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Tag: energy

  • Spatial Justice Tests

    - by Aaron Krei­der, Ener­gy Jus­tice Network  One of the main goals of Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work’s Jus­tice Map project is to demon­strate the role that income and race play in the sit­ing of dirty facil­i­ties. You can use Jus­tice Map (by click­ing on Advanced Mode) to ana­lyze the race and income of peo­ple who live with­in, say,…

  • Waste Done Right

    - by Ruth Tyson, Ener­gy Jus­tice Network In 2012, Amer­i­cans dis­posed of 251 mil­lion tons of trash, accord­ing to the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA). The Sto­ry of Stuff Project neat­ly lays out the way mate­ri­als move through our econ­o­my from extrac­tion to pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion, con­sump­tion, and dis­pos­al. Most con­sumers don’t think beyond the “con­sump­tion”…

  • Families Get $4 Million For Fracking Water Contamination

    In March, a fed­er­al jury award­ed a total of $4.2 mil­lion to two fam­i­lies from Dimock, Penn­syl­va­nia whose drink­ing water wells have been con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by Cabot Oil and Gas when drilling for nat­ur­al gas. “It’s been a bat­tle,” said plain­tiff Scott Ely, co-plain­tiff with Ray Hubert, in a law­suit against Cabot filed in 2009. “You’re up…

  • Biomass Power Facilities Idle for Months

    One of bio­mass energy’s main sell­ing points is that it’s a base­load source of ener­gy avail­able 24/7, unlike solar and wind. Despite these promises–and hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars of tax­pay­er sub­si­dies, grants and loans–several bio­mass pow­er facil­i­ties across the U.S. have been sit­ting idle for months at a time, thanks to fires, equip­ment fail­ure,…

  • Compost Chicken Manure, Don’t Burn It

    - by Mike Ewall, Decem­ber 19, 2014, Bal­ti­more Sun  Dan Rodricks’ recent col­umn urged the new gov­er­nor to get a large-scale poul­try waste incin­er­a­tor built on the East­ern Shore (“Lar­ry Hogan has a chance to be a green gov­er­nor,” Dec. 13). This awful idea has been float­ed for 15 years now and has gone nowhere despite an array…

  • Water Abuse in the Fracking Process

    - by Alex Lotor­to, Ener­gy Jus­tice Network Water is used in shale gas devel­op­ment from cra­dle to grave, how­ev­er, most peo­ple don’t think about it beyond the issues of ground­wa­ter contamination. Procur­ing and bring­ing raw mate­ri­als like sil­i­ca sand, steel, cement, and frack­ing chem­i­cals to the well loca­tions requires an incred­i­ble amount of man­u­fac­tur­ing, trans­porta­tion,…

  • Eviction of Mobile Home Park for Fracking Water

    - by Alex Lotor­to, Ener­gy Jus­tice Network Riverdale Mobile Home Park was locat­ed on the Susque­han­na Riv­er in Piatt Town­ship, Jer­sey Shore, Penn­syl­va­nia. Res­i­dents were ordered to leave the park in March 2012 by Aqua PVR LLC, a project of Aqua Amer­i­ca, a pri­vate water util­i­ty, and Penn Vir­ginia Resources, a nat­ur­al gas pipeline company. …

  • AUDIO: Energy’s Water Footprint in the Western Drought

    Drought in the west­ern U.S. is in the news every day, yet most media cov­er­age ignores the impact from water with­drawals for indus­tri­al pow­er facil­i­ties. While munic­i­pal and agri­cul­tur­al use are major drains on lim­it­ed water resources, so too are bio­mass, coal, nat­ur­al gas, and nuclear pow­er facilities.  On August 20, EJN spoke with Sta­cy Tellinghuisen,…

  • If You Build It, They Will Cut

    Gen­er­at­ing bio­mass ener­gy doesn’t result in more log­ging, accord­ing to the bio­mass indus­try, whose spokesper­sons claim facil­i­ties only make use of “waste” wood already com­ing from exist­ing log­ging operations. Ron Kotr­ba, Senior Edi­tor for Pel­let Mill Mag­a­zine, wrote in the May/June 2015 issue that bio­mass is the “most unlike­ly of the for­est prod­ucts to dri­ve…

  • When Zero Waste is Environmental Racism

    - by Kaya Ban­ton, Chester Envi­ron­men­tal Justice My name is Kaya Ban­ton and I have been a res­i­dent of Chester, Penn­syl­va­nia all of my life.  Chester is a small city right out­side of Philadel­phia known as one of the worst cas­es of envi­ron­men­tal racism. There are a num­ber of pol­lut­ing facil­i­ties in and sur­round­ing Chester.…