Tag: Trump Environmental Protection Agency

EPA to scale back federal rules restricting waste from coal-fired power plants

Washington Post logoAgency chief Andrew Wheeler argues that Obama-era rules ‘placed heavy burdens on electricity producers.’ Critics call the changes unwarranted and potentially dangerous.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday plans to relax rules that govern how power plants store waste from burning coal and release water containing toxic metals into nearby waterways, according to agency officials.

The proposals, which scale back two rules adopted in 2015, affect the disposal of fine powder and sludge known as coal ash, as well as contaminated water that power plants produce while burning coal. Both forms of waste can contain mercury, arsenic and other heavy metals that pose risks to human health and the environment.

The new rules would allow extensions that could keep unlined coal ash waste ponds open for as long as eight additional years. The biggest benefits from the rule governing contaminated wastewater would come from the voluntary use of new filtration technology.

View the complete November 3 article by Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis on The Washington Post website here.

Buried, altered, silenced: 4 ways government climate information has changed since Trump took office

The following article by Morgan Currie, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Digital Civil Society Lab, Stanford University, and Britt S. Paris, Ph.D. Student in Information Studies, University of California/Los Angeles was posted on the Conversation website March 21, 2018:

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After Donald Trump won the presidential election, hundreds of volunteers around the U.S. came together to “rescue” federal data on climate change, thought to be at risk under the new administration. “Guerilla archivists,” including ourselves, gathered to archive federal websites and preserve scientific data.

But what has happened since? Did the data vanish? Continue reading “Buried, altered, silenced: 4 ways government climate information has changed since Trump took office”

While you weren’t looking: 5 stories from the Trump administration that aren’t about “shitholes”

The following article by A.P. Joyce was posted on the mic.com website January 12, 2018:

Credit: Shutterstock

This week the media was roiled by the revelation that the president of the United States argued against accepting immigrants from what he reportedly called “shithole countries” in Central America, Africa and the Caribbean, arguing instead for more immigrants from countries like Norway.

But as the nation struggled to define what constitutes overt white nationalism, Trump’s cabinet continued to make drastic policy changes that will affect millions of Americans. Here’s what you might have missed. Continue reading “While you weren’t looking: 5 stories from the Trump administration that aren’t about “shitholes””