welcome to reality trivia
environment
The environment is everything that isn't me.
Albert Einstein
june 20, 2018
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
*articles*
*North Carolina’s endless coal ash nightmare: Poisoned water and higher bills from Duke Energy(ARTICLE BELOW)
*'The entire habitat is gone': Hawaii's natural wonders claimed by lava
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Pruitt grants home state coal ash regulation powers, enraging environmentalists
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Flooding from sea level rise threatens over 300,000 US coastal homes – study
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Texas oil boom has environmental advocates choosing between 2 unwelcome scenarios(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Michigan adopts strictest lead water rules in the United States
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*TRUMP SIDES WITH TOXIC CHEMICALS INDUSTRY OVER THE HEALTH OF AMERICANS
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*60% of Pittsburgh kids with asthma don’t have their disease under control
(excerpt BELOW)
*Yellowstone chief says he is ousted after dispute with Trump administration over bison herd(ARTICLE BELOW)
*A new network of high-res cameras is monitoring Pittsburgh's air pollution in real time(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*First application to drill in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge doesn’t consider wildlife impacts(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Radium has been widely spread on Pennsylvania roadways without regulation: Study
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Oysters to Fight Erosion and Help Preserve Southern Louisiana History
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Do You Know Where Your Meat Comes From?
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Scientists find opioids in Puget Sound mussels
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump’s offshore oil and gas drilling plan threatens scores of coastal national parks(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Widely used PVC plastic chemical spurs obesity, prediabetes: Study
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*INTERIOR DEPARTMENT MOVES TO REVERSE OBAMA-ERA RULES ON HUNTING BEARS, WOLVES IN ALASKA(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Pharmaceutical makers sending drug-spiked water to treatment plants
(ARTICLE BELOW)
cartoons(at the end)
North Carolina’s endless coal ash nightmare: Poisoned water and higher bills from Duke Energy
It’s been four years since a devastating spill, and still little action — except rate increases
LAURYN HIGGINS - salon
JUNE 20, 2018 9:30PM (UTC)
Coal ash is one of the largest types of industrial waste generated in the United States. Depending on the composition of the coal that is being burned, the residue can contain toxic substances. Recently, the byproduct has made its way into political agendas and onto Capitol Hill. But for the state of North Carolina, coal ash is doing far more damage. It’s destroying lives.
In 2014, Duke Energy was responsible for the third-worst spill of the residue in recorded history. The spill, which ran into the Dan River, affected 70 miles along the North Carolina and Virginia border, with 39,000 tons of the waste product coating the underbelly and floor of the local water supply. In response to the spill, Duke Energy pled guilty the following year to illegally discharging the pollution from coal-ash dumps at five North Carolina power plants and was ordered to pay out$102 million in restitution and fines.
The process of legally disposing coal ash is complex but regulated, and that is because of what is lurking inside. It can contain toxic chemicals including arsenic, chromium and lead, and if ingested can cause severe health problems such as cancer, and in some cases, death. For the residents of Eden, North Carolina, April 18, 2015 was the day they learned this.
That's when the North Carolina Division of Public Health sent out a letter to inform citizens that it was recommended that their well water not be used for drinking or cooking. The chemical that sparked this warning was vanadium. The substance is created from burning coal and is known to cause nausea, cramps and diarrhea for individuals who come in contact with it. For Eden residents, more than 45 times the state screening levels of vanadium were found in their drinking water.
After the distribution of this letter, residents in neighboring community Salisbury, North Carolina began to receive similar letters citing the warning, and this time a new chemical compound was the culprit.
Hexavalent chromium, a chemical that when inhaled or swallowed is carcinogenic, is often known to be found in coal ash. In the early nineties, it famously took center stage in activist and legal clerk Erin Brockovich’s takedown of Hinkley, California’s, Pacific Gas and Electric Company. (Duke has denied the chemical came from its coal ash.)
Upon receipt of these letters, a state of wariness, misdoubt and all-around alarm quickly set in for residents of North Carolina. And Duke Energy’s plan to help was, in the eyes of many residents, subpar. The electric power company began distributing bottled water to residents to ease concern, but as time has passed, and residents are still forced to bathe, drink and cook from bottles of water, frustration has only grown.
On January 11, 2018, residents of Dukeville, North Carolina had officially been living on bottled water for 1,000 days, and with no real signs of change on the horizon, they began to take matters into their own hands. Press conferences and rallies were held throughout the state to bring awareness, and demand for immediate change was thrown down with an iron fist. However, Duke Energy’s response to the outcry and problem they created was to place the burden back on the victims.
In late January of 2018, Duke Energy announced their plan to clean up the spill, but in order to afford that cleanup, they proposed a rate increase for their customers to cover the costs. According to Duke Energy, "The filing with the NCUC requests to increase revenues by about $647 million, for an overall average rate increase across all customer groups of 13.6 percent. Since Duke Energy Carolinas' last request to adjust rates in North Carolina in 2013, this represents approximately a 2.5 percent annual increase." To break that down, customers could expect to pay at least an additional $20 a month.
With customer outrage at an all-time high, on February 1, Duke Energy announced their plan to pass along some of the rewards from their $276 million tax savings. But it did not disclose the exact dollar amount in which that would be, providing more confusion and frustration for customers, and still leaving thousands of residents without safe drinking water. In March, the company announced a roughly 4.7 percent average service increase over the next few years. Meanwhile, some local residents received word they'd been connected to a municipal water source just a few weeks ago.
In May, Gov. Roy Cooper and Department of Environmental Quality secretary Michael Regan announced the creation of an Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board, comprised of environmental justice and public health experts, to advise the DEQ on ongoing issues like contaminated water. But for now, residents of North Carolina are still demanding the electric power company be held accountable for its actions, and waiting to see if their cries for justice are heard and received.
In 2014, Duke Energy was responsible for the third-worst spill of the residue in recorded history. The spill, which ran into the Dan River, affected 70 miles along the North Carolina and Virginia border, with 39,000 tons of the waste product coating the underbelly and floor of the local water supply. In response to the spill, Duke Energy pled guilty the following year to illegally discharging the pollution from coal-ash dumps at five North Carolina power plants and was ordered to pay out$102 million in restitution and fines.
The process of legally disposing coal ash is complex but regulated, and that is because of what is lurking inside. It can contain toxic chemicals including arsenic, chromium and lead, and if ingested can cause severe health problems such as cancer, and in some cases, death. For the residents of Eden, North Carolina, April 18, 2015 was the day they learned this.
That's when the North Carolina Division of Public Health sent out a letter to inform citizens that it was recommended that their well water not be used for drinking or cooking. The chemical that sparked this warning was vanadium. The substance is created from burning coal and is known to cause nausea, cramps and diarrhea for individuals who come in contact with it. For Eden residents, more than 45 times the state screening levels of vanadium were found in their drinking water.
After the distribution of this letter, residents in neighboring community Salisbury, North Carolina began to receive similar letters citing the warning, and this time a new chemical compound was the culprit.
Hexavalent chromium, a chemical that when inhaled or swallowed is carcinogenic, is often known to be found in coal ash. In the early nineties, it famously took center stage in activist and legal clerk Erin Brockovich’s takedown of Hinkley, California’s, Pacific Gas and Electric Company. (Duke has denied the chemical came from its coal ash.)
Upon receipt of these letters, a state of wariness, misdoubt and all-around alarm quickly set in for residents of North Carolina. And Duke Energy’s plan to help was, in the eyes of many residents, subpar. The electric power company began distributing bottled water to residents to ease concern, but as time has passed, and residents are still forced to bathe, drink and cook from bottles of water, frustration has only grown.
On January 11, 2018, residents of Dukeville, North Carolina had officially been living on bottled water for 1,000 days, and with no real signs of change on the horizon, they began to take matters into their own hands. Press conferences and rallies were held throughout the state to bring awareness, and demand for immediate change was thrown down with an iron fist. However, Duke Energy’s response to the outcry and problem they created was to place the burden back on the victims.
In late January of 2018, Duke Energy announced their plan to clean up the spill, but in order to afford that cleanup, they proposed a rate increase for their customers to cover the costs. According to Duke Energy, "The filing with the NCUC requests to increase revenues by about $647 million, for an overall average rate increase across all customer groups of 13.6 percent. Since Duke Energy Carolinas' last request to adjust rates in North Carolina in 2013, this represents approximately a 2.5 percent annual increase." To break that down, customers could expect to pay at least an additional $20 a month.
With customer outrage at an all-time high, on February 1, Duke Energy announced their plan to pass along some of the rewards from their $276 million tax savings. But it did not disclose the exact dollar amount in which that would be, providing more confusion and frustration for customers, and still leaving thousands of residents without safe drinking water. In March, the company announced a roughly 4.7 percent average service increase over the next few years. Meanwhile, some local residents received word they'd been connected to a municipal water source just a few weeks ago.
In May, Gov. Roy Cooper and Department of Environmental Quality secretary Michael Regan announced the creation of an Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board, comprised of environmental justice and public health experts, to advise the DEQ on ongoing issues like contaminated water. But for now, residents of North Carolina are still demanding the electric power company be held accountable for its actions, and waiting to see if their cries for justice are heard and received.
'The entire habitat is gone': Hawaii's natural wonders claimed by lava
The Kilauea eruption has wiped out rare sites and whole ecosystems. As the island mourns a tragedy, it also accepts the brutal cycle of nature
by Breena Kerr - the guardian
Wed 20 Jun 2018 04.00 EDT
In Puna, the area of Hawaii island that’s been hardest hit by the Kilauea volcano eruption, those who lived nearest to the lava flows watched the forest around their homes begin to die first. They said the fruit trees, flowers and ferns began turning brown, languishing in the noxious, sulfur-dioxide-filled air. Then the lava came. Now large swaths of formerly verdant forest has been replaced by rough and barren volcanic terrain.
“Before the eruptions, that area was probably the best forest left in the state of Hawaii,” said Patrick Hart, a biology professor at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. “There were areas where the native Ohia forest extended right up to the ocean, and you just don’t see that in the rest of Hawaii,” he said. Now it’s covered with 20 to 30ft of lava.
On Hawaii island, also known as the Big Island, lava from the weeks-long eruption of the Kilauea volcano has also paved over tide pools and coral gardens, boiled a 400-year-old lake until it evaporated and killed a number of sea creatures.
But to scientists, it’s just part of life on the state’s youngest island, where land is still being created as lava continuously reshapes the natural environment.
“From a human point of view, what’s happening is tragic,” said David Damby, a volcanologist with the United States Geological Survey (USGS). “But from the volcano’s point of view, that’s the job she does: to build new land and change the landscape. That’s the way the earth works.”
The humid, rainy forests in Puna were an important habitat for native Hawaiian trees, birds and insects, Hart said. Chartreuse colored amakihis and bright red apapanes rested on trees, Hawaiian hawks soared through the air, and dragonflies, butterflies and crickets all made the forest their home.
It will likely take at least 100 years for the decimated tracts of lava-covered forest to begin again – first with lichen, then with native ferns and Ohia trees that have adapted to grow on lava. In 150 years, Hart said, the land could begin to resemble a forest like the one that used to be there. It’s a process that has happened many times before on Hawaii.
“It’s a very powerful thing to witness,” said Ryan Perroy, a volcanologist and associate professor at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. “But in geological terms, it’s also not an unexpected event. This is how Puna was built, with volcanic eruptions.”
Elsewhere in Puna, there have been other dramatic changes to the landscape. On the morning of 2 June, lava poured into Green Lake. Plumes of steam began rising from the popular swimming spot where depths reached about 200ft; in less than two hours, the 400-year-old freshwater lake was gone – evaporated and covered in lava.
Just days later, rivers of lava flowed into nearby Kapoho Bay, destroying hundreds of homes and paving over the turquoise, coral-filled bay and a series of rare, protected tidepools that had teemed with marine life.
“Kapoho Bay was a very important recreational place for people in this area,” said Steven Colbert, an associate professor in marine science at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. “There aren’t a lot of places here where you can access the shoreline and get in the water easily. And this was one of those areas. It was also a very important research spot for us scientists.”
The tide pools at Kapoho Bay, Colbert said, were home to thriving coral and abundant fish – especially small ones that found safe haven from predators in the protected environment. When the lava entered the ocean there, much of the marine life was covered or boiled alive.
“For the animals right there when the lava reaches the water, they don’t have a chance,” he said.
In the meantime, the surrounding water will need to clear, but that won’t happen until the eruption slows or stops.
“It’s gone from beautiful Hawaiian water that is clear and turquoise, where you can see 50 to 60ft down, to a muddy mess filled with volcanic glass particles,” he said. “It blots out the sunlight so normal algae can’t grow, and filter feeders like coral have to sort between bits of food and volcanic particles.”
The loss to scientists has been great. “There was no place like Kapoho in all of Hawaii,” said John Burns, who spent a decade studying coral in the tide pools, said. “That entire habitat is gone now.” Once the glassy volcanic particles dissipate and the PH and temperature of the water returns to normal, he said, the coral can begin to regrow. But it will be starting from scratch, just as part of that area did when it was formed by lava in the 1950s and 1960s. How fast the coral regrow will depend on whether the lava creates a sloping coastline, or protected pools like it did in Kapoho, which can allow for faster growth than the usual rate of one centimeter per-year.
“In terms of marine organisms and coral, we’re basically starting from day one now.” And yet, he said, it’s easier to lose an irreplaceable reef to lava than it is to lose it to bleaching, which has happened in many places in Hawaii because of a global rise in ocean temperatures.
“There’s the tragedy of people losing their homes and for us, as scientists, losing our research site. But from the perspective of the environment, this is a natural cycle,” he said. “I’d much rather see a reef die from lava than from bleaching.”
“Before the eruptions, that area was probably the best forest left in the state of Hawaii,” said Patrick Hart, a biology professor at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. “There were areas where the native Ohia forest extended right up to the ocean, and you just don’t see that in the rest of Hawaii,” he said. Now it’s covered with 20 to 30ft of lava.
On Hawaii island, also known as the Big Island, lava from the weeks-long eruption of the Kilauea volcano has also paved over tide pools and coral gardens, boiled a 400-year-old lake until it evaporated and killed a number of sea creatures.
But to scientists, it’s just part of life on the state’s youngest island, where land is still being created as lava continuously reshapes the natural environment.
“From a human point of view, what’s happening is tragic,” said David Damby, a volcanologist with the United States Geological Survey (USGS). “But from the volcano’s point of view, that’s the job she does: to build new land and change the landscape. That’s the way the earth works.”
The humid, rainy forests in Puna were an important habitat for native Hawaiian trees, birds and insects, Hart said. Chartreuse colored amakihis and bright red apapanes rested on trees, Hawaiian hawks soared through the air, and dragonflies, butterflies and crickets all made the forest their home.
It will likely take at least 100 years for the decimated tracts of lava-covered forest to begin again – first with lichen, then with native ferns and Ohia trees that have adapted to grow on lava. In 150 years, Hart said, the land could begin to resemble a forest like the one that used to be there. It’s a process that has happened many times before on Hawaii.
“It’s a very powerful thing to witness,” said Ryan Perroy, a volcanologist and associate professor at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. “But in geological terms, it’s also not an unexpected event. This is how Puna was built, with volcanic eruptions.”
Elsewhere in Puna, there have been other dramatic changes to the landscape. On the morning of 2 June, lava poured into Green Lake. Plumes of steam began rising from the popular swimming spot where depths reached about 200ft; in less than two hours, the 400-year-old freshwater lake was gone – evaporated and covered in lava.
Just days later, rivers of lava flowed into nearby Kapoho Bay, destroying hundreds of homes and paving over the turquoise, coral-filled bay and a series of rare, protected tidepools that had teemed with marine life.
“Kapoho Bay was a very important recreational place for people in this area,” said Steven Colbert, an associate professor in marine science at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. “There aren’t a lot of places here where you can access the shoreline and get in the water easily. And this was one of those areas. It was also a very important research spot for us scientists.”
The tide pools at Kapoho Bay, Colbert said, were home to thriving coral and abundant fish – especially small ones that found safe haven from predators in the protected environment. When the lava entered the ocean there, much of the marine life was covered or boiled alive.
“For the animals right there when the lava reaches the water, they don’t have a chance,” he said.
In the meantime, the surrounding water will need to clear, but that won’t happen until the eruption slows or stops.
“It’s gone from beautiful Hawaiian water that is clear and turquoise, where you can see 50 to 60ft down, to a muddy mess filled with volcanic glass particles,” he said. “It blots out the sunlight so normal algae can’t grow, and filter feeders like coral have to sort between bits of food and volcanic particles.”
The loss to scientists has been great. “There was no place like Kapoho in all of Hawaii,” said John Burns, who spent a decade studying coral in the tide pools, said. “That entire habitat is gone now.” Once the glassy volcanic particles dissipate and the PH and temperature of the water returns to normal, he said, the coral can begin to regrow. But it will be starting from scratch, just as part of that area did when it was formed by lava in the 1950s and 1960s. How fast the coral regrow will depend on whether the lava creates a sloping coastline, or protected pools like it did in Kapoho, which can allow for faster growth than the usual rate of one centimeter per-year.
“In terms of marine organisms and coral, we’re basically starting from day one now.” And yet, he said, it’s easier to lose an irreplaceable reef to lava than it is to lose it to bleaching, which has happened in many places in Hawaii because of a global rise in ocean temperatures.
“There’s the tragedy of people losing their homes and for us, as scientists, losing our research site. But from the perspective of the environment, this is a natural cycle,” he said. “I’d much rather see a reef die from lava than from bleaching.”
Pruitt grants home state coal ash regulation powers, enraging environmentalists
Environmental advocates say they will sue over the move.
