Environmental Law Matters

Beth Blalock has been named the new Brownfield Coordinator for the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, replacing Madeleine Kellam, who has led the brownfield program since its inception and will retire at the end of 2014. Ms. Blalock is an environmental attorney (UGA, 2003), with a background in environmental and land use law. Her prior experience includes approximately five years as general counsel for the Georgia Conservancy and, previously, with King and Spalding. Beth will begin work with the Georgia EPD within the coming weeks, allowing for at least a two-month ...

Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) touts the success of the State's Brownfields Redevelopment Program. Since its inception in 1997, Florida's Brownfields Redevelopment Act ( Florida Statutes Sections 376.77 -376.85) has been viewed as successfully encouraging the redevelopment of abandoned or underutilized industrial and commercial property. The Brownfield's program provides a mix of regulatory and financial incentives to encourage the voluntary cleanup and redevelopment of qualified sites. FDEP recently released its Annual Report on the ...

An increasingly pitched battle between business and agricultural interests over the blending of ethanol in gasoline has turned its focus to EPA's rulemaking mandate which sets the minimum volume of renewable fuel sold annually in the U.S. This Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) has drawn significant attention because opponents of the use of ethanol in gasoline and diesel fuels believe that there is little if any likelihood of congressional action in the near term. The EPA has proposed to reduce the volume of ethanol that must be blended into gasoline this year, while keeping the biodiesel ...