AS THE SKY CLEARED over rain-swept Southeast Alaska one August afternoon in 2019, we flew over Prince of Wales Island to take in its lush forests. Numerous fresh clearcuts interrupted the deep green cover on the United States’ fourth largest island located at the southern end of Alaska’s massive Tongass National Forest. In some spots, stands of younger trees stretched their canopies across older, logged areas. On the whole, though, the forest here looked rich and vast.
BLOOD UNDER THE TRACKS: The dirty business of making railroad ties poisons Oregon town May 6, 2018 Part 1 People in The Dalles, Ore., say their air is being poisoned by a company that uses creosote to make railroad ties. Some say they are crazy, but a bevy of court documents and medical studies back …
Trade Secrets Meet the polluter in The Dalles, Ore., who thinks its toxic air emissions data are none of your business. May 14, 2018 Part 2 By PAUL KOBERSTEIN and JESSICA APPLEGATE Photographs by SARAH CLARK THE DALLES, Ore., – Union Pacific’s creosote treatment plant in The Dalles for years resisted public demands for fewer …
Protecting the environment is a game of numbers.
The state’s new Cleaner Air Oregon program will soon decide such things as how much toxic air pollution each industry should be allowed to emit. It will also decide how much toxic pollution people can inhale harming their health. Unfortunately, Cleaner Air Oregon is about to dial-in a number that protects industry more than people. This number has been skewed to provide more protection for white people than African-Americans.