Coal mining in the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming began in the 1920s, but it wasn’t until the energy crises of the 1970s that development of the region’s abundant reserves got seriously underway, and the region soared economically. I was at the time working at the Solar Energy Research Institute and simultaneously free-lancing energy stories for a number of print venues. I often traveled to chronicle the economic and social upheaval as well as the gawdawful environmental changes around energy boomtowns like Craig, Colorado, and Gillette, Wyoming.
In the 1990s, the low-sulfur coal of the basin was coveted because of the need to comply with Clean Air Act emission standards designed to curb acid rain caused by burning coal at electricity-generating power plants. By 2003, the Powder River Basin had ripped more coal from the ground than had been taken from the Appalachian basins of the eastern United States. Currently, the mines of the basin extract about 43% of total U.S. coal production and are the single largest U.S. source of carbon dioxide emissions. Of that haul of coal, 85% comes from leased federal land. But just as overall U.S. coal production peaked in 2008, it also did so in the basin as power companies switched to renewables or natural gas. Production has been on the decline ever since.
For more than a decade, climate activists have fought against new federal leases for fossil fuel operations, and the Bureau of Land Management previously generated land-use plans that would partially curtail the practice. But litigation knocked those down as inadequate.
On Thursday, to the expected howls of Republicans like body-slamming, illegal wolf-shooting Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, President Joe Biden announced a proposed rule to end offering new coal leases on 13 million federally owned acres in the basin. This wouldn’t immediately end coal production there. Far from it. The Bureau of Land Management’s two land-use plans would let existing operations keep going for decades—until 2041 in Wyoming and 2060 in Montana. However, recently finalized Environmental Protection Agency rules mandating strict new emissions controls at power plants could shutter all of them by 2039 if the rules survive the lawsuits already filed. Since basin coal goes almost exclusively to generate electricity, that means future production would depend on exports abroad. These make up just 2% of current output.
A list of the 16 existing mines can be seen here. Public comments on the proposed rule will be open for 30 days.
The no-leasing proposal is a response to a 2022 court order saying proposed land-use plans under the Trump administration had failed to fully account for climate change and public health problems caused by burning coal.
“This is a really critical, and frankly long overdue step that BLM has taken,” said Melissa Hornbein, an attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center, which has long been involved in challenges to previous BLM land management plans. “The amount of savings in terms of sicknesses, premature birth, fetal brain damage, respiratory infections, and mortality is almost hard to quantify, but it’s really, really impactful,” she told Jake Bolster at Inside Climate News.
In a joint statement with Montana Sen. Steven Daines, Reps. Ryan Zinke, and Matt Rosendale, Gianforte said: “Every action taken by the Biden administration is driving up the cost of affordable energy and threatening the reliability of our electrical grid. Affordable power generated by coal keeps the lights on in Montana and fuels manufacturing across the country and world. Today’s announcement is nothing more than a gift to China and our adversaries and a slap in face to hardworking Montanans. Instead of prioritizing the ideological agenda of the far left, President Biden should prioritize the needs of American consumers and workers.”
Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte
Daines said, “Since Day One the Joe Biden administration has been on an anti-energy war path in an attempt to appease far-Left environmental groups.” House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman—an Arkansas Republican known for rejecting climate science and with a lifetime report card score of 3% from the League of Conservation Voters—said the administration was “weaponizing federal agencies to advance their radical climate agenda.”
This GOP talking point targeting “far-left environmentalists,” “radical climate agenda,” “extremist Democrat (sic) green agenda” is a Republican favorite. Quite the accusation when considering the truly radical, extremist, and dead-end Republican agenda of throwing up obstacles to sabotage even modest efforts to mitigate or prevent the worst climate impacts.
A spokesperson for Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, who is in his toughest reelection contest since he entered the Senate in 2007, said in a statement to E&E News that he is reviewing the proposal. “Senator Tester will always stand up to President Biden’s energy policies when they don’t make sense for Montana. He is reviewing the proposal and encourages Montanans to make their voices heard during the public comment period.” If Tester does come out strongly against the proposed rule, it wouldn’t be the first time. He also opposed the recently announced EPA tailpipe rule.
