The uber challenge facing the incoming Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency in its oversight of 1,570 hazard waste sites is best summed in a name that’s become synonymous with the daunting task: Superfund.
The “Superfund” started out as a trust fund created by Congress in 1980 to finance cleanups, paid for by billions of dollars in taxes on the chemical and petroleum industries. Congress allowed the tax to expire 25 years ago.
Now, with the trust fund empty, Superfund has become the name of a drastically underfunded federal program responsible for ensuring the industries responsible for these toxic sites do the cleanup, if possible. The EPA shoulders the financial burden using budgeted funds at sites where responsible entities no longer exist or can’t be found.
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Photo credit: Mark Harris for NBC News
Category: Homepage
Mayor Acquanetta Warren responded to an outpour of opposition to ongoing warehouse development in a letter to the editor on Nov. 27, 2020.
Unsurprisingly, she failed to meaningfully respond to residents’ growing concerns about building warehouses next to our homes and our children’s schools, as well as the harmful environmental impacts that are exacerbating in the city of Fontana, surrounding communities, and damaging our children’s health.
In her response, Mayor Warren affirmed to the community that she has opted for a “status-quo” approach to economic investment and advancement opportunities, even though residents want and have demanded better.
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NORTH HAMPTON – Former state Rep. Mindi Messmer believes residents who live near the Coakley Landfill Superfund site should be concerned by detections of another PFAS contaminant in private wells.
“It is concerning because once again we have people exposed to a chemical that we have no enforceable standards for,” Messmer said after perfluorooctanesulfonamide (PFOSA) was found in private wells near the landfill. “Other states are taking steps to regulate PFOSA and New Hampshire needs to do the same.”
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Photo credit: Ioanna Raptis/Seacoastonline
President-elect Joseph R. Biden tapped North Carolina environmental regulator Michael Regan to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and named Rep. Deb Haaland of New Mexico as his pick for interior secretary, as he moved Thursday to fill out the team tasked with implementing a far-reaching climate agenda.
Mr. Regan, a veteran of the EPA during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, is currently the secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.
If confirmed, he would be the first Black man to serve as EPA Administrator.
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Photo credit: The Washington Times
Introducing his climate team, President-elect Biden said his administration would respond to the existential threat of climate change “by building a modern, climate-resilient infrastructure and a clean energy future” that would put millions of Americans to work. “And we are committed to facing climate change by delivering environmental justice.”
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Photo credit: Angelia Weiss, Getty Images contributor
BOSTON (SHNS) – A coalition of more than 40 groups that includes long-standing environmental organizations, big players in the state’s financial world, tech companies, and more sent a letter Friday to the lawmakers trying to hammer out a climate bill highlighting the importance of including environmental justice provisions in the final product.
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Photo credit: Massachusetts State House
The year is 2014, and the sleepy mining and agricultural towns of Northern Appalachia have transformed into gold-rush towns. But this is a new type of gold – Shale gas.
These towns sit above an underground formation called the Marcellus Shale that could help make America the world’s greatest producer of natural gas – and in 2014 the Marcellus region is booming. The restaurants are buzzing, bars packed, hotels full for the first time since many people can remember. Each generation of this area has seen the boom and the bust of other major industries – timber, coal, steel – and shale gas is the next one. It’s marketed as energy independence, good paying blue collar jobs, the American Dream. In areas where decades of economic decline have created a culture of need, this dream is welcomed with open arms.
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In the first major test of Virginia’s historic environmental justice law, the state’s air board Dec. 3 approved a U.S. Navy proposal to build a power plant near a predominately Black community with higher-than-normal rates of respiratory illnesses.
Environmental and health advocates were dismayed by the State Air Pollution Control Board’s 5–1 decision, saying it shows that the state still hasn’t fully embraced equity and justice at the regulatory level. Board members, meanwhile, pointed out that the Navy plans to install technologies that will ensure the plant produces few emissions.
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Photo credit: Don S. Montgomery, USN (Ret.)
WASHINGTON — When Joseph R. Biden, Jr. won the presidential election, his top candidate to lead the nation’s most powerful environmental agency appeared clear: Mary D. Nichols, California’s clean air regulator and arguably the country’s most experienced climate change official, was seen as a lock to run the Environmental Protection Agency.
Now Mr. Biden’s team is scrambling to find someone else, according to several people who have spoken with the presidential transition team. The chief reason: This month, a group of more than 70 environmental justice groups wrote to the Biden transition charging that Ms. Nichols has a “bleak track record in addressing environmental racism.”
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Photo credit: Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press
For environmental justice advocates who have spent decades fighting to protect communities from polluters, the new year cannot come too soon. After four years of the Trump administration shredding the Environmental Protection Agency into “little tidbits,” as President Donald Trump put it during his first campaign, change is in the air.
President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to make the climate crisis and environmental justice guiding principles of his administration from day one, Jan. 20. It’s a huge promise—and a tall order.
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Photo credit: Spike Johnson