"Bill Wehrum, a top Environmental Protection Agency official who helped reverse Obama-era rules aimed at cutting emissions of greenhouse gases and other air pollutants, is stepping down amid scrutiny over possible violations of federal ethics rules."
June 26, 2019 — The Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ), in a letter to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler, objected to the EPA's June 26 Final Rulemaking entitled "Freedom of Information Act Regulations Update [4]." The letter states that the rule "enables the agency to limit public access to EPA records that are legally public information" and "the highly irregular procedure of issuing a final rule without proposal or public comments is unjustified and unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA)."
"The Trump administration has enlisted the help of two private fireworks firms to put on an extended pyrotechnics display as part of the president’s overhaul of the nation’s Independence Day celebration on the Mall."
"The EPA is reversing a 24-year-old air policy that would allow power plants, refineries and other industrial sources to avoid stringent controls for toxic air pollution, it announced June 25."
"Those hoping for political leadership in the face of the climate emergency are in for yet more disappointment, with the G20 group of powerful nations possibly set to avoid strong commitments to tackling the issue."
"America’s coal-burning power plants are shutting down at a rapid pace, forcing electric utilities to face the next big climate question: Embrace natural gas, or shift aggressively to renewable energy?"
"A record 14-year-old oil leak off the coast of Louisiana is not releasing as much crude into the Gulf of Mexico as recent estimates suggest, but it's still spewing between 100 and 900 times more than claimed by the company involved in the incident, a study from NOAA and the Department of Commerce found yesterday.
Taylor Energy Co. LLC's oil platform, Saratoga A, fell during Hurricane Ivan in 2004. Extreme waves caused a subsurface mudslide at Mississippi Canyon 20 in the Gulf where the platform sat in more than 400 feet of water.
"The E.P.A. found that a small town in Louisiana was overloaded with carcinogens. Why didn’t that mean the government had to act?"
"The water is almost gone. Satellite photographs reveal the stark shrinking of one of the main rain-fed reservoirs that serves Chennai, one of the biggest cities in India."
"How do the Democratic presidential hopefuls compare on their climate actions and promises to solve the crisis? With the debates coming, ICN analyzes their records."
Links
[1] https://www.sej.org/headlines/epas-wehrum-steps-down-amid-scrutiny-over-possible-ethics-violations
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/06/26/epas-top-air-policy-official-steps-down-amid-scrutiny-over-possible-ethics-violations/?utm_term=.4542066a1512
[3] https://www.sej.org/sej-objects-epas-freedom-information-act-regulations-update
[4] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/06/26/2019-13290/freedom-of-information-act-regulations-update
[5] https://www.sej.org/headlines/fireworks-firms-plan-bigger-pyrotechnics-trump-s-fourth-speech
[6] https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/fireworks-firms-plan-bigger-pyrotechnics-for-trumps-fourth-speech/2019/06/25/6527f0c8-9778-11e9-8d0a-5edd7e2025b1_story.html
[7] https://www.sej.org/headlines/epa-announces-reversal-decades-old-air-toxics-policy
[8] https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/epa-closer-to-reversing-decades-old-air-toxics-policy
[9] https://www.sej.org/headlines/g20-summit-may-sideline-climate-keep-trump-happy-during-trade-talks
[10] http://fortune.com/2019/06/25/g20-summit-trump-trade-climate-change/
[11] https://www.sej.org/headlines/coal-fades-us-natural-gas-becomes-climate-battleground
[12] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/26/climate/natural-gas-renewables-fight.html?rref=collection/sectioncollection/climate
[13] https://www.sej.org/headlines/feds-record-oil-leak-100-times-greater-company-says
[14] https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060652095
[15] https://www.sej.org/headlines/opinion-when-pollution-matter-life-and-death
[16] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/22/opinion/sunday/epa-carniogens.html
[17] https://www.sej.org/headlines/chennai-indian-city-nearly-5-million-running-out-water
[18] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/21/climate/chennai-india-water-shortage-images.html
[19] https://www.sej.org/headlines/election-2020-candidates-climate-change-positions-and-accomplishments
[20] https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24062019/election-2020-climate-change-presidential-debate-questions-candidate-profiles
[21] https://www.sej.org/search_results
[22] https://www.sej.org/search_results?page=1873
[23] https://www.sej.org/search_results?page=1870
[24] https://www.sej.org/search_results?page=1871
[25] https://www.sej.org/search_results?page=1872
[26] https://www.sej.org/search_results?page=1875
[27] https://www.sej.org/search_results?page=1876
[28] https://www.sej.org/search_results?page=1877
[29] https://www.sej.org/search_results?page=1878
[30] https://www.sej.org/search_results?page=4913