Category: News Archive

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.”
Read More…
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.

Read More…
Photo Credit: Lindsay Lazarski/WHYY

The compounds can form PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” which have been linked to cancer and birth defects. The E.P.A. approvals came despite the agency’s own concerns about toxicity.

For much of the past decade, oil companies engaged in drilling and fracking have been allowed to pump into the ground chemicals that, over time, can break down into toxic substances known as PFAS — a class of long-lasting compounds known to pose a threat to people and wildlife — according to internal documents from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Read more…

When Justine Knox, 57, bought her single-story home in Corpus Christi’s historic Hillcrest neighborhood in 1993, she wanted to stay and raise her family in the community where she grew up and met her husband.
“I wanted my kids to one day come back and say, ‘Hey, I grew up right there. It’s my home. My parents worked hard for that,’” she said.
Twenty-eight years later, Knox’s house sits next to vacant lots where well-kept houses from the 1920s once stood, abuzz with family life. Her neighbors moved out under a voluntary resettlement plan with the Port of Corpus Christi, which razed the acquired properties in recent years to make way for the new Harbor Bridge.
Read More…
Photo Credit: Eddie Seal/Bloomberg via Getty Images

A group of Albany women has been fighting for nearly a dozen years to bring to light what they’ve long suspected, that they are the victims of environmental racism. They say cancer is showing up in their families, and it all points to one facility that still stands today.
“My mom had cancer. My father had cancer too.” said Elaine McCall.
Read more…
Photo credit: Rawpixel, Getty Images

Pipeline opponents; environmental groups; and Memphis, Tenn., activists celebrated over the holiday weekend after the developers of the Byhalia Connection crude oil pipeline abruptly dropped the project.
Plains All American Pipeline LP officials made the announcement late Friday, citing market factors for the cancellation. But serious legal and political obstacles loomed over the 50-mile project, which gained national prominence as a battle about environmental justice.
“If anybody is asking whether the movement is alive in Memphis, you have your answer,” Justin Pearson, one of the leaders of the effort to stop the pipeline, said in an online video posted shortly after the announcement. “Today Southwest Memphis’ movement rings across this country.”
Read More…
Photo Credit: Karon Focht/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom