Energy and Environment Monitor

2015 WV Legislature Rewrites Aboveground Storage Tank Act

April 16, 2015

In January 2014, a leak of MCHM from a tank farm operated by Freedom Industries entered an intake for a public water system on the Elk River in Charleston, West Virginia.  The State Legislature, already in town, responded to public outcry and cobbled together a complicated statutory and regulatory structure for aboveground tanks before adjourning in March 2014.  WVDEP, unfamiliar with…

Board Affirms Certification Revocation for Water Lab in WV

March 27, 2015

By order dated March 11, 2015, the West Virginia Environmental Quality Board (“EQB”) affirmed an earlier order by WVDEP revoking a laboratory certification granted to Appalachian Laboratories (“AppLabs”).  WVDEP issued the order on October 16, 2014 in response to press accounts that a former employee of AppLabs (John Shelton) had pleaded guilty to diluting or falsifying water samples…

Fourth Circuit Ends Multi-Year Legal Battle: Court Upholds Army Corps’ Assertion that Virginia Wetland is a “Water of the United States”

March 24, 2015

“This is the way the world ends, Not with a bang but a whimper.”

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EPA Announces New RCRA Regulations to Limit “Sham Recycling”

March 11, 2015

On January 13, 2015, the U.S. EPA published a preamble and final rule that places new restrictions on recycling under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA), part of the Solid Waste Disposal Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 6901-6992k. The revised regulations focus on businesses that recycle, often for a fee, hazardous secondary materials accepted from off-site industrial sources. The…