A judge for the United States District Court, Southern District of New York approved a consent decree between the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and EPA that sets a deadline for EPA to finalize a perchlorate drinking water regulation by December 19, 2019. The October 18 decree conditionally settles the litigation brought by NRDC claiming that EPA missed a statutory deadline for issuing a proposed regulation within two years of a positive regulatory determination in 2011. EPA contested NRDC’s claim that it was legally bound to propose a perchlorate regulation within two years of its positive regulatory determination as it conducted additional research and modeling – as recommended by its Science Advisory Board – to properly establish a maximum contaminant level goal (MCLG).
In addition to the deadline for publishing a final perchlorate regulation, the consent decree sets interim deadlines for EPA to complete its external peer review process for perchlorate modeling (October 30, 2017) and for publishing the regulatory proposal (October 31, 2018).