All Entries in the "Other Environmental Stories" Category
EnviroReporter’s 2012 Year in Review
2012 was a banner year for EnviroReporter.com’s in-depth investigations of Fukushima, Rocketdyne, Runkle Canyon, fracking, perchlorate and a host of controversial environmental issues. New Media technology helped propel site’s coverage to new levels of investigative journalism excellence as scandal after scandal are exposed by the multi-award winning news website.
AEG Punts Perchlorate Football at Farmers Field
Like Wile E. Coyote roping himself to a perchlorate-powered rocket, the Los Angeles City Council is set to launch the city into unknown territory September 28. That’s when the council will make an historic deal to approve the $1.2 billion Farmers Field project in downtown adjacent Staples Center. If the council and mayor don’t douse the fuse of toxic fireworks at Farmers Field before it’s built, the city and it citizens could have just about the same amount of luck as the hapless cartoon character but with much more consequences.
AEG’s Perchlorate Problem
AEG’s Farmers Field $1.2 billion project gets the go-ahead from the Los Angeles Planning Commission despite plan’s environmental impact report leaving out crucial data about the use of the toxic oxidizer perchlorate in fireworks the facility will be able to shoot off every day of the year when it opens, perhaps in 2017. Activists are concerned over health effects while Los Angeles Times takes project boosterism to new and unseemly lows. EIR obscured by toxic smoke may open up city and developer to future lawsuits from fans, players, employees and people living around Farmers Field and impacted by perchlorate and heavy metals in the bursts.
Fracked
While activists march on Sacramento with demands to “Stop Fracking with California,” and historic chemical legislation comes to the United States Senate floor, EnviroReporter.com‘s Michael Collins takes on Fracking Chemical Cocktail and Trichloroethylene in The Toxies Tapes. More brawl than interview, TCE clobbers Collins who defiantly jousts with the volatile organic compound. The reporter then truly meets his match in “Frackie” where the chemistry sparks and the subject turns to drilling and fracking.
A Fracking Night to Remember
Fracking Chemical Cocktail heats up the Third Annual Toxies Awards for Bad Chemical Actors at the Silent Movie Theatre in Hollywood where the worst of the worst chemicals are honored for the harm they do to the environment. With new toxins to dishonor for the deadly work, the Toxies come through with a wild and wicked show that has to be the dirtiest awards celebration in Tinseltown.
EnviroReporter Best 2011 Online News Organization Website at 2012 LA Press Club Gala
EnviroReporter.com wins First Place for “Website – News Organization – Exclusive to the Internet” at the 54th Annual Southern California Journalism Awards Gala Dinner was held at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles June 24, 2012. The win for the website is a strong affirmation that our coverage of the ongoing Fukushima meltdowns is valued by alternative and mainstream media. The team of Denise Anne Duffield and Michael Collins, who serve as editor and reporter respectively for the website, also placed in the competition for Online Journalist of the Year and Online Investigative series also for their radiation contamination in North America work.
What’s in Pepper Spray?
An LA Weekly investigation finds the cancer-causing chemicals trichloroethylene (TCE) and tetrachloroethylene (PCE) being used as the base of pepper sprays sold in California with no Prop. 65 warnings. Sprays with these carcinogens are being sold all over the country. True Value and Do It Best hardware stores sell PCE-based pepper sprays at the Southern California stores LA Weekly investigated.
Will SOPA Nuke the Internet?*
Don’t count on being able to access uncensored information about Fukushima, or anything else, if SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) or its Senate version PIPA (the Protect IP Act) becomes law. A crucial vote on SOPA is January 24 in Washington D.C. which will possibly change the Internet forever.
Toxies Take Tinseltown
Even the multiple meltdowns and melt-throughs in Japan at the worst nuclear reactor disaster in history can’t crimp the style of the Second Annual Toxies Red Carpet Awards for Bad Actor Chemicals taking place at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood California June 16, 2011 at 4 pm and is also streaming live on the Toxies website. This reporter’s favorite Toxie remains the silver siren with rocket booster boots named Perchlorate which has impacted water supplies in 43 states including California where millions drink this toxic rocket fuel oxidizer. Perchlorate the foxy Toxie redefines what it means to be bad.
Five Years
EnviroReporter.com celebrates its Five Year Anniversary by looking at the beginnings of this investigative reporting and where its headed as we confront the reality of multiple meltdowns an ocean away and a government that assures the public there is no chance for radioactive exposure. Despite the grim outlook, miracles do happen, and the accomplishments of this website, totally $6 billion in saved land because of toxic contamination issues.
No More Monkey Business
NASA backs off its plans to irradiate 18 squirrel monkeys in a $1.75 million experiment that our Pasadena Weekly investigation found was not only cruel and scientifically useless but also redundant since an Italian space radiation experiment, using humans not harmed, had already been underway to understand longterm cosmic radiation exposure’s effects on astronauts.
