Have you heard of mountaintop removal coal mining? The companies who do it prefer the more value neutral “mountaintop mining.” But the “removal” part is very descriptive.  The practice involves blowing off the tops of mountains to get at the coal underneath. Leftover rubble is dumped into the mountain valleys, burying hundreds of streams, according [...]

Plenty of folks at this point (hat tips: Scott's Take, DCist) have pointed out that the Mayor's Conservation Corps—part of the city summer jobs program—have spent their first days on the job handing out paper doorhangers.
Many of them have ended up on the street and sidewalks, and then there's the obvious irony of promoting a [...]

Well, it’s not the lawn, exactly, but the country’s most widely used weed killer that French scientists say also kills human cells and may cause miscarriages, abnormal fetal development and low birth weight babies.
Environmental Health News reports today that one of the inert ingredients in Roundup, the country’s most widely used herbicide, might not be [...]

This sounds like a bad summertime horror movie. The kind that’s beyond ridiculous but you still can’t quite wipe from your mind.
Now Playing! Dohn-DA, dohn-DA, dohn-DA, dohn-DA …  Attack of the Joyriding Jellyfish!
New research warns the spineless blobs are poised to take over the world’s oceans. It’s hard to deny the comic elements of this story [...]

Did you know that much of the city’s trash is trucked to Fairfax County, where it is incinerated and turned into electricity? According to the Department of Public Works and the “waste-to-energy” industry, it's a "win-win" scenario; the trash disappears and the country reduces its dependence on foreign oil. What could be more patriotic, especially [...]

The Department of Energy has just launched a cool new website that maps service stations across the country – and here in the District – where you can fill’er up on biodiesel, ethanol and other “alternative fuels.”  
The Google Maps page was created for policy wonks planning the cars of the future, so at least [...]

LL and ace photographer Darrow Montgomery trekked this afternoon to one of the most isolated spots in the District of Columbia to see if Mayor Adrian M. Fenty would have any comment on the budget passed today by the D.C. Council.
Fenty, after all, had maintained in previous questioning on budgetary matters that he would let [...]

Up to now, the Washington Post has taken some pretty standard steps toward shrinking itself, consisting of shuttering some sections and taking aim and duplication. Now comes some genuine innovation on the reductionist front: An opt-in scheme for the paper's redundant TV Week insert.
According to the plan—full text after jump—subscribers in Arlington and Alexandria [...]