Environmental News Bits

MARCH 20, 2024

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced amendments to the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) for integrated iron and steel manufacturing facilities. You can find more information about the final rule on EPA’s website. On March 18, 2024, the U.S.

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PA Environment Daily

NOVEMBER 12, 2021

Mon Valley residents in Valley Clean Air Now are urging industry and government to take action to help the community following days of poor air quality since last Friday. VCAN is seeking to raise money to educate and protect the most at-risk residents from harmful air pollution by installing home portable air cleaners.

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MGKF Law

AUGUST 2, 2023

On July 25, 2023, a Third Circuit panel rejected an environmental group’s challenge of federally approved changes to Pennsylvania’s State Implementation Plan (“SIP”), holding that the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) emissions-based analysis did not violate the Clean Air Act (“CAA”).

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PA Environment Daily

FEBRUARY 17, 2023

On February 17, the Clean Air Council and the Environmental Integrity Project sent a letter to the Department of Environmental Protection urging the state to temporarily halt operations at a Shell plastics chemical plant in Beaver County that has repeatedly violated air pollution limits and recently released plumes of black smoke for several hours.

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PA Environment Daily

NOVEMBER 13, 2023

On November 13, the Department of Environmental Protection announced it approved funding for two Oil City recreation projects from penalties collected for Air Pollution Act violations at the Webco Oil City Plant in Venango County.

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Environmental News Bits

SEPTEMBER 22, 2023

A citizens’ group in West Virginia is suing the Environmental Protection Agency, alleging that federal regulators have failed to protect a majority-Black community in the state and residents of parts of Louisiana and Texas from cancer-causing chemicals. Read the full story from ProPublica.

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Environmental News Bits

JANUARY 11, 2022

The Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to add a powerful dry-cleaning solvent, 1-bromopropane, to its list of hazardous air pollutants was long overdue, environmentalists and industry officials say. Read the full story in the Washington Post.

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Greenbuilding Law

JULY 4, 2021

And not to let reality get in the way of government action, the Environmental Protection Agency had recently (but apparently no more) offered guidance on fireworks particle pollution on its website, Most people will have no reaction when exposed to. Wildfires, high winds, volcanoes and fireworks” (.

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PA Environment Daily

OCTOBER 8, 2024

Environmental Protection Agency announced the federal government has settled its final federal Clean Air Act (CAA) claim against Philadelphia Energy Solutions Refining and Marketing, LLC pertaining to the June 21, 2019 fire and explosion at its former South Philadelphia refinery. On October 8, the U.S.

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PA Environment Daily

MAY 2, 2023

On April 25, Earthworks filed a formal environmental complaint with the Department of Environmental Protection with video evidence showing more air pollution violations by gas flares at the Shell Petrochemical Plant in Beaver County. DEP acknowledged the complaint by email and said they were looking into it.

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PA Environment Daily

AUGUST 16, 2022

On August 16, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County Conservation District released a study linking contamination in Pittsburgh’s urban soils to historical air pollution emissions and atmospheric inversions. Urban soils are known to contain various harmful contaminants that pose health risks.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

APRIL 2, 2024

Air pollution from ports comes from many sources: ships, trains, tugboats, cargo equipment, and – quite importantly – the trucks that move cargo containers to and from ports. Because drayage trucks tend to be among the oldest tractor trucks on the road, they tend to pollute at greater rates than other tractors.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

AUGUST 10, 2023

The power sector is the second highest source of climate pollution in the U.S. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently published a proposed rule which would limit carbon pollution from fossil fuel burning power plants, a move which is critically important, statutorily required, and long overdue.

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PA Environment Daily

AUGUST 10, 2022

On August 17, PA Interfaith Power & Light and Jewish Earth Alliance will host an online program on the dangers of particulate air pollution.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

AUGUST 20, 2024

Diesel school buses – which represent the majority of school buses – were not only sending out toxic fumes from the tailpipe, but pollution was getting inside the buses, exposing children to unhealthy air. Electric school buses are the best choice for reducing emissions that pollute our air and harm our health.

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PA Environment Daily

APRIL 12, 2023

On April 3 and 6, the Department of Environmental Protection issued a total of three more Air Quality notices of violation to the Shell Petrochemical Plant in Beaver County. Shell's Air Quality Permit does not allow visible emissions for more than five minutes during any two consecutive hours.

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PA Environment Daily

MAY 18, 2022

On May 17, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Allegheny County Health Department announced the U.S. million penalty and make extensive improvements at its steel production facility in Braddock, Pennsylvania, as part of a settlement covering longstanding air pollution violations. Steel Corporation will pay a $1.5

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Union of Concerned Scientists

OCTOBER 7, 2024

Last month, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued updated final guidelines for how the agency plans to “ meaningfully engage ” the public in health and environmental protection. As an example: suppose EPA issued a “request for public comment” on a draft rule related to toxic air pollutants.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

NOVEMBER 13, 2023

Second, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is in the process of setting regulations for future passenger vehicles—and casting doubt on EV sales is a tactic to push for weaker regulations. Are EV sales actually slowing? So why are we hearing so much about it right now?

