On January 23, 2020, the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (collectively, “Agencies”) released the pre-publication version of the much-anticipated final rule narrowing the meaning of the term “waters of the United States,” which defines waters subject to federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act (“CWA”). The final rule, called the “Navigable Waters Protection Rule,” represents the latest development in the Trump Administration’s extensive effort to repeal and replace the Obama Administration’s…

On January 10, 2020, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) published the long-awaited proposed rule to amend its regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA).  The statute, sometimes pejoratively referred to as a “paper-tiger,” requires a federal agency to take a hard look at the environmental impacts of certain proposed projects, but does not mandate any particular outcome. The CEQ promulgates NEPA regulations and coordinates the other Executive branch agencies’ implementation of…

On December 9, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to revisit the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. Circuit’s decision in Hoopa Valley Tribe v. FERC, 913 F.3d 1099 (2019), allowing the lower court’s ruling to stand. The key holding of the D.C. Circuit’s opinion, which concerned the ongoing Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) relicensing of the Klamath Hydroelectric Project, is that the States of California and Oregon waived their authorities under section…

On November 22, 2019, the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) agreed to obtain a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit for the operation of the federally owned and operated Chief Joseph Dam, the second-largest hydropower producing dam in the United States, as part of a settlement with the Columbia Riverkeeper. The settlement resolves litigation (previously addressed on this blog) brought by the Columbia Riverkeeper, which claimed that the Corps’ dam operations had long…

On November 15, EPA posted its pre-publication version of the Final Rule re-classifying aerosol cans as “universal waste” under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), which finalizes EPA’s March 16, 2018 proposal (83 Fed. Reg. 11,654).  As discussed in our prior blog post regarding the proposal, many aerosol cans have historically been classified as hazardous waste because of their ignitability, and thus often are subject to stringent regulations related to handling, transportation, and disposal.…