Gov. Phil Murphy vowed to spend $100 million on clean transportation projects, much of which would be targeted to reducing unhealthy air quality in urban areas with communities that are already overburdened with pollution problems.
The projects announced Tuesday include a range of initiatives aimed at electrifying the transportation sector. That would mean funding for projects to transition to electric buses and electrifying garbage and delivery trucks. It also includes money to switch from fossil fuel used by medium- and heavy-duty equipment in cargo handling operations at ports and funding to aid industrial areas in so-called environmental-justice communities.
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Category: News Archive
The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) failures to enforce its environmental standards resulted in lead poisoning at a housing development in East Chicago, Ind., according to a report from the agency’s watchdog.
The department’s Office of Inspector General reviewed the agency’s efforts to mitigate risks to residents of public housing near toxic waste dumps after the West Calumet Housing Complex was deemed uninhabitable in 2016.
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“It took courage for Senator Cassidy to vote against Trump,” Sharon Lavigne, the founder of the faith-based grassroots organization RISE St. James, said about the Louisiana Republican after the impeachment hearing of the former president. “He voted with his conscience, not his party. Now he has to find the courage to honor his oath as a doctor and stop more petrochemical plants from being built in fenceline communities.”
Photo Credit: Julie Dermansky
Each well drilled using hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for oil and gas production creates tens of millions of gallons of wastewater, called produced water or brine. In Ohio, much of that wastewater is disposed of in underground injection wells, including waste from Pennsylvania and West Virginia. As the number of injection wells grows in Ohio, local communities want some control over where these wells are located.
In Belmont County, Ohio, Judy Burger’s husband is getting ready to retire. After 25 years, their peaceful home near the highway is quickly changing, “I’m a nervous wreck, I’m on blood pressure medicine,” she said. “I have my Venetian blinds closed in my house so I don’t have to look across the street to see the mayhem and the destruction and the coming reality.”
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Photo Credit: Julie Grant/The Allegheny Front
President Joseph Biden Jr. has promised to up the ante for environmental justice (EJ) communities by “rooting out the systemic racism in our laws, policies, institutions, and hearts.” Although a complete rollout of Biden’s plan has not yet been revealed, his campaign plans and initial actions allow for some educated analysis as to what industry can expect for future regulations and enforcement actions.
To reach an understanding of likely industry impacts, it’s important to look at the evolution of EJ regulations to date.
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In the report, Superfund Underfunded: How taxpayers have been left with a toxic financial burden, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group analyzed data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to generate a report on the state of cleanup since the initial funding mechanism, the Polluter Pays Tax on culpable corporations, expired in 1995.
“Millions of Americans live near these sites, which have chemicals either proven to cause — or suspected of causing — major health problems,” report author Jillian Gordner, who works on the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund’s campaigns against toxic substances, said in a statement. “Congress’s failure to reinstate a Polluter Pays Tax that would speed the cleanup of these sites is a choice to prioritize industry’s bottom line over the lives of Americans.”
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SUPERFUND UNDERFUNDED
In 1980, Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), informally called Superfund. The Superfund program was given the authority and funds to hold polluters responsible for cleaning up contaminated waste sites or clean up the sites themselves if no responsible party can be found or afford the cleanup. These toxic waste sites house some of the most “hazardous chemicals known to humankind.” The Superfund toxic waste program protects people from these contaminants and the serious health problems associated with them.
The program was originally funded by a tax on the chemical and petroleum industries, but that tax expired in 1995, and now the money for the Superfund program has come primarily through appropriations from the general revenue.
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WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Joe Biden has yanked back the health assessment of a notable “forever chemical,” alleging the document was compromised by “political interference” in the final days of the Trump administration.
The EPA announced Feb. 9 that it was removing from its website the toxicity assessment for PFBS, or perfluorobutanesulfonic acid, a PFAS compound that’s one of seven similar chemicals regulated by state law in Michigan public drinking water under rules passed last year.
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When three 775-foot-tall smoke stacks at the Navajo Generating Station came tumbling down in December, sending plumes of dust into the sky and thundering reverberations off the mesas of the Arizona high desert, it marked the end of an era.
The federal government was instrumental in engineering the rise of the 2,250-megawatt coal plant 45 years ago, one of the country’s largest prior to its closure in 2019.
Now, President Biden faces questions about how to replace it, marking an early test of his promises to weave environmental and social justice into his climate agenda.
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Photo Credit: Jamie & Judy Wild/DanitaDelimont.com “Danita Delimont Photography”/Newscom
When a massive fire broke out at the Intercontinental Terminals Company in 2019, a thick plume of smoke blanketed parts of east Harris County for several days. Hospital admissions for asthma increased by about 65% compared to the same time in 2018, according to county data.
A Deer Park 911 dispatcher named Brandy fielded calls as residents’ phones began to buzz and beep with shelter-in-place notifications on the first morning of the fire.
“All we can tell you is that the city manager’s office and the emergency management office have requested a shelter in place,” she told one caller. “Yeah, stay home. They request you not to be out and about. Make sure your doors and windows are shut, and turn your air conditioners off.”
The fire burned for days and affected neighboring cities.
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Photo Credit: Florian Martin/Houston Public Media