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The Dredge Report
U.S. EPA Administrator Carol Browner last night said she would propose ordering General Electric to dredge PCB-contaminated hot spots along a 40-mile stretch of the upper Hudson River in New York. GE dumped large volumes of the chemicals in the river over a 30-year period, before it was against the law; it stopped doing so […]
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Injunction Junction, What's Your Function
A Seattle federal judge agreed yesterday to allow the National Marine Fisheries Service to implement its own restrictions on fishing in waters considered critical habitat for the endangered Steller sea lion, whose population has dropped 80 percent since the 1970s. The judge lifted his own injunction banning trawl fishing in the Bering Sea and Gulf […]
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Top of the POPs
Some 600 delegates from more than 120 countries began a week of talks yesterday in Johannesburg, South Africa, to try to reach agreement on a treaty to ban 12 persistent organic pollutants (POPs), chemicals such as PCBs and several pesticides that have been linked to cancer, birth defects, and genetic abnormalities in humans and wildlife. […]
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Blessed Art Thou, a Monk Swimming
Pres. Clinton announced the creation yesterday of the largest protected area in the U.S., 84 million underwater acres off of Hawaii. The new reserve extends 1,200 miles northwest of the main Hawaiian islands, encompassing atolls and islands and 70 percent of the nation’s coral reefs. Clinton’s order designates 4 million acres of the reserve for […]
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Pesticide Company to Stop Smokin' Roaches
The U.S. EPA today is announcing a ban on the commonly used pesticide diazinon because of health threats to children. Marketed under such names as Spectracide and Real-Kill, diazinon is used in household ant and roach killers, as well as garden and lawn sprays. The EPA has reached a voluntary agreement with the pesticide’s chief […]
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Another Watts Riot
Electricity demand is so high in California — the state is operating at 95 percent capacity — that state and utility officials are asking residents to save energy by turning on their Christmas lights a few hours later at night. Southern California Edison, for example, asked its customers to wait to turn on their sure-to-be-heartwarming […]
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Albert Bates, Ecovillage Network of the Americas
Albert Bates is regional secretary for the Americas of the Global Ecovillage Network. He is also the principal founder of the Institute for Appropriate Technology in Tennessee, where he has taught sustainable design, natural building, agriculture, and technology. Monday, 4 Dec 2000 UNGUIA, Colombia The fruit hanging from the trees here, which looks like Idaho’s […]
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Going Against the Grain
A class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of farmers contends that the maker of the StarLink biotech corn variety was negligent in bringing the corn to market. StarLink was not approved for human consumption, but has been found to have made its way into the food stream, leading to a nationwide recall of millions of taco […]
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The Protocol of the Elders of Ozone
The ozone hole will likely close within 50 years, according to scientists who just ended a major conference on the issue in Buenos Aires. They said that the international ban on ozone-depleting chlorofluorcarbons, which resulted from the 1987 Montreal Protocol, is beginning to have an effect, but that the ozone recovery is not likely to […]
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Bye, Bye Birdwatchers
For perhaps the first time, an environmental group, the Nature Conservancy, has landed among the top 10 of U.S charities ranked by income. The conservancy sat at No. 9 on a listing by the NonProfit Times, with a total income in 1999 of $704 million. The group claims it devoted more than 93 percent of […]
