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  ICP has published a (double) book about a variety of inner city-relevant topics, including racism, environmental and otherwise - click here for sample chapters, here for an interactive map,  here for fast ordering and delivery, and here for other ordering information.   CBS MarketWatch of April 23, 2004, says the the novel has "some very funny moments," and that the non-fiction mixes "global statistics and first-person accounts."  The Washington Post of March 15, 2004, calls Predatory Bender: America in the Aughts "the first novel about predatory lending;" the London Times of April 15, 2004, "A Novel Approach," said it "has a cast of colorful characters."  See also, "City Lit: Roman a Klepto [Review of ‘Predatory Bender’]," by Matt Pacenza, City Limits, Sept.-Oct. 2004. The Pittsburgh City Paper says the 100-page afterword makes the "indispensable point that predatory lending is now being aggressively exported to the rest of the globe," and opines that that the "novel Predatory Bender: A Story of Subprime Finance may, in fact, be the first great American lending malfeasance novel" including "low-level loan sharks, class-action lawyers, corporate bigwigs, hired muscle, corrupt politicians, Iraq War veterans, Wall Street analysts, reporters and one watchdog with a Web site."  And environmental justice too!  Click here for that review; for or with more information, contact us.

Brazil Says Advocate Against Dam to Displace 12,000 Could've Come to UN “on Vacation”

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, June 2 -- During the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York last month, the absence of Brazil's Azelene Kaingang was much noted. She was scheduled to speak on a panel as an advocate against that country's Belo Monte dam project. But she did not come.

On June 2, Inner City Press asked Brazil's Permanent Representative and Mission to the UN about Ms. Kaingang's abence and was told that she was not allowed to come as a government employee, but that she could have come if she had “taken vacation days.”

Brazil's Mission provided a vigorous defense of the dam, saying it would displace “only twelve thousand people” in a poor area “without electricity or running water... not indigenous land.” The defense included deriding those concerned about the displacement as “ladies from Stockholm and Mayfair who need to keep their NGOs going.” One of these NGOs, it should be noted, is Amnesty International.

More substantively, it was argued that after the nuclear power accident in Japan, and the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, hydro-power is the only way for Brazil to go. But what about the 12,000 people the government acknowledges it would displace? We will continue to follow this.

Footnote: during the Permanent Forum, Inner City Press was told of the existence of a blacklist administered by the UN, at the request of governments, of indigenous activists who are not to be allowed to attend in this or future years. This, we are looking into.

May 30, 2011

The EPA has been petitioned about the the Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement (SDEIS) for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, asking for field hearings along the right of way. There is draft legislation that would speed up the process for making a decision on Keystone XL even further than the State Department’s planned needlessly fast-paced timeline.

The Keystone XL pipeline would threaten communities from Alberta to Texas. It would put communities at risk in Alberta, where the tar sands are extracted and where communities downstream are already experiencing high rates of cancers. Along the pipeline route, the extra corrosive diluted bitumen it would carry could cause a rupture into the vital Ogallala Aquifer, which could be even more devastating and difficult to clean up than last year’s Enbridge tar sands pipeline spill into the Kalamazoo River. And in Texas communities such as Port Arthur, already named by EPA as an environmental justice showcase community, additional refinery pollution from the tar sands that would be refined would exacerbate already serious health and social justice issues.

May 23, 2011

The European Union in 2005 established a forest law enforcement, governance and trade plan. A 2008 regulation implemented the plan, while the individual voluntary partnership agreements attended to the legal contexts of each individual country. All six agreements apply to both exports and domestic markets, while checks are also intended to assure that the licensing system won't be based on corrupt existing systems. But this doesn't cover indirect trade...

May 16, 2011

Good news: environmental groups in Germany have the right to challenge in court projects that may have a significant impact on protected areas, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled last week...

January 19, 2009

  The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved a proposal last week to build a natural gas terminal on the site of the former Sparrows Point shipyard in eastern Baltimore County, and an 88-mile pipeline to Pennsylvania. The five-member FERC panel voted 4-1 without discussion to approve the request from Virginia-based AES Corp. The pipeline is to run through Baltimore, Harford and Cecil counties on its way to southern Pennsylvania. AES Corp., which declined to comment yesterday, has 30 days to accept the commission's conditions and 90 days to submit implementation plans. Other parties to the case have 30 days to appeal the decision. Fight fight fight.

January 12, 2009

  NY State governor Patterson has a new plan of which his supporter say, "In New York City there's a much stronger emphasis on environmental justice and access to parks, which ties into the governor's proposal to have more healthy, outdoor exercise accessible to children."  We'll see...

January 5, 2009

  While a press release promotes "the NYC Community Air Survey [a]s an initiative of Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC, which aims to... Reforest targeted areas of our parkland," parkland in The Bronx was given away and eliminated for the new Yankee Stadium.  Oh but "air samples will be analyzed for fine particles (PM2.5), nitrogen oxides (NOx), elemental carbon (EC), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and ozone (O3)." Hot air...

December 29, 2008

   So HBOS is said to be cutting off Oz Minerals, not extending loans, the extractive party is over... and in New York, the Parks Department has closed Harlem's Thomas Jefferson Park due to elevated levels of lead...

December 22, 2008

Wisconsin Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner on December 18 offered to give his take on the status of the negotiations after spending a full week at the Poznan climate conference for meetings with foreign diplomats, industry officials and former Vice President Al Gore. Obama did not send his own team to the U.N. meeting, but instead asked members of Congress and staff attending the negotiations to brief him when they got back. Several U.S. lawmakers signed up for the trip to Poland, but only Sensenbrenner and Sen. John Kerry actually crossed the Atlantic for the negotiations. On December 15, Obama said he had spoken with Kerry, the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, about the Poznan negotiations. But a Sensenbrenner spokesman said today that no such conversation has taken place between the Republican congressman and the president-elect. Meeting with reporters last week in Poland, Sensenbrenner predicted that because of the economic implications of cap-and-trade legislation, Democrats would lose their House and Senate majorities in the 2010 elections if they pursue votes on such a bill.

In his letter to Obama, Sensenbrenner said he was "deeply concerned" about the shape of the U.N. climate negotiations after hearing from Chinese and Indian diplomats who explained that they would not accept legally binding emission reductions in a new international global warming agreement.

Sensenbrenner cautioned Obama that the U.S. Senate rejected the 1997 Kyoto Protocol because developing countries took a similar position more than a decade ago. "The current negotiations seem to be leading toward a similarly flawed outcome," he wrote. At the U.N. negotiations, representatives from several emerging economies did outline new domestic emission reduction strategies that show a willingness to go much further than they did during the Kyoto negotiations. Brazil, for example, said it would set a target to reduce deforestation 70 percent over the next decade. Mexico said it would establish a cap-and-trade program aimed at curbing its midcentury emissions by 50 percent compared with 2002 levels.

 China, South Africa and South Korea also drew praise for their domestic climate plans. And U.N. climate meetings over the next year are aimed at figuring out exactly how to actually measure, report and verify the global warming policies of developing countries -- with the outcomes included when the talks conclude in December 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark. "They're not saying what we heard a few years ago, which is we won't take action," said the head of the international policy office at the Natural Resources Defense Council. He said there was good reason for Obama to sit down with the Republican congressman to talk about climate change. "Given the bipartisan spirit Barack Obama has pledged going forward, it'd be useful to hear both sides of the perspective," Schmidt said. "It'd give Obama a chance to compare notes." An Obama spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.

December 15, 2008

 In Texas, a Dallas program that seeks to improve local air quality by offering up to $3,000 in subsidies to low-income residents to replace old vehicles with new ones is struggling as applications have dropped 40 percent amid economic turmoil. Participation in a similar program in Houston is down about 55 percent. Old cars and trucks emit up to 30 times more pollution than new vehicles...

 In Ukraine, President Viktor Yushchenko said his country will pay in full for any natural gas it imports and that any Russian supplies will flow unmolested through his country's borders. The statements came hours after Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Ukraine has not fully paid its electricity bills and said the West had no grounds to demand Russia sell gas to Ukraine at subsidized prices...

December 8, 2008

Falling uranium prices forced Toronto-based Denison Mines Corp. to shut down the Tony M mine in southern Utah last week, but the company will open another Utah mine, the Beaver Shaft mine, that has higher grades of uranium and deposits of vanadium, which is used in steel alloys. Uranium yellowcake hit a high of $136 a pound last year, then dropped to $44 a few weeks ago...

  Meanwhile in Virginia, a state commission will study whether 60,000 tons of uranium can be safely mined in the rural south-central region despite opposition from the General Assembly. The Coal and Energy Commission can review the possible effects mining would have on the air, land and drinking water resources, but it does not have the power to lift a 25-year-old ban on uranium mining, which the General Assembly enacted shortly after the deposits were discovered. Supporters of the study say Virginia needs to expand its search for alternative energy sources, but opponents from the area where the uranium was discovered and environmental groups say mines put the drinking water and other natural resources at risk of contamination

  China National Petroleum Corp., the parent of Asia's biggest oil producer PetroChina Co., has made six major oil and gas discoveries this year and may hit a record for a third year, the company said on its Web site. It is stepping up efforts on fuel searches to meet rising domestic demand for energy and will maintain a "stable" increase in crude production and a "rapid" gain in gas output next year, the statement said...

December 1, 2008

For a grassroots debate in Cincinnati this week, "environmental Justice is about keeping already polluted neighborhoods from having to accept more polluting neighbors – usually industry, not a family of 12 or more. The myth that jobs will be lost and businesses will choose other locations (taking their precious tax dollars with them) is one of several objections used to support placing polluting companies in 'overburdened' areas."

.. long standing conflicts between client companies and communities in North Sumatra which have led to the imprisonment of villagers and restrictions being placed on people’s movements, which have in turn prevented children from getting to school and villagers from going to market or their farmland

.. the takeover of community lands in West Kalimantan undermining community food security

.. repeated allegations that client companies in several parts of Indonesia are clearing forests and areas of high conservation value.

Nearly all of the 17 business groups which are HSBC’s clients have announced plans to expand their palm oil operations. Unless their practices change, these operations will inevitably destroy more forest, wildlife and peoples’ homes.   Yep, that's HSBC..

November 24, 2008

On Climate, UN Lobbies Itself, On Migration It Tells the Poor to Go Home

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, November 20 -- That women are impacted by climate change, and that global warming talks in Poznan should take notice, are hardly controversial positions. But Thursday at the UN a strange grouping held a briefing on this issue. Ostensibly a "civil society" organization, the "Global Gender and Climate Alliance," said they will try in Poznan "to ensure that climate change funds target women and men equally." 

  Strangely, the founders of this Alliance are UN agencies, the UN Development Program and the UN Environment Fund. Inner City Press asked if this doesn't constitute the UN lobbying itself, the UN taking up the space where independent civil society should be. Video here, "under construction" (at time of press conference) GGCA web site here.

November 17, 2008

  In Indiana, a a 79-year-old Vigo County woman is suing Pfizer, claiming her property was contaminated by PCBs when a breached wastewater lagoon at a Pfizer plant flooded the property after heavy rains in June. The woman is seeking temporary housing, and the lawsuit claims that Pfizer was negligent in maintaining the lagoon's dam, and also seeks environmental legal action against the company...

  In Vietnam, the environment minister admitted the fines for industrial polluters were too low to deter them from fouling the environment and proposed raising the penalties for every breach of regulation from 70 million dong ($4,100) to 500 million dong ($29,800). There were a series of pollution scandals in which companies from Taiwan and other nations were caught pumping toxic waste into rivers. The government was aware of 4,000 factories that were heavily polluting the air and water, but the environmental agency in Vietnam lacked the resources to staff them and efficiently crack down on the corruption...

November 10, 2008

  The Maryland Public Service Commission approved plans proposed by a subsidiary of Clipper Windpower last week for 28 turbines on 3,000 acres of Backbone Mountain, and the company hopes to start construction next year. The project would cost more than $120 million, and a representative for the company said that given the credit crisis, they still face many challenges...

  In the UK, car sales fell for the sixth consecutive month, dropping 23 percent in October as consumers hesitated to make big purchases while the U.K.'s economy headed toward a recession. The Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders lowered its 2008 sales forecast 4.9 percent, to 2.15 million vehicles, and is also calling for lower interest rates and cuts in vehicle taxes. Sales are also falling in Germany, Europe's biggest economy, which also lowered its vehicle sales predictions...

November 3, 2008

 As per the WashPost, another down side of ethanol: Alexandria, Va., is one example of a town caught off guard by ethanol transport through its boundaries. A company working with Norfolk Southern Corp.   railroad started unloading ethanol in the densely populated Washington, D.C., suburb in April, but it was more than a month later that Alexandria firefighters obtained the key tools they needed to extinguish ethanol fires, which cannot be put out with typical foams. Emergency preparation evacuations at an elementary school across from the loading operation did not begin until this month.

Officials are looking to shut down or restrict the ethanol transfer operation, saying it is potentially dangerous and a slap at city residents. The Alexandria ethanol controversy has also spurred a congressional scrutiny of rail laws. Long-established laws give railroads broad powers to move freight across state lines, including the authority to unload and load what they want with little or no deference to local officials in most cases. Top Alexandria officials, including the mayor, met with Norfolk Southern executives about the operation starting in 2006, but they did not notify residents or discuss it publicly, mistakenly assuming that Norfolk Southern would be required to apply for city approval before opening.
Now, Alexandria officials have taken their concerns to federal regulators, who have yet to issue a ruling. The two sides are also in court. Ethanol transfer accidents have been serious. A 2006 derailment of 23 Norfolk Southern tank cars in New Brighton, Pa., sparked a fire that burned for 48 hours and forced a seven-block evacuation...

 In Peru, a mining mess could contaminate ponds that provide drinking water to Lima. The metals company, Gold Hawk Resources of Canada, stopped production at its processing plant for its Coricancha mine in May as a preventative measure, and the government issued an emergency decree in July that helped stop farmers from irrigating crops on the hills above the tailing site to prevent the water from pressuring the walls of the ponds, which contain toxic chemicals. But the rainy season is approaching, and the government is bracing for a potential disaster...

  October 27, 2008

   In Pennsylvania, Penn Ridge Coal LLC and Allegheny Pittsburgh Coal Co. are suing Blaine, claiming that ordinances that protect the community from long-wall mining violate their right to do business. The ordinance prohibits corporations that have more than three violations against it in the past 20 years from doing business in the township, and companies claim that is an "anti-corporation law." No, we call it wise...

  In Ivory Coast, a court jailed two men for dumping toxic waste from a ship chartered by an international oil trader at open sites around the commercial capital Abidjan. The spill killed 17 people and sickened thousands. Nigerian Salomon Ugborugbo, director of the local Tommy company that had used trucks to distribute the waste, was charged with poisoning and given a 20-year sentence, while Ivorian shipping agent Desire Kouao got a five-year sentence for complicity. But what about the bigger fish?

October 20, 2008

 In Columbus, Ohio, Georgia-Pacific sued to force AIG, its insurer, to cover part of the $22 million settlement it paid to South Side residents when one of its resin plants exploded in 1997. Georgia Pacific paid $22 million to residents in 2001, but AIG refused to reimburse the company for its losses...

In Rhode Island, a Texas-based gas company is guilty of illegally storing liquid mercury without a permit, a jury decided this week. The mercury was removed from home gas regulators, and Southern Union was guilty of storing the containers inside an abandoned home in Pawtucket instead of shipping it out. The company faces a maximum fine of $38 million...

  Than Shwe versus nature, too: skins, teeth, claws and bones of 1,200 protected species, including 107 endangered tigers and cats, are being sold in Myanmar's markets...

October 13, 2008

  Fund diversion averted: the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality has agreed to pay $1 million to track air pollution and screen children for illnesses in south Phoenix after an outcry over a plan to use the money to fight global warming. The money came from a $6 million fine levied against a Honeywell plant for discharging harmful solvents and jet fuel into soil and the sewer system...

  Alabama-based Drummond Co. has claimed a 2.3-trillion cubic foot natural gas field that the company says could supply 10 percent of the annual U.S. usage. The field is near the company's vast coal fields in northeastern Colombia...

October 6, 2008

Native rights organizations and environmental justice groups are calling on the U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee and other Congressional Committees to conduct hearings concerning federal land management practices that threaten or destroy Tribal sacred lands.

September 29, 2008

At UN, Green Funding Is Blood Oil Money As Questions Are Excluded

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, September 24 -- When climate change is discuss in the UN, there is more than a little hot air. Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg appeared alongside Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on September 24, to announce $35 million in funding to the new UN Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation program, known by the catchy acronym REDD. As one correspondent noted, REDD in Norwegian means fear. Inner City Press asked about Norway's controversial $10 billion Arctic liquefied natural gas facility near Snoehvit, which will increase carbon emission levels. Video here.

September 22, 2008

   In St. Paul, Virginia 11 protesters were arrested in what they called "an action that successfully demonstrated to Dominion that there are a lot of people in the community that are having strong opposition to the power plant and to mountaintop removal mining and to what Dominion is trying to do to Southwest Virginia." Hear, hear.

September 15, 2008

A Kentucky environmental group sued the Clintwood Elkhorn Mining Co. for dumping mining waste into an Appalachian stream valley without a permit. The company acknowledged the dumping and called it an "isolated incident."

  And that makes it okay?

In Norway, as high gas prices increase incentives, the country's oil and gas industry will boost investments to $22.9 billion in 2009 to increase exploration for new reserves, the state statistics office said. Costs for companies such as StatoilHydro ASA  Click for Enhanced Coverage Linking Searchesand Det Norske Oljeselskap ASA have also climbed as a worldwide expansion in exploration drives up demand and prices for drilling rigs and engineers...

September 8, 2008

  In West Virginia, the head of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board said the agency's investigation into last week's deadly explosion at the Bayer CropScience plant could take about a year. The explosion occurred in the methomyl section of the plant and involved a new 4,000-gallon tank in the plant's southwestern corner. Bayer makes the pesticide methomyl in the plant and uses it to make Larvin, an insecticide used to kill pests on cotton, corn and other vegetables...

  Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev led the groundbreaking ceremony yesterday for a $5.8 billion new nuclear plant near the northern town of Belene, following the partial closure of the country's single nuclear facility. Building work on the first of the plant's two reactors was expected to be completed in 2013, and work on the second reactor was to be operational in 2014...

September 1, 2008

  Why on September 11?

Pursuant to the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), Public Law 92-463, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hereby provides notice that the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC) will convene a meeting on the date and time described below. All meetings are open to the public. Members of the public are encouraged to provide comments relevant to the specific issues being considered by the NEJAC. For additional information about registering for public comment, please see SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION.

DATES: The NEJAC will convene an open meeting via teleconference call on Thursday, September 11, 2008, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. (all times noted are Eastern Time). Due to limited telephone lines, all members of the public who wish to attend the teleconference meeting or to provide public comment must register in advance, no later than Monday, September 8, 2008.

ADDRESSES: Because this meeting will be held via teleconference call, there is no physical location where members of the public can listen in. To attend, you must register in advance. See FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT section below.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Pre-registration for all attendees is required. Because this meeting is conducted via teleconference call, online registrations will not be accepted. Rather, requests should be sent to Ms. Julianne Pardi of ICF International at: 33 Hayden Avenue, 3rd Floor, Lexington, MA 02421; Telephone: (781) 676-4010; E-mail: jpardi@icfi.com, or FAX: (781) 676-4005. Please provide name, organization, and telephone number for follow-up as necessary.

