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The Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday that a study by the largest toxic waste dump in the West showed that its level of cancer-causing chemicals was too low to harm the health of a nearby community where a high number of babies have been born with serious birth defects. Chemical Waste Management said its study showed instead that the level of PCBs surrounding the Kettleman Hills landfill in Central California was similar to contamination found in rural areas across the country, even in the remote wilderness. E.P.A. officials helped design and oversee the study. Local families denounced the study, saying it would provide no comfort to mothers whose infants had died from heart murmurs and Down syndrome. Officials said the study was only one piece of information that the E.P.A. was considering before making a decision about an application for the landfill's expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two federal agencies say they know how far the new Nissan Leaf will go on a fully charged battery. They just don't agree. A few weeks before the Nissan Leaf is delivered to buyers, the Environmental Protection Agency, which approves the fuel economy stickers that go in the window of every new car, says it will go 73 miles. The Federal Trade Commission says the correct number is 96 to 110. (These range numbers, it's worth pointing out, are distinct from the fuel economy numbers that Nick Bunkley recently wrote about in The New York Times.) [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- A top federal regulator has recommended revoking the permit for one of the nation's largest planned mountaintop removal mining projects, saying it would be devastating to miles of West Virginia streams and the plant and animal life they support. In a report submitted last month and made public on Friday, Shawn M. Garvin, the Environmental Protection Agency's regional administrator for the Mid-Atlantic, said that Arch Coal's proposed Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County should be stopped because it ''would likely have unacceptable adverse effects on wildlife.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency is 10 years behind schedule in setting guidelines for a host of toxic air pollutants, according to a report from the agency's inspector general. The report, which was released last week, found that the agency had failed to develop emissions standards, due in 2000, for some sources of hazardous air pollutants. These included smaller sites often located in urban areas, like dry cleaners and gas stations, but also some chemical manufacturers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed adding the oil and gas sector and facilities that inject carbon dioxide into the ground to the greenhouse gas sources that are required to report their annual emissions to the government. The agency already requires 31 industries to track and report emissions. The new rule, if accepted after a public comment period, would also try to track emissions of methane and fluorinated gases, which have a much more powerful impact on the atmosphere than carbon dioxide does. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Environmental Protection Agency announced on Monday that it would overhaul drinking water regulations so that officials could police dozens of contaminants simultaneously and tighten rules on the chemicals used by industries. The new policies, which are still being drawn up, will probably force some local water systems to use more effective cleaning technologies, but may raise water rates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In a direct challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency's authority, Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, introduced a resolution on Thursday to prevent the agency from taking any action to regulate carbon dioxide and other climate-altering gases. Ms. Murkowski, joined by 35 Republicans and three conservative Democrats, proposed to use the Congressional Review Act to strip the agency of the power to limit emissions of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court gave the agency legal authority to regulate such emissions in a landmark 2007 ruling. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Environmental Protection Agency said Monday that it would probably increase the amount of ethanol that gasoline retailers could blend into ordinary fuel, to 15 percent, if tests established that the blend would not damage cars. The maximum ethanol blend is now 10 percent, except for cars specially equipped to handle higher blends. The agency said it was likely to approve the increase to 15 percent next summer, perhaps for use only in cars of the 2001 model year and later. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

