President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan contains tens of billions of dollars to address environmental and economic issues throughout the Ohio Valley region, according to details released Wednesday by the White House.
Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, had promised a major infrastructure initiative, but one never got traction during his four years in office.
Speaking in Pittsburgh Wednesday, Biden called his plan the largest jobs investment since World War II.
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Photo Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images
Category: News Archive
(CNN)A dozen major companies earned an F for failing to publicly address the growing problem of toxic chemicals that may be in the products they sell to consumers, according to the 2021 Who’s Minding the Store? A Report Card on Retailer Actions to Eliminate Toxic Chemicals.
The report is a collaboration of nonprofit partner organizations, including the environmental advocacy groups Toxic-Free Future, WE ACT for Environmental Justice and Defend Our Health.
Photo Credit: Adam Gault/Getty Images
March 26, 2021 – The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is underestimating methane emissions from oil and gas production in its annual Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks, according to new research from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). The research team found 90 percent higher emissions from oil production and 50 percent higher emissions for natural gas production than EPA estimated in its latest inventory.
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Photo Credit: SEAS
Tribal landowners tried for years to get fair compensation for an oil pipeline that cuts across the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota, only to see officials and the courts dismiss their concerns.
But now, thanks to new leadership at the Department of Interior, the federal government is taking a fresh look at their claims. Some see it as a sign that, not only might their voices finally be heard in this case but also that a turnaround has begun in the nation’s long history of injustices toward Indigenous people.
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Photo Credit: Jodi Spotted Bear/Buffalo’s Fire
A federal judge blocked new oil and gas leasing and fracking in Ohio’s Wayne National Forest, a popular destination for outdoor recreation and the only National Forest located in the vast state.
The ruling rebuked the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for failing to consider threats to public health, endangered species, and watersheds before opening more than 40,000 acres of the forest to fracking last year.
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Photo Credit: Taylor McKinnon/Center for Biological Diversityfos
WASHINGTON — As Congress begins to assemble a once-in-a-century federal investment in infrastructure, the Biden administration is taking steps to redefine the process for permitting such projects.
It’s a quieter set of actions that could amount to sweeping changes to how the money, once authorized by lawmakers, is directed across the Pittsburgh region and the country.
Biden officials are studying a 50-year-old environmental permitting law, widening the scope of reviews and restoring provisions rolled back by the Trump administration last year. The changes could advance President Joe Biden’s climate agenda by funneling federal dollars to specific projects, like those powered by clean energy, while stalling others, like those run by fossil fuels.
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Photo Credit: Andrew Rush/Post-Gazette
Before sunrise on a June morning in 2019, a section of pipe nearly five decades old ruptured at the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery, spewing a cloud of flammable vapor that hung to the ground like a spectral fog.
Within minutes, according to a surveillance video, a series of explosions in the refinery’s alkylation unit rained huge pieces of shrapnel across the refinery and released 5,239 pounds of hydrofluoric acid (HF), a chemical so toxic that worker-safety advocates have called for its banishment from use in refining.
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Photo Credit: Jessica Griffin/The Philadelphia Enquirer
We grew up believing that everyone had to deal with asthma. Everyone had to use a nebulizer just to breathe, or had a history of lung disease in their family, right? But as we got older, we realized these things were not normal. This is the harsh reality nearly every child in Chicago’s predominantly Black and Latino Southeast Side has to face. We are raised believing factories are a part of everyday life, harsh smells are unavoidable, and having toxic metals in your backyard soil is typical. The Southeast Side is a community where polluting industries are more common than playgrounds, and the rate of lung cancer is over 50% per 100,000 people .
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Photo Credit: Oscar Sanchez
Hazardous waste sites are scattered all across the country, from a Brooklyn canal once surrounded by chemical plants to a shuttered garbage incineration facility in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
There are more than 1,300 of these spots in all — dubbed “Superfund sites” by the federal government — where toxic chemicals from factories and landfills were dumped for decades, polluting the surrounding soil, water and air.
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Photo Credit: EPA
On Monday, Governor Tom Wolf announced a major clean energy initiative that will produce nearly 50 percent of electricity for Pennsylvania’s state government by the year 2023.
According to the governor, the energy will be produced through seven new solar energy arrays totaling 191-megawatts, which will be build at several locations across the commonwealth.
Part of the governor’s GreenGov initiative, Pennsylvania PULSE (Project to Utilize Light and Solar Energy) will go into operation on January 1, 2023. The project is the largest solar commitment by any government in the U.S. announced to date.
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Photo Credit: WHP Harrisburg
Part of the governor’s GreenGov initiative, Pennsylvania PULSE (Project to Utilize Light and Solar Energy) will go into operation on January 1, 2023. The project is the largest solar commitment by any government in the U.S. announced to date.
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Photo Credit: WHP Harrisburg