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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) e-Manifest system is anticipated to officially launch in June 2018.   The e-Manifest is a nationwide system for tracking hazardous waste shipments electronically and will establish the first national repository of manifest data.  This is a much overdue modernization and consolidation of the current paper system.  The anticipated benefits…

Ever since the EPA’s 1985 rulemaking on the Definition of Solid Waste, 50 Fed. Reg. 614 (1985), the question of how one distinguishes legitimate recycling from sham recycling has puzzled both regulators and recyclers. The question is vital because sham recycling is equivalent to illegal disposal and exposes the perpetrator to enforcement and significant penalties.…

Several environmental organizations have petitioned the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and moved to block EPA from implementing a 90-day administrative stay of the New Source Performance Standards covering methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure.  A group of states, plus the District of Columbia and the City of Chicago, have since moved to intervene …

Yesterday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed a rule to rescind the 2015 Clean Water Rule and recodify the definition of “waters of the United States,” known as WOTUS, that existed before 2015.  EPA and the Corps intend to re-evaluate and revise the WOTUS definition consistent with the…

On May 18th, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals granted the EPA’s request to stay challenges to the New Source Performance Standards regulating methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure, pending review of the rule in accordance with President Trump’s Energy Independence Executive Order.  EPA announced in April that it intended to reconsider the…

By statute, North Carolina has capped the monetary awards available for nuisance claims related to agricultural or forestry operations. The law, H.B. 467, was designed to protect hog farms and other concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) from substantial judgments in odor nuisance lawsuits.   It limits compensatory damages to the reduction in the fair market …

A federal district court in Indiana recently ruled on whether email communications with environmental contractors hired by an attorney are protected from discovery. In Valley Forge Ins. Co. v. Hartford Iron & Metal, Inc., No. 1:14-cv-00006-RLM-SLC, 2017 WL 1361308 (N.D. Ind. April 14, 2017), the Court held that the communications were not protected by…

A North Carolina appeals court has ruled that a company may be an “operator” of a hazardous waste disposal facility under RCRA Subtitle C based solely on post-closure involvement at the site.

The case, WASCO LLC v. N.C. Dep’t of Env’t & Nat. Res., Div. of Waste Mgmt., No. COA16-414, 2017 BL 125671 (N.C. …

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recently released a guidance document on the subject of President Trump’s January 30, 2017 executive order, EO 13771, titled “Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Cost.”  That executive order garnered a great deal of attention with its bold but simplistic decree that “[u]nless prohibited by law, whenever …