Articles by Grist staff

10,000? Maniacs!

After two decades of struggle, Pennsylvania has finally secured legislation requiring the state to design and implement a water-conservation strategy. The Water Resources Planning Act, signed into law this week by outgoing Gov. Mark Schweiker (R), is widely seen as a first step in determining the amount of water available in Pennsylvania, as well as […]

Hogwash

The U.S. EPA unveiled new livestock-waste regulations yesterday designed to keep billions of pounds of unhealthful pollutants out the nation’s waterways annually. The rules, which were issued in compliance with a court mandate from a 1989 lawsuit brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council, will require some 15,500 factory farms to obtain government permits to […]

Sucker Punch

Thanks (or maybe no thanks) to a deal struck by the federal government and the Washington state Attorney General’s Office, some 170 barrels of highly radioactive plutonium waste will be shipped from California and Ohio to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington beginning as early as next week. In exchange for being allowed to transport […]

The No-good, the Bad, and the Ugly

During the 2000 budget year, the federal government awarded more than $855 million worth of contracts to companies that had violated at least one federal law in the previous three years, the General Accounting Office reported yesterday. In all, 39 companies winning contracts of $100,000 or more were guilty of violating federal environmental, labor, employment, […]