Read the full story from the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting.
As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency prepared to make label changes for the herbicide dicamba after it caused widespread crop damage, the agency depended on the herbicide’s maker for guidance, documents produced in a federal lawsuit show.
A review of more than 800 pages of documents from a lawsuit filed against the U.S. EPA in January 2017 highlight the process behind how the agency made the label changes.
Read the full story from the Toledo Blade.
In the latest volley of a high-stakes lawsuit that could affect the future of western Lake Erie, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is being accused of playing games and “once again engaging in [a] procedural sleight-of-hand” while also letting the state of Ohio give “lip service” to the idea that it’ll someday enact the most aggressive cleanup strategy.
Read the full story in the Narragansett Times.
From the shores of Scarborough Beach, Governor Gina Raimondo Monday signed an executive order to study reliance on plastic waste and its impact on Rhode Island’s natural resources. The executive order specifically will create the “Task Force to Tackle Plastics,” a body that will include environmental groups, marinas, relevant industries, state agencies and state lawmakers. According to Raimondo, the order is taking aim at reducing reliance on single-use plastics throughout the state.
Read the full story from Waste360.
The 35,520-panel system will produce 4 megawatts on 17 acres of the now closed Brooklyn landfill in Cuyahoga County.
National appliance efficiency standards drive energy, water, and utility bill savings. They are also major job creators. Existing standards could help consumers save $2 trillion on energy bills by 2030, money that will create new jobs when shifted from utilities to other goods and services. This report quantifies the impact of these savings on job creation, both nationally and state by state.
Read the full story from Bloomberg Environment.
Companies involved with contaminated properties will see more incentives to negotiate quicker deals for faster cleanups over the next year as part of the EPA’s continued emphasis on addressing Superfund sites.
The program was a priority of former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, but his task force has completed less than a third of its Superfund program reforms in the past year. Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler has said that priority will continue.
The EPA’s Superfund task force drafted more than 40 recommendations in July 2017 on how to improve the contaminated site cleanup program. The agency anticipates completing 27 percent of those recommendations by the end of July, and the remaining 73 percent over the next 13 months, according to a July 23 EPA report.
Read the full story from NPR.
When a huge floating gyre of plastic waste was discovered in the Pacific in the late 1980s, people were shocked. When whales died and washed ashore with stomachs full of plastic, people were horrified. When photographs of beaches under knee-deep carpets of plastic trash were published, people were disgusted.
Though some of it came from ships, most, presumably, was from land. But how much was coming from where?
No one really knew until 2015. That’s when Jenna Jambeck, an environmental engineer at the University of Georgia, did the math. Her groundbreaking study suggested there were hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of times as much plastic washing into the sea as people were seeing in those ocean gyres.
Read the full story from the Food & Environment Reporting Network.
The way the FDA assesses potential toxicity of ingredients and additives in the food supply has long favored industry studies over independent science. Now, a new effort to fix the problem is breaking down.
Read the full story in The Guardian.
Millions of tons of waste plastic from British businesses and homes may be ending up in landfill sites across the world, the government’s spending watchdog has warned.
Read the full story in the Omaha World-Herald.
The Nebraska Public Power District will take part in a federal study to develop ways to safely and economically collect and store the carbon produced by coal-fired power plants and ethanol plants.
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