In the United States, low income Black and Brown communities are already more likely to suffer the impacts from permitted pollution from petroleum facilities and other polluting industries. In addition to these known and well documented disparities, regulators have allowed for even more pollution to be released onto these overburdened communities through regulatory loopholes in the Clean Air Act known as Startup, Shutdown, Malfunction, (SSM) leaving communities exposed to dangerous levels of toxic air pollution from multiple sources. Sierra Club and partners are working to ensure EPA implements strong rule-making that eliminates SSM loopholes and prioritizes the most impacted people by upholding equal protection laws. Dozens of community and environmental groups have called on President Biden to close SSM loopholes and end free passes to pollute.
EPA allows facilities like power plants and factories to emit as much pollution as they like during periods of Start-up, Shutdown, and Malfunctions. The amount of pollution emitted during so-called “SSM events” can be 100s to 1000s of times higher than normal operations.
Did you know that there are deadly loopholes in the EPA and state Clean Air Act rules? The Startup, Shutdown, and Malfunction loopholes allow polluters to ignore their permitted emission limitations -- and of course they take advantage of this! The consequences are even more deadly air pollution dumped on communities near plants and factories -- who already suffer the greatest burden from these poisons. It's time to close the loopholes! The Sierra Club has partnered with Earthjustice and community activists to create a video to shed light on this issue, and galvanize action to close the SSM loopholes.
Bloomberg Philanthropies y el Sierra Club anunciaron que la campaña Más Allá del Carbón ha logrado retirar el 60% de las plantas térmicas de carbón de Estados Unidos —318 de las 530 hasta hoy. Este hito duplica la meta original, establecida en 2011, la cual se comprometió a retirar el 30%, la mitad, del total para este año 2020 y a acelerar la transición hacia una economía de energía limpia.
Today, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) unanimously passed the Ocean-Going Vessels At-Berth regulation, which will clean up pollution from idling ships in California’s ports by requiring all ships to either plug into shore power or to capture emissions over the next decade.
Los incendios que afectan a toda California se están amainando y se han eliminado las órdenes de evacuación en varias partes del estado, aunque no en todas. El humo de los incendios continúa creando condiciones insalubres en todo el estado y el Oeste del país —un riesgo aún mayor para la salud pública en medio de una pandemia.
Salt Lake City, UT -- Today, the Sierra Club’s Utah Chapter released a comprehensive legislative scoring on conservation and environmental issues of the 2020 Utah State legislature. The scorecard reviewed twenty bills addressing a swath of environmental and governance issues-- and revealed failing averages for the House and the Senate. The scorecard release comes ahead of Utah's general elections, which include votes for Governor, the entire State House, and fifteen seats in the State Senate.
Richmond, CA — Yesterday evening, the Sierra Club and San Francisco Baykeeper moved to intervene as full parties in the lawsuits to defend the City of Richmond’s ordinance that phases out the storage and handling of coal and petroleum coke in the city, and also filed an accompanying motion to dismiss the lawsuits. The environmental legal organization Earthjustice is representing both the Sierra Club and SF Baykeeper in court.
Sierra Club applauds and fully supports the special resolution Indianapolis City-County Council members passed unanimously tonight, calling on local electric provider Indianapolis Power & Light (IPL) to update its 20-year energy plan filed with state regulators in December to include the full retirement of the Petersburg Super Polluter coal plant by 2028.
Yesterday, communities across Western Pennsylvania filed a joint protest of Shell Pipeline Company’s effort to build the Falcon Ethane Pipeline without any air pollution limits.
Today, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt told Bloomberg News that he does not plan to extend clean car standards implemented by the Obama administration past 2025. He also suggested that he would not allow California to issue their own, stricter standards to manage air quality within the state, though he’d previously claimed that the state’s waiver to do so would be protected.
CHARLOTTE, N.C.—Even as Duke is asking for rate increases on families and businesses to pay for its statewide coal ash cleanup, the utility has now announced a $200 million dollar plan to convert the four coal units at the Marshall Steam Station to burn a mix of coal and fracked gas.
Memphis, Tenn. — A new report shows that the White Bluff and Independence coal-fired power plants operated by the largest utility in Arkansas, Entergy, emit enough pollution to raise the levels of unhealthy ozone smog in the Memphis area.