On Sunday, The Guardian published a comprehensive report on the environmental, health, and legal issues raised by fracking in the Eastern Agency of the Navajo Nation. In particular, the outlet highlighted instances in which fracking wells owned by Denver-based gas and oil company Enduring Resources had either exploded or malfunctioned, contaminating nearby water sources. In one case from 2019, a fracking well leak brought on by a valve failure pushed 1,400 barrels of slurry off the well pad and into the surrounding snow; by the time the company moved to contain the contaminated area, the snow had melted and the toxins had been washed downstream into the adjacent creek bed. Three days later, an explosion sounded off from another nearby well. Three months later, at another site in the area, 20 barrels of crude oil were sent straight into the earth.
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Given all that we know about racial injustice and its devastating effects on the health of people and the planet, it is shocking how few resources the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has devoted to promoting environmental justice.
In 2019, the EPA budget was 1,500 times the size of its environmental justice budget, just one staff position in 650 was devoted to this issue and a mere $1 of every $2,000 in the EPA’s grants budget was earmarked for environmental justice. The Biden administration is moving aggressively to remedy this.
Photo Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais
Amy Townsend-Small has been chasing methane her entire professional life. The quest has taken her from Southern California freeways to sewage plants to animal feedlots. Sniffing out the potent greenhouse gas, which traps 86 times as much heat as carbon dioxide after it’s emitted into the atmosphere, has required her to breathalyze cows and take chemical measurements at large manure lagoons. When fracking took off around 2010, Townsend-Small shifted her focus to a new and growing problem: methane leaks from oil and gas activity.
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One of the great ironies of climate politics is that America continues to subsidize — to the tune of billions of dollars a year — the very industries that are most responsible for the warming of the planet. Biden wants to put an end to that.
His American Jobs Plan, released last week, recognizes that if the US wants to hit decarbonization targets, and get climate change under control, cutting off government support for fossil fuels is a logical first step. The proposal takes aim at tax preferences, loopholes, and laws that allow fossil fuel companies to dodge costs and avoid cleaning up their pollution.
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Florida officials are urging residents in the surrounding areas of a wastewater storage pond to heed evacuation orders ahead of a potential overflow of polluted water.
On Friday, the Manatee County Public Safety Department warned of an “imminent threat” of an uncontrolled release of wastewater from the former Piney Point phosphate processing plant in Palmetto after a breach was detected in one of the walls of the southern reservoir, which holds about 800 million gallons of water containing phosphorus and nitrogen.
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President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan contains tens of billions of dollars to address environmental and economic issues throughout the Ohio Valley region, according to details released Wednesday by the White House.
Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, had promised a major infrastructure initiative, but one never got traction during his four years in office.
Speaking in Pittsburgh Wednesday, Biden called his plan the largest jobs investment since World War II.
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(CNN)A dozen major companies earned an F for failing to publicly address the growing problem of toxic chemicals that may be in the products they sell to consumers, according to the 2021 Who’s Minding the Store? A Report Card on Retailer Actions to Eliminate Toxic Chemicals.
The report is a collaboration of nonprofit partner organizations, including the environmental advocacy groups Toxic-Free Future, WE ACT for Environmental Justice and Defend Our Health.
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March 26, 2021 – The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is underestimating methane emissions from oil and gas production in its annual Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks, according to new research from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). The research team found 90 percent higher emissions from oil production and 50 percent higher emissions for natural gas production than EPA estimated in its latest inventory.
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Tribal landowners tried for years to get fair compensation for an oil pipeline that cuts across the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota, only to see officials and the courts dismiss their concerns.
But now, thanks to new leadership at the Department of Interior, the federal government is taking a fresh look at their claims. Some see it as a sign that, not only might their voices finally be heard in this case but also that a turnaround has begun in the nation’s long history of injustices toward Indigenous people.
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A federal judge blocked new oil and gas leasing and fracking in Ohio’s Wayne National Forest, a popular destination for outdoor recreation and the only National Forest located in the vast state.
The ruling rebuked the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for failing to consider threats to public health, endangered species, and watersheds before opening more than 40,000 acres of the forest to fracking last year.
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Photo Credit: Taylor McKinnon/Center for Biological Diversityfos