Novalawcity

EPA Proposes Water Quality Standards for Florida

The EPA issued a press release on January 15, announcing proposed standards for water quality in Florida. These standards, prompted by a consent decree that the EPA entered into with the Florida Wildlife Federation in August 2009, would reduce the amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus allowed into Florida's inland waterways (lakes, streams, etc.). These nutrients are a significant source of water pollution in the state's waters. The proposed standards will be published in the Federal Register for public comments.

Also as part of the consent decree, the EPA will introduce proposed water quality standards for coastal and estuarine waters by January 2011.

Thanks to Sabrina Pacifici's blog for this item of state-wide interest.

Freeze, Evildoer! Put down that Fruit Bat and put your hands up!

Bet you thought, as I did, that the initials EPA stood for Easily Pushed around and Abject.  However, the agency is flexing some new muscle, showing that it takes environmental crimes seriously.  There is now an EPA Fugitives List which, like those posters in the Post Office (remember the Post Office and slow mail?), presents a rogues' gallery of environmental criminals.  Disturbingly, though, there is only one corporate CEO in the bunch, and I think we've all known, at least since the EXXON Valdez, that some corporations are the really big environmental criminals.  See this article in The New York Times.   

Books We Hope President Obama Will Read

Shepard Broad Law Center's own Joel Mintz has written a chapter on how the United States has dealt with hazardous waste in an important new book, Agenda for a Sustainable America, edited by John C. Dernbach.  Professor Mintz's chapter, titled Hazardous Waste and Superfund: Few Changes and Little Progress, hits hard at the American proclivity for dealing with environmental problems by moving them around, preferably into somebody else's backyard. His article concludes with four very specific recommendations which could well serve as a blueprint for a new administration confronting the problem of hazardous waste after far too many years of neglect.