"The chair of a House panel is crying foul over the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) failure to provide an expert to testify on the effects of toxic mercury air pollution."
Native American tribes and environmental groups have sued to stop a massive copper mine near Tucson. The $1.9 billion Rosemont Mine, at a half-mile deep and a mile wide, would sprawl across federal, state and private land, leaving a waste pile the height of skyscraper.
"The Department of the Interior will be able to treat members of Congress and the executive branch to free concert tickets under new rules released Tuesday."
SEJ joined with several dozen other journalism groups to support the right to film police activity in a public place, and bills to block information of importance to environmental reporters failed in Louisiana, California and Iowa, but a Colorado paper was blocked from covering a wild horse roundup. All that in this month’s WatchDog Tipsheet.
"Senate Republicans advanced President Trump's nominee to be the Interior Department's top lawyer on Tuesday over objections from Democrats who called him partisan and unresponsive to ethics questions swirling around the department's secretary and his predecessor." Daniel Jorjani was architect of Interior's proposed policy for rejecting Freedom of Information Act requests.
Toxic chemicals and disease-causing microorganisms can be found in some fresh-caught fish. And that means local stories for environmental journalists, who can pick up on problems through federal and state fish advisories. The latest TipSheet explains the health impacts and how they’re regulated, plus questions to ask and story ideas, including an environmental justice angle.
"The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Native American rights in a 5-4 decision in a case out of Wyoming. Justice Neil Gorsuch, the only Westerner on the court, provided the decisive vote in this case, showing himself again to be sensitive to Native American rights."
"The Environmental Protection Agency plans to change the way it calculates the health risks of air pollution, a shift that would make it easier to roll back a key climate change rule because it would result in far fewer predicted deaths from pollution, according to five people with knowledge of the agency’s plans."
"Despite repeatedly expressing public support for children's health, EPA is ending funding for a network of research centers focused on environmental threats to kids, imperiling several long-running studies of pollutants' effects on child development."
"New York’s Suffolk County had a trash problem. Facing brimming landfills and public pressure, legislators took a first-in-the-nation step: They banned plastic bags. But what the county saw as part of the solution, the plastics industry took as a threat."
