As a mustard yellow bulldozer about the size of a Jeep Rubicon rumbles forward and reverses hurling dirt into the air, cars rattle down Earhart Boulevard in New Orleans. The spring sun beams down baking six construction workers in neon yellow vests and white hard hats as they prepare to concrete the gutted neutral ground. Greg Dabalos, a concrete finisher from Command Construction Industries based out of Metairie, La., says his company did not tell him what used to exist on the grassy parcel across the street in this mainly black community. But before he could respond to additional questions, an employee from the construction company exited a truck and crossed the street directing all inquiries to their office.

Unlike Dabalos, long-time residences of Gert Town know what occupied this barren lot surrounded by a five and a half-foot barbed wire fence. They blame activities that occurred there for damaging their health – causing cancer, respiratory problems and other adverse effects. And a class action suit by neighbors against companies that made and stored an arsenal of lethal chemicals there – including DDT and toxic dry-cleaning fluids – tore the community apart.

“The real bad time of the operation was during the Vietnam War,” says Frank Edwards, one of the lawyers who represented Gert Town residents in the class action suit against plant operators. “They actually made Agent Orange there.”

Dorothy Leonard, who lives across the street from this barren lot, says children play there. Although no sign identifies this site in the center of this low-income New Orleans community – now restricted to commercial or industrial use, long-time residents of Gert Town remember the Thompson-Hayward chemical plant once located there. A class action suit against companies that operated the facility ruined relationships between neighbors.

“The people had complained about the smell and the burning eyes and they couldn’t sit on their porches,” said Frank Edwards, one of the lawyers who represented Gert Town residents in the class action suit against plant operators. “It was in their houses and it was in their attics and it was under their houses.”

Spanish moss cascades from the twisted branches of live oaks shading New Orleans streets and luring tourists out of the French Quarter to pristine neighborhoods, like the Garden District. But few visitors venture to Gert Town, dominated by the old, gigantic Blue Plate sign. This sparsely inhabited neighborhood is home to Xavier University and the birthplace of famous musician Allen Toussaint. Floodwaters up to seven feet from Hurricane Katrina inundated Gert Town for about two weeks. Now, most businesses there are liquor-filled corner stores.

Although Gert Town was never a tourist mecca, it was booming industrially in the mid 20th century. Companies, including Coco-Cola and Blue Plate Fine Foods, opened factories there. But since few citizens questioned businesses moving into their community, the deadly potions operators brewed at the Thompson-Hayward chemical plant on Earhart Boulevard remained a mystery for nearly half a century.

Toxic chemicals have plagued this crime-ridden community since a former St. Louis-based chemical company began producing herbicides and pesticides there in 1941.  Between 2006 and 2007 – nearly a decade after class action litigation against plant operators by Gert Town residents, crews removed the noxious legacy on the 2.7-acre parcel, where workers made DDT and the main component of Agent Orange. But the community is still fighting to get U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to remove the poisons that leached into their soil from the chemical plant. And construction on a high-traffic road abutting the site of this once lethal facility has alarmed neighbors.

The same year a powerful republican New York state senator endorsed industry-drafted revisions to gas drilling laws, his law firm represented the largest natural gas producer in the state. When asked whether he found his actions to be a conflict of interest, state Senator George Winner (R-NY) responded, “Not at all.”

There are two sides competing for money in the Marcellus Shale gas rush: landowners and energy companies. Winner makes money from both. He is an active partner in a law firm that profits from landowners and energy companies involved in natural gas deals.

“You either represent landowners, or you represent the companies because even though it’s not a direct conflict of interest, it’s a kind of philosophical conflict,” says Christopher Denton, an Elmira, N.Y., attorney and Winner’s former law partner.

Winner serves counties overlaying a tremendous store of natural gas, but his involvement in New York gas deals is widely unknown because the state does not require in depth financial disclosures. Winner admits his firm did “a couple real estate transactions” for Fortuna Energy Inc., a company that has aggressively pursued gas leases in his district, but he does not believe that that represents a conflict of interest with his legislative responsibilities. Some of his constituents disagree.

Congress punts and industry pounces on the International Maritime Organization as it looks to set limits on carbon

Environmentalists achieved a major victory in March when the United Nations International Maritime Organization agreed to set strict new standards for air emissions from ships off the U.S. and Canadian coasts.

The agreement requires ocean vessels within 200 miles of the shoreline to switch to a cleaner yet costlier blend of fuel that emits less sulfur and other harmful pollutants linked to asthma and cancer. Environmental Protection Agency scientists believe the new rules will save 8,300 lives per year, mostly in communities near ports.

Some in the shipping industry supported the tougher measures, but one key industry component continues to vigorously oppose them: the cruise line industry.

CARLSBAD, CA – High on a hill above this sunny beach town sits a reservoir filled with water pumped from hundreds of miles away. But the price of that imported water is soaring, and supplies are shrinking. Local officials see salvation to the west – a huge new desalination plant that would turn 300 million gallons a day of the sparkling Pacific Ocean into a new, 50 million gallon river of drinking water.

Down below, Poseidon Resources LLC is pushing to complete a dizzying checklist of approvals before heading to Wall Street for project financing. After 12 years of permitting battles, the desalination plant – which could open the floodgates for many others on the California coast – may finally be built.

Best of all, the developers promise, it will cost the public nothing to build.

Six weeks and counting. That’s how much time Poseidon officials have to clear a laundry list of approvals, then persuade Wall Street investors to buy $530 million in bonds to construct their 50 million gallon a day seawater desalination plant.

Senior vice president Peter MacLaggan said company personnel and southern California water officials alike are “working day and night to get to the finish line…everybody’s making a tremendous effort.”

Between late April and June 22 all were pushing to complete the following:

√ Nine separate local water districts must approve revised 30 year contracts with Poseidon to buy the water. There has been haggling over water delivery, percent of profits allowed, and a few other issues. But MacLaggan said nearly all of the agreements were “dropping into place like clockwork.” Several district managers agreed.