In September 2016, US Senators Jim Inhofe and Mike Rounds released a report conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), that investigated the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) management and cleanup of Superfund contaminated sediment sites.  The GAO report reveals continued, systemic problems with the EPA’s management of such Superfund sites, and makes various recommendations for improving how the EPA approaches associated investigation, coordination, and cleanup processes. More specifically, the GAO […]

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On August 22, 2016, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power began construction on the Tujunga Spreading Grounds, a project that is expected to capture about 5 billion gallons of stormwater per year. The Tujunga Spreading Grounds construction will reconfigure the 20 spreading basins into 9 deeper basins through the removal of soil and sediment from the site. After completion, the Tujunga Spreading Grounds enhancement project will recharge the […]

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Governor Jerry Brown’s administration has dropped all mandatory water conservation targets, allowing cities, water districts, and private water companies across the state to set their own targets. The State Water Board’s recently updated emergency water conservation regulations give urban water agencies the ability to set their own conservation standards based on a “stress test” of supply reliability. As a result of this autonomy, the majority of urban water agencies in […]

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In January, a number of commercial beekeepers, growers and environmental activist groups filed a lawsuit – Anderson et al. v. McCarthy et al. – against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for failing to properly regulate certain pesticide-coated seeds affecting bees and other wildlife.  The lawsuit alleged that the EPA incorrectly applied the treated article exemption of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) to the pesticide-coated seeds, enabling the […]

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