BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — The government shutdown has suspended federal cleanups at Superfund sites around the nation and forced the cancellation of public hearings, deepening the mistrust and resentment of surrounding residents who feel people in power long ago abandoned them to live among the toxic residue of the country’s factories and mines.
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER and KIM CHANDLER
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Category: News Archive
Today, many of our school districts are not getting their water tested. You would think after the water crisis in Flint, Mich., that all public entities in the United States would be testing their tap water regularly and making the results available to the public.
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In eastern Washington, a push to clean PCBs from the Spokane River faces a dirty legacy and global pollution problem.
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ZIONSVILLE, Ind. (WISH) — A man who worked as an environmental consultant on a federal Superfund site near Zionsville in the 1980s is offering his services to help with an investigation into toxins in Franklin.
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Inspiring Women of Ecology
In fighting to protect her community from toxic waste, this housewife started a movement that led to the creation of the EPA’s Superfund.
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Making America’s Waters Burn Again
The Trump administration’s new Dirty Water Rule seeks to strip the Clean Water Act’s protections from an overwhelming number of our waterways and return our water to levels of pollution we last saw before the Clean Water Act’s enactment in 1972.
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Sustainable Earth: Water
CLEAN WATER IS essential for life, but most people in the developed world don’t think much about the water they use for drinking, food preparation, and sanitation. In developing nations, however, the search for safe drinking water can be a daily crisis. Millions of people die each year, most of them children, from largely preventable diseases caused by a lack of access to clean water and proper sanitation.
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MD Reject Permit for “Potomac Pipeline”
In what environmentalists hope is a major shift in state energy policy, Governor Larry Hogan voted to reject a permit necessary for a fracked-gas pipeline known as the “Potomac Pipeline.” During the Maryland Board of Public Works’ semi-monthly meeting, January 2nd Hogan and the other members of the board unanimously rejected a right-of-way easement for the project, which is proposed by a subsidiary of notorious energy company TransCanada.
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Record rainfall and flooding in Japan, followed by a heat wave that sent tens of thousands of people to the hospital. Astonishing temperature records set across the planet, including sweltering weather above the Arctic Circle. Historic, lethal wildfires in Greece, Sweden and California, terrible flooding in India, a super typhoon with 165-mph winds in the Philippines, and two record-setting hurricanes that slammed the Southeast United States.
Natural disasters cost the world $155 billion this year, and several of them struck the United States particularly hard. Michael and Florence, the California wildfires and a volcanic eruption in Hawaii are all on that list, according to the Zurich-based reinsurance company Swiss Re. But it doesn’t match what happened in 2017. That was the costliest weather year in U.S. history, with more than $300 billion in damage, Woods Hole Research Center senior scientist Jennifer Francis said in an essay published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Read More.
Listen to the Podcast.
In 1978, Lois Gibbs was a young mother with a child in a school that was found to be built over a toxic chemical waste dump site. Lois gained international attention and incredible momentum in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s as she led the fight for environmental justice for children and families affected by the environmental disaster identified with the neighborhood where it occurred, Love Canal.
“I was waiting on someone to knock on my door and tell me what to do, to explain how I could help,” says Lois of the early days of revelations about the infamous Love Canal dump.
“But no one ever came to my door. So I did something on my own.”
Her persistent activism led to passage of the “Superfund” toxic waste site cleanup legislation.
Lois went on to found the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, which has helped more than 10,000 grassroots organizations with technical, organizational or environmental education. She appears in the 2018 HBO movie Atomic Homeland and was named a “top environmentalist of the past century” by Newsweek magazine. She also has been honored with a Heinz Award and the Goldman Prize for her groundbreaking environmental work.
On this 40th anniversary of the Love Canal tragedy, Lois shares how she dealt with being called “a hysterical mother with a sickly child.” She explains the moment she most clearly saw democracy at its best, and the key to success for today’s environmental activists.
“Average people and the average community can change the world,” Lois says.
Hear how she did it, and how you can, too, on this episode of “We Can Be.”