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Rena Steinzor | January 13, 2010
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced Monday that the agency will propose new rules to reduce pollution from runoff from urban and suburban areas and from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). This announcement goes far in demonstrating that the EPA under President Obama is serious about its commitments to improve the quality of the nation’s waters, […]
Sandra Zellmer | January 13, 2010
My family has gotten a lot smaller lately. My mother died in 2004, my father in 2007, and my uncle in 2008. I’ve done the five stages of grief, as introduced by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in 1969, but not exactly as she described. It’s true that I initially felt denial: “I’m a lucky person; this can’t […]
Holly Doremus | January 12, 2010
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. Last Monday, EPA signed off on the Corps of Engineers’ issuance of a Clean Water Act § 404 permit to Hobet Mining for a mountaintop removal coal mining project in West Virginia. The decision is important because it’s the first product of the process announced last fall for joint EPA / […]
Sidney A. Shapiro | January 11, 2010
As reported in a post Saturday, OMB has become the epicenter for industry efforts to head off an EPA regulation concerning coal ash. There have been 17 meetings between industry interests and OMB officials. When questioned about the large number of meetings, an OMB spokesman said, “This has been a very regular, very normal deliberative […]
James Goodwin | January 9, 2010
“White House, EPA at Odds Over Coal-Waste Rules” reads a headline in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal. It’s worth a look. The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has in fact continued to host meetings with outside groups regarding EPA’s work on a rule for controlling the disposal of hazardous coal ash waste. […]
Ben Somberg | January 7, 2010
A few months ago Rena Steinzor wrote skeptically here about state (as opposed to federal) regulation of hydraulic fracturing: … the idea that after doing all this research, EPA should stand back and let the gas-producing states take the lead, stepping in only after much more delay, would amount to a rollback of environmental protection […]
Holly Doremus | January 5, 2010
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. As I pointed out three months ago, the federal government has awakened from its 8-year Bush administration slumber to notice that the SF Bay-Delta is an important environmental and economic resource whose management requires federal input. On December 22, the Obama administration issued an Interim Federal Action Plan for the California […]
Ben Somberg | January 4, 2010
A group of organizations who work to eliminate health hazards in housing have sent a letter to OMB chief Peter Orszag expressing concern over the “detailing” of Randall Lutter to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). The letter focuses on Lutter’s writings on the economics of lead poisoning: Mr. Lutter’s statement, “…the children […]
Holly Doremus | December 31, 2009
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. On Sunday, 60 Minutes had a long story on the California water crisis, featuring Lesley Stahl interviewing (among others) Arnold Schwarzenegger and UC Davis professor Jeff Mount. On the positive side, the story accurately portrayed the vulnerability of California’s fragile through-Delta water delivery system to a major earthquake or catastrophic levee […]