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On December 22, 2022, EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) Program released its ORD Staff Handbook for Developing IRIS Assessments (IRIS Handbook). EPA began working on the approaches in the IRIS Handbook after a 2011 National Research Council report recommended several improvements to the overall IRIS assessment process. In 2020, EPA released a draft IRIS Handbook for public comment and commissioned a peer review by the National Research Council.

Established in 1985 to ensure Agency-wide consistent toxicity evaluations, IRIS assessments provide chemical toxicity values for noncancer and cancer human health effects resulting from chronic exposure to chemicals. These values are often utilized in EPA regulations under the Clean Air Act (CAA), the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). While chemical risk evaluations conducted under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) require more information and analysis than that provided by an IRIS assessment, IRIS assessments will likely continue to be used to inform TSCA risk evaluations. State agencies and international bodies also rely on IRIS assessments.…

Continue Reading EPA Finalizes its Long-Awaited IRIS Handbook Updating a Number of Key Elements

How can sitting still in the Northeast potentially land you in a world of trouble under the Federal Clean Air Act (CAA) and corresponding state laws? Quite easily, if you happen to be in or leave a vehicle with its engine on and the vehicle itself is not in motion for more than a few minutes. That is the definition of “unnecessary vehicle idling” in many jurisdictions.

Across the Northeast and elsewhere, unnecessary vehicle idling is, subject to certain nuances and exceptions, generally prohibited. Recently, violators have come under attack by non-governmental organizations. State penalties vary, but the potential exposure can be severe, especially when the statutory maximum available penalties are calculated pursuant to the Federal CAA and compounded on a per-violation/per-day basis. Accordingly, owners and operators of all forms of trucking and transit companies should not sit still and should take proactive measures to educate or reeducate vehicle schedulers and operators alike on these anti-idling requirements.
Continue Reading Sitting Still (or How State Anti-Idling Laws are Landing Transit and Transportation Companies in Federal Court)

Over the last decade, phase one of the Clean Air Act’s regional haze program cost companies (primarily electric generating companies) hundreds of millions of dollars in compliance costs and caused the early closure of a number of facilities. The program is just now entering the initial stages of its second planning period, with major implementation activities expected over the next few years. Unsuspecting companies are finding themselves the targets of the program’s requirements for the first time. In states that have taken early action—Arizona, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon and Washington—there has been a shift in attention from older power plants to oil and gas operations and manufacturing facilities in the pulp and paper, cement, and minerals sectors, among others. Even companies that have been through this regulatory process before are facing difficult new questions due to major rule changes enacted in 2017, changes to guidance and key technical documents, and a new focus on statutory provisions addressing “reasonable progress” that were not often used in the past. Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP partner Aaron Flynn has assisted numerous clients in dealing with regional haze issues. In this video, partner Allison Wood interviews Aaron regarding the recent developments in the regional haze program and regarding how companies can best position themselves as states and EPA decide on the next round of emission control requirements.
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Continue Reading VIDEO Inside Look: Regional Haze

The US Environmental Protection Agency has continued to pursue an enforcement agenda against many of the same businesses believed to benefit the most from the Administration’s policies. Notably, this includes midstream oil and gas sources, as recently evidenced by EPA’s September 2019 Enforcement Alert titled, “EPA Observed Air Emissions from Natural Gas Gathering Operations in Violation of the Clean Air Act.”…
Continue Reading Don’t Be a Pig: EPA Focuses Enforcement Alert Against Mid-Stream Gas Gathering Operations

Policy makers in California have pledged to resist Trump administration policy changes on environmental and other issues. Senate Bill 1 (SB 1), proposing the California Environmental, Public Health and Workers Defense Act of 2019, is the California legislature’s current preemptive response to the administration’s attempts to modify certain federal environmental and worker safety laws.

SB 1 has passed the California Senate. It is awaiting a final hearing in the State Assembly’s Appropriations Committee, likely sometime in mid‑to‑late August. After that, it moves to the Assembly floor, where a final vote is required by the end of California’s legislative session on September 13, 2019.
Continue Reading SB 1: California’s Attempt to Halt Federal Environmental and Worker Safety Deregulation

The US National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) are the centerpiece of the US Clean Air Act (CAA) and establish allowable concentration levels for six “criteria air pollutants”: ozone, particulate matter, lead, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide. The CAA requires the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to review and, as appropriate, revise the NAAQS at least every five years, and EPA has, since 1970, regularly adopted increasingly stringent standards. Whether those revisions have gone far enough or too far has become a predictably contentious issue, with each review involving debates over science, the role of EPA’s Clean Air Science Advisory Committee (CASAC), the discretion of the EPA Administrator, and the format of the review process itself, among many other issues.
Continue Reading The New NAAQS Review Process Begins to Take Shape

In recent years there has been an explosion in the availability of small, low cost, hand held (or drone mounted) air quality monitoring devices or air sensors. Although the most likely near term applications may be community groups seeking information on potential industrial impacts, even individual consumers may have use for such devices to monitor the quality of indoor air. The biggest hurdle to the effectiveness, and eventual integration into the realm of regulatory compliance, of these devices is the lack accepted standards for evaluating the quality of the data they produce. What role will EPA play in that?
Continue Reading Making Sense of “Air Sensors”

When most Americans think about the traditions of presidential transitions, they recall the oath of office, the prior president and family leaving the White House, the inaugural parade, the balls with their beautiful gowns and sharp tuxedos, and more. What they more than likely don’t think about, much less even know about, are other happenings in the White House and in the agencies that run our government. While the peaceful transfer of power is a hallmark of the American political system, it is not without controversy, particularly where the outgoing president is a member of a different political party with remarkably different political views than the incoming commander in chief.
Continue Reading What To Know About Proposed Chemical Safety Reg Changes

New lawsuits filed in the US Courts of Appeal are seeking to upend a fundamental tenet of the Clean Air Act (CAA or the Act) Title V operating permit program—i.e., that the program does not itself impose new substantive requirements but rather has the purpose of identifying, in a single document, the CAA requirements that apply to a source. These lawsuits have been filed in the D.C. Circuit, the Fifth Circuit, and the Tenth Circuit challenging EPA orders issued in response to various third-party professional environmental advocacy groups’ requests that EPA object to Title V permits proposed for several industrial facilities in Utah and Texas. In the orders, EPA clarified that the Title V permitting and petition process set forth in 42 U.S.C. § 7661d(b)(2) is not the appropriate forum to second-guess preconstruction authorizations issued under Title I of the Act and incorporated into a facility’s Title V permit. …
Continue Reading Title V Challenges Seek to Undermine Longstanding Policies of Permit Reliance and Regulatory Certainty

Recently, the Trump administration’s Assistant Administrator for Enforcement, Susan Parker Bodine, clarified the role of EPA’s Next Generation Compliance initiative in civil enforcement settlements by announcing that (contrary to the prior administration’s suggestion) there is “no default expectation” that “innovative enforcement” provisions will routinely be sought as injunctive relief in civil settlements. Does this suggest a broader reassessment of the “Next Gen” program by EPA?
Continue Reading Revisiting “Next Generation Compliance”