Construction industry groups are concerned about the new general construction permit for stormwater discharges from construction sites, set to replace the
current 2012 permit.
At an April 27 hearing, GOP lawmakers blasted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for limiting the scope of the Pebble Mine project in Bristol Bay, Alaska, before the project’s developer had formally submitted plans and applied for a permit.
As construction industry groups await a Supreme Court ruling in a narrowly focused Clean Water Act case, they also are seeking clues as to how the justices may view a much more important matter that has not yet come before them—an expected frontal challenge to a wide-ranging U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-Army Corps of Engineers regulation governing federal jurisdiction over the “waters of the United States.”
Michigan unveiled a plan to push pipe replacement and toughen state drinking-water rules, but Congress adjourned without passing a federal-aid package and participants in the city’s unfolding saga traded blame at heated Washington hearings.
Merrick B. Garland, President’s Obama’s nominee to fill the U.S. Supreme Court seat left open by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in February, has a history of giving deference to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in clean air and other environmental cases and has sided more often with EPA than industry, according to SCOTUSblog, which analyzes high court cases.
The U.S. Congress’ House Committee on Natural Resources says the Environmental Protection Agency’s engineers don’t have the skills to manage mine remediation work because of Colorado’s Gold King Mine disaster in August, when 3 million gallons of toxic wastewater were spilled into the Animas and San Juan rivers during an EPA-led effort to reopen the mine.
North Carolina has issued the nation’s first National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit for the dewatering of power-plant coal-ash ponds in upland areas.
