The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced final rules for the disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas industry, one of the largest sources of methane, a potent global warming pollutant.

According to the EPA, the rule will cover 85 percent of the greenhouse gas discharges from the oil and gas sector and will require reporting by about 2,800 facilities.

The EPA’s action requires these sectors to annually report methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions from flaring, equipment leaks, offshore petroleum and natural gas production, onshore production facilities, liquefied natural gas imports and exports, and onshore transmission and distribution. The EPA also finalized rules requiring inventory and disclosure for large sources of fluorinated gases.

Coal ash spill

Hurry up! Friday is the deadline for submitting comments to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on its proposal to regulate coal ash, including one option that would keep things as they are (not good).

And if the December 2008 TVA coal ash disaster isn’t reason enough to regulate this substance as a hazardous waste, here are some stories that may change your mind.
 

Amargosa toad

What the heck are we doing to our animals? I read a startling piece on birds afflicted with “long-billed syndrome” – abnormally long beaks which inhibits preening and eating in some dire cases. Many of these birds end up starving and infested with feather lice. These incidents are appearing in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. The cause: undetermined. But I can’t help but suspect there’s a chemical, human-induced reason behind all of this.

It saddens me that these birds are growing abnormally long beaks, that the cute, furry American pika is slowly heating to death, that marbled murrelets have lost their habitats and their lives because of logging, that sea turtles are being caught and killed in nets, and that countless other animals are being decimated – all due to man’s continual and perpetual mishaps.

But here’s a story to bring some cheer: after the Amargosa toad of Beatty, Nev. was close to extinction years ago, locals banded together to revive the toad’s numbers, NPR reports.  

Martin Lakes, Texas coal-fired power plant

Oh, Texas. Why, oh why does Texas have to be the only state in the union refusing to comply with federal greenhouse gas regulations, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – following the law! – starts to regulate stationary sources of greenhouse gas pollution in January?

Given the fact that Texas is the nation’s largest emitter of greenhouse gas pollution from power plants, it’s really unfair to the rest of the country that the Lone Star remains so ... lone.

Last week, voters in California overwhelmingly rejected Proposition 23, a challenge to that state’s global warming law. And while California serves as the optimal role model for the rest of the country, Texas is the big-bad polluter vowing to undermine all federal regulations of clean air – while breaking the law to make its point. Texas has 21 operating coal plants and seven proposed coal plants (most in the nation), which will further threaten air quality for Texans. And it's a problem for residents in downwind and neighboring states.

"Shrek" glasses were recalled because of cadmium

I wish I could just issue myself a ticket instead of dealing with police or worse - those pesky speed cameras.

That’s essentially what the Consumer Product Safety Commission is allowing jewelry manufacturers to do regarding levels of cadmium in their products. But I’m not talking about a measly speeding ticket here, I’m talking about exposing children to unsafe levels of this toxic metal. Cadmium is one of the  world’s most deadly chemicals and can cause cancer and neurological harm in humans. A child’s growing body is even more vulnerable to it’s deadly side effects.

Only this past spring CPSC acted aggressively after it was discovered that some Chinese jewelry manufacturers were using cadmium in their products – which was recently banned.

Red sludge in Hungary

<Update 10/14: According to news reports, the red sludge tide now has reached the Danube River.>

On Tuesday, approximately 185 million gallons of red sludge burst from a reservoir at an aluminum plant about 100 miles southwest of Budapest, Hungary. The sludge, a hazardous-waste byproduct of aluminum manufacturing killed at least four people and severely injured some 120 more. Several are missing.

One Hungarian official called this an “environmental disaster.” Yet, according to industry representatives in the U.S. and Europe, red sludge isn't toxic.

If this story sounds vaguely familiar, it's because on Dec. 22, 2008, more than 1 billion gallons of toxic coal ash sludge burst through the dam of a waste pond at the Tennesee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant in Harriman, Tennessee. There has been fierce debate since then over the need to regulate coal ash -- but the EPA has yet to decide whether to regulate it as toxic waste.

Not toxic? Isn't that the assurance given about red sludge?

So, imagine breathing in a substance that not only exacerbates but causes known breathing problems such as asthma. You'd want the Environmental Protection Agency to do something about it, right?

Well, they did: in June the EPA reined in emissions of sulfur dioxide—a nasty chemical—from power plants and other sources. These new standards are expected to prevent thousands of asthma attacks and hundreds of emergency room visits every year.

Great, right? Industry doesn't think so.

I spent a few days in Houston attending an (insert irony here) air pollution hearing in June. After only a few days, I felt run-down, my eyes burning and my breathing labored. I believe my symptoms were caused by breathing in Houston's heavily polluted air.

That's not the only area of Texas exposed to dirty air. Current and proposed power plants will produce nearly one million tons of criteria pollutants annually. With its 21 operating coal plants and seven proposed coal plants, Texas has the largest number of any state in the nation. Which is why it's no surprise that states outside of Texas are being contaminated, too.

We filed suit on behalf of Sierra Club to urge the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to intervene, and establish and reinforce federal air standards in Texas to reign in the estimated 400,000 tons per year of ozone-forming pollution, more than 227 million tons per year of carbon dioxide, huge quantities of soot and other fine particle pollution, and almost 14,000 pounds per year of mercury.

Coal ash spill

One grandmother from Virginia called on the EPA to "do the right thing... step up."

Gefen Kabik, 14, of Potomoc, Maryland asked, "Since when has money become more important than people?"

And Eric Schaeffer, director of the Environmental Integrity Project, said, "There are a lot of people who can't afford to be in the room today who are depending on you to make the right choice."

Today, at the first of seven EPA public hearings on coal ash, the agency had to work through lunch to accommodate the swell of people giving testimony—an estimated 200 people. The hearing was to discuss one of two options the EPA is considering on coal ash. One option would regulate coal ash as a toxic substance, while the other—supported by power companies and other polluters—would do nothing to monitor and regulate the threats from coal ash.

Narwahls can't fight noise with their fearsome tooth

All of you have had that errant neighbor who decides to throw a party at 2 a.m., and the next day you are groggy and temperamental—not your best self.

Now imagine having to contend with that loud noise 24 hours a day—as marine animals in the Gulf of Mexico must because of oil and gas drilling surveys.

Earthjustice joined a lawsuit against the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (formerly the Minerals Management Service) to challenge its approval of these surveys.