Tim Sheehy, the Republican seeking to oust Tester from his Senate seat blasted BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning, a former Tester adviser. He tweeted: “BLM, run by former@JonTester advisor and eco-terrorist Tracy Stone-Manning, continues their war on American energy. We need to stand strong against the radical Biden-Tester climate cult agenda. Make American energy dominant again!”
The BLM has already published a rule to allow two new types of leases—for restoration and mitigation. This change had also caught the ire of the same Montana Republican leaders who blasted the end-of-leasing proposal.
Other people greeted the administration’s actions with praise.
Said Gillette, Wyoming, resident Lynne Huskinson, a retired coal miner and board member of the Powder River Basin Resource Council and Western Organization of Resource Councils: “As someone who lives near some of the largest coal mines in the nation, I’m thankful for the leadership from the BLM in finally addressing the long-standing negative impacts that federal coal leasing has had on the Powder River Basin. For decades, mining has affected public health, our local land, air, and water, and the global climate. We look forward to BLM working with state and local partners to ensure a just economic transition for the Powder River Basin as we move toward a clean energy future.”
Mark Fix, a Miles City rancher and member of the Northern Plains Resource Council, said: “Coal companies in this region already have decades of coal locked up in leasing, and it’s hard to imagine they’ll find buyers that far into the future given the competition from more affordable energy sources. This plan protects taxpayers from wasting publicly owned resources on lowball leases to subsidize an industry in decline. It’s time we take a clear-eyed look at the future and start investing in a transition away from coal.”
And Drew Caputo, vice president of litigation for lands, wildlife and oceans at Earthjustice, said: “This is a monumental decision that will save lives, safeguard our environment and significantly cut carbon emissions in the United States. For years, conservation groups have litigated to get to this point — arguing that the federal government cannot simply lease away our public lands to coal companies while ignoring the impacts to public health.”
—MB
weekly ECO-VIDEO
RESOURCES & ACTION
GREEN BRIEFS
In 1973, Elliot Berman at the University of Delaware pioneered "Solar One," a project that integrated a hybrid system of photovoltaic panels into a building and connected it to the local electricity grid, feeding power to the utility in the day and buying it at night. Just like residential rooftop installations do today. Berman’s solar arrays also operated as flat-plate thermal collectors, providing heat to storage bins. It was proof that the idea worked, but it was very inefficient.
Last week, consultants Wood-Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industries Association announced that the United States has now surpassed 5 million solar installations on homes, businesses, and ground-mounted arrays. In a press release, SEIA noted that it took until 2016 before the first million U.S. solar installations were put in place, four decades after Solar One was connected. The association said its data shows more than half those 5 million installations have come online since the start of 2020, and more than 25% since the Inflation Reduction Act was signed in August 2022.
The SEIA predicts that U.S. solar installations will double to 10 million by 2030 and triple to 15 million by 2034. Today, 11 states have more than 100,000 solar installations, with California the leader with 2 million. In 2012, California only had 25,000 solar installations.
Said SEIA president and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper: “Solar is scaling by the millions because it consistently delivers on its promise to lower electricity costs, boost community resilience, and create economic opportunities. Today 7% of homes in America have solar, and this number will grow to over 15% of U.S. homes by 2030. Solar is quickly becoming the dominant source of electricity on the grid, allowing communities to breathe cleaner air and lead healthier lives.”
A few other statistics from SEIA/Wood-Mackenzie:
- While 97% of installations are on residential rooftops, they only generate half the nation’s solar electricity, the rest coming from utility-scale operations.
- By 2034, U.S. solar capacity is expected to grow to 673 gigawatts, enough to power more than 100 million homes.
- By 2028, 26% of installed residential solar will include energy storage, about double the current rate.
- The 198 million metric tons of CO2 displaced by existing solar installations are equivalent to closing 53 coal-fired plants, about a fourth of the current total.
- The residential solar market alone displaces 37 million metric tons of CO2 each year.
—MB
It will be interesting to see how Republicans intent on killing the green transition will react to the Oakland Unified School District’s all-electric bus fleet built in California by BYD, the leading Chinese EV manufacturer.
The World Resources Institute calculates that there are 480,000 school buses in the United States. The vast bulk of them run on diesel fuel, spewing carbon dioxide, particulates, and other toxins with every stroke of their pistons. About 60% of the 20 million students who ride those buses come from low-income families. Health problems from diesel emissions are well documented. A California legislative mandate requires all newly bought school buses to have zero emissions by 2035.
