US EPA sends biofuel-blending volume proposal to White House for review
NEW YORK, May 15 - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has sent a proposed rule to the White House for review on the amount of biofuels that oil refiners must blend into their fuel beginning in 2026.
Under the Renewable Fuel Standard, oil refiners must blend billions of gallons of biofuels into their fuel or buy tradable credits from those that do.
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Reuters
15-05-2025
- Reuters
US EPA sends biofuel-blending volume proposal to White House for review
NEW YORK, May 15 - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has sent a proposed rule to the White House for review on the amount of biofuels that oil refiners must blend into their fuel beginning in 2026. Under the Renewable Fuel Standard, oil refiners must blend billions of gallons of biofuels into their fuel or buy tradable credits from those that do.
The Independent
24-04-2025
- The Independent
North Dakota enacts nation's first law shielding Roundup's maker from some cancer lawsuits
A new first-of-its-kind law enacted in North Dakota could shield agrochemical manufacturer Bayer from lawsuits claiming it failed to warn customers that its popular weedkiller Roundup could cause cancer. Though the immediate effect may be small, given that North Dakota is among the least populated U.S. states, Bayer is hopeful that success there could lead to similar laws being passed around the country. The company faces an onslaught of lawsuits seeking billions of dollars for alleged harm from Roundup. The next state to follow North Dakota could be Georgia, where a similar bill is pending before Gov. Brian Kemp. Bayer, based in Germany, acquired Roundup with the 2018 purchase of St. Louis-based Monsanto. It contends glyphosate, an active ingredient in Roundup, has for decades provided a safe and efficient way to control weeds with less tilling, which helps prevent soil erosion. For crops such as corn, soybeans and cotton, Roundup is designed to work with genetically modified seeds that resist glyphosate's deadly effect. 'Without crop protection tools, America's consumers could face higher costs to provide for their families and put food on the table,' Brian Naber, Bayer's president of crop science for North America, Australia and New Zealand, said in a statement praising the North Dakota law. North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong declined to comment Thursday about the legislation, which he signed without fanfare a day earlier. Bayer has been hit with about 181,000 legal claims alleging that Roundup's key ingredient, glyphosate, causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Though some studies associate glyphosate with cancer, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said it is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans when used as directed. Bayer, which disputes the cancer claims, has teamed with a coalition of agricultural groups to back legislation in at least 11 states this year seeking to undercut the main argument made in the lawsuits. The bills declare that a federally approved label on pesticides is sufficient to satisfy any duty under state law to warn customers. Bayer also has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block the legal claims. Many agricultural industry groups contend glyphosate is an essential tool for farmers. They're concerned that mounting legal costs could lead Bayer to pull the product from the U.S. market. The North Dakota law, which will take effect Aug. 1, 'is a resounding win for farmers' and 'sets the standard for states across America to pass legislation," said Elizabeth Burns-Thompson, executive director of the Modern Ag Alliance, which Bayer helps finance. Though prompted by lawsuits against Bayer, the North Dakota legislation would apply more broadly to other pesticides with federally approved labels. 'Ultimately, this sets a bad precedent,' said Sam Wagner, an agriculture and food organizer for the Dakota Research Council, which opposed the measure. "It will arguably make it extremely tough for anyone to win a case' filed in North Dakota against a pesticide manufacturer. As President Donald Trump 's administration seeks to rollback federal regulations, new state laws that limit court claims could leave some people without any avenue to seek compensation for their injuries and losses, said Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that advocates for an end to toxic pesticides. 'The chemical companies should not be able to hide behind a weak regulatory system," Feldman said. ___ Associated Press reporter Jack Dura contributed to this report.
Reuters
23-04-2025
- Reuters
As Trump's EPA ends 'environmental justice,' minority communities may pay a price
Summary Trump administration withdraws lawsuit against chloroprene-emitting plant Grants are slashed along with EPA's environmental justice and DEI programs New EPA chief says US can protect the environment and economy at the same time LAPLACE, Louisiana, April 23 (Reuters) - From her home on Louisiana's "Cancer Alley," Lydia Gerard looks down at her 8-month-old great-granddaughter and wonders if she will one day suffer the same fate as her many friends and relatives whose lives were cut short by the disease. Gerard lives along the Mississippi River, just a few blocks from a synthetic rubber plant that the administration of former President Joe Biden sued, claiming it posed an imminent public health hazard. Gerard, like more than 90% of people living within 1 mile (1.5 km) of the plant, is Black. "She's not even 8 months yet, and has to be subject to breathing all that," said Gerard, referring to the plant's emissions of chloroprene, which in 2010 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classified as a likely human carcinogen. Seven weeks after President Donald Trump took over in January, the new EPA leadership withdrew the lawsuit against the plant's Japanese owners, Denka Performance Elastomer LLC, siding with company lawyers who disputed the lawsuit's contention that emissions were linked to significant cancer risk. The Trump administration's press release announcing the end of the lawsuit said the dismissal fulfilled the president's Day One executive order to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion, and that it aligned with the EPA's new pledge to "end the use of 'environmental justice' as a tool for advancing ideological priorities." Three environmental researchers and five former EPA officials interviewed by Reuters say the end of the EPA's DEI and environmental justice programs - which seek to ensure a healthy environment for minority groups that often live closest