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Estrada Chips Away at Logging
Some Asian officials are beginning to recognize that the effects of annual monsoons and typhoons in the region are exacerbated by human-caused environmental degradation. Rampant logging of forests and illegal quarrying loosen silt that thereby clogs rivers and worsens flooding. Philippine Pres. Joseph Estrada is particularly concerned about the loss of forested land and has […]
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Hump Day
Martin Sheen joined some 400 anti-nuclear activists in a mile-long protest march outside the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico yesterday, the 54th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan. Protestors called for an end to the lab’s production of new plutonium pits, which are the cores of nuclear bombs. The protestors were briefly […]
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Suzanne Nelson, Native Seeds/SEARCH
Suzanne Nelson is director of conservation and seed bank curator at Native Seeds/SEARCH in Tucson, Ariz. Monday, 9 Aug 1999 TUCSON, Ariz. Monday, Monday, can’t trust that day … I never know exactly what’s in store for me when I get into the office on Monday. I used to think it was a good day […]
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Rotten to the Corps
Despite Pres. Clinton’s pledge to protect wetlands, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is backing off from enforcing the nation’s primary wetlands protection law, according to a review of the Corps’s records. The Corps has cut inspections for possible violations by 40 percent since 1992, and in 1998 rejected only 3.2 percent of applications for […]
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Ready to Aim at Fire
Environmentalists are urging Brunei, Malaysia, and Singapore to take Indonesia to international court because fires raging in parts of Indonesia are blanketing much of Southeast Asia in a thick, dangerous smog, driving many residents to don masks. Hundreds of fires have been set by plantation owners and small farmers to clear land, and experts say […]
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Let's Hope This Trojan Didn't Leak
A defunct nuclear reactor from the Trojan Nuclear Plant in Oregon safely completed a 36-hour, 270-mile barge ride up the Columbia River yesterday, reaching its destination at the Port of Benton, Wash. A tugboat pushed the barge past Portland, Ore., at about 1 a.m. Saturday, making it the first commercial reactor of that size and […]
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Water Flows Uphill Toward Money
The world’s poor pay much more for water than the wealthy, and the water they get is often severely contaminated, according to a report published last week by the UN-affiliated World Commission on Water for the 21st Century. Government-subsidized water systems tend to reach wealthier citizens first and bypass the poor, even though they are […]
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Plutonium Bombshell
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson yesterday ordered an immediate investigation into reports that thousands of unsuspecting employees at a government uranium plant in Kentucky were exposed on the job to cancer-causing plutonium and other radioactive materials. His announcement followed the publication yesterday of a Washington Post article on the issue. The Natural Resources Defense Council and […]
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Not a Steller Success
Debate is raging among environmentalists and fishers over Alaska’s Steller sea lions, whose numbers have dropped by more than 80 percent in the last 20 years, from 120,000 to 20,000. Enviros charge that fishers are catching too many pollack, exacerbating the sea lions’ decline by depriving them of a primary food source, and last month […]
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Hogwash!
In an effort to keep mountains of hog manure and other animal wastes out of waterways, the U.S. EPA today will outline new pollution rules it wants to impose on factory farms. Under the rules, large hog and dairy operations would have to get pollution permits from state environmental agencies, requiring that they safely store […]
