NY-NJ port swaps assets with NYC to grow Brooklyn, Staten Island terminals
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey will take full control of the Howland Hook marine terminal in Staten Island while New York City will take over Brooklyn’s Red Hook terminal.
USDA Easing Producers’ Transition to Organic Production with New Programs and Partnerships, Announces Investments to Create and Expand Organic Markets
WASHINGTON, May 15, 2024 – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced new programs, partnerships, grant awards and an additional $10 million in funding to expand the markets for organic products and help producers transition to organic production. These programs will support the development of new and better markets for domestic organic products, provide hands-on training to producers transitioning to organic production and ease the financial burden of obtaining organic certification.
EPA Announces Final Rule to Improve Public Awareness of Drinking Water Quality
WASHINGTON - Today, May 15, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a final rule to make annual drinking water quality reports more understandable and accessible to the public. These reports are an important tool that drinking water systems use to inform residents about water quality and any contaminants that have been found in the water. Starting in 2027, this final rule will ensure that these reports are easier to read and support access to translations in appropriate languages while enhancing information about lead in drinking water. EPA is also taking steps to streamline the delivery of reports by encouraging electronic methods.
“EPA is taking action today to help ensure that the American public has improved access to information about the drinking water in their communities by strengthening requirements for annual drinking water quality reports,” said acting Assistant Administrator for EPA’s Office of Water Bruno Pigott. “Today's announcement will ensure these reports are easier to understand, and easier to access in additional languages to provide all people with the information they want and need about their water.”
The final rule will support public education by more clearly communicating important information in water quality reports and improving access to the reports. Water systems are currently required to provide annual drinking water reports to customers each year, and with this rule systems serving over 10,000 customers will be required to distribute reports twice per year. The final rule also introduces a new reporting requirement that will provide EPA with better information to make decisions on oversight, enforcement, regulatory revisions, and training and technical assistance. Today’s final rule will require states to submit compliance monitoring data they already receive from public water systems to EPA annually.
Learn more about EPA’s Revised Consumer Report Rule, including upcoming webinars and fact sheet that provides more detail on the new requirements.
Background
A Consumer Confidence Report, sometimes called a “Drinking Water Quality Report,” summarizes information about the local drinking water. As part of the America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2018, Congress instructed EPA to revise the Consumer Confidence Report Rule. Today’s final rule will support the goal of the Safe Drinking Water Act “right-to-know” provisions by improving the Consumer Confidence Reports so that people can make better decisions about their drinking water. EPA’s final rule will work to further that goal by making sure important information in annual reports are accurate and accessible.
“EPA is taking action today to help ensure that the American public has improved access to information about the drinking water in their communities by strengthening requirements for annual drinking water quality reports,” said acting Assistant Administrator for EPA’s Office of Water Bruno Pigott. “Today's announcement will ensure these reports are easier to understand, and easier to access in additional languages to provide all people with the information they want and need about their water.”
The final rule will support public education by more clearly communicating important information in water quality reports and improving access to the reports. Water systems are currently required to provide annual drinking water reports to customers each year, and with this rule systems serving over 10,000 customers will be required to distribute reports twice per year. The final rule also introduces a new reporting requirement that will provide EPA with better information to make decisions on oversight, enforcement, regulatory revisions, and training and technical assistance. Today’s final rule will require states to submit compliance monitoring data they already receive from public water systems to EPA annually.
Learn more about EPA’s Revised Consumer Report Rule, including upcoming webinars and fact sheet that provides more detail on the new requirements.
Background
A Consumer Confidence Report, sometimes called a “Drinking Water Quality Report,” summarizes information about the local drinking water. As part of the America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2018, Congress instructed EPA to revise the Consumer Confidence Report Rule. Today’s final rule will support the goal of the Safe Drinking Water Act “right-to-know” provisions by improving the Consumer Confidence Reports so that people can make better decisions about their drinking water. EPA’s final rule will work to further that goal by making sure important information in annual reports are accurate and accessible.
Court Approves EPA Settlement Requiring Payment of Response Costs at Missouri Electric Works Superfund Site in Cape Girardeau, Missouri
LENEXA, KAN. (MAY 15, 2024) – Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the court approval of a settlement agreement with 36 private parties and three federal agencies for payment of EPA’s past and future cleanup costs at the Missouri Electric Works Superfund Site in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
The settlement agreement is issued under the authority of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), commonly known as Superfund.
Under the terms of the settlement, the polluting private parties will pay $6,074,739 and the federal agencies, also responsible for pollution, will pay $600,798 to the United States to satisfy EPA’s past and future cleanup costs. Additionally, the private parties will pay $625,261 and the federal agencies will pay $61,839 to the state of Missouri in settlement of state response costs.
