Regulation

The U.S. Senate voted to ratify an international treaty on Sept. 21, 2022, agreeing to phase out a class of climate-warming chemicals that are widely used as coolants in refrigerators, air conditioners and heat pumps. If you’re getting a sense of déjà vu, don’t be surprised. These chemicals, called hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, were commercialized in the 1990s as a replacement for earlier refrigerants that were based on chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs. CFCs were destroying the ozone layer high in the Earth’s atmosphere, which is essential for protecting life from the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation. HFCs are less harmful than CFCs, but they create another problem – they have a strong heat-trapping effect that is contributing to global warming. If HFCs can be phased down globally – as many countries have agreed to do under the 2016 Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, the treaty just ratified by the U.S. Senate on a bipartisan...

About 23 million U.S. households depend on private wells as their primary drinking water source. These homeowners are entirely responsible for ensuring that the water from their wells is safe for human consumption. Multiple studies show that, at best, half of private well owners are testing with any frequency, and very few households test once or more yearly, as public health officials recommend. Even in Iowa, which has some of the strongest state-level policies for protecting private well users, state funds for free private water quality testing regularly go unspent. Is the water these households are drinking safe? There’s not much systematic evidence, but the risks may be large. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency still relies on a 15-year-old study showing that among 2,000 households, 1 in 5 households’ well water contained at least one contaminant at levels above the thresholds that public water systems must meet. While other researchers have studied thi...

The U.S. Supreme Court will test how flexible the EPA and states can be in regulating water pollution under the Clean Water Act when it hears oral argument in City and County of San Francisco v. Environmental Protection Agency on Oct. 16, 2024. This case asks the court to decide whether federal regulators can issue permits that are effectively broad orders not to violate water quality standards, or instead may only specify the concentrations of individual pollutants that permit holders can release into water bodies. My research focuses on water issues, including the Clean Water Act. This case involves both federal and state authority to issuing permits, and it will be interesting to see where the court focuses. While justices have been willing to limit the EPA’s authority under the act, they traditionally have allowed states broad authority to protect water quality. Thus, while some fear that this case is yet another occasion for the court to limit the EPA’s authorit...