The Trump Administration on Tuesday proposed a new rule aimed at speeding up and streamlining the permitting process for large energy and infrastructure projects, including oil and gas pipelines and facilities tied to artificial intelligence. The rule, which does not require action by Congress, includes a suite of procedural changes to section 401 of the Clean Water Act — a law enacted in the…
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Ethylene oxide was once considered an unremarkable pollutant. The colorless gas seeped from relatively few industrial facilities and commanded little public attention. All that changed in 2016, when the Environmental Protection Agency completed a study that found the chemical is 30 times more carcinogenic than previously thought. The agency then spent years updating regulations that…
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Four months have passed since a Louisiana oil facility burst apart, spewing a dense black sludge that drifted across homes, farms, and waterways as far as 50 miles away. Since then, the U.S. Department of Justice and Louisiana environmental regulators have filed a sweeping lawsuit against Smitty’s Supply, the company that ran the facility storing oil and vehicle lubricants.
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Since 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has required large industrial facilities to report their greenhouse gas emissions. The data, which the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program has been collecting since 2011, is essential in efforts to reduce emissions and provides vital information to the public about climate pollution from the largest U.S. polluters. However, the Trump EPA has…
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States that have slashed funding for environmental regulation over the last 15 years have put themselves in a tough position to handle the fallout of the Trump administration’s pro-polluter agenda, according to a new report from the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP). Since 2010, 27 states have slashed budgets and 31 have cut staff at their own public health and environmental agencies…
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The chemical industry finally got its wish. Industry lobbyists have long pushed the federal government to adopt a less stringent approach to gauging the cancer risk from chemicals, one that would help ease regulations on companies that make or use them. Last week, in a highly unusual move, the Environmental Protection Agency embraced that approach in announcing that it is revising an…
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