The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failed to obtain a South Carolina pollution control permit for its controversial project to deepen the Savannah River, according to a lawsuit filed today in state court by the Southern Environmental Law Center on behalf of Georgia and South Carolina conservation groups.
Today, Governor McDonnell announced that he will ask the General Assembly not to take any action this legislative session on uranium mining.
On behalf of the Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation, the Southern Environmental Law Center today filed suit to stop contamination of the Wateree River, nearby groundwater, and wetlands by coal ash lagoons of South Carolina Electric and Gas Company in southern Richland County, South Carolina.
The long-awaited report issued by the National Academy of Sciences today echoes numerous pitfalls with potential uranium mining, milling and waste disposal in the Commonwealth that many concerned Virginians have expressed in past months.
A federal court today rejected the Portland Cement Association’s attempt to repeal public health protections provided by the Environmental Protection Agency against air pollution from portland cement kilns.
The state’s air permit for the proposed Titan America cement plant in New Hanover County must reduce pollution to the maximum extent possible to protect public health and satisfy federal and state law, according to comments on the draft air permit filed by conservation groups.
North Carolina needs to objectively and critically investigate the risks of hydraulic fracturing before considering changes to existing law, according to comments submitted today by the Southern Environmental Law Center to the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
The Alabama Environmental Management Commission (EMC) today unanimously voted to approve a permit issued for the Shepherd Bend coal mine, a 1,773-acre strip mine to be located less than 1,000 feet from Birmingham's primary drinking water intake.
Conservation groups will examine closely a draft air permit for the proposed Titan cement plant issued today by the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources and encourage the public to participate in the upcoming public comment period.
As the N.C. House of Representatives prepares to vote on whether to fast track fracking and offshore drilling in North Carolina, a map released today by the Southern Environmental Law Center shows that hydraulic fracturing of potential shale gas deposits in the state could directly impact the water supply for 1.1 million people, and an additional 1.3 million people downstream.
Two leading conservation organizations, the Alabama Rivers Alliance and Southern Environmental Law Center, today released a report detailing the changes needed in state policies to ensure that Alabama has clean and plentiful drinking water and healthy river systems for the long term.
Yesterday's ruling by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the decades-long tri-state water wars should be a wake-up call for Alabama to get serious about planning its own water future, Alabama conservation groups said today.
A coalition of environmental groups announced today that they have filed a motion in federal court to oppose the efforts of major national agricultural organizations to force an end to federal and state programs to reduce pollution and restore the Chesapeake Bay.
The Keep the Ban Coalition today announced the support of 41 localities and organizations that have joined the growing statewide movement urging the Virginia legislature to resist an industry push to lift the state's ban on uranium mining as early as next year.
Local groups today filed a motion to intervene in the court case over Colleton County’s denial of a special exception for South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. to dump large quantities of coal ash waste from its coal-fired power plant on a 1,700 acre site within the county using dump trucks that would travel through local communities.
A strong majority of North Carolina voters says deep cuts in environmental protections proposed in a legislative budget would handicap the economy and harm the state's quality of life, according to a new poll from Public Policy Polling.
The Alabama Rivers Alliance, Black Warrior Riverkeeper and the Cahaba River Society have filed a motion to intervene in a permit appeal by a business organization filed against the Alabama Department of Environmental Management to help defend the agency's stormwater program for small cities.
More than 100 citizens from around the Commonwealth were expected to turn out today for a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) meeting in Richmond to support keeping a statewide ban on uranium mining and milling in Virginia that has been in place for almost 30 years.
Groups that kept the proposed Titan America cement plant near Wilmington, N.C., accountable to standards protecting the health of N.C. residents now will defend national pollution limits on cement plants after a federal court granted their intervention in Portland Cement Association v. EPA.
Two Alabama river groups are appealing an administrative law judge's approval of a permit for a massive strip, auger and underground coal mine in Blount County. The Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of the Black Warrior Riverkeeper and Friends of Locust Fork River, filed the necessary papers this week with the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals; only a few coal mine permits have ever been appealed to this level in Alabama.
The Southern Environmental Law Center and the National Parks Conservation Association today applaud Governor Phil Bredesen and the state of Tennessee for petitioning to limit surface mining on state-owned lands in the North Cumberland Plateau, which would eliminate the threat of mountaintop removal coal mining in these critical watersheds and ridgelines.
A legal challenge brought by the Southern Environmental Law Center on behalf of the Western North Carolina Alliance and Trout Unlimited against a permit issued by the state to the Cliffs at High Carolina ended today in a settlement agreement that reduced the private, Tiger Woods-designed golf course’s impact on headwater trout streams by almost half—from 3,132 linear feet of stream impacts in the original design to 1,655 linear feet of impacts in the revised design.
