Environmental Conference Roundup: Funding and Regulatory Uncertainty Ahead (Except for PFAS—the Always Certain Environmental Topic)

Author: Rob Young

During the week of March 24, I attended two informative conferences. First was the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS) Spring conference in Washington, followed later in the week by the American Bar Association-Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources (ABA SEER) in Philadelphia. ECOS is a non-profit, non-partisan group that supports state environmental leaders in efficiently addressing environmental health. In the spring and fall each year, state environmental agency directors or their designees from pretty much every state environmental agency (48 states, plus DC, at this gathering) meet to discuss environmental agency activities and priorities at the state level. I have been attending these semi-annual ECOS conferences off and on for nearly 10 years, and AlterEcho considers these priorities in our business planning. A few of my takeaways from the ECOS meeting:

• While I don’t see any of the inner workings within the ECOS organization, it appears that the directors, whether in red, blue, or in-between states, work together to produce policies and procedures that promote efficiency and environmental health across all states. It’s definitely worth visiting the ECOS Website for more information, including the policy documents posted there.
• Headliner topics included increasing permit efficiencies, PFAS, disaster response, critical mineral recovery/renewable energy materials life cycles, and AI. It was noted that AI would be a major topic during the next ECOS meeting this fall.
• It appears the states have not received much information about how the Federal government plans to support them from a funding and technical standpoint. In my experience, this has usually been the case when presidential administrations and environmental priorities change.
• Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia Senator and Chair of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee) and Lee Zeldin (USEPA Administrator) spoke on consecutive days. Both described the need to make the government more efficient and to ease regulatory pressures on business. PFAS were a noticeable subject in both presentations. Ms. Moore Capito cited her experience with PFAS at a large manufacturer site in West Virginia. She also voiced concern that the drinking water MCLs may have been set too low, citing the inability for current technologies to adequately treat PFAS at the MCLs. Mr. Zeldin indicated that he was surprised at the number of times PFAS in biosolids were identified in meeting agendas with different representatives across USEPA. He said the subject was at or near the top of several agendas. He also provided clarification on his approach to environmental protection in environmental justice communities and indicated on several occasions that USEPA would meet their statutory obligations. I did not hear any information on USEPA’s proposed procedures for meeting the statutory obligations.
• State representatives had a few questions for Ms. Moore Capito and Mr. Zeldin about whether USEPA would continue to lead the country’s scientific research related to the environment. Questioners cited the importance of USEPA’s historical lead in conducting this research, which is used by the States in their programs. Mr. Zeldin acknowledged that USEPA has many personnel with advanced degrees who are experts in their disciplines. He further indicated that those resources should be focused on EPA programs that are not meeting their commitments, citing TSCA as an example. He said USEPA will look at using current research resources to meet statutory obligations. The extent to which this will happen, and how it will happen, were not discussed.

AlterEcho has been attending ABA-SEER spring and fall meetings for several years. These meetings are informative with respect to trends in environmental law and litigation, and allow us to connect or re-connect with environmental attorneys whom we support.

The title of the keynote presentation on the first day was “Environmental Law Under Siege: The First 66 Days of Trump 2.0.” The presentation was from Harvard Law Professor Richard Lazarus and provided a detailed account of the Trump Administration’s approach to reforming environmental laws, and how these efforts compare to changes sought in previous administrations. While focused on the legal aspects of environmental regulation, this was a very interesting presentation and AlterEcho will continue to follow related developments.

PFAS continues to be at the forefront of environmental issues and was again a topic of conversation throughout the conference. While it was acknowledged that the Trump Administration and Congress may scale back regulatory efforts related to PFAS, my take-away is that attorneys and environmental consultants are continuing to help their clients deal with PFAS regulatory and technical issues, and this will continue—regardless of regulatory and policy changes at the Federal level. Let’s remember that several states are leading the charge in banning certain products containing PFAS, nearly half the states have drinking water standards or health advisories/notification levels for PFAS, and states are increasingly rolling out programs to monitor and eliminate PFAS in industrial user discharges to publicly owned treatment works (POTWs).

I also noted that there were several presentations that addressed issues related to climate change, such as green construction, resiliency planning and implementation, and energy policy. Environmental justice was also discussed during presentations, with reminders that while the Federal government has discontinued climate and EJ programs, many states maintain and enforce these programs.

Another hot topic, was Clean Water Act Section 404 Permitting (wetlands), which has been an ongoing issue in the environmental community for years. Finally, there were several presentations related to CERCLA, including management of PRP Groups and Natural Resource Damage Assessments.

Combined, the ECOS and ABA-SEER meetings were very informative and will allow AlterEcho to help our clients through a likely period of regulatory uncertainty in the upcoming year.

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Our team includes engineers, chemists, hydrogeologists and environmental scientists with
more than three decades of experience working with federal and state environmental agencies, nonprofits, law firms, and companies ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 firms.