Posts from January 2014.
Property owners in the town of Roxana, Illinois, a small village on the Mississippi River across from St. Louis, filed suit against Shell Oil Company and ConocoPhillips. The property owners alleged that a refinery owned by Shell and later ConocoPhillips leaked benzene and other petroleum-based contaminants into the groundwater under their homes. The property owners sought the lost value in their homes as a result of the groundwater contamination. The Illinois District Court Judge certified the property owners as a class under Rule 23, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. On appeal ...
On January 14, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that Heather McTeer Toney has been appointed by President Obama as regional administrator for EPA's regional office in Atlanta. Ms. McTeer Toney was the first African-American and first female to serve as the Mayor of Greenville, Mississippi, holding that post from 2004-2012. Thereafter, she served as the Executive Director of the Center for Excellence in Student Learning at Mississippi Valley State University, and as the principal attorney at Heather McTeer, PLLC. For more information on environmental law ...
As stated in the Federal Register, effective December 30, 2013, the "All Appropriate Inquiry Rule," found at 40 CFR Part 312.11 was amended to add as paragraph (c)- a reference to ASTM International's E1527-13 "Standard Practice for Environmental Site Assessments: Phase I Environmental Site Assessment Process." ASTM E1527-13 was included to "make clear that persons conducting all appropriate inquires may use the procedures included in this standard to comply with the All Appropriate Inquires Rule." Now both ASTM E1527-05 and E1527-13 have been found by the EPA to comply ...
In mid-December, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued final rules that the Agency said are intended to facilitate the management of carbon dioxide gas that is required to be captured from electric power plants. Summaries of the regulations and links to them can be found here and here. The rules are intended to support rules on carbon pollution standards for new power plants, which were published earlier this year in draft form and have not yet become final. Those draft regulations have been criticized for a number of reasons, including an assertion by industry that they ...