Atlanta partner Randy Brogdon was a featured speaker at the annual Combustion Turbine Operations Technical Forum (CTOTF) in West Palm Beach Florida.  CTOTF is one of the premier forums for the exchange of information related to the design, operation, and maintenance of combustion turbines and combined cycle power plants in…

Sean Sullivan, an Environmental and Natural Resources Partner in Raleigh, NC, was part of the presenting faculty for the 2014 Carolinas Air Pollution Control Association’s Spring Meeting April 16-18 in Asheville, North Carolina. Sean discussed the EPA’s Risk and Technology Review program providing a description of the methodology for the RTR process and a summary of RTR outcomes for individual source categories.

A key defense to violations of the Clean Air Act may no longer be available for excess emissions during unavoidable malfunctions.  EPA’s current policy is that civil penalties are not appropriate if the violation was unavoidable, so long as the source can prove it did everything possible to manage the situation properly.  However, the D.C. Circuit just rejected EPA’s authority to provide an affirmative defense for excess emissions that occur due to a malfunction.  The decision, Natural Resources Defense Council v. EPA, largely upheld EPA’s cement MACT standard in the face of numerous challenges, but the court’s decision to eliminate EPA’s affirmative defense for malfunctions may have much broader implications for all facilities regulated under the Clean Air Act.

On April 15, 2014, one year and one day before the compliance deadline, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit fully upheld EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS).  As a result, all existing coal- and oil-fired  electric utility units will be required to meet specific, numeric emission limits for mercury, particulate matter, and acid gases next year.

Please join Troutman Sanders for a discussion of recent congressional efforts to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The discussion will begin with a presentation by Jim Jones, Assistant Administrator for EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention on the EPA’s view of the need for and scope of TSCA reform, followed by a panel discussion of industry experts and congressional staff.

(Reposted from Corporate Counsel by Marlisse Silver Sweeney from March 28, 2014) –

If your company is “going green” this year, or at least advertising to customers that it is, Ronald Urbach in Madison Avenue Insights warns that it’s not as easy as composting.

Last year, “the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) alone settled 14 separate enforcement actions based on what it considered to be misleading or deceptive environmental marketing claims,” he says, adding that “green claims” were also the subject of many attorney general investigations, private litigation and self-regulatory actions.

Corporate Counsel (March 17, 2014) Troutman Sanders Partners Randy Brogdon and Brooks Smith  penned an article that was featured in a March 17 posting of Corporate Counsel magazine. The article, entitled “Environmental Compliance and Commitment From the Top, From the Experts,“ discusses the increasing focus on environmental compliance…

In a decision released Tuesday, the D.C. Circuit held that an electric utility industry group could not challenge an EPA rule because it did not raise the relevant issues during the public comment period.  That result may seem unremarkable.  However, the remarkable aspect of the decision is that the group had no opportunity to comment because the issues of concern were not included in EPA’s proposed rule—EPA inserted them into the final rule without warning.  Nevertheless, the Court held that the industry group’s failure to comment precluded any challenges to those new aspects of the rule.