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Oil and fracking chemicals spill into Colorado’s floodwaters
Posted by Grist: None Given on September 16th, 2013
Grist: Heavy rains returned to Colorado on Sunday and hampered rescue efforts after last week`s flash floods. The confirmed death toll has risen to seven, and hundreds are still unaccounted for. An estimated 1,500 homes are destroyed. Some 1,000 people in Larimer County, north of Boulder, were awaiting airlifts that never came on Sunday - they were called off because of the foul weather.
The floods have also triggered other problems that have gotten a lot less media attention: Fracking infrastructure...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Oil and fracking chemicals spill into Colorado’s floodwatersDeadly 1,000-year floods strike Colorado
Posted by Grist: None Given on September 13th, 2013
Grist: Biblical hell has broken out in Colorado, where more than six inches of rain fell in 24 hours, contributing to flash floods that killed at least three people.
(Before you complain about our use of "biblical," note that it`s the word federal forecasters chose to describe the flooding in an official update on the National Weather Service website.)
"It`s insane right now, I`ve lived in Colorado my whole life, and this is nothing that I`ve ever, ever seen before," Andra Coberly, spokesperson for...
ExxonMobil Charged with Pa. Fracking-Related Crimes
Posted by Grist: None Given on September 13th, 2013
Grist: ExxonMobil subsidiary XTO Energy is being prosecuted for alleged environmental crimes after it spilled fracking wastewater into a Pennsylvania river in 2010.
The company`s response? It claims the criminal charges could harm the environment.
We told you about this spill in July - that`s when the company agreed to pay a $100,000 federal fine for spilling 57,000 gallons of contaminated fluids out of sloppily maintained tanks in Penn Township and into a tributary of the Susquehanna River. It also...
Antarctic moss a charming but chilling sign of warming
Posted by Grist: None Given on August 30th, 2013
Grist: A fleecy clump of moss growing on the Antarctic Peninsula might not seem like much of a sight to behold, but it`s a sign of a climate in flux.
The patch of Polytrichum moss, sampled in 2008 by scientists at Alexander Island`s Lazarev Bay, either did not exist or was slumbering beneath ice when the peninsula was first spotted by Russian sailors in 1820.
But now it is flourishing on ice-free rock - the world`s southernmost such moss bank.
The Antarctic Peninsula is one of the fastest-warming...
U.S. government paid $17 billion for weather-withered crops last year
Posted by Grist: None Given on August 28th, 2013
Grist: Desiccated corn and sun-scorched soybeans have been in high supply lately - and we`re paying through the nose for them.
The federal government forked out a record-breaking $17.3 billion last year to compensate farmers for weather-related crop losses - more than four times the annual average over the last decade.
The losses were mostly caused by droughts, high temperatures, and hot winds - the sizzling harbingers of a climate in rapid flux.
Could some of these costs have been avoided? The...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on U.S. government paid $17 billion for weather-withered crops last yearDrill next door: Here’s what it looks like when a fracking rig moves in
Posted by Grist: None Given on August 28th, 2013
Grist: When my wife and I pulled into a relative’s subdivision in Frederick, Colo., after a wedding on a recent weekend, it was a surprise to suddenly find a 142-foot-tall drill rig in the backyard, parked in the narrow strip of land between there and the next subdivision to the east. It had appeared in the two days we`d been gone.
This couple hundred grassy acres, thick with meadowlarks and bisected by a creek crowded with cattail, bulrush, willow, and raccoon tracks, sits atop the DJ Basin shale deposit....
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Drill next door: Here’s what it looks like when a fracking rig moves inIs the NSA surveillance program really about spying on environmentalists?
Posted by Grist: None Given on August 26th, 2013
Grist: At the Guardian, Nafeez Ahmed, executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, has an idea about what might be driving the massive expansion of the NSA’s domestic surveillance program that we’ve learned so much about lately. It’s not concerns about religious fundamentalists who hate America. Instead, he suggests, the government is worried about environmental activism: But why have Western security agencies developed such an unprecedented capacity to spy on their own domestic...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Is the NSA surveillance program really about spying on environmentalists?Fracking boom could lead to housing bust
Posted by Grist: None Given on August 16th, 2013
Grist: When it comes to the real estate market in Bradford County, Pa., where 62,600 residents live above the Marcellus Shale, nothing is black and white, says Bob Benjamin, a local broker and certified appraiser. There aren’t exactly “fifty shades of grey,” he says, but residential mortgage lending here is an especially murky situation.
When Benjamin fills out an appraisal for a lender, he has to note if there is a fracked well or an impoundment lake on or near the property. “I’m having to explain a...
The first rule of fracking is: Don’t talk about fracking
Posted by Grist: None Given on August 2nd, 2013
Grist: The Hallowich children were just 7 and 10 years old when their family received a $750,000 settlement to relocate away from their home in Mount Pleasant, Penn., which was next door to a shale-gas drilling site. By the time they’re grown up, they may not remember much about what it was like to live there - the burning eyes, sore throats, headaches, and earaches they experienced thanks to contaminated air and water. And maybe it’s better if they don’t remember, since they’re prohibited from talking...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on The first rule of fracking is: Don’t talk about frackingAnti-Keystone activists keep the heat on
Posted by Grist: None Given on July 30th, 2013
Grist: Dozens of activists young, old, and in between walked 100 miles, from Camp David in Maryland to the White House, to call attention to their campaign for climate action and Keystone rejection. The Walk for Our Grandchildren, which wrapped up over the weekend, was one of many climate actions being coordinated all around the U.S. this summer.
Jay Mallin captured the highlights on video:
Some of the marchers also got themselves arrested at the D.C. office of Environmental Resources Management,...