As our very own Jon Popham reported, oil prices fell to a five-month low yesterday - and the Environmental Protection Agency wants to keep it that way in the wake of Hurricane Gustav.  To ensure a steady supply of gasoline, the EPA announced Monday it would “waive certain quality standards” for fuel in Texas, according to a Reuters article.

‘We recognize the environmental benefits of these fuel programs. However, to minimize or prevent problems with the supply of gasoline, I am today issuing this waiver of the RFG and RVP requirements for the covered areas in Texas that are subject to these standards,’ EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said in a letter to the Texas Governor that was obtained by Reuters on Monday.

The waiver will be in effect for one more week, until September 10.  The article also notes that the same waiver was granted Louisiana last week.

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As we mentioned a few days ago, Congress is working on legislation to protect the Clean Water Act from some changes the Executive branch has made over the past few years. Well, now, the Judicial branch of government is doing the same, as the Washington Post reports that a United States Court of Appeals has overturned a Bush administration ruling “that prevented states and local governments from imposing stricter monitoring of pollution generated by power plants, factories and oil refineries than required by the federal government.”

The ruling, which fell 2-1, determined that the Environmental Protection Agency’s refusal to allow states to set stricter pollution standards than required is violation of the Clean Air Act.

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The Clean Water Restoration Act is coming to a vote in the House of Representatives sometime very soon, and both Environment Illinois and The New York Times editorial board would like you to know how important the vote is.  The original Clean Water act, passed in 1972, was supposed to protect all the waters and wetlands in the United States, plain and simple.  However, a court case from a few years back muddied the waters of the Act (some pun intended).  As The Times puts it:

This jurisdictional confusion stems largely from a bizarre 2006 Supreme Court ruling in which the justices split three ways on which waters were protected under the act. A conservative foursome said that only permanent waters deserved protection. A liberal foursome said that all waters, including seasonal, intermittent streams, deserved protection. Seeking to split the difference, Justice Anthony Kennedy ruled that such streams as well as remote wetlands deserved protection if regulators could show a “significant nexus” to a navigable body of water somewhere downstream.

Based on the confusing nature of three dissenting opinions

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When it comes to global warming, some people just don’t get it. This can be frustrating enough when dealing with a misguided friend or acquaintance. But when the denier happens to be a United States Senator, one of a mere 100 voices charged with protecting the vital interests of the country, frustration can give way to sheer astonishment.

Enter Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), one of the most outspoken and passionate deniers of Global Warming in all of American politics - and given the utter lack of action on the urgent issue by the Federal government until just recently this is no small feat. Things have begun to change for the better though, with or without Senator Inhofe, in the recent passage of legislation upping the required mileage on automobiles sold in the United States and with the 2007 ruling by the Supreme Court that the EPA must do more to enforce the Clean Air Act which has slowly prodded the Bush Administration into talking about doing something (which sadly represents progress since it’s more than they had been doing).

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The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

TakePart Gang:

Arrested in Development by Wendy Cohen

Is Google Making Us Dumber? by Blair Golson

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Nicole Hughes:

Top 5 Ways to Green Your July 4th

Greenopia: Eco-Guides For Your City

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Andy Kondrat:

Hypermiling Contest Winner Gets 124 Miles to the Gallon

Rise in Fuel Prices May Lead to Dirtier Energy Sources

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Jon Popham:

Red Tide in Yellow Sea Threatens Olympics

Mercedes-Benz Ditching Gasoline Cars by 2015

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Giulia Rozzi:

46664 Concert: Happy Birthday Nelson Mandela

Denise Richards Likes to Share

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Gina Telaroli:

Top 10 Movies for the 4th of July: For Patriots and Cynics!

The Radical and Beautiful Journey of Wall-E

For us eco-friendly folk, not only can we celebrate our independence as a country this July 4th, but we can also celebrate our independence from fossil fuels, plastic waste, and pollution. Check out these top 5 tips below for having a fun and earth friendly holiday weekend:

1) Stay off the boat

Lots of people love to go boating on July 4th, but did you know that marine engines are among the highest contributors of hydrocarbons (HC) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx) emissions in many areas of the country? When the boat’s engine is running, you’re invariably dumping chemicals into the water, which kills animals and other marine life.  If the boat is a must this weekend, definitely check out these tips for preventing boater pollution from the Environmental Protection Agency. And don’t even THINK about throwing your trash overboard. We’ll find you…

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The Environmental Protection Agency announced yesterday that they have given a permit to a company to drill in the Arctic.  This permit, it should be noted, does not give the company the right to drill.  Oil corporations still are waiting on both other permits and court rulings in their favor to allow drilling to proceed.  However, the Associated Press reports,

The EPA permit allows Shell Offshore Inc., a subsidiary of Dutch-owned Royal Dutch Shell PLC, to release up to 245 tons of nitrogen oxides at each of its drilling sites in the Beaufort Sea.

That’s roughly equivalent to the amount produced by 1,500 school buses each year, EPA officials said.

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The Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA to friends, relatives, and close neighbors, is being taken to task for caving in to pressure from the White House when it denied California’s effort to set the strictest auto emission standards in the nation.  Of course, I may have had some problems with the EPA in the past, but this time, we have, you know, testimony and subpoenaed documents and all sorts of fun things.  From the San Francisco Chronicle:

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, said the new details - revealed in sworn testimony from top EPA officials - showed that the White House “played a decisive role in the rejection of the California motor vehicle standards” in December.

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The Washington Post reported today that with very little fanfare, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has rewritten a section of the Clean Air Act which will make it easier to build power plants near national parks and wilderness areas.

The rewriting affects Class 1 areas, the highest level of protection afforded parks and wilderness (short of the Witness Protection Program, but it’s really really hard to hide a forest).  The change is policy is subtle, but the effects substantial.  Basically, the policy now is to not allow pollution levels to ever go over a certain mark, even in short spikes.  The new policy would afford, you know, the ability to pollute more, and more often.  It acts like a cap and trade program, except the pollution is trading with itself.  Confused?  Let’s let the pros discuss:

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The Environmental Protection Agency’s name should be a pretty good giveaway for what it’s supposed to be doing, but a survey conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists states that 56% of EPA scientists surveyed have “experienced at least one incident of political interference in the past five years.”  And on Wednesday, the top science advisor for the EPA was taken to task by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee as the agency has been “allowing more ozone pollution than the EPA’s advisory panels recommended and [has been] holding meetings with White House officials about pollution risks that are kept secret from Congress and the public.”  That sounds about right.

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