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  • Trump Administration, in Parting Gift to Industry, Reverses Bird Protections

    The Trump administration gutted protections for migratory birds on Tuesday, delivering the second of two parting gifts to the oil and gas industry. “These are definitely midnight regulations,” said Richard Revesz, an environmental law professor at New York University. “They’re 11:59 and 59 seconds regulations.”

  • Coal Plants Seek More Time to Pollute Water Resources

    The Trump EPA estimated that enforcement delays would save utilities about $26.1 million a year. But the EPA didn’t look at the cost of environmental damage or health risks associated with delays in cleaning up the coal ash ponds. Isabel Carey and Jason Schwartz at the Institute for Policy Integrity said the EPA’s failure to consider those costs meant the rule violates the Administrative Procedure Act.

  • Trump EPA Finalizes Rollback Making It Harder to Enact New Public Health Rules

    Richard Revesz, who directs the New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity, noted that the administration’s approach is “inconsistent” with existing federal guidance, which states that “in performing a cost-benefit analysis all costs and benefits should be taken into account, whether they’re direct or indirect.” “They’re basically saying that the indirect consequences of regulation must be taken into account if they’re negative, and should be ignored if they are positive.”

  • The Drilldown: Industrial Soot Emissions

    Although president-elect Joe Biden is planning to reinstate many environmental laws rolled back by President Donald Trump, when asked if Biden’s administration will strengthen current standards for soot emissions, a spokesman declined to answer. “Given the deadly nature of this pollutant, my advice to the new administration would be to very quickly embark on the process to make the standard more stringent,” said Richard Revesz, an expert on environmental law at New York University.

  • New Trump Rule Would Downgrade Health Benefits in Air Pollution Decisions

    The cost-benefit rule, which changes the way the E.P.A. shifts economic analyses of Clean Air Act regulations to limit future air pollution controls, is not expected to survive the incoming Biden administration. “It’s like breaking all the calculators on the way out the door,” said Jack Lienke of New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity. “The people coming in can buy new calculators. It’s just a hurdle and takes some time. It’s just another annoyance for the incoming administration to deal with. ”

  • Who Joe Biden Is Picking to Fill His White House and Cabinet

    Over 100 environmental safeguards were removed across the past four years. Biden plans to impose stricter environmental standards on industry, a job that would be overseen by his next EPA administrator. Possible picks include Richard Revesz, an NYU Law professor who is considered one of the foremost legal minds in environmental law. Originally from Argentina, he has spent most of his career in academia. But he has managing experience, having served as dean of the NYU law school from 2002 to 2013.

  • Trump Re-Election Would Enable Defense, Expansion of EPA Rollbacks

    Environmentalists acknowledge a Trump re-election victory would mean new threats to regulation but might not guarantee success of poorly crafted deregulatory efforts. “The Trump administration’s record in defending these rollbacks has been really atrocious thus far,” Environmental Defense Fund attorney Tomás Carbonell said during the environmental law conference, citing a statistic from New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity that the administration has lost 83 percent of its legal fights to date with respect to deregulatory efforts across multiple federal agencies.

  • The Other Public Health Crisis

    According to prominent medical doctors, we are in the midst of “the biggest public health challenge of the 21st century.” But it’s not the one you think. The toll of the COVID-19 pandemic is enormous and devastating. But the public health impacts of climate change could be vastly greater. The medical profession is demanding that we recognize climate change for the health crisis that it already is, rather than the environmental catastrophe that it threatens to become. 

  • Critics of Pending EPA Lead Water Rule Face Tough Call on Filing Lawsuit

    New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity non-partisan think tank met with OMB officials Aug. 28 to reiterate its concerns about the proposed rule’s cost-benefit analysis. Former EPA officials, state drinking water regulators and water utilities have also raised concerns about the complexity of the proposed rule and whether it can be implemented well.

  • How EPA Rollbacks Evade 1994 Environmental Justice Order

    When EPA moved to lock in a national rollback of long-standing hazardous pollutant requirements last year, officials saw no need to study the effects on environmental justice communities despite a 1994 executive order requiring agencies to assess environmental justice concerns. At the Institute for Policy Integrity, a think tank based at New York University School of Law that opposes the policy's repeal, Jack Lienke noted that the executive order is not legally enforceable. But in light of a 2015 Supreme Court decision saying agencies had to incorporate cost considerations into their rulemakings, EPA's move could be vulnerable on the grounds that the agency ignored the possible costs associated with the health damage accompanying higher levels of toxic emissions, said Lienke, the institute's regulatory policy director.