Page 4 - Locus Focus News Today

Because of its toxicity, the sale of leaded gasoline in passenger cars was banned by the EPA in 1996. But its use was still allowed for “off-road” vehicles, such as farm machinery, marine engines and race cars. There are more than a dozen major race tracks around the United States where leaded gasoline is still in use. But only one of these racetracks is close to residential

Happy has lived at the Bronx Zoo for most of her 48 years, and for more than a decade has remained largely isolated and lonely. Like all elephants, Happy has a complex mind and a deep social, intellectual, and emotional life; she desires to make choices and has a sense of self-recognition. But like all nonhuman animals, Happy is considered a thing in the eye of the law, with

Last month Multnomah County filed suit against several of the largest fossil fuel and coal-producing corporations to hold them accountable for damages from the 2021 Pacific Northwest Heat Dome, one of the deadliest and most destructive human-made weather disasters in American history, in which 69 Multnomah County residents lost their lives. The County alleges in this lawsuit

On June 28, 2021, Portland State Geography Professor Vivek Shandas drove around Portland on this hottest day ever recorded in the city, measuring the temperatures of the pavement in various neighborhoods around town. And what he found was a dramatic discrepancy between the ambient temperatures of the pavement in low income communities - as high as 160 degrees Farenheit - and

Throughout history, mankind has dammed rivers at the cost of wild fish, Indigenous peoples, forested land, and healthy watersheds. Adding to the havoc of today’s climate-change-induced weather extremes and water shortages, science says there’s no future for the business of dam-building. 

In recent years it’s becoming more and more obvious that youth are the real leaders of the climate movement. And for good reason, because they are the ones that are going to live with the climate mess that previous generations have created.

Just before northbound traffic reaches the St. Johns Bridge, three new billboards have appeared on Hwy 30/St Helens Road in Linnton.  They are part of the Tank the Tanks campaign. The billboards perch alongside the six mile-long Critical Energy Infrastructure (CEI) Hub. The four women behind the campaign warn that this is a blast zone. Sandwiched between this road and the

This year’s Oregon legislative session has been another wild ride. There were more bills introduced this session than ever before—an interesting mix of vital bills addressing environmental, social and racial justice issues, and a rash of other bills to undo all that. While many of the worst bills and some of the best have wound up in the dustbin of history (for now), many

The construction and operation of fossil fuel infrastructure is causing expensive physical and economic damages to land, air, water and frontline communities on an almost daily basis. But if, for example, a major earthquake destroys the tank farms comprising Portland’s Critical Energy Infrastructure hub along the Willamette River, right now it would be tax payers who footed

Boston-based Rye Development wants to build the largest pumped-storage hydroelectric development in the Pacific Northwest and in the process destroy irreplaceable Tribal Cultural and Religious Resources. Pumped storage is touted as the most efficient way to store solar and wind power and the Goldendale Energy Storage Project touts itself as green energy. But building this