"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Thursday it will seek input from state and local officials as it considers how to rework a 1991 rule meant to protect people from lead and copper contamination in drinking water."
"Missouri has issued its first fines over the misuse of a farm chemical in 2016 that went on to be linked in different formulations to widespread U.S. crop damage this year, the state said on Thursday."
"The amount of medicinal products containing illegal wildlife tissue seized by EU authorities has risen sharply in the last six years, according to monitoring group TRAFFIC and includes items from a range of animals including tigers, bears and snakes."
"Hoping for more unfettered production of coal, oil and gas even as it erects wind farms, a Wyoming county sees the president as a key to job security."
"Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke brought the leader of a California park to his office last month to reprimand him for climate change-related tweets the park had sent via Twitter, two sources close to the situation said."
"The controversial Bayou Bridge Pipeline has been granted a permit by the New Orleans District office of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to cross southern Louisiana between Nederland, Texas, and St. James Parish, including wetland areas across the Atchafalaya River Basin, the corps announced late Thursday (Dec. 14)."
"Extreme weather left its mark across the planet in 2016, the hottest year in recorded history. Record heat baked Asia and the Arctic. Droughts gripped Brazil and southern Africa. The Great Barrier Reef suffered its worst bleaching event in memory, killing large swaths of coral. Now climate scientists are starting to tease out which of last year’s calamities can, and can’t, be linked to global warming."
"A senior executive at the Russian nuclear processing plant suspected of being behind a spike of radioactivity over Europe this fall admitted Wednesday that the isotope recorded does emerge as part of the plant’s production cycle but said its levels are negligible."
"The Trump administration violated the law by wrongly withholding funds for a popular Energy Department program supporting innovation, the Government Accountability Office said Tuesday."
"Virginia regulators unexpectedly tossed the fate of the Atlantic Coast pipeline project up in the air yesterday, as what was widely expected to be a vote to let the natural gas pipeline proceed instead raised new questions about the project's timing and next steps forward."
