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A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency permitter was surprised to hear Coeur d'Alene Mines Corp. blame her agency when it pulled out of the Kensington gold mine permit process. While the company announced EPA comments on the environmental review of the mine would trigger months of delay, EPA scientist Patty McGrath was expecting they would be addressed in a couple of weeks. "They made this decision on their own, without discussing it with us first, which is why we don't understand why they're pointing to our comments as the reason for the delay," McGrath said. Coeur announced it was canceling the...

WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency says there's no need to rid drinking water of a toxic rocket fuel ingredient that has fouled water supplies around the country, including in California. The EPA's conclusion is in a draft document not yet made public but reviewed Monday by the Associated Press.

Twelve years ago, Bill Clinton's Environmental Protection Agency proposed sweeping changes in the way it regulated air pollution. The EPA wasn't concerned with lawn mowers, weed trimmers and leaf blowers, administrator Carol Browner assured Congress; rather, it sought to save the thousands of people who are killed every year by the ozone and particulate matter from automobile and smokestack emissions. And if the rules, which at the time were the most expensive in U.S. history, saved one life, it would be worth it. In this newspaper's 127-year history, it has never published an obituary of someone who died from ozone...

GROVETON, TX (KTRE) - The Trinity-Neches Texas Sub-Regional Planning Committee, or TNT, is set to meet with the Environmental Protection Agency next week. TNT says TxDOT has not given enough thought to the environmental impact of the corridor, and they need the EPA to examine the findings they will get from TxDOT about the TTC. "We're not in opposition to improvement and expansion. We just want to make sure it's done right because once you cover up rural Texas with concrete you can't change it back," says Connie Fogle with TNT. The Trans-Texas Corridor is expected to use thousands of...

Word around Detroit is GM and the EPA are apparently duking it out over the Chevy Volt. The problem is this: Is the Volt an electric car or a hybrid? How you define the Volt is important, because it dictates how the official EPA fuel-economy numbers will be calculated.

The Pineywoods Sub-Regional Planning Commission met Thursday to hear a presentation by the commission's president, Hank Gilbert, who said the plans to move the Trans-Texas Corridor to the current U.S. Hwy. 59 location may not come to fruition. The Texas Department of Transportation initially planned to build a new highway system, which would have been as large as 1,200-feet wide, that would run through rural areas of East Texas, including Nacogdoches County. However, TxDOT scrapped those plans in June and announced a new proposal to build the TTC along the existing route of U.S. Hwy 59. But Gilbert, of the...

EPA: Ban ozone-depleting air conditioners by 2010By Solnik, Claude Publication: Long Island Business News Date: Friday, September 7 2007 The air conditioning industry is getting a breath of fresh air as federal regulations phase out ozone-depleting units from homes and commercial buildings. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is slowly doing away with air conditioners that spout hydrocarbons, which deplete the ozone layer. The agency, as of 2010, is banning manufacturers from making units with a refrigerant known as R-22, commonly used to cool residential and commercial spaces. The substance, also known as chlorodifluoromethane, or difluoromonochloromethane, spews clouds of hydrocarbons into...

Under the Clean Water Act of 1972, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers are granted jurisdiction over the “navigable waters” of the United States. If a boat can float on it, it’s theirs to regulate. Over the years, the definition of “navigable waters” overflowed its banks, expanding to include virtually anywhere with detectable levels of H2O. “What began as a reasonable attempt to control water pollution in our nation’s interstate rivers, lakes, and streams,” says Peyton Knight at the National Center for Public Policy Research, “spiraled into unreasonable federal regulation of isolated wetlands, ponds, dry lakebeds,...

New York and 11 other states are suing federal environmental regulators over greenhouse gas emissions from oil refineries, the New York attorney general's office said on Monday. The suit, led by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, charges that the Environmental Protection Agency violated the federal Clean Air Act by refusing to issue standards, known as new source performance standards, for controlling global warming pollution emissions from oil refineries. Note: Other states in the suit are California, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. New York City and Washington D.C. also joined in...

The Milwaukee, Madison and Green Bay areas do not meet tough new air quality standards designed to protect public health and may need additional regulations, federal regulators said Tuesday. The Environmental Protection Agency's announcement drew criticism from a top state air official, who warned it could hurt economic development and do little to improve air quality.The EPA said its review found Brown, Columbia, Dane, Racine, Waukesha and Milwaukee counties have unacceptable levels of fine particulate matter in the air or contribute to problems in neighboring areas. The pollution is largely caused by coal-fired power plants and diesel engines and creates...

