- The Trump administration will no longer require “mining companies to prove they have the financial wherewithal to clean up their pollution,” reports Matthew Brown in The Chicago Tribune. Even though “The U.S. mining industry has a long history of abandoning contaminated sites and leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for cleanups. Thousands of shuttered mines leak contaminated water into rivers, streams and other waterways, including hundreds of cases in which the EPA has intervened, sometimes at huge expense.”
- Mangroves are integral to coastal ecosystems and provide essential habitat to a variety of fish species. New research published in the journal Global Change Biology indicates that mangroves are not genetically equipped to adapt to climate change. “If the sea level continues to rise,” Chung-I Wu, a University of Chicago evolutionary biologist and coauthor of the paper,” the first group [of species] to die will be the mangroves.” Via Hakai Magazine.
- In January of 2017, the Obama Administration withdrew 100,000 acres of federal land in southwest Oregon from consideration for mining for at least 20 years. Now republican congressman Rob Bishop from Utah is asking the Trump Administration to review and roll back that decision. However, “Attempts in recent years to open nickel mines near the headwaters of pristine creeks and rivers in southwest Oregon have faced solid opposition.” Via Jefferson Public Radio.
source http://midcurrent.com/2017/12/06/tippets-epa-drops-mining-clean-up-rule-mangroves-and-climate-change-mining-in-southwest-oregon/
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