The Virginia Beach city council announced that it would suspend a storm water fee increase, which was intended to pay for additional staff to work on issues relating to sea level rise. As a result of the suspension, nine staff positions will be left unfilled.

The cities of Dover, Portsmouth, and Rochester in New Hampshire questioned the accuracy of scientific research finding that municipal wastewater is contributing to high nitrogen levels in the Great Bay estuary.

During a radio interview, the newly appointed head of Milwaukee’s Health Department, Patricia McManus, stated that “the science is still out” on whether vaccines cause autism. Any link between vaccines and autism has, however, been disproved in numerous scientific studies.

Former Milwaukee Health Commissioner Bevan Baker ordered Health Department employees not to discuss concerns about lead contamination with members of the city council.

The mayor of Denmark in South Carolina, Gerald Wright, refused to allow a Virginia Tech professor, Marc Edwards, to test the city’s drinking water supplies for possible contamination. Mayor Wright asserted that the testing was unnecessary because the city’s water had already been assessed by the state Department of Health and Environmental Control and found to be safe.

The Mayor of Tangier Island in Virginia, James Eskridge, told reporters that he does not believe human activities are the main cause of climate change.

In a televised Town Hall, the Mayor of Tangier Island in Virginia questioned whether sea level rise is actually occurring, stating: “I’m a keen observer . . . why am I not seeing sings of it?”

During a radio interview, Howard Klug, the Mayor of Williston, North Dakota, questioned whether climate change is real. Mayor Klug then asserted that human activities, including the development and use of fossil fuels, have little impact on the climate. He argued that there is no need to restrict fossil fuel development as the “world . . . can heal itself.”

Todd Pollock, the mayor of Bedford in Kentucky, told reporters that the science of climate change is not “settled” and that its causes have yet to be determined.