Correspondence concerning the meeting should be sent to Ms. Victoria Robinson, NEJAC Program Manager, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, at 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW., (MC2201A), Washington, DC 20460; via e-mail at environmental-justice-epa@epa.gov; by telephone at (202) 564-6349; or by FAX at (202) 564-1624. Additional information about the meeting is available at the Internet Web site: http://www.epa.gov/compliance/environmentaljustice/nejac/meetings.html.

  But again, why on September 11?

August 25, 2008

  In Alaska, Canadian mining firm Ucore Uranium Inc. will spend $4 million this year to conduct exploratory drilling for uranium and other precious metals on the Prince of Wales Island, where the state's only producing uranium mine was in operation from 1957 to 1971...

   China National Petroleum Corp. said it has discovered oil and natural gas in two blocks in Kazakhstan. Chinese oil companies have boosted investment in domestic and overseas fields recently to help meet domestic demand in the world's fastest-growing major economy. China National's subsidiary, PetroKazakhstan Inc., made the discoveries, which yielded as much as 203.2 cubic meters (1,278 barrels) of oil per day and 173,100 cubic meters (6.11 million cubic feet) of natural gas per day. China National acquired PetroKazakhstan in 2005 for $4.18 billion in the country's biggest energy takeover...

August 18, 2008

  The Ecuadorian government has agreed to mediate a settlement between Chevron Corp. and 30,000 Amazon residents suing the company for up to $16 billion in environmental damages. The jungle dwellers are suing the U.S. oil company over charges it polluted the jungle and damaged their health by dumping 18 billion gallons of oil-laden water between 1997 and 1992. Neither party has ruled out a settlement, but experts say a deal is unlikely...

 In Arizona, Honeywell International directed $1 million of its environmental justice settlement for polluting Phoenix to... the Western Governors Association. The settlement, which still must be approved by the courts, states that the money will be earmarked for the governors' use as part of the Western Climate Initiative efforts to "develop regional strategies for addressing climate change." ADEQ Director Steve Owens claims, "This grew out of Honeywell's own interest in doing something to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions."

August 11, 2008

  Some Alaska lawmakers considered rescinding approval for an exclusive TransCanada license to build a gas pipeline after the company's chief executive remarked to a newspaper, "Nothing goes ahead until Exxon is happy with it." TransCanada Chief Executive Hal Kvisle sought to reassure legislators that the comment was neither meant as a slight against Exxon Mobil nor an indication that the gas company would have veto power over the project, a 1,715-mile line that would run from the North Slope to Alberta...

   Norway's Petroleum Directorate said it had completed a seismic scan of Arctic waters near the Lofoten Islands, which industry would like to see opened for oil and gas exploration and environmental groups say should not be disturbed. The state is refusing to publish the survey...

August 4, 2008

 In Kentucky, U.S. military officials last Tuesday confirmed that "trace" amounts of mustard gas, a deadly nerve agent, had leaked from a weapons stockpile in Richmond...

 The Bulgarian The environment ministry has granted a permit to a Canadian company to expand Europe's largest gold mine. Dundee Precious Metals Inc. has agreed to pay Bulgaria a higher annual fee and to allow the country to take a 25-percent stake in a planned gold- and copper-processing plant...

July 28, 2008

Resources, resources, and extractive industries --  Canadian mining company Minco Silver Corp. has agreed to pay $62.3 million for Sterling Mining Co., which has had financial problems that would have required it to unload assets if it did not find a partner. In 2003, Sterling bought the Sunshine silver mine, which has produced about 360 million ounces of silver since it opened in 1884...

  Vietnam wants to continue pursuing a joint oil-exploration project with Exxon Mobil Corp. in disputed waters despite warnings from China to drop the deal. The exploration would occur in parts of the South China Sea that both Vietnam and China have laid claim to...

July 21, 2008

 In North Carolina, there is a suit in federal court to stop a proposed Duke Energy Corp.  Click for Enhanced Coverage Linking Searchespower plant in Cliffside, saying the utility needs to remove more mercury from the future plant's emissions...

 Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva signed an agreement with the Indonesian president Saturday to cooperate on biofuels. The two nations are home to much of the world's remaining intact tropical rainforests. Brazil is a leading sugar cane-based fuel producer, and Indonesia is the world's largest producer of palm oil...

July 14, 2008

  In France, a 75-kilogram leak of untreated liquid uranium from a nuclear plant in Provence last week forced officials to ban residents and visitors in the popular tourist destination from drinking well water, swimming, or fishing in two rivers. Nuclear officials set the leak at the lowest danger tanking, but the incident embarrassed the government amid an arts festival in nearby Avignon...

 In California, state lawmakers called for an investigation of a Mojave Desert chemical plant after a San Francisco Chronicle series about a former chemical worker who battled for a decade to convince officials that toxic substances at the company -- now called the Searles Valley Minerals -- have harmed workers...

July 7, 2008

  Bangladesh last week called for global action to control soaring global crude prices, the day after it raised state-set fuel prices by up to 66 percent. The country explained that it could no longer afford to sell petrol, diesel, kerosene and gas at subsidized rates when oil has soared above $140 per barrel... In Haiti, gasoline subsidies were further cut last week, pushing the price per gallon up to $6.14, further burdening an impoverished people. The subsidies began after April riots over the high cost of food, but the cash-strapped government could not maintain the assistance that totaled an estimated $15 million over three months...

 In Utah, Emery County has signed an agreement with the U.S. subsidiary of British Columbia-based Blue Rock Resources Ltd. to build a $100 million uranium mill to produce yellowcake for nuclear reactors. According to the company, the mill would be modern, green, a source of good jobs, and just the first facility in an industrial park that could later include a nuclear reactor and coal-fired power plant on land leased by the state

June 30, 2008

  In West Virginia, DuPont filed an appeal Tuesday after a West Virginia jury in October found the company negligent in creating a waste site tainted with heavy metals and ordered it to pay $196.2 million in punitive damages for the way it handled cleanup of the Spelter site. ..

  In Myanmar, the Thai energy firm PTT Exploration and Production on Monday signed a deal to drill for natural gas in Burma's Gulf of Martaban. The field, which will require an investment of about $2 billion, is expected to produce about 300 million cubic feet of gas a day, 80 percent of which will be exported to Thailand. Not unlike a Laos dam Inner City Press covered last week, click here for that.

On global issues, click here for hour-long debate...

June 23, 2008

  In California, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has ordered an investigation into the illegally dumped trash that was allowed to sit for weeks in South Los Angeles, one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. The report, Villaraigosa said, will evaluate deployment of waste collection workers and their response times...

  The British navy has denied allegations by animal rights activists that its use of underwater sonar is to blame for the deaths of 32 dolphins found stranded in a creek near Falmouth. The animals had empty stomachs, leading experts to suspect that they were not looking for food when they fled to shallow waters -- but a navy official said it was "extremely unlikely" that side-scan sonar used by one of its survey vessels could have anything to do with it...

June 16, 2008

  In West Virginia, officials from chemical maker DuPont Co. discovered evidence of elevated cancer rates among workers at a plant near Parkersburg, according to government records. Rates at the plant were five times those at Dupont's other plants, the company told federal regulars. The officials say they do not know the cause but have pledged a full review

   PetroChina Co. plans to match China's record corporate bond sale, raising 60 billion yuan ($8.7 billion) as refining losses strain its resources. The bonds will last 15 years and may be sold in stages. China's biggest oil producer and the world's second-biggest company by market value plans to increase capital spending by 15 percent this year to 207.9 billion yuan to increase energy supplies in the fast-growing economy.

June 9, 2008

  Cote d'Ivoire citizens are suing London-based Trafigura in British courts, alleging the company's 2006 dumping of 400 tons of toxic waste was responsible for 10 deaths and led 100,000 to seek medical attention. The company has already agreed to pay $195 million (£100 million) for environmental damages, but denies the dumping was associated with health effects. After the incident, many in the Ivory Coast national government resigned. But not President Gbagbo, who is meeting with a UN Security Council delegation on June 9...

 The Maryland Department of the Environment filed a lawsuit against Atlanta-based Mirant power company for allegedly allowing polluted water and heavy metals to escape from a landfill in southern Maryland. The lawsuit seeks millions of dollars in penalties and an end to dumping of coal ash, the alleged pollutant, at the 38-year-old Faulkner landfill...

June 2, 2008

  In Russia, metal magnates are discussing a three-way merger to create a metals and mining giant. Holdings company officials Vladimir Potanin and Alisher Usmanov would combine assets to buy blocking shares in Norilsk Nickel and Metalloinvest to further control the country's metals market. The merger would be the largest in the country's history.

  In Alabama, Teledyne Brown Engineering is expanding its nuclear engineering and manufacturing with a new 200,000-square-foot plant and a $92 million contract to make service modules that aid uranium enrichment...

May 26, 2008

  In Brazil, Franco-Belgian water and energy utility Suez has won a building and operation license for the second of two controversial hydroelectric power dams on the River Madeira on the edge of the Amazon rainforest. The plants are opposed by indigenous peoples and former environment minister Marina Silva, who resigned last week in protest of the projects...

  In Texas, the EPA will examine air samples for trichloroethylene -- a likely carcinogen -- in the town of Grand Prairie this week. The chemical in liquid form has pooled beneath parts of the town, and residents fear it is affecting their air quality...

May 19, 2008

  In DC, the 33-acre federal Fort Reno Park in northwest Washington was abruptly shut Tuesday and will remain closed indefinitely after soil analysis showed arsenic levels far above what the federal government considers safe...

 In Massachusetts, Federal environmental officials have recommended all buildings at the Starmet Corp. hazardous waste site in Concord be demolished because they are contaminated with depleted uranium and other hazardous substances. Officials say they could pose a safety threat. Demolishing and disposing of the waste could cost an estimated $64 million

  Malaysia's national oil firm Petronas announced last week it had signed production sharing agreements for oil fields in Uzbekistan, where it will also take part in a gas-to-liquid project. Petronas is already involved in several Uzbeki oil exploration blocks...

May 12, 2008

  In Idaho, construction on a new $2 billion uranium enrichment plant near Idaho Falls could begin as early as 2011, once French-backed Areva obtains a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It will be one of the largest construction projects in the state's history and could create 1,000 jobs for the five years it takes to complete it. The facility will produce fuel for nuclear power plants. Calling the IAEA...

  Ghana's first industrial-scale ethanol plant, build by Constran S/A of Brazil, will begin exporting ethanol to Sweden by the end of 2010, said officials from Constran and Northern Sugar Resources Ltd., which will provide the sugar cane for refinement. Swedes starving...

May 5, 2008

   Here's pro-corporatism cum environmentalism: "Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, called for the state Public Service Commission to drop conditions it has placed on Spanish utility Iberdrola SA  in return for approving the company's bid to buy Energy East Corp.,  the parent company of New York State Electric & Gas Corp. Schumer said the PSC is insisting that Iberdrola sell all its wind power assets in New York and promise not to develop any new wind power. The senator said that requirement is not in keeping with the goal of moving New York toward renewable sources of energy.  He also said the PSC wants Iberdrola to sell a coal-fired power plant near Rochester but would not require a new owner to convert the plant to cleaner natural gas. Anne Dalton, a spokeswoman for the PSC, said in response to Schumer's statement that wind generation is only one issue surrounding the proposed deal."

  Yeah, but isn't a wonderful two-fer, lobbying in favor of a corporate merger, in the name of the environment?

  In Nigeria, another pipeline has been sabotaged, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta announced Friday. The militant group is demanding more oil revenue be directed to their oil-rich but heavily polluted region. Royal Dutch Shell PLC confirmed three attacks during the past week and announced it may be unable to meet its commitment to exporting 169,000 barrels per day from Nigeria during the next few weeks.

   Critics are accusing Norway's sovereign oil fund of pursuing nationalist motives after it voted last May for Exxon Mobil to reduce greenhouse emissions -- the country owns 0.3 percent of the company's stock. The fund makes no such demands of state-controlled StatoilHydro, of which it owns 62.5 percent. The ExxonMobil  measure failed 68 percent to 32 percent. The fund has defended itself, saying it follows strict ethical guidelines such as refusing to own shares in nuclear arms makers and emphasizing climate change awareness

April 28, 2008

  Maryland State Treasurer Nancy Kopp is pushing for Exxon Mobil  shareholders to approve a resolution that would separate the roles of chairman and chief executive officer and make the company's board chairman independent. Kopp said the current board of directors is led by an "insider chair," which does not bode well for the decisions the board must make. Exxon's board opposes the resolution

 Ecuador's Energy Minister Galo Chiriboga said Wednesday that the country has settled with U.S. oil company Occidental Petroleum Corp.  and will return $100 million of the $171 million in tax dollars that the company demanded. In a separate claim, Occidental, which operated in Ecuador from 1999 to 2006, is seeking $1 billion in damages for property it said was illegally confiscated...

April 21, 2008

  In Pennsylvania, Amerikohl Mining Inc. has proposed a strip mine next to the Youghiogheny River and along the popular Allegheny Highland trail. Amerikohl President John Stilley said the mine would have minimal impact on the trail, but citizen groups say it will be an eyesore and an environmental hazard

  In Spain, two senior managers of a Catalonian nuclear plant run by energy company Endesa have been fired for failing to disclose full information about a radioactive leak, the plant's directors said yesterday. The managers discovered the link on March 14 but failed to notify the CSN, Spain's nuclear safety body, until April 4. A subsequent inspection discovered that the leak was more serious than the managers had first indicated...

April 14, 2008

  Washington State regulators fined Puget Sound Energy $1.25 million last week over falsified gas pipeline inspection records. The Utilities and Transportation Commission said there were 209 violations in which PSE's subcontractor, Pilchuck Contractors Inc., falsified and altered safety maintenance records. PSE said that although records were falsified, the work had been performed. Great defense, that...

 Italy has not fulfilled its obligation to clear mountains of rubbish dumped in landfill sites and elsewhere around the Naples area, according to a ruling yesterday by a European court. Many of the landfills in the region are controlled by the Camorra mafia, which make a lucrative business out of subverting waste-handling procedures and shipping in industrial waste from the north...

April 7, 2008

    A judge exonerated Ingram Barge Co. of liability for its 200-foot barge that broke away from its Industrial Canal moorings during Katrina and landed on top of houses in the Lower 9th Ward. The judge found that the barge was in the custody of another firm at the time but did find negligence in two other marine companies for not properly securing two Ingram barges...

  In Malaysia, the government scrapped plans yesterday to build a 1.3 billion ringgit ($408 million) coal-fired power plant in eastern Sabah state on Borneo island due to worries it would pollute the environment. The 300-megawatt plant was to have been built near a tropical forest by a subsidiary of state-controlled utility Tenaga Nasional and a Sabah state government agency...

March 31, 2008

  In California, Kern County officials approved Cilion Inc.'s plans Tuesday to build a corn-powered ethanol plant north of Bakersfield. The project is expected to generate up to 55 million gallons of fuel additive each year. Environmentalists protested, saying the plant would worsen air quality in the San Joaquin Valley...

   In Afghanistan, about 70 percent of people do not have access to safe drinking water, a government minister said Tuesday at the opening of the first of a chain of hydrological stations to monitor water supply. The Qargha hydrological station is the first of 174 to be erected across Afghanistan to measure water resources, including rainfall, as well as water quality and levels, Deputy Minister for Energy and Water Shojaudin Ziaie said...

March 24, 2008

  In Wyoming, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will take responsibility for cleaning up one source of contamination in Cheyenne's drinking water. A Cold War-era missile site near the city has been identified as one source of trichloroethylene, a chemical used as a nuclear missile cleaner and lubricant, in the water....

  In France, over 3,000 barrels of fuel oil leaked into and along the Loire River after a pipe burst while a tanker was being loaded at the Donges refinery in western France late Sunday, the oil company Total said Monday. Cleanup teams were using floating dams, and Total mobilized a separate 200-member team to cope with the spill...

March 17, 2008

 In Maryland, Mirant Mid-Atlantic, the owner of three coal-burning power plants in the state, has agreed to pay a $175,000 fine and reduce the soot coming from its smokestacks after regulators found that the plants had repeatedly violated emissions limits. The agreement, laid out Tuesday in a consent decree filed in Prince George's County Circuit Court, also requires that the company, a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Mirant, donate $75,000 to reduce pollution coming from Prince George's school buses...

   Ukraine President Viktor Yushencko last week denounced his prime minister over her call to eliminate immediately all joint venture intermediaries that ship gas in from Russia and distribute to Ukrainian consumers. The flap comes ahead of new talks to resolve long-running price and supply disputes between the two countries...

March 10, 2008

  In Arkansas, state officials have filed a preliminary injunction request as part of the state's 2005 lawsuit against the $2 billion poultry operation in Arkansas -- including Tyson Foods Inc., the world's largest meat producer, Cargill Inc., George's Inc. and Simmons Foods Inc. -- for polluting the once-pristine Illinois River watershed with chicken waste, which contains bacteria, antibiotics, growth hormones and harmful metals...

  In Brazil, police used rubber bullets last week to oust 900 activists from a tree farm they had invaded to highlight allegations its Swedish-Finnish operators, Stora Enso, violated a law forbidding foreign companies from owning certain lands

March 3, 2008

 In Indiana, a federal Superfund site of lead-contaminated soils spanning an entire neighborhood in Jabsville will be cleaned up as part of a $21 million project that could take up to five years, U.S. EPA announced on Tuesday. The cleanup is expected to begin in Spring 2009...

      In  Seoul, Samsung Heavy Industries Co. announced last week that it will set up a fund worth only $107 million to help residents in areas hit by a December oil spill in which a barge it operated leaked 78,920 barrels of oil into South Korea's western waters...

February 25, 2008

  In Kazakhstan, Ministry of Emergencies head Vladimir Bozhko last week warned ArcelorMittal, the world's biggest steel company, that it could be forced to close one of its coal mines it if does not improve safety conditions after an explosion last month killed 30 people. The company was given one month to draw up a plan to introduce 41 safety reforms at the Abaiskaya mine in central Kazakhstan. ArcelorMittal is making steel for New York's Freedom Tower...

  Meanwhile, New York State Inspector General Kristine Hamann released a report last week concluding that Gov. Eliot Spitzer's (D) nomination last year of Angela Sparks-Beddoe as chairwoman of the state Public Service Commission created a number of ethical problems because Sparks-Beddoe began assuming official duties at the agency while still working for the utility Energy East...

February 18, 2008

  In Texas, regulators last week approved a controversial air permit to allow Tucson-based Asarco LLC to restart a dormant copper smelter in West Texas over the objections of elected officials in El Paso, Texas; New Mexico; and Juarez, Mexico. The three-member Texas Commission on Environmental Quality voted unanimously to approve Asarco's request...

  In Nepal more than 80 percent of Katmandu's buses, vans and trucks were non-operational this week because a fuel shortage made it impossible to buy diesel and gasoline to run them...

February 11, 2008

In California, the secretary of the state Environmental Protection Agency has called for an independent investigation of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, after Marin Country officials were slow to respond to two January spills that dumped more than 5 million gallons of raw and partially treated sewage into the bay...

