environmental health
May 1, 2014 -
That's the question an environmental advocacy group raises in a new video about Duke Energy's Belews Creek power plant in Stokes County, NC. The video intensifies the spotlight shining on the company's environmental impact in the wake of a massive coal ash spill into the Dan River from another Duke plant.
April 24, 2014 -
In a groundbreaking verdict, a Texas jury has awarded $3 million to a family that sued over shale gas drilling operations that sickened them, their pets and livestock.
April 17, 2014 -
A new study sheds light on how the color of your skin influences the quality of the air you breathe. And while the South ranks relatively high for environmental inequality, it turns out that it's among the regions with the least disparity between whites and nonwhites when it comes to lung-damaging air pollution exposure.
March 21, 2014 -
Legal and regulatory pressure is building against North Carolina-based Duke Energy over its chronic mismanagement of toxic waste from coal-fired power plants. Meanwhile, environmental watchdogs using a hidden camera busted a Kentucky utility illegally dumping coal ash wastewater into the Ohio River.
March 14, 2014 -
Environmental groups have issued notice that they plan to sue a large North Carolina hog operation over illegal pollution. The company's president is a major political donor and the son of an influential former state lawmaker.
March 11, 2014 -
Before its coal-fired units were shuttered in 2012, Duke Energy's Dan River plant burned coal from mountaintop removal mines in Appalachia. The reality that the arsenic-laden ash now contaminating a North Carolina river was once a forested mountain peak highlights the destructive lifecycle of coal.
March 7, 2014 -
Given its tendency to contaminate water, coal ash is an obvious environmental issue. But its disproportionate impacts on low-income communities and people of color also make it a justice issue.