Articles by Grist staff

Authority Figures

The Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation’s largest public power provider, announced late last week that it would invest $1.5 billion in reducing sulfur dioxide emissions from coal-fired plants. The money will be used to install five smokestack-scrubber systems at plants in Tennessee, Alabama, and Kentucky beginning in 2005. Stephen Smith, director of the Southern Alliance […]

Wave Hello

The ocean may supply Canada with power for the first time if the Canadian company B.C. Hydro proceeds with plans to build wave-energy plants in British Columbia. Although a few such plants exist in Europe and others are being tested in Washington state, the ocean is a relatively untapped energy source. The Canadian plants would […]

Foulbanks, Alaska

More than 100 workers are busily cleaning up a 285,600-gallon oil spill outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, that began Thursday when a man fired a .338 caliber rifle at the trans-Alaskan pipeline. About a third of the spilled oil has been recovered, but a representative of the company managing the cleanup said it would be years […]

Ready, Willing, and Cable?

Environmentalists are concerned about a proposal by the state of Florida to streamline a lengthy approval process for laying undersea fiber-optic cables by creating four authorized submarine telecommunications corridors off Broward and Palm Beach counties. Under the proposal, cables laid within the corridors would be subject to a one-month approval process, rather than the yearlong […]