Farmworker Advocates Seek Stronger Pesticides Safeguard

Mario Vargas, a farmworker organizer from Ohio, his daughter Myra Vargas (middle), and Alexis Guild of Farmworker Justice walk past the U.S. Capitol in July of 2013, as they head to a meeting in the Hart Senate Office Building.

When Mario Vargas showed up at the Washington, D.C., offices of representatives from his home state of Ohio in July of 2013, he shared stories from farmworkers who are getting sick from pesticides. Joined by his family and other farmworkers, he spoke about how it feels to inhale pesticides while pregnant, how farmworkers don’t know what their basic rights are, and how many workers are afraid to tell the truth about what is really going on in the fields.

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Clean Air Ambassador Records Fight for Justice, Clean Air

Hilton Kelley stands in front of the Valero oil refinery in Port Arthur, TX, in late November 2013.

Taking his work to the next level, Clean Air Ambassador Hilton Kelley has completed a book, A Lethal Dose of Smoke And Mirrors: Going home for better or worse, that chronicles his decision to leave Hollywood and take on powerful industrial polluters in his hometown, Port Arthur, Texas. Hilton—the first African-American man to win the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize—tells how he single-handedly made great strides to improve the health and environment in Port Arthur.

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Fears Ramp Up As Oil Rolls into Albany

Fire from petroleum crude oil tank car explosion.

Train cars carrying crude oil have been derailing and exploding with frightening frequency lately, in Canada and North Dakota and Alabama and Philadelphia. There are fears that Albany, capital of the great state of New York, may be next in line.

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Colorado Tackles Rules Governing Oil, Gas

A fracking drill rig.

Colorado has emerged as a western ground zero in the fracking boom, with more than 50,000 active wells in the state and 3,000 wells permitted annually on average in recent years. The state is struggling to deal with this staggering growth as well as the changing nature of the industry as operations have moved into communities along the Front Range.

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