Watering Down Water Protections

Now, the Trump administration has said it will take steps to rescind the Endangerment Finding, even though 97 percent of scientists have agreed that by burning fossil fuels, humans are warming the planet, which is leading to extreme weather events. Just weeks ago, the administration said it would remove Biden-era climate rules and regulations that mandate capturing 90 percent of carbon emissions from coal and gas power plants.

Repealing the Endangerment Finding would require a formal proposal that could take months to complete and would likely lead to litigation. The New York Times reports that the proposal doesn’t challenge the argument that fossil fuels are warming the planet, but instead says the EPA went too far under its Clean Air Act authority to make the Endangerment Finding. However, almost 20 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that greenhouse gases were a pollutant under that act and two years later the agency made its Endangerment Finding.

The Trump administration is also eliminating the EPA’s scientific research branch, which has been attacked by industry. This past January, 80 industry groups including oil, refining, and mining associations, asked the Trump administration to stop relying on the EPA’s research branch, according to Inside Climate News.

The Washington Post reports that since January, nearly 4,000 EPA employees in total have left the agency, which started with over 16,000. The research and development office has employed hundreds of chemists and scientists looking into many environmental hazards, including those that affect air and water. 

In 2020, environmental organizations sued the EPA to stop allowing the use of dicamba because, when it’s applied, it can drift and harm neighboring farms, communities, and ecosystems. A federal appeals court found against the EPA, ruling that it had understated the amount of damage from the herbicide and that its use would tear at the social fabric of farming communities. Then, the agency tried again to register dicamba, but another court prohibited its sale.

Now, the EPA plans to require practices that it says will minimize the impact on certain species and the environment, according to its website. The action was praised by the American Soybean Association, according to the Washington Post. A spokesperson for the Center for Food Safety said in a statement that allowing the chemical will decimate not only farmers and residents of rural America but also natural areas like wildlife refuges.

The Guardian reports that the Biden administration had granted $20 million for improving municipal sources and providing clean water to parts of Monterey County south of San Jose. Those areas are composed mostly of Spanish speakers, many of whom pick strawberries. The money would have provided safe drinking water to those who had contaminated wells or were on a public system that was failing.

In clawing back the money, Trump’s EPA said that it was a wasteful diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) program. The grant was one of hundreds the Trump administration sought to end because they were aimed at environmental and climate justice under the Inflation Reduction Act, passed under Biden, according to Inside Climate News. 

At least one pollutant is in more than 80 percent of the domestic wells in the region, and one can contain contaminants that can cause the skin of young children to turn blue by restricting oxygen flow. Some of the pollutants can create toxic fumes in a shower.

The state is stepping in to help around 400 residents of the thousands affected by helping to provide them with safe drinking water.

Researchers from Swansea University and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour say the flightless birds have a secret strategy for finding their way home after swimming far from land, which they do to find food for their chicks. 

The birds, which are just over two feet tall, can’t really get their bearings in rough seas by sticking their heads above the water to look for landmarks, so how did they know which way to go? To find out, the team put GPS devices on penguins from a colony living off Argentina’s coast and discovered that instead of swimming in a straight line back to shore, the penguins often followed curved, S-shaped paths driven by the currents. 

They say the birds seem to sense both the presence and strength of these currents—and to understand tidal cycles in which water moves first in one direction and then reverses. If the penguins were carried too far out by a tide, they seem to know they’ll be brought back in later.

The study found that the birds could stick the landing and arrive within 300 meters of their departure point—some even at night. This remarkable navigation strategy helped the penguins not only to conserve energy but also to increase the amount of food they gathered—simply by taking the long way home. 

The study was published in the journal PLOS Biology.