Posted by Amy Mall in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
NRDC believes that some places are too sensitive to drill for oil or gas and should be completely protected from industrial development. We feel this way about wilderness quality public lands managed by the federal government on behalf of all...
Posted by Amy Mall in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
A recent article reported that the Pennsylvania Secretary of Environmental Protection has stated that "water discharges from Marcellus shale drilling operations have already harmed aquatic life in the state...." Because of this, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission is seeking the...
Posted by Amy Mall in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
If you've read some of my previous blog posts you know that Pennsylvania has seen more than its share of severe environmental damage from natural gas drilling. Drinking water contamination, air pollution, fish kills, dead livestock, and more have been...
Posted by Amy Mall in Health and the Environment , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Last month I noted that Pennsylvania had acknowledged its need for better groundwater protections and was proposing new rules to strengthen its standards for gas well construction. This month, the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has proposed new rules for hydraulic fracturing "to...
Posted by Amy Mall in Health and the Environment , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Americans own a lot of land. I am not talking about your own backyard, but about federal land that belongs to all Americans. This land includes national parks, national forests, and national wildlife refuges. It also includes land managed by an...
Posted by Amy Mall in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
A recent article in the Philadelphia City Paper reports on a memo sent by the former Pennsylvania Secretary of Conservation and Natural Resources to Governor Edward Rendell in March, 2009. The memo stated that the Governor's request to lease an...
Posted by Amy Mall in Health and the Environment , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Today the President submitted his proposed budget for the 2011 fiscal year (which starts on October 1) to Congress. He reaffirmed his commitment to addressing global warming by proposing steps to help the U.S. transition away from the dirty fossil fuels that cause...
Posted by Amy Mall in Curbing Pollution , Health and the Environment , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
In a recent post I blogged about widespread concern across the country of insufficient regulation, inspection, and enforcement by state regulators. A scathing new investigation by ProPublica shines a much brighter light on this issue. The investigation examined 32 states and found...
Posted by Amy Mall in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Yesterday Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a suite of agency initiatives to reform the process for federal oil and gas leasing (leasing on public lands or leasing of oil and gas that is owned by the federal government but is located beneath...
Posted by Amy Mall in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Imagine an environmental protection law that passes the House of Representatives by a vote of 372 to 15 and passes the Senate by voice vote with no recorded dissent. Well, you don't need to imagine this, or wake up from a dream. It...
Posted by Amy Mall in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Historically, the federal government protected pristine wilderness quality lands by designating them as "wilderness study areas." The Bush adminstration, however, agreed to a policy that prohibits the Bureau of Land Management from designating such lands as wilderness study areas. Therefore, many of the country's last...
Posted by Amy Mall in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
The Roan Plateau in western Colorado is a place of deep box canyons, quiet trout streams and expansive meadows that rises 3,500 feet above the Colorado River valley. Home to black bears, cougars, prized elk and deer herds, golden eagles and...
Posted by Amy Mall in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
The Obama administration is taking a hard look at how best to revise federal procedures for oil and gas leasing on public lands. The Bush administration created policies to help its oil and gas friends and make industrial development the primary use of public lands throughout...
Posted by Amy Mall in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
As I discussed in a previous post, the Wilderness Act of 1964 authorizes Congress to protect our nation's wildest lands in order to preserve their natural state and all of the values associated with their wildness. Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs) are lands that...
Posted by Amy Mall in Health and the Environment , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
In recent months, several publications have purported to calculate the costs of NRDC proposals to protect human health, clean air and clean water from contamination generated by oil and gas production. But these "costs," used by industry to fight new protections, are grossly exaggerated and...
