Interesting Stuff That Transpired During Our Publishing Break
We’re back, rested, and raring to go! While we were gone: The public comment period on the U.S. EPA’s proposed new mercury regulations ended, with a record of nearly 540,000 comments received, overwhelmingly supporting tougher rules. In other EPA news, the agency promised to reconsider its controversial 2003 rollbacks of New Source Review provisions of the Clean Air Act, and issued an analysis showing that nearly 100 million Americans are breathing overly sooty air. The U.S. Forest Service proposed restricting off-road vehicles on public land to designated trails and roads — enviros called the proposal weak and under-funded; off-road enthusiasts bristled. The USFS also OK’d a plan to log thousands of acres at the site of the Biscuit wildfire in Oregon. A federal appeals court rejected a lawsuit by Nevada attempting to block construction of the Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste disposal site. And, finally, Washington and Oregon threatened to sue the feds if they continue to refuse to assess the environmental damage caused by the Hanford nuclear site.
