EPA today provided long overdue and vitally important health protections for American families and children by issuing standards for toxic air pollution from power plants, said the Southern Environmental Law Center.
In a 56-41 vote, a bipartisan majority of the U.S. Senate today upheld EPA rules that protect Tennessee from harmful air pollution emitted by facilities in other states while also creating new, full-time jobs. Senator Alexander (R-TN) voted to support the “cross-state” rule that protects people’s health, saves lives, and creates jobs while Senator Corker (R-TN) voted to dismantle it.
The new federal drilling plan ignores the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster by using the same flawed assumptions to continue leasing the Gulf of Mexico to oil companies for more risky deep water drilling.
he Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) is pleased to announce that Anne Davis, senior litigator and active community citizen, will join SELC this fall as the managing attorney of its new Tennessee Office.
Conservation groups filed a lawsuit today challenging an Environmental Protection Agency rule that exempts large-scale biomass-burning facilities from carbon dioxide limits under the Clean Air Act for the next three years.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in its overall effort to rein in heat-trapping greenhouse gases, took a major step backwards today with a final decision to ignore carbon pollution from biomass-burning plants for at least three years.
New guidance proposed today by the Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency would bring long-awaited and much needed clarity to the protection of our nation’s streams, wetlands, and open waters.
Twenty years after Congress updated the Clean Air Act, the Southern Environmental Law Center welcomed today’s announcement from EPA proposing maximum limits for more than 80 hazardous air pollutants by large power plants and called on the government to follow through implementing strong protections for the American people. Studies estimate that these pollution limits will save 17,000 people each year from premature death and cases of childhood asthma symptoms each year.
The U.S. Office of Surface Mining (OSM) will hold three public hearings starting this week to receive input from local citizens regarding the state's petition to protect mountain ridgelines on public lands in the Cumberland Plateau from surface coal mining.
A report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today shows that pollution controls for ozone and soot in the 1990 amendments of the Clean Air Act-currently under harsh attack from polluting industries and allies on the Hill-will yield approximately $2 trillion in benefits in 2020 while saving 230,000 people from early death in that year alone.
Today the EPA changed course and said it will not regulate carbon dioxide from facilities that burn trees and other biomass for at least three years. In the meantime, biomass facilities that come online or upgrade will not have to control for those emissions.
Conservation groups have withdrawn their challenge of a large timber sale that the U.S. Forest Service was planning in the north section of the Cherokee National Forest after reaching an agreement with the agency sparing the most vulnerable ecosystems and critical wildlife habitat.
Conservation groups today filed suit against oil giant BP under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) for the ongoing unlawful harm or killing of endangered and threatened wildlife caused by the company’s massive Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.
Following are statements by the Southern Environmental Law Center regarding the findings released today by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, with state-by-state rankings for energy efficiency
The Southern Environmental Law Center and the National Parks Conservation Association today applaud Governor Phil Bredesen and the state of Tennessee for petitioning to limit surface mining on state-owned lands in the North Cumberland Plateau, which would eliminate the threat of mountaintop removal coal mining in these critical watersheds and ridgelines.
Downstream users and river advocates today challenged a North Carolina Division of Water Quality wastewater permit that fails to require adequate reductions in color and thermal pollutants being discharged by the Blue Ridge Paper Products mill into the Pigeon River in Haywood County, North Carolina, about 40 miles from the Tennessee border.
Environmental groups expressed disappointment over a federal district court decision today to halt a six-month federal moratorium on new deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico that would have allowed for safety reviews after the loss of life in the Deepwater Horizon explosion and ongoing deepwater oil spill damaging the Gulf Coast.
The Minerals Management Service (MMS) continues to approve new leases after the Deepwater Horizon explosion that give British Petroleum and other companies the right to drill even more deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico under the same inadequate oversight that led to the current oil spill, according to a new legal challenge filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center and Defenders of Wildlife. The groups say current policies create an incentive to allow drilling even in the face of evident risks because once a lease is issued by MMS, the U.S. government is obligated to pay the lessee either the fair market value of the lease or the amount spent to obtain the bid plus costs and interest if the government cancels the lease or refuses to allow drilling.
The Southern Environmental Law Center applauds action by the U.S. Senate today voting down a proposal that would have prolonged the country's addiction to fossil fuels even as oil continues to spew into the Gulf of Mexico in the worst man-made environmental disaster in U.S. history.
Tennessee Wild, a broad coalition of conservation organizations, praised Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker today for introducing legislation to permanently protect new wilderness areas on the Cherokee National Forest.
The Southern Environmental Law Center and Defenders of Wildlife today notified BP that they would file suit against the company for the unauthorized take of endangered species caused by the continuing oil spill and use of dispersants.
