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  Environmental - Legal News


The Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed skeptical Wednesday as the Environmental Protection Agency sought to continue enforcing an anti-air-pollution rule in 11 states while separate legal challenges proceed around the country.

The EPA’s “good neighbor” rule is intended to restrict smokestack emissions from power plants and other industrial sources that burden downwind areas with smog-causing pollution.

Three energy-producing states — Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia — challenged the rule, along with the steel industry and other groups, calling it costly and ineffective. The rule is on hold in a dozen states because of the court challenges.

The Supreme Court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, has increasingly reined in the powers of federal agencies, including the EPA, in recent years. The justices have restricted EPA’s authority to fight air and water pollution — including a landmark 2022 ruling that limited EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants that contribute to global warming. The court also shot down a vaccine mandate and blocked President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program.

The court is currently weighing whether to overturn its 40-year-old Chevron decision, which has been the basis for upholding a wide range of regulations on public health, workplace safety and consumer protections.

A lawyer for the EPA said the “good neighbor” rule was important to protect downwind states that receive unwanted air pollution from other states. Besides the potential health impacts, the states face their own federal deadlines to ensure clean air, said Deputy U.S. Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart, representing the EPA.

States such as Wisconsin, New York and Connecticut can struggle to meet federal standards and reduce harmful levels of ozone because of pollution from power plants, cement kilns and natural gas pipelines that drift across their borders.

Judith Vale, New York’s deputy solicitor general, said as much as 65% of some states’ smog pollution comes from out of state. The EPA plan was intended to provide a national solution to the problem of ozone pollution, but challengers said it relied on the assumption that all 23 states targeted by the rule would participate.


President Joe Biden’s administration on Friday proposed up to three oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico, but none in Alaska, as it tries to navigate between energy companies seeking greater oil and gas production and environmental activists who want Biden to shut down new offshore drilling in the fight against climate change.

The five-year plan includes proposed sales in the Gulf of Mexico — the nation’s primary offshore source of oil and gas — in 2025, 2027 and 2029. The three lease sales are the minimum number the Democratic administration could legally offer if it wants to continue expanding offshore wind development.

Under the terms of a 2022 climate law, the government must offer at least 60 million acres of offshore oil and gas leases in any one-year period before it can offer offshore wind leases. The provision tying offshore wind to oil and gas production was added by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a top recipient of oil and gas donations and a key vote in favor of the climate law, which was approved with only Democratic votes in Congress. The landmark law, the Inflation Reduction Act, was signed by Biden as a key step to fight climate change but includes a number of provisions authored by Manchin, a centrist who represents an energy-producing state.

For instance, if the Biden administration wants to expand solar and wind power on public lands, it must offer new oil and gas leases first.

“The Biden-Harris administration is committed to building a clean energy future that ensures America’s energy independence,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement. The proposed offshore leasing program “represents the smallest number of oil and gas lease sales in history” and “sets a course for (the Interior Department) to support the growing offshore wind industry,” she said.

The lease program will guard against environmental damage caused by oil and gas drilling and other adverse impacts to coastal communities, Haaland said.

If completed, the sales would increase climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 300-page environmental review by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. How much they will increase is uncertain because the review considered five or 10 new sales but not the three sales proposed.


President Joe Biden will travel to Arizona, New Mexico and Utah next week and is expected to talk about his administration’s efforts to combat climate change as the region endures a brutally hot summer with soaring temperatures, the White House said Monday.

Biden is expected to discuss the Inflation Reduction Act, America’s most significant response to climate change, and the push toward more clean energy manufacturing. The act aims to spur clean energy on a scale that will bend the arc of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

July has been the hottest month ever recorded. Biden last week announced new steps to protect workers in extreme heat, including measures to improve weather forecasts and make drinking water more accessible.

Members of Biden’s administration also are fanning out over the next few weeks around the anniversary of the landmark climate change and health care legislation to extol the administration’s successes as the Democratic president seeks reelection in 2024.

