May 28, 2024 Life's tragedy is we get old too soon and wise too late. Words that are going to be ringing in EPA's ears after its next visit to the Supreme Court. By Jeff Porter As predicted in February, our nation's highest court is about to hear its third Clean Water Act in four years. Anyone who doubts the...
Mar 25, 2024 EPA's Safer Communities by Chemical Accident Prevention Rule will almost certainly be challenged and EPA is the underdog in the legal fight to come By Jeff Porter 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...
Jan 11, 2024 Another PFAS Clean Water Act Citizen Suit and there may be thousands more of these fish in the barrel. By Jeff Porter Lara Beaven of Inside PFAS Policy is reporting on another PFAS citizen suit under the Federal Clean Water Act. This one, by Tennessee...
Jan 10, 2024 The Navy is going to get a Clean Water Act NPDES permit authorizing its firing of munitions. What's next? By Jeff Porter Sam Hess of Inside EPA is reporting that the U.S. Navy has agreed to apply for a Federal Clean Water Act NPDES permit authorizing the...
Jan 04, 2024 We already knew many Federal Judges weren't deferring to EPA, now the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals isn't deferring to Judges either. By Jeff Porter Just before the holidays I wrote about three Judges of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals who decided, over the Army Corps of Engineers'...
Dec 11, 2023 Oppenheimer isn't the only Los Alamos blockbuster this year. EPA has another one with its exercise of its Residual Designation Authority there! By Jeff Porter You may have thought the movie Oppenheimer would be the only blockbuster involving Los Alamos, New Mexico this year. But now EPA has...
Nov 27, 2023 EPA's new Maui Functional Equivalence Guidance is guidance in name only as confusion continues to reign over the reach of the Clean Water Act By Jeff Porter Just before the Thanksgiving holiday EPA issued draft guidance regarding when a discharge of a “pollutant” to groundwater is the...
Sep 07, 2023 Soon we'll have EPA guidance responding to the Supreme Court's Maui decision, but it may not be much. By Jeff Porter The ever-vigilant Sam Hess of Inside EPA has posted an August presentation by an EPA official at the Association of Clean Water...
Aug 03, 2023 Will EPA's 9th attempt to determine the reach of the Clean Water Act be the charm? The Waters Advocacy Coalition doesn't seem to think so. By Jeff Porter Last week the Waters Advocacy Coalition sent to the heads of the Environmental Protection Administration and the Corps of Engineers many...
May 23, 2023 Congress might make it so the US Forest Service doesn't need to get Federal and State NPDES permits to keep fighting fires. By Jeff Porter A few months ago I told you about the United States Forest Service's decision to resolve a citizen suit accusing it of violating the...
Feb 16, 2023 Instead of criticizing House Republicans for trying to legislatively determine the reach of the Clean Water Act, House Democrats should try it. By Jeff Porter Inside EPA reports that some House Democrats are criticizing their Republican colleagues for attempting to repeal EPA's eighth attempt to...
Oct 04, 2022 More on the Supreme Court's most recent tangle with the Clean Water Act By Jeff Porter Bobby Magill of Bloomberg has published a concise summary of the two hours in the Supreme Court yesterday during which attorneys for the...
Apr 22, 2022 Misery may love company but this NGO's attempt to prove two golf courses meet the "functional equivalence" test in the same case seems doomed. By Jeff Porter Some of you may recall that late last year an NGO filed a lawsuit against an operator of a wastewater treatment facility in the mountains...
Mar 31, 2022 When it comes to the reach of the Federal Clean Water Act, is rule making a way to find common ground and, if so, why hasn't it worked yet? By Jeff Porter Yesterday EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Radhika Fox told an EPA Advisory Committee EPA remains committed to using Federal rule...
Feb 24, 2022 Another "Maui" Citizen Suit in New York Continues to Meander Along in its Tenth Year By Jeff Porter A Magistrate Judge and EPA continue to strongly disagree about the application of the Safe Drinking Water Act to septic systems and...
Jan 19, 2022 Will Rogers, Farmers and Waters of the United States By Jeff Porter The social commentator Will Rogers famously said that a "farmer has to be an optimist or he wouldn’t still be a farmer." Those words...