"U.S. coal companies lobbied Congress to allow a drop in their payments to help miners with black lung disease by arguing the incurable ailment was in decline and a victims’ trust fund was financially healthy, assertions contradicted by government findings, according to documents seen by Reuters."
"The Trump administration approved a massive gold mine for southwestern Alaska yesterday that would rank among the world's largest mining projects."
"Trump once called the practice a 'horror show.' But his Interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, keeps doing favors for big-game killers."
"The Trump administration is preparing to unveil its plan for undoing Barack Obama’s most ambitious climate regulation — offering a replacement that would do far less to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet, according to POLITICO’s review of a portion of the unpublished draft."
"The Environmental Protection Agency privately challenged the Trump administration’s rationale for freezing Obama-era mileage standards, saying the proposal would actually increase U.S. highway deaths."
"Trump International Hotel & Tower is endangering fish and other aquatic life in the Chicago River, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan alleges in a new lawsuit targeting the president’s skyscraper for multiple violations of clean water laws."
"Last summer, the Interior Department gave its bureaus 30 days to decide how they would streamline environmental reviews of energy production, infrastructure build-out and other major actions on public lands. The Bureau of Land Management has moved aggressively on its list of priorities, which are listed in a Sept. 27, 2017, report obtained by E&E News under the Freedom of Information Act."
"Federal scientists at EPA, the Interior Department and other agencies are reporting political interference with their work, requests to remove 'climate change' from research and declining staff levels, a new survey of government employees said."
SEJ and IJNR invite journalist attendees of SEJ's 28th annual conference in Flint to apply for the expenses-paid post-conference tour, October 7-10, 2018 to northern Michigan, where lakes Superior, Michigan and Huron come together. Deadline is Sep 21.
"The US interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, has blamed environmentalists for California’s ferocious wildfires and claimed, contrary to scientific research, that climate change had “nothing to do” with them. Instead, he said the fires were worsened because of limits on logging."
