Drilling Free-for-All

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke wants to open up most U.S. waters -- including protected areas off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and in the Arctic -- to oil and gas drilling.

Zinke requires that his presence at the Interior Department be signaled by the hoisting of a special flag.

President Donald Trump signs a $1.5 trillion tax bill that includes opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

Trump reduces the size of two national monuments in Utah -- Bears Ears by 85 percent and Grand Staircase-Escalante by nearly half --the largest reduction of previously protected areas in U.S. history. The Sierra Club's Environmental Law Program challenges the move.

EPA administer Scott Pruitt appoints Robert Phalen -- who said that children need to breathe dirty air to strengthen their lungs -- to an agency science board.

The EPA dramatically loosens its guidance on radiation, now saying that exposure equivalent to that of 5,000 chest X-rays "usually results in no harmful health effects."

Responding to objections from the Sierra Club's legal program and others, federal energy regulators soundly reject an attempt by Energy Secretary Rick Perry to subsidize coal-fired and nuclear power generators in the name of "grid resiliency."

The Interior Department renews the lease for a copper and nickel mine next to Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The mine belongs to a Chilean billionaire who is also the Washington, D.C. landlord to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. (Source: Sierra, March/April 2018).

Contaminated Wild Seafood
Ryan Bigelow of the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch says that most tuna consumed in the United States is imported, much of it caught in the Pacific, in regions where fishing practices are loosely regulated. According to a 2014 study, as much as one-third of the wild seafood imported to the United States was caught illegally. To add to the sourcing concerns, because of industrial emissions, the mercury content of Pacific-caught yellowfin and bigeye tuna crept up by several percent every year between 1998 and 2008, according to a 2017 review paper. In January 2017, the Food and Drug Administration added bigeye tuna to its list of foods to be avoided by women of childbearing age and children. (Source: Mother Jones, March/April 2018).