By: Ron Sobczak, Sierra Club Upstate March 2016 Bulletin You may have read about the proposed coal ash landfill in Pickens. Coal ash is the generic term referring to several very distinct materials produced when we combust coal to produce electricity. We need places to safely store the huge amounts of coal ash generated from coal power plants. The

By: Vince Jackson, Independent Mail Originally Published: January 31, 2016 PICKENS COUNTY — The Pickens County Council has retained the services of an environmental lawyer in the ongoing controversy involving the possible dumping of coal ash in the Liberty area. Spartanburg attorney Gary W. Poliakoff has been retained by the county to look at the

By: Ron Barnett, Greenville Online Originally Published: February 18, 2016 The company that wants to build a landfill for coal ash near Liberty used “deceit, fraud, misrepresentation” and “bare-faced lies” to get state approval to bring in coal ash without Pickens County’s knowledge, an attorney for the county told a circuit judge Thursday. Robert Goings,

Big Methane Leak Causes State Of Emergency The Porter Ranch neighborhood of Los Angeles is officially in a state of emergency, according to a declaration by California Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday. The area has been suffering from the effects of a methane gas leak at the Aliso Canyon Storage Facility since late October. At

By: Tim Sandler and Stephanie Gosk, NBC News Originally published on December 31, 2015 A company that made a blood-clot filter associated with 27 deaths and hundreds of problems replaced the device with a modified version that it knew had similar and potentially fatal flaws soon after it was put on the market. Confidential company

By Arthur Bryant, Chairman. Source: Public Justice. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform just released the latest version of the propaganda piece it started publishing in 2002. Entitled 2015 Lawsuit Climate Survey: Ranking the States, the report summarizes the answers of a “nationally representative sample of 1,203 in-house general counsel, senior litigators or