Pollution

"One of the companies responsible for polluting an 80-mile (129-kilometer) stretch of river and floodplains in southwestern Michigan with toxic chemicals will pay at least $245.2 million to advance a cleanup effort that began more than 20 years ago, federal officials said Wednesday."

"Los Angeles beaches are plagued by stormwater pollution that can make people sick and damage ecosystems, and local governments are largely failing to address the hazards, according to a new report."

"Executives at one of the world’s largest utilities companies knew that families in Flint, Michigan, might be at risk of being poisoned by lead in their tap water months before the city publicly admitted the problem, according to internal company emails."

"A majority of Americans say they want more stringent oversight of large-scale livestock operations, according to a national poll by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for a Livable Future released Tuesday. The polling follows a recent recommendation from the nation’s leading public health association to temporarily halt the creation of new concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, and increase their oversight and regulation."

"RCMP say no injuries reported, local highway closed after Canadian Pacific Railway derailment"

"Melanie Loessl says she's never seen anything like it.

Early Monday morning, Loessl received a phone call from her daughter, just down the road from her farmstead near Guernsey, Sask., roughly 110 kilometres east of Saskatoon.

Her daughter told her a train had derailed and caught fire.

"When I looked out my window, all I could see was flames and crazy smoke," she said. "I thought our whole place was on fire.""

"EPA has hired another political appointee in its air regulatory office who has a long history of suing the agency."

"On 'good' bad days, the shells lay open at the bottom of the river, shimmering in the refracted sunlight. Their insides, pearl white and picked clean of flesh, flicker against the dark riverbed like a beacon, alerting the world above to a problem below."

"Lawmakers have reached a deal on federal cleanup standards for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in an annual defense authorization, sources told E&E News."

"EPA's internal watchdog today delivered a scathing rebuke of former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's proposal to exempt high-emissions trucks from Clean Air Act requirements."

"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Tuesday released its newest definition for ambient air in a move critics say will ease burdens on polluting industries. On its surface, the guidance deals less directly with air quality than it does with fencing."