The site is an approximately 6.4-acre parcel, located in Cape Girardeau, at which the former Missouri Electric Works Inc. sold, serviced, and remanufactured transformers and other equipment containing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Releases of PCBs and volatile organic compounds from the facility resulted in soil and groundwater contamination at the site. EPA has been overseeing investigation and cleanup at the site since the 1980s.
EPA designated the property as a Superfund site in 1990. Under Superfund, EPA enforces the “polluter pays” principle, which holds responsible parties accountable for cleanup and reimbursement of EPA’s oversight costs throughout a contaminated site’s history.
For more information, visit the Missouri Electric Works Superfund Site Profile page.
Learn more about the Superfund program.
# # #
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View all Region 7 news releases
Connect with EPA Region 7 on Facebook and Instagram
Follow us on X: @EPARegion7
The settlement agreement is issued under the authority of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), commonly known as Superfund.
Under the terms of the settlement, the polluting private parties will pay $6,074,739 and the federal agencies, also responsible for pollution, will pay $600,798 to the United States to satisfy EPA’s past and future cleanup costs. Additionally, the private parties will pay $625,261 and the federal agencies will pay $61,839 to the state of Missouri in settlement of state response costs.
The site is an approximately 6.4-acre parcel, located in Cape Girardeau, at which the former Missouri Electric Works Inc. sold, serviced, and remanufactured transformers and other equipment containing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Releases of PCBs and volatile organic compounds from the facility resulted in soil and groundwater contamination at the site. EPA has been overseeing investigation and cleanup at the site since the 1980s.
EPA designated the property as a Superfund site in 1990. Under Superfund, EPA enforces the “polluter pays” principle, which holds responsible parties accountable for cleanup and reimbursement of EPA’s oversight costs throughout a contaminated site’s history.
For more information, visit the Missouri Electric Works Superfund Site Profile page.
Learn more about the Superfund program.
# # #
Learn more about EPA Region 7
View all Region 7 news releases
Connect with EPA Region 7 on Facebook and Instagram
Follow us on X: @EPARegion7
EPA proposes PCBs cleanup plan for Spokane River
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is accepting public comment on its proposed plan to reduce the amount of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, in the Spokane River basin.
PCBs in surface water readily accumulate in aquatic organisms, meaning even small amounts in the environment can pose health problems for people who consume fish.
The agency’s plan establishes a Total Maximum Daily Load for PCBs-- often referred to as a pollution budget – to protect human health and aquatic life along the Spokane and Little Spokane rivers of Washington and highlights the need to continue to reduce PCBs from both industries and communities in the Spokane Valley.
While PCBs were banned in 1979, they were widely used by multiple industries to lubricate and cool equipment and some of that equipment, like electrical transformers manufactured before the ban, are sources of the chemicals found in the 100 river miles of the Spokane River watershed.
For more information on how to comment on the draft plan, go to: https://www.epa.gov/tmdl/spokane-river-pcb-tmdls
EPA will be issuing the final Spokane River TMDL for PCBs by September 30, 2024.
PCBs in surface water readily accumulate in aquatic organisms, meaning even small amounts in the environment can pose health problems for people who consume fish.
The agency’s plan establishes a Total Maximum Daily Load for PCBs-- often referred to as a pollution budget – to protect human health and aquatic life along the Spokane and Little Spokane rivers of Washington and highlights the need to continue to reduce PCBs from both industries and communities in the Spokane Valley.
While PCBs were banned in 1979, they were widely used by multiple industries to lubricate and cool equipment and some of that equipment, like electrical transformers manufactured before the ban, are sources of the chemicals found in the 100 river miles of the Spokane River watershed.
For more information on how to comment on the draft plan, go to: https://www.epa.gov/tmdl/spokane-river-pcb-tmdls
EPA will be issuing the final Spokane River TMDL for PCBs by September 30, 2024.
EPA, DEQ, Panhandle Health celebrate 50 years of protecting children from lead poisoning
Today, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Basin Environmental Improvement Project Commission are celebrating decades of work to protect Silver Valley children from lead poisoning after the infamous 1973 Bunker Hill smelter baghouse fire, the worst lead poisoning event in U.S. history. The work has made the Silver Valley a much healthier place to live, work, and play.
For the last 50 years EPA and its partners – Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, Coeur d’Alene Tribe, Panhandle Health District, and the Basin Commission -- have cleaned up countless abandoned mines, treated and re-forested hundreds of acres of metals-laden hillsides, and removed millions of tons of contaminated soil from over 7,000 residential and school yards, play areas, roads, streambeds, and mine sites.
