So, where does one hide a pile of old roofing shingles that can cover a football field and towers some 30 feet in height? If you are Denver-based Shingles 4 Recycling, you don’t have to hide such a mountain––not when you can place it in the north Denver, working-class neighborhood of Elyria. Now, the recycling […]
Climate change
Posted inGoat
Mopping up at Los Alamos
Last week, Los Alamos National Labs finally reached a settlement with community groups over their 2008 lawsuit claiming that polluted runoff from the facility violated its federal clean-water permit. But worries over toxic stormwater discharges at the lab go back decades (PDF report) and came to a head 11 years ago this month, when the […]
Posted inGoat
CAFO air pollution crackdown?
I’m traveling in New Mexico this week, learning about its dairy industry, and thinking a fair bit about how we raise animals — for milk and meat — in the United States. Many of the people I’ve met so far on this trip live very near large dairies. Some of the people I hope to […]
Posted inWotr
This Earth Day, it’s all about the air
As we prepare to mark the 41st annual celebration of Earth Day, we can thank Nevada Sen. Harry Reid and other Democrats for beating back the most recent attacks on the Clean Air Act. Perhaps America’s most successful environmental safeguard, this law has protected human health and the environment for four decades. Today, it’s emerging […]
Posted inApril 18, 2011: Muddy Waters
As seas rise, cities retreat
Climate change is causing seas to rise — and threatening cities along the West Coast. At the current rate of greenhouse gas emission, scientists estimate that global temperatures will increase by an average of 8 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, melting polar ice sheets and upping sea levels by a meter. According […]
Posted inGoat
Out like a lion, in like a wildfire
Back in December, when temperatures at HCN-HQ in Paonia plummeted regularly into face-shattering freezingness and the high country softened under pillows, featherbeds, jumpy-castles of snow, it was easy to imagine Colorado’s immediate future rife with moisture. Maybe even a mild spring on the high plains, piled with wildflowers and lushly green around the edges and […]
Posted inRange
EPA Reports Massive Drop in US Greenhouse Gas Emissions
By Clark Williams-Derry Great Scott, how did I miss this? Late last month, the EPA released a draft greenhouse gas inventory, showing that net climate warming emissions from the US fell by a whopping 15 percent from 2000 through 2009. A 15 percent decline? Wow. Just wow. But the story gets even more dramatic. Over […]
Posted inGoat
This Week in Toxics
Despite recent wrangling over the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, agency officials and congressmen are crowding the political aisle this week to agree on one particular thing: pollutants that threaten human health should be regulated, or at the very least, disclosed. Pinning health problems on specific chemicals like the ones EPA […]
Posted inGoat
Human health v. economic health
Twenty years after amendments to the Clean Air Act authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate additional toxic emissions from coal-fired power plants, the agency is finally flexing its muscle. New rules proposed this month would cut mercury emissions along with other dangerous metals like arsenic, chromium and nickel and particulate matter from oil- and […]
Posted inGoat
‘Managed retreat’
Sea level rise is real, and it’s coming to a coastal city near you. Research published last month from the University of Arizona finds that hundreds of coastal cities in the lower 48 will lose an average of 9 percent of their land area as climate change causes seas to rise about one meter by […]
Posted inBlog
How better science could help solve environmental justice problems
In the world of public health research and environmental monitoring, “cumulative impacts” are edging toward conventional wisdom–but at EPA headquarters, the phrase is just becoming hip. This week, the agency doled out $32 million dollars to study the health impacts of exposure to multiple pollutants at once. That’s on top of the $7 million granted […]
Posted inGoat
Superfund sludges on
Superfund. The word, at least for me, conjures up images an empty warehouse filled with metal drums leaking toxic sludge, dirt barely covering a hazardous waste sites, maybe some illegal dumping. This Tuesday, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency added 10 sites to its “Superfund” priority cleanup list, and proposed 15 more for consideration. One of the […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2011: High Tension
Crowdsourcing helps tackle environmental injustice in California’s Imperial Valley
The border city of Calexico, Calif. — population 27,000; 95 percent Latino; 25 percent poverty rate — is the kind of place where environmental laws are enforced last, if at all. But a local task force of residents, academics, and environment and health officials hope to change that. Last year, they launched the Imperial Visions […]
Posted inBlog
An atlas of equity
Portland, OR often receives credit for green leadership, but that doesn’t mean that the city is free from environmental risks. Like anywhere else, the commerce, industry and daily activities of millions of people in Portland’s metropolitan area combine to strain the environment; and, like in any city, Portland’s disparate neighborhoods don’t feel these strains evenly. […]
Posted inGoat
Missing the subdivisions for the trees
At first it’s hard to tell what we’re looking at. The tiny plane bumps and bounces through turbulence that warns of an incoming winter storm, repeatedly bucking my too-tall self (despite tight seatbelt) into the low ceiling and knocking the lens of my camera against the window. Beyond the smeared glass, rolling mountains spread eastward […]
Posted inBlog
Will the EJ legacy of Southwest coal be addressed?
I have been busy this year chasing my two young ones around the house trying to get giddy little happy people to take a few moments from their daily joy to drink some water, gulp vitamins and brush their teeth before bed so they can stay healthy. The need to play is often prioritized over […]
Posted inGoat
Coal in the courts
When environmentalists began taking the climate change fight to the courts, their focus was strategically narrow. In the early part of this decade, most climate-related lawsuits focused on taking out the most immediate threat: new coal-fired power plants. It was a logical approach; had a slew of new plants come online, “they would’ve overwhelmed any […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2011: Obama and the West
Religious leaders shouldn’t duck their responsibility
On a Sunday morning last fall, leaders from Christian, Jewish, Muslim and other faiths led the third annual “blessing of the waves” in Huntington Beach, Calif. The event celebrated the ocean’s spiritual value and also protested marine pollution, including the rapid acidification of the world’s oceans associated with climate change. Over 3,000 people participated, and […]
Posted inGoat
Tricking beetles and protecting whitebark pine – a video
Whitebark pine are an important forage species for grizzly bear, as we — and others — have written. They’re also a species that writers and nature lovers seem to specially connect with; our own Ed Marston and Earthjustice’s Doug Honnold have written odes to them in these pages. Writer and photographer David Gonzales has founded […]
Posted inRange
Washington’s bill of (coal-free) health
By Jennifer Langston Under a bill introduced today, Washington State would stop burning dirty coal for electricity within its borders. But aside from healthier air and clearer views of Mt Rainier, would the state’s electricity customers notice any difference? Probably not. Washington’s only coal-fired power plant – located n Centralia and owned by the Canadian […]