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The Environmental Protection Agency will continue to allow farmers to spray crops with a controversial weedkiller, while tightening restrictions, the agency said. The EPA extended by two years its approval of XtendiMax, a version of the herbicide dicamba made by Bayer, which some farmers and researchers have blamed for damaging millions of acres of crops over the past two years. (Bunge, 10/31)

The mothers of two men killed by a toxic paint stripper took a step toward suing the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday for failing to take quick action to remove the product from the market. The EPA had pledged in May, after then-Administrator Scott Pruitt met with families of two victims, to wrap up action “shortly” on proposed Obama-era regulations that would eliminate most allowable uses of the paint-stripping solvent methylene chloride. (Knickmeyer, 10/31)

The groundskeeper who won a massive civil suit against Bayer's Monsanto claiming that the weedkiller Roundup caused his cancer has agreed to accept $78 million, after a judge substantially reduced the jury's original $289 million award. Dewayne "Lee" Johnson, a Northern Californian groundskeeper and pest-control manager, was 42 when he developed a strange rash that would lead to a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in August 2014. (Sullivan, 10/31)

State officials on Wednesday removed the elected board and general manager of a water district that for years has been accused of serving brown, smelly water to its customers in Compton. With a 22-page decree, the State Water Resources Control Board abolished Sativa Los Angeles County Water District’s five-member board of directors and ousted its manager. In their place, the state appointed the county’s Department of Public Works to temporarily run the district while officials seek to merge the small district, which delivers water to about 1,600 homes, with a larger provider. (Jennings, 10/31)