An InvestigateWest report on the billion dollar cruise ship industry in the Washington-Alaska cruise market found that most ships avoid tougher state regulations and dump their waste in Canadian waters between the two states, despite state efforts to adopt stricter standards for sewage and wastewater discharge.
Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category
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Sewage has polluted fishery for over a decade
August 5th, 2010 
Beth A review of state and federal environmental records by reporters Christopher Baxter, Patrick Lester and Jarrett Renshaw, of The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.), uncovered that for more than a decade, Allentown and other communities have allowed more than 33 million gallons of raw sewage into a prized local trout fishery. The pollution equates to someone [...]
Gulf of Mexico littered with abandoned oil and gas wells
July 7th, 2010 Beth Associated Press reporters Jeff Donn and Mitch Weiss discovered that more than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one – not industry, not government – is checking to see if they are leaking. The oldest [...]
Regulators failed to address problems with blowout preventers
June 22nd, 2010 Beth A New York Times investigation shows that regulators knew there were problems with the blind shear ram, a “fail-safe” device intended to prevent disasters like the Deepwater Horizon blowout, yet failed to address them. “An examination by The New York Times highlights the chasm between the oil industry’s assertions about the reliability of its blowout [...]
Safety of rig had been a concern for months
June 3rd, 2010 Beth Ian Urbina, of The New York Times, reports that internal documents from BP showed that “there were serious problems and safety concerns with the Deepwater Horizon rig far earlier than those the company described to Congress last week. The problems involved the well casing and the blowout preventer, which are considered critical pieces in the [...]
BP chose riskier option to seal Deepwater Horizon well
May 27th, 2010 Beth Ian Urbina, of The New York Times, reports that a BP document provide to the paper by a Congressional investigator reveals that BP officials chose “to use a type of casing for the well that the company knew was the riskier of two options.” The selected casing only had a single seal, and if cement [...]
Chemical s used by BP may pose health threats
May 25th, 2010 Beth A WDSU-New Orleans report shows the chemical dispersant that BP is using on the oil spill in the Gulf may pose health threats to those working on the clean up, and fisherman are reporting illnesses. “Marine toxicologist Riki Ott said the chemicals used by BP can wreak havoc on a person’s body and even lead [...]
Nitrate contamination a problem across California
May 18th, 2010 Beth “The water supply of more than two million Californians has been exposed to harmful levels of nitrates over the past 15 years,” according to a report by California Watch. Nitrates are the most common groundwater contaminant, and are a problem in both rural and city water systems. In 1980, nine wells in California exceeded accepted [...]
Drilling in Gulf of Mexico allowed without requisite permits
May 14th, 2010 Beth Ian Urbina, of The New York Times, reports that the “federal Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species — and despite strong warnings from that agency about the [...]
Carbon offsets have little impact on global warming
April 21st, 2010 Beth A joint investigation by The Christian Science Monitor and the New England Center for Investigative Reporting “found that individuals and businesses who are feeding a $700 million global market in offsets are often buying vague promises instead of the reductions in greenhouse gases they expect.”
