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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
In 2018, California was ravaged by multiple large-scale wildfires, killing more than 100 people and firefighters and resulting in more than $9 billion in damages paid by insurers. The 2018 hurricane season produced 8 hurricanes, including two “major” (Cat 3, 4, or 5)...
New Jersey's Governor Murphy recently signed into law S-232, the “toughest” environmental law of its kind in the country, that is aimed at curbing the cumulative environmental and public health impacts in The Garden State. S-232 now requires facilities that meet...
On October 1, 2020, the EPA announced the nominees for the approximately 15 additional spots on the TSCA Scientific Advisory Committee on Chemicals (“SACC”). SACC is a group of experts chosen by the EPA to “provide independent scientific advice and recommendations to...
The glyphosate litigation seemingly ended last week with the news that the manufacturer of Roundup had agreed to a $10.9 billion dollar settlement agreement that applied to the majority the pending claims against it across the country (the settlement has not yet been...