The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday finalized a rule that could reclassify many “major” sources of pollution as minor ones, allowing facilities to abide by less-stringent emissions standards for dangerous substances such as mercury, lead and arsenic.
The reclassification changes a 1995 rule that for decades has held major emitters to tighter standards even if their operators have taken actions to reduce their pollution – a policy known as “once in, always in.”
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Category: News Archive
You care about the planet, and would like to avoid bottles and other goods made of single-use plastic. But it’s complicated.
Choosing products with packaging that claims to be “biodegradable” or “compostable” might mean that they degrade only under special conditions, and could complicate recycling efforts, said Jason Locklin, the director of the New Materials Institute at the University of Georgia. “It’s tremendously confusing, not just to the consumer, but even to many scientists,” he said.
Photo credit: Big Green Smile
New data from space is providing the most precise picture yet of Antarctica’s ice, where it is accumulating most quickly and disappearing at the fastest rate, and how the changes could contribute to rising sea levels.
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Photo credit: NASA ICESat and ICESat-2
Evidence suggests several chemical additives in plastic products and packaging are poisoning consumers, harming the environment and undermining recycling initiatives, according to a new study, which calls for the development of safer alternatives.
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Photo credit: Ricardo Franco | EPA
Categories
Another toxic EPA cookbook
President Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler’s environmental agenda — massive cuts to the EPA budget, short-circuited environmental reviews, reduced enforcement, weaker rules and scores of rollbacks of environmental protections — is shamelessly out of step with overwhelming public support for protecting the environment. The main strategy for selling this toxic stew has been to highlight its “benefits” and downplay its harms. Not content with that, the Trump administration is also working on new tricks to cook the books and hide the benefits of environmental protections.
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The Trump administration on Friday finalized its plan to open about nine million acres of the pristine woodlands of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to logging and road construction.
The administration’s effort to open the Tongass, the nation’s largest national forest, has been in the works for about two years, and the final steps to complete the process have been widely expected for months. They come after years of prodding by successive Alaska governors and congressional delegations, which have pushed the federal government to exempt the Tongass from a Clinton-era policy known as the roadless rule, which banned logging and road construction in much of the national forest system.
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Photo credit: Jim Wilson | The New York Times
Residents of eight cities have been alerted that a brain-eating amoeba was found in a southeast Texas water supply, leading one of the towns to issue a disaster declaration.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality issued a water advisory to residents served by the Brazosport Water Authority warning customers not to use any water due to the presence of Naegleria fowleri, a brain-eating amoeba, found in the water supply on Friday evening.
“The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality at the direction of the Governor’s Office is working with Brazosport Water Authority to resolve the issue as quickly as possible,” the advisory reads.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order Wednesday to end the sale of gasoline-powered cars in the state by 2035.
The order aims to phase out cars with internal combustion engines within 15 years by requiring that all new passenger cars and trucks sold in the Golden State in 2035 be zero-emission vehicles.
Newsom said the move, which comes as California is battling some of the worst wildfires in the state’s recent history, will help California reduce carbon pollution in the transportation sector, which contributes to more than half of the state’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
Photo credit: Paul Kitagaki Jr. / AP
Hurricanes, floods and wildfires imperil hundreds of hazardous waste sites. But the Trump administration won’t talk about the rising risks.
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Photo credit: Spike Johnson
There are many ways in which Americans are united.
Across party lines Americans reject the so-called revolving door. People in government and industry move back and forth working for companies when they are out of government and supposedly overseeing them when they are in government. Since the industry employers invariably pay more, which master do they serve while they are in government?
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Photo credit: Carolyn Kaster, STF / Associated Press