Resources

• Legal Dictionary: Environmental Law
• Legal Dictionary: Toxic Torts
• Mesothelioma and Asbestos Resources
• What is considered toxic waste?
• Silicosis and Silica
• Welding Rods
• Environmental Protection Agency
• EPA Laws and Regulations

News:

• New York Times: BP to Get $250 Million in Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Settlement

December 16, 2011: LONDON — The British oil company BP said Friday that Cameron International, one of its contractors in the oil well that exploded last year in the Gulf of Mexico, has agreed to pay $250 million to settle claims related to the ensuing spill.  (more)

• New York Times: E.P.A. Links Tainted Water in Wyoming to Hydraulic Fracturing for Natural Gas

December 8, 2011: DENVER — Chemicals used to hydraulically fracture rocks in drilling for natural gas in a remote valley in central Wyoming are the likely cause of contaminated local water supplies, federal regulators said Thursday.  The draft report, after a three-year study by the Environmental Protection Agency, represents a new scientific and political skirmish line over whether fracking, as it is more commonly known, poses a threat in the dozens of places around the nation where it is now being used to extract previously unreachable energy resources locked within rock.  (more)

• Christian Science Monitor: Halliburton ‘destroyed’ evidence after Gulf oil spill, BP charges

December 6, 2011: The allegation by oil giant BP that Halliburton, a subcontractor on the doomed Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, destroyed data about a cement slurry operation is a glimpse into a nasty corporate court battle set to go to trial in federal court in New Orleans in February.  (more)

• NY Times: Many Hit by Spill Now Feel Caught in Claim Process

April 19, 2011: BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala. — By October, Tim Nguyen found that his work in a Mississippi shipyard was no longer paying the bills. His hours had been cut back, part of the general ebb of work along the Gulf Coast after the terrible summer of BP.  (more)

• NY Times: A Year Spent Wrestling With Paperwork, Not Nets

April 19, 2011: It has been a year of sitting inside, of dry paperwork, a year in which accounting displaced fishing as the cornerstone of the gulf economy.  This is no sort of work for a man like Alton Verdin.  (more)

• CNN Money: BP’s $20 billion fund barely tapped

April 19, 2011: NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The fund established to compensate Gulf Coast residents in the aftermath of last year's massive BP oil spill said Monday it has paid out $3.8 billion so far.  The Gulf Coast Claims Facility, established last August with $20 billion in seed money from BP (BP), said it has approved 300,000 claims from businesses and individuals hurt by the spill, out of approximately 857,000 claims submitted.  (more)

• Reuters: Erin Brockovich pushes for disease cluster law

March 30, 2011: (Reuters) - Erin Brockovich, a U.S. consumer health advocate whose life story was the basis for an Academy Award-winning film, urged senators Tuesday to pass a law to document disease clusters in the United States.  (more)

• Bloomberg: BP Managers Said to Face U.S. Manslaughter Charges Review

March 29, 2011: Federal prosecutors are considering whether to pursue manslaughter charges against BP Plc (BP/) managers for decisions made before the Gulf of Mexico oil well explosion last year that killed 11 workers and caused the biggest offshore spill in U.S. history, according to three people familiar with the matter.  (more)

• Bloomberg: BP Said to Fault Own Engineers for Misinterpreting Well Data

August 30, 2010: BP Plc’s internal investigation of the Deepwater Horizon rig disaster pins some of the blame on the company for mistakes made when finishing the oil well, including misreading pressure data that indicated a blowout was imminent, according to a person familiar with the report. (more)