Ella Kissi-Debrah, a 9-year-old UK citizen, is believed to be the first person to have her death certificate list air pollution as a cause of her death. Ella suffered from an extreme case of asthma and the coroner reviewing her death determined that the high level of...
Alexandra Fraher
Climate Lawsuit In The Netherlands Looks To Accelerate Change
Recently in The Netherlands, a group of over 17,000 citizens and several environmental groups sued Shell, asking the Court to require the company to reduce its emissions of carbon dioxide by 2030 by 45% of 2019 emission levels. Milieudefensie (“Friends of the Earth...
PFAS Action Plan By EPA Open To Public Comment
The Environmental Protection Agency recently requested public comment on guidance regarding its Significant New Use Rule for PFAS, accomplishing another goal under its PFAS Action Plan. This is just one of many avenues the EPA is taking to regulate per- and...
PFAS Filtration Technology Approved In Mansfield, MA
On November 7, 2020, Mansfield, Massachusetts voters approved spending $13.9 million for a new water project. The project is intended to address the town’s excess polyfluoroalkyl substances (“PFAS”) levels in public wells. Town Manager Kevin Dumas wants to start...
Joint Statement On Hydropower Is Promising Step Forward
Conservation and hydropower representatives issued their Joint Statement of Collaboration on U.S. Hydropower (“Joint Statement”) recently. The dialog that led to the Joint Statement on hydropower started back in 2018 with Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the...
Workers Compensation PFAS Claims – Will Subrogation Apply?
Can workers’ compensation carriers bring subrogation actions for payments made to firefighters allegedly made sick from exposure to PFAS? A number of states have adopted statutory presumptions that the cause of firefighters’ cancers is from exposure to a host of...
Climate Lawsuit To Be Heard By U.S. Supreme Court
The United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a Fourth Circuit climate lawsuit decision this month. The City of Baltimore brought a climate lawsuit seeking to hold Chevron, ExxonMobil, and other energy companies responsible for climate change-related damage to the...
PFAS Lawsuit Statute of Limitations Expanded In Michigan
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel joins a group of government officials to hire private law firms to pursue PFAS suits on a contingent basis, and Michigan becomes just the second state to extend the PFAS lawsuit statute of limitations. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl...
California Wildfire Insurance Plan May Protect Homeowners
After ten years of enormously destructive and increasingly severe fire seasons, the 2020 fire season in California has been the worst one yet. Over the past decade, California has seen 8 of its 10 biggest fires in its history. So far, 3.2 million acres have burned in...
Green New Deal: Climate Legislation or Empty Promises?
With sweeping declarations identifying a need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create thousands of high-paying jobs, the proposed Green New Deal superficially appears to be the climate legislation that green advocates have been waiting for. However, upon closer...