"The number of heat-related deaths in Arizona soared to a new high last year as people endured the hottest summer on record and the complications of the pandemic."
"This week, in a first, firefighters are demanding independent testing for cancer-linked chemicals known as PFAS in their gear and that their union drop sponsorships from chemical and equipment makers."
"Every day at work for 15 years, Sean Mitchell, a captain in the Nantucket Fire Department, has put on the bulky suit that protects him from the heat and flames he faces on the job. But last year, he and his team came across unsettling research: Toxic chemicals on the very equipment meant to protect their lives could instead be making them gravely ill.
"The Biden administration's Interior Department leaders face a Freedom of Information Act request backlog that has tripled over the last four years, underscoring the serious public records management challenges ahead."
"As Michael S. Regan was settling in as North Carolina’s top environmental regulator in a new Democratic administration, a powerful Republican wanted to send a message to the young head of the state’s Department of Environmental Quality."
"At the request of the Biden administration, a federal court today tossed out a Trump-era rule limiting the use of science to craft EPA regulations."
"The administration has pledged to make agriculture a cornerstone of its plan to fight warming, but also to tackle a legacy of discrimination that has pushed Black farmers off the land."
"If there were any doubts that the climate is changing in the Colorado River Basin, 2020 went a long way toward dispelling them, thanks to yet another year of extreme weather."
"President Joe Biden outlined ambitious new plans for taking on climate change on Wednesday, but the most potent weapon may already be in his arsenal. The five-member Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is poised to play a pivotal role fulfilling Biden’s clean-energy ambitions, including his vow to strip greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector over the next 14 years."
"Polluting factories go uninspected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Leadership positions sit vacant at the U.S. Geological Survey’s climate science centers. And U.S. Department of Agriculture research into environmental issues important to farmers is unfinished."
"Interior Department data showing that the Bureau of Land Management's relocation of its Washington-based headquarters staff out West prompted 87% to leave the bureau could bolster arguments to move BLM's headquarters back."
