Nevada ranked first nationally in the release of toxic chemicals per square mile in 2017, the most recent year for which data is available, and the state’s mining industry was the reason why. read more here.
Tag: contamination
The study suggests that as the Portland Harbor Superfund site is cleaned-up, salmon recovery efforts in the Willamette will get a major boost. Read more here
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler’s history of lobbying for International Paper Co. and Xcel Energy Inc., among other companies, means he is recused from working on 45 Superfund sites, according to new agency data. Read more here.
A portion of Libby’s asbestos cleanup has been completed, with the EPA removing that area from the list of federal Superfund sites. Read more here.
“The odor was unbearable, as were the flies and stink bugs,” said Brasfield, who sports a greying handlebar moustache and describes himself as a conservative Republican. “The flies were so bad that you couldn’t walk outside without being inundated by them. You’d be covered in all sorts of insects. People started getting headaches, they couldn’t breathe. You wouldn’t even go outside to put meat on the barbecue.”
“Oh my goodness, it’s just a nightmare here,” said Heather Hall, mayor of Parrish, where the unwanted cargo squatted for two months. “It smells like rotting corpses, or carcasses. It smells like death.” Read more.
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No more toxic jobs in Appalachia
They scream jobs and like a carrot on a stick, and politicians chase them. Out-of-state and out-of-country companies come to capitalize on West Virginia’s people. They minimize the health impacts, such as cancers and neuro-developmental defects. OVEC Project Coordinator Dustin White told the group. Read more.
The citizens’ committee which for years has urged removal of nuclear waste from a federally owned Lewiston site issued a statement Thursday thanking Assistant Secretary of the Army R.D. James for moving ahead with the project.
James’ signature on the plan late Monday “was like manna from heaven,” said Amy H. Witryol, secretary of the Lake Ontario Ordnance Works Restoration Advisory Board.
James’ action came after complaints last week from the board and the Niagara County Legislature about a 39-month wait for approval of the $490 million Corps of Engineers plan to clean up the Niagara Falls Storage Site on Pletcher Road. It has been the repository of waste from the World War II atomic bomb project. Congress, however, may not appropriate the funding until 2025, a Corps official said.
Read the press release from the Lake Ontario Ordnance Works Restoration Advisory Board here.
Contact: Lois Marie Gibbs (CHEJ/PAI) 703-237-2249
Teresa Mills (CHEJ) 614-539-1471
United Nation’s Tribunal Recommends Worldwide Ban on Hydraulic Fracturing.
The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal is recommending a worldwide ban on hydraulic fracturing, the extreme oil and gas extraction technique known as ‘fracking.’ The Tribunal found that the materials, and infrastructure of fracking inherently and necessarily violate human rights. The specific rights violated include the rights to life, to water, to full information and participation, and especially the rights of indigenous people, women and children.
“I hope the United States heeds the warnings of the UN Tribunal and puts a stop to any and all fracking related activities immediately given these findings,” said Lois Gibbs founder of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice/ People’s Action Institute (CHEJ).
CHEJ was involved in three of the United States field Tribunals in Athens’s, Youngstown, Ohio and Charlottesville, VA. Lois Marie Gibbs served as a Juror in all three field Tribunals. Teresa Mills CHEJ’s Ohio organizer was both on the overall advisory panel and assisted community leaders to understand the rules and help with logistics in all three field hearing. The field hearings provided the basic information for the findings.
Gibbs recalled, “as a Juror I heard innocent people share their experiences living near fracking infrastructures. Children needing to dodge 100’s of trucks to get to school. Families who could light their faucets on fire due to the gas getting into their water supplies. Women, men and children made sick with asthma, cancers, skin disease and so much more who were not allowed to know what chemicals were being sent miles below their properties and evaporating into their air from fracking waste ponds.
This is an incredible victory for the people and provides clear impartial conclusion that communities can use to fight back against Fracking.
