-
EPA Declines to Add Microplastics to Proposed UCMR 6
On July 1, 2026, the EPA issued its long-awaited proposed Sixth Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (“UCMR 6”). Despite two petitions urging their inclusion, the agency decided not to add microplastics to the list of contaminants that public water systems will be required to monitor during the 2028–2030 sample collection period. The Petitions The EPA’s proposal…
-
OSHA Advisory Committee Raises Concerns Over Agency’s Respirator Standard Overhaul
As part of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s July 1, 2025 deregulatory efforts (read our client alert summarizing the actions here), the agency proposed a series of changes to chemical-specific respirator standards affecting multiple hazardous substances including asbestos, benzene, lead, cadmium, and ethylene oxide. The proposals were primarily aimed at consolidating substance-specific respirator requirements…
-
EPA Proposes New Definition of “Begin Actual Construction” for NSR Permitting
Under EPA’s New Source Review (“NSR”) program, an owner or operator must obtain a permit prior to commencing construction of a new major source or a major modification to an existing source. The NSR permitting process can be lengthy, often taking a year or more to complete with complex air dispersion modeling, control technology analyses,…
-
After Sackett: Federal Wetlands Regulation, the Trump Administration’s Rulemaking, and What Comes Next
Wetlands are among the most productive and protective ecosystems on our planet — filtering water, storing carbon, buffering floods, and sustaining biodiversity. They are also, since the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Sackett v. EPA, substantially less protected by federal law. By eliminating the ‘significant nexus’ test, Sackett shrunk federal power over millions of acres…
-
From Regulation to Litigation: Climate Tort Risk After the Endangerment Finding Repeal
As my colleague Meghan Greenfield discussed yesterday, on February 12 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rescinded its 2009 finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare, unwinding what it described as the legal foundation for nearly every federal climate regulation of the past fifteen years. The immediate regulatory consequences are significant and well-chronicled:…
-
NAAQS: Litigation Trends and Stalled Rulemakings
Under the Clean Air Act, EPA regulates six criteria pollutants through the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (“NAAQS”) program. EPA sets primary and secondary NAAQS that states must meet through regulation of stationary and mobile sources. The Clean Air Act requires EPA to review the NAAQS at least every five years and revise the standards…
-
EPA Endangerment Finding Repeal Upends Federal Climate Regulation
In what it described as “the single largest deregulatory action in US history,” the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on February 12 repealed its finding under the Clean Air Act that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare—the so-called “endangerment finding.”[1] The decision eliminates not only federal greenhouse gas emission standards for vehicles and engines…
-
NOT IN MY BACKYARD;
State and Local Obstacles to Renewable Energy Development FEDERAL CONTEXT An unfriendly administration — and a contested legal record On January 20, 2025, President Trump issued a presidential memorandum invoking his authority under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (43 U.S.C. § 1341(a)) to withdraw the entire outer continental shelf (OCS) from offshore wind leasing…
-
The Impacts of Climate Change on Worker Safety
While this year’s Earth Week theme of “our power, our planet” is centered around the renewable energy movement and combating climate change, attention should also be directed to the people tasked with building that future and how to adequately protect those workers who are already feeling the effects of a changing environment. For example, between…
-
Oregon’s Extended Producer Responsibility Law: A Constitutional Challenge with Potential National Implications
Earth Day’s theme this year—Our Power, Our Planet—asks us to consider where environmental power resides and how it is exercised. Oregon’s Plastic Pollution and Recycling Modernization Act is an example of that question in action. Enacted in 2021, the Act represents an assertion of state environmental authority in a space that the federal government has…
-
EPA Declines to Add Microplastics to Proposed UCMR 6
On July 1, 2026, the EPA issued its long-awaited proposed Sixth Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (“UCMR 6”). Despite two petitions urging their inclusion, the agency decided not to add microplastics to the list of contaminants that public water systems will be required to monitor during the 2028–2030 sample collection period. The Petitions The EPA’s proposal…