With 2019 in full swing, the SEJournal offers an analysis of the year ahead in environment and energy news, with an overview of our full special report, the “2019 Journalists’ Guide to Energy & Environment.” Plus, don’t miss SEJ’s Jan. 25 event with top reporters to help you keep track of the big stories on the beat. RSVP here to attend in-person or online.
U.S. courts will be a key venue of environmental conflict in 2019, as the Trump administration pushes back against an extensive array of long-standing environmental law. This special edition Issue Backgrounder looks at seven key legal disputes, including cases involving climate change liability, intergenerational equity and policy, as well as conflicts over maintaining national monuments, defining which waters are subject to anti-pollution rules, disposing of coal ash and extending offshore drilling.
"Add one more item to those “Out for 2019” lists : plastic straws. D.C. banned plastic straws in restaurants and other businesses effective Jan. 1, 2019, becoming the second major U.S. city to do so. Seattle made the change six months ago."
"Disaster officials say they need to start removing millions of tons of rubble from Paradise – and soon – so the town can begin recovering from the Camp Fire. That much is certain. The question is where to put the rubble."
"Elmira High School is one of 1,290 active and 220 potential toxic legacy sites statewide, according to an analysis of state records by the Elmira Star-Gazette."
"A crew of engineers in the middle of the ocean will try to fix a device that was intended to clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic have coalesced into a field of debris twice the size of Texas."
"Throw-away plastic items such as straws and polystyrene cups will be banned in the European Union by 2021, EU officials agreed on Wednesday, as they passed measures to cut plastic use in a bid to reduce marine litter."
"The Trump administration wants to reclassify some radioactive waste left from the production of nuclear weapons to lower its threat level and make disposal cheaper and easier."
"The world’s largest pork producer is teaming up with a Virginia-based energy company to harness methane gas from thousands of malodorous hog lagoons to both heat homes and combat climate change."
Advertisement 