The Mexican Energy Ministry announced this week that it will soon begin issuing the first-ever permits for companies to produce biofuels in the country in a bid to cut emissions from cars and boost incomes for impoverished farmers. And, some ask, what about the cost of corn and tortillas?

February 4, 2008

  In Michigan, a lawsuit against Dow Chemical stating that dioxin from the company's Midland plant got into the Tittabawassee River and contaminated property should become a class-action suit, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled last week. There could be as many as 2,000 plaintiffs in the case. Blue Planet Run, anyone?

 France's government-owned electricity group EDF recently held preliminary talks with Spain's ACS about a joint bid for Spanish utility Iberdrola, and EDF also is reportedly weighing bids for Germany's RWE and the Belgian assets that other French utilities Suez and Gaz de France must shed to meet European Union conditions in their still-only-proposed merger...

January 28, 2008

  BG Group's project to build a liquefied natural gas terminal in the port of Brindisi has faced environmental protests and political hurdles that have turned the investment into a "nightmare for the British energy group," per the FT...

ConAgra Foods  said last week it has dropped plans to build an ethanol plant in Clovis in eastern New Mexico. Last month, the state Environmental Improvement Board ordered another hearing on the Clovis plant after groups that opposed it appealed the Environment Department's decision to issue an air quality permit for the facility. The company planned to build it on property where ConAgra operates a grain elevator, but opponents objected. They contended the location was too close to mostly Hispanic and black neighborhoods, subjecting those residents to pollutants. They said that was inconsistent with an environmental justice executive order signed in 2005. Letters sent in 2006 to some residents, as well as radio and print notices, described the location as three miles west of Clovis. The site actually was at the city's edge on land straddling the city limits.

January 21, 2008

   Bausch & Lomb, DuPont Chemical Corp., Eastman Kodak and Xerox are among eight companies that will pay New York $1.6 million in remediation fees to clean up Rochester Fire Academy, which is a hazardous waste site where six companies -- along with the University of Rochester and Monroe County -- disposed of hazardous waste from 1954 to 1980.

  U.S.-based NSF International said yesterday it withdrew certification for pipes made by Saudi Industries for Pipes Co. after high lead levels were found in pipes used for drinking water...

January 14, 2008

            Environment Maryland has now said in a report it found potentially toxic fly ash residue, a byproduct of coal-fired plants, in air samples taken near a power company's dumpsite..

  Nigeria now accounts for 36 percent of global gas flaring, making it one of the single largest contributors to global warming. The government and industry are forming an ad hoc "Flare Reduction Committee" to purport to address the flaring...

January 7, 2008

  In Kentucky, the Army Corps of Engineers withdrew its permit for a large-scale mountaintop-removal expansion until it can review issues raised by environmentalists...

  Which kind of green? Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni last month revived a controversial plan to give ownership of a 7,100-hectare swath of rainforest land to the Mehta Group, which is planning to destroy the forest and replace it with a sugarcane plantation...

December 31, 2007

  In Kentucky, there is a U.S. Army plan to use off-site disposal for sarin. Army and DOD agencies charged with storage and destruction of chemical weapons at Blue Grass Army Depot, KY, this month announced an emergency plan to destroy three containers holding a mixture of sarin (GB) nerve agent and acidic neutralizing chemicals. The unplanned disposal of the containers and their contents is necessary, military sources say, following the discovery of a serious leak from one of them in August. Great...

December 24, 2007

            Missouri's chief utility regulator, Jeff Davis, plans early next year to hold public hearings to discuss changing the laws governing commissioners' contacts and disclosures, after protests erupted regarding an informal meeting he held with a utility executive prior to a proposed merger was announced...

            Mongolia's new prime minister, Sanj Bayar, said the government has a "moral right" to full control of the $2.4 billion Tavan Tolgoi coal project, but has vowed not to abuse the rights of its private developers, according to officials...

December 17, 2007

   In Louisiana, state environmental officials last week officially declared an emergency to clean up two 1,500-gallon tanks filled with a toxic substance that were dumped illegally along Interstate 12 near Lacombe. The state Department of Environmental Quality hired contractor U.S. Environmental Services to remove the tanks and clean up any contaminated soil nearby

  Don't believe the hype: Beijing will target outdoor kebab sellers as part of a 20-day campaign against street-level polluters leading up to the 2008 Olympics, it was reported last week...

December 10, 2007

  In Maryland, a retired Navy hospital ship is barred from being exported from Baltimore's harbor after U.S. EPA obtained a warrant to search it for toxic chemicals...

   China-based Yunnan Joint Power Development Co. announced this week that it brokered a deal with the Burmese government to operate the Shweli dam power station in Myanmar for the next 40 years...

December 3, 2007

            More than 500 Southwestern Utah residents have signed a petition to stop the building of Toquop Energy Project, a proposed 750-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Mesquite...

            EPA said last week that Anadarko Petroleum Co. was fined $157,500 for destroying 3 acres of wetlands in southwest Wyoming during a natural gas well drilling project, violating the federal Clean Water Act. EPA officials said the company agreed to restore the wetlands

            The Chilean government awarded Apache Corp. rights to explore two oil and natural gas drilling blocks on the island of Tierra del Fuego last week...

November 26, 2007

  In New Jersey, remediation company EnCap has until Nov. 27 to fix environmental and financial problems with the $1 billion Meadowlands landfill project. Jimmy Hoffa, anyone? The Meadowlands Commission wants to clean up and close four landfills by using some of the $149 million collateral put up by EnCap in its $1 billion plan to turn nearly 800 polluted acres into a development of luxury homes. Great...

  In Brazil, the increase in carbon dioxide pollution that the country produced in the past 13 years surpassed the country's rate of economic growth, according to a study published this week by the Economy and Energy Institute...

November 18, 2007

  The Pennsylvania Environmental Protection Department last week charged Purco Coal Inc. with intentionally discharging acid mine drainage into Jonathan Run creek in Fayette County and concealing the pipes to prevent its discovery...

   Able UK, the company behind plans to scrap U.S. "ghost ships," was fined more than 20,000 pounds for failing to cover or dampen asbestos when it disposed of at Hartlepool's Seaton Meadows landfill. Heavy machinery used to crush the material could have released dangerous fibers into the air...

  In Kentucky, plaintiffs rejected a proposed emissions settlement with Zeon Chemicals that would prohibit them from saying anything negative about the company, leading to further settlement discussions. Gag....

November 12, 2007

 In Iowa, debate is heating up over two proposed, coal-fired power plants near Waterloo and in Marshalltown as environmentalists, NASA's chief climate scientist, industry experts and citizens line up to testify about the projects

  Meanwhile, Idaho Power Co.  said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it is abandoning its plans to develop 250 megawatts of coal-fired power by 2013, concluding that it is not the best technology to meet its resources needs. Instead, it will develop natural gas, wind and geothermal power facilities to meet its expected demand...

 But Indonesia, the world's largest exporter of thermal coal, is planning to instate a domestic market obligation on coal producers to ensure sufficient supplies for 35 power stations, following attempts to nationalize other resource-based industries, including palm oil and gas...

November 5, 2007

  In Minnesota, EPA has completed soil testing of an area surrounding a pesticide plant in south Minneapolis, concluding that the contamination of the soil near hundreds of homes is likely due to several sources, most of them not known. Great...

  Qatar Airways is striving to be the first carrier to fuel its fleet with natural gas, said the airline's commercial general manager, Ali al-Rais, who added that the state-owned airline would announce details of the plan at the Dubai Air Show next month. Meanwhile, Maurice Flanagan, the executive vice chairman of the Dubai-based carrier Emirates, said that he does not believe in global warming and thinks Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" is "absolute rubbish." In denial in the Emirates...

October 29, 2007

  The Pennsylvania Toxic Substances and Disease Registry reported this week that there was no conclusive link between cases of a rare cancer and any environmental factors in northeastern Pennsylvania. There were 97 cases of polycythemia -- a bone marrow cancer -- in Schuylkill, Luzerne and Carbon counties reported to the ATSDR between 2001-05. Based upon the population, there should have only been about 25 cases...

President Hamid Karzai wants an international scientific committee formed to review the environmental and health risks of herbicides used to destroy the country's opium poppy crop. The government has already formed two review committees of its own. Politics over science...

October 22, 2007

            Alabama-based Vulcan Materials Co., a producer of construction materials, has reached a settlement with the city of Modesto over claims a dry cleaning compound produced by one of the company's former divisions contaminated the city. Vulcan sold the manufacturer that produced the perchloroethylene in June 2005...

            BHP Billiton bought a $10 million stake in Falklands oil exploration this month, triggering yet more controversy between Britain and Argentina. Ah, oil...

October 15, 2007

  In Montana, W.R. Grace & Co. is challenging a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that restored criminal charges of "knowing endangerment" to the government's case regarding citizens' and employee's exposure to asbestos in Grace's vermiculite mine...

  In Northern Cyprus, more than 1,000 metric tons of sewage spilled into the sea after a wall collapsed Wednesday at a Kyrenia waterfront sewage plant, and the flow was continuing at a rate of 42 metric tons per hour yesterday, Turkish Cypriot authorities admitted...

October 8, 2007

  In West Virginia, DuPont Chemical Corp. is liable for environmental damage in the town of Spelter where the chemicals manufacturer dumped waste from a zinc-smelting operation, a jury decided last week. The company was sued by 10 Harrison County residents in 2004 after they claimed they were exposed to high levels of the toxic metals from a 100-foot waste pile in the town...

   In El Paso, Texas, requests have been made to County Attorney Jose Rodriguez to seek criminal prosecution of the copper company Asarco for burning illegal toxic waste...

  Meanwhile, U.S. President Bush signed off on the first U.S. shipment of heavy fuel oil to North Korea in five years after the country agreed to complete an inventory of its nuclear programs and disable its existing nuclear facilities by the end of the year. The United States will send 50,000 metric tons of fuel worth about $25 million, according to the president's order...

October 1, 2007

            Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) paid Vermont-based Native-Energy $1,152 on Tuesday to offset the emissions his weekly flights home are likely to generate over the next year. The funds will finance pollution-free energy projects like wind turbines

            The state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Company announced Sunday that the United Arab Emirates would cut oil output by around 600,000 barrels per day in November due to planned maintenance work at three oilfields...

September 24, 2007

The French consortium Novarka signed a contract last week to construct a steel shield over the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident for more than 430 million euros...

  California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) fired state Fish and Game commissioner Judd Hanna last week, just weeks after Hanna voiced support for a ban on hunters using lead ammunition in California's condor range. At least 12 condors have died from lead poisoning in the past decade. Thirty-four Republican state senators and Assembly members wrote a letter the governor asking him to fire Hanna, calling the commissioner "an outspoken advocate seeking to achieve his own personal objectives"....

September 17, 2007

  In North Carolina, Nuclear Regulatory Commission investigators visited the McGuire nuclear plant in Lake Norman on September 11 after Duke Energy reported last week that it found improperly installed caps on heat exchangers that cool the oil in the plant's pumps...

An explosion on a pipeline carrying natural gas from Iran to Turkey caused a temporary supply cut to the country, Turkish and Iranian officials said last week. The explosion, caused by a "technical malfunction," caused only partial damage to the pipeline, but it is unknown when deliveries will resume for the pipeline...

September 10, 2007

  In Delaware, DuPont Chemical Corp.'s Edge Moor plant released more than 1,000 pounds of highly reactive titanium tetrachloride into the Delaware River on September 2. The plant reopened late Tuesday after the company investigated the leak...

  In Finland, two decades after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine, fish and mushrooms in parts of Finland still have elevated levels of cesium-137 from radioactive fallout, the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority and Finnish Food Safety Authority said last week...

September 3, 2007

  The recent ExxonMobil refinery suit in Louisiana, St. Bernard Citizens For Environmental Quality, et al. v. Chalmette Refining, could not have been brought if the EPA's April 20 rule letting emitters off the hook from minimizing emissions during startups, shutdowns and malfunctions (SSM) were in place. The rule among other things denies the public a right to see the SSM plans, purportedly due to security concerns. Polluters still trying to milk and hide behind 9/11...

August 27, 2007

  In Louisiana, the U.S. Justice Department may pursue criminal charges against Citgo Petroleum Corp. for the oil spill at its refinery near Lake Charles last year. The investigation became public last week after Citgo filed court papers trying to keep its employees from having to give pre-trial testimony to investigators about the June 2006 spill that released about 99,000 barrels of oil from the refinery's tanks. ICP note: It's not yet clear if there is any political aspect to the case, given that Citgo is controlled by... Chavez' Venezuela...

  In Guyana, mercury used by gold miners has poisoned number of residents of rural Guyana by seeping into area rivers and streams. In one community, 90 percent of villagers showed signs of illness and tested positive for mercury...

August 20, 2007

  California regulations to reduce diesel engines' greenhouse gas emissions have prompted equipment rental companies to begin selling construction equipment that does not meet new standards set by the California Air Resources Board to countries with looser environmental rules, such as Mexico, Taiwan and Vietnam.  That's it, push the pollution elsewhere...

Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, called on New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma to consider setting up an experimental clean coal plant when the state reports on its energy needs this month

August 13, 2007

  In California, people are starting to question the environmental record of British grocery giant Tesco, which plans to open 27 stores in Arizona and California, saying the company has a mixed record on labor and reducing its greenhouse gas emissions...

  About two billion people in Asia lack proper sanitation, which leaves Asian nations facing huge cleanup costs, according to the Manila-based Asian Development Bank. Underinvestment in sanitation has led to "massive pollution of both surface and groundwater," which leads to disease outbreaks, the ABD said...

August 6, 2007

  The New Jersey Environmental Protection Department announced last week it is fining Encap and other firms $1.9 million for allowing uncontrolled methane emissions to escape from the Meadowlands landfills they hope to refurbish for their $1 billion EnCap Golf project...

   A UN review board has rejected an emissions-cutting project in Equatorial Guinea, making it the largest project to fail the approval process under the Kyoto Protocol. The project, which would have turned natural gas into methanol, failed to demonstration how the emissions cuts would have happened with or without Kyoto incentives...

July 30, 2007

Increased bureaucracy and terrorism-rated concerns have made it more difficult to access data on toxic chemicals stored in the Wichita area, a Wichita Eagle analysis of state records shows. All told, there are 240 companies in Sedgwick County that handle toxic chemicals, storing as much as 1.4 billion pounds of toxic and flammable compounds...

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko fired the heads of Belneftekhim, the state petrochemicals company; state gas pipeline group Beltransgas; and Belarussian Oil Company, the state oil and refined products trader, for failing to avert an energy shock in the nation due to a sudden rise in Russian gas prices. The firings took place as Belarusian officials were holding crisis talks at the Gazprom headquarters regarding Belarus' unpaid gas debt of $500 million...

July 23, 2007

  In Illinois, EPA is supervising the testing of natural-gas systems at 80 homes in Park Ridge after PCB-contaminated liquids were found in four homes. The gas company Nicor found the chemicals in three homes in February and one in May, a spokeswoman said last week...

  In Serbia, 10 metric tons of fish have been found dead in the Toplica River, a tributary of the Sava River. The incident recalls one earlier this month, in which 20 metric tons of dead fish were found in the river due to high concentrations of ammonia...

  Shell and Colombian state-owned oil company Ecopetrol announced on July 16 they will work together on a 50-50 partnership to explore 650,000 hectares of land in central Colombia for oil. And human rights?

July 16, 2007

  Self-investigation? The New Jersey Environmental Protection Department approved DuPont Chemical Corp.'s plan Tuesday to continue its investigation into contamination from PFOA used in non-stick and stain resistant products at its Chamber Works plant near the Delaware River. A company report filed with state regulators last fall confirmed the presence of the chemical in groundwater around the plant and in the factory's discharges into the Delaware River...

  Britain's Brinkley Mining signed a protocol with the Democratic Republic of Congo yesterday agreeing to jointly develop uranium reserves in the central African country. The Congolese atomic energy agency CGEA would hold 25 percent of the venture while Brinkley would hold the remaining 75 percent. The British firm has already committed at least $3 million to the venture...

July 9, 2007

The Mongolian government came out in favor last week of the construction of a mine at the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold deposit by Canada's Ivanhoe Mines and U.K.-listed Rio Tinto. The government will receive a 34 percent stake in what will be the country's largest mining investment

 The Hungarian government is drafting legislation to prevent a possible takeover of Mol, the country's oil and natural gas company, by OMV, its Austrian rival, Hungarian Finance Minister Janos Veres said last week. The legislation is a response to OMV's announcement that it increased its stake in Mol to 18.6 percent and would like to hold "friendly talks" on a possible alliance... Yeah, very friendly...

July 2, 2007

  In Ohio, DuPont Corp. will begin testing private wells for the chemical C8 in Barlow, Belpre, Decatur, Dunham and Warren townships as part of the first phase of a new contamination survey mandated by U.S. EPA. The agency reported last year that C8 was "likely" carcinogenic to humans. DuPont continues to claim there are no known health effects associated with C8...

  In Armenia, the government has approved plans to begin developing the Teghut copper-molybdenum deposit in the Lori region despite fears over the mine's environmental impacts. In the 1970s, the former Soviet republic banned the development of the reserve out of fear for the mine's effects on local humans, plants and wildlife

June 25, 2007

   Confession time? Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Michael Somare has finally acknowledged financial ties to his country's controversial logging industry, after previously denying personal association with the forest industry. He admits chairing the Sepik River Development Corporation...

  Sleazy with the books, too: Xcel Energy agreed Tuesday to pay $64.4 million to settle a dispute with the Internal Revenue Service over whether it could deduct costs of corporate-owned life insurance on employees from taxable income. Officials said the profit deduction would cause the company to lose 5 cents per share.

  On a positive note, for the first time in more than 40 years, bluebirds are nesting on San Juan Island, according to a recent sighting...

June 18, 2007

 In Massachusetts, state lawmakers introduced legislation last week that would require the phasing out the use of 10 toxic chemicals in the By State, mandating that alternatives be used for dry cleaning, pesticides and solvents. The chemicals proposed are formaldehyde; lead; trichloroethylene; perchloroethylene; dioxins and furans; hexavalent chromium; organophosphate pesticides; polybrominated diphenyl ethers; di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, aka DEHP; and 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid...

   Last week, the European Commission yesterday approved a planned joint venture between South Korean group Hyundai Heavy Industries and Finnish company Wartsila to build engines for liquefied natural gas tankers that can run on LNG or oil-based fuels. The commission concluded the deal would not impede competition...

June 11, 2007

Chile's Supreme Court ruled last week that the general government must compensate 356 residents of two slums in Arica for health problems due to exposure to toxic waste from the town's mining industry. The Swedish company responsible for importing the toxic materials, Promel, cannot pay the residents because it no longer exists...

  In Florida, EPA received $2 million to begin initial work cleaning up Mt. Dioxin, a mound of contaminated soil at the former Escambia Treating Co. The cleanup is expected to take 16 months and EPA will spend at least another $15 million to encase more than a half-million cubic yards of soil containing dioxin, arsenic and other toxic chemicals at the Superfund site...

June 4, 2007

   In Kentucky, a federal judge has approved a class-action settlement filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky between Hexion Specialty Chemicals and residents of Rubbertown, a southwestern Louisville neighborhood. According to the settlement, the company will have to spend $4 million upgrading its operations and pay about $2,500 to Rubbertown residents. Cheap settlement in Rubbertown....

