The Bush administration tweaked Clean Water Act regulations to reclassify mining waste as “fill.” Now, that revised definition has been applied to metals mining for the first time — allowing a gold mine to put its tailings directly into an Alaskan lake. The 1972 Clean Water Act prohibited dumping waste into streams and lakes. But […]
Pollution
Posted inJuly 25, 2005: The Many Faces of Richard Pombo
Tales of Colorado’s high-elevation tailings
In 1983, an anonymous caller warned Doc Smith that “his river would turn red.” Sure enough, the next day, the rancher and veterinarian watched toxic mining metals surge through the Arkansas River as it crossed his property. This wasn’t the first time: His grandfather had fought the effects of mining on his ranchlands and livestock […]
Posted inJune 27, 2005: Reflections on a Divided Land
Factory wants to squeeze cheese underground
A massive cheese factory, mired in controversy over water-quality violations, has innovative plans for its wastewater: It wants to pump the milky liquid deep underground. In December, the Sacramento Bee exposed wastewater disposal violations at Hilmar Cheese Company near Modesto, which produces over 1 million pounds of cheese every day. A subsequent state investigation into […]
Posted inMay 2, 2005: The Great Energy Divide
Colorado River kisses a toxic mess good-bye
A 12 million-ton relic of the Cold War willget hauled away from Moab
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
A chemical cocktail pollutes Western water
Traces of pharmaceuticals, pesticides, other compounds turn up in streams and wells
Posted inWotr
Requiem for Yucca Mountain
Without a miracle of some sort, it is all over. Yucca Mountain, the federal government’s choice for storing nuclear waste from Cold War-bomb production and power plants, will never open. The project that began with a congressional mandate 22 years ago seems perennially stalled, even though $8 billion has already been spent on everything from […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2005: An Empire Built on Sand
‘Safe dose’ of rocket fuel now larger
Perchlorate, a tasteless, colorless component of solid rocket fuel, has been detected in the drinking water of 26 states. Despite its toxicity, it is not yet regulated. However, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Water is considering new drinking water standards for the dangerous salt, following a recent National Academy of Sciences report. The EPA […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2005: An Empire Built on Sand
A leak-proof fuel tank? No such thing
Leaking diesel taints drinking water on the Idaho-Washington line
Posted inWotr
Libby tested environmentalists, who came up short
“Goofy logic” from “Ray Rong,” one critic charged. “The most ridiculous piece of journalism I have read,” said another. “Trash” and “rubbish,” said others. Those blasts came from angry environmentalists. They’re criticizing a piece of news analysis I wrote recently, about an environmental-health disaster in Libby, Mont. I intended it to be provocative. In that […]
Posted inJuly 19, 2004: They're Here: Global Warming's Unlikely Harbingers
Wanted: Leak-proof dumps
Until the 1980s, conventional wisdom held that Wyoming was so arid that landfills didn’t need liners to prevent leaks. As a result, at least 21 of the state’s currently operating and closed municipal landfills are now leaking dangerous chemicals, such as nitrates, chlorides, pesticides and dry-cleaning solvents, into groundwater. The number could be even higher; […]
Posted inJuly 19, 2004: They're Here: Global Warming's Unlikely Harbingers
Oceans need a sea change
It’s time to wake up and smell the salt water. According to a recent report from the United States Commission on Ocean Policy, America’s oceans are overfished, polluted and in desperate need of new management policies. After three years of study, the President Bush-appointed commission came up with more than 200 preliminary recommendations aimed at […]
Posted inWotr
Just push it
When I was 10 years old, my mother’s boyfriend had a push mower. Every weekend during the summer, he’d drag the rusty thing off the porch and shove it around our weedy lawn. It scraped, jammed on every twig and left dandelions still waving tall and insolent while he sweated and struggled to make muscles […]
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
Toxic chemical creeping toward Colorado River
CALIFORNIA, ARIZONA Chromium 6, the toxic element made infamous by the movie Erin Brockovich, is back in the news. In Southern California and central Arizona, water officials fear that the chemical might contaminate drinking water for some 20 million people, as it creeps toward the Colorado River from a pump station on a natural gas […]
Posted inMay 10, 2004: Shooting Spree
Report unearths the high cost of mining
If you drive a car, wear jewelry, or use a cell phone, you use the products of mineral mining. But mining for aluminum, gold, and other metals exacts a steep toll in damage to ecosystems and human health. A recent report from Earthworks and Oxfam America, Dirty Metals: Mining, Communities and the Environment, details the […]
Posted inMarch 29, 2004: Who Will Take Over the Ranch?
Asbestos beyond Libby city limits
Since Andrew Schneider and David McCumber broke the story of Libby, Mont., in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, what began as local news about miners and their families dying of asbestosis has mushroomed into a national health disaster. Now, in their new book, An Air That Kills, they expose the asbestos industry’s deadly impact on the lives […]
Posted inMarch 29, 2004: Who Will Take Over the Ranch?
California scores a goal for perchlorate cleanup
But will the public or the defense industry come out ahead?
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
Defense company turns from rockets to real estate
CALIFORNIA Aerospace and defense company GenCorp has big plans for a former rocket-testing site east of Sacramento: Turn part of it into a subdivision. The company wants to build offices, stores, and 3,800 houses and apartments in the 1,400-acre Easton development. The new development will cover more than a tenth of a 13,000-acre site where […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2003: Being Green in the Land of the Saints
Clean water changes could sully Western streambeds
Western rivers might be left high and dry — and polluted — if Bush administration officials push through a rule change to the Clean Water Act. In November, a senior government official leaked a draft of the proposed change to the Los Angeles Times. Under the new rule, the Clean Water Act would apply only […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
State picks up federal slack on perchlorate
In late September, outgoing California Gov. Gray Davis signed two bills into law to protect drinking water supplies from perchlorate, a toxic chemical used in rocket fuel and explosives (HCN, 4/28/03: Cold War toxin seeps into Western water). It could be 2008 before the federal Environmental Protection Agency sets a maximum contaminant level for perchlorate, […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
Mining companies slapped with half the bill for Superfund mess
Environmentalists, Coeur d’Alene Tribe members and government attorneys are doing victory jigs over a federal court ruling regarding a north Idaho Superfund site. Even the mining companies seem fairly pleased with the outcome this time. The Coeur d’Alene Tribe and the federal government have wrangled in court with two mining companies for over a decade, […]