THREAD
Trump administration strips pollution safeguards from drinking water sources😡
Rollback of clean water protections for streams and wetlands😡
Obama-era rules have long been targeted by Trump😡
The Trump administration has completed its rollback of environmental protections for streams, wetland and other bodies of water, a process that has stripped pollution safeguards from drinking water sources used by around a third of all Americans.
Clean water protections strengthened under the Obama administration have long been targeted by Donald Trump, who has called it a “very destructive and horrible rule”. #climateaction@WeDontHaveTime#fornature
Trump has been backed by ranchers, farming groups and golf course operators, who claim the so-called “Water of the United States” (Wotus) rule impinged upon landowners’ rights.#climateaction@WeDontHaveTime#fornature
The Obama-era water rule was repealed last year and on Thursday the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a weakened replacement that removes millions
of miles of streams and around half of America’s wetlands from #climateaction@WeDontHaveTime#fornature
The move has dismayed former EPA staff who worked on the expansion of protections to ephemeral streams that supply drinking water to an estimated 117 million people in the US.
“The new rule is scientifically indefensible and socially unjust,” said Betsy Southerland, who was scientific director of the EPA’s office of water for three decades before departing in 2017. #climateaction@WeDontHaveTime#fornature
“This EPA’s Wotus definition, which will limit federal water quality protections to a very small set of waters and wetlands, will result in the impairment of drinking water, fisheries and flood control for communities throughout the US.” #climateaction@WeDontHaveTime#fornature
The Trump administration had promised the demise of the water rule to industry groups that lobbied against what they saw as costly federal overreach. “This new rule will provide much-needed clarity and regulatory certainty for companies that
site and build infrastructure that delivers essential energy to America’s communities,” said Karen Harbert, chief executive of the American Gas Association.#climateaction
But opponents of the repeal point out that the replacement regime not only scraps the Obama-era rule
but also reverses protections reaching back to the 1972 Clean Water Act, such as requirements that landowners seek permits that the EPA considers on a case-by-case basis. #climateaction
The new, far narrower, definition of water protections will maintain safeguards for major rivers such as the Mississippi River and the Colorado River but not short-lived streams that feed into them after it rains or snow melts. #climateaction@WeDontHaveTime#fornature
About 60% of streams in the US are dry for part of the year but then connect to large rivers following rainfall. Wetlands not situated next to large rivers will also be excluded from protections.#climateaction@WeDontHaveTime#fornature
People living in the western US are set to be particularly affected by the new rule, with ephemeral streams making up around 89% of Nevada’s stream miles and 94% of Arizona’s, for example. #climateaction@WeDontHaveTime#fornature
Environmental groups warn that as many as 75 endangered species😔😡 dependent on temporary streams will be imperiled by the move, while any degradation of wetlands would also harm wildlife and worsen the climate crisis by lessening their ability to store carbon. #climateaction
Trump told the World Economic Forum at Davos that the US has “among the cleanest air and drinking water on Earth”, despite widespread contamination with chemicals such as PFAS and neurotoxins such as lead in Americans’ water.
The Trump administration has dismantled about 100 environmental rules while in office, including the reversal of a ban on mining companies dumping their waste into rivers. #climateaction@WeDontHaveTime#fornature
“The ‘dirty water rule’ will put clean drinking water for tens of millions of people at risk, especially the low-income communities and communities of color already disproportionately impacted by polluted water,”#climateaction@WeDontHaveTime#fornature
Clean, safe drinking water is a basic human right and we should be doing more to protect our water resources, not less🌱#climateaction@WeDontHaveTime#fornature
The goal of the Trump administration rollback is to reduce the obligations of farmers, ranchers and other landowners in their requirements to protect water quality in the US🌱#climateaction@WeDontHaveTime#fornature
This will lower regulatory costs to that group of Americans. But there are costs to the environment that will be borne by other Americans🌱#climateaction@WeDontHaveTime#fornature
These include, the loss of healthy drinking water, algal blooms that sicken swimmers and pets and reduced value of properties near waterways. #climateaction@WeDontHaveTime#fornature
The life of a wolf is a rough one – in a pack or solo – and there are many reasons a young, healthy wolf could die. She could have been kicked in the head by a deer while hunting. She could have choked on the liver of a raccoon, which happened to a wolf in Yellowstone.
She could have been hit by a car. Or she could have been killed by a poacher.🤬
Gray wolves are covered under both the Federal Endangered Species Act, as well as the California Endangered Species Act
A young female gray wolf bid goodbye to her family, left home and crossed the state line into California to find love.
The scaly-foot snail is one of Earth’s strangest creatures. It lives more than 2,300 metres below the surface of the sea on a trio of deep-sea hydro thermal vents at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. #climateaction@WeDontHaveTime#ForNature
Here it has evolved a remarkable form of protection against the crushing, grim conditions found at these Stygian depths. It grows a shell made of iron. Discovered in 1999, the multi-layered iron sulphide armour of Chrysomallon squamiferum #climateaction@WeDontHaveTime#ForNature
– which measures a few centimetres in diameter – has already attracted the interest of the US defense department, whose scientists are now studying its genes in a bid to discover how it grows its own metal armour. @WeDontHaveTime#ForNature
Apparently #Covid19 can live on paper for up to 36 hours, maybe somebody could invent a UV lamps to irradiate letterboxes as the envelope is posted.
In the US there are trials going on of robotic UV lamps which can kill all bacteria in a hotel room after each guest
leaves, they would probably be good idea too for care homes.
Corona just illustrates, what had been visible to the naked eye for much longer. The "rich" west measure the worth of a human life (or rest life) for money for some time now.
From a purely what we could do standpoint, some million of people could be still alive, if we would put
"They have exposed our societies to diseases for which no immunity has yet developed."
Errr... we need to have encountered a disease in order to have had the opportunity to develop immunity to it.
So this does not make the emergence of new pathogens by this route any different to the emergence by any other route even though it may well be accelerating the rate of emergence of new pathogens
I also have a problem with the idea that simply coming into contact with more species is really that significant except perhaps because we have been living in man made protected zones with very little contact with wildlife for some time.
The Con Don and his democracy-destroying brethren in OUR United States of America
is trying to squelch absentee voting because too many people might vote against him. He is threatening to hold funding for OUR U.S. postal service to prevent it.
An absentee ballot doesn't have to be mailed. Voters can drop the completed ballot in a secure, drive in ballot
receptacle at their county headquarters and other designated places in their area.
Archaeologists discover remains of vast Mayan palace in Mexico
Ancient building found 100 miles west of Cancùn estimated to be more than 1,000 years old
Archaeologists in Mexico have uncovered the remains of a vast Mayan palace over 1,000 years old in an ancient city about 100 miles west of the tourist hotspot of Cancún.
It is part of a larger complex that also includes two residential rooms, an altar and a large round oven. Archaeologists have also uncovered remains from a burial site, and hope forensic analysis of the bones could provide more clues about Kulubá’s Mayan inhabitants.