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Valley Advocates Demand Environmental Justice
When Bush II’s Head of EPA came to California’s Central Valley, he tried to hold secret meetings with industry and was met with a protest from clean air advocates angered by EPA’s long history of ignoring the Valley’s severe public health and environmental justice problems in favor of big business interests. Yesterday, President Obama’s EPA…
Read MoreEPA Administrator Visits California's Central Valley
For years citizens of California’s central valley have been asking for help and Wednesday, if only for a few hours, one of the most influential people in the country listened. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson travelled to a church in Fresno to hear the concerns of the people of the valley and what she heard was…
Read MorePower Plant Ordered to Stop Polluting the Monongahela River
After 40 years without effective pollution controls, a scrubbing system was recently installed at the Hatfield’s Ferry power plant in Masontown, Penn., limiting the amount of sulfur dioxide and other pollutants the plant pumps into the air. But the plant’s failure to install a scrubbing system for its discharged wastewater means that the dangerous pollutants…
Read MoreTr-Ash Talk: Put Down that Glass!
A while back, we documented the threat of hexavalent chromium in drinking water and the fact that it leaches from coal ash disposal sites across the country. Sadly hexavalent chromium and coal ash share a headline again in this story out of Madison, Wisconsin. The article details the results of a study that found hexavalent…
Read MoreMonday Reads: The Midway Atoll Tsunami Edition
Several hours after the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami struck northern Japan, towering waves raced west across the Pacific, engulfing the three tiny islands of Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. A mere three days earlier, Midway Atoll had been heralding the latest wildlife celebrity to woo human audiences: Wisdom. Not only was she the…
Read MoreNew York Times Defends the Right to Breathe
Over the weekend, the editorial page of the New York Times once again defended the right to breathe clean air. This time, the paper focused on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recently proposed health standards for power plants’ toxic air emissions, which are expected to save as many as 17,000 lives every year by reducing…
Read MoreLongview Coal Export Terminal Application Withdrawn
Residents of Longview, Wash., can exhale a sigh of relief today, secure in the knowledge that their health will not be jeopardized by a coal shipping terminal. Australian-based Ambre Energy and its subsidiary Millennium Bulk Logistics announced this week that the companies are withdrawing a permit application to construct a coal export facility in Longview…
Read MoreFight To Protect Gray Wolf Shifts To Capitol Hill
It is with deep regret that we must announce that Earthjustice was forced to step down as the courtroom lawyer for wolves in the Northern Rockies in the two cases related to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s action to remove or reduce their Endangered Species Act protections. This action was not our choice, but a…
Read MoreToxic Air's Toll: Thousands of Preventable Deaths
The New York Times Green blog has a good post today that spells out in no uncertain terms the cost of delaying health standards for coal plants’ toxic air pollution: thousands of preventable deaths. Earlier this week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took the historic action of proposing these long-overdue health standards, which are expected…
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