            Australian mining company Rio Tinto PLC may be considering a $27 billion bid for Canadian rival Alcan Inc., analysts said this week. Rio Tinto has hired Deutsche Bank to advise it on a possible bid for Alcan, the analysts said...

HSBC last week was fined $850,000 for mismanaging "hundreds of containers of abandoned chemicals... NYS said HSBC knew of the abandoned chemicals, as well as frozen pipes and faulty fire suppression system at the site. However, HSBC didn't contact the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation or any state or local emergency responder to report the threat as required under state law."  Meanwhile HSBC makes loud claims about carbon neutrality and climate change funding. Environmental responsibility begins at home, though, no?

May 28, 2007

  In Maryland, Baltimore officials approved a consent agreement last week with New Jersey-based Honeywell International, requiring the company to study pollution at its former pesticide plant in South Baltimore and propose a way to stop the leaking of toxic chemicals. The study comes a little late, no?

Efforts to put a stop to Japan's bid to resume commercial whaling have been strengthened by new countries joining the conservation bloc, New Zealand's conservation minister said yesterday. The International Whaling Commission holds its annual meeting next week in Alaska. Japan has been recruiting countries in an attempt to meet the three-quarters majority necessary to overturn the ban. We'll see...

May 21, 2007

  In Cambodia last week, a factory spill outside Phnom Penh poisoned nearby fisheries, killing more than 50 metric tons of fish when it seeped into ponds. Farmers said they doubted they would be compensated for their loss.

  In North Carolina, Duke Energy Corp. says it will move ahead with a controversial coal-fired power project at its Cliffside facility in the Blue Ridge Foothills, Duke CEO Jim Rogers said last week after the company's annual shareholders meeting. The company still needs a permit from the North Carolina Division of Air Quality. We'll see.

May 14, 2007

   Exxon Mobil agreed last week to pay $400,000 in penalties to California for air permit violations at its Torrance Refinery. The company also said it would spend a mere $2 million on a plan to cut excessive emissions of carbon dioxide, volatile organic compounds and other pollutants...

  Nepal has been hit by fuel shortages after state-run Indian Oil Corporation reduced supplies to the country by 40 percent, a minister said yesterday. Indian Industry Minister Rajendra Mahato said Nepal owes $91 million dollars to the company. The fuel cuts began last week...

May 7, 2007

  In Massachusetts last week, nearly 100 residents of Spencer went to the hospital with burns or rashes after the town's water supply was accidentally treated with too much corrosive lye, officials said. Water treatment plants routinely put lye in water to reduce acidity and limit pipe corrosion....

  Last week the Chinese government finally released environmental activist Tan Kai from jail after he spent 18 months behind bars, accused of taking state secrets from a government official's computer he was repairing, Tan was targeted due to his investigation of a chemical factory's pollution and the government's lack of response to local residents' complaints about the situation...

April 30, 2007

            Chevron Corp. agreed to pay the New Jersey Environmental Protection Department a $1 million settlement for spilling more than 10,000 gallons of crude oil into the Arthur Kill off Perth Amboy on Feb. 13, 2006, the New Jersey Attorney General's Office announced last week. That's getting off cheap...

            Uganda's health ministry announced last week that the country would start using DDT in the battle against malaria. Spraying will begin in August in Kabale, according to the malaria control program chief...

April 23, 2007

The Guam EPA is looking further into reports that Lujan's Salvage Yard and Towing Services in the tri-village area of Mongmong-Toto-Maite is continuing to improperly store solid waste despite a recent grassfire and EPA action against the company. A Guam EPA official said the agency fined Lujan's $12,000, adding that cleaning up and bringing the Lujan salvage site into compliance with regulations is one of the Guam EPA's highest priorities

A bankruptcy court judge has set an April 25 hearing to discuss contracts Entergy New Orleans has signed with both the state and an insurer to receive more than $220 million to help the company pay for storm damage it sustained from Hurricane Katrina. Under the state contract, Entergy is to receive a $171 million Community Development Block Grant. The company also has reached a $53 million settlement with Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance, a subsidiary of AIG Inc

  Yeah, AIG likes to play cheap in paying on insurance policies it has collected premiums for...

April 16, 2007

   The city of Norilsk, Siberia, is home to half the world's palladium industry, but its massive sulfur dioxide emissions could also be making it the world's largest producer of acid rain, BBC reported last week...

  In Guam, family members who used to own parts of Urunao -- a site where the U.S. Air Force discarded tons of metallic debris, tires and ordnance in the 1940s -- said they are upset that only the current owner of the site is being compensated for the damage done. The former owners noted that they paid property taxes on the land up until 2001 or 2002, and they say they deserve compensation...

April 9, 2007

 In California last week, construction workers closed a 10-inch hole in a main sewer pipe in Carlsbad that had spilled more than 5 million gallons of raw sewage into the freshwater Buena Vista Lagoon. That is, Countrywide Mortgage is not on the only toxic thing in Carlsbad...

  Rwanda and Congo-Kinshasa recently reached an agreement to extract methane gas stored under Lake Kivu. The two countries hope the extraction will not only provide fuel for power generation but also mitigate the danger of the 55-billion-cubic-meter deposit. Authorities fear that if the methane gas explodes it will release enough carbon dioxide to kill tens of thousands of people around the lake, much the same way 1,800 people died around Lake Nyos around Cameroon in August 1986 after CO2 escaped from the lake. There is four times as much CO2 as methane under Lake Kivu...

April 2, 2007

  In Louisiana, Murphy Oil Co. sent out $60 million in checks last week to more than 6,000 Chalmette residents as part of its settlement for oil spilled from its Meraux refinery during Hurricane Katrina. The checks are the first part of the $330 million settlement agreed to earlier this year.

 Shell Nigeria confirmed last week that the Nigerian government has charged the company with the alleged loss of some "radioactive tools" belonging to one of Shell's contractors. Shell denied reports that it was involved in the dumping of toxic waste in Nigeria. We'll see.

March 26, 2007

 In Delaware, NRG Energy said last week that it would sue to keep the state Public Service Commission from releasing information about the utility's bid to build a new coal-fired power plant. Delaware, home of transparency...

  Last week, Total oil company CEO Christophe de Margerie was detained and questioned
by French police over whether the company paid bribes in 1997 to win the contract to develop Iran's South Pars natural gas fields

   Telma Manjate, the national coordinator for the Convention on Climate Change, announced last week that the Mozambican government has $405,000 ready to prepare its second national communication on climate change. The document should be completed by the first
quarter of 2009...

March 19, 2007

 Energy Department officials acknowledged last week that a small amount of radium-226 is missing from the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion plant in Piketon, Ohio. The material does not pose a security risk and does not threaten the environment, a spokeswoman claimed. How not?

  In Sudan, the Chinese-built Merowe dam will wipe several Nile-side communities off the map as raising waters form the dam's reservoir. When the project finishes in six years the dam, which will double Sudan's power capacity, will displace 60,000 people...

March 12, 2007

  Qui tam, anyone? A federal judge in Denver said last week that he will rule within a month in the case of a lawsuit brought by a former Interior Department auditor that said Oklahoma-based Kerr-McGee Corp. had cheated the government out of millions in royalties for offshore oil production. A jury ruled last moth that the company cheated the government out of $7.6 million in royalties

  In Russia, draft legislation in the Duma would allow state-owned Gazprom and Transneft to set up their own security services with the same powers as the police -- they would be able to stop and search people and vehicles and use firearms outside company sites.

March 5, 2007

  In Arizona, aerospace firm Honeywell International Inc. announced last week that it will pay a $500,000 fine for hazardous waste violations committed at its Kingman plant in 2005

 Guam EPA and Andersen Air Force Base are beginning a $13 million cleanup operation at Urunao to dispose of unexploded ordnance, lead contamination and other unknown pollution left over from the Air Force's use of the site as a dumping ground in the 1940s...

  Nigerian Information Minister Frank Nweke is touring U.S. cities to promote and improve the image of his country in hopes of enticing foreign investment in it's natural resources. Nweke has visited several U.S. cities, including Houston on Tuesday, to encourage investment in his nation that has suffered from deteriorating political stability and continued violence in the oil-rich Niger Delta...

February 26, 2007

  This week we're temporarily going highbrow, the recent work of Professor Paul Mohai showing that people of color were living in the areas where hazardous waste facilities decided to locate before the facilities arrived.  "What we discovered is that there are demographic changes after the siting but they started before the siting," Mohai says. "Our argument is that what's likely happening is the area is going through a demographic shift, and it lowers the social capital and political clout of the neighborhood so it becomes the path of least resistance." U of M announces that Mohai will present the findings during a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Mohai's talk, "Which Came First, People or Pollution? How Race and Socioeconomic Status Affect Environmental Justice," is one of seven scheduled presentations, Robert Bullard is also hoped for...

February 19, 2007

  Beyond petroleum (jelly)? BP told a resident living near the company's Texas City plant that exploded in 2005 that she had no right to sue following the accident, an attorney told a state court last week. Robert Hilliard, who is representing Texas City resident Sealy Davis in a lawsuit against BP, said that the oil company offered his client $2,000 in compensation following the explosion to cover Sheetrock and foundation damage to her home...

 Indonsia's state-owned Pertamina announced last week that it will undertake six oil exploration projects in Ecuador this year as part of a strategic alliance agreement signed last year. An executive with the company said that once the projects begin commercial production, they will likely add 20,000 barrels of oil per day to the company's total output. Also in Ecuador, two Japanese tourists were killed while riding on the top of one of the busses called chivas...

February 12, 2007

  Oil and corruption: Three oil companies -- Vetco Gray UK Limited, Vetco Gray Controls Inc., and Vetco Gray Controls Limited -- will pay the U.S. government a total of $26 million in fines related to bribing Nigerian customs officials $2.1 million to speed up entrance of people and equipment into the country, the Justice Department announced last week...

  Sleaze in Alaska: KeyBank, which acted as a financial adviser and banker to Knik Arm Power Plant developer Marc Marlow, this week sued Marlow for the second time. The lawsuit is an attempt to recover hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees that the bank says it is owed for advising Marlow in the deal. Plans to build the facility recently collapsed....

February 5, 2007

  This gun for hire: former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke was paid to say last week that the development of a liquefied natural gas facility in Sparrows Point would be "safe" and does not pose a terror threat. Clarke is a consultant for AES Corp., which is proposing to build the LNG plant in Baltimore County. Giuliani is engaged in similar work, for another LNG project...

January 29, 2007

  In Indiana, a group of Madison County residents suing zoning officials over their decision to allow the construction of a $105 million Broin Companies ethanol plant argued in court this week that the county officials should not have allowed the facility to be built. The residents said one of the families living near it has a special-needs child who is at high risk of breathing in pollutants generated by the development work...

  In Azerbaijan, a natural gas consortium led by BP PLC has halted production at a natural gas field in the Caspian Sea off the coast of Azerbaijan. The field shut down for a week shortly after starting operations last month and only restarted again on Jan. 14. The shutdown was prompted by tests on the effectiveness of the repair work done after the first shutdown...

            Devon Energy Corp. announced Tuesday that it will sell all its assets in West Africa as a means to reduce its debt and focus on North America, Brazil and China. The properties held by the company in West Africa -- located in Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ivory Coast -- held an estimated proved reserves of amount 90 million barrels of oil equivalent as of the end of last year...

January 22, 2007

  In California, the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board has ordered the Marine Corps to pay between $5.5 million and $29.4 million to clean up the Las Pulgas Landfill, which was used by Camp Pendleton to house decades worth of trash. Temporary fixes for the site have already amounted to nearly $3 million...

  In Azerbaijan, a Baku district court Sunday sentenced Bakhtiyar Hadjiyev, editor of the political opposition Web site www.susmayaq.biz, to 12 days of jail for allegedly campaigning against increased energy prices after the Azerbaijani government canceled natural gas contracts with Russia. Gasoline prices have risen 50 percent and household electricity prices have gone up 300 percent since the government's decision last week... Click here for a recent BBC piece on Inner City Press' reporting from the United Nations.

January 14, 2007

  In California, South Coast Air Quality Management District regulators said last week that they are investigating an incident at the ConocoPhilips oil refinery in Wilmington that sent flames shooting high into the air. The district recently increased the strength of its "anti-flaring" law for refineries, banning open burn-off of excess gases from South Bay refineries except in emergencies or during planned shutdowns, start-ups or other "essential" operations. Violators can face fines of $1,000 -- too low.

  In Fiji, the military regime backing last month's coup in Fiji seized the country's only operational gold mine last week. Vatukoula mine operator Emperor Mines is negotiating with the government and military officials, the Australia-based company said...

January 8, 2007

  In Ohio, EPA is trying an emergency $1 million hazardous waste cleanup to unearth and remove more than 1,300 drums of paint and solvent buried in a hill overlooking the Little Miami River in Warren County.

Democratic Republic of Congo government officials will review three of the country's biggest mining contracts soon after a World Bank report released recently found that they were approved with "a complete lack of transparency." The three contracts -- representing joint ventures between Gecamines and three mining companies that include Phelps Dodge -- refer to deals approved in 2005 under a power-sharing government, which was seen by many diplomats as deeply corrupt but necessary to put an end to a war in the country central to the region's stability...

  Most recent move in a long saga: Ecuadorean Attorney General Jose Maria Borja Gallegos asked the U.S. attorney general Dec. 5 to investigate allegations that Chevron Corp. did not properly clean up toxic waste left over from Texaco Inc.'s oil drilling activities in rainforests...

January 1, 2007

 EJ notes. In Wisconsin, "community leaders should not be planning to invest billions of dollars in new freeway construction without first considering that nearly one-third of all African-Americans in Milwaukee do not even have a driver's license."

 In Massachusetts, the now planned location of a diesel power plant, Chelsea, "is classified by the US Environmental Protection Agency as an Environmental Justice Community of Concern, is considered one of the state's most "environmentally overburdened cities." Such a classification is given to a neighborhood or community composed of predominantly poor or minority residents and that, compared with similar communities, carries a disproportionate level of environmental hazards.

December 25, 2006

 In Tennessee, the Energy Department said last week that it finished removing all of the depleted uranium hexafluoride left at the former uranium-enrichment site in Oak Ridge ahead of schedule. DOE transported about 6,000 cylinders filled with the depleted uranium to a storage site in Ohio over the last three years...

   Migratory birds traversing Finland on their way south for the winter are confused by the country's exceptionally warm winter this year and are singing and mating as if it were spring, experts said last week. Disconcerting...

December 18, 2006

 In West Virginia, DuPont Co. officials said Wednesday that more than 600 pounds of the chemical trimethylamine were released during two leaks at the company's plant in Belle over the weekend. The company previously reported that only 150 pounds had leaked from the plant...

 In New Mexico, the Las Cruces Superfund site contains at least 7.2 billion gallons of perchloroethylene-contaminated water, U.S. EPA officials said last week. The agency said the contaminated plume must be treated to bring the water up to agency standards. The city of Las Cruces and Dona Ana County own the land that is contaminated and are responsible for covering the estimated $13.7 million cost of cleanup...

A federal grand jury indicted two oil tanker crewmen with falsifying records to conceal the illegal dumping of waste oil and sludge from their ship, the M/T Captain X Kyriakou, off the California coast from Oct. 27 to Nov. 2. The indictment returned Tuesday charged Artemios Maniatis, the chief engineer, and Dimitrios Georgakoudis, his top assistant in the engine room, on a felony charge of knowingly failing to maintain accurate logs of discharges...

December 11, 2006

  In Ohio, the Energy Department is conducting a final review of the Fluor Fernald former uranium processing plant this month to ensure that the company's cleanup work meets the agency's standards. Fluor Fernald announced Oct. 29 that remediation work at the site was complete and signs of life in the wetlands there lend hope to the assumption that 20 years' worth of work to remove soil contaminated by radioactive materials is over...

  In Russia, Sakhalin regional prosecutor Yury Chaika said yesterday that Russian environmental and migration authorities detected "over 100 violations of environmental, migration and labor laws" at the Shell-led Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project. Chaika said the operating consortium running the project could face criminal prosecution for the violations. But what about the banks?

December 4, 2006

Tanker engineer James Legg filed a complaint in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas last week accusing ConocoPhillips of retaliatory actions against him for uncovering evidence that the company covered up a midocean oil spill in January 2004...

 In Indonesia, an explosion on the Pertamina-owned East Java Gas Pipeline on the island of Java last week caused by a mud slide left hundreds of companies and tens of millions of people suffering power disruptions. At least seven people were killed in the explosion, 16 were injured and four are reported missing...

  More than 400 cities in China face water shortages, state media reported last week. Quoting a senior government official, the China Daily newspaper said rapid urbanization combined with pollution is staining the country's water supplies. About 45 billion metric tons of untreated wastewater pump directly into lakes and rivers...

November 27, 2006

   The NBA's Utah Jazz has dropped the Delta Center name from its Salt Lake City arena in favor of EnergySolutions Arena. The move honors the arena's new beneficiary, hazardous waste disposal firm EnergySolutions. It is unknown how much the firm paid for the 10-year naming rights.  And it's hazardous to even ask...

            A report commissioned by Tasmania's Resources Planning and Development Commission found that Gunns Ltd. failed to address concerns about air and water pollution in its plans for a $1.4 billion pulp mill in Tasmania. The report said the company would have to conduct new studies on emissions if it wants to "achieve credibility" as the biggest industrial project in Tasmania's history...

November 20, 2006

  North Carolina state officials last week approved EQ Industrial Service's plan to ship hazardous waste from last month's fire at its APEX chemical plant to a landfill in Belleville, Michigan. Great...

  Meanwhile, Russian environmentalist group Ekozashchita asked the German government last week to prosecute the uranium-enriching company Urenco of trying to turn Russia into a "nuclear dump." The group said that the company is illegally delivering nuclear waste to Russia...

Last week Inner City Press sat down for an interview with the president of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Arkady Ghoukasyan, and asked him about the fires, about the United Nations and other matters. Click here for the footage, on Google Video.

November 13, 2006

  In Pennsylvania, a lawsuit was filed last week against pottery manufacturer CBS Corp. for the costs of cleaning up a hazardous waste site north of Gettysburg. The cleanup of groundwater at Shriver's Corner began in 2002 and will take more than 30 years.

  Judge David Hurd of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York approved a consent decree between General Electric and the federal government last week to dredge PCBs from part of the Hudson River.

 On the global tip, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a memorandum of understanding with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso yesterday establishing an energy partnership to offset concerns of dependence on Russian energy sources.

And in global Environmental Justice news, a beat we particularly like, The European Court of Human Rights condemned Italy last week for permitting a factory near Brescia in northern Italy to treat toxic industrial waste only 30 meters away from an inhabited house. The court awarded resident Piera Giacomelli 20,598 euros for damages, costs and moral damage due to the factory's operations...

November 6, 2006

  In New Jersey, PCB concentrations in the wetlands around the Kin-Buc Landfill Superfund site have risen over the past 10 years. PCB levels rose from 2.1 parts per million in 1996 to 2.7 ppm in 2002...