In addition to the clean transportation the 74 Oakland school-bus fleet will give riders, these rolling batteries will provide, when parked, 2.1 gigawatt-hours of electricity to the grid, enough to power up to 400 homes. The buses are rated for 110 miles of range before recharging.
Electric school buses charging at the Oakland Unified School District depot.
Todd Woody at Bloomberg writes:
The buses are expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 25,000 tons annually in a city where 72% of public school students come from low-income families, who are disproportionately impacted by pollution from Oakland’s busy port, truck traffic and manufacturing facilities. Alameda County, where Oakland is located, has some of the nation’s worst air pollution, according to an American Lung Association report released this month.
The Oakland Unified School District’s previous diesel bus fleet gave children no respite from pollutants linked to lung diseases like asthma. “I would wipe my fingers along the inside of the bus at the end of the day and they would be black from diesel smoke,” says Marjorie Urbina, who has been driving school buses for 23 years. “If it’s in the bus, it’s in my lungs.”
The environmental and health benefits are obvious. But Oakland’s 26-seat buses, built by BYD at a Lancaster, California, factory, and supplied by Silicon Valley start-up Züm, are not cheap at $350,000 apiece. That’s three times what a diesel bus costs. So the purchases were subsidized through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus Program, with additional funding from the state and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. So far the EPA has awarded nearly $2 billion to help pay for some 5,000 electric school-bus replacements at more than 600 schools nationwide. The CSBP is authorized to provide a total of $5 billion in federal school bus grants through 2026
—MB
ECO-TWXXT
HALF A DOZEN OTHER THINGS TO READ (OR LISTEN TO)
Calls for responsible mining fail to stem rights abuses linked to transition minerals by Daisy Clague at Climate Home News. As the rapid deployment of clean energy technologies fuels demand for their components, human rights abuses linked to the supply of critical minerals show no sign of letting up. New data from a Transition Minerals Tracker compiled by the Business & Human Rights Resource Center shows that more than 630 allegations of human rights violations have been associated with minerals mining since 2010. Of those, 91 were made in the last year alone. The tracker monitors human rights abuses associated with the extraction of seven minerals including copper, lithium, and bauxite, which is new in this year’s update. These elements are essential for the production of solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and electrification more broadly. The latest BHRRC data points to widespread violations of Indigenous peoples’ rights—such as forced relocation, water pollution and denial of access to traditional land—as well as attacks on human rights defenders and workers’ rights abuses.
Las Bambas copper mine in Peru where Indigenous people unsuccessfully protested an expansion with blockades that since 2016 cost the Chinese-owned MMG operation 600 days of work stoppages.
In the race for space metals, companies hope to cash in by Sarah Scoles at Undark. In April 2023, a satellite the size of a microwave launched to space. Its goal: to get ready to mine asteroids. While the mission, courtesy of a company called AstroForge, ran into problems, it’s part of a new wave of would-be asteroid miners hoping to cash in on cosmic resources. Potential applications of space-mined material abound: Asteroids contain metals like platinum and cobalt, which are used in electronics and electric vehicle batteries, respectively. Although there are plenty of these materials on Earth, they can be more concentrated on asteroids than mountainsides, making them easier to scrape out. And scraping in space, advocates say, could cut down on the damaging impacts that mining has on this planet. Space-resource advocates also want to explore the potential of other substances. What if space ice could be used for spacecraft and rocket propellant? Space dirt for housing structures for astronauts and radiation shielding? Previous companies have rocketed toward similar goals before but went bust about a half-decade ago. In the years since that first cohort left the stage, though, “the field has exploded in interest,” said Angel Abbud-Madrid, director of the Center for Space Resources at the Colorado School of Mines.
