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    A report tied Iowa’s water pollution to agriculture. Then the money to promote it mysteriously disappeared

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    When a team of scientists embarked two years ago on a $1m landmark study of Iowa’s persistent water-quality problems, they knew that the findings would be important to share. High cancer rates amid the state’s inability to stem the tide of pollutants flowing into rivers and lakes was a growing public concern.But now, after the completed study pointed to agricultural pollution as a significant source of the key US farm state’s water problems, public officials have quietly stripped funding from plans to promote the study findings, according to sources involved in the project.The report, the results of two years of data analysis, has been highly controversial in Iowa because of the large amount of evidence it cites linking water pollution – and resulting human and environmental health risks – to the state’s economically and politically powerful farm industry.Supporters of the report said the agricultural industry and allied public officials have tried to downplay the findings for months, and they fear this move is another impediment to change.‘Zeroed out’When the report was finalized earlier this year, there was a little more than $400,000 left in the budget, with some of that money earmarked for communications and “public awareness” work, travel and other costs associated with promoting the findings, records show.Jennifer Terry, the project lead on the water report, had planned in-person meetings with scientists and community groups to focus on recommendations made in the report.But those funds were recently “zeroed out” with no explanation, according to email communications.Funding for the water report and related public outreach came from Polk county, Iowa’s most populous county and home to the state capital city of Des Moines. County leadership has changed since the report was commissioned.“The intent was that at the conclusion of the report to make sure it was seen widely in a public education effort,” said former Polk county administrator John Norris, who led support for the water report in 2023. “That was a big part of the value of it – that the public learns from it.”Norris, who agreed to leave office earlier this year as part of a legal settlement with the county, said he hoped the county would use some of the money in some way for water-quality work.Frank Marasco, who replaced Norris, did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did Polk county spokesperson Jon Cahill. Terry also declined to comment.The water report, authored by a team of 16 scientists, focuses on pollution patterns in two “essential” rivers fed from a watershed running from southern Minnesota through the central part of Iowa to Des Moines. The rivers are the primary source of drinking water for roughly 600,000 people and considered important recreational state assets, but they’re commonly laden with harmful contaminants that include phosphorus and nitrogen, bacteria from animal and human waste, pesticides and other chemicals.This summer, nitrate levels in key drinking-water sources were measured in quantities far higher than is allowed under federal safety standards.Much, though not all, of the contamination is tied to agriculture, according to the report. Among multiple recommendations, the report calls for the top US corn-growing state to diversify into production of crops that require fewer chemical inputs, and for limits on the density of livestock.The water report comes alongside growing concerns about the prevalence of cancer across the state. For the last few years, Iowa has had the second-highest rate of cancer in the nation, and is one of only two US states where cancer is increasing. Pesticides and nitrates both are scientifically shown to cause cancers.Kerri Johannsen, senior director of policy and programs at the Iowa Environmental Council, said all allocated funds should be fully utilized to educate the public.“People in Polk county and across the state are facing a water crisis but we cannot begin to make progress until all Iowans, including decision-makers, understand the urgency of this moment,” she said.“The importance of accessible, transparent public education and awareness cannot be understated,” Johannsen added. “The current resources available for addressing our water issues are a drop in the bucket, and our elected officials have a responsibility to do everything they can to find a way forward for the sake of the health of the people of this state.”Feds add to worriesThe issues over how to address water-quality problems in Iowa, which has nearly 87,000 farms and ranks first in the nation for corn, pork and egg production, comes as the Trump administration and Republican allies in Congress are moving to dismantle regulations aimed at protecting water quality, including those that work to limit discharges of pesticides and other farm-related chemicals into waterways.One chief concern for environmental advocates is the Permit Act, which is actually a package of more than a dozen bills that would streamline permitting requirements. The legislation would cut protections for many waterways, limit requirements for updated pollution-control measures and exempt pesticide spraying and agricultural runoff from permitting and accountability, according to the advocacy group Beyond Pesticides.If the measures become law, it will make it that much harder for Iowans to clean up their waterways.In another blow to efforts to address the state’s water-quality problems, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently reversed a decision made under the Biden administration that found additional areas of four Iowa rivers should be designated as impaired.When waters are classified as impaired, it triggers stricter regulatory measures to limit pollutants entering the waterways and other enhanced measures aimed at reducing the inflow of harmful contaminants.The reversal angered environmental groups across the state as well as the utility providers tasked with cleaning up the water. But farm groups, including the Iowa Farm Bureau, which had opposed the impairment designations, cheered the news.News of the reversal broke the same week that the EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, visited Iowa to meet with farmers and others and attend the Iowa state fair to serve as a grill master at the Iowa Pork Producers Association tent.When asked what drove the decision to reverse the impairment decision, an EPA spokesperson said only that the agency had been tracking the levels of nitrates this spring and summer in the waterways and is “ensuring that all of the information and data collected by the cities, universities, and other groups is provided to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources for evaluation”.The agency is “not currently aware” of any “exceedances” of nitrates at public water systems “using surface waterbodies in Iowa”, the spokesperson said. The agency is working with state officials to “understand and resolve the issues forming the basis for EPA’s reconsideration of its 2024 decision”.Adam Shriver, director of wellness and nutrition policy at the Harkin Institute at Drake University, said the recent events are disheartening.“I think it shows just how far we still have left to go,” Shriver said. “The farm bureau opposed the initial impairment designation and was taking a victory lap with the recent EPA announcement. As long as they continue to get whatever they want from every level of government while other stakeholders are ignored, public health is going to suffer.”This story is co-published with the New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group More

