News & Updates
Conference of Western Attorneys General
October 25, 2023
|
|
21 Species Removed From US Endangered Species Act After Going Extinct
About 21 species have been removed from the United States Endangered Species Act (ESA) after going extinct. The US Fish and Wildlife Service removed a mix of animals and plant species after determining that they had gone extinct. The move to delist the extinct species began in September 2021. A majority of the species listed were included on the ESA in the 1970s and 1980s. Many species featured were already at extremely low numbers at the time of their listing – or possibly extinct entirely.
|
|
California Attorney General Files Amicus Brief Supporting Koi Nation in Lawsuit Against City of Clearlake
California Attorney General announced that the Lake County Superior Court has granted the Department of Justice’s application to file an amicus brief in support of the Koi Nation of Northern California's lawsuit against the City of Clearlake. The Koi Nation contends that the site of a proposed 75-room hotel — known as the Airport Hotel and 18th Avenue Extension — contains tribal cultural resources and that the city did not adequately conduct consultation with the Koi Nation or consider the project’s impacts on tribal cultural resources, in violation of the California Environmental Quality Act's (CEQA) tribal consultation requirements added by Assembly Bill 52 (AB 52). The Department of Justice’s amicus brief supports the Koi Nation’s position, providing information on the legislative history and intent of AB 52’s requirements.
|
|
EPA Closes Loophole in PFAS
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has formally closed a loophole that allowed the industry to avoid reporting small releases of "forever chemicals". Under a newly finalized rule, facilities will no longer receive an exemption allowing them to avoid reporting small quantities of the chemicals when released during processes like manufacturing and mining. Through the regulation, PFAS will be considered "chemicals of special concern" reported to the Toxics Release Inventory. That designation means that facilities will have to share data on all PFAS releases with regulators when they exceed very low release thresholds of 0.1 grams up to 100 pounds. The rule stems from a controversy over the Toxics Release Inventory, an important EPA tool used to monitor industry emissions of various contaminants of concern. Congress requires the agency to routinely add new PFAS to the inventory list, in turn making relevant industries inform regulators of the quantities and types of chemicals they release.
|
|
Attorney General Warns Companies of Responsibility to Disclose Presence of Dangerous PFAS
California Attorney General issued an enforcement advisory letter to manufacturers, distributors, and sellers of food packaging and cookware, alerting them to their obligations under Assembly Bill 1200 (AB 1200). It is a recently enacted statute that restricts the presence of PFAS in food packaging and imposes labeling disclosure requirements for cookware. The enforcement advisory letter summarizes the provisions of the bill, which took effect on January 1, 2023 and it prohibits the manufacture, distribution, sale, and offer for sale of plant-based (paper) food packaging that contains PFAS. The bill also requires manufacturers of cookware to disclose the presence of PFAS and certain other chemicals on the internet or product label and prohibits manufacturers from claiming their cookware is PFAS-free, unless certain conditions are met.
|
|
Attorney General Files Another Suit Over "Forever Chemicals"
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson filed suit against several companies to hold them accountable for knowingly contaminating South Carolina’s natural resources through toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS, specifically Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF). AFFF is a firefighting agent commonly used in commercial applications to combat high-temperature fires.
PFAS are a group of synthetic chemical compounds that don’t occur naturally in the environment. They are used for a wide array of consumer products, such as food packaging and non-stick cookware, and for industrial uses like textile, electronic, and automotive manufacturing. In August, Attorney General Wilson filed suit for PFAS contamination as it relates to state natural resources, drinking water, consumer products, and manufacturing. Through this action, Attorney General Wilson is seeking to hold these companies accountable and award South Carolina damages for the decades of injury to South Carolina’s natural resources and public safety caused by the toxic forever chemicals.
|
|
A New Movement To Restore Clean Water Act Protections
A new Clean Water Act aims to restore protections for many of our nation's treasured waters that are currently left open to pollution and other destruction after the U.S. Supreme Court's vote to drastically reduce their safeguards. As the celebration of 51 years of the Clean Water Act, passed by Congress in a bipartisan effort to protect clean water. A new Clean Water Act of 2023 introduced in Congress seeks to restore protections after the U.S. Supreme Court reduced safeguards for many of our waters in the Sackett v. EPA case, leaving them open to pollution and changing Congress’s original objective in passing the Clean Water Act, which was maintaining the integrity of our nation’s critical water resources.
