The Press

This is an example. The links will not work


InsideEPA Headlines

  • The biofuels industry is planning to push EPA to soften its renewable fuel standard (RFS) to improve the greenhouse gas (GHG) profile of biofuels compared to gasoline, one biofuels advocate says, an option that could provide an administrative fix for an issue that is threatening to stall pending climate-energy legislation. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
    • EPA is reportedly considering partially approving an ethanol industry request to waive the Clean Air Act to allow mid-level ethanol blends of up to 15 percent (E15) in conventional gasoline by approving the new fuel blend only for vehicles that meet EPA Tier II emissions standards. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
      • The Supreme Court’s recent request for supplemental briefs in a key Clean Water Act case could signal support for environmentalists’ novel argument that an Alaska mine should be subject, for the first time, to strict EPA pollutant discharge limits in an Army Corps permit usually reserved for dumping “fill” material, according to Department of Justice (DOJ), industry and environmentalists’ briefs filed in response to the court’s request. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
        • A 2004 law intended to ensure that victims have a voice in criminal proceedings is complicating environmental enforcement, as courts and prosecutors struggle to determine how to apply the law to environmental cases where the victims often are hard to identify because of complicated exposure scenarios or long delays between the alleged criminal activity and the trial. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
          • Environmentalists are opposing EPA Region V’s recent approval of controversial changes Indiana made to its environmental enforcement policy that critics say will weaken enforcement, but the activists say they are left without any clear legal options to challenge the approval because it was made in a non-regulatory policy decision. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
            • EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is vowing to issue by the end of 2010 the agency’s long-awaited final dioxin risk assessment that would inform any regulatory standards for the chemical, but some activists who are calling for an immediate release of the analysis say the 2010 date will lead to additional delays. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
              • Paul Anastas, President Barack Obama’s choice to head EPA’s research office, who is known as the “father of green chemistry,” could revolutionize agency efforts to focus on sustainable product design and production, safer chemicals and “green jobs,” which some observers believe could eventually drive greater use of regulatory approaches that consider products’ lifecycle impacts. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
                • EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s visit to Wyoming for a tour of energy production sites has prompted Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) to lift his hold on Regina McCarthy, President Obama’s nominee to head EPA’s air office, with Barrasso’s office saying it is preferable to have a confirmed air chief that the Senate can hold accountable. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
                  • The Obama EPA is tightening the Bush administration’s proposed new source performance standard (NSPS) for coal processing plants, but is drawing fire from environmentalists who want even stricter limits and industry officials who say the changes are too strict and create compliance cost concerns. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
                    • EPA’s ability to meet a court-ordered July 15 deadline to re-propose vacated maximum achievable control technology (MACT) standards for thousands of industrial boilers and incinerators is being hampered by a lack of data necessary to design the rule, due to a delay in White House approval of EPA’s data collection request. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
                      • An Obama administration statement of principles calling on Congress to “broadly protect” waters under the Clean Water Act (CWA) could provide political cover for moderate Democratic senators who have stalled progress on a bill to address the issue in the Environment & Public Works Committee (EPW), sources say. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
                        • Judge Sonia Sotomayor, whom President Obama nominated to the Supreme Court, has a limited history of environmental rulings but is drawing praise from activists who say her record on “access to court” issues such as standing indicates she may be more favorable to environmentalist plaintiffs than retiring Justice David Souter. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
                          • Little-noticed House climate bill provisions amending the Clean Air Act could dramatically shift courts’ roles in reviewing EPA regulations by giving judges the option of vacating rules only if the vacatur will not result in environmental harm. The bill also sets a deadline on petitions for reconsideration that would markedly speed the pace at which challenges to rules are reviewed by courts. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
                            • EPA officials are weighing how to define language in President Obama’s fiscal year 2010 budget that requires the agency to give “equitable consideration” to small drinking water systems’ regulatory compliance burdens, with options including revising the agency’s formula for issuing controversial waivers from Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) requirements. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
                              • EPA’s just-announced plan to speed and strengthen Bush-era reviews of chemical hazard assessments is facing doubts from key observers, who say the agency has not done enough to scale-back the Bush program and doubt whether the agency will be able to meet the new 23-month deadline for completing the reviews. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
                                • Environmentalists are looking to broadly reshape EPA regulations governing cooling water intake structures after a recent Supreme Court decision upheld the agency’s use of a cost-benefit test but left in place lower court requirements for EPA to revise other portions of the rule for structures at existing power plants. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
                                  • A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report urging the White House Office of Management & Budget’s (OMB) regulatory review office to improve transparency when it changes agency rules could guide modifications President Obama is weighing for a Clinton-era executive order (E.O.) on regulatory reviews. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
                                    • A key federal official is resisting industry and legal experts’ calls for EPA and other agencies to stringently validate new computational toxicology (comptox) and in vitro methods they plan to use for assessing chemicals’ toxicity, which experts argue is necessary to prevent legal challenges when the new toxicology data is used for regulatory purposes. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
                                      • Wyoming environmentalists fear that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s recent tour of energy facilities in the state obscured the projects’ adverse air quality, water and other impacts because activists were denied a meeting with Jackson to raise their concerns about energy production. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
                                        • Activists have filed the first-ever lawsuit against EPA for failing to slow ocean acidification caused by climate change, arguing the agency must require Washington state to list its coastal waters as impaired due to human-induced pH changes, in an effort to win carbon dioxide (CO2) regulations under the Clean Water Act. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
                                          • An EPA air advisory workgroup is considering calling on the agency to develop a comprehensive data collection plan for its new mobile source emissions model to address their concerns that EPA lacks specifics on how the agency will update the model in future years, fill data holes and validate the data-intensive model. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
                                            • A New Jersey congressman is urging Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) to advance legislation that would add new public notification requirements on EPA and other government agencies conducting Superfund cleanups, arguing that a recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) underscores the need for the bill. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
                                              • House Republicans are pushing legislation that would extend the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) chemical facility security standards -- due to expire in October -- through to 2012 as an alternative to Democratic legislation that seeks to strengthen the current standards. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
                                                • Activists are criticizing House Democrats’ bill to ban the export of electronic waste (e-waste) to developing nations, saying it includes a number of “loopholes” and exemptions that will allow continued exports of the waste. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
                                                  • Activists are criticizing an EPA proposal issued in response to a court remand that seeks few changes to how “hot spots” are analyzed to determine individual road projects’ emissions impacts on transportation conformity. (from Inside EPA Weekly Report)
                                                    •  
                                                      Powered by Y! Pipes

