Environment
April 3, 2014 -
North Carolina regulators have found highly toxic thallium seeping from coal ash pits at two Duke Energy plants. Rep. Mike Hager -- the state lawmaker who co-chairs the committee that will handle coal ash cleanup legislation and former engineering manager for one of the thallium-leaking plants -- doesn't think the discovery is cause for alarm. Is his perspective shaped by his Duke connections?
March 26, 2014 -
Watchdog groups are raising concerns about calls to move coal ash from wet impoundments into dry landfills, warning of inevitable leakage from landfills that are typically located in low-income and minority communities. Instead, they propose storing the waste above ground in concrete vaults on power plant property.
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 12, 2014 -
The Obama administration continues its push to privatize the Tennessee Valley Authority, which provides electricity for 9 million people in seven Southeastern states without taxpayer subsidy and at prices below the national average.
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 10, 2014 -
Record-breaking domestic oil production is likely to swamp any effort to inject climate concerns into 2014 mid-term elections -- and could even cost Democrats the Senate.
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.
