A Voice from the Eastern Door
A Voice from the Eastern Door
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Reprinted with permission from Ecowatch On Thursday, January 23, 2020 the Trump administration finalized its replacement for the Obama-era Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule in a move that strips protections from more than half of the nation’s wetlands and allow landowners to dump pesticides into waterways, or build over wetlands, for the first time in decades. President Donald Trump has been working to undo the 2015 rule since he took office, but his replacement goes even further, The New York Times explained. In addition to rolling back...
Reprinted with permission from Ecowatch President Donald Trump proposed one of his most aggressive environmental rollbacks yet on Thursday, January 9, 2020 announcing a change that would exempt federal agencies from considering the climate impacts of pipelines and other infrastructure projects. The president’s proposal would significantly limit enforcement of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which mandates that federal agencies consider how proposed construction projects like pipelines, highways and dams would impact land, air, w...
Reprinted with permission from ECOWATCH The 15-year-old interactive map was beneficial to researchers and environmentalists. The National Library of Medicine (NLM), part of the National Institutes of Health, hosted it. Some of the information has moved to other sources, while some has just disappeared completely, as Newsweek reported. TOXMAP offered detailed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data for clearly labeled toxic release sites and offered extensive health and demographic data, like mortality rates, that users could easily...
Last month, a Keystone Pipeline spill released more than 383,000 gallons of oil in North Dakota - equivalent to filling half of an Olympic swimming pool. The spill affected 200,000 square feet of wetlands, which could take years to recover, with many experts saying it may not. Earlier this year, the Keystone pipeline leaked 1,800 gallons of oil less than half a mile from the Mississippi River. Workers had to excavate sections of the affected pipeline to find and repair the leak. That leak was nothing compared to the 2017 Keystone spill in...
By EcoWatch The Trump administration repealed the 2015 Clean Water Rule rule on Thursday, September 12, 2019 a rule intended to protect 60 percent of the nation’s waterways from pollution, The New York Times reported. At stake is the definition of “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act. The Obama-era rule expanded that definition from larger bodies of water to include streams and wetlands. Thursday’s repeal will return the country to more-limited 1986 water-protection standards, The Washington Post reported. The adminis...
The Trump administration announced sweeping changes to the Endangered Species Act Monday in a move that could make it harder to protect plants and animals from the climate crisis, The New York Times reported. The changes would make it easier to remove species from the list, end the blanket rule giving threatened species the same protections as endangered ones, allow regulators to assess the economic impacts of protecting a species and give the government major leeway in how it interprets the phrase “foreseeable future.” This last change is rel...
One quarter of the world’s population are living in areas where the competition for water resources is extreme, according to a new report from the Washington-based global research group World Resource Institute (WRI), as The Guardian reported. Around the world 17 countries, including India, which is home to 1.3 billion people, face extreme water stress. That means, “irrigated agriculture, industries and municipalities withdraw more than 80 percent of their available supply on average every year,” the WRI report said. “Such a narrow gap between...
Reprinted with permission from Human Rights Watch July 22, 2019. Last week, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decided not to ban chlorpyrifos, a neurotoxic pesticide that, according to studies funded by the agency, has been linked to developmental delay in children. This decision is just the latest example of the Trump administration obstructing public and environmental health regulations of toxic materials. The decision follows several attempts by the administration to quash a 2015 EPA proposal to ban chlorpyrifos. These...
President Trump is hell-bent on making as much money as possible for his coal and fossil fuel friends and along the way - destroying the planet. By eliminating federal regulations, his administration, with help from Republicans in Congress, has often targeted environmental rules as burdensome to the fossil fuel industry and other big businesses. In a two-part series, Indian Time has sourced information on Trump’s war on the environment. From the New York Times and based on research from Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School along with o...
South Glengarry, Ont. (June 25, 2019) - Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC) has completed a significant restoration project at Charlottenburgh Marsh, a large coastal wetland within the Cooper Marsh Conservation Area. By protecting the natural habitat and removing invasive species, DUC is ensuring that this provincially significant wetland continues to support abundant wildlife, including 130 recorded bird species. A short drive east of Cornwall, the Cooper Marsh Conservation Area is a popular destinati...
The governments of 187 countries have agreed to control the movement of plastic waste between national borders in an effort to curb the world’s plastic crisis, but the United States was not among them. The Basel Convention, part of the United Nations Treaty Collection, is a treaty that controls transboundary movements of hazardous wastes around the world and their disposals. In order to combat the dangerous effects of plastic pollution, the Basel Convention has agreed to include ‘plastic waste’ in a legally-binding framework which will make...
Our world is losing biodiversity, and fast. According to a report released in the first week of May by the United Nations, up to one million species could face extinction in the near future due to human influence on the natural world. Such a collapse in biodiversity would wreak havoc on the interconnected ecosystems of the planet, putting human communities at risk by compromising food sources, fouling clean water and air, and eroding natural defenses against extreme weather such as hurricanes and floods. In the sweeping UN-backed report,...
Reprinted from Earth Justice MAY 2, 2019. Washington, D.C. The Trump administration today is expected to issue a rule rolling back safety regulations designed to prevent another Deepwater Horizon tragedy. The Well Control and Blowout Preventer Rule, finalized under the Obama administration, requires real-time oversight of risky drilling operations and precautionary failsafe measures to stop a spill when things go wrong. Interior officials began re-writing the rule after President Trump issued an executive order in 2017 calling for offshore...