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      The unlikely alliance pressing Trump to regulate Pfas on US farms: ‘This is a basic human right’

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      An unlikely alliance of farmers, bikers, truckers, a detective and scientists from across the political spectrum are working to pressure the Trump administration and Republican leadership to rein in the use of toxic sewage sludge as fertilizer on the nation’s farmland.Sludge often teems with Pfas, or “forever chemicals”, which present a health risk to farmers and the public, and have destroyed farms and contaminated water across the country. The issue has touched the groups’ lives in different ways, highlighting its broad risks to health.“We can all sit down and agree that we and our children shouldn’t be fed literal poison,” said Dana Ames, a Johnson county, Texas, detective who is investigating contamination from sludge on local farms.In Oklahoma, farmer Saundra Traywick lives in an area where she says toxic sewage sludge is spread as fertilizer. Her family and animals get sick, and the potent stench can be unbearable.Mike “Lucky” Pruitt, a biker who lives in a dairy- and oil-producing region in Texas, wonders whether Pfas from sludge contributed to the rare brain cancer that killed his six-year-old son; in Johnson county, Texas, Ames took the unprecedented step of opening a criminal investigation, which is ongoing, over sludge that polluted local farms and water.Billy Randal, a trucker, just learned about the sludge’s dangers, and fears that people hauling the substance are exposed to toxic waste. And in Massachusetts, Kyla Bennett, a former US Environmental Protection Agency scientist and cancer survivor, is part of a lawsuit that could lead to sludge being banned.The alliance has a real chance of success, those involved say, because it includes everyone from liberal scientists to people on the far right – they are willing to set aside political differences for the fight.“The American people are smart – once we figure out what’s occurring, we have a whole lot more in common than we don’t, and this is a basic human right,” said Ames, the Texas detective. “We all deserve safe and clean food and water.”The alliance is aiming to hold rallies thatit hopes will draw thousands of people in Austin, Texas, and Washington DC in the coming months. Those involved are aiming to get Trump’s attention and to pressure the Texas legislature to act.Getting Trump’s attentionSludge is a mix of human and industrial waste, and a byproduct of the wastewater treatment process that regulators allow to be used as fertilizer because it’s rich in nutrients that help plants grow. It also virtually always teems with Pfas and other dangerous chemicals, which contaminate water, crops and livestock, while also sickening farmers and contaminating the nation’s food supply.Maine became the first state to ban sludge, also called biosolids, after it found Pfas had contaminated crops or water on at least 73 farms where the substance had been spread. The state established a $70m fund to bail out affected farmers.Pfas are a class of about 15,000 compounds that are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they don’t naturally break down. The chemicals are linked to a range of serious health problems like cancer, liver disease, kidney issues, high cholesterol, birth defects and decreased immunity.View image in fullscreenIn the Biden administration’s final days, the EPA issued a draft risk assessment for Pfas in sludge that could in effect ban the substance, but Republicans in Congress slipped a rider into the current appropriations bill that would essentially kill the process by withdrawing key funding. The rider was inserted just a few weeks after the EPA met with a sludge industry trade group to hear its grievances about the assessment.Ames said the EPA “has gone rogue” and she suspects Trump is unaware of the situation. The president has publicly said he wants clean water and food, Ames said, and she suspects he will act if alerted.“As his voters and his base, we want his ear, and we want to make sure that the president knows what’s going on,” Ames said.In Massachusetts, Bennett, the scientist, who is now with the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer) non-profit, has been frustrated with the Biden and Trump administrations’ policies on sludge, and has sued the EPA under the Clean Water Act to force the agency to regulate the substance. Peer is assisting with letters for the action, though it is not directly involved with organizing the rallies.It’s not often that Peer works with folks on the right, but the “strange bedfellows” are a hopeful development, Bennett said.“This is an issue that should transcend politics because it affects human health and people are humans before they’re Republicans and Democrats,” Bennett said.‘We’ve got to make a change’In 2021, doctors diagnosed six-year-old Rylan Pruitt with a rare and aggressive brain cancer. After 30 rounds of radiation treatment and several months of chemotherapy, he died, leaving behind distraught parents looking for answers.There was no family history of cancer, and his father, Mike “Lucky” Pruitt, began to hear about the risks of Pfas. He turned his attention to the huge dairy and oil operations – both known sources of Pfas and other chemical pollution – in the rural community in which he lives.Only about 50 other people have developed the type of cancer that killed Rylan – and one of them was a young girl who lived about 11 miles (17km) away, Pruitt said. He said he put together the pieces, like family history, how the cancer was “stupidly and exceedingly rare”, and the research that has connected sludge and Pfas to rare pediatric cancers.“For me it’s: ‘This is why this is happening, and we’ve got to make a change,’” Pruitt said.View image in fullscreenHis 15,000-member motorcycle group, the Rylan Strong Network, pressures lawmakers on issues around pediatric cancer and health insurance. He contacted every Texas legislator asking them to support a bill that would require measuring Pfas in sludge. So far, very few have responded, and previous versions of the legislation were killed.“It’s all about who has the biggest checkbook,” Pruitt said.In Oklahoma, Traywick’s non-profit, Save Oklahoma Farms and Ranches, has had similar results in pressuring lawmakers. Her kids’ immune disorders, the flies that gnaw her donkeys’ legs raw and the unmeasured effects of suspected Pfas on land and water – none of it has so far convinced state legislators to act.But, she said, she is more optimistic as “a growing movement of people is waking up to the fact that this is not Democrats versus Republicans or left versus right – we all want our children to have a healthy future,” Traywick said.In New Jersey, Randal, founder of the national Truckers Movement for Justice, just learned about the sludge from Ames, and worries about what people hauling the waste are exposed to.The truckers, with thousands of members in the US and Mexico, recently worked with environmental groups to petition the US Department of Transportation to strengthen regulations around hauling fracking waste. The problem with sludge is similar, Randal said. Many drivers have to clean their trucks, there are few protections and they are not made aware of the Pfas and other risks in what they are hauling.“We have truck drivers handling this shit and they don’t have a clue about what they’re working around,” Randal said. “Industry laughs all the way to the bank and it’s time for it to stop.” He plans to mobilize truckers to join the rallies.In Johnson county, Texas, Goldman Sachs-owned Synagro, sold local farmers the tainted sludge that a lawsuit alleges polluted local waters and destroyed the land. The farms’ drinking water was found to be contaminated at levels more than 13,000 times higher than the federal health advisory for Pfos, one kind of Pfas compound, and affected meat was as much as 250,000 times above safe levels, the federal lawsuit against Synagro alleges. Synagro denies that the Pfas came from its sludge.Last year, Ames opened the first-ever criminal investigation into the situation, and Johnson county joined Peer’s Clean Water Act lawsuit. “We’re coming together and we’re saying: ‘No, this isn’t a third-world country, and there’s no reason why in America our food should be poisoned like this,’” Ames said. More

