People & Population

Will Safety Trump Secrecy in Oil-by-Rail?

Should firefighters and residents know whether trains loaded with explosive oil are routed through the heart of residential districts? Many railroads say no, claiming it is a security issue. But on June 18, 2014, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) dismissed that claim, saying that oil train routing was not sensitive security information. Yet the railroads are fighting back.

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"Canada's Indigenous: 'We Are the Wall' That the Pipeline Cannot Pass"

"First Nations groups have vowed to fight the Canadian government’s approval of a planned pipeline with lawsuits and direct action. They say Tuesday’s decision violates their constitutional rights because the government failed to consult tribal bands, the basic units of government for First Nations in Canada."

Source: Aljazeera America, 06/20/2014

"Robert Bullard: The Father of Environmental Justice"

"As a sociologist in the 1970s, Robert Bullard made a dismaying discovery: Houston landfills and incinerators were far more likely to be located in communities of color than in white neighborhoods, even though blacks made up just one-fourth of the city’s population. That realization launched a lifetime of environmental justice work, including leadership in convening the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit and framing the landmark 17 Principles of Environmental Justice in 1991, bringing environmental justice to the fore at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and catalyzing creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Justice."

Source: Ensia, 06/16/2014

As Obama Visits Indian Reservation, Past U.S. Betrayals Loom

"CANNON BALL, N.D. — This isolated town nestled in the undulating prairie of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Nation is so small, its only formal sign is a boulder spray-painted with 'C. Ball.' But Friday afternoon, it briefly became the center of the American political world when President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama visited."

Source: Wash Post, 06/16/2014

Ashtracker Database Helps Journos Dig Up Stories on Coal Ash Problems

Local reporters can find information about coal-ash situations in their own areas using a newly improved database compiled by the Environmental Integrity Project which goes well beyond anything previously available because it includes large amounts of painstaking research by EIP. The site is important for its focus on contamination of groundwater that people may drink by the toxic heavy metals in coal combustion wastes.

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Special Edition TipSheet: Coastal Risk and Resilience in the Gulf Region

From 1970 until 2010, 34.8 million more people decided to move towards the coast of the United States and that population is expected to grow just as sea-level rise and climate change continue to increase the risk of living there. Amy Wold, a reporter with The Advocate in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, covers change and adaptation; locks and floodgates; levees and marshes; communities at risk; insurance issues; and lessons learned. Photo (click to enlarge): In 2012, Wold took this shot of the rapidly disappearing Cat Island in Barataria Basin in south Louisiana. She returned there in 2014 to find barely any land left above water. © Amy Wold, The (Baton Rouge) Advocate.

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