Latest news with #DEQ
Yahoo
20 hours ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Officials monitoring toxic algae blooms at Zion National Park
WASHINGTON COUNTY, Utah () — Officials at Zion National Park are monitoring toxic algae blooms in water bodies throughout the park. Officials say they are observing the Virgin River and streams for toxic Officials are asking visitors to not drink stream water anywhere in the park. Instead, they are asking visitors to carry water or filter directly from a spring. North Fork of the Virgin River and North Creek is under a 'warning' advisory, which means there is potential for short-term effects like rash, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or long-term illness. Popular areas that come under this advisory include The Narrows, Pine Creek, Deep Creak and Emerald Pools. La Verkin Creek, Timber Creek and Hop Valley Creek are under a 'health watch' advisory which indicates evidence that a bloom may exist or become more severe. , during 'Health Watch' and 'Warning' advisory levels, officials recommend against swimming or submerging your head in the water. During 'Danger' advisory levels, recreators should consider avoiding all contact with the water. Over 100 conservation organizations urge US Senate to stop sale of public lands also known as 'blue green algae', are photosynthetic bacteria found in lakes, reservoirs, rivers, streams, and other bodies of water in many places throughout the world. When people are exposed to cyanotoxins, they can experience a range of symptoms that include a mild skin rash, serious illness, or in rare circumstances, death. If you are unsure of how to identify a harmful algal bloom, the showing the different types of blooms. Exposure to harmful algae blooms can lead to skin irritation, gastrointestinal illness, and sometimes death, the DEQ said. If you come into contact with a harmful algal bloom, you should remove yourself from the 'source of exposure' and call the Utah Poison Control Center at (800) 222-1222. Officials monitoring toxic algae blooms at Zion National Park Mark Green to resign from House after final vote on 'big, beautiful bill' Paddleboarders rescued along San Rafael River over the weekend RFK Jr. fires CDC's independent vaccine advisors Hundreds of Marines mobilizing to Los Angeles Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Arkansas legislative committee reviews, advances water quality standards
DEQ Director Bailey Taylor (left) and the division's chief legal counsel, Kesia Morrison, address the Joint Public Health Committee on June 4, 2025. (Ainsley Platt/Arkansas Advocate) The Joint Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee on Wednesday reviewed amendments to Arkansas' surface water quality standards rule, which is part of the state's enforcement of the federal Clean Water Act. As part of the Clean Water Act, the state is required to review — and if necessary, revise — the standards every three years. The rule, currently called Rule 2, was pulled from last month's committee agenda to give lawmakers more time to review the changes, which include the addition of five new health-based water quality standards for benzene, methylbenzene, xylene, toluene and phenol. The rule also amends existing criteria for ammonia and cadmium, which haven't been updated in decades, to bring them in line with revisions made by the Environmental Protection Agency within the last 15 years. Rule 2 standards apply to surface waters — such as rivers, creeks, lakes and wetlands — not to drinking water, which is governed by a separate federal law, the Safe Drinking Water Act. While the Division of Environmental Quality oversees Arkansas' enforcement of the CWA, the Arkansas Department of Health enforces the SDWA in the state. 'It's not a blanket effluent limit,' DEQ Director Bailey Taylor told committee members. The standards are for the 'ambient' water quality, and permit limits for facilities like wastewater treatment plants and industrial plants that discharge waste into surface waters are backcalculated from the standards, she said. Under the revised rule, the 'primary contact season,' the period during which people are most likely to be recreating in the water by swimming, fishing or boating, would be extended by two months so it would now fall from April to October. Pressed by Greenwood Republican Rep. Lee Johnson for an explanation for the change, Taylor said standards during the primary contact season are tighter for some measures than outside of it to account for greater human contact with the water. Taylor singled out bacteria standards as one example. She said the change was made to account for water recreation that's been happening in April and October. Johnson said it was 'interesting' that the division was moving to make the change now, and asked if DEQ believed Arkansans were swimming more in 2025 than they were in 2020 or in the 1980s. 'I just wonder why we're deciding now to change the recreational season when it's been in effect for a long time,' Johnson said. Taylor said the division was trying to account for recreation that was happening outside of the traditional May to September season. Johnson countered by asking if DEQ had collected any data showing that more people were engaging in water recreation during the extended months. Taylor said the decision was based on 'anecdotal stakeholder engagement.' The rule will next be considered by the Arkansas Legislative Council's Administrative Rules Subcommittee. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Senate Agriculture committee considers Wilson for DEQ secretary
