Environmental Protection Agency

Some officials at the Environmental Protection Agency were so worried their boss would deny California permission to implement its own global-warming law that they worked with a former EPA chief to try to persuade the current administrator to grant the state's request. That unusual effort was revealed by documents released Tuesday by congressional investigators probing whether EPA Administrator Stephen L.

California's states'-rights battle against the Bush administration over global warming was freed to move forward in federal court Friday, after the Environmental Protection Agency issued its long-delayed justification for blocking the state's 2002 law curbing greenhouse emissions from cars and trucks. EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson had written to Gov.

Diesel-powered ships and trains must cut soot emissions by as much as 90% by 2030, under regulations signed Friday by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Stephen Johnson. "Today EPA is fitting another important piece into the clean diesel puzzle by cleaning emissions from our trains and boats," Johnson said by telephone from the Port of Houston, where he made the announcement. "This will help America's economic workhorse become its environmental workhorse as well."

Contractors renovating U.S. homes built before 1978 must take special precautions to avoid exposing children to lead paint under a regulation announced Monday by the Environmental Protection Agency. Many physicians and scientists have criticized the EPA's long-awaited rule as inadequate to protect children who live in the estimated 38 million homes that contain old lead paint. Every year, about 11 million renovations occur in U.S.

Citing repeated delays and violations of environmental law, federal regulators Tuesday sent their own work crews to finish removing oil and contaminated water released into a Santa Maria creek by Greka Energy Corp. About 200 barrels of crude oil and toxic water leaked out of a corroded pipe at Greka's Bell lease site Jan. 29, migrating to a tributary of Sisquoc Creek, officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said.

Officials from more than a dozen states sued the Bush administration Wednesday, accusing the Environmental Protection Agency of "foot-dragging" to avoid regulating greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. A year ago, the states won a legal challenge in which the Supreme Court agreed that the EPA had the authority to limit carbon dioxide and other pollutants that cause global warming.

For the off-road warriors of Northern and Central California, few wild landscapes are as enticing as the Clear Creek Management Area, with its deep canyons, scampering feral pigs, rainbow-hued flowers and giant rock formations. But on Thursday, a 48-square-mile swath of the Diablo Mountains in San Benito and Fresno counties was labeled a virtual death zone where five visits a year over three decades could lead to lung cancer and other crippling diseases.

A coalition of environmental groups plans to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today to force it to overturn motor vehicle emissions limits for Southern California, charging that the targets fail to address hazardous pollution faced by 1.5 million people who live next to freeways. In a petition to be filed in the U.S.

Escalating a fight with Democrats on Capitol Hill, the White House on Friday invoked executive privilege in refusing to turn over documents to a congressional committee investigating the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to deny California permission to implement its own vehicle emission standards.

Jason Burnett has made a lot of news lately, criticizing the Bush administration for rejecting California's request for a federal waiver that would have allowed the state to enforce greenhouse gas restrictions. Burnett, until recently the associate deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, testified last month before a congressional panel about the possible White House role in overruling the EPA staff's recommendation of the waiver.