All posts tagged "Environmentallaw"

California and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday finalized a $1.67 billion settlement with truck engine maker Cummins — the largest civil penalty ever assessed under the federal Clean Air Act — after the company installed devices on more than 600,000 RAM pickup trucks that regulators said illegally bypassed emission tests, resulting in ten of thousands of tons of excess pollution. The penalty is the second largest the EPA has ever recovered under any environmental law, behind the $20 billion settlement in the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon platform explosion and oil spill, which......

Chemicals that can make people sick have recently been found in fish, crabs and oysters in South Carolina as concerns grow about the threat the toxins pose to food and water across the Palmetto State. The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control documented the pollutants, known as forever chemicals, in freshwater fish caught in 18 waterways from the foothills to the coast. In some cases, the pollutants were found at high levels, state data show. All told, more than a dozen species contained forever chemicals, and many fish tested came from some of South Carolina’s most popular spots......

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Employees at Gov. Ron DeSantis’ tourism oversight district urged leaders Wednesday not to strip them of their theme park passes and Disney discounts, calling the longtime program a treasured benefit that drew them to work there. Those perks have emerged as the latest front in DeSantis’ battle with Disney. The governor’s hand-picked oversight board is calling the millions of dollars their predecessors spent on Disney perks for government employees working at and near Disney World “unethical” payments funneled to the entertainment giant. But Lt. Pete Simon pleaded Wednes......

Steve Coombs’ lakefront home used to quake when waves crashed along Ogden Dunes’ receding shoreline. “At one point, my wife said, ‘Should we just move out? Should we just go to a hotel?’ I mean, it’s very unnerving,” he recalled. But fleeing the “biggest asset that we own” wasn’t an option for Coombs, who said he enjoyed 60 yards of sand between his home and the lake when he bought it a decade ago. “There are some people who say, ‘Well, you folks built houses where they shouldn’t have been built,’ but that’s not the case,” Coombs said. “Years ago, there was all kinds of shoreline and sand here......

NEW YORK — New Jersey sued the Biden administration Friday to stop New York’s congestion pricing plan, the latest escalation over the effort to charge drivers entering Manhattan. The suit, filed in federal court in New Jersey, claims the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration failed to conduct a “comprehensive” and “complete” environmental review of the Empire State’s plan, which New Jersey claims will have “significant” environmental impacts. “We are suing to block New York’s ill-conceived congestion pricing plan,” N.J. Gov. Phil Murphy said Friday at a press......

MOUTH OF THE KLAMATH RIVER, California — Sheldon SmilingCoyote locked his eyes on the push and pull of the waves in front of him, suddenly slashing the tip of his handheld hook through the water, pulling out a slimy prehistoric fish. Lassoing the lamprey over his head to keep it from squirming off the hook, he ran to a hole he'd dug in the sand and released the fish on a pile of its relatives. SmilingCoyote tallied two dozen in his catch on a late February day. These nutrient-rich fish, a wintertime staple for the Yurok people, lost 400 miles of their historical spawning habitat to four dams t......