to sources of contamination - will be most felt in Black and Hispanic communities that have long endured the harmful effects of pollution. Those health inequities are the legacy of racial discrimination that was legal from the country's inception until 1965, the type of historical injustice DEI policies were designed to correct. Trump has also rescinded a 1994 executive order by President Bill Clinton that directed every federal agency to develop an agency-wide environmental justice strategy to address adverse health or environmental effects on minority and low-income populations. "It's DEI being treated like a four-letter word," said Linda Birnbaum, a retired toxicologist and former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences who spent 19 years at the EPA. "People who are already most impacted by high pollution are going to be most hurt by the loosening of regulations." Asked to comment on the findings of this story, an EPA spokesperson directed Reuters to a video statement by Trump's new EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, who has outlined a strategy emphasizing deregulation, saying the U.S. can protect the environment and promote economic growth at the same time. "In practice, 'environmental justice' has been used primarily as an excuse to fund left-wing activist groups instead of actually spending those dollars on directly remediating the specific environmental issues that need to get addressed," Zeldin said in the video posted on the EPA website last month. Zeldin has also promoted traditional EPA initiatives such as expediting cleanup of toxic "Superfund" sites and collaborating with states on clean air and water projects. He expressed pride in EPA removal of hazardous material from Los Angeles wildfire sites in only 28 days. On March 12, the new EPA unveiled what it called "the most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history" by rolling back 31 initiatives and eliminating the agency's DEI arm and its 10 regional environmental justice offices, which worked with communities to identify and mitigate local sources of pollution. It said it has saved $2 billion in wasteful spending by canceling hundreds of grants in conjunction with billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. Some business leaders and conservative groups have praised Zeldin's deregulation measures, predicting they would lower the cost of living for all Americans and stimulate energy production. Reuters could not immediately establish if they also explored the environmental impact on minority communities. CANCELED GRANTS Democrats on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works complained in a letter to Zeldin in March that the cancellation of 400 grants in the name of eliminating DEI and environmental justice violated several court orders and terms of EPA contracts. The EPA has yet to respond, a spokesperson for the committee said. At least one non-profit group is suing to reactivate an $11.4 million grant that was frozen for the Union Heights section of North Charleston, South Carolina, one of the first Black communities established after emancipation from slavery. It would have funded energy-efficient affordable homes, weatherized and retrofitted homes, and restored a neighborhood divided by highway construction. A $20 million EPA grant was cut for San Diego's Barrio Logan, a predominantly Latino community with high rates of asthma. A major highway cuts through the neighborhood, which is further affected by pollution from waterfront industry and its associated truck traffic. As a result of the grant cut, a program to provide electric transit buses for Barrio Logan has been canceled and a long-planned community park will be significantly delayed or canceled, as will free electric shuttle service and home upgrades to improve air quality, grant recipients said. "This is a very underserved community," said Tonantzin Sanchez, 42, a board member of the Chicano Park Steering Committee, speaking from the park in the heart of the neighborhood. "We're given the scraps." CANCER ALLEY Cancer Alley, a nickname that dates to the 1980s, is an 85-mile (137-km) stretch from New Orleans to Baton Rouge that is home to some 150 chemical plants and oil refineries. Multiple studies over the years point to elevated health risks, including one in 2022, opens new tab that found nearly every census tract in the area ranks in the top 5% nationally for cancer risk. In 2023, the Biden administration sued Denka, demanding it eliminate the alleged dangers posed by chloroprene emissions. Denka said the lawsuit relied on flawed and outdated data that emerged from studies of mice, while an updated 2021 survey, opens new tab of humans showed no increase in cancer deaths. Denka criticized the EPA's reliance on the data that assumed affected people would have to breathe chloroprene emissions 24 hours a day for 70 years. Moreover, Denka said the plant's emissions were reduced 85% after a $35 million upgrade completed in 2018. "Where is the cancer? I mean, you could just call it Cancer Alley ... but we don't see the increase in cancer," said Jason Hutt, an attorney for Denka and a partner at Bracewell LLP. One peer-reviewed 2021 study, opens new tab, the only one to examine effects in the surrounding community, found elevated levels of cancer and other maladies for people living closest to the plant. Denka dismissed this field survey, which was prompted by concerns from a community advocacy group and led by the progressive University Network for Human Rights, as "flawed and biased" and cited an EPA assessment that called it "uninformative." The 2021 field study found 52 cancer cases among people living within 1.5 km of the plant, a prevalence 44% higher than the national level, which would have produced 36 cases. That translates to an additional 16 people, out of a sample of 777, who contracted cancer within the previous 23 years, said Ruhan Nagra, lead author and a law professor at the University of Utah. Within a second concentric circle extending to a radius from 1.5 to 2.5 km from the plant, cancer rates dropped to virtually even with the national level. Children in the closer zone also had higher rates of headaches and nosebleeds, and adults reported more chest pain, heart palpitations and breathing difficulty than people in the outer zone, the study said. Gerard, 70, lives in the inner zone. She said her husband died of kidney cancer in 2018 at age 67. Her grandmother died of lung cancer. "We had other people," she said, referring to those diagnosed with cancer, which Reuters was unable to independently confirm. "Cousins, and people in the neighborhood, next door, across the street, down the street - a lot of people."
