Laws & Regulations

"Experts are meeting in Germany for U.N.-hosted talks on climate change amid growing pressure for governments to act faster against global warming."

"Documents that the federal Environmental Protection Agency tried to keep confidential show that its staffers criticized how Minnesota regulators drafted a key permit for the planned PolyMet copper-nickel mine, and concluded that the permit would violate federal law because it lacked pollution limits based on the state’s water quality standards."

"president Donald Trump is trying to take an ax to federal advisory committees, ordering that their numbers be slashed. Trump signed an executive order Friday that directs every federal agency to evaluate the need for all of its advisory committees created under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. And it gives agency heads until September to terminate at least one-third of current committees created by agency heads."

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"U.S. environmental groups fighting fossil-fuel development made headlines years ago with public demonstrations against big pipeline projects including the Dakota Access and the Keystone XL - only to be steamrolled by President Donald Trump’s executive orders to approve them. Now the so-called ‘keep it in the ground’ movement has a new strategy to slow Trump’s pro-oil agenda: Burying the administration in formal written protests and lawsuits challenging nearly every oil and gas lease it plans on public land."

"Senators at a Clean Water Act hearing expressed interest in reopening the law to clarify which wetlands and waterways it protects. But that effort would likely be stymied by the fact that participants in the Environment and Public Works Committee hearing, including ranking member Tom Carper (D-Del.), expressed confusion over basic concepts of Clean Water Act jurisdiction."

"Last week, we learned that the Food and Drug Administration had detected PFAS compounds in pineapple, sweet potato, meat, and chocolate cake. ... [I]t has become clear that 3M, the company that originally developed PFOS and PFOA, had known for a very long time that these toxic and persistent chemicals were in our food."

"Prosecutors dropped all criminal charges Thursday against eight people in the Flint water crisis and pledged to start from scratch the investigation into one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in U.S. history."

"A week after the West Virginia Supreme Court unanimously upheld the property rights of landowners battling one natural gas giant, the same court tossed out a challenge filed by another group of landowners against a different natural gas company."

"An investigation into an explosion at an Oklahoma natural gas drilling rig that killed five workers last year faulted inadequate training and equipment and called for new regulations, the U.S. safety regulator said on Wednesday."

"An environmental group filed a complaint against the Department of the Interior on Tuesday, saying the agency shuffled controversial employees into roles without Senate confirmation."