"Poverty in Appalachia is concentrated in the communities around mountaintop removal mines, and people living in those areas suffer greater risk of early deaths, according to a new scientific paper by a West Virginia University researcher."
Some half a million people live in Texas' colonias, impoverished communities often without flush toilets, clean drinking water, or electricity. Such commmunities exist in other border states, and their residents suffer disproportionately from a spectrum of serious diseases that arise from this environment.
FEMA trailers rejected after Hurricance Katrina because of formaldehyde concerns are being welcomed by Indian tribes in Oklahoma who have little else to live in.
"THERMAL, Calif. — Community activists in Southern California's Coachella Valley have been toiling for years along the eastern rim of this crescent-shaped breadbasket to spread the word about the abandoned waste dumps, shoddy migrant housing and overburdened recycling facilities that are a fact of life in this poor, farmworker community."
The rehabilitation of San Francisco's Hunters Point Naval Shipyard is bringing pressure on the minority population of the area.
More access was urged for records on oil and gas leasing, government-issued permits and leases related to metal mining, grazing livestock on public lands, harvesting ocean fish, operating chemical plants, drilling for oil, logging, building roads or strip malls, coal mining, filling wetlands, and more.
"The source is a Coachella Valley soil-recycling plant on tribal land, regulators say. Operators defend their enterprise, but agencies have cracked down."
Last year, legislation to put new teeth in federal whistleblower protections failed when a single senator put a secret hold on it late in the session. The good news is Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-HI) has introduced the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2011 to restart the legislative effort.
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