Defenders of Wildlife and the Southern Environmental Law Center today filed suit challenging the Minerals Management Service’s (MMS) complicity in the Gulf oil disaster and continued lax oversight of oil drilling operations, including its failure to require a thorough examination of spill risks from exploratory drilling operations like the Deepwater Horizon.
We welcome a renewed focus in the U.S. Senate on addressing the problem of climate change, and look forward to working with policymakers to improve the effectiveness of draft legislation outlined today by Senators Kerry and Lieberman.
After years of delay, tragedy in Tennessee, EPA proposes regulatory options but stops short of issuing a strict rule
SELC welcomes the introduction of a bi-partisan compromise in the U.S. House of Representatives that restores long overdue protections for streams and wetlands.
The Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation today jointly issued a historic rule on curbing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from light-duty vehicles, which contribute about one-fourth of America's share of the world's climate-change pollution.
The Departments of Transportation in Tennessee and North Carolina are now studying ways to complete the Corridor K project between Chattanooga and Asheville by improving existing roads instead of building stretches of new four-lane highway through mostly new terrain, a proposal which has drawn regionwide oppo
SELC joins conservation groups across the region in applauding the historic settlement that successfully ends the decades-long fight to stop a highway through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Consistent with the latest scientific data about the growing health threat from breathing smog pollution, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today proposed to strengthen the national limit for allowable ozone levels. The move would mean that more areas, such as some mid-size cities, will come under Clean Air Act requirements and deadlines leading to more people breathing cleaner air in the future.
The U.S. EPA agreed to adopt rules reducing toxic air pollution from the nation¹s coal- and oil-burning power plants by November 2011, according to a settlement agreement reached in a federal lawsuit brought against the agency by a coalition of public health and environmental groups.
Final decision announced today by the U.S. Forest Service as a win-win approach to resolving the problem.
Senators Mark Warner and Jim Webb of Virginia and Senator Kay Hagan of North Carolina, along with 17 members of the Southeast's congressional delegation are joining more than 150 colleagues from across the country and from both sides of the aisle to introduce a bill in the House and Senate today that would permanently protect 58.5 million acres of America's premiere public land.
SELC welcomed EPA's announcement on a proposal to establish nationwide standards for controlling largest sources of heat trapping gas pollutants.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today announced it will re-evaluate the national limit for ozone pollution.
Passage of this House bill signals a seismic shift in U.S. policy on climate change—from ignoring the problem to attempting to solve it—but the bill needs strengthening by the Senate.
A key claim in SELC's lawsuit was that the Bush administration failed to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for impacts to at-risk species before issuing the rule, as required by the Endangered Species Act.
In an environmental assessment issued today, the U.S. Forest Service found that muddy runoff from off-road vehicle use in the designated Tellico River ORV area in the Nantahala National Forest has caused significant and extensive damage to water quality throughout the Tellico watershed.
The Southern Environmental Law Center and National Parks Conservation Association are filing suit today in federal court in Washington D.C. challenging a rule issued last month by the Bush Administration that severely limits the government's ability to protect Appalachian streams from the ravages of mountaintop removal and other destructive forms of surface mining for coal.
Following Congressional pledges for EPA regulation of coal waste after the catastrophic waste spill in Tennessee and a second spill in Alabama, the Southern Environmental Law Center today outlined the minimum safeguards necessary to protect the environment and public health and safety from coal waste.
The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), the largest environmental advocacy organization dedicated solely to protecting the Southeast, today announced a list of ten special places in the South that face immediate, potentially irreparable threats in 2009.
A December 22 flood of toxic coal sludge—enough to fill 798 Olympic-size swimming pools—in Tennessee demonstrates the dangers of burning coal and underscores the need for stringent regulation of coal waste, according to the Southern Environmental Law Center.
Today, a coalition of public health and environmental groups filed a lawsuit in federal court here, seeking a firm and enforceable new deadline for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to require deep reductions in mercury and other toxic air pollutants emitted from coal- and oil-fired power plants.
Despite the rain from recent hurricanes that has fallen across the Southeast, much of the region remains firmly in the grip of drought conditions
The U.S. Senate today began much-anticipated debate on the Climate Change Security Act of 2008, also known as the Warner-Lieberman bill. The U.S. has lagged well behind other industrial nations in addressing the threat of global warming.
Tennessee's four largest metro areas rank among the top 25 in the country for having the highest level of global warming emissions per capita, according to a report released today examining the carbon footprint of U.S. urban centers.
More than a dozen public interest groups have banded together in a legal move designed to stop the potential destruction of state parks and private lands throughout Tennessee's Cumberland Plateau from large-scale commercial rock removal.
A team of conservation groups, together with Tennessee's wildlife agency, today filed a petition with federal agencies demanding they stop ignoring the impacts of coal mining, including mountaintop removal, on the nation's threatened and endangered wildlife.