Human activities are cumulatively driving the health of the world's oceans down a rapid spiral, and only prompt and wholesale changes will slow or perhaps ultimately reverse the catastrophic problems they are facing. Such is the prognosis of Jeremy Jackson, a professor of oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, in a bold new assessment of the oceans and their ecological health. Publishing his study in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Jackson believes that human impacts are laying the groundwork for mass extinctions in the oceans on par...

WASHINGTON, DC, August 12, 2008 (ENS) - The Bush administration has proposed sweeping changes to the Endangered Species Act, releasing a plan to give federal agencies the authority to decide without expert consultation whether their activities could harm endangered and threatened species. Administration officials contend the proposal will make the law easier to implement, but critics say the plan would undermine federal protection of imperiled plants and animals. Announced Monday by the head of the U.S. Interior Department, the proposed changes would relax the current requirement that federal agencies consult with federal wildlife experts to ensure activities they undertake or...

Compact fluorescent light bulbs have long been known to contain poisonous liquid mercury, but a study released earlier this year shows the level of mercury vapor released from broken bulbs skyrockets past accepted safety levels. Following a story reported by WND last year about a Maine woman quoted $2,000 for cleaning up a broken fluorescent bulb (or CFL) in her home, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection studied the dangers of broken CFLs and the adequacy of recommended cleanup procedures. The results were stunning: breaking a single compact fluorescent bulb on the floor can spike mercury vapor levels in a...

At what price will corn be so expensive that the federal government will decide that it is time to stop driving up the price of food? Three years ago, Congress imposed a Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) mandate that has forced the gasoline industry to mix massive amounts of corn-based ethanol into the nation's fuel supply. In 2007, Congress nearly doubled that mandate to require nine billion gallons of ethanol be blended into gas in 2008 and even more in 2009. But, as a safety valve, Congress gave the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the power to waive the new mandates if...

Which gets better gas mileage, a Hummer or a scooter? No contest. But which is more polluting? It may not be what you think. "It's true. The cleanest scooter is still dirtier than a car," said John Swanton, air pollution specialist with the California Air Resources Board.

The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday denied a request by Texas to temporarily cut federal ethanol requirements for the nation's fuel supply, saying the state had not proved that the recent rise in corn prices is severely hurting its economy. Under the energy law signed late last year, 9 billion gallons of ethanol and biodiesel must be blended into gasoline between Sept. 1, 2008, and Aug. 31, 2009, to meet a national Renewable Fuels Standard. Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) sought to reduce that to 4.5 billion gallons, on the grounds that the mandate is hurting livestock producers and increasing food...

HOUSTON, Aug. 7 -- The US Environmental Protection Agency has denied a request submitted by Texas Gov. Rick Perry for a 50% waiver from the federal renewable fuel standard (RFS) mandate for corn-based ethanol. The RFS, part of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, requires increased national production of renewable biofuels to 36 billion gal/year by 2022 from 9 billion gal/year in 2008. Perry blamed increased demand for corn-based ethanol for contributing to escalating corn prices, which he said contributes to higher food prices and also higher costs for livestock feed (OGJ Online, July 22, 2008). EPA said...

Lynn Moses, a Driggs, Idaho man, will enter the federal prison in Sheridan, Oregon today at 2 p.m. in an unfolding story of government tyranny. Mr. Moses lost his wife to an unexpected heart attack 1 ½ years ago, and suspects that the stress created by this abuse of federal power is responsible. And yesterday he was forced to leave his 17-year-old daughter Whitney at home in tears, who will now have to experience her senior in high school without the companionship of either of her parents, both of them taken from her by the repressive power of the central...

August 4, 2008, Fairbanks, Alaska – Governor Sarah Palin announced today the State of Alaska has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking to overturn U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne’s decision to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. This action follows written notice given more than 60 days ago to Secretary Dirk Kempthorne of the Department of the Interior and Director Dale Hall of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asking that the regulation listing the polar bear as threatened be withdrawn.“We believe that the Service’s decision to list...

<p>ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The state of Alaska sued Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne on Monday, seeking to reverse his decision to list polar bears as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.</p> <p>Gov. Sarah Palin and other state officials fear a listing will cripple offshore oil and gas development in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas in Alaska's northern waters, which provide prime habitat for the only polar bears under U.S. jurisdiction.</p>

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - California said Thursday it planned to sue the US government for failing to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from ships, aircraft, construction and agricultural equipment. In the latest legal threat from the state against the Environmental Protection Agency, California's Attorney General Jerry Brown said the body was "wantonly ignoring" its duty to set pollution standards...

