The Latest On: Clean Water Act
The buzz is heightening. The Sundance official selection documentary The Last Mountain is arriving at theaters across America beginning this weekend in Washington, DC, and New York City. Throughout June, it will open in 18 other cities, bringing this film -- on the frightening effects of destructive mountaintop removal mining-- to the biggest metropolitan markets in the nation.
You decide. Check out this picture of Florida's waterways—choked with algae—and choose which of the following quotes best describes the photo. Both speakers were referring to attempts in the state legislature to keep the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating the amount of nutrients flowing from utilities, industry and large-scale farms into Florida's waterways. The nutrients feed an explosion of algae.
On Thursday morning, the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, will begin a two-part hearing on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) policies on mountaintop removal mining. The committee, chaired by Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-OH) is calling the hearings “EPA Mining Policies: Assault on Appalachian Jobs – Part I and Part II.”
News that the EPA may delay the coal ash rule until the end of 2012 or even 2013 will come as a bitter disappointment to communities across the United States. Many had faith in Administrator Jackson’s promise that this Administration would finally issue effective controls on toxic ash disposal in 2010.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a new guidance that will restore protections to waterways that are currently the dumping grounds for industrial polluters. The “Clean Water Framework” is a huge deal for the millions of Americans who depend on this water for drinking.
Well, it's true that here on a blog, the currency is words. We're supposed to tell stories through our prose. But today I'm going to go easy on the blog and yield the storytelling to a small collection of witty, beautiful, foot-stomping and surreal art by people who are mastering other mediums to talk about mountaintop removal mining:
Bacteria-resistant meat leaves beef lovers nauseated
As Chesapeake Energy Corp. struggles to contain a massive spill of toxic, hydraulic fluids yesterday at a natural gas fracking site in Pennsylvania, it also is struggling to explain how this dangerous event happened and how they are handling it. I mean, how do you explain away the poisoning of water supplies, waterways and farmers' fields?
