The News

reuters.com — U.S. drivers need to pay more gas taxes and new user fees to fix crumbling roads and bridges and ease congested highways, a transportation commission is set to recommend to Congress later this month. U.S. gasoline taxes should be raised 10 cents a gallon to help fund improvements, at least until new systems are created to charge drivers for how much they use roads, according to a draft copy of recommendations from the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission. "We've basically had a 30-year experiment in this country in under-investing in surface transportation infrastructure," said Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and chairman of the commission.

Read Full Article »

cnn.com — The drinking water in the area of last month's coal-sludge spill in eastern Tennessee is safe, but elevated levels of arsenic have been found in the sludge, authorities said. A billion gallons of the sludge, made up of water and fly ash from a coal-burning Tennessee Valley Authority steam plant in Kingston, Tennessee, swamped 300 acres of mostly private property when a dike on a retention pond collapsed December 22. Preliminary results from water samples taken in the spill area show no unsafe levels of toxins, said Leslie Sims, on-scene coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency. The testing includes municipal supplies and private wells, he said.

Read Full Article »

nytimes.com — A coal ash spill that blanketed residential neighborhoods and contaminated nearby rivers in Roane County, Tenn., earlier this week is more than three times larger than initially estimated, the Tennessee Valley Authority said on Thursday.

Coal ash, a byproduct of burning coal, contains toxic heavy metals like arsenic, lead and selenium that can cause cancer and neurological problems.

Read Full Article »

iht.com — Environmentalists sued the Bush administration on Monday, trying to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from changing a U.S. rule they say keeps mining waste from entering mountain streams. At issue is mountaintop mining, in which forests are clear cut and holes are drilled to blast apart rock. Massive machines then scoop coal from the exposed seams. The rock and dirt left behind is dumped into adjacent valleys, changing the natural shape of the earth, lowering the height of the mountain and covering streams.

Read Full Article »

news.bbc.co.uk — U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has welcomed the multi-billion dollar aid package for US carmakers, but said the industry faced some "hard decisions." The U.S. government is to provide $17.4 billion in loans to help General Motors and Chrysler survive..Mr. Obama said the package was a "necessary step" to "help avoid a collapse" in the industry. But he urged carmakers not to "squander this chance to reform bad management practices." "With the short-term assistance provided by this package, the auto companies must bring all their stakeholders together... to make the hard choices necessary to achieve long-term viability," Mr. Obama said.

Read Full Article »

msnbc.msn.com — President-elect Barack Obama has selected two of the nation's most prominent scientific advocates for a vigorous response to climate change to serve in his administration's top ranks, according to sources, sending the strongest signal yet that he will reverse Bush administration policies on energy and global warming. The appointments of Harvard University physicist John Holdren as presidential science adviser and Oregon State University marine biologist Jane Lubchenco as head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which will be announced tomorrow, dismayed conservatives but heartened environmentalists and researchers. Like Energy Secretary-designate Steven Chu, Holdren and Lubchenco have argued repeatedly for a mandatory limit on greenhouse gas emissions to avert catastrophic climate change.

Read Full Article »