Geologist Susie Beiersdorfer has discussed the connection between Youngstown earthquakes and the nearby injection well. She has said the brine toxic waste injected into the well reactivated an ancient fault by acting as a lubricant and reducing friction between layers of the shale, thereby causing earthquakes, meeting organizers said.
The situation in the Youngstown area has [...]
Elevated levels of metals have been found in groundwater near ash basins at all 14 N.C. coal-fired power plants, state regulators say after intensified monitoring.
Coal ash holds metals that can be toxic in high doses. But the elements most widely detected at the power plants, iron and manganese, also occur naturally and aren’t considered health [...]
The Yasuni National Park, known as "the lungs of the world" and one of the most bio-diverse places on earth, is under threat from oil drilling. The race is on to find the funds required to develop new sustainable energy programmes that would leave the oil – and the forest – untouched.
In the early light [...]
Sharon Wilson in Texas reports:
Huge thanks go to Brett Shipp for staying on this story. To recap:
A chemical plant blew up and I knew right away that fracking was involved.
Chemical fire spawns fish kill, criminal investigation
Waxahachie chemical firm cited for environmental violations
Chemical plant relocation upsetting Ellis County residents
Ellis County Commissioners catch heat from chemical plant [...]
By Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe and Lowell Brown / Staff Writers, Denton Record-Chronicle
FLOWER MOUND — In the months before, it was just Tammi Vajda and several others who came to Town Council meetings.
They were outnumbered by other Flower Mound residents who favored natural gas drilling in town. They called Vajda names.
“My husband asked me why I did [...]
THE ULTIMATE LIST FOR ENVIRONMENTAL “LIST JOURNALISM” from the Society of Environmental Journalists
One of the latest trends, as journalism and publishing turn
increasingly to online media, is “list journalism.” We know it when we
see it — without too much basis beyond personal opinion, a
publication will ballyhoo the Top Ten of something. We have long
suspected that the [...]
Bruce Ritchie reports:
A bill filed by a Senate budget subcommittee chairman would prohibit the Public Service Commission from allowing private utilities to charge customers higher rates for using large amounts of water.
SB 1244 appears aimed at Aqua Utilities Florida, the largest private water utility in Florida. But the bill is raising broader concerns among some [...]
The Obama administration did the nation — and Florida in particular — a great service by putting forth an ambitious plan to restore the Gulf of Mexico. The blueprint unveiled this month could, over time, begin to reverse decades of man-made damage that hammered the gulf long before last year’s historic oil spill. The federal [...]
Speaking to voters in Iowa Monday, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania ripped the Environmental Protection Agency’s new rule placing first-ever limits on the amount of mercury that coal-fired power plants can emit into the air.
The GOP presidential contender claimed the new regulations would shut down 60 coal fired power plants in America, and he [...]
Large numbers of infants and toddlers have died from lead poisoning in Nigerian villages where their parents process gold ore inside their family compounds, according to a report published Tuesday by an international team of researchers.
In two Nigerian communities, 118 children under the age of 5 died in a single year – 25 percent [...]
Catherine Ryan Hyde summarizes the struggle Cambria has had with its own governing body, the Community Services District, to protect the local environment. The area is legally protected by state and federal law, but the CSD board of directors has pursued invading it to build a desalination plant. The full text of her summary includes [...]
Bruce Ritchie
Floridaenvironments.com
Author Cynthia Barnett of Gainesville says she traces the start of her focus on water issues to a St. Petersburg Timespage 1A story written in 2003 that she says made her “insane.”
Barnett is author of “Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis.” It’s an important new book that challenges Americans to transform their views of [...]
Japan’s response to the nuclear crisis that followed the March 11 tsunami was confused and riddled with problems, including an erroneous assumption an emergency cooling system was working and a delay in disclosing dangerous radiation leaks, a report revealed Monday.
The disturbing picture of harried and bumbling workers and government officials scrambling to respond to the [...]
David Zucchino of the Los Angeles Times reports one of the good stories of 2011:
December 25, 2011
Reporting from Yadkinville, N.C.
Loyd Bryant used to pump manure from his 8,640 hogs into a fetid lagoon, where it raised an unholy stink and released methane and ammonia into the air. The tons of manure excreted daily couldn’t be [...]
A major new study out today in one of the most respected scientific journals around confirms the pervasive and irreversible impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining here in Appalachia. The study is called Cumulative impacts of mountaintop mining on an Appalachian watershed, and it appears online today in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of [...]
Kathy Johnston reports in San Luis Obispo’s New Times on a project that needs some laws to change
Using fish heads and fish carcasses to help crops grow well—an ancient practice that pre-dates the Pilgrims—is an idea that recently caught on in San Luis Obispo County.
People enthusiastically jumped on board this fall to make a fish-composting [...]
Tohoku Electric Power Company's Onagawa nuclear plant experienced a fire and the earlier story of a malfunction at the Tokyo Electric Power nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture, seems to be causing concern.
The movement of the bedrock under the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant during the Great East Japan Earthquake was larger than pre-quake estimates [...]
Heavy rains routinely trigger big sewage overflows in Baltimore, but there is growing evidence that chronic leaks from the region’s aging, cracked sewer lines are a bigger threat to public health.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/videogallery/66669135/Environment/Sewage-leaks-threaten-Baltimore’s-streams-and-harbor
Though storm-fed spills can be dramatic, Baltimore’s’ streams and harbor are also fouled on sunny days as storm drains yield grayish discharges that look and [...]
Just three years ago, the manmade fires here were so fierce smoke would blot out the Amazon sky, turning the days dark. Towering rainforest trees exploded in flames, their canopies cleared to let pasture grow for cattle.The ash that snowed down onto this jungle town was shin-deep. Dirty layers hid red-hot timber chunks, glowing coals [...]
BP in a high-stakes court filing on Monday accused Halliburton of destroying damaging evidence about the quality of its cement slurry that went into drilling the oil well that blew out last year and caused the nation’s worst offshore oil spill. BP accused Halliburton of having intentionally destroyed evidence about possible problems with its cement [...]
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