epa

The Smoke Management Plan regulates prescribed burning on forest land aimed at reducing fuel loading, restoring forest ecosystems, and potentially reducing the risk to communities from catastrophic wildfires, while minimizing air quality impacts from smoke.

Last week, EPA Administrator Michael Regan defended his agency’s issuing its final WOTUS rule in December, ahead of what could be a watershed Supreme Court WOTUS ruling later this year.  Regan was pressed by Republican senators at an Environment and Public Works hearing on why EPA jumped ahead of the Supreme Court’s ruling expected by June in Sackett vs. EPA, a case many bel...

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 ...