Environment | WPN World People News

The rainy season in South Sudan is fully underway and FAO is distributing vital livelihood kits to conflict-affected farmers.

Twelve-year-old Samikshya sits in rubble outside her destroyed home in Gerkhutar Village, Nepal. Samikshya’s home and school were destroyed in the first of two massive earthquakes that have hit Nepal recently.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 10 and the U.S. Department of Justice have settled with P4 Productions LLC, for violations of federal Emergency Planning and Community-Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) and Comprehensive Emergency Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) chemical reporting laws. As part of the settlement, the Company has agreed to pay a $600,000 combined penalty.

Three subsidiaries of North Carolina-based Duke Energy Corporation, the largest utility in the United States,on May 14 pleaded guilty to nine criminal violations of the Clean Water Act at several of its North Carolina facilities and agreed to pay a $68 million criminal fine and spend $34 million on environmental projects and land conservation to benefit rivers and wetlands in North Carolina and Virginia.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday the resolution of a series of enforcement actions at five Southern California metal finishing companies which will collectively pay more than $223,700 in civil penalties for hazardous waste and Clean Water Act violations. The violations were uncovered during inspections conducted at facilities in the cities of Compton, Paramount, Ontario, and Sun Valley. Three facilities are located along the I-710 freeway corridor where the effects of pollution are disproportionately higher on local residents than in other areas of Los Angeles County.

Sugar cane and soybean plantations have replaced hectare after hectare of jungle as the Amazon has been exploited in the name of agriculture, with little regard for the environmental impacts.

A farmhouse near the town of Dryden in upstate New York.

EPA Region 7 compliance evaluation inspections at two GKN Armstrong Wheels, Inc., facilities in Iowa revealed violations of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) related to the storage and handling of hazardous waste at each facility. In a settlement filed recently in Lenexa, Kan., the company agreed to pay a $150,031 civil penalty to the United States.

A coal-fired power plant on the Ohio River, west of Cincinnati. Since early 2012, approximately 8 million comments have been submitted by people across the country, supporting clean energy and carbon pollution limits for power plants.

An estimated 82,000 tons of toxic coal ash leaked into the Dan River from Duke Energy’s Dan River Power Station in February of 2014. Duke closed this North Carolina power plant in 2012, leaving its 58-year old, unlined coal ash pond containing about 100 million gallons of toxic ash open to the elements.