Houston, TX -- Today, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner named former Shell chairman and president Marvin Odum as the chief recovery officer to oversee the recovery from Hurricane Harvey.
In response, Sierra Club Organizer Bryan Parras released the following statement:
Houston, TX -- Today, the Texas Tribune reported that Scott Pruitt’s EPA is refusing to publicly share the pollutant levels throughout the region affected by Hurricane Harvey while his agency continues to waive environmental safeguards. There are 449 chemical and toxic facilities and refineries in the 25 counties most affected by the hurricane.
Washington, D.C. -- Today, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granted Williams Transco the right to begin construction on the fracked gas Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline despite a faulty water review and a piecemeal permitting process. FERC’s review lacked public oversight and is currently evading judicial review, while the Wolf administration’s review of the project downplayed known impacts to water quality that other states took action on.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission upended Governor Andrew Cuomo’s rejection of the fracked gas Valley Lateral Pipeline. Under section 401 of the Clean Water Act, states must certify that a pipeline will not violate their clean water standards before construction on that pipeline can begin. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation previously refused to give the Millennium Pipeline Company the section 401 certificate it needed and today’s move by FERC overrides that.
St Louis, MO -- Today, ex-St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley was found not guilty in the 2011 shooting death of Anthony Lamar Smith. Stockley was violating policy by carrying his own assault rifle, his own DNA was found on the weapon that he claimed was in Anthony’s possession, and video footage captured Stockley proclaiming he intended to kill Smith. This verdict comes just a few years after the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown in St. Louis was not indicted.
The Tenth Circuit Court just secured a major victory for those that care about protecting public lands and our climate. Today’s decision sheds new light on the destructive consequences of leasing our most precious lands to corporate polluters who value their balance sheets more than public health. This decision marks a major step in our efforts to hold coal, oil, and gas companies accountable for their reckless contributions to climate change and to force the doting Trump Administration to take our environmental laws seriously.
RALEIGH, NC -- Late yesterday, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) requested additional information from Duke Energy and Dominion Energy in order to conduct a more thorough examination of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline’s (ACP) effects on the state’s water quality.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- While visiting Florida, in response to a question about whether the severity of recent Hurricanes had changed Donald Trump’s thoughts at all about climate change, Trump responded, “we’ve had bigger storms.” Previously, over the past few weeks, Trump has referred to both Hurricane Irma and Harvey in “epic” terms and noted their historic nature and unprecedented character.
Donald Trump and Scott Pruitt today continued their capitulation to the coal industry at the expense of the health of our families. Pruitt’s decision to target the new clean water protections is another heartless ploy by the Trump administration scrap progress on protecting our families from toxic coal ash.
A coalition of national conservation groups including Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club and Animal Legal Defense Fund filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today challenging border wall construction activities that threaten wildlife and public lands in San Diego and Imperial Valley, California.