Uncategorized Archives

Conservationists Act to Protect Sensitive Bay and Crab Fishery in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest

Southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest is as much ocean as land. It includes saltwater bays, fjords, canals, channels, and too many islands to count. At this intersection of land and ocean, life flourishes where forest creeks and streams empty nutrients into shallow saltwater bays. Among other species, dungeness crabs flourish, fed seasonally by the carcasses…

Fracking in California? We're On The Case.

Here’s what we know: Fracking is already happening in California. Based on the oil and gas industry’s own admission, there were 600 wells that were fracked in 2011 alone. Here’s what we don’t know: exactly where, when, or what chemicals the oil and gas industry is blasting into the ground during fracking. What makes matters…

Too Close to Risk It

Shell Oil has until the end of October to wrap up drilling operations in the Arctic.

How Clean Are Your Local Waterways?

You know that creek in your backyard, or the river or lake near your town? Have any idea what kind of condition it is in, or how polluted it is? Most people probably don’t — up until now, it hasn’t been very easy to get this information. But to help people find out about the condition…

Lies, Damned Lies And Coal Company Biologists

Coal companies have been blasting mountains, dumping waste rock into streams, and undermining private and public lands for more than a century. It’s apparently lucrative to do so. But a recent filing by a coal company shows just how far they have drunk their own Kool-Aid (or coal ash?) in justifying the damage mining can…

Time To Slay Another Dragon At Fisheating Creek

As everyone involved in the environmental movement knows, we’ve got to stay vigilant with each passing year to make sure that that our victories don’t get undone. So, on Oct. 2, the Florida office of Earthjustice filed suit to protect a landmark citizen’s victory that we won in a jury trial 15 years ago. Once…

What the Clean Water Act Means To Me

In 1972, Congress passed the Clean Water Act by a two-thirds majority and with strong bipartisan support, and a Republican president signed it into law.

On 40th Anniversary, Clean Water Act Faces Toxic Times

Forty years ago today, against a backdrop of flaming rivers, dying lakes and sewage-choked beaches, our politicians reached across the aisle to pass the Clean Water Act—a law aptly described by the New York Times‘ Robert Semple as “a critical turning point” in rescuing the nation’s waterways from “centuries of industrial, municipal and agricultural pollution.”…

When Polluters Attack The Clean Water Act

Clean water is one of Earth’s most precious resources. Life is not possible without clean water. Thursday is the 40th anniversary of our nation’s most important law to protect clean water and end water pollution: the Clean Water Act of 1972. This is a great law whose goals include making all waters safe for fishing, swimming,…