Waste

"They’re our dirty little forgotten secret: the city’s 161 closed garbage dumps. Forty one of them are still active, spewing gases and discharging a toxic slurry into sewers and waterways. City staff say we shouldn’t be worried, even while reserve funds to maintain the sites have been emptied in Rob Ford’s budget juggling. Truth is, our track record isn’t very good when it comes to putting these oozing mounds to bed."

After a December 2008 spill of toxic coal ash at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston plant, EPA vowed to bring the ubiquitous waste under regulation. First, industry got to the Obama White House to sandbag the effort. Now, GOP lawmakers heavily funded by electric utilities have slipped a rider into the House stopgap spending bill to quash EPA's effort to protect the public altogether.

"Sewage-filled tanker trucks have dumped 153 million gallons of human waste and restaurant grease at a Pelion disposal site that lies in one of the most vulnerable areas for groundwater pollution in South Carolina."

"Two southwestern Pennsylvania fly ash disposal sites are among 28 such sites in 17 states that have contaminated groundwater by leaking toxic, cancer-causing hexavalent chromium, according to a new report by Earthjustice and two other environmental groups."

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday a new study by the largest toxic waste dump in the West showed its level of cancer-causing chemicals was too low to harm the health of a nearby community where an unusually high number of babies have been born with serious birth defects."

"State environmental officials approved new coal-ash landfill in southeast Baltimore Tuesday, saying "state-of-the-art" pollution controls there should allay nearby residents' fears that the power plant waste will blow into their neighborhoods and leak into the Patapsco River."

"The state of Minnesota is suing 3M Co. over its disposal of chemicals previously used to make Scotchgard and other products."