Duke Fracking Tests Reveal Dangers Driller’s Data Missed

"When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared that a group of Texas homes near a gas-drilling operation didn’t have dangerous levels of methane in their water, it relied on tests conducted by the driller itself," Bloomberg Sustainability reports. Read the full story here.

"An Arizona Republic analysis found that despite warnings from fire and forestry experts, and nature itself, the state’s wildlands are dangerously overgrown. Arizonans, meanwhile, have since 1990 built more than 230,000 homes and other structures in wildfire-prone areas, creating risks for themselves and the firefighters called upon to protect them."

The ethanol era has proven far more damaging to the environment than politicians promised and much worse than the government admits today. Farmers have wiped out millions of acres of conservation land, destroyed habitat and contaminated water supplies, an Associated Press investigation found. Five million acres of land set aside for conservation have been converted. The consequences are so severe that environmentalists and many scientists have now rejected corn-based ethanol as bad environmental policy.

“EPA regulations for the land application of biosolids are some of the most lenient in the world, requiring wastewater-treatment plants to check for just nine of some 80,000 pollutants that can make it through processing and into sewage sludge.”

Facing Foreclosure: Oklahoma's mortgage settlement program benefits attorneys | Tulsa World
"So far, the largest financial beneficiary of Oklahoma's mortgage settlement program is a young attorney who used a system of vouchers and possibly a family connection to acquire dozens of clients."

Shocking cost investigation: Utility middle men charge renters inflated prices | Columbus Dispatch
"A 10-month investigation by The Dispatch found that residents pay markups of 5 percent to 40 percent when their landlords enter into contracts with certain submeter companies. If the customer fails to pay, the companies sometimes resort to collection tactics that would be illegal for regulated utilities, including shutting off heat in winter and even eviction."

South Austin pastor lives lavishly while West Side project languishes | Chicago Tribune
“In a rolling investigation, Chicago Tribune reporters David Jackson and Gary Marx examine government's haphazard efforts to assist one of the city's hardest-hit neighborhoods. Tracing where the money goes, their latest installment how a politically-connected pastor lives in a lavish suburban mansion while some tenants in his apartment buildings endure substandard conditions and go without heat.”

New reports fuel debate of whether Lisa Steed arrested innocent drivers | Salt Lake Tribune
“This month, UHP provided The Tribune with more documents about Steed, including the Winward review and the internal affairs investigation undertaken before her firing last year. In the internal affairs investigation, UHP found prosecutors who had received complaints about the former trooper of the year, but some of those same prosecutors also praised Steed’s work.”

Facing lawsuits over deadly asbestos, paper giant launched secretive research program | The Center for Public Integrity
“Named in more than 60,000 legal claims, Atlanta-based Georgia-Pacific sought salvation in a secret research program it launched in hopes of exonerating its product as a carcinogen, court records obtained by the Center for Public Integrity show.”

Wisconsin Supreme Court justices tend to favor attorney donors | WisconsinWatch
“Justices have the option of recusing themselves from cases involving donor attorneys but have rarely stepped aside, remaining involved in nearly 98 percent of such cases, the Center found.”

Booming rental market makes it easier for neglectful landlords to ignore substandard living conditions | Austin American-Statesman
“A wide range of involved parties — City Council members, city Code Compliance officials, tenant advocates and real estate industry groups — agree that Austin’s real estate boom has made it possible for a subset of “bad actors” among rental property owners to ignore substandard conditions and tenants’ complaints. One indicator of the scope of the problem — code complaints and violations at rental properties — has exploded in recent years.”

$1,100 an hour? Part-time service at little agencies means big bucks and benefits for politicians | San Jose Mercury News
“Even the elected officials who benefit were surprised by the hefty hourly rates, which this newspaper calculated through an analysis of government meeting minutes and the Bay Area News Group's public salary database.”

