A family of widely used fluorinated chemicals may be contaminating local drinking water supplies, causing uncertain health effects and with little clarity over federal regulations. But some states are starting to step in. This week’s TipSheet unwinds the confusion over PFAS, with some backstory and plenty of resources for your local coverage.
"EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt placed a polluted California area on his personal priority list of Superfund sites targeted for 'immediate and intense' action after conservative radio and television host Hugh Hewitt brokered a meeting between him and lawyers for the water district that was seeking federal help to clean up the polluted Orange County site."
"Urbanization is on the rise; so is the urban heat island effect—a situation that is worsening with the decline of tree cover in U.S. metropolitan areas"
"The Environmental Protection Agency had a total of 33 threat investigations underway as of mid-March — 10 of them involving Scott Pruitt from the last six months — a security assessment released Monday shows, offering the most detailed tally yet of threats against the agency’s top official."
"It was supposed to be a town hall meeting where Iowa ranchers could ask questions directly of Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. But when the agency learned that anyone would be free to ask anything, they decided to script the questions themselves."
The Wilson Center in Washington, DC, will host a conversation with Alaska Lt. Governor Byron Mallott, 1:30-3:00 p.m., about how Alaska will address climate change impacts now while also plan for the future and transition to a cleaner energy economy. RSVP required.
"A mother and daughter who had been camped high in trees for five weeks to protest a natural gas pipeline near Roanoke climbed down from their roosts Saturday after a federal judge threatened to start levying heavy fines."
"Florida’s mangroves have been forced into a hasty retreat by sea level rise and now face being drowned, imperiling coastal communities and the prized Everglades wetlands, researchers have found."
Sixteen young Alaskans "are suing the state of Alaska for causing climate change and failing to protect the climate for future generations. They are asking for a science-based energy policy—one that will shift to renewable energy sources and bring greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050."
"For the first time since humans have been monitoring, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have exceeded 410 parts per million averaged across an entire month, a threshold that pushes the planet ever closer to warming beyond levels that scientists and the international community have deemed “safe.”"
