"Offshore oil derricks dotting the California coastline continue pumping despite a history of catastrophic spills and vows from generations of politicians to send them to the scrapheap. They’ve even survived a modest attempt by state officials more than a decade ago to offer incentives to oil companies that chose to abandon their costly operations."
"Billions of these tiny plastic pellets are floating in the ocean, causing as much damage as oil spills, yet they are still not classified as hazardous".
"The EPA can shield some records regarding a former official’s role in pesticide policymaking from a conservation group, a divided Second Circuit ruled Monday. Messages between staff about how the agency should communicate its policies are protected by the deliberative process privilege, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit."
"At least a third of the scientists and staff at EPA’s specialized forensics lab have quit or retired over the past five years, an exodus that threatens the unit’s central role in solving some of the nation’s most difficult environmental crimes."
"The Biden administration’s oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico last week doesn’t just lock in decades of future drilling and greenhouse gas emissions, it also opens up more extraction in an area where chemical companies dumped tons of hazardous industrial waste."
"A smelting company has poisoned rivers, killed off boreal forest and belched out more sulfur dioxide than active volcanoes. Now it wants to produce more metal for the “green economy.”"
"ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST PARISH, La. — As white smoke wafted from a massive oil and gas refinery that sits near his backyard, Michael Coleman reminisced about the sweet days of his childhood, before sugar cane fields that stretched for miles were sold and replaced by chemical companies that wiped out the “nice little community we had here.”
"A $9 billion highway widening project being proposed in the Houston area could become an important test of the Biden administration’s commitment to addressing what it has said is a history of racial inequity with infrastructure projects in the U.S."
"The department recommended higher fees for oil and gas leases, but there was no sign the government planned to take global warming into account when weighing new applications."
The history of environmental racism is a long one in the United States, far longer than the efforts to address the problem. But reporting on environmental justice continues to tick upwards, and an analysis in the latest Backgrounder points to promising progress, explaining why for journalists the year ahead may yield important stories, whether about future footholds or new missteps.
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