Pollution

"Local water systems are asking the EPA—for the first time in the Safe Drinking Water Act’s history—for help obtaining chlorine-based water treatment chemicals amid a nationwide shortage."

"The groundwater of at least nine military installations near the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and Virginia is contaminated with high levels of toxic fluorinated “forever chemicals,” according to a report Wednesday by an environmental group that cites Defense Department records."

"A federal judge ruled Monday that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency must update nearly three-decade-old regulations about the chemicals that can be used to disperse offshore oil spills, which some environmental groups contend cause serious health problems."

"The Florida Department of Environmental Protection is suing the owner of the Piney Point site that sent 215 million gallons of contaminated water into Tampa Bay earlier this year."

"A wildfire in Northern California spread more than 100,000 acres overnight into Friday — becoming the largest blaze in the country and the third largest in the state's history."

"There's a certain smell that reminds Dianna Cormier-Jackson of her childhood on Leila Street in Houston's Fifth Ward. When she was young in the early 1960s, she recalls the air there feeling "heavy," as if it was thick with oil and gasoline. Some days, the heavy smell would be so strong that her parents would make her and her siblings stay in the house. But on school days, they marched out into the rank air."

"President Biden on Thursday unveiled a far-reaching, multipronged plan to make U.S. cars and light trucks more fuel-efficient and to begin a shift to electric vehicles over the coming decade. The move marks one of the administration’s most consequential pushes so far to combat climate change and tackle the nation’s biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions."

"Under orders from President Biden, EPA has taken its first overt step to revisit one of the Trump administration’s most bitterly contested air quality rollbacks."

"The Biden administration is planning to unveil new emissions rules for cars tomorrow [Thursday] during an event at the White House featuring industry officials and electric vehicles, according to three sources."

"This summer's low-oxygen dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico along the Louisiana coast covered 6,334 square miles - 10 times the size of Lake Pontchartrain and well above the average size for the past five years, researchers said Tuesday."