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ABC NEWS - Aug 16 A federal judge in South Carolina has issued an injunction to block the Trump administration's move to delay a clean water regulation, known as the Waters of the United States rule, that defines the limits of federal jurisdiction over surface water bodies. Judge David Norton ruled that, in its effort to delay the rule, the government did not properly consider public comment, and on that basis suspended the EPA's decision. Thursday's ruling will not impact 24 states where other legal challenges are pending.
THE WASHINGTON POST - Aug 14 Officials at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) privately challenged the Trump administration’s rationale for freezing Obama-era vehicle fuel efficiency standards, saying the proposal would actually increase U.S. highway deaths. In announcing the proposal earlier this August, officials with the EPA and Department of Transportation contended the mileage freeze would save about 1,000 lives a year. But in a June email, senior EPA staffers told the Office of Management and Budget — the White House office charged with evaluating regulatory changes — that it would slightly increase highway deaths, by 17 annually. While the Trump administration has said it wants to freeze mileage standards after 2020, agencies are still seeking public comment on that and other options, EPA spokesman John Konkus said Tuesday.
REUTERS - Aug 10 A California jury last Friday found Monsanto liable in a lawsuit filed by a school groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson, who alleged the company’s glyphosate-based weed killers, including Roundup, used during the course of his work caused his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Monsanto was ordered to pay $39 million in compensatory and $250 million in punitive damages. Monsanto, a unit of Bayer AG, faces more than 5,000 similar lawsuits across the United States. The jury, sitting in San Francisco Superior Court, found that Monsanto had failed to warn Johnson and other consumers of the cancer risks posed by its weed killers. In a contradictory decision issued in September 2017, EPA concluded a decades-long assessment of glyphosate risks and found it to be likely that the chemical is not carcinogenic to humans.
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - Aug 10 A decades-old plan to protect Alviso and surrounding South Bay areas from devastating floods has moved closer to reality with $177 million in federal funds to begin work on a 4-mile-long levee and wetlands restoration. The federal government approved $177 million in disaster supplemental funding last month to protect the south end of the San Francisco Bay from sea level rise and a possible 100-year flood. All but $74 million of that money will be repaid by the state and the Santa Clara Valley Water District.
LOS ANGELES TIMES - Aug 14 Sentinel Peak Resources intends to abandon petroleum production in South Los Angeles and prepare its drilling site on Jefferson Boulevard for another use “yet to be determined.” The move comes nearly a year after Los Angeles demanded the company follow new and stringent rules in order to continue operating the facility, which is located next to apartments and was the subject of neighborhood protests. Those rules were described by officials as the toughest requirements for any drilling site in the city. Sentinel Peak Resources filed a lawsuit in response, arguing that the city had imposed “unduly oppressive” conditions that were not based on proven violations. It complained that the new requirements — including the demand to erect a 45-foot-tall enclosure around drilling equipment — would force the company to curtail or cease its operations there.
