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| The Bush EPA this evening announced a flawed new national air quality standard for ozone “smog” and called for sweeping changes to the Clean Air Act that threaten to fundamentally weaken one of the nation’s most important environmental laws, according to Environment California. | |
| Washington, D.C. – A federal appeals court today ruled that the Bush Administration’s rules allowing coal-and oil-fired power plants to avoid making deep mandatory cuts in mercury and other toxic air pollution violates the law. The court’s decision invalidates the so-called “Clean Air Mercury Rule,” which would have allowed dangerously high levels of mercury air pollution to persist under a weak cap-and-trade program for utilities that would not have taken full effect until well beyond 2020. EPA’s rule further would have allowed coal- and oil-fired power plants also to avoid controls on any of other air toxics they emit, which include arsenic, lead, hydrogen chloride, and nickel. | |
| Yesterday five major car companies sued the State of California for adopting the first in the nation law to restrict global warming pollution from cars. The lawsuit is the automobile industry's latest attempt to prevent the implementation of the law passed by the California Legislature in 2002. | |
| Under the Bush administration's "Clear Skies" bill, scheduled for a vote tomorrow in a key Senate committee, as many as 782 industrial facilities in California would not have to comply with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules that require steep reductions in their emissions of dozens of pollutants that cause cancer, birth defects, and other serious health problems, according to Lethal Loophole, a new report released today by Environment California. | |
| The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee today cast the first ever vote on the Bush administration's "Clear Skies" bill (S.131), rejecting the measure on a 9-9 tie. | |
| Today the California Air Resources Board adopted the strongest standards for ozone, or urban smog, in the country. Achieving the new standard of 0.07 ppm, averaged over eight hours, will prevent more than 3.7 million school absences due to smog-related illness and save hundreds of lives. | |
| San Bernardino ranked 1st nationwide for the worst fine particle, or “soot,” pollution among large metro areas in 2004, according to a new report released today by Environment California, a statewide environmental advocacy group. | |
| At an EPA hearing in San Francisco today, residents and public health advocates sharply criticized the Bush administration's proposed air quality standards for fine particle, or "soot," pollution and called on the administration to substantially strengthen the fine particle standards. The administration issued the proposal in December, disregarding the recommendations of its own scientific advisers and EPA staff scientists. | |
| Environment California today commended the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, for resisting pressure from special interests to erode the ability of states to protect their citizens from air pollution and global warming. In a report released today, the NRC affirmed the vital role that states play in reducing pollution from cars, diesel trucks, and other moving sources. | |
| The Environmental Protection Agency today finalized new national air quality standards for particle “soot” pollution that ignore the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that the standards need to be substantially strengthened to protect Americans from this deadly air pollutant. National air quality standards are the backbone of the Clean Air Act and thus efforts to reduce air pollution nationwide. | |
| A federal appeals court today stuck down a highly controversial air pollution rule that was a centerpiece of the Bush administration’s environmental agenda. The 2003 rule gutted key provisions of the Clean Air Act, known as New Source Review, that require power plants and other industrial sources of air pollution to install modern pollution controls when they make physical or operational changes that increase emissions. | |
| The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today proposed new standards to reduce diesel pollution from the nation’s trains, boats, and ships, which are large, long-overlooked pollution sources. Diesel pollution contributes to lung cancer, heat attacks, asthma attacks, strokes, and premature deaths. | |
| At a public hearing in Los Angeles today, scientists, public health professionals, local residents, environmental advocates and elected officials all called on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to strengthen its proposed air quality standards for deadly ozone smog pollution. | |
| Fresno is poised to face a tougher fight against smog pollution, according to a new report, Hot and Smoggy: The Ozone-Hot Weather Connection in Eight California Cities, released today by Environment California Research & Policy Center. | |
