Environmental Protection Agency

For farmers, this stinks: Belching and gaseous cows and hogs could start costing them money if the federal government decides to charge fees for air-polluting animals. Farmers are turning their noses up at the notion, which they contend is a possible consequence of an Environmental Protection Agency report after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gases from motor vehicles amount to air pollution.

President-elect Barack Obama will tap Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu as his Energy secretary and former New Jersey environmental protection commissioner Lisa Jackson as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, a senior Democrat said Wednesday. In addition, Carol Browner, a former EPA administrator, will serve as a high-level coordinator on energy issues, reporting to the president.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday abandoned its push to revise two air pollution rules in ways that environmentalists had long opposed, abruptly dropping measures that the Bush administration had spent years preparing. One proposal would have made it easier to build a coal-fired power plant, refinery or factory near a national park. The other would have altered the rules that govern when power plants must install antipollution devices.

In a ruling hailed by environmentalists, a federal appeals court reinstated one of President Bush's clean air regulations while the Environmental Protection Agency makes court-mandated changes. In July, the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out the Clean Air Interstate Rule, which required 28 mostly Eastern states to reduce smog-forming and soot-producing emissions that can travel long distances in the wind. The court said the EPA overstepped its authority by instituting the rule, citing "more than several fatal flaws" in the regulation.

If you simply guess how many miles per gallon of fuel your vehicle gets, you might do about as well as the Environmental Protection Agency has over the last couple of decades. Last month, the EPA announced the first major revision in its fuel economy testing procedures since 1986, aiming to create more realistic mileage comparisons among vehicles. The EPA acknowledges that fuel economy estimates may drop by as much as 30%, an explicit admission that its prior practices were far off the mark.

Beneath a steely sky and icy snow flurries, cross-country skiers glide over a 130-acre alpine meadow that Kirkwood Mountain Resort has preserved for wildlife and recreation. In nearby restaurants, diners use plates and utensils that are reusable or made with recycled materials. And employees receive financial rewards for carpooling to work. Kirkwood, a 35-year-old vacation community nestled in a box canyon south of Lake Tahoe, is a proud signer of a national environmental charter for ski areas.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday unveiled proposals to slash diesel soot from freight trains and marine vessels by 90% by 2030, winning guarded praise from environmentalists, but a scathing rebuke from Southern California's top air quality regulator. Under rules announced by EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, existing and new train locomotives would have to meet increasingly tougher controls on emissions of nitrogen oxide and fine particulate matter.

Concerned about the extent of pollution at the beachfront property, federal officials announced Wednesday that they have taken steps to add a shuttered Oxnard metal recycling plant and a massive waste pile on surrounding property to a list of Superfund sites. "We found that there were levels of metals and radioactive materials here that were posing a threat to human health and the environment," said Pete Guria, chief of the Environmental Protection Agency's regional emergency response section.

The White House has renominated three people for top jobs affecting the environment who were previously blocked in Congress because of their pro-industry views. According to industry lobbyists and Republican aides in Congress, Bush intends to skirt the Senate approval process if necessary by making recess appointments to put the three nominees in the posts.

President Bush, while acknowledging Tuesday that he took "very seriously" the Supreme Court's ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency must regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles as pollution, set up a potential conflict with Congress by attaching two conditions to comply with the decision.