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Cleanup of Superfund Site Completed in Morris County, New Jersey
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has successfully completed the cleanup of a superfund site in Long Hill Township and Harding Township, Morris County, NJ. The site, at the edge of a National Wildlife Refuge, had formerly served as an asbestos dump. It has now been removed from the National Priorities List of hazardous waste…
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Rebranding Tap Water: NYC Water-On-the-Go Campaign
On a recent walk along New York City’s Union Square Park, I came across a beautiful sight: walking in 95-degree humid heat, I saw fountains and fountains of cold, clean, and free drinking water. New Yorkers profess that their tap water is “the purest and tastiest” in the world. This summer, the New York Department…
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Russia’s peatland fires seen burning for months
Some of Russia’s smog-causing peatland fires are likely to burn for months, part of a global problem of drained marshes that emit climate-warming greenhouse gases, experts said on Wednesday. Novel carbon markets could offer a long-term fix for peat bogs, from Indonesia to South Africa, if negotiators of a U.N. climate treaty can agree ways…
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EPA Sets Limits on Mercury and Other Air Emissions from Cement Kilns
Cement plants emit mercury from the kilns used in the cement manufacturing process. Cement kilns operate at high temperatures, and are, in fact used to destroy many types of toxic substances. The rule, proposed on August 9, 2010 also applies to total hydrocarbons (THC), and particulate matter (PM) from new and existing kilns located at…
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The Fish May Now Return
The Gulf of Mexico has been a problem for fishing and other marine life even since the BP oil spill earlier this year. Things are looking up finally. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has just reopened 5,144 square miles of Gulf waters to commercial and recreational finfish fishing. Since July 3, NOAA data…
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Harvesting Indonesian Ice
Ice can exist on the equator, so long as it’s at a high elevation. The Indonesian mountain ridge, which rises to 16,000 feet on the island of New Guinea, supports the presence of such an ice field. According to a study by researchers from Ohio State University, that tropical ice field can disappear within a…
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Free and Low-Cost Solar Energy
If solar electricity or solar water heating isn’t your cards right now, there are plenty of other ways to take advantage of the sun’s energy–for little or no money. One of the simplest is hanging your wet duds on a clothesline. It only takes just a couple more minutes of your time… To comment on…
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Russia’s fires cause “brown cloud,” may hit Arctic
Smoke from forest fires smothering Moscow adds to health problems of “brown clouds” from Asia to the Amazon and Russian soot may stoke global warming by hastening a thaw of Arctic ice, environmental experts say. “Health effects of such clouds are huge,” said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, chair of a U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) study of “brown…
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Biochar
Biochar is charcoal type created by the pyrolysis of biomass, and differs from ordinary charcoal only in the sense that its primary use is not for fuel, but for biosequestration or atmospheric carbon capture and storage. As much as 12 percent of the world’s human caused greenhouse gas emissions could be sustainably offset by producing…
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Deep, Open Ocean Is Vastly Under-Explored, Study Finds
ScienceDaily (Aug. 3, 2010) — New research from the University of Sheffield has discovered that the deep open ocean, by far the largest habitat for life on Earth, is currently the most under-explored area of the sea, and the one we know least about. The research, published in the journal PLoS ONE, has mapped the…