News & Insights

ACOEL announced May 22 the election of 17 new fellows. Each new College member has a depth of experience in – and has made substantial contributions to – the field of environmental law. See how who are new members are.

Last week our nation’s highest court was scheduled to decide whether to hear the City and County of San Francisco’s appeal of Ninth Circuit split decision upholding an EPA NPDES permit issued to the City and County containing two narrative prohibitions on discharges from the Oceanside combined sewer system and wastewater treatment facility. One of those […]

A recent news article piqued my interest in a potential hazard for librarians handling Victorian era books with Emerald green book covers – arsenic contamination from dyes once used to produce a brilliant green hue, most especially in cloth book bindings.  About five years ago, Dr. Melissa Tedone identified friable arsenic while repairing the cloth […]

In mid-April of this year, the Climate XChange, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing state climate policy, announced that it, along with RMI and the Evergreen Collaborative, had reviewed “6,795 pages of state climate plans.”  These plans had been submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as part of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Grants […]

Last Friday, EPA formally designated perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) – including their salts and structural isomers! – as hazardous substances under CERCLA. I cannot really quarrel with the underlying decision to list PFOA and PFOS. Given the developing evidence about the risks that they pose, it’s difficult to argue that they are […]

DOJ and EPA have submitted their brief arguing that the Supreme Court should leave alone a split Ninth Circuit decision upholding a NPDES permit condition prohibiting the permittees, the City and County of San Francisco, from “causing or contributing” to any violation of “applicable water quality standards”. You might recall that when the City and […]

On March 6, 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued its long-awaited climate disclosure rule. The rule, formally titled, “The Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors,” came nearly two years after the SEC’s initial proposal and after some 24,000 public comments in response to that proposal. In line with the initial […]

Last week, Inside EPA (subscription required) ran a story indicating that EPA is trying to figure out how to juggle some increasingly expensive cleanups with shortfalls in Superfund tax revenue.  The story notes that EPA is adding expensive new sites to the National Priorities List, while also anticipating new costs resulting from PFAS regulation and […]

EPA picked another Clean Water Act fight with the United States Supreme Court last week and I don’t understand why EPA thinks it is a fight it can win. As many of you know, the jurisdictional reach of the Clean Water Act is now the shortest it has been in over forty years as a […]

Fifty years ago the Commonwealth of Virginia experienced a human health and environmental crisis when the insecticide Kepone was discovered in the blood of manufacturing workers and in the fish and sediment of the James River at Hopewell Virginia. For those of us who participated on response teams the memories are vivid. But most have […]

The American College of Environmental Lawyers (“ACOEL”) announces its annual Stephen E. Herrmann Environmental Writing Award (“Herrmann Award”) for the 2023-24 academic year. Stephen E. Herrmann is a distinguished, nationally recognized environmental lawyer. For over forty years, Mr. Herrmann has been a leader in the area of environmental law as a practitioner, teacher, and writer. […]

I seem to be the ACOEL CERCLA blogger by default. The other environmental practitioners may affect to being far too cool for this practice area, but we all know they secretly read Superfund cases at night when they are alone. So, to provide a guilty pleasure to some and perhaps a useful thought to others, […]