Over the last 50 years, average blood lead levels in children tested by Panhandle Health District have declined from about 67 to 2 micrograms per deciliter (µg/dL), well below the Centers for Disease Control’s reference value of 3.5 (µg/dL). The work at the Bunker Hill Superfund Site is nowhere near complete but vast improvements have been made and should be celebrated.
Background: Fire at the Bunker Hill Baghouse
By September 3, 1973, when a fire disabled much of the main pollution control device on the Bunker Hill Mine’s lead smelter in Smelterville, Idaho, the “Silver Valley” had been grappling for almost 100 years with significant environmental and public health problems caused by the mining and processing of the region’s abundant metals.
Some companies attempted to protect workers from debilitating illnesses that were cutting short their careers and their lives. In fact, in its 2005 report on cleanup of the Bunker Hill Superfund Site, the National Academies of Science noted that “By 1920, Bunker Hill management realized that their smelter could be causing some health risks for its employees and initiated an unproven electrolytic treatment for removing the lead from their bodies.”
And for decades, Bunker Hill Mining Corporation -- the largest lead and zinc mine in the U.S. -- and other mining companies in the Silver Valley had been compensating downstream farmers for damage to crops and livestock. The mining companies also purchased “pollution easements” allowing them to discharge mine tailings directly into the South Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River and several of its tributaries.
After the baghouse fire was extinguished, the mine’s owner, Gulf Resources, determined that the financial benefits of continuing to operate the crippled smelter were greater than the legal risks of spewing huge amounts of lead and other pollutants into the community. According to the Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry, a division within CDC, the smelter poured an average of 73 tons of lead each month into Smelterville and surrounding Kellogg neighborhoods from September 1973 until August 1974 when it was shut down.
Unsurprisingly, a 1976 study conducted by the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare in the months following the fire found that 99 percent of Smelterville children had blood lead levels at or above the CDC’s level of concern at the time. These were among the highest blood levels ever recorded.
Armed at the time with limited authorities, health and environmental agencies scrambled to stop dangerous waste and pollution management practices and simultaneously reduce kids’ exposures to lead soil and dust. The work had near immediate impacts: By 1981 only 19 percent of Smelterville children tested had blood lead levels that exceeded that era’s national average.
Despite effective work combatting the acute crisis in Smelterville and Kellogg, annual flooding events, development, ongoing mine and smelting operations, and even mine closures continued to inject more pollution into communities throughout the Silver Valley, repeatedly exposing children to dangerous levels of lead.
Of particular concern was the impact of acidic smelter emissions on the inability of the surrounding hillsides to grow vegetation after they’d been heavily logged to build the mines, towns, and railroads. The denuded unfertile hillsides had become little more than enormous deposits of metals-laden soil with nothing to keep it in place during the yearly spring floods that regularly inundated and contaminated downstream communities like Wallace and Kellogg.
In 1983, EPA listed the Bunker Hill Mining and Metallurgical Complex as a Superfund site. Expanded in 2002, the BHSS includes environmental cleanup and restoration work in areas contaminated by mining waste in the Coeur d’Alene River Watershed totaling about 1,500 square miles. It is one of the largest Superfund sites in the nation.
Armed with a spate of new environmental statutes, state and federal agencies took on the problem, removing wastes from countless abandoned mines, treating and re-foresting the denuded hillsides, and placing millions of tons of contaminated soil into repositories where it is securely stored and monitored. Previously acidic streams once devoid of life now host abundant fish populations and nurse the trees and shrubs that stabilize their banks and reduce dangerous flooding.
Panhandle Health District’s Kellogg office has conducted free annual blood lead testing to help identify children with elevated blood lead levels and determine how they’re being exposed to lead. The EPA and the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality focus their cleanup efforts on properties with high lead levels that pose the greatest risk to children. So far, EPA has removed leaded soils from over 7,000 properties throughout the Silver Valley.
Ultimately, the 1973 baghouse fire set in motion an enormous amount of work to mitigate the devastating impacts that mining and smelting had had on the environment and the health of the people in the Silver Valley and downstream communities. That work has protected generations of children from elevated blood lead levels and transformed much of the landscape that contributed to the public health risks confronted by the region’s residents.
For the last 50 years EPA and its partners – Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, Coeur d’Alene Tribe, Panhandle Health District, and the Basin Commission -- have cleaned up countless abandoned mines, treated and re-forested hundreds of acres of metals-laden hillsides, and removed millions of tons of contaminated soil from over 7,000 residential and school yards, play areas, roads, streambeds, and mine sites.
