If you live near the Atlantic Ocean — and millions of Americans do, along the most densely populated stretch of the nation — then you know the coastal flooding is always in the background. When a big storm like a Nor’easter barrels its way up the Eastern Seaboard, cities from Miami Beach all the way up to Maine can expect some beach erosion and possibly a couple feet of water...
One of the more fantastic experiences that I’ve enjoyed in my lifetime was an opportunity, several years ago, to scuba dive along Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. This is truly one of the world’s great natural splendors; it is the largest living thing on Planet Earth, stretching some 900 miles, and it is also much larger than anything that humans have ever constructed. Chock full...
I’ve written on this site about problems in what the locals in Louisiana call “Cancer Alley” — the massive petrochemical facilities that mostly line the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. For decades, this industrialized corridor has reflected the push and the pull between Louisiana’s desperate need for well-paying blue-collar jobs and...
It’s been going on for decades — poor towns in the Deep South, often with a predominantly black population — getting dumped on, whether it’s by Big Oil or by chemical plants or by toxic-waste disposal firms. Many of my earliest cases as an environmental lawyer were in these off-the-beaten track places such as Brookhaven, Mississippi or Martha, Kentucky, where oil companies...
In more than a quarter century as an environmental lawyer, I’ve learned a lot about the mostly ineffective ways that government regulators do their jobs — and that learning curve definitely accelerated in those first few months after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Time and time again, I — and others in the environmental community here in Louisiana — watched in those...
Labor Day weekend hasn’t been a holiday from fear along the East Coast — especially at the Jersey Shore, which is normally booming with tourists from the traditional end of summer vacation. As I write this, Tropical Storm Hermine is strengthening into a hurricane — just as it was when it battered central Florida on its meandering journey northward — and threatening to lash...
It’s almost starting to become a cliche in 2016: That this poor community or that city is poised to become “the new Flint.” It’s not surprising that such a stunning case of governmental malfeasance — allowing residents of a mid-sized, economically challenged community to drink corrosive lead-poisoned water for nearly two years — would become the new low...
Not that long ago, I mentioned in a blog post that the New York Times had found strands of evidence — common law firms, similar lobbying and political strategies and the like — suggesting that two of our most notorious industries may have worked more closely together than anyone could have imagined. At first blush, the idea that lobbyists and key executives for these two so-called...
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...
There was a rare, positive development in the ongoing saga of Flint’s corrosive water supply and the lead poisoning of residents in the Michigan city — and hopefully it’s the first step toward something much more meaningful. The events that have transpired in Flint since early 2014, when cost-cutting state officials engineered a switch to that abrasive water from the Flint River...
