Appeals Court Reverses Limits on Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining
RICHMOND, Virginia, February 17, 2009 (ENS) – A federal appeals court Friday reversed a lower court ruling that limited the controversial coal mining practice called mountaintop removal. In mountaintop removal coal operations, the peaks of mountains are blasted away with explosives to expose coal seams and the waste materials are dumped into streams, causing what [...]
Read More »Rapanos Will Pay for Clean Water Act Violations
DETROIT, Michigan, December 30, 2008 (ENS) – In long-running case that affects the scope of federal jurisdiction over wetlands and other waters, developer John Rapanos and related defendants agreed Monday to resolve violations of the Clean Water Act at three sites in Midland and Bay counties, Michigan. Rapanos has agreed to pay a $150,000 civil [...]
Read More »Bush Administration Covered Up 500+ Blocked Water Pollution Cases
WASHINGTON, DC, December 16, 2008 (ENS) – The results of a Congressional investigation released today detail the collapse of the Clean Water Act enforcement program in the wake of a Supreme Court decision that clouded the question of whether rivers, streams and wetlands remain protected from pollution and development. The report reveals more than 500 [...]
Read More »Feds Pump $1 Million More into Tamiami Trail Planning
WASHINGTON, DC, December 12, 2008 (ENS) – The National Park Service will provide $1 million to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to evaluate the next course of action needed along the Tamiami Trail to restore water flows to Everglades National Park, federal officials announced today. Completed in 1928, the Tamiami (pronounced tamee-amee) Trail is [...]
Read More »Arizona Developer Fined $1M for Altering Santa Cruz River
PHOENIX, Arizona, October 13, 2008 (ENS) – An Arizona land developer and a contractor have agreed to pay one of the largest fines in the history of the U.S. EPA to settle alleged violations of the Clean Water Act for bulldozing, filling, and diverting five miles of the Santa Cruz River, a major waterway in [...]
Read More »Texas Starts on the Long Road to Recovery
AUSTIN, Texas, September 16, 2008 (ENS) – President George W. Bush and Texas Governor Rick Perry visited Houston and Galveston today to survey areas devastated by last weekend’s Hurricane Ike. A former Texas governor, Bush flew over Galveston, where the airport is still not functional and many homes and businesses were destroyed when the storm [...]
Read More »EPA Kills Controversial Yazoo Pumps Flood Control Project
WASHINGTON, DC September 3, 2008 (ENS) – The Yazoo Pumps Project, proposed to drain wetlands in the Mississippi Delta for flood control, will not be built. On Tuesday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced its final decision under the Clean Water Act to prohibit construction of the project first proposed by the U.S. Army Corps [...]
Read More »Ohio Permits Clean Coal Plant to Impact Streams, Wetlands
COLUMBUS, Ohio, July 31, 2008 (ENS) – The Ohio EPA has issued a water quality certification to Ohio River Clean Fuels, LLC for a proposed coal-to-liquid fuels plant in Columbiana and Jefferson counties. The water quality certification to impact wetlands and streams is the first of three major state environmental permits Ohio River Clean Fuels [...]
Read More »Warming Climate Adds to U.S. Flood Fears
WASHINGTON, DC, July 2, 2008 (ENS) – Climate change will bring an increase in severe storms like the ones responsible for the devastating floods plaguing the U.S. Midwest, experts warned Tuesday. But current government flood forecasts and insurance programs do not consider the effects of global warming, leaving Midwest residents with an incomplete assessment of [...]
Read More »USGS Offers New Emergency Backup for Flood Forecast Data
WASHINGTON, DC, June 4, 2008 (ENS) – The U.S. Geological Survey, USGS, is better prepared to help protect the public this hurricane season than in the past by ensuring that emergency managers have quick storm-proof access to critical water information. A new downlink backup system located in South Dakota guarantees the availability of streamflow information [...]
Read More »Corps Hears Missouri Flood Concerns, Neutralizes Spring Rise
OMAHA, Nebraska, March 27, 2008 (ENS) – The Army Corps of Engineers announced today that it will adjust releases from five tributary dams in Missouri and Kansas to eliminate the spring pulse, also called the spring rise – the release of millions of gallons of water on the Missouri River below Kansas City. The 48 [...]
Read More »Courts Back Release of Water Into Flooded Missouri
JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri, March 26, 2008 (ENS) – Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon did not succeed in his effort to prevent the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from releasing millions of gallons of water from a South Dakota dam on the Missouri River in a man-made “spring rise.” The Corps plans to raise water levels [...]
Read More »Eroding Alaska Native Village Sues Energy Companies
SAN FRANCISCO, California, February 26, 2008 (ENS) – The arctic coastal village of Kivalina and a federally recognized tribe, the Alaska Native village of Kivalina, are suing two dozen oil, coal and power companies that they claim have made the climate warmer, causing their land and homes to slide into the Chukchi Sea. Nine oil [...]
Read More »Alcoa Seeks to Dredge Toxic Sediment from Columbia River
VANCOUVER, Washington, February 15, 2008 (ENS) – Alcoa submitted its formal request to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for permission to dredge portions of the Columbia River at Vancouver, Washington starting this fall. The dredging project will remove river sediments contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, PCBs, toxic byproducts of more than 40 years of industrial [...]
Read More »Alabama, Florida Declare Victory in Water War With Georgia
WASHINGTON, DC, February 5, 2008 (ENS) – The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington today ruled that a secret settlement agreement entered into between Georgia, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Atlanta-area water users is illegal under federal law. The agreement, which was signed in 2003, would have allocated nearly 25 percent of Lake [...]
Read More »EPA Nixes Pumping Mississsippi Wetlands Dry for Agriculture
WASHINGTON, DC, February 4, 2008 (ENS) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is threatening to veto a $220 million Army Corps of Engineers flood-control project in the Mississippi Delta known as Yazoo Pump that environmentalists have long opposed for its adverse impact on wildlife and wetlands. The world’s largest hydraulic pumping plant would be used [...]
Read More »Developer Fined for Despoiling Hawaii’s Largest Wetland
HONOLULU, Hawaii, February 2, 2008 (ENS) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Thursday fined Frank Coluccio Construction Co. and Castle Family LLC a total of $68,000 for filling sensitive wetlands without federal permits. The fill, adjacent to Hamakua Stream near Kailua on the island of Oahu, affected the largest wetland in the Hawaiian islands, the [...]
Read More »Colorado Firm Cut Stream Channel Through City Illegally
DENVER, Colorado, January 20, 2008 (ENS) – Acting without a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit, a contractor excavated a new stream channel on open space property belonging to the City of Lafayette, Colorado without the city’s permission or knowledge. Now, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has ordered Kenneth L. Schell and Twin Peaks Excavating, [...]
Read More »Colorado Water District Ordered to Restore River
DENVER, Colorado, December 20, 2007 (ENS) – The Avondale Water and Sanitation District in Pueblo County, Colorado is in big trouble with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for illegally rerouting a river. The federal agency has ordered the Avondale district to restore the segment of the Arkansas River it re-engineered. Avondale is located about 50 [...]
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