"The president signed U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown’s and Rob Portman’s Water Infrastructure Flexibility Act into law that would provide local communities with increased flexibility when complying with Clean Water Act requirements for updates to sewer systems."
"Almost 16,000 desalination plants worldwide produce bigger-than-expected flows of highly salty waste water and toxic chemicals that are damaging the environment, a U.N.-backed study said on Monday."
"A multi-agency state task force assembled to tackle a ubiquitous chemical contaminant across Michigan continues to operate under the Whitmer administration, but without a director or the executive directive that created it."
U.S. courts will be a key venue of environmental conflict in 2019, as the Trump administration pushes back against an extensive array of long-standing environmental law. This special edition Issue Backgrounder looks at seven key legal disputes, including cases involving climate change liability, intergenerational equity and policy, as well as conflicts over maintaining national monuments, defining which waters are subject to anti-pollution rules, disposing of coal ash and extending offshore drilling.
Expect the fight to worsen over the Trump Administration’s attempted rollback of auto mileage standards. Not only is California resisting a loss of its waiver to set tighter rules, joining at least 16 other states in a preemptive lawsuit. But carmakers themselves are deviating from the Trump line, worried over a fracturing of the nationwide auto market or seeking an edge in the field for more efficient vehicles. This special edition TipSheet looks at prospects for conflict in the year ahead.
"The government shutdown has suspended federal cleanups at Superfund sites around the nation and forced the cancellation of public hearings, deepening the mistrust and resentment of surrounding residents who feel people in power long ago abandoned them to live among the toxic residue of the country’s factories and mines."
"Fiat Chrysler Automobiles agreed Thursday to a settlement with U.S. regulators and other plaintiffs that could cost the automaker roughly $800 million to resolve allegations that it cheated on emissions tests."
"The two-week-old shutdown has halted one of the federal government’s most important public health activities, the inspections of chemical factories, power plants, oil refineries, water treatment plants, and thousands of other industrial sites for pollution violations."
"The Chesapeake Bay Foundation downgraded the health of the nation’s largest estuary Monday from a C-minus to a D-plus, blaming the dip in its latest report card on increased pollution from extraordinary amounts of rainfall in 2018."
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