Articles by Grist staff

Who’s That Breathin’ That Nastri Air? Nastri Boys!

Ever since President Bush took office, the war against air pollution hasn’t been going well — but environmentalists do win the occasional battle. Case in point: The U.S. EPA’s Pacific Southwest region chief, Wayne Hector Nastri, recently succeeded in convincing one of the biggest polluters in the Southwest to clean up its act. Tucson Electric […]

Get Along Little Dogies

Yippee-ai-ay. After years of studies and legal actions, ranchers in California’s Mojave Desert are being forced to remove cattle herds from almost half a million acres of federal land during the spring and fall, when threatened desert tortoises mate and forage in the area. Grazing cattle can crush tortoises or their burrows, eat their food, […]

Dis Solutia

The U.S. EPA and the Department of Justice plan to file a cleanup consent decree today with Solutia and Pharmacia (the company that owns Monsanto), in a move that could overrule any court-ordered cleanup of PCBs from a former Monsanto chemical plant in Anniston, Ala. Under the decree, the two companies would investigate the scope […]

Quit Being Modest

Enviros chalked up a small victory yesterday when the U.S. Senate threw its support behind a measure requiring that investor-owned utilities produce at least 10 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. The Senate did so by rejecting, 58 to 40, an attempt by Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.) to remove the requirement from […]