North Carolina Legislative Building (Photo: Galen Bacharier/NC Newsline) The North Carolina Senate Agriculture, Energy, and Environment Committee reviewed Reid Wilson's appointment as secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality during its hearing on Wednesday. The hearing was billed as 'discussion only.' Lawmakers will take a vote at their next meeting. Wilson formerly served as secretary for the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources from 2021 to 2024. Before that, he was DNCR's chief deputy secretary from 2017 to 2020. Following his appointment earlier this year by Gov. Josh Stein, he's been serving as DEQ secretary on an interim basis while awaiting confirmation. At the national level, Congress has been working on a federal budget that would include cuts to some of the areas under DEQ's purview. Sen. Jay Chaudhuri (D-Wake) asked what the cuts would mean to DEQ and how Wilson would respond. About half of DEQ's budget comes from federal sources, Wilson said. In particular, the proposed budget would remove $31.5 million from operating grants. 'We would have to let a whole lot of people go, and the consequences of that are that our permitting processes would take longer, our responses to spills and other problems would take longer, our responsiveness and assistance to businesses would not be as strong,' Wilson said. 'Everything we do, we would do less well.' Chaudhuri jokingly followed up with, 'Do you still want this job?' Wilson answered in the affirmative. Sen. Jim Burgin (R-Harnett, Lee, Sampson) asked about water quality, specifically microplastics. Wilson said DEQ staff are looking into the issue, and the department also collaborates with others like university researchers to learn more. 'Water quality is a huge priority,' he said. 'It is a significant health concern, so we're gonna' be involved with that.' After Hurricane Helene swept through the western portion of the state, DEQ worked closely with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to provide mobile programs testing the quality of drinking wells. Wilson said the agencies found out how polluted the drinking water was, how to get it cleaned, and tested it to make sure it was healthy before people drank it again. 'For folks with a well in the yard or on their property, they're more vulnerable, so we want to make sure we are doing as much testing,' Wilson said. 'We have a [fund] which helps pay for additional private well tests around the state when we determine that that is needed.' Lawmakers also voted to approve two pieces of legislation at Tuesday's meeting, which they discussed yesterday: House Bill 247 ('8-1-1 Amendments') and House Bill 694 ('Study Water/Wastewater Regionalization'). The former heads to the Senate Judiciary Committee and the latter proceeds to the Senate Rules Committee.
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Oregon should bypass California's stalled Clean Trucks program and steer its own into the fast lane
Oregon could bypass California on trucks rules, commentators write. (Getty Images) California has set ambitious goals for EV truck adoption with its Advanced Clean Trucks rule, which imposes steeply escalating statewide EV sales quotas on truck manufacturers over the next decade. However, the state only generates about 2% of global transportation-related GHG emissions, so its initiative will not have a significant climate impact unless ACT motivates national- and global-scale action on truck electrification. ACT has so far been adopted by only 10 states, of which six currently have legislation pending to delay ACT implementation. This includes Oregon's HB3119, which provides that 'the Department of Environmental Quality may not implement or enforce the Advanced Clean Trucks regulations … before January 1, 2027.' Oregon cannot simply develop its own vehicle air pollution restrictions because Section 177 of the federal Clean Air Act prohibits states from adopting such emission standards that differ from federal standards unless they are 'identical to the California standards.' One factor stymieing ACT implementation in Oregon is the lack of high-power EV charging infrastructure, without which it is infeasible for Oregon to keep up with California's fast-track ACT timeline, especially for heavy-duty, long-haul trucks. ACT provides a variety of flexible compliance mechanisms such as credit trading and banking to ease the regulatory burden, but there is no guarantee these would suffice to meet the ACT's required schedule of EV trucking sales quotas. And delaying ACT implementation likely would run afoul of Section 177's identicality requirement. In response to ACT-induced disruption in the Oregon market for large trucks, Gov. Tina Kotek recently directed DEQ to 'quickly develop a solution for Class 7 and 8 trucks that considers the current circumstances while still maintaining the integrity of the ACT program for all other classes.' One option being considered is 'credit pooling' (interstate trading of compliance credits). Credit pooling would, in effect, allow California and Oregon to comply with different ACT standards: Oregon would effectively buy the right to relax its ACT standard by paying California to attain a more stringent standard. It's not clear that this scheme would be Section 177-compliant but, in any case, we think it would not make sense to require Oregon's trucking industry to, in effect, pay a penalty fee to California for not complying with an infeasible, California-imposed regulatory standard. Trading revenue would be better spent in-state to support Oregon's own trucking industry rather than subsidizing California's