Baobab trees
Scientists solve mystery of ancient “tree of life” by Helen Briggs at the BBC news. DNA studies show that baobab trees first arose in Madagascar 21 million years ago. Their seeds were later carried on ocean currents to Australia and also to mainland Africa, evolving into distinct species. The researchers are calling for greater conservation efforts for the trees, which they say may be closer to extinction than previously thought. Baobabs are known as "the tree of life" or "upside down tree" for their strange shapes and longevity. They are in trouble because of climate change and widespread deforestation. Ilia Leitch of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, worked on the study, alongside her husband, Andrew Leitch, of Queen Mary University of London. "We have been able to pinpoint the origin of baobabs, which are an iconic keystone species supporting a wide diversity of animals and plants as well as humans,” she said, "And the data have enabled us to provide important new insights which will inform their conservation to safeguard their future." The two researchers studied eight baobab species, six of which are found in Madagascar, one widespread across Africa, and another in north-west Australia.
Property insurers see escalating losses from climate disasters by Christropher Flavelle at The New York Times. The insurance turmoil caused by climate change—which had been concentrated in Florida, California and Louisiana—is fast becoming a contagion, spreading to states like Iowa, Arkansas, Ohio, Utah, and Washington. Even in the Northeast, where homeowners insurance was still generally profitable last year, the trends are worsening. In 2023, insurers lost money on homeowners coverage in 18 states, more than a third of the country, according to a New York Times analysis of newly available financial data. That’s up from 12 states five years ago, and eight states in 2013. The result is that insurance companies are raising premiums by as much as 50 percent or more, cutting back on coverage or leaving entire states altogether. Nationally, over the last decade, insurers paid out more in claims than they received in premiums, according to the ratings firm Moody’s, and those losses are increasing. The growing tumult is affecting people whose homes have never been damaged and who have dutifully paid their premiums, year after year. Cancellation notices have left them scrambling to find coverage to protect what is often their single biggest investment. As a last resort, many are ending up in high-risk insurance pools created by states that are backed by the public and offer less coverage than standard policies. By and large, state regulators lack strategies to restore stability to the market.
Laurel Sutherlin
Procter & Gamble, Mondelēz and Nestlé Are Among 10 of the Leading Consumer Brands Driving Global Deforestation by Laurel Sutherlin at Wiki Observatory. “Keep Forests Standing,” a 2023 report by my organization, Rainforest Action Network (RAN), a nonprofit environmental group, revealed that many companies are still profiting from destructive practices, failing to bridge the gap between their public promises and their harmful actions. Our report identified 10 multinational corporations as significant contributors to deforestation and human rights abuses through their supply chains: Colgate-Palmolive, Ferrero, Kao, Mars, Mondeléz, Nestlé, Nissin Foods, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever. While some progress has been made, particularly with policies like No Deforestation, No Peatlands, No Exploitation, implementation remains incomplete, especially in regions like Indonesia and Malaysia. Producing a “scorecard” for each brand, we urged them to take concrete actions to protect forests and communities. The scorecard uses rigorous criteria to assess policies and transparency in reporting. Unfortunately, in 2023, none of the evaluated brands achieved an “A” grade, with Procter & Gamble, Mondeléz, Ferrero, and Nissin Foods performing the worst. These brands wield considerable economic power, influencing global markets for “forest-risk commodities,” particularly agricultural products such as palm oil, soy, cocoa, coffee, wood, pulp and paper, and beef.
This City Leader Wants Drivers to Pay $850/Year To Register Their Cars—And Give The Money To Transit by Kea Wilson at Streetsblog. A Canadian politician has a modest proposal to her city’s drivers: pay a tax equivalent to the current cost of an annual bus pass to register their cars—the equivalent of $858 American dollars a year—or give up those cars altogether and take the bus for free. And it’s sparking a conversation about how bold we should be in our efforts to break the cycle of car dependency south of the border, too. Quebec City Council Member Jackie Smith recently made headlines for proposing a nearly 39-fold increase to the annual $30 municipal car registration tax—about $22 in U.S. currency—which she says would allow the community of 542,000 to totally eliminate fares, double its current transit coverage, and pay off all of the agency’s debt. Smith argues that bold move is necessary to stop the transit death spiral that’s rocked the region since COVID-19, when agencies became the target of proposed funding cuts as ridership fell and the provincial government argued that “nobody takes the bus” anymore. In December, though, a new bill offered municipal leaders a rare opportunity to fill that gap: by increasing local taxes on things like excessive asphalt that exacerbates flooding, excessive water consumption that exacerbates drought, and vehicle registration fees that don’t capture the true costs of excessive driving.