The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, based in Rome, is an internationally recognized Civil Society public opinion tribunal functioning independently of state authorities. It applies internationally recognized human rights law and policy to cases brought before it.
Governments have an affirmative obligation to protect the rights of their citizens, according to internationally recognized human-rights Covenants and Declarations. When governments fail to adequately regulate harmful oil and gas industry practices, they fail to meet their human rights obligations. And when governments fail to take measures to prevent the advance of climate change and its impacts on the rights to life, liberty, and security, they are failing to meet their internationally recognized human-rights obligations. Widespread government failures have created a global “axis of betrayal,” according to the international court, in which governments and fossil-fuel industries collude – at great cost to people and the planet – in human-rights violations to their mutual profit.
The Special Session was conducted for five days in May of 2018. Four Preliminary tribunals had been conducted in the months prior to the Plenary hearings. The Pre-tribunals included rich oral testimony from Australia, the US states of Ohio and Virginia, and other places, supporting documentation, and findings from those Pre-tribunal’s local judges. All materials and reports from those Pre-tribunal hearings, all the Plenary session’s oral testimony and arguments, all Plenary session reports, amicus curiae briefs and full documentation are available, in both video and text formats, on the website for the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal Session on Human Rights, Fracking and Climate Change.
The full text of the Opinion is attached. It is also available on the website for the PPT Session on Human Rights, Fracking and Climate Change and on the Jurisprudence page of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal website at their headquarters in Rome.
CHEJ was involved in three of the United States field Tribunals in Athens and Youngstown, Ohio and in Charlottesville, VA. Lois Marie Gibbs served as a Juror in all three field Tribunals. These field hearings provided the basic information for the large Tribunal held in Oregon. This is an incredible victory which provides yet a new tool in the tool box for communities to fight back against Fracking.
The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal released its Advisory Opinion, recommending a worldwide ban on hydraulic fracturing, the extreme oil and gas extraction technique known as ‘fracking.’ The Tribunal found that the materials, and infrastructure of fracking inherently and necessarily violate human rights. The specific rights violated include the rights to life, to water, to full information and participation, and especially the rights of indigenous people, women and children. Governments have an affirmative obligation to protect the rights of their citizens, according to internationally recognized human-rights Covenants and Declarations. When governments fail to adequately regulate harmful oil and gas industry practices, they fail to meet their human rights obligations. And when governments fail to take measures to prevent the advance of climate change and its impacts on the rights to life, liberty, and security, they are failing to meet their internationally recognized human-rights obligations. Widespread government failures have created a global “axis of betrayal,” according to the international court, in which governments and fossil-fuel industries collude – at great cost to people and the planet – in human-rights violations to their mutual profit.
The Special Session was conducted for five days in May of 2018. Four Preliminary tribunals had been conducted in the months prior to the Plenary hearings. The Pre-tribunals included rich oral testimony from Australia, the US states of Ohio and Virginia, and other places, supporting documentation, and findings from those Pre-tribunal’s local judges. All materials and reports from those Pre-tribunal hearings, all the Plenary session’s oral testimony and arguments, all Plenary session reports, amicus curiae briefs and full documentation are available, in both video and text formats, on the website for the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal Session on Human Rights, Fracking and Climate Change. The full text of the Opinion is attached. It is also available on the website for the PPT Session on Human Rights, Fracking and Climate Change and on the Jurisprudence page of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal website at their headquarters in Rome.
Deep gratitude to all who have taken this long journey with us to get this opinion finalized, and contributed in big and small ways along the way! Now the work of getting these important findings out to the world begins….
Peace and Blessings,
~Simona
Simona L. Perry, PhD
Cell 240 599 6655
Google Phone USA +1 912 289 1158
For years, Diane Wilson has tried to get Formosa Plastics Corp. to stop discharging plastic pellets from its sprawling petrochemical complex on the Central Texas coast. This week, she’s getting her day in court. Read more ...