BREAKING: @EPA has taken major steps to protect fenceline communities by proposing long-overdue updates to two rules to reduce cancer-causing air pollution from petrochemical facilities.
This is a win for every community known as “cancer alley” due to these pollutants. 🧵
Petrochemicals are a lifeline for the fossil fuel industry. EPA must enact stronger air rules and stop the expansion of these facilities that emit cancer-causing pollution. 🛢️ 🙅ejus.tc/40Jn4G4
Fenceline monitoring is critical to ensuring polluters are accountable for the dangerous air toxins they emit near communities.
EPA’s new proposed air rules are just one step toward protecting fenceline communities like St. James Parish, also known as Cancer Alley in Louisiana. ejus.tc/3Kn4M8l
The fight to protect fenceline communities doesn’t stop at EPA’s new proposed air rules. We must demand the agency finalize the strongest protections possible for communities! Thank you to activists like @risestjames for standing up & demanding change. ejus.tc/3zAbsJU
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Operated for nearly 3 decades as open-pit, cyanide heap-leach mines, the Zortman-Landusky mines plagued the surrounding area with cyanide & acid mine drainage, contaminating surface & ground waters, including those flowing onto the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation. That's not all.
In 1998, the mine operators declared bankruptcy and left behind a drastically underfunded clean-up effort, which has largely been shouldered by taxpayers. The acid mine drainage will perpetually pollute the area and the water must be continually treated, but that's not enough.
Even with ongoing treatment, a plume of contaminants continues to creep onto Reservation lands, threatening key cultural sites & the Fort Belknap Tribes’ ceremonial and powwow grounds. As a result, the Tribes took action with environmental groups, even filing litigation.
In light of Sackett v. EPA, as much as 118 million acres of formerly protected wetlands are now threatened. So why are wetlands so important? 🧵
While industry still views them as “wasteland” waiting to be filled in, destroyed, and developed for profit, wetlands are essential ecosystems that protect us from flooding, provide food, and are critical to wildlife. In fact, wetlands are often called "biological supermarkets."
The combo of nutrients, shallow water, & primary productivity strikes gold in wetlands, making them ideal to nurture organisms at the base of the food web. Not only that, but they're used for food, water, and shelter by birds and mammals during migration and breeding seasons.
BREAKING: In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court severely weakened the Clean Water Act in Sackett v. EPA. This is a catastrophic loss for water protections across the country and a win for big polluters, putting our communities, public health, and local ecosystems in danger.
The Justices on this conservative Court narrowed the definition of “waters of the United States”, creating confusion for regulators & communities by undercutting the legal foundation of @EPA's new science based "WOTUS" regulation, as it applies to wetlands.earthjustice.org/press/2023/sup…
BREAKING: We're going to court. The Biden Administration approved the Willow oil project without adequately assessing its climate impacts. It could've properly weighed its options to limit the impact. It could've said no. It didn't. And now, we are filing a lawsuit to stop it.
Together with @NRDC, we filed a legal challenge claiming the Biden administration has failed to consider alternatives that could have meaningfully reduced greenhouse gas emissions and on-the-ground effects of the Willow Project.
The lawsuit also takes the administration to task for failing to assess Willow’s full climate impact, by neglecting to consider the additional climate pollution of future development that can only happen once Willow project infrastructure is in place.
BREAKING: Today @EPA finally released the nation’s first drinking water standards for six highly dangerous PFAS chemicals. About 200 million people drink water contaminated by these “forever chemicals,” which stay in the environment and our bodies for decades.
Communities poisoned by PFAS contamination have been urging @EPA to pass these laws and prevent residents from further suffering caused by the toxic chemicals which include health harms like reproductive harm, immune deficiencies, and cancer.
These long-overdue drinking water standards are just one of the [LB1] actions EPA must take to protect people from pervasive exposure to PFAS, a class of more than 9,000 toxic chemicals. Check out our tracker to see how @EPA is doing: ejus.tc/3Lb9Zkr
BREAKING: The Biden Administration has just approved ConocoPhillips's Willow oil project, ignoring pleas from millions who called for the Alaska oil-drilling plan to be halted due to concerns about climate change. 🧵
.@Interior’s record of decision ignores the project's dire climate and biodiversity impacts. It approves 3 drilling pads which will produce 92% of the oil ConocoPhillips initially sought to develop, amounting to more than 260 million metric tons of greenhouse gases.
This project is also intended to be a stepping-stone for oil development. ConocoPhillips has described Willow as the “next great Alaska hub,” saying it had identified up to 3 billion barrels of nearby prospects that could be accessed if the Willow infrastructure were in place.