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New Formula for Infants

For the first time, the U.S. EPA’s proposed guidelines for assessing the dangers of pesticides and other carcinogens presume that such chemicals pose a higher risk to infants and children. The guidelines call on environmental regulators to assume that children who are two or younger be considered 10 times more susceptible to hazardous chemicals than […]

Crisis of Confidence Game

California yesterday submitted new evidence to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission of a widespread plan by electricity generators, traders, and even municipal power companies to produce the state’s 2000-2001 energy crisis in order to turn a profit. State officials said the evidence, which was the result of a 103-day investigation, was just the “tip of […]

Kids ‘n’ Play

Generating power for developing nations could be child’s play — literally — according to an engineering professor at the University of Michigan. Raj Pandian has proposed harnessing the energy from playground equipment (such as teeter-totters, merry-go-rounds, and swing sets) in Third World villages, then using it to power light bulbs, radios, sewing machines, telephones, and […]

Bring Back My Bonnie to Me

The Bonneville Power Administration, the largest hydroelectric power producer in the Northwest, is abandoning some of its wildlife conservation plans due to financial woes. The quasi-governmental agency is required by law to compensate for any damage it causes to natural habitats; recently, however, the Northwest Power Planning Council criticized the BPA for failing to spend […]

Let’s Not Be Frank

If Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski (R) gets his way, environmental organizations that sue state agencies and lose will have to pick up part of the state’s legal bills. At Murkowski’s request, bills were introduced yesterday into the Alaska House and Senate proposing changes to the state’s public-interest litigant rules. Currently, the rules allow public-interest groups […]

And other words from readers

  Re: Oakless Creek Canyon Dear Editor: You missed the point. The project the U.S. Forest Service is contemplating is in the final stages of two years’ worth of environmental analysis and planning. How could it “shape up to be a test case” for efforts to ease environmental review? I have an exhaustive, 300-page document […]

Phyllis Fitzgerald, Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District

Phyllis Fitzgerald is a technical coordinator for the Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District in Kentucky. Monday, 3 Mar 2003 LOUISVILLE, Ky. As I approached early retirement from my last job working for a gas and electric utility, I pondered my next career — a necessity after mortgaging my future to put five kids through […]

Dolphin Self-Defense

Mass Appeal

Massachusetts may get its first national forest if a plan being drawn up by the administration of Gov. Mitt Romney (R) comes to fruition. The plan’s still in the preliminary stages — so preliminary, in fact, that no maps have yet been sketched — but a considerable chunk of northwestern Massachusetts could be affected, including […]

N.C. Pee Dee Blues

Water wars have long simmered in the arid Western U.S., but now they’re bubbling up in Eastern states as well. Dry spells in 1999 and 2002 brought many of the East’s rivers to worrisome lows; increased water demand spurred by new development is only adding to the problem. A contentious quarrel between Maryland and Virginia […]