"The Virginia Senate’s Finance and Appropriations Committee approved budget legislation for the coming fiscal year that ends a tax exemption for data centers on January 1."
"President Donald Trump’s Interior Department is withholding key ethics disclosure information for Karen Budd-Falen, a high-ranking agency appointee who is facing calls for an investigation into her financial ties to a massive lithium mining project, Public Domain has learned."
"Following a ProPublica article revealing that the U.S. Forest Service had for years issued clothing to wildland firefighters that it knew contained potentially dangerous “forever chemicals,” the agency has stopped distributing those garments."
"While the average lifespan of a wastewater system is 40 to 50 years, many of the plants and pipes across the nation could be twice that old or more."
"The Department of the Interior issued a final rule that curbs and streamlines its environmental reviews. Critics say the move is illegal."
"The Supreme Court has [agreed to hear] green-lighted the fossil fuel industry’s latest attempt to quash a swath of lawsuits seeking to hold oil companies accountable for the costs of climate change."
"The Trump administration is reopening a loophole to allow more mercury emissions from some coal-fired power plants, provoking swift denunciations from public health advocates who said the rollback will leave children at further risk of exposure to the brain-damaging element."
The enforcement of environmental laws suffered a dramatic collapse during the Trump administration’s first year, several studies have found. Even the most serious violations, typically referred to the Department of Justice, are left unpursued because of DOJ staffing declines. The latest Backgrounder has the details, a look at the administration’s rationale for the decline and the implications for the environment and public health.
"A bill banning the sale and use of plastic and metallic glitter has yet to go through in Brazil as the capital’s sandy shores bear cost of carnival’s shine"
"The Center for Biological Diversity filed suit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Feb. 11 for failing to make a preliminary decision about whether to expand protection for the saltmarsh sparrow, a bird whose population is in sharp decline around the Chesapeake Bay and the marshes along the East Coast."
