The Future of Environmental Regulations


By Mark Hammond, Esquire, President, Land Air Water Legal Solutions LLC


President Trump made several bold, sweeping pronouncements about the role the United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) and other federal agencies should play in the regulation of manu- facturing and business. Sifting through the


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rhetoric, what will drive future environmental and related regulatory efforts, and what specifically does the future hold for U.S.-based printing operations? Is past performance indicative of future returns, or will the federal government truly operate in a completely different manner, as promised during the campaign?


President Obama began his presidency with major- ities in both the Senate and House, and three major policy goals—health care reform, financial regula- tory reform, and climate change legislation. Eight years later, President Obama left office without ever having a climate change bill reach his desk. Why? Competing visions for such a bill amongst the presi- dent and other leaders from his party in Congress.


President Trump will face the exact same problem— competition from his own party’s Congressional leaders for establishing legislative priorities and the specific details of any legislation that is introduced. Without strong prior relationships with Congres- sional members of his party, and the inherent resistance to presidential pressure that Senators have due to their staggered, six-year election cycle, President Trump may find the law-making process to be considerably more difficult than expected.


Immediate (2017) Federal Outlook The Clean Power Plan, which creates an intrusive regulatory scheme for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from electric power production, will die, although the precise cause of its death has yet to be determined. The more interesting issue will be what comes next for greenhouse gases (GHG)—pres- idential direction to U.S. EPA to halt development of all GHG related regulations, a legislative override of Massachusetts v. U.S. EPA and/or the “endanger- ment finding,” or something completely different. In all likelihood, if and how GHG emissions will be regulated at the federal level will be a contentious issue for the next several years, with the major battles occurring during the first year of the new administration.


In terms of existing federal environmental regu- lations directly affecting printers, there will be no meaningful short-term developments. U.S. EPA is a large bureaucracy staffed by solid professionals, and other than two or three large national issues with significant energy and economic components (e.g., GHG emissions from power plants and/or automo- biles, natural gas and oil pipeline development), there will not be noticeable changes in U.S. EPA’s existing implementation of regulations generally or anything affecting printers specifically.


Short-Term Federal Outlook In the next two to three years, expect a decrease in overall federal environmental enforcement issues, no (or slow) development of new regulations, and a greatly increased emphasis on economics in the development of those regulations that do go forward. Should the new administration be more successful than widely expected in implementing its agenda, the beginning of a rollback of so-called “job killing”


INSIGHTS


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