On January 12, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sided with AGC in tentatively denying an environmental group’s effort to force contractors to dispose of discarded PVC as a hazardous waste.
On June 3, AGC was the only construction organization to publicly oppose a proposed consent decree that would settle the lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity in D.C. federal court, saying EPA unreasonably delayed responding to CBD’s 2014 petition that asked the agency to regulate PVC under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).
Under the proposed “sue and settle” agreement, EPA promised to decide within nine months whether to move forward with listing PVC as hazardous waste, which could have significant implications for the construction industry. AGC joined with a broad array of stakeholders again on December 23 to push back on this effort.
The EPA will seek comments on its tentative decision and AGC will support the EPA’s science-based decision to not undertaking this rulemaking.