Pollution

A new technology for coating the inside of lead service pipes could save homeowners money and make expensive replacement unnecessary. It is being tested.

"Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator who has aggressively pushed to dismantle regulations and downsize the organization, is threatening to reach outside his agency and undermine the Justice Department’s work enforcing antipollution laws, documents and interviews show."

"A sprawl of mobile home parks house 10,000 people in Southern California’s Coachella Valley, but their drinking water is chronically contaminated. Now some solutions are in sight."

"The Environmental Protection Agency says it has recovered 517 containers of 'unidentified, potentially hazardous material' from highly contaminated toxic waste sites in Texas that flooded last month during Hurricane Harvey. The agency has not provided details about which Superfund sites the material came from, why the contaminants at issue have not been identified and whether there’s a threat to human health."

"When Jane Horton bought her dream 800-square-foot farmhouse in 1975, she thought little of the semiconductor manufacturing plant across the street. Even after the company’s buildings were demolished and a chain-link fence went up around the campus, she still had no knowledge of the toxic dangers lurking beneath her feet — let alone of the fact that they were invading her home."

"Fraud. Bribery. Incompetence. The military’s use of contractors adds to a legacy of environmental damage."

"The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District's $3 billion Project Clean Lake is designed to one day capture and clean 98 percent of the 4.5 billion gallons of stormwater and sewage that it receives each year before it pours untreated into Lake Erie. But even that federally mandated, 25-year program wouldn't have prevented pollutants from 236 wastewater treatment plants in Northeast Ohio from being discharged into our waterways over the past five years".

"The cleanup of a northwest Montana community where health professionals say hundreds of people have been killed by asbestos exposure entered a new phase Thursday as officials turn their focus to keeping residents safe over the long term. The five-member Libby Asbestos Superfund Advisory Team met for the first time after being established by the Montana Legislature earlier this year."

"The city of Flint saw fewer pregnancies, and a higher number of fetal deaths, during the period women and their fetuses were exposed to high levels of lead in their drinking water, according to a new research study that reviewed health records from Flint and the state."