EPA to issue cooling water intake rule on November 20

Citing the impacts of the government shutdown in October, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced that it will miss a court-ordered deadline of November 4 to issue a final Clean Water Act (CWA) rule requiring power plants and industrial facilities to obtain permits for their cooling water intake structures. In a letter to Super Law Group, which represented the environmental groups that had sued the agency to ensure a deadline for issuing the rule, EPA said that it is exercising the “force majeure” clause in the settlement agreement to postpone the issuance of the rule to November 20. “The shutdown does seem to qualify as a force majeure, and adding back the 16 days lost is appropriate under those circumstances,” the law firm said in an e-mail message to Bloomberg BNA. The final rule will require affected facilities to obtain National Pollutant Discharge Elimination Systems (NPDES) permits specifying that they are using the best available technology to minimize the mortality of fish and other marine life that can be trapped in their cooling water intake structures.