Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

WV congressional delegation not on same page on legislation targeting PFAS

Charleston Gazette-Mail: WV congressional delegation not on same page on legislation targeting PFAS.

hey’re in our clothes, our food and our blood. We made them virtually indestructible, but there’s evidence that they can destroy us.

They’re per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), industrial chemicals whose extensive contamination and deleterious health effects have left a toxic legacy in West Virginia.

But West Virginia’s congressional delegation isn’t on the same page when it comes to recently reintroduced federal legislation designed to protect Americans from PFAS, the “forever chemicals” that don’t break down in the human body and the environment and can be found in food, household products and drinking water.

Reps. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., and Fred Upton, R-Mich., last week announced legislation that would require the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to establish a national drinking water standard for two of the most extensively found PFAS, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS).

The Daily Climate, April 8, 2021

Articles include: Marine life can’t survive at the equator; Black climate agenda; Biden to court – dismiss children’s lawsuit; ghost forests and sea level rise; Enbridge pipeline & Michigan; handling the climate crisis; nuclear heating plant; lightning & the Arctic; Report: Canadian wood pellet industry; EPA reverses trump; polar bears’ food plight; PayPal net-zero pledge.

Exclusive: EPA reverses Trump stance in push to tackle environmental racism

The Guardian: Exclusive: EPA reverses Trump stance in push to tackle environmental racism. Environmental Protection Agency launches crackdown on pollution that disproportionately affects people of color.

Michael Regan, head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, has sought to revive the effort to confront environmental racism by ordering the agency to crack down on the pollution that disproportionately blights people of color.

On Wednesday, Regan issued a directive to EPA staff to “infuse equity and environmental justice principles and priorities into all EPA practices, policies, and programs”. The memo demands the agency use the “full array of policy and legal tools at our disposal” to ensure vulnerable communities are front of mind when issuing permits for polluting facilities or cleaning up following disasters.

DeSmogBlog, April 4, 2021

Articles include: fossil fuel legacy & white supremacy; clean energy lowering costs impact; SW US fire threats caused by heat; Piney Point phosphate plant disaster; EPA dismisses trump appointees.

The Daily Climate, April 1,2021

Articles include: Climate change and financial markets; Report: O&G warning – diversify; Tackling climate change will create jobs; Biden and electric vehicles; Rainforests will become savannas – study and study. EU climate plan and Asia; greening the financial system; low maximum Arctic ice; world bank financing fossil fuels; Canada’s TransMountain pipeline study paper from a team at Simon Fraser University‘s School of Resource and Environmental Management; Increase funding for poor nations; Saudi Arabia, renewable energy, planting trees; frequent flyers; Aussie brewer and solar power; coal shutdowns – German approach; Report (no link provided): Barrier Reef doomed; EPA fires trump appointees.

The Daily Climate, March 25, 2021

Articles include: midwestern winemakers; Mauritanian protestor; Netflix bingeing; Biden halted O&G leases; China’s coal spree; Report: big banks financing O&G drilling; Democrats plan to revive Obama-era climate change rule; riders abandoning buses & trains; new climate change technology; sea ice in Northern Labrador; EPA to review Trump’s attacks on science; 50% carbon cut by 2050.

The Daily Climate, April 2, 2021

Articles include: Birds versus bees: Here are the winners and losers in the great pesticide trade-off; How climate change is stunting farm production; California’s rooftop solar program collides with equity concerns; Barrier Reef doomed as up to 99% of coral at risk, report finds; Keep your Whole Foods gift card. We want systemic change.; US EPA takes tougher stance on new chemicals; Quebec clears path for farmers with Parkinson’s to get workers’ compensation; Florida’s only lead factory didn’t protect workers. Regulators didn’t either.; Fracking brings pollution, not wealth, to Navajo land; Decades of arsenic poisoning produced by Giant Mine has caused irreversible damage to Dene First Nation land; Mysterious death of bald eagles in US explained by bromide poisoning;

Lawmakers must protect Virginians from the harms of gold mining

Virginia Mercury: Lawmakers must protect Virginians from the harms of gold mining.

In 1990, heavy rainfall overpowered a holding dam at the Brewer Gold Mine in Jefferson, South Carolina, where gold had been pulled from the earth going back to 1828. The spill sent 10 million gallons of the cyanide solution used to process gold into a nearby tributary to the Lynches River, killing aquatic life as far as 50 miles downstream.

In 2015, while attempting to address and remediate polluted wastewater at the abandoned Gold King Mine in Silverton, Colorado, personnel with the Environmental Protection Agency and contractors accidentally released an estimated 3 million gallons of gold mine tailings laced with toxins like lead, mercury and arsenic into a tributary of the Animas River, damaging watersheds in three states and the Navajo Nation. The Animas River ran an eerie shade of orange after the spill and, today, six years later, large stretches of the river are devoid of life because of the toxic pollution.

The Daily Climate, March 18, 2921

Articles include: Republicans warn Federal Reserve against assessing climate risk in financial system; The EPA restores climate change website deleted under Trump; Study: Ocean emissions from bottom trawling are equivalent to global aviation; Scientists claim feeding cows seaweed could slash their methane emissions by a staggering 82 percent; Nearly half the U.S. is in drought that’s expected to grow worse: NOAA; Inside clean energy: Where can we put all those wind turbines?

EPA finalizes rule curbing interstate pollution from 12 states

Politico: EPA finalizes rule curbing interstate pollution from 12 states. The rule will require power plants in the 12 states to optimize their use of already-installed pollution controls for 2021. EPA finalized a rule (Reg. 2060-AU84) on Monday to curb nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants in 12 states ahead of a July deadline for states to be in compliance with the 2008 ozone standard.

Background: The rule follows a string of prior regulations and litigation stretching back to the Obama administration regarding interstate pollution, which the Clean Air Act requires upwind states to address because their pollution causes air quality problems in other states.