E.A. CRUNDEN - thinkprogress
JUN 19, 2018, 11:45 AM
Environmental organizations and activists slammed the Trump administration’s decision to grant Oklahoma the nation’s first-ever permit to regulate coal ash, citing the state’s lackluster oversight record. Critics also expressed concern that the move would put residents in danger and expose them to cancerous toxins.
Oklahoma received the green light on its efforts to self-regulate coal ash in the state on Monday, in a victory for utilities and conservative lawmakers in Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt’s home state. The dangerous substance produced by burning coal has long served as a source of ire for environmentalists, who criticize the weak federal regulations overseeing its handling.
The state has long fought for the right to regulate its own coal ash. The Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ) has regulated coal ash for over 20 years using federal rules, something Monday’s announcement changes. Now, the state will be completely in charge and able to set its own rules.
Pruitt lauded the “historic” news and emphasized in a statement that it “places oversight of coal ash disposal into the hands of those who are best positioned to oversee coal ash management: the officials who have intimate knowledge of the facilities and the environment in their state.”
Oklahoma utility companies seemed to share Pruitt’s view, welcoming the decision. But activists offered a starkly different response. Earthjustice attorney Jennifer Cassel announced that the nonprofit would be suing over the decision.
“Pruitt knows full well that the only thing that will happen is for the toxic contamination from coal ash to get worse. Already the coal-fired power plants are violating state and federal rules on coal ash,” Cassel said in a statement. “And yet, [Pruitt] has approved a program that keeps coal ash management behind closed doors and allows his polluter buddies to self-regulate, leaving the fox guarding the henhouse.”
Earthjustice has filed 95 lawsuits other lawsuits against the Trump administration relating to environmental issues. Along with the Environmental Integrity Project, Earthjustice released new analysis on Monday that found all of the Oklahoma coal ash dumps generated by coal-fired plants that adhered to federal groundwater testing rules yielded toxic contamination results in the water.
Johnson Grimm-Bridgwater, who directs the Sierra Club’s Oklahoma chapter, said that the decision would be dangerous for Oklahomans, exposing them to toxins.
“Fresh looks at groundwater data show that coal ash in Oklahoma is polluting the state’s groundwater with toxic chemicals, as communities like Bokoshe, Oklahoma already know firsthand,” he told ThinkProgress via email Tuesday morning, citing one particularly vulnerable area in the state.
Grimm-Bridgwater said that his organization would be legally challenging the move along with other groups including Earthjustice.
“ODEQ,” he emphasized, “has gone on record that they are opposed to citizen suits, so it is clear that such an agency is NOT the entity best suited to take care of Oklahomans on this issue.”
As Grimm-Bridgwater noted, ODEQ has suffered from steep budget cuts, in addition to a reduction in staff, something that will likely impact efforts to enforce coal ash regulations. Moreover, under Oklahoma’s state program regulating coal ash, disposal involving movement to abandoned coal mines and pits isn’t covered, leaving many areas vulnerable to toxins.
Coal ash contains poisons like arsenic and lead in addition to other cancerous agents. The substance has also been found to contain high levels of radioactivity.
Coal ash historically went unregulated until a 2008 disaster at the Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee, which exposed residents to 1 billion gallons of coal ash. But environmental advocates have criticized present-day EPA coal ash regulations, arguing they don’t go far enough in holding companies accountable.
An Obama-era law allows states to regulate coal ash themselves on the condition that their regulations are found to be as stringent as those of the federal government. In September 2017, Pruitt granted an industry petition seeking a reconsideration of parts of that rule, a month after allowing states to submit their own associated programs to the EPA for approval.
Oklahoma’s environmental agencies have a track record of ties to industry, a history that involves Pruitt. As state attorney general, Pruitt maintained close relationships with fossil fuel companies as well as electric utilities. State agencies have also been accused of lax oversight when it comes to industry behavior, particularly coal ash compliance.
The approval granted to Oklahoma will take effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register. While Oklahoma is the first state in the country to receive a permit from the EPA, other states may soon follow, including Georgia, which has a similar petition pending before the agency.
Oklahoma received the green light on its efforts to self-regulate coal ash in the state on Monday, in a victory for utilities and conservative lawmakers in Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt’s home state. The dangerous substance produced by burning coal has long served as a source of ire for environmentalists, who criticize the weak federal regulations overseeing its handling.
The state has long fought for the right to regulate its own coal ash. The Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ) has regulated coal ash for over 20 years using federal rules, something Monday’s announcement changes. Now, the state will be completely in charge and able to set its own rules.
Pruitt lauded the “historic” news and emphasized in a statement that it “places oversight of coal ash disposal into the hands of those who are best positioned to oversee coal ash management: the officials who have intimate knowledge of the facilities and the environment in their state.”
Oklahoma utility companies seemed to share Pruitt’s view, welcoming the decision. But activists offered a starkly different response. Earthjustice attorney Jennifer Cassel announced that the nonprofit would be suing over the decision.
“Pruitt knows full well that the only thing that will happen is for the toxic contamination from coal ash to get worse. Already the coal-fired power plants are violating state and federal rules on coal ash,” Cassel said in a statement. “And yet, [Pruitt] has approved a program that keeps coal ash management behind closed doors and allows his polluter buddies to self-regulate, leaving the fox guarding the henhouse.”
Earthjustice has filed 95 lawsuits other lawsuits against the Trump administration relating to environmental issues. Along with the Environmental Integrity Project, Earthjustice released new analysis on Monday that found all of the Oklahoma coal ash dumps generated by coal-fired plants that adhered to federal groundwater testing rules yielded toxic contamination results in the water.
Johnson Grimm-Bridgwater, who directs the Sierra Club’s Oklahoma chapter, said that the decision would be dangerous for Oklahomans, exposing them to toxins.
“Fresh looks at groundwater data show that coal ash in Oklahoma is polluting the state’s groundwater with toxic chemicals, as communities like Bokoshe, Oklahoma already know firsthand,” he told ThinkProgress via email Tuesday morning, citing one particularly vulnerable area in the state.
Grimm-Bridgwater said that his organization would be legally challenging the move along with other groups including Earthjustice.
“ODEQ,” he emphasized, “has gone on record that they are opposed to citizen suits, so it is clear that such an agency is NOT the entity best suited to take care of Oklahomans on this issue.”
As Grimm-Bridgwater noted, ODEQ has suffered from steep budget cuts, in addition to a reduction in staff, something that will likely impact efforts to enforce coal ash regulations. Moreover, under Oklahoma’s state program regulating coal ash, disposal involving movement to abandoned coal mines and pits isn’t covered, leaving many areas vulnerable to toxins.
Coal ash contains poisons like arsenic and lead in addition to other cancerous agents. The substance has also been found to contain high levels of radioactivity.
Coal ash historically went unregulated until a 2008 disaster at the Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee, which exposed residents to 1 billion gallons of coal ash. But environmental advocates have criticized present-day EPA coal ash regulations, arguing they don’t go far enough in holding companies accountable.
An Obama-era law allows states to regulate coal ash themselves on the condition that their regulations are found to be as stringent as those of the federal government. In September 2017, Pruitt granted an industry petition seeking a reconsideration of parts of that rule, a month after allowing states to submit their own associated programs to the EPA for approval.
Oklahoma’s environmental agencies have a track record of ties to industry, a history that involves Pruitt. As state attorney general, Pruitt maintained close relationships with fossil fuel companies as well as electric utilities. State agencies have also been accused of lax oversight when it comes to industry behavior, particularly coal ash compliance.
The approval granted to Oklahoma will take effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register. While Oklahoma is the first state in the country to receive a permit from the EPA, other states may soon follow, including Georgia, which has a similar petition pending before the agency.
Flooding from sea level rise threatens over 300,000 US coastal homes – study
Climate change study predicts ‘staggering impact’ of swelling oceans on coastal communities within next 30 years
Oliver Milman in New York
the guardian
Mon 18 Jun 2018 01.00 EDT
Sea level rise driven by climate change is set to pose an existential crisis to many US coastal communities, with new research finding that as many as 311,000 homes face being flooded every two weeks within the next 30 years.
The swelling oceans are forecast repeatedly to soak coastal residences collectively worth $120bn by 2045 if greenhouse gas emissions are not severely curtailed, experts warn. This will potentially inflict a huge financial and emotional toll on the half a million Americans who live in the properties at risk of having their basements, backyards, garages or living rooms inundated every other week.
“The impact could well be staggering,” said Kristina Dahl, a senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
“This level of flooding would be a tipping point where people in these communities would think it’s unsustainable.
“Even homes along the Gulf coast that are elevated would be affected, as they’d have to drive through salt water to get to work or face their kids’ school being cut off. You can imagine people walking away from mortgages, away from their homes.”
The UCS used federal data from a high sea level rise scenario projected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and combined it with property data from the online real estate company Zillow to quantify the level of risk across the lower 48 states.
Under this scenario, where planet-warming emissions are barely constrained and the seas rise by about 6.5ft globally by the end of the century, 311,000 homes along the US coastline would face flooding on average 26 times a year within the next 30 years – a typical lifespan for a new mortgage.
AdvertisementThe losses would multiply by the end of the century, with the research warning that as many as 2.4m homes, worth around a trillion dollars, could be put at risk. Low-lying states would be particularly prone, with a million homes in Florida, 250,000 homes in New Jersey and 143,000 homes in New York at risk of chronic flooding by 2100.
This persistent flooding is likely to rattle the housing market by lowering property prices and making mortgages untenable in certain areas. Flood insurance premiums could rise sharply, with people faced with the choice of increasing clean-up costs or retreating to higher ground inland.
“Unfortunately, in the years ahead many coastal communities will face declining property values as risk perceptions catch up with reality,” said Rachel Cleetus, an economist and climate policy director at UCS. “In contrast with previous housing market crashes, values of properties chronically inundated due to sea level rise are unlikely to recover and will only continue to go further underwater, literally and figuratively.”
The report does not factor in future technological advances that could ameliorate the impact of rising seas, although the US would be starting from a relatively low base compared with some countries given that it does not have a national sea level rise plan. And the current Trump administration has moved to erase the looming issue from consideration for federally funded infrastructure.
The oceans are rising by about 3mm a year due to the thermal expansion of seawater that’s warming because of the burning of fossil fuels by humans. The melting of massive glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica is also pushing up the seas – Nasa announced last week that the amount of ice lost annually from Antarctica has tripled since 2012 to an enormous 241bn tons a year.
This slowly unfolding scenario is set to pose wrenching choices for many in the US. Previous research has suggested that about 13 million Americans may have to move due to sea level rise by the end of the century, with landlocked states such as Arizona and Wyoming set for a population surge.
“My flood insurance bill just went up by $100 this year, it went up $100 the year before,” said Philip Stoddard, the mayor of South Miami. “People on the waterfront won’t be able to stay unless they are very wealthy. This isn’t a risk, it’s inevitable.
“Miami is a beautiful and interesting place to live – I’m looking at a lizard on my windowsill right now. But people will face a cost to live here that will creep up and up. At some point they will have to make a rational economic decision and they may relocate. Some people will make the trade-off to live here. Some won’t.”
RELATED: Climate shock: U.S. homes values already dropping in ‘areas most exposed to flood risk’
The swelling oceans are forecast repeatedly to soak coastal residences collectively worth $120bn by 2045 if greenhouse gas emissions are not severely curtailed, experts warn. This will potentially inflict a huge financial and emotional toll on the half a million Americans who live in the properties at risk of having their basements, backyards, garages or living rooms inundated every other week.
“The impact could well be staggering,” said Kristina Dahl, a senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
“This level of flooding would be a tipping point where people in these communities would think it’s unsustainable.
“Even homes along the Gulf coast that are elevated would be affected, as they’d have to drive through salt water to get to work or face their kids’ school being cut off. You can imagine people walking away from mortgages, away from their homes.”
The UCS used federal data from a high sea level rise scenario projected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and combined it with property data from the online real estate company Zillow to quantify the level of risk across the lower 48 states.
Under this scenario, where planet-warming emissions are barely constrained and the seas rise by about 6.5ft globally by the end of the century, 311,000 homes along the US coastline would face flooding on average 26 times a year within the next 30 years – a typical lifespan for a new mortgage.
AdvertisementThe losses would multiply by the end of the century, with the research warning that as many as 2.4m homes, worth around a trillion dollars, could be put at risk. Low-lying states would be particularly prone, with a million homes in Florida, 250,000 homes in New Jersey and 143,000 homes in New York at risk of chronic flooding by 2100.
This persistent flooding is likely to rattle the housing market by lowering property prices and making mortgages untenable in certain areas. Flood insurance premiums could rise sharply, with people faced with the choice of increasing clean-up costs or retreating to higher ground inland.
“Unfortunately, in the years ahead many coastal communities will face declining property values as risk perceptions catch up with reality,” said Rachel Cleetus, an economist and climate policy director at UCS. “In contrast with previous housing market crashes, values of properties chronically inundated due to sea level rise are unlikely to recover and will only continue to go further underwater, literally and figuratively.”
The report does not factor in future technological advances that could ameliorate the impact of rising seas, although the US would be starting from a relatively low base compared with some countries given that it does not have a national sea level rise plan. And the current Trump administration has moved to erase the looming issue from consideration for federally funded infrastructure.
The oceans are rising by about 3mm a year due to the thermal expansion of seawater that’s warming because of the burning of fossil fuels by humans. The melting of massive glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica is also pushing up the seas – Nasa announced last week that the amount of ice lost annually from Antarctica has tripled since 2012 to an enormous 241bn tons a year.
This slowly unfolding scenario is set to pose wrenching choices for many in the US. Previous research has suggested that about 13 million Americans may have to move due to sea level rise by the end of the century, with landlocked states such as Arizona and Wyoming set for a population surge.
“My flood insurance bill just went up by $100 this year, it went up $100 the year before,” said Philip Stoddard, the mayor of South Miami. “People on the waterfront won’t be able to stay unless they are very wealthy. This isn’t a risk, it’s inevitable.
“Miami is a beautiful and interesting place to live – I’m looking at a lizard on my windowsill right now. But people will face a cost to live here that will creep up and up. At some point they will have to make a rational economic decision and they may relocate. Some people will make the trade-off to live here. Some won’t.”
RELATED: Climate shock: U.S. homes values already dropping in ‘areas most exposed to flood risk’
EPA Moves To Replace Obama-Era Rule Protecting Drinking Water For 117 Million
Scott Pruitt revoked the Clean Water Rule, which clarified what bodies of water could be federally protected, last year.
By Alexander C. Kaufman - huff post
6/15/18
The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday inched closer to proposing a regulation to replace an Obama-era rule that clarified which bodies of water qualified for federal protection.
The proposal comes more than a year after EPA administrator Scott Pruitt signed an executive action to revoke the 2015 Clean Water Rule, also known as the Waters of the United States, or WOTUS, rule. The regulation clarified which wetlands and streams could be protected under the Clean Water Act and expanded federal authority to all “navigable” waters. That extended the federal safeguards to 2 million miles of streams and 20 million acres of wetlands, securing the drinking water of more than 117 million Americans.
But a federal judge stayed the Clean Water Rule in 2015; the rule has since bounced around the courts. In January, the Supreme Court volleyed the case back to the district court level. In the meantime, Pruitt began the process of repealing the rule outright.
On Thursday evening, Pruitt said he planned to send the new rule to the White House Office of Management and Budget. In a tweet wishing President Donald Trump a happy birthday, Pruitt said he announced the WOTUS replacement in a meeting with farm interests in Lincoln, Nebraska.
The new proposal comes amid a series of personal and professional scandals involving Pruitt. People have called for Pruitt to be investigated for public corruption and fired following revelations of his extravagant spending, bizarre requests of aides, and use of his office to enrich himself. President Donald Trump has so far defended the embattled administrator, insisting as recently as this month that the “EPA is doing really, really well.”
But conservatives began to turn on Pruitt this week. On Wednesday, a dark-money conservative group in Iowa rolled out a new TV ad calling Pruitt a “swamp monster” who is “embarrassing the president.” Later that day, conservative pundit and Trump booster Laura Ingraham said in a tweet that Pruitt had “gotta go.” Even Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who counts Pruitt as a friend and protégé, said on Ingraham’s radio program that it may be time for Pruitt to step aside.
The proposal comes more than a year after EPA administrator Scott Pruitt signed an executive action to revoke the 2015 Clean Water Rule, also known as the Waters of the United States, or WOTUS, rule. The regulation clarified which wetlands and streams could be protected under the Clean Water Act and expanded federal authority to all “navigable” waters. That extended the federal safeguards to 2 million miles of streams and 20 million acres of wetlands, securing the drinking water of more than 117 million Americans.
But a federal judge stayed the Clean Water Rule in 2015; the rule has since bounced around the courts. In January, the Supreme Court volleyed the case back to the district court level. In the meantime, Pruitt began the process of repealing the rule outright.
On Thursday evening, Pruitt said he planned to send the new rule to the White House Office of Management and Budget. In a tweet wishing President Donald Trump a happy birthday, Pruitt said he announced the WOTUS replacement in a meeting with farm interests in Lincoln, Nebraska.
The new proposal comes amid a series of personal and professional scandals involving Pruitt. People have called for Pruitt to be investigated for public corruption and fired following revelations of his extravagant spending, bizarre requests of aides, and use of his office to enrich himself. President Donald Trump has so far defended the embattled administrator, insisting as recently as this month that the “EPA is doing really, really well.”
But conservatives began to turn on Pruitt this week. On Wednesday, a dark-money conservative group in Iowa rolled out a new TV ad calling Pruitt a “swamp monster” who is “embarrassing the president.” Later that day, conservative pundit and Trump booster Laura Ingraham said in a tweet that Pruitt had “gotta go.” Even Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who counts Pruitt as a friend and protégé, said on Ingraham’s radio program that it may be time for Pruitt to step aside.
leave the shit in the ground!!!
