Pollution

"The EPA will investigate whether a North Carolina state agency's regulation of industrial pig farms discriminates against communities of color."

"Fukushima fishermen appear to have finally run out of patience with Tokyo Electric Power Co. They lambasted TEPCO at a meeting on Feb. 25 over the utility’s failure for half a year to disclose the flow into the ocean of water contaminated with radioactive materials from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant."

"Sensors at the Fukushima nuclear plant have detected a fresh leak of highly radioactive water into the sea."

"Federal prosecutors filed multiple criminal charges against Duke Energy on Friday over years of illegal pollution leaking from coal ash dumps at five North Carolina power plants."

"Amid pressure from neighborhood groups and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, BP later this year will halt shipments of dusty petroleum coke to Chicago sites across the border from its giant Whiting, Ind., refinery."

"California’s public drinking water systems violated safety levels for contaminants more than 1,000 times during the 2012-2013 fiscal year says a report that cites high levels in some water systems of arsenic, nitrates and other pollutants."

"Criminal charges are expected to be brought against Duke Energy in the next several days that will accuse the nation’s largest electric utility of multiple misdemeanor violations of the federal Clean Water Act."

"The Arctic could become a site of future turmoil, and not just because of the emerging geopolitical tensions and militarization in the region. Beyond concerns of a frozen conflict in the icy north, there is the additional fear that the Barents and Kara Seas could become the location of a slow-motion nuclear disaster. Until 1991 the Soviet Union used the seas as a junkyard where it would dispose of its nuclear waste."

"Streams near large factory pig farms have high levels of bacteria. Health groups are raising a stink."