Latest Pollution Headlines
All the headlines from our Pollution Topic Page, ordered by recency.
Environmental Groups Sue Landowners Over Mountaintop Mining in West Virginia
Jun 3 2013 // Environmental activists say three reclaimed mountaintop removal mining sites are still polluting West Virginia waterways, and they’re suing the current landowners in a novel attempt to stop it. The lawsuits filed in...
Tiny Southern California Agency Earns B Corp Status
May 28 2013 // Merely bringing your A-game may not be enough to entice certain companies to give you their business, especially those who are looking for environmentally or socially conscious partners. Following the challenging recession...
Insurers and Climate Change: The Truth is More Complicated than the Sound Bytes
May 24 2013 // As an insurance guy who has been on both sides of the climate change debate (I’ve worked for organizations full of climate change skeptics and now head one that believes it’s an important public policy issue)...
Group Sues EPA To Force Utah To Clean Air Faster
May 20 2013 // An environmental group is suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, claiming it hasn’t pushed Utah hard enough to clean up air pollution across urban areas of northern Utah. WildEarth Guardians says the EPA let...
Obama Administration Releases Proposed Fracking Regulations
May 17 2013 // The Obama administration on Thursday unveiled a new proposal for regulating hydraulic fracturing on federal lands, rolling back some measures from its original, abandoned draft as it sought to ease concerns the rules would...
Will Supreme Court Enter Climate Change Debate?
May 16 2013 // With a barrage of legal briefs, a coalition of business groups and Republican-leaning states are taking their fight against Obama administration climate change regulations to the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Chamber of...
Greenhouse Gas Milestone; CO2 Levels Set Record
May 13 2013 // Worldwide levels of the chief greenhouse gas that causes global warming have hit a milestone, reaching an amount never before encountered by humans, federal scientists said. Carbon dioxide was measured at 400 parts per...
DIMA’s CEO Examines Ireland’s Links to Re/Insurance and Europe
May 13 2013 // The European Insurance Forum, held in Dublin on the 9th and 10th of May, presented an opportunity to examine Ireland’s progress in overcoming the financial crisis that caused a severe recession beginning in 2008. It...
N.Y. Gov. Cuomo’s Administration Says ‘No Timetable’ on Fracking Decision
May 8 2013 // Months after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration promised a decision “within weeks” on whether to allow hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, it now says there’s “no timetable for a...
Judge Declines to Dismiss Emissions Suit Against ExxonMobil
May 6 2013 // A federal judge has declined to throw out a 2010 environmental lawsuit against ExxonMobil Corp. over emissions from its Baytown oil refinery. U.S. District Judge David Hittner in Houston adopted a magistrate’s April...
Tool Identifies California’s Most Polluted Cities
May 6 2013 // Seven of California’s 10 ZIP codes most burdened by pollution are in the San Joaquin Valley and three are in Los Angeles, according to a new tool developed by state environmental officials to target communities for...
Senate Panel to Investigate Texas Fertilizer Plant Explosion
May 1 2013 // U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer said on Tuesday she plans to investigate the explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant earlier this month that killed 15 people and injured scores more. California’s Boxer, the head of the...
Tainted Illinois Well Water Case Ends in Guilty Verdict
Apr 30 2013 // After a former suburban Chicago water official was convicted on April 29 for lying about secretly mixing carcinogen-tainted well water into the village’s drinking supply, the sense of bitterness and betrayal among...
Tool Identifies California’s Most Polluted Cities
Apr 24 2013 // Seven of California’s 10 ZIP codes most burdened by pollution are in the San Joaquin Valley and three are in Los Angeles, according to a new tool developed by state environmental officials to target communities for...
Texas Governor: State Oversight Not to Blame for West Blast
Apr 24 2013 // Gov. Rick Perry said that spending more state money on inspections would not have prevented the deadly explosion at the West Fertilizer Co. plant that was last investigated by Texas environmental regulators in 2006. Perry...
Safety Rules Limited for Small Fertilizer Plants
Apr 23 2013 // There were no sprinklers. No firewalls. No water deluge systems. Safety inspections were rare at the fertilizer company in West, Texas, that exploded and killed at least 14 people this week. This is not unusual. Small...
EPA Blamed For Delays in Asbestos Study In Montana
Apr 21 2013 // Internal investigators are faulting the Environmental Protection Agency for years of delays in completing health studies needed to guide the cleanup of a Montana mining town where hundreds of people have died from asbestos...
What Did Regulators Know Before Texas Plant Exploded?
Apr 19 2013 // Despite being located within a short walk of a nursing home, school and residential buildings, West Fertilizer Co. in central Texas had no blast walls and had filed no contingency plan to the Environmental Protection...
Report: California Lags in Fracking Regulations
Apr 12 2013 // A new report on hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in California warns there are risks of irreversible contamination of surface and groundwater near oil drilling sites unless the technique is carefully monitored...
New Hampshire Jury Finds Exxon Mobil Liable for $236.4M in U.S. Pollution Suit
Apr 9 2013 // A New Hampshire jury on Tuesday found Exxon Mobil Corp liable for $236.4 million in a civil lawsuit that charged the oil company had polluted groundwater in the state with a gasoline additive used to reduce smog in the...
