Do Hydrogen Cyanide Leaks Show Weakness of Current Regs? The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will set up its microphones for an all day hearing Tuesday in Galena Park, a community on Houston’s east side in the heart of the enormous Houston Ship Channel refinery complex. It’s the second of two such hearings with the [...]
The world is warming, and there’s heated debate over what to do about it, or if it’s even warming at all. (Hint: It is.) Amidst this debate, some opponents of government regulations and environmental policy have taken up protest by retrofitting their diesel trucks to spew billowing clouds of black, noxious smoke. When the soot gets [...]
Federal agencies announced Wednesday that Shell Oil has agreed to pay $115 million to install pollution controls at their refinery and chemical plant in Deer Park, Texas to resolve alleged violations of the Clean Air Act. On top of that, the company will pay a $2.6 million civil penalty, and spend another million installing a [...]
In the war on air pollution in Texas’s smoggiest cities, investigators say the state has slashed their funding even as they continue to find illegal vehicle inspection operations thriving in their communities. “Hundreds of thousands of vehicles have fraudulent inspection stickers on them right now,” said Lt. Eddie Hazel who heads an emissions fraud task [...]
We’ve come a long way since the days when kids played in clouds of DDT, gas stations sold leaded gasoline, and smoking near youngsters was commonplace. America has made great strides since the 1970s in reducing toxins in the environment that cause health issues in children, according to a new edition of the EPA report, [...]
Citing “the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and more powerful storms” President Barack Obama put tackling climate change on a list of goals for his second presidential term today. In an inaugural speech that served to set an agenda for the next four years, the president said that failure to respond to [...]
No one likes turning forty, but today the Clean Water Act is celebrating its birthday. On October 18, 1972 the act was signed into law by Congress. Before the Clean Water Act, two-thirds of waterways were deemed unsafe for fishing and swimming, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In a look back at the act [...]
Last week, a Travis County district judge ruled in favor of a bunch of kids suing the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Three environmentally-minded minors and a young adult argued that Texas’ air should be protected under the public trust doctrine much like Texas’ water, and the Judge agreed. In 2011, the youths drafted a [...]
One environmental group believes that the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) needs something more than just a chimney sweep to clean up its act. LCRA was served with a notice of intent to sue last week by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP), representing the Texas Campaign for the Environment. The environmental group’s notice of intent [...]
The winds of change are cleaner than usual in Texas’ biggest metropolitan area. According to the American Lung Association’s annual State of the Air 2012 report, Houston’s air quality index has improved slightly from last year, marking the best levels ever recorded in the city since the association first began following them thirteen years ago. The association [...]
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