Environmental News Archive
Lost in the uproar over silica sand mining is a serious threat to Minnesota’s environmental-review procedures with potentially far-reaching implications. And it appears no one in state government or our congressional delegation is taking this threat seriously.
In the historic Mississippi River town of Wabasha, a clever and aggressive Canadian sand company found a way to flout Minnesota’s environmental-review measures. They leased land from a railroad and then claimed exemption from state and local review, using the railroad’s federal right of pre-emption over state and local zoning laws. This longstanding privilege basically says that state and local governments cannot restrict a railroad’s right to operate in interstate commerce.
Climate change may have reached the point of no return last month.
The Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it has noted a rise in radioactive tritium in sea water within the port at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Elevated levels of methane and other stray gases have been found in drinking water near natural gas wells in Pennsylvania's gas-rich Marcellus shale region, according to new research. In the case of methane, concentrations were six times higher in some drinking water found within one kilometer of drilling operations.
An anti-fracking demonstration attracted more than 2,000 activists to the eastern side of the Capitol at midday Monday. Pop singer Natalie Merchant led members of the crowd in a rewritten rendition of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land."
Much has been made of the recently announced Center for Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD), a Pittsburgh-based partnership between 11 fracking companies and non-profit groups. The CSSD bills itself as a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for the gas industry, putting forward a set of 15 standards for fracking and certifying drillers that voluntarily comply with those standards.
