As a quake-stricken Japanese nuclear plant continues to spew radiation into the environment, journalists and people across the world are getting an unwelcome lesson in how secrecy can threaten people's health and safety. A New York Times team finally on March 16 did the story on the withholding of information. Read their coverage, as well as others.
"The operator of an Indiana County (PA) coal-fired power plant is liable for more than 8,600 violations of the Clean Water Act that polluted the Conemaugh River with metal discharges, a federal judge ruled, which would lead to a maximum civil penalty of more than $300 million."
"They’re our dirty little forgotten secret: the city’s 161 closed garbage dumps. Forty one of them are still active, spewing gases and discharging a toxic slurry into sewers and waterways. City staff say we shouldn’t be worried, even while reserve funds to maintain the sites have been emptied in Rob Ford’s budget juggling. Truth is, our track record isn’t very good when it comes to putting these oozing mounds to bed."
"HOLBROOK, Pa. -- A waste hauler and his company were charged Thursday with dozens of criminal counts for what prosecutors said was years of dumping millions of gallons of wastewater from natural gas drilling, sewage sludge and restaurant grease into streams and mine shafts."
"QUEBEC – Nathalie Normandeau, Quebec’s natural resources minister, announced Wednesday that the Quebec government would no longer authorize any hydraulic fracturing operations in the province."
"A Seattle-based seafood company that operates mostly in Alaska will pay $1.9 million in penalties as well as cleanup costs for the ammonia and other waste it discharged from its processing plant in the Aleutians."
"Recent studies suggest that smog-filled air kills more people and causes more breathing problems than previously thought, U.S. EPA scientists say in a new draft paper, but due to a procedural twist, the findings can't be taken into account as Administrator Lisa Jackson decides whether to set stricter limits than the George W. Bush administration chose in 2008."
"Wyoming, famous for its crisp mountain air and breathtaking, far-as-the-eye-can-see vistas, is looking a little bit like smoggy Los Angeles these days because of a boom in natural gas drilling."
"The federal government has agreed to step up its efforts to force freighters sailing on the Great Lakes to begin treating their biologically contaminated ballast water discharges like any other industrial pollutant."
"The Lone Star state is several years ahead of Pennsylvania when it comes to deep natural gas drilling." So the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette went to Texas to see what might be in store, especially as densely settled suburban areas are drilled. For some, such as homeowners, it has meant economic loss; but for drillers, it has meant fortunes.
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