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Dis Solutia

The U.S. EPA and the Department of Justice plan to file a cleanup consent decree today with Solutia and Pharmacia (the company that owns Monsanto), in a move that could overrule any court-ordered cleanup of PCBs from a former Monsanto chemical plant in Anniston, Ala. Under the decree, the two companies would investigate the scope […]

Track Stars

U.S. Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) and Harry Reid (Nev.) yesterday proposed creating a national tracking system to monitor both chronic diseases and environmental pollution so that any correlations between the two could be more easily identified and studied. Last year, the two senators held hearings in Fallon, Nev., which is home to a cluster […]

Appliance of My Eye

Meanwhile, drought conditions in parts of the U.S. are driving up sales of water-efficient toilets, faucets, laundry machines, dishwashers, and other appliances. Home Depot and Sears are among the companies benefiting from consumers’ itch to shift away from water guzzlers. Sears spokesperson Larry Costello said water- and energy-efficient appliances now represent 17 percent of the […]

No Absurd Headline Necessary

The U.S. Department of Energy is preparing to claim that Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force did all it could to involve environmental groups in planning the Bush administration’s energy plan. Last month, a federal court ruled in favor of the Natural Resources Defense Council and ordered the department to release as many as […]

On the Water Front

More than 2.7 billion people will experience severe water shortages by 2025 if the world continues to consume water at the current rate, according to a U.N. report released today, which happens to be World Water Day. The report goes on to say that another 2.5 billion may be living in areas where it will […]

Living Worse Daily

In 1986, it rained for three weeks straight in Midland, Mich., headquarters of Dow Chemical Corp. A wastewater containment facility at a Dow plant on the banks of the Tittabawassee River overflowed, and waste from the plant was carried downstream into the Saginaw flood plain. In 1995, Michigan began finding elevated levels of dioxins — […]

Get the Lead Out

Residents of northern Idaho are fiercely resisting a plan by the U.S. EPA to expand a 21-square-mile area into one of the country’s largest Superfund sites. That’s not so unusual — many towns resist Superfund designation, fearing that the stigma will drive away tourists and businesses. But some northern Idaho towns have filed a lawsuit […]

I Glum From the Land Down Under

Meanwhile, in other news from the Southern Hemisphere, a committee composed of more than 100 representatives from Australia’s government agencies and the private sector has issued the country a damning environmental report card. The committee, which reports on the state of the Australian environment every five years, said there had been little progress since its […]

Scarey Larsen

An enormous section of Antarctica’s Larsen Ice Shelf collapsed and splintered into thousands of icebergs this week after one of the region’s warmest recorded summers. The section, designated Larsen B, was 650 feet thick and about the size of Rhode Island. Although scientists stopped short of attributing the collapse to global warming, they did say […]

Mind the Gap

Environmentalists and public-health advocates in California are upset over a new state regulation that allows low-level radioactive waste to be dumped in municipal landfills instead of federally regulated nuclear waste storage facilities. Citing the possibility of increased cancer risks, the Sierra Club and a nuclear policy group, the Committee to Bridge the Gap, are backing […]