Clean Water Act

 

NWPR & WOTUS

 

Regan’s Pledge For WOTUS ‘Middle Ground’ Faces Doubts Amid Criticisms. According to InsideEPA, “EPA Administrator Michael Regan’s pledge to craft a new ‘middle ground’ policy defining ‘waters of the United States’ (WOTUS) is facing significant doubts as supporters of the Trump-era definition threaten legal action over Biden administration overhaul plans while environmentalists slam the officials over the pace of any changes. ‘The question up to now has not been whether the Biden Administration would do something to redefine Waters of the United States but what would they do? Now, the question becomes, ‘Can they write a definition that will last beyond their time in office?’ Kevin Minoli, formerly a senior official in EPA’s Office of General Counsel and now a partner at Alston & Bird, said in a statement. His comments come in response to EPA’s June 9 announcement, together with the Army Corps of Engineers, that officials would craft a new WOTUS rule under the Clean Water Act (CWA). But the announcement has been met with stinging criticisms from both sides. Environmental groups charged that the Biden administration was not moving quickly enough to repeal the Trump-era WOTUS definition. Meanwhile, supporters of the Trump-era WOTUS definition strongly criticized the Biden administration’s announcement, raising concerns that officials have plotted a new path without listening to agriculture groups, and hinting at possible legal action.” [InsideEPA, 6/10/21 (=)]

 

When It Comes To The Waters Of The United States, EPA Thinks The Eighth Time Will Be The Charm. According to The National Law Review, “This morning Juan Carlos Rodriguez reports what EPA Administrator Regan had already suggested -- that the Biden Administration apparently thinks that the eighth time really can be the charm with respect to EPA’s effort to determine the reach of the Federal Clean Water Act by regulation. In litigation pending in Massachusetts challenging the seventh EPA effort, EPA has asked the Federal Court to send the matter back to EPA for further action and maintain the seventh attempt as the law in the meantime. This brings to mind a scene in the classic movie My Cousin Vinny when Vinny says about passing the Bar exam, ‘for me, six times was the charm.’ The difference is that Vinny did pass the Bar exam on that sixth attempt while there is absolutely no reason to believe that an eighth rulemaking by EPA will do anything other than lead to more litigation and continuing confusion in the longest-running controversy in environmental law. Mr. Rodriguez’s report does a good job of covering all the bases except that his story begins in the middle. One has to go all the way back to the Carter Administration to tell the complete story of EPA’s efforts to do by regulation what Congress didn’t do by legislation. Sadly, the only thing more improbable than the possibility that, for EPA, the eighth time will be the charm, is the possibility that Congress will resolve the reach of the Federal Clean Water Act once and for all.” [The National Law Review, 6/10/21 (-)]

 

New Mexico Water Advocates Applaud Biden Administration Repeal Of Trump-Era Dirty Water Rule. According to KRWG-Radio, “Water advocates across New Mexico applaud the Biden Administration’s decision to repeal the Trump Administration’s Dirty Water Rule. The Dirty Water Rule, combined with previous reductions of protections at the federal level in 2001 and 2006, negatively impacts New Mexico more than any state in the nation leaving more than 90% of New Mexico’s waters unprotected by the federal Clean Water Act. Amigos Bravos, New Mexico Acequia Association, and Gila Resources Information Project, represented by New Mexico Environmental Law Center joined together last year to appeal the Trump Dirty Water Rule. This appeal will remain active until the rule is formally repealed by the Biden Administration. For more information about how the Dirty Water Rule impacts New Mexico, visit ‘Polluted Future: New Mexico Clean Water Under Threat,’ a website and video series created in partnership by Amigos Bravos and CAVU. ‘Decades of environmental racism have left native and land based communities here in New Mexico feeling the impacts of water pollution for too long. The Dirty Water Rule has only exacerbated the disparity. By quickly repealing this harmful rollback of the Clean Water Act, the Biden administration can finally tackle the nation’s clean water crises and ensure that clean water for all is the standard,’ said Rachel Conn, projects director of Amigos Bravos.” [KRWG-Radio, 6/10/21 (=)]

 

Water Pollution

 

PFAS

 

