Reckoning Day: US Cities Burn Recyclables After China Bans Imports
"Residents of cities like Chester, outside Philadelphia, fear a rise in pollution from incinerators after China’s recycling ban".
"Residents of cities like Chester, outside Philadelphia, fear a rise in pollution from incinerators after China’s recycling ban".
"For months, Clovis, New Mexico, dairy farmer Art Schaap has been watching his life go down the drain. Instead of selling milk, he is dumping 15,000 gallons a day – enough to provide a carton at lunch to 240,000 children. Instead of working 24/7 to keep his animals healthy, he’s planning to exterminate all 4,000 of his cows, one of the best herds in his county’s booming dairy industry."
"The Supreme Court is taking up another far-reaching debate over the scope of the Clean Water Act."
"Canadian National Railway says it doesn’t yet know how much oil leaked from a derailment in western Manitoba, but it says trains are now running on the line again."
"Virginia lawmakers have approved legislation to require the state’s largest electric utility to excavate and clean up unlined coal ash pits."
"Thirteen Michigan water systems failed to meet federal standards for lead in drinking water in the last half of 2018, and seven of those systems had lead levels at least twice as high as the state will allow starting in 2025."
"Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration on Friday banned Sterigenics from using ethylene oxide at its Willowbrook sterilization plant, responding to an intense public outcry about toxic air pollution that left surrounding neighborhoods with some of the highest cancer risks in the nation."
"An Ohio River commission that represents eight states lining the waterway and its tributaries voted Thursday to keep its authority to set regional water pollution standards, rather than ceding that power to each individual state."
"The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday announced what officials called a historic effort to rein in a class of long-lasting chemicals that pose serious health risks to millions of Americans. But environmental groups and residents of contaminated communities said that the agency’s “action plan” is short on action, saying ample evidence exists to regulate the chemicals in the nation’s drinking water."

Our latest Issue Backgrounder looks at the potentially historic impact of the ambitious climate action agenda known as the Green New Deal — not just on this Congress or the next, or even on the race for the White House in 2020, but for the soul of the Democratic Party. An analysis of a public policy program in the making, the political maneuvering it’s engendering and its prospects to sow division or prompt a united front.