The U.S. EPA has unveiled analysis of its most recent Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data (for 2013). The TRI provides a useful starting point for finding not only local and regional hotspots, but also significant trends.
The expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline in Canada by the multibillion-dollar Houston firm Kinder Morgan is, to say the least, controversial. So it did not help instill public confidence when Canada's National Energy Board on Jan 16, 2015, ruled that Kinder Morgan did not have to make public its emergency response plans for spills and fires.
Are megabucks from fossil fuels and other big industries corrupting the election of federal government officials? The U.S. public has little chance of knowing under current rules that are bringing "dark money" to ascendancy in American politics.
Professional photojournalists may again be facing unconstitutional requirements for permits to work in public parks — this time at the county level in a well-heeled District of Columbia suburb. But Virginia's Fairfax County Park Authority is encountering pushback as they conduct an annual review of their fee policies at various park units.
"Each year, contaminated food sickens forty-eight million Americans, of whom a hundred and twenty-eight thousand are hospitalized, and three thousand die." The federal food safety system under the Agriculture Department and other agencies fails to protect them."
"Oklahoma’s highest court is about to make a decision that could really shake up the way fracking companies do business in the state."
"The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is scheduled to make a brief Vatican visit at the end of the week on the topic of addressing climate change."
"A tally of monarch butterflies wintering in Mexico rose to 56. 5 million this year from a record low of 34 million last year but conservationists said on Tuesday the increase was too slight to reduce the threat of extinction facing the insect."
Labor unions and environmentalists say the ultra-secret Trans Pacific Partnership trade treaty could nullify U.S. laws meant to protet Americans. They oppose the administration's bid for "fast-track" authority to present it to Congress on a take-it-or-leave it basis."
"Southern California gets the vast majority of its water from four aqueducts that flow from the north, but all of them cross the San Andreas Fault. That means millions of people are just one major earthquake away from drying out for a year or more."
