On June 29, 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released the final version of the Clean Water Rule (CWR), which defines categories of water that are now subject to regulation without the need to perform a case-specific "significant nexus" determination. In doing so, the EPA stated that the primary purpose of the new rule is to limit the sometimes slow, confusing and costly process of determining whether a "water" is subject to EPA regulation under the Clean Water Act (CWA) on a case-by-case basis.

On July 14, 2015, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Sierra Club had standing to challenge EPA's determination that the Cincinnati metropolitan area had reached attainment status for particulate matter (PM 2.5). Sierra Club v. EPA, - F.3d --, 2015 WL 4231713 (6th Cir. 2015). After granting the Sierra Club the right to challenge, the court held that EPA had failed to implement "reasonably available control measures" applicable to non-attainment areas, and therefore vacated the EPA's determination that the Cincinnati metropolitan area was in attainment for PM 2.5.

Manufacturers and utilities that incorporate widely-available, low-cost internet protocol devices into their industrial control systems are at an increased risk for cyber-attacks. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is responsible for developing information security standards and guidelines to protect the nation's critical infrastructures, recently published the Guide to Industrial Control Systems (ICS) Security, NIST Special Publication 800-82, Revision 2, released May 2015.

NCR Corporation recently avoided joint and several liability under CERCLA for its contribution to PCB contamination in the Lower Fox River. In United States v. NCR Corp., No. 10-C-913, 2015 WL 2350063 (E.D. Wisc. May 15, 2015), a Wisconsin District Court held that recent 7th Circuit guidance in the wake of Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway, Co., v. United States, 556 U.S.599 (2009) required a volumetric apportionment of NCR's liability.

In Ford Motor Co., et al. v. Mich. Consolidated Gas Co., et al., Case No. 08-13503, E.D. Mich. (Feb. 10, 2015), the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan rejected a party's attempt to "slice and dice" its cleanup costs between Sections 107 and 113 of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act ("CERCLA"). Citing existing case law, the court concluded that if a party is eligible to bring a Section 113 contribution claim, then that party can only bring a Section 113 claim and cannot separately pursue its allegedly "voluntary" costs under Section 107..

There is a growing population of electric customers in Ohio who are interested in installing rooftop solar panels and other small-scale power sources on their homes and places of business. These "on-site" power sources are often referred to as distributed generation. Not only do distributed generation resources allow customers to reduce their monthly electric bills, but on-site resources can potentially earn customers money in the form of credits from their local electric utility. The credits are earned when distributed generation customers produce more electricity than they use during the month and the excess is distributed into the electric utility's grid. The mechanism that is used to track the amount of excess electricity produced by small-scale on-site power sources and credit owners of these resources for the excess electricity is called "net-metering."

More than 12 years in the making, U.S. EPA recently issued two new technical guides for assessing and mitigating the vapor intrusion pathway: Technical Guide for Assessing and Mitigating the Vapor Intrusion Pathway from Subsurface Vapor Sources to Indoor Air and Technical Guide for Addressing Petroleum Contamination at Leaking Underground Storage Tank Sites. Read a summary of some of the key issues in the guides here .