Agriculture

"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has re-approved a chemical used in Bayer's Roundup weed killer despite concerns over its health risks."

"CORNING, Iowa — A fight over how to fuel Americans' cars is beginning to wear on Ray Gaesser. Gaesser farms 5,500 acres of corn and soybeans in Adams County, where cornfields stretch to the horizon and one of the biggest employers is a corn-to-ethanol plant."

"The EPA announced Thursday it supports the continued use and registration of neonicotinoids, a class of insecticides linked to declines in bees, aquatic insects and birds."

"Attorneys general from 14 states filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over its rollback of Obama-era chemical plant safety regulations."

"A U.S. court decision last week striking down three biofuel waivers that the Environmental Protection Agency gave oil refineries in 2017 has cast doubt on the legitimacy of dozens of other EPA exemptions granted under similar circumstances, according to industry experts and agency data."

"A U.S. appeals court has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency must reconsider three of the biofuel waivers it recently granted to small oil refineries, arguing the agency’s justification for approving the exemptions was flawed."

"The Russian River flowed with a cherry red tint Wednesday after tens of thousands of gallons of fresh cabernet sauvignon wine poured into the largest tributary in Sonoma County."

"Defying environmentalists and public health advocates, the Trump administration on Thursday announced the replacement of Obama-era water protections with a significantly weaker set of regulations that lifts limits on how much pollution can be dumped into small streams and wetlands."

"Trump administration officials took a victory lap after they unveiled their final revisions to Clean Water Act protections for waterways and wetlands. But the Waters of the U.S., or WOTUS, replacement rule that EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers completed yesterday must now survive a possible Democratic win in the 2020 presidential election and an expected inundation of challenges in the courts."

"KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Dozens of government computers sit in a nondescript building here, able to connect to a data model that could help farmers manage the impact of a changing climate on their crops. But no one in this federal agency would know how to access the model, or, if they did, what to do with the data."