ECO-QUOTE
“If we humans are good at anything, it’s thinking we’ve got a terrific idea and going for it without acknowledging the potential consequences or our own ignorance.”—David Suzuki
ECOPINION
Humans have been altering nature for thousands of years – to shape a sustainable future, it’s important to understand that deep history by Todd Braje at The Conversation. An iconic Paris landmark, the Notre Dame cathedral, will still be under renovation [when the Olympics begin in July] after a devastating fire that ignited in the cathedral and burned for 12 hours on April 14, 2019. Notre Dame is nearly 1,000 years old and has been damaged and repaired many times. The massive beams that framed the structure were fashioned from European oak trees harvested 300 to 400 years ago. Today, these trees are common throughout north-central Europe, but few are tall enough to replace Notre Dame’s roof lattice and spire, thanks to centuries of deforestation. Planners had to search nationwide for enough suitably large oaks for the restoration. As an archaeologist, I study long-term human interactions with nature. In my new book, Understanding Imperiled Earth: How Archaeology and Human History Inform a Sustainable Future, I describe how addressing modern environmental crises requires an understanding of deep history—not just written human records, but also ancient connections between humans and the natural world. Many people assume that the devastating impacts humans have wrought on our planet came about with the industrial era, which began in the mid-1700s. But people have been transforming conditions on Earth for millennia. Looking backward can inform our journey forward.
Lobbying against energy-efficiency measures draws criticism: 'Nobody is asking you what the payback is on your fancy cabinets' by Wes Stenzel at The Cool Down. Lobbyists are dismantling green energy initiatives in the name of affordability, disrupting our potential for a greener future in the process. Federal, state, and local governments have introduced and implemented policies that will save homeowners money in the long run—and simultaneously help curb carbon pollution—by regulating energy efficiency in the construction of new homes. These measures sometimes include requirements for wiring an EV charger installation (which strongly benefits any homeowner who wants to save money on refueling their car) and thicker insulation to help reduce heating and cooling costs. When lobbyists oppose these kinds of measures, they ultimately cost homeowners money in the long run by encouraging policies that can make energy bills more expensive. Lower energy-efficiency standards also have a negative impact on the planet, as they allow new buildings to emit more carbon pollution than is necessary, thus contributing to the dangerous overheating of our planet. "We do need to wrestle with the issue of cost, but it strikes me funny that we're measuring improvements to houses by this simple payback calculation," green builder Rob Howard said. "Nobody is asking you what the payback is on your fancy cabinets or flooring. But energy efficiency always comes down to that debate."
The Chinese EV leader BYD's all-electric SUV, the Tang, which began being manufactured in 2020.
The Problem With Starting (Another) Trade War With China by Timothy Noah at The New Republic. As policy, Trade War Two will have some perverse effects. It will help enlarge the domestic industry in electric vehicles by effectively barring Chinese EVs. Chinese EVs are not yet a significant part of the U.S. market, and under the new policy they never will be. But protection could easily create a domestic monopoly. Elon Musk’s Tesla already controls the majority of the domestic market in electric vehicles; now Musk will no longer have to worry about losing market share to China. In addition, the 100 percent tariff on Chinese EVs will raise prices for other EVs, which will in turn slow domestic adoption of the very technology Biden’s trying to spread to combat the climate change emergency. The main thing Trade War Two will achieve is an end to a half-century of trade liberalization. [Wall Street Journal reporter Bob] Davis pointed out to me that whenever the G20 meets, this group of leaders from the planet’s 20 largest economies renews its commitment “to ensure a level playing field and fair competition by discouraging protectionism.” “I can’t imagine,” Davis told me, that this boilerplate will survive in future G20 statements. I’m not yet on board with the new economic doctrine that says the desire for more open markets is an artifact of the bad old neoclassical order, and good riddance to it. I fear these trade wars will never end. I hope I’m wrong.
