EPA releases agency plans for adapting to a changing climate

A press release from the US Environmental Protection Agency: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today released its draft Climate Change Adaptation Implementation Plans for public review and comment. In support of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan and Executive Order on Preparing the United States for the Impacts of Climate Change announced today, the Implementation Plans provide detailed information about the actions EPA plans to take across the country to help communities adapt to a changing climate.

“To meet our mission of protecting public health and the environment, EPA must help communities adapt to a changing climate,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. “These Implementation Plans offer a roadmap for agency work to meet that responsibility, while carrying out President Obama’s goal of preparing the country for climate-related challenges.”

The impacts of a changing climate – including increased extreme weather, floods, and droughts – affect EPA’s work to protect clean air and water. The draft Climate Change Adaptation Implementation Plans recognize that EPA must integrate climate adaptation planning into its programs, policies, rules, and operations to ensure that the agency’s work continues to be effective even as the climate changes.

EPA released its draft agency Climate Change Adaptation Plan on February 9, 2013 for public review and comment, and expects to issue the final versi

on this Fall. In 2009, all federal agencies were required to develop Climate Change Adaptation Plans by the federal Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force. Under Executive Order 13514, the Task Force was charged with developing recommendations for the President on how to increase the nation’s resilience to climate change. The new Implementation Plans provide information about how EPA will meet the agency-wide priorities identified in the draft Climate Adaptation Plan released earlier this year...

EPA’s climate change adaptation plan falls short: groups urge three key actions

Center for Biological Diversity: The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed plan for adapting to climate change has fatal flaws that will limit its ability to help the nation cope with the mounting climate crisis, said 30 groups in a letter sent to the agency this week. The groups urged the agency to use its existing authority under the Clean Air Act to make quick, ambitious cuts to greenhouse gas pollution to slow the increasingly devastating changes being wreaked by global warming.

The EPA’s proposed “Climate Change Adaptation Plan,” released for public comment, outlines how the agency will try to remain effective in the face of climate change and help people and wildlife adjust to the massive environmental transformations underway. But the agency’s plan fails to acknowledge its own crucial role in national greenhouse pollution reductions, which will play a key role in determining the magnitude of the danger the nation will face.

...According to the groups, the EPA must take three key actions to help the nation cope with global warming risks:

1. Make quick and ambitious cuts in greenhouse gas pollution under the Clean Air Act and other laws: Bold moves to cut greenhouse gas pollution will reduce the need for adaptation efforts and will make those efforts more feasible and less costly. ...
2. Acknowledge the scientific evidence that today’s greenhouse gas concentrations are already resulting in climate chaos....
3. Recognize the science-based target for atmospheric carbon dioxide of 350 parts per million: That’s the level scientists have determined is necessary to avoid the most dangerous impacts of climate change. The EPA has the authority to set a national limit for CO2 at this level to protect people, wildlife and the planet. A national cap on carbon is critical to heading off the worst effects of global warming.

US environment agency releases first climate adaptation plan

Carey L. Biron in AlertNet via IPS: For the first time, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has publicly released a draft plan on how the department's programmes will adapt to global warming, in a move that could lay additional groundwork for important new emissions rulemaking the agency may announce in coming months.

 Obama is being urged to set new carbon standards on U.S. power plants, cutting their greenhouse gas emissions by at least a quarter by 2020. Credit: public domain

The EPA is tasked with oversight of the health of both human communities and natural systems, mandated with creating and implementing standards relating to air and water quality, among others. As such, the agency has emerged at the frontlines of Washington's attempts to push through stricter climate-related regulations while circumventing the U.S. Congress, which remains fractious and politicised over the reality of human responsibility for global warming.

"We're happy the government is finally waking up to the cold, hard reality of climate change and seeing its impacts," Elizabeth Perera, a Washington climate policy expert with the Sierra Club, an environment advocacy group, told IPS. "The more real and specific that you can talk about these impacts, the more we think there will be a fire lit under the government to do something on the action side. On climate change, you have to remember, we're talking about major costs across all parts of the government and economy."

The draft plan comes in response to a government-wide requirement, mandated through executive order in 2009 by President Barack Obama, in which this year all U.S. government agencies are required to file climate change-related adaptation plans with a newly created office within the White House, the Council on Environmental Quality.

Each of these plans will now be open to public comment for two months, although the plan by the EPA is expected to garner some of the most significant public scrutiny. According to a five-year plan, adaptation planning is to be integrated across the EPA's operations by 2015....

Stormwater success stories on EPA website

Environment News Network: A collection of stormwater success stories on a new U.S. EPA website are intended to inform and educate stakeholders about the benefits of developing pollution reduction budgets, called total maximum daily loads, TMDLs, to protect and restore water quality in their own watersheds. The site provides both sound byte fact sheets that are one to two pages long, as well as technical fact sheets of four to five pages, that are representative of TMDLs prepared by states around the country.

For example, oyster lovers and residents near Virginia Beach, Virginia remember a time when oysters from the Lynnhaven Bay watershed were a delicacy served to dignitaries. But high bacteria levels in the Lynnhaven Bay watershed forced the Virginia Health Department to shut down almost all of the shellfish areas for decades, until recently.

Implementing the Lynnhaven Bay, Broad Bay, and Linkhorn Bay fecal coliform TMDL for shellfish areas has helped to reduce bacteria levels. Management actions targeted sources of bacteria such as boating activities, on-site sewer systems, agricultural areas, and pet waste to slash bacteria levels. As a result, Lynnhaven Bay watershed shellfish areas are reopening and Lynnhaven oysters are returning as an edible, marketable natural resource on local restaurant menus.

The new website offers fact sheets illustrating how stakeholders can get involved in identifying and cleaning up waters that fail to meet their state's water quality standards. The fact sheets show what benefits people can enjoy with cleaner waters, such as enhancements to recreation or better quality drinking water supplies….

Map of the Lynnhaven River area of northern Virginia Beach, Virginia, United States. Map from United States Geological Survey