welcome to reality trivia
environment
The environment is everything that isn't me.
Albert Einstein
apr 26, 2018
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
*articles*
*Wind, solar deliver stunning 98 percent of new U.S. power capacity in January, February(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Rising seas hit U.S. coastal property values: ‘A pricing signal from climate change’
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Déjà Poo All Over Again
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Pittsburgh scores all F’s on the American Lung Association’s air quality report card
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Sell Off Public Resources, Live Large on the Public Dime
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Sickened Coal Ash Cleanup Workers Seek Justice From Tennessee Valley Authority Contractor(ARTICLE BELOW)
*New Study Shows Young People in Polluted Cities Are at Greater Risk for Alzheimer's
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Report calls out worst produce for pesticides—strawberries, spinach top list
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Colorado fracking company wants to ‘silence’ opposition to massive drilling project, lawyer says(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Commentary: Lawmakers want the EPA to ignore impacts of pesticides on endangered species(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Barrel of Radioactive Sludge Ruptures at Nuclear Facility
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*The US had 3 billion-dollar climate and weather disasters in the first 3 months of 2018(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Pennsylvania Superior Court Rules That Fracking Natural Gas From a Neighboring Property Is Trespassing(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Environment worse for all races in segregated areas, research shows
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Five Western Pennsylvania Facilities Are Dumping Toxics Into Local Rivers -- Often Without Punishment(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Three Countries Show How Near a 100% Green Grid Is
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Pee and pesticides: Thoreau's Walden Pond in trouble, warn scientists
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Pruitt Takes Clean Water Act Decisions Away from Regional EPA Offices
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Despite Overwhelming Opposition from Residents, Michigan Permits Nestlé to Draw More Groundwater for Bottling(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Commentary: Coca-Cola’s “war” with the public health community
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*PLASTIC PARTICLES FOUND IN BOTTLED WATER
(ARTICLE BELOW)
Wind, solar deliver stunning 98 percent of new U.S. power capacity in January, February
Renewables to provide 69 percent of new capacity by March 2021, as dozens of coal plants are retired
JOE ROMM - think progress
APR 24, 2018, 1:04 PM
Solar and wind power was responsible for a remarkable 98 percent of all new U.S. power generation capacity that came online in the first two months of 2018.
According to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) latest “Energy Infrastructure Update,” the overwhelming majority of new power plants set up in January and February were renewable energy projects.
As FERC reports, during these two months, 1,568 Megawatts of wind and 565 MW of solar power capacity were put into service — along with just 40 MW of natural gas.
While President Trump and Energy Secretary Rick Perry have been promoting policies that favor fossil fuel generation over renewables, FERC reports that most of the big new renewable energy projects came online in states that voted for Trump.
These projects include the 170 MW Beaver Creek Wind Project in Iowa, the 168 MW Prairie Wind Project, also in Iowa, and the 81 MW Stuttgart Solar Project in Arkansas.
The stunning and ongoing price drops in solar and wind have shifted the economics of new generation away from fossil fuels.
Indeed, FERC also projects that renewables will keep dominating the market for new power generation over the next three years, while coal power plants will keep being shuttered for the foreseeable future.
Of the nearly 212,000 MW of new net generating capacity — additions minus retirements — proposed by March 2021, renewables comprise almost 147,000 MW, or 69 percent of the total.
Meanwhile, FERC reports that over the next three years, 70 coal power units will be shut down while only 5 new ones are expected to be added. Net coal generation will drop by more than 15,000 MW.
The coal and nuclear industries have been wooing both Trump and Perry to get an emergency intervention, which is to say, a massive bailout.
But whatever the Administration does in the short term, the global shift toward cheaper, cleaner energy is unstoppable.
According to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) latest “Energy Infrastructure Update,” the overwhelming majority of new power plants set up in January and February were renewable energy projects.
As FERC reports, during these two months, 1,568 Megawatts of wind and 565 MW of solar power capacity were put into service — along with just 40 MW of natural gas.
While President Trump and Energy Secretary Rick Perry have been promoting policies that favor fossil fuel generation over renewables, FERC reports that most of the big new renewable energy projects came online in states that voted for Trump.
These projects include the 170 MW Beaver Creek Wind Project in Iowa, the 168 MW Prairie Wind Project, also in Iowa, and the 81 MW Stuttgart Solar Project in Arkansas.
The stunning and ongoing price drops in solar and wind have shifted the economics of new generation away from fossil fuels.
Indeed, FERC also projects that renewables will keep dominating the market for new power generation over the next three years, while coal power plants will keep being shuttered for the foreseeable future.
Of the nearly 212,000 MW of new net generating capacity — additions minus retirements — proposed by March 2021, renewables comprise almost 147,000 MW, or 69 percent of the total.
Meanwhile, FERC reports that over the next three years, 70 coal power units will be shut down while only 5 new ones are expected to be added. Net coal generation will drop by more than 15,000 MW.
The coal and nuclear industries have been wooing both Trump and Perry to get an emergency intervention, which is to say, a massive bailout.
But whatever the Administration does in the short term, the global shift toward cheaper, cleaner energy is unstoppable.
Rising seas hit U.S. coastal property values: ‘A pricing signal from climate change’
When will the trillion-dollar bubble burst?
JOE ROMM - think progress
APR 23, 2018, 2:02 PM
FLORIDA HOMES SURROUNDED BY FLOOD WATER IN THE AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE IRMA, SEPTEMBER 12, 2017. CREDIT: JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES
The trillion-dollar coastal property bubble is ready to burst as global warming-driven sea level rise and storm surges threaten more and more property with flooding.
We are now seeing “a pricing signal from climate change” in the relatively depressed prices for the coastal property most at risk for flooding, as Harvard real-estate professor Jesse Keenan told the Wall Street Journal Friday.
Keenan is the lead author of a new study of Miami single-family homes that found the “rates of price appreciation in the lowest elevation” homes “have not kept up with the rates of appreciation of higher elevation” homes since about 2000 (see chart). That is, the homes along Miami’s coast most at risk from climate change are seeing their value drop over time compared to homes less at risk of flooding.
A second, broader study, “Disaster on the Horizon: The Price Effect of Sea Level Rise,” found that “Homes exposed to sea level” are being priced 7 percent lower than homes that are the same distance from the beach, but that are less exposed to flooding.
The study, which used Zillow data from around the country, concluded that the pricing gap between riskier homes and safer homes was being driven by the “more sophisticated investors.” For that group, the gap is about “11 percent and has increased over time, coinciding with the release of new scientific evidence on the extent and timing of ocean encroachment.”
The trillion-dollar coastal property bubble is ready to burst
The economic risks from rising seas are enormous — but the Trump administration’s policies all but guarantee a worst-case scenario plays out.
A 2014 Reuters analysis of this “slow-motion disaster” calculated there’s almost $1.25 trillion in coastal property whose value is being propped up by the National Flood Insurance Program’s below-market rates.
“The risk will rise as sea levels rise, and when that happens, you’d expect your property value to fall,” as Lloyd Dixon, the director of the RAND Center for Catastrophic Risk Management and Compensation, explained in October. “At some point, the property becomes worthless.”
Moreover, the latest science and politics are both ominous. On the one hand, the Trump administration’s policies — to abandon the Paris climate deal while working to gut both domestic climate action and coastal adaptation programs — make the worst-case climate scenarios more likely while undermining efforts by coastal communities to prepare for what’s coming.
On the other hand, the latest science makes clear such policies will destroy every last bit of U.S. (and global) coastal property in the coming decades. That science was recently reviewed by scientists from 13 federal agencies in November’s National Climate Assessment (NCA), which the Trump administration reviewed and cleared before releasing.
The NCA examined scenarios where the Paris climate agreement fails and found seas could rise 1.4 to 1.8 feet by 2050, which is in the time frame of 30-year mortgages that banks will soon be considering. When banks stop providing those mortgages, property values will plummet.
Remember, the storm surge from future Harveys and Sandys will be on top of whatever sea level rise we see, which is why studies find that, in high emissions scenarios, Hurricane Sandy-type storm surges could occur every year or two by mid-century.
Sean Becketti, the chief economist for mortgage giant Freddie Mac, warned in 2016 that the coastal property bubble will burst sooner than expected: “Some residents will cash out early and suffer minimal losses. Others will not be so lucky.”
As Bloomberg put it last April, “Demand and financing could collapse before the sea consumes a single house.” The studies discussed above make clear that process may already be starting.
Given that the coastal property bubble must burst sometime in the not-too-distant future — and that the early sellers of overpriced coastal property will do a lot better than the later ones — the initial deflation we’re now seeing may well hasten the inevitable sell-off.
Here’s the ultimate question for owners of coastal property, and the financial institutions that back them: Who will be part of the smart money that gets out early – and who will be with the other kind of money?
We are now seeing “a pricing signal from climate change” in the relatively depressed prices for the coastal property most at risk for flooding, as Harvard real-estate professor Jesse Keenan told the Wall Street Journal Friday.
Keenan is the lead author of a new study of Miami single-family homes that found the “rates of price appreciation in the lowest elevation” homes “have not kept up with the rates of appreciation of higher elevation” homes since about 2000 (see chart). That is, the homes along Miami’s coast most at risk from climate change are seeing their value drop over time compared to homes less at risk of flooding.
A second, broader study, “Disaster on the Horizon: The Price Effect of Sea Level Rise,” found that “Homes exposed to sea level” are being priced 7 percent lower than homes that are the same distance from the beach, but that are less exposed to flooding.
The study, which used Zillow data from around the country, concluded that the pricing gap between riskier homes and safer homes was being driven by the “more sophisticated investors.” For that group, the gap is about “11 percent and has increased over time, coinciding with the release of new scientific evidence on the extent and timing of ocean encroachment.”
The trillion-dollar coastal property bubble is ready to burst
The economic risks from rising seas are enormous — but the Trump administration’s policies all but guarantee a worst-case scenario plays out.
A 2014 Reuters analysis of this “slow-motion disaster” calculated there’s almost $1.25 trillion in coastal property whose value is being propped up by the National Flood Insurance Program’s below-market rates.
“The risk will rise as sea levels rise, and when that happens, you’d expect your property value to fall,” as Lloyd Dixon, the director of the RAND Center for Catastrophic Risk Management and Compensation, explained in October. “At some point, the property becomes worthless.”
Moreover, the latest science and politics are both ominous. On the one hand, the Trump administration’s policies — to abandon the Paris climate deal while working to gut both domestic climate action and coastal adaptation programs — make the worst-case climate scenarios more likely while undermining efforts by coastal communities to prepare for what’s coming.
On the other hand, the latest science makes clear such policies will destroy every last bit of U.S. (and global) coastal property in the coming decades. That science was recently reviewed by scientists from 13 federal agencies in November’s National Climate Assessment (NCA), which the Trump administration reviewed and cleared before releasing.
The NCA examined scenarios where the Paris climate agreement fails and found seas could rise 1.4 to 1.8 feet by 2050, which is in the time frame of 30-year mortgages that banks will soon be considering. When banks stop providing those mortgages, property values will plummet.
Remember, the storm surge from future Harveys and Sandys will be on top of whatever sea level rise we see, which is why studies find that, in high emissions scenarios, Hurricane Sandy-type storm surges could occur every year or two by mid-century.
