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The Center for Public Integrity is making it easy for journalists to get local on this story about how the federal government's Superfund is far behind on cleaning up the worst toxic sites in the country. About half of all Americans live within 10 miles of one of the 1,304 active or proposed Superfund sites. At least 114 of the sites may pose immediate health risks for people living nearby, according to the EPA. Click here to find the site closest to you. The EPA's 2007 target for construction completions was 40 sites, but it has been scaled back to 24. The 2008 target is 30 sites, according to the EPA's 2008 budget request. You can see, at that rate, it will take decades to clean up just the current list.

CPI reports:

Communities across America face a daunting threat from hazardous waste sites -- some near neighborhoods and schools -- 27 years after the federal government launched the landmark Superfund program to wipe out the problem, a Center for Public Integrity investigation has found.

Initiated in 1980, Superfund is desperately short of money to clean up abandoned waste sites, which has created a backlog of sites that continue to menace the environment and, quite often, the health of nearby residents.

Click here to see 100 companies that are linked to about 40 percent of the worst toxic sites in America.

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Small Papers Covering the Environment

Can we give a shout out to small papers in Alaska that aggressively covered the environment in 2006? Tiny papers with 2,400 circulations took on global climate-change issues, shipping questions and fishing. Click here and go down to the "Best Environmental Reporting" section for a summary.

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Online Confessions

Thanks to Al's Morning Meeting reader Theresa Moore at WTSP-TV in Tampa for sending me this one. The Miami Herald ran a piece about churches that have launched online confessionals. Some of the sites like IveScrewedUp.com, NotProud.com, DailyConfession.com, GroupHug.us and MySecret.tv are extremely popular. The story says:

A woman kept her secret for nearly two decades.

Finally ready to confess, she turned not to a minister, but to her computer.

''I am sorry God for not keeping that baby,'' her anonymous confession reads. "I had an abortion and had kept that secret for over 18 years. I feel so ashamed. Please forgive me!''

The confession appears at IveScrewedUp.com, a Web site launched by the Flamingo Road Church in Cooper City. It's one of a growing number of such sites across the country -- some secular and others church-sponsored -- that offer a place to spill out ugly secrets or just make peccadilloes public.

''I think it helps people understand ... that we're not here to point out people's screw-ups, that we're here to help them,'' said lead Pastor Troy Gramling, whose nondenominational church launched the site on Easter weekend. "The church is made of skin and flesh and people that have made mistakes."

The 6,500-member church created the site as part of a 10-week series on the ways people mess up -- in marriage, parenting, finances and more. The goal of the series is to help congregants learn from their mistakes.

So far, more people are reading the confessions than posting them. The site gets about 1,000 hits a day, with about 200 online admissions.

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Al's Morning Multimedia: Derby Time

People who know me know that I get a little nuts around Kentucky Derby time. It is just the best time to be from Kentucky. Go to the Kentucky Derby Web site to see what very cool multimedia they produce.

They draw post positions this evening. With a field as large as as this year's, post position will be huge. Friday on Al's Morning Meeting I will tell you who is going to win the big race on Saturday. My picks will be based on sound reasoning and logic, which means they almost always are wrong.

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Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.

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