Word: epa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
President Barack Obama made the first big green move of his Administration by simply getting out of the way. Speaking from the White House, the President on Monday announced that he was directing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reconsider an application by California and 13 other states to set stricter limits on greenhouse-gas emissions from cars and trucks, opening the way for tighter fuel efficiency standards nationwide. Obama is also directing the Department of Transportation to issue guidelines that will ensure the U.S. auto fleet reaches an average fuel economy of 35 miles per gallon (m.p.g...
...putting aside climate change-accelerating carbon dioxide, coal remains a highly polluting source of electricity that has serious impacts on human health, especially among those who live near major plants. Take coal ash, a solid byproduct of burned coal. A draft report last year by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that the ash contains significant levels of carcinogens, and that the concentration of arsenic in ash, should it contaminate drinking water, could increase cancer risks by several hundred times. A 2006 report by the National Research Council had similar findings. "This is hazardous waste, and it should be classified...
...currently classified as hazardous waste. Though the EPA in the past has come close to imposing stricter rules on the treatment of coal ash, the agency has repeatedly backed down in the face of opposition from utilities and the coal industry. As a result, hundreds of coal plants around the U.S. are allowed to dump their leftover sludge in unlined wet ponds like the one used by the Kingston facility. Not only does that raise the risk of accidents like the Kingston spill, but the toxins in the ash could seep into the soil or groundwater, contaminating drinking water supplies...
...human health. And authorities rarely stop the export of potentially hazardous e-waste. The U.S. is the only industrialized country that refused to ratify the 19-year-old Basel Convention, an international treaty designed to regulate the export of hazardous waste to developing nations. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) oversees the export of only one type of e-waste--cathode-ray tubes in old TVs and monitors--and a report last August by the Government Accountability Office dismissed the EPA's enforcement as "lacking...
...same report included a sting investigation that found that 43 U.S. recycling firms were willing to ship broken monitors with cathode-ray tubes to buyers in foreign countries without getting the required permission from the EPA and the receiving nations. Yet some of these companies had been trumpeting their exemplary environmental principles to the public. "At least three of them held Earth Day 2008 electronics-recycling events," the report notes...