Sean Becketti, the chief economist for mortgage giant Freddie Mac, warned in 2016 that the coastal property bubble will burst sooner than expected: “Some residents will cash out early and suffer minimal losses. Others will not be so lucky.”
As Bloomberg put it last April, “Demand and financing could collapse before the sea consumes a single house.” The studies discussed above make clear that process may already be starting.
Given that the coastal property bubble must burst sometime in the not-too-distant future — and that the early sellers of overpriced coastal property will do a lot better than the later ones — the initial deflation we’re now seeing may well hasten the inevitable sell-off.
Here’s the ultimate question for owners of coastal property, and the financial institutions that back them: Who will be part of the smart money that gets out early – and who will be with the other kind of money?
Déjà Poo All Over Again
The EPA is considering a controversial process to deal with sewage overflows. Again.
By Emily Atkin - the new republic
April 19, 2018
Last month, in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ final game of spring training, a pool of sewage appeared on the team’s field in Chavez Ravine. The odor was so foul—also literally in foul territory—that the game was cut short in the fifth inning. The Dodgers officially earned the victory over their crosstown rivals, the Angels, but the result was hardly satisfying. “Crappy way to end the spring,” quipped pitcher Ross Stripling.
This is exactly how America more broadly has dealt with its poop problem for decades: wait for spills to happen, clean it up, and go on with life. But America’s infrastructure is getting older and leakier; metropolitan-area populations are booming; and climate change is causing bigger rainfall events that more frequently overwhelm decaying sewers. Wastewater contaminated with dangerous microbial bacteria—not to mention nutrients, metals, and pharmaceuticals—is increasingly overflowing into streets and bodies of water.
In response, the Environmental Protection Agency announced on Tuesday that it will be developing new rules for wastewater treatment plants during rain and snow storms. The goal, the EPA said, is to “optimize wastewater treatment during wet weather, which will protect both water quality and public health in the communities they serve.” Which sounds reasonable enough. What the EPA doesn’t explicitly say is that it’s exploring a rule to allow treatment plants to release sewage that hasn’t been fully decontaminated.
This is not the first time a Republican administration has considered allowing it. If the past is any indication, environmentalists have a messy fight on their hands—one they already fought, and won, more than a decade ago.
Here’s a sampling of sewage news from the past month alone.
Nearly 8 million gallons of combined rainwater and untreated sewage spilled into New York’s Genesee River, and more than 4 million gallons of the same spilled in Baltimore. The Willamette River in Oregon was polluted with 1.3 million gallons of partially treated sewage, and, a few days later, with an “unknown amount” of raw sewage. A report last week from nine water conservation groups stated that between 28.8 million and 46.2 million gallons of sewage spilled in Alabama in 2016. “What these statistics show is there are [sanitary sewer overflows] happening on any given day across the state, and we accept that is the case,” attorney Eva Dillard told AL.com. Rainy days are the worst of all.
To prevent these overflows, Trump’s EPA is exploring a process called “blending,” in which treatment plants combine partially treated sewage—in other words, partially free from contaminants—with fully treated sewage. Then, the plants dump the mixture into public waterways. This allows them to get rid of wastewater quickly, which in turn prevents treatment plants from getting flooded and overwhelmed when it rains a lot. The logic is that it’s better to release semi-contaminated water into the environment than raw sewage. Blending, according to the EPA’s press release, also helps “avoid a possible shutdown or damage to the water treatment plant.”
Blending is generally only permitted during very extreme weather—when it’s certain that the sewage systems are going to overflow, said Tom Ballestero, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Stormwater Center. But such certainty is subjective; wastewater treatment plant operators are unsure when they’re allowed to do this. Thus, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is starting a rulemaking process to give guidance on when and how blending can be used. “EPA is taking action on a new rule that will give municipalities much-needed clarity on blending at wastewater treatment plants,” Pruitt said in a statement.
The EPA didn’t offer much more in terms of detail, saying only that they would be reaching out to stakeholders. An agency spokesperson didn’t return a request for comment. But at least one environmental group is worried. “In short, it looks like Pruitt is resurrecting a bad idea from the first George W. Bush administration, which would allow cities to dump partially treated sewage into our waters,” said Larry Levine, the director of urban water infrastructure at the National Resource Defense Council. “This would release harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites and other human pathogens into the water.”
In 2005, the Bush administration’s EPA proposed explicitly permitting the use of blending, but only under certain conditions: Mixed sewage couldn’t be discharged into environmentally sensitive areas, and treatment plants would be required to continuously monitor their blending. The EPA dropped the proposal, however, amid public outcry; the Republican-controlled House even voted to block it. “If EPA had stuck to its plan to open the sewage floodgates, it would have caused more sickness, more beach closings, more economic suffering for local communities, and greater harm to fish and other wildlife,” said Nancy Stoner, the director of NRDC’s clean water program, at the time of the decision.
Thirteen years later, sewage releases have ballooned—and they’re only going to get worse as the climate continues to warm and infrastructure continues to crumble. “I think the general public would be shocked to know how regularly wastewater combined with stormwater gets into our receiving waters,” Ballestero said. “It’s staggering.”
While blending removes most microbial contamination, the most serious threat that faces pose to human health, it does not remove nutrient pollution, which causes dead zones and harmful algal blooms. Nor does it remove pollutants from pharmaceuticals and other products humans consume. That’s why blending is only “a short-term fix,” said Ballestero. “I don’t think it should be a long-term fix.”
The long-term fix would be a multi-billion dollar investment in bigger, better sewage treatment infrastructure across the country—infrastructure that can handle more human waste and more extreme storms. But that’s not going to happen anytime soon, no matter how many infrastructure weeks the president announces this year.
This is exactly how America more broadly has dealt with its poop problem for decades: wait for spills to happen, clean it up, and go on with life. But America’s infrastructure is getting older and leakier; metropolitan-area populations are booming; and climate change is causing bigger rainfall events that more frequently overwhelm decaying sewers. Wastewater contaminated with dangerous microbial bacteria—not to mention nutrients, metals, and pharmaceuticals—is increasingly overflowing into streets and bodies of water.
In response, the Environmental Protection Agency announced on Tuesday that it will be developing new rules for wastewater treatment plants during rain and snow storms. The goal, the EPA said, is to “optimize wastewater treatment during wet weather, which will protect both water quality and public health in the communities they serve.” Which sounds reasonable enough. What the EPA doesn’t explicitly say is that it’s exploring a rule to allow treatment plants to release sewage that hasn’t been fully decontaminated.
This is not the first time a Republican administration has considered allowing it. If the past is any indication, environmentalists have a messy fight on their hands—one they already fought, and won, more than a decade ago.
Here’s a sampling of sewage news from the past month alone.
Nearly 8 million gallons of combined rainwater and untreated sewage spilled into New York’s Genesee River, and more than 4 million gallons of the same spilled in Baltimore. The Willamette River in Oregon was polluted with 1.3 million gallons of partially treated sewage, and, a few days later, with an “unknown amount” of raw sewage. A report last week from nine water conservation groups stated that between 28.8 million and 46.2 million gallons of sewage spilled in Alabama in 2016. “What these statistics show is there are [sanitary sewer overflows] happening on any given day across the state, and we accept that is the case,” attorney Eva Dillard told AL.com. Rainy days are the worst of all.
To prevent these overflows, Trump’s EPA is exploring a process called “blending,” in which treatment plants combine partially treated sewage—in other words, partially free from contaminants—with fully treated sewage. Then, the plants dump the mixture into public waterways. This allows them to get rid of wastewater quickly, which in turn prevents treatment plants from getting flooded and overwhelmed when it rains a lot. The logic is that it’s better to release semi-contaminated water into the environment than raw sewage. Blending, according to the EPA’s press release, also helps “avoid a possible shutdown or damage to the water treatment plant.”
Blending is generally only permitted during very extreme weather—when it’s certain that the sewage systems are going to overflow, said Tom Ballestero, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Stormwater Center. But such certainty is subjective; wastewater treatment plant operators are unsure when they’re allowed to do this. Thus, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is starting a rulemaking process to give guidance on when and how blending can be used. “EPA is taking action on a new rule that will give municipalities much-needed clarity on blending at wastewater treatment plants,” Pruitt said in a statement.
The EPA didn’t offer much more in terms of detail, saying only that they would be reaching out to stakeholders. An agency spokesperson didn’t return a request for comment. But at least one environmental group is worried. “In short, it looks like Pruitt is resurrecting a bad idea from the first George W. Bush administration, which would allow cities to dump partially treated sewage into our waters,” said Larry Levine, the director of urban water infrastructure at the National Resource Defense Council. “This would release harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites and other human pathogens into the water.”
In 2005, the Bush administration’s EPA proposed explicitly permitting the use of blending, but only under certain conditions: Mixed sewage couldn’t be discharged into environmentally sensitive areas, and treatment plants would be required to continuously monitor their blending. The EPA dropped the proposal, however, amid public outcry; the Republican-controlled House even voted to block it. “If EPA had stuck to its plan to open the sewage floodgates, it would have caused more sickness, more beach closings, more economic suffering for local communities, and greater harm to fish and other wildlife,” said Nancy Stoner, the director of NRDC’s clean water program, at the time of the decision.
Thirteen years later, sewage releases have ballooned—and they’re only going to get worse as the climate continues to warm and infrastructure continues to crumble. “I think the general public would be shocked to know how regularly wastewater combined with stormwater gets into our receiving waters,” Ballestero said. “It’s staggering.”
While blending removes most microbial contamination, the most serious threat that faces pose to human health, it does not remove nutrient pollution, which causes dead zones and harmful algal blooms. Nor does it remove pollutants from pharmaceuticals and other products humans consume. That’s why blending is only “a short-term fix,” said Ballestero. “I don’t think it should be a long-term fix.”
The long-term fix would be a multi-billion dollar investment in bigger, better sewage treatment infrastructure across the country—infrastructure that can handle more human waste and more extreme storms. But that’s not going to happen anytime soon, no matter how many infrastructure weeks the president announces this year.
Pittsburgh scores all F’s on the American Lung Association’s air quality report card
Why is the air getting worse instead of better?
Kristina Marusic ehn
4/19/18
Pittsburgh's air quality is not only among the worst in the nation, but has actually declined in recent years, according to a new report from the American Lung Association.
The organization'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.
While the region saw a slight decrease in unhealthy days for ozone, there was an increase in particulate matter pollution, which causes higher rates of asthma and lung cancer, decreased lung function in children, and increased hospital admissions and premature death due to heart attacks and respiratory illness. This marks the 19th year that the "State of the Air" report has been issued, and the 19th time Allegheny County has received an F grade for particle pollution.
The report, which looked at data from 2014 to 2016 for the Pittsburgh-New Castle-Weirton, Pennsylvania/Ohio/West Virginia metro area, found that on both measures for particle pollution, Allegheny County did worse this year than last year: The region fell from the 17th worst-ranked county in the nation for daily particle pollution levels to the 10th worst, and Pittsburgh was one of just six regions in the country where year-round particulate pollution increased, rather than decreased, since the last report. (The others were Los Angeles; Las Vegas; Birmingham, Ala.; Harrisburg-York-Lebanon, Penn.; and Lancaster, Penn.)
Allegheny County was also the only county in the state to experience an increase in unhealthy air days for particulate pollution—from an average of 6 to 8.5 unhealthy days per year.
