The Navajo Nation and the state of New Mexico have reached multimillion-dollar settlements with mining companies to resolve claims stemming from a 2015 spill that resulted in rivers in three Western states being fouled with a bright-yellow plume of arsenic, lead and other heavy metals, officials confirmed Wednesday.

The Environmental Protection Agency released one of its last major rollbacks under the Trump administration on Tuesday, limiting what evidence it will consider about risks of pollutants in a way that opponents say could cripple future public health regulation.

President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday offered the leadership of the Environmental Protection Agency to Michael S. Regan, a North Carolina regulator who has made a name pursuing cleanups of industrial toxins and helping low-income and minority communities hit hardest by pollution.

Over four decades, Mary Nichols has been the regulator behind some of the nation’s most ambitious climate policies and, in recent years, she’s been their staunchest defender against President Donald Trump's effort to dismantle them.

DM Imports agreed to the settlement earlier this month, according to enforcement records from the Environmental Protection Agency. A complaint filed in the case alleges that inspection of three new trucks brought across the border from Canada in March showed that systems reducing emissions had either been removed, or disconnected from sensors monitoring pollution. The inspections were conducted by Customs and Border Patrol Agents based at the border crossing in Eastport, Idaho. 

In the early 1970s, park officials and neighborhood advocates rejoiced in the addition of a new public park where an outfall pipe from the Kaiser smelting plant met Deadman Creek. Fifty years later, environmental regulators and the former owners of the property are trying to stop that flow, based on new knowledge about the harm of asbestos and other chemicals. 

Six former Environmental Protection Agency chiefs are calling for an agency reset after President Donald Trump’s regulation-chopping, industry-minded first term, backing a detailed plan by former EPA staffers that ranges from renouncing political influence in regulation to boosting climate-friendly electric vehicles.

The contaminants are collecting in pipes that feed into retention ponds, where levels of contaminants are thousands of times beyond what is permitted for human health. The site of the former plant is owned by a recycling company, but an undeveloped area north of the old smelter remains in Kaiser's hands and is where much of the groundwater contamination has been located by regulators. 

The EPA says that levels of harmful chemicals once discovered in the groundwater beneath a city landfill northwest of Spokane have fallen to levels that no longer pose a threat to health or the environment. The landfill was designated as a Superfund site in 1986. 

The Environmental Protection Agency issued a report Tuesday detailing summertime water temperature problems on the lower Snake and Columbia rivers and assigning significant responsibility to federal dams.

Clean up Lake Coeur d’Alene.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that sewage plants and other industries cannot avoid environmental requirements under landmark clean-water protections when they send dirty water on an indirect route to rivers, oceans and other navigable waterways.

The Supreme Court delivered a setback Monday to Montana homeowners who are seeking additional cleanup of arsenic left over from years of copper smelting.

The Trump administration is gutting an Obama-era rule that compelled coal plants to cut back emissions of mercury and other human health hazards, limiting future regulation of air pollutants by petroleum and coal plants.

The fines, totaling $180,000, were agreed to in January. The three companies sold parts intended to allow diesel trucks to bypass features that ensure compliance with air quality standards from exhaust.

For more than three years, the Trump administration has prided itself on working with industry to unshackle companies from burdensome environmental regulations. But as the Environmental Protection Agency prepares to finalize the latest in a long line of rollbacks, the nation's power sector has sent a different message: Thanks, but no thanks.

The 64-year-old activist seeks justice and community engagement at Superfund meetings, tribal gatherings and even from her chemotherapy chair.

State regulators hope to publish in the spring their proposed rules governing discharge of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, into the Spokane River. Businesses and governments say the limit imposed by the federal government, currently under review, is too stringent to be met with current technology, while conservation groups worry a new, less strict temporary standard won’t protect the health of the community.