In yet another example of government secrecy, the agency in charge of protecting human health and the environment has ordered its staff not to speak with congressional investigators, the media and even the agency’s own inspector general. The massive, taxpayer-funded Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with an annual budget of nearly $8 billion, has issued a gag order on its pollution enforcement officials via an internal electronic mail made public by an international wire service dedicated to covering environmental issues. The message orders nearly a dozen managers in the EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance and their staff to keep...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic senators called on Tuesday for the resignation of Stephen Johnson, head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, saying he sided with polluters instead of fighting global warming and other ecological problems. The three senators, all active in the climate change debate, also asked the U.S. attorney general to investigate whether Johnson has made false or misleading statements in sworn testimony before the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee. "Mr. Johnson has consistently chosen special interests over the American people's interests in protecting health and safety," Sen. Barbara Boxer of California told reporters. "He has become a...

One of the favorite targets of conservative pundits (and rightly so) is the liberal tendency to extremes. Oftentimes, a liberal will see a societal problem, and pronounce :”This needs government!” Quite often the liberal will see a real problem, too, but will either end up creating a massive, wasteful bureaucracy (say, Medicare or Social Security), or else use the problem as a excuse for a vastly disproportionate growth in governmental power (say, the IRS). As H. L. Mencken once wrote, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”...

There is a point at which one’s contempt for the environmentalists and their allies is irredeemable. There is no longer the usual excuse that’s there’s room for argument or discussion regarding global warming. Having been labeled “deniers” for years, the sense that the end of this hoax is in sight brings no desire to forgive and forget. Recently, Dr. Roy Spencer, an atmospheric scientist who formerly worked for NASA, testified before a Senate committee. Free now to speak without the impediments of bureaucratic oversight, Dr. Spencer told the committee, “I am pleased to deliver good news from the front lines...

SAN FRANCISCO -- California's effort to limit vehicle emissions of gases that contribute to global warming hit a snag Friday when a federal appeals court ruled that the state and environmental groups acted too early when they sued the Bush administration in January for blocking the law. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco dismissed a lawsuit filed by California, 15 other states and five environmental groups over the Environmental Protection Agency's refusal to let the state enforce its limits on greenhouse gas fumes from new cars and trucks. The court said the Jan. 2 suit was...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal appeals court dealt a setback to California and environmental groups today in their battle with the Bush administration over the state's efforts to restrict vehicle emissions of gases that contribute to global warming. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco dismissed a lawsuit filed by California and 15 other states in January over the Environmental Protection Agency's refusal to let the state enforce its limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new cars and trucks. The court said the suit was premature because the EPA hadn't yet taken formal action to deny the...

The EPA is looking to expand its powers even more thanks to the Supreme Court of the United States. It is about to meddle ever more in our national economic health with its claimed "fixes" to the non-existent "problem" of global warming. But, we citizens have a chance to have our say. The EPA has opened up to public comments on their latest power grab. I urge each of you to email your insistence that the EPA lay off our economy with their anti-capitalist notions of fixing the non-existent problem of global warming. We only have 120 days to make...

"Today EPA released an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking soliciting public input on the effects of climate change and the potential ramifications of the Clean Air Act in relation to greenhouse gas emmisions."

Al Gore blew into Washington on Thursday, warning that "our very way of life" is imperiled if the U.S. doesn't end "the carbon age" within 10 years. No one seriously believes such a goal is even remotely plausible. But if you want to know what he and his acolytes think this means in practice, the Environmental Protection Agency has just published the instruction manual. Get ready for the lawnmower inspector near you. In a huge document released last Friday, the EPA lays out the thousands of carbon controls with which they'd like to shackle the whole economy. Central planning is...

Climate change puts U.S. way of life at risk - EPA 17 Jul 2008 19:32:17 GMT Source: Reuters By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent WASHINGTON, July 17 (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, under fire for apparently discounting the impact of climate change, on Thursday said global warming poses real risk to human health and the American way of life. Risks include more heat-related deaths, more heart and lung diseases due to increased ozone and health problems related to hurricanes, extreme precipitation and wildfires, the agency said in a new report. "Climate change poses real risk to human health and...

