Today, our colleagues Mark Elliott and Kevin Ashe published their Alert titled Getting the Lead Out of California Schools. The Alert discusses California’s new water supply permit requirements and the State Water Board’s Drinking Water for Schools Grant Program, which allocates up to $9.5M in funding to improve access to and the quality…
Today, our colleagues Kevin Ashe, and Eric Moorman posted their Alert titled Natural Resources Agency Launches CEQA Guidelines Rulemaking. The Alert discusses the California Natural Resources Agency’s issuances of a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) on January 26, 2018. The NPRM proposes a comprehensive update to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Guidelines, Title…
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and New York City have announced that they will be working together to update the City’s flood maps. The need for updating FEMA’s flood maps has become more than apparent since at least 2005. Cities like New York, Houston, and Baton Rouge, which have been…
On January 24, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit decided the case of Conservation Law Foundation, Inc., v. Pruitt. The Pruitt case involves a consolidated appeal from the decisions of the U.S. District Courts in Massachusetts and Rhode Island dismissing the Clean Water Act (CWA) Citizen Suits filed…
On January 24, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit dismissed an appeal of a decision by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia that denied a preliminary injunction that would have enjoined the enforcement of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) and the U.S. Army…
Pursuant to the provisions of Section 102(c) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, as amended, the Office of the Secretary, Department of Homeland Security, in her “sole discretion” has waived in their entirety the following laws (including all federal state, or other laws, regulations and…
Today, my colleague Anthony Cavender and I published our Alert titled Congress Expands the Oil Pollution Act to Reach Spills Originating Outside of the U.S. In it we discuss the Foreign Spill Protection Act of 2017 and key takeaways from this new law: New law establishes oil spill liability in the…
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its intention to hear a hotly-contested Endangered Species Act (ESA) case involving the “dusky gopher frog.” This frog’scritical habitat was determined by the lower courts to include areas in Louisiana although the species allegedly has not been seen there for many years. The Court’s…
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion in National Assoc. of Manufacturers v. Department of Defense, et al. (the WOTUS case). The Court held that the plain language of the Clean Water Act (CWA) requires that appeals of such Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules as the redefinition of…
On December 22, 2017, the Office of the Solicitor of the Department of the Interior issued a Memorandum re: The Migratory Bird Treaty Act Does Not Prohibit Incidental Take, which substantially modifies the Department’s policy regarding the criminal enforcement of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act’s (MBTA) prohibition against the incidental…