At midnight Thursday, California lawmakers put their pencils down.
The legislative session had come to a close in Sacramento, and elected officials had approved a whole bunch of climate change, energy and environment bills — and rejected others. Here’s a brief roundup of some of the highest-profile legislation.
Because of the decrease in fossil fuel plants, an old idea suddenly looks new again in the consideration of power generation for TVA.
The utility has begun to study whether a pumped storage power plant similar to the Raccoon Mountain facility just west of Chattanooga might be feasible for either of two mountain ridges along the Tennessee River in Northeast Alabama.
The Biden administration unveiled a plan Thursday to undo Trump-era rule changes to a key section of the Clean Water Act, essentially giving states, territories and tribes more say on fossil fuel or industrial projects that could pollute their watersheds.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rule centers on Section 401 of the Clean Water Act, a longstanding provision that gives states more authority to certify or deny federal permits that are necessary for certain projects, including oil and gas pipelines.
Federal courts have delivered a string of rebukes to the Trump administration over what they found were failures to protect the environment and address climate change as it promotes fossil fuel interests and the extraction of natural resources from public lands.
Federal agencies would no longer have to take climate change into account when they assess the environmental impacts of highways, pipelines and other major infrastructure projects, according to a Trump administration plan that would weaken the nation’s benchmark environmental law.
The proposed changes to the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act could sharply reduce obstacles to the Keystone XL oil pipeline and other fossil fuel projects that have been stymied when courts ruled that the Trump administration did not properly consider climate change when analyzing the environmental effects of the projects.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
