Disasters

"This coming Sunday, Dec. 22, marks five years since the Kingston Coal Plant's ash dam in Tennessee ruptured, sending more than a billion gallons of toxic sludge into homes, onto farmland, and into the Emory and Clinch Rivers in Roane County - one of the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history. Five years later, we're still waiting - and pushing - for the Environmental Protection Agency to put in place long-overdue protections to prevent more coal ash disasters."

"HOUSTON — Nearly four years after the Gulf of Mexico oil rig explosion that left 11 dead, a former low-level engineer at BP was found guilty on Wednesday of obstruction of justice for deleting messages during a federal investigation into how much oil leaked."

"SAN FRANCISCO -- Chevron Corp. failed to maintain equipment at a California refinery and has not responded adequately to multiple airborne chemical releases, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday."

"WOLF POINT, Mont. -- It's tough to miss the trains hauling crude oil out of the Northern Plains. They are growing more frequent by the day, mile-long processions of black tank cars that rumble through wheat fields and towns, along rivers and national parks."

"US government scientists have for the first time found direct evidence of toxic exposure in the Gulf of Mexico."

"The Interior Department will not be held in contempt over its actions in the aftermath of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill after the Supreme Court declined on Monday to review an appeals court ruling in the government's favor."

"For more than a decade, the question of how global warming is affecting the scariest storms on the planet—hurricanes—has been shot through with uncertainty. The chief reason is technological: In many parts of the world, storm strengths are estimated solely based on satellite images. Technologies and techniques for doing this have improved over time, meaning that there is always a problem with claiming that today's storms are stronger than yesterday's. After all, they might just be better observed."

"Two former BP Plc supervisors won the dismissal on Tuesday of some of the manslaughter charges facing them over the Gulf of Mexico drilling rig explosion that killed 11 people in 2010."

"Japan is planning to earmark 100 billion yen ($970 million) for a storage facility for tens of thousands of tonnes of soil contaminated with radiation from the Fukushima disaster, a report said Wednesday."

"A trouble-prone system used to decontaminate radioactive water at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant was switched off Sunday because of a chemical leak, the plant's operator said."