Bill Phillips spent nearly 50 years in the US oil and gas industry; most of his career was with the Phillips Petroleum Company. Bill is a descendant of Frank Phillips. Frank Phillips, along with his brother Lee Eldas (L.E.) Phillips, Sr., founded the original Phillips Petroleum Company in 1917 in Bartlesville, OK. Do you remember Phillips 66 gas stations? Phillips Petroleum Company merged with Conoco, Inc. in 2002 to form the current ConocoPhillips oil company. As you prepare to cast your crucial ballots this Fall, please think long and hard about the far-reaching, cumulative effects of the US political philosophies,...

EPA Could Regulate Lawnmowers, Speed Limit * Posted July 14th, 2008 at 4.54pm in Energy and Environment. Want to mow your lawn? Better check with the Environmental Protection Agency first. Last Friday the EPA issued an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) that would impose a number of unthinkable regulations on the economy and everyday life. One of many is regulation the emissions of a lawnmower. This would require the agency to create different regulations and units of emissions requirements for each gadget that pollutes. Page 337 of the EPA’s ANPR reads, “[E]ach application could require a different unit of...

While others criticized the Bush administration's inaction on greenhouse gases, U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe warned Friday that it has put in place a scenario that will bankrupt the U.S. economy. A key player in the years-long debate over climate change, the Oklahoma Republican agreed that using the Clean Air Act to put new regulations in place would be an unprecedented expansion of the Environmental Protection Agency's authority that would impact every household. "Obviously the concept of regulating carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act is flawed and the act must be amended by Congress," Inhofe said. "Today's notice should concern...

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - With water shortages in many areas of the country, learning to use water in the most efficient manner is more important than ever. To help promote smart use of this scarce resource, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Friday announced that it is accepting nominations for its annual water efficiency awards."We encourage organizations and individuals who are saving water, energy and money for our nation's families and communities to apply for the 2008 Water Efficiency Leader Awards," Benjamin H. Grumbles, EPA's assistant administrator for water, said in a statement. "Together, we are proving innovative technology...

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration on Friday rejected regulating greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, saying it would cause too many job losses. In a 588-page federal notice, the Environmental Protection made no finding on whether global warming poses a threat to people's health, reversing an earlier conclusion at the insistence of the White House and officially kicking any decision on a solution to the next president and Congress. The White House on Thursday rejected EPA's conclusion three weeks earlier that the 1970 Clean Air Act "can be both workable and effective for addressing global climate change." Instead, EPA said...

Opponents of a massive new energy tax and federal bureaucracy breathed a small sigh of relief last month when the Lieberman-Warner climate tax bill went down in flames on the Senate floor, with even 10 Democrats breaking from the party line and saying, in writing, that they would have opposed the bill on final passage. Unfortunately, power-mad bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency are undaunted. Empowered by an activist Supreme Court in the 5-4 Massachusetts v. EPA decision, the EPA is expected today to release a staggering document blueprinting a dizzying array of greenhouse gas regulatory programs under dozens of...

Opponents of massive new energy taxes and regulations breathed a small sigh of relief last month when the Lieberman-Warner climate-tax bill went down in flames on the Senate floor. Even 10 Democrats broke from the party line and voted against it, writing that they would have opposed the bill on final passage. Unfortunately, power-mad bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency remain undaunted. The EPA is expected today to release a document that blueprints a dizzying array of greenhouse-gas regulatory programs under dozens of different provisions of the 1970 Clean Air Act. The document, called an “Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking,”...

Dust storms that fouled Kern County’s air in May could mean months of delay for two major Kern County freeway projects. A project to widen Highway 46 from Holloway Road west to Highway 33 at Blackwells Corner will almost certainly be delayed for five months or more, said Ron Brummett, executive director of the Kern Council of Governments. And the Westside Parkway in Bakersfield, a freeway that’s to run west from a point near Highway 99 to Heath Road, might also be delayed if dickering over air quality standards goes on too long. The Environmental Protection Agency, Brummett said, is...

A judge in Georgia has thrown out an air pollution permit for a new coal-fired power plant because the permit did not set limits on carbon dioxide emissions. Both opponents of coal use and the company that wants to build the plant said it was the first time a court decision had linked carbon dioxide to an air pollution permit. The decision’s broader legal impact was not clear, either for the plant, proposed to be built near Blakely, in Early County, Ga., or for others outside Georgia, but it signaled that builders of coal plants would face continued difficulties in...

I flushed my pills down the toilet. The prescription had expired. I had a queasy impulse to jettison the medicine this way because of some vague understanding that expired medicine could be dangerous. It may, but not in the way I imagined. Scientists are now finding a vast array of pharmaceuticals, from sex hormones, to anti-convulsants, to mood stabilizers, in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, the Associated Press found recently. The drugs get there via people like me, blithely tossing drugs into the water system — and through the natural metabolic practices of a country...

