News & Articles

In its annual publication listing potential candidates for placement on the Endangered or Threatened Species lists, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service identified the rattlesnake-master borer moth as one of several species that face threats to their survival.

The Environmental Protection Agency has sent its revised Risk Management Program Rule to the White House Office of Management and Budget for pre-publication review. The EPA’s Risk Management Program applies to facilities that use or store a certain threshold amount of hazardous substances.

Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment published the findings of a study analyzing flowback and produced waters from hydraulically fractured unconventional oil and gas wells. The study found that only 4-8% of the flowback and produced waters is composed of returned injected hydraulic fracturing fluids, and the majority of the return of injected hydraulic fracturing fluids occurs within the first few months after the initial fracturing. The remaining 92-96% of the flowback and produced waters comes from naturally occurring formation brines.

On Thursday President-elect Donald Trump nominated Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt’s nomination signals a major policy shift on environmental regulations from that of the Obama Administration. Scott Pruitt has written that the debate on climate change is “far from settled.” He recently joined a coalition of state attorney generals in suing over the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, and he has also sued over the EPA’s recently announced regulations seeking to curtail the emissions of methane from the oil and gas sector.