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Officials in New Jersey’s largest city announced on Monday that thousands of water filters handed out to residents had significantly reduced lead in drinking water to safe levels. Bottled water would still be made available, but officials said the crisis that had gripped the city for months seemed to be easing. Testing done jointly by city, state and federal officials found that the filters had been 97 percent effective at reducing lead levels to below a federally acceptable standard, meaning that 97 percent of test results showed the filters working properly. (Corasaniti, 9/23)

Almost all of the filters supplied by Newark, New Jersey, to combat tainted water showed lead lower than the federal standard in preliminary tests, Governor Phil Murphy said. The results indicate that the city, New Jersey’s most populous, likely has avoided a crisis on the scale of that in Flint, Michigan, whose contaminated supply led to a state of emergency. Newark will continue to supply free bottled water, officials said at a City Hall news conference. (Young, 9/23)

Scolded for doing little, leader after leader promised the United Nations on Monday to do more to prevent a warming world from reaching even more dangerous levels. As they made their pledges at the Climate Action Summit, though, they and others conceded it was not enough. And even before they spoke, teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg shamed them over and over for their inaction: “How dare you?” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres concluded the summit by listing 77 countries that committed to carbon neutrality by 2050, 70 nations pledging to do more to fight climate change, with 100 business leaders promising to join the green economy and one-third of the global banking sector signing up to green goals. (Borenstein, 9/24)

The political war between California and the Trump administration escalated Monday with a letter from Andrew Wheeler, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, warning that Washington would withhold federal highway funds from the state if it did not rapidly address a decades-long backlog of state-level pollution control plans. The letter is the latest parry between President Trump and the liberal West Coast state that he appears to relish antagonizing. California’s recent actions on clean air and climate change policy have blindsided and enraged him, according to two people familiar with the matter. (Davenport, 9/24)

The Trump administration is ratcheting up its threats against California with a letter warning the state faces sanctions – including cuts in federal highway funding – over its “failure” to submit complete reports on its implementation of the Clean Air Act. In the letter to the California Air Resources Board, Andrew Wheeler, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, wrote that the state had the “worst air quality in (Wilner, 9/23)

Russ Brown and other emergency officials in Yuba County have been trying to get the word out. Charge your medical equipment and phone batteries now. Make sure you have enough nonperishable food to last a few days. Because when the hot winds start blowing, the power to your house may be shut off. (Wigglesworth and Serna, 9/23)

Kaw Valley, though, has been cited dozens of times for federal safety violations at its other mines and has been dinged by state regulators for water quality problems. Aside from residents, the project has stoked concerns from the county planning commission, a nearby golf course, neighboring cities and school districts.Yet county staff are still pushing the project forward. In recommending the new sand mine, Leavenworth County staff wrote that it would provide jobs and “a necessary good” because sand is used to produce concrete and asphalt as well as mitigate flooding. (Hardy, 9/24)