Sugar Land-based Imperial Sugar has reached a settlement with federal regulators seeking to fine the company for safety violations after a 2008 explosion at its Georgia refinery killed 14 workers near Savannah, GA. The Feb. 7, 2008, explosion killed 14 workers and injured 36. Investigators determined that dangerous levels of…
TXI will permanently shut down its four oldest, highest-polluting cement kilns in Midlothian and will stop burning hazardous waste as fuel, the company said Tuesday. The Dallas-based company’s announcement ends an environmental battle that has raged in North Texas for decades. Midlothian became a center for the cement industry because…
The 2005 BP plant disaster in Texas City has taken on new relevance, because the investigations that were done in its aftermath reveal so much about the company that is responsible for what’s happening now in the Gulf. Government probes, court filings and BP’s own confidential investigations paint a picture…
Natural gas utilities might have to dig up neighborhoods across Texas to replace hundreds of thousands of steel service lines to prevent explosions. The Texas Railroad Commissioner will propose that utilities replace the lines, which bring natural gas from pipelines under neighborhood streets to homes. Texas has at least 525,000…
The New York Times (7/5) editorialized that the recent controversy over the diabetes drug Avandia — with “two major studies” saying it “raises the risk of cardiovascular ailments” and the third yet-to-be-published study that “seemed to exonerate” the drug — should probably lead patients to ask their doctors about alternatives.…
A man who accused a priest of sexually abusing him when he was 14 has settled his lawsuit with the Fort Worth Roman Catholic Diocese. At the man’s request, terms of the settlement were confidential. The suit, filed last year in state district court, accused the Rev. Rudolf Rentería of…
Two Texas natural gas pipelines that exploded last month, killing three people, had not been properly marked, according to state records. Incident reports filed with the commission by the pipeline operators and excavators involved in each event confirm that neither pipeline was properly marked before the digging. State law requires…
While most of the discussions about the environmental impact of natural gas drilling in the Barnett Shale have centered on air quality, questions are now being raised about its potential impact on water quality as well. Drilling critics have expressed concern that a drilling process called hydraulic fracturing in which…
The Los Angeles Times (7/1, Rick) reports that Avastin (bevacizumab) “can cause significant kidney damage in some patients,” according to a new study. Researchers, “reporting in this month’s issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology…wrote that patients on Avastin were at increased risk of severe protein loss…
Utility provider PG&E has agreed to pay $5 million to the mother of a 20-year-old woman who was killed in a car accident involving one of the company drivers. Mary Bernstein and a friend were killed in the wreck in 2006 when John Mayfield, a diabetic, blacked out a the…