A top manager who supervises the Environmental Protection Agency program responsible for cleaning up the nation's most contaminated properties and waterways told Congress on Thursday that the government needs to plan for the ongoing threat posed to Superfund sites from climate change. "We have to respond to climate change, that's just part of our mission set," [...]
"A new body of emerging research shows that people are dying prematurely from breathing the air even in places where air pollution levels were deemed “safe” by the US." “We found that the mortality rate increases almost linearly as air pollution increases,” Francesca Dominici, professor of biostatistics at Harvard’s school of public health, and a [...]
"There’s really no way around it: This was an awful year for climate change. And much—but not all—of that is due to Donald Trump. In his first year as president, Trump staffed his administration with climate deniers and fossil fuel allies, began the process of repealing the Clean Power Plan, pulled the US out of the Paris climate agreement, and basically [...]
"CHARLESTON, WEST VIRGINIA — Jacqui Patterson, director of the environmental and climate justice program at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), began her testimony at the Environmental Protection Agency’s public hearing on Wednesday with a story about her father. Years ago, Patterson said, her father developed a cough that slowly but [...]
Life in Cancer Alley--- "‘You can’t eat nothing off the ground anymore’ explained one local resident, who like many in this area, has seen the local ecology slowly degenerate over the years. Residents spoke about sludge-like residue that hangs around the bottom of trees, and of plants flowering out of season, or not at all. Others [...]
"One of the new White House appointees to a critical environmental panel once said that the air these days is just too clean to promote good health. Robert Phalen, an air pollution researcher at the Irvine campus of the University of California, said in 2012 that children need to breathe irritants so that their bodies [...]
“Dawn told me about the illegally dumped nuclear waste, that there had been instances where it had gone off-site, which were documented, that when West Lake was unregulated it had received all kinds of toxic chemicals, including paint and jet fuel,” says Ferdman. “I told her, ‘No offense, but I’m going to be fact-based and [...]
"Last week brought more bad news: Mr. Pruitt is proposing to end a decades-long agreement with the Justice Department that funds the E.P.A.’s lawsuits against polluters responsible for creating hazardous waste sites. Neither Congress nor the courts will have the final say. The decision rests with the Trump administration. Since the Reagan administration, the E.P.A. has reimbursed [...]
After Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, the EPA confirmed 13 of Houston's Superfund sites were flooded or completely underwater. Gibbs says thousands more sites are vulnerable to violent storms, and politics make it unlikely that many of them will be ever be remediated. "We've seen it time and time again, going back to Katrina or Superstorm Sandy. They're [...]
As unprecedented hurricanes assault coastal U.S. communities, residents and experts fear the storms could unleash contamination the EPA has tried to keep at bay. “The problem is that you could see a lot of waste that was supposedly ‘under control’ getting mobilized into waterways and spreading throughout the community,” Olson said. Working with the NRDC [...]