Reprinted with permission from Earth Justice For half a century, staple food crops in the United States - such as corn, wheat, apples and citrus - have been sprayed with chlorpyrifos, a dangerous pesticide that can damage the developing brains of children, causing reduced IQ, loss of working memory, and attention deficit disorders. Earthjustice, among other groups, has for years pushed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to ban chlorpyrifos, as it is known to harm health, water and wildlife. The U.S. EPA was expected to make a decision by...
(February 28, 2019) Clarkson University graduate student Evie Brahmstedt recently gave a plenary presentation on her research on mercury cycling in St. Lawrence River wetlands at Save the River's Annual Winter Environmental Conference in Clayton, New York on February 2nd. According to Brahmstedt, a doctoral student in the Environmental Sciences and Engineering program at Clarkson's Institute for a Sustainable Environment, "The Save the River conference is a great opportunity to engage with...
The Trump administration is continuing work on one of Interior's biggest, most controversial priorities: opening up more Arctic lands in Alaska to oil drilling. The National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska is a vast 22.1-million-acre area on Alaska's North Slope. The Bureau of Land Management, an agency under the Interior, has gone ahead with a series of public meetings in its effort to expand oil development in the 22-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska during Trump's shutdown. Two...
In a decision deemed by critics unsurprising but also “absolutely unconscionable,” the Trump administration’s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reportedly plans to refrain from regulating a pair of toxic chemicals linked to kidney and testicular cancer, even though they are contaminating millions of Americans› drinking water. Sources familiar with an unreleased draft plan approved last month by acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler told Politico that the chemicals PFOA and PFOS will remain unregulated under the Safe Drinking Water A...
On Thursday, December 6, 2018, as world leaders gathered in Poland for the United Nations 24th annual United Nations Conference of the Parties, the climate summit where governments are debating how to halve global emissions over the next 12 years – EPA announced their proposed gutting of an Obama-era rule requiring coal-fired power plants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Then on Tuesday, December 11, 2018, the Trump administration unveiled its plan to replace an Obama-era rule that sought to safeguard drinking water for millions of A...
The recently released lengthy Fourth National Climate Assessment includes detailed information about how specific regions of the will be impacted. Here’s what else you need to know. Northeast There will be shorter winters and longer summers. There will be a decline of species that support some of the most valuable and iconic fisheries, including Atlantic cod, Atlantic sea scallops and American lobsters. Expect approximately 650 excess deaths per year caused by extreme heat by 2050. Health risks from contaminated flood waters. For example, becau...
(November 20, 2018) CORNWALL, ON - The River Institute is embarking on a new project called ‘The Great River Rapport’ – an ecosystem health report to answer your questions and provide information on the health of the St. Lawrence River. Dr. Leigh McGaughey, lead scientist on this project is enthusiastic about the public involvement components of the project. “This project is like no other,” she says, “We want everyone to be able to access quick facts about river health and get involved in caring for our shared ecosystem. Based on science and ri...
Submitted by Rich Gast, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Franklin County The wild turkey, Meleagris gallopavo, is one of only two domesticated birds native to North America. The Muscovy duck is the other. Five sub-species make up the entire North American population. The most abundant is the eastern wild turkey, sub-species silvestris, meaning forest, which ranges across the entire eastern half of the United States and parts of eastern Canada. They're readily identified by their brown-tipped...
A pamphlet by MCA Tehotiiennawakon Department Boxelder Bugs The bodies of boxelder bugs are black in color and are marked by red lines along the thorax and sides. Their wings are flat and red. Boxelder bugs measure between 11 to 14 mm long. Behavior, Diet & Habits Boxelder bugs do not nest indoors year-round. Rather, they make their homes in boxelder, maple and ash trees during warmer seasons and migrate into buildings and homes to find shelter for the winter. They enter through small cracks and...
Submitted by Paul Hetzler, CCE Horticulture and Natural Resources Educator Seems like competitiveness may be part of human DNA. But it does not always pay to be first. No prize awaits the fastest car that passes a radar patrol, or the first person to come down with the flu at the office. And for trees, the first ones to turn color in autumn are not envied by their peers; if trees experience envy, which no one knows. The first trees to show orange and red and drop their leaves are telling us to get quotes from a tree-removal company, because...
Reprinted with permission from Soundbite Source SEATTLE - To rid the world’s oceans of plastic pollution, environmental advocates are hoping Seattle’s move to ban plastic straws will send ripple effects across the nation and the world. In early July, Seattle became the first major U.S. city to ban single-use plastic straws, forcing some 5,000 restaurants to offer reusable or compostable utensils, straws and cocktail picks. Organizers behind the “Strawless in Seattle” campaign were expecting to have only the month of September designa...
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo recently deployed the first installation of recycled materials from the former Tappan Zee Bridge, as well as former Canal vessels, in the Shinnecock Reef, launching the Governor’s initiative to significantly expand New York’s network of artificial reefs. Announced in April, the program is poised to bolster 12 artificial reefs off the shores of Long Island - the largest expansion of artificial reefs in New York state history. The materials for the reef expansion will be strategically placed to improve New York’s diver...
