Pollution

"Fire departments face liability risks and potentially huge costs and uncertainties as they switch from PFAS-enabled firefighting foam, according to lawyers and groups working with them."

"The amount of dust generated by desert windstorms has grown markedly since the mid-19th century, helping to offset the global rise in temperature, new research shows."

"After years of sending leachate from the Coventry landfill downstream to a municipal wastewater treatment plant in Vermont, Casella Waste Systems is building an on-site facility to treat its runoff. Amid rising public concern over PFAS and new or forthcoming regulations, an increasing number of landfill operators across the country are considering similar moves."

"Diversified Energy’s liabilities exceed its assets, according to a new report, sparking concerns about whether taxpayers will wind up paying to plug its 70,000 wells."

"Fossil-fuel companies’ climate messaging may have changed to fit the new century, but the goal is the same the industry has had for  decades: to delay action and protect profits for as long as possible. Even in the face of an increasingly obvious climate emergency, this message still resonates with many people. Maybe that’s because the biggest social media companies help amplify it."

"Despite an injection of funding, the agency still has not recovered from an exodus of scientists and policy experts, both insiders and critics say."

"WASHINGTON — The nation’s top environmental agency is still reeling from the exodus of more than 1,200 scientists and policy experts during the Trump administration. The chemicals chief said her staff can’t keep up with a mounting workload. The enforcement unit is prosecuting fewer polluters than at any time in the past two decades.

"A chaotic start to the new Republican-led House may spell trouble for the 2023 farm bill."

"For centuries, a Native American tribe considered a large swath of land with cliffs jutting out along the Rappahannock River in Virginia’s Northern Neck as their ancestral heart and homelands."

"Turf wars between microbes dictate how much carbon salt marshes store and how much methane they pump into the air."

"The EPA will begin a rulemaking aiming to reduce PFAS in landfill leachate discharges and will expand or begin studies on PFAS pollution from textile manufacturers and sewage treatment plants, the agency said."