NEW YORK - Environmental groups are taking the Obama administration to court over what they call "weak" safety rules for oil shipped by rail. It's a timely issue given last week's fatal Amtrak derailment.
Sean Dixon, an attorney with Hudson Riverkeeper, says the rules issued this month don't contain enough specifics, and don't address the broader issue of crude oil safety on the railways. For example, he says, the Amtrak crash happened within several hundred feet of a line of tank cars.
"There's nothing in this rule that even attempts to address human error, with respect to early reports out of Philadelphia on the Amtrak derailment that high speed may have been a player," says Dixon. "So, there's a lot of ancillary issues with respect to crude safety that aren't anywhere in this rule."
Dixon says the lawsuit filed last week by Earthjustice charges the administration with not doing enough to protect public safety. The American Petroleum Institute also has taken issue with the new rules and filed suit in the D.C. Circuit.
Some in the petroleum and railroad industries are voluntarily taking steps to improve tank car safety.
Larissa Liebmann, staff attorney with the Waterkeeper Alliance, says the oil industry relies on so-called unit trains, which often link as many as 120 tank cars carrying more than three-million tons of crude oil.
"Even beyond the fact that we have explosions and fires that can happen in communities, a single spill of one tank car can mess up the water for swimming for a good amount of time, for fishing," says Liebmann. "It can cause drinking water sources to be contaminated."
Nationwide, Dixon says there has been a 4,000 percent increase in the amount of crude oil shipped by rail in the past six years and a significant share rolls through New York.
"Recent numbers have shown that about a quarter of all of the oil produced in the Bakken fields comes through Albany," says Dixon. "This last winter, that number got a little bit higher. So, we are a pretty significant player, in terms of regions through which these trains are being shipped."
The suit was filed in the 9th Circuit on behalf of the Sierra Club, the Waterkeeper Alliance and several other conservation groups.
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The sale of public lands along with a rollback of protections for national monuments is back on the table now that Republicans control both houses of Congress.
During his first term, President Donald Trump unsuccessfully tried to reduce the size of national monuments in Utah and Nevada. The Washington Post set off alarm bells last month after it reported that New Mexico's Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks is among the six national monuments the Trump administration is considering for energy development.
Mark Allison, executive director of New Mexico Wild, said it is a complicated issue.
"We see attempts through the courts, the House rules process, through budget reconciliation and even federal legislation where they're trying to either turn what are public lands over to states or actually directly privatize them and sell them off to the highest bidder," he explained.
That came to pass last week when the House Natural Resources Committee passed legislation to sell or transfer 460,000 acres of federal lands in Nevada and Utah to local governments or private entities.
In the 2025 State of the Rockies survey, 72% of residents polled in eight Western states said they would prefer their member of Congress emphasize protecting clean air, water and wildlife habitat while boosting outdoor recreation over maximizing the amount of public land used for oil and gas drilling.
That was a 2% increase from the year before. But Allison fears public sentiment consistently expressed in the annual Colorado College poll could be ignored.
"If this comes, we want to be ready to have just an overwhelming and immediate response to tell the administration that we stand by our monuments in New Mexico and don't want to see them harmed," he added.
In the final days of his administration, President Joe Biden designated more than 600,000 acres of desert east of California's Coachella Valley as the Chuckwalla National Monument. But a Texas-based group has filed a lawsuit to stop the designation, arguing the president overstepped his authority.
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By Nina B. Elkadi for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Mark Moran for Iowa News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration
On March 10, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources received two phone calls. One caller phoned to complain that manure runoff was entering a tributary of Dry Run Creek, a waterway that provides vital habitat for fish and other wildlife in Winneshiek County, Iowa. The other caller described dead fish downstream. A few days later on March 13, the DNR reported the manure spill but did not name its source. Sentient has now obtained records from the Iowa DNR that show the source is an Iowa dairy operation — the Dale Humpal Dairy — located near an animal feeding operation run by another individual — Darryl Humpal — whose own operation has been fined multiple times for manure spill violations. Both operations have each received approximately $2 million in federal subsidies.
This particular manure spill caused a 10.2 mile-long fish-kill — one of the largest documented kills to occur in Iowa in the last decade.
