EPA

The on-again, off-again Pebble Mine venture in Alaska is facing a day of reckoning, with the future of the nation’s largest salmon run, which can exceed 40 million fish, hanging in the balance, according to FERN’s latest story by Paul Greenberg, in collaboration with Mother Jones. Both sport and commercial fishermen depend on the Bristol Bay fishery, valued at more than half a billion dollars, and for years they have been fighting a proposed mining venture that would develop a deposit containing billions of tons of copper, gold, and molybdenum in the same headwaters where all those salmon get their start.

The Renewable Fuel Standard would be set at 19.88 billion gallons in 2019, up 3 percent from this year and all for cleaner-burning "advanced" biofuels, under a proposal unveiled by Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday.

A coalition of ethanol and farm groups sued the EPA in federal appeals court on Tuesday over its system of granting "hardship" waivers from the Renewable Fuel Standard to small-volume refineries. The lawsuit challenges three exemptions "made under unusually clandestine proceedings" to refineries in Oklahoma, Wyoming and Utah.

The Environmental Protection Agency barred reporters from a national summit on water contaminants, which was convened Tuesday by EPA administrator Scott Pruitt. Reporters from the AP, CNN, and E&E News were blocked from attending the meeting, and one reporter was shoved from the building.

President Trump "promised to support home-grown biofuels and Administrator (Scott) Pruitt is breaking that promise," said Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley on Monday following reports the EPA issued a "hardship" waiver exempting an oil refinery owned by billionaire Carl Icahn from complying with the ethanol mandate. The biofuels group Growth Energy said the waiver was "just one more example" of EPA "giving refineries everything they want."

In a letter to President Trump, five Corn Belt senators said on Monday the EPA "is currently undermining your commitment of a 15 billion-gallon RFS." The Republican senators sent the letter on the same day White House officials were scheduled to discuss possible revisions to the ethanol mandate, which requires oil refiners to blend in the corn-based fuel.

Andeavor, one of the largest U.S. oil refining companies, reported $1.5 billion in net profits last year. Yet the EPA gave it a waiver from having to comply with the Renewable Fuel Standard, reported Reuters.

The Trump administration improperly and repeatedly delayed the pesticide applicator rule issued by the EPA in early 2017, decided U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White, who declared the rule to be in effect.

In a step that overrides an appellate court decision, Congress included a provision in the $1.3 trillion government funding bill that exempts an estimated 200,000 large livestock farms from reporting emissions coming from manure and other animal waste. Hog, cattle and poultry groups said the exemption means farms won't be treated like Superfund sites that create dangerous air pollution.

Last October, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt said the agency would investigate whether it has the authority to allow year-round sales of E15, a goal of the ethanol industry. It's still doing the research five months later and may find the answer soon, Pruitt told AgDay TV, when asked about possible changes to the Renewable Fuel Standard.

For nearly a year, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt pushed for a public debate on the science of climate change that would be structured like the "red team-blue team" exercises of the military. White House chief of staff John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, squashed the idea as ill-conceived, reports the New York Times.

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to close its National Center for Environmental Research, a lauded program that has funded research into the effects of environmental chemicals on children’s health. Advocates fear that the reorganization could result in defunding of essential research programs.

The Environmental Protection Network, a group of former employees of the Environmental Protection Agency, released a report slamming President Trump’s 2019 budget. The group says that if the budget is approved by Congress, its effects on the EPA “would be more punishing than for any other federal agency.”

Syngenta announced this week that it will pay $550,000 in fines after the Environmental Protection Agency found that it misused the pesticide chlorpyrifos at a test field in Hawaii. The fine is dramatically lower than the nearly $5 million initially sought by the Obama administration. Scott Pruitt, Trump's EPA chief, overruled a recommendation by agency scientists to ban chlorpyrifos for agricultural use.

Two Democratic lawmakers unveiled legislation to suspend the use of neonicotinoid insecticides, with the goal of reducing high mortality rates of honeybees and other pollinating species.

A new regulation will restore so-called application exclusion zones intended to protect farmworkers and other people from exposure to pesticides as they are being applied, said the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday. The exclusion zones were created as part of a 2015 agricultural worker protection standard and were reduced in size in 2020 during the Trump era.