  Missouri- based Bunge North America Inc. will pay the EPA $13.9 million under the terms of a U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois agreement signed last week. Bunge will spend $12 million to reduce harmful emissions at 11 soybean processing plants and a corn dry mill extractions plant in eight states: Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois..

  Polluters on the move: More than 30 multinational companies operating in China -- including Panasonic Battery Co., Pepsi Co. and Foster's Group Ltd. -- violated national water pollution control guidelines recently, according to a Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs report released last week

October 30, 2006

In New Mexico, Clovis-area officials are disturbed by a new report from New Mexico and federal officials that recommends that the $459,000 settlement from Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway for environmental damage in Clovis should instead be spent to restore 43 acres of wetland at Bottomless Lakes State Park in Roswell, more than 100 miles away. The railroad had dumped waste water into a playa lake in Clovis for years...

 In Delaware, the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control ordered Claymont Steel this week to end excessive slag dust releases and said it could possibly release a report on solutions to the facility's emissions problems by March 1, 2007. Four Claymont-area Republican lawmakers also asked this week for a state attorney general's office probe into pollution from the company's facility, citing recent findings of higher-than-reported mercury emissions..

 In Peru, indigenous people took over four oil wells last week in protest of contaminated river water, shutting down Pluspetrol's 50,000 barrels per day of output...

October 23, 2006

  In Alaska, the EPA has filed a federal lawsuit against the owners of Safety Waste Incineration in Wasilla alleging that the incinerator the company uses exceeds pollution limits and is out of compliance with standards set forth in the Clean Air Act.

 In Washington state, ConocoPhilips paid the Department of Ecology a $540,000 fine last week in relation to a 2004 violation in which 1,000 gallons of oil spilled into the Puget Sound

  Meanwhile the European Commission took legal action against Hungary and three other members last week for violating the environmental impact assessment mandate on various projects in sensitive areas. The commission also took action against Hungary for submitting its greenhouse gas allocation plan for the 2008-12 phase of the Emissions Trading Scheme late...

October 16, 2006

  In Illinois, Toxic chemicals from inside barrels at the Feddeler Landfill in Lowell will likely cost the city between $20 million and $35 million to clean up.

 In Texas, workers last week began removing an estimated 200,000 gallons of oily water, leftover fuel, lube oil and grease surrounding the disused mobile offshore-drilling unit Zeus sitting on the edge of the Freeport harbor channel.

  From the Sunday Telegraph of Oct. 8: "Spin over substance? 1 HSBC: has reduced its CO2 production from 550,000 tons to 0. Actual cost: $3 million."  HSBC was sure given a lot of flattery for this $3 million. Meanwhile they steal that amount very quickly through their subprime ex-Household units...

  Also troubling: a South Korean businessman was arrested last week for exporting uranium-enrichment materials to a Middle Eastern country, prosecutors said. He allegedly shipped 15 metric tons of potassium bifluoride to an unidentified country and planned to ship 25 more

October 9, 2006

  In Texas, Citgo's Corpus East refinery had two 12-million-gallon oil vats sitting uncovered for at least a dozen years, releasing benzene into the air, according to the Justice Department's August indictment of the company accusing it of knowingly releasing illegal amounts of the toxic chemical in 2001 and 2002. This may also be a global item, given Citgo's ownership by Venezuela...

  On the global / bottom of the sea beat, mining investors such as Nautilus Minerals Inc. and Neptune Minerals Plc. raised more than $50 million recently in bids to begin pulling rocks lined with copper and gold worth $300 each off the sea floor a mile beneath Papua New Guinea.

  In China last week, the Three Gorges Project Construction Committee raised its estimates of the number of people who will be displaced by the construction of the Three Gorges Dam from 1.13 million to 1.4 million.

  In Cote D'Ivoire, a household waste dump near Abidjan will be reopened for a year under the terms of a deal struck last week between Construction and Town Planning Minister Marcel Amon Tanoh and the village of Akouedo... Until next time, for or with more information, contact us.

October 2, 2006

  In Illinois, EPA fined the Lehigh Cement Co. $84,378 this week for exceeding federal limits for furan and dioxin emissions from its plant in Mitchell. The agreement, announced Wednesday, does not require the company to admit any wrongdoing. Great...

 And we're back: former Treasury Secretary John Snow will serve on the board of directors of Marathon Oil Corp., officials with the company announced last week...

September 25, 2006

  On the Gulf Coast, DuPont last week began a new PFOA processing project at its First Chemical plant in Pascagoula, dodging an appeal of the water emissions permit rubber-stamped for First Chemical by the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality...

  The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management has fined Southern Union, the parent company of New England Gas, $1,000 per day for failing to submit three soil remediation plans for dumping toxic soil over 50 acres in a neighborhood in North Tiverton.

September 18, 2006

  Iran wants to build a second natural gas pipeline to Armenia, Parliament Speaker Gholam-Ali Hadad-Adel said last week while visiting the former Soviet Republic. Armenia is short on energy reserves due to a dispute with energy rich neighbor Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave. Hadad-Adel said a new Iranian pipeline would serve primarily to supply Armenia with natural gas, but added that "the possibility of transporting gas to third countries through the [country] is not excluded"

  In Maryland, Harford County officials notified 375 households in the Forest Hill neighborhood last week that levels of the gasoline additive MTBE had been rising in the groundwater since the spring. The results of these tests had been in the state's possession for two months, but state officials only told county officials last week, which could constitute a violation of a Maryland law that requires notification within 14 days for such a test."

September 11, 2006 - As UN Checks Toxins in Abidjan, the Dumper Trafigura Figured in Oil for Food Scandal, Funded by RBS and BNP Paribas

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN

  UNITED NATIONS, September 11 -- While in Ivory Coast the dumping of toxic chemicals by Trafigura Beheer BV has led to a new political crisis, it has emerged that the dumper Trafigura figured in the UN - Iraq Oil for Food scandal, alongside mining operations in Kazakhstan, derivatives and loans from such mega-banks as Royal Bank of Scotland, ING and BNP Paribas. The toxins were dealt out in at least nine places around the port of Abidjan, leaving five dead and over 7000 in need of medical treatment. How far the liability and accountability will spread is not yet known.

   Before the UN Environment Program sent investigators to Abidjan, at UN Headquarters on September 7, Inner City Press asked the spokesman for Secretary-General Kofi Annan for the UN's position and actions to date on the spill. The spokesman responded that

"On this specific issue, the Prime Minister, Charles Konan Banny, spoke to Mr. Guehenno today, to brief him on the dissolution of the Government.  He told them the decision was made to ensure that all those who have a hand in what happened in the dump of the toxic waste, take full responsibility and are removed from Government jobs.  We obviously acknowledge the decision.  I think it is always good when people take responsibility for these sorts of things."

   Even cursory research finds the dumper, Trafigura Beheer BV, listed in various reports on the UN's Oil for Food program. Facts on File reports that:

"in May 2001, the Essex tanker, chartered by Dutch oil-trading company Trafigura Beheer BV, had been topped off with an extra 230,000 barrels after inspection at an off-shore Iraqi oil platform. Trafigura had purchased the oil in the shipment from French oil-services company Ibex Energy France. The cargo had been seized in the Caribbean Sea after the captain alerted U.S. and U.N. authorities. Later, according to the Journal, Ibex's general manager, Jean Paul Cayre, in an affidavit filed with Britain's High Court of Justice, had said the two companies performed the same routine with the Essex in 2000, under Trafigura's direction, paying Iraq $5.4 million for the extra oil. At Trafigura's direction, Cayre said, the two companies had shredded records of the deals and replaced them with false ones."

    Documents tie French President Jacques Chirac's friend Patrick Maugein to the 25 million barrels allocated to Trafigura Beheer BV, which employed Patrick's brother Philippe as a consultant. Trafigura was accused of evading taxes on oil imports into Thailand; the International Relations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives has taken testimony on Trafigura's involving in the Sudanese oil industry.

    Public reporting on Trafigura comes even closer to the current UN.  The Financial Times' Claudio Gatti one year ago reported:

"Kojo Annan, son of Kofi Annan, United Nations secretary-general, received more than Dollars 750,000 from several oil trading companies now under investigation for their role in the UN's oil-for-food program (OFFP) for Iraq. The funds were dispatched between 2002 and 2003 to an account Kojo  Annan opened under his middle name - Adeyemo - in a Swiss branch of Coutts bank... In 2003, one company - Trafigura Beheer BV, a Dutch-based entity founded by traders who formerly worked for the then fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich - sent $247,500 to Kojo Annan's account at Coutts... The company found records of the payment in question, but explained that it was related to a transaction with PPI, the Nigerian company that employed Mr Annan as a director. 'The request (of payment) was received from a PPI fax and it was assumed that this was a PPI account.' Mr. Annan's lawyer said PPI 'conducted business with Trafigura in 2002 and 2003' clarifying the deals were confined to Nigerian gas oil and petrol. PPI's representative in Geneva is Michael Wilson, a Ghanaian friend of the Annan family, who has attracted scrutiny in the oil-for-food investigation. Mr Wilson and Mr Annan both worked for Cotecna, the Swiss inspection company that in 1998 received a UN contract under the oil-for-food program ultimately worth $60 million. Between spring 2002 and spring 2003, Mr Annan's Coutts account received over $200,000."

    Control of Coutts lay with Royal Bank of Scotland. As research into who funds and enables Trafigua continues, earlier this year Euromoney reported "BNP Paribas, ING and Royal Bank of Scotland's $300 million facility for commodity trading group Trafigura Beheer has closed."

  On Friday the UN said it is sending the UN Environment Program to investigate the toxic dumping in Abidjan. But the trail is not without self-reference, and leads well beyond the Ivory Coast. Bigger picture, Reuters reports that "countries that report to the Basel Convention, which monitors hazardous waste, produced around 108 million tonnes of the wastes in 2001, according to U.N. statistics. Uzbekistan was top with 26 percent of the total." Developing...

   In U.S. dumping news, South Korean shipping company Sun Ace Shipping Co. plead guilty this week to dumping oil residue off the coast of New Jersey and agreed to pay $500,000 in fines, the Justice Department said. New Jersey groups working to protect and restore the Delaware Estuary and its watershed will get $100,000 of the fines, the agency said. Sun Ace vessels will also be banned from U.S. ports and waters for three years, according to the terms of the plea agreement...

September 4, 2006

 In Kentucky, Paducah Remediation Services, a contractor at the Energy Department's Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, intends to fix a series of safety and other problems jeopardizing millions of dollars in performance fees, company President Mike Spry said last week.

 In Nigeria, the military burned hundreds of homes and shops in Port Harcourt after gunmen kidnapped at least two Italian oil workers and killed their military guard last week, witnesses said...

August 28, 2006

  In Vietnam, protesters in Ho Chi Minh City are pressing to close down or force two steel plants to move away that are emitting manganese dust, carbon monoxide and lubricants at a rate five to 20 times higher than permitted...

  Montana mystery: a contaminated plume of groundwater in a residential neighborhood southwest of downtown Billings is emitting vapors, according to tests conducted by the U.S. EPA last week. The agency said there is no indication of any imminent health risk to home owners and said that it plans to return to the site in the winter for more tests to see if the risk of breathing in contaminants is higher...

August 21, 2006

  In North Carolina, while groundwater tests from around DuPont's Fayetteville Works plant show low levels of ammonium perfluorooctanoate, commonly known as C8, critics continue to attack for the high levels in workers' blood. While the average person might have 5 parts per billion of C8 in his blood, the highest reading in 2005 showed a plant worker with 4,540 ppb, and the average of 64 samples was 504 ppb

  In India, Asbestos-lined ocean liner The Blue Lady arrived in India's Alang port on Tuesday to be scrapped, ending months of efforts by environmentalists to send the ship somewhere else. See this week's Global Inner Cities report for information on ship-breaking, particularly in Bangladesh....

August 14, 2006

  In Tennessee, the Energy Department said last week that it will meet a federally mandated deadline to remove all of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's uranium-loaded cylinders by 2009. Dennis Hill, a spokesman for Bechtel Jacobs Co. -- which is overseeing the transportation of the cylinders to another facility in Piketon, Ohio -- said that there are 650 drums left to be shipped by the end of the calendar year.

  Benin President Boni Yayi asked Nigeria on Saturday if it would keep the price of natural gas deliveries on its pending pipeline stable even if world oil prices fluctuate. The completion date for the pipeline has been pushed back three months to March 2007 because of pricing disagreements, Nigerian Energy Minister Jocelyn Degbe said...

August 7, 2006

  Beyond petroleum? BP signed an agreement last week with lenders in Indonesia yesterday, securing $2.6 billion in financing to pay for a liquefied natural gas plant being constructed in human rights-challenged Papua province... In Alaska, the Department of Transportation said last week that it is investigating whistleblower allegations by BP workers that two safety valves were not working at the time of a large oil leak at the Prudhoe Bay oilfield in March...

July 31, 2006

  Defensive litigation: in Florida, Lockheed Martin's lawyers have filed a motion in Florida's 12th Circuit Court asking more than 300 Tallevast residents who are suing the defense contractor over damages from a plume of toxic waste under their homes to turn over documents showing proof of ownership of their homes, tests for chemicals on their properties and alleged exposure to toxic substances...

  In Russia, Exxon Mobil Corp. admitted last week that it spilled a small amount of oil from its Sakhalin Island project off the Russian coast....

July 24, 2006

  In Washington State, Spokane's Wastewater Management Department Director Dale Arnold told the state Department of Ecology this week that at least 53,000 gallons of raw sewage spilled from storm drains in the city into the Spokane River over a three-day period earlier this month. But the actual amount of sewage could be greater because eyewitnesses reported to the city that they saw what appeared to be sewage debris in the river as early as May...

            Overseas in Indonesia,  Asia Pulp and Paper is desperately deny accusations that it is failing to protect some of Indonesia's most important remaining forests in Riau and Jambi provinces on Sumatra Island where it manages forest concessions .

            U.S. Comptroller General David M. Walker told Congress earlier this month that Iraq's government-controlled oil industry is hampering the country's ability to govern itself due to "massive corruption" and "a lot of theft." Oil metering, anyone?

July 17, 2006

  In Australia, documents leaked last week show that Gunns's proposed $1.2 billion pulp mill will initially rely on native forests for up to 80 percent of its pulp wood resource...

  Russia's LUKoil announced on July 11 that it wants to build its first refinery in Turkey. The firm, Russia's biggest oil company, said it would build the $2 billion refinery in the Turkish Black Sea port of Zonguldak...

   Concerns are growing in Chad that money given to the government by Exxon Mobil Corp. in exchange for the rights to develop an oil pipeline in the country is not getting to the nation's poor. For most of this year, Chad's oil wealth has been frozen in London bank accounts after a government dispute with the World Bank...

  In straight domestic EJ news in Texas, DeBerry community members filed a federal lawsuit last month against the Texas Railroad Commission accusing the state oil and natural gas industry regulator of environmental racism and claiming that the agency failed to enforce oil drilling safety regulations in the town. The U.S. EPA recently found the town's groundwater to be contaminated with pollutants such as arsenic, benzene, lead and mercury from local oilfields...

July 10, 2006

            This week, an environmental focus on finance. Advocates note that Wells Fargo has invested millions of dollars in Massey Energy, which they say is destroying Appalachian communities with mountaintop coal removal...

            Macquarie Bank and other investors announced yesterday they would buy Pennsylvania-based Duquesne Light Holdings Inc. for $1.59 billion...

July 3, 2006

  In Delaware, suit has been filed against M.A. Hanna Plastics Group Inc. of Michigan, the Wilmington Economic Development Corp., and two individuals Wednesday to recover $3.7 million for the cleanup of toxins at the former Electric Hose and Rubber site in Wilmington, for buried lead- and arsenic-contaminated waste at the site...

  In Bolivia, Energy Minister Andrez Soliz said last week he would seek criminal charges against former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada and Enron Corp. officials for allegedly cheating the country in a gas pipeline investment deal..

June 26, 2006

  The Guam Environmental Protection Agency received a tip this week that a Harmon Co. facility is in possession of illegal refrigerants. The U.S. EPA is working with Guam regulators to investigating the illegal importation of R-22 refrigerants via the Philippines. R-22 is being phased out of production under the Clean Air Act because it contains levels of chlorine.

   In Sudan, a small British oil company, White Nile Ltd., is slowing edging French oil giant Total SA out of control of the potential 3 million barrels of oil. White Niles secured large tracts of the land from the Southern Sudan government when the company gave the government a 50 percent stake in the operations, in contrast to Total's 10 percent offering to the Sudan's national government. The company will sink the first of 70 wells by November...

June 19, 2006

  In North Carolina, test results from a May lead-poisoning case at the Penrith Townhouses in Durham revealed elevated lead levels in the water of 12 of 51 units sampled, according to Durham County's Environmental Health Director Robert Brown. County and state officials then ordered further tests in homes around the development and found that 11 of the 19 homes sampled had elevated levels of lead in their water...

  In Ohio, EPA cited Lanxess Corp. for air contamination at its Addyston plant last week...

  According to a report called "Ecomafia," Italy lost up to 400,000 metric tons of hazardous waste last year, mostly to crime organizations that processed it more cheaply...

June 12, 2006

    EPA's National Environmental Justice Advisory Committee has a Gulf Coast Hurricanes Work Group, which is now calling for EPA to revise its disaster response procedures to address the needs of "vulnerable populations," which could involve changes to the federal National Response Plan and Superfund National Contingency Plan (NCP). The recommendations, drafted by a work group of the (NEJAC), come as environmentalists are considering lawsuits over the response of EPA and other federal and state agencies to the environmental impacts of the disaster. The full NEJAC panel is scheduled to review the report at its June 20-22 meeting in Washington...

  In Saudi Arabia on June 7, Texas-based Halliburton announced that it's been awarded a multimillion-dollar oilfield services contract by Saudi Aramco. The three-year contract would utilize up to 23 rigs to drill more than 300 wells. Saudi Arabia hopes to expand production capacity to 12.5 million barrels per day by 2009.

June 5, 2006

            Weapons of mass destruction in Indiana - Army contractor Parsons Technology Inc. resumed work last week destroying VX nerve agent at a facility 30 miles north of Terre Haute after workers discovered degraded seals May 18 in a three-way valve in one of Newport Chemical Depot's two reactors. The discovery prompted the shutdown of both reactors used to destroy the chemicals...

            Oops -- the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has proposed fining GeoMechanics Inc. $3,250 for not securing a nuclear gauge with two separate locking devices, which led to its theft from a South Charleston, W Va., parking lot last September

  A powerless nation: New Zealand's government says it will dispatch an electrical engineer to the South Pacific nation of Niue to help restore power to the island, which lost power Tuesday night after a fire broke out at the nation's sole power station...

May 29, 2006

 In Oregon, Portland General Electric's coal-fired power plant in Boardman is finally back operating after a four-month shutdown for repairs to its turbine and generator rotors. The shutdown cost utility customers an additional $46 million in extra power costs. PGE has asked state regulators to track the costs of the replacement power and, at a later date, bill customers - GrEat...

  In Rwanda, regulators will soon begin testing a 5-megawatt power plant next month to determine the technical viability of a proposed gas-to-power generation plant in Lake Kivu. And across the lake is the Democratic Republic of Congo, where despite fighting an election is scheduled for July 31 -- for more, see ICP's Global Inner Cities Reports.