Texas oil boom has environmental advocates choosing between 2 unwelcome scenarios
Environmentalists face an unsettling choice in the area, where the shortage has sparked an uptick in gas flaring.
E.A. CRUNDEN - thinkprogress
JUN 15, 2018, 11:19 AM
With the United States eyeing both a boom in oil production and a widespread pipeline shortage, large oil companies are growing increasingly nervous about meeting demands. At least one, ExxonMobil, is looking to oil-rich Texas to solve that dilemma, setting opponents up to make an unwelcome choice: either prioritize the hazards posed by pipelines to humans and the environment, or those caused by a pipeline shortage.
Exxon announced on Tuesday that the oil giant will join with the Houston-based Plains All American Pipeline in an effort to construct a pipeline stretching from West Texas all the way down to the large state’s southeastern region.
The multibillion dollar project would see 1 million barrels of crude oil pass dailyfrom the Permian Basin, near Midland, to the Gulf Coast area, where the sprawling metropolis of Houston is located. Originating in Wink, delivery points on the coast include Webster, Baytown and Beaumont.
“The proposed common carrier pipeline would be designed to ship more than 1 million [barrels per day] of crude oil and condensate, providing a safe, efficient and cost-effective option to transport ExxonMobil and other third-party production to market destinations in Texas,” a statement from Plains All American said.
The announcement also comes in the midst of a national pipeline crisis. The United States is on track to bypass Russia as the world’s largest oil producer after passing Saudi Arabia earlier this year, but a lack of pipeline capacity has hindered those efforts.
That holds especially true for the Permian Basin region. The area has struggled amid rising oil prices and increasing production demands, all despite a lack of pipelines. That region, spread out between Texas and New Mexico, has the capacity to transport 3.1 million barrels of crude oil per day — but currently has a daily production of 3.3 million barrels.
Incentivizing an uptick in production are rising oil prices and soaring demand, factors that are encouraging companies to expand. After spending $6.6 billion last year to double its Permian Basin acreage last year, Exxon has said the company plans to triple oil and gas production in the Permian Basin region by 2025. This week’s announcement carried no indicator of how long the planned pipeline would take to construct, but according to the Dallas Morning News the project is unlikely to open prior to 2020.
Exxon isn’t alone in its efforts. Plains All American also announced the Cactus II pipeline in February, which will carry at least 585,000 barrels per day from the Permian region across the state to Corpus Christi, located on the Texas coast. Phillips 66 and EPIC have announced pipelines charting similar paths and set to open in 2019.
For environmental advocates, the construction of new pipelines poses a conundrum. Those concerned about climate change and other environmental impacts of fossil fuel production are faced with two, equally unwelcome scenarios.
The first scenario is the construction of additional pipelines, which pose a health risk to neighboring communities, as much as to animal and plant life. Oil spills, for example, can contaminate waterways and expose large areas to potentially deadly health ramifications.
More broadly, an increase in pipelines means more oil. So what happens if the pipelines aren’t built?
This is the second scenario. However, in an area where oil production sees no signs of slowing down, this has its own set of impacts. Natural gas can be unearthed as a byproduct of crude oil extraction. But due to the price of oil, natural gas isn’t always as lucrative. It also can’t be easily transported without pipeline infrastructure. Companies often deal with an excess of gas by burning it off, or gas flaring. This can release harmful methane emissions — putting both people and the environment at risk.
In announcing the new pipeline this week, Plains All American emphasized that “priority would be placed on using existing pipeline corridors to help limit potential community and environmental disruptions.” But experts are concerned the Permian Basin is a health hazard — a problem worsened simultaneously by both the oil boom itself and the current pipeline shortage.
Amid the Trump administration’s onslaught of environmental regulatory rollbacks, issues like methane leaks in the Permian Basin have gone largely ignored despite their public health consequences, which include skin irritation and headaches, as well as long-term damage to the body. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expected to announce sometime this month an end to Obama-era regulationsguarding against methane leaks and gas flaring.
That decision isn’t good news for millions of Texans. Approximately 2.3 million Texans live within a half mile of potentially hazardous oil and gas operations. That encompasses almost a fifth of the nation’s second-largest state. At least 900 schools and 75 medical facilities are also compromised, according to the Texas Observer.
Much of that concentration is found in the Permian Basin, where emissions are a fact of life. Sharon Wilson, a Dallas-based organizer for the environmental nonprofit group Earthworks, told the Texas Observer that during a tour of the area last week she noticed methane leaks so staggering they resembled a dripping faucet.
“It’s just crazy what I‘m seeing. It’s the worst emissions I’ve seen anywhere,” she said.
Rather than addressing such leaks, the Texas government may look to move in a different direction. In the next few months, state oil and gas regulators will decide whether or not to allow fossil fuel producers to flare more natural gas in an effort to address the oil surplus.
The oil byproduct in the Permian Basin has proven hard to sell and has weighed down oil production. The Texas Railroad Commission currently allows oil producers to flare gas for up to 10 days following oil well completion, with additional permits lasting up to 45 days occasionally granted.
That’s disconcerting for environmental advocates, who traditionally have no love for pipelines but also have reservations about gas flaring.
“We have serious concerns about the increased risk of excessive gas flaring in the Permian basin due to poor planning and investment by some operators,” said Colin Leyden, who serves as senior manager for the Environmental Defense Fund in Texas.
According to an Environmental Defense Fund report on gas flaring in the Permian Basin released last November, certain oil and gas producers in the region are wasting close to 10 percent of their produced gas through flaring. The report notes that in addition to being harmful for the environment, that practice can cause health problems ranging from eye and throat irritation to deadly illnesses including cancer.
“Unfortunately, we have heard that some companies that have not planned appropriately and are unable to get their gas to market are lobbying the Railroad Commission to relax the state’s flaring rules,” Leyden told ThinkProgress via email. “This would be a huge mistake. It would lead to more unnecessary pollution, undermine the credibility of the agency, and punish those companies that have planned and invested to follow the rules and minimize their waste.”
Many environmentalists staunchly oppose additional allowances for natural gas flaring, but at least one Railroad Commission member, Ryan Sitton, has indicated his approval, according to E&E News.
“What they’re [oil companies] asking for is, hey, if we run into these natural gas capacity issues like we’re forecasting, we’d like some more broad flexibility,” Sitton said earlier this week.
The back-and-forth over pipeline expansion and gas flaring coincides with growing concern throughout the oil and gas industry which is at the same time facing a seven-year low in employment. With fewer young people interested in working for the oil and gas industry, controversial pipelines, and shifting environmental regulations, the Texas oil boom is facing uncertain new territory.
Exxon announced on Tuesday that the oil giant will join with the Houston-based Plains All American Pipeline in an effort to construct a pipeline stretching from West Texas all the way down to the large state’s southeastern region.
The multibillion dollar project would see 1 million barrels of crude oil pass dailyfrom the Permian Basin, near Midland, to the Gulf Coast area, where the sprawling metropolis of Houston is located. Originating in Wink, delivery points on the coast include Webster, Baytown and Beaumont.
“The proposed common carrier pipeline would be designed to ship more than 1 million [barrels per day] of crude oil and condensate, providing a safe, efficient and cost-effective option to transport ExxonMobil and other third-party production to market destinations in Texas,” a statement from Plains All American said.
The announcement also comes in the midst of a national pipeline crisis. The United States is on track to bypass Russia as the world’s largest oil producer after passing Saudi Arabia earlier this year, but a lack of pipeline capacity has hindered those efforts.
That holds especially true for the Permian Basin region. The area has struggled amid rising oil prices and increasing production demands, all despite a lack of pipelines. That region, spread out between Texas and New Mexico, has the capacity to transport 3.1 million barrels of crude oil per day — but currently has a daily production of 3.3 million barrels.
Incentivizing an uptick in production are rising oil prices and soaring demand, factors that are encouraging companies to expand. After spending $6.6 billion last year to double its Permian Basin acreage last year, Exxon has said the company plans to triple oil and gas production in the Permian Basin region by 2025. This week’s announcement carried no indicator of how long the planned pipeline would take to construct, but according to the Dallas Morning News the project is unlikely to open prior to 2020.
Exxon isn’t alone in its efforts. Plains All American also announced the Cactus II pipeline in February, which will carry at least 585,000 barrels per day from the Permian region across the state to Corpus Christi, located on the Texas coast. Phillips 66 and EPIC have announced pipelines charting similar paths and set to open in 2019.
For environmental advocates, the construction of new pipelines poses a conundrum. Those concerned about climate change and other environmental impacts of fossil fuel production are faced with two, equally unwelcome scenarios.
The first scenario is the construction of additional pipelines, which pose a health risk to neighboring communities, as much as to animal and plant life. Oil spills, for example, can contaminate waterways and expose large areas to potentially deadly health ramifications.
More broadly, an increase in pipelines means more oil. So what happens if the pipelines aren’t built?
This is the second scenario. However, in an area where oil production sees no signs of slowing down, this has its own set of impacts. Natural gas can be unearthed as a byproduct of crude oil extraction. But due to the price of oil, natural gas isn’t always as lucrative. It also can’t be easily transported without pipeline infrastructure. Companies often deal with an excess of gas by burning it off, or gas flaring. This can release harmful methane emissions — putting both people and the environment at risk.
In announcing the new pipeline this week, Plains All American emphasized that “priority would be placed on using existing pipeline corridors to help limit potential community and environmental disruptions.” But experts are concerned the Permian Basin is a health hazard — a problem worsened simultaneously by both the oil boom itself and the current pipeline shortage.
Amid the Trump administration’s onslaught of environmental regulatory rollbacks, issues like methane leaks in the Permian Basin have gone largely ignored despite their public health consequences, which include skin irritation and headaches, as well as long-term damage to the body. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expected to announce sometime this month an end to Obama-era regulationsguarding against methane leaks and gas flaring.
That decision isn’t good news for millions of Texans. Approximately 2.3 million Texans live within a half mile of potentially hazardous oil and gas operations. That encompasses almost a fifth of the nation’s second-largest state. At least 900 schools and 75 medical facilities are also compromised, according to the Texas Observer.
Much of that concentration is found in the Permian Basin, where emissions are a fact of life. Sharon Wilson, a Dallas-based organizer for the environmental nonprofit group Earthworks, told the Texas Observer that during a tour of the area last week she noticed methane leaks so staggering they resembled a dripping faucet.
“It’s just crazy what I‘m seeing. It’s the worst emissions I’ve seen anywhere,” she said.
Rather than addressing such leaks, the Texas government may look to move in a different direction. In the next few months, state oil and gas regulators will decide whether or not to allow fossil fuel producers to flare more natural gas in an effort to address the oil surplus.
The oil byproduct in the Permian Basin has proven hard to sell and has weighed down oil production. The Texas Railroad Commission currently allows oil producers to flare gas for up to 10 days following oil well completion, with additional permits lasting up to 45 days occasionally granted.
That’s disconcerting for environmental advocates, who traditionally have no love for pipelines but also have reservations about gas flaring.
“We have serious concerns about the increased risk of excessive gas flaring in the Permian basin due to poor planning and investment by some operators,” said Colin Leyden, who serves as senior manager for the Environmental Defense Fund in Texas.
According to an Environmental Defense Fund report on gas flaring in the Permian Basin released last November, certain oil and gas producers in the region are wasting close to 10 percent of their produced gas through flaring. The report notes that in addition to being harmful for the environment, that practice can cause health problems ranging from eye and throat irritation to deadly illnesses including cancer.
“Unfortunately, we have heard that some companies that have not planned appropriately and are unable to get their gas to market are lobbying the Railroad Commission to relax the state’s flaring rules,” Leyden told ThinkProgress via email. “This would be a huge mistake. It would lead to more unnecessary pollution, undermine the credibility of the agency, and punish those companies that have planned and invested to follow the rules and minimize their waste.”
Many environmentalists staunchly oppose additional allowances for natural gas flaring, but at least one Railroad Commission member, Ryan Sitton, has indicated his approval, according to E&E News.
“What they’re [oil companies] asking for is, hey, if we run into these natural gas capacity issues like we’re forecasting, we’d like some more broad flexibility,” Sitton said earlier this week.
The back-and-forth over pipeline expansion and gas flaring coincides with growing concern throughout the oil and gas industry which is at the same time facing a seven-year low in employment. With fewer young people interested in working for the oil and gas industry, controversial pipelines, and shifting environmental regulations, the Texas oil boom is facing uncertain new territory.
the man who caused the problem, trying to be a hero!!!!
Michigan adopts strictest lead water rules in the United States
Reuters - raw story
14 JUN 2018 AT 16:45 ET
Michigan on Thursday adopted the strictest U.S. rules to guard against lead in drinking water, a move sparked by the Flint water crisis that exposed thousands of city residents to the toxic chemical, officials said.
Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, who has been criticized for his slow response in the crisis, said state officials decided to exceed federal standards in plans to lower the state’s requirement for lead concentration levels in water.
“As a state, we could no longer afford to wait on needed changes at the federal level, so Michigan has stepped up to give our residents a smarter, safer rule – one that better safeguards water systems in all communities,” he said in the statement.
Flint, facing an extended economic decline since the 1980s, came under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager in 2011. To save money, the city of about 100,000 residents in 2014 temporarily switched its water source from Detroit’s municipal system to the Flint River, which was more corrosive and caused more lead to leach from aging pipes, causing health problems.
The crisis prompted a rash of lawsuits by parents who say their children, who are especially vulnerable to lead poisoning, had dangerously high levels of the chemical in their blood.
Under new standards set by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, the maximum level of allowable lead in drinking water will drop to 12 parts per billion in 2025. The federal level as mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is 15 parts per billion.
All public water systems are required to replace the state’s 500,000 lead service lines at a rate averaging 5 percent per year beginning in 2021 over a 20-year period.
The new rules prohibit partial lead service line replacement due to the potential for elevated lead levels that could harm public health. Most public water systems are required to perform a full system inventory detailing all parts and materials used.
“The new Michigan Lead and Copper Rule is the most stringent in the world when applied to cities with lead pipe – yet it strikes a reasonable balance between cost and benefit,” Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards, a water engineer who first raised the issue of Flint’s lead contamination, said in an email.
Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, who has been criticized for his slow response in the crisis, said state officials decided to exceed federal standards in plans to lower the state’s requirement for lead concentration levels in water.
“As a state, we could no longer afford to wait on needed changes at the federal level, so Michigan has stepped up to give our residents a smarter, safer rule – one that better safeguards water systems in all communities,” he said in the statement.
Flint, facing an extended economic decline since the 1980s, came under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager in 2011. To save money, the city of about 100,000 residents in 2014 temporarily switched its water source from Detroit’s municipal system to the Flint River, which was more corrosive and caused more lead to leach from aging pipes, causing health problems.
The crisis prompted a rash of lawsuits by parents who say their children, who are especially vulnerable to lead poisoning, had dangerously high levels of the chemical in their blood.
Under new standards set by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, the maximum level of allowable lead in drinking water will drop to 12 parts per billion in 2025. The federal level as mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is 15 parts per billion.
All public water systems are required to replace the state’s 500,000 lead service lines at a rate averaging 5 percent per year beginning in 2021 over a 20-year period.
The new rules prohibit partial lead service line replacement due to the potential for elevated lead levels that could harm public health. Most public water systems are required to perform a full system inventory detailing all parts and materials used.
“The new Michigan Lead and Copper Rule is the most stringent in the world when applied to cities with lead pipe – yet it strikes a reasonable balance between cost and benefit,” Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards, a water engineer who first raised the issue of Flint’s lead contamination, said in an email.
Trump Sides With Toxic Chemicals Industry Over The Health Of Americans
by Jake Thomas - the intellectualist
6/10/18
The EPA will only consider direct contact with dangerous chemicals in deciding which to restrict or ban from the market.
After intense pressure from the chemical industry, the Environmental Protection Agency will pare back the scope of its investigations into some of the most dangerous chemicals on the market – meaning chemicals posing a grave health and safety risk could get a pass from regulators.
From The New York Times:
Under a law passed by Congress during the final year of the Obama administration, the E.P.A. was required for the first time to evaluate hundreds of potentially toxic chemicals and determine if they should face new restrictions, or even be removed from the market. The chemicals include many in everyday use, such as dry-cleaning solvents, paint strippers and substances used in health and beauty products like shampoos and cosmetics.
But as it moves forward reviewing the first batch of 10 chemicals, the E.P.A. has in most cases decided to exclude from its calculations any potential exposure caused by the substances’ presence in the air, the ground or water, according to more than 1,500 pages of documents released last week by the agency.
The EPA will instead concentrate on hazards associated with direct contact, which means contamination of drinking water and other potential issues will not be addressed in the agency’s decision to restrict or ban these chemicals.
The approach is a big victory for the chemical industry, which has repeatedly pressed the E.P.A. to narrow the scope of its risk evaluations. Nancy B. Beck, the Trump administration’s appointee to help oversee the E.P.A.’s toxic chemical unit, previously worked as an executive at the American Chemistry Council, one of the industry’s main lobbying groups.
The EPA insists that the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and other laws already speak to the issues of environmental exposure, but this position is not shared by all:
“It is ridiculous,” said Wendy Cleland-Hamnett, who retired last year after nearly four decades at the E.P.A., where she ran the toxic chemical unit during her last year. “You can’t determine if there is an unreasonable risk without doing a comprehensive risk evaluation.”
Senator Tom Udall, Democrat of New Mexico, and Representative Frank Pallone Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, who played leading roles in passing the 2016 law, said the E.P.A. was ignoring its directive for a comprehensive analysis of risks.
“Congress worked hard in bipartisan fashion to reform our nation’s broken chemical safety laws, but Pruitt’s E.P.A. is failing to put the new law to use as intended,” Mr. Udall said in a statement referring to Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator.
