Emerging Contaminants: MassDEP has proposed reportable concentrations and clean-up standards for perfluoroalkyl compounds in the Massachusetts Contingency Plan, 310 CMR 40.0000 et seq. (MCP). Written comments must be filed by July 19, 2019. The final regulations are scheduled for the Fall, 2019.
Climate Change: Following up on an April, 2018 policy announcement, the EPA proposes to adopt regulations that would treat carbon dioxide emissions from power plants using managed forest biomass as carbon neutral.
Renewable Energy: The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) has proposed regulations to revise the Class I and Class II Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard (RPS) regulations, including revisions to the efficiency standard for certain woody biomass to qualify for Class 1 Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs).
Solid Waste: During 2019, the MassDEP will continue to hold Solid Waste Advisory Committee meetings to arrive at a draft 2020 Solid Waste Master Plan. Subcommittees that will also be meeting include the source reduction, organics and C&D Subcommittees. In this connection, in February MSW Consultants provided the MassDEP with its final Massachusetts Materials Management Capacity Study which is intended to inform the development of the 2020 Master Plan.
NPDES: In April, the EPA issued an Interpretative Statement on Application of Clean Water Act National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System to Releases of Pollutants from a Point Source to Groundwater, in which the Agency concludes “that the CWA is best read as excluding all releases of pollutants from a point source to groundwater from NPDES program coverage. regardless of a hydrologic connection between the groundwater and jurisdictional surface water.” It will remain to be seen whether or not this interpretation will quell the conflict among the federal Circuits over the issue, highlighted last September when the Massachusetts District Court dismissed a citizen’s suit alleging violations of the NPDES program by Casella Waste Systems’ discharge of contamination to the groundwater at the Southbridge landfill in Toxics Action Center, et. al. v. Casella Waste Systems, Inc., et. al. Hopefully, the United States Supreme Court will answer the question of NPDES jurisdiction when it takes up County of Maui, HI v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund on appeal from a Ninth Circuit decision extending jurisdiction to discharges to groundwater.
As summer closed, we took a family vacation to Oregon. In addition to lingering in Powell’s Books, eating from food trucks, and drinking local brews and Stumptown Coffee during several days in Portland, we borrowed a friend’s car for excursions to Cannon Beach and the Columbia River Gorge. As part of our family goal to someday visit all 50 states, we made sure to cross into Washington. We grabbed that extra state with a dramatic pedestrian crossing over the Bridge of the Gods, which serves as the Columbia River crossing on the Pacific Crest Trail.
Labor Day, as news of the Eagle Creek Fire along the Oregon/Washington border brought the reality of Western wildfires to a personal level. With visions of our triumphal Columbia River crossing still fresh, it was harrowing to learn of the breadth and rapid spread of the Eagle Creek Fire, which allegedly was started with a discarded firework. Careless fireworks are always a risk, but in the tinder box of the exceedingly dry Pacific Northwest forests this summer, this act of carelessness devastated over 50,000 acres.
Since Trump’s inauguration, friends and colleagues have been asking, “what impact will President Trump have on environmental law?” Along with the rest of the nation (and world), we are waiting to see just how far Trump will push his anti-environment agenda.