United States v. Ameren Corp., No. 1:24-cv-00047 (E.D. Mo. Mar. 12, 2024). Under a proposed consent decree, settling CERCLA defendants must pay $6,074,739 and certain settling federal agencies must pay a further $600,798 for costs the United States incurred responding to releases of hazardous substances at the Missouri Electric Works Superfund site in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
United States v. General Recycling of Washington, LLC, No. 2:24-cv-00329 (W.D. Wash. Mar. 12, 2024). Under a proposed consent decree, settling CERCLA, CWA, and OPA defendants must construct, monitor, and maintain a habitat restoration project and pay a total of $360,558.12 for assessment costs in connection with natural resource damages caused by releases of hazardous substances and discharges of oil from facilities located near the Lower Duwamish River.
United States v. Crowley Marine Services, Inc., No. 2:24-cv-00307 (W.D. Wash. Mar. 7, 2024). Under a proposed consent decree, settling CERCLA, CWA, and OPA defendants must purchase credits in a habitat restoration project constructed along the Lower Duwamish River, pay a total of $210,000 for natural resource damages, and pay $64,325.63 to reimburse assessment costs in connection with natural resource damages caused by releases of hazardous substances and discharges of oil from facilities located along and near the river.
DOE notified interested parties of its intent to launch a Voluntary Carbon Dioxide Removal Purchasing Challenge.
EPA announced the availability of and seeks comment on a draft document titled “EPA Criteria for Product Category Rules to Support the Label Program for Low Embodied Carbon Construction Materials.”
Today's climate impacts and those on the horizon increasingly infuse mitigation and adaptation efforts with urgency, causing policymakers to contemplate or issue formal declarations of a climate emergency and to streamline review processes to aid rapid development of mitigation and adaptation infrastructure and technology. Yet, this urgency and need have the potential to create injustice and sideline or overwhelm efforts to reduce existing injustice.
Many environmental law paradigms focus on fixed points. Sometimes, the fixed points are in the past, and environmental laws call upon us to look at a baseline or previous state of nature and compare our actions against it. Other approaches call for us to consider an ideal state and develop strategies regarding how to reach it. In a 4° Celsius world, both strategies fail. Adhering to baselines is meaningless and striving for goals that are unachievable may lead to paralysis.
Last September, the Biden Administration announced the American Climate Corps, a workforce training and service initiative with the goal of giving young people skills-based training for careers in the clean energy, conservation, and climate resilience sectors. The initiative will offer 20,000 Americans paid training in a variety of environmental fields, specifically prioritize equity and environmental justice, and collaborate with federal agencies, nonprofit organizations, and tribal, state, and local governments.
EPA announced the availability of and seeks comment on the draft document titled "Technical Documentation for the Framework for Evaluating Damages and Impacts (FrEDI)," which provides technical documentation of a framework used to analyze future climate change-related impacts to the United States, projected to occur across multiple impact sector categories, geographic regions, and populations, under any custom temperature scenario.
United States v. Navistar, Inc., No. 1:24-cv-00285 (S.D. Ind. Feb. 13, 2024). Under a proposed consent decree, settling CERCLA defendants must reimburse the United States for response costs and are liable for future response costs regarding the release and threatened release of hazardous substances from a former waste oil collection, storage, and transfer facility in Indianapolis, Indiana.