It’s been over a week since the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) inadvertently released an estimated three million tons of toxic wastewater into the Animas River, which temporarily turned the river orange. The long term effects on the 126 mile-long waterway that flows south from Colorado’s San Juan Mountains to Farmington, New Mexico where it joins with the San Juan River, are yet to be discovered.
The Needle in the Haystack
Given our extensive knowledge of federal, state, and local records collections, law firms and businesses often come to us in search of historical documentation that will support their cases or tell their unique stories. But when we take on projects, we never know just how much documentation we’ll discover. Sometimes it’s a lot – enough to fill up several Bankers Boxes. Other times, it’s not so much, and only a file folder or two is required. Recently, we unearthed a handful of documents for an environmental case, though we had combed through many relevant collections at federal repositories in the Washington, D.C. area. This was a perfect example of finding the proverbial needle in the haystack, where one document (out of only the aforementioned handful) proved invaluable to our client.
Reconstructing the History of a City Block
Much of the work we do in support of environmental law and toxic tort cases involves compiling comprehensive site histories. We work with our clients to come up with cost-efficient research strategies to compile these site histories, which help answer their most pressing environmental or historical questions. We’ve broadly discussed this type of work before in relation to chemical releases into local waterways. Today, we’d like to take the opportunity to discuss a specific case in which we reconstructed the history of an entire city block.
Crowdsourcing with the Help of Citizen Historians and Archivists
In our last post, we provided insight into how we find information for our clients. We explained that we spend most of our time in the field at libraries and archival repositories because, even in the era of Google, most of the historical records we’re after just aren’t online. Maybe they will be one day, but not any time soon. That’s not to say that public libraries, government agencies, and cultural institutions aren’t doing their best to digitize their collections and make them accessible online. Many repositories have embraced the power of the crowd to carry out their public-service oriented missions, which is good news for the general public and historical researchers like us who have insatiable appetites for finding and interpreting historical information.
How Will We Celebrate Thanksgiving in Years to Come?
EPA’s Proposed Clean Power Plan: The Historical Context and Future Implications of Section 111(d)
We recently attended the American Bar Association (ABA) Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources (SEER) 2014 Fall Conference in Miami, where the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed Clean Power Plan and the future of compliance was comprehensively discussed, analyzed, and debated from the beginning of the conference to the very end. The topic is of interest to us given our expertise in conducting historical environmental research into former industrial sites and manufactured gas plants, as well as our desire to improve and expand our research services in support of clients affected by emerging environmental litigation.
Patriotic Holidays & Their Origins
To most Americans, summer includes swimming, sand, sun, and overall good time fun. It’s also the season packed with patriotic holidays. Though summer doesn’t officially begin until June 21st, the majority of us bookend the season with two such holidays. Memorial Day kicks it off at the end of May, signaling to kids all across the country that the summer vacation will soon commence. In early September, Labor Day serves as the last hurrah for barbeques, campfires, and, thankfully, mosquitoes. In between, the mid-summer blowout of the Fourth of July is celebrated. Fireworks explode high up in the dark night sky as the country joins in shouting “Happy Birthday!” to America. In this post, we’ll tell you about the origins of these hallmarks of summer — and, more importantly, our country’s history — and how they’ve been celebrated over time.
From Cherry Trees to Giant Pandas: Gifts to the United States
symbolic gestures of friendship and used to solidify relationships—not just between heads of state or government officials, but also from the people of one country to the people of another. America’s Founding Fathers tried to ban the practice of accepting gifts from foreign entities, viewing them as a corrupting influence on diplomacy. The Articles of Incorporation strictly prohibited gifts from being accepted by government representatives, while the U.S. Constitution states that gifts can be received so long as Congress approves:
Finding Evidence: Research Tactics for Environmental Law & Toxic Torts
Recently, chemical releases and spills into local waterways by a chemical manufacturer and other industry in West Virginia have captured the national spotlight. For those familiar with environmental history, however, these tragic occurrences have been far more commonplace, albeit less publicized, than many may realize.
A Brief History of the Internship
Completing an internship isn’t just a rite of passage for today’s college students. Some get paid for their work. Some pay to do the work. Others get academic credit. For some, it’s a combination of all three. Either way, many students feel an internship is that must-have bullet point on their resume (second to the degree, of course) that will catch a prospective employer’s attention.