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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Wisconsin Environmental Group Sues EPA

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Friday, January 30, 2015   

MADISON, Wis. - A number of environmental organizations including Clean Wisconsin have filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency.

They're urging the EPA to address air pollution from huge farms known as "concentrated animal feeding operations." According to Clean Wisconsin, the ammonia emissions pose a serious health risk to Wisconsinites.

"There's an accumulating body of evidence linking air-pollutant releases from industrial food-animal production operations to people who work in, live near, or go to school near these facilities," said Keeve Nachman, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University. "A number of studies have been published that document the wide spectrum of different contaminants generated by and emitted by industrial food-animal production facilities."

In Wisconsin, state law exempts agricultural waste from ammonia-pollution regulation. The EPA has set limits on ammonia exposure, but the lawsuit alleges that a lack of oversight means there are no state limits on the amounts released by any particular facility. Each year, according to Clean Wisconsin, livestock operations in the state give off an estimated 82,000 tons of ammonia, accounting for two-thirds of all ammonia emissions in the state.

The petitions filed in federal court allege the EPA has failed for years to address noxious emissions, and call for action from the agency within 90 days. Tarah Heinzen, an attorney with the Environmental Integrity Project, said the focus of her group's petition is establishing health-based national air standards for ammonia "because livestock operations are the nation's dominant source of this pollutant, which causes numerous damaging impacts on health and the environment. The petition simply asks EPA to write rules that will hold factory farms to the same standards as other major polluters."

Clean Wisconsin said it has been petitioning the EPA to use its authority to address this issue since 2009, adding that the agency has not responded to the petitions.

Details of the suit are online at environmentalintegrity.org.


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