Pollution

"The government shutdown isn’t stopping the Trump administration from advancing its policy priorities, especially when it comes to fossil fuels." "Between Oct. 1 and Wednesday, the bureau approved 474 permits to drill on public lands."

"A North Dakota judge has ordered Greenpeace to pay damages of $345 million, reducing an earlier jury award after it found the environmental group and related entities liable for defamation and other claims in connection with protests of an oil pipeline nearly a decade ago."

"For decades, some big polluters were allowed to estimate their emissions using methods the government knew were often unreliable. Air monitors at coke manufacturers, chemical plants and other industrial facilities showed far higher emissions than the estimates, records viewed by ProPublica show."

"Some 280 years after a river-swimming Benjamin Franklin petitioned to curb water pollution here, the city is still struggling to meet the challenge, according to water advocates who assembled along the banks of one of its two main rivers on Monday."

"The law required a state agency to issue major regulations more than a year and a half ago, and it had no excuse not to, the court found."

"Experts say its continued use will likely harm hundreds of endangered species, rendering some extinct."

"Federal regulators are falsely claiming that production of a dangerous PFAS chemical has been phased out in the US, according to a complaint filed this week by an environmental watchdog group alleging the statement is untrue since the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) consistently finds the chemical and other PFAS in fluorinated plastic containers."

"The EPA wants the city of 28,000 to rein in an industrial solvent, 1,4-Dioxane, from its wastewater discharges. So far, Asheboro has refused."

"South America's vulnerable Amazon rainforest region is a rising frontier for oil and gas drilling."

"The complex web of air monitoring networks in the nation’s national parks is bogged down under the government shutdown, widening weak spots in an already underfunded and overstretched network."