Enviro Links: Abandoned Gulf Wells, Greens Sue Exxon, and More

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In Gulf disaster news:

There are more than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico, many of them closed off decades ago, and no one has been keeping track of whether or not they’re leaking, reports the Associated Press. Many are classified as “temporarily abandoned,” and may have failing cement jobs because the rules for capping those wells are not as stringent they are for permanent closures.

The Obama administration has asked a federal appeals court to reinstate the moratorium on new offshore drilling.

More tar balls have been found in Galveston, Texas.

The Navy is sending a blimp to help monitor cleanup efforts in the Gulf.

Oil is now making its way into Lake Pontchartrain, a lake that borders New Orleans. More than 1,000 pounds of tar balls and waste have been removed from the lake.

At least the Gulf spill is benefiting someone: Atlantic Coast vacation destinations.

And in other environmental news:

Environment Texas and the Sierra Club are suing the nation’s largest oil refinery in Baytown, Texas, owned by ExxonMobil Corp, for illegally releasing at least 5.9 million pounds of hazardous air pollutants over five years.

The EPA announced new, tougher standards for dangerous sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions yesterday. By 2012, the plan will cut SO2 emissions 71 percent from 2005 levels and nitrogen oxide emissions by 52 percent, the EPA said.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) is pressuring the Obama administration to oppose a massive pipleline that would bring oil into the US from Canada’s tar sands.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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