Environment | WPN World People News

Environmental groups Hawaiʻi Wildlife Fund and Conservation Council for Hawaiʻi, represented by Earthjustice, brought suit on Tuesday to block the replacement of approximately 4,800 streetlight fixtures across Maui County with new LED fixtures that threaten to kill or injure critically imperiled seabirds and sea turtles. The County of Maui Department of Public Works violated the Hawaiʻi Environmental Policy Act by moving forward with the project, in conjunction with Maui Electric Company, without the legally mandated environmental review.

On February 8, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Jefferson County Board of Health (JCBH) announced a settlement agreement with Drummond Company (Drummond) that will resolve allegations that Drummond violated the Clean Air Act at the coke byproduct recovery plant located at its ABC Coke facility in Tarrant, Ala.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti at a press conference with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to announce his decision not to repower three coastal gas plants in the Los Angeles basin.

The European Commission, on February 15, announced an investment of € 116.1 million for the latest integrated projects to be funded under the LIFE programme for the Environment and Climate Action. The funding will support projects in Austria, Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Portugal and Slovenia.

Interorient Marine Services Limited, a vessel operating company, on February 13, was convicted and sentenced in the Western District of Louisiana, for maintaining false and incomplete records relating to the discharge of oil from the tank vessel Ridgebury Alexandra Z, announced Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bossert Clark of the Environment and Natural Resources Division and United States Attorney David C. Joseph for the Western District of Louisiana.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands – Insurance company Aegon (the 19th largest in the world) has announced it is no longer investing in tar sands oil. The financial company will also sell its investments in pipeline companies Transcanada and Enbridge in Canada and the US.

An IUCN study has identified tree species native to Indonesia’s Kutai National Park that are resilient to climate change and support threatened East Bornean orangutan populations, recommending their use in reforestation efforts.

Earthjustice President Abigail Dillen released the following statement on the introduction of a resolution on the Green New Deal.

Health and labor organizations will have to argue again in court that chlorpyrifos, a brain-damaging pesticide, must be banned from all food uses, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Febuary 6. The decision comes four months after Andrew Wheeler’s Environmental Protection Agency asked the court to rehear the case either by the 3-judge panel that originally banned chlorpyrifos in 2018, or by a panel of 11 judges.

On Febuary 5, the Environmental Court of the State of Hawaiʻi ruled that the State Energy Office of the Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism (DBEDT) was wrong in allowing “wholesale” exemptions from the state law mandate that all new single-family homes include solar water heaters.