by Patrick J. Paul On February 16, 2022, less than a week after nine Phoenix police officers were injured in a fatal standoff in South Phoenix, the City Council by a 6-3 vote, approved more than $500,000 in expenditures on behalf of the Phoenix Police Department to purchase drones and to develop a program to […]
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by Amanda A. Reeve On February 7, 2022, Sierra Club, et al. filed a Notice of Intent to File Suit (“NOI”) over the Unites States Environmental Protection Agency’s (“USEPA”) supposed failure to perform its duties under the Clean Air Act (“CAA”) to timely “make statutory completeness determinations and findings of failure to submit Regional Haze […]
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by Michael C. Ford “Sackett” may be poised to become a part of the Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdictional lexicon, joining the likes of Rapanos, significant nexus, relatively permanent, and Solid Waste Agency of Cook County, on the tip of every Clean Water Act practitioner’s tongue. In a surprise move, the Supreme Court of the […]
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by Patrick J. Paul The federal Clean Water Act created federal jurisdiction over “navigable waters” defined as “waters of the United States” (WOTUS). Since becoming law in 1972, debate over what is, and is not, WOTUS has been robust. The Supreme Court’s 2006 decision in Rapanos v. U.S. epitomized the challenges in finding consensus on […]
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by Patrick J. Paul On January 19, 2021, the last full day of President Trump’s tenure at the White House, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals essentially said “good riddance” to Trump’s “ACE” (the Affordable Clean Energy Rule) in American Lung Association v. EPA, No. 19-1140 (D.C. Cir. 2021). More to the point, the D.C. […]
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by John W. Andrews Everyone has heard a bad joke where the setup for the punchline is “well, it coulda been worse”. Hardrock mining companies operating on federal public lands presumably didn’t feel like laughing when the House Natural Resources Committee released its committee print for President Biden’s proposed “Build Back Better” (BBB) legislation in […]
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by Patrick J. Paul On October 21, 2021, Phoenix, Arizona-based Mesa Air and Reno, NV-based Flirtey announced an agreement under which Mesa will purchase four delivery drones with options to purchase an additional 500 over the next four years in an effort to expand drone delivery service in the U.S. Initially, Mesa and Flirtey will […]
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by Fred Breedlove The Arizona Department of Water Resources (“ADWR”) announced on September 18, 2021 that it had initiated a rulemaking for three subject areas: licensing timeframes, well construction and licensing, and dam safety. Overall, the proposed changes are mostly non-substantive in nature; however, new additions to ADWR’s licensing timeframes (“LTFs”) are welcome changes for […]
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by Mitchell J. Klein The Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure bill, which passed Aug. 10, contains a provision that would bring back an excise tax that expired in 1995 on a lengthy list of raw chemicals. House Democrats also want it to cover crude oil. In addition to this new tax stream, the House has already approved […]
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by Fred Breedlove The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (“Reclamation”) published its August 2021 24-Month Study on Monday, effectively declaring a shortage on the Colorado River for the Lower Colorado River Basin. The August study predicts that the elevation of Lake Mead at Hoover Dam will continue to be below 1,075 feet (the level that triggers […]
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