"‘My Body Was Poisoned’: Biden’s Lead Pipe Removal Plan Faces Hurdles"
"A string of unexpected impediments could delay the administration’s timeline on an issue that is central to its effort to address racial disparities."
EJToday is a daily weekday digest of top environment/energy news and information of interest to environmental journalists, independently curated by Editor Joseph A. Davis. Sign up below to receive in your inbox. For queries, email EJToday@SEJ.org. For more info, read an EJToday FAQ. Plus, follow EJToday on social media at @EJTodayNews, and flag stories of note by including the @EJTodayNews handle on your posts. And tell us how to make EJToday even better by taking this brief survey.
Want to join the EJToday team? Volunteer time commitments can vary from just an hour a month up to a daily contribution, and would involve helping to curate content of interest. To learn more, reach out to the director of publications, Adam Glenn, at sejournaleditor@sej.org.
Note: Members have additional options to choose from (you'll need your log-in info).
"A string of unexpected impediments could delay the administration’s timeline on an issue that is central to its effort to address racial disparities."
"The Onondaga Nation has protested for centuries that illegal land grabs shrank its territory from what was once thousands of square miles in upstate New York to a relatively paltry patch of land south of Syracuse. ... So now the nation is presenting its case to an international panel."
"Hours before devastating fires scorched the historic town of Lahaina on Maui, Kyle Ellison labored to save his rental house in Kula, a rural mountain town 24 miles away, from a different blaze."
"Rising sea temperatures are killing mussels in Spain's Ebro delta and shellfish output is also suffering from Greece to Canada".
"EBRO DELTA, Spain - Mussel farmer Xavier Cabrera held out a handful of dry, dead mussels from his shellfish farm on the coast of the Ebro Delta, 100 miles (160 km) south of Barcelona. "Let's hope this isn't our future," he said ruefully.
A summer heatwave in the Mediterranean region killed off about 80% of the seed mussels - the tiny young that were going to be next year's harvest - and the little that was left of this year's production.
"'Adaptation apartheid' is preventing fragile states from accessing finance to protect their people from global warming".
"Parks, trails, housing, commercial development, flood resiliency efforts and new community amenities are supposed to turn the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River into the next Inner Harbor. But some activists worry about gentrification and more injustice."
"The Biden administration is charting plans to sell offshore oil-drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico over the next five years, while trimming the program to its smallest level ever.
The oil leasing plan being released by the Interior Department on Friday will contain only a low number of sales, according to people familiar with the deliberations who declined to be named because the blueprint isn’t yet public. That’s far from the 11 sales the agency proposed last year, and it would be the lowest in history.
"Emails show David Bernhardt of interior department overrode superintendent of California park, causing ‘chaos and destruction’"
"After dodging surprisingly pointed questions about climate change at the first debate Fox News hosted last month, the contenders hoping to take on President Joe Biden next November battled each other over who would do most to ramp up production of the fossil fuels destabilizing the planet’s weather systems."
"A Swiss Academy of Sciences panel is reporting a dramatic acceleration of glacier melt in the Alpine country, which has lost 10% of its ice volume in just two years after high summer heat and low snow volumes in winter."
"A new report finds that five major global insurers are still backing U.S. coal mines, even when they've promised not to."
"Faced with more frequent flooding and worse to come, the Philadelphia environmental justice community of Eastwick is grappling with difficult questions about its future: Will levees and flood walls protect them, or should residents abandon their homes and move to higher ground?"
"Climate change-driven heat waves, droughts, and floods will push vulnerable people into more extreme poverty, Harvard researcher says."
"One of the most complicated wildfire cleanup missions in recent memory is now underway on the Hawaiian island of Maui, where fleets of workers and equipment are being shipped to the island while officials plot how to carefully but quickly remove hundreds of thousands of tons of toxic debris."
"A warming planet is creating a booming and loosely-regulated disaster restoration industry fueled by immigrant labor. Without protection, workers are exposed to lethal toxins making them sick long after the cleanup."