Category: News Archive

FLINT, MI – Federal prosecutors accuse the owner and president of a Flint chemical company with dumping nearly 50 million gallons of untreated liquid drained from eight different landfills into the city’s sewer system.

Robert J. Massey, the president and owner of Oil Chem Inc., 711 W. 12th St., is charged in a U.S. District Court indictment with a felony of knowing violation of the Clean Water Act.

Massey is charged with directing “his employees to dispose of the landfill leachate through a hose from a tank to a sanitary sewer drain located at the Oil Chem facility, without treatment and in violation of Oil Chem’s wastewater discharge permit” from January 2007 until October 2015, including waste from one hauler that included PCBs, according to information filed with the federal court on Dec. 21.

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Photo credit: Jake May | MLive.com

A group of Texas environmental groups say the federal Environmental Protection Agency looked the other way when Texas didn’t require tough enough rules on air pollution for several refineries, gas plants and chemical plants.

The Environmental Integrity Project, along with other Texas environmental groups, filed a lawsuit against EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler on Monday after he did not respond to a petition by the groups to correct what they say is a violation of federal law in Texas.

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Photo credit: REUTERS/Loren Elliott

“Broken Ground,” a podcast that discusses environmental stories in the southern United States, has recently come out with a new season that focuses on citizens — specifically in Norfolk and Charleston, S.C. — dealing with sea level rise and all the flooding that comes with it. The podcast is produced in the Charlottesville office of the Southern Environmental Law Center.
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Photo credit: Carolyn Lane | The Cavalier Daily

Environmental justice is having a moment. The term, which encompasses the many ways by which low-income people and communities of color suffer an unequal burden from pollution, contamination, and climate change, has seen a surge in use, largely due to the recent American political campaign.
Democratic primary candidates frequently mentioned environmental justice (or environmental racism) in their stump speeches, campaign pledges, and in debates — an indication that ideas that were not in the political discourse a decade ago, may shape some future climate policies. Environmental justice came up frequently enough in the primary that the first-ever Presidential Environmental Justice Forum was held in November 2019 and drew Senators Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren, as well as billionaire activist Tom Steyer. It’s been a big focus of President-elect Joe Biden’s climate platform and was discussed frequently as he unveiled his climate team in earlier this month. Beyond the race for the presidency, the racial unrest of the past summer, as well as the patterns of infections and death due to COVID-19, focused attention on a number of systemic issues in the U.S., including unfair environmental impacts felt by Black and brown Americans.
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Photo credit: Grist / MCarson Photography

The uber challenge facing the incoming Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency in its oversight of 1,570 hazard waste sites is best summed in a name that’s become synonymous with the daunting task: Superfund.
The “Superfund” started out as a trust fund created by Congress in 1980 to finance cleanups, paid for by billions of dollars in taxes on the chemical and petroleum industries. Congress allowed the tax to expire 25 years ago.
Now, with the trust fund empty, Superfund has become the name of a drastically underfunded federal program responsible for ensuring the industries responsible for these toxic sites do the cleanup, if possible. The EPA shoulders the financial burden using budgeted funds at sites where responsible entities no longer exist or can’t be found.
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Photo credit: Mark Harris for NBC News

Mayor Acquanetta Warren responded to an outpour of opposition to ongoing warehouse development in a letter to the editor on Nov. 27, 2020.
Unsurprisingly, she failed to meaningfully respond to residents’ growing concerns about building warehouses next to our homes and our children’s schools, as well as the harmful environmental impacts that are exacerbating in the city of Fontana, surrounding communities, and damaging our children’s health.
In her response, Mayor Warren affirmed to the community that she has opted for a “status-quo” approach to economic investment and advancement opportunities, even though residents want and have demanded better.
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NORTH HAMPTON – Former state Rep. Mindi Messmer believes residents who live near the Coakley Landfill Superfund site should be concerned by detections of another PFAS contaminant in private wells.

“It is concerning because once again we have people exposed to a chemical that we have no enforceable standards for,” Messmer said after perfluorooctanesulfonamide (PFOSA) was found in private wells near the landfill. “Other states are taking steps to regulate PFOSA and New Hampshire needs to do the same.”

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Photo credit: Ioanna Raptis/Seacoastonline

President-elect Joseph R. Biden tapped North Carolina environmental regulator Michael Regan to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and named Rep. Deb Haaland of New Mexico as his pick for interior secretary, as he moved Thursday to fill out the team tasked with implementing a far-reaching climate agenda.
Mr. Regan, a veteran of the EPA during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, is currently the secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.
If confirmed, he would be the first Black man to serve as EPA Administrator.
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Photo credit: The Washington Times

Introducing his climate team, President-elect Biden said his administration would respond to the existential threat of climate change “by building a modern, climate-resilient infrastructure and a clean energy future” that would put millions of Americans to work. “And we are committed to facing climate change by delivering environmental justice.”
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Photo credit: Angelia Weiss, Getty Images contributor