White House Blocks EPA Emissions Draft Document Outlines Keys To Regulating Greenhouse Gases By IAN TALLEY and SIOBHAN HUGHES June 30, 2008 WASHINGTON -- The White House is trying to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from publishing a document that could become the legal roadmap for regulating greenhouse-gas emissions in the U.S., said people close to the matter. The fight over the document is the latest development in a long-running conflict between the EPA and the White House over climate-change policy. It will likely intensify ongoing Congressional investigations into the Bush administration's involvement in the agency's policymaking. The draft document,...

<p>Jason Burnett has made a lot of news lately, criticizing the Bush administration for rejecting California’s request for a federal waiver that would allow the state to enforce greenhouse gas restrictions.</p> <p>Burnett, until recently the associate deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, last month testified before a congressional panel about the possible White House role in overruling the EPA staff’s recommendation of the waiver. Since then, Burnett has given numerous interviews on the issue.</p>

Greens Thwart Gasoline Production By Steven Milloy Four-plus-dollar gasoline is forcing Americans to realize that we need increased domestic oil production to meet our ever-growing demand for affordable fuel. But even if the greens lose the political battle over drilling offshore and in places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, they nevertheless are way ahead of the game as they implement a back-up plan to make sure that not a drop of that oil ever eases our gasoline crunch. The Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, successfully pressured the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to block ConocoPhillips’...

Support S. 2766/H.R. 5949, the Clean Boating Act of 2008 Did you know that a recent court ruling about pollution being dumped from commercial ship ballast water will also require all recreational boats to get permits by September, 2008—despite the fact that 99% of recreational boats do not have ballast tanks? Boats and ships are different, and shouldn’t be treated the same. These costly permits—intended for commercial ships and supertankers that have brought harmful invasive water species into U.S. waters—are being developed right now to tax your boat’s engine cooling water, bilge water, and even deck runoff. This will seriously...

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) -- General Motors shareholders blasted the company's chief executive for raking in huge salaries and bonuses while the automaker has struggled financially, but a proposal to give investors a say on executive pay was soundly defeated on Tuesday. Shareholders also defeated a proposal under which at least 75 percent of future stock options and restricted stock awards for senior executives would be tied to the company's performance. John Lauve of Holly, Mich., who sponsored the proposal on performance pay, said GM's market share, stock price and credit rating have decreased in recent years, but management and directors...

FRIDAY, May 30 (HealthDay News) -- Asthma inhalers that contain the drug albuterol to relax the airways also contain chemicals that harm the ozone layer. And these inhalers won't be available after this year, so U.S. health officials are urging patients to switch to alternative inhalers now. Chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, are widely used to propel inhaled drugs into the lungs. However, products containing CFCs are being phased out, because the chemicals damage the Earth's protective ozone layer. CFC inhalers are being replaced by inhalers powered by HFAs, or hydrofluoroalkanes, which are ozone-friendly. The change to HFA-powered inhalers has been in...

WASHINGTON - Health and environmental organizations filed a lawsuit Tuesday arguing that the Bush administration failed to protect public health and the environment when it issued new smog requirements. The lawsuit maintains that the Environmental Protection Agency ignored the recommendation of a key advisory panel of scientists who had recommended more stringent smog standards. The suit was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by Earthjustice on behalf of a number of environmental and conservation groups and the American Lung Association. The EPA in March issued tougher health standards for ozone, commonly known as...

The state of Texas is now in official opposition to the federal ethanol mandate. Governor Rick Perry has petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency for a one-year reprieve, and the reason is simple and increasingly familiar: Washington's ethanol obsession is hurting the state. We all know that corn farmers everywhere love ethanol. Don't tell that to Texas cattle ranchers. Because of the mandate to add this biofuel to gasoline, ranchers are being forced into bidding wars with ethanol plants for the grains they feed their cattle. They don't appreciate being hammered on price because of a subsidy to corn growers. Thus,...

Motorheads don’t want to hear it; refuse to believe it — but ugly realities are coming down hard on the ‘09 Camaro that will very possibly cause GM to pull the plug before the first one ever rolls off the line. Doubt that? Consider the stillborn rear-wheel-drive next generation Chevy Impala — nixed because of concerns within GM about the possibility of meeting the pending (2012) 35 mpg fuel economy edict recently passed by Congress. A lighter front-drive car with a V-6 instead of a V-8 can make the cut; a V-8 RWD Impala can’t. So it’s gone. So is...