Republican senators staged a surprise boycott of a committee meeting and stalled the confirmation of President Obama’s nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, a move that underscores how bitter battles over some Cabinet nominations have strained the president’s relationship with Congress. Gina McCarthy, a Massachusetts native who was a top environmental official under former
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Connecticut’s former top environmental official — Gina McCarthy — is reported to be leading the short list to take over the top slot at the Environmental Protection Agency. McCarthy currently runs the air division there as the assistant administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation. For more on this story, visit: Former CT DEP
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Don’t dump dredge spoil in eastern Long Island Sound. That was the message some speakers had for the federal Environmental Protection Agency at a hearing on finding potential sites to replace two existing dredge disposal sites in eastern Long Island Sound.

The Environmental Protection Agency has awarded the Connecticut Maritime Foundation a $800,000 grant to reduce diesel emissions from a New London ferry service. The grant will be used to purchase and install two new diesel marine engines in the Jessica W, a high-speed ferry operated by Cross Sound Ferry as the Block Island Express. For
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35 grants totaling $1.6 million awarded to state and local government and community groups in New York and Connecticut under the Long Island Sound Futures Fund.

When leveraged by an additional $3 million contributed by the recipients themselves, a total of $4.6 million will support conservation projects in both states. The projects in both states will open up 50 river miles for fish passage, and restore 390 acres of critical fish and wildlife habitat.

Click on this Environmental Headline for more of this Long Island Sound watershed-size story.

The Center for Biological Diversity and Center for Environmental Health filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to fully implement new air-quality standards for lead, required under the Clean Air Act. The EPA revised 30-year-old air standards for lead in 2008, lowering allowable airborne lead levels by 90 percent to protect health and environmental quality.

2012 marks the 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act, the nation’s law for protecting our most irreplaceable resource. Everyone deserves clean water – it is vital for our health, communities, environment and economy. To help commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is asking people to send
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Environmental Headlines apologizes for the advertising techniques used on the Register’s website. We still thought it an important enough story to link to this morning. I received an ad for a video plug in but was able to press the “back” button on my browser to return to the story. The state has issued a
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Eleven states, including California and New York, sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday to compel it to review clean air standards for soot pollution nationwide, after the agency had missed an October deadline. Other states that brought the lawsuit are Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. The
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EPA’s new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards will improve people’s health by requiring power plants that contribute to air pollution in Connecticut to use widely available, proven pollution control technologies to protect families from pollutants like mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel and acid gases.

These new standards will prevent up to 90 premature deaths in Connecticut while creating up to $750 million in health benefits in 2016. Click on this environmental headline for more on this story.

The Northeast’s long saga of lawsuits over clean air continued Wednesday as Connecticut and 11other states told the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency they will sue the agency for failing to revise standards for particulate matter, or soot, as required by the Clean Air Act. The law requires the EPA to review and update standards every
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Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), in an attempt to forward his own narrow agenda, is attacking clean air and public health safeguards. Sen. Paul has his sights set on the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, also called the “Good Neighbor” rule.  Undoing this rule would mean that one state can continue to dump its pollution into another
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New greenhouse gas regulations for US power plants are unlikely to be proposed by the end of the month, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has admitted. The agency originally aimed at producing initial proposals by 30 September, but EPA administrator Lisa Jackson told news agency Reuters yesterday that the target will not
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Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized Clean Air Act protections that will slash hundreds of thousands of tons of smokestack emissions that travel long distances through the air and threaten the health of hundreds of millions of Americans living downwind. The Cross-State Air Pollution Rule will protect communities that are home to 240
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The EPA recently recognized Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships (NEEP) and the Connecticut Energy Efficiency Fund, for programs that promote the use of ENERGY STAR qualified products, services and practices.

Is your community investing in green infrastructure to improve air quality, lower summertime temperatures, or reduce energy costs? The Clean Water America Alliance (Alliance) is conducting a project for the Turner Foundation to engage utilities, cities, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and the private sector on green infrastructure policy. Click this Environmental Headline for more information!

More than 2,500 U.S. scientists have sent a letter urging members of Congress to reject legislation that would undermine a U.S. EPA finding under the Clean Air Act that heat-trapping emissions are altering the climate and endangering public health.

This will help communities implement development approaches that protect the environment, improve public health, create jobs, expand economic opportunity, and improve overall quality of life. Read more inside.

The owner of the Mt. Tom coal plant in Holyoke has agreed to pay $40,814 as a settlement for violating federal clean water laws during discharges of dirty water into the Connecticut River.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has announced a settlement under which the EPA will set greenhouse gas pollution limits for power plants and refineries by 2012.