Senators slam Bush’s
Clear Skies plan

Washington, DC, Aug. 2 (ENS)— In a letter to the Bush administration, 44 US senators have criticized President George W. Bush’s proposals for overhauling the Clean Air Act.

Please go to www.ens-news.com for full article.

Report: Yucca Mountain volcanic hazard greater than previously believed

Washington, DC, July 31(ENS)— British researchers have developed a computer model that shows a volcanic eruption might cause greater damage than previously thought to the proposed high-level nuclear waste storage facility beneath Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

For full article please go to www.ens-news.com

ENVIRO BRIEFS

Activists in India target Coca-Cola
Residents and activists in India’s southern Kerala state vowed Aug. 5 to step up protests against a Coca-Cola plant, guarded by police, for allegedly depleting ground water and contaminating the environment.

More than 700 environmental activists and residents of the northern Kerala border town of Plachimada in Palakkad district staged protest rallies late Aug. 4 demanding the closure of the US beverage giant’s factory.

“The ground water has been severely contaminated,” said the Anti Coca-Cola People’s Struggle Committee. “The company is dumping its foul-smelling, dry, sediment slurry waste in the surrounding villages.”

But company officials denied the charge.

“The sludge produced by our company is rich in manure and we have even been supplying it free of cost to local farmers,” said the plant manager of Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages.

Activists, who launched their campaign in April, said the company was slurping up more than 1.5 million tons of water daily. They are calling on Coca-Cola to restore the environment, pay compensation, close down the factory, and leave the country.

Some 300 people had been arrested since the protests began and a number of women injured by police during demonstrations. (AFP)

Longleaf pine plantation to
become a preserve
One of the world’s last stretches of longleaf pine forest will now be managed, and eventually owned, by The Nature Conservancy, the New York-based Greentree Foundation announced July 29. The private foundation chose the Conservancy to manage the 5,200 acre Greenwood Plantation in Georgia, considered one of the most biologically diverse privately-held properties in the southeastern United States.

Located in southwest Georgia’s Red Hills, Greenwood is an example of a vanishing ecosystem — the longleaf pine forest. Once covering more than 90 million acres across the southeast, less than three percent of the original longleaf pine forests remain.

Teeming with wildlife, the Greenwood property contains a 1,000 acre old growth section of longleaf pine known as the “Big Woods,” where trees range in age up to 500 years old.

Rivaling Latin American rain forests in species diversity, longleaf pine ecosystems can contain more than 40 plant species per square meter — among the highest values reported at this scale in the world — and support an estimated 300 globally imperiled species.

The Nature Conservancy will officially assume management of Greenwood, which also includes several historic buildings, on Sept. 1, 2002. (for full article go to ENS)

Zambia to accept GM food aid from US
Zambia is expected to import genetically modified corn from the United States to feed its 2.3 million starving citizens, according to the Biotechnology Trust of Africa, a regional charitable trust. Zambia has decided not to follow in the footsteps of Zimbabwe, which two months ago rejected 10,000 metric tons of genetically modified maize from the US Agency for International Development.

But scientists fear that the lack of a National Biosafety Framework in Zambia could create difficulties in monitoring transboundary genetically modified foods.

Zambia is facing a lack of capacity and legal requirements to handle genetically modified food at the height of food shortages and hunger that is sweeping the entire Southern African Development Community.

The governments of several countries in Southern Africa have declared national disasters due to the food security crisis - Malawi in February, Lesotho and Zimbabwe in April, and Zambia on May 29. The Zambian government is assuring the people that there is no need for alarm over genetically modified foods. (ENS)