Environmental Articles

Concern for environmental issues is not new to Beasley Allen. While serving as Lt. Governor for the State of Alabama, in 1971 the firm’s future founding shareholder Jere Beasley vowed to take control of pollution laws out of the hands of big utilities and special interest groups, and put it back into the hands of the average citizen.

Protection of people and their property from large corporate polluters is still our top priority. A unique feature of our growing environmental toxic tort practice is the ability to represent a large number of people harmed by damage to their property. Our attorneys are fighting to make a difference in the lives of those threatened by environmental toxins that contaminate waterways, soil and wildlife, endangering human health and life.

Arkansas attorney general concerned says residents still sick after ExxonMobil oil spill

Posted: May 12, 2013

Mayflower, Ark., residents, including a number of children, are continuing to experience adverse health effects after ExxonMobil’s’s Pegasus pipeline ruptured, Dustin McDaniel, the state’s Attorney General said Tuesday. ExxonMobil’s pipeline breached on March 29, spilling about 5,000 barrels of highly

Keystone Pipeline would cost Americans $100 billion per year in damages, new report estimates

Posted: May 11, 2013

A new analysis of the hidden costs to society presented by the proposed Keystone XL pipeline estimates the damage to human health, property, the environment, and the climate could easily top $100 billion per year.

Alabama’s plans to build convention center with BP oil spill recovery funds sparks anger

Posted: May 10, 2013

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama is receiving $94 million from BP to restore its share of the Gulf Coast in the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the governor plans to spend more than 90 percent of those

Tests confirm Exxon’s Arkansas oil spill created highly toxic air pollution

Posted: May 8, 2013

High levels of 30 toxic chemicals were present in air samples taken in Mayflower, Ark., the day after a breach in ExxonMobil’s Pegasus pipeline allowed an estimated 5,000 barrels of chemically treated tar sands oil to flood a suburban neighborhood.

BP oil, dispersants sickening and deforming a spectrum of sea life, scientists warn

Posted: May 6, 2013

Fish with open, oozing lesions and shrimp and crabs with no eyes, no eye sockets, and horrible deformities are becoming alarmingly common in the Gulf of Mexico, and scientists monitoring the problem worry that all the toxic pollution unleashed by

Belize Supreme Court overturns contracts, sparing barrier reef from offshore drillers

Posted: May 5, 2013

Defying government and big-business interests, Belize’s Supreme Court has declared offshore drilling contracts awarded by the Belize government since 2004 to be null and void. The stunning ruling represents a huge victory for the second-largest barrier reef in the world

Is lack of corporate safety amounting to a ‘terror’ all its own?

Posted: May 4, 2013

If lawmaking proponents of deregulation have their way, Americans won’t have to worry about being harmed by random foreign terrorists so much as they will by the danger and catastrophe presented by many of our own factories, oil rigs, mines,

Mexico, hundreds of others sue BP over Gulf oil spill damages

Posted: May 4, 2013

Mexico is pursuing legal action against BP for its role in spilling millions of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf. The lawsuit was filed in March just before the third anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, which killed 11

ExxonMobil pipeline spills oil again, one month and 200 miles from Arkansas spill

Posted: May 3, 2013

One month after ExxonMobil’s 70-year-old Pegasus pipeline spilled 5,000 barrels of oil in the town of Mayflower, Ark., another breach in the same pipeline created an oil spill on a residential yard in Ripley County, Missouri.

EPA voices serious objections to TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline

Posted: May 3, 2013

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an Environmental Impact assessment of TransCanada’s proposed Keystone Pipeline XL project, sharply criticizing the State Department’s own recent environmental review of the plan. If allowed to proceed, the $7-billion pipeline would transport millions of