TV News LIES

According to a Department of Justice press release, Chesapeake Appalachia pled guilty on Oct. 5 in federal court to three violations of the Clean Water Act related to natural gas drilling activity in northern West Virginia. The press release states:

Chesapeake pled guilty to three counts of “Unauthorized Discharge into a Water of the United States” in that it discharged sixty (60) tons of crushed stone and gravel into Blake Fork, a water of the United States, on at least three different occasions in December of 2008.

Chesapeake also admitted that after discharging the stone and gravel that it then spread the material in the stream to create a roadway for the purpose of improving access to a site associated with Marcellus Shale drilling activity in Wetzel County, West Virginia.

Environmentalists campaigning to prevent the wholesale destruction of the Indonesian rainforest scored a major victory on Wednesday after coaxing the Walt Disney company, one of the world's largest publishers of children's books, to revamp its paper purchasing policies and sever ties with two of Asia's most controversial pulp and paper manufacturers.

After two years of occasionally testy exchanges and intense negotiation with the Rainforest Action Network (Ran), a San Francisco-based advocacy group, Disney agreed in a new written policy to do everything it could to safeguard endangered forests and their ecosystems, which support the sorts of animals celebrated in Disney feature films and their multimedia spinoffs.

The 16-month battle against the Minisink Compressor project in Orange County, NY, has been ramping up dramatically over the last week, and it appears to be far from over.

Despite the fact that a rehearing is pending, and further litigation is imminent, Millennium Pipeline began construction of the highly contentious natural gas facility on Oct.1. For five consecutive days, Minisink residents have managed to seriously delay construction activities by physically blocking the entrance to the site of the proposed compressor station. Two residents were arrested for disorderly conduct—a father of two young children on Monday and a local farmer on Tuesday.

Paula Getzelman and her neighbors in the Southern Monterey County Rural Coalition have three tasks on their agenda:

1. Combat the aggressive yellow star-thistle weed that is invading vineyards. 2. Add a bike lane to the gravel road that leads to their homes.
3. Learn more about the secretive fracking operations going on over the hill.

That last item is proving thornier than any noxious weed or road expansion. New neighbors aren't common here, but gas companies are moving into California's vast central stretches in the hopes of turning the state's Monterey Shale into the next Marcellus Shale.

Fifteen residents of Corpus Christi, Texas — so sickened by pollution they have been deemed crime victims — are asking a federal judge to force Citgo Petroleum Corp. to set up multimillion-dollar trust funds to cover medical and relocation costs, in a case with national ramifications.

A jury in 2007 convicted Citgo of criminal violations of the Clean Air Act, concluding that the company’s Corpus Christi refinery allowed toxic chemicals to drift from two large, uncovered storage tanks into a nearby neighborhood for a decade.

The coral in Australia's Great Barrier Reef is rapidly disappearing due to a host of factors -- all of which are influenced by humans, according to a new study. The report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, tracks coral cover over the last 27 years and finds levels have fallen by nearly 50%.

The Great Barrier Reef is one of the world's most beloved natural attractions because of its remarkable array of sea life. But, according to researchers, a trio of factors has conspired to degrade the reef: tropical cyclones, attacks from the coral predator the crown-of-thorns starfish, and rising water temperatures.