industry. The Section-177 identicality requirement ensures that a manufacturer selling standard-compliant vehicles in one state can sell the exact same vehicles in other states. But requiring identical sales percentages between states only makes the regulations more burdensome for manufacturers, not less so. The EPA could adopt a sensible Section-177 interpretive framework that allows states to develop their own ACT implementation timelines according to their unique circumstances (a 'timeline' would not itself be construed as a 'standard'), but the Trump EPA will not likely be amenable to such accommodation. However, Oregon could reform its ACT regulations to circumvent federal preemption in a way that would be more economically efficient and impactful than California's regulation even without the encumbrance of Section 177. Rather than employing an inflexible standard to drive unpredictable and volatile market trading prices, the regulation could employ stable pricing incentives (EV subsidies financed by fees on internal-combustion vehicles) to drive EV adoption at a scale and pace that the market can tolerate. Price stability would be conducive to long-term investment in truck electrification, and program ambition would not need to be restrained by predictive uncertainty. This policy approach is exemplified by Germany's Feed-in Tariff (FIT) program in the early 2000s, which triggered an explosive expansion of the global solar power market led by Germany in the 2004-2014 time frame. The program did not impose mandatory sales targets and timelines on solar manufacturers; it just offered them a guaranteed price (initially 45¢/kWh) for renewable power. (A price incentive is not a 'standard' and would hence not be governed by Section 177.) A financial incentive program could constitute one element of a targeted industrial policy (including charging infrastructure, grid capacity, battery technology, etc.) that leverages the investment potential of truck electrification to gain the support of the trucking industry and establish a market-based incentive framework for nationwide truck electrification. Oregon should take the lead in developing a policy foundation for truck electrification that would entirely circumvent federal preemption and could extend to national and global scope. Indeed, there would be no other option to federal regulation if current Congressional efforts to axe California's clean truck rules succeed. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Business Mayor
24-05-2025
- Automotive
- Business Mayor
Oregon joins new electric vehicle coalition after Congress revokes California's stricter clean emission rules
Oregon has joined 11 other states to continue the transition to electric cars and trucks, a day after the U.S. Senate revoked a waiver that allows California to set stronger emission rules that Oregon also relies on for its policies. The federal Clean Air Act prohibits states like Oregon from creating their own, more stringent vehicle emission standards. But it allows powerful and populous California to seek waivers that allow it to develop and implement its own emission rules — and other states can then adopt them. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has long relied on California's waivers to set clean car and truck rules, seeking to gradually transition gasoline and diesel-powered cars and trucks in the state to electric ones. These include regulations to transition all new passenger cars, SUVs and light-duty pickup trucks sold in Oregon to battery electric or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles by 2035 and to require medium and heavy-duty truck manufacturers in the state to sell a rising percentage of new plug-in hybrid or zero-emission trucks as part of their overall sales. The Senate's vote came as U.S. House Republicans voted to gut clean energy tax credits, including the federal tax credit for electric vehicles. If that bill becomes law, electric cars – already more expensive than fossil fuel-powered cars – would become even less affordable. The Affordable Clean Cars Coalition — led by the U.S. Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of two dozen governors committed to advancing state-led climate action — will work to sustain and develop state programs to help residents buy affordable electric cars and expand charging and fueling infrastructure, among other agenda items. California also announced it plans to sue the federal government over the Senate's decision to revoke the clean air waiver. Leah Feldon, director of Oregon's DEQ, said she was disappointed in the Senate's decision. The DEQ declined to comment on whether it would join California's lawsuit. 'This action puts decades of progress at risk and makes it harder for states like Oregon to tackle climate change and protect our air and our communities,' Feldon said in a statement. It's unclear how Oregon plans to make the transition to electric cars and trucks easier. Gov. Tina Kotek's office did not immediately return calls for comment. The state's popular rebate program for EV's has just reopened, but is likely — as in previous years — to quickly run out of funding. And in recent days, Oregon chose to delay the enforcement of a clean truck rule aimed at phasing out dirty diesel trucks. Greenhouse gas emissions from transportation contribute 35% of Oregon's total emissions — the largest sector of emissions across the state. Tailpipe pollution also contributes to myriad health problems, including asthma, heart disease and premature death, especially in low-income communities located near highways and industrial areas.
