Limited test of lead filters delivers an unwelcome surprise Bottled water distributed to concerned, frustrated residents
NJTV’s Brenda Flanagan reports: There was worry among parents in Newark over the health of their children Tuesday, after federal officials said tests showed that tap water in some city residences exceeded federal levels for lead despite the presence of faucet filters supplied by the city.
The rules will shrink habitats that animals and plants rely on for survival
A grizzly bear and a cub along the Gibbon River in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. (Frank van Manen/United States Geological Survey/AP)
Darryl Fears reports for the Washington Post Aug. 12 at 12:22 PM
Three months after a U.N. report warned that 1 million species face extinction because of human activity, the Trump administration on Monday finalized rule changes to the Endangered Species Act that make it harder to protect plants and animals whose populations are in serious decline.
The rules were changed as part of President Trump’s mandate to scale back government regulations on behalf of businesses. In that vein, language in the act that required officials to rely heavily on science when considering whether to list a species as threatened or endangered regardless of economic impact was removed.
Potential threats to business opportunities and other costs of listing a species can now be considered and shared with the public. Officials said those considerations would not affect listing decisions.
The administration will also shrink the number of habitats set aside for threatened wildlife. Currently, land that plants and animals occupy is set aside for their protection, in addition to areas that they once occupied but abandoned.
For the threatened species, unoccupied habitat might not be protected, opening it up for oil and gas exploration or other forms of development.
Conservationists and some politicians decried the changes as a major rollback of the 46-year-old law credited with saving the bald eagle, grizzly bear, humpback whale, American alligator and Florida manatee from extinction.
“Today, the Trump administration issued regulations that take a wrecking ball to one of our oldest and most effective environmental laws, the Endangered Species Act,” Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) said in a statement. “As we have seen time and time again, no environmental protection — no matter how effective or popular — is safe from this administration.”
In May, a U.N. report on world biodiversity found that 1 million plant and animal species are on the verge of extinction, with alarming implications for human survival.
The report, written by seven experts from universities around the world, directly linked the loss of species to human activity and showed how those losses are undermining food and water security, along with human health.
More plants and animals are threatened with extinction now than at any other period in human history, the report said.
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A U.S. Forest Service scientist stands beside a red spruce growing on Mount Mansfield in Stowe, Vt., last year. (Lisa Rathke/AP)
ByJim Furnish in the Washington Post – August 11. 1:38 PM
Jim Furnish is a consulting forester in Iowa, following a 34-year career with the U.S. Forest Service, including as the agency’s deputy chief from 1999 to 2002.
I was the supervisor of Oregon’s Siuslaw National Forest in 1996 when a huge landslide caused by shoddy road construction sent tons of mud and debris into a critical salmon stream. I felt terrible ― and personally responsible. In the rush to build logging roads along treacherously steep hillsides, we mismanaged forests for decades and pushed salmon and spotted owls to the brink of extinction.
When I came to Washington to become deputy chief of the Forest Service a few years later, that Oregon landslide ― and countless other road-building mistakes ― motivated me to rewrite national forest policy. I was a chief architect of two landmark rules to reform logging and road-building in our national forests.
But I learned another important lesson: The Forest Service shouldn’t operate in a vacuum. The public should have its say, and we can’t cut it out of its rightful role just because that would be quick, easy or politically expedient.
This is why I’m so deeply troubled by the Trump administration’s latest attempt to roll back some of the most important rules protecting our national forests via the National Environmental Policy Act. That law has fostered government transparency and accountability for our environment and public health for 50 years. But a new Forest Service proposal would eliminate opportunities for citizen involvement and environmental review on more than 90 percent of all Forest Service projects.
I recall feeling miffed when, as a young Forest Service employee in the 1970s, NEPA required me to document why we did things such as cut down trees. Over time, I came to learn that many concerned citizens knew a lot more than I did. They also owned the public land where I worked on their behalf.
Federal agencies that authorize logging, mining and drilling on public land should aspire to accountability, transparency, trustworthiness and scientific rigor. So when the Forest Service claims that sweeping changes to its NEPA rules will “increase efficiency,” I measure its proposal against those bedrock principles.
During my 34-year career with the Forest Service, I authored several rule changes. But with this one, I see smoke and mirrors.
Buried deep within 16 pages of legalese are some nasty surprises: a nearly unlimited license to commercially log nearly seven square miles — about 3,000 football fields — or build five miles of logging roads at a time without involving the public or disclosing environmental consequences.
This proposed rule will stifle citizen participation, foster deepened opposition and increase litigation.
The state has handed out about $1 billion in tax breaks to companies and individuals that invested in solar farms. Now the state tax collector is looking to cancel some of those breaks and collect the money.
Anxiety among tax attorneys and companies that claimed tax credits and their fight with the state Department of Revenue has been burbling for more than a year.
This month, Monarch Private Capital, a tax-credit broker based in Georgia, asked Revenue Secretary Ronald Penny to renounce the department’s position through an administrative process called a “declaratory ruling.”
Monarch Private Capital offers state and federal tax credits to companies and individuals looking to lower their tax bills.
Schorr Johnson, a spokesman for the state Department of Revenue, said in an interview last month and in emails last month and Thursday that state law prohibits the department from discussing tax audits.
“We cannot comment on ongoing audits or any potential litigation,” Johnson wrote Thursday.
The state offered a 35% tax credit to investors in renewable energy projects. The tax credit, along with other state polices encouraging renewable energy, helped make North Carolina one of the top states in the nation in solar farm capacity, The News & Observer has reported.
The renewable energy tax credit ended in 2015, but investors were given a few more years to claim the tax breaks.
Over the last nine years, the state allowed more than $1 billion in tax breaks for investments in renewable energy property, according to theDepartment of Revenue reports.
A September public notice from the tax department said some people who invested in credits through partnerships don’t qualify for tax breaks.
