Twenty-two Senate Democrats are pressing Majority Leader Harry Reid to bring a broad climate bill to the floor.

Growth Energy is growing. The ethanol group announced the following new hires on Monday:

Katy Ziegler Thomas is joining the group as chief of staff. She previously was the vice president for government relatoins at the National Farmers Union and is also a former aide to Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.). Roger Conway, formerly director of United States Department of Agriculture's Office of Energy Policy and New Uses, has been hired as chief economist at the ethanol group.

Houston Ruck joins as creative director. He had been a designer for U.S. News & World Report. Stephanie Dreyer has been hired as a public affairs associate. She previously worked as deputy press secretary for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). Kelly Manning is Growth Energy's new vice president for development. He was the general manager for KSFY TV, the ABC affiliate in Sioux Falls, S.D.

The EPA plans to tighten drinking water standards for four chemicals linked to cancer and more broadly overhaul its strategy for protecting the public from water contaminants.

The agency announced Monday that it will begin writing rules under the Safe Drinking Water Act to lower allowed levels of the compounds tetrachloroethylene, trichloroethylene, acrylamide and epichlorohydrin.

The first two are used in textiles and other industries, the others are introduced into drinking water at water treatment plants, according to EPA.

Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio) circulated draft legislation Monday that expands federal support for technology that traps and stores greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants.

It would also impose emissions standards on individual plants permitted in the decade after the bill’s enactment, but provides a long lead time -- as late as 2030 -- before they kick in.

The plan is another sign that senators are jockeying for position to protect home-state energy interests as broader climate and energy legislation takes shape in the Senate.

Power companies should get credit under a climate change bill for forest conservation, a coalition of groups said Monday.

Utilities are expected to spend $65 billion this year on wind power, installing the equivalent of 34 nuclear plants as companies prepare for a cap on carbon dioxide emissions, Bloomberg reports today.

“Utilities that built natural gas-fired generators during the last decade are increasingly erecting turbines and buying wind power from competitors, tapping a renewable-energy source as governments consider ways to penalize carbon-based fuels,” Bloomberg reports.

One California company thinks it may have an answer to the carbon problem: use it to make cement.

“With this technology, coal can be cleaner than solar and wind, because they can only be carbon-neutral,” Vinod Khosla, the Silicon Valley billionaire, told the New York Times.

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A story this month in The Nation magazine has fanned the flames of a green movement debate over whether some big beltway environmental groups are willing to compromise too much on climate change.

The story, by British journalist Johann Hari, attacks groups including the Nature Conservancy and Conservation International that have partnered with oil companies and other industries on various projects, linking the groups’ acceptance of corporate money to what he calls weak stances on climate policy.

Hari’s piece underscores divisions within the green movement that are evident in the Capitol Hill debate over climate legislation. A large number of big groups – such as National Wildlife Federation and the Sierra Club – are trying to shepherd a climate bill through the Senate that will include several concessions to various industries. 

But some other groups say that major Capitol Hill plans are giving away too much. The Center for Biological Diversity last week accused senators crafting the bill of “pandering” to business groups. And Greenpeace opposed the big climate bill the House approved last year.

Anyway, The Nation has posted responses to the story from a spectrum of environmental groups, providing a limited field guide of sorts to these green movement divides.

Keep an eye on Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) as the Senate climate debate lurches along.

The climate and energy bill that three senators – John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) – are crafting could include at least two big provisions that the New Mexico Democrat has a history of opposing.

The first deals with how to handle money – possibly lots of money – generated through expanded offshore oil-and-gas drilling that the bill is expected to promote. Environment & Energy Daily (via the New York Times) reported Friday that the latest draft will give coastal states a nice cut of the leasing and royalty revenues from oil-and-gas development in federal waters off their shores.

The Senate confirmed President Barack Obama’s three nominees to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Friday – including William Magwood, who had come under fire from activist groups.

The nominees were confirmed by unanimous consent rather than a roll call vote.

Magwood headed the Energy Department’s civilian nuclear technology program until 2005 and then became an industry consultant. The Project on Government Oversight and anti-nuclear groups had opposed Magwood, alleging he is too close to the nuclear industry to be an independent regulator.