The Environmental Protection Agency is considering adding a portion of Bear Creek in Eastern Baltimore County to its list of Superfund cleanup sites. It’s tied to the years-long cleanup of the old Bethlehem Steel site at Sparrows Point.
The state is spearheading the cleanup of the property while the federal government is charged with cleaning up the water around it, which includes Bear Creek.
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Photo credit: Nikki Davis
Day: October 13, 2021
SAN JACINTO, Texas – In October of 2017 Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, Scott Pruitt ordered the complete clean-up of the San Jacinto River Waste Pits.
“To witness the threat, the danger that this site poses to the community in person makes a difference and the difference it makes is urgency,” said Pruitt at the time.
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Photo Credit: Mark Mulligan/Houston Chronicle
California denied 21 oil drilling permits this week in the latest move toward ending fracking in a state that makes millions from the petroleum industry but is seeing widespread drought and more dangerous fire seasons linked to climate change.
State Oil and Gas Supervisor Uduak-Joe Ntuk sent letters Thursday to Aera Energy denying permits to drill using hydraulic fracturing in two Kern County oil fields to “protect “public health and safety and environmental quality, including (the) reduction and mitigation of greehouse gas emissions.”
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Photo Credit: Jae C. Hong/AP Photo, File
Pennsylvania is immensely proud of its fracking business, but it shouldn’t be. Fracking creates huge environmental and health risks to surrounding areas. It has been linked to massive amounts of climate change pollution, radioactive air and water pollution, and health risks including birth defects, asthma, and cancer.
Last year, a grand jury report found that Pennsylvania’s leaders failed to protect from the health risks associated with fracking by siding with the industry instead of the public. The report recommended a series of ways to limit the damage done by fracking, which included moving fracking away from homes and cutting off loopholes allowing radioactive waste to pollute drinking water.
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Photo Credit: Lindsay Lazarski/WHYY
Chemical giants DuPont and Daikin knew the dangers of a PFAS compound widely used in food packaging since 2010, but hid them from the public and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), company studies obtained by the Guardian reveal.
The chemicals, called 6:2 FTOH, are now linked to a range of serious health issues, and Americans are still being exposed to them in greaseproof pizza boxes, carryout containers, fast-food wrappers, and paperboard packaging.
The companies initially told the FDA that the compounds were safer and less likely to accumulate in humans than older types of PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals” and submitted internal studies to support that claim.
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Photo Credit: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock
By: Julia Weil, Community Organizing Intern
As we have seen countless times, hazardous contamination is disproportionately present in areas where more minority and low-income people live. Though this has been both protested at specific sites and researched on a larger scale for many years, it not only continues, but the companies responsible both refuse to take responsibility and even deny the environmental racism that drives their decision-making.
The process of moving potential contaminating facilities out of white neighborhoods and into majority minority neighborhoods can be seen in the case of Southside Recycling, owned by Reserve Management Group, in Chicago. Formerly General Iron, the scrap metal shredding facility was proposed to move out of Lincoln Park, a wealthier and whiter area of Chicago, and into the already environmentally over-burdened Southeast Side, in an area where the majority of residents are Latino.
In Lincoln Park, before the proposed location change, the General Iron facility was protested by residents due to the noise, smell, and particulate matter, and a notice of violation was issued due to emissions. The new company name doesn’t change the impact that the metal shredding facility could have on surrounding communities.
Recognizing the sickeningly common narrative continued by the location change, local activists on the Southeast Side conducted several protests and participated in a hunger strike. The Southeast Side of Chicago has a long history of environmental racism and pollution, driven by zoning laws. In fact, over just the past 7 years, as many as 75 facilities in that area were inspected for “allegedly violating the Clean Air Act.”
However, the owners of Southside Recycling continue to defend their actions, asserting that this move isn’t due to environmental racism and the new facility will be “environmentally conscious.” The owners cite the greater area of the plot available on the Southeast Side as being protective, though an elementary school and a high school sit just a half mile from the new site, and the area in which they planned to relocate already suffers from a higher level of contamination.
The planned relocation resulted in a civil rights lawsuit being filed against General Iron, and has attracted the attention of the EPA. Michael Regan, the EPA’s 16th Administrator, has declared that the Southeast Side of Chicago suffers from environmental injustice, and has asked that the city delay the issuing of a permit for this facility. Hopefully, this is a first step towards halting development of the facility altogether in this location, followed by more protective litigation for over-burdened communities.
Photo Credit: Antonio Lopez
Albuquerque’s South Valley was once a thriving oasis of food production watered by a network of historic irrigation canals, or acequias. Today it’s home to several historic neighborhoods along the Rio Grande including Mountain View.
After much of the area was rezoned in the 1960s, the residents, who are mainly Chicanos as well as recent immigrants, came under siege by the structural forces of environmental racism that dictate who lives near polluters and who doesn’t. Mountain View was soon enveloped by industry — auto recyclers, Albuquerque’s sewage plant, paint facilities, and fertilizer suppliers — that left a legacy of contaminated groundwater, two Superfund sites and high levels of air pollution.
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Photo Credit: Gabriela Campos/High Country News
Former Michigan governor Rick Snyder, his health director and other ex-officials have been told they’re being charged after a new investigation of the Flint water scandal, which devastated the majority Black city with lead-contaminated water and was blamed for a deadly outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in 2014-15, the Associated Press has learned.
Two people with knowledge of the planned prosecution told the AP on Tuesday that the attorney general’s office has informed defense lawyers about indictments in Flint and told them to expect initial court appearances soon. They spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
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Photo credit: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Tuesday finalized a rule that would allow future greenhouse gas limits only on power plants, sidestepping oversight over the oil and gas industry, iron and steel manufacturers and other polluting industries.
The new rule from the EPA argues that only sectors whose pollution accounts for more than 3 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are “considered to contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution.”
The rule is a direct response to a 2017 executive order from President Trump that asked agencies to “immediately review existing regulations that potentially burden the development or use of domestically produced energy resources.”
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