When the 105th Congress returns to work for its 1998 session, it will face plenty of choices about the environment. During this year’s session lawmakers continued to ignore Superfund, the toxic waste clean-up law, and the Endangered Species Act. Both are long past due for rewrites. The reason, says Congressional Quarterly’s Allan Freedman, is that […]
Since 1990, the Goldman Foundation of San Francisco has recognized local organizers with its annual Environmental Prize which includes a cash award. A winner is selected from each inhabited continent for work in a wide range of evironmental areas and the 1997 North American Goldman went to Terri Swearingen, a nurse and mother jailed repeatedly […]
Host Steve Curwood talks with attorney Luke Cole about civil rights law in the environmental justice movement. Cole says the Civil Rights Act is becoming an increasingly valuable tool against environmental racism. And, under pressure from grassroots activists, the EPA is catching on. They have started paying attention to environmental civil rights violations.
Gwendolyn Glenn travels to Iberville Parish in Louisiana to report on a landmark EPA investigation into charges of environmental racism. For years, Iberville residents have suffered health problems traced to numerous chemical plants in the predominantly black community. Activists in Iberville have argued that the siting of such plants in their neighborhoods is an example […]
Betsy Bayha of member station KQED in San Francisco reports on the debate over the dumping of trash and toxic waste from Navy ships. The Navy has until the end of this year to comply with the same strict dumping regulations as commercial vessels, but the service says it can’t meet the deadline, and has […]