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Delta Smelt Get Life From Supreme Court
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court handed conservationists a victory and some good news for endangered wildlife. The court denied a request by an anti-wildlife right-wing group to strip federal Endangered Species Act protections from a rare species – a California fish called the delta smelt. The right-wing Pacific Legal Foundation, has tried repeatedly to…
Read MoreFriday Finds: The Phantom Dust Menace
Republican dust up over phantom environmental regulation Conservative Republicans are so intent on eliminating “unnecessary” environmental regulations that they recently set their sights on eliminating a rule that doesn’t even exist, reports the Washington Post. The so-called “dust rule” regulates farm dust, which is mixed with things like dirt and dried cornstalk bits and is technically…
Read MoreThey Took Our Jobs! (Not)
Today, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA)—that’s “Ice-uh” for those unfamiliar with the congressman—ran a hearing in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about pollution from coal-fired power plants. The hearing unfolded roughly as expected, with one side—repped by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli—arguing that clean air standards are job-killers, and the other side—repped by Environmental…
Read MoreTr-Ash Talk: Yet Another Coal Ash Spill
We’re closing in on the 3-year anniversary of the TVA coal ash disaster and there are still no federal regulations in place protecting us from coal ash. And now, another spill: in Oak Creek, Wisconsin a bluff collapsed, sending coal ash and debris from We Energies Oak Creek Power Plant into Lake Michigan. Writing this…
Read MoreNew Bureaucracy, Same Old Sad Story?
Today Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a major agency reshuffling that will affect how the government enforces laws on mountaintop removal and surface coal mining. He will fold the Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) into another Department of Interior subdivision, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). OSMRE is the agency that oversees…
Read MoreClimate View Part I: Poseidon’s Wrath
Island and coastal cities fear full submersion as oscillating and extreme weather patterns take headlines more than ever.
Read MoreScience and the Law: Leave EPA To Do Its Job
In the back and forth between climate skeptics and conservationists, we’ve clearly got two things on our side (although many of our foes would argue this): science and the law. This point was clearly delineated during a panel discussing the congressional attacks on the Environmental Protection Agency (and the Clean Air Act and Clean Water…
Read MoreMajor Victory — Court Reinstates Roadless Rule
Toward the end of the Clinton administration, the Forest Service declared that most logging and road building no longer would be permitted on nearly 60 million acres of wild, unprotected national forest lands. The so-called Roadless Area Conservation Rule was immediately challenged in nine separate lawsuits filed by states (Idaho, Wyoming, Alaska, Utah, North Dakota), a few…
Read MoreMountaintop Removal: A View From Up Above
Recently, thanks to a nonprofit flight operation called SouthWings, I had the opportunity to fly in a small airplane over a mountaintop removal coal mining site in West Virginia.
We flew over the Hobet mountaintop removal mining site, which measures to more than 20 square miles of demolition, and though I will try to put what I saw into words, it can only really be understood through the eyes. So I’m sharing a few photos that illustrate a scale of destruction that words cannot convey.
Tr-Ash Talk: A House United Against Clean Water
On Friday, in a 267–144 vote, a majority of House members voted to keep allowing coal ash to pollute our drinking water. The passage of the Coal Residuals Reuse and Management Act (H.R. 2273) lets states choose to adopt a disposal standard less protective than those for household garbage. The bill fails to protect communities from…
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