May 22, 2006

  On the housing front, in Colorado 300 residents of the Penwood Place Apartments in Denver had to evacuate last week because of asbestos contamination two to 10 times above safe levels in wall plaster discovered after a fire at the apartment..

Mining: BHP Billiton Ltd. agreed last week  to sell its Tintaya copper mine in Peru to Anglo-Swiss miner Xstra PLC for $860 million..

  In New Mexico, the state Environment Department has accepted Los Alamos National Laboratory's plan to determine the extent of groundwater chromium contamination in Los Alamos County. The Nuclear Security Administration found chromium levels in a monitoring well in December that were more than four times the federal drinking water standard and eight times the state's groundwater standard.

May 15, 2006

  In Kentucky, lawsuits have been filed against two industrial plants for their industrial odors and emissions. The suits target Louisville Gas & Electric, the operator of the coal-fired Cane Run power plant, and the Hexion Specialty Chemicals plant.

  From Brussels, E.U. officials wrote a letter to the German economy minister last month seeking clarification of the deal between Deutsche Bank, German state bank KfW and Russian energy giant Gazprom for a proposed 1 billion Euro natural gas pipeline between Russia and Germany. Officials wish to determine whether the deal's details are compatible with E.U. regulations.

 In South Africa, the city of uMhlathuze is suffering from high emissions levels caused by industry, vehicles and biomass burning, according to a new report from the city council's environmental planning department. Buffer zones and ambient air quality limits will have to be introduced, it concluded.

May 8, 2006

   In Delaware, Oil and tar balls began appearing along the Delaware Bay east
of Dover last week, triggering increased spill control efforts in both New Jersey and Delaware. Delaware Department of Natural Resources investigators said the oil might have been spilled or dumped by a ship traveling along the bay's main channel...

 Globally, it's toxic politics: Russia has extended last month's ban on Georgian and Moldovan wines to brandy and sparkling wines, which Russian officials said also contained pesticides and heavy metals. Nothing to do with the Russian-backed breakaway regions of Abkhazia and Transdniester, of course...

May 1, 2006

  In Colorado last week, EPA officials released proposed penalties for Fremont Paving and Redi-Mix, Inc. for spilling 4,000 gallons of oil into Oak Creek in May 2005. EPA's proposed fines are $37,890 for the complaint and $75,000 for a proposed "supplemental environmental project." Hmm...

  In Maryland, Carroll County Health Department and the state Department of the Environment admitted last week that water from a well serving 40 homes in a Finksburg trailer park has tested positive for suspected carcinogen and gasoline additive MTBE. The officials claimed they were unsure of the source of the 20 parts per billion contamination, but they said that it did not come from nearby gas stations or an auto-parts junkyard...

 In Alaska, former NFL running back Larry Csonka, who's now a commentator for the Outdoor Life Network was fined $5,000 by the National Forest Service April 19 for conducting commercial work in a national forest without obtaining a special-use permit. Larry, Larry, quite contrary... 

April 24, 2006

  In Michigan, Muskegon city officials began searching for underground contamination of vinyl chloride at the Beacon Square shopping plaza last week in preparation for the opening of new stores in the shopping center. New stores on vinyl chloride?

  Oil dealings in Brussels: European oil refiner Petroplus said last week that it will buy Belgium-based Petroleum Holdings in a deal that would create the continent's largest independent refiner...

April 17, 2006

  In Tennessee, the cleanup of the K-770 scrap yard in Oak Ridge, a couple miles west of the former K-25 uranium-enrichment plant, will not finish until sometime around the end of the year, according to cleanup officials. The cleanup, which has already hauled away 30,000 tons of radioactive junk from the scrap yard, was supposed to finish several months ago...

  In Missouri, EPA and state Department of Environmental Quality officials began testing chemicals at the former Minton Enterprises facility in Highland last Thursday to determine the extent of contamination at the site. EPA officials estimate the cleanup at the site will cost the government as much as $300,000 and will take months to complete...

April 10, 2006

            Last Tuesday the EPA released test results showing that high lead levels contaminate 14 New Orleans neighborhoods, and that a cancer-causing petroleum constituent is present in a city landfill. The announcement of the presence of the contaminants marks the first time since the start of the seven-month environmental investigation that officials have acknowledged contamination problems in neighborhoods outside of St. Bernard Parish, where a million-gallon oil spill took place...

  In West Virginia, it has now been shown that Massey Energy did not teach miners how to use fire-safety equipment or conduct fire drills at the Aracoma Alma No. 1 Mine where two miners died in a January 19 fire...

  In India, 40 survivors of the deadly 1984 Bhopal methyl isocyanate gas leak from a Union Carbide plant completed a 500-mile walk from Bhopal to New Delhi demanding that the government make amends to survivors and to victims -- Union Carbide's leak killed over 3500 people...

April 3, 2006

  In Delaware, from TRI we learn that toxic air pollution rose in 2004, mostly due to the emissions from ERG Energy's Indian River power plant, which accounted for 46 percent of all toxic emissions in the area in 2004...

 In Alaska, the EPA announced on March 27 it has fined Anchorage chemical seller Altex Distributing Inc. $134,000 for not having a risk management plan or notifying emergency officials about thousands of pounds of chlorine and sulfur dioxide stored in the company's Ship Creek yard between May 2003 and Sept. 2005.

March 27, 2006

  In Louisiana, St. Charles Parish Waterworks Director Robert Brou told the Parish Council last week that its east bank water-treatment plant is in such bad shape it could collapse at any time, shutting off water supplies to residents for months...

  In New Mexico it's reported that of 54,029 public comments on El Paso's proposal to drill for coalbed methane in the Valle Vidal watershed, nine have been in support of the plan. Democracy? We'll see.

March 20, 2006

  Science, Sh-mience. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe is demanding information from the  National Science Foundation about the funding and management of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and its managing body, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research and the roles they play in "researching, analyzing, and understanding the science of global climate change."

Inhofe has previously called global warming the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people"...

March 13, 2006

  No stick? In New Jersey, testing has found traces of perfluorooctanoic acid in a well owned by Pennsville Township. DuPont Co. has a plant in Deepwater that uses PFOA for making Teflon...

  The Energy Department last week cited the University of Chicago, manager of the federal Argonne National Laboratory, for nuclear safety violations going back to 1999. The job of managing the laboratory opened for bidding earlier this year. Time for a new manager?

  Click here for Robert Bullard's narrative of events in Dickson, Tennessee...

March 6, 2006

  Congressional hype: staff of the U.S. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee have started an investigation of how some EPA regions may be targeting small businesses with their regulations and enforcement. Even Inside EPA notes that the finding of the Small Business Administration's (SBA) ombudsman's office that out of 382 total small business complaints nationwide in FY05, only seven were filed against EPA, compared with 34 against the Internal Revenue Service and 28 against the Food & Drug Administration, according to the office. In FY04, 25 of the 445 complaints filed by small business owners pertained to EPA regulations. And in FY03, out of 412 complaints filed, just 17 were about EPA-related issues.  

February 27, 2006

  Buck-passing in the Big Easy. The federal Environmental Protection Agency is claiming that assessing public health issues in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is not its job (or problem), that only the Centers for Disease Control can do it. But the EPA and its previous head were just slapped down in a court ruling on their claim they did okay in New York after 9/11/01…

February 20, 2006

  In South Carolina,   The state Department of Health and Environmental Control will
finally investigate complaints of air, water and ground contamination in Una, Saxon and Arcadia. The state probe stems from conference calls and in-person meetings-- two community meetings have been held. Organizers said more than 50 people attended the last one. The state now will concentrate on the Freeman Gas & Electric Co. property on Sibley Street. The mostly vacant land contains rows and rows of propane tanks.

  Meanwhile, The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection is seeking candidates to join the Environmental Justice Advisory Board. But note – if justice gets in the way of PA-based companies like Sovereign Bank, the law will be bent or changed (see Inner City Press’ Bank Beat for the specifics on Harrisburg’s fast-passed suck-up-to-Sovereign law).

February 13, 2006

 Mercury from Jersey to Nevada: Officials will transfer nearly 3,000 metric tons of mercury in Hillsborough, N.J., to the Hawthorne Army Depot in Nevada later this year, it was announced last week.

   In California, technicians claim to have cleaned up about 90 percent of the hazardous waste at March Air Reserve Base using carbon filters, furnaces and gasoline-eating microorganisms. And what of the other ten percent?

February 6, 2006

 In Florida, officials last week accused one Amoco and one Super Stop gas station in Homestead last week of post-Katrina price gouging after they raised gas prices 64 cents per gallon in one day after the hurricane. The stations face a fine of up to $10,000…

 In Indiana, Swiss-based ABB Ltd. claims it will complete demolition of a former electrical components manufacturing plant it owns in Bloomington by the end of this year supposedly cleaning up cancer-causing chemicals at the site.

January 30, 2006

  In Florida, it’s been confirmed that the Tallevast toxic plume from the former American Beryllium Co. plant has reached three different aquifer zones. Environmental Science & Technologies Inc. said the plume is moving more rapidly underground than previously believed

  In South Dakota, efforts continue to get the state permit for GCC Dacotah's Rapid City cement plant rescinded. The concern is that the plant will be allowed to violate air quality standards because the permit requires it to monitor emissions once every five years…

January 23, 2006

  In the same week as the Alito hearings, and discussions of the Supreme Court’s New London takings clause decision, another novel use is proposed for eminent domain: in Alaska, lawmakers introduced a bill last week to use eminent domain to encourage oil and gas drilling by threatening to take land away from developers that are taking too long to begin work on the North Slope and Point Thomson natural gas projects…

  Priorities seemingly backwards: In Utah, Salt Lake City officials will meet with residents to get their input on whether they should use Superfund money to clean up groundwater tainted with PCE. The site is near a culinary well by a reservoir. Officials worry that “the stigma associated with being a Superfund site could affect property values.” So leave it toxic?

January 9, 2006

   In Florida, two kinds of fish caught in the Pensacola Bay system tested above federal health safety levels for PCBs, reflecting that sediment near a proposed Army Corps habitat restoration site is contaminated.

    In Iowa, an agricultural plant that came under scrutiny last year for producing corrosive hydrochloric acid in Jefferson is in fact one of fully 63 power plants, cement makers and other manufacturers in the state that emit the acid, documents have shown. Most have higher smokestacks that release the acid in stronger winds.

   In Massachusetts, courtesy the Cape Cod Times, Army officials are trying to decontaminate soil  tainted with explosives and perchlorate at Camp Edwards by covering it with organic microbes and are experimenting with cranberry wastewater provided by Ocean Spray...

Nuclear medicine, anyone? Inner City Press/Community on the Move's Bronx branch has received a letter from Connecticut-based CardinalHealth, projecting a new “radio-pharmacy” at 2425 Waterbury Avenue in The Bronx.  Triggering the letter is a required application to the NYS DEC, since the proposed site is in a DEC-defined “Environmental Justice Area,” and ICP has been identified by DEC as a “party likely to be interested in this Plan.” Well, yes. We’ve expressed our interest to Cardinal, but have yet to hear back.

January 3, 2006

December 26, 2005

  In Wisconsin, investigations are mounting into the seeming link between donations from utility executives to Gov. Jim Doyle's campaign and the approval of the sale of the Kewaunee nuclear plant.  Campaign finance records show Wisconsin Public Service Corp and Alliant Energy contributed more than $43,000 to Doyle when a state body was deciding whether to approve selling the plant to Dominion Resources

  Also in Wisconsin, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week proposed a $60,000 fine for the operator of the Point Beach nuclear power plant for altering a federal report three years ago. The NRC also said it was proposing a fine for Nuclear Management Co. for not accurately reporting the result of an emergency preparedness drill at the plant…

December 19, 2005

  From AP via the Rochester D&C of December 14: “In New York, 63 of the 107 neighborhoods with the highest health risk ratings were in Monroe County, according to AP's data. And when mapped, the neighborhoods form a bulls-eye around Kodak Park, Eastman Kodak's sprawling industrial facility. In fact, Kodak Park was one of the three factories across the nation that created potential health risks for nearby residents in 2000,

according to AP's analysis. (The others were Eramet Marietta Inc. in Marietta, Ohio, and Titan Wheel Corp., in Walcott, Iowa, which closed in 2003).” The Green Bay Press-Gazette, also of December 14, reported in more detail:

Total number of blacks in Wisconsin: 300,245 - Number in 10 percent of the most polluted areas: 140,159 -Percentage: 47

Total Hispanics: 192,921 - Hispanics in polluted areas: 87,585 - Percentage: 45

Total Asians: 87,995 - Asians in polluted areas: 26,153 - Percentage: 30

Total whites: 4,681,630 - Whites in polluted areas: 629,426 - Percentage: 13 percent

-- Source: Environmental Protection Agency and 2000 U.S. Census Bureau statistics.

December 12, 2005

  In New Jersey, cleanup workers at Ford Motor Company’s Ringwood site have identified extensive areas where lead solvents, PCBs and other toxics are still present…

  In Michigan, CMS Energy Corp. announced last week it will begin accepting bids for its Palisades nuclear plant and hopes to sell it by 2007. CMS said the company plans to enter into a long-term agreement with the buyer to continue to purchase power from the facility. We’ll see.

  And in Peru, St. Louis-based Doe Run Co. is responsible for lead poisoning of Peruvian children because of its metallurgical complex, experts said last week. Nearly all of the children tested in La Oroya, had lead poisoning, Doe Run and the Ministry of Health reported last year…

December 5, 2005

  In Connecticut, the U.S. EPA has taken over the cleanup of the polluted 7.45-acre Hull Dye property that once contained more than 800 abandoned chemical drums from textile operations. The Derby site has been entangled in investigations of corruption at the state’s Department of Environmental Protection…

  In Kentucky, the state recently spent $5,000 to close an abandoned oil well that leaked oily sludge during heavy rains, threatening the Middle Fork of Newcombe Creek in Elliott County. Oil and gas regulators have identified at least 8,000 similar abandoned wells that may need plugging and reclamation…

November 28, 2005

  This week, we turn north to Canada, where toxic waste left over from a former Royal Canadian Air Force radar base is polluting Northern Ontario's Polar Bear Provincial Park on Hudson Bay. Up to 10,000 rusted metal drums left over from 40 years ago leak chemicals into the ground, contaminating water, and harming polar bears, caribou and rare species of birds…

 Less far north, in upstate New York, General Electric is now planning not to remove the PCBs it put into the Hudson River, but rather to “cap” thousands of cubic yards of the PCBs at the bottom of the river.  This according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration memo sent to U.S. EPA in October. GE released 1.3 million pounds of PCBs into the Hudson during the decades it manufactured capacitors and other components at its Hudson Falls and Fort Edward plants north of Albany. Last month, GE reached a tentative agreement-on-the-cheap with EPA that would require GE to dredge 43 miles of the river, but that plan has yet to be formalized…

November 21, 2005

 More Gulf Coast pollution: an oil tank vessel traveling from Houston to Tampa, Fla., last week spilled about 10,000 gallons of No. 6 fuel oil off the coast of Port Arthur after debris punctured the barge, the Coast Guard has disclosed...

In Nevada, the EPA has asked BP subsidiary Atlantic Richfield Co. to construct fences and provide security around six square miles of old tailings and waste ponds at the former Anaconda copper mine. Arco said the Bureau of Land Management should pay for fencing and security...

November 14, 2005

Slipshod: In Wisconsin, officials at the Point Beach Nuclear Plant shut down and then restarted a reactor last week after workers discovered peeling paint on the inside of the reactor, according to a report filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission...

          In Connecticut last week, Pfizer accidentally leaked five gallons of industrial chemicals from its Groton facility...

This week we review a welcome new addition to the still-small bibliography of environmental justice books: anthropologist Melissa Checker’s “Polluted Promises: Environmental Racism and the Search for Justice in a Southern Town” (NYU Press 2005). The “Southern Town” in question is Augusta, Georgia, specifically the Hyde Park / Aragon Park neighborhood. The author went to Augusta in the fall of 1998 to volunteer with the Hyde and Aragon Park Improvement Committee (HAPIC), which was combating pollution by ITT-owned Southern Wood Piedmont, pouring PCBs into Rocky Creek. Chapter Five of the book tells the story of three lawsuits, spanning the early 1990s until at the time of the author’s arrival, “resigning themselves to the fact that their lawsuit might never pan out, HAPIC leaders looked to longer-term solutions to their problems” (135). A computer center is set up and other polluters are identified: Thermal Ceramics and Goldberg Brothers scrap metal yard, whose drums of mercury-contaminated debris are pictured on page 182. After much struggle, the scrap yard is cleaned up, leveled and cleaned out. The author concludes “that progress toward social change might be halting or slow, or sometimes might event take a few steps backward, but there is progress if you look for it.” We’re glad the Ms. Checker looked for it, and filed this report.

November 7, 2005

  In Maryland, more than 800 landowners in Carroll County have received letters notifying them that MTBE levels in area wells tested above the state action level. New state laws require officials to notify residents when measuring high levels of the gasoline additive

In New England, Wal-Mart was last week forced agreed to pay a $50,000 fine and equip its trucks with portable generators following an investigation that found the company's trucks idling illegally last year in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

October 31, 2005

In Utah, the International Uranium Corp.'s mill in San Juan Country began receiving truckloads of nuclear waste from Japan last week, raising questions over Utah's ability to regulate foreign nuclear material.

 In Pennsylvania, Hazelton Mayor Lou Barletta says he wants to use dredged material from rivers in Philadelphia, New York and New Jersey to fill used mines and promote development in the region. Others have wisely pointed out that imported dredge could bring unwanted contaminants into the area. Yep...

October 24, 2005

Garbage time. In New Jersey, litigation has begun asserting that the New York Susquehanna & Western Railway Corp. and several other transportation operators have violated a federal ban on open dumping at waste transfer stations.

 In Rhode Island, state investigators discovered this week that more than 80,000 tons of fly ash from a Massachusetts incinerator ended up in a Johnston, R.I., landfill. The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management has said each truckload of solid waste transported from out of state could carry a three-year jail sentence and a $5,000 penalty -- mighty cheap, we think...

October 17, 2005

 Corporate sleaze in South Carolina: DuPont and contractor Fluor are together seeking a $7.5 billion five-year contract to manage the Energy Department's contaminated Savannah River site...

 More sleaze: the proposal to reduce the Toxics Release Inventory reporting requirement to every other year -- moving in the wrong direction. Click here for more.

October 10, 2005

General Electric, while fighting Superfund in court, reached a settlement-on-the-cheap with the EPA last week for its contamination of the Hudson River with polychlorinated biphenyls. The agreement calls on GE to pay the government up to $78 million of the EPA's bill -- which could exceed $700 million.  GE dumped an estimated 1.3 million pounds of PCBs into the river from its plants in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls. Inner City Press / Fair Finance Watch has submitted comments against GE’s proposed expansions in Turkey and the Philippines, click here for ICP’s GE Watch.

Beyond preemption: in Congress, Senators Inhofe and Vitterer have used Hurricane Katrina to propose legislation that would give the EPA administrator authority to waive or change any law under EPA's jurisdiction or that applies to any activity in the nation carried out by the agency for up to 18 months....

