A leaked copy of Interior Secretary Zinke’s secret recommendation on national monuments shows the Secretary hopes to strip protections from public lands and waters across the country. Sites that could lose protections include Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, Cascade-Siskiyou in Oregon, Gold Butte in Nevada, Katahdin Woods and Waters in Maine, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks and Rio Grande del Norte in New Mexico, Northeast Canyons and Seamounts near Massachusetts and Rose Atoll and Pacific Remote Islands.
Washington, DC -- Today, the White House quickly walked back reports that Donald Trump will not pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Following his original decision to withdraw from the Accord in June, Trump was universally condemned by the people he was elected to represent and the world writ large.
Watts, Cali.– Today, hundreds of people in and around Watts will gather at St. John's United Methodist Church, across from the community’s historic Watts Towers to hear about the benefits of electric vehicles, learn about programs that support electric vehicle purchasing and identify the roadblocks that make it harder for low-income families to go electric.
The California Assembly adjourned early Saturday morning without taking up for a vote Senate Bill 100 (Kevin de Leon), a bill designed to get California to 100% clean energy by 2045. SB 100 would have accelerated the state’s existing goals for transitioning to renewable energy and would have set a 2045 goal for all retail electricity in the state to be created without greenhouse gas pollution.
Two public officials who helped secure funding to address the water crisis in Flint, Mich., a photographer who has documented the natural beauty of Nebraska, and a world-renowned conservationist are among those receiving national awards from the Sierra Club this year.
Puget Sound Energy (PSE), the largest utility in Washington State, reached a proposed settlement today to pay down all of its debts on Colstrip by 2027. Initially the utility had planned to pay off the coal plant in 2045, but as coal continues to get more expensive compared to cleaner alternatives like solar, wind and energy efficiency, holding onto coal assets is getting harder to justify. The proposal is part of PSE's rate case process and still needs approval of the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission.
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.