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NRDC

APRIL 21, 2023

Environmental Protection Agency has proposed new rules to address air pollution. But experts worry it’s not enough.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

MAY 13, 2024

So of course the American Lung Association ’s yearly report, State of the Air (SOTA), published every year since 2000, is of professional and personal interest. The air quality for this report was calculated using data reviewed by EPA from 2020, 2021, and 2022. We cannot change the topography.

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NRDC

APRIL 24, 2023

Environmental Protection Agency has proposed new rules to address air pollution. But experts worry it’s not enough.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

MARCH 18, 2024

Last week, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized updated regulations for certain facilities that emit ethylene oxide (EtO), a colorless, cancer-causing gas. Under the Clean Air Act, EPA is required to review and revise standards for “hazardous air pollutants” (including ethylene oxide), every eight years.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

MARCH 14, 2023

Late last month, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) asked the public to provide oral comments on a major rule that will determine how much soot pollution you are exposed to. But the oral comments also included several speakers representing the industries producing a substantial amount of this deadly air pollution.

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PA Environment Daily

SEPTEMBER 30, 2024

The Green and Healthy Homes Initiative's Thriving Communities Grant Program , in collaboration with the the US Environmental Protection, to award $40 million in grants to fund eligible projects in historically disadvantaged communities throughout EPA’s Region 3-- Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and 7 (..)

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PA Environment Daily

NOVEMBER 1, 2024

PA Bulletin, page 7270 ) Air Quality Permits -- Mountain Gathering, LLC - Jefferson Compressor Station: DEP invites comments on an Air Quality Plan Approval covering multiple sources of air pollution at the facility located in Jefferson Twp., Received May 10, 2024, approved October 31, 2024. ( Butler County. ( 7, 2024. (

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Union of Concerned Scientists

FEBRUARY 22, 2023

Still though, counties across the state have air that hasn’t met the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) standards for decades, causing a host of public health problems from asthma and cardiovascular issues to premature death. This all makes Maryland one of the deadliest states for diesel particulate pollution.

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PA Environment Daily

JULY 26, 2024

The Department of Environmental Protection published notice in the July 27 PA Bulletin that it is requiring any facility operating under a temporary Title V Air Quality Plan Approval for more than 12 months to submit an application for a Title V Air Quality permit on or before November 25, 2024.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

JULY 9, 2024

To explore a small piece of what is at stake, let’s take a quick look at some of the rules currently under review at the EPA: Air emission reporting requirements If finalized and implemented, this rule will improve the way air pollution emissions are estimated and collected by the EPA.

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PA Environment Daily

JULY 1, 2022

The Department of Environmental Protection is now accepting applications for $5.46 million in funding for Electric Cargo Handling Grants under the Driving PA Forward Program. formal notice ) The deadline for applications is September 23.

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Environment, Law, and History

APRIL 29, 2022

The recently published open-access book, Greening Europe: Environmental Protection in the Long Twentieth Century – A Handbook , edited by Anna-Katharina Wöbse and Patrick Kupper (De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021), has a number of law-related chapters.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

SEPTEMBER 22, 2023

In a major win for community members in South Memphis, Tennessee, a facility emitting a toxic air pollutant— ethylene oxide (EtO)—announced late last month that it will close its doors. We also estimated that EtO emissions contributed to more than 80 percent of the cancer risk attributable to toxic air pollution around the facility.

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PA Environment Daily

JULY 22, 2024

On July 22, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced the award of over $4.3 billion in Climate Pollution Reduction Grants to implement community-driven solutions that tackle the climate crisis, reduce air pollution, advance environmental justice, and accelerate America’s clean energy transition.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

MAY 2, 2023

Beverly Wright, Vernice Miller-Travis , and Peggy Shepard, among others, shows that Black and brown communities are disproportionately exposed to and harmed by pollution. A myriad of studies since have validated these findings across a number of exposures, such as soot air pollution (PM2.5

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Legal Planet

AUGUST 22, 2023

States and local air quality regulators have the legal authority to set particulate matter (PM), ozone, and nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions standards and adopt regulations for these pollutants when they are already in attainment of the national ambient air quality standards ( NAAQS ) set by the U.S.

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Environmental News Bits

FEBRUARY 22, 2024

by Daniel Cohan, Rice University Tens of millions of Americans, including many Texans like me, live in counties that will soon be violating air pollution particle standards for the first time. It’s not that our air is getting dirtier – it’s because the U.S.

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PA Environment Daily

OCTOBER 25, 2024

Many of the notices offer the opportunity for public comments. -- The Department of Environmental Protection published notice in the October 26, 2024 PA Bulletin extending the three Air Quality Permits needed for the temporary operation of the Shell Petrochemical Plant in Beaver County until a full Title V Air Quality Permit can be put in place. (

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