President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency is in jeopardy after Republicans formed a united front Thursday to deny her a vote in committee. Democrats erupted in frustration at the GOP “obstructionism” and vowed to find a way to push Gina McCarthy’s nomination through the Environment and Public Works Committee, despite the last-minute Republican boycott of the vote. But even then, McCarthy could still face a filibuster on the Senate floor — and won’t have the 60 votes she needs, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told his Democratic allies Thursday morning.

The Obama administration has launched an online tool to bolster research into links between climate change and health and inform “more effective responses.” The interagency U.S. Global Change Research Program on Thursday unveiled its Metadata Access Tool for Climate and Health (MATCH) platform. “It is a publicly accessible digital platform for searching and integrating metadata ... extracted from more than 9,000 health, environment, and climate-science datasets held by six Federal agencies,” said Tom Armstrong, executive director of the interagency climate program, in a blog post.  

Senator Tom Libous, a champion of fracking in the New York Legislature, is blocking a bill that would delay drilling for natural gas for at least two more years. Passage of the measure would harm the prospects of a real-estate company founded by Libous’s wife and run by a business partner and campaign donor. The donor, Luciano Piccirilli, operates Da Vinci II LLC, which owns 230 acres near Oneonta, west of Albany. Da Vinci II’s rights to underground natural gas are leased to a drilling company, property and corporate records show.

DETROIT — A state agency canceled a Wednesday event to honor the safety record of a Detroit oil refinery where a recent fire forced the temporary evacuation of some nearby homes. The Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration had planned to present Marathon Petroleum Corp. with an award Wednesday for an outstanding safety and health record, and issued an advisory Tuesday to promote the event. On Wednesday morning, however, the agency said in a statement it canceled the event while the company investigated the fire. A number of residents had to leave their homes in nearby Melvindale because of the April 27 fire. No one was injured in the blaze, which burned a tank that the company said held wastewater produced in refining processes.

A key House Democrat today criticized the Obama administration's proposal for regulating hydraulic fracturing on public land, saying it appears to be watering down the rule "under pressure from industry." "The Interior Department seems to be making the rule weaker, not stronger," Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) said in his opening statement at a hearing on the proposal. "Weakening these requirements is troubling to me." Holt is the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources' Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee. His criticism was included in the Democratic response to Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash).

A proposal in the U.S. Senate has advocates concerned that Illinois could become a leading contender for storing nuclear waste from around the nation. The discussion draft of a Senate bill released April 25 and open for public comment until May 24 launches a process to create a “centralized interim storage” site (CIS) for nuclear waste that is currently stored at reactors nationwide. And a June 2012 study [PDF] by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory using spatial modeling suggests that northern Illinois would be among the top possibilities.

Today, global demands for food, energy, and shelter are putting unprecedented pressure on the resources of the planet. Water is at the heart of this crisis. In fact, more than half of the world’s cities are already experiencing water shortages on a recurring basis – based on findings from a study that I published, along with 13 of my colleagues, this week in the Water Policy journal. These water-stressed cities are finding it extremely difficult and expensive to secure the additional water supplies needed to support their growth. Our study, “Tapped Out: How Can Cities Secure Their Water Future?” highlights the reality that many growing cities are badly in need of new, low-cost, and reliable sources of water. We found that a key strategy cities should consider is to form partnerships with agricultural producers to conserve water use on farms, thereby freeing up water that can be used in the city.

Assistant U.S. Attorney General Ignacia Moreno, the point person at the Justice Department for prosecuting environmental crimes, says she will leave government service next month. Moreno, the first Latina to lead the department's Environment and Natural Resources Division, was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in November 2009. Her tenure spanned one of the worst disasters in U.S. history, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April 2010. Eleven men died in that firestorm. The Justice Department extracted a record $1 billion civil penalty from Transocean, the rig owner, earlier this year. And a civil trial continues in New Orleans over other environmental damages.  

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently urged the U.S. Department of State to put a price tag on the social costs of greenhouse gas emissions when preparing its final environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline, a recommendation attorneys say could open the door to lengthier federal reviews and additional legal challenges for future projects.

The National Energy Board (NEB) has given Enbridge Inc. until 2016 to comply with rules tied to its emergency shutdown system requirements. After an October 2011 inspection, the NEB found 117 of its 125 pump stations were not complying with regulations. The NED inspection conducted at several pump stations along the Enbridge liquids transport system determined that Enbridge’s pump stations lacked emergency shutdown push-buttons and an alternate source of power needed to operate the shutdown systems in the case of a power outage.

Vice President Joe Biden told a South Carolina environmental activist Friday that he opposes a controversial oil pipeline from Canada, but said he is "in the minority" inside the Obama administration, according to the activist's account of the conversation. Biden made the remark at Rep. Jim Clyburn's annual "World Famous Fish Fry" Friday evening, where he met Elaine Cooper, a Columbia resident and group chair of the South Carolina chapter of the Sierra Club, while working the ropeline amongst hundreds of supporters in attendance. An email obtained by BuzzFeed from the organization's national program assistant, Jessica Eckdish, provides Cooper's record of the encounter, in which she "was able to ask Vice President Biden if he supporting [sic] rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline," Eckdish writes.

On any given day, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has the power to throw the environmental movement into complete disarray. Tucked into a nondescript neighborhood in Washington, D.C., the court isn’t well known to the public, but it’s often called the second most important court in the United States. It has particular significance to the environmental movement because of its exclusive jurisdiction over regulations involving vital environmental laws like the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act.

Two former senators threw their energy policy weight Tuesday to make the case that the private sector — rather than federal government — should decide whether to export natural gas. "Markets are dynamic. There are many factors [that] are working [that] change by the month. Some change daily," former Sen. J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.) told lawmakers on a House Energy and Commerce Committee subpanel, citing fluctuating expenses like labor rates, interest rates and fuel costs.