Weekly News Roundup for April 22, 2016

These are some of the stories we’ve been following this week.

• Residents testified in a construction defect lawsuit earlier this week against the country’s largest homebuilder, D. R. Horton.

• In New Hampshire, towns are coming together to deal with the lead contamination of their water. The consortium will work to address concerns from residents, as well as to keep them updated on the progress of correcting the issues.

• Officials in Vermont said that they stopped billing for fees on EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program projects because of concerns about the source of the money being used to pay the fees. Two developers were charged in civil court with misusing funds from investors through the EB-5 program.

• The EB-5 Coalition Committee met to discuss ways to reform the popular investor program, which will expire in September unless re-authorized by Congress. Several lawmakers have said that they want to see increased oversight and reduced fraud.

• Farmers in Australia want Dandaragan to be off-limits to oil and gas companies interested in hydraulic fracturing operations in the area.

• Oil trains pass through Montana on a regular basis, but the state has never had a rail safety plan. The Montana Public Service Commission expects to rectify this within the next six months.

• We recently published blog posts on the effects of raising the minimum wage and how it has been handled in Seattle. A new report states that retail prices have not increased in Seattle.

• A California Superfund Site will receive $78 million to clean up groundwater contaminated at the Omega Chemical Corporation.

• Researchers at the Stanford School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences have created a way to calculate the price that organizations would have to pay for different ways to detect methane leaks.

• A federal water and energy bill under consideration by the House of Representatives would include funds to help reduce methane emissions across the country.

• Six years ago the Deepwater Horizon oil rig spilled millions of gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The resulting environmental disaster is still being felt today.