Today’s Essential Reads
FRACKING:
At around 774 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of estimated recoverable reserves, it is likely to have the world’s third-biggest reserves in unconventional gas behind China and the US, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).
Pennsylvania Law on Fracking Chemicals Worries Doctors
Natural gas companies must tell health professionals what they use in drilling, but a required confidentiality agreement might leave physicians on shaky legal ground.
Steve Israel: Big Anti-Fracking Week Likely in Sullivan
By this time next week, the Town of Bethel won’t only be known as the host of the 1969 Woodstock festival — and the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts at that Woodstock site. It should become the largest Sullivan County town to ban gas drilling.
Gas Fracking Sparks Scare in Rural US
After the drilling began on Terry Greenwood’s farm, he says, “the water went bad — it looked like iced tea.”
BP OIL SPILL:
Gulf Oil Spill Anniversary: BP Disaster’s Impact On Children Still Debated
Julie Creppel raises six children here, steps away from the lapping waves of the Gulf of Mexico. Her modest mobile home, on a narrow peninsula roughly an hour and a half south of New Orleans, puts her about as close as anyone to where, two years ago today, a BP offshore drilling operation went terribly wrong, spewing 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf’s constant saltwater churn.
Restore Act May Be Threatened by Amendments
Some environmental groups are criticizing House Republicans for adding amendments to a transportation bill that would force approval of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline and block new federal coal-ash regulations. The “poison pill” amendments, the group says, threaten passage of not only a bill providing funding for key transportation projects but also jeopardizes congressional action on legislation to send 80 percent of Clean Water Act fines from the 2010 BP oil spill to the five Gulf states, including Louisiana.
BP Spill Fight Looms With Feds, Despite Settlement Of Private Claims
BP has finalized a $7.8 billion settlement with more than 100,000 businesses and individuals harmed by the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, just days before the second anniversary of the rig explosion that triggered one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history, the company said Wednesday.
Two Years After the BP Spill, Gulf Oysters Are Full Of Heavy Metals
On the second anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, evidence of the spill’s ongoing impacts on Gulf people and ecosystems continues to mount. As if eyeless shrimp, toxic beaches, and dead dolphins weren’t bad enough, a new study suggests that Gulf oysters are also in trouble.
RADIATION:
Tomioka Plans to Create Temporary Towns to Encourage Residents’ Return
The town government of Tomioka, Fukushima Prefecture, which is located entirely within the no-entry zone around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, plans to create three “temporary Tomiokas” for evacuated residents, it has been learned.