Ivy Tech, DNR emails expose favors between officials, raunchy jokes, nude pictures | Indianapolis Star
“The emails — which featured jokes about erectile dysfunction and breast size, and pictures that compared naked women to various animals — appear to violate the spirit, if not the letter, of Ivy Tech’s sexual harassment policy. Yet they were allowed to continue for at least six months before administrators asked Walkup to cease sometime this year.”

Research stalls on dangers of military burn pits | Democrat and Chronicle
“Thousands of returning veterans and civilians are now attributing myriad symptoms — respiratory problems, neurological disorders, cancers and ALS — to exposure to the burn pits, which were located at dozens of bases throughout Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Dozens of Georgia children die despite state intervention | Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Epic failures by Georgia’s child welfare system have given the state one of the nation’s highest rates of death by abuse and neglect, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows.”

Ted Cruz Failed To Disclose Ties To Caribbean Holding Company | Time Swampland
“Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz potentially violated ethics rules by failing to publicly disclose his financial relationship with a Caribbean-based holding company during the 2012 campaign, a review of financial disclosure and company documents by TIME shows.”

GW misrepresented admissions and financial aid policy for years | The GW Hatchet
George Washington University admitted publicly for the first time Friday that it puts hundreds of undergraduate applicants on its waitlist each year because they cannot pay GW's tuition.

By the end of the year, the oil giant BP is expected to complete work on new equipment that will more than triple the amount of petroleum coke produced by its Whiting refinery on Lake Michigan, the Chicago Tribune reports. The project will turn the sprawling Indiana plant into the world's second-largest source of petroleum coke, also known as petcoke, and Chicago into one of the biggest repositories of the high-sulfur, high-carbon waste.

BP this week confirmed that all of its petcoke is shipped a few miles across the state border to sites in the East Side and South Deering neighborhoods. Residents say black clouds of dust blow off uncovered piles of petcoke and coal in the area so frequently that people are forced to keep their children inside with the windows closed.

"Stimulus funds aimed at jump starting the economy paid for about 4,000 trees in Denver, with many ending up at million dollar homes in Denver’s priciest neighborhoods where residents acknowledge they could have paid for their own trees, but the government was giving them out for free, so why bother?"

County officials estimate there’s been a 756 percent increase in the amount of fracking waste brought to Frio County since 2010 and that this year alone will see an estimated 351,720 truck trips because of it.

Don't believe the signs city officials have posted at the four outfall spots that dump raw sewage into the Potomac River. The truth is much worse.

Sex Predators Unleashed | Sun-Sentinel
"Another child is dead. This time, a brown-haired, brown-eyed girl, a year younger than Jimmy Ryce. A 1999 law passed after Jimmy was raped and murdered at age 9 is meant to protect Floridians from sex offenders by keeping the most dangerous locked up after they finish their prison sentences. But an eight-month Sun Sentinel investigation into the law named in Jimmy’s memory has uncovered shocking failures. Florida’s safeguards have broken down at every stage, setting hundreds of rapists and child molesters free to harm again."

Taken | The New Yorker
"The basic principle behind asset forfeiture is appealing. It enables authorities to confiscate cash or property obtained through illicit means, and, in many states, funnel the proceeds directly into the fight against crime. But the system has also given rise to corruption and violations of civil liberties. Over the past year, many have expressed concern that the state laws designed to go after high-flying crime lords are routinely targeting the workaday homes, cars, cash savings, and other belongings of innocent people who are never charged with a crime."

New York Promised Help for Mentally Ill Inmates – But Still Sticks Many in Solitary | WNYC/ProPublica
"In New York, inmates diagnosed with “serious” disorders should be protected from solitary confinement. But since that policy began, the number of inmates diagnosed with such disorders has dropped."

Costly perk forces DWP to shell out extra if it gives work to outside contractors | Los Angeles Times
"It's no secret Los Angeles Department of Water and Power employees are paid well. But a little-known clause in their union contract ensures they can work extra hours and collect even higher wages when private contractors are hired to help them get the job done."