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      A coal-fired plant in Michigan was to close. But Trump forced it to keep running at $1m a day

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      Donald Trump has made several unusual moves to elongate the era of coal, such as giving the industry exemptions from pollution rules. But the gambit to keep one Michigan coal-fired power station running has been extraordinary – by forcing it to remain open even against the wishes of its operator.The hulking JH Campbell power plant, which since 1962 has sat a few hundred yards from the sand dunes at the edge of Lake Michigan, was just eight days away from a long-planned closure in May when Trump’s Department of Energy issued an emergency order that it remain open for a further 90 days.On Wednesday, the administration intervened again to extend this order even further, prolonging the lifetime of the coal plant another 90 days, meaning it will keep running until November – six months after it was due to close.The move, taken under emergency powers more normally used during wartime or in the wake of disaster, has stunned local residents and the plant’s operator, Consumers Energy. “My family had a countdown for it closing, we couldn’t wait,” said Mark Oppenhuizen, who has lived in the shadow of the plant for 30 years and suspects its pollution worsened his wife’s lung disease.“I was flabbergasted when the administration said they had stopped it shutting down,” he said. “Why are they inserting themselves into a decision a company has made? Just because politically you don’t like it? It’s all so dumb.”The 23 May order and the latest edict, by the US energy secretary, Chris Wright, both warn that the regional grid would be strained by the closure of JH Campbell with local homes and businesses at risk of “curtailments or outages, presenting a risk to public health and safety” without it.“This order will help ensure millions of Americans can continue to access affordable, reliable, and secure baseload power regardless of whether the wind is blowing or the sun is shining,” Wright said in a statement on Thursday.But Miso, the grid operator for Michigan and 14 other states, has stressed it has had “adequate resources to meet peak demand this summer” without JH Campbell and Consumers Energy had already set about making plans for life after its last remaining coal plant.“What’s remarkable is that this is the first time the energy secretary has used these powers without being asked to do so by the market operator or power plant operator,” said Timothy Fox, an energy analyst at ClearView. “It shows the Trump administration is prepared to take muscular actions to keep its preferred power sources online.”View image in fullscreenWright – whose department has bizarrely taken to tweeting pictures of lumps of coal with the words “She’s an icon. She’s a legend” – has said the US “has got to stop closing coal plants” to help boost electricity generation to meet demand that is escalating due to the growth of artificial intelligence.The administration has also issued a separate emergency declaration to keep open a gas plant in Pennsylvania, although it has sought to kill off wind and solar projects, which Trump has called “ugly” and “disgusting”.The president, who solicited and received major donations from coal, oil and gas interests during his election campaign, has signed an executive order aimed at reviving what he calls “beautiful, clean coal” and took the remarkable step of asking fossil fuel companies to email requests to be exempt from pollution laws, again under emergency powers.So far, 71 coal plants, along with dozens of other chemical, copper smelting and other polluting facilities, have received “pollution passes” from the Trump administration according to a tally by the Environmental Defense Fund, allowing greater emissions of airborne toxins linked to an array of health problems. Coal is, despite Trump’s claims, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels and the leading source of planet-heating pollution.Trump has launched a “political takeover of the electricity grid” to favor fossil fuels, according to Caroline Reiser, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The result of this will be higher electricity bills, more pollution in our communities and a worsening climate crisis,” she added.In Michigan, the cost of keeping JH Campbell open is set to be steep. Consumers Energy initially estimated its closure would save ratepayers $600m by 2040 as it shifts to cheaper, cleaner energy sources such as solar and wind.Reversing this decision costs $1m a day in operating costs, an imposition that midwest residents will have to meet through their bills. It is understood the company privately told outside groups it fears the administration could keep adding 90-day emergency orders for the entire remainder of Trump’s term.