epa

Will Obama Crack Down on Rocket Fuel in Drinking Water?

Fulfilling a confirmation pledge, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Lisa P. Jackson is revisiting the Bush administration's refusal to regulate rocket fuel pollution in the nation's drinking water.

Posted in epa, pollution, water quality

EPA Declares Public Health Emergency in Asbestos-Ridden Libby, Montana

WASHINGTON, DC, June 17, 2009 (ENS) - The first public health emergency ever declared by the U.S. EPA exists at the Libby asbestos site in northwest Montana, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced today. Vermiculite contaminated with asbestos was mined in Libby until 1990. Hundreds of asbestos-related disease cases have been documented in this small community, which covers the towns of Libby and Troy.

Posted in Environment, epa, Health, pollution

‘Clean’ Energy and Poisoned Water

In the musical "Urinetown," a severe drought leaves the dwindling supplies of clean water in the hands of a corporation called Urine Good Company. Urine Good Company makes a fortune selling the precious commodity and running public toilets. It pays off politicians to ward off regulation and inspection. It uses the mechanisms of state control to repress an increasingly desperate and impoverished population.

Posted in Corporatism, epa, water rights

To Obama and the EPA: The Threat Is Real, It's Time to Act

Over the next month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is asking you and me, we the public, whether or not it should do something about the biggest threat to the global economy, world security, and human health. Not bank failures. Not terrorism.

Posted in climate change, Environment, epa

EPA Seeks Rules for Utilities' Polluted Runoff

$A Finnish paper factory. Eric Schaeffer, who heads the Environmental Integrity Project, an advocacy group, said the agency must take action to avoid solving \"one environmental problem by creating another.\"(AFP/File/Olivier Morin)$

Faced with new evidence that utilities across the country are dumping toxic sludge into waterways, the Environmental Protection Agency is moving to impose new restrictions on the level of contaminants power plants can discharge.

Posted in epa, pollution, water

Planet Earth: Too Big to Fail

The Obama administration has given itself an extraordinarily powerful tool that could help the president achieve all three of his top domestic goals at once--but only if he has the political moxie to deploy it to its full extent.

Posted in cap/trade, Environment, epa, green economy, pollution

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 27, 2009
3:45 PM

CONTACT: Earthjustice
Paul Cort or Brian Smith, Earthjustice 510-550-6700

EPA to Review Bush-Era Air Pollution Rules

Environmental groups who sued over New Source Review rules, cautiously optimistic

WASHINGTON - April 27 - EPA Chief Lisa Jackson announced today agency plans to reconsider Bush-era regulations on air pollution controls for facilities that emit fine particle pollution (PM 2.5).

Earthjustice, representing the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council sued the agency in July 2008, challenging the Bush new source review permitting program. The groups challenged several exemptions in the rule that would allow massive industrial facilities to be built without analyzing the impacts of soot pollution on surrounding communities.

###

Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.

Earthjustice Links:

Posted in Environment, epa, pollution

US Congress Begins Drive for Climate Change Bill

$Activists call for action on climate change, energy and the economy on the West Lawn of the US Capitol in March in Washington, DC. Under pressure from the Obama administration to show the world that Washington is making advances against climate change, Congress is to open debate on a \"clean energy\" bill this week. (AFP/Getty Images/File/Alex Wong)$

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Congress on Tuesday began work on a bill that would fundamentally change the way American factories and power plants use and supply energy as part of the Obama administration's drive to cut harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

"The time for delay, denial and inaction has come to an end," declared Democratic Representative Edward Markey in opening the House Energy and Commerce Committee's effort to produce a climate bill by the end of May.

Posted in climate change, epa

Greens Hail Obama's OK to Regulate Greenhouse Emissions

$Greenpeace, which hailed Friday's announcement, warned against precisely that possibility, noting that the decade-long fight for regulating greenhouse gases had shown that \"industry will exploit every ambiguity, every gap and every loophole in legislation to avoid real climate action as much and as long as possible.\" (Getty image)$

WASHINGTON - U.S. green groups hailed Friday's formal finding by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that carbon dioxide and several other greenhouse gases "endanger" public health and welfare as a landmark – if long overdue – step toward slowing global warming.

Posted in climate change, epa, global warming, pollution

EPA to Propose Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The Environmental Protection Agency today plans to propose regulating greenhouse gas emissions on the grounds that these pollutants pose a danger to the public's health and welfare, according to several sources who asked not to be identified.

The move, coming almost exactly two years after the Supreme Court ordered the agency to examine whether emissions linked to climate change should be curbed under the Clean Air Act, would mark a major shift in the federal government's approach to global warming.

Posted in climate change, Environment, epa