Over the last 50 years, average blood lead levels in children tested by Panhandle Health District have declined from about 67 to 2 micrograms per deciliter (µg/dL), well below the Centers for Disease Control’s reference value of 3.5 (µg/dL). The work at the Bunker Hill Superfund Site is nowhere near complete but vast improvements have been made and should be celebrated.
Background: Fire at the Bunker Hill Baghouse
By September 3, 1973, when a fire disabled much of the main pollution control device on the Bunker Hill Mine’s lead smelter in Smelterville, Idaho, the “Silver Valley” had been grappling for almost 100 years with significant environmental and public health problems caused by the mining and processing of the region’s abundant metals.
Some companies attempted to protect workers from debilitating illnesses that were cutting short their careers and their lives. In fact, in its 2005 report on cleanup of the Bunker Hill Superfund Site, the National Academies of Science noted that “By 1920, Bunker Hill management realized that their smelter could be causing some health risks for its employees and initiated an unproven electrolytic treatment for removing the lead from their bodies.”
And for decades, Bunker Hill Mining Corporation -- the largest lead and zinc mine in the U.S. -- and other mining companies in the Silver Valley had been compensating downstream farmers for damage to crops and livestock. The mining companies also purchased “pollution easements” allowing them to discharge mine tailings directly into the South Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River and several of its tributaries.
After the baghouse fire was extinguished, the mine’s owner, Gulf Resources, determined that the financial benefits of continuing to operate the crippled smelter were greater than the legal risks of spewing huge amounts of lead and other pollutants into the community. According to the Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry, a division within CDC, the smelter poured an average of 73 tons of lead each month into Smelterville and surrounding Kellogg neighborhoods from September 1973 until August 1974 when it was shut down.
Unsurprisingly, a 1976 study conducted by the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare in the months following the fire found that 99 percent of Smelterville children had blood lead levels at or above the CDC’s level of concern at the time. These were among the highest blood levels ever recorded.
Armed at the time with limited authorities, health and environmental agencies scrambled to stop dangerous waste and pollution management practices and simultaneously reduce kids’ exposures to lead soil and dust. The work had near immediate impacts: By 1981 only 19 percent of Smelterville children tested had blood lead levels that exceeded that era’s national average.
Despite effective work combatting the acute crisis in Smelterville and Kellogg, annual flooding events, development, ongoing mine and smelting operations, and even mine closures continued to inject more pollution into communities throughout the Silver Valley, repeatedly exposing children to dangerous levels of lead.
Of particular concern was the impact of acidic smelter emissions on the inability of the surrounding hillsides to grow vegetation after they’d been heavily logged to build the mines, towns, and railroads. The denuded unfertile hillsides had become little more than enormous deposits of metals-laden soil with nothing to keep it in place during the yearly spring floods that regularly inundated and contaminated downstream communities like Wallace and Kellogg.
In 1983, EPA listed the Bunker Hill Mining and Metallurgical Complex as a Superfund site. Expanded in 2002, the BHSS includes environmental cleanup and restoration work in areas contaminated by mining waste in the Coeur d’Alene River Watershed totaling about 1,500 square miles. It is one of the largest Superfund sites in the nation.
Armed with a spate of new environmental statutes, state and federal agencies took on the problem, removing wastes from countless abandoned mines, treating and re-foresting the denuded hillsides, and placing millions of tons of contaminated soil into repositories where it is securely stored and monitored. Previously acidic streams once devoid of life now host abundant fish populations and nurse the trees and shrubs that stabilize their banks and reduce dangerous flooding.
Panhandle Health District’s Kellogg office has conducted free annual blood lead testing to help identify children with elevated blood lead levels and determine how they’re being exposed to lead. The EPA and the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality focus their cleanup efforts on properties with high lead levels that pose the greatest risk to children. So far, EPA has removed leaded soils from over 7,000 properties throughout the Silver Valley.
Ultimately, the 1973 baghouse fire set in motion an enormous amount of work to mitigate the devastating impacts that mining and smelting had had on the environment and the health of the people in the Silver Valley and downstream communities. That work has protected generations of children from elevated blood lead levels and transformed much of the landscape that contributed to the public health risks confronted by the region’s residents.
Failed electrical breaker triggered Dali crash: NTSB
A preliminary federal investigation found the use of a different breaker configuration than had been previously in use onboard the Dali that led to a series of power blackouts on its outbound voyage.
Port NOLA CEO stepping down amid major expansion
Brandy Christian led the Port of New Orleans during the acquisition of its on-dock rail network and spearheaded the development of a new terminal that will allow the port to service ultra-large ships.