As the Trump administration proposes big cuts at environmental agencies like the U.S. EPA, the latest TipSheet explores how to dig up local angles from the budget action. Examples: Tracking changes at EPA regional offices and labs, at Superfund or at state revolving funds for clean water and safe drinking water programs.
"Residents in Flint, Mich., are about to start paying the full cost of their water again, even though what’s flowing from their taps has yet to be declared safe to drink without an approved filter."
"The Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago became the city’s African American intellectual, artistic and economic mecca as segregationist policies kept black people out of other areas. Local leaders hope to build on that legacy with the microgrid that ComEd is proposing for the neighborhood."
"Dusty mounds of petroleum coke are gone from Chicago, but federal and city officials discovered a potentially more dangerous type of pollution while investigating the black piles that once towered above the East Side neighborhood."
"Indiana's energy utilities want state lawmakers to pass a law that critics say would muscle out smaller companies from the emerging solar energy market."
"A state judge has sided with a northern Michigan fish growing company that wants to dramatically increase production of rainbow trout on the Au Sable River, turning aside objections that the expansion would pollute the prized waterway."
"Scientists are seeing an uptick of the legacy toxic in Great Lakes fish and birds. Warming waters are the suspected culprit. More coal will make it worse."
"More than 1,700 residents of Flint, Michigan who say the Environmental Protection Agency mismanaged the water crisis that exposed thousands of children to lead poisoning have sued the U.S. government, seeking class action status for their claims."
While resurrecting the declining U.S. coal industry, as promised by the new administration, is probably not possible, it may not stop a lifting of the moratorium on coal leasing on federal lands. TipSheet looks at how the issue moved front and center, and whether the move would help coal country.
"The greatest sign posted at a public fishing access spot in the United States is on the South Branch of the Au Sable River at a place called the Mason Tract. It reads: “Sportsman slow your pace … ahead lies the fabled land of the South Branch. Here generations of fisherman have cast a fly on one of the great trout streams of America."
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