Pressure Mounts on Khimki Developers – April 20, 2011

Russian activists have held off construction of a major highway through an old growth forest outside of Moscow much longer than most would have imagined. What began as a seemingly provincial standoff between an embattled newspaper editor and journalist – Mikhail Beketov – and the Khimki political elite has turned into a much larger struggle. (Beketov nearly paid with his life, however, his fingers smashed and his skull crushed. He remains brain dead and confined to a wheelchair.) Indeed a campaign to save a forest, ostensibly an environmental movement, has suddenly become the new face of Russian civil society. Of course this has raised the stakes. And with the construction… more

by: Adam Federman

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Use of Diesel Fuel in Fracking Violates Safe Drinking Water Act – February 1, 2011

The 2005 Bush-Cheney Energy Policy Act famously exempted hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act. But it made one small exception: diesel fuel. The Policy Act states that the term “underground injection,” as it relates to the Safe Drinking Water Act, “excludes the underground injection of fluids or propping agents (other than diesel) pursuant to hydraulic fracturing operations related to oil, gas, or geothermal production activities [italics added].” But a congressional investigation has found that oil and gas service companies used tens of millions of gallons of diesel fuel in fracking operations between 2005 and 2009, thus violating the Safe Drinking Water Act. Hydraulic fracturing… more

by: Adam Federman

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Khimki Forest Defenders Felled by Kremlin, but Struggle Will Continue – December 20, 2010

A decision to halt the construction of a highway that would cut through Moscow’s Khimki forest earlier this year has been overturned. Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Sergei Ivanov, announced last week that the development would go ahead as planned, adding that, “additional ecological measures will be taken.” The issue had become a cause celebre and culminated in an unusually large rally and concert in Moscow in September. Even Bono got in on the act. It was then that President Dmitry Medvedev seemed willing to bend, calling for a public review of the project and raising the possibility that the highway would be redirected.

As the Washington Post put it:

… more

by: Adam Federman

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Choose Your Friends Wisely – August 31, 2010

Radical eco-activist imprisoned for “friending” Mike Roselle

For years, Rod Coronado was the unofficial bad boy of the radical environmental movement. As a teenager he cut his teeth with the now well known Sea Shepherd Society and, in 1986, participated in a risky act of eco-sabotage: taking aim at Iceland’s refusal to conform to an international ban on whaling, Coronado and a partner destroyed the Hvalfjordur whaling station and sank two of the country’s whaling vessels, causing some $2 million in damage. Coronado went on to wage an underground war against the fur industry, targeting research facilities and fur farms across North America. (His story, and the story of the modern American environmental movement, is told in Dean… more

by: Adam Federman

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In Russia, A Victory For Civil Society – August 27, 2010

Khimki Highway Construction On Hold

A long running battle over the construction of a highway through Moscow’s Khimki forest has taken a surprising turn. Earlier this week I wrote about the broad based campaign to save one of Moscow’s few remaining green belts and old growth oak forests.

Environmentalists and activists have been working since 2007 to halt the construction of a highway through the 2,500-acre forest, which many viewed as inevitable. Just a couple of weeks ago one of the organizers, Yevgenia Chirikova, told the Washington Post that, “The next step is probably that they will start building. We are ready. It is going to be very loud.”

For now, however, the construction… more

by: Adam Federman

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