#epa

[reasonsforhope]

Article | Paywall-Free

"The Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule Tuesday [October 8, 2024] requiring water utilities to replace all lead pipes within a decade, a move aimed at eliminating a toxic threat that continues to affect tens of thousands of American children each year.

The move, which also tightens the amount of lead allowed in the nation’s drinking water, comes nearly 40 years after Congress determined that lead pipes posed a serious risk to public health and banned them in new construction.

Research has shown that lead, a toxic contaminant that seeps from pipes into the drinking water supply, can cause irreversible developmental delays, difficulty learning and behavioral problems among children. In adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, lead exposure can cause increased blood pressure, heart disease, decreased kidney function and cancer.

But replacing the lead pipes that deliver water to millions of U.S. homes will cost tens of billions of dollars, and the push to eradicate them only gathered momentum after a water crisis in Flint, Mich., a decade ago exposed the extent to which children remain vulnerable to lead poisoning through tap water...

The groundbreaking regulation, called the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements, will establish a national inventory of lead service lines and require that utilities take more aggressive action to remove lead pipes on homeowners’ private property. It also lowers the level of lead contamination that will trigger government enforcement from 15 parts per billion (ppb) to 10 ppb.

The rule also establishes the first-ever national requirement to test for lead in schools that rely on water from public utilities. It mandates thatwater systems screen all elementary and child-care facilities, where those who are the most vulnerable to lead’s effects — young children — are enrolled, and that they offer testing to middle and high schools.

The White House estimates that more than 9 million homes across the country are still supplied by lead pipelines, which are the leading source of lead contamination through drinking water. The EPA has projected that replacing all of them could cost at least $45 billion.

Lead pipes were initially installed in cities decades ago because they were cheaper and more malleable, but the heavy metal can wear down and corrode over time. President Joe Biden has made replacing them one of his top environmental priorities, securing $15 billion to give states over five years through the bipartisan infrastructure law and vowing to rid the country of lead pipes by 2031. The administration has spent $9 billion so far — enough to replace up to 1.7 million lead pipes, the administration said.

On Tuesday, the administration said it was providing an additional $2.6 billion in funding for pipe replacement. Over 367,000 lead pipes have been replaced nationwide since Biden took office, according to White House officials, affecting nearly 1 million people...

Environmental advocates said that former president Donald Trump, who issued much more modest revisions to the lead and copper rule just days before Biden took office, would have a hard time reversing the new standards.

Erik Olson, the senior strategic director for health at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that the Safe Drinking Water Act has provisions prohibiting weakening the health protections of existing standards...

Olson added that the rule “represents a major victory for public health” and will protect millions of people “whose health is threatened every time they fill a glass from the kitchen sink contaminated by lead.”

“While the rule is imperfect and we still have more to do, this is by far the biggest step towards eliminating lead in tap water in over three decades,” he said."

-via The Washington Post, October 8, 2024

[empireofthestates]

What You Need to Know about Project 2025

The GOP's Radical Plans for America's Future

graphics from @/pinballwizardess on tiktok

[mysharona1987]

[liberalsarecool]

Republicans are malware.

[climatecalling]

The sleeping giant of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has stirred.

In the past month, an avalanche of anti-pollution rules, targeting everything from toxic drinking water to planet-heating gases in the atmosphere, have been issued by the agency. Belatedly, the sizable weight of the US federal government is being thrown at longstanding environmental crises, including the climate emergency.

On Thursday, the EPA’s month of frenzied activity was crowned by the toughest ever limits upon carbon pollution from America’s power sector, with large, existing coal and gas plants told they must slash their emissions by 90% or face being shut down.

The measure will, the EPA says, wipe out more than 600m tons of carbon emissions over the next two decades, about double what the entire UK emits each year. But even this wasn’t the biggest pollution reduction announced in recent weeks.

In April, new emissions standards for cars and trucks will eliminate an expected 9bn tons of CO2 by the mid-point of the century, while separate rules issued late last year aim to slash hydrofluorocarbons, planet-heating gases used widely in refrigeration and air conditioning, by 4.6bn tons in the same timeframe. Methane, another highly potent greenhouse gas, will be curtailed by 810m tons over the next decade in another EPA edict.

In just a few short months the EPA, diminished and demoralized under Donald Trump, has flexed its regulatory muscles to the extent that 15bn tons of greenhouse gases – equivalent to about three times the US’s carbon pollution, or nearly half of the entire world’s annual fossil fuel emissions – are set to be prevented, transforming the power basis of Americans’ cars and homes in the process.

[socialjusticeinamerica]

[stevelieber]

You can get alt text and image descriptions at the @stopproject2025comic site, and read a lot of other explainer comics there, too! Comics writers and artists have come together to make a whole bunch of comics explaining what Project 2025 will mean for our country.

