Five officials charged with manslaughter over Flint water crisis.

Courtesy of MLive:  

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette has charged five water officials -- including a member of Gov. Rick Snyder's cabinet and a former emergency manager -- with manslaughter related to their alleged failure to act in during the Flint Water Crisis. 

Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Director Nick Lyon, former Flint Emergency Manager Darnell Earley, former City of Flint Water Department Manager Howard Croft, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality's Drinking Water Chief Liane Shekter-Smith and former district supervisor Stephen Busch will all face involuntary manslaughter charges related to their alleged failure to act in the Flint Water Crisis, Schuette announced in a release on Wednesday, June 14. 

Involuntary manslaughter is a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison and/or a $7,500 fine. 

The manslaughter charges are connected to the death of Robert Skidmore, who died Dec. 13, 2015, due to the area's Legionnaires' disease outbreak.

This almost got lost among all of the Donald Trump coverage, but it nice to see that even though justice moves slowly that it does at least move forward.

And the Michigan Attorney General hinted that Governor Rick Snyder may not be out of the woods either. 

I remember when Rachel Maddow first started talking about this in early 2016. That it took this long for these charges to be filed seems indefensible.

Geophysicists link fracking to increased number of earthquakes.

Courtesy of the Daily Item:  

The swarm of earthquakes went on for months in North Central Texas, rattling homes, with reports of broken water pipes and cracked walls and locals blaming the shudders on the hydraulic fracturing boom that’s led to skyrocketing oil and gas production around the nation. 

Darlia Hobbs, who lives on Eagle Mountain Lake, about a dozen miles from Fort Worth, said that more than 30 quakes had hit from November to January. 

“We have had way too many earthquakes out here because of the fracking and disposal wells,“ she said in an interview. 

While the dispute over the cause remains, leading geophysicists are now saying Hobbs and other residents might be right to point the finger at oil and gas activities. 

“It is certainly possible, and in large part that is based on what else we’ve seen in the Fort Worth basin in terms of the rise of earthquakes since 2008,“ William Ellsworth, a U.S. Geological Survey seismologist, said. 

Ellsworth said the Dallas-Fort Worth region previously had just a single known earthquake, in 1950. 

Since 2008, he said, there have been more than 70 big enough to feel. Those include earthquakes at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport that scientists linked to a nearby injection well. 

Ellsworth briefed his colleagues on his findings Thursday at the Seismological Society of America’s annual meeting in Anchorage, Alaska. 

Researchers also are investigating links between quakes in Kansas, Oklahoma, Ohio and elsewhere to oil and gas activities. USGS seismologist Art McGarr said it was clear that deep disposal of drilling waste was responsible for at least some of the earthquakes in the heartland.

Well gee now we can have not only flammable tap water,  and virtually impossible to clean up oil spills, we can also have dramatically increased earthquakes and possibly millions of dollar in property damage.

Gee isn't relying on fossil fuels fun?