FEW in the auto industry were satisfied with the calculations that awarded the Chevrolet Volt a mileage rating of 230 miles a gallon (which has since been topped by the Nissan Leaf battery car at 367). Those numbers are based on a draft Environmental Protection Agency standard for plug-in hybrids and battery cars. But the agency says its work isn't complete and it is searching for meaningful ways to present mileage information to car buyers on the window sticker. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Obama administration signaled its determination to ensure that mining companies clean up their toxic debris as the Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to require the companies to post bonds to guarantee, in the words of an agency release, ''that owners and operators of these facilities, not taxpayers, foot the bill for environmental change.'' The E.P.A.'s announcement, in the wake of a court decision five months ago requiring the agency to ensure that companies could not avoid financial responsibility by declaring bankruptcy, comes as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar prepares to testify before Congress on Tuesday about the future of the 1872 law that governs mining for minerals like gold, silver, copper, iron, lead and uranium. A spokeswoman for the National Mining Association, Carol Raulston, said that such a rule supplicated other bond requirements set by state and federal agencies and that the government was overestimating the toxicity of mine waste. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday that it had granted California the right to enforce its first-in-the-nation standards controlling greenhouse-gas emissions from cars and light trucks. The move reverses a 2008 ruling by the Bush administration and effectively ends a seesaw political battle between automakers and environmental regulators that began in Sacramento eight years ago when the California Legislature first took up the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Less than a month into the job, and with only a skeleton staff, Lisa Jackson, the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, has already engineered an astonishing turnaround. She has pledged to reverse or review three Bush administration directives that had slowed the government's response to global warming and has brought a new sense of urgency to an issue that President Bush treated indifferently. She has also boosted morale at an agency badly demoralized after eight years of political meddling. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Six states bordering the Ohio River are joining the Environmental Protection Agency in the largest study of its kind to identify and reduce dangerous levels of bacteria that plague the waterway. Unsafe levels of fecal coliform, or E. coli, have been identified in about 500 miles of the 981-mile river, which stretches from Pittsburgh to the Mississippi River at Cairo, Ill. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Chosen for: Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Would bring to the job: Twenty years of experience as an environmental regulator and a reputation as a consensus builder. Ms. Jackson, a chemical engineer, brought a more policy-driven approach as commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, winning praise even from those who opposed her decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Environmental Protection Agency announced that it intended to ban the use of the pesticide carbofuran, citing its harmful effects on children and the environment. The agency said the risks associated with exposure to carbofuran in food and water exceed levels established by the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. In 1991, Congress banned the granular form of the pesticide, which was blamed for the deaths of more than a million birds. In humans, the pesticide can cause long-term damage to the body's neurological and reproductive systems. The chemical is used to combat pests that feed on rice, cotton, corn, soybean and sugar cane crops, particularly in China; the agency says it is not widely used in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article reports on the failure of the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush in implementing the regulations related to science, which is against their agenda. The decision of the Environmental Protection Agency to reject the recommendations of experts regarding the regulation of the amount of soot in the air is a recent example of it.

The article focuses on the recommendation of the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States regarding standards of emission of particles of soot in air. The agency has refused to follow a plea from independent science advisers and has tightened only one of two standards regulating the amount of lethal particles of soot in the air. The annual standard level has been kept at its original level fixed in 1997.

Reports on the federal lawsuit filed by New York and six other states that seeks to force the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to do more to prevent foreign species of fish and plants from invading the Great Lakes. Demand of the states that they wanted the agency to take an active role in enforcing regulations that control the discharge of ballast water from ocean-going vessels; Contention of the states that EPA's refusal to regulate ballast discharges violates provisions of the Clean Water Act; Response of the EPA on its decision not to police ballast discharges but instead to work with the Coast Guard to carry out the National Invasive Species Act.

The article focuses on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), that has opened the door to possible revision of its fuel economy tests. In an advisory on its web site, the EPA said on March 24, 2004 that it would publish a notice in the Federal Register soliciting comment from all interested parties on Bluewater Network's, an environmental group, call for a revision of its test procedures within 120 days.

Reports that U.S. President George W. Bush has nominated Utah Governor Michael O. Leavitt to replace Christie Whitman as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Reactions of business, Republican Party groups and environmental activists; Remarks by Bush and Leavitt; Outlook for a politically charged battle over Bush's environmental record when Leavitt's Senate confirmation hearings are held; Views of Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.); Background on Leavitt; Leavitt's stance on land issues.

Editorial. Comments on the statistical assessment report of the U.S. environment issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2003.