Environmental News Bits

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

On October 17, 2022, the United States Environmental Protection Agency issued a proposed finding that lead air pollution may reasonably be anticipated to endanger the public health and welfare within the meaning of Section 231(a) of the Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C.

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PA Environment Daily

NOVEMBER 17, 2022

On November 17, Erie Coke Corporation, along with a corporate officer, have been indicted by a federal grand jury in Erie on among other charges, Violation of the Clean Air Act, United States Attorney Cindy K. Chung announced today. The eight-count Indictment, returned on Nov.

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Legal Planet

JANUARY 10, 2023

There are Supreme Court cases going back a century or more dealing with what we would now consider environmental issues such as preserving nature or air pollution. I began with a Westlaw search for the term “air pollution.” The earliest opinion I found was Huron Portland Cement Co. City of Detroit. Seattle Disposal Co.

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Legal Planet

OCTOBER 26, 2022

discussing the ways in which local air districts can take action to end harmful air pollution from building appliances. Reducing appliance emissions is a critical step on the path to healthy air. Local air districts can and should use their power to push for zero-emission appliances. Download as PDF.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

SEPTEMBER 22, 2023

In a major win for community members in South Memphis, Tennessee, a facility emitting a toxic air pollutant— ethylene oxide (EtO)—announced late last month that it will close its doors. We also estimated that EtO emissions contributed to more than 80 percent of the cancer risk attributable to toxic air pollution around the facility.

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Legal Planet

AUGUST 26, 2021

The case involved the lynchpin of the Clean Air Act, EPA’s power to set national air quality standards. The Court then held that greenhouse gases are covered by the Clean Air Act as a type of air pollutant. Among other things, the Clean Air Act gives federal protection to wetlands.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates emissions of EtO, yet the agency is years behind on updating standards and control requirements, despite mounting evidence of the harm of long-term EtO exposure. A decade overdue , EPA is finalizing updated regulations for commercial sterilizers now.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

MAY 2, 2023

Robert Bullard, “environmental justice embraces the principle that all people and communities have a right to equal protection and equal enforcement of environmental laws and regulations.” A myriad of studies since have validated these findings across a number of exposures, such as soot air pollution (PM2.5

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Legal Planet

OCTOBER 10, 2023

The decline probably wasn’t due to environmental regulation. The passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act and its major 1990 Amendments don’t show up at all in a graph of coal use. Coal began to really plunge in 2012, three years before Obama’s Clean Power Plan was issued. Download as PDF

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Union of Concerned Scientists

APRIL 20, 2023

Multiple lines of analysis make clear that regardless of how cheap wind and solar power get, without directly addressing pollution from coal and gas plants, the country’s clean energy transition will not happen fast enough. One critical tool for forcing that reckoning comes from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

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PA Environment Daily

FEBRUARY 12, 2024

On February 12, environmental groups announced the US Environmental Protection Agency formally objected to an air quality permit for the US Steel Edgar Thomson Plant issued by the Allegheny County Health Department in August 2023 saying it was not in compliance with the Clean Air Act. Steel Edgar Thomson by ACHD.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

DECEMBER 1, 2022

California has a longstanding leadership role on transportation pollution, and the Clean Air Act grants the state the right to set strong vehicle emissions standards. Over 10,000 UCS supporters chimed in with EPA in support of granting California’s ability to enforce its truck regulations. Washington.

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PA Environment Daily

MAY 18, 2022

million penalty and make extensive improvements at its steel production facility in Braddock, Pennsylvania, as part of a settlement covering longstanding air pollution violations. Steel is required to make numerous improvements in training, monitoring and work practices to increase compliance and timely response to air pollution.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

JUNE 1, 2022

And as EPA moves forward with its own proposal to finally strengthen truck pollution regulations, industry has been waging an all-out war on those, too. This fight by industry to delay, obstruct, and otherwise thwart stronger regulation has devastating consequences. Image: Freightliner ).

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Environment Next

JULY 22, 2021

The bill further requires EPA to list PFOA and PFOS as hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) under the Clean Air Act and establish pretreatment standards and effluent limits for the compounds under the Clean Water Act.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

FEBRUARY 9, 2023

The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to review—and update—its ethylene oxide emissions standards every eight years, but the last time it did so was in 2006. People of color, people with low-incomes, and non-English speakers have for too long shouldered the weight of weak environmental regulation.

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Legal Planet

JUNE 30, 2022

CT , the Supreme Court said this: We hold that the Clean Air Act and the EPA actions it authorizes displace any federal common law right to seek abatement of carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel fired power plants. And, most relevant here, §7411(d) then requires regulation of existing sources within the same category.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

OCTOBER 6, 2022

EPA proposed changes to its MON rule in 2019, regulating toxic emissions for about 200 chemical plants that produce solvents, plastics, and pesticides across the country. EPA plans to issue a Clean Air Act rulemaking for commercial sterilizers later this year and for other chemical facilities soon, as well.

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PA Environment Daily

MAY 4, 2023

Covanta Delaware Valley, LP is a permitted waste-to-energy facility that has filed an application for a Plan Approval to install equipment that would reduce the amount of the pollutant nitrogen oxides (NOx) emitted from the facilities six (6) waste combustors to meet the new federal and state standards for air pollution.