October 3, 2005

            With Katrina and Rita now passed, the two federal agencies with lead environmental roles, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have released lists of “roadblocks,” including dealing with 22 million tons of debris. None of the wood debris can leave because that might spread Formosan termites, which have infested New Orleans since the mid-1960s, eating away at homes, cables, trees and dock pilings. Open burning is usually against the rules. So is dumping billions of gallons of untreated, contaminated water into Lake Pontchartrain. The EPA has already waived such rules. A bill by Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, chairman of the Senate environment and public works committee, would let the EPA suspend its standards for four months during the Katrina cleanup, with extensions possible for 18 months or more... 

September 26, 2005

            In Colorado, Standard Mine in the Gunnison National Forest has been added to the list of the state's 22 Superfund sites last week. The site, where mining began in 1874, leaks wastewater saturated with metals into the Elk Creek waterway...

            The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources disclosed last week that the amount of out-of-state garbage dumped in Wisconsin landfills has increased by 46 percent since last year...

September 19, 2005

 In West Virginia, dioxin concentrations in the Nitro community center's day-care result in an additional cancer risk of 91 per 1 million children, just below the already-unrealistically-high level requiring a U.S. EPA cleanup of the site, agency officials said in a report released last week.

Also cheesy -- in California, Hilmar Cheese Co. has agreed to negotiate with state environmental officials about a $4 million fine for illegally flushing milky wastewater onto nearby fields for nearly three years at its Turlock manufacturing facility. Water regulators have accused the cheese plant -- which Hilmar says is the world's largest -- of dumping an average of 700,000 gallons of salty wastewater daily onto Merced County fields.

In (and around) the Loop: children playing near a H. Kramer and Co. smelter in Pilsen could suffer from lead poisoning, according to a study released last week. Illinois EPA records show the plant is the largest source of airborne lead in Chicagoland... Speaking of Chicago, click here for ICP’s book review this week, of Steve Bogira’s “Courtroom 302.”

September 12, 2005

In South Carolina, Duke Energy Corp.'s Oconee nuclear power station is operating again after an outage last month resulted in an inspection by Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials. The faulty unit, one of three in the power station, was operating at 18 percent capacity last week...

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan (D) wrote a letter last week to the state EPA asking why Midwest Generation was not penalized for more than 7,600 documented pollution violations at six coal plants in and around Chicago. See this week’s Inner City Press CRA Report for details on the AG’s father’s motives for passing an anti-foreclosure bill in Illinois’ state legislature...

September 5, 2005

There are, or were, 140 petrochemical plants along the 80 miles of the Mississippi river between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Post-Katrina, with rainbows on the river, the damage has yet to be assessed.  Beyond hydrocarbons, the run-off of pesticides and fertilizers starves the water of oxygen and creates the world's largest "dead zone" off the Louisiana coast. This year, even prior to Katrina, it expanded to an estimated 8,000 square miles.  Going forward, here’s a contact for advocacy: Louisiana Office of Environmental Assessment, Regulation, Box 4314, Baton Rouge, LA 70821-4314 -- fax (225) 219-3582... And, click here for ICP’s Gulf Coast Watch.

August 29, 2005

Right move for the wrong reason -- the Navy asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week to reverse a decision allowing Cove Energy to build a liquefied natural gas terminal in Fall River. The Navy said the project would disrupt the military's torpedo testing in Narragansett Bay...

The dirty cleaners: Cosmed Group Inc., a Rhode Island company that sterilizes medical equipment, will pay a $1.5 million fine for ethylene oxide emissions at five facilities across the nation

Cleanup will begin early next month at the Starmet Corp. Superfund site in West Concord, Massachusetts. The state Department of Environmental Protection hired Utah-based Envirocare to remove more than 3,700 barrels of spent uranium and transport them to a disposal facility near Salt Lake City -- where Wal-Mart is trying to charter a bank, click here for ICP/Fair Finance Watch’s opposition.

August 22, 2005

This, we must link to -- the GAO's report on environmental justice, or the lack thereof. Click here for the whole report in text format; here are some quotes:

"We found that in four phases of drafting three significant clean air rules between fiscal years 2000 and 2004, EPA generally devoted little attention to environmental justice... the economic analyses of the two mobile source rules did not include an analysis of environmental justice.... EPA's capability to identify environmental justice concerns through economic reviews also appears to be limited. More than 10 years have elapsed since the executive order directed federal agencies, to the extent practicable and permitted by law, to identify and address the disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of their programs, policies, and activities. However, EPA apparently does not have sufficient data and modeling techniques to be able to distinguish localized adverse impacts for a specific community." Yep...

August 15, 2005

In Alabama, Morgan County residents are criticizing the state Department of Environmental Management for failing to notify them of benzene contamination leaking from underground storage tanks. ADEM said it has a policy of notifying only families who obtain drinking water from a well...

 In Florida, Lockheed Martin Corp. has completed its own (self-serving) evaluation of the contamination at the former American Beryllium Co. site in Tallevast. The report put the plume of contamination at 131 acres...

August 8, 2005

In New Jersey, there are plans to sue the New York Susquehanna and Western Railway Corp. and several hauling companies over violations of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which bans "open dumping" of polluting waste into the environment.

Meanwhile, in California and also rail-related, questions are growing about the air quality agreement reached in June between Union Pacific, BNSF [formerly Burlington Northern Santa Fe] and the Air Resources Board -- it was done without public participation. Environmental justice, anyone?

August 1, 2005

July 25, 2005

In New Jersey, inspectors last week found thousands of pounds of the toxic chemical phosphorus pentasulfide during an inspection of a Meadowlands rail yard. After responding to a report of a spill, inspectors discovered more than 80 containers of the deadly substance. The facility is owned by New York Susquehanna & Western Railroad Corporation...

 WMD... in Indiana. Approximately five gallons of wastewater containing remnants of a deadly VX nerve agent leaked at the Newport Chemical Depot last week, though contamination was limited to one room. The Army had been destroying the toxic through a sodium hydroxide reactor when the incident occurred...

July 18, 2005

            Hazardous waste in Western New York: in the town of Porter, opposition to the proposed expansion of Chemical Waste Management's hazardous waste landfill is growing. The state DEC held a public hearing in May 2004; still, it seems that CWM plans to expand in Porter.  As one local put it, "Just because a piece of land was already contaminated, with waste from the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb, doesn't mean you just keep piling more and more waste there." Yep...

July 11, 2005

            New York State officials last week approved a $451 million plan  to clean up Onondaga Lake, calling on Honeywell International to remove pollution from the lake. Honeywell and its predecessor AlliedSignal Inc. are responsible for much of the mercury and other pollution dumped into the lake by the Allied Chemical plant in Solvay...

In power news, last week the Wisconsin Public Service Corp. and Wisconsin Power and Light Co. sold the Kewaunee nuclear power plant to Richmond, Va.-based Dominion Resources Inc. for $191.5 million -- 13 percent lower than the $220 million expected when the deal was first announced in November 2003. Also, ex- Bank of America CFO Jim Hance has moved to the board of directors of Duke Power.   Oh, Equator Principles...

July 5, 2005

To be watched, closely: this week lawyers for DuPont are slated to meet with the West Virginia Environmental Quality Board to discuss alternations DuPont wants to make to the industrial waste dump in Wood County, WV...

  On July 4, ICP Fair Finance Watch filed  filing comments with regulators in Central America on General Electric’s proposal to buy control of BAC International Bank and export its (subprime) consumer finance to six more countries; ICP noted environmental issues at GE as well -- click here to view a summary the comments.

June 27, 2005

In Alabama, the Anniston Army Depot could pay $1,100 in fines after the state Department of Environmental Management found unlabeled hazardous waste during two surprise inspections last spring, ADEM officials said in a notice of violation issued June 6. All we can ask is -- a barely $1000 fine?

In Tennessee, a settlement to reduce pollution was reached Wednesday between Loudon County residents and environmental groups and Tate & Lyle -- the company that wanted to construct an $80 million corn syrup facility there...

In North Carolina, the state legislature is considering a bill that would transfer a 100-acre DuPont Co. industrial site to the state and then to Swiss-based Ilford Imaging Group. But who would pick up the $7.2 million tab to clean up arsenic and other pollution there? Until next time, for or with more information, contact us.

June 20, 2005

           In New Mexico, the state Environmental Department last week fined fertilizer company Helena Chemical Co. $233,777 for failing to comply with state air quality laws and regulations.

            The Nuclear Regulatory Commission proposes to let a private consortium build a National Enrichment Facility to make fuel for atomic power plants about 200 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. The location is near the town of Eunice, in Lea County, New Mexico....

            In Texas, as part of an agreement with the state Commission on Environmental Quality, Texas Petrochemicals has committed to reduce emissions of 1,3-butadiene by half. High concentrations of the toxic chemical were found around the company's fences, which border people’s backyards. We’ll see... 

June 13, 2005

  In Texas, BP is close to settling most of the civil claims brought by workers injured in the March explosion at its Texas City refinery, attorneys for both sides said last week. The March 23 blast killed 15 people and injured more than 170, many of them seriously...

The Associated Press speculated last week that General Electric may consolidate its nuclear power business in North Carolina in the hope that regulators will allow utilities to build a new generation of power plants, company officials said this week. In 2003, GE Nuclear Energy moved its headquarters from San Jose, Calif., to Wilmington, NC...

June 6, 2005

In federal court in Alabama, McWane Inc. is charged with violating the Clean Water Act by misleading federal regulators about dumping pollutants into Avondale Creek.

 In Minnesota, arsenic, dioxin and other chemicals need to be removed from about 40 homes near the Cass Lake Superfund site, U.S. EPA officials said last week. The chemicals were left by a former wood treatment plant that closed in 1985...

May 31, 2005

Too little, too late: in Montana, EPA chief Steven Johnson said last week it will take five to six years to clean up asbestos contamination in Libby, the site of a former W.R. Grace & Co. vermiculite mine. Current EPA funding for the remediation project is about $17 million per year...

  Outside investors in / controllers of West Virginia: Denver-based Energy Corp. of America said last week it has inked a deal with Black Stone Mineral Co. L.P. of Houston to sell about 7 million shares of term royalty interest in the Appalachian Gas Royalty Trust....

May 23, 2005

    In Kentucky, the state will resume paying $12,500 per month for air monitoring of toxic chemicals in Louisville, officials said last week. The University of Louisville has paid for the program since the state stopped payments almost a year ago.

            In Utah, the EPA sued U.S. Magnesium last week in federal court, alleging that the company has illegally manufactured and dumped PCBs at its site near the Great Salt Lake. Agency officials, who said they would seek the statutory maximum, have called the company the nation's worst polluter.  Oh, there’s others, too... 

May 16, 2005

           In Colorado, the state Public Utilities Commission and the state Office of Consumer Counsel have proposed a $5.6 million fine for Xcel Energy in response to several power outages last summer.

          Right to know? Safety and health records from the Texas City BP refinery that exploded recently will not be made public until the conclusion of a probe by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a federal district court judge ruled last week...

May 9, 2005

Dangerous cargo: More than 10,000 shipments of hazardous materials travel through Columbia, South Carolina each year on the Norfolk Southern railroad, according to company officials. Common chemicals include molten sulfur, anhydrous ammonia and chlorine, all of which could be fatal is spilled in a populated area

 In Kentucky, the Louisville Metro Air Pollution District filed for an administrative hearing last week to seek up to $790,000 in fines from the Louisville Paving plant, which has been cited for 16 air quality violations.

May 2, 2005

  In New Jersey, Exxon Mobil Corp. claimed last week it is waiting for the Army Corps of Engineers to approve its remediation plan before it begins work at an East Greenwich Township site contaminated with PCBs. The company faces fines of $50,000 per day unless it agrees to clean up the site. We’ll see.

In Connecticut, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission is conducting a special inspection of the Millstone Nuclear Power Complex in Waterford after an emergency shutdown and steam release at the plant last week.

April 25, 2005

            In California, tests by the state Department of Toxic Substances Control have detected perchlorate at four times the state drinking water standard in an irrigation well near a Wyle Laboratories plant in Norco. Earlier tests found the chemical in groundwater and two septic tanks on at the plant.

  In Texas, Asarco, which owns an El Paso copper smelter that has contaminated nearby soil, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week for five subsidiaries in an effort to limit asbestos liability. State and city officials said they are worried that the company will attempt a similar tactic to limit its responsibility for lead and arsenic pollution at the smelter site. Apparently Congress’ supposed crackdown on bankruptcy abuse is only directed at consumers, and not polluters...

April 18, 2005

    In California, the J.R. Davis rail yard emitted 25 tons of soot in 2000, equivalent to the amount produced by 90,000 diesel trucks, according to a study by the state Air Resources Board. Since the study, the first of its kind, rail traffic to the facility has increased

            While hardly inner city we are compelled to report that a BP pipeline rupture "misted" 200 acres of tundra with crude oil in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska on April 12. State environmental officials said they do not yet know how much oil spilled.

April 11, 2005

  In California, Valero agreed last week to pay the EPA a $97,940 fine for alleged hazardous materials violations at its Benicia refinery. A June 2003 site inspection revealed the refinery improperly stored sludge from petroleum processing and lacked necessary permits...

In Delaware, a mechanical problem at Premcor's Delaware City Refinery caused significant emissions on the morning of April 6 of sooty black smoke. State Natural Resources and Environmental Control Secretary John Hughes said the release was part of a pattern of violations at the plant that could lead to a "chronic violator" review. We’ll see.

April 4, 2005

            In El Paso, Texas, the City Council voted unanimously last week to sue Asarco to pay for a cleanup of 600 residential yards contaminated with lead and arsenic released by the company's copper smelter.

In Ohio, industrial facilities released 289 million pounds of toxic emissions last year, compared to 290 million the year before, according to a state Environmental Protection Agency report released last week.

  In continued chemical weapons news from Alabama, the Anniston Chemical Disposal Facility successfully burned 1,026 8-inch artillery projectiles and 1,245 gallons of sarin during a test held between March 18 and March 23, officials said last week...

March 28, 2005

            In Indiana, pesticide maker Reilly Industries failed to repair two refrigeration units at its Indianapolis plant, releasing excessive amounts of chlorofluorocarbons, according to a U.S. EPA violation notice made public on March 22... In Massachusetts, ChemGenes Corp. failed to conduct inspections of hazardous waste storage areas, label dates and containers, and provide proper training for employees, the U.S. EPA said last week. The agency has proposed fining the company $225,206 for multiple violations of federal and state laws... \

            In Texas, even before the explosion at BP, BASF Fina Petrochemicals LP entered into an Agreed Order on Wednesday with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, settling complaints about flare emissions at the company's Port Arthur steam cracker. BASF will pay a $1.9 million fine -- hardly enough.

March 21, 2005

  In New Jersey, the EPA will expand its investigation of paint sludge and other chemicals near a Ford toxic waste dump in Ringwood. Residents says that the sludge, which contains heavy metals, benzene and PCBs, has made them sick...

  In New York, a state Supreme Court justice ordered Yonkers last month to repair aging sewer pipes and hookups that have polluted the Bronx River with raw sewage. The town could be subject to fines of up to $1,000 per day if it does not reduce fecal coliform levels in the river to acceptable levels within 15 months...

 In Maryland, Army officials said last week they had neutralized the last 30 gallons of mustard agent at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, which once housed more than 1,600 gallons. Nearby residents said they are still worried about buried munitions at the site, as well as the possibility that chemical residue could leach into groundwater...

March 14, 2005

          In New Jersey, Ciba Specialty Chemicals Corp. must remove more than 30,000 drums of waste from a landfill on its Dover Township property or face a state lawsuit, the state DEP commissioner said March 8 in a letter to the company. The site contains waste from Ciba's defunct industrial dye- and resin-making operations...

          In Washington State, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers should have required an environmental impact statement before allowing a $31 million pier expansion at the BP Cherry Point Refinery, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said last week, affirming the court's earlier finding.

          In other enviro-legal news, Houston-based Dynegy Midwest Generation was required last week to install $ 500 million worth of pollution control equipment and other improvements at the former Illinois Power Baldwin generating station and four other plants, along with a $ 9 million fine...

  In hypocrisy news, Inner City Press’ BofA Watch report this week is on this irony: while BofA brags about its environmental commitment, with organizations which (wisely) denounce fossil fuel pollution, on March 9, 2005, the following was announced:

Atlas Pipeline Partners, L.P. to Acquire ETC Oklahoma Pipeline for $190 Million
 Atlas Pipeline Partners L.P. (NYSE:APL) (the "Partnership") announces that on March 8, 2005, it entered into an agreement with LG PL, LLC, a Texas limited liability company, and La Grange Acquisition, L.P., a Texas limited partnership, subsidiaries of Energy Transfer Partners L.P. (NYSE:ETP), to acquire all of the outstanding equity interests in ETC Oklahoma Pipeline, Ltd., a Texas limited partnership... ETC Oklahoma Pipeline's principal assets include more than 315 miles of natural gas pipelines located in the Anadarko Basin in western Oklahoma, a natural gas processing facility in Elk City, Oklahoma with total capacity of 130 million cubic feet of gas per day ("mmcf/d") and a 100 mmcf/d gas treatment facility in Prentiss, Oklahoma, collectively referred to as the "Elk City system". Total gas throughput, including approximately 118 mmcf/d processed at the Elk City plant, is currently approximately 262 mmcf/d. Total compression horsepower consists of 21,000 hp at six field stations and 12,000 horsepower within the Elk City facility. The Elk City system gathers and processes gas from more than 300 receipt points representing more than fifty producers and delivers that gas into multiple interstate pipeline systems.
The Partnership has received a commitment from Wachovia Bank, National Association and Fleet National Bank, a Bank of America company, to fully underwrite a new $270 million loan facility. The facility will be comprised of a $225 million 5-year revolving loan and a $45 million 5-year term loan. The loan proceeds will be used to refinance the existing $54 million outstanding on our current $135 million facility and to finance the acquisition of ETC Oklahoma Pipeline.

   We’ve highlighted BofA above, because of its bragging (and because this week’s Wachovia Watch Report focuses on ICP’s ongoing FOIA litigation to unseal the list of subprime lenders assisted).  BofA’s wider environmental record still needs scrutiny...

March 7, 2005

In Oklahoma at the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant, which makes 2,000 pound "bunker buster" penetration bombs, halted production Feb. 8 after 17 workers developed anemia caused by TNT exposure. The closure is the second since August...

  In the U.K. there’s a proposal in the new Environmental Justice Bill to give a right to communities to order an environmental impact assessment of developments such as new factories, roads or waste incineration plants. The U.K.’s Environment Agency in 2003 prosecuted 266 companies and the courts imposed fines on 11 company directors for polluting. The average fine in 1998 was £2,500. It is now estimated to be only £4,000...

In Massachusetts, EPA data shows that a portion of the polluted Housatonic River now undergoing a $45 million cleanup is in danger of recontamination with PCBs discharged by a General Electric plant.

February 28, 2005

  On Memphis, Tennessee’s Presidents Island, Radiological Assistance Consulting and Engineering -- yes, the acronym is “RACE” -- plans to burn low-level radioactive waste from hospitals, research laboratories and nuclear power generators at its plant at 2550 Channel. The four-year-old company very quietly received a construction permit from the local Health Department.  The incinerator should be ready to start this summer, brags company president Bob Applebaum. He claims there will be no danger because of the "very, very small" levels of radiation. Then why the stealth permitting process? The Health Department published a small public notice in The Daily News in September 2002. The permit was issued in February 2003; the company later got an extension when the project was delayed.  And now, they’re gearing up to burn, in the face of opposition. Environmental justice, anyone?

