Uncategorized
All Stories
-
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 […]
-
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 […]
-
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 […]
-
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 […]
-
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 […]
-
Not-So-Safe Harbor
Australia’s Sydney Harbor was hit this week by an 80,000-liter (21,000-gallon) oil spill, creating a seven-mile-long slick that lapped at the side of the famous Sydney Opera House and pungent fumes that drove tourists and locals away from the area. The cleanup is expected to take a month, and a serious risk will be posed […]
-
South Park Village: Bigger, Longer, and (Mostly) Unopposed
Developers and a number of enviro groups are backing a compromise plan to build a large tourist and resident area outside Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. The proposal, which federal officials are likely to approve today, would create Canyon Forest Village on 272 acres near the south entrance to the park, including new hotels […]
-
A New Monty Python Parrot-y
Monty Python comedian John Cleese, featured in the famous “dead parrot” comedy sketch, has joined an effort to push for stronger parrot protections. A new study by the World Wildlife Fund and the World Parrot Trust has found that 27 percent of the world’s 330 parrot species are in serious danger from habitat loss and […]
-
Does This Mean Kids Are Pests?
Men who are exposed to pesticides on the job may have increased difficulty fathering children, according to a new study published in the Lancet medical journal. Researchers studied 650 couples, including 20 couples in which the male partner had been regularly exposed to pesticides. The exposed men were significantly less successful than the others in […]
-
Chinese Water Torture
Only 23 percent of recent tap water samples from China’s main cities met national health standards, according to figures from the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine. The percentage would be even lower if water from towns and villages in the countryside had been sampled, the academy said. Scarcity of water is also a serious issue […]
