In West Virginia, Who Pays for Poisoning a River?

If the EPA had complied with the 1985 Superfund mandate, the chemical spill in West Virginia may never have occurred and Freedom Industries would be guaranteed to have the resources to clean up the mess

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In Memory of Fred Meyer

The Board of Trustees and staff of Earthjustice express our profound sorrow and deepest sympathies to the family for the loss of our great friend and longtime trustee, Fred Meyer. Fred was a rock and source of great wisdom, fidelity, clarity and constancy of vision, accountability, perception, humor, compassion and worldly acumen and knowledge.

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Kryptonite for Superfund

It’s a hustle of grand proportions and deadly consequences. The House of Representatives will vote today on H.R. 2279, a bill that guts Superfund—the law that requires industries to handle their hazardous waste safely and clean up their toxic spills.

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Teen Lobbies for Farmworker Protections

Selena and her father Miguel at the Rayburn House Building in 2013, after meeting with their representative's office.

18-year-old Selena Zelaya of Mount Dora, FL, was one of about a dozen farmworker advocates who traveled to D.C. to lobby for farmworker protections against harmful pesticides. Selena’s mother and father are farmworkers and from a young age she began advocating on behalf of them and others. Selena shares why she is so committed to the fight for farmworker protections.

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Clearing the Air in the Southwest with State, Federal Rules

Arizona Public Service Company officially announced yesterday that it will retire Units 1, 2, and 3 of the Four Corners Power Plant by January 1, 2014 and install long-overdue pollution controls on the plant’s remaining two units by July 31, 2018. Built before the Clean Air Act was enacted, this coal plant has been operating…

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Top 10 unEARTHED Blog Posts of 2013

Looking back at the most popular blog posts from 2013 we find a wide variety of subjects that generated substantial readership. From sharks to climate to honeybees, UNEARTHED readers were all over the map this year.

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Effective Litigation: The Antidote to Political Foot-Dragging

The North Portico of the White House is seen through the fog, April 1, 2013.

The White House “systematically” delayed finalizing a host of environmental and public health safeguards for political reasons before the 2012 election, reported The Washington Post last February. With many of these rules still awaiting approvals more than a year after the election, the Post recently revisited its investigation into the politics of continued White House…

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Rising Tides Threaten Coastal Creatures

A recent report, Deadly Waters, details a new threat to endangered species: rising sea levels. After analyzing data from scientific literature, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, scientists at the Center for Biological Diversity identified 233 federally protected species in 23 coastal states that risk habitat loss due to sea…

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Five Years Later and the Story of the TVA Spill Continues

On December 22, 2008, just after midnight, the town of Harriman, Tennessee woke to the flood of more than one billion gallons of toxic coal ash sludge that burst through an earthen dam on the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant.

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