Today, in surrebuttal testimony submitted to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC), the Minnesota Department of Commerce (DoC) confirmed its original finding that Enbridge’s proposed Line 3 tar sands pipeline project is not needed and that the risks outweigh any limited benefits.
New Orleans, LA -- It is now estimated that an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico from a ruptured pipeline could be nearly twice as large as originally reported.
Washington, DC -- Today, Senate Republicans passed the budget resolution, opening the door to oil drilling in the sensitive coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The resolution includes instructions to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to generate $1 billion over 10 years for the federal budget, instructions that will likely lead to drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic Refuge. Previously, the House Budget instructed the Natural Resources committee to generate $3.6 billion over 10 years through similar mechanisms.
ANNAPOLIS, MD - Today, 63 Maryland Senators and Delegate urged Governor Larry Hogan to implement Obama-era standards for coal fired-power plants in the state. The Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) is proposing to renew expired water pollution permits for three coal-fired plants in Dickerson, Chalk Point and Morgantown that would allow excessive dumping of toxic pollutants into Maryland waterways.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, the Sierra Club officially filed its lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency for its continued failure to conduct the required environmental impact analysis on the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). The EPA is almost four years overdue in its last review for Congress and eight years overdue on its air quality impact analysis. Both are necessary to determine the extent of the RFS program’s adverse air quality impacts and inform the EPA in its annual setting of renewable fuels volumes. The Sierra Club filed its notice of intent to sue in February 2017 and filed its complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- On Fox News last night, Scott Pruitt questioned what authority Congress has given the EPA to reduce carbon pollution, again suggesting he’ll attack the proven scientific and legal principles supporting EPA’s duty to protect the health of the public from dangerous greenhouse gas pollution.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals today granted an unusual request from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) - to throw out DEP’s approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) and let them start anew.
Washington, DC -- Today, the State Department granted a cross-border permit for Enbridge’s Line 67, or Alberta Clipper, tar sands pipeline expansion. Since 2015, Enbridge has already been moving an expanded amount of tar sands across the border, since the company connected Line 67 to the nearby Line 3 tar sands pipeline. This scheme allowed them to bypass State’s environmental review because Line 3’s original cross-border permit was older and did not specify a maximum capacity.
Sierra Club released new findings today showing that Secretary Rick Perry’s recent directive to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to force electricity customers to bail out uneconomic coal and nuclear plants would severely distort America’s energy markets and cause ratepayers’ bills to skyrocket.
WASHINGTON, DC - Scott Pruitt is engaging in an attack on the enforcement of environmental law at the EPA, and in doing so is referencing the myth of so-called “sue and settle.” The polluter backed U.S. Chamber of Commerce report underlying Pruitt’s false rhetoric has been regularly debunked in the academic literature on the topic. As the Harvard Environmental Law Review concluded: “This analysis reveals the current ‘sue-and-settle’ debate for what it is: a war of words relying on emotionally charged rhetoric to score political points."