With the surprising and sad news over the weekend of Justice Scalia’s passing, many critical decisions before the Supreme Court suddenly got more interesting. This is certainly the case with the Clean Power Plan.
Last Week, in the first time in history the Court issued a stay of the effectiveness of the rule while the
Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued a stay of the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) after the lower Court had denied to grant such relief. Currently, the legal challenge to the validity of the rule is pending before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court had never previously issued a stay of a
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As predicted last year in a prior blog post, EPA announced today that it would revise the current ozone standard of 75 ppb downward to 70 ppb. EPA had been contemplating a revised standard between 70 ppb and as low as 60 ppb.
Under the Clean Air Act, EPA is required to review the
I was fortunate enough to be asked to participate in a radio interview with Jeff St. Clair, WKSU Radio, regarding the Clean Power Plan. It was an interesting discussion of the legal questions surrounding the plan as well as a broader discussion of the state of environmental regulation in the United States.
Here is an
Following a failure of the dike at the Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee which received national attention, the Obama Administration announced it would re-evaluate regulation of coal combustion residuals (CCR) or coal ash.
The Administration’s key decision was whether to regulate CCR under Subtitle C of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) as
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Through out the long and contentious election process the focus of the debate was getting America back to work. Much of the debate centered on tax policy and budget cuts. However, the President was accused of "over-regulation" which Mitt Romney argued cooled the economic recovery.
As part of the debate over regulation, environmental regulation was
In perhaps the biggest environmental decision in decades, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld all aspects of EPA’s complex regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Each piece of EPA regulation was controversial, yet the Court validated the overall approach paving the way for future action by EPA.
Flashback several years ago, when the Obama Administration stated
Under increasing pressure from the Courts, EPA announced on June 14th its proposed revision to the federal air quality standard for fine particles (microns less than 2.5). The last standard was 15 ug/m3 which was established in 1997. EPA is now proposing to lower the standard somewhere between 12 and 13 ug/m3.
Back in 2009, the Court
The Obama Administration had already delayed issuance of a revised ozone standard three times. EPA had said repeatedly that it would it would finally promulgate the new standard by this August. Then last week, President Obama shocked many by announcing that EPA would not issue a new ozone standard until 2013.
A Little History on Ozone
Under
It is no secret that EPA and its wave of recent and forthcoming regulations have stirred up much angst among Republicans in Congress. Many industry groups argue that EPA’s rulemaking, especially its anticipated announcement of a much stricter ozone standard, will have a devastating impact on our fragile economy.
While plenty of bills have been floated since