"One bad air day can be one day too many, especially for people with asthma, children, senior citizens and others who are more vulnerable to suffer from poor air quality," Kevin Stewart, director of Environmental Health for the Mid-Atlantic American Lung Association, told EHN.
"The health impact could just be a day where people experience pain when breathing deeply and can't carry out their normal activities and have to stay home from school or work. But we also know that being exposed to high levels of ozone or fine particle pollution can kill people," he said.
Stewart highlighted that Allegheny was the only county outside of California to receive F grades in all three air quality categories, which he said is likely due to industrial sources.
"In California there are certain meteorological and topographical elements that lead to concentrations of air pollutants at the ground level," he explained. "They have a drier environment, so they have a larger component of atmospheric dust than there is in the East, for example. In Allegheny County, the problem is more likely related to industrial sources of air pollution."
An earlier report from PennEnvironment indicates that 70 percent of Pittsburgh's air pollution comes from just 10 industrial sources.
"These Fs represent a failure on the part of local leaders and regulators to prioritize air quality and treat it as the significant public health threat that it is," Rachel Filippini, executive director of Pittsburgh's Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP), said in a statement.
When it comes to ozone, the Pittsburgh metro area is improving, despite still receiving an F grade. For the third year in a row, the region experienced fewer unhealthy days of high ozone than in it had in previous reports.
"We certainly applaud the progress made in the U.S. and in Southwestern Pennsylvania with respect to air pollution in the past," Stewart said. "But there are a lot of potential risks now—from potential new industrial development as a consequence of the national gas and ethane boom, to what's happening at the national level with the EPA's weakened ability to enforce the Clean Air Act.
"We have to take care of these things for ourselves and for our children."
The organization'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.
While the region saw a slight decrease in unhealthy days for ozone, there was an increase in particulate matter pollution, which causes higher rates of asthma and lung cancer, decreased lung function in children, and increased hospital admissions and premature death due to heart attacks and respiratory illness. This marks the 19th year that the "State of the Air" report has been issued, and the 19th time Allegheny County has received an F grade for particle pollution.
The report, which looked at data from 2014 to 2016 for the Pittsburgh-New Castle-Weirton, Pennsylvania/Ohio/West Virginia metro area, found that on both measures for particle pollution, Allegheny County did worse this year than last year: The region fell from the 17th worst-ranked county in the nation for daily particle pollution levels to the 10th worst, and Pittsburgh was one of just six regions in the country where year-round particulate pollution increased, rather than decreased, since the last report. (The others were Los Angeles; Las Vegas; Birmingham, Ala.; Harrisburg-York-Lebanon, Penn.; and Lancaster, Penn.)
Allegheny County was also the only county in the state to experience an increase in unhealthy air days for particulate pollution—from an average of 6 to 8.5 unhealthy days per year.
"One bad air day can be one day too many, especially for people with asthma, children, senior citizens and others who are more vulnerable to suffer from poor air quality," Kevin Stewart, director of Environmental Health for the Mid-Atlantic American Lung Association, told EHN.
"The health impact could just be a day where people experience pain when breathing deeply and can't carry out their normal activities and have to stay home from school or work. But we also know that being exposed to high levels of ozone or fine particle pollution can kill people," he said.
Stewart highlighted that Allegheny was the only county outside of California to receive F grades in all three air quality categories, which he said is likely due to industrial sources.
"In California there are certain meteorological and topographical elements that lead to concentrations of air pollutants at the ground level," he explained. "They have a drier environment, so they have a larger component of atmospheric dust than there is in the East, for example. In Allegheny County, the problem is more likely related to industrial sources of air pollution."
An earlier report from PennEnvironment indicates that 70 percent of Pittsburgh's air pollution comes from just 10 industrial sources.
"These Fs represent a failure on the part of local leaders and regulators to prioritize air quality and treat it as the significant public health threat that it is," Rachel Filippini, executive director of Pittsburgh's Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP), said in a statement.
When it comes to ozone, the Pittsburgh metro area is improving, despite still receiving an F grade. For the third year in a row, the region experienced fewer unhealthy days of high ozone than in it had in previous reports.
"We certainly applaud the progress made in the U.S. and in Southwestern Pennsylvania with respect to air pollution in the past," Stewart said. "But there are a lot of potential risks now—from potential new industrial development as a consequence of the national gas and ethane boom, to what's happening at the national level with the EPA's weakened ability to enforce the Clean Air Act.
"We have to take care of these things for ourselves and for our children."
Sell Off Public Resources, Live Large on the Public Dime
The gospel according to Pruitt and Zinke.
BY CHARLES P. PIERCE - esquire
APR 18, 2018
Once again, I point out that, maybe, confirming a guy to head the EPA who was at the time of his nomination and confirmation suing the agency he was designated to lead, might not have been the greatest idea in the history of government. (Senator Edward Markey gets credit for this bit of wisdom.) And while it is true that Scott Pruitt is doing everything in that job that he was hired to do—deregulating clean air, clean water, and entire species out of existence while crippling the EPA’s most basic scientific functions--he’s doing it in such a corrupt and farcical manner that even the ethics officers down at Camp Runamuck are expressing concern.
The promiscuous use of government aircraft. The sweet $50-per-night condo deal he got from an energy industry lobbyist. His bizarre (and very expensive) demands for security measures that this week took a very weird turn in that Pruitt now seems to be drawing his notions concerning his protection from the sitcoms of the 1960s.
First, he ordered up a new government SUV with seats that apparently were designed similarly to Jethro Bodine’s old double-naught spy hat. From The Washington Post via The Hill:
The new car was ordered last May and cost the government $10,200 for a one-year lease, according to federal spending records. Records show that EPA requested upgrades to the vehicle which included Wi-Fi, GPS navigation, second-row bucket seats and a leather interior. The upgrades were an additional $300 per month. Pruitt wanted the larger car because it was similar to those used by other Cabinet officials, a former EPA official told the Post. The official said that the bulletproof seats, made of the same kevlar used in bulletproof vests, was approved by the head of Pruitt’s security detail, Pasquale “Nino” Perrotta. The covers cost hundreds of dollars, according to the source.
This, of course, was on top of the revelation that Pruitt also had arranged for a Cone of Silence not unlike that employed at CONTROL HQ, at least if The New York Times is accurate.
The E.P.A. said the secure phone booth was necessary “to make and receive phone calls and to discuss sensitive information, including classified telephone calls up to the top secret level.” The agency paid about $24,000 for the phone booth and more than $20,000 to install a drop ceiling, remove closed-circuit television equipment and pour concrete around the booth, according to agency contracts.
This $43,000 gimcrack, alas, was not legal, at least according to the GAO, and is of a piece with Pruitt’s general approach to federal public service, which can be best summed up by the ancient political maxim, “Me some too, yes?”
In a separate report Monday, the E.P.A.’s inspector general published records showing that Mr. Pruitt’s chief of staff signed off on hires and thousands of dollars in raises for political appointees under a provision of a clean water law. That report was part of an ongoing audit of salaries and hiring practices at the agency.
Of course, the entire Interior Department seems to be dedicated to allowing private interests to gorge on public lands while its officials go up to their elbows in the public trough. This goes right up to Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. From CBS News:
A report by Interior's inspector general said Zinke's use of a chartered flight after he spoke to a National Hockey League team in Las Vegas "might have been avoided" if Interior employees had worked with the team to accommodate Zinke's schedule. Zinke and four Interior Department staffers flew on a private plane from Las Vegas to his home state of Montana in June 2017. Zinke has said no commercial flight was available for the late-night flight that allowed him to deliver a speech to Western governors the next day in Whitefish, Montana. Zinke, a former Montana congressman, was in Las Vegas to speak to the Vegas Golden Knights, the city's new National Hockey League team. The team's owner, Bill Foley, contributed to Zinke's congressional campaigns.
Well, despoiling the natural wilderness is hard damn work, as the NYT reminds us, and a fella needs his rest while traveling, especially when you’re working hard to despoil only the natural wilderness far from where you live.
In the last year, Mr. Zinke has torn up Obama-era rules related to oil, gas and mineral extraction and overseen the largest reduction of federal land protection in the nation’s history, including an effort to slash the size of Bears Ears National Monument. But here in Montana, where support for drilling in certain beloved areas can be a career killer, Mr. Zinke has struck a different note. And as he faces allegations that he has violated travel and ethics rules, an examination of his Interior Department record shows that his pro-development bent has not always applied to his home state, where he is viewed as a fiercely ambitious candidate for future office. In the past year, Mr. Zinke has halted the sale of oil and gas leases near Yellowstone National Park, opposed gold mining in that area, and urged the president to protect one national monument, Montana’s Upper Missouri River Breaks, while creating another, the Badger-Two Medicine, just miles from his childhood home.
Alas for Alaska, Zinke doesn’t live there, which is why Interior and the Army Corps of Engineers want to go full speed ahead on the massive Pebble Mine project, an extraction extravaganza that will endanger the Bristol Bay watershed, which is only the richest salmon fishery on the planet. It not only feeds the world, but it is vital to the life of the various Native communities in and around the bay. The fight by Alaskan environmentalists against this looming potential catastrophe has been strong and, just this month, both state environmental officials and U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski were able to get the Corps of Engineers to extend the public-comment period on the project by two months.
There's something of a dark irony in turning the Interior Department into an open sewer of greed and corruption. It is consistent with the entire administration*, which is run at the top by a conspicuous glutton. There are seven deadly sins. Gluttony is one of them. I’d say we have a clean sweep, probably the only clean thing involved in this whole mess.
The promiscuous use of government aircraft. The sweet $50-per-night condo deal he got from an energy industry lobbyist. His bizarre (and very expensive) demands for security measures that this week took a very weird turn in that Pruitt now seems to be drawing his notions concerning his protection from the sitcoms of the 1960s.
First, he ordered up a new government SUV with seats that apparently were designed similarly to Jethro Bodine’s old double-naught spy hat. From The Washington Post via The Hill:
The new car was ordered last May and cost the government $10,200 for a one-year lease, according to federal spending records. Records show that EPA requested upgrades to the vehicle which included Wi-Fi, GPS navigation, second-row bucket seats and a leather interior. The upgrades were an additional $300 per month. Pruitt wanted the larger car because it was similar to those used by other Cabinet officials, a former EPA official told the Post. The official said that the bulletproof seats, made of the same kevlar used in bulletproof vests, was approved by the head of Pruitt’s security detail, Pasquale “Nino” Perrotta. The covers cost hundreds of dollars, according to the source.
This, of course, was on top of the revelation that Pruitt also had arranged for a Cone of Silence not unlike that employed at CONTROL HQ, at least if The New York Times is accurate.
The E.P.A. said the secure phone booth was necessary “to make and receive phone calls and to discuss sensitive information, including classified telephone calls up to the top secret level.” The agency paid about $24,000 for the phone booth and more than $20,000 to install a drop ceiling, remove closed-circuit television equipment and pour concrete around the booth, according to agency contracts.
This $43,000 gimcrack, alas, was not legal, at least according to the GAO, and is of a piece with Pruitt’s general approach to federal public service, which can be best summed up by the ancient political maxim, “Me some too, yes?”
In a separate report Monday, the E.P.A.’s inspector general published records showing that Mr. Pruitt’s chief of staff signed off on hires and thousands of dollars in raises for political appointees under a provision of a clean water law. That report was part of an ongoing audit of salaries and hiring practices at the agency.
