Environmental Activities of the U.S. Coast Guard

Jonathan L. Ramseur
Specialist in Environmental Policy

The U.S. Coast Guard’s environmental activities focus on prevention programs, accompanied by enforcement and educational activities.

A key component of the Coast Guard’s environmental activities involves maritime oil spill prevention. As required by several environmental statutes, including the Clean Water Act and the Oil Pollution Act, the Coast Guard’s pollution preparedness and response activities aim to reduce the impact of oil and hazardous substances spills. Related to this duty, the Coast Guard inspects U.S. and foreign-flagged ships to ensure compliance with U.S. laws and international agreements. In addition, the Coast Guard’s National Pollution Funds Center (NPFC) manages the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund (OSLTF), which is primarily used to finance prompt responses to oil spills and to reimburse parties for applicable costs associated with oil spills (e.g., cleanup costs, natural resource damages, economic losses).

The Coast Guard’s approach to marine debris (e.g., discarded fishing lines or nets) is preventive, promoting compliance by boarding and inspecting vessels, and working with local port agencies to ensure there are facilities to receive garbage from vessels. With other agencies, the Coast Guard monitors and measures marine debris.

The Coast Guard has a history of scientific study dating back to the 1880s, but its current role is that of a facilitator, supporting the scientific efforts of other groups. The Coast Guard operates three icebreakers in the Arctic and Antarctic, and provides supplies to remote stations.

Coast Guard operations must comply with applicable environmental laws. Requirements include air emission standards and waste management.


Date of Report: December 6, 2010
Number of Pages: 9
Order Number: RS22145
Price: $19.95

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Federal Agency Actions Following the Supreme Court’s Climate Change Decision: A Chronology

Robert Meltz
Legislative Attorney/Acting Section Research Manager

On April 2, 2007, the Supreme Court rendered one of its most important environmental decisions of all time. In Massachusetts v. EPA, the Court held that greenhouse gases (GHGs), widely viewed as contributing to climate change, constitute “air pollutants” as that phrase is used in the Clean Air Act (CAA). As a result, said the Court, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had improperly denied a petition seeking CAA regulation of GHGs from new motor vehicles by saying the agency lacked authority over such emissions.

This report presents a chronology of major federal agency actions taken in the wake of Massachusetts v. EPA. Most of the listed actions trace directly or indirectly back to the decision— EPA’s “endangerment finding” for GHGs from new motor vehicles, the agency’s proposed standards for such vehicles, its interpretation of the phrase “subject to regulation” (the CAA trigger for requiring “best available control technology” in “prevention of significant deterioration” areas), guidance for determining best available control technology, and the “tailoring rule” (limiting the stationary sources that initially will have to install best available control technology and obtain CAA Title V permits). A few agency actions were included solely because of their relevance to climate change and their post-Massachusetts occurrence—for example, EPA’s responses to California’s request for a waiver of CAA preemption allowing that state to set its own limits for GHG emissions from new motor vehicles, and EPA’s monitoring rule for GHG emissions.

More analytical treatment of the government actions in this report may be found in CRS Report RL32764, Climate Change Litigation: A Survey, by Robert Meltz; CRS Report R40984, Legal Consequences of EPA’s Endangerment Finding for New Motor Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emissions, by Robert Meltz; CRS Report RS22665, The Supreme Court’s Climate Change Decision: Massachusetts v. EPA, by Robert Meltz; CRS Report R40585, Climate Change: Potential Regulation of Stationary Greenhouse Gas Sources Under the Clean Air Act, by Larry Parker and James E. McCarthy; and CRS Report R40506, Cars, Trucks, and Climate: EPA Regulation of Greenhouse Gases from Mobile Sources, by James E. McCarthy.


Date of Report: December 3, 2010
Number of Pages: 10
Order Number: R41103
Price: $19.95

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Water Quality Bills in the Remainder of the 111th Congress

Claudia Copeland
Specialist in Resources and Environmental Policy

The Senate and House could consider a number of water quality bills some time during the remaining days of the 111th Congress. Recent press reports have indicated that legislators, especially in the Senate, are seeking to gather support for several bills, possibly packaged with others dealing with public lands and wildlife protection. This report describes 10 water quality bills pending in the Senate that could be candidates for consideration during the lame duck session of the 111th Congress.

All of the water quality issues discussed below have been highlighted in recent press reports for inclusion in a package. All but one would amend the Clean Water Act (CWA), and all were approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in recent weeks. Similar House bills have been introduced for all but one of the Senate measures discussed in this report, and the House has passed two of them. With the exception of a bill on Chesapeake Bay, the individual bills are not likely to be considered controversial. Most of the individual bills would either reauthorize existing CWA provisions that address water quality concerns in specified geographic areas, or would establish similar provisions for other regions or watersheds. These water quality issues and related 111th Congress bills are: 

• Estuaries under the CWA’s National Estuary Program (H.R. 4715), 
• Chesapeake Bay (S. 1816), 
• Columbia River Basin (S. 3550), 
• Great Lakes (S. 3073 and S. 933), 
• Gulf of Mexico (S. 1311), 
• Lake Tahoe (S. 2724), 
• Long Island Sound (S. 3119), 
• Puget Sound (S. 2739), and 
• San Francisco Bay (S. 3539). 

