epa

Earlier this week, the EPA proposed the first-ever national drinking water standard for PFAS chemicals.  As part of EPA's PFAS Strategic Roadmap, the agency proposed to establish legally enforceable levels for six PFAS known to occur in drinking water.  Th...

The U.S. House voted last week to repeal, on a largely symbolic 227-198 vote, the EPA’s controversial WOTUS rule.  The Senate could follow suit as soon as this week.  Democrats argued clean water is a human right that will suffer with the GOP’s move.  However nine Democrats, inclu...

Earlier this week, the Washington Senate approved two bills that focus on crop protection products.  Senate Bill 5143, which received a 49-0 vote in the Senate, would change the name and membership of the Commission on Pesticide Registration, adding a non-voting member from the Pacific Northwest EPA region.  ...

The Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposed rule that would improve and modernize the pesticide Application Exclusion Zone requirements.  Those requirements are part of the 2015 Agricultural Worker Protection Standard, and the agency is proposing to reinstate several provisions from that standard.  ...

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen and attorneys general from 23 other states filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration’s Waters of the U.S. Rule.  The group says the EPA’s WOTUS rule “goes beyond the power Congress delegated in the Clean Water Act, raises serious constitutional concerns, and runs roughshod over the Administrative Procedures Act.”   “The administrati...

Thursday, several members of the House of Representatives, including Washington’s Dan Newhouse, Illinois’ Mike Bost, North Carolina’s David Rouzer, and Iowa’s Mariannette Miller-Meeks led 192 other House Republicans in a letter blasting the Administration for its "premature and reckless WOTUS final rule".  The Members demand th...

An attorney for the American Farm Bureau Federation said a lawsuit filed by the Bureau and other farm groups against the EPA’s final ‘Waters of the U.S.’ rule is needed, on top of any favorable Supreme Court ruling.  Deputy General Counsel Travis Cushman says the latest WOTUS lawsuit is needed, not just because of a possible timing gap between the Biden EPA rule effective in March and a Supreme Co

The EPA and Army Corps of Engineers published the revised WOTUS rule in the Federal Register this week.  The publication means the revised rule will go into effect on March 20th.   EPA and the Army Corps announced the rule at the end of 2022, which will replace the Navigable Waters Protection Rule from the Trump Administration.  At the ...

Last month, the EPA ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to stop oil and other toxic chemical discharges into the Columbia River.  The announcement put the issue of river spills back to the front burner.  The group Columbia Riverkeeper sued the Corps last year, and says these pollutants harm fish and other wildlife in the Columbia and Snake Rivers.  Miles Johnson, Co...

National Milk Producers Federation President and CEO Jim Mulhern calls the new Waters of the U.S. Rule "cumbersome, unclear and overly complicated."  NMPF released the response earlier this week following the end-of-year announcement of the WOTUS final rule by the EPA.  Th...