Practical EHS Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has completed its effort to bring a 2016 Obama-era rule governing emissions from oil and natural gas (O&G) operations on federal and Indian lands in line with the current administration’s policy of promoting the development of these resources without regulatory “burdens that unnecessarily encumber energy […]
In a pre-Labor Day report, the advocacy group Public Citizen accuses President Donald Trump of having broken his campaign promise that “the American worker will finally have a president who will protect them and fight for them.”
Judge David C. Norton of the U.S. District Court for South Carolina upended the Trump administration’s careful plans to eliminate and replace the Obama administration’s Clean Water Rule by issuing an injunction against the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers’ (Corps) “Suspension Rule” that delayed the effective date of the Clean Water Rule for 2 […]
Stating that the Trump EPA cannot use a general provision of the Clean Air Act (CAA) to negate a specific provision of the Act, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated an Agency final rule that sought to delay by 20 months the effective date of the Obama EPA’s […]
On August 21, 2018, the EPA followed its proposal to repeal the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) (October 18, 2017, Federal Register (FR)) with a proposed replacement the Agency is calling the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule.
In implementing major policies, it is unlikely that Andrew Wheeler, the EPA’s new acting administrator, will differ in any significant way from Scott Pruitt, the man he’s replacing to direct the activities of the Agency’s 14,000 employees (that number is a 20-year low).
Brett Kavanaugh has been announced as President Donald Trump’s choice to replace Anthony Kennedy on the bench of the U.S. Supreme Court. Here’s a brief summary of the judicial nominee’s decisions, rulings, and court opinions on various EHS-related cases in recent years on the D.C. Circuit.
On July 5, in a tweet, President Trump accepted the resignation of Scott Pruitt as EPA Administrator. “Within the Agency Scott has done an outstanding job, and I will always be thankful to him for this,” stated Trump. The president added that on Monday, Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler will step in as Acting EPA Administrator.
In a data brief, the National Employment Law Project (NELP) reports that under the Trump administration, OSHA’s enforcement totals have steadily fallen. According to the NELP, the decrease in OSHA inspectors during the same period “has clearly led” to the enforcement decline.
In a proposal that is extraordinary even under the deregulatory agenda of President Donald Trump and Administrator Scott Pruitt, the EPA is seeking to wipe off the books all but a handful of minor provisions in the Agency’s Risk Management Program (RMP) Amendments Rule (Amendments Rule, January 13, 2017, FR).