Power & Pipes

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on May 1 declaring that the use of bulk-power system equipment supplied by companies controlled by certain foreign nations poses an extraordinary threat to the US power grid. The order observes that the bulk-power system is a valuable target for malicious actors, and any attack on that system could pose serious risks to the economy, public health and safety, and national security.

Our colleagues in the environmental practice have published a LawFlash analyzing the implications of the recent US Supreme Court ruling that the Clean Water Act (CWA) requires a permit when there is a direct discharge (or the functional equivalent of a direct discharge) from a point source into navigable waters.

The US Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued Version 3.0 of its guidance on April 17 on identifying essential critical infrastructure workers amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

In an order issued on April 17, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) agreed to defer implementation of certain cybersecurity and operational reliability standards administered by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) that had important compliance milestones later this year, including the suite of supply chain risk management standards that have been under development for several years and were set to take effect on July 1. The move by FERC is intended to provide some measure of relief from impending compliance burdens and to allow electric utilities to focus their resources on responding to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.