| Online: | |
| Visits: | |
| Stories: |
| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
“Forget Oil. Here Are The More Insidious Things That Polluted America’s Air And Water This Year” (Picture)
This year, three billion gallons of waste were injected into California’s underground aquifers. Eighty millions pounds of toxic grey goop were spilled in a North Carolina waterway. Clouds of thick, black, oily dust coated children’s playground equipment in Chicago’s southeast side.
Like every year, 2014 saw a wide range of environmental pollution from fossil fuel development. But there was no BP-scale well blowout, no Lac-Mégantic-sized crude oil train explosion. Instead, many of this year’s major fossil fuel disasters came from a more insidious source — not the fuels themselves, but the waste products they create. These are essentially the leftovers from fossil fuel development: wastewater from oil and gas drilling, coal ash from coal burning, and petroleum coke from tar sands refining.
“I think it’s been a big year for coal ash, fracking, and petcoke,” said Abigail Dillen, the vice president of litigation at Earthjustice, an environmental law firm. “We saw some high-profile disasters, and they happened at moments in the news cycle where they got more attention.”
While 2014 was not devoid of conventional polluters, environmentalists say the news media has had an increased focus on waste-based pollutants in 2014 — a signal that the problem is growing. Most importantly, they say, it shines a light on the lack of federal environmental regulation that could assure safe disposal of the waste. morehere