                                                      NOTE: The publishers of InsideEPA provide us only the headlines. To see the full article, there is an individual charge. Click on the headline to see the details.

                                                      New York Times Environmental Headlines

                                                    • Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, met China’s two top leaders to discuss energy problems on Wednesday, but some experts noted that the two nations’ official positions remain far apart.
                                                      • With demand for gasoline, and the ethanol that goes into it, expected to rise, oil companies are trying to benefit.
                                                        • With a lead bullet ban in place in California condor territory, two of the endangered birds found riddled with shotgun pellets set off a hunt for the shooter.
                                                          • In a colossus of light and mirrors, scientists dream of kindling the power of stars.
                                                            • With climate talks in Copenhagen looming in six months, the president’s challenge of overhauling energy appears even greater than health care.
                                                              • A new wave of liberal arts students are heading to farms this summer, in search of both work and social change.
                                                                • Industries are pushing to classify nuclear power plants and burning waste from coal mines as environmentally advantageous.
                                                                  • While groundwater rights remain sacrosanct, the state government is facing pressure to embrace regulation.
                                                                    • The Obama administration plans to combine California’s tough new auto-emissions rules with existing fuel economy limits to create a single new national standard.
                                                                      • The most ambitious energy and global warming legislation ever debated in Congress has critics and supporters on both sides of the aisle.
                                                                        • With restrictions on water use spreading, golf courses can save water and still keep the courses green using subterranean sensors that tell them when to turn on the sprinklers.
                                                                          • A media pile-on will announce a 47-million-year-old primate.
                                                                            • Climate change may effect the bloom of phytoplankton, a food that predicts the development and hatching of shrimp eggs.
                                                                              • Concrete ties may be stronger and more durable than wooden ones, but are they environmentally friendlier?
                                                                                • Do refrigerators use more energy when filled with food?
                                                                                  • Cleanup of chemical pollutants began Friday on a stretch of river that was named a Superfund site 25 years ago.
                                                                                    • The plant would be the first large-scale desalination operation on the West Coast and the largest in the hemisphere.
                                                                                      • Relieved of billions of tons of glacial weight, land is rising much as a cushion regains its shape after a person gets up from a chair.
                                                                                        • A report from an energy consulting group sees big opportunities for the oil sands, shrouded in vast uncertainty.
                                                                                          • A new U.N. report says that the level of vulnerability does not always mirror economic conditions.
                                                                                            • Cap and trade, hatched as a theory in obscure economic journals, has become the policy of choice in the debate over how to slow the heating of the planet.
                                                                                              • Supporters hope a 5-cent tax on disposable shopping bags will pull in some cash for a state in deep fiscal trouble.
                                                                                                • A new analysis halves projections of how much sea levels could rise if Antarctica’s ice sheets fully disintegrated.
                                                                                                  • With a series of compromises on the stickiest issues behind them, the House Energy and Commerce Committee is poised to approve the legislation by the end of next week.
                                                                                                    • The internal government memorandum challenged the scientific and economic basis of a proposed finding that climate-altering gases are a threat to human health and welfare.
                                                                                                      •  
                                                                                                        Powered by Y! Pipes
                                                                                                        <

                                                                                                        NOTE: Click on the headline above to see the full article

                                                                                                        Washington Post-Newsweek Environmental Headlines

                                                                                                      • Aviva Kempner drives me crazy. The 62-year-old documentary filmmaker -- "The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg" -- phoned me every week or two a few years back when I was covering the events leading to the Washington Nationals' arrival in D.C.
                                                                                                        • President Obama continued to reverse his predecessor's policies this week by undoing a controversial Bush administration rule known as "preemption" that used federal regulations to override state laws on the environment, health, public safety and other issues.
                                                                                                          • A bill to create the first national limit on greenhouse-gas emissions was approved by a House committee yesterday after a week of late-night debates that cemented the shift of climate change from rhetorical jousting to a subject of serious, if messy, Washington policymaking.
                                                                                                            • After lawmakers consumed all of Monday afternoon with opening statements, debate over a bill that would cap U.S. greenhouse gas emissions finally got underway in a House committee yesterday.
                                                                                                              • The Obama administration today plans to propose tough standards for tailpipe emissions from new automobiles, establishing the first nationwide regulation for greenhouse gases.
                                                                                                                • After the decade they've had, Capitol Hill's climate-change skeptics might well feel like polar bears on a shrinking ice floe.
                                                                                                                  • The congressional trek toward climate legislation inched forward yesterday as the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a 932-page bill chock-full of allowances and provisions designed to bring together a coalition of lawmakers, industries and environmental groups behind the regulation of...
                                                                                                                  •  
                                                                                                                    Powered by Y! Pipes

                                                                                                                    NOTE: Click on the headline above to see the full article