Click here to read more.
After intense pressure from the chemical industry, the Environmental Protection Agency will pare back the scope of its investigations into some of the most dangerous chemicals on the market – meaning chemicals posing a grave health and safety risk could get a pass from regulators.
From The New York Times:
Under a law passed by Congress during the final year of the Obama administration, the E.P.A. was required for the first time to evaluate hundreds of potentially toxic chemicals and determine if they should face new restrictions, or even be removed from the market. The chemicals include many in everyday use, such as dry-cleaning solvents, paint strippers and substances used in health and beauty products like shampoos and cosmetics.
But as it moves forward reviewing the first batch of 10 chemicals, the E.P.A. has in most cases decided to exclude from its calculations any potential exposure caused by the substances’ presence in the air, the ground or water, according to more than 1,500 pages of documents released last week by the agency.
The EPA will instead concentrate on hazards associated with direct contact, which means contamination of drinking water and other potential issues will not be addressed in the agency’s decision to restrict or ban these chemicals.
The approach is a big victory for the chemical industry, which has repeatedly pressed the E.P.A. to narrow the scope of its risk evaluations. Nancy B. Beck, the Trump administration’s appointee to help oversee the E.P.A.’s toxic chemical unit, previously worked as an executive at the American Chemistry Council, one of the industry’s main lobbying groups.
The EPA insists that the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and other laws already speak to the issues of environmental exposure, but this position is not shared by all:
“It is ridiculous,” said Wendy Cleland-Hamnett, who retired last year after nearly four decades at the E.P.A., where she ran the toxic chemical unit during her last year. “You can’t determine if there is an unreasonable risk without doing a comprehensive risk evaluation.”
Senator Tom Udall, Democrat of New Mexico, and Representative Frank Pallone Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, who played leading roles in passing the 2016 law, said the E.P.A. was ignoring its directive for a comprehensive analysis of risks.
“Congress worked hard in bipartisan fashion to reform our nation’s broken chemical safety laws, but Pruitt’s E.P.A. is failing to put the new law to use as intended,” Mr. Udall said in a statement referring to Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator.
Click here to read more.
60% of Pittsburgh kids with asthma don’t have their disease under control
Nationally, that rate is 38%. What are the consequences for these children?
Kristina Marusic - ehn
Jun 11, 2018
PITTSBURGH — Last fall, twelve-year-old Savaughn Williams was thrilled to start playing on the little league football team in Clairton, Pennsylvania, a town 15 miles south of Pittsburgh.
Savaughn's mom, Collette Williams, was initially excited that he wanted to play, too. Football is a big deal in Clairton: The town's high school team, the Bears, has won the state championship for its class four out of the last 10 years. In 2012 they set the state record for most consecutive wins after playing 60 straight games without a loss. "Go Bears" signs are plastered all over town.
But soon after the start of the season, Collette decided to pull her son off the team.
One chilly afternoon Savaughn had a severe asthma attack during practice. Collette managed to get it under control without a trip to the ER, but when he was little, she had to take him to the ER for asthma attacks nearly once a month. Cold air tended to exacerbate his breathing problems, and Colette feared that if he kept playing football, they'd fall back into that pattern.
"Some days he has good days and he can keep up with other kids, but some days I'll have to make him slow down and catch his breath a little bit," Collette tells EHN. "I try to explain to him that if he starts getting winded and doesn't catch it in time, he could have an attack that could cause him to stop breathing, and he could even pass away from it. He kind of gets it, but I don't think he fully gets how serious his asthma is, so I have to keep telling him."
She adds "I'm scared one day when he does finally get it, it might be too late if I'm not around."
Savaughn isn't the only kid in Pittsburgh who regularly has trouble catching his breath. County data is lacking, so last year pediatricians set out to put a number on the region's asthma problem—and the results were striking: A study of more than 1,200 elementary school students in eight of the county's most polluted school districts found that 22 percent of kids tested have asthma. At the state level, just 10 percent of kids have asthma. The national average is 8 percent.
In Clairton the asthma rate in the study was 18 percent. In some of the 14 schools included in the study, such as Fairless and Shaffer elementary schools (both of which have since been closed by the district), the rates spiked to more than 30 percent of kids examined.
Asthma has many potential causes and triggers. Genetics can play a role, along with things like allergies and tobacco smoke—but one major trigger stands out in this region: Allegheny County has some of the worst air quality in the country. It was one of only 10 counties in the nation to receive all F's on the American Lung Association's 2018 air quality report card, and Pittsburgh was one of just six regions in the country where year-round particulate pollution (tiny, airborne particles of chemicals that cause heart and respiratory problems when inhaled) increased rather than decreased since the last report. (read more)
Savaughn's mom, Collette Williams, was initially excited that he wanted to play, too. Football is a big deal in Clairton: The town's high school team, the Bears, has won the state championship for its class four out of the last 10 years. In 2012 they set the state record for most consecutive wins after playing 60 straight games without a loss. "Go Bears" signs are plastered all over town.
But soon after the start of the season, Collette decided to pull her son off the team.
One chilly afternoon Savaughn had a severe asthma attack during practice. Collette managed to get it under control without a trip to the ER, but when he was little, she had to take him to the ER for asthma attacks nearly once a month. Cold air tended to exacerbate his breathing problems, and Colette feared that if he kept playing football, they'd fall back into that pattern.
"Some days he has good days and he can keep up with other kids, but some days I'll have to make him slow down and catch his breath a little bit," Collette tells EHN. "I try to explain to him that if he starts getting winded and doesn't catch it in time, he could have an attack that could cause him to stop breathing, and he could even pass away from it. He kind of gets it, but I don't think he fully gets how serious his asthma is, so I have to keep telling him."
She adds "I'm scared one day when he does finally get it, it might be too late if I'm not around."
Savaughn isn't the only kid in Pittsburgh who regularly has trouble catching his breath. County data is lacking, so last year pediatricians set out to put a number on the region's asthma problem—and the results were striking: A study of more than 1,200 elementary school students in eight of the county's most polluted school districts found that 22 percent of kids tested have asthma. At the state level, just 10 percent of kids have asthma. The national average is 8 percent.
In Clairton the asthma rate in the study was 18 percent. In some of the 14 schools included in the study, such as Fairless and Shaffer elementary schools (both of which have since been closed by the district), the rates spiked to more than 30 percent of kids examined.
Asthma has many potential causes and triggers. Genetics can play a role, along with things like allergies and tobacco smoke—but one major trigger stands out in this region: Allegheny County has some of the worst air quality in the country. It was one of only 10 counties in the nation to receive all F's on the American Lung Association's 2018 air quality report card, and Pittsburgh was one of just six regions in the country where year-round particulate pollution (tiny, airborne particles of chemicals that cause heart and respiratory problems when inhaled) increased rather than decreased since the last report. (read more)
Yellowstone chief says he is ousted after dispute with Trump administration over bison herd
Reuters - raw story
08 JUN 2018 AT 06:33 ET
The superintendent of Yellowstone National Park said on Thursday he was being forced from his post after disagreeing with the Trump administration over management of the park’s famed bison herd.
Dan Wenk, who has led one of the nation’s most popular national parks since 2011, said in an interview broadcast by public radio that he and his boss, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, had been at odds over bison but that he believed they had settled their differences.
“I thought we were on track and I thought that he was very supportive of what we were doing and how we were doing it and that we were going to get it done,” Wenk told the Mountain West News Bureau, without specifying the nature of their disagreement.
Conflicts have raged for years over how many bison the park can sustain and methods used to keep the population contained.
The park’s practice of capturing and shipping to slaughter a certain number of bison that wander from Yellowstone in winter in search of food in Montana, Zinke’s home state, is driven in part by ranchers there who are concerned about competition for rangelands and about the spread of brucellosis, a disease carried by some bison that can cause cows to miscarry.
During Wenk’s tenure, the park has argued Yellowstone can withstand many more bison than the target of 3,000 that is supported by the Montana Department of Livestock and the ranchers it represents.
Montana cattlemen also have raised alarms about a program instituted under Wenk’s leadership that seeks to distribute brucellosis-free bison from Yellowstone to Native American tribes in Montana and elsewhere.
Interior Department spokeswoman Heather Swift did not respond to a request from Reuters about any disagreements over bison management.
But she said in an email that Zinke had been “out front” in carrying out orders by President Donald Trump to reorganize the federal government for the future.
She said personnel moves for those who, like Wenk, are in the senior executive service “are conducted to better serve the taxpayer and the Department’s operations.”
Wenk said earlier this month that he planned to retire in 2019, without alluding to any policy disputes with superiors.
In Thursday’s interview, however, he said he had been told by the acting chief of the National Park Service, a branch of the Interior Department, that he needed either to accept reassignment to a new post in Washington, D.C., or retire early in August.
“I’m feeling like I devoted 43 years of my life, I think I have a record of achievement with the National Park Service that at the end of the day doesn’t matter and that I’m no longer wanted at Yellowstone National Park,” Wenk told Mountain West, which is aired in Wyoming and other Western states.
“Even though I told them I was going to retire, that seemed not to make a difference, so extremely disappointed is probably a mild way to explain it,” he said.
Wenk could not immediately be reached by Reuters.
Yellowstone, which occupies the northwestern corner of Wyoming and parts of Idaho and Montana, is home to the nation’s last large herd of wild, purebred bison. Millions flock to the park annually to view the bison and other wildlife and natural wonders.
Dan Wenk, who has led one of the nation’s most popular national parks since 2011, said in an interview broadcast by public radio that he and his boss, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, had been at odds over bison but that he believed they had settled their differences.
“I thought we were on track and I thought that he was very supportive of what we were doing and how we were doing it and that we were going to get it done,” Wenk told the Mountain West News Bureau, without specifying the nature of their disagreement.
Conflicts have raged for years over how many bison the park can sustain and methods used to keep the population contained.
The park’s practice of capturing and shipping to slaughter a certain number of bison that wander from Yellowstone in winter in search of food in Montana, Zinke’s home state, is driven in part by ranchers there who are concerned about competition for rangelands and about the spread of brucellosis, a disease carried by some bison that can cause cows to miscarry.
During Wenk’s tenure, the park has argued Yellowstone can withstand many more bison than the target of 3,000 that is supported by the Montana Department of Livestock and the ranchers it represents.
Montana cattlemen also have raised alarms about a program instituted under Wenk’s leadership that seeks to distribute brucellosis-free bison from Yellowstone to Native American tribes in Montana and elsewhere.
Interior Department spokeswoman Heather Swift did not respond to a request from Reuters about any disagreements over bison management.
But she said in an email that Zinke had been “out front” in carrying out orders by President Donald Trump to reorganize the federal government for the future.
She said personnel moves for those who, like Wenk, are in the senior executive service “are conducted to better serve the taxpayer and the Department’s operations.”
Wenk said earlier this month that he planned to retire in 2019, without alluding to any policy disputes with superiors.
In Thursday’s interview, however, he said he had been told by the acting chief of the National Park Service, a branch of the Interior Department, that he needed either to accept reassignment to a new post in Washington, D.C., or retire early in August.
“I’m feeling like I devoted 43 years of my life, I think I have a record of achievement with the National Park Service that at the end of the day doesn’t matter and that I’m no longer wanted at Yellowstone National Park,” Wenk told Mountain West, which is aired in Wyoming and other Western states.
“Even though I told them I was going to retire, that seemed not to make a difference, so extremely disappointed is probably a mild way to explain it,” he said.
Wenk could not immediately be reached by Reuters.
Yellowstone, which occupies the northwestern corner of Wyoming and parts of Idaho and Montana, is home to the nation’s last large herd of wild, purebred bison. Millions flock to the park annually to view the bison and other wildlife and natural wonders.
A new network of high-res cameras is monitoring Pittsburgh's air pollution in real time
Researchers hope they'll help capture "fugitive emissions" of toxics to help health officials crack down on some of the region's biggest polluters.
Kristina Marusic - ehn
Jun 05, 2018
PITTSBURGH—A new network of cameras installed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University will provide live, 24-hour monitoring of visible air pollution from some of the region's largest polluters.
Researchers say the cameras will improve residents' and government officials' ability to detect, monitor and document sources of visible air pollution, including "fugitive emissions"—air pollution that occurs episodically and doesn't necessarily escape through a smokestack. The color of emissions also provides clues as to its chemical makeup and where it travels after released.
Air quality is a persistent problem in the region: The American Lung Association's annual "State of the Air" report for 2018, which uses a report card-style grading system, gave Allegheny County F grades for ozone, daily particulate matter levels and long-term particulate matter levels. It was one of just 10 counties in the nation to score F grades in all three categories.
The high-resolution cameras are trained on three plants in U.S. Steel's Mon Valley Works Monongahela Valley operations: the Clairton coke works plant, the Edgar Thomson Plant in Braddock, and the Irvin Plant in West Mifflin. An earlier report from PennEnvironment indicates that 70 percent of Pittsburgh's air pollution comes from just 10 industrial sources.
Clairton Coke Works is the third largest emitter in the region, and had at least 6,700 air pollution violations over a three-year span between 2012 and 2015, according to an Allegheny County Health Department report. Clairton also has higher rates of childhood asthma than the rest of the county or state.
The project, termed Breathe Cam, was launched by Carnegie Mellon University's CREATE Lab and the Breathe Project with support from the Heinz Endowments*. Previously, Breathe Cams were pointed at the Shenango Coke Works plant on Neville Island. Before that plant shut down in 2016, the live-footage of fugitive emissions captured by the cameras resulted in citations for violating county air regulations. In the year after the plant closed, emergency room visits for asthma dropped 38 percentin surrounding neighborhoods.
The Breathe Cam project was launched in response to citizen reports to CREATE Lab's SmellPGH app, which allows residents to report bad smells in the air and any health symptoms accompanying them and delivers those reports directly to the Allegheny County Health Department.
"We hope to get a better idea about what is happening by observing three of the [Monongahela] Valley's largest pollution sources," Randy Sargent, who directs Breathe Cam for the CREATE Lab, said in a press statement. Though all three U.S. Steel plants already are monitored by the health department, the cameras make it easier to detect fugitive emissions and to visually inspect what emissions looked like during times when a high volume of reports have been submitted through the SmellPgh app.
"Many of the smells being reported appear to emanate from the Mon Valley, based on the report locations, prevailing winds and prevalence of pollution-trapping temperature inversions in the river valley," Sargent said.
The live feed can be viewed on the Breathe Project website.
Researchers say the cameras will improve residents' and government officials' ability to detect, monitor and document sources of visible air pollution, including "fugitive emissions"—air pollution that occurs episodically and doesn't necessarily escape through a smokestack. The color of emissions also provides clues as to its chemical makeup and where it travels after released.
Air quality is a persistent problem in the region: The American Lung Association's annual "State of the Air" report for 2018, which uses a report card-style grading system, gave Allegheny County F grades for ozone, daily particulate matter levels and long-term particulate matter levels. It was one of just 10 counties in the nation to score F grades in all three categories.
The high-resolution cameras are trained on three plants in U.S. Steel's Mon Valley Works Monongahela Valley operations: the Clairton coke works plant, the Edgar Thomson Plant in Braddock, and the Irvin Plant in West Mifflin. An earlier report from PennEnvironment indicates that 70 percent of Pittsburgh's air pollution comes from just 10 industrial sources.
Clairton Coke Works is the third largest emitter in the region, and had at least 6,700 air pollution violations over a three-year span between 2012 and 2015, according to an Allegheny County Health Department report. Clairton also has higher rates of childhood asthma than the rest of the county or state.
The project, termed Breathe Cam, was launched by Carnegie Mellon University's CREATE Lab and the Breathe Project with support from the Heinz Endowments*. Previously, Breathe Cams were pointed at the Shenango Coke Works plant on Neville Island. Before that plant shut down in 2016, the live-footage of fugitive emissions captured by the cameras resulted in citations for violating county air regulations. In the year after the plant closed, emergency room visits for asthma dropped 38 percentin surrounding neighborhoods.
The Breathe Cam project was launched in response to citizen reports to CREATE Lab's SmellPGH app, which allows residents to report bad smells in the air and any health symptoms accompanying them and delivers those reports directly to the Allegheny County Health Department.
"We hope to get a better idea about what is happening by observing three of the [Monongahela] Valley's largest pollution sources," Randy Sargent, who directs Breathe Cam for the CREATE Lab, said in a press statement. Though all three U.S. Steel plants already are monitored by the health department, the cameras make it easier to detect fugitive emissions and to visually inspect what emissions looked like during times when a high volume of reports have been submitted through the SmellPgh app.
"Many of the smells being reported appear to emanate from the Mon Valley, based on the report locations, prevailing winds and prevalence of pollution-trapping temperature inversions in the river valley," Sargent said.
The live feed can be viewed on the Breathe Project website.
Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth
Biggest analysis to date reveals huge footprint of livestock - it provides just 18% of calories but takes up 83% of farmland
Damian Carrington Environment editor
the guardian
Thu 31 May 2018 14.00 EDT
Avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet, according to the scientists behind the most comprehensive analysis to date of the damage farming does to the planet.
The new research shows that without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75% – an area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined – and still feed the world. Loss of wild areas to agriculture is the leading cause of the current mass extinction of wildlife.
The new analysis shows that while meat and dairy provide just 18% of calories and 37% of protein, it uses the vast majority – 83% – of farmland and produces 60% of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions. Other recent research shows 86% of all land mammals are now livestock or humans. The scientists also found that even the very lowest impact meat and dairy products still cause much more environmental harm than the least sustainable vegetable and cereal growing.
The study, published in the journal Science, created a huge dataset based on almost 40,000 farms in 119 countries and covering 40 food products that represent 90% of all that is eaten. It assessed the full impact of these foods, from farm to fork, on land use, climate change emissions, freshwater use and water pollution (eutrophication) and air pollution (acidification).
