"After decades of pressure from farmworkers and their allies, California launched a statewide system to warn communities before they’re exposed to toxic pesticides. But health concerns remain."
"California air quality regulators announced the launch of a first-in-nation satellite data project Friday, with the aim of monitoring and minimizing methane emissions."
"The Trump administration has eviscerated a grant program designed to make U.S. industry cleaner and more competitive by improving measurement of emissions from building materials. The Environmental Protection Agency says it has canceled $116 million in grants to 21 recipients that include universities and trade groups, according to information obtained by the Sierra Club through a public records request."
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"As Texas stares down a water shortfall, its leaders are looking at vast volumes of brown, briney oilfield wastewater as a hopeful source of future supply. They don’t have many other options. But extracting clean water from this toxic slurry will require enormous amounts of energy, just as Texas fights to keep up with the rapidly growing power demands of a high-tech industrial buildout."
"Advocates fear the agency will “justify avoiding any enforcement whatsoever” of millions of tons of coal ash nationwide."
"A new report illustrates a concerning dynamic: Record heat last year pushed countries to use more planet-warming fossil fuels to cool things down."
"The National Institutes of Health will no longer be funding work on the health effects of climate change, according to internal records reviewed by ProPublica."
"With a $4.5 trillion fight over tax cuts looming, the oil and gas industry wants to protect billions of dollars in tax benefits it enjoys and get new ones, too."
Hazardous sites around the United States are supposed to have disaster plans, which make for a localizable story environmental journalists can tell to help protect their communities. The problem, reports TipSheet, is that a key federal database of these plans may be shut down by the Trump administration. More on the Risk Management Program, efforts to protect the data and how reporters can use it.