“Consumers Energy continues to comply with the [Department of Energy] order and will do so as long as it is in effect,” a company spokesperson said. “We are pursuing recovery of the costs of running the Campbell plant in a proceeding currently before [the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission]. Timely cost recovery is essential.”Should the Trump administration go further and force all of the US fossil fuel plants set to retire by 2028 to continue operating, it will cost American ratepayers as much as $6bn a year in extra bills, a new report by a coalition of green groups has found.This would almost certainly be met by legal action – Dana Nessel, Michigan’s attorney general, has already filed a lawsuit arguing the “arbitrary and illegal order” to extend JH Campbell’s lifespan will unfairly heap costs upon households in the state.Trump’s efforts may bear some fruit, with US coal production expected to tick up slightly this year, although the longer-term trend for coal is one of decline amid cheaper gas and renewables. “The administration may slow the retirement trend although they are unlikely to stop it,” said ClearView’s Fox. “The economics don’t change but the administration could be a savior for these plants at least while Donald Trump is in office.”For those living next to and downwind of coal plants, there is a cost to be paid that isn’t just monetary. Tiny soot particles from burned coal can bury themselves deep into the lungs, causing potentially deadly respiratory and heart problems.The closure of such plants can lift this burden dramatically – a recent study found that in the month after a coal facility was closed near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2016, the number of childhood asthma visits to local hospitals declined by 41% and then continued to fall by about 4% each month.The study shows “the closure of a major industrial pollution source can lead to immediate and lasting improvements in the lung health of the those who live nearby”, said Wuyue Yu, research co-author and postdoctoral fellow at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.For those living in the township of Port Sheldon, a mostly bucolic setting on the shore of the vast Lake Michigan, a pollution-free future beckoned once JH Campbell had been scheduled to close, with lofty plans for new parkland, housing and a battery plant touted for the site.View image in fullscreenNow there is uncertainty. Last week, a few dozen residents and activists held a protest event next to the sprawling plant, which hummed and whirred in the summer heat, one 650ft chimney puncturing the horizon, another, smaller flue striped red and white, like a candy cane.Dozens of train cars full of coal, hastily procured after the plant’s supply was used up ahead of a closure that has been scheduled for four years, backed up in the sunshine. When burned in the huge 1.5GW plant, this coal emits about 7.7m tons of carbon dioxide a year.“Trump is just trying to keep the money coming into coal companies as long as he can, I suppose,” said David Hoekema, who has lived a couple of miles from the plant since 2006 and has had to clean coal dust from his windows. Trump easily won this county, called Ottawa, in last year’s election, but Hoekema said even his staunchest conservative neighbors don’t want the coal plant.“I’ve not met anyone along the lake shore who says, ‘Oh yeah, let’s keep this open’ – even the conservative Republicans are concerned about their health,” he said. “Republican ideology says local control is best but the Trump administration is saying, ‘We don’t care what the hell states do, we will impose our order on them.’ I know there’s a lot of competition, but this would have to be one of their craziest decisions.”The Department of Energy did not respond to questions about its plan for JH Campbell once its latest extension expires. The battle over the coal plant’s future has taken place to a backdrop of a scorching summer in Michigan, one of its hottest on record, with algal blooms sprouting in its lakes, both symptoms of an unfolding climate crisis.“The talk in neighborhoods has been how hot it’s been this summer – my kid was prepared to be outside every day and it’s been so hot so often it’s been irresponsible to do that,” said Stephen Wooden, a Democratic state lawmaker who added that Michigan residents are also “pissed off” about increasing power bills.“We’re seeing the impacts of climate change daily, it is impacting our state,” Wooden said. “And this is being caused by the continuation of outdated, expensive fossil fuels that Donald Trump wants to prop up.” More

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      Climate advocates outraged at Trump administration plans to fast-track AI sector

