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Sucker Punch

Thanks (or maybe no thanks) to a deal struck by the federal government and the Washington state Attorney General’s Office, some 170 barrels of highly radioactive plutonium waste will be shipped from California and Ohio to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington beginning as early as next week. In exchange for being allowed to transport […]

Angelo the Ripper

Environmentalists scored a victory yesterday — albeit a fragile one — when the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling that the Clean Water Act applied to attempts by developers to fill wetlands using an increasingly common method known as deep ripping. The case concerned a California developer, Angelo Tsakopoulus, who used deep […]

Milling for the Grist

Green-leaning former Vice President Al Gore has decided against running for president in 2004 — but never fear, Grist Magazine is keeping its hat in the ring. No, we’re not running Umbra Fisk as a write-in candidate for ’04; we do plan, however, to be around to tell it like it is on the environment […]

You Sleigh Me

This Ain’t Rocket Science. Oh Wait, Yes It Is.

The U.S. Pentagon is a major source of perchlorate, the main ingredient of solid rocket fuel and a toxic chemical that can cause neurological problems and developmental damage in infants and children, and possibly cancer and other serious ailments in adults. For decades, millions of Americans have been exposed unknowingly to perchlorate through their local […]

Merry Gristmas (or Whatever You Celebrate)

Kim Jong Ill

In a sign of the further souring of relations with Washington, North Korea announced yesterday that it would immediately restart a nuclear reactor that has been offline since 1994, when it nearly provoked a war with the U.S. North Korea says the Yongbyon reactor is its only option for producing electricity in light of the […]

Cell-ebrate

Every year, hundreds of millions of new cell phones come into the world — and now, thanks to a deal brokered by the United Nations Environment Programme, when they leave the world, they may do so in a relatively eco-friendly fashion. Yesterday, the giants of the electronics industry (including market leaders Nokia, Motorola, Philips, and […]

A Hull of a Problem

Oil continues to seep out of the sunken oil tanker Prestige, further threatening coastal areas of northwestern Spain that have already suffered severe damage from the spill. An estimated 33,000 gallons of fuel oil are leaking each day from numerous cracks in the vessel, officials warned yesterday. If unaddressed, the leaks could continue into 2006, […]

Music to Calm the Salvage Beast

Salvage-logging operations that extract downed trees from storm-damaged areas may actually wreak more havoc on forests than did the original storm, according to a study conducted at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The research, which was partially funded by the U.S. EPA, focused on Colorado’s Routt National Forest, where a 1997 windstorm blew down […]