Tagwater pollution

Why does W. Va. want MORE toxic water pollution?

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It wasn’t that long ago when the issue of water pollution in West Virginia was front-page national news. You may remember the incident that happened just over three years ago, in January 2014, involving a company called Freedom Industries. To paraphrase the old Janice Joplin song, “freedom” was just another word, in this case, for corporate neglect. A holding tank filled with...

Fracking spills are worse than they want you to know

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One fact has remained pretty constant since the fracking boom in America began back in the 2000s: Almost any environmental problem has turned out to be worse than the oil-and-gas industry and government regulators want the public to know. When it comes to polluting the wells of people who live near fracking rigs, the industry clings to its story line that fracking can’t possibly pollute the...

America’s water crisis slams a small La. town

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America’s crisis over the lack of safe drinking water feels like it’s spiraling out of control these days. It was just a couple of days ago that I told you about an emergency in Corpus Christi, Texas, where shoddy practices by a local Big Oil subsidiary had caused gallons of a highly toxic, carcinogenic chemical to back up into the Gulf Coast city’s main water supply. The crisis...

Corpus Christi is America’s newest Flint

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The name of the Texas coastal community called Corpus Christi translates literally as “the body of Christ.” But what’s been happening over the last few days with the water in this oil-and-chemical city and its drinking water has been anything but holy. Instead, Corpus Christi is joining the growing list of American cities whose tap water has been compromised, either from aging...

EPA comes out with the truth on fracking and drinking water

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It was just a year and a half ago that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency came out with its first draft of a much-anticipated report about the impact that the boom in hydraulic fracking operations, or fracking, around the country was having on our drinking water. Environmentalists had encouraged such a study because the anecdotal evidence — people living near fracking rigs who...

Shocker: The EPA’s plan to let you drink radioactive water

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The world not long ago marked the 5th anniversary of the Fukushima reactor meltdown in Japan — an ongoing nuclear crisis that may not be cleaned up for decades, and even that may be optimistic. Lingering high radiation levels mean that swaths of northern Japan remain uninhabitable — unsafe to eat local food, breathe the air, or drink the water. To many, the 2011 Fukushima tragedy...

Is this America’s next Flint?

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America’s drinking water is under assault — from careless dumping of hazardous wastes to the lead pollution caused by our ancient infrastructure. Yet rarely do these tales of governmental neglect or industrial abuses make it onto the national radar screen. The Flint, Michigan, lead pollution story was different — a “perfect storm” that combined race, the poisoning of...

Who is to blame for Flint’s water crisis?

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The situation in Flint, Michigan — the beaten-down industrial city where poor residents were essentially force-fed toxic drinking water for nearly two years — keeps getting worse and worse. In addition to elevated lead levels in a growing number of Flint’s children — a situation that can lead to permanent brain damage — there are concerns that dozens of cases of...

The reckless disregard for the people of Flint, Michigan

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Over the course of a career as an environmental lawyer, with a focus on energy-related issues, I’ve seen a lot of changes. There have been oil booms and oil busts, especially in my home state of Louisiana. Coal, nuclear, natural gas have fallen out of favor, only to come back and then in some cases fall out of favor again. Some elected officials take a slightly more active approach in...

The most damning indictment of fracking yet

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There has been a wave of scientific research lately on fracking and its environmental risks. Some of that work has emerged from the governmental agencies that regulate unconventional drilling for oil and gas, including the recent, highly publicized report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on the effects of fracking on drinking-water safety. The problem, of course, with government...

Stuart H. Smith is an attorney based in New Orleans fighting major oil companies and other polluters.
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