|
|
Vermont Attorney General’s Office Reaches $75,000 Settlement for Timber Trespass at Hazen’s Notch State Park
Attorney General Charity Clark announced a $75,000 settlement to resolve claims by the State of Vermont for civil timber trespass and unlawful mischief on State Park land. The settlement resolves a 2021 case filed by the Attorney General’s Office on behalf of the Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation (FPR) alleging that the defendant cut 839 trees without authorization in a designated natural area in Hazen’s Notch State Park. Unapproved damage to trees of another is unlawful in Vermont. Whether on public or private land, if you are unsure about ownership of certain trees, FPR advises to call before you cut.
|
|
First Steps in Colorado River Negotiations Are Revealed
The Interior Department published report cataloging public comments collected for the first stage of its multiyear process to draft a long-term operating plan for the Colorado River. The report revealed that the new operating plan is expected to guide the next 20 years of water allocations in the river basin, which serves 40 million individuals and irrigates 5.5 million acres of farmland. In its report, as well as in a notice set to appear in Friday’s Federal Register, Interior identified key elements of the operating plan. These will include the “coordinated operations” of lakes Powell and Mead to address low water levels and guidelines for the storage and delivery of water in those reservoirs, including “water conserved through extraordinary measures by or for tribal, agricultural, or municipal entities.”The Interior secretary acts as the “watermaster” for the Lower Basin states, which draw their share of the Colorado River entirely from infrastructure operated by the federal government. Federal officials previously relied on that same authority when drafting the 2007 operating plan.
In comments submitted for the report, the seven Colorado River Basin states — which also includes Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — vowed to work together on the operating plan, even as officials offered a preview of potential disputes. Interior is expected to produce a draft environmental impact statement on the new plan by late 2024, with a record of decision in 2025.
|
|
Continuing a line of split decisions from the California courts of appeal, the third district court of appeals concludes that the duty to inquire of extended family members whether a child in the custody of a county department of public social services in advance of a detention hearing is or may be an “Indian child” applies regardless of whether the child was removed from parents via warrant or via warrantless removal.
Washington statute authorizing the governor to enter into compacts with Tribes addressing tribal taxation of cigarette sales to nonmembers did not “authorize” tribal taxation, but recognized tribal sovereignty to do so; as such, the sales were not subject to Washington state escrow deposition requirements required to be imposed on cigarette (continued)
|
|
manufacturers who did not participate in the Master Settlement Agreement between a number of states and cigarette manufacturers.
The 1868 Fort Bridger Treaty with certain Shoshone bands and the affiliated Bannock Tribe did not make the exercise of the hunting right reserved by the Tribes contingent upon residency on one of the two reservations contemplated by the Treaty.
Plaintiffs, tribal member allottees on the Crow Reservation, failed to state a claim that the Secretary of the Interior, by publishing findings that triggered enforcement of the Crow Tribe’s Water Rights Settlement Act of 2010, violated either the Fifth Amendment or her trust (continued)
|
|
obligations to the allottees, whose reserved water rights, under the terms of the Settlement, would thereafter be fulfilled from the “Tribal Water Right,” which was declared to be “in complete replacement of and substitution for, and full satisfaction of,” the allottees’ water-rights claims, including “any claims of the allottees against the United States that the allottees have or could have asserted.”
In a challenge to pro se plaintiffs’ ejection from tribal casino due to mask ban during the Covid-19 pandemic, the court rejected the plaintiffs’ assertion that further proceedings in tribal court were futile due to the tribal attorney general’s administrative denial of the claim as time-barred—Plaintiffs were required to challenge the statute-of-limitations finding by suing in tribal court and then appealing if necessary.
|
|
|
|
All summaries are posted in CWAG's Google Docs account, accessible through the link below. Should you have any issues with the links, contact Patricia Salazar at [email protected] with questions.
|
|
Conference of Western Attorneys General
5050 Laguna Blvd | Suite 112-323 | Elk Grove, California 95758
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
