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Defective Meters and Whistleblower Complaints Raise Questions About Gas Utility’s Profits

DeSmogBlog

A little over a decade ago, Gary Dye, then a gas measurement engineer at NW Natural, Oregon’s largest gas utility, lost faith in his employer to responsibly deal with what he believed to be systematic inaccuracies among the company’s hundreds of thousands of gas meters. Faulty Meters Raise Questions About Profits.

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Phantom Gas and Missing Documents Reveal Gaps in Utility Oversight

DeSmogBlog

The circumstances surrounding his termination are documented among thousands of pages of public records and internal company documents that provide a penetrating look into the multi-billion dollar stakes of negotiations between governments and state-sanctioned monopolies that are shaping the future of energy systems in Oregon and beyond.

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Scientists Find Appalachian Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining Put Endangered Species at Risk Thousands of Times

DeSmogBlog

Mountaintop removal coal mining — one of the most notoriously destructive forms of mining — has torn through over 500 mountains across Appalachia, even as coal’s dominance over American energy supplies has faded in recent years. The paper suggests that all of this might have happened in violation of federal law. The diamond darter.

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In Their Own Words: The Dirty Dozen Documents of Big Oil’s Secret Climate Knowledge

DeSmogBlog

Found in the book “ Energy and Man: A Symposium ” Provenance: Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware. He helped develop the fusion bomb, which is immensely more powerful than even the atomic bomb. Available at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). View on DocumentCloud. But this is basic physics, right?

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Toxins from Marathon Refinery Fire Leaked 15 Hours Before Evacuation Called

DeSmogBlog

An initial air monitoring reading detected benzene , a known carcinogen, in the air, according to an LDEQ field interview document from the incident. Air monitor readings taken with a handheld gas monitor between 7:30 a.m. Air monitor readings taken with a handheld gas monitor between 7:30 a.m. By 11:06 p.m.,

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Pandemics, Plans, Perceptions

Varuna

We had avian flu in 2005 and Ebola in 2014 and scientists, again including Carroll, warned that we did not develop plans to address any future outbreaks of those viruses. Most water system operators do not have the data to determine their baselines for the compliance metrics in the new laws. We were forewarned but didn’t prepare.

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Isle de Jean Charles Community Members Moved into the First Federally Funded Resettlement Project in Louisiana Despite Visible Engineering Issues

DeSmogBlog

OCD justified the change by saying the state had determined not all residents on the island identified as part of the Tribe, and that limiting the project to a specific tribe could be seen as contrary to HUD’s rules and federal anti-discrimination laws. But the state scrapped these plans.