Weekly News Roundup for May 1, 2015

Aircraft Deicing at Syracuse Airport, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user Newkai~commonswiki, CC BY 2.0.

Here are some of the stories we’ve been following this week.

• Airports all over the world use special chemicals to melt the snow and ice off airplane wings. However, a new study shows those chemicals are contaminating the soil around the airports.

• A bill that would have banned fracking in the Sunshine State failed to get past the Senate. We’ve written about local fracking bans before.

• Residents in Dukeville, North Carolina are being warned that their water could be contaminated. Bottled water is being offered to those near contaminated wells.

• North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory talked about why he would not be signing a bill regarding the state’s coal ash commission.

• The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) confirmed that deep injection of wastewater from fracking and other energy production processes causes earthquakes. The latest studies suggest that fracking is “only occasionally the direct cause of felt earthquakes.” Oklahoma has been hit by a record number of earthquakes in recent years. View our previous posts about induced seismicity.

• Legislators in Washington State passed a bill aimed at improving oil train safety. The bill now awaits Governor Jay Inslee’s signature, but since he requested this legislation and considered it a high priority for this session, there seems little doubt that he will sign.

• Railroad union officials are also pushing for tougher standards to reduce oil train accidents.

• A refinery in Utah is at the center of a controversy. Locals are suing the state to prevent the refinery from expanding. Residents say the additional air pollution would be harmful to those living in the area.

• The City of Leavenworth is being accused of defrauding the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and illegally dumping sewage into a creek that feeds into the Missouri River, as well as dumping solid sewer waste that affected several businesses near the dumpsites. The lawsuit was filed by a City employee at the wastewater treatment plant.

• Judge rules that Colorado and North Dakota can join Wyoming in a lawsuit against the recently announced federal fracking regulations. We’ve posted previously about the federal fracking regulations.