Category: News Archive

‘Crossroads of the climate crisis’: swing state Arizona grapples with deadly heat

Post author By CHEJ Intern
Post date November 4, 2020

Even now, Ivan Moore can’t think why his father didn’t didn’t tell anyone that the air conditioning in their house was busted. “I honestly don’t know what was going through his mind,” he said.

That week three years ago, temperatures in Phoenix, Arizona were forecasted to top 115F (46C). Moore, his wife and two children went to the mountains for a camping trip, and his dad Gene, stayed behind. A few days later, Gene died.

The air conditioning had been blowing hot air. “He’d opened a window but it was too hot,” Moore said. “My dad’s heart basically gave out on him.”

Phoenix – America’s hottest city – is getting hotter and hotter, and Moore’s father is one of the hundreds of Arizonans who have succumbed to the desert heat in recent years.

Photo Credit: Caitlin O’Hara/The Guardian

Tags Arizona, climate change, climate crisis

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People of color more likely to live without piped water in richest US cities

Post author By CHEJ Intern
Post date November 4, 2020

People of color in some of America’s wealthiest cities are significantly more likely to live in houses without indoor plumbing essential for running water, new research reveals.

Clean, safe, affordable water is essential for human health and economic survival. Yet access to running water is not universal in the United States, ostensibly the richest country in the world.

Nationwide, almost half a million homes do not have piped water, with the majority – 73% – located in urban areas. In fact, almost half the houses without plumbing are located in the country’s top 50 cities.

Photo credit: Christin Lola/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Tags Environmental Justice, people of color, water quality

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Pipeline Company Agrees to Pay $800,000 in Fines, Road Fixes

Post author By CHEJ Intern
Post date November 3, 2020

A natural gas pipeline company and one of its contractors has agreed to pay $300,000 to settle allegations that they violated Massachusetts environmental protection laws during the construction of a natural gas pipeline in 2017, and another $500,000 to repair a stretch of road damaged during the project, the state attorney general’s office said.

Kinder Morgan subsidiary Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. damaged a vernal pool and other protected wetland resources areas, degraded water quality in a cold water fishery, and discharged 15,000 gallons of contaminated pipeline test water directly onto the ground during construction of the pipeline through Sandisfield and Otis State Forest, according to a statement Monday from Attorney General Maura Healey.

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Americans May Add Five Times More Plastic to the Oceans Than Thought

Post author By CHEJ Intern
Post date November 3, 2020

The United States contribution to coastal plastic pollution worldwide is significantly larger than previously thought, possibly by as much as five times, according to a study published Friday.

The research, published in Science Advances, is the sequel to a 2015 paper by the same authors. Two factors contributed to the sharp increase: Americans are using more plastic than ever and the current study included pollution generated by United States exports of plastic waste, while the earlier one did not.

Photo credit: Francisco Robles/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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What Voters in Battleground States Think About Climate Change

Post author By CHEJ Intern
Post date November 3, 2020

Climate change has emerged as a major issue for voters this year, both nationally and in crucial battleground states like Arizona and Florida, new polls from The New York Times and Siena College suggest.

Nationwide, 58 percent of Americans said they were either “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about their communities being harmed by climate change, according to a survey conducted in mid-October, with 39 percent saying they were “not too concerned” or “not at all concerned.”

Photo credit: The New York Times/Sienna College Poll

News Archive

Trump’s EPA rewrote the rules on air, water energy. Now voters face a choice on climate change issues

Post author By CHEJ Intern
Post date October 30, 2020

Cherise Harris noticed a change in her eldest daughter soon after the family moved a block away from a 132-year-old coal-fired power plant in Painesville, Ohio.

The teen’s asthma attacks occurred more frequently, Harris said, and she started carrying an inhaler with her at all times.

The family didn’t know it at the time, but Painesville’s municipal-owned plant emits nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide – two pollutants that the American Lung Association says inflames air passages, causing shortness of breath, chest tightness, pain and wheezing.

Photo credit: Getty Images

News Archive

Duke study finds high PFAS levels in Pittsboro residents’ blood

Post author By CHEJ Intern
Post date October 30, 2020

A new Duke University study has found that the concentrations of some potentially cancerous per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — or PFAS — are two to four times higher in the blood of Pittsboro residents than the U.S. population as a whole.

The study also found that some types of PFAS chemicals found in Pittsboro residents’ blood are “strikingly similar” to those found in the blood of Wilmington residents during an earlier study conducted by N.C. State and East Carolina universities.

Photo credit: Pxfuel, Creative Commons

News Archive

The $16 Million Was Supposed to Clean Up Old Oil Wells; Instead, It’s Going to Frack New Ones

Post author By CHEJ Intern
Post date October 30, 2020

North Dakota’s top oil and gas regulator had a problem. With winter bearing down, his department had yet to spend $16 million in federal coronavirus relief funds earmarked for cleaning up abandoned oil and gas well sites across the state, and the arrival of cold weather would halt the work.

If the money wasn’t spent by the end of the year, the state would lose it. So Lynn Helms, director of the state’s Department of Mineral Resources, proposed a different use for the funds: paying oil companies to hydraulically fracture new wells.

Photo credit: William Campbell/Corbis via Getty Images

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In Deep Red Tennessee, Senate Candidate Marquita Bradshaw Talks Environmental Justice

Post author By CHEJ Intern
Post date October 29, 2020

Tennessee’s Republican movers and shakers probably weren’t expecting pollution to be a major issue in this year’s Senate race. Since Al Gore vacated his Senate seat in 1993 to serve as Bill Clinton’s vice president, Tennesseans have elected only Republicans to the chamber and the GOP has become nearly synonymous with environmental deregulation.

But Marquita Bradshaw’s surprise win in the state’s Democratic primary in August has made environmental justice one of the race’s signature issues.

The question now is whether, after 27 years, Tennesseans will spring a surprise and elect a Democrat to replace retiring three-term Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander — this time, a Black woman who is emblematic of the party’s new blue wave of progressives.

Photo credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS

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Buckingham’s next environmental justice fight? Maybe gold mining

Post author By CHEJ Intern
Post date October 29, 2020

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline is dead. So what’s next for Buckingham County?

Gold, apparently.

This month, plans by a Canadian gold mining company to extract the valuable commodity from thousands of acres in Buckingham surfaced, setting off a wave of alarm in a community that fought five years to keep a natural gas pipeline from being built through their corner of Central Virginia.
Read more…
Photo credit: Daily Progress File

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