In the Department’s field report, DNR officials observed “several dead fish” and “a strong odor of manure.” The report continues, “fish appeared to have recently died and they had not deteriorated yet.” In a letter to a DNR district supervisor, a natural resource technician describes, “freshly dead fish with some stranded gasping for air, manure on top of ice, and dirty flowing water below ice…”
More than 100,000 dead fish were observed by the investigators, whose subsequent water tests revealed lethal levels of ammonia. According to an evaluation of Dale Humpal Dairy’s manure storage facility on March 12, a faulty manure control structure had been “noted during previous inspections.”
Lactating dairy cows produce 150 pounds of manure per day. Dairy operations produce a lot of manure — more than poultry farms or beef — and that manure can wreak havoc on the environment in a number of ways. In addition to water pollution, livestock manure management is responsible for around 9 percent of methane emissions in the U.S., according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
As part of its investigation, on March 11 DNR officials paid a visit to Dale Humpal Dairy, where the manure appeared to be originating. Dale Humpal, the apparent operator who is listed as a member of the Iowa State Dairy Association Board, was nowhere to be found that day.
According to DNR documentation, Dale Humpal Dairy is a 330-head dairy with 50-60 heifers, and 15 calves “in huts,” the small structures where individual calves are typically kept on industrial dairy operations. The documents refer to the dairy as an animal feeding operation, which the EPA defines as an agricultural operation where animals are raised in confinement. In one of the photos Sentient obtained, cows can be seen crammed in a large shed with just enough room at the bottom to poke their heads out for air.
On March 12, the DNR was able to make contact with Humpal, who told the DNR he was not aware of any manure overflowing from his operation. As the DNR official continued to test for ammonia downstream (with some samples testing as high as 23 parts per million), they ultimately came to their conclusion that the dairy was the source, and on March 31 called Humpal with the results.
“I stated to him that my investigation was concluded and it was determined that the runoff from his open lots caused manure to flow into the tile intake,” the official wrote, referring to the soil drainage system prevalent in Iowa farmland.
In 2017, a manure spill attributed to the animal feeding operation owned by Darryl Humpal — located near Dale Humpal Dairy — killed 34,486 fish in Dry Run Creek.
Water pollution continues to afflict Iowa amid a steady increase of farm animals in the state. The overwhelming majority — 99 percent — of farmed animals in the U.S. are raised in factory farms. In Iowa, there are almost 124 million farm animals at any given time — around 55 million chickens, 53.4 million hogs, 11.5 million turkeys, and 3.7 million cattle and cows. In Iowa, manure spills are commonplace: a recent report by Food and Water Watch found that from 2013 to 2023, there were 179 documented manure spills that killed almost 2 million fish.
Dale Humpal did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources did not respond regarding what penalties it will be pursuing as a result of the violations.
Nina B. Elkadi wrote this article for Sentient.
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An environmental group is voicing concern about the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to tackle PFAS pollution.
The EPA recently announced steps to reduce the toxic "forever chemicals" in drinking water and hold polluters accountable.
Dan Firth, chair of the solid waste and mining committee for the Tennessee chapter of the Sierra Club, is concerned the EPA's efforts could be undermined by proposed budget cuts and regulatory rollbacks of pollution rules.
"We certainly hope that they will follow through and will improve, will strengthen the controls of around PFAS," Firth emphasized. "That they will truly make the polluters pay, and that they will clean up the drinking water and protect the residents of Tennessee."
EPA data show more than 143 million were exposed to toxic "forever chemicals" last year.
Firth pointed out if the EPA follows through on enforcing safe drinking water rules, it could improve water quality across Tennessee and ease the cleanup burden on taxpayers. He added the agency should also go further by treating PFAS as a class of chemicals and limit their use to prevent future contamination.
Firth noted the Tennessee Department of Environment Conservation is still in the process of revising its permit process. His group is encouraging the department to include some testing requirements for PFAS in biosolids.
"Grundy County had a bill in the legislature this year to gain local control over how they handle, whether they can permit or can deny the land application of biosolids at the local level," Firth observed.
Firth is calling for swift, meaningful action to improve access to clean water, noting PFAS exposure is linked to pregnancy complications and increase the risk of certain cancers.
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