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The Energy Law Blog

JULY 23, 2013

In the recent ruling, the Third Circuit held that it was reasonable for EPA to interpret Section 126(b) to be an “independent mechanism for enforcing interstate pollution control,” thereby giving EPA authority to directly regulate a specific source in an upwind state. See GenOn REMA, LLC v. 12-1022, slip op. at 29 (3d Cir.

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Legal Planet

MARCH 21, 2024

Conservative groups have claimed since then that virtually every government regulation raises a major question. None of these apply to the new car rule: The new rule is based on a legal provision that EPA has applied for decades to regulate cars, rather than an obscure and rarely used legal provision. The rule is not unprecedented.

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Law Columbia

MARCH 29, 2024

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is still awaiting funding to craft the regulations needed to implement the laws, though it has indicated it will begin the process soon. However, the existence of federal regulations on the same subject as a state law does not mean that state law is necessarily preempted. 218 (1947)).

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Law Columbia

APRIL 18, 2023

District Court for the Northern District of California substantively heard only the federal claims asserting preemption by the federal Energy Policy & Conservation Act, or EPCA, which preempts state and local governments from setting standards “concerning the energy efficiency, energy use, or water use of” products regulated by EPCA.

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PA Environment Daily

MARCH 21, 2024

The Department of Environmental Protection notified the Shell Petrochemical Plant in Beaver County it will no longer be able to operate under an Air Quality Construction permit and must submit an application for a full Title V Air Quality Permit within 120 days. 12,671,044.75

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PA Environment Daily

APRIL 26, 2023

On April 25, the Eyes On Shell citizens initiative reported fenceline air pollution monitoring data at Shell's Petrochemical Plant in Beaver County reported benzene levels of over 185 µg/m3 and 89 µg/m3 they said was above the 29 µg/m3 minimum risk level established by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

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PA Environment Daily

DECEMBER 19, 2022

On November 15, 2022, Erie Coke Corporation, along with the plant superintendent, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Erie on among other charges, violation of the Clean Air Act. Such hazardous air pollutants were released directly into the air to avoid the plant’s environmental monitoring system.

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PA Environment Daily

SEPTEMBER 3, 2021

These permits are required under the federal Clean Air Act for any large or major source of air pollution. It does not authorize any increase in air emissions of regulated pollutants above the previously approved levels.

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The Energy Law Blog

OCTOBER 3, 2011

23, 2011), available at [link] EPA is proposing changes to the New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) in 40 CFR part 60 and technology-based National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) in 40 CFR part 63 that apply to oil and gas production, processing, transmission and storage facilities. 52738 (Aug.

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Acoel

JULY 30, 2021

In the race to regulate PFAS substances, Congress’ actions have outpaced agency knowledge, leaving industry to wager on the outcome. The bill would require the EPA to designate PFAS and related PFOA compounds as hazardous substances under CERCLA within one year of the Act’s enactment. Posted on July 30, 2021 by Donald K.

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PA Environment Daily

APRIL 21, 2022

The information may assist states and local air pollution control agencies, Tribal authorities, and regulated entities in their consideration of technologies and measures that may be implemented to reduce GHG emissions from stationary combustion turbines.

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Acoel

JUNE 29, 2022

This level of forced retirements is far in excess of any prior EPA projections of plant shutdowns resulting from implementation of a Clean Air Act rulemaking. For example, EPA projected a total of just 4,700 MW of coal capacity retirements under the 2012 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards rule.

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Vermont Law

JUNE 30, 2014

Summary: Last week the Supreme Court handed down its second Clean Air Act case of the term, Utility Air Regulatory Group v. The case involved a challenge to EPA’s attempt to regulate greenhouse gases in the Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) program of the Clean Air Act.

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Legal Planet

FEBRUARY 24, 2022

The EJ focus now includes other measures to ensure that vulnerable communities get the benefit of climate regulations. The most powerful tool for assisting those communities, however, may be the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). Air pollution is the biggest threat to poor communities and communities of color.

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PA Environment Daily

MAY 11, 2023

May 11, the Environmental Integrity Project and Clean Air Council filed a federal lawsuit against the Shell Petrochemical Plant for repeatedly violating permitted air pollution limits from a massive new plastics production plant in Beaver County, which opened last year. In a lawsuit filed in the U.S.

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Corp Watch

MARCH 8, 2024

million for air pollution in 2007, and then $8.75 in 2022 References: Gigantic sleaze scandal winds up as former Elf oil chiefs are jailed - Total to pay $15 mln to settle US false claims case Six Texas Oil Refineries Are Among the Nation’s Worst Benzene Polluters, Data Shows Total to pay $2.9 million in 2013. Total settles U.S.

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Acoel

FEBRUARY 1, 2022

Croix and in South Carolina, EPA invoked Section 303 of the Clean Air Act, which provides for the issuance of an emergency order in response to an imminent and substantial endangerment to public health or welfare, to require immediate actions to either pause operations or reduce emissions from the facilities. In actions in St.

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Ohio Environmental Law

SEPTEMBER 8, 2022

Toxic Substances Control Act section 7 imminently hazardous chemical. Supreme Court regarding the Clean Air Act and other environmental statutes as to whether EPA is required to consider costs when promulgating a rule. There have been multiple cases that have gone up to the U.S.

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