EPA Proposes First-Ever Reporting Requirements For PFAS. According to E&E News, “EPA is proposing its first-ever reporting requirements under a key toxics law for ‘forever chemicals’ and withdrawing Trump-era guidance that the agency says ‘weakened’ protections against the family of toxic substances. In an announcement this afternoon, the agency said it will propose a rule under the Toxic Substances Control Act to gather data on more than 1,000 per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that are manufactured in the United States. Michal Freedhoff, President Biden’s nominee for assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, said in a statement that EPA is committed to ‘strengthening our rules, improving our data, and advancing our understanding’ of PFAS. EPA is also withdrawing guidance issued in the last days of the Trump administration related to when PFAS are included in the surface coatings of imported goods. The guidance limited which coatings fell under the 2020 Significant New Use Rule prohibiting companies from manufacturing, importing, processing or using certain long-chain PFAS without prior EPA review. EPA now says that the guidance ‘inappropriately narrowed the scope and weakened prohibitions’ on PFAS imports in the rule and had been finalized without consideration of public comments. ‘The guide was never deemed necessary by career staff and its development was directed by political officials serving in the last administration,’ EPA explained in a press release.” [E&E News, 6/10/21 (=)]

 

PFAS Action. According to Politico, “EPA took a series of steps relating to toxic ‘forever chemicals’ on Wednesday, including proposing a rule that would require all companies that have manufactured PFAS in the past decade to report to EPA information such as which chemicals and byproducts were produced and in what volumes, what is known about their health and environmental effects, whether workers were exposed and how the chemicals were disposed of. The agency also withdrew guidance that the Biden administration says weakened a rule (Reg. 2070-AJ99) issued by the Trump administration that effectively bans the import of certain PFAS chemicals, and published a final rule adding three additional PFAS chemicals to the Toxics Release Inventory.” [Politico, 6/11/21 (=)]

 

Senate Urged To Back RCRA On PFAS As Regan Ducks CERCLA Query. According to InsideEPA, “New Mexico’s environment secretary is urging senators to back calls for EPA to designate certain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) as a ‘hazardous waste’ under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) a possible alternative to long-running calls for the agency to take a similar action under the Superfund law. During a June 9 hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, New Mexico Environment Department chief James Kenney pressed for the listing of PFAS as ‘hazardous waste’ under RCRA -- an action that lawmakers have previously not sought, opting instead to push for a Superfund designation as hazardous substances that has lingered at EPA. But the idea has been pending for more than a year, with two environmentalists’ petitions still awaiting action at EPA, and a water utility group currently weighing the concept. Such a designation would ensure cradle-to-grave management of wastes contaminated with PFAS, environmentalists have said. The listing would also lead to an automatic designation of those chemicals as hazardous substances under the Superfund law. Former Trump EPA waste head Peter Wright during an exit interview with Inside EPA earlier this year suggested such a move would be less precedent-setting than under the Superfund law, known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA).” [InsideEPA, 6/10/21 (=)]

 

Toxic Algae

 

Glacier Blood? Watermelon Snow? Whatever It’s Called, Snow Shouldn’t Be So Red. According to The New York Times, “Winter through spring, the French Alps are wrapped in austere white snow. But as spring turns to summer, the stoic slopes start to blush. Parts of the snow take on bright colors: deep red, rusty orange, lemonade pink. Locals call this ‘sang de glacier,’ or ‘glacier blood.’ Visitors sometimes go with ‘watermelon snow.’ In reality, these blushes come from an embarrassment of algae. In recent years, alpine habitats all over the world have experienced an uptick in snow algae blooms — dramatic, strangely hued aggregations of these normally invisible creatures. While snow algae blooms are poorly understood, that they are happening is probably not a good sign. Researchers have begun surveying the algae of the Alps to better grasp what species live there, how they survive and what might be pushing them over the bleeding edge. Some of their initial findings were published this week in Frontiers in Plant Science. Tiny yet powerful, the plantlike bacteria we call algae are ‘the basis of all ecosystems,’ said Adeline Stewart, a doctoral student at Grenoble Alpes University in France and an author of the study. Thanks to their photosynthetic prowess, algae produce a large amount of the world’s oxygen, and form the foundation of most food webs. But they sometimes overdo it, multiplying until they throw things out of balance. This can cause toxic red tides, scummy freshwater blooms — or unsettling glacier blood.” [The New York Times, 6/11/21 (=)]

 

Environmental Justice

 