Locked in Terror | Fresno Bee
"The Fresno County Jail has been a place of terror and despair for mentally ill inmates who spiral deeper into madness because jail officials withhold their medication. About one in six jail inmates is sick enough to need antipsychotic drugs to control schizophrenia, bipolar disorders and other psychiatric conditions, but many sit for weeks in cells without medication previously prescribed by private doctors, say family members, lawyers and psychiatrists. If the inmates do get medication, it’s often at a lower dose or is a cheaper generic substitute that doesn’t work as well, they say."

Victims’ Dilemma: 911 Calls Can Bring Eviction | The New York Times
"Aiming to save neighborhoods from blight and to ease burdens on the police, municipalities have adopted ordinances requiring landlords to weed out disruptive tenants."

At DCF, an untold epidemic of abuse, neglect and death | Miami Herald
"A Miami Herald investigation — which included a review of hundreds of pages of agency emails, incident reports and other documents obtained through Florida’s public records law — shows the number of children who died is nearly four times what had been acknowledged."

Portland drug informant's cases fall apart after questions about his credibility, whereabouts | The Oregonian
"Police and prosecutors say checks-and-balances ensure the integrity of the system. But defense attorneys -- whose clients faced years in prison because of Jackson's work -- say police wasted thousands in taxpayer dollars putting so much faith in a dubious undercover source."

Truck company vehicles were taken out of service for maintenance problems | San Antonio Express-News
"Defective brakes, axle problems and cracked wheel rims were among the most serious maintenance problems state inspectors found on trucks owned by B&E Transport, the firm involved in last week's crash that damaged a bridge over U.S. 281."

Nevada chief justice orders courts review after potentially more than 2,400 ruled mentally ill not reported to gun database | Reno Gazette-Journal
"An RGJ report this week found that Washoe District Court in Reno did not send 179 names to the Department of Public Safety’s database of people prohibited from possessing a gun. When the RGJ asked the department how many reports it had received from other courts in the state, the director said only 13 in the past year: five from Lyon County; five from White Pine County and three from Reno Municipal Court."

Before Bakken well violation, a $22M fraud case in the Texas oil patch | EnergyWire
"A little-known company called Halek Operating ND LLC is facing the largest fine North Dakota has ever levied against an oil and gas producer -- $1.5 million -- for jeopardizing drinking water near Dickinson. But even before the company drilled its first well in North Dakota, federal officials say the man behind it had swindled $22 million out of 300 investors in a Texas oil and gas project."

Shortcomings seen in response to missing Iowans | Des Moines Register
"A Des Moines Register examination of missing-person cases revealed ongoing shortcomings in how Iowa responds when its residents vanish."

Woman says KCMO councilman’s sexting scandal connected to taxpayer money, shares story with FBI | 41 Action News (Kansas City)
"41 Action News has spoken exclusively with a woman who is convinced the taxpayer money was used to help keep a sexting scandal out of the public spotlight. And she’s shared her story with the FBI."

Even Small Amounts of Precipitation Dump Raw Sewage into Potomac River | Alexandria Gazette Packet
Don't believe the signs city officials have posted at the four outfall spots that dump raw sewage into the Potomac River. The truth is much worse.

In Afghanistan, redeployed U.S. soldiers still coping with demons of post-traumatic stress | The Washington Post
"A diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder is not a barrier to being redeployed. Not when the Army needs its most experienced soldiers to wrap up the war. Instead, the Army is trying to answer a new question: Who is resilient enough to return to Afghanistan, in spite of the demons they are still fighting?" 

Poway schools rely on Mello-Roos tax machine – For lunches, signs and old school repair | inewsource
There is no legal limit and no standardized formula for calculating Mello-Roos Taxes. In some cases, the formulas are so convoluted that homeowners have virtually no way of knowing whether they’re paying the correct amount. What’s more there is no state oversight over the funds: at a minimum, the system is far from transparent to those who are footing the bill. Some are asking whether it’s even legal.

Even Odds | The San Francisco Chronicle
Being male and black in Oakland means being about as likely to be killed as to graduate from high school ready for college

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