Pollution

"On a daily basis, water managers in cities across the state move from crisis to crisis hoping to keep the water flowing to residents."

"Officials in Alabama discriminated against Black residents in a rural county by denying them access to adequate sanitation systems, imposing burdensome fines and liens and ignoring the serious health risks plaguing the community, according to a landmark environmental justice agreement announced Thursday by the Biden administration."

"Three months after the devastating East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment, senators are optimistic they can pass a bipartisan rail safety bill to prevent similar disasters."

"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday proposed baseline water quality standards for tribal waters, which the agency said would protect more than 500,000 people who live on reservations."

"Vinyl chloride, the cancer-causing chemical released in the February train derailment disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, contaminates many communities in the U.S. due to pollution from plastics manufacturing plants, according to a new report."

"The plastics industry says heating and treating plastic waste with chemicals enables it to make new plastics. But environmentalists say that process, emitting large amounts of climate and air pollution, isn’t recycling and isn’t green."

"When Shell Chemical Appalachia announced the start of a massive plastics manufacturing facility last November in western Pennsylvania, [it] ... touted the company’s “strong and innovative safety focus.” But now, just six months later, the plant has been the site of multiple malfunctions, including the leakage of benzene, a known carcinogen, along with other pollutants last month."

"Think of them as speed cameras, but for methane. Just like roadside instruments used to identify drivers breaking traffic rules, new powerful satellites are starting to catch oil and gas operators releasing the planet-warming gas into the atmosphere."

"New York may soon become the first state in the nation to ban natural gas in new construction under a budget deal announced by Gov. Kathy Hochul."

"In a move that will transform California’s economy and end diesel’s decades-long dominance in goods movement, the Air Resources Board today unanimously approved an ambitious, contentious mandate to shift big rigs and other trucks to zero-emissions."