Sustainability

WASHINGTON - A federal judge has overturned environmental permits for the proposed Rosemont Copper Mine, saying the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to consider the mine's impact on several endangered species in the Santa Rita Mountains.

PHOENIX – Residents will see their recycling and composting rates go up over the next two years. The rate increase comes after two years of China cutting back on what types of recycling it will accept, meaning less revenue to offset the city’s recycling program.

PHOENIX – “Perfect droughts,” when diminished streamflow and precipitation affect all of a region’s water sources, occurred in California an average of six times a century for the past 600 years, University of Arizona tree-ring experts say, and they could become longer and more common in the future, irrespective of climate change.

PHOENIX – New research says human-induced climate change played a big role in the Four Corners drought of 2017 and 2018, which caused $3 billion in losses and prompted an emergency drought declaration on the Navajo Nation Reservation.

PHOENIX – A UCLA team is developing a concrete that aims to reduce carbon emissions from ordinary concrete production.

PHOENIX – To reduce emissions by city vehicles, Phoenix will use a $1 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to purchase more garbage trucks fueled by compressed natural gas.

WASHINGTON - A House committee gave preliminary approval Wednesday to a bill that would reverse Trump administration changes to the Endangered Species Act, after a heated debate between members over which side had the best interest of the act at heart.

WASHINGTON - Clean-water rules unveiled Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency could remove the vast majority of Arizona's waterways from federal oversight, a change environmentalists call bad news in a region where water is "super precious."

PEORIA – For decades, the Arizona Game & Fish Department has trucked and flown water out to catchments so that wildlife large and small have access to this precious resource.

PHOENIX – Insects spend a lot of time upside-down and sideways, and now scientists have learned more about how their circulatory and respiratory systems handle the pull of gravity in awkward positions.

WASHINGTON - Federal officials said recovery efforts for the humpback chub have been so successful that the Colorado River fish can be downgraded from endangered to threatened, but some environmentalists worry that it may be too soon to make that move.

PHOENIX – A Republican lawmaker from Kingman has introduced legislation that would bar “fourth priority” water contracts along the Colorado River from being transferred to growing cities in central Arizona.