A Central District of California Judge has preliminarily approved a class action settlement in City of Long Beach, et al. v. Monsanto Company, et al., that will resolve claims by various municipalities against Monsanto Company, Solutia, Inc. and Pharmacia for environmental damages related to PCBs. The underlying basis for the claims are...
By: Ted A. Warpinski and M. Andrew Skwierawski Since taking office on January 20th, President Biden has taken the expected actions to halt or slow down many of the policies of the Trump Administration. Some of these actions are global in nature, like rejoining the Paris Climate Accord to address climate change. Others could be felt locally, like...
By: Ted A. Warpinski and M. Andrew Skwierawski On May 4, 2020, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) published a notice of its draft risk evaluation for PERC (Perchloroethylene), seeking public comment on the same. Prompted by a requirement in the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the EPA performs a risk evaluation to determine...
By: Ted A. Warpinski and M. Andrew Skwierawski On March 26, 2020, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) issued guidance on how it intends to handle environmental compliance obligations that may be impacted by the COVID-19 Pandemic. A link to our update on that guidance can be found here. At that time, we expected that the...
By: Ted A. Warpinski and M. Andrew Skwierawski On March 26, 2020, EPA issued the policy document entitled "COVID-19 Implications for EPA's Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Program." The policy document addresses situations where compliance with environmental obligations may not be "reasonably practicable" due to COVID-19. The policy is...
By: Elizabeth K. Miles On January 23, 2020, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Army finalized the Navigable Waters Protection Rule (www.epa.gov/nwpr). This new rule replaces the 2015 Waters of the United States Rule, which was repealed in October, 2019. If implemented, this rule would significantly affect the...
Under current Wisconsin law, a property owner is generally liable for contamination regardless of when the pollution occurred and regardless of who caused the contamination. There are some limited exceptions for qualifying local governments, lenders, impacted neighbors and persons who obtain what is known as a Voluntary Party Liability...
By: Ted A. Warpinski & Todd Farris Many local governmental units (“LGUs”) may still be dealing with old municipal dumps and most have abandoned contaminated properties ripe for development if sources of funds to clean them up can be identified. It is time to look again at the tools available to recover investigative and remediation costs...
By: Ted A. Warpinski Well, it turns out they have been around for a long time but, like many industrial chemicals, it is really the knowledge about their persistence in the environment and toxic effects to people that seems to be emerging. The emerging contaminants I am writing about are known in the environmental field as PFAS, which stands for...
Litigation attorneys, Christopher Meuler and Ted Warpinski, authored a post for the American Bar Association’s Environmental and Energy Litigation Blog. Their blog post, The Boundaries of State Assumption of Wetland Permitting Authority Get Tested, discusses the pros and cons of a delegation program authorized by section 404(g) of the Clean Water...
