"U.S. lawmakers criticized environmental officials at a hearing on Wednesday for not acting sooner when they saw a report that drinking water in Flint, Michigan was polluted with dangerously high levels of lead."
Based on a variety of data sources, the Center for Effective Government's new map and database shows that "people of color and poor residents are significantly more likely to live near dangerous chemical facilities than white and non-poor residents" in the U.S.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's openness has been a major issue throughout the crisis of contaminated drinking water in Flint, which has caused lead poisoning of some children. One aspect of the openness issue is the ability of agency employees to speak with journalists; another is unfulfilled FOIA requests.
"Poor, heavily Hispanic neighborhoods shoulder a disproportionate fracking wastewater burden in Texas' booming Eagle Ford".
"Los Angeles prosecutors filed criminal charges against the Southern California Gas company on Tuesday over a huge methane leak near the city that has forced thousands of residents from their homes since October."
"An industrial chemical is showing up in trout from the Great Lakes. It’s called perfluoro-1-butane sulfonamide, or FBSA."
"The Environmental Protection Agency was ordered Friday to begin issuing long-overdue rules aimed at stopping mining companies from declaring bankruptcy to avoid pollution cleanups."
"This morning, the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform committee will hold the first Congressional hearing in Washington on the Flint water crisis."
"The FBI is now investigating the contamination of Flint’s drinking water, a man-made public health catastrophe, which has left an unknown number of Flint children and other residents poisoned by lead and resulted in state and federal emergency declarations."
"Two years after one of the nation's worst coal ash spills, 1 ½ million tons of the potentially toxic waste byproduct from coal-fired power generation is being moved by rail from the banks of the Dan River in North Carolina to a landfill in central Virginia."
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