On October 9, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency/Corps of Engineers Waters of the United States Rule. That rule reportedly would expand Clean Water Act permitting, enforcement, testing and other requirements to a new group of ditches; buffers to rivers, streams, and wetlands; floodplains, and other areas. The Sixth Circuit held that the group challenging the rule – which included a number of state and local governments including Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama – has a “substantial possibility” of prevailing on the merits, specifically regarding two new buffer thresholds added to the rule just… Read more
Tag: Sixth Circuit
Key Part of EPA Aggregation Test for Oil and Gas Drilling Operations Reversed
On August 7, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rejected EPA’s definition of “adjacency” used to determine when to aggregate emissions from oil and gas drilling operations for major source permitting purposes under the Clean Air Act. In a 2-1 ruling in the case of Summit Petroleum Corporation v. EPA, the Sixth Circuit held that the word “adjacent” has a plain and unambiguous meaning, and EPA’s effort to stretch the meaning to include dispersed emission sources based on functional interrelatedness was unreasonable and unlawful. For more information on the aggregation issue or the Sixth Circuit ruling,… Read more