"The methane released by U.S. landfills could be cut in half in the next 25 years if the EPA adopts policies that some states have now, a new study finds."
A Biden administration initiative that commits to allocating 40% of federal investments to disadvantaged communities plagued by overpollution is an environmental justice breakthrough, writes columnist Yessenia Funes. But it’s also a program with weaknesses, such as how it factors in race or keeps track of impacts. What is Justice40, what has it missed and what is its future?
What was once benignly dubbed biosolids is more accurately tagged toxic sludge. And some of it may be finding its way into our food. The latest TipSheet reports how that came to be despite (or perhaps because of) Clean Water Act regulation, and how hard it is to calculate the potential harms. Plus, more than a dozen reporting ideas and resources for this highly localizable story.
"Scientists have found plastic pollution almost everywhere they have looked. In clouds. On Mount Everest. In Arctic snow. Now, for the first time, tiny plastic particles have been detected in the breath of dolphins."
"Residents of Imperial Beach in southern San Diego County filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the operators of an international wastewater treatment plant — alleging that the site has failed to contain a cross-border crisis that has long contaminated their community."
"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has granted preliminary approval for the use of a material that contains radioactive radium in a Florida road project that’s being described as a “pilot.”"
"When he was just 18 years old, Emmanuel Akatire traveled about 500 miles from his home in Zorko, Ghana, to Accra, the nation’s capital, to find the only work he could — sifting through vast piles of discarded electronics to find valuable scrap metal. A week’s worth of painstaking, often dangerous work, earns him the equivalent of about 60 U.S. dollars."
"The justices will consider whether a lower court improperly tossed approvals for a temporary storage facility in Texas."
"Russ Lewis has picked up some strange things along the coast of Long Beach Peninsula in Washington state over the years: Hot Wheels bicycle helmets with feather tufts, life-size plastic turkey decoys made for hunters, colorful squirt guns." ... "These items aren’t like the used fishing gear and beer cans that Lewis also finds tossed overboard by fishers or partygoers. They’re the detritus of commercial shipping containers lost in the open ocean."
"Residents of two south Florida counties are feuding over the proposed construction of a huge trash incineration plant that environmentalists say will subject thousands of people to toxic fumes and a risk of polluted drinking water."
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