"One of the nation’s biggest coal companies will pay a record civil penalty and will spend tens of millions of dollars to clean up water flowing from mines in five states, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department announced on Wednesday."
"On Thursday, a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation subcommittee will hold a hearing on rail safety, taking a specific look at the recent accidents plaguing states like North Dakota, home to the Bakken formation, which produces crude oil."
"Since the 1990s, a vast body of research has linked BPA and other chemicals found in plastics to serious health problems, ranging from cancer to infertility. But the industry—often using tactics pioneered by Big Tobacco as it sought to bury evidence about the health risks of smoking—has managed to shield these substances from federal regulation. How did Big Plastic bring regulators to heel?"
"Three environmental and public health groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday, seeking to press it to move forward with rules that would require public disclosure of certain pesticide ingredients."
Congress funds and orders up a great array of non-partisan expert explainers on the issues of the day via the Congressional Research Service. Unfortunately, Congress does not think the voting public can handle the truth, and keeps the reports secret. We thank the anonymous leakers who give them to the Project on Government Secrecy.
We all know it. Some agencies and organizations publish data in PDF format to keep journalists and the public from using the raw data. Take heart. Help is on the way with one easy software tool — Tabula.
Journalism and open-government groups will mount a host of special projects and forums March 16-22, 2014, to pry loose the secrets of a government that is supposed to be accountable to the public. Here are some key links and events.
Don't polish your glasses — you read it right. Bipartisan. By a vote of 410-0. The bill makes several modest improvements in the Freedom of Information Act; it should strengthen the presumption in favor of disclosure of government records, authorize a central tracking system for FOIA requests and strengthen the role of the Office of Government Information Services.
"A worker at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station gives his eyewitness account of what happened there on March 11, 2011, in the immediate wake of a massive earthquake and tsunami that caused three of the station’s reactor cores to melt."
"House Republicans are being accused of 'environmental racism' by an environmental group that argues GOP efforts to reform decades-old chemical laws would disproportionately harm minority groups."