“A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use,” said Joseph Poore, at the University of Oxford, UK, who led the research. “It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car,” he said, as these only cut greenhouse gas emissions.
“Agriculture is a sector that spans all the multitude of environmental problems,” he said. “Really it is animal products that are responsible for so much of this. Avoiding consumption of animal products delivers far better environmental benefits than trying to purchase sustainable meat and dairy.”
The analysis also revealed a huge variability between different ways of producing the same food. For example, beef cattle raised on deforested land result in 12 times more greenhouse gases and use 50 times more land than those grazing rich natural pasture. But the comparison of beef with plant protein such as peas is stark, with even the lowest impact beef responsible for six times more greenhouse gases and 36 times more land.
The large variability in environmental impact from different farms does present an opportunity for reducing the harm, Poore said, without needing the global population to become vegan. If the most harmful half of meat and dairy production was replaced by plant-based food, this still delivers about two-thirds of the benefits of getting rid of all meat and dairy production.
Cutting the environmental impact of farming is not easy, Poore warned: “There are over 570m farms all of which need slightly different ways to reduce their impact. It is an [environmental] challenge like no other sector of the economy.” But he said at least $500bn is spent every year on agricultural subsidies, and probably much more: “There is a lot of money there to do something really good with.”
Labels that reveal the impact of products would be a good start, so consumers could choose the least damaging options, he said, but subsidies for sustainable and healthy foods and taxes on meat and dairy will probably also be necessary.
One surprise from the work was the large impact of freshwater fish farming, which provides two-thirds of such fish in Asia and 96% in Europe, and was thought to be relatively environmentally friendly. “You get all these fish depositing excreta and unconsumed feed down to the bottom of the pond, where there is barely any oxygen, making it the perfect environment for methane production,” a potent greenhouse gas, Poore said.
The research also found grass-fed beef, thought to be relatively low impact, was still responsible for much higher impacts than plant-based food. “Converting grass into [meat] is like converting coal to energy. It comes with an immense cost in emissions,” Poore said.
The new research has received strong praise from other food experts. Prof Gidon Eshel, at Bard College, US, said: “I was awestruck. It is really important, sound, ambitious, revealing and beautifully done.”
He said previous work on quantifying farming’s impacts, including his own, had taken a top-down approach using national level data, but the new work used a bottom-up approach, with farm-by-farm data. “It is very reassuring to see they yield essentially the same results. But the new work has very many important details that are profoundly revealing.”
Prof Tim Benton, at the University of Leeds, UK, said: “This is an immensely useful study. It brings together a huge amount of data and that makes its conclusions much more robust. The way we produce food, consume and waste food is unsustainable from a planetary perspective. Given the global obesity crisis, changing diets – eating less livestock produce and more vegetables and fruit – has the potential to make both us and the planet healthier.”
Dr Peter Alexander, at the University of Edinburgh, UK, was also impressed but noted: “There may be environmental benefits, eg for biodiversity, from sustainably managed grazing and increasing animal product consumption may improve nutrition for some of the poorest globally. My personal opinion is we should interpret these results not as the need to become vegan overnight, but rather to moderate our [meat] consumption.”
Poore said: “The reason I started this project was to understand if there were sustainable animal producers out there. But I have stopped consuming animal products over the last four years of this project. These impacts are not necessary to sustain our current way of life. The question is how much can we reduce them and the answer is a lot.”
The new research shows that without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75% – an area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined – and still feed the world. Loss of wild areas to agriculture is the leading cause of the current mass extinction of wildlife.
The new analysis shows that while meat and dairy provide just 18% of calories and 37% of protein, it uses the vast majority – 83% – of farmland and produces 60% of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions. Other recent research shows 86% of all land mammals are now livestock or humans. The scientists also found that even the very lowest impact meat and dairy products still cause much more environmental harm than the least sustainable vegetable and cereal growing.
The study, published in the journal Science, created a huge dataset based on almost 40,000 farms in 119 countries and covering 40 food products that represent 90% of all that is eaten. It assessed the full impact of these foods, from farm to fork, on land use, climate change emissions, freshwater use and water pollution (eutrophication) and air pollution (acidification).
“A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use,” said Joseph Poore, at the University of Oxford, UK, who led the research. “It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car,” he said, as these only cut greenhouse gas emissions.
“Agriculture is a sector that spans all the multitude of environmental problems,” he said. “Really it is animal products that are responsible for so much of this. Avoiding consumption of animal products delivers far better environmental benefits than trying to purchase sustainable meat and dairy.”
The analysis also revealed a huge variability between different ways of producing the same food. For example, beef cattle raised on deforested land result in 12 times more greenhouse gases and use 50 times more land than those grazing rich natural pasture. But the comparison of beef with plant protein such as peas is stark, with even the lowest impact beef responsible for six times more greenhouse gases and 36 times more land.
The large variability in environmental impact from different farms does present an opportunity for reducing the harm, Poore said, without needing the global population to become vegan. If the most harmful half of meat and dairy production was replaced by plant-based food, this still delivers about two-thirds of the benefits of getting rid of all meat and dairy production.
Cutting the environmental impact of farming is not easy, Poore warned: “There are over 570m farms all of which need slightly different ways to reduce their impact. It is an [environmental] challenge like no other sector of the economy.” But he said at least $500bn is spent every year on agricultural subsidies, and probably much more: “There is a lot of money there to do something really good with.”
Labels that reveal the impact of products would be a good start, so consumers could choose the least damaging options, he said, but subsidies for sustainable and healthy foods and taxes on meat and dairy will probably also be necessary.
One surprise from the work was the large impact of freshwater fish farming, which provides two-thirds of such fish in Asia and 96% in Europe, and was thought to be relatively environmentally friendly. “You get all these fish depositing excreta and unconsumed feed down to the bottom of the pond, where there is barely any oxygen, making it the perfect environment for methane production,” a potent greenhouse gas, Poore said.
The research also found grass-fed beef, thought to be relatively low impact, was still responsible for much higher impacts than plant-based food. “Converting grass into [meat] is like converting coal to energy. It comes with an immense cost in emissions,” Poore said.
The new research has received strong praise from other food experts. Prof Gidon Eshel, at Bard College, US, said: “I was awestruck. It is really important, sound, ambitious, revealing and beautifully done.”
He said previous work on quantifying farming’s impacts, including his own, had taken a top-down approach using national level data, but the new work used a bottom-up approach, with farm-by-farm data. “It is very reassuring to see they yield essentially the same results. But the new work has very many important details that are profoundly revealing.”
Prof Tim Benton, at the University of Leeds, UK, said: “This is an immensely useful study. It brings together a huge amount of data and that makes its conclusions much more robust. The way we produce food, consume and waste food is unsustainable from a planetary perspective. Given the global obesity crisis, changing diets – eating less livestock produce and more vegetables and fruit – has the potential to make both us and the planet healthier.”
Dr Peter Alexander, at the University of Edinburgh, UK, was also impressed but noted: “There may be environmental benefits, eg for biodiversity, from sustainably managed grazing and increasing animal product consumption may improve nutrition for some of the poorest globally. My personal opinion is we should interpret these results not as the need to become vegan overnight, but rather to moderate our [meat] consumption.”
Poore said: “The reason I started this project was to understand if there were sustainable animal producers out there. But I have stopped consuming animal products over the last four years of this project. These impacts are not necessary to sustain our current way of life. The question is how much can we reduce them and the answer is a lot.”
First application to drill in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge doesn’t consider wildlife impacts
"This plan is not adequate," the Interior Department said.
KYLA MANDEL - thinkprogress
MAY 31, 2018, 11:33 AM
The Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service issued a scathing response to the first permit application to begin seismic testing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), submitted by two Alaska Native corporations and a small oil services firm.
The seismic work application is the first step toward developing oil and gas drilling in the pristine arctic refuge, which was opened up to fossil fuel development by the Trump administration last year. But as the Interior Department’s response to the application shows, it may not be as easy as some companies might have expected to make the government’s push for energy development in the refuge a reality.
“This plan is not adequate,” the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) said in its reply to the permit application, obtained by the Washington Post. The agency said the application showed “a lack of applicable details for proper agency review.” This includes failing to include any studies about the impacts of the proposed seismic work and equipment on wildlife, the arctic tundra, or the aquatic conditions in the area.
“There is no documentation of environmental effects, whether positive or adverse,” the FWS noted. According to the Washington Post, the department’s response “showed no sign of approval.”
The permit application, submitted by Kuukpik Corp., a joint venture with oil services firm and project operator SAExploration, the Arctic Slope Regional Corp., and the Kaktovik Inupiat Corp., is the only one received by the FWS so far. The proposal details plans to create ice roads and use smaller vehicles and sleds, as well as use biodegradable lubricants in order to minimize environmental harm. The operation would be carried out by 300 workers and also use giant sleds, airstrips, and explosives in order to search for and map underground fossil fuel reserves.
Commenting on the application, Peter Nelson, director of federal lands at advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife, told the Washington Post: “One thing is pretty notable: how many inaccuracies and missing pieces of information there are. It really provides more evidence that industry and the Trump administration are being pretty reckless with this process.”
For nearly a decade, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) has been introducing bills to open the refuge up to the oil and gas industry. Last fall, bolstered by a fossil fuel friendly administration, Murkowski — who is the head of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee — finally found her opportunity to insert the proposal into the Republican tax bill.
The proposal to open up drilling in the Arctic refuge, however, has faced overwhelming public opposition over the years. The refuge is home to many threatened and endangered species, including migratory birds and polar bears.
Alaska’s coastal plain, 1.5 million acres of protected land known as Area 1002, is also the primary breeding ground for a unique herd of 195,000 porcupine caribou — which are, in turn, a staple for the indigenous Gwich’in tribe, who say their way of life would be irreparably changed if oil and gas interests are able to open the area to development.
The move hasn’t received support from all Republicans either. In December, 12 Republican representatives sent a letter to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) expressing their concerns about opening up oil and gas exploration in a refuge that “stands as a symbol of our nation’s strong and enduring national legacy.”
The move has also be criticized for its poor economic accounting. While the Trump administration suggested that royalties could bring in as much as $3.6 billion over the next decade, refuge experts point out that would require leasing all 1.5 million acres at a high market price.
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates there are 7.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil reserves. No drilling, however, has taken place in the area since it became a refuge in 1980; no seismic work has taken place since the mid-1980s.
The trio of companies that submitted their seismic permit application to FWS hope to begin work on December 10. The proposal also detailed plans to conduct operations as late as May 31, which according to the FWS response, “impinges on the beginning of the calving and nesting season of wildlife using this area.”
The seismic work application is the first step toward developing oil and gas drilling in the pristine arctic refuge, which was opened up to fossil fuel development by the Trump administration last year. But as the Interior Department’s response to the application shows, it may not be as easy as some companies might have expected to make the government’s push for energy development in the refuge a reality.
“This plan is not adequate,” the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) said in its reply to the permit application, obtained by the Washington Post. The agency said the application showed “a lack of applicable details for proper agency review.” This includes failing to include any studies about the impacts of the proposed seismic work and equipment on wildlife, the arctic tundra, or the aquatic conditions in the area.
“There is no documentation of environmental effects, whether positive or adverse,” the FWS noted. According to the Washington Post, the department’s response “showed no sign of approval.”
The permit application, submitted by Kuukpik Corp., a joint venture with oil services firm and project operator SAExploration, the Arctic Slope Regional Corp., and the Kaktovik Inupiat Corp., is the only one received by the FWS so far. The proposal details plans to create ice roads and use smaller vehicles and sleds, as well as use biodegradable lubricants in order to minimize environmental harm. The operation would be carried out by 300 workers and also use giant sleds, airstrips, and explosives in order to search for and map underground fossil fuel reserves.
Commenting on the application, Peter Nelson, director of federal lands at advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife, told the Washington Post: “One thing is pretty notable: how many inaccuracies and missing pieces of information there are. It really provides more evidence that industry and the Trump administration are being pretty reckless with this process.”
For nearly a decade, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) has been introducing bills to open the refuge up to the oil and gas industry. Last fall, bolstered by a fossil fuel friendly administration, Murkowski — who is the head of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee — finally found her opportunity to insert the proposal into the Republican tax bill.
The proposal to open up drilling in the Arctic refuge, however, has faced overwhelming public opposition over the years. The refuge is home to many threatened and endangered species, including migratory birds and polar bears.
Alaska’s coastal plain, 1.5 million acres of protected land known as Area 1002, is also the primary breeding ground for a unique herd of 195,000 porcupine caribou — which are, in turn, a staple for the indigenous Gwich’in tribe, who say their way of life would be irreparably changed if oil and gas interests are able to open the area to development.
The move hasn’t received support from all Republicans either. In December, 12 Republican representatives sent a letter to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) expressing their concerns about opening up oil and gas exploration in a refuge that “stands as a symbol of our nation’s strong and enduring national legacy.”
The move has also be criticized for its poor economic accounting. While the Trump administration suggested that royalties could bring in as much as $3.6 billion over the next decade, refuge experts point out that would require leasing all 1.5 million acres at a high market price.
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates there are 7.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil reserves. No drilling, however, has taken place in the area since it became a refuge in 1980; no seismic work has taken place since the mid-1980s.
The trio of companies that submitted their seismic permit application to FWS hope to begin work on December 10. The proposal also detailed plans to conduct operations as late as May 31, which according to the FWS response, “impinges on the beginning of the calving and nesting season of wildlife using this area.”
Radium has been widely spread on Pennsylvania roadways without regulation: Study
200 times more of the carcinogen has been released into the environment through legal road brining than has as a result of oil and gas industry spills.
Kristina Marusic - ehn
May 30, 2018
Wastewater from the oil and gas industry that's being spread on roadways to control dust and ice in at least 13 states, including Pennsylvania, poses a threat to the environment and to human health, according to a study released this week.
The wastewater, commonly referred to as "brine," contains high levels of salt along with lead, radium, organic contaminants and other heavy metals in concentrations above safe levels for drinking water. Researchers have found that nearly all of the metals from brine leach out from roadways when it rains, and they speculate that the pollutants could wind up in nearby bodies of water and find their way into local drinking water sources.
"Even though the highest volumes of brine are being spread on roads in northwestern Pennsylvania, most of this activity is occurring within the Allegheny River watershed," William D. Burgos, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Pennsylvania State University who co-authored the study, told EHN. "And the Allegheny River is the drinking water source for the city of Pittsburgh."
In their report, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, the researchers noted that in Pennsylvania from 2008 to 2014, spreading oil and gas wastewater on roads released more than four times more radium to the environment (320 millicuries) than was released from oil and gas wastewater treatment facilities, and 200 times more radium than spills. Some lead and radium was also found to settle into roadways.
Radium is radioactive and has been linked to bone marrow and lung cancer, while the health impacts of lead exposure range from lowered IQ levels and behavioral issues in children to kidney, brain and central nervous system damage in adults. The researchers also found that the levels of salt in the brine pose a threat to aquatic life, and that some of the organic contaminants showed potential toxicity outcomes in human cells that have been linked to liver cancer in animal experiments.
The brine, which is a byproduct of both fracking and conventional oil and gas drilling, is sometimes used to treat icy roads during the winter, but is more commonly used to control dust on unpaved roadways in the summer. An estimated 34 percent of roads in the U.S. are unpaved, and dust from these roadways contributes to almost half of the nation's annual airborne particulate matter emissions, which causes cardiovascular and respiratory issues.
"We do know that dust isn't good," Nathaniel R Warner, another of the study's co-authors out of Penn State's Civil and Environmental Engineering department, told EHN. "It also causes health issues, so we do need to suppress dust. But we need to make sure we're solving one problem while minimizing the creation of another."
Previous research suggests that the use of brine may not actually be effective at controlling dust.
Burgos and Warner were only able to track down one published study investigating the effectiveness of the practice, which found no statistical difference in the amount of dust being blown off roads that had been treated with brine and roads that hadn't been treated at all. The authors of that study, which was conducted in North Dakota, speculated that brine doesn't contain high enough concentrations of calcium and magnesium, which help bind dust together into clay and retain moisture.
"Our recommendations for moving forward include setting a limit on radioactivity, reducing the amount of organics, and frankly, testing whether brine even works," Warner said. "If it doesn't work any better than water at suppressing dust, maybe we just don't need to be doing this."
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) does require townships that want to use oil and gas brine on their roadways to obtain a "certificate of analysis" that requires testing of the fluid for some chemicals, but the researchers said those tests are very limited and ignore some of the most concerning elements of the brining liquid.
"The number of analytes is really limited," Burgos said, "and radium isn't on the list at all." He noted that none of the states that allow oil and gas brine to be spread on roadways currently require any radium analysis.
There are more than 200 commercially available dust suppressants, which likely undergo more rigorous efficacy, health and environmental testing than oil and gas brine. But they can cost up to a dollar a gallon, whereas the oil and gas industry generally provides townships with brining services for free since it's the cheapest method of disposal available.
On May 17, the DEP conceded that it shouldn't have allowed hundreds of thousands of gallons of brine to be spread on dirt roads in Farmington Township in Warren County last year. The announcement came during an Environmental Hearing Board case that had been filed by a resident who claimed spreading the brine on roadways where Amish families walk and ride in open buggies was unsafe.
Moving forward, the DEP has indicated that brine will be reclassified as "residual waste" and that a stricter permitting process will be required before it can be spread on roadways. The researchers at Penn State University said they'd been in talks with the DEP about their findings, but did not think their study was directly related to that decision.
"Ultimately, these are really funding-driven decisions," Burgos said. "If we want to fix this, we probably have to provide these townships with more funding for road maintenance."
