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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.

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