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Take This Blob and Shove It
A giant blob of radioactive waste is expanding inside a million-gallon tank buried at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state, and the Department of Energy and site contractor Lockheed Martin are baffled by the problem. A pump that was supposed to dissipate pockets of hydrogen gas in the tank instead whipped the contents into […]
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Environmentalism: It's Dyn-o-mite!
Eco-terrorism — arson, bombings, and sabotage done in the name of protecting the environment — is on the rise in the American West. At least 100 major acts of eco-terrorism have taken place in the West since 1980, causing $42.8 million in damages, and 33 of the incidents occurred in the last four years. The […]
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Justice Folks
Environmental justice is becoming a higher priority in California as more Latino legislators come to power and try to improve the kinds of neighborhoods in which they grew up, where minority families live side-by-side with factories and waste dumps. Earlier this month, California lawmakers passed a package of bills that aims to limit pollution in […]
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Solar Sells
Citizens who generate their own electricity by solar power or other means could get credits on their electric bills for feeding excess power to utilities, under a bill unveiled on Friday by Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.). More than two dozen states already have laws that allow “net metering” of this sort, but Inslee says a […]
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Prez to Ride Out Storm?
Pres. Clinton plans to stand tough this year against congressional Republicans who have attached at least 39 anti-environmental riders to government spending bills. In past years, Clinton has caved in and approved bills containing such riders, but the administration is now signaling that he is ready to veto major appropriations bills if the riders aren’t […]
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A Chip-Mill on Their Shoulders
Commercial logging has escalated dramatically in the South in recent years, and an unlikely set of Southerners, including local loggers and tourism officials, are speaking up to say that tree-cutting is out of control in the region. After the feds drastically reduced logging in the Northwest in the early 1990s, big timber companies focused their […]
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Winning a Tony
Al Gore’s presidential campaign is promising pro-environment business leaders a special session with campaign Chair Tony Coelho if they raise $5,000 for the candidate by next Thursday, the end of the year’s third quarter. Gore is struggling both to raise money and to keep himself in good standing with the environmental community. One enviro said […]
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Senate Oils Industry's Hand
The Senate did a favor for oil companies yesterday, voting to prevent the Clinton administration from charging royalties based on market rates for oil and gas pumped from federal lands. By the Interior Department’s estimation, the companies are currently underpaying the government by as much as $68 million a year. The vote came as the […]
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Industry Oils Alaskan Land
BP Exploration pleaded guilty yesterday to illegally dumping hazardous wastes on Alaska’s North Slope and agreed to pay some $22 million to settle criminal and civil claims. Federal prosecutors say that a BP contractor dumped hundreds of barrels containing oil, paints, paint thinners, and solvents. Alaska’s North Slope is an environmentally sensitive area, and BP’s […]
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When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Take Out an Ad
The British Columbia government began running radio and newspaper ads yesterday accusing a native Indian tribe of illegally logging on public land. The government also started legal proceedings to stop the logging by the Westbank Tribal Nation, which began 17 days ago after treaty negotiations between the tribe and the provincial and federal governments broke […]