Terminated
[This is an expanded version of a December 27, 2010 LA Weekly blog post entitled “Arnold Schwarzenegger backs down on gutting of California's Green Chemistry Initiative” where your comments are also invited as well as here.]
In the face of withering media coverage in LA Weekly and elsewhere, the Schwarzenegger Administration has pulled an about-face on [...]
Schwarzenegger’s Chemical Romance
Environmentalists are crying foul over the gutting of the Green Chemistry Initiative by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Department of Toxic Substances Control in his final days in office. Enviros say that slashed regulations hurt Californians and make a mockery out of Schwarzenegger’s ‘green governor’ legacy.
AAN the Finalists are…
Deputy Editor, News of LA Weekly Jill Stewart surprises Michael Collins and EnviroReporter.com‘s editor Denise Duffield with word that our environmental exposés in the paper had made the finals in the AltWeekly Awards 2010 held by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies to be awarded July 16 in Toronto, Canada. Collins’ exposes on pollution hotspots Rocketdyne, Runkle Canyon, Corporate Pointe and the Brentwood nuclear dump resonate with the judges thanks in large part to these two delightful dynamos.
The Toxies
Just days before the 82nd Annual Academy Awards in Hollywood, the First Annual Toxies Awards took place at the legendary Egyptian Theatre across the boulevard. A rogue’s gallery of “bad actors” with names like Trichloroethylene, Hydrofluoric Acid and Toluene competed for Toxies in this first-ever awards ceremony celebrating the worst of the 85,000 chemicals we come into contact with on a regular basis. One bad actor, Perchlorate, was a sleak silver rocket girl with thrusters for feet, so beautiful as fireworks, she was ‘the chemical that launched a thousand rockets’ including mine.
We, Robot
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, home of America’s greatest robotic explorations of the heavens, isn’t sold on deep-sixing the manned space program. Part Two of a special Pasadena Weekly cover story investigation that also explores the origins of NASA’s manned space program, the brainchild of an infamous Nazi rocket scientist, Wernher von Braun, whose V-2 rockets killed thousands during the London Blitz of World War II, rockets built by concentration camp slave labor who were worked to death, tortured and executed during the production of these American-coveted missiles. Von Braun is considered by NASA to be the 20th Century’s greatest rocketeer illustrating that one man’s Nazi is another man’s hero.
Space Monkey Business
Critics say NASA is taking a giant leap backwards by irradiating monkeys in space-travel tests designed to simulate the intense radiation astronauts would experience in voyages to the moon and Mars. The Pasadena Weekly discovers that Italian human radiation tests aboard the International Space Station obviate the need for these crude and inhumane radiation tests on primates, the first of their kind in nearly three decades.
NASA’s Monkey Business
The future of manned space exploration may be revealed Monday when President Obama unveils his 2011 budget request for NASA. The budget’s approval by Congress may also determine the future of 28 squirrel monkeys and renewed animal radiation experiments.
Challenger Remembered
EnviroReporter.com remembers the crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger that perished 24 years ago January 28, 1986. These people represent the very best of this country and of this planet. Remembering our heroes, and emulating the bravery of their deeds, is their due honor.
Cain Was Able
EnviroReporter.com was deeply saddened to learn of the passing of our friend Steve Cain, senior environmental planner for the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, on December 16. In our last communications, Steve provided us with information crucial to an investigation that could impact the health and well-being of untold numbers of people, speaking volumes about Steve’s integrity. We will miss this delightful and dedicated man.
Darkness Over the Land
EnviroReporter.com experiences the tragedies and triumphs of California’s Inyo County and it’s timeless treasure, Death Valley National Park. This rowdy romp includes a cast of characters whose devotion to their earthly paradise is devilishly dangerous. Their sizzling tales shed light on the hopes and hazards of the hottest, lowest land in North America.
It’s a Gas
The U.S. EPA just announced new draft guidelines for the vapors of the toxic solvent, trichloroethylene or TCE, and they are four times stronger than they already were in recognition of the chemical’s dangers. This will make an alarming TCE groundwater crisis in Southern California even more important as the solvent spreads.
Bad Air Day?
Schwarzenegger’s condescension towards environmentalists and embrace of big business polluters, combined with a possible fatal flaw in Obama’s new greenhouse gases plan, virtually assures that Californians will have many more bad air days ahead.
Chem and Get It
The Obama Administration announces a bold new Environmental Protection Agency initiative to test previously ignored chemicals that may be harming humans and the environment. Bisphenol A, linked to obesity and cancer, brominated flame retardants, perfluorinated compounds and a host of other potential goo will be tested and regulated under the new plan, the most important of its kind since the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act. EnviroReporter.com wonders whether this leadership at the top will filter throughout the ranks of the federal and state EPA.
Up in Smoke
The 6,400 fireworks at Santa Monica Pier’s 100th birthday celebration September 9 fail to ignite much excitement. The tepid pyrotechnics get lost in toxic smoke which descends on the city, gassing thousands of unsuspecting yuppies with perchlorate and heavy metals.
