August
August 18, 2000
A Florida state civil court convicts a Fox Television affiliate under "whistelblower" statutes for deliberately distorting the reporting of journalists Jane Akre and Steve Wilson about Bovine Growth Hormone, a chemical found in most milk. The TV network had allegedly caved in to pressure from Monsanto Chemical to spike news reports about health and environmental concerns with BGH. Akre and Wilson were awarded the Goldman Prize in 2001. Their fight is described at their Web site FoxBGHsuit.
August 14, 2003
Electric power failure affects 50 million people from New York to Ontario. A US-Canadian task force report in the incident issued in April, 2004 put the blame on FirstEnergy Corp., a northern Ohio electricity transmitter, which did not properly identify conditions that led to the overload of its system and take the necessary diagnostic steps. But FirstEnergy says "Our transmission system was designed and built to provide reliable service to our customers, not to be a superhighway for long-distance transactions to Canada and elsewhere."
August 10, 1922
National Coast Anti Pollution League formed by state and municipal officials at Atlantic City, New Jersey to stop oil dumping. Elected as president is Gifford Pinchot, also now running for governor of Pennsylvania and formerly Teddy Roosevelt¹s leading conservation expert. Pinchot wins the governorship in November. President David Neuberger writes in the New York Times:
“About twenty miles below Sandy Hook (NJ) one is greeted by four miles of … oil, sludge, tar and bilge water resting on the ocean. It is steadily increasing and defiles everything it touches… The question presents itself: Shall industrial waste be held superior to the public weal, public health, sanitation and the conservation of food? Shall this sort of industiral progress be permitted at the expense of our people, and shall all these be made subservient to industrial waste? It was to overcome these conditions by drastic laws and their enforcement, compelling ship owners to find a method by which all these ills might be alleviated, and the owners of industrial plants shown the way to cooperate, that this League was organized. There are methods which, if properly applied, would stay the menace and avert the consequences.”
August 15, 1922
In support of the National Coast Anti-Pollution League, a columnist in the Philadelphia Ledger newspaper writes of a time, 20 years beforehand, when fish were common in the Delaware River:
“How [can] any sane person deliberately go into such black and vile-looking water? … [Only twenty years ago] the haul of the shad net brings that thrilling moment when the encircled fish break water and the whole surface inclosed in the arc of bobbing corks suddenly bursts into silver flame as a hundred fine big fellows leap and churn in a last desperate effort … There’s a lot more than sentiment in such reminiscences as these… They mean happiness and health in an age when the tendency is to sleep away from the turmoil and the ‘twice breathed air’ of the city… The lack of such things means millions of dollars in good, hard cash, to say nothing of the less material considerations. Philadelphia, of all cities, should support the Anti-Pollution League and should welcome the election of Gifford Pinchot to its presidency.”