Groups oppose leaving coal-ash regulation to states

More than 300 groups, saying they represent millions of people from all 50 states, sent a letter to the Senate last week opposing the Coal Ash Recycling and Oversight Act, which would prevent the federal government from regulating coal ash, which contains heavy metals including arsenic, lead and mercury. Billions of tons of it are stored in ponds, landfills and mines in almost every state. (Greenpeace photo of Tennessee coal ash pond)

The Coal Ash Recycling and Oversight Act was introduced last month and would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from finalizing its proposed coal ash rule and from ever issuing coal ash regulations. The bill would reinforce an EPA decision from 2000 that waste from burning fossil fuels doesn't need to be regulated under the Solid Waste Disposal Act. The issue got fresh attention in December 2008, when a Tennessee Valley Authority coal-ash pond broke and released 1 billion tons of waste into the Emory and Clinch rivers in east Tennessee, Environmental News Service notes. TVA is a federal agency, but the pond had been regulated by the state.

EPA proposed coal-ash regulation in 2010, then backed off. The groups' letter says that the Coal Ash Recycling and Oversight Act would nullify "450,000 public comments, essentially silencing the voices of nearly half a million Americans who supported protective regulations." The groups say they have no confidence in state-by-state management of coal ash. (Read more)

Researcher says nanomaterials could have 'profound' negative effect on food crops

Nanomaterials, which are created by manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale, may be harming the quality and yield of food crops, University of California researchers concluded in a report released in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The materials are being used in many consumer products,which  including shampoos, gels, hair dyes and sunscreens, which are washed into the environment. Researcher John Priester told Bobbie Mixon of the National Science Foundation that as their uses increase, the likelihood of nanomaterials contaminating food crops rises. "Conventionally treated wastewater is a primary source of normally nutrient-rich organic materials applied to agricultural soil, and farmers beneficially use this treated water and the biosolids from it as fertilizer," Mixon reports. "As nanomaterials become more prevalent, there is concern about nanomaterials buildup in soils and possible nanomaterials entry into the food supply."

There had been no previous study of the affects of nanomaterials on a soil-based crop, so researchers grew soybeans, a major global commodity, in soil containing high amounts of nanomaterials. They found that two nanomaterials -- cerium oxide powder and zinc oxide -- "could profoundly alter soil-based food crop quality and yield," Mixon reports. (Read more)

Federal appeals court strikes down EPA's cross-state air pollution rule

A federal appeals court has struck down the Environmental Protection Agency's air pollution rule for emissions that cross state lines, ruling that the EPA exceeded its statutory authority with the Cross State Air Pollution Rule, aimed at 28 Eastern states. More than a dozen states and several power companies challenged the rule last year, claiming it put undue burdens on them to implement.

"To put it colloquially, the good-neighbor provision requires upwind states to bear responsibility for their fair share of the mess in downwind states," the opinion of the three-judge panel says, but goez too far "by requiring steep pollution cuts from states beyond what they actually contribute to other states' air quality problems," Politico's Erica Martinson reports. The ruling also says the agency should not have set "implementation plans" for states telling them how and where to make pollution cuts to meet air emission limits.

Judge Judith Rogers disagreed with the majority, saying in her dissent that the ruling will result in "a redesign of Congress's vision of cooperative federalism between the states and the federal government in implementing the Clean Air Act based on the court's own notions of absurdity and logic that are unsupported by a factual record." The Natural Resources Defense Council's Clean Air Program senior attorney and Director John Walke said the majority "got the precedent badly wrong," and that the NRDC will urge the Obama administration to appeal the court's ruling. (Read more)