Pollution

"Salt water creeping upland could release legacy fertilizer into the Chesapeake Bay."

"At 5:20 on Tuesday evening, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke tweeted a photo of himself at the Tallahassee airport with Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, announcing that he had decided, after meeting with Governor Scott, to exempt the state from a new Trump administration plan to open up most of the nation’s coastline to offshore oil drilling."

"Nearly everywhere you turn during this frigid stretch of winter, much of the world seems covered in a layer of salt aimed at keeping our roads drivable and sidewalks free of ice. All that salt is one reason — although not the only one — that many of the nation’s rivers and streams are becoming saltier, according to new research published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

"An oil tanker that caught fire after colliding with a freighter off China's east coast is at risk of exploding and sinking, Chinese state media reported Monday, as authorities from three countries struggled to find its 32 missing crew members and contain oil spewing from the blazing wreck."

"The Environmental Protection Agency is touting cleanups at seven of the nation’s most polluted places as a signature accomplishment in the Trump administration’s effort to reduce the number of Superfund sites, even though records show the physical work was completed before President Donald Trump took office."

"A Democratic senator plans to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to block President Trump from overturning safety rules put in place after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster in 2010."

"Some officials in Phillips County say they aren’t concerned about incomplete cleanup of a chemical site in Helena-West Helena that is located in a flood-risk zone."

"On the last business day of the year, the Interior Department rescinded a 2015 Obama administration rule that would have set new environmental limitations on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, on public lands."

"Short cuts, subsidies and tax breaks helped create 7,000 jobs in the Powder River Basin. Damage to water, air and land is part of the price borne by the public, too."

"Eight northeastern states said on Tuesday they sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to force it to impose more stringent controls on a group of mostly Midwestern states whose air pollution they claim is being blown in their direction."