The
Center for Public Integrity is making it easy for journalists to get local
on this story about how the federal government's
Superfund is
far behind on cleaning up the worst toxic sites in the country. About half of all Americans live within 10 miles of one of the
1,304 active or proposed Superfund sites.
At least 114
of the sites may pose immediate health risks for people living nearby,
according to the EPA.
Click here to
find the site closest to you.
The EPA's 2007 target for
construction completions was 40 sites, but it has been scaled back to 24. The
2008 target is 30 sites, according to the EPA's 2008 budget request. You can
see, at that rate, it will take decades to clean up just the current list.
CPI reports:
Communities across America face a daunting threat from
hazardous waste sites -- some near neighborhoods and schools -- 27 years after
the federal government launched the landmark Superfund program to wipe out the
problem, a Center for Public Integrity investigation has found.
Initiated in 1980, Superfund is desperately short of money to
clean up abandoned waste sites, which has created a backlog of sites that
continue to menace the environment and, quite often, the health of nearby
residents.
Click here to
see 100 companies that are linked to about 40 percent of the worst toxic sites in America.
Small Papers Covering the Environment
Can we give a shout out to small papers in Alaska
that aggressively covered the environment in 2006? Tiny papers with 2,400
circulations took on global climate-change issues, shipping questions and
fishing. Click
here and go down to the "Best Environmental Reporting" section for a summary.
Online
Confessions
Thanks to Al's Morning Meeting reader Theresa Moore at WTSP-TV in Tampa
for sending me this one. The Miami Herald ran
a piece about churches that have launched online confessionals. Some of the sites like IveScrewedUp.com, NotProud.com, DailyConfession.com, GroupHug.us and MySecret.tv
are extremely popular. The story says:
A woman
kept her secret for nearly two decades.
Finally
ready to confess, she turned not to a minister, but to her computer.
''I am
sorry God for not keeping that baby,'' her anonymous confession reads. "I had
an abortion and had kept that secret for over 18 years. I feel so ashamed.
Please forgive me!''
The
confession appears at IveScrewedUp.com,
a Web site launched by the Flamingo Road Church in
Cooper City. It's one of a growing number of such sites across the country --
some secular and others church-sponsored -- that offer a place to spill out
ugly secrets or just make peccadilloes public.
''I think
it helps people understand ... that we're not here to point out people's
screw-ups, that we're here to help them,'' said lead Pastor Troy Gramling,
whose nondenominational church launched the site on Easter weekend. "The
church is made of skin and flesh and people that have made mistakes."
The
6,500-member church created the site as part of a 10-week series on the ways
people mess up -- in marriage, parenting, finances and more. The goal of the
series is to help congregants learn from their mistakes.
So far,
more people are reading the confessions than posting them. The site gets about
1,000 hits a day, with about 200 online admissions.
Al's Morning Multimedia: Derby Time
People who know me know that I get a little nuts around
Kentucky Derby time. It is just the best
time to be from Kentucky. Go to the Kentucky Derby Web site to
see what very cool multimedia they produce.
They draw post positions this evening. With a field as large as as this year's, post position will be huge. Friday on Al's Morning
Meeting I will tell you who is going to win the big race on Saturday. My picks
will be based on sound reasoning and logic, which means they almost always are
wrong.
We're always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's
Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story
excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as
original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly
from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided
whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the
accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and
inaccuracies found will be corrected.
