Law Firm Faegre Baker Daniels sent out a Legal Update this week detailing two complaints filed simultaneously against the EPA over actions (and inactions) taken in regards to nitrogen and phosphorus runoff in the Mississippi River. One complaint (Gulf Restor’n Network v. Jackson, E.D. La., No. 2: 12-cv-00677), filed March 13 in the U.S. District [...]
Archive for the ‘Water’ Category
25 Jan
NRC Report Champions the Benefits of Wastewater
As the National Research Council made clear way back in 2001, “In this new century, the United States will be challenged to provide sufficient quantities of high-quality water to its growing population.” According to a new report authored and released by the NRC’s Water Science and Technology Board (made up of sixteen government officials, researchers, [...]
22 Nov
Water Disclosure
Jenner & Block’s Corporate Environmental Lawyer Blog yesterday posted a bit about the results of the recently released 2011 Water Disclosure Report by the not-for-profit Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which holds “the largest database of primary corporate climate change information in the world”. The blog post highlighted the following “key findings” from the process and [...]
14 Sep
Seattle’s Future Water Woes
No doubt there are bigger water related-problems in the national news, with the summer’s drought in Texas casting a grim agricultural shadow over the coming year and the storms that have hit the east coast and the Gulf in recent weeks causing more than a just a stir. But seeing as we at Knowledge Mosaic [...]
14 Jun
National Ocean Council’s Actions, Jackson
What has two categories, nine priority objectives, and aims to address some of the most pressing challenges facing our oceans, coasts, and Great Lakes? The National Ocean Council’s Strategic Action Plan, of course! On June 2nd, the Council released an introduction to, and content outlines for, the nine priority objectives that make up the Strategic [...]
17 May
Let’s Hope This Sunlight Can Kill Coliform, Arsenic, and Bad User Interfaces
In the name of transparency, the EPA announced yesterday the release of several improvements to the availability and usability of drinking water data in the Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) tool. The updated Safe Drinking Water Act search page can ostensibly used to pinpoint violations of drinking water standards in any given individual’s community. [...]
3 May
EPA and Army Corps of Engineers Issue Draft Guidance on Identifying Waters Protected by the Clean Water Act
On May 2, 2011, the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers jointly issued a request for comments in the Federal Register on draft guidance that is intended to clarify how the two agencies will make determinations about whether waters are protected by the Clean Water Act (33 USC §1251 et seq.). The proposed [...]
12 Apr
To Frack or Not To Frack?
Hydraulic fracturing has received a lot of press since we originally reported on it (here and here), but probably nothing compared to the debate going forward. On Sunday, April 10th, The Hill’s E2-Wire released a pre-publication version of a study from Cornell University concluding that natural gas obtained via “fracking” could be even worse for [...]
8 Apr
High Levels of Lead, Low Levels of Communication
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) got a public lesson in post-publication clarification when the GAO’s report “CDC Public Health Communications Need Improvement” was published earlier this week. The GAO report takes us back to Washington, D.C., in the year 2001, when the District’s Water and Sewer Authority became aware of lead levels in [...]
14 Jan
Public Water Fluoridation or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Mass Medication
Early last week, the EPA announced a joint effort with the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to update guidelines and standards for fluoride in drinking water. HHS is proposing to lower the recommended level of fluoride in drinking water to 0.7 milligrams of fluoride per liter of water (the low end of [...]
