The Tonawanda Coke plant near Buffalo, NY, closed its doors this past Sunday marking a huge victory for the local residents who have fought for years to shut down the facility. Read more here.
Tag: air pollution
The Civil Rights Movement was about more than voting and lunch counters. It was also about the right of all Americans to live and work in a healthy, safe place. (Voting rights aren’t much good if you can’t walk to the polls because your asthma is bad that day.) That was why Dr. King had moved on to the Poor People’s Campaign at the time of his murder.
There is in Alabama a poisoned place called Uniontown. Its residents are primarily African-American. In no particular order, they have seen dumped on or near their places of abode coal ash, cheese waste, wastewater from a nearby catfish processing plant. All of that overtaxes the place’s antiquated sewage system until it starts giving up its proper contents all over the ground and into the rivers and groundwater. The people who live there know why this is the case, as this study from the Pew Charitable Trusts discovered. Read more.
Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services has determined that past exposure to sulfur-based compounds in the air near the Bridgeton landfill may have harmed the health of area residents and workers. Read more.
The EPA assessing the vulnerability of at least 40 toxic waste sites that could be damaged by Hurricane Florence in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. But that review does not include dozens of inland Superfund sites that potentially could be flooded by the storm’s fluctuating path. Read more.
Elevated levels of PFOA were found in the village of Hoosick Falls public water system in 2014. The state Health Department and village officials were later criticized because they waited roughly 16 months — and faced pressure from the EPA — before they warned the public to stop drinking the water. Read more.
While the EPA’s decision not to place the North Birmingham Alabama 35th Avenue Alternatives Superfund site on the NPL was disappointing to many in the community, it was perhaps understandable given the strong vocal opposition with the state. It is now abundantly clear, as evidenced by the July 19, 2018 convictions of a former state legislator, a business executive and attorney on a number of federal charges including conspiracy, wire fraud and bribery, that the EPA’s initial public review process was undermined by an illegal misinformation scheme to prevent the North Birmingham site from being added to the NPL. Being listed provides more opportunities for citizen participation, grants and hard deadlines for action.
Jimmy Smith has lived in Collegeville all of his life. At 85 years old he’s seen the community during it highs and lows. He’s lived side by side with contamination from what was the life blood of the community: the steel industry. He suspected something wasn’t right when three members of his family, himself included, were diagnosed with various cancers. Smith said, “It just so happened out of my four daughters, two of them had cancer. My oldest daughter, the preacher of the family, the good Lord called her home as a result of the cancer.” Read more.
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Kentucky Coal Company’s Sweetheart Deal
Conservationists say Kentucky regulators rubber-stamped the utility’s own plans, (Big Rivers Electric Corporation) insulated it from citizen’s lawsuits and neglected to assess the complete environmental impact of the pollution.
“To me that’s the bigger story, it’s not whether there’s a nominal fine or not. It’s the fact that there’s no indication the company is being required to do a full accounting for what the impacts are of this pollution or fully address the pollution at its source,” said Thom Cmar, an attorney with Earthjustice, an environmental advocacy non-profit.
But the agreed order doesn’t require Big Rivers to assess groundwater impacts. “If it’s in those seeps it’s also getting into the groundwater in other ways and a much larger survey of the site needs to be done to determine what the full scope of the problem is and what the impacts are,” Cmar said. Read more.
Two Kalamazoo-area communities were told not to drink the water because of high levels of contaminants discovered in recent testing. Recent tests showed a concentration of more than 1,500 parts per trillion of PFAS coming from Parchment’s water supply, more than 20 times higher than the U.S. EPA’s health advisory of 70 parts per trillion. Read more.
It turns out that everyone who was worried about how the San Jacinto waste pits Superfund site, in Houston, TX, would hold up during Hurricane Harvey was right on the money.
A new round of EPA testing has revealed that the area is still recording higher-than-normal dioxin levels in the area.
Read More.
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Is Radium Being Spread on Your Roads?
Radium has been widely spread on Pennsylvania roadways without regulation: Study
Wastewater from the oil and gas industry that’s being spread on roadways to control dust and ice in at least 13 states, including Pennsylvania, poses a threat to the environment and to human health, according to a study released this week. Read more.