Clean Water Act violations reported by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) dropped by more than half in the years following an interstate compliance agreement, the EPA announced Tuesday. In 2018, the EPA and 47 states reached an agreement to cut noncompliance with the law by 50 percent in the next five years. The effort has reached its goal ahead of schedule, slashing noncompliance from 20.3 percent in early 2018 to 9 percent, according to the agency. The initiative applied to about 46,000 facilities nationwide that are subject to regulation under the Clean Water Act.

EPA has proposed a new estimate for the social cost of carbon emissions, nearly quadrupling an interim figure that has already drawn legal challenges from a host of Republican-led states. The metric puts a price tag on the damages created by each metric ton of greenhouse gas emissions. Agencies can then use it as part of their analyses of the costs and benefits of more stringent climate regulation on sources ranging from power plants and automobiles to the oil and gas sector. The Biden administration has been using the Interagency Working Group’s interim value of $51 per metric ton of CO2. But earlier this month, EPA quietly proposed increasing that number to $190.

Have patience. That, in essence, is the response of EPA officials to criticism that they are whiffing on an opportunity to strengthen commercial jet aircraft engine pollution regulations and benefit environmental justice communities. The tension is on display in a newly published final rule aimed at syncing U.S. emissions standards for new engines with the guidelines of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a U.N. agency responsible for air transport issues.

Abortion opponents and their allies in elected office are seizing on an unusual strategy after suffering a wave of election defeats — using environmental laws to try to block the distribution of abortion pills. The new approach comes as the pills mifepristone and misoprostol, which people can take at home during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, have become the most common method of abortion in the U.S. and virtually the only option for millions of people in states with laws that have forced clinics to close since the fall of Roe v. Wade. The first salvo started last week with a petition asking the Food and Drug Administration to require any doctor who prescribes the pills to be responsible for disposing of the fetal tissue — which anti-abortion advocates want to be bagged and treated as medical waste rather than flushed down the toilet and into the wastewater. If the FDA ignores or rejects the petition, as is expected, the group Students for Life of America plans to sue.