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      The Trump administration has unveiled plans to speed the development of the highly polluting artificial intelligence sector, sparking outrage from climate advocates.Rolled out on Wednesday, the 28-page scheme pledges to remove so-called “bureaucratic red tape” and streamline permitting for datacenters, semiconductor manufacturing facilities and fossil fuel infrastructure.To do so, it will dismantle some environmental and land-use regulations, roll back some Biden-era rules for subsidies for semiconductor plants related to climate requirements, and seek to establish exclusions for datacenters from the National Environmental Policy Act and streamline permits under the Clean Water Act.“We need to build and maintain vast AI infrastructure and the energy to power it. To do that, we will continue to reject radical climate dogma and bureaucratic red tape, as the Administration has done since Inauguration Day,” the plan says. “Simply put, we need to ‘Build, Baby, Build!’”Trump is also expected to sign three AI-related executive orders on Wednesday during a keynote address at a summit in DC. The announcement will be co-hosted by bipartisan lawmakers with the Hill and Valley Forum and a business and technology podcast hosted by four technology investors and businessmen, including Trump’s AI and crypto czar, David Sacks.The AI sector is already depleting land and water resources and taking a massive toll on the climate, with AI-powered large language models such as ChatGPT taking up to 10 times more energy than a regular Google search, according to an estimate by the Electric Power Research Institute. Last year, ChatGPT used more than half a million kilowatts of electricity every day, equivalent to the daily power use of 180,000 US households.The training of a single AI model can lead to an emissions footprint that is almost five times larger than the lifetime carbon footprint of the average American car. Recent research from Food and Water Watch also found that energy demand from AI servers and datacenters in the US is expected to increase up to threefold from 2023 to 2028, which could lead the US sector to, by 2028, annually consume enough water to fill more than 1m Olympic-size swimming pools and enough electricity to power more than 28m American households.“At its core, President Trump’s AI agenda is nothing more than a thinly veiled invitation for the fossil fuel and corporate water industries to ramp up their exploitation of our environment and natural resources – all at the expense of everyday people,” said Mitch Jones, a managing director Food and Water Watch, an environmental advocacy group.The new plan recommends that regulators review states’ AI laws to see whether they interfere with the agency’s authority. It also says federal agencies will “consider a state’s AI regulatory climate when making funding decisions” and “limit funding if the state’s AI regulatory regimes may hinder the effectiveness of that funding or award”.Republicans earlier this year attempted to enact a version of this by placing a moratorium on states’ ability to impose regulations on artificial intelligence into Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but the provision was stripped at the last minute.“Under this plan, tech giants get sweetheart deals while everyday Americans will see their electricity bills rise to subsidize discounted power for massive AI datacenters,” said JB Branch, a big-tech accountability advocate with the consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen. “States are held hostage: either stop protecting their residents from dangerous, untested AI products, or lose federal funding.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs a counterweight to the new Trump plan, a broad coalition of more than 90 advocacy groups – including climate and environmental justice non-profits, consumer protection organizations and labor advocates – published an open letter calling for a “people’s AI action plan” that prioritizes “public wellbeing, shared prosperity, a sustainable future and security”.“We can’t let big tech and big oil lobbyists write the rules for AI and our economy at the expense of our freedom and equality, workers and families’ wellbeing,” the coalition wrote.Research shows that many datacenters used for AI are placed near low-income communities of color, which are already often overburdened by pollution.“People sacrifice their health, their wellbeing and, too often, their future, so that others can benefit,” said Sharon Lewis, executive director of the Connecticut Coalition for Environmental Justice. “We’re told these datacenters are harmless, but even though they might seem like they pose no risk, in reality, these energy-hungry, pollution-intensive facilities are just as damaging to our environment and health.” More

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      Trump’s EPA announces major rollbacks to power plant pollution limits

