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A Bum Deal
Nevada’s two Democratic senators are pressing a bill that would force the Bureau of Land Management to sell land near California’s Mojave National Preserve as a site for a second Las Vegas airport, even before environmental studies can be done to determine its potential impact. The Interior Department, on behalf of both the BLM and […]
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Reinventing the Wheels
EU ambassadors voted yesterday in favor of a bill that would force automakers to take back old cars and pay for the cost of recycling or reusing them, overriding opposition from Germany. The bill, which still needs approval from the EU parliament, would cover all cars produced in 2001 or later. By 2006, automakers would […]
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Sit-In on the Dock of the Bay
Dockworkers, environmentalists, and the regional EPA office in Seattle joined forces yesterday to stop the first in a series of shipments of potentially toxic waste from Taiwan due to be shipped to Tacoma, Wash., this week, then on to an Idaho hazardous waste landfill. The waste was illegally dumped last year in Cambodia, where its […]
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Gore Plays Heart and Soul
Vice Pres. Al Gore played the good environmentalist yesterday in New Hampshire, designating the Connecticut River, which winds through four New England states, as an American Heritage River and announcing that $819,000 will go toward projects related to the river. Gore canoed along the river with New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen (D), as friends, backers, […]
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Californians Log Off
In an effort to improve water quality and protect fish populations, California Gov. Gray Davis (D) has proposed new regulations to tighten logging restrictions along streams on private forestland. But environmentalists say they don’t go far enough. The rules would represent steps toward strengthening the state’s 26-year-old Forest Practices Act, which many say has failed […]
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Lettuce Have Standards
The U.S. Department of Agriculture plans to offer up a second proposal for national organic standards by the end of this year. The first draft of proposed standards, unveiled in late 1997, elicited a record 300,000 public comments, most of them critical of the proposed rules, which, among other things, would have allowed some genetically […]
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Uncrossing the Delaware
Fish populations in the Delaware River in Pennsylvania are making a striking comeback following a major river cleanup effort. In the last 20 years, levels of harmful ammonia and bacteria in the Delaware have been cut by about half, and the level of dissolved oxygen in the river, necessary for fish to breathe, has quadrupled. […]
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Freezing Their Assets Off
A Dutch court has frozen the assets of Greenpeace International at the urging of British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., which was the target of a nuclear protest by the enviro group on Monday. British Nuclear Fuels asked for the court’s move so it could reclaim compensation for costs incurred when Greenpeace delayed a company shipment of […]
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Cruise: Spigots Wide Open
Royal Caribbean Cruises, the world’s second largest cruise line, agreed yesterday to pay $18 million and plead guilty to 21 felony charges of dumping waste oil and hazardous waste at sea and lying to the U.S. Coast Guard about it. While crew members on the line’s ships were wearing “Save the Waves” buttons, workers below […]
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My, What a Big Population You Have
Northern gray wolves could move off the endangered species list in as few as three years, according to Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Wolves introduced during the last four years in central Idaho, northwestern Montana, and Yellowstone National Park have adapted quite well to their new surroundings. Delisting […]