[lordfreg]

— EPA!tots

*lore under the cut ; tw for child neglect

When the turtles were around 3-5, Splinter wasn’t very attentive. This was due to a horrible depression, and the turtles simply didn’t understand.

Being Splinter’s favorite, Donnie understood the depth and reason why Splinter wasn’t really around, but couldn’t explain it to Leo or Mikey. Raph barely understood, only knowing that he had to care for his siblings.

Raph never really felt comfortable enough to let Splinter raise his brothers, only really letting up when his younger brothers proved that they could take care of themselves.

Leo has never been Splinter’s favorite, a reflection of himself. Too cocky, too arrogant, too stupid to understand that he made the same mistakes and his life was ruined. Leo and Splinter grew to hate each other, but they loved each other.

Mikey always tried his best to keep his family together, now it’s boiled down to keeping his team together.

[meret118]

During President Donald Trump’s administration, they said, their managers at the Environmental Protection Agency began pressuring them to make new chemicals they were vetting seem safer than they really were. They were encouraged to delete evidence of chemicals’ harms, including cancer, miscarriage and neurological problems, from their reports — and in some cases, they said, their managers deleted the information themselves.

After the scientists pushed back, they received negative performance reviews and three of them were removed from their positions in the EPA’s division of new chemicals and reassigned to jobs elsewhere in the agency.

. . .

A second Trump presidency could see more far-reaching interference with the agency’s scientific work. Project 2025, the radical conservative policy plan to overhaul the government, would make it much easier to fire scientists who raised concerns about industry influence.

[kawuli]

Today in "cool things the US government is doing"

The Environmental Protection Agency is giving out $2 billion in Community Change Grants "to empower historically disadvantaged communities all across the country to access federal funding to address the challenges of climate change, increase resiliency, and transform lives."

The grants target "communities most adversely and disproportionately impacted by climate change, legacy pollution, and historical disinvestments"

Specifically:

Tribes in Alaska: $150 million for projects benefitting Indian Tribes in Alaska including funds for cleanup of contaminated lands.

Tribes: $300 million for projects benefiting Tribal communities in the other states. 

Territories: $50 million for projects benefitting disadvantaged communities in the United States’ territories of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands.

Disadvantaged Unincorporated Communities: $50 million for projects benefiting small and rural areas that lack fixed, legally determined geographic boundaries, such as Colonias.

U.S.-Southern Border Communities: Consistent with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) longstanding commitment to addressing transborder pollution challenges, $100 million for projects benefitting non-Tribal disadvantaged communities within 100 kilometers north of the U.S.-Mexico border.

$200 million is also available in technical assistance to help people with the application process, so organizations without the institutional capacity to understand complicated federal funding structures can get help, free of charge.

As they put it, "The Community Change Grants are funded by the Environmental Protection Agency to empower historically disadvantaged communities all across the country to access federal funding to address the challenges of climate change, increase resiliency, and transform lives."

So a) if you know of any organizations that might be able to use this funding, spread the word! and b) sometimes the government does good stuff, even in this the year of our discontent 2024.

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Capricorns (Alpine ibex) clash on spring meadows in the Swiss canton of Grisons

Photograph: Gian Ehrenzeller/EPA

[reasonsforhope]

"The sleeping giant of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has stirred.

In the past month, an avalanche of anti-pollution rules, targeting everything from toxic drinking water to planet-heating gases in the atmosphere, have been issued by the agency. Belatedly, the sizable weight of the US federal government is being thrown at longstanding environmental crises, including the climate emergency.

On Thursday [May 18, 2023], the EPA’s month of frenzied activity was crowned by the toughest ever limits upon carbon pollution from America’s power sector, with large, existing coal and gas plants told they must slash their emissions by 90% or face being shut down.

The measure will, the EPA says, wipe out more than 600m tons of carbon emissions over the next two decades, about double what the entire UK emits each year. But even this wasn’t the biggest pollution reduction announced in recent weeks.

In April, new emissions standards for cars and trucks will eliminate an expected 9bn tons of CO2 by the mid-point of the century, while separate rules issued late last year aim to slash hydrofluorocarbons, planet-heating gases used widely in refrigeration and air conditioning, by 4.6bn tons in the same timeframe. Methane, another highly potent greenhouse gas, will be curtailed by 810m tons over the next decade in another EPA edict.

In just a few short months the EPA, diminished and demoralized under Donald Trump, has flexed its regulatory muscles to the extent that 15bn tons of greenhouse gases – equivalent to about three times the US’s carbon pollution, or nearly half of the entire world’s annual fossil fuel emissions – are set to be prevented, transforming the power basis of Americans’ cars and homes in the process...