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      US power plants will be allowed to pollute nearby communities and the wider world with more unhealthy air toxins and an unlimited amount of planet-heating gases under new regulatory rollbacks proposed by Donald Trump’s administration, experts warned.The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled a plan on Wednesday that would repeal a landmark climate rule that aims to mostly eliminate greenhouse gases from power plants by the 2030s and would, separately, weaken another regulation that restricts power plants’ release of hazardous air pollutants such as mercury.“We choose to both protect the environment and grow the economy,” said Lee Zeldin, administrator of the EPA, at an event to announce the plans. He said the rollbacks will save households money while also defying what he called “the climate change cult”.The climate rule has “saddled our critical power sector with expensive, unreasonable and burdensome regulations”, Zeldin said. “American energy suffered and Americans who rely on reliable, affordable energy suffered. The good news is those days are over.”The EPA’s proposals will go out for public comment and are likely to face legal challenges.They target a rule crafted last year by the Biden administration to phase out emissions from electricity-producing fossil fuel plants, which are responsible for around a quarter of US greenhouse gases, and a regulation called the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which Biden toughened in 2023 to slash harmful pollution suffered by communities.These rollbacks come despite overwhelming scientific evidence of the dire consequences of the worsening climate crisis and the harm caused by pollutants such as mercury, which can seep into water, soils and the air and has been linked to neurological damage in young children as well as heart, lung and immune system ailments in adults. Coal-fired power plants cause nearly half of all mercury emissions in the US, according to the EPA.More than 200 health experts wrote to the EPA on Wednesday warning the moves “would lead to the biggest pollution increases in decades and is a blatant give-away to polluters”. The experts added the reversals are “a direct contradiction to the Environmental Protection Agency’s mission of protecting public health and the environment”.Trump, however, has vowed to boost fossil fuel production at all costs, having reaped record donations from the oil and gas industry during his election campaign. At Wednesday’s EPA event, Zeldin was joined by eight lawmakers, all Republicans – Kevin Cramer, Troy Balderson, Brett Guthrie, Carol Miller, Dan Meuser, Rob Bresnahan, Michael Rulli and Riley Moore – who have collectively received more than $3m from fossil fuel donors in their own election campaigns, a Guardian analysis of the OpenSecrets database shows.Bresnahan, a Pennsylvania representative, holds personal financial interests in more than 20 fossil fuel companies.In justifying the deletion of the Biden climate plan, which the EPA previously estimated would deliver $370bn in net benefits, Zeldin has claimed that US power plants only produce a small and declining fraction of the world’s emissions. This is despite the fact that if these power plants were a country, it would be the sixth-largest emitter on the planet.Gina McCarthy, who was EPA administrator under Barack Obama, said that Zeldin’s “dismantling of our nation’s protections from power plant pollution is absolutely illogical and indefensible. It’s a purely political play that goes against decades of science and policy review.”“By giving a green light to more pollution, his legacy will forever be someone who does the bidding of the fossil fuel industry at the expense of our health,” she added. “Everyone will be affected by his actions, but the most vulnerable among us, our kids and grandkids, will suffer the most.”The EPA has embarked upon a wide-ranging blitz upon environmental regulations since Trump became president, setting about removing or loosening clean air and water rules that, collectively, were on track to save 200,000 American lives in the decades ahead.Trump, who has adopted the mantra of “drill, baby, drill”, has claimed unhindered fossil fuel production will bring down energy costs, although he has sought to hobble clean energy such as solar and wind, which are typically the cheapest sources of new electricity generation.The rollbacks follow the second-hottest May on record globally, and a record-hot 2024 that unleashed a stunning number of climate-driven disasters and six weeks of extra-dangerously hot days. Experts have warned that sea level rise is on track to cause “catastrophic inland migration”, including to millions of Americans, with climate shocks set to wipe 50% from global GDP by the end of this century.“It’s completely reprehensible that Donald Trump would seek to roll back these lifesaving standards and do more harm to the American people and our planet just to earn some brownie points with the fossil fuel industry,” said Patrick Drupp, climate policy director at the Sierra Club.“This administration is transparently trading American lives for campaign dollars and the support of fossil fuel companies, and Americans ought to be disgusted and outraged that their government has launched an assault on our health and our future.” More

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      Minnesota’s Boundary Waters are pristine. Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ could pollute them forever