Of course, the entire Interior Department seems to be dedicated to allowing private interests to gorge on public lands while its officials go up to their elbows in the public trough. This goes right up to Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. From CBS News:
A report by Interior's inspector general said Zinke's use of a chartered flight after he spoke to a National Hockey League team in Las Vegas "might have been avoided" if Interior employees had worked with the team to accommodate Zinke's schedule. Zinke and four Interior Department staffers flew on a private plane from Las Vegas to his home state of Montana in June 2017. Zinke has said no commercial flight was available for the late-night flight that allowed him to deliver a speech to Western governors the next day in Whitefish, Montana. Zinke, a former Montana congressman, was in Las Vegas to speak to the Vegas Golden Knights, the city's new National Hockey League team. The team's owner, Bill Foley, contributed to Zinke's congressional campaigns.
Well, despoiling the natural wilderness is hard damn work, as the NYT reminds us, and a fella needs his rest while traveling, especially when you’re working hard to despoil only the natural wilderness far from where you live.
In the last year, Mr. Zinke has torn up Obama-era rules related to oil, gas and mineral extraction and overseen the largest reduction of federal land protection in the nation’s history, including an effort to slash the size of Bears Ears National Monument. But here in Montana, where support for drilling in certain beloved areas can be a career killer, Mr. Zinke has struck a different note. And as he faces allegations that he has violated travel and ethics rules, an examination of his Interior Department record shows that his pro-development bent has not always applied to his home state, where he is viewed as a fiercely ambitious candidate for future office. In the past year, Mr. Zinke has halted the sale of oil and gas leases near Yellowstone National Park, opposed gold mining in that area, and urged the president to protect one national monument, Montana’s Upper Missouri River Breaks, while creating another, the Badger-Two Medicine, just miles from his childhood home.
Alas for Alaska, Zinke doesn’t live there, which is why Interior and the Army Corps of Engineers want to go full speed ahead on the massive Pebble Mine project, an extraction extravaganza that will endanger the Bristol Bay watershed, which is only the richest salmon fishery on the planet. It not only feeds the world, but it is vital to the life of the various Native communities in and around the bay. The fight by Alaskan environmentalists against this looming potential catastrophe has been strong and, just this month, both state environmental officials and U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski were able to get the Corps of Engineers to extend the public-comment period on the project by two months.
There's something of a dark irony in turning the Interior Department into an open sewer of greed and corruption. It is consistent with the entire administration*, which is run at the top by a conspicuous glutton. There are seven deadly sins. Gluttony is one of them. I’d say we have a clean sweep, probably the only clean thing involved in this whole mess.
Sickened Coal Ash Cleanup Workers Seek Justice From Tennessee Valley Authority Contractor
Tuesday, April 17, 2018
By Sue Sturgis, Facing South | Report
truthout
At the same time the Trump administration is seeking to roll back regulations designed to protect people and the environment from toxic coal ash, hundreds of workers who cleaned up the nation's largest-ever coal ash spill and claim it sickened them are still waiting for their day in court.
A team of attorneys has filed lawsuits in federal court on behalf of 53 dead and sick workers against Jacobs Engineering, a Fortune 500 government contractor hired by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to clean up following the spill of over a billion gallons of coal ash from a holding pond at the federally-owned corporation's Kingston power plant in eastern Tennessee on Dec. 22, 2008. The spill inundated a nearby residential community and contaminated the Emory and Clinch rivers with coal ash, which is laden with heavy metals, radioactive elements, and other health-damaging contaminants. The disaster also spurred the federal regulations now targeted for rollback.
After the USA Today Network-Tennessee published an investigation into conditions at the cleanup site, more workers came forward with similar stories of lung disease, cancers, and skin conditions. Since then, the attorneys involved in the case filed a new lawsuit in state court on behalf of an additional 180 dead or sick workers.
The federal lawsuit is expected to get underway later this year. It was delayed in part due to a fire at the offices of the plaintiffs' attorneys, the cause of which remains unknown.
While the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wanted the cleanup workers to be given protective gear, it met resistance from Jacobs Engineering and The Shaw Group, the Louisiana-based government contractor hired by TVA for technical advice on the project. Workers say the companies downplayed the dangers of coal ash and seemed concerned about alarming the public.
In the end, the EPA signed off on a safety plan that did not require workers to be given protective suits and that made it difficult for them to qualify for a respirator or even a dust mask -- and the companies resisted implementing even that.
"Jacobs' site safety manager, Tom Bock, and TVA site supervisor Gary McDonald both have admitted refusing workers' requests for respirators and dust masks in violation of the plan's rules on the approval process," the USA Today Network-Tennessee reported.
Warnings Were Given
The news network's reporting on the Kingston cleanup recounted the dangerous working conditions at the spill site, with tornados of coal ash blowing across the landscape and workers eating atop coal ash heaps with only bottled water to clean themselves. However, it did not get all of the facts right. This is how the first story in the series opened:
It was the nation's largest coal ash spill, and it would bring a stampede of government supervisors, environmental advocates, lawyers, journalists, politicians and contractors to Kingston, Tenn.
But not one of them asked why the hundreds of blue-collar laborers cleaning up the mess weren't wearing even basic dust masks.
It's not true that no one visiting the disaster site inquired into the workers' safety. Within a week of the spill, United Mountain Defense (UMD) -- an environmental nonprofit that works in coal-impacted communities and was involved in the Swan Pond community near TVA's Kingston plant before the spill occurred -- tried to draw official attention to the fact that workers at the site were not using protective gear. They brought up the issue at the first official public meeting about the spill, held six days after the disaster.
Facing South reported on UMD's concerns the following day; the Knoxville News Sentinel, part of the USA Today Network-Tennessee, linked to the story in its roundup of coverage of the disaster. Titled "'IT'S LIKE 9/11': Official inaction endangers residents, workers following Tenn. coal ash disaster," the report quoted Chris Irwin, a self-described "tree-hugging attorney" who was working with UMD at the time:
UMD volunteers report that cleanup workers do not appear to be wearing protective respiratory equipment despite the known hazards of fly ash. For example, a Material Safety Data Sheet for coal ash [pdf] calls for employees handling the material to wear NIOSH respiratory protection.
"They're treating it like snow," Irwin says. "They're not taking the most basic elementary precautions. It's like 9/11, where they had unprotected workers traipsing through toxic dust."
When Facing South called the Joint Information Center and asked who is doing the cleanup work and what protective gear they'd been provided, the person answering the phone said she would have someone look into it and call back.
No one called back. UMD volunteers continued to document hazardous conditions at the site, including cleanup workers laboring without protective gear, and distributed information about the dangers of coal ash. But it wasn't easy, as volunteers with the group faced harassment and even arrest. Irwin has no patience for claims that no one in charge knew about the hazards.
"Those workers were not accidentally exposed," he tells Facing South. "They were murdered for TVA's P.R. campaign."
Jacobs Engineering has been embroiled in controversy before related to its government contracting work. The company, which moved its headquarters from California to Dallas in 2016, paid the federal government $35 million in 2000 in connection with allegations that it improperly charged overhead costs to various government contracts.
The five-year cleanup of the spill cost TVA ratepayers $1 billion. Jacobs Engineering wants ratepayers to foot its legal bills as well.
A team of attorneys has filed lawsuits in federal court on behalf of 53 dead and sick workers against Jacobs Engineering, a Fortune 500 government contractor hired by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to clean up following the spill of over a billion gallons of coal ash from a holding pond at the federally-owned corporation's Kingston power plant in eastern Tennessee on Dec. 22, 2008. The spill inundated a nearby residential community and contaminated the Emory and Clinch rivers with coal ash, which is laden with heavy metals, radioactive elements, and other health-damaging contaminants. The disaster also spurred the federal regulations now targeted for rollback.
After the USA Today Network-Tennessee published an investigation into conditions at the cleanup site, more workers came forward with similar stories of lung disease, cancers, and skin conditions. Since then, the attorneys involved in the case filed a new lawsuit in state court on behalf of an additional 180 dead or sick workers.
The federal lawsuit is expected to get underway later this year. It was delayed in part due to a fire at the offices of the plaintiffs' attorneys, the cause of which remains unknown.
While the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wanted the cleanup workers to be given protective gear, it met resistance from Jacobs Engineering and The Shaw Group, the Louisiana-based government contractor hired by TVA for technical advice on the project. Workers say the companies downplayed the dangers of coal ash and seemed concerned about alarming the public.
In the end, the EPA signed off on a safety plan that did not require workers to be given protective suits and that made it difficult for them to qualify for a respirator or even a dust mask -- and the companies resisted implementing even that.
"Jacobs' site safety manager, Tom Bock, and TVA site supervisor Gary McDonald both have admitted refusing workers' requests for respirators and dust masks in violation of the plan's rules on the approval process," the USA Today Network-Tennessee reported.
Warnings Were Given
The news network's reporting on the Kingston cleanup recounted the dangerous working conditions at the spill site, with tornados of coal ash blowing across the landscape and workers eating atop coal ash heaps with only bottled water to clean themselves. However, it did not get all of the facts right. This is how the first story in the series opened:
It was the nation's largest coal ash spill, and it would bring a stampede of government supervisors, environmental advocates, lawyers, journalists, politicians and contractors to Kingston, Tenn.
But not one of them asked why the hundreds of blue-collar laborers cleaning up the mess weren't wearing even basic dust masks.
It's not true that no one visiting the disaster site inquired into the workers' safety. Within a week of the spill, United Mountain Defense (UMD) -- an environmental nonprofit that works in coal-impacted communities and was involved in the Swan Pond community near TVA's Kingston plant before the spill occurred -- tried to draw official attention to the fact that workers at the site were not using protective gear. They brought up the issue at the first official public meeting about the spill, held six days after the disaster.
Facing South reported on UMD's concerns the following day; the Knoxville News Sentinel, part of the USA Today Network-Tennessee, linked to the story in its roundup of coverage of the disaster. Titled "'IT'S LIKE 9/11': Official inaction endangers residents, workers following Tenn. coal ash disaster," the report quoted Chris Irwin, a self-described "tree-hugging attorney" who was working with UMD at the time:
UMD volunteers report that cleanup workers do not appear to be wearing protective respiratory equipment despite the known hazards of fly ash. For example, a Material Safety Data Sheet for coal ash [pdf] calls for employees handling the material to wear NIOSH respiratory protection.
"They're treating it like snow," Irwin says. "They're not taking the most basic elementary precautions. It's like 9/11, where they had unprotected workers traipsing through toxic dust."
When Facing South called the Joint Information Center and asked who is doing the cleanup work and what protective gear they'd been provided, the person answering the phone said she would have someone look into it and call back.
No one called back. UMD volunteers continued to document hazardous conditions at the site, including cleanup workers laboring without protective gear, and distributed information about the dangers of coal ash. But it wasn't easy, as volunteers with the group faced harassment and even arrest. Irwin has no patience for claims that no one in charge knew about the hazards.
"Those workers were not accidentally exposed," he tells Facing South. "They were murdered for TVA's P.R. campaign."
Jacobs Engineering has been embroiled in controversy before related to its government contracting work. The company, which moved its headquarters from California to Dallas in 2016, paid the federal government $35 million in 2000 in connection with allegations that it improperly charged overhead costs to various government contracts.
