Category: Environment
Lead keeps poisoning children. It doesn’t have to.
SANTA ANA, California — The news came as a shock: Lead, lurking somewhere in Nalleli Garrido’s home, was poisoning her 1-year-old son.
His pediatrician instructed her to clean all the toys of her toddler, Ruben, keep the home dust-free and prevent him from playing in the bare soil outside her rented bungalow in Santa Ana’s Logan neighborhood. She did all she could. But the dust kept sneaking in.
No one offered an alternative. The only solution she and her husband could find was to get out. In 2019, after two years of constant worry, they moved north to the city of Buena Park, buying a home with a grassy yard — not an exposed patch of soil like her Santa Ana front yard, where the toxic metal could be found in concentrations as high as 148 parts of lead per million parts of soil. California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment considers 80 parts per million and above dangerous for children.
“I was terrified to take my son out,” said Garrido, a psychiatric nurse. “Even walking through the yard, I would tell my kids to hold their breath. ‘Don’t breathe that in, don’t breathe in the dust.’” Read more.
Legal Complaint Claims Alabama Discriminates When Distributing Sewage Infrastructure Funds
Alabama only allows state funds for sewage infrastructure to go to public bodies. A civil rights complaint argues the policy hurts communities of color. Read more.
Working Group Appointed to Learn What Went Wrong With Response to the Moody Landfill Fire
The Alabama Department of Environment Management on Friday announced the formation of a working group to assess whether changes in laws, regulations and resources are needed following the fire at the vegetative waste disposal site near Moody.
In a press conference, ADEM officials said the fire revealed shortcomings in the ability and authority of state and local governments to respond to situations that are outside the scope of their regulated activities but pose risks to the public. The working group will examine the response to the fire and make recommendations for improving the ability of state and local agencies to respond to similar emergencies in the future. Read more.
Working Group to Be Announced to Consider Changes After Lessons Learned at the Moody Landfill Fire
Public leaders are set to announce today the formation of a working group to assess whether changes in laws, regulations and resources are needed in light of the underground environmental fire at a landfill in Moody. Read more.
Red Mountain Cut Features Time Capsule of Alabama’s Robust Geologic History
A national natural landmark, the road cut along Birmingham’s Red Mountain Expressway documents more than a hundred million years of geologic history and was once an educational centerpiece. Read more.
Work on Landfill Fire ‘Proceeding Well,’ ADEM Director Says
ADEM Director Lance LeFleur said on Friday that smoke from the underground landfill in Moody has been greatly reduced and the EPA expects the fire to be out in a matter of weeks, or sooner. He said work on putting out the fire is proceeding well, and ADEM and EPA are continuing to monitor air and water quality in the area. Read more.
Who would put out a landfill fire near Moody? That question consumed officials for weeks.
A private landfill near Moody smoldered for almost two months, inundating residents miles around with noxious smoke, before the EPA stepped in.
Read more.
No Water Contamination Found From Landfill Fire
This Swampy Paradise is Alabama’s Winter Haven for Sandhill Cranes
As many as 25,000 sandhill cranes migrate to Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge every winter, along with a handful of highly endangered whooping cranes. Read more.
Moody Landfill Fire Now a Federal Affair as EPA Is Called in to Extinguish Nuisance
The landfill fire in Moody is now a federal affair. At the request of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will lead the effort to put out the underground fire at a privately operated vegetative waste disposal site near Moody in St. Clair County, the agency said in a press release Wednesday. Read more.