The wastewater, commonly referred to as "brine," contains high levels of salt along with lead, radium, organic contaminants and other heavy metals in concentrations above safe levels for drinking water. Researchers have found that nearly all of the metals from brine leach out from roadways when it rains, and they speculate that the pollutants could wind up in nearby bodies of water and find their way into local drinking water sources.
"Even though the highest volumes of brine are being spread on roads in northwestern Pennsylvania, most of this activity is occurring within the Allegheny River watershed," William D. Burgos, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Pennsylvania State University who co-authored the study, told EHN. "And the Allegheny River is the drinking water source for the city of Pittsburgh."
In their report, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, the researchers noted that in Pennsylvania from 2008 to 2014, spreading oil and gas wastewater on roads released more than four times more radium to the environment (320 millicuries) than was released from oil and gas wastewater treatment facilities, and 200 times more radium than spills. Some lead and radium was also found to settle into roadways.
Radium is radioactive and has been linked to bone marrow and lung cancer, while the health impacts of lead exposure range from lowered IQ levels and behavioral issues in children to kidney, brain and central nervous system damage in adults. The researchers also found that the levels of salt in the brine pose a threat to aquatic life, and that some of the organic contaminants showed potential toxicity outcomes in human cells that have been linked to liver cancer in animal experiments.
The brine, which is a byproduct of both fracking and conventional oil and gas drilling, is sometimes used to treat icy roads during the winter, but is more commonly used to control dust on unpaved roadways in the summer. An estimated 34 percent of roads in the U.S. are unpaved, and dust from these roadways contributes to almost half of the nation's annual airborne particulate matter emissions, which causes cardiovascular and respiratory issues.
"We do know that dust isn't good," Nathaniel R Warner, another of the study's co-authors out of Penn State's Civil and Environmental Engineering department, told EHN. "It also causes health issues, so we do need to suppress dust. But we need to make sure we're solving one problem while minimizing the creation of another."
Previous research suggests that the use of brine may not actually be effective at controlling dust.
Burgos and Warner were only able to track down one published study investigating the effectiveness of the practice, which found no statistical difference in the amount of dust being blown off roads that had been treated with brine and roads that hadn't been treated at all. The authors of that study, which was conducted in North Dakota, speculated that brine doesn't contain high enough concentrations of calcium and magnesium, which help bind dust together into clay and retain moisture.
"Our recommendations for moving forward include setting a limit on radioactivity, reducing the amount of organics, and frankly, testing whether brine even works," Warner said. "If it doesn't work any better than water at suppressing dust, maybe we just don't need to be doing this."
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) does require townships that want to use oil and gas brine on their roadways to obtain a "certificate of analysis" that requires testing of the fluid for some chemicals, but the researchers said those tests are very limited and ignore some of the most concerning elements of the brining liquid.
"The number of analytes is really limited," Burgos said, "and radium isn't on the list at all." He noted that none of the states that allow oil and gas brine to be spread on roadways currently require any radium analysis.
There are more than 200 commercially available dust suppressants, which likely undergo more rigorous efficacy, health and environmental testing than oil and gas brine. But they can cost up to a dollar a gallon, whereas the oil and gas industry generally provides townships with brining services for free since it's the cheapest method of disposal available.
On May 17, the DEP conceded that it shouldn't have allowed hundreds of thousands of gallons of brine to be spread on dirt roads in Farmington Township in Warren County last year. The announcement came during an Environmental Hearing Board case that had been filed by a resident who claimed spreading the brine on roadways where Amish families walk and ride in open buggies was unsafe.
Moving forward, the DEP has indicated that brine will be reclassified as "residual waste" and that a stricter permitting process will be required before it can be spread on roadways. The researchers at Penn State University said they'd been in talks with the DEP about their findings, but did not think their study was directly related to that decision.
"Ultimately, these are really funding-driven decisions," Burgos said. "If we want to fix this, we probably have to provide these townships with more funding for road maintenance."
Oysters to Fight Erosion and Help Preserve Southern Louisiana History
As erosion claims land, local scientists explore using oysters to preserve parts of the Mississippi delta.
Tuesday, May 29, 2018 - 14:15
Brian Owens, Contributor - inside science
(Inside Science) -- In southern Louisiana, the land is disappearing fast. The region loses 25,000 acres of coastal land every year -- the equivalent of a football field every 15 minutes. The land loss is devastating for the people and economy of the Mississippi River Delta, as the winding bayous that provide a place to fish for shrimp turn into open ocean, and homes are overwhelmed by storms and floods. But the Native American tribes that call the area home are losing not just their land but also pieces of their history and culture.
"The loss of land affects where we live, but also our sacred sites, our burial mounds," said Patty Ferguson-Bohnee, a lawyer from the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe in Terrebonne Parish.
So the tribe has teamed up with Earl Melancon, who studies coastal restoration at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana, to build up artificial oyster reefs that will help to protect their community and sacred burial mounds from the rising waters.
The usual suspects
There are a variety of causes of coastal land loss in Louisiana, said Denise Reed, a coastal restoration scientist at the University of New Orleans. Trying to untangle what is happening where is "like doing an autopsy without a body," she explained. Some are natural processes, like wave-driven erosion at the edges, and subsidence, the gradual sinking of coastal land into the ocean. But these pale in comparison to the human-driven causes.
Over the past century, New Orleans has been protected from flooding of the Mississippi River by building levees that keep the channel in one place. This mean that the sediments are deposited in a single small area instead of being spread out around the delta, where they help maintain they wetlands. Decades of oil and gas exploration have cut canals, throughout the marshes, that both directly destroy the land and allow salt water to intrude deep into the wetlands, killing the plants whose tangle of roots hold the soil in place.
Donald Dardar, the tribe's second chairman, said oil companies have already cut canals through some sacred sites and then failed to maintain them, leaving the banks to erode. And human-caused climate change leads to rising sea levels and more devastating hurricanes that bring massive storm surges to the area.
The scale of the problem can seem overwhelming.
"People are largely powerless against the forces causing land loss," said Reed. But, she added, there is a lot that can be done, if projects focus on where they can have the biggest impact.
Living barrier
Melancon believes his oyster reefs can be one of those projects. The reefs are created using huge, 20-foot-long gabion mats made of UV-resistant plastic mesh filled with limestone. The mats protect the shore from erosion by mitigating wave action and strong currents, and provide a place for oysters to grow. As the oyster reefs form, they provide further protection. Over time the mats will break down, but the reefs stay, providing a natural, living shoreline barrier.
Because the reefs continue to grow, they can also keep up with sea level rise on their own, said Melancon. As the water levels rise, the oyster reefs grow upward, because the oysters like to keep the same amount of water above them. People will not be allowed to harvest the oysters, so the reefs should remain intact, but the new oysters will likely provide a source of new larvae that can help repopulate other harvestable sites.
Other projects in the area have shown some success using the same technique, said Melancon, and the tribe's burial mounds are a good candidate for protection.
"They're on reasonably solid land now, on some of the highest ground around. But they are vulnerable to erosion; it's just a matter of time," he said. "We can't wait until they start eroding; once the land is gone, it can't be replaced."
Melancon has done an initial survey to determine that the sediments in the area can support the mats, and he and the tribe are now working with the local government to find funding to get the project off the ground. Dardar hopes that the first reefs can be installed by November, to begin preserving what's left of the sacred sites.
"Our ancestors built them for a reason; we don't want to see them go," he said. "As we speak they are washing away, so it's really important that we get this done to protect them for the whole tribe."
"The loss of land affects where we live, but also our sacred sites, our burial mounds," said Patty Ferguson-Bohnee, a lawyer from the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe in Terrebonne Parish.
So the tribe has teamed up with Earl Melancon, who studies coastal restoration at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana, to build up artificial oyster reefs that will help to protect their community and sacred burial mounds from the rising waters.
The usual suspects
There are a variety of causes of coastal land loss in Louisiana, said Denise Reed, a coastal restoration scientist at the University of New Orleans. Trying to untangle what is happening where is "like doing an autopsy without a body," she explained. Some are natural processes, like wave-driven erosion at the edges, and subsidence, the gradual sinking of coastal land into the ocean. But these pale in comparison to the human-driven causes.
Over the past century, New Orleans has been protected from flooding of the Mississippi River by building levees that keep the channel in one place. This mean that the sediments are deposited in a single small area instead of being spread out around the delta, where they help maintain they wetlands. Decades of oil and gas exploration have cut canals, throughout the marshes, that both directly destroy the land and allow salt water to intrude deep into the wetlands, killing the plants whose tangle of roots hold the soil in place.
Donald Dardar, the tribe's second chairman, said oil companies have already cut canals through some sacred sites and then failed to maintain them, leaving the banks to erode. And human-caused climate change leads to rising sea levels and more devastating hurricanes that bring massive storm surges to the area.
The scale of the problem can seem overwhelming.
"People are largely powerless against the forces causing land loss," said Reed. But, she added, there is a lot that can be done, if projects focus on where they can have the biggest impact.
Living barrier
Melancon believes his oyster reefs can be one of those projects. The reefs are created using huge, 20-foot-long gabion mats made of UV-resistant plastic mesh filled with limestone. The mats protect the shore from erosion by mitigating wave action and strong currents, and provide a place for oysters to grow. As the oyster reefs form, they provide further protection. Over time the mats will break down, but the reefs stay, providing a natural, living shoreline barrier.
Because the reefs continue to grow, they can also keep up with sea level rise on their own, said Melancon. As the water levels rise, the oyster reefs grow upward, because the oysters like to keep the same amount of water above them. People will not be allowed to harvest the oysters, so the reefs should remain intact, but the new oysters will likely provide a source of new larvae that can help repopulate other harvestable sites.
Other projects in the area have shown some success using the same technique, said Melancon, and the tribe's burial mounds are a good candidate for protection.
"They're on reasonably solid land now, on some of the highest ground around. But they are vulnerable to erosion; it's just a matter of time," he said. "We can't wait until they start eroding; once the land is gone, it can't be replaced."
Melancon has done an initial survey to determine that the sediments in the area can support the mats, and he and the tribe are now working with the local government to find funding to get the project off the ground. Dardar hopes that the first reefs can be installed by November, to begin preserving what's left of the sacred sites.
"Our ancestors built them for a reason; we don't want to see them go," he said. "As we speak they are washing away, so it's really important that we get this done to protect them for the whole tribe."
Do You Know Where Your Meat Comes From?
By Ronnie Cummins
Organic Consumers Association
May. 27, 2018 07:56AM EST
Consumers know if the tomatoes they buy in the supermarket were imported from Mexico. They know if the sweater they purchased was made in Vietnam.
They also know if the chicken they toss in their grocery cart was imported from another country. Under Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) laws, these products are required to carry labels that tell you if the product was imported from another country.
But beef and pork? Those products are exempt from COOL laws. That means consumers have no idea where their steak and bacon came from, unless the producer chooses to label it.
U.S. cattle ranchers say the failure to require COOL labels on beef is hurting their industry. That's especially true for ranchers serving the fast-growing grassfed segment of the beef industry said Will Harris, president of the board of directors of the American Grassfed Association (AGA) and a fourth-generation cattleman.
The grassfed industry suffers the most because, as Harris told us:
"The U.S. leads the world in the production of grain-fed beef. This production advantage primarily exists because grains and soy are so heavily subsidized under the USDA federal farm program. Grassfed beef producers in America are unsubsidized.
"The subsidies on grain permits our domestic grain-fed beef products to be marketed below the pricing thresholds that would allow stiff competition from imported product. The big winners in the repeal of COOL are the multinational meat companies.
This has allowed them to shop for meat in the cheapest markets in the world, and bring it into the best market in the world, and sell it to consumers as 'Product of the USA,' even though the animal had never drawn a single breath of air in the United States."
Harris, who estimates at least 75 percent of the grassfed beef consumed in America comes from Australia, New Zealand or Uruguay, said American consumers are being intentionally misled. Millions of pounds of beef, imported from other countries, are being wrongly labeled as "Product of the USA," Harris said.
Mike Callicrate of Ranch Foods Direct agreed. He told us that:
"U.S. grassfed producers can't come close to competing with cost of production of South American, Australian and New Zealand imports, especially considering producers in the exporting countries are similarly being exploited, forced to produce below cost, by the same multinational packers.
"The loss of COOL was a huge hit on the cattle price, especially grassfed prices due to extremely low cost of supposedly 'grassfed' imports, which allow importers and retailers to make ridiculous margins.
"I just returned from a ranch tour in Argentina. They think it's funny that most South American beef is considered 'grassfed.' They said that may have been true 20 years ago, but not today. Their highest-quality cattle prices were 30 percent below the U.S. at the time of my visit. South American beef has also been falsely considered organic by default."
Ranchers and other advocates of COOL are hoping a revamped North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will help them restore COOL labels on beef—but time may be running out.
Why Are Beef and Pork Exempt From COOL Labeling Laws?
COOL was first established under the Tariff Act of 1930 which required that, "unless excepted, every article of foreign origin (or its container) imported into the U.S. shall be marked with its country of origin."
Over the years, COOL, as applied to meat, has evolved with a convoluted history.
Under COOL, imported beef and pork were required "to bear a label denoting the foreign country-of-origin of the beef all the way to the consumer, unless the beef undergoes a substantial transformation in the United States."
That sounds clear enough, but the "undergoes substantial transformation" in the U.S., along with exemptions under the law for some agricultural commodities, led to a series of changes in the law. According to the National Agricultural Law Center:
The requirements for listing the country of origin for beef and pork specifically were outlined in the COOL law, but were altered through the evolution of the proposed regulations and litigation with the World Trade Organization. In the original regulations, if the product had not undergone a substantial transformation in the United States, its country of origin was the one that was declared to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. 7 C.F.R. § 60.200(f). However, if the product underwent a substantial transformation in the United States, the product must have been labeled as "product from [the country it was imported from], and processed in the U.S." 7 C.F.R. § 60.200(g)(2). If commodities were sold together, with only a part of it undergoing a substantial transformation in the United States, all the countries of origin must have been disclosed. 7 C.F.R. § 60.200(h).
Similarly, commodities that had different countries of origin and/or methods of production could still be sold together, as long as all the countries and methods were listed, pursuant to 7 C.F.R. § 60.300(d).
That's more or less how the law worked, with some tweaks here and there, until December 2008. That's when Canada and Mexico sued to overturn COOL requirements for beef and pork, arguing that the law violated international trade law because it discriminated against Canadian and Mexican livestock.
After much back and forth with rulings and appeals, in May 2015, the World Trade Organization (WTO) determined that the U.S. COOL requirements did in fact violate international trade law. The WTO also said the countries could impose $1.01 billion in retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods.
Soon after the WTO's ruling, in December 2015, Congress repealed COOL and Agricultural Sec. Tom Vilsack announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) would no longer enforce the labeling law on beef and pork products. The repeal was a part of the $1.4-trillion omnibus spending bill, which was signed by President Barack Obama.
The USDA justified its decision by arguing that imported beef is a product of the U.S. even if it comes from a different country, as long as the country of origin has food safety standards similar to that in America.
U.S. ranchers rise up in defense of COOL
Ever since COOL was repealed in 2015, U.S. cattle ranchers, including those in the grassfed beef industry, have been vocal on the need to reestablish the labeling law.
According to a lawsuit filed in June 2017, by American ranchers and cattle producers against the USDA and Sec. of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, millions of pounds of beef are now being imported from various countries and labeled as "Product of the U.S.A," despite only undergoing repackaging in the U.S. The lawsuit alleges that this practice violates the Tariff Act of 1930.
While the lawsuit makes its way through the courts, Kenny Graner, president of the U.S. Cattlemen's Association, is looking for an opening in the recent NAFTA negotiations to strike a deal with Canada and Mexico that restore the labels on beef. (The WTO governs global trade, while NAFTA resolves trade disputes that erupt between only Canada, Mexico and the U.S.)
In a written statement, Graner said:
As talks continue on a modernized NAFTA, U.S. cattle producers remain disappointed in the lack of discussion on a WTO-compliant country-of-origin labeling (COOL) program. Country-of-origin labeling remains an important issue for cattle producers across the U.S. and consensus must be reached on how to best respond to consumer demand for accurate information. USCA continues to work toward truth in labeling on all fronts, and we hope the administration will do the same.
Graner cited industry figures showing that in 1994, the year NAFTA was implemented, the U.S. ran a surplus of $226.7 million in beef and a deficit of $978.8 million with Canada and Mexico combined. By 2016, the surplus in beef had become a deficit of $710.4 million, and the combined deficit in cattle had grown to $1.55 billion.
Political commentator Tomi Lahren expressed similar concerns in a Fox News Insider report, saying that U.S. ranchers and cattle producers have been "squeezed, poked and prodded by the meat packing industry." She went on to say:
They [the foreign beef producers and the big meat packers lobbyists] control the market. They control the price. They buy this cheap foreign beef, and your American ranchers are going under—and not because they can't compete in quality, but because that can't compete with mystery meat brought in from who knows where.
If the repeal of COOL is hurting the beef industry, it's even worse for grassfed producers, Harris told us. In an email he wrote:
"I was among the earliest of the American cattle producers who embraced the grassfed protocol. I have seen steady increases for demand of this product for the last 25 years. In the last few months, I have seen most of the necessary-for-production margin premiums eroded by imported grassfed beef."
U.S. cattle producers continue to lobby to get COOL reinstated, as they believe it will help create competition in the beef market, put a stop to consumer deception, reduce market manipulation, enable price discovery and support America's rural economy.
As Carrie Balkcom, executive director of American Grassfed Association, said:
"Consumers want to know when they go to the market that the grassfed meats they are buying are from these farms and farmers. Farmers that are restoring and regenerating their farms. Farmers and farms that are preserving and restoring their rural economies. Farmers and farms that are saving a way of life by allowing these farms to survive so the next generation can be supported.
