EJToday is a daily weekday digest of top environment/energy news and information of interest to environmental journalists, independently curated by Editor Joseph A. Davis. Sign up below to receive in your inbox. For queries, email EJToday@SEJ.org. For more info, read an EJToday FAQ. Plus, follow EJToday on social media at @EJTodayNews, and flag stories of note by including the @EJTodayNews handle on your posts. And tell us how to make EJToday even better by taking this brief survey.
Want to join the EJToday team? Volunteer time commitments can vary from just an hour a month up to a daily contribution, and would involve helping to curate content of interest. To learn more, reach out to the director of publications, Adam Glenn, at sejournaleditor@sej.org.
Note: Members have additional options to choose from (you'll need your log-in info).
"An Interior Department proposal would cancel BLM grazing leases for American Prairie's buffalo in Montana, but it could affect tribal and private herds across the West."
"Lee Zeldin, currently the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is understood to be the leading candidate for Attorney General after President Donald Trump fired Pam Bondi."
"When former top Environmental Protection Agency official Judith Enck noticed a cavalcade of chemical and plastics industry lobbyists visiting the agency’s Washington headquarters in February, she wondered what could be up."
"An EPA lawyer said the dissent letter “is likely protected speech under the First Amendment” and advised against “retaliatory” moves."
"When pollution gets bad enough in the rivers supplying Iowa’s largest city with drinking water, it costs Des Moines around $16,000 a day to run a special system to filter out dangerous nitrates. It’s a fact of life in the agriculture-dependent state — and climate change is making the water quality problem even worse."
"President Trump has tried to cut funding for virtually every federal program that addresses climate change. But Congress has been pushing back, sometimes with surprising bipartisan support."
"Brazil’s Environment Minister Marina Silva, a globally recognized climate leader, said she was stepping down Wednesday from her role in President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration to run for Congress later this year."
"Hydrologist Maureen Gutsch trudged through the mud and slush to confirm a grim picture: Colorado just had its worst snowpack since statewide recordkeeping began in 1941."
"The Environmental Protection Agency proposed Thursday to include microplastics and pharmaceuticals on a list of contaminants in drinking water for the first time, a step that could lead to new limits on those substances for water utilities."
"Republicans at the state and federal levels are working to shield fossil fuel companies from laws and legal claims that aim to make them pay for some of the damage caused by climate change."
"In announcing one of the largest reorganizations in the 120-year history of the U.S. Forest Service, the Trump administration declared that there would be “no interruption or change” to the agency’s firefighting force. But critics say the upheaval comes at the worst possible time ... .
"President Donald Trump’s administration will move the U.S. Forest Service headquarters out of the nation’s capital to Salt Lake City as part of an organizational overhaul that involves shuttering research facilities in 31 states and concentrating resources in the West, the agency announced Tuesday."
"Before becoming a top official at the Environmental Protection Agency, Aaron Szabo was a lobbyist for the oil and gas industry. Metadata shows he helped draft a trade group’s 2022 letter to the EPA objecting to controls on methane emissions."
"The US Environmental Protection Agency has proposed to remove air emission regulations from plastic pyrolysis plants, also known as chemical or advanced recycling facilities, that essentially burn plastic to make fuel."
"The administration moved to block endangered species protections in the Gulf of Mexico, but few see a real threat to oil production."
