Blog

Three recent developments in the saga of efforts to regulate mercury emissions from coal-fired utilities are significant. Early last week, Michigan became the twenty-third state to require coal-fired utilities within its jurisdiction to reduce their mercury emissions. Michigan’s regulation requires these sources to cut mercury emissions by 90% by 2015. Then, on Thursday, the EPA […]

As climate change legislation awaits action in the Senate, serious and complicated legal and policy questions about the tools designed to reduce carbon emissions remain. Truly, the climate change debate operates in two distinct worlds. The first is becoming increasingly hysterical, consisting of sensational and camera-ready protests and attacks underwritten by groups such as the […]

In Wednesday’s Federal Register, EPA unveiled a new, streamlined process through which agency scientists will systematically review old chemical profiles in the IRIS database and update them with the latest toxicological information. With everything from Clean Air Act residual risk determinations about hazardous air pollutants to Superfund site cleanup standards to Safe Drinking Water Act […]

CPR President Rena Steinzor and board member Robert Glicksman sent a letter today to White House Science Adviser John Holdren and OIRA Administrator Cass Sunstein regarding OMB's role in EPA science decisions. The letter concerns two recent episodes involving OMB that we wrote about this week: one regarding the EPA's Endocrine Disrputor Screening Program (EDSP) […]

As the recession grinds on, financial news continues to grab front-page headlines. The national deficit is a central flashpoint for controversy, triggering debate on the appropriate balance between spending today and increasing our children’s growing mountain of debt. In the midst of this battle, it is easy to overlook another looming problem: the growth of […]

Greenwire and the Los Angeles Times ran pieces last week shining a light into a dark corner where staff at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs once again meddled in scientific regulatory programs where they do not belong, second-guessing EPA’s administration of the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP). The program, mandated by Congress under […]

Before Cass Sunstein had spent much more than a week as the official director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), he invited us over to the White House to talk about how he wanted to shape his small office of economists and statisticians into a strong force for progressive policy within the […]

The Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act of 2009, introduced today by Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md), is a marked improvement from legislation in past years and demonstrates the Senator’s continued leadership on restoring one of this country’s greatest natural resources. The bill rightly emphasizes the implementation and enforcement of the Bay-wide Total Maximum Daily […]

With some fanfare, the EPA announced last week that it has selected a cleanup strategy for the Palos Verdes Shelf (PVS) Superfund Site off the coast of southern California – an area that has been termed “ the world’s largest DDT dump.” The EPA touts its plan as “a major milestone” that puts the site […]