The five-year cleanup of the spill cost TVA ratepayers $1 billion. Jacobs Engineering wants ratepayers to foot its legal bills as well.
New Study Shows Young People in Polluted Cities Are at Greater Risk for Alzheimer's
The study is not the first to suggest that air pollution is a risk for the brain, especially in children.
By Olivia Rosane / EcoWatch * alternet
April 16, 2018, 1:18 PM GMT
A study has found that living in cities with high air pollution puts children and young adults at risk for Alzheimer's and suicide, The University of Montana reported Friday.
University of Montana researcher Dr. Lilian Calderón-Garcidueñas was part of a team that looked at the autopsies of 203 residents of Mexico City, which has daily ozone and particulate matter levels above U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards.
The subjects they studied ranged in age from 11 months to 40 years, and the researchers found signs of Alzheimer's in 99.5 percent of them, including in less-than-a-year-old babies.
"Alzheimer's disease starting in the brainstem of young children and affecting 99.5% of young urbanites is a serious health crisis," the abstract of the study, published in Environmental Research on March 23, warned.
The researchers, who also included participants from the Universidad del Valle de México, the Instituto Nacional de Pediatría, Boise State University, Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Médica Sur and the Universidad Autónoma de Piedras Negras, looked for two abnormal proteins linked to the development of Alzheimer's: hyperphosphorylated tau and beta amyloid. They found increased levels of both in the study's subjects.
"Alzheimer's disease hallmarks start in childhood in polluted environments, and we must implement effective preventative measures early," Calderón-Garcidueñas said in the University of Montana press release. "It is useless to take reactive actions decades later."
Researchers theorized that particulate matter increased Alzheimer's risk as it enters the brain through the gastrointestinal tract, nose and lungs. The circulatory system carries particulate matter throughout the body and damages barriers.
The study is not the first to suggest that air pollution is a risk for the brain, especially in children. A study published in March found brain abnormalities in school-aged children in the Netherlands whose mothers were exposed to particulate matter when they were pregnant, U.S. News and World Report reported. The abnormalities were linked to behavioral problems and impulse control and, crucially, occurred even when the pollution the mothers were exposed to was beneath levels determined safe by EU law.
"To me, air pollution is kind of the next lead, in a way," University of Rochester environmental medicine professor Deborah Cory-Slechta told Popular Science in early April.
Cory-Slechta was alerted to the brain problems caused by air pollution when colleagues using mice to study the impact of air pollution on lung development invited her to look at the mice's brains. She found damage in almost every part of the brains two months after pollution exposure had ended.
According to the Popular Science article, living in highly air polluted areas has been linked to poor memory, lower intelligence-test performance and behavioral problems.
As the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health points out, Mexico City has made important strides in reducing air pollution since the World Health Organization found it the most polluted city in the world in 1992. However, the University of Montana study warns that it, and, indeed, every polluted city, still has more work to do to protect its children's brains.
University of Montana researcher Dr. Lilian Calderón-Garcidueñas was part of a team that looked at the autopsies of 203 residents of Mexico City, which has daily ozone and particulate matter levels above U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards.
The subjects they studied ranged in age from 11 months to 40 years, and the researchers found signs of Alzheimer's in 99.5 percent of them, including in less-than-a-year-old babies.
"Alzheimer's disease starting in the brainstem of young children and affecting 99.5% of young urbanites is a serious health crisis," the abstract of the study, published in Environmental Research on March 23, warned.
The researchers, who also included participants from the Universidad del Valle de México, the Instituto Nacional de Pediatría, Boise State University, Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Médica Sur and the Universidad Autónoma de Piedras Negras, looked for two abnormal proteins linked to the development of Alzheimer's: hyperphosphorylated tau and beta amyloid. They found increased levels of both in the study's subjects.
"Alzheimer's disease hallmarks start in childhood in polluted environments, and we must implement effective preventative measures early," Calderón-Garcidueñas said in the University of Montana press release. "It is useless to take reactive actions decades later."
Researchers theorized that particulate matter increased Alzheimer's risk as it enters the brain through the gastrointestinal tract, nose and lungs. The circulatory system carries particulate matter throughout the body and damages barriers.
The study is not the first to suggest that air pollution is a risk for the brain, especially in children. A study published in March found brain abnormalities in school-aged children in the Netherlands whose mothers were exposed to particulate matter when they were pregnant, U.S. News and World Report reported. The abnormalities were linked to behavioral problems and impulse control and, crucially, occurred even when the pollution the mothers were exposed to was beneath levels determined safe by EU law.
"To me, air pollution is kind of the next lead, in a way," University of Rochester environmental medicine professor Deborah Cory-Slechta told Popular Science in early April.
Cory-Slechta was alerted to the brain problems caused by air pollution when colleagues using mice to study the impact of air pollution on lung development invited her to look at the mice's brains. She found damage in almost every part of the brains two months after pollution exposure had ended.
According to the Popular Science article, living in highly air polluted areas has been linked to poor memory, lower intelligence-test performance and behavioral problems.
As the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health points out, Mexico City has made important strides in reducing air pollution since the World Health Organization found it the most polluted city in the world in 1992. However, the University of Montana study warns that it, and, indeed, every polluted city, still has more work to do to protect its children's brains.
Report calls out worst produce for pesticides—strawberries, spinach top list
Pesticides residues are found on about 70% of tested produce; new research suggests this exposure could impact fertility
Brian Bienkowski - ehn
Apr 10, 2018
Just when you thought it couldn't get any harder to eat healthy.
Turns out those nutrient packed foods we're all told to eat—such as strawberries and spinach— are also consistently tainted with potentially harmful pesticides. Both foods top the "Dirty Dozen" list released today by the Environmental Working Group(EWG), which analyzed federal data on pesticides in produce.
EWG, which examined tests done over the past few years by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, reports almost 70 percent of the produce sampled by the feds had pesticide residues.
Some were worse than others: "More than 98 percent of samples of strawberries, spinach, peaches, nectarines, cherries and apples tested positive for residue of at least one pesticide," according to the report.
For strawberries, which topped the Dirty Dozen list, about one-third of the samples contained 10 or more pesticides. Pesticides tainted a whopping 97 percent of the samples of spinach, which was second worst according to EWG.
Other produce on the "Dirty Dozen":
"If you are going to buy some things organic, this is a helpful, clear list of those with highest residues on them," said Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst with EWG, which releases the list annually.
In all the USDA found 230 different pesticides and compounds formed when pesticides break down in their more than 38,000 samples.
Instigating infertility?
It's difficult to say how much these residues on produce may harm people. Pesticides come in many forms—some are highly toxic, some not as much—and chemicals can have different effects at different doses.
Also, produce can have complex mixtures of different chemicals. Studies of people who work with pesticides, and are chronically exposed, have linked exposure to respiratory and memory problems, depression, cancer, birth defects and brain problems.
Lunder said there are certain pesticides, such as the organophosphate pesticide chlorpyrifos, that are showing up on produce and are widely considered toxic. After several studies linked the chemical to impaired brain development and behavior in children, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama Administration proposed banning the chemical, however, new EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, cancelled the ban.
The EWG report pointed to a new line of research on pesticide residues linking the exposure to infertility. In January, a study of 325 women undergoing infertility treatment found women who ate two or more servings per day of produce with pesticide residues were 26 percent less likely to have a successful pregnancy than women with less pesticide exposure.
"These data suggest that dietary pesticide exposure within the range of typical human exposure may be associated with adverse reproductive consequences," the authors wrote.
In 2015, scientists found men's intake of pesticide-tainted produce was linked to lower semen quality.
It's not entirely clear how pesticide residues could impact fertility, however, in animal studies, exposure to low doses of pesticide mixtures early in pregnancies "increases embryonic cell death and inhibits its normal cell division ultimately resulting in fewer live born pups," said Jorge Chavarro, a researcher and associate professor at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who was the senior author of the study that linked pesticide residues to fewer successful pregnancies in women.
"Something similar may be happening in humans," he said.
Keep eating your fruits and veggies
Lunder stressed that eating fruits and vegetables is important and, while avoiding pesticides isn't easy, buying organic will certainly lessen your exposure.
She added that avoiding pesticides is especially important when women are pregnant, planning to get pregnant or parents are feeding kids.
EWG also lays out the "Clean Fifteen" —those produce least likely to have pesticides.
So here's a good start for your next grocery list:
Turns out those nutrient packed foods we're all told to eat—such as strawberries and spinach— are also consistently tainted with potentially harmful pesticides. Both foods top the "Dirty Dozen" list released today by the Environmental Working Group(EWG), which analyzed federal data on pesticides in produce.
EWG, which examined tests done over the past few years by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, reports almost 70 percent of the produce sampled by the feds had pesticide residues.
Some were worse than others: "More than 98 percent of samples of strawberries, spinach, peaches, nectarines, cherries and apples tested positive for residue of at least one pesticide," according to the report.
For strawberries, which topped the Dirty Dozen list, about one-third of the samples contained 10 or more pesticides. Pesticides tainted a whopping 97 percent of the samples of spinach, which was second worst according to EWG.
Other produce on the "Dirty Dozen":
- Nectarines
- Apples
- Grapes
- Peaches
- Cherries
- Pears
- Tomatoes
- Celery
- Potatoes
- Sweet Bell Peppers
"If you are going to buy some things organic, this is a helpful, clear list of those with highest residues on them," said Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst with EWG, which releases the list annually.
In all the USDA found 230 different pesticides and compounds formed when pesticides break down in their more than 38,000 samples.
Instigating infertility?
It's difficult to say how much these residues on produce may harm people. Pesticides come in many forms—some are highly toxic, some not as much—and chemicals can have different effects at different doses.
Also, produce can have complex mixtures of different chemicals. Studies of people who work with pesticides, and are chronically exposed, have linked exposure to respiratory and memory problems, depression, cancer, birth defects and brain problems.
Lunder said there are certain pesticides, such as the organophosphate pesticide chlorpyrifos, that are showing up on produce and are widely considered toxic. After several studies linked the chemical to impaired brain development and behavior in children, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama Administration proposed banning the chemical, however, new EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, cancelled the ban.
The EWG report pointed to a new line of research on pesticide residues linking the exposure to infertility. In January, a study of 325 women undergoing infertility treatment found women who ate two or more servings per day of produce with pesticide residues were 26 percent less likely to have a successful pregnancy than women with less pesticide exposure.
"These data suggest that dietary pesticide exposure within the range of typical human exposure may be associated with adverse reproductive consequences," the authors wrote.
In 2015, scientists found men's intake of pesticide-tainted produce was linked to lower semen quality.
It's not entirely clear how pesticide residues could impact fertility, however, in animal studies, exposure to low doses of pesticide mixtures early in pregnancies "increases embryonic cell death and inhibits its normal cell division ultimately resulting in fewer live born pups," said Jorge Chavarro, a researcher and associate professor at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who was the senior author of the study that linked pesticide residues to fewer successful pregnancies in women.
"Something similar may be happening in humans," he said.
Keep eating your fruits and veggies
Lunder stressed that eating fruits and vegetables is important and, while avoiding pesticides isn't easy, buying organic will certainly lessen your exposure.
She added that avoiding pesticides is especially important when women are pregnant, planning to get pregnant or parents are feeding kids.
