"On Sunday morning, hundreds of thousands of pounds of toxic gas were accidentally released from the Shell Oil facility in Deer Park [Texas]."
Abrahm Lustgarten (left) wrote a nine-part series delving into farm subsidies and water policy. But his efforts to get the actual names of farm subsidy recipients or individual water users were largely thwarted. Read how info flows less quickly to the public than money and water flow to farmers in SPJ's FOI blog. Photo credit: Lars Klove.
"Oklahoma regulators are imposing new restrictions on energy companies injecting wastewater underground, in the latest effort to stem a sharp increase in earthquakes."
"To comply or not to comply. That’s the question now facing Texas officials regarding the Obama administration’s ambitious Clean Power Plan. The sweeping regulatory initiative, unveiled [Monday] in its final form, aims at transforming the nation’s electricity-production system to slash emissions of climate-disrupting air pollution."
"Several earthquakes shook Oklahoma on Monday as the state experiences a sharp increase in the frequency of tremors linked to wastewater disposal from gas and oil drilling, including from fracking, state and federal officials said."
"Scores of Native American demonstrators protested at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday against a proposed $6 billion copper mine in Arizona at a site that members of the Apache tribe say is sacred."
"A dirt trail shaded by ponderosa pines drops down the slope of this small canyon below the Los Alamos Nature Center and a recreation center. The canyon became a dumping ground during the Manhattan Project. Old pipes, washing machines, culverts and other debris from the era were tossed into the canyon by nearby homeowners and Los Alamos National Laboratory staff."
"Kyle Tisdel and Samantha Ruscavage-Barz sift through rocks beside a dusty road in New Mexico's high desert, searching for remnants of life a thousand years past. With the nearest meager town of Cuba an hour away, they're off the beaten path by any standard. But to them, these dirt roads surrounding Chaco Canyon are the front lines of a monumental battle pitting ancient Pueblo culture against the modern world's thirst for oil."
New projections put sea-level rise from climate change as high as six meters (20 feet). A mapping tool from the independent research organization Climate Central shows such a rise "are striking, to say the least – the inundation of Galveston, Matagorda and Padre islands, along with cities such as Port Arthur, part of Beaumont, Galveston, Texas City, the Freeport-Lake Jackson area and part of Corpus Christi."
"Honda has earned a new Guinness World Record for fuel efficiency. In a 25 day drive across all of the European Union’s contiguous countries, a Honda Civic Tourer 1.6 i-DTEC diesel averaged 2.82 liters per 100km (100.31 miles per gallon)."