U.S. Gas Industry Claims Are False: Analysis of IEA Methane Tracker Finds U.S. Oil & Gas Sector Lags Behind Eighteen Other Countries on Emissions Intensity by Al Johnson-Kurts. The United States is the world’s top methane emitter from oil and gas. Despite the U.S. fossil fuel industry’s repeated claims to have the “cleanest gas in the world,” a new Oil Change International analysis of the International Energy Agency’s 2024 global methane emissions data reveals the truth for the first time: U.S. methane intensity lags behind 18 other countries. As the world’s largest oil and gas producer, this relatively high methane emissions intensity translates into a staggeringly huge amount of planet-destroying methane. America’s oil and gas sector emits more methane than any other. The IEA estimates 2023 methane emissions from America’s oil and gas infrastructure at nearly 13.8 million metric tons. This equates to nearly 1.2 billion tons of CO2 equivalent (CO2e), as much as 301 coal plants. While cleaning up methane could be crucial in slowing the ongoing climate crisis, it cannot replace the fundamental role of phasing out fossil fuels. The science is clear that to maintain a livable planet, we need to produce and consume less oil, gas, and coal tomorrow than we do today. The IEA’s Net Zero Scenario, which provides a roadmap for maintaining the 1.5°C goal, requires a 20% reduction in gas by 2030 and an 80% reduction by 2050. This projection incorporates a 75% reduction in methane emissions from oil and gas by 2030, a goal that the industry has failed to make progress toward.
DeShawn Blanding
The Food and Farm Bill Must Right the Wrongs of Longstanding Racial Injustice by DeShawn Blanding at the Union of Concerned Scientists. My grandfather, Frederick Henry Blanding, was a third-generation farmer and descendant of slaves. During his lifespan, most people ate locally sourced and homegrown foods. While Granddaddy Frederick loved farming, he faced such severe discrimination and anticipated the endangered state of small farmers that he swayed my father and his siblings away from farming. He foresaw then what we know now: Our food and farming system was never designed to support Black, Indigenous, and people of color workers and small farmers who toil to produce our agricultural goods. Though the Biden-Harris administration has made concerted efforts to course correct our unjust food and farming systems, there’s much more work to be done; transformational and equitable change cannot be relegated to one presidential administration. It must be indelibly imbued into our public policies. In federal food and agricultural policy, the best vehicle to achieve this change is the food and farm bill.
I swapped my south LA lawn for a verdant microfarm—now I feed the neighborhood by Beverly Lofton at The Guardian. In 2020, during the pandemic, I connected with Crop Swap LA, a local group that turns unused spaces like front lawns into sustainable microfarms in a way that creates jobs and preserves water—and then equitably distributes the food grown on them. Their goal is to have microfarms in places hardest hit by food insecurity and food apartheid. My neighborhood has been called a food desert. Grocery stores and other stores keep closing, while more and more apartment-style housing is being built. We started the conversion in 2021 and we celebrated the grand opening in 2022. Crop Swap LA took out all of the grass and I was able to get a $4,500 rebate from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power for the turf that was removed. They put in a reservoir and six raised beds and a drip irrigation system that uses recycled water. We’ve had so much rain lately and it all gets captured into the reservoir. Before the conversion, my front lawn was just basically grass, and with the drought and all the watering costs, the water bill was about $400 every other month. The bill I just got this week for water was $37.63 for two months, so it’s just an amazing amount of savings. We’ve grown a lot of dark leafy greens, bok choy, collard greens, string beans. Crop Swap LA also grows carrots, beets, radishes, potatoes, and anything that needs a deeper root system in grow bags called GardenSoxx. And we have a grapevine, so we’ll have Concord grapes this year. The microfarm is solar powered and has on-site composting.
OTHER GREEN STUFF
Iconic baobabs: The origin and long-distance travels of upside down trees • Sea otter study finds tool use allows access to larger prey, reduces tooth damage • “Forever chemicals” found to rain down on all five Great Lakes • Millions of tons in illegal logs shipped from Mozambique to China • Biochar Is Dominating the Carbon Removal Market — But No One Seems to Care • An environmental justice coalition for all • Oil Companies Must Set Aside More Money to Plug Wells, a New Rule Says. But It Won’t Be Enough • Microsoft’s AI obsession is jeopardizing its climate ambitions • Canada wildfire smoke put this city’s air quality among U.S. worst • In Seawater, Researchers See an Untapped Bounty of Critical Metals • EPA: $1.3 Trillion Needed for Nation’s Water Infrastructure • Eight climate activists arrested in Germany over airport protest