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Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended President Donald Trump’s executive order spurring the domestic production of the weed killer glyphosate, as his Make America Healthy Again movement reels from the president’s embrace of the chemical they despise. (Downs, 2/19)

President Trump’s executive order aimed at spurring production of a pesticide has infuriated leaders of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA movement. (Stolberg and Tabuchi, 2/19)

When President Donald Trump on Feb. 12 announced the “single largest deregulation in American history” — the repeal of climate emissions standards for all vehicles and the key scientific determination underpinning them, in one swoop — he said it would save Americans $1.3 trillion. But the administration’s own analyses, found in the official rulemaking published Wednesday in the Federal Register, show a more nuanced picture. The climate rollbacks also come with costs, ranging from hundreds of billions of dollars on the low end to more than $1.4 trillion on the high end — an amount that exceeds the projected savings. (Hirji, 2/19)

In a stretch of Louisiana with about 170 fossil fuel and petrochemical plants, premature death is a fact of life for people living nearby. The air is so polluted and the cancer rates so high it is known as Cancer Alley. “Most adults in the area are attending two to three funerals per month,” said Gary C. Watson Jr., who was born and raised in St. John the Baptist Parish, a majority Black community in Cancer Alley about 30 miles outside of New Orleans. His father survived cancer, but in recent years, at least five relatives have died from it. (Pineda and Borenstein, 2/20)

Each morning, Katherine Prevost fills her coffee maker with water from her kitchen faucet and presses the button. Until recently, she didn’t know the water may have contained a potent neurotoxin — lead. She was shocked when a water test provided by Verite News found lead detected in the water coming from the tap. “Now that means that I can’t do that anymore,” Prevost said. She already drank bottled water, but she relied on tap water for cooking everything from her gumbos and crawfish boils and other daily activities like brushing her teeth. (Parker, 2/19)

A resourceful solution to repurpose waste and nourish farmland, or a poisonous and permanent mistake? Depending on whom you ask, the practice of spreading treated sewage, or sludge, on New Hampshire farmland might be either. For decades, this fertilizer has been a point of contention both locally and nationwide. Now, with renewed attention on sludge’s PFAS, or “forever chemical” content, a new bill from Merrimack Democratic Rep. Wendy Thomas brings the practice back into the spotlight. (Rains, 2/19)

A Bay Area refinery will pay a multi-million-dollar penalty for a series of major violations, including fires, toxic emissions and leaking tanks that went on for years, prosecutors and air regulators announced on Wednesday. A civil action against Martinez Refining Company resulted in a $10 million judgment against the company, along with $600,000 in mitigation payments for environmental projects in Contra Costa County, the district attorney and the Bay Area Air District said in a joint announcement. A judge signed the final judgment on the enforcement action on Wednesday. (Castañeda, 2/19)