EWG also lays out the "Clean Fifteen" —those produce least likely to have pesticides.
So here's a good start for your next grocery list:
- Avacados
- Sweet Corn
- Pineapples
- Cabbage
- Onions
- Sweet Frozen Peas
- Papayas
- Asparagus
- Mangoes
- Eggplant
- Honeydew Melon
- Kiwi
- Cantaloupe
- Cauliflower
- Broccoli
Colorado fracking company wants to ‘silence’ opposition to massive drilling project, lawyer says
Deep-pocketed energy companies use lawsuits as weapon against public opposition.
MARK HAND - think progress
APR 15, 2018, 9:00 AM
A college student, a lawyer, and a videographer attended a protest at an oil and gas construction site in Greeley, Colorado in early March and all three are now getting sued by the company behind the massive project.
The student, Cullen Lobe, already was facing criminal charges in Weld County, Colorado for locking himself to a bulldozer as part of an act of civil disobedience at the oil and gas construction site. But for Extraction Oil and Gas, the government’s criminal charges against Lobe weren’t enough. The Denver-based company decided to take legal action of its own.
The company’s civil lawsuit names Lobe and four others — John Lamb (the lawyer), Jeremy Mack (the videographer), Brian Hedden, and Mary Delffs — as defendants. While Lobe was arrested and now faces criminal charges, the four other individuals were not arrested but instead were given criminal citations by the Weld County Sheriff’s Department for trespassing at the Extraction Oil and Gas drilling site.
The legal action against Lamb, a lawyer with the National Lawyers Guild who was acting as a legal observer at the March 8 protest, and Mack, an independent journalist who videotaped the protest, comes at a time of increasing concern surrounding the arrest and prosecution of reporters and protesters critical of U.S. government and powerful corporations.
During protests of Donald Trump’s inauguration in Washington D.C., at least six journalists and filmmakers were charged with felony rioting offenses. Legal observers also were rounded up as part of the D.C. police’s strategy to trap and then arrest everyone who was on the street.
The charges were eventually dropped against the legal observers and most, but not all, the journalists. A reporter who went to trial as part of the first group of inauguration defendants was found not guilty. Another journalist is among the defendants still facing prosecution.
Prosecutors also brought serious criminal charges against the filmmakers who covered the coordinated oil pipeline “value turner” action in October 2016. But the cases against the filmmakers were later dismissed.
Over the past decade, energy companies have started taking stronger measures, including legal action, against environmentalists and landowners who wage civil disobedience campaigns against their projects. The aggressive attacks by the companies, combined with state lawmakers considering anti-protest legislation, are making citizens think twice before exercising their First Amendment rights, according to legal experts.
The lawsuit against Lobe is “meant to harass and intimidate” him while seeking to “chill and silence the community,” Lobe’s lawyer, Jason Flores-Williams, wrote in a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
In its March 9 lawsuit, which was amended three weeks later, Extraction Oil and Gas asked the District Court of Weld County, Colorado to force the 23-year-old Lobe and the others to pay “all available damages, fees and costs, including at least nominal damages.” Additionally, the complaint seeks a ruling to prevent the defendants from committing “any further trespass” on any Extraction Oil & Gas sites. The company contends the demands in its lawsuit are necessary to deter further disruption at its drilling sites.
In a motion filed last Wednesday, Flores-Williams asked the court to dismiss the company’s complaint.
According to Flores-Williams, a prominent defense attorney based in Denver, the company’s lawsuit is a “textbook” case of what is known as a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, or SLAAP. This type of legal action is intended to intimidate and silence critics by weighing them down with the cost of a legal defense until they halt their criticism or opposition.
“This is the small kid and the huge bully in the sandlot and the bully poking his finger in the small kid’s chest, saying, ‘You get out of here. If you ever come around again, I’m going to destroy you’,” Flores-Williams told ThinkProgress.
For 2017, Extraction Oil and Gas reported revenues from oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids sales increased 117 percent over the prior year to $604.3 million. The company had not responded to a request for comment on Flores-Williams’ motion to dismiss its lawsuit at the time this article was published.
Along with Lobe and the other defendants, Extraction Oil and Gas named “John and Jane Does 1-8” in its lawsuit. These unnamed people are residents of Colorado who “acted in concert” with the others named in the complaint, the company said.
Naming John and Jane Does is a legal maneuver used by companies when they want to use the discovery process in a court case to see who attended meetings, signed attendance lists, or painted signs in order to add those people to the lawsuit, according to Flores-Williams. If Extraction Oil and Gas prevails in this action, “the mere act of attending a meeting could expose a person to civil liability,” he said.
Weld County, located along Colorado’s Front Range, is one of the most heavily drilled counties in the country. Companies have expanded their fracking operations from rural areas to suburban communities. Many residents in Weld County and other counties in Colorado, however, have decided to fight the pollution and noise that comes when the oil and gas industry enters neighborhoods.
“Weld County is an oil-friendly county,” Andy McNulty, a lawyer with Killmer, Lane & Newman, LLP, a Denver law firm that specializes in First Amendment cases, said in an interview with ThinkProgress. “But you always hope that the judiciary is somewhat immune from those political pressures. It’s more important now than ever, as we’ve seen with the executive overreach of power in the Trump era, that the judiciary stands as a bulwark to protect the constitutional rights of its citizens.”
According to Lobe, he was driven to protest Extraction Oil and Gas’s activities because of the company’s decision to build its project next to a middle school in a lower-income section of Greeley. The company was originally awarded a permit in 2013 to drill up to 67 wells a few hundred feet away from Frontier Academy in Greeley. The school is composed of children that come largely from white, middle-class families. The parents were not happy with the project and organized a movement against the project.
In 2014, in the face of the parents’ resistance, Extraction Oil and Gas abandoned the Frontier Academy site. The company instead turned its attention to a new location on the other side of town, also within a thousand feet of a school. The school, Bella Romero Academy, serves mostly recent immigrants and working-class families. Nearly 90 percent of its children qualify for free and reduced-price lunches.
The drilling site represents a “clear case of environmental racism,” Lobe told ThinkProgress. “These companies feel like they can just go in anywhere and do whatever they want. They have all the money. They have all the power. We really hope that these people can take a step back and look at what danger they’re putting these children in.”
In his motion to dismiss, Flores-Williams wrote that Lobe “is the kind of engaged young person that we should want to encourage, not drive into bankruptcy” by assessing damages against them for raising their voice.
Close to 30 states have laws that protect citizens from lawsuits that seek to penalize them for expressing their opposition or organizing against a project. Although Colorado doesn’t have an anti-SLAPP statute, it does have a procedure that can stop this type of lawsuit before it is abused. In a 1984 case, the state Supreme Court in 1984 ruled that a housing developer’s lawsuit against a citizens’ group was a classic case of retaliation for the opposition to a housing development.
Flores-Williams cited the 1984 case in his motion to dismiss Extraction Oil and Gas’s lawsuit against Lobe. “Extraction seeks to use this court not as a means of redress, but as its muffler or silencer, with the muzzle pointed squarely at an active, engaged community with legitimate concerns over the health and safety of its children,” the motion said. “The decision to sue a college student already facing criminal charges — and restrict the rights of many unnamed others and the community at large — goes beyond the pale.”
Similar to Extraction Oil and Gas’s legal strategy in Colorado, Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, filed a lawsuit against Greenpeace and several other environmental groups that opposed the oil pipeline project. Lawyers for Greenpeace accused the company of attempting to silence advocacy work and attack the fundamental right to free speech.
Energy Transfer Partners is using SLAPP against its critics “in an attempt to shut them up — or even better, to shut them down,” according to Greenpeace. The company is suing Greenpeace for at least $900 million in damages.
“The use of this dirty tactic by corporations is on the rise. As we face an upswing in a new global right-wing agenda, governments and corporations around the world are attempting to chip away at free speech,” Greenpeace wrote in a blog postabout the lawsuit.
Individual environmental activists, like Lobe and other opponents of the drilling site in Greeley, are facing the same type of threats at the local level as the national green groups. In Weld County, “if the court were to grant injunctive relief and especially if the court were to allow this case to go trial for damages, it would have a significant chilling effect on the free speech rights of these folks,” McNulty said.
The student, Cullen Lobe, already was facing criminal charges in Weld County, Colorado for locking himself to a bulldozer as part of an act of civil disobedience at the oil and gas construction site. But for Extraction Oil and Gas, the government’s criminal charges against Lobe weren’t enough. The Denver-based company decided to take legal action of its own.
The company’s civil lawsuit names Lobe and four others — John Lamb (the lawyer), Jeremy Mack (the videographer), Brian Hedden, and Mary Delffs — as defendants. While Lobe was arrested and now faces criminal charges, the four other individuals were not arrested but instead were given criminal citations by the Weld County Sheriff’s Department for trespassing at the Extraction Oil and Gas drilling site.
The legal action against Lamb, a lawyer with the National Lawyers Guild who was acting as a legal observer at the March 8 protest, and Mack, an independent journalist who videotaped the protest, comes at a time of increasing concern surrounding the arrest and prosecution of reporters and protesters critical of U.S. government and powerful corporations.
During protests of Donald Trump’s inauguration in Washington D.C., at least six journalists and filmmakers were charged with felony rioting offenses. Legal observers also were rounded up as part of the D.C. police’s strategy to trap and then arrest everyone who was on the street.
The charges were eventually dropped against the legal observers and most, but not all, the journalists. A reporter who went to trial as part of the first group of inauguration defendants was found not guilty. Another journalist is among the defendants still facing prosecution.
Prosecutors also brought serious criminal charges against the filmmakers who covered the coordinated oil pipeline “value turner” action in October 2016. But the cases against the filmmakers were later dismissed.
Over the past decade, energy companies have started taking stronger measures, including legal action, against environmentalists and landowners who wage civil disobedience campaigns against their projects. The aggressive attacks by the companies, combined with state lawmakers considering anti-protest legislation, are making citizens think twice before exercising their First Amendment rights, according to legal experts.
The lawsuit against Lobe is “meant to harass and intimidate” him while seeking to “chill and silence the community,” Lobe’s lawyer, Jason Flores-Williams, wrote in a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
In its March 9 lawsuit, which was amended three weeks later, Extraction Oil and Gas asked the District Court of Weld County, Colorado to force the 23-year-old Lobe and the others to pay “all available damages, fees and costs, including at least nominal damages.” Additionally, the complaint seeks a ruling to prevent the defendants from committing “any further trespass” on any Extraction Oil & Gas sites. The company contends the demands in its lawsuit are necessary to deter further disruption at its drilling sites.
In a motion filed last Wednesday, Flores-Williams asked the court to dismiss the company’s complaint.
According to Flores-Williams, a prominent defense attorney based in Denver, the company’s lawsuit is a “textbook” case of what is known as a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, or SLAAP. This type of legal action is intended to intimidate and silence critics by weighing them down with the cost of a legal defense until they halt their criticism or opposition.
“This is the small kid and the huge bully in the sandlot and the bully poking his finger in the small kid’s chest, saying, ‘You get out of here. If you ever come around again, I’m going to destroy you’,” Flores-Williams told ThinkProgress.
For 2017, Extraction Oil and Gas reported revenues from oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids sales increased 117 percent over the prior year to $604.3 million. The company had not responded to a request for comment on Flores-Williams’ motion to dismiss its lawsuit at the time this article was published.
