By WILLIAM DIETRICH
We're midway through an academic quarter at Western Washington University's Planet magazine, and it's time for second-draft panic.
The spring of 2009 is our student environmental magazine's 30th Anniversary, and we've got stories with no point, stories with gaping holes, stories that ignore AP style, stories with no lead, stories that stop instead of end, stories with no pictures, and pictures with no stories.
"An international fisheries group set up to protect Atlantic tuna has done the opposite and driven one species of the fish, the bluefin, to the edge of extinction, environmentalists said Thursday."
"Rapid changes already underway to the Earth's climate, ecosystems and land cover threaten the health of billions, undermining key human life-support systems and threatening the core foundations of healthy communities worldwide, according to a new report released Wednesday."
"Over the last century, the intensive use of chemical fertilizers has saturated the Earth’s soils, waters, and atmosphere with nitrogen. Now scientists are warning that we must move quickly to revolutionize agricultural systems and greatly reduce the amount of nitrogen we put into the planet's ecosystems."
"Hundreds of gasoline spills, which contain carcinogens like benzene, are reported each year in Nassau and Suffolk counties. Countless others go unreported or unnoticed. Cleaning them up can run into the millions and take decades to complete."
"Federal officials said Wednesday they have given marching orders to Maryland and other states that drain into the Chesapeake Bay to come up with detailed plans for reducing pollution plaguing the estuary, warning that states face development shutdowns or other as-yet unstated consequences if the water fails to get cleaner."
"As many as 25 percent of the American farmers growing genetically engineered corn are no longer complying with federal rules intended to maintain the resistance of the crops to damage from insects, according to a report Thursday from an advocacy group."
Within weeks, Minnesota state agencies will be releasing a study on the safety of atrazine, a weedkiller widely used by corn growers. The Minnesota results will come as the U.S. EPA undertakes yet another review of its own.
"The Environmental Protection Agency will set new nationwide emission standards for makers of polyvinyl chloride, commonly known as the plastic PVC, under a settlement with environmental groups announced Thursday."
"Nearly two-thirds of the coal-ash dams across West Virginia might need repairs, and a quarter of them are ranked as being in poor or unsatisfactory condition, according to a report released Thursday by the state Department of Environmental Protection."
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