By Harriet Blake
Green Right Now

In its waning days, the outgoing Bush administration is promoting oil-shale development in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming by passing midnight-hour regulations that would open public lands to oil-shale exploration, leasing and development. In November, the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management put these regulations into effect to develop an oil shale program that the bureau says could add 800 billion barrels of oil from land in the Western United States.

In response, earlier this week, 11 environmental groups notified the administration and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) of their intent to file federal lawsuits under the Endangered Species Act. The BLM has 60 days to respond. The environmental groups, which include the Sierra Club, the Defenders of Wildlife and the Center for Biological Diversity, among others, want the administration to consider the effects that commercial oil-shale development will have on endangered species.

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By Tom Kessler
Green Right Now

ExxonMobil Corporation’s pipeline subsidiary has agreed to plead guilty and pay more than $6 million in fines and other charges for a 15,000-gallon spill of diesel oil into the Mystic River from ExxonMobil’s oil terminal in Everett, Mass.

The Justice Department announced Tuesday that it had filed charges in federal court that ExxonMobil Pipeline Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of ExxonMobil Corporation, violated the criminal provisions of the Clean Water Act. The plea agreement is subject to court approval.

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By David Louie
KGO-San Francisco

The Bay Area is on notice that it’s exceeding new federal air standards for asthma-aggravating particles.

Federal transportation funding is on the line if the Bay Area doesn’t shape up. The problem is nearly invisible soot in the area that can lead not only to asthma, but also to bronchitis and heart disease.

>> Watch now

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By Barbara KesslerGreen Right Now

What happens when regulation takes a holiday? Financial institutions run amok, industry encroaches on national parks, endangered wildlife is left in the lurch, and apparently, too, the nation’s water is put at risk.

This week, two Congressional leaders, Henry Waxman, (D-Calif.) and James Oberstar (D-Minn.) unveiled the results of their joint investigation into the Clean Water Act, which shows that there has been a recent, dangerous lack of enforcement of the Clean Water Act.

In a letter to President Elect Barack Obama, the two lawmakers explained that since a 2006 Supreme Court decision narrowed the scope of the Clean Water Act, making it more difficult to assemble a case against clean water violators, hundreds of enforcement actions have been stalled or sidelined.
All told, the report discovered that some 500 potential clean water cases have been dropped or put on hold since the court’s ruling in Rapanos v. United States, a case that asked whether certain wetlands that empty into a river in Michigan were subject to federal clean water protections. That decline in enforcement represents roughly a halving of enforcement actions.

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By John DeFore

To judge from the coverage of Earth-friendly measures and green innovations in the news, you might think that ever since An Inconvenient Truth Americans have been moving, however slowly, toward addressing the causes of climate change.

Not so fast. According to the Department of Energy’s independent number-crunching agency the Energy Information Administration, greenhouse gas emissions in the United States actually rose in 2007 to a level 1.4 percent above the previous year. What’s more, that growth was higher than the average annual growth recorded since 1990.

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A group of volunteers took water samples from Gilleland Creek Wednesday. The volunteers sampled six sites along the creek for E.coli bacteria levels.  The creek, which flows through Pflugerville, Manor and Harris Branch before reaching the Colorado River, was placed on a list of creeks with elevated bacteria levels in 2004.
Officials want to study the [...]

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By Tomas Roman
KGO - San Francisco

SAN MARTIN, CA — Thousands of lives could be saved in California by reducing the diesel fumes being pumped out from trucks and buses. New regulations are being considered to cut the cancer risk.

>> Watch now

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From Green Right Now

In one final mad dash of activity, look for the Bush administration to significantly roll back several significant environmental restrictions, according to a report from McClatchy Newspapers. It’s expected that the administration will overturn limits that have kept power plants from encroaching upon national parks, blocked uranium mining near the Grand Canyon and protected ground water from contamination at mountaintop coal mining sites in Appalachia.

McClatchy reports that the Bush administration is expected to have the new rules finalized shortly before Thanksgiving. If the administration can get the rules in place quickly, it would make it more difficult for the Obama administration and the new Democratic Congress to undo the changes.

If the relaxed restrictions occur, the areas od potential impact include:

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By Tom Kessler

More than 30 years after the Clean Air Act set a national goal of cleaning up dirty air in major national parks and wilderness areas, conservationists don’t see progress but they do still see a yellowish haze caused by old power plants and factories with outdated pollution controls.

Last week, the Environmental Defense Fund and National Parks Conservation Association sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to enforce deadlines for the states to adopt Clean Air Act plans. To date, only a handful of states have submitted the required plans to comply with the law. The two groups say power plant and factory emissions continue to obscure views at national parks across the country.

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By Shermakaye Bass

Republican presidential candidate Arizona Sen. John McCain, who has historically opposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), has been uncharacteristically taciturn on the energy issue since he chose pro-drilling Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Green-energy proponents find that ominous.

“With the pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for his running mate, John McCain’s race towards the Bush administration’s failed energy policy is now complete,” Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope said recently. “… No one is closer to the the oil industry than Governor Palin. Along with her support for drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge and off our coasts, she also opposes a windfall profit tax on the richest oil companies. …She has been dismissive of alternative energy, saying ‘alternative-energy solutions are far from imminent and would require more than 10 years to develop’, when in reality it is the oil she would like to drill that would take a decade to bring to market.”

The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) in Washington, D.C., showed a similar concern over Palin.

“Obviously, it’s a very disappointing pick for a (presidential) candidate who at one time made a priority of getting us away from the old fossil fuels of the past – Sen. McCain,” said David Sandretti, the League’s communications director.

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By Harriet Blake

Residents of the Dallas/Fort Worth metro area will again get a chance to trade in their pollution-emitting old clunker for a newer, less polluting car with the help of state money.

The North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) reports that it has about $12 million for the second year of the AirCheckTexas Drive a Clean Machine campaign, which began taking applications in mid-August.

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By Diane Porter

There are already undeniable legacies of the 2008 Olympic Games: eight gold medals hanging around U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps’ neck, for instance, or the otherworldly sprint that helped Jamaican runner Usain Bolt break Michael Johnson’s record in the men’s 100 meter race. There are visual reminders, as well; the Olympic pavilions, Bird’s Nest and Water Cube will remain a part of central Beijing life for decades.

Perhaps the most crucial legacy, however, is yet to be played out. As hotels empty, athletes and television crews return to their home countries, and Beijing goes back to a life more sheltered from the world, the lingering question is this: Will the enormous and by most accounts successful efforts to reduce the city’s pollution during the Olympic games continue in some fashion, improving life for those who live there and reducing the city’s footprint on the global environment?

“Beijing will be built into a livable city,” said Du Shaozhong, deputy head of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau in a press conference the day before closing ceremonies.

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