In colder Alaska, the EPA has fined XTO Energy Inc. $139,000 for Clean Water Act violations at the company's two Cook Inlet oil production platforms and its Nikiski processing plant between January 2000 and June 2004. Discharge from the facilities exceeded pollutant limits for treated sanitary and domestic wastewater on at least 24 occasions...

February 21, 2005

In Houston opposition continues to grow to Allied Waste Industries, with applied last April for a permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to vertically expand the landfill, formerly operated by Browning-Ferris Industries, from 188 to 316 feet, at 5757 Oates Road. Allied Waste spokeswoman Linda Brown refused to comment. "Saturday was the deadline for any filings with the TCEQ, and as of today, we still have not received, although it's a little early yet, the official notification about the contest. So the client is not going to make any comment until such time," Brown said.

  In Michigan, U.S. Steel last week was fined $950,000 for emitting small particles of solids into the air at its Ecorse plant on the Detroit River.

In Delaware, the EPA and the Justice Department have sued the heirs of the former Diamond State Salvage yard in Wilmington to recoup cleanup costs. The suit seeks $18 million for the removal of 100,000 tons of contaminated soil and 4,700 tons of debris.

February 14, 2005

          In Louisiana, a federal judge ruled last week that Chalmette Refining LLC violated the Clean Air Act more than 34 times between 2001 and 2003. The company could eventually be ordered to pay $27,500 per day for each violation...

          Final fall-out: the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority received $23 million last week as reimbursement for the cleanup of PCB-contaminated soil at the Paoli Rail Yard Superfund site. The settlement ended a 19-year-old court fight with American Premier Underwriters Co., the insurance firm formed after the Penn Central railroad went bankrupt...

February 7, 2005

   Amidst the Super Bowl hype, environmental justice: in northwest Jacksonville, “homes, schools and parks were built on closed dumps, which contain ash from incinerators that the city used to burn trash during most of the 20th century. Tests have found soil in those areas containing excessive amounts of heavy metals, usually lead and arsenic, and sometimes dioxins and other industrial chemicals. Cleanup plans now pending with the EPA involve neighborhoods near McCoys Creek, Durkeeville, Royal Terrace and Lonnie Miller Park.” Florida Times-Union, January 11, 2005. In the Super Bowl’s aftermath, will any of these issues be resolved?

  In Pennsylvania, two tanker cars filled with anhydrous hydrogen fluoride -- a caustic concentrated gas that turns into hydrofluoric acid when mixed with water -- ended up in the Allegheny River last week after a train derailment in East Deer.

Not urban, but reflected of slick oil companies: in Alaska, the state Supreme Court last week upheld a lower court ruling that said Conoco Phillips, Exxon Mobil and Forest Oil are not entitled to a "discovery" rate for drilling in North Slope's Midnight Sun reservoir. The oil companies were trying to get millions of dollars in royalty refunds - and they’ll probably try again...

January 31, 2005

 In New Jersey, who’s minding the (environmental) store?   The Perth Amboy plant where three workers died in an explosion on January 25 did not submit a required annual list of hazardous chemicals stored at the facility for the last five year, according to the NJ Environmental Protection Department. The last time the company submitted a report was 1999, when its inventory included acetone, nitrogen, acetylene and petroleum oil...

 In Delaware, thinking of giving aware the store: Natural Resources and Environmental Control Department Secretary John Hughes is considering whether BP is eligible for a Coastal Zone Act permit to build a 2,000-foot liquefied natural gas delivery dock along the Delaware River...

January 24, 2005

In Michigan, CMS Energy Corp. now claims that it would cost the company more than $45 million to clean up toxics at the Bay Harbor development near Petoskey that are a threat to Lake Michigan and the Little Traverse ecosystem. Bleach-like alkaline drainage from cement kiln dust piles was capped with rock and soil when CMS built the resort in the 1990s. Question: why’d ya build it?

In New Jersey, the State Education Department announced on January 18 that it will open a charter school this fall in Camden with an environment-centered curriculum. The Environment Community Opportunity Charter School will open with about 185 students in kindergarten through second grade and will expand in four years to include third and fourth graders.   Great object lesson -- first allow noxious uses that pollute the area, then put in a school on the topic....

January 18, 2005

In Arkansas, but all accounts the EPA should continue monitoring the air quality in El Dorado, where a chemical plant explosion forced the evacuation of 500 residents earlier this month. The Teris LLC warehouse contains magnesium, lithium and other metals...

 In New Jersey, officials closed portions of Ringwood State Park last month after finding dangerous levels of lead, arsenic and other toxic chemicals in an area that was supposedly cleaned up a decade ago. The contaminated area used to be the site of a Ford Motor Co. production plant...

January 10, 2005

In Texas, opponents of a planned $1 billion, 750-megawatt, coal-fired plant in San Antonio have requested a hearing with the state Commission on Environmental Quality. There are concerns that the plant will emit unhealthy levels of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury...

 In Florida, residents who live near a shuttered creosote plant in Hull have sued CSX Corp., the owner of the property. Creosote, which was used to prevent the decay of railroad ties, has contaminated the area and caused decreased property values and health problems...

January 3, 2005

December 27, 2004

  In Georgia, Brenntag Mid-South Inc.'s East Point chemical distribution warehouse suffered a glacial acetic acid leak last week. In Michigan, tests results released this month reveal high levels of dioxin in the Saginaw River, which might delay an Army Corps of Engineers plan to dredge the river of muck to aid navigation. The U.S. EPA and environmental groups want the Army Corps to conduct new assessments and revise its plan.   Holiday spirit speculation: perhaps all the more so, in light of the recently increased public knowledge of dioxin’s effects, via the face and other changes in Viktor Yushchenko in Ukraine...  More seriously, or practically, per the Hartford Courant, “a major contributor to the amount of dioxin found in the environment is polyvinyl chloride plastic, better known as PVC, or vinyl. You can recognize PVC by looking at the bottom of certain plastic containers. Any plastic with a triangle containing the number 3 is a PVC product. In fact, PVC makes up 20 percent of all plastics. Many software companies use it to package their products. Some shampoos and facial cleansers also come in PVC bottles. A key ingredient in the production of PVC is chlorine -- 57 percent, to be exact -- and when we burn chlorine products, we get dioxin”...

December 20, 2004

  Mmm, mmm, good? The EPA is investigating Campbell Soup Co. for violations at the company's tomato-processing plant in Stockton, California, Campbell disclosed last week. EPA alleges that the plant exceeded allowable nitrogen oxide emissions over a five-day period in 2002...

In New York State, environmental spending as a percentage of the budget has dropped from 1.6 percent in 2001 to 1.2 percent now, and falling...

 In weapons of mass destruction news, officials at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Jefferson County, Arkansas are working on a plan to dispose of piles of ash and gallons of brine, following incineration of 3,850 tons of nerve and blister agent weapons in February... Requests are being made to the Department of Homeland Security to ban the production of Compound 1080, a highly toxic poison, a teaspoon of which could kill dozens of humans, that is produced only by Tull Chemical Co. in Oxford, Alabama...

December 13, 2004

  In Texas, officials are now monitoring Houston's air quality following an explosion and fire last week at the Marcus Oil and Chemical plant, which manufactures polyethylene wax... In Sparks, Nevada, Clean Water Act violations at the Kinder Morgan Energy Partners oil storage plant will the company (a mere) $157,500. The EPA says the facility failed to conduct 10 required emergency drills and two oil spill drills over the past five years; the fine assessed, however, makes it just a cost of doing business... A Fond du Lac, Wisconsin judge ruled last week that ECI Special Waste Services Inc. violated environmental laws at least 394 times. The violations for the waste treatment company include inadequate sampling and treatment methods and underreporting of hazardous loads...

December 6, 2004

On brownfields, an editorial in the Buffalo News of Nov. 30 noted that “New York State's recently enacted brownfields legislation received opposition from the Western New York delegation for not meeting the needs of former industrial cities such as Buffalo.... New York State is now trying to significantly reduce the availability of those incentives to local projects. It appears that budgetary concerns arising from a massive allocation of tax credits for a single project in Manhattan have forced the state to come up with ways to limit the availability of these incentives.”  And that’s not even mentioning the proposed boondoggle of tax benefits to the proposed re-developers of the Bronx Terminal Market...

A sample brownfield, in Maine (as reported in the Bank Beat Report, ICP has challenged a merger application between Maine-based Banknorth and Toronto Dominion, so why not) -- “The Goodall Mill complex on the bank of the Mousam River in Sanford, Maine has sat largely vacant for years. The Maine DEP has been monitoring areas of the mill complex since a sulfuric acid spill in the early 1990s at the former International Woolen Co. Inc.. Testing uncovered oil discharges, discarded fluorescent lighting ballasts containing PCBs, the presence of heavy metals in discharge water and solvents in the ground water.  Now attempt are afoot to redevelop it, responsibly.  We’ll be watching...

November 29, 2004

In New Jersey, Mickey “Van Dunk, 34, still lives in Upper Ringwood, in the same area where he grew up and sometimes played with other kids on the mounds of industrial junk - the tons of lead-based paints, solvents and other discarded materials Ford Motor Co. regularly dumped very close to his home... Now, 17 surgeries later, with massive infected chunks of Mickey's body removed, Linda Van Dunk cleanses the wounds, tends the scars and soothes the spirit of her husband, whose condition has led to facial disfigurement and loss of function in the most private areas of his body... The EPA's project director Joe Gowers says EPA and Ford agreed to meet again with residents and their attorneys next month about the cleanup.”  This outrageous news courtesy of the Thanksgiving Day edition of the Bergen Record...

 And from Inner Asia, over the BBC: “An oil spill will cost the PetroKazakhstan Kumkol Resources (formerly Hurricane Kumkol Munay, a subsidiary of Canada's PetroKazakhstan) joint-stock company 268.8m tenge (2.067 million dollars, the current exchange rate is 130 tenge to the dollar), the figure demanded under a lawsuit the Kyzylorda Region environmental protection department has filed against the company. Two more lawsuits have been filed, demanding that a total of 6m (tenge, over 46,153 dollars) be paid. The court has ordered the joint-stock company to pay this money for discharging toxic waste over the limit.”

November 22, 2004

In Georgia, the revolving hazardous waste trust fund “was established by the Legislature 12 years ago to clean up toxic waste sites that pose a direct threat to the environment or public health. It was also intended to reimburse cities and counties that have undertaken such cleanups. But in recent years, as the economy slumped and tax revenues shrank, the governor and state lawmakers have repeatedly raided the trust fund to use the money for other purposes, a practice that has left many financially strapped local communities holding the bag. About 50 hazardous waste sites around the state are slated for immediate cleanup using money from the trust fund. But as a consequence of the budgetary sleight-of-hand, work at eight sites has been stopped and at 26 other projects has been delayed indefinitely. Dozens of cities and counties are waiting for money to help pay for $11 million in cleanups, but only $1.2 million will be reimbursed because the trust fund has mostly been drained. In the past two years, more than $20 million has been diverted from the fund, and there's a $162 million gap between what will be collected in fees and the amount needed to finish work that's already under way. In the meantime, a toxic stew of chemicals endangers water supplies and poisons the soil all over the state. One in every six Georgians lives within two miles of a leaking landfill that is contaminating the groundwater around it.”  And guess in which communities this is most frequent...

November 15, 2004

            The World Health Organization cited Riverside County, California, as the fourth-worst polluted area in the world for small particulate air pollution behind Indonesia, Thailand and India. Mira Loma, which has been usurped in the last 15 years by warehouses, is arguably the worst in Riverside County.  In the early '90s is when there was a rapid increase in Mira Loma in warehousing because the county fast-tracked all the construction of these warehouses without having to go through each issue with regards to the environment," said Mira Loma resident Betty Anderson, who has been combating warehouse developers in the area for more than a decade. Anderson, along with a slew of other residents, blame the warehousing industry and their hundreds of diesel trucks for the deteriorating air quality. She said the devastating effects the pollution has had on the community are irreversible and unforgivable. Look up on the train tracks on that bridge," Anderson said referring to the railroad bridge just north of Van Buren Boulevard on Etiwanda Avenue. The underside of this bridge is completely black from the smoke of the diesel trucks. . . . I'm sure you can get some sort of cleanser to clean that, but clean that out of the lungs of our kids. You can't do that." USC recently finished a 10-year study in the area, tracking about 500 children's respiratory health as they progressed from adolescence to adulthood. Mira Loma is one of the highest reporting areas in the country in violation of the federal and state air quality standards," said Ed Avol, one of the co-investigators of the study and a professor in the Keck School of Medicine at USC. The children do in fact have more symptoms and respiratory problems and slower rates of [lung] growth." Avol said typically lungs fully develop by the late teenage years and early 20s, further mentioning the study concluded that Mira Loma children have stunted lung growth that decreases their capacity to breath and usually leads to respiratory complications. They don't have as healthy life outlooks as their peers who might grow up in cleaner communities," he said. The fact that these children have slower growing lungs raises the question: Do they ever catch up?"  Good question...

November 8, 2004

Clean water in the inner city?  A court order may somewhat protect the Bronx River from raw sewage from Yonkers, from pipes that were illegally connected to the city's storm-water drainage system. New York State Supreme Court Justice Francis Nicolai ordered the city in a decision made public last week to come up with a plan to stop the discharge. State testing in June 2003 showed fecal coli form bacteria levels at 16 million per 100 milliliters at a flow rate of two gallons per minute. Similar suits against the Bronx Zoo and New York Botanical Garden were settled, including for the canoe portage paths now in place.  But is the water clean yet?  Nope...

November 1, 2004

From the annual meeting in Pittsburgh of the Society of Environmental Journalists, in late October: a Carnegie Mellon professor of architecture, Vivian Loftness, linked issues of great importance to people of color, like urban planning and transportation problems, to environmentalists’ concerns over suburban sprawl. Sprawl, she said, was a "car-centric" form of urban planning that often leaves the poor "without access to modern amenities -- commercial, residential and educational settings."

  October 29 at the Center for Architecture in Manhattan, several long-time planners pointed to the environmental justice movement as being the hopeful way forward, the successor to earlier movements around housing and community development.  Here’s hoping...

October 25, 2004

  Plutonium in upstate New York: in Niagara County, in a landfill owned by Waste Management Inc., the following have recently been found: plutonium-239, plutonium-240, radium-226, thorium-230, strontium-90, actinium-227, uranium 233/234, uranium 235/236 and uranium-238. Both the plutonium and strontium are linked to atomic bomb research conducted at the University of Rochester.  Weapons of mass destruction.... According to the Rochester D&C, artifacts of darker UR experiments - some injecting unwitting patients at Strong Memorial Hospital with plutonium - were apparently also buried there. Finding radioactive metals at the UR Burial Area - a site supposedly long ago cleaned up - has sounded a major chord of concern in Niagara County. To the west just more than a mile is the Niagara River, to the north, Lake Ontario. It was a sign to many that the federal government has not adequately investigated radiation at the former military site known as the Lake Ontario Ordnance Works. Part of the old ordnance works site, once 7,500 acres, is still in federal hands. Included is the 191-acre Niagara Falls Storage Site, one of about 20 former U.S. military installations contaminated with bomb-related radioactive waste. Buried there is 22,000 tons of radioactive waste, including one-third of the world's supply of mined uranium. For the record, the UR burial area is on a portion of a 710-acre landfill now owned by the "CWM Chemical Services LLC" subsidiary of Waste Management Inc....

October 18, 2004

In Colorado, a consent decree filed last week in federal court requires New Jersey-based ASARCO Inc. to remediate 100 lead and arsenic-contaminated residential properties near its now shuttered Denver-area smelters. Also in Colorado, officials now say they’ll demolish a former plutonium processing plant near Denver using a manual technique, after officials said last week the facility cannot be cleaned enough to allow for a detonation. The 300,000-square-foot building at Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant was shut down in 1989 and scheduled to be demolished as part of a $7 billion project.  Kaiser Hill says it will manually demolish the vault and remove the radioactive waste before dismantling the rest of the building...

 In Kentucky, polluters including General Electric and LG&E Energy have submitted letters of complaint about a proposed air pollution control plan for the Louisville area they say would be too expensive and strict.

October 11, 2004

In Western New York, opposition continues to grow to the planned sewage treatment plant on Syracuse's South Side. There’s be an event on October 12 at Syracuse University's Hendricks Chapel -- note, however, that Syracuse University recently sold its naming rights and stadium advertising space to Citizens Bank, accused this summer by groups from the East Coast to Cleveland with redlining and involvement in predatory lending, click here for more...

  Moving from reporting to advocacy, Inner City Press / Community on the Move’s recent complaint that the draft EIS scope for the proposed give-away of the Bronx Terminal Market to Steven Ross’ Related Companies did not even mention environmental justice has resulted a new Section 22 in the final scope, mailed out October 8: “an analysis will be performed that considers the potential for disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of the project on minority or low-income populations... If disproportionate impacts are identified, discuss appropriate avoidance measures, mitigation measures and enhancements for the affected population.” We’ll see...

October 4, 2004

In Ohio, District Judge Alegon L. Marbley of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio granted class-action status last week to a 2003 lawsuit alleging that Honeywell-Grimes and Siemens Energy and Automation contaminated private wells in Champaign County with cancer-causing PCE and TCE...

September 27, 2004

   The Ohio Environmental Council last week released its list of the most mercury polluted waters in the state. At the top of the list is the Grand River in Ashtabula County, where the fish contain five times the safe limit for mercury for women and children

  In La-La Land, approval of a 115-acre Long Beach port expansion was based on underestimates of air pollution, South Coast Air Quality Management District officials said last week. The agency had expressed similar concerns in a letter last October, but the Long Beach port commissioners approved the expansion anyway.

September 20, 2004

In Illinois, Governor Rod Blagojevich has asked the operators of the state's 12 remaining medical-waste incinerators five of which are near Chicago, to shut down the facilities.  We’ll see...

  WMD found -- in Utah, Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility officials recently disposed of a VX nerve agent spray tank last weekend, marking the halfway point for the clean up of 13,616 tons of nerve and blister chemicals stored at the site in Tooele County...

September 13, 2004

In California, Pacific Gas & Electric and the state Department of Toxic Substances Control now claim that they will expedite cleanup of chromium 6 groundwater contamination headed toward the Colorado River. Experts opine that low river water levels accelerates the transport of the chemical...

 In Maryland, Harford County City Council voted last week to enforce a six-month moratorium on new gas station construction, giving the county time to consider adopting regulations that would help combat MTBE groundwater contamination, which has already affected more than 150 wells in the Upper Crossroads area.

September 6, 2004

  In Missouri last week, Sigma-Aldrich Corp. and the EPA reached a slap-on-the-wrist settlement agreement requiring the company to pay only $180,000 in fines for failing to maintain records and equipment, as well as repair industrial refrigeration appliances that use ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons...

  In Texas, electricity consumers have filed nearly 35,000 complaints with the Public Utility Commission since deregulation started 31 months ago. Complaints range from unwittingly being switched to different providers to charges that the PUC is to lax penalizing companies for violations. Yep...

August 30, 2004