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On January 29, 2025, Lee Zeldin was confirmed as the 17th Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator. After a week on the job, Zeldin continued to maintain several policies that had been put in place immediately after the Trump administration took office. Some of these policies are summarized below. While these actions are generally expected when…

Within hours of taking office, President Trump issued a flurry of Executive Orders (EO), including several that will undoubtedly affect a wide range of environmental policies nationwide. While the full implications of these EOs, as well as potential additional actions, are far from clear at this early stage, there are several takeaways for those who…

On December 11, 2024, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced it finalized a revision to the personal protective equipment (PPE) standard for the construction industry. The final rule adds specific language to the existing standard requiring employers to provide properly fitting PPE for construction industry workers. This change aligns the construction industry with…

On July 30, 2024, the U.S. EPA Office of Inspector General issued a fraud alert to bring attention to an increasing number of companies reporting that they have received fraudulent EPA Notice of Violation letters demanding payment. Businesses have received these fraudulent letters through email and U.S. Postal Service mail. The letters allege that the…

Below is an excerpt of a legal update co-authored with Real Estate + Development Group lawyer Eden Yerby.

In companion rulings favoring offshore wind developers and federal agencies, the First Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed rulings issued by the District Court (D. Mass.) and dismissed challenges brought by two Vineyard Wind opponents concerning…

On May 10, 2024, extensive revisions recently adopted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the Risk Management Program (RMP) regulations (40 CFR Part 68) will take effect. The revisions, dubbed by EPA as the “Safer Communities by Chemical Accident Prevention Rule,” reinstate certain Obama-era provisions previously rolled back under the Trump administration. However, the…

Earlier this year, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) released a “Connecticut Environmental Justice Public Participation Guidance Document” (‘the Guidance”) concerning the 2023 amendments to Connecticut’s environmental justice (EJ) statute regarding permitting or other approvals for certain facilities. Although helpful in indicating DEEP’s interpretation of the amended statute (which is not a…

The EPA Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) February 15, 2024, report on EPA’s practices in collecting, retaining, and producing criminal discovery materials in environmental cases found that EPA’s special agents largely adhered to requirements embedded in the due process clauses of the U.S. Constitution, the Brady doctrine, the Jencks Act, and the Federal Rules of…

On February 7, 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its Final Rule lowering the primary annual National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) from the current level of 12 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m3) to 9 μg/m3.  Once published, the Final Rule is certain to be challenged in…