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      The story is co-published with Public Domain, an investigative newsroom that covers public lands, wildlife and government
      A little-known provision of Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” would open thousands of acres of public lands at the edge of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters wilderness to a foreign-owned mining company.The move amounts to a giveaway “in perpetuity” to a company that has lobbied in Washington for years, environmental campaigners say, potentially opening up one of the US’s most famous wilderness areas to water-pollution risks.Earlier this month, conservationists cheered when Congress withdrew from the reconciliation bill several provisions that would have sold off hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land in Nevada and Utah. Those provisions had sparked fury among public land advocates and staunch opposition even from some Republicans, including the representative Ryan Zinke of Montana, who vowed to oppose the bill if the land sell-off provisions were retained.Despite that fury, a lesser-known public lands giveaway remained in the reconciliation bill. If approved as currently written, the provision could lease in perpetuity land near Minnesota’s Boundary Waters wilderness, an enormous complex of pristine lakes and untrammeled forests, to Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining giant Antofagasta PLC.Becky Rom, the national chair of Save the Boundary Waters, a campaign to protect the wilderness area from mining, described the provision as “a giveaway of critical and sensitive federal public land forever to a single mining company”.“It is a giveaway,” Rom added. “This is forever.”An ‘irreplaceable’ wilderness areaFirst set aside by Congress in 1964, the 1.1m-acre Boundary Waters canoe area wilderness, as it is officially known, is the only large-scale protected sub-boreal forest in the lower 48 states. Each year, about 150,000 visitors come to partake in the all-American tradition of canoe travel and enjoy a pristine landscape where wolves, moose, loons, bears and bald eagles thrive. Those who come to explore it help contribute to Minnesota’s $13.5bn outdoor recreation economy. According to the US Forest Service, the landscape contains “healthy forests with extremely high water quality”. It is “irreplaceable”.But the Boundary Waters also sit atop mineral-rich lands. Antofagasta has for years sought to develop a copper and nickel mine on public land near the wilderness, amid the headwaters that feed its famous lakes. The company and its American subsidiary, Twin Metals Minnesota, came close to success during the first Trump administration, which overturned an Obama-era denial and renewed mining leases for the project.The Biden administration, recognizing the threat the proposed mine posed to the environment, subsequently rescinded those discretionary leases, arguing that they were legally deficient. The Biden administration also issued an order that prohibited mining for 20 years in the portion of the Superior national forest where Antofagasta wants to extract copper and nickel. Twin Metals Minnesota, which declined to comment for this story, filed litigation to fight the Biden policies in court. That lawsuit is ongoing.View image in fullscreenMeanwhile, the companies went to Capitol Hill in their quest to build their mine, which they say will directly employ more than 750 people and could revitalize “the entire region”. In the last three years alone, Antofagasta and Twin Metals have poured more than $1.6m into lobbying efforts in Washington DC, according to OpenSecrets.Among the lobbying shops they retained is Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, the powerful firm that was the longtime home of David Bernhardt, interior secretary during Trump’s first term. Brownstein’s employees and its political action committee, in turn, were together among the top 10 donors last election cycle to the campaign committee of representative Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, the powerful chair of the House natural resources committee.Last month, that lobbying apparently bore fruit. Westerman’s committee unveiled its portion of the president’s reconciliation bill and it contained a major win for Antofagasta and Twin Metals.The bill, which passed the House and is now being considered by the Senate, includes provisions that rescind the Biden administration’s 20-year mining prohibition in the Superior national forest and grants Twin Metals 20-year mining leases to pursue its copper-nickel project on nearly 6,000 acres (2,500 hectares) of public land near the Boundary Waters. It also grants Twin Metals rights in perpetuity to lease renewals and it prohibits judicial review of the leases, meaning that citizens cannot sue to challenge them. Only one party retains rights to judicial review per the legislation: Twin Metals. If the federal government fails to comply with the reconciliation bill, Twin Metals can sue to enforce it.“The reconciliation bill compels the issuance of four leases forever,” said Rom. “To get there it expressly overrides four federal laws, it expressly overrides BLM regulations, so all of those rules that apply to everybody else in the world, the laws, the regulations, for Antofagasta they don’t apply.”“There is a heavy hand in here,” she added. “The heavy hand of Antofagasta.”Pollution fears and pushbackNeither Antofagasta nor Westerman’s office responded to requests for comment. Twin Metals has said its mine will provide a supply of strategic minerals that are important to national security and the emerging green energy economy.For conservationists like Rom – who grew up helping her father run an outfitting business in the Boundary Waters wilderness and has since spent decades working to protect the wilderness area – the major threat from Twin Metals’ proposed mine is water pollution. That threat was described in a 2016 letter by the US Forest Service, when it initially denied its consent to the Twin Metals mine leases during the waning days of the Obama administration. There is “inherent potential risk that development of a regionally-untested copper-nickel sulfide ore mine within the same watershed as the BWCAW might cause serious and irreplaceable harm to this unique, iconic, and irreplaceable wilderness area”.The agency’s letter particularly drew attention to the risk of acid mine drainage, a potent form of water pollution that is a well-known risk of the sort of sulfide-ore mining that Twin Metals and Antofagasta wish to undertake. Any drainage from the “mine workings and mining wastes are likely to be highly acidic”, the agency said of the Twin Metals mine. Any failure to contain such waste could have “potentially severe consequences for the BWCAW” and could “cover a very broad region”.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenTwin Metals Minnesota has denied that acid mine drainage will be a potential threat, calling it a “nonissue”.As the reconciliation bill moves through the Senate, conservationists as well as their allies in Congress are hoping it will be stripped out of the bill before it lands on Trump’s desk. They argue, among other things, that the bill’s Twin Metals provision may run afoul of Senate rules governing the reconciliation process, which disallows the body from including “extraneous provisions” in budget bills.Among the opponents of the Twin Metals provision is Minnesota’s junior senator, Tina Smith, though the state’s congressional delegation is split on the issue.“Senator Smith strongly opposes the reckless Republican provision in the US House-passed Big Beautiful Bill that would give a foreign conglomerate full permission to build a copper-nickel sulfide mine right on the doorstep of the Boundary Waters watershed,” wrote a spokesperson for Smith in a statement to Public Domain. “By including this language in their massive budget bill, Republicans in Congress have made it clear they don’t care about the science or the data, which shows unequivocally that this type of mining poses an unacceptable risk and stands to irreversibly pollute this pristine wilderness.” More

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      Republican Vote Against E.V. Mandate Felt Like an Attack on California, Democrats Say