The descriptions in this report are based on bills as reported by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, although if any of the bills were to receive further consideration, provisions could differ from the reported version or amendments offered. Further, if the Senate or House were to consider a group of water quality bills, the package might include more or fewer than those discussed here. Also, whether sufficient time remains for necessary action by both the Senate and House is highly uncertain. .


Date of Report: December 3, 2010
Number of Pages: 10
Order Number: R41517
Price: $29.95

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Mountaintop Mining: Background on Current Controversies

Claudia Copeland
Specialist in Resources and Environmental Policy

Mountaintop removal mining involves removing the top of a mountain in order to recover the coal seams contained there. This practice occurs in six Appalachian states (Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Ohio). It creates an immense quantity of excess spoil (dirt and rock that previously composed the mountaintop), which is typically placed in valley fills on the sides of the former mountains, burying streams that flow through the valleys. Critics say that, as a result of valley fills, stream water quality and the aquatic and wildlife habitat that streams support are destroyed by tons of rocks and dirt. The mining industry argues that mountaintop mining is essential to conducting surface coal mining in the Appalachian region and that surface coal mining would not be economically feasible there if producers were restricted from using valleys for the disposal of mining overburden.

Mountaintop mining is regulated under several laws, including the Clean Water Act (CWA) and the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA). In June 2009, officials of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps), and the Department of the Interior signed a Memorandum of Understanding outlining a series of administrative actions under these laws to reduce the harmful environmental impacts of mountaintop mining and surface coal mining in Appalachia. The plan includes a series of nearterm and longer-term actions that emphasize specific steps, improved coordination, and greater transparency of decisions. The actions are being implemented through regulatory proposals, guidance documents, and review of pending applications for permits to authorize surface coal mining operations in Appalachia. This report provides background on regulatory requirements, controversies and legal challenges to mountaintop mining, and recent actions and proposals by the Administration. Congressional attention to these issues also is discussed, including legislation in the 111th Congress that seeks to restrict the practice (H.R. 1310, the Clean Water Protection Act, and S. 696, the Appalachia Restoration Act) and other legislation seeking to block the Administration’s regulatory actions (H.R. 6113 and S. 3933, the Electricity Reliability Protection Act of 2010).


Date of Report: November 22, 2010
Number of Pages: 16
Order Number: RS21421
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EPA’s BACT Guidance for Greenhouse Gasesfrom Stationary Sources

Larry Parker
Specialist in Energy and Environmental Policy

James E. McCarthy
Specialist in Environmental Policy

Stationary sources—a term that includes power plants, petroleum refineries, manufacturing facilities, and other non-mobile sources of air pollution—are not yet subject to any greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards issued by the EPA; but because of the Clean Air Act’s wording, such stationary sources will become subject to permit requirements for their GHG emissions beginning on January 2, 2011. Affected units will be subject to the permitting requirements of the Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) and Title V provisions. For PSD, this will include state determinations of what constitutes Best Available Control Technology (BACT) that affected facilities will be required to install. On November 10, 2010, EPA released guidance and technical information to assist state authorities in issuing permits and determining BACT.

Among the sources likely to be affected by implementation of the PSD permit requirements are new and modified electric generating units of all kinds, but particularly those fired by coal. These sources emit substantially more than EPA’s threshold of 100,000 metric tons of CO2 annually: for example, a 500 megawatt (MW) coal-fired baseload power plant would emit on the order of three million metric tons of CO2 annually. The coal mining industry and coal-fired electric utilities face at least half a dozen major regulatory actions over the next few years; industry supporters view these rules collectively as a significant threat to the future of coal. Viewed in this context, the permit requirement is one more nail in what increasingly appears to them as coal’s future coffin.

In its new guidance, EPA retains the basic five-step process for determining BACT that it has recommended to state authorities for 20 years. The primary foci of the EPA guidance package are on state discretion in determining BACT and on energy efficiency as the most likely result of a GHG BACT analysis. These foci are evident through EPA’s guidance for each of the five steps.

For those looking for bright lines and specific recommendations with respect to GHG BACT technologies, particularly with respect to coal-fired facilities, the released package does not provide them. Indeed, EPA’s supplemental “Questions and Answers” release on the guidance seems to stress that it did not draw such conclusions. For example:

• Do these tools identify BACT for specific types of industrial facilities? No. 
• Does this guidance say that fuel switching (coal to natural gas) should be selected as BACT for a power plant? No. 
• Does this guidance say that carbon capture and storage (CCS) should be selected as BACT? No. 

Likewise, the guidance provides no cost thresholds for permitting authorities to consider in determining the economic impacts of alternatives nor proposes a new approach to selecting BACT for GHG emissions. Instead, the guidance focuses on the discretionary authority that states have in determining BACT—discretion that ensures that BACT will continue to be determined on a case-by-case basis with states differing in what they consider appropriate control measures and what constitutes BACT. Whether industry will find such discretion provides sufficient regulatory certainty to invest billions in new plants remains to be seen.

In short, the EPA GHG guidance is a simple expansion of the five-step BACT process that has been used for two decades to include greenhouse gases. Whether that is an adequate response will be determined by applicants, state authorities, and future EPA regulatory actions under related parts of the act, such as Section 111 (NSPS), to which BACT is linked.


 Date of Report: November 22, 2010
Number of Pages: 21
Order Number: R41505
Price: $29.95

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