Environmental Law

Read about a DOL final rule under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), which clarifies that fiduciaries may consider climate change and other environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors when making investment decisions and exercising shareholder rights.

In this webinar, Mintz and GZA explain why people are so concerned about PFAS, referred to as “forever chemicals,” when and how you should look for them, what actions you should consider taking if you find them, and the implications of all of this for real estate transactions.

In this webinar, Jacob Hupart and co-host, David Leone of GZA GeoEnvironmental, explore the legal and practical challenges associated with climate change and how companies can learn to navigate its impact on their businesses. The presentation focuses on how to prepare for a new regulatory environment under the Biden Administration, practical steps companies can take to improve their resiliency in the future and how to identify and manage risks.

The United States Supreme Court’s decision in Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund leaves anyone with responsibility for a discharge to groundwater wondering whether that discharge is prohibited by the federal Clean Water Act. Guidance issued by EPA at the very end of the Trump administration offers no real assistance.

The United States Supreme Court’s April 23 decision in County of Maui v. Hawai’i Wildlife Fund (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-260_i4dk.pdf) proves that legislating is best done by the Congress, not the Courts. The Court’s decision also tells us that the era of judicial deference to EPA that began in the mid-1980s seems to be coming to an end.

You don’t see a unanimous decision of the United States Supreme Court very often, especially in an environmental case, but that’s what happened this week when the Court held that for an area to be “critical habitat” of an endangered species, it first had to be habitat.

I’ve been an environmental lawyer for thirty years. That’s how long the jurisdictional reach of the Federal Clean Water Act has been unsettled. Sometime in the next few months the newly more Conservative United States Supreme Court will decide whether to grant either of two petitions to review diametrically opposed Federal Appeals Court answers to the question of whether the Clean Water Act applies to discharges to groundwater, one very important facet of the three decade old question already considered by the Supreme Court three times.

EPA held a public meeting on June 11, 2015 on EPA’s Proposed Rule imposing one-time electronic reporting and recordkeeping requirements on manufacturers and processors of certain nanoscale materials under Section 8(a) of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

In the Winter 2015 issue of the ABA’s Natural Resources & Environment magazine, John Barkett retraced the Supreme Court’s treatment of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA) from Key Tronic to Waldburger and, looking back over that history, he makes the unassailable observation that the Court’s decisions have been, and will continue to be, guided by the plain meaning of CERCLA’s text.

On April 6, 2015, EPA published a long-awaited Proposed Rule imposing one-time electronic reporting and recordkeeping requirements on manufacturers and processors of certain nanoscale materials under Section 8(a) of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

You can bet on it! The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued a new set of regulations effective January 2, 2015 that will create major burdens for underground storage tank (UST) owners and operators.