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  • EPA fails to inform public about weed-killer in drinking water

    This story was written by Danielle Ivory. One of the nation’s most widely used herbicides has been found to exceed federal safety limits in drinking water in four states, but water customers have not been told and the Environmental Protection Agency has not published the results. Records that tracked the amount of the weed-killer atrazine […]

  • New Obama forest plan leaves roadless rule intact

    The Obama administration will defend the Clinton roadless rule that has been ping-ponging in the courts for nearly a decade, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said in Seattle on Friday. If courts can’t resolve the forest-protection conflict, the administration will create its own roadless rule, he said. Vilsack laid out a broad vision for the […]

  • ForestEthics mails Fortune 500 companies to kick off tar-sands campaign

    A tar-sands facility: oil doesn’t get any dirtier than this.At ForestEthics, persuading the world’s largest corporations to treat the Earth ethically is our bread and butter. And it often starts with a letter. Last week, we mailed letters to more than 100 Fortune 500 companies, warning that their continued consumption of fuels from Canada’s tar […]

  • More gas contamination affects Pennsylvania residents

    Pennsylvania environment officials are investigating another natural gas well leak, after residents near the town of Roaring Branch complained last month that rust-colored water was flowing from a spring and two small creeks were bubbling with methane gas. The incident is the latest in a string of more than 50 similar cases related to gas […]

  • Water problems from drilling are more frequent than PA officials said

    When methane began bubbling out of kitchen taps near a gas drilling site in Pennsylvania last winter, a state regulator described the problem as “an anomaly.” But at the time he made that statement to ProPublica, that same official was investigating a similar case affecting more than a dozen homes near gas wells halfway across […]

  • ‘Tapped’ documentary pulls plug on bottled water craze

    Only about a fifth of the plastic water bottles purchased in the United States are recycled.Courtesy producers of TAPPED.Tapped, a new documentary about the bottled water industry from director Stephanie Soechtig and the producers of Who Killed the Electric Car?, is a pretty damning look at how consumers have been tricked into spending too much […]

  • Learning from past civilizations

    To understand our current environmental dilemma, it helps to look at earlier civilizations that also got into environmental trouble. Our early 21st century civilization is not the first to face the prospect of environmentally induced economic decline. The question is how we will respond. As Jared Diamond points out in his book Collapse, some of […]

  • The Climate Post: Smalls steps and giant leaps

    First Things First: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited India last weekend to inch forward collaboration on regional security, global business, nuclear power, and climate change. U.S. papers played up the real-time meltdown between Clinton and Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh. The two appeared before cameras on a trip to a new, energy-efficient office building […]

  • Help for the hurting Potomac

      A plastic 55-gallon barrell is seen amongst piles of driftwood and mud along the Potomac River in Cropley, MD. The main culprits for the river’s deteriorating health are agricultural runoff and suburban sprawl due to a booming local population.  This CAP post looks at some useful responses. Global warming is on the national and […]