"A Senate subcommittee on investigations will hold a two-day hearing when Congress returns from recess on Wall Street banks' involvement with physical commodities like oil, natural gas and metals."
"A panel of federal appeals court judges in New Orleans has refused to reconsider a ruling that BP and Andarko Petroleum Corp. must pay federal fines related to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil disaster."
"Bad news in the bug department: The emerald ash borer, a tiny, glitter-green insect from China expected to kill virtually all ash trees in the eastern U.S. - unless they are treated with expensive chemicals - may have a new target."
Here's an idea: let people know where 100-car trainloads of crude oil might be threatening their safety. After the July 2013 Lac-Mégantic disaster that killed 47, people might want to know about this. And the Federal Railroad Administration officially agrees — saying railroads can't hide this information. Now the Association of Washington Cities has an online map for that.
Yes, the pipeline is publicly regulated. Yes, the March 2013 rupture of Exxon's Pegasus Pipeline in Mayflower, Arkansas, quite publicly polluted people's yards and homes. Yes, it is publicly known that there were defects and poor maintenance on the pipeline. But 900,000 pages of documents that might show Exxon's neglect are being claimed as "confidential" by the company as it tries to defend against a class-action lawsuit.
After Katrina, Louisiana may have hit the national spotlight for a time, but coastal communities elsewhere around the country will have to find their own answers to the question “Why does anyone still live there in harm’s way?” — even as more and more people move toward the coast and the water moves ever closer to them.
"Two years ago, Superstorm Sandy devastated the northeastern United States, killing more than 70 people, causing $60 billion in damage and exposing major gaps in federal disaster preparedness and response. But there has been little movement in Congress to change policies to prepare the country for future disasters."
"Federal regulators secretly and illegally revised the license for California’s last nuclear power facility — PG&E’s Diablo Canyon — to mask the aging plant’s vulnerability to earthquakes, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by environmentalists."
"A pipeline carrying condensate, a toxic substance produced during natural gas and oil processing, caught fire in eastern Ohio early this morning."
"Thirty years after the world’s most dangerous chemical plant disaster, we’re not much safer."
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