April will mark the two-year anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster that killed eleven people, injured seventeen others, and released an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. On March 16, the Senate passed a widely supported measure that would section off 80 percent of the fines BP has paid and direct those funds to the five Gulf states impacted by the spill.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reviewing the Consumer Confidence Report (CCR) rule, a policy mandating that public water systems provide annual reports to consumers on the quality of local drinking water. The resulting reports have been criticized for being overly technical, complex, and difficult for the general public to understand or act upon.

The third-party audit system, in which private companies take over responsibility for inspecting worksites and production facilities, has been shown to expose Americans to significant health and safety risks while eating, working, and breathing.