"Va. Communities Resist Sewage Sludge On Farm Land As PFAS Concerns Grow
"As worry mounts about health risks from exposure to ‘forever chemicals,’ Virginia communities push for testing and limits for biosolids"
Source: Virginia Mercury, 11/26/2025
EJToday: Top Environmental Politics Headlines
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FDA Yanks Proposal Requiring Talc-Containing Cosmetics To Test For Asbestos
"The Trump administration is withdrawing a proposal to require cosmetic companies to test their talc-containing products for asbestos, according to a public notice Tuesday."
Source: The Hill, 11/26/2025"With Turkey as Next COP Host, Climate Talks Again Go to Authoritarians"
"United Nations climate officials announced Thursday that Turkey will host the 2026 Conference of Parties, COP31, making it the fourth time in five years that the climate talks are held in a country under authoritarian rule."
Source: Newsweek, 11/25/2025"Some Park Rangers Are Still Owed Pay After the Shutdown"
"Federal workers were guaranteed back pay once the government reopened. Some at the National Park Service are still waiting."
Source: NYTimes, 11/25/2025Tracking Down Orphaned, Possibly Leaking, Oil And Gas Wells In The Parks
"An unknown number of abandoned oil and gas wells dot the National Park System, but the one at Cuyahoga Valley National Park revealed itself with a whistling plume of colorless, odorless, and potentially lethal, methane gas."
Source: National Parks Traveler, 11/25/2025As NYC Builds Seawalls, This Queens Community Feels Left Behind
"A decade after city officials promised to cut flood risks in the Edgemere neighborhood, critics say it remains just as vulnerable."
Source: Floodlight, 11/25/2025"Fighting for ‘The Right to Night’ Under Starry, Rural Skies"
"Industrialization in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula has some residents pushing for protection of the region’s celestial splendor."
Source: NYTimes, 11/25/2025"Oil Producers, but Maybe Not the Planet, Get a Win as Climate Talks End"
"Global climate negotiations ended on Saturday in Brazil with a watered-down resolution that made no direct mention of fossil fuels, the main driver of global warming."
Source: NYTimes, 11/24/2025"How China Silences Environmental Reporters Beyond Its Borders"
"Journalists who report on the harms caused by China’s overseas infrastructure buildout in Africa face intimidation, surveillance and police pressure."
Source: Inside Climate News, 11/24/2025"Trump Plans to Open More Than a Billion Acres of U.S. Waters to Drilling"
"The plan from the Interior Department is one of the president’s most significant steps yet to increase domestic fossil fuel production."
"The Trump administration on Thursday announced a plan to allow new oil and gas drilling across nearly 1.3 billion acres of U.S. coastal waters, including a remote region off Alaska in the northern Arctic where drilling has never before taken place.
The plan is one of President Trump’s most significant steps yet to increase the production of fossil fuels, the burning of which is dangerously heating the planet.
Source: NYTimes, 11/24/2025"Trump’s Energy Department Revamp Nixes Clean-Energy Offices"
"The Trump administration is eliminating Energy Department offices focused on clean energy and renewables and, instead, creating units dedicated to hydrocarbons and fusion energy."
Source: Bloomberg, 11/24/2025"Arid States Prepare for EPA to Walk Away From Their Wetlands"
"Southwestern states are bracing for many of their streams to lose federal safeguards under the EPA’s proposal to lift Clean Water Act protections for many wetlands and waterways across the US. New Mexico, Arizona, California, and other arid states face the brunt of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal because it explicitly excludes streams that only run when it rains—one of the most common kinds of waterways in the desert Southwest."
Source: Bloomberg Environment, 11/24/2025Global Effort to Curb Emissions of a Climate Pollutant Falls Short, UN Says
"Despite the efforts of more than half of all countries worldwide to curb a key climate super-pollutant, a report released this week by the United Nations Environment Programme at the U.N. climate summit shows that global methane emissions continue to climb at a troubling pace."
Source: Inside Climate News, 11/24/2025Tribal Radio Funding, Future Remain Uncertain After Clawback Of CPB Money
'For the past few weeks, Oitancan “Oi” Zephier has labored among piles of vinyl records nearly 2 feet high. KILI-FM, the Porcupine, South Dakota-based tribal public broadcasting station Zephier manages, has gone digital and no longer needs the records. The station is selling the records, because what it needs is cash."
Source: South Dakota Searchlight, 11/24/2025Calif. Child Farmworkers: Exhausted, Underpaid and Toiling in Toxic Fields
"State officials are failing to protect the health and safety of thousands of young field laborers, an investigation has found."
Source: Capital & Main, 11/21/2025
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