Along with Lobe and the other defendants, Extraction Oil and Gas named “John and Jane Does 1-8” in its lawsuit. These unnamed people are residents of Colorado who “acted in concert” with the others named in the complaint, the company said.
Naming John and Jane Does is a legal maneuver used by companies when they want to use the discovery process in a court case to see who attended meetings, signed attendance lists, or painted signs in order to add those people to the lawsuit, according to Flores-Williams. If Extraction Oil and Gas prevails in this action, “the mere act of attending a meeting could expose a person to civil liability,” he said.
Weld County, located along Colorado’s Front Range, is one of the most heavily drilled counties in the country. Companies have expanded their fracking operations from rural areas to suburban communities. Many residents in Weld County and other counties in Colorado, however, have decided to fight the pollution and noise that comes when the oil and gas industry enters neighborhoods.
“Weld County is an oil-friendly county,” Andy McNulty, a lawyer with Killmer, Lane & Newman, LLP, a Denver law firm that specializes in First Amendment cases, said in an interview with ThinkProgress. “But you always hope that the judiciary is somewhat immune from those political pressures. It’s more important now than ever, as we’ve seen with the executive overreach of power in the Trump era, that the judiciary stands as a bulwark to protect the constitutional rights of its citizens.”
According to Lobe, he was driven to protest Extraction Oil and Gas’s activities because of the company’s decision to build its project next to a middle school in a lower-income section of Greeley. The company was originally awarded a permit in 2013 to drill up to 67 wells a few hundred feet away from Frontier Academy in Greeley. The school is composed of children that come largely from white, middle-class families. The parents were not happy with the project and organized a movement against the project.
In 2014, in the face of the parents’ resistance, Extraction Oil and Gas abandoned the Frontier Academy site. The company instead turned its attention to a new location on the other side of town, also within a thousand feet of a school. The school, Bella Romero Academy, serves mostly recent immigrants and working-class families. Nearly 90 percent of its children qualify for free and reduced-price lunches.
The drilling site represents a “clear case of environmental racism,” Lobe told ThinkProgress. “These companies feel like they can just go in anywhere and do whatever they want. They have all the money. They have all the power. We really hope that these people can take a step back and look at what danger they’re putting these children in.”
In his motion to dismiss, Flores-Williams wrote that Lobe “is the kind of engaged young person that we should want to encourage, not drive into bankruptcy” by assessing damages against them for raising their voice.
Close to 30 states have laws that protect citizens from lawsuits that seek to penalize them for expressing their opposition or organizing against a project. Although Colorado doesn’t have an anti-SLAPP statute, it does have a procedure that can stop this type of lawsuit before it is abused. In a 1984 case, the state Supreme Court in 1984 ruled that a housing developer’s lawsuit against a citizens’ group was a classic case of retaliation for the opposition to a housing development.
Flores-Williams cited the 1984 case in his motion to dismiss Extraction Oil and Gas’s lawsuit against Lobe. “Extraction seeks to use this court not as a means of redress, but as its muffler or silencer, with the muzzle pointed squarely at an active, engaged community with legitimate concerns over the health and safety of its children,” the motion said. “The decision to sue a college student already facing criminal charges — and restrict the rights of many unnamed others and the community at large — goes beyond the pale.”
Similar to Extraction Oil and Gas’s legal strategy in Colorado, Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, filed a lawsuit against Greenpeace and several other environmental groups that opposed the oil pipeline project. Lawyers for Greenpeace accused the company of attempting to silence advocacy work and attack the fundamental right to free speech.
Energy Transfer Partners is using SLAPP against its critics “in an attempt to shut them up — or even better, to shut them down,” according to Greenpeace. The company is suing Greenpeace for at least $900 million in damages.
“The use of this dirty tactic by corporations is on the rise. As we face an upswing in a new global right-wing agenda, governments and corporations around the world are attempting to chip away at free speech,” Greenpeace wrote in a blog postabout the lawsuit.
Individual environmental activists, like Lobe and other opponents of the drilling site in Greeley, are facing the same type of threats at the local level as the national green groups. In Weld County, “if the court were to grant injunctive relief and especially if the court were to allow this case to go trial for damages, it would have a significant chilling effect on the free speech rights of these folks,” McNulty said.
Commentary: Lawmakers want the EPA to ignore impacts of pesticides on endangered species
It would be hard to overstate the dangers of this Farm Bill rider
Lori Ann Burd - ehn
Apr 13, 2018
According to the latest push by House Republicans, pesticides — all of them — are so safe there's no longer any need to bother asking experts to determine their harm to our most endangered species before approving them.
It's not true, of course — not even vaguely. It's such an outrageously anti-science statement it's laughable.
But not surprisingly, that's what pesticide makers like Dow Chemical would have us believe.
And now that's what Republicans in Congress would have us believe.
This week some of the biggest agriculture and pesticide players in Washington, D.C. — including Croplife and Dow Chemical — succeeded in getting Republicans to include a rider in the 2018 Farm Bill that would exempt the Environmental Protection Agency's pesticide-registration program from the most important parts of the Endangered Species Act: The provisions requiring that a pesticide's harm to endangered species be assessed and addressed before it can be approved, and the provisions that prohibit a pesticide's killing of endangered species.
That's right: If the rider remains in place, consideration for impacts on endangered species would be written out of the process of registering pesticides.
Shortly after President Trump and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt took power last year, they made it clear how little they cared about science, public health and wildlife when Pruitt reversed an EPA plan to ban Dow's chlorpyrifos from use on crops, despite troves of evidence showing that this chemical causes brain damage in children and is likely to harm imperiled species.
The troth of evidence against chlorpyrifos was so compelling that prior to Trump taking office, the EPA had found that the chemical harmed 97 percent of the nation's 1,800 endangered plants and animals.
The evidence of risk was overwhelming. Hence the EPA's plan to ban it.
But then Dow donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund, and the EPA simply walked away from years of research.
And now, Dow and friends are getting even more bang for their buck — this time with House Republicans who don't seem to care how many species they drive extinct.
It seems like Dow has really been cashing in on its D.C. spending spree over the past six years, during which the company has donated $11 million to congressional campaigns and political action committees and spent an additional $75 million lobbying Congress.
It would be hard to overstate the dangers of this Farm Bill rider. If we don't stop it, it could not only directly fuel the extinction of many of our most endangered plants and animals — it could eliminate one of the most important shields we have to protect all species, including humans, against highly toxic pesticides poisoning the waterways and landscapes we all depend on.
It's not true, of course — not even vaguely. It's such an outrageously anti-science statement it's laughable.
But not surprisingly, that's what pesticide makers like Dow Chemical would have us believe.
And now that's what Republicans in Congress would have us believe.
This week some of the biggest agriculture and pesticide players in Washington, D.C. — including Croplife and Dow Chemical — succeeded in getting Republicans to include a rider in the 2018 Farm Bill that would exempt the Environmental Protection Agency's pesticide-registration program from the most important parts of the Endangered Species Act: The provisions requiring that a pesticide's harm to endangered species be assessed and addressed before it can be approved, and the provisions that prohibit a pesticide's killing of endangered species.
That's right: If the rider remains in place, consideration for impacts on endangered species would be written out of the process of registering pesticides.
Shortly after President Trump and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt took power last year, they made it clear how little they cared about science, public health and wildlife when Pruitt reversed an EPA plan to ban Dow's chlorpyrifos from use on crops, despite troves of evidence showing that this chemical causes brain damage in children and is likely to harm imperiled species.
The troth of evidence against chlorpyrifos was so compelling that prior to Trump taking office, the EPA had found that the chemical harmed 97 percent of the nation's 1,800 endangered plants and animals.
The evidence of risk was overwhelming. Hence the EPA's plan to ban it.
But then Dow donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund, and the EPA simply walked away from years of research.
And now, Dow and friends are getting even more bang for their buck — this time with House Republicans who don't seem to care how many species they drive extinct.
It seems like Dow has really been cashing in on its D.C. spending spree over the past six years, during which the company has donated $11 million to congressional campaigns and political action committees and spent an additional $75 million lobbying Congress.
It would be hard to overstate the dangers of this Farm Bill rider. If we don't stop it, it could not only directly fuel the extinction of many of our most endangered plants and animals — it could eliminate one of the most important shields we have to protect all species, including humans, against highly toxic pesticides poisoning the waterways and landscapes we all depend on.
Barrel of Radioactive Sludge Ruptures at Nuclear Facility
KEITH RIDLER / The Associated Press - truthdig
APR 12, 2018
BOISE, Idaho—A barrel containing radioactive sludge ruptured at an Idaho nuclear facility, federal officials said Thursday, resulting in no injuries and no risk to the public but possibly slowing progress in shipping waste out of the state.
The U.S. Department of Energy said the 55-gallon barrel ruptured late Wednesday at the 890-square-mile site that includes the Idaho National Laboratory, the nation’s top federal nuclear research lab.
Federal officials said it’s the first known rupture of a barrel containing radioactive sludge at the site but might not be the last.
That’s because secretive record keeping during the Cold War makes it hard for officials to now know the exact contents of similar barrels, said Idaho National Laboratory Joint Information Center spokesman Don Miley.
The barrel contains a mixture of fluids and solvents that came from nuclear weapons production at the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver, Colorado.
Officials during the Cold War were extremely secretive about the contents of the barrels for fear that the process of making nuclear weapons could be revealed if the contents were known, Miley said.
A preliminary theory about the cause of the barrel rupture, he said, is that radioactive decay made the barrel heat up and ignite particles of uranium. An investigation is planned.
“They haven’t run into anything like this actually happening,” he said. “They’ve got a really good idea of what’s in (the barrels), but they might not always know the concentrations.”
He said an investigation will try to determine if there are other barrels at risk of rupturing.
Workers entering the structure, even before the breach, must use self-contained breathing apparatus and wear full protective clothing. Officials said no radiation has been detected outside the structure, which has special filters to prevent radioactive particles from escaping.
It’s not clear how many barrels are in the earthen-floor structure that’s 380 feet (116 meters) long and 165 feet (50 meters) wide. The barrel that ruptured had been moved to the containment structure in preparation for shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, New Mexico.
The sprawling Idaho site in high-desert sagebrush steppe sits atop the giant Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer that’s used by cities for drinking water and farmers for irrigation. The area is near the striking 7,550-foot (2,300-meter) Big Southern Butte, which has a road to the top for adventurous drivers.
The site has been used for nuclear waste disposal and storage beginning in the 1950s. The federal government has been cleaning it up following court battles and several agreements with Idaho in the 1990s amid concerns by state officials that Idaho was becoming the nation’s nuclear waste dump.
The Energy Department has already missed several deadlines under those agreements involving moving nuclear waste out of Idaho and has paid about $3.5 million in fines.
Idaho is also preventing research quantities of spent nuclear fuel from entering the state to be analyzed by Idaho National Laboratory scientists due to a missed deadline.
The federal agency also faces deadlines concerning waste stored in barrels, and the radioactive release and investigation could slow the process of moving that waste out of state.
The Energy Department has floated the idea of bringing in more nuclear waste from Hanford in Washington state for treatment at a $500 million facility at the Idaho site.
Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden on Thursday declined to comment on the situation.