"Feeding Americans with American products without the worry of whether or not other countries will or will not provide us with food. COOL provides these consumers with the knowledge that they are helping with these efforts. We cannot allow marketing and food conglomerates to decide what goes on a label."
If you want to support American-grown grassfed meat and dairy, buy directly from a trusted farmer near you or look for products that bear the American Grassfed Association logo to ensure that your food is truly a "Product of the U.S.A."
They also know if the chicken they toss in their grocery cart was imported from another country. Under Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) laws, these products are required to carry labels that tell you if the product was imported from another country.
But beef and pork? Those products are exempt from COOL laws. That means consumers have no idea where their steak and bacon came from, unless the producer chooses to label it.
U.S. cattle ranchers say the failure to require COOL labels on beef is hurting their industry. That's especially true for ranchers serving the fast-growing grassfed segment of the beef industry said Will Harris, president of the board of directors of the American Grassfed Association (AGA) and a fourth-generation cattleman.
The grassfed industry suffers the most because, as Harris told us:
"The U.S. leads the world in the production of grain-fed beef. This production advantage primarily exists because grains and soy are so heavily subsidized under the USDA federal farm program. Grassfed beef producers in America are unsubsidized.
"The subsidies on grain permits our domestic grain-fed beef products to be marketed below the pricing thresholds that would allow stiff competition from imported product. The big winners in the repeal of COOL are the multinational meat companies.
This has allowed them to shop for meat in the cheapest markets in the world, and bring it into the best market in the world, and sell it to consumers as 'Product of the USA,' even though the animal had never drawn a single breath of air in the United States."
Harris, who estimates at least 75 percent of the grassfed beef consumed in America comes from Australia, New Zealand or Uruguay, said American consumers are being intentionally misled. Millions of pounds of beef, imported from other countries, are being wrongly labeled as "Product of the USA," Harris said.
Mike Callicrate of Ranch Foods Direct agreed. He told us that:
"U.S. grassfed producers can't come close to competing with cost of production of South American, Australian and New Zealand imports, especially considering producers in the exporting countries are similarly being exploited, forced to produce below cost, by the same multinational packers.
"The loss of COOL was a huge hit on the cattle price, especially grassfed prices due to extremely low cost of supposedly 'grassfed' imports, which allow importers and retailers to make ridiculous margins.
"I just returned from a ranch tour in Argentina. They think it's funny that most South American beef is considered 'grassfed.' They said that may have been true 20 years ago, but not today. Their highest-quality cattle prices were 30 percent below the U.S. at the time of my visit. South American beef has also been falsely considered organic by default."
Ranchers and other advocates of COOL are hoping a revamped North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will help them restore COOL labels on beef—but time may be running out.
Why Are Beef and Pork Exempt From COOL Labeling Laws?
COOL was first established under the Tariff Act of 1930 which required that, "unless excepted, every article of foreign origin (or its container) imported into the U.S. shall be marked with its country of origin."
Over the years, COOL, as applied to meat, has evolved with a convoluted history.
Under COOL, imported beef and pork were required "to bear a label denoting the foreign country-of-origin of the beef all the way to the consumer, unless the beef undergoes a substantial transformation in the United States."
That sounds clear enough, but the "undergoes substantial transformation" in the U.S., along with exemptions under the law for some agricultural commodities, led to a series of changes in the law. According to the National Agricultural Law Center:
The requirements for listing the country of origin for beef and pork specifically were outlined in the COOL law, but were altered through the evolution of the proposed regulations and litigation with the World Trade Organization. In the original regulations, if the product had not undergone a substantial transformation in the United States, its country of origin was the one that was declared to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. 7 C.F.R. § 60.200(f). However, if the product underwent a substantial transformation in the United States, the product must have been labeled as "product from [the country it was imported from], and processed in the U.S." 7 C.F.R. § 60.200(g)(2). If commodities were sold together, with only a part of it undergoing a substantial transformation in the United States, all the countries of origin must have been disclosed. 7 C.F.R. § 60.200(h).
Similarly, commodities that had different countries of origin and/or methods of production could still be sold together, as long as all the countries and methods were listed, pursuant to 7 C.F.R. § 60.300(d).
That's more or less how the law worked, with some tweaks here and there, until December 2008. That's when Canada and Mexico sued to overturn COOL requirements for beef and pork, arguing that the law violated international trade law because it discriminated against Canadian and Mexican livestock.
After much back and forth with rulings and appeals, in May 2015, the World Trade Organization (WTO) determined that the U.S. COOL requirements did in fact violate international trade law. The WTO also said the countries could impose $1.01 billion in retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods.
Soon after the WTO's ruling, in December 2015, Congress repealed COOL and Agricultural Sec. Tom Vilsack announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) would no longer enforce the labeling law on beef and pork products. The repeal was a part of the $1.4-trillion omnibus spending bill, which was signed by President Barack Obama.
The USDA justified its decision by arguing that imported beef is a product of the U.S. even if it comes from a different country, as long as the country of origin has food safety standards similar to that in America.
U.S. ranchers rise up in defense of COOL
Ever since COOL was repealed in 2015, U.S. cattle ranchers, including those in the grassfed beef industry, have been vocal on the need to reestablish the labeling law.
According to a lawsuit filed in June 2017, by American ranchers and cattle producers against the USDA and Sec. of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, millions of pounds of beef are now being imported from various countries and labeled as "Product of the U.S.A," despite only undergoing repackaging in the U.S. The lawsuit alleges that this practice violates the Tariff Act of 1930.
While the lawsuit makes its way through the courts, Kenny Graner, president of the U.S. Cattlemen's Association, is looking for an opening in the recent NAFTA negotiations to strike a deal with Canada and Mexico that restore the labels on beef. (The WTO governs global trade, while NAFTA resolves trade disputes that erupt between only Canada, Mexico and the U.S.)
In a written statement, Graner said:
As talks continue on a modernized NAFTA, U.S. cattle producers remain disappointed in the lack of discussion on a WTO-compliant country-of-origin labeling (COOL) program. Country-of-origin labeling remains an important issue for cattle producers across the U.S. and consensus must be reached on how to best respond to consumer demand for accurate information. USCA continues to work toward truth in labeling on all fronts, and we hope the administration will do the same.
Graner cited industry figures showing that in 1994, the year NAFTA was implemented, the U.S. ran a surplus of $226.7 million in beef and a deficit of $978.8 million with Canada and Mexico combined. By 2016, the surplus in beef had become a deficit of $710.4 million, and the combined deficit in cattle had grown to $1.55 billion.
Political commentator Tomi Lahren expressed similar concerns in a Fox News Insider report, saying that U.S. ranchers and cattle producers have been "squeezed, poked and prodded by the meat packing industry." She went on to say:
They [the foreign beef producers and the big meat packers lobbyists] control the market. They control the price. They buy this cheap foreign beef, and your American ranchers are going under—and not because they can't compete in quality, but because that can't compete with mystery meat brought in from who knows where.
If the repeal of COOL is hurting the beef industry, it's even worse for grassfed producers, Harris told us. In an email he wrote:
"I was among the earliest of the American cattle producers who embraced the grassfed protocol. I have seen steady increases for demand of this product for the last 25 years. In the last few months, I have seen most of the necessary-for-production margin premiums eroded by imported grassfed beef."
U.S. cattle producers continue to lobby to get COOL reinstated, as they believe it will help create competition in the beef market, put a stop to consumer deception, reduce market manipulation, enable price discovery and support America's rural economy.
As Carrie Balkcom, executive director of American Grassfed Association, said:
"Consumers want to know when they go to the market that the grassfed meats they are buying are from these farms and farmers. Farmers that are restoring and regenerating their farms. Farmers and farms that are preserving and restoring their rural economies. Farmers and farms that are saving a way of life by allowing these farms to survive so the next generation can be supported.
"Feeding Americans with American products without the worry of whether or not other countries will or will not provide us with food. COOL provides these consumers with the knowledge that they are helping with these efforts. We cannot allow marketing and food conglomerates to decide what goes on a label."
If you want to support American-grown grassfed meat and dairy, buy directly from a trusted farmer near you or look for products that bear the American Grassfed Association logo to ensure that your food is truly a "Product of the U.S.A."
Scientists find opioids in Puget Sound mussels
Washington officials found traces of oxycodone in mussels from 3 different locations.
pressherald.com
SEATTLE — Scientists who track pollution have discovered traces of the pain reliever oxycodone in some Puget Sound mussels.
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife obtained clean mussels from Penn Cove on Whidbey Island and put them in different areas to test for water contamination, KIRO-TV reported this week.
Scientists worked with the Puget Sound Institute to analyze the data and discovered three out of 18 locations came back positive for trace amounts of oxycodone.
Two were near Bremerton’s shipyard and one was in Elliot Bay near Harbor Island in Seattle.
Puget Sound Institute scientist Andy James, who assisted with the study, said the areas where the oxycodone-tainted mussels were sampled are considered highly urbanized and are not near commercial shellfish beds.
“You wouldn’t want to collect (and eat) mussels from these urban bays,” he said.
He also said the oxycodone was found in amounts thousands of times lower than a therapeutic dose for humans.
Scientists usually find chemical compounds in Puget Sound waters, ranging from pharmaceuticals to drugs such as cocaine, but this is the first time that opioids have been discovered in local shellfish, according to the Puget Sound Institute.
“It’s telling me there’s a lot of people taking oxycodone in the Puget Sound area,” said State Fish and Wildlife biologist Jennifer Lanksbury, who leads the monitoring studies.
The contamination is likely coming through wastewater treatment plants, she said, adding that the chemicals may be having an impact on fish and shellfish in those areas.
“Hopefully our data shows what’s out there and can get the process started for cleaning up our waters,” she said.
She says mussels at a restaurant or store are healthy because they come from clean locations.
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife obtained clean mussels from Penn Cove on Whidbey Island and put them in different areas to test for water contamination, KIRO-TV reported this week.
Scientists worked with the Puget Sound Institute to analyze the data and discovered three out of 18 locations came back positive for trace amounts of oxycodone.
Two were near Bremerton’s shipyard and one was in Elliot Bay near Harbor Island in Seattle.
Puget Sound Institute scientist Andy James, who assisted with the study, said the areas where the oxycodone-tainted mussels were sampled are considered highly urbanized and are not near commercial shellfish beds.
“You wouldn’t want to collect (and eat) mussels from these urban bays,” he said.
He also said the oxycodone was found in amounts thousands of times lower than a therapeutic dose for humans.
Scientists usually find chemical compounds in Puget Sound waters, ranging from pharmaceuticals to drugs such as cocaine, but this is the first time that opioids have been discovered in local shellfish, according to the Puget Sound Institute.
“It’s telling me there’s a lot of people taking oxycodone in the Puget Sound area,” said State Fish and Wildlife biologist Jennifer Lanksbury, who leads the monitoring studies.
The contamination is likely coming through wastewater treatment plants, she said, adding that the chemicals may be having an impact on fish and shellfish in those areas.
“Hopefully our data shows what’s out there and can get the process started for cleaning up our waters,” she said.
She says mussels at a restaurant or store are healthy because they come from clean locations.
Trump’s offshore oil and gas drilling plan threatens scores of coastal national parks
From Cape Hatteras National Seashore to Channel Islands National Park, coastal lands are under attack.
MARK HAND - thinkprogress
MAY 23, 2018, 3:15 PM
Coastal national parks face both environmental and economic risks from President Trump’s plan to expand oil and gas drilling to almost all coastal areas of the United States, according to a report released Wednesday by the National Parks Conservation Association and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
The Trump administration is proposing opening up the waters of 14 coastal states to oil and gas drilling. These states’ coastlines, however, are home to 68 national parks, warns the report, including the Channel Islands National Park in California, which was harmed by a major oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California in 1969. More than 84 million visits were made to these national parks in 2017.
Together, ocean-related tourism and the recreation sectors in these states contributed $90.3 billion to the nation’s gross domestic product in 2015, the report’s authors found. The level of recreation and tourism almost certainly would nosedive in coastal regions, the report argues, if they saw greater industrialization from oil and gas infrastructure.
Climate change is also another reason not to allow expanded offshore drilling, according to the report. Coastal national parks like the Everglades in Florida and Cape Hatteras in North Carolina could be exposed to significant sea level rise and magnified storm surges due to the burning of fossil fuels extracted in offshore areas.
The NRDC report comes at the same time as a new government report sounds the alarm about the impact of rising sea levels on the nation’s public lands. Roughly 25 percent of U.S. national parks are vulnerable to rising sea levels because they’re situated in coastal areas, according to a report released last Friday by the National Park Service.
Along with the potential economic and climate impacts, oil spills similar to the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010 and the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989 would have devastating impacts on the ecosystems inside national parks located along the coasts, says the report, titled: “‘SpOILed Parks: The Threat to our Coastal National Parks from Expanded Offshore Drilling.”
The Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground in Prince William Sound, spilling nearly 11 million gallons of oil along the Alaskan coastline, including the Kenai Fjords, Katmai, and Aniakchak national park sites. Recreation and tourism declined dramatically as a result. Despite cleanup efforts, oil remains on the beaches of these national parks almost 30 years after the disaster.
The 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill leaked more than 171 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, contaminating hundreds of miles of beaches, wetlands, and ocean waters. The spill affected every major island in Gulf Islands National Seashore, a national park that is still recovering from the spill’s effects on plants, wildlife, and archaeological resources.
The coastal areas under consideration for expanded oil and gas drilling are located in Alaska, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, New England, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington state.
The Trump administration has done a lot of public back-peddling and given mixed signals suggesting it may “spare” states like Florida, Franz Matzner, deputy director of federal campaigns for the NRDC, wrote Wednesday in a blog post.
“There’s no bargain to be struck here: any expansion of offshore drilling is too much. Our public ocean waters — and all they support — are still going to have a bullseye squarely fixed on them unless the entire proposal is relegated to the dustbin of history,” Matzner wrote.
The Trump administration’s proposal, first made public in January, would open up 90 percent of the nation’s offshore areas to oil and gas leasing. The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Offshore Energy Management held several public meetings on the proposal over a two-month period that ended in early March.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said the proposal is consistent with Trump’s executive order issued in April 2017 to widen energy exploration. The plan represented a clear departure from the Obama administration’s effort to protect areas rather than exploit them, he said. “This is a clear difference between energy weakness and energy dominance,” the secretary said.
Officials from a dozen coastal states have filed comments in opposition to the plan, arguing that increased offshore drilling would contribute to climate change and associated consequences, such as sea level rise and more frequent and severe extreme weather events. They also argued that offshore drilling could compromise sensitive coastal ecosystems and marine economies in the affected states.
The administration’s final offshore drilling plan is expected to be released in the next few months.
The proposal has generated fierce opposition from nearly every governor of a state that would see its waters opened to oil and gas extraction under the five-year plan. The only governor that has not opposed the plan is Paul LePage of Maine.
In response to the administration’s push to open new areas to offshore drilling, the NRDC released an advertisement on Wednesday highlighting the impact that the Trump administration’s offshore drilling plan could have on coastal states.
“The plan could be devastating: offshore drilling could ruin fisheries, soil the habitats and migratory pathways of whales and dolphins; threaten coastal communities with industrialized coastlines and catastrophic spills; and exacerbate climate change,” the report says.
The report also notes how expanded offshore oil and gas drilling could exacerbate climate change, causing negative effects on inland national parks. By providing increased access to and sales of fossil fuels, greater levels of offshore drilling will ultimately contribute to greater greenhouse gas emissions.
Forested parks like Rocky Mountain and the Great Smoky Mountains are experiencing record wildfires, made more likely by climate change, according to the report. Desert parks like Joshua Tree and Grand Canyon often lack adequate water to sustain their plant and animal life. Alpine parks like Glacier and North Cascades will have no glaciers left within the next few decades.
Along with seeking to expand offshore drilling, the Trump administration has proposed repealing several offshore drilling regulations put in place after the Deepwater Horizon spill, the largest oil spill in history.
The Interior Department has said that rolling back the regulations, which include things like having third-party auditors certify the safety equipment on offshore rigs, would save industry some $228 million over 10 years.
The Trump administration is proposing opening up the waters of 14 coastal states to oil and gas drilling. These states’ coastlines, however, are home to 68 national parks, warns the report, including the Channel Islands National Park in California, which was harmed by a major oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California in 1969. More than 84 million visits were made to these national parks in 2017.
Together, ocean-related tourism and the recreation sectors in these states contributed $90.3 billion to the nation’s gross domestic product in 2015, the report’s authors found. The level of recreation and tourism almost certainly would nosedive in coastal regions, the report argues, if they saw greater industrialization from oil and gas infrastructure.
Climate change is also another reason not to allow expanded offshore drilling, according to the report. Coastal national parks like the Everglades in Florida and Cape Hatteras in North Carolina could be exposed to significant sea level rise and magnified storm surges due to the burning of fossil fuels extracted in offshore areas.
The NRDC report comes at the same time as a new government report sounds the alarm about the impact of rising sea levels on the nation’s public lands. Roughly 25 percent of U.S. national parks are vulnerable to rising sea levels because they’re situated in coastal areas, according to a report released last Friday by the National Park Service.
Along with the potential economic and climate impacts, oil spills similar to the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010 and the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989 would have devastating impacts on the ecosystems inside national parks located along the coasts, says the report, titled: “‘SpOILed Parks: The Threat to our Coastal National Parks from Expanded Offshore Drilling.”
The Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground in Prince William Sound, spilling nearly 11 million gallons of oil along the Alaskan coastline, including the Kenai Fjords, Katmai, and Aniakchak national park sites. Recreation and tourism declined dramatically as a result. Despite cleanup efforts, oil remains on the beaches of these national parks almost 30 years after the disaster.