If last year’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), with its $370bn in clean energy subsidies and enticements for electric car buyers, was the carrot to reducing emissions, the EPA now appears to be bringing a hefty stick.

The IRA should help reduce US emissions by about 40% this decade but the cut needs to be deeper, up to half of 2005 levels, to give the world a chance of avoiding catastrophic heatwaves, wildfires, drought and other climate calamities. The new rules suddenly put America, after years of delay and political rancor, tantalizingly within reach of this...

“It’s clear we’ve reached a pivotal point in human history and it’s on all of us to act right now to protect our future,” said Michael Regan, the administrator of the EPA, in a speech last week at the University of Maryland. The venue was chosen in a nod to the young, climate-concerned voters Joe Biden hopes to court in next year’s presidential election, and who have been dismayed by Biden’s acquiescence to large-scale oil and gas drilling.

“Folks, this is our future we are talking about, and we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity for real climate action,” [Michael Regan, the administrator of the EPA], added. “Failure is not an option, indifference is not an option, inaction is not an option.” ...

It’s not just climate the EPA has acted upon in recent months. There are new standards for chemical plants, such as those that blight the so-called "Cancer Alley" the US, from emitting cancer-causing toxins such as benzene, ethylene oxide and vinyl chloride. New rules curbing mercury, arsenic and lead from industrial facilities have been released, as have tighter limits on emissions of soot and the first ever regulations targeting the presence of per- and polyfluoroalkylsubstances (or PFAS) in drinking water.” ...

For those inside the agency, the breakneck pace has been enervating. “It’s definitely a race against time,” said one senior EPA official, who asked not to be named. “The clock is ticking. It is a sprint through a marathon and it is exhausting.” ...

“We know the work to confront the climate crisis doesn’t stop at strong carbon pollution standards,” said Ben Jealous, the executive director of the Sierra Club.

“The continued use or expansion of fossil power plants is incompatible with a livable future. Simply put, we must not merely limit the use of fossil fuel electricity – we must end it entirely.”"

-via The Guardian (US), 5/16/23

[azspot]

The U.S. Air Force is claiming that it cannot depollute drinking water that it contaminated with dangerous forever chemicals because the U.S. Supreme Court has stripped federal regulators of the authority to make it clean it up.

In June, the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron deference, a 40-year-old doctrine that required judges to defer to a federal agency when determining the meaning of any ambiguous laws that agency should try to enforce. The Air Force has claimed that without the Chevron deference, the Environmental Protection Agency cannot order it to address its own pollution, The Guardian reported Monday.

In Tucson, Arizona, several Air Force bases have been polluting the drinking water, contaminating it with trichloroethylene, a volatile organic compound produced in industrial work, and PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” which do not naturally break down. These chemicals can accumulate inside the human body and have been linked to a myriad of severe health problems.

In May, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered the Air Force and National Guard to develop a plan to address the pollution, which would cost them an estimated $25 million—just 0.1 percent of the Air Force’s budget. The Air Force refused, stating that “the EPA’s order can not withstand review” and therefore it wouldn’t be beholden to it, according to The Guardian.

[mysharona1987]

[liberalsarecool]

This regulation was long overdue.

#VotingMatters #VoteBlue

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

The Supreme Court temporarily put on hold on Thursday an Environmental Protection Agency plan to curtail air pollution that drifts across state lines, dealing another blow to the Biden administration’s efforts to protect the environment.

The ruling followed recent decisions chipping away at the agency’s authority to address climate change and water pollution.

Under the proposal, known as the “good neighbor” plan, factories and power plants in Western and Midwestern states must cut ozone pollution that drifts into Eastern ones. The emissions cause smog and are linked to asthma, lung disease and premature death.

The ruling was provisional, but even the temporary loss for the administration will suspend the plan for many months and maybe longer.

The vote was 5 to 4. Writing for the majority, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said the court’s ruling was modest, pausing the administration’s plan in light of developments in lower courts. He said the Supreme Court’s stay would remain in place while a federal appeals court in Washington considered the matter and, after that, until the Supreme Court acts on any appeal.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by the court’s three liberal members, issued a spirited dissent predicting that the majority had created a “yearslong exercise in futility.”

“Given the number of companies included and the timelines for review,” she wrote, “the court’s injunction leaves large swaths of upwind states free to keep contributing significantly to their downwind neighbors’ ozone problems for the next several years.”

She called one argument set out in the majority opinion “a feeble response.” Another, she said, “throws at the wall a cherry-picked assortment of E.P.A. statements.”

“None stick,” she added.

Vickie Patton, general counsel of the Environmental Defense Fund, criticized the majority’s approach as reckless.