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The Farmer and the Smell

The U.S. EPA could offer large industrial livestock farms amnesty from the federal Clean Air Act and Superfund laws, according to people involved in agency-industry talks. Rather than enforce the laws, the EPA would monitor pollution levels at roughly 30 large hog and chicken operations, a plan environmentalists and former enforcement officials say is far […]

Mexi-can’t

The U.S. Department of Energy acted illegally when it found that two Mexican power plants would not have a significant impact on the air and water quality in the border region between northwestern Mexico and Southern California, a federal judge in San Diego ruled yesterday. That ruling calls into question the legitimacy of U.S. permits […]

Low Riders

The average fuel efficiency of the nation’s cars and trucks hit a 22-year low of 20.4 miles per gallon during the 2002 model year, the U.S. EPA announced last week. That statistic stands in stark contrast to significant improvements in other automotive areas: Since 1981, average horsepower has increased 93 percent and average acceleration (as […]

Jerilyn Lopez Mendoza, Environmental Defense

Jerilyn Lopez Mendoza is policy director for the Los Angeles Environmental Justice Project Office of Environmental Defense. Her work focuses on greening the built environment, increasing green space in L.A.’s urban core, and ensuring transportation equity for the working poor. Monday, 5 May 2003 LOS ANGELES, Calif. Monday mornings are rough, especially when you’re trying […]

Don’t Call It a Comeback

The nuclear industry is swinging into comeback mode. A bill expected to pass the U.S. Senate in the next few weeks would provide federal loan guarantees for as much as 50 percent of the cost of constructing up to six new nuclear power plants. Sponsored by Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), the legislation also would earmark […]

We Don’t Cotton to This Idea

Farmers in India are harvesting the nation’s first approved biotech cotton crop, a development that has environmentalists and some nationalists nervous. About 55,000 growers, an estimated 2 percent of India’s cotton farmers, have planted Monsanto’s Bollgard cotton seed, genetically engineered with the Bt bacterium to be resistant to the bollworm, a troublesome cotton pest. The […]

Snake Oil

Federal dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers in the Northwest have been spilling oil directly into the waterways on which they sit, in amounts ranging from a trickle to, in one case, 1,000 gallons. Oregon and Washington state authorities have been trying to get a handle on the problem, but the U.S. Army Corps […]

Con-servancy?

The Nature Conservancy, based in Arlington, Va., has become the world’s wealthiest environmental group, with assets of $3 billion, but according to an extensive investigative series by the Washington Post, that money is not all going to the environmental good. The conservancy is known for purchasing and protecting ecologically valuable land, using donations from both […]

Bighorn Blown

The U.S. Forest Service has settled a lawsuit with eight former and current workers from Bighorn National Forest who suffered on-the-job retaliation after complaining about hostile working conditions and questionable forest-management practices. The $200,000 settlement will be divided among the whistleblowers, but the USFS will not discipline the managers who were responsible for the retaliatory […]

Texa-cojones

In 1992, Texaco called an end to almost three decades of oil drilling in Ecuador — and left behind a legacy of miles of pipelines and 20 billion gallons of toxic waste that destroyed the rainforest, fouled waterways, and exposed residents to cancer-causing pollutants. Now, 30,000 jungle residents of Ecuador and Peru whose environment was […]