Op-Ed: Any Reform Of Federal Oil And Gas Leasing Must Include Environmental Justice. According to an op-ed by Beverly L. Wright in Scientific American, “This pollution flows through our backyards, school grounds and recreation centers, threatening our access to clean air and water and jeopardizing our health. But all too often, the communities hit hardest by these dangers are ignored and left out of the conversation. We deserve better, and this leasing pause is the opportunity to give Secretary Haaland the chance to hear from us and to center justice and equity in reforms of the oil and gas program. The environmental injustices our communities face are numerous. In 2019, the Environmental Protection Agency published a report that found the petroleum sector released over 11 million pounds of pollution in 25 Louisiana parishes, with many of these facilities operating in close proximity to Black residents. Within this pollution were chemicals widely known to cause cancer and damage heart and lung functions, making it difficult to breathe and often leading to premature death. And now, as studies show that air pollution exacerbates the impacts of the COVID-19 virus, the threat that oil and gas facilities pose to our communities is only being magnified. Unfortunately, air pollution is not the only concern. In coastal communities, redlining, oil spills and offshore drilling add to racial inequality. Following the BP oil drilling disaster, massive amounts of oil waste were disposed of in landfills next to Black communities, jeopardizing our water supplies. And as offshore drilling continues, our coastlines are deteriorating, leaving many areas without natural defenses to extreme weather events. To make matters worse, greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas industry are massive contributors to the climate crisis, which disproportionately affects our communities where floods, heat waves and other climate-induced disasters have become the norm.” [Scientific American, 6/10/21 (+)]

 

Western Water

 

How Severe Is The Western Drought? See For Yourself. According to The New York Times, “An intense drought is gripping the American West. Extreme conditions are more widespread than at any point in at least 20 years, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, the government’s official drought-tracking service. And the hottest months of summer are still to come. ‘It’s an alarming picture,’ said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies how global warming affects extreme weather events. Across the region, reservoir levels are near record lows and mountain snowpack, which slowly releases water in the spring and summer, is largely depleted. In California, water restrictions are already in effect, with more widespread cuts expected. Dry soil conditions are already increasing fire risk. The West is no stranger to drought, but climate change is making it worse. Severe dryness covered California and Nevada just five years ago, from 2012 to 2016, and the Southwest has been in drought for much of the past two decades, punctuated by rare wet years. Experts say this year is unusual because extreme drought conditions are so widespread and have intensified quickly. They are likely to grow even worse this summer.” [The New York Times, 6/11/21 (+)]

 

Key Reservoir On Colorado River Hits Record Low. According to E&E News, “A key reservoir on the Colorado River has dipped to its record low in the latest showing of the drought’s grip on the region. The surface elevation of Lake Mead along the Nevada-Arizona border dipped to 1,071.56 feet at 11 p.m. yesterday. The level was last hit in July 2016 and is 18.5 feet lower than one year ago, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. It’s the lowest level since Lake Mead was filled in the 1930s. ‘We’re expecting the reservoir to keep declining until November, then it should start to rebound,’ said Bureau of Reclamation spokeswoman Patti Aaron. The water level affects the recreation industry at what is one of the largest man-made reservoirs in the country and the efficiency of hydropower generation at Hoover Dam. It won’t be used to determine next year’s water deliveries to Arizona, California and Nevada until August, when the Bureau of Reclamation issues an official projection. Already, the agency has said it’s expected to declare the first-ever shortage declaration that prompts cuts in Arizona and Nevada. ‘People are certainly concerned,’ Aaron said. ‘You look at the reservoir and it’s concerning.’ Lake Mead levels ebb and flow throughout the year depending on weather patterns and how much water is consumed or evaporates. Officials project the lake will fall to 1,064 feet before rebounding in November when agriculture needs decrease, Aaron said.” [E&E News, 6/10/21 (=)]

 

Flooding

 

NASA Satellites May Vastly Underestimate Downpours. According to E&E News, “A government scientist investigating Hurricane Maria’s destruction said yesterday that NASA satellites may underestimate precipitation during major storms, raising questions about using them to inform warning systems before and during disasters. Scott Weaver, director of the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program, told colleagues during a meeting of a Maria investigative team that when the hurricane hit in 2017, NASA satellites reported far less rainfall over Puerto Rico than ground-based rain gauges operated by NOAA. ‘When you have extreme rainfall, IMERG underestimates compared to ground-based systems,’ Weaver said, referring to NASA’s global satellite system, known officially as Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for Global Precipitation Measurement. ‘Space-based observations are pretty good in lower rates’ of rainfall, Weaver added. ‘It’s when we’re in these extreme environments that there are issues.’ Weaver, who is part of a government team investigating causes of death and building damage caused by Maria, said NASA satellites were measuring rainfall in Puerto Rico at half an inch per hour — far less than the 1.7 inches per hour that NOAA gauges were recording. ‘These satellites are being used to drive flood models,’ Weaver said. ‘If they’re vastly underestimating [precipitation], it may draw into question what the flooding characterization may be’ during a disaster.” [E&E News, 6/11/21 (=)]

 

 

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