Wendy Wilson of the Snake River Alliance, an Idaho-based nuclear watchdog group, said the incident is a reminder of why the state should not allow more nuclear waste to be shipped into Idaho for treatment.
“It sure demonstrates how much things can go wrong when you’re dealing with waste that hasn’t been fully assessed,” she said.
The U.S. Department of Energy said the 55-gallon barrel ruptured late Wednesday at the 890-square-mile site that includes the Idaho National Laboratory, the nation’s top federal nuclear research lab.
Federal officials said it’s the first known rupture of a barrel containing radioactive sludge at the site but might not be the last.
That’s because secretive record keeping during the Cold War makes it hard for officials to now know the exact contents of similar barrels, said Idaho National Laboratory Joint Information Center spokesman Don Miley.
The barrel contains a mixture of fluids and solvents that came from nuclear weapons production at the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver, Colorado.
Officials during the Cold War were extremely secretive about the contents of the barrels for fear that the process of making nuclear weapons could be revealed if the contents were known, Miley said.
A preliminary theory about the cause of the barrel rupture, he said, is that radioactive decay made the barrel heat up and ignite particles of uranium. An investigation is planned.
“They haven’t run into anything like this actually happening,” he said. “They’ve got a really good idea of what’s in (the barrels), but they might not always know the concentrations.”
He said an investigation will try to determine if there are other barrels at risk of rupturing.
Workers entering the structure, even before the breach, must use self-contained breathing apparatus and wear full protective clothing. Officials said no radiation has been detected outside the structure, which has special filters to prevent radioactive particles from escaping.
It’s not clear how many barrels are in the earthen-floor structure that’s 380 feet (116 meters) long and 165 feet (50 meters) wide. The barrel that ruptured had been moved to the containment structure in preparation for shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, New Mexico.
The sprawling Idaho site in high-desert sagebrush steppe sits atop the giant Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer that’s used by cities for drinking water and farmers for irrigation. The area is near the striking 7,550-foot (2,300-meter) Big Southern Butte, which has a road to the top for adventurous drivers.
The site has been used for nuclear waste disposal and storage beginning in the 1950s. The federal government has been cleaning it up following court battles and several agreements with Idaho in the 1990s amid concerns by state officials that Idaho was becoming the nation’s nuclear waste dump.
The Energy Department has already missed several deadlines under those agreements involving moving nuclear waste out of Idaho and has paid about $3.5 million in fines.
Idaho is also preventing research quantities of spent nuclear fuel from entering the state to be analyzed by Idaho National Laboratory scientists due to a missed deadline.
The federal agency also faces deadlines concerning waste stored in barrels, and the radioactive release and investigation could slow the process of moving that waste out of state.
The Energy Department has floated the idea of bringing in more nuclear waste from Hanford in Washington state for treatment at a $500 million facility at the Idaho site.
Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden on Thursday declined to comment on the situation.
Wendy Wilson of the Snake River Alliance, an Idaho-based nuclear watchdog group, said the incident is a reminder of why the state should not allow more nuclear waste to be shipped into Idaho for treatment.
“It sure demonstrates how much things can go wrong when you’re dealing with waste that hasn’t been fully assessed,” she said.
New study suggests living near an oil or gas well raises risk of cancer
The study looked at levels of carcinogens in the air around homes near oil and gas wells in Colorado.
NATASHA GEILING - think progress
APR 10, 2018, 12:40 PM
A new study from researchers at the Colorado School of Public Health suggests that living near oil and gas operations could result in exposure to dangerously high levels of carcinogens — and that current state regulations aren’t sufficient to protect public health.
According to the study, which looked at families living near oil and gas wells in Colorado’s Northern Front Range, the lifetime cancer risk of living within 500 feet of a well was eight times higher than the highest level of risk allowed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The study looked at 500 feet, specifically, because Colorado law requires that new oil and gas wells be built at least 500 feet from homes. According to FracTracker, there were more than 60,000 active oil and gas wells in Colorado as of May 2017. It’s unclear how many wells are within 500 feet of homes, though an analysis by Inside Energy found that since 2013, 220 new wells have been built within 500 feet of homes in Colorado’s Northern Front Range.
Living near oil and gas operations comes with a host of concerns, from nuisance noise to the danger of an explosion. But the Colorado School of Public Health Study -- published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology — looked specifically at air quality near oil and gas operations, and found high levels of carcinogenic compounds like benzene, which has been linked to certain kinds of cancers, like leukemia.
“The highest concentrations of hazardous air pollutants were measured in samples collected nearest to an oil and gas facility,” Lisa McKenzie, an assistant research professor in the Environmental and Occupational Health department at Colorado School of Public Health and the study’s lead author, said in a press statement. “For example, average benzene concentrations were 41 times higher in samples collected within 500 feet of an oil and gas facility than in samples collected more than a mile away.”
Colorado, which produced 9.1 million barrels of crude oil in 2016, requires oil and gas operations to be at least 500 feet from homes, and 1,000 feet from high-occupancy buildings like schools.
But the study from the Colorado School of Public Health suggests that those standards might not be strong enough to protect the public from potentially adverse health impacts associated with diminished air quality around oil and gas operations — a finding that could have serious policy implications for a state that has continued to see oil production expand as prices remain low.
“Our previous work shows that thousands of people along the Front Range of Colorado live closer than 500 feet from a well and related infrastructure and that the population living close to these facilities continues to grow,” MacKenzie said.
A previous study, published last year by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, did not find strong evidence linking proximity to oil and gas wells with health risks. Other studies, however, have linked living close to oil and gas operations with adverse health impacts.
One study, which looked at health impacts near fracking operations in Pennsylvania, found that 39 percent of those living less than 0.6 miles from a gas well reported upper-respiratory problems, compared with just 18 percent of those living more than 1.2 miles away.
Another study, which looked at more than 1.1 million births in Pennsylvania, found that babies born to mothers who lived within 0.6 miles of an oil or gas well weighed, on average, 1.38 ounces less than babies born to mothers who lived 1.8 miles or more from wells.
The distance that an oil or gas operation can be placed with respect to a home — known as a setback — has been the topic of political debate both in Colorado and in oil and gas producing states around the country.
In 2016, oil and gas operators spent more than $15 million to defeat a pair of ballot initiatives in Colorado that would have moved the setback limit from 500 feet to 2,500 feet.
And the setback isn’t an ironclad rule — homes can be built closer than 500 feet to an oil or gas well, and operators can ask for permission to drill within 500 feet of homes. In Greeley, Colorado, for instance, residents are currently fighting a proposal by a Denver-based oil and gas company to construct a well within 500 feet of a local school’s playground.
Across the country, there is little consistency from state to state with respect to setback requirements.
Los Angeles County, which is home to the largest urban oil field in the country, has a setback requirement of just 300 feet, though the Los Angeles City Council has considered expanding that to 2,500 feet. In Oklahoma, there is no statewide requirement for how far oil and gas wells need to be from homes and schools, leaving cities responsible for determining whether or not to restrict oil and gas wells from being drilled near homes.
In Texas, oil and gas wells must be at least 200 feet from a private residence, though oil companies are allowed to apply for an exemption if they want to drill closer. In Pennsylvania, oil and gas operations are required to be setback 500 feetfrom buildings, but again, oil companies are allowed to apply for exemptions.
Because setback requirements are often the result of political compromises rather than scientific understanding of the risks of living near oil and gas operations or historical modeling of potential dangers, a 2016 study that looked at the efficacy of setback requirements in Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Texas found that “current natural gas well setbacks in the Barnett Shale of Texas, the Marcellus Shale of Pennsylvania, and the Niobrara Shale of Colorado cannot be considered sufficient in all cases to protect public health and safety.”
According to the study, which looked at families living near oil and gas wells in Colorado’s Northern Front Range, the lifetime cancer risk of living within 500 feet of a well was eight times higher than the highest level of risk allowed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The study looked at 500 feet, specifically, because Colorado law requires that new oil and gas wells be built at least 500 feet from homes. According to FracTracker, there were more than 60,000 active oil and gas wells in Colorado as of May 2017. It’s unclear how many wells are within 500 feet of homes, though an analysis by Inside Energy found that since 2013, 220 new wells have been built within 500 feet of homes in Colorado’s Northern Front Range.
Living near oil and gas operations comes with a host of concerns, from nuisance noise to the danger of an explosion. But the Colorado School of Public Health Study -- published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology — looked specifically at air quality near oil and gas operations, and found high levels of carcinogenic compounds like benzene, which has been linked to certain kinds of cancers, like leukemia.
“The highest concentrations of hazardous air pollutants were measured in samples collected nearest to an oil and gas facility,” Lisa McKenzie, an assistant research professor in the Environmental and Occupational Health department at Colorado School of Public Health and the study’s lead author, said in a press statement. “For example, average benzene concentrations were 41 times higher in samples collected within 500 feet of an oil and gas facility than in samples collected more than a mile away.”
Colorado, which produced 9.1 million barrels of crude oil in 2016, requires oil and gas operations to be at least 500 feet from homes, and 1,000 feet from high-occupancy buildings like schools.
But the study from the Colorado School of Public Health suggests that those standards might not be strong enough to protect the public from potentially adverse health impacts associated with diminished air quality around oil and gas operations — a finding that could have serious policy implications for a state that has continued to see oil production expand as prices remain low.
“Our previous work shows that thousands of people along the Front Range of Colorado live closer than 500 feet from a well and related infrastructure and that the population living close to these facilities continues to grow,” MacKenzie said.
A previous study, published last year by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, did not find strong evidence linking proximity to oil and gas wells with health risks. Other studies, however, have linked living close to oil and gas operations with adverse health impacts.
One study, which looked at health impacts near fracking operations in Pennsylvania, found that 39 percent of those living less than 0.6 miles from a gas well reported upper-respiratory problems, compared with just 18 percent of those living more than 1.2 miles away.
Another study, which looked at more than 1.1 million births in Pennsylvania, found that babies born to mothers who lived within 0.6 miles of an oil or gas well weighed, on average, 1.38 ounces less than babies born to mothers who lived 1.8 miles or more from wells.
The distance that an oil or gas operation can be placed with respect to a home — known as a setback — has been the topic of political debate both in Colorado and in oil and gas producing states around the country.
In 2016, oil and gas operators spent more than $15 million to defeat a pair of ballot initiatives in Colorado that would have moved the setback limit from 500 feet to 2,500 feet.
And the setback isn’t an ironclad rule — homes can be built closer than 500 feet to an oil or gas well, and operators can ask for permission to drill within 500 feet of homes. In Greeley, Colorado, for instance, residents are currently fighting a proposal by a Denver-based oil and gas company to construct a well within 500 feet of a local school’s playground.
Across the country, there is little consistency from state to state with respect to setback requirements.
Los Angeles County, which is home to the largest urban oil field in the country, has a setback requirement of just 300 feet, though the Los Angeles City Council has considered expanding that to 2,500 feet. In Oklahoma, there is no statewide requirement for how far oil and gas wells need to be from homes and schools, leaving cities responsible for determining whether or not to restrict oil and gas wells from being drilled near homes.
In Texas, oil and gas wells must be at least 200 feet from a private residence, though oil companies are allowed to apply for an exemption if they want to drill closer. In Pennsylvania, oil and gas operations are required to be setback 500 feetfrom buildings, but again, oil companies are allowed to apply