Vice President Kamala Harris heads to Wisconsin this week with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to talk about broadband infrastructure investments. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack goes to Oregon to highlight wildfire defense grants, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will go to Illinois and Texas, and Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona heads to Maryland to talk about career and technical education programs.

The Inflation Reduction Act included roughly $375 billion over a decade to combat climate change and capped the cost of a month’s supply of insulin at $35 for older Americans and other Medicare beneficiaries. It also helps an estimated 13 million Americans pay for health care insurance by extending subsidies provided during the coronavirus pandemic.

The measure is paid for by new taxes on large companies and stepped-up IRS enforcement of wealthy individuals and entities, with additional funds going to reduce the federal deficit.



When a pool or spa is re-plastered or re-surfaced such as patching & repairing ONLY, plan review is not usually required (unless additional work will be done at the same time, such are replacing suction covers, handrails, tile lines, splitting the main drains or equalizer lines, plugging up equalizer lines and installing autofil, etc…) however, a scope of work should be submitted to Placer County Environmental Health for review.

Pre and Final replaster inspections will be required

The following requirements can be found in the California Health and Safety Code
(H&S section 116025) and California Code of Regulations Title 22 & 24:
1. Swimming pool shells shall be white in color except: the lane and other pool markings; top surface edges of benches in spa pool; the edge of pool steps; tiles at the water line; and tiles installed at the 4 ½ feet depth line. Spa pools may be light pastel color when approved by the enforcing agent. All materials must be submitted to Environmental Health for approval. (Section 3108B.3)
2. When a pool greater than five feet in depth is re-plastered or resurfaced, it is required to have a Depth Marking Line (or belly band), a straight line of slip resistant tile with a minimum of 4 inches and not greater than 6 inches wide of a color contrasting with the background of the pool shell across the bottom of the pool where the water depth is 4 ½ feet. (Section 3110B.3)
3. Stair risers shall be uniform in height (min 6 inches up to max 12 inches), each step tread shall be (min 12 inches up to max 16 inches) except the top step tread (min 14 inches up to max 18 inches for standard or regular type; min 21 inches up to max of 24 inches for triangular, concave or convex type), and the minimum width of the stair shall be 24 inches. Spa bench tread shall be min 12 inches to maximum 24 inches.
4. A hand railing must be provided over all stairs extending from the deck to the bottom step tread (minimum distance of the handrails to the edge of the riser shall be 3 inches). The height of the railing shall be min 28 inches up to max 36 inches above the deck and each step tread. (Sec 3111B.3). Minimum two handrails are required for spa.

Pool Re-plaster in Los Angeles, CA - Re-plastering your swimming pool is an important job – trust it to someone with experience and an outstanding reputation. We have been removing and replacing pool plaster for many years.




On a recent day under the July sun, three men heaved solar panels onto the roof of a roomy, two-story house near the banks of the Kentucky River, a few miles upstream from the state capitol where lawmakers have promoted coal for more than a century.

The U.S. climate law that passed one year ago offers a 30% discount off this installation via a tax credit, and that’s helping push clean energy even into places where coal still provides cheap electricity. For Heather Baggett’s family in Frankfort, it was a good deal.

“For us, it’s not politically motivated,” said Baggett. “It really came down to financially, it made sense.”

On August 16, after the hottest June ever recorded and a scorching July, America’s long-sought response to climate change, the Inflation Reduction Act, turns one year old. In less than a year it has prompted investment in a massive buildout of battery and EV manufacturing across the states.

Nearly 80 major clean energy manufacturing facilities have been announced, an investment equal to the previous seven years combined, according to the American Clean Power Association.

“It seems like every week there’s a new factory facility somewhere” being announced, said Jesse Jenkins, a professor at Princeton and leader of the REPEAT Project which has been deeply involved in analysis of the law.

The IRA is America’s most significant response to climate change, after decades of lobbying by oil, gas and coal interests stalled action, while carbon emissions climbed, creating a hotter, more dangerous world. It is designed to spur clean energy buildout on a scale that will bend the arc of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. It also aims to build domestic supply chains to reverse China’s and other nations’ early domination of this vital sector.

