Latest Articles
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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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Global warming in action in the Antarctic
The scene is breathtaking, even mystical. Four searchlight beams arrow down from above me to a vanishing point over dark water. Sea fog sweeps in along the beams and occasionally an iceberg is illuminated. From the left, a small, pale full moon is just showing over the clouds. I am on the bridge of the […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
