Uncategorized

The Dredge Great-Scott Decision

U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman said yesterday that her agency would order General Electric to spend almost $500 million to dredge PCBs from the upper Hudson River. In doing so, Whitman disregarded a multi-million-dollar P.R. campaign by the giant company claiming that dredging would not improve the river’s health. Enviros, who had feared that […]

Tree? No Thanks, I'm Trying to Cut Back

Indonesia said this week that it would tighten its forestry laws to rein in illegal logging. Under the new rules, companies will lose their licenses to log in 2003 unless they can prove they are managing forests sustainably. Enviros cheered the change, though it remains to be seen just how the theory will translate into […]

Free-range Checking

The Sante Fe group Forest Guardians is hoping to raise $1 million to boot cattle from thousands of state-owned acres in Arizona and New Mexico. In late November, the group won a case before Arizona’s Supreme Court that ended a state policy of allowing only ranchers to lease state school trust land, which includes about […]

Take That Back

Maryland yesterday became the first state to lose the authority to enforce federal clean air laws. The loss is the result of the state’s failure to act on a U.S. EPA order to create more public participation in the industrial permit application process. Under Maryland law, only the owners of property abutting an industrial polluter […]

Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud

Pulling Back the Rains

A single rainstorm can whisk 10,000 tons of dirt and grit and millions of pounds of toxics and nutrient pollution into the Chesapeake Bay. Officials from Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the District of Columbia are unveiling plans today to rein in rain-related pollution problems, in the first major restoration effort they’ve announced since pledging well […]

Salt and the Earth

Road salt is set to become the latest addition to Canada’s list of extremely toxic substances. Environment Minister David Anderson is recommending the addition based on research showing that the tons of salt used to de-ice the country’s highways each winter are polluting groundwater and killing vegetation. Environmentalists lauded the move, which is expected to […]

Esso S.O.S.

Activists are targeting 300 Esso gas stations in the U.K. tomorrow for boycotts, urging drivers to fill up their tanks elsewhere because Esso’s parent company, the oil giant ExxonMobil, opposes the Kyoto treaty on climate change. Groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are helping to lead the StopEsso campaign, which has the support […]

Pass the Joint Venture

Ford and Toyota are considering whether to jointly produce a gas-electric hybrid in North America. No deal has been signed yet, but the two companies have already selected the kind of vehicle and the technology that would be used, says John Wallace, executive director of Ford’s alternative-propulsion division. Both companies have incentives to seal the […]

N'yuk, N'yuk, N'Yucca

All the effort by the feds to determine whether Nevada’s Yucca Mountain would be a suitable place to permanently store the country’s nuclear waste can be summed up as “a failed scientific process,” according to a draft report by the General Accounting Office, the congressional watchdog agency. The report, which has been obtained by several […]