Thursday, 28 Apr 2005

Long-time and widely respected environmental-justice advocate Willie Fontenot, a community liaison officer for the Louisiana attorney general's office, recently led a student tour group past an ExxonMobil refinery with a checkered safety history, snapping pictures along the way. Two weeks later, he was abruptly forced to resign, without being given a reason. Muckraker investigates the details of Fontenot's suspicious compulsory retirement.

Strongarm of the Law

Supreme Court rules that pesticide makers are liable for damages

The U.S. Supreme Court has acted to restore a measure of sanity to the world of pesticides and weed-killers. In the 1990s, lawyers for big chemical companies pushed a novel interpretation of the 1972 federal law governing pesticides: By submitting pesticides for approval by the U.S. EPA, they said, companies thereby gained immunity from any future lawsuits over damage caused by the chemicals. Several lower courts fell for it, and in 2001, the Bush administration formally adopted the pro-industry position. But in a ruling yesterday on a case involving peanut farmers whose crops were wiped out by a Dow Chemical pesticide called Strongarm, the Supremes reversed the lower court rulings and rejected the industry's legal interpretation. In fact, Justice John Paul Stevens' majority opinion called it "particularly dubious," especially in light of the fact that the EPA relies solely on manufacturer-provided information in approving pesticides.


A reader's husband craves one of those new-fangled alternative-fuel cars, but she wants to surprise him for his birthday with something completely different -- an eco-souped-up muscle car. She comes to advice maven Umbra Fisk to learn how, exactly, to do the souping.

Access of Evil

Gas drilling limited by equipment, workers -- not access to federal land

To hear the Bush administration tell it, domestic energy production is limited by lack of access to federal lands. Vice President Dick Cheney is galled that "large parts of the Rocky Mountain West are off-limits." But according to government records, industry experts, and local officials, there's plenty of access for gas drilling. In fact, there's so much access that there's not enough person-power and equipment to keep up with it. The Bureau of Land Management issued a record number of gas-drilling permits last year, outnumbering the available drilling rigs and qualified workers. And industry officials don't expect to catch up anytime soon, as it can take a year or more for delivery of new rigs. Even as new training schools open up, energy companies have asked for some 5,000 new workers over the next five years just to fulfill current leases. The apparent disconnect between Bush policy -- more access! -- and, well, the truth has left some energy analysts puzzled.

You Just Keep on Pushing My Love Over the Borderline

Former Iron Curtain may become continent-spanning greenbelt

The fabled Iron Curtain that separated Western Europe from the communist countries of Eastern Europe was once one of the most dangerous places on earth. But in the post-Cold War era, a coalition of conservation and community-development groups has ambitious plans to transform it into a string of parks, nature preserves, and organic farms. Already parks exist in Germany, between Finland and Russia, and between Austria and the Czech Republic and Hungary. Though there's resistance from governments that aren't quite yet chummy -- say, Greece and Macedonia -- and farmers that chafe at organic restrictions, organizers envision a grassroots, largely voluntary effort involving both public and privately owned land. "The idea is to interlink the needs of people and nature, because they're not incompatible," says Andrew Terry of the World Conservation Union, which is coordinating the project. "Protected areas should be places that allow humans and wildlife to live together."