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Environment
Toxic Landscape series
An on-going series by The (Bergen, N.J.) Record looks at the effectiveness — or lack thereof — of Superfund efforts in New Jersey’s Bergen and Passaic counties. The first story in the series focuses on errors and cutbacks that have plagued the process. “Since the program was launched 30 years ago, only three of the…
Read MoreInvestigateWest:Cruise Ships Dump Waste To Dodge Laws
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.
Read MoreSewage has polluted fishery for over a decade
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…
Read MoreGulf of Mexico littered with abandoned oil and gas wells
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…
Read MoreRegulators failed to address problems with blowout preventers
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…
Read MoreSafety of rig had been a concern for months
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…
Read MoreBP chose riskier option to seal Deepwater Horizon well
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…
Read MoreNitrate contamination a problem across California
“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…
Read MoreDrilling in Gulf of Mexico allowed without requisite permits
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…
Read MoreCarbon offsets have little impact on global warming
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.” Carbon offsets are unregulated and often linked to projects that…
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