By Glynn Wilson – The National Transportation Safety Board has opened an investigation into the Colonial Pipeline explosion and fire in Helena, Alabama, which killed one worker and seriously injured four others. The major gasoline pipeline, built in 1963, that had already busted in September and was leaking, causing fears of a gas shortage in…
Standing Rock Sioux Protest is About More than Stopping One Pipeline – By Glynn Wilson – CANNON BALL, N.D. – Justice Rowland, a young Lakota man camped out in the overflow Sacred Stone camp here, grew up in Wounded Knee, South Dakota. But back in April when he heard about the Standing Rock Sioux protest…
By Glynn Wilson – CANNON BALL, N.D. – Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II issued a statement Monday condemning the tactics used against unarmed water protectors by police, including rubber bullets and pepper spray. Since Saturday October 22, 127 water protectors have been arrested and there have been multiple reports that peaceful protesters were…
By Glynn Wilson – CANNON BALL, N.D. – According to the Morton County sheriff’s department, 83 people were arrested on Saturday while protesting a controversial North Dakota oil pipeline and pepper spray was used in what the local cops called a “riot.” Saturday’s arrests occurred in a confrontation with police after around 300 demonstrators trespassed…
By Glynn Wilson – CANNON BALL, N.D. – Sitting with your legs crossed in a campsite filled with traditional teepees along with modern RVs and tents overlooking the Missouri River here, with the sounds of wolves and coyotes off in the distance, a drum up the hill by the council fire and the occasional Red…
“Art at its highest and nature at its truest are one.” — Knute E. Westerlind, the architect of Municipal Auditorium in Sioux City, Iowa, designed in 1938 and finished in 1950 By Glynn Wilson – CHAMBERLAIN, S.D. — From this vantage point looking out from the American Creek Campground, the Missouri River looks as blue…
By Tom Goldtooth and Annie Leonard – Over the last month, thousands of Native Americans from across the country have converged to camp in and around the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota to oppose the construction of the multibillion-dollar Dakota Access oil pipeline. The pipeline, which would transfer crude oil to existing pipelines…
By Glynn Wilson – MOBILE, Ala. — A major gas pipeline that was discovered broken and leaking at least 250,000 gallons last week in rural Shelby County, south of Birmingham near Helena, has government and industry officials hopping to contain the leak, shore up any impact on the price of gas, and assure the public…
EDITOR’S NOTE – For info about a free roundtrip bus on Saturday from Mobile to this demonstration go to the Facebook event page for Gulf Coast Interdependence Day. You can sign up as a volunteer and RSVP to attend and find out details about the bus and other matters. The free bus will leave from…
By Glynn Wilson – The Obama administration on Friday released the first national regulations to provide for the safe disposal of coal ash from coal-fired power plants. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced the final rule that establishes safeguards to protect communities from coal ash impoundment failures, like the catastrophic 2008 spill in Kingston, Tennessee,…
Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – It’s incredible that, despite real progress in reducing climate-disrupting carbon emissions, the United States is still charging ahead with a “boom” in dirty fuels and extraction methods. It’s like swallowing aspirin as you beat your head against a wall. What gives? By now, it’s clear that the dirty…
WASHINGTON — ExxonMobil Pipeline Company has agreed to pay a civil penalty for a violation of the Clean Water Act stemming from a 2012 crude oil spill from ExxonMobil’s “North Line” pipeline near Torbert, Louisiana. Under the consent decree lodged Tuesday in federal court, ExxonMobil will pay $1,437,120 to resolve the government’s claim, according to…
Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – With a couple of decisions in 2001 and 2006, the Supreme Court managed to break the Clean Water Act by calling into question what Congress meant by “the waters of the United States.” The existing law had been working just fine for almost 30 years. When the Clean…
BATON ROUGE, La. – While Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal was in the nation’s capital last Saturday contemplating “a hostile takeover of Washington D.C.,” residents in his own state began a peaceful 155-mile walk from Grand Isle to the Governor’s Mansion in Baton Rouge to show support for a lawsuit that would hold the oil and…
By Glynn Wilson – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Coast Guard are working with the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator Office, Texas Petroleum and Forefront Emergency Management to mitigate an estimated 50-barrel crude oil spill in the Delta National Wildlife Refuge 10 miles southeast of Venice, in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. A silver…
We recently received this note from Albert Blok, Clinical Research Coordinator at American Educational Research Association, and publish it here as a letter to the editor. Editor: I’m a research coordinator for the Association of American Universities. Recently, I was visiting your site for research purposes, and came across a resource that no longer works.…
Glynn Wilson – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is now seeking public comment on what information could be reported and disclosed about chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing operations. As we reported in-depth two years ago, when the Alabama division of the U.S. Forest proposed opening up large tracts of the Talladega National Forest to natural…
By Glynn Wilson – It was July 5, 2010, while BP’s Deepwater Horizon was still gushing into the Gulf of Mexico and I was watching helpless from Gulf Shores, Alabama, that I began to ask the question: Where Oh Where Have All the Wildlife Gone? Are most of the birds already dead from the oil,…
Birmingham Company Agrees to Sell Property to Alabama State Docks – By Glynn Wilson – In an unusual turnaround from its ambition to build a new coal handling export terminal along the riverfront in Mobile, Alabama, Walter Energy has reached an agreement “in principle” with the State Port Authority to sell both the Blue Creek…
By David Underhill – MOBILE, Ala. – The first foreign substance flowing into Mobile’s drinking water from the new crude oil pipeline is not oil. It’s mud — and whatever welding and other construction debris got stirred into the disturbed earth of the pipe’s broad right-of-way through the watershed of the metro area’s reservoir Big…
