Environmental Compliance & Permitting

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This week’s post is authored by Emilee Mooney Scott and is also available on Robinson+Cole’s Environmental Law + blog. Thank you to Emilee for contributing. Emilee is a partner in the firm’s Environmental, Energy + Telecommunications group, focusing her practice on a variety of environmental compliance and transactional matters, including the Connecticut Transfer Act…

This post was co-authored by Environmental, Energy + Telecommunications group partners Jonathan Schaefer and Emilee Mooney Scott and is being shared on our Environmental Law + blog. If you’re interested in getting updates on developments affecting environmental regulation, we invite you to subscribe to the blog.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under Administrator Lee…

This week’s post is authored by Emilee Mooney Scott and is also available on Robinson+Cole’s Environmental Law + blog. Thank you to Emilee for contributing. Emilee is a partner in the firm’s Environmental, Energy + Telecommunications Group, focusing her practice on a variety of environmental compliance and transactional matters, including emerging contaminants.

As we…

As we previously reported, EPA published a PFAS Action Plan in 2019 designed to enhance and improve data gathering, regulatory development, enforcement, and communication related to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). EPA continues to make progress implementing the PFAS Action Plan and is working on a more formal framework for addressing PFAS under the…

This week we are pleased to have a guest post from Robert S. Melvin, a member of Robinson+Cole’s Environmental, Energy + Telecommunications Group. Attorney Melvin has over 20 years of experience counseling clients on environmental, health, and safety compliance, sustainability, emergency response efforts, site remediation, and development projects. A wide range of clients benefit from his services, including aerospace and other manufacturers, stone and aggregate producers, metal finishers, municipalities, educational institutions, and water and wastewater utilities.

In these days of working from home and managing countless other demands on our time, we offer this post to help you decide whether to add the latest Clean Water Act (CWA) cases and rules to your must-see legal watch list. Since its 1972 inception, the Clean Water Act has prohibited any unpermitted “discharge,” defined as “any addition of any pollutant to navigable waters from any point source.” For more than four decades, agencies and courts have struggled with this CWA liability trigger in various circumstances, as well as the CWA’s vague definition of “navigable waters” as “waters of the United States” (WOTUS).
Continue Reading Binge-Watching the Clean Water Act Cases and Rules

On Valentine’s Day, EPA showed a little love for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), announcing a sweeping plan to address PFAS contamination and protect public health. PFAS are a group of man-made chemicals that have been gaining a lot of attention, as described in our 2019 outlook. EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler announced the…

This is the last of our three-part series of predictions for 2019. First Matt provided our thoughts and predictions in the labor/employment arena. Last week, Jeff gave our outlook for corporate compliance and litigation. Last but not least, this week I am providing our predictions for hot topics in environmental, health, and safety…

We have been talking about conflict minerals for years.  And, so have our manufacturing clients.  As covered previously in this blog, the conflict minerals laws and regulations are some of the most well known, but least understood laws/regulations that face manufacturers/distributors today.

The stated purpose of conflict mineral laws and regulations were laudable, namely,…

California Proposition 65 is often viewed as a significant thorn in the side of manufacturers.  As previewed in our 2018 Corporate Compliance & Litigation Outlook, significant changes to California Prop 65 will be effective as of August 30, 2018.  If your company has not developed a plan to address these changes, now is the…