The 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill leaked more than 171 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, contaminating hundreds of miles of beaches, wetlands, and ocean waters. The spill affected every major island in Gulf Islands National Seashore, a national park that is still recovering from the spill’s effects on plants, wildlife, and archaeological resources.
The coastal areas under consideration for expanded oil and gas drilling are located in Alaska, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, New England, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington state.
The Trump administration has done a lot of public back-peddling and given mixed signals suggesting it may “spare” states like Florida, Franz Matzner, deputy director of federal campaigns for the NRDC, wrote Wednesday in a blog post.
“There’s no bargain to be struck here: any expansion of offshore drilling is too much. Our public ocean waters — and all they support — are still going to have a bullseye squarely fixed on them unless the entire proposal is relegated to the dustbin of history,” Matzner wrote.
The Trump administration’s proposal, first made public in January, would open up 90 percent of the nation’s offshore areas to oil and gas leasing. The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Offshore Energy Management held several public meetings on the proposal over a two-month period that ended in early March.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said the proposal is consistent with Trump’s executive order issued in April 2017 to widen energy exploration. The plan represented a clear departure from the Obama administration’s effort to protect areas rather than exploit them, he said. “This is a clear difference between energy weakness and energy dominance,” the secretary said.
Officials from a dozen coastal states have filed comments in opposition to the plan, arguing that increased offshore drilling would contribute to climate change and associated consequences, such as sea level rise and more frequent and severe extreme weather events. They also argued that offshore drilling could compromise sensitive coastal ecosystems and marine economies in the affected states.
The administration’s final offshore drilling plan is expected to be released in the next few months.
The proposal has generated fierce opposition from nearly every governor of a state that would see its waters opened to oil and gas extraction under the five-year plan. The only governor that has not opposed the plan is Paul LePage of Maine.
In response to the administration’s push to open new areas to offshore drilling, the NRDC released an advertisement on Wednesday highlighting the impact that the Trump administration’s offshore drilling plan could have on coastal states.
“The plan could be devastating: offshore drilling could ruin fisheries, soil the habitats and migratory pathways of whales and dolphins; threaten coastal communities with industrialized coastlines and catastrophic spills; and exacerbate climate change,” the report says.
The report also notes how expanded offshore oil and gas drilling could exacerbate climate change, causing negative effects on inland national parks. By providing increased access to and sales of fossil fuels, greater levels of offshore drilling will ultimately contribute to greater greenhouse gas emissions.
Forested parks like Rocky Mountain and the Great Smoky Mountains are experiencing record wildfires, made more likely by climate change, according to the report. Desert parks like Joshua Tree and Grand Canyon often lack adequate water to sustain their plant and animal life. Alpine parks like Glacier and North Cascades will have no glaciers left within the next few decades.
Along with seeking to expand offshore drilling, the Trump administration has proposed repealing several offshore drilling regulations put in place after the Deepwater Horizon spill, the largest oil spill in history.
The Interior Department has said that rolling back the regulations, which include things like having third-party auditors certify the safety equipment on offshore rigs, would save industry some $228 million over 10 years.
Widely used PVC plastic chemical spurs obesity, prediabetes: Study
Little is known about the compound—but researchers say exposure is likely widespread and it could be making us fat and susceptible to diabetes
Brian Bienkowski - ehn
May 22, 2018
Mice exposed in the womb to a chemical used in PVC plastic, door and window frames, blinds, water pipes, and medical devices were more likely to suffer from prediabetes and obesity, according to a study released this week.
The chemical also increased fat accumulation in human stem cells.
The research suggests that the widely used chemical— organotin dibutyltin (DBT)—could be spurring obesity and diabetes and scientists say we should monitor people's exposure since we know so little about the compound.
"We don't really know how exposed we are [to DBT]," lead author of the new study, Raquel Chamorro-García told EHN. García is a postdoctoral researcher at University of California Irvine's Department of Developmental and Cell Biology.
"But it's in so many materials in our houses and we believe most people are exposed and the chemical could be impacting our current diabetes problem," she added.
There have been dramatic increases in both obesity and diabetes rates over the past few decades. About 38 percent of adults in the US—and about 17 percent of children—are now considered obese. More than 30 million people in the US now suffer from diabetes—if you include prediabetes that number jumps to more than 100 million people.
And, while poor diets and not enough physical activity remain the leading causes, scientists increasingly say this problem goes beyond these obvious culprits. The new study --published this week in Environmental Health Perspectives—is the latest evidence that chemicals in our environment may contribute to these problems—by activating certain receptors, triggering oxidative stress or promoting tissue dysfunction.
Researchers have previously linked certain flame retardant chemicals, BPA, some pesticides, PCBs, and tributyltin (another chemical used in PVC piping) to obesity. DBT, which was tested in the new study, is formed when tributyltin degrades, and it also used on its own in manufacturing.
Scientists at the University of California, Irvine exposed pregnant female mice to DBT. The exposure led to more fat and decreased glucose tolerance in male mice. It's not clear why the link was so profound in male mice but "males and females are metabolically different, we speculate that differences in fat storage might become evident at older ages in females," the authors wrote.
They also examined what effect the chemical had on human stem cells and found increased fat accumulation in exposed cells.
While scientists haven't tested humans for DBT, previous studies found the chemical in house dust and seafood. In addition, a 2009 study estimated humans are exposed to DBT via leaching from PVC water pipes as well.
"The concentrations we used in this study are in the realm of what we'd expect people to be exposed to," García said.
The chemical also increased fat accumulation in human stem cells.
The research suggests that the widely used chemical— organotin dibutyltin (DBT)—could be spurring obesity and diabetes and scientists say we should monitor people's exposure since we know so little about the compound.
"We don't really know how exposed we are [to DBT]," lead author of the new study, Raquel Chamorro-García told EHN. García is a postdoctoral researcher at University of California Irvine's Department of Developmental and Cell Biology.
"But it's in so many materials in our houses and we believe most people are exposed and the chemical could be impacting our current diabetes problem," she added.
There have been dramatic increases in both obesity and diabetes rates over the past few decades. About 38 percent of adults in the US—and about 17 percent of children—are now considered obese. More than 30 million people in the US now suffer from diabetes—if you include prediabetes that number jumps to more than 100 million people.
And, while poor diets and not enough physical activity remain the leading causes, scientists increasingly say this problem goes beyond these obvious culprits. The new study --published this week in Environmental Health Perspectives—is the latest evidence that chemicals in our environment may contribute to these problems—by activating certain receptors, triggering oxidative stress or promoting tissue dysfunction.
Researchers have previously linked certain flame retardant chemicals, BPA, some pesticides, PCBs, and tributyltin (another chemical used in PVC piping) to obesity. DBT, which was tested in the new study, is formed when tributyltin degrades, and it also used on its own in manufacturing.
Scientists at the University of California, Irvine exposed pregnant female mice to DBT. The exposure led to more fat and decreased glucose tolerance in male mice. It's not clear why the link was so profound in male mice but "males and females are metabolically different, we speculate that differences in fat storage might become evident at older ages in females," the authors wrote.
They also examined what effect the chemical had on human stem cells and found increased fat accumulation in exposed cells.
While scientists haven't tested humans for DBT, previous studies found the chemical in house dust and seafood. In addition, a 2009 study estimated humans are exposed to DBT via leaching from PVC water pipes as well.
"The concentrations we used in this study are in the realm of what we'd expect people to be exposed to," García said.
killers at heart!!!
Interior Department moves to reverse Obama-era rules on hunting bears, wolves in Alaska
pbs
May 21, 2018 7:01 PM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is moving to reverse Obama-era rules barring hunters on some public lands in Alaska from baiting brown bears with bacon and doughnuts and using spotlights to shoot mother black bears and cubs hibernating in their dens.
The National Park Service issued a notice Monday of its intent to amend regulations for sport hunting and trapping in national preserves to bring the federal rules in line with Alaska state law.
Under the proposed changes, hunters would also be allowed to hunt black bears with dogs, kill wolves and pups in their dens, and use motor boats to shoot swimming caribou.
These and other hunting methods — condemned as cruel by wildlife protection advocates — were outlawed on federal lands in 2015. Members of the public have 60 days to provide comment on the proposed new rules.
“The conservation of wildlife and habitat for future generations is a goal we share with Alaska,” said Bert Frost, the park service’s regional director. “This proposed rule will reconsider NPS efforts in Alaska for improved alignment of hunting regulations on national preserves with State of Alaska regulations, and to enhance consistency with harvest regulations on surrounding non-federal lands and waters.”
Expanding hunting rights on federal lands has been a priority for Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, a former Montana congressman who displays a taxidermied bear in his Washington office along with mounted heads from a bison and an elk.
The Obama-era restrictions on hunting on federal lands in Alaska were challenged by Safari Club International, a group that promotes big-game hunting. The Associated Press reported in March that Zinke had appointed a board loaded with trophy hunters to advise him on conserving threatened and endangered wildlife, including members of the Safari Club.
President Donald Trump’s sons are also avid trophy hunters who have made past excursions to Africa and Alaska.
Collette Adkins, a lawyer and biologist with the advocacy group Center for Biological Diversity, expressed outrage at the rollback.
“Cruel and harmful hunting methods like killing bear cubs and their mothers near dens have no place on our national preserves,” she said.
The Humane Society of the United States said it would oppose the new rules.
“These federal lands are havens for wildlife and the National Park Service is mandated to manage these ecosystems in a manner that promotes conservation,” said Anna Frostic, a lawyer for the animal rights group. “This proposed rule, which would allow inhumane killing of our native carnivores in a misguided attempt to increase trophy hunting opportunities, is unlawful and must not be finalized.”
The National Park Service issued a notice Monday of its intent to amend regulations for sport hunting and trapping in national preserves to bring the federal rules in line with Alaska state law.
Under the proposed changes, hunters would also be allowed to hunt black bears with dogs, kill wolves and pups in their dens, and use motor boats to shoot swimming caribou.
These and other hunting methods — condemned as cruel by wildlife protection advocates — were outlawed on federal lands in 2015. Members of the public have 60 days to provide comment on the proposed new rules.
“The conservation of wildlife and habitat for future generations is a goal we share with Alaska,” said Bert Frost, the park service’s regional director. “This proposed rule will reconsider NPS efforts in Alaska for improved alignment of hunting regulations on national preserves with State of Alaska regulations, and to enhance consistency with harvest regulations on surrounding non-federal lands and waters.”
Expanding hunting rights on federal lands has been a priority for Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, a former Montana congressman who displays a taxidermied bear in his Washington office along with mounted heads from a bison and an elk.
The Obama-era restrictions on hunting on federal lands in Alaska were challenged by Safari Club International, a group that promotes big-game hunting. The Associated Press reported in March that Zinke had appointed a board loaded with trophy hunters to advise him on conserving threatened and endangered wildlife, including members of the Safari Club.
President Donald Trump’s sons are also avid trophy hunters who have made past excursions to Africa and Alaska.
Collette Adkins, a lawyer and biologist with the advocacy group Center for Biological Diversity, expressed outrage at the rollback.
“Cruel and harmful hunting methods like killing bear cubs and their mothers near dens have no place on our national preserves,” she said.
The Humane Society of the United States said it would oppose the new rules.
“These federal lands are havens for wildlife and the National Park Service is mandated to manage these ecosystems in a manner that promotes conservation,” said Anna Frostic, a lawyer for the animal rights group. “This proposed rule, which would allow inhumane killing of our native carnivores in a misguided attempt to increase trophy hunting opportunities, is unlawful and must not be finalized.”
Pharmaceutical makers sending drug-spiked water to treatment plants
Water treatment plants near drug makers are getting heavily drugged.
Brian Bienkowski - ehn
May 21, 2018
Wastewater treatment plants taking discharges from nearby pharmaceutical manufacturers have "substantially" higher concentrations of drugs in the water, according to a new national study.
In the most extreme example, an anti-fungal drug was found at levels 3,000 times higher at a treatment plant near a drug maker compared to treatment plants that don't accept drug maker discharge.
"Unfortunately, this is pretty typical," Jose Lozano, director of The Ithaca Area Wastewater Treatment Facility's Environmental Laboratory in New York, told EHN.
These plants were "not designed to treat these type of compounds," added Lozano, who was not involved in the study.
The research, led by federal scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey and published in Science of the Total Environment, is the first national study to examine drug loads sent to treatment plants from manufacturers and is the latest evidence that manufacturers are sending high loads of their products into our waterways—with the consequences on aquatic and human health still not fully understood.
"Modern wastewater treatment plants mostly reduce solids, and reduce bacteria. They were not engineered to deal with complex compounds," lead author of the study and physical scientist for the USGS, Tia-Marie Scott, told EHN.
Scott and colleagues tested 13 wastewater treatment plants receiving pharmaceutical discharges and six that did not. The plants were across the country—in a variety of urban and rural spots—however, as part of the study, they are anonymous.
They tested for 120 drugs and compounds formed when drugs break down. They found 33 drugs had concentrations "substantially higher" in plants near drug makers.
"There's a lot of variability," Scott said. "Some drugs stayed steady, while others pop up seasonally, like some drugs during flu season, for example."
In addition to the anti-fungal drug, they found: anti-histamines, diabetic medication, muscle relaxants, blood pressure drugs, insomnia drugs, anti-seizure medication and anti-inflammatories. Several of the drugs were found at levels hundreds of times higher near drug makers than at plants not receiving discharge.
Scientists are still trying to understand what the influx of pharmaceutical drugs into our environment may be doing. Much depends on the drug, the mixture and the dose; however, mixes of pharmaceuticals have previously been shown to disrupt the endocrine system of fish, feminized them, altered behavior and reproduction, changed growth, and increased liver sizes.
The authors point out, however, "many of the pharmaceuticals included in this study have not commonly been observed in the environment. Thus, little is currently known about potential environmental effects of these pharmaceuticals."
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America would not comment on the study. A spokesperson said via email that "manufacturing impact isn't the sort of thing we typically have the expertise to comment on."
Seeking solutions
Lozano said his lab has found that keeping drug-tainted water in the treatment process for longer periods of time helps break down and rid the water of contaminants.
Like many wastewater plants, they let nature take its course — using microorganisms that break down and remove nutrients and organic material in wastewater. "The more time you allow it to spend in the system, you decrease the number of emerging contaminants," Lozano said. "They're more likely to be biodegraded, absorbed or modified."
But cities depend on treatment plants running quickly and efficiently, so this longer retention time "presents a challenge," Lozano said, adding they're experimenting with ways to optimize the process.
For treatment plants across the country trying to tackle emerging contaminants, money is an issue. For instance, many countries in Europe use ultraviolet light to disinfect water, a process that's proven quite effective for pharmaceuticals. But it consumes a lot of energy.
"If we were to implement that in the U.S., it would take a massive investment to solve the problem," Lozano said.
In the most extreme example, an anti-fungal drug was found at levels 3,000 times higher at a treatment plant near a drug maker compared to treatment plants that don't accept drug maker discharge.
"Unfortunately, this is pretty typical," Jose Lozano, director of The Ithaca Area Wastewater Treatment Facility's Environmental Laboratory in New York, told EHN.
These plants were "not designed to treat these type of compounds," added Lozano, who was not involved in the study.
The research, led by federal scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey and published in Science of the Total Environment, is the first national study to examine drug loads sent to treatment plants from manufacturers and is the latest evidence that manufacturers are sending high loads of their products into our waterways—with the consequences on aquatic and human health still not fully understood.
"Modern wastewater treatment plants mostly reduce solids, and reduce bacteria. They were not engineered to deal with complex compounds," lead author of the study and physical scientist for the USGS, Tia-Marie Scott, told EHN.
Scott and colleagues tested 13 wastewater treatment plants receiving pharmaceutical discharges and six that did not. The plants were across the country—in a variety of urban and rural spots—however, as part of the study, they are anonymous.
They tested for 120 drugs and compounds formed when drugs break down. They found 33 drugs had concentrations "substantially higher" in plants near drug makers.
"There's a lot of variability," Scott said. "Some drugs stayed steady, while others pop up seasonally, like some drugs during flu season, for example."
In addition to the anti-fungal drug, they found: anti-histamines, diabetic medication, muscle relaxants, blood pressure drugs, insomnia drugs, anti-seizure medication and anti-inflammatories. Several of the drugs were found at levels hundreds of times higher near drug makers than at plants not receiving discharge.
Scientists are still trying to understand what the influx of pharmaceutical drugs into our environment may be doing. Much depends on the drug, the mixture and the dose; however, mixes of pharmaceuticals have previously been shown to disrupt the endocrine system of fish, feminized them, altered behavior and reproduction, changed growth, and increased liver sizes.
The authors point out, however, "many of the pharmaceuticals included in this study have not commonly been observed in the environment. Thus, little is currently known about potential environmental effects of these pharmaceuticals."
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America would not comment on the study. A spokesperson said via email that "manufacturing impact isn't the sort of thing we typically have the expertise to comment on."
Seeking solutions
Lozano said his lab has found that keeping drug-tainted water in the treatment process for longer periods of time helps break down and rid the water of contaminants.
Like many wastewater plants, they let nature take its course — using microorganisms that break down and remove nutrients and organic material in wastewater. "The more time you allow it to spend in the system, you decrease the number of emerging contaminants," Lozano said. "They're more likely to be biodegraded, absorbed or modified."
But cities depend on treatment plants running quickly and efficiently, so this longer retention time "presents a challenge," Lozano said, adding they're experimenting with ways to optimize the process.
For treatment plants across the country trying to tackle emerging contaminants, money is an issue. For instance, many countries in Europe use ultraviolet light to disinfect water, a process that's proven quite effective for pharmaceuticals. But it consumes a lot of energy.
"If we were to implement that in the U.S., it would take a massive investment to solve the problem," Lozano said.
environment funnies
the real threat to the environment!!!