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      For decades, California has been able to adopt its own emissions regulations, effectively setting the bar for carmakers nationally. And for just as long, Republicans have resented the state’s outsize influence.There is little question that California leaders already see fossil fuels as a relic of the past.At the Southern California headquarters of the state’s powerful clean-air regulator, the centerpiece art installation depicts in limestone a petrified gas station. Fuel nozzles lie on the ground in decay, evoking an imagined extinction of gas pumps.For more than half a century, the federal government has allowed California to set its own stringent pollution limits, a practice that has resulted in more efficient vehicles and the nation’s most aggressive push toward electric cars. Many Democratic-led states have adopted California’s standards, prompting automakers to move their national fleets in the same direction.With that unusual power, however, has come resentment from Republican states where the fossil fuel industry still undergirds their present and future. When Republicans in Congress last week revoked the state’s authority to set three of its mandates on electric vehicles and trucks, they saw it not just as a policy reversal but also as a statement that liberal California should be put in its place.“We’ve created a superstate system where California has more rights than other states,” Representative Morgan Griffith, who represents rural southwestern Virginia, said in an interview. “My constituents think most folks in California are out of touch with reality. You see this stuff coming out of California and say, ‘What?’”Federal law typically pre-empts state law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. But in 1967, the federal government allowed smoggy California to receive waivers from the Environmental Protection Agency to enact its own clean-air standards that were tougher than federal limits, because the state historically had some of the most polluted air in the nation. Federal law also allows other states to adopt California’s standards as their own under certain circumstances.Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said last week that the state would fight in court to preserve its autonomy in setting emissions rules.Rich Pedroncelli/Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Minnesota’s Green Crew Is Helping Teens Fight Climate Anxiety

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      Early on a Saturday morning in Minnesota, a group of teenagers gathered at the edge of six acres of wooded, hilly land. Most were quiet, some blinking against the sun. They were robotics enthusiasts, aspiring marine scientists, artists, athletes and Scouts.What they shared was a desire for hands-on conservation work, a meaningful response for many of them to their worries about climate change.“Cool,” said Sophia Peterson, the group’s 18-year-old leader, who faced the crowd with a grin. “Let’s get started.”50 States, 50 Fixes is a series about local solutions to environmental problems. More to come this year.The students were organized by the Green Crew, an environmental group founded by a teenager in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metro area. The organization seeks to help a generation that has grown up under the threat of climate change channel their fears into concrete action.Tell Us About Solutions Where You Live More

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      in US Politics

      RFK Jr and his grandchildren swam in DC creek contaminated by sewage

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      The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has revealed that he went swimming with his children in a Washington DC creek that authorities have said is toxic due to contamination by an upstream, ageing sewer system.The “Make America healthy again” crusader attracted attention for the Mother’s Day dip in Dumbarton Oaks Park with his grandchildren Bobcat and Cassius, which he posted about on X. He was also accompanied by relatives Amaryllis, Bobby, Kick and Jackson.Rock Creek, which runs through the federal park, is described as unsafe for swimming or wading because it acts as a runoff for excess sewage and storm water during rain storms.Studies of streams in the nation’s capital have revealed “chronic elevated levels of Escherichia coli (E coli) contamination that exceeded DC’s surface water quality standards”, according to one published in 2021.The District of Columbia banned swimming in all waterways in 1971, citing “extraordinarily high levels of pollutants from human and animal waste containing bacteria such as salmonella and hepatitis, and viruses”.Separately, the National Park Service has said: “Rock Creek has high levels of bacteria and other infectious pathogens that make swimming, wading, and other contact with the water a hazard to human (and pet) health. All District waterways are subject to a swim ban – this means wading, too!”Part of the issue is that the District’s combined sewer system was developed before 1900, and – like New York City sewage and rain systems – is designed to combine to ease runoff, bypassing water treatment plants.In Washington, according to Open Data DC: “Release of this excess flow is necessary to prevent flooding in homes, basements, businesses, and streets. [Combined sewer overflows] are discharged to the Anacostia River, Rock Creek, Potomac River or tributary waters at CSO outfalls during most moderate rain events.”Kennedy, an avid outdoorsman, had not responded to a request for comment as of publication time, and has not posted on social media about it.In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Kennedy described himself as a “renegade”. Joined by other appointees to the federal health agency – including the TV doctor Mehmet Oz, Marty Makary and Jay Bhattacharya – he said: “The entire leadership of this agency are renegades who are, you know, who are juggernauts against convention and who are trying to look for truth, no matter what the cost.”On Sunday, Kennedy joined Donald Trump to unveil a new administration plan to lower high US prescription drug prices. He thanked the US president for standing “up to the oligarchs” and took aim at Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who has made drug pricing a signature issue of his political platform.“It’s one of these promises that politicians make to their constituents knowing that they’ll never have to do it,” the former 2024 Democratic turned independent presidential candidate said.Sanders later scoffed at the administration’s plan, saying it “will be thrown out by the courts”.Kennedy is known for taking risks of a biological kind. He admitted to transporting a roadkill bear cub to New York’s Central Park, and his daughter Kick described a childhood adventure when her father transported a rotting whale head on top of their car from Nantucket to their Westchester home.Had Kennedy’s foray into the polluted creek produced ill effects, the probable treatment for E coli poisoning would not necessarily have benefited much from the administration’s drug cost reduction plan. Common antibiotics used to treat E coli infections are typically priced $10 to $30 for a course of treatment. More