Downstream users and river advocates today challenged a North Carolina Division of Water Quality wastewater permit that fails to require adequate reductions in color and thermal pollutants being discharged by the Blue Ridge Paper Products mill into the Pigeon River in Haywood County, North Carolina, about 40 miles from the Tennessee border.
After years of delay, tragedy in Tennessee, EPA proposes regulatory options but stops short of issuing a strict rule
SELC welcomes the introduction of a bi-partisan compromise in the U.S. House of Representatives that restores long overdue protections for streams and wetlands.
More than 150 people attended a symposium in Richmond today to hear from five experts from around the world on the human, environmental and economic impacts of uranium mining. The experts have witnessed first-hand the operations and impacts of uranium mines in the U.S. and around the globe, and have written extensively on issues of water quality and health consequences, as well as economic and community impacts.
River advocates served legal notice to a large industrialized hog operation in eastern North Carolina for violations of the Clean Water Act.
Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation, Inc. and SELC reached an agreement with cities to significantly reduce the amount of water transferred out of the Catawba River in North Carolina during drought conditions.
Groups today appealed to Wake County Superior Court for a comprehensive review of public health and environmental impacts from the proposed Titan America cement plant after a N.C. Department of Administration ruling allowed the plant to go forward without such a review.
The Southern Environmental Law Center today petitioned for a hearing on a permit issued last month for a 3,255-acre coal mine in Blount County. The proposed mine would have more than 60 pollution discharge points into the main stem or feeder streams of the Locust Fork, a tributary of the Black Warrior River that is already on the state's list of the worst polluted streams.
The N.C. Court of Appeals this week upheld the state’s protective buffer for trout streams in a victory for North Carolina’s water quality, according to the SELC.
After Durham County miscounted properties belonging to petition signatories, its announcement yesterday that a citizens’ petition is invalid without specific explanation and citizens must sue for reconsideration only raises questions, according to the SELC and Haw River Assembly.
The Durham City-County Planning Department miscounted the amount of affected land owned by signatories to a protest petition and improperly invalidated a protest petition filed on October 5 ahead of the vote by the Durham Board of County Commissioners, according to the Southern Environmental Law Center and Haw River Assembly. On October 12, the county commissioners’ 3-2 vote to move the critical area boundary fell short of the 4-1 vote required by the valid protest petition so Jordan Lake watershed boundaries could not be amended.
Final decision announced today by the U.S. Forest Service as a win-win approach to resolving the problem.
An audit by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has found that Shelby County's stormwater management program falls far short of numerous federal requirements aimed at keeping polluted runoff from reaching streams, rivers and ground water.
U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson issued a decision today in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint phase of the years-long tri-state water wars between Georgia, Alabama and Florida.
EPA’s recent finding that North Carolina has the most coal combustion waste sites posing a high hazard to the public—12 of the 44 sites nationwide.
Protection of North Carolina’s economic diversity, natural wealth and people hinges on the Environmental Protection Agency.
A key claim in SELC's lawsuit was that the Bush administration failed to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for impacts to at-risk species before issuing the rule, as required by the Endangered Species Act.
South Carolina’s environmental agency illegally permitted coal-fired power plant.
In an environmental assessment issued today, the U.S. Forest Service found that muddy runoff from off-road vehicle use in the designated Tellico River ORV area in the Nantahala National Forest has caused significant and extensive damage to water quality throughout the Tellico watershed.
Following Congressional pledges for EPA regulation of coal waste after the catastrophic waste spill in Tennessee and a second spill in Alabama, the Southern Environmental Law Center today outlined the minimum safeguards necessary to protect the environment and public health and safety from coal waste.
Today’s second spill of coal waste from a TVA coal-fired power plant into Widows Creek in northeast Alabama adds urgency to the need for regulation of coal waste.
The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), the largest environmental advocacy organization dedicated solely to protecting the Southeast, today announced a list of ten special places in the South that face immediate, potentially irreparable threats in 2009.
A December 22 flood of toxic coal sludge—enough to fill 798 Olympic-size swimming pools—in Tennessee demonstrates the dangers of burning coal and underscores the need for stringent regulation of coal waste, according to the Southern Environmental Law Center.
Conservationists filed a lawsuit today challenging a state permit for a proposed strip coal mine in Alabama, which would discharge pollutants into the Black Warrior River, less than a quarter mile from an intake for one of Birmingham's major sources of drinking water.