Holding
out the prospect of
vast new domestic reserves, the natural gas industry is promising to
make the United
States
an energy-rich nation once again. But we should be careful what we wish
for.
Spending those riches could endanger water supplies for millions of
Americans
while still failing to solve the climate crisis.
Aerial photographs of land
surrounding the millennium pipeline north of Sullivan County, NY show sweeping
tracts of largely unspoiled forest. They are ecologically important for several
species including neo-tropical migrant birds that travel from South America to
breeding habitats in the northern latitudes, bald eagles, and the endangered
timber rattlesnake.
On October 15th, La Mesa Nacional Frente a La Minería Metálica en El Salvador, also known as El Salvador's National Roundtable on Mining, won the
Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award awarded by the Institute for Policy Studies for their fight against mining in El Salvador.
As the international community's attention is fixed on the coup and crisis in Honduras, another Central American country fights the constraints and inequalities caused by flawed free trade agreements between the United States and the hemisphere.
ACOMA,
NEW MEXICO-On the Navajo Nation, almost everyone you talk to either
worked in uranium mines themselves or had fathers or husbands who did.
Almost everyone also has multiple stories of loved ones dying young
from cancer, kidney disease and other ailments attributed to uranium
poisoning.
The
effects aren't limited to uranium miners and millers; whole families
are usually affected as women washed their husbands' contaminated
clothes, kids played amidst mine waste and families even built homes
out of radioactive uranium tailings.
WASHINGTON- Activists asked cell phone users
to stop texting for one hour on Wednesday -- not to save energy or focus on
the road, but to call attention to one of the deadliest and most
underreported conflicts in the world.
What's the Story?
The British mining corporation Monterrico's plan was to create Peru's second largest copper mine at Rio Blanco, a vast site in the Huancabamba mountains in the north-west of the country.
Peru
is already the world's third-largest copper-producing nation, and the
mine in the province of Piura was to have increased output by around a
quarter, producing exports worth up to $1bn (£600m) a year for the next
20 years.
When the Environmental Protection Agency declared this year on September 11 that all pending mountaintop removal mining permits in four Appalachian states stood in violation of the Clean Water Act and required further review, Lora Webb didn't have time to join in any celebrations. As she and her husband, Steve, a coal miner, packed up their possessions and left his family's ancestral property outside Lindytown, West Virginia, Lora was more concerned about finding a place to sleep that night.
A federal judge is expected to hear arguments Friday detailing why environmental activist Timothy DeChristopher should be allowed or prohibited from presenting evidence he acted out of "necessity" when he deliberately bid on and won oil and gas leases he couldn't pay for as part of a protest.
The December disruption of the Bureau of Land Management auction in Salt Lake City led to an indictment on two criminal charges against DeChristopher - violation of the federal oil and gas leasing reform act and providing a false statement.
Residents of Treece moved a step closer to being moved out of their lead-polluted town Thursday when the U.S. Senate approved an amendment to allow the Environmental Protection Agency to buy out and shut down the community.
The amendment was attached to the Interior and Environment Appropriations Act by Sens. Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback, both R-Kan., and James Inhofe, R-Okla.
The bill passed the Senate on Thursday evening.
The Treece amendment "represents one of the rare instances of true bipartisan support," Roberts said.
A planned Canadian-owned uranium mine near the Grand Canyon is being targeted in a lawsuit launched by three U.S. environmental groups that claim the project threatens four at-risk species of fish and an endangered songbird that inhabit the iconic Arizona park.
The president of Toronto-based Denison Mines told Canwest News Service that the legal action has the company "looking at what the potential ramifications might be," but insists the mine poses no harm to the famed natural wonder or its animal residents.
