Blogs

This is a first in a weekly series of personal stories from farm and agricultural workers, illustrating the need for stronger worker and safety protections against pesticide exposure. To get beyond the statistics of 10,000–20,000 pesticide poisonings on farms a year in this country, we go to the frontlines, beginning in California.

California’s energy storage market is showing just how regulation can encourage innovation. Last year, California’s Public Utilities Commission set the nation’s first large-scale energy storage procurement targets, over the initial opposition of the state’s three largest utilities. Now, a year later, the targets are in place and the utilities are actively working to meet them, invigorating California’s energy storage market in the process.

Sometime after midnight, the White House made it official—its review of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) coal ash rule has begun. The quiet posting of the rule by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) sets in motion OMB’s official regulatory review pursuant to a 1993 executive order.

Last month, I toured a scrap recycling facility as part of a weeklong conference put on by the Society of Environmental Journalists in New Orleans, Louisiana. As an Earthjustice employee who has written before about recycling’s dark side, I was curious to hear the industry’s take on the health impact of scrap recycling.

River herring spend most of their lives in the Atlantic Ocean. They are anadromous fish species, which means they return to spawn in coastal rivers in the spring. But these small fish are in big trouble. Based on analysis by the National Marine Fisheries Service, their populations have declined more than 98 percent from their historic level.

Autumn’s beauty was on full display in Colorado’s aspen forests late last month.

So was the Obama administration’s schizophrenic approach to climate and public lands policy.

In late September, I was fortunate enough to spend a day each hiking through two roadless areas—Pilot Knob and Sunset—managed by the Gunnison National Forest.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska has paved the way for better monitoring of high-impact trawl boats in the North Pacific, ruling that the National Marine Fisheries Service violated the law when it restructured the observer program for the groundfish fisheries.

We’re on the eve of what could be a disastrous vote by the Port of Los Angeles.

There’s something in the air, and Kevin Hamilton knows it all too well. A respiratory therapist in the San Joaquin Valley, Hamilton has watched his patients and his family struggle with the effects of fine particle and ozone pollution for decades.

“They are convinced the air quality is affecting their health and so am I,” he said. “Their asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases are acting up more.”