Purchasers who knowingly take title to real property found to be contaminated with hazardous substances during pre-purchase due diligence may be subject to liability for remediation costs under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund), unless those purchasers are able to establish CERCLA’s bona fide prospective purchaser defense (the BFPP Defense).

Two decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court have created enormous confusion around the question of what U.S. waters are subject to federal regulation. On May 2, EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers published proposed joint guidance that intends to clarify this issue by describing how the agencies will identify waters protected by the CWA.

Immediately following Hurricane Katrina, the Mississippi Governor’s Commission for Recovery, Rebuilding, and Renewal collaborated with the Congress for the New Urbanism to generate rebuilding proposals for the Mississippi Gulf Coast. One of the ideas to emerge from this partnership was the Katrina Cottage—a small home that could improve upon the FEMA trailer.

Black carbon, a component of soot and particulate matter, competes closely with methane as the largest anthropogenic contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide. Regulation of black carbon has been identified as an affordable, politically feasible, fast-action means to mitigate the warming temperatures caused by climate change.

Environmental credit markets for mitigating impacts to wetlands, endangered species, water quality, and carbon emissions have been established throughout the United States. Recently, there has been much debate about whether a conservation project should be allowed to produce credits for multiple markets, a practice broadly referred to as credit stacking.

Absent legislative intervention, CAA regulation of GHGs is moving beyond mobile sources to the industrial and power facilities that emit significant U.S. GHG emissions. The authors analyze the mechanisms available to EPA for regulating such sources, and identify one, NSPS, as the most predictable, likely, and practical, i.e., knowable, pathway. Indeed, EPA announced in late 2010 that it intends to pursue this pathway.

This Article briefly describes a new basis for the objection that EPA has employed whereby operating permits can be delayed for significant periods of time without the expenditure of significant resources by EPA or environmental groups. In many cases, its use has shifted resource-intensive enforcement questions to the states.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency embarked on an ambitious schedule of air pollution rulemaking following the vacatur of several Bush Administration rulemakings. The “transport rule” seeks to cap interstate emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO₂) and nitrogen oxides (NO_x) from power plants to replace the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR).

Several key issues have emerged as pivotal in ongoing efforts to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Progress on these complex issues is central to the success of TSCA reform. To foster further discussion of these critical topics, the Environmental Law Institute convened a series of issue-specific lunchtime teleconferences during the summer and fall of 2011 to provide a forum for focused dialogue among key players. The first panel of the series, held on June 30, 2011, set the stage for the series by examining the status of TSCA reform in the larger context of the U.S.

For nearly 40 years, EPA allowed application of pesticides directly to or over waters of the United States without an NPDES permit and instead relied on the FIFRA registration process to regulated such pesticide use. Following mixed results from the courts regarding the legality of this practice, the pesticide industry filed a petition for rulemaking and obtained a favorable rulemaking outcome. Nonetheless, the pesticide industry challenged the results of its own rulemaking petition in hopes of obtaining an even more generous rule.