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Activists wanted to clean up a coal ash dump. Dump sued activists for complaining.

talkin’ trash

Activists wanted to clean up a coal ash dump. Dump sued activists for complaining.

By on Jun 2, 2016Share

Four residents of a tiny Alabama town are fighting back against a giant landfill operator after the Georgia-based company, Green Group, filed a $30 million defamation suit against them. The American Civil Liberties Union asked a federal court to dismiss the suit on Thursday.

Green Group operates a toxic coal ash dump in Uniontown, Ala., a small, mostly black community where half the residents live below the poverty line. The Arrowhead landfill draws coal ash — the sludge left by burning coal — from across the country. Opposition to the landfill gained strength after waste from the largest coal ash spill in U.S. history was dumped in Uniontown. In total, Arrowhead takes up to 15,000 tons of toxic waste from 33 other states every day.

Three years ago, members of a group called Black Belt Citizens Fighting for Health and Justice and other residents filed a civil rights complaint with the EPA against the Alabama Department of Environmental Protection (ADEM), the state agency that oversees the landfill. The complaint against ADEM says that dust from the dump gets into homes and on cars and causes serious health problems. Three years later, the agency is still investigating.

Black Belt Citizens operates a Facebook group where residents talk about the town’s toxic sites — the landfill, as well as the sewage overflow and massive cheese processing plant. The landfill sits on a former slave plantation, and borders a historic black cemetery.

After residents filed the civil-rights complaint, Green Group approached four members of Black Belt with a settlement offer. To avoid a lawsuit, Mary Schaeffer, Ellis Long, Benjamin Eaton, and Esther Calhoun needed to remove their names from the EPA complaint, retract all their statements about the landfill, then pin that retraction to the group’s Facebook page for two years. The agreement would have given Green Group the right to look through their phones and laptops for text messages and emails.

The four refused, and were slapped with a defamation suit for what they said online. They’re now represented by the ACLU.

“State officials would never have allowed the landfill to be here if we were a rich, white neighborhood,” said Esther Calhoun, president of Black Belt Citizens, in a statement from the ACLU. “They put it here because we’re a poor, Black community and they thought we wouldn’t fight back. But we are fighting back and we’re not afraid to make our voices heard.”

The legacy of racism and enslavement compound the environmental injustice that Uniontown faces today. Once a plantation, now a toxic landfill, where silence is expected and modest objection —  even simple Facebook posts — leads to ludicrous lawsuits.

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Activists wanted to clean up a coal ash dump. Dump sued activists for complaining.

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China to spend big to clean up its air

China to spend big to clean up its air

China plans a five-year, $277 billion spending spree to clean up the country’s killer air.

The government of the heavily polluted nation pledged to clean up its skies after air-pollution levels reached dizzying new heights early this year. The announcement coincides with other nascent environmental initiatives, such as a carbon-trading system to tackle climate change and, bizarrely, legal changes that could see serious polluters executed.

Chris Aston

Filthy air in Beijing.

Many wondered whether the pledge to tackle air pollution was mere rhetoric, but this week’s announcement suggests that China is taking the problem seriously. From Reuters:

The money is to be spent primarily in regions that have heavy air pollution and high levels of PM 2.5, the state-run China Daily newspaper quoted Wang Jinnan, vice-president of the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning as saying. Wang helped draft the plan. …

The new plan specifically targets northern China, particularly Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province, where air pollution is especially serious, the newspaper said.

The government plans to reduce air emissions by 25 percent by 2017 compared with 2012 levels in those areas, according to the report.

It’s not only residents of China who would benefit from a serious campaign to improve air quality. Pollution from the region travels over the Pacific Ocean on jet streams to the West Coast of the U.S., taking as little as a week to arrive.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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China to spend big to clean up its air

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Judges Say Reporter Must Testify, CIA Spies Can Wear Disguises in Court

Mother Jones

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A US appeals court has ruled that the First Amendment does not protect New York Times national security reporter James Risen from revealing the sources that gave him information about the CIA’s plan to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program. Risen has been issued a subpoena by the Obama Administration to testify at the trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who allegedly leaked unauthorized information about the program.

In a 2-1 decision, the US Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, overturned a 2011 ruling by a lower court that Risen had journalist’s privilege to protect his sources. It also reaffirmed that the CIA can take special measures to hide the identity of current and former CIA agents who provide witness in the trial. Agents can hide their real names from the jury when testifying, and can take other security measures such as hiding behind ” a screen between the trial participants and the public seating section of the courtroom” or wearing “light disguises (wigs, false beards, half glasses.)”

The majority opinion said: “There is no First Amendment testimonial privilege, absolute or qualified, that protects a reporter from being compelled to testify by the prosecution or the defense in criminal proceedings about criminal conduct that the reporter personally witnessed or participated in, absent a showing of bad faith, harassment, or other such non-legitimate motive.”

The information in question is part of Risen’s 2006 book, State of War: The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration. In it, he described the CIA operation against Iran’s nuclear program as poorly run and wrote that it potentially gave valuable information to the Iranians. Risen told The Times in 2011 that, “I am going to fight this subpoena…I will always protect my sources, and I think this is a fight about the First Amendment and the freedom of the press.”

In a dissenting opinion, Circuit Judge Roger L. Gregory agreed with Risen: “The majority reads narrowly the law governing the protection of a reporter from revealing his sources, a decision that is, in my view, contrary to the will and wisdom of our Founders.”

The Obama Administration indicted Sterling under the Espionage Act, a law it has wielded more than any other presidential administration. Critics of Risen’s subpoena say that forcing Risen to testify, and cracking down on a national security whistleblower, is setting an alarming precedent. “I think it’s possible we’re headed toward a genuine crisis, where a New York Times reporter is in jail for publishing the news,” says Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy, a government watchdog group. He would like to the Obama Administration to withdraw the subpoena, but notes, “I’m not sure where things go from here. It’s hard for me to imagine Risen saying, ‘OK, I give up. Sterling was my source.’ Will he go to jail? I don’t know.”

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Judges Say Reporter Must Testify, CIA Spies Can Wear Disguises in Court

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Israeli Team Harnesses Sun to Purify Water

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Israeli Team Harnesses Sun to Purify Water

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Review: Radiation City’s "Animals in the Median"

Mother Jones

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Radiation City
Animals in the Median
Tender Loving Empire

Dreamy and wistful is the default mode for plenty of modern bands that haven’t figured out who they want to be when they grow up, but the striking Portland, Oregon quintet Radiation City shows how to do it right. Their second album, Animals in the Median, shimmers like a unearthly mirage, weaving together misty melodies, analog electronics and the siren vocals of keyboardist Lizzy Ellison to create a poignant sense of faded optimism and missed opportunities. Hazy gems such as “Wash of Noise” and “Lark” echo the melancholy retro-futurism of Stereolab, albeit with a more delicate touch, while the gauzy “Wary Eyes” evokes the gently eerie sensation of hearing soft music from another room at 3 a.m. Ellison and company could create a great soundtrack for David Lynch.

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Review: Radiation City’s "Animals in the Median"

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A Brief History of Earth Day

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A Brief History of Earth Day

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5 Clever and Convenient Compost Solutions

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5 Clever and Convenient Compost Solutions

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