EPA is gearing up to issue a suite of new final and proposed rules, including under its Superfund, water, waste and toxics programs, in 2023 — measures that are already driving heated advocacy as environmentalists and industry groups battle over the reach and stringency of the upcoming regulations.
Many, if not all, of the pending per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) regulations will be quickly challenged once finalized while the proposals will spark strong debates.
Legal challenges to EPA’s PFAS rules under Superfund and the drinking water law are “an absolute,” John Gardella, an attorney with CMBG3 Law, said during a Nov. 30 Perrin Conferences webinar titled, “One Year Since EPA’s PFAS Roadmap, Updates and Preparation for 2023.”
He said those challenges are “going to happen. There is going to be legal pushback on those designations, those standards, and it will just be a matter of what the courts do with them — that will have the dramatic impact on where we are all going with the PFAS litigation in the future,”
But even before rules reach court, EPA is facing heated debate over its pending plans.
A case in point is the upcoming Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) reporting rule for PFAS imports, manufacture and processing.
EPA missed its congressional Jan. 1 deadline and now says it will issue the final rule in March 2023, according to the Unified Agenda.
