Environmental Politics

"The state's top wetlands expert has been reinstated after a three-week investigation, but the question of who initiated it and why remains unclear. Connie Bersok was put on paid leave from the state Department of Environmental Protection on May 11, two days after she refused to approve a permit for the Highlands Ranch Mitigation Bank in Clay County. Bersok told co-workers she had complained to the DEP's inspector general about her bosses' push to approve the Highlands Ranch permit, then wound up suspended herself."

"When award-winning West Virginia anti-coal activist Maria Gunnoe went to Washington, DC, last week, she was prepared for obstructionist tactics. She was prepared to face icy stares and hard questions from Republican lawmakers. She was not prepared to be branded a pedophile."

"A senior Chinese official demanded on Tuesday that foreign embassies stop issuing air pollution readings, saying it was against the law and diplomatic conventions, in pointed criticism of a closely watched U.S. embassy index."

"SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- The United Nations is haunting California's El Dorado County."

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"The White House [Thursday] night issued a veto threat to a pending House spending bill to fund the Department of Energy, the Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies, citing cuts to clean energy promotion and other DOE priorities and 'policy riders' that would reopen the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository, undo federal building efficiency requirements and block guidance on the Clean Water Act."

"A federal appeals court [Friday] asked the Department of Energy to explain why it should be able to continue to collect fees for its nuclear waste fund despite the fact that there is no operating national repository."

"MANHATTAN, Kansas -- The site of a proposed facility to fight animal diseases, including those which could be spread by bioterrorists, is little more than a parking lot today because of safety and budget concerns."

"OTTAWA -- The federal government has suggested it could replace a team of smokestack pollution specialists by turning to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, appearing to contradict its own description of the scientists and their work on Environment Canada's website."

"From the house where he was born, Henry Clark can stand in his back yard and see plumes pouring out of one of the biggest oil refineries in the United States."