Nick Lyon is the highest-ranking state official to be charged in the crisis.
Excerpt:
Michigan's director of its Department of Health and Human Services, Nick Lyon, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and misconduct in office over the Flint water crisis.
Chief Medical Executive Dr. Eden Wells will be charged with obstruction of justice.
Lyon and Wells are the highest-ranking state officials to be charged in the crisis. The charges stem from an investigation led by Michigan's attorney general.
The involuntary manslaughter charge stems from an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease, a type of pneumonia, that spread in the city following its switch in water source. According to the indictment, Lyon knew about the outbreak but failed to alert the public.
Trump reportedly told the mayor of a disappearing island town not to worry about rising sea levels.
Excerpt:
It began a week earlier, when CNN aired a story about Tangier, Va., which sits on Tangier Island, about 12 miles from both the Virginia and Maryland coasts in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. The small island, now only 1.3 square miles, shrinks by 15 feet each year, according to the Army Corps of Engineers, which points to coastal erosion and rising sea levels as the cause.
The island’s 450 residents, many of whom are descendants of its first settlers in the 17th century, are desperate. Scientists predict they will have to abandon the island in 50 years if nothing is done.
...
Trump thanked the mayor and the entire island of Tangier, where he received 87 percent of the votes, for their support. Then the conversation turned to the island’s plight.
“He said we shouldn’t worry about rising sea levels,” Eskridge said. “He said that ‘your island has been there for hundreds of years, and I believe your island will be there for hundreds more.’”
The DOI is currently asking for public input into the review of National Monuments.
Excerpt:
On Friday the Department of Interior formally released their list of national monuments that are "under review," following President Trump's executive order. The list includes many of the monuments that we expected to be there, like the oil- and gas-rich land around Grand Staircase-Escalante, as well as many others, including the Carrizo Plain in California, Gold Butte in Nevada, and Ironwood Forest in Arizona. All in all, 267 national monuments are up for review. The full list includes:
Basin and Range, Nevada, established in 2015
Bears Ears, Utah, established in 2016
Berryessa Snow Mountain, California, established in 2015
Canyons of the Ancients, Colorado, established in 2000
Carrizo Plain, California, established in 2001
Craters of the Moon, Idaho, established in 2000
Giant Sequoia, California, established in 2000
Gold Butte, Nevada, established in 2016
Grand Canyon-Parashant, Arizona, established in 2000
Grand Staircase-Escalante, Utah, established in 1996
Hanford Reach, Washington, established in 2000
Ironwood Forest, Arizona, established in 2000
Mojave Trails, California, established in 2016
Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, New Mexico, established in 2014
Rio Grande del Norte, New Mexico, established in 2013
Sand to Snow, California, established in 2016
San Gabriel Mountains, California, established n 2014
Sonoran Desert, Arizona, established in 2001
Upper Missouri River Breaks, Montana, established in 2001
Vermilion Cliffs, Arizona, established in 2000
Katahadin Woods and Waters, Maine, established in 2014
Marianas Trench, Pacific Ocean, established in 2009
Northeast Canyons and Seamounts, Atlantic Ocean, established in 2016
Pacific Remote Islands, Pacific Ocean, established in 2009
Papahanaumokuakea, Hawaii and the Pacific Ocean, established in 2006 and 2016
Rose Atoll, Pacific Ocean, established in 2009
The DOI is currently asking for public input into our national monuments. Starting on Friday, May 12, go to regulations.gov and search "DOI-2017-0002" in the search bar, and let them know what you think.
Your input is important.
As stated by Mark Squillace (from when I interviewed him last fall regarding the future of the Antiquities Act): “The notion of these being public lands means something. It means that we protect common interests of the general public before we protect the private interests that some companies or individuals might have in the use of those public lands”
The elimination of the Office of International Climate and Technology is another sign of the Trump administration’s retreat on global warming policy.
Excerpt:
The Energy Department is closing an office that works with other countries to develop clean energy technology, another sign of the Trump administration’s retreat on climate-related activities after its withdrawal from the Paris agreement this month.
The 11 staff members of the Office of International Climate and Technology were told this month that their positions were being eliminated, according to current and former agency employees. The office was formed in 2010 to help the United States provide technical advice to other nations seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The small office also played a lead role preparing for the annual Clean Energy Ministerial, a forum in which the United States, China, India and other countries shared insights on how best to promote energy efficiency, electric vehicles and other solutions to climate change.
Word of the closing came right before Rick Perry, the energy secretary, attended the latest Clean Energy Ministerial meeting in Beijing on June 6 to 8, agency employees said.
The Trump administration's latest budget includes millions in cuts to land and wildlife management programs. Critics say it would hurt rural America, which largely supported the president in November.
Excerpt:
Still subject to approval by Congress, the president's budget includes a roughly $1.4 billion cut to the Department of Interior and far deeper cuts to the Department of Agriculture: combined the two agencies own and manage more than 700 million acres of public lands, mostly in the West.
Here are three items of note in the Department of Interior budget alone that aren't generating much attention so far. But they could disproportionately hit rural communities, many of which tended to support President Trump in last year's election.
A proposed $12 million cut to rangeland management programs designed to rehabilitate grass and prairie lands important for cattle ranchers that depend on public lands for grazing.
A $14 million cut to wildlife management programs, which has already come under scrutiny in western states like Colorado, where revenues from hunting and fishing on public lands have been falling.
A proposed large cut to the popular Land and Water Conservation fund that's added scores of private lands into the protected federal public land system since 1964.
Scientists are furious over ARPA-E projects approved but yet to be funded
Excerpt:
The Department of Energy (DOE) has stopped processing the paperwork on tens of millions of dollars in research that its Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) has agreed to fund.
DOE officials aren't saying why they have taken this unusual step, dubbed a “no-contract action.” It went into effect earlier this month and affects more than a dozen projects across four new ARPA-E programs. The move, first reported by Politico Pro, includes a gag order on ARPA-E program managers, leaving investigators in the dark about the status of their grants. The resulting uncertainty is having a devastating impact on research teams, scientists say, and even threatens the viability of small companies for whom these major awards are so important.
