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After years of severe drought, most of California’s reservoirs are now full and the snowpack is, in places, exceeding record levels set in 1983. A major storm drenched Southern California on February 17 before shifting to the north. Heavy rains are expected to continue, hitting different areas of the state, for as long as the […]
Yesterday we looked at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) overall goals for antiretaliation programs. Today we’ll look at the role that OSHA expects company management to play in creating an antiretaliation program.
With remarkable efficiency, less than 1 month after inauguration, Congress and President Trump came together to nullify the Stream Protection Rule (SPR, December 20, 2016, Federal Register), a major regulatory action 6 years in the making at the Department of Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement.
The fact that the top job at OSHA remains unfilled has not deterred house Democrats from seeking to amend the act that establishes job safety laws in the U.S. Get the latest information here.
On Friday, February 17, the Senate voted 52-46 to approve President Trump’s nomination of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt as Administrator of the EPA. Upon being sworn in, Pruitt will take the helm of an Agency he sued at least 12 times as AG, primarily alleging that the EPA issued rules that exceeded the Agency’s […]
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has long administered the whistleblower protection programs for itself and other federal agencies. If a worker speaks up about regulatory compliance issues or safety, and suffers a change in work status, OSHA will investigate to determine whether the change resulted from illegal retaliation. But OSHA doesn’t just want […]
News media have reported that President Trump will issue a new executive order to further limit some as yet unnamed additional aspect of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) powers. The president has already frozen the effective dates of dozens of EPA rules and also silenced most of the social networking of EPA staff.
High-priority substances to undergo full risk evaluation EPA’s proposed Procedures for Prioritization of Chemicals for Risk Evaluation under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) comprises the Agency’s steps for selecting chemicals it will subject to full risk evaluations, as required by the June 2016 amendments to TSCA. The main objective of the selection or screening […]
Q: Under what conditions are the underground tanks at a Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) regulated facility regulated under the EPA?
The deadline to submit Tier II reports is March 1. Do you know your state’s reporting requirements? Section 312 of the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA) requires facilities storing hazardous chemicals above certain thresholds to submit an annual inventory of those chemicals to the State or Tribal Emergency Response Commission (SERC/TERC), […]