One target of the law is cleaner transportation, the largest source of climate pollution for the U.S. Siemens, one of the biggest tech companies in the world, produces charging stations for EVs. Executives say this alignment of U.S. policy on climate is driving higher demand for batteries.

“We’ve been talking about bringing manufacturing jobs back to America for my entire life. We’re finally doing it, right? That’s pretty exciting,” he said.


Earth’s average temperature set a new unofficial record high on Thursday, the third such milestone in a week that already rated as the hottest on record.

The planetary average hit 63 degrees Fahrenheit (17.23 degrees Celsius), surpassing the 62.9-degree mark (17.18-degree mark) set Tuesday and equaled Wednesday, according to data from the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, a tool that uses satellite data and computer simulations to measure the world’s condition.

That average includes places that are sweltering under dangerous heat — like Jingxing, China, which checked in almost 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 degrees Celsius) — and the merely unusually warm, like Antarctica, where temperatures across much of the continent were as much as 8 degrees Fahrenheit (4.5 degrees Celsius) above normal this week.

The temperature is ramping up across Europe this week, too. Germany’s weather agency, DWD, has predicted highs of 37C (99F) on Sunday and the Health Ministry has issued a warning to vulnerable people.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Thursday issued a note of caution about the Maine tool’s findings, saying it could not confirm data that results in part from computer modeling.

“Although NOAA cannot validate the methodology or conclusion of the University of Maine analysis, we recognize that we are in a warm period due to climate change,” NOAA said.

Still, the Maine data has been widely regarded as another troubling sign of climate change around the globe. Some climate scientists said this week they weren’t surprised to see the unofficial records.


A federal appeals court has sided with commercial fishermen who say proposed restrictions aimed at saving a vanishing species of whale could put them out of business.

The fishermen harvest lobsters and crabs off New England and oppose tough new restrictions on the way they fish that are intended to protect the North Atlantic right whale. The whale numbers only about 340 in the world and it’s vulnerable to lethal entanglement in fishing gear.

The fishermen and the state of Maine appealed their case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit after losing in a lower court. The appeals court said Friday it disagreed with the lower court’s ruling.

The appeals court ruling could mean that the federal government must take another stab at crafting new rules to protect the whales. The restrictions would limit where lobster fishers can fish and what kind of gear they can use to try to prevent the whales from becoming entangled in fishing ropes.

The changes would represent a potential worst-case scenario for the lobster fishing industry, wrote Douglas H. Ginsburg, the senior judge of the appeals court, in Friday’s ruling.

“The result may be great physical and human capital destroyed, and thousands of jobs lost, with all the degradation that attends such dislocations,” Ginsburg wrote.

The fishers sued the National Marine Fisheries Service, an arm of the federal government. The service declined to comment on the lawsuit.

A district court judge ruled in September 2022 that the service used the best available data to create the new fishing restrictions. The rules are meant to reduce the likelihood that the whales will get caught in the vertical rope lines that run from the surface of the water to lobster and crab traps on the ocean floor.

Numerous conservationists have argued over the years that the trap lines pose too much of a risk to whales because even those that survive an entanglement can emerge less likely to thrive and reproduce.

“If they’ve been traumatized by ropes, and climate change, lack of food, they may wait for years to calve, maybe up to 12 years, and some never do,” said Michael Moore, director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Marine Mammal Center in Massachusetts. “It’s not only about mortality, it’s also about keeping the animals that are still alive healthy and growing.”

The whales were once abundant off the East Coast, but they were decimated during the commercial whaling era. Their populations have declined in the last several years, and they also face other threats such as collisions with large ships.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, and other Maine politicians have sided with the fishermen, who feel the new fishing restrictions are based on flawed data and are overly punitive. The U.S. lobster fishing industry, worth hundreds of millions of dollars per year, is based largely in the state.

“We’re facing rules that are just nonsensical,” said Dave Cousens, a lobster fishermen and past president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. “They don’t pass a straight-face test.”

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