Gas Flaring Wastes Energy and Pollutes the Air – Why is it Still Happening? click button

Gas Flaring Wastes Energy and Pollutes the Air – Why is it Still Happening?

Gas flaring was responsible for Texas’s recent increase in oil refinery pollution, but it’s hardly a new problem. We’re less than a decade away from the UN’s goal of Zero Routine Flaring by 2030, but refineries still flare 150 billion cubic meters of natural gas each year, releasing 400 million tons of greenhouse gasses and other pollutants into the atmosphere.

Why This Matters: Companies have historically practiced gas flaring as a convenient and inexpensive way to “dispose of ” gas that was extracted alongside oil, as opposed to storing paying to store it.

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Pipeline Construction in Memphis Raises Environmental Justice Issues click button

Pipeline Construction in Memphis Raises Environmental Justice Issues

Pipelines often raise environmental justice issues – a problem the incoming Biden administration will need to wrestle with given the President’s campaign promises.  The nonprofit newsroom MLK50 recently reported on the construction of a pipeline in Memphis, in which the company offered resident Joseph Owens only $3,000 to buy an easement on his one acre of land.

Why this Matters: Eminent domain is meant to be a tool of last resort the government uses to ensure that infrastructure like roads and power lines can be built without one landowner stopping construction that benefits the community

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EPA Rule Unjustly Trumps State Clean Water Act Authority To Protect Rivers and Drinking Water

EPA Rule Unjustly Trumps State Clean Water Act Authority To Protect Rivers and Drinking Water

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) yesterday issued another rule dealing a blow to 40 years of settled law on the authority of states and tribes under the Clean Water Act to block fossil fuel projects such as natural gas pipelines and coal terminals that could pollute state waterways.

Why This Matters:  The EPA is turning the Clean Water Act on its head and undercutting states and tribes that are protecting the clean water and the health of their citizens.

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