Please note that our offices will be closed early on Wednesday 12/24 and all day Thursday 12/25 and Friday 12/26 for our staff to enjoy Christmas with their families.
Our offices will also be closed Thursday January 1st to celebrate the New Year 2026!
Every once in a while, we find ourselves in need of a rescue. Whether it’s from an accident, a natural disaster, or sometimes just from ourselves, there are available resources to help you out of a tough spot. One such resource that you might not have heard about is the Spokane County Technical Rescue Team.
At a 2025 ASSP Inland Northwest / Pacific NW Section AIHA Chapter meeting held in Spokane, WA, the Technical Rescue Team provided valuable insight into the roles that they perform to support the community. They are trained and equipped to respond to various incidents that include trench or building collapses, confined spaces, or rescues that require advanced technical rope or water skills. They spoke about their continuing evolution of training and resources in order to fill gaps in response activities throughout the region.
To find out more about what’s happening in Spokane County Fire District 9 and the services they provide, check out their website here.
Starting tomorrow many Washington state businesses will have to start collecting retail sales tax for previously exempted services:
Learn more about ESSB 5814 from the Washington Department of Revenue’s website.
Since the 1970s, the EPA has applied its “Reactivation Policy” to idle facilities, subjecting sources shut down for two or more years to new source review if restarted. There were some options to rebut this presumption usually related to demonstrating intent to restart at the time of shutdown (e.g. maintenance activities, operator statements, and the cost of reactivation). This policy was specifically articulated in the 1999 Monroe Order.
On July 25, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit rejected an EPA determination that a specific stationary source would require an NSR permit to restart a long-idle refinery in the US Virgin Islands based on the principles in the “Reactivation Policy”. The court held that the Clean Air Act (CAA) unambiguously limits NSR applicability to construction of new sources and modifications of existing sources, not mere operation.
Administrator Zeldin’s September 18, 2025 memorandum (2025 Zeldin Memo) formally rescinds the “Reactivation Policy” nationwide. EPA will apply NSR only where a restart involves a “major modification”—a physical or operational change that increases emissions above regulatory thresholds.
The 2025 Zeldin Memo also stresses the importance of nationwide consistency, both that EPA regional offices should no longer apply the “Reactivation Policy” in permitting or enforcement and that State and local agencies are encouraged to align with this approach.
The Washington State Department of Ecology is launching the Aqueous Film-Forming Foam (AFFF) disposal program to support fire departments in Washington state. This initiative addresses the urgent need to safely manage and dispose of AFFF, a firefighting foam that contains per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Ecology’s AFFF disposal program covers the costs of disposal for qualifying Washington municipal fire departments and public first responders. In Washington state, waste with PFAS is classified as dangerous waste.
After completing an extensive review of disposal methods for AFFF, Ecology chose to dispose of the foam at the Clean Harbors RCRA-permitted incinerator in Aragonite, Utah. Under Ecology’s program, Clean Harbors, a permitted hazardous waste hauler, will collect approximately 32,000 gallons of AFFF from 77 participating fire stations, mostly in an around the Puget Sound region.
For more information, see the EIS here and the letter to the public here.
EPA recently issued new guidance that clarifies its interpretation of “begin actual construction” under the Clean Air Act’s (CAA) New Source Review (NSR) preconstruction permitting program. Through this guidance, EPA is allowing building activities that are not related to air emissions, such as installing cement pads, to proceed before companies obtain an NSR permit.
In the new guidance, EPA stated that if a structure contains no emissions units, it is not considered a “source” under the CAA because it does not emit or have the potential to emit air pollutants. EPA further clarified that the NSR regulation “does not prohibit initiation of physical on-site construction of those parts of a facility that do not qualify as an emission unit.”
EPA’s recently released 2025 Spring Agenda identifies that EPA plans to propose a rule revising the definition of “begin actual construction” by January 2026 and to finalize the rule by September 2026.
EPA’s 9/16/2025 proposal would eliminate federal reporting obligations under the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) for a wide range of industrial sectors and suspend most remaining requirements until 2034.
The proposed rule would permanently remove reporting obligations for 46 source categories after reporting year 2024 — including stationary fuel combustion, electricity generation, aluminum and cement production, petroleum refining, pulp and paper manufacturing, municipal solid waste landfills, wastewater treatment, and industrial GHGs. It would also eliminate requirements for suppliers of carbon dioxide, geologic sequestration, and carbon injection activities.
For the petroleum and natural gas industry, EPA proposes to defer reporting for nine oil and natural gas segments until 2034 — including onshore and offshore production, natural gas processing, transmission compression, pipelines, underground storage, and liquefied natural gas storage, import, and export facilities.
See the proposal in the Federal Register at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-09-16/pdf/2025-17923.pdf
Effective Friday, June 6, 2025: The Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has issued the following:
For more information, visit DNR’s burn restrictions webpage.
Both the Environmental Protection Agency and Washington State Department of Ecology have revised Construction General Stormwater Permits to implement City and County of San Francisco v. EPA (2025), in which the Supreme Court found that end-result requirements, such as permit terms prohibiting discharges that contribute to a violation of a water quality standard in a receiving water, are unlawful.
On April 15, 2025, EPA published its final action, narrowly modifying the 2022 CGP under the CWA. The CGP modification expands the list of areas eligible for coverage, including construction projects that discharge to receiving waters within Lands of Exclusive Federal Jurisdiction. The modified CGP added new permit conditions applicable to Lands of Exclusive Federal Jurisdiction, which prohibit stormwater discharges that contain i) observable deposits of solids, scum, sheen, or other substances; ii) an observable film, sheen, or discoloration from oil and grease; or iii) foam or substances that produce an observable change in color, odor, or cloudiness in the discharge. EPA maintains that these “final water quality-based limitations” are valid because they “tie compliance to the condition of the discharge (not the receiving water).” The modified permit and Fact Sheet can be found here.
On March 19, 2025, Ecology published a proposal to update the 2021 CSWGP, which expires Dec. 31, 2025. The draft CSWGP proposes several changes including expressing that “end-result” prohibitions no longer apply, requiring that all site inspections (e.g. weekly) will need to be conducted by a Certified Erosion Sediment Control Lead (CESCL), requiring weekly sampling for either turbidity or transparency and weekly sampling for pH at construction sites 1-acre or less, requiring daily turbidity effluent limitation sampling for dewatering discharges to certain impaired water bodies, and dissolved oxygen impairments will trigger a numeric effluent limit for turbidity. Public comments are being accepted until May 9th. The proposed permit and Fact Sheet can be found here.
The Washington State Department of Ecology (Ecology) published its final 2025 Industrial Stormwater General Permit (ISGP), which authorizes the discharge of stormwater and certain conditionally authorized “non-stormwater” discharges from industrial activities in the State of Washington. The final 2025 ISGP took effect on January 1, 2025 and superseded the 2020 ISGP.
The new permit:
Facilities previously covered under the 2020 ISGP had to reapply for coverage by July 5, 2024. Covered facilities must update their Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plans (SWPPP) to conform to the new permit by May 15, 2025, and all conforming SWPPP updates must be implemented by July 1, 2025.
More information is available at Ecology’s website here.