By Richard Denison Yesterday marked exactly a month since what is now said to be 10,000 gallons of “crude MCHM”—mixed with what was later found to have included other chemicals—spilled into West Virginia’s Elk River, contaminated 1,700 miles of piping in the water distribution system for nine counties, and disrupted the lives of hundreds of […]
By Matt Wasson It took a few days after a state of emergency was declared across nine West Virginia counties—and one-sixth of the state’s population was told not to drink or bathe using their tap water—for the national news media to discover a story of national importance occurring in the political backwaters of Appalachia. Filings by the West Virginia […]
The Neuse Riverkeeper Foundation and Waterkeeper Alliance issued a Notice of Intent to sue the current and former owners and operators of the Stilley swine feeding operation this week to stop illegal discharges of swine waste into groundwater, wetlands and streams that flow to the Trent River. [slideshow_deploy id=’346814′] The Stilley Facility, which confines more […]
A major Antarctic ice mass, the Pine Island Glacier, is melting irreversibly and could add as much as a centimeter to global sea level rise over the next 20 years alone, according to new research published in Nature Climate Change. Ice flow velocities at the surface of Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica. Regions in red […]
By Kiley Kroh Residents of nine counties in West Virginia have been told not to use or drink their water after a chemical used by the coal industry spilled into the Elk River on Thursday. Gov. Tomblin (D-WV) declared a state of emergency as more than 100,000 customers, or 300,000 people, are without safe drinking water. The […]
By Brian Bienkowski As winter sets in across the northern U.S., the road salt that keeps people out of ditches is flowing into rivers at levels that could harm fish and other creatures. With billions of pounds of salt spread on U.S. roads every year, waterways in the nation’s wintry cities are getting saltier. And, […]
Bottlenose dolphins in Louisiana’s Barataria Bay have lung damage and adrenal hormone abnormalities not previously seen in other dolphin populations, according to a new peer-reviewed study published today in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. The Deepwater Horizon spill heavily oiled Barataria Bay. The study was conducted in August 2011 as part of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) by […]
Will a death toll of 900,000 be the body count it takes for the public to finally say enough, already? Or will it also take another set of grisly photographs of maimed bodies, deformed skulls, misshapen mouths and twisted spines? The breaking news out of Wilmington, NC today has both. Unfortunately, this latest episode is […]
By Brian Bienkowski Only about half of the prescription drugs and other newly emerging contaminants in sewage are removed by treatment plants. That’s the finding of a new report by the International Joint Commission (IJC), a consortium of officials from the U.S. and Canada who study the Great Lakes. The impact of most of these “chemicals of […]