Environment

April 8, 2016 - The U.S. announced a deal last week to move weapons-grade plutonium from Japan and ship it to the Savannah River Site on the South Carolina-Georgia border, where there are longstanding concerns about the environmental health risks that low-income and African-American communities disproportionately bear.

April 5, 2016 - BP will be able to write off most of the $20 billion settlement it has agreed to pay for its 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill as an ordinary business expense, resulting in a potential tax windfall of over $5 billion.

April 1, 2016 - North Carolina's carcinogen-contaminated drinking water near Duke Energy's coal ash dumps — and the political fight over what to do about it — should serve as a warning for problems to come in other historically coal-dependent states due to a lack of federal oversight for drinking water and coal ash disposal.

March 25, 2016 - A week after the Obama administration canceled plans to auction off an oil and gas lease in the Atlantic, an auction of 43 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico was disrupted by hundreds of protesters chanting, "Shut it down!" The winning bids came to just $156 million, the fourth-lowest total since 1983.

March 18, 2016 - Created to protect oil rig workers after the deadly BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement is failing to perform its most basic functions. Meanwhile, offshore rig workers are dying on the job at an alarming rate.

March 16, 2016 - The Obama administration's decision to drop the Atlantic from the federal government's offshore drilling plan is being heralded as a win for grassroots organizing against the might of Big Oil and its allies in government.

March 4, 2016 - The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is escalating its battle over the fast-food chain's refusal to participate in a program to protect farmworkers' human rights: It's declaring a national boycott and launching a protest tour with marches outside the company chairman's homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida.

February 18, 2016 - The first presidential primaries in the South get underway this week in South Carolina, a state embroiled in the controversy over expanding offshore oil and gas drilling to the Atlantic. While most of the Republicans support expanded drilling, the Democrats don't want to see it come to the East Coast.

February 11, 2016 - Duke Energy officials in recent weeks have suggested that the administration of North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory may be going too far in its efforts to undermine environmental regulations aimed at curbing climate change and promoting renewable energy.

February 9, 2016 - The Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw will use a $48 million grant won in the National Disaster Resilience Competition to relocate away from the rising Gulf of Mexico — and hopes to serve as a model for others facing catastrophic sea-level rise. Other grant winners include Tennessee, Virginia and New Orleans.