Latest Articles
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All They Hate is Dust in the Wind
Leaders from Los Angeles and California’s Owens Valley today will sign an agreement to resolve a bitter, long-running dispute over water and dust. In 1913, a Los Angeles-bound aqueduct began diverting water from the Owens River, causing Owens Lake to dry up. The dried sediments cause severe dust storms and give Owens Valley the worst […]
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Finders Keepers, Polluters Weepers
Citizens across the U.S. have formed 35 “water keeper” programs, in which volunteers monitor pollution in rivers, bays, and channels and along coastlines, working to boost enforcement of environmental laws. The Clean Water Act empowers citizens to bring legal actions against polluters when local, state, and federal governments do not. The keeper programs are modeled […]
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License to Kill
Police forces across England are on alert after environmentalists threatened to sabotage four new government testing sites for genetically modified crops. The British government, saying it was committed to openness in dealing with GM technology, on Monday made public on the Internet the location of the four sites, and also announced that 75 new sites […]
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What I Did on My Summer Vacation
August is prime R&R time for lawmakers, who are kicking back in their home states and pressing the all-important constituent flesh. No such vacation at the Sierra Club, however, where summer means it’s time to drive lawmakers crazy by running ads against them. On the receiving end of the group’s radio spots this time around […]
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Paper or … Uh, Paper?
The South African government is considering a ban on plastic bags as a way to help clean up its littered streets and landscapes, Mohammed Valli Moosa, the nation’s new environment minister, said yesterday. He also said the government may impose a compulsory returnable deposit on all bottles to ensure they aren’t tossed into the street […]
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Ford Cells Out
Ford Motor Co. announced yesterday that it would develop an experimental fuel-cell car powered by a hydrogen-burning internal combustion engine by year’s end. The company, which just opened a hydrogen fueling station at a Michigan research lab, said it is making progress in developing an on-board fuel processor that would generate hydrogen from gasoline, then […]
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Psychiatric Help 5 Cents
Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.), whom environmentalists love to hate, has taken to denouncing gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles, and some enviros are reacting with schizophrenic behavior. While the Sierra Club in Seattle has been handing out mock baseball cards accusing Gorton of “striking out” on the environment, the Sierra Club in D.C. recently posed Gorton in […]
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The Unkindest Cut
The $792 billion tax-cut plan, passed by the GOP-controlled Congress and under veto threat from Pres. Clinton, would give more than $1 billion in subsidies over the next five years to petroleum, chemical, timber, and nuclear-power industries, says Friends of the Earth. One of the biggest tax breaks for a narrow interest would repeal rules […]
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Operation Butterfly Storm
The Group of 100, a leading Mexican environmental organization, yesterday called on the nation’s army to defend the winter refuge of monarch butterflies against heavily armed illegal loggers. Locals living near the butterfly refuge in western Michoacan state have reported that 100 trucks loaded with lumber leave the refuge each night. An audit published in […]
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I Just Can't Help It — I Looove to Pollute!
A Tampa man portrayed by prosecutors as an incorrigible polluter was sentenced yesterday to 13 years in the slammer, the longest sentence ever given out in a federal environmental crimes case. Gary Benkovitz, 62, owner of a company that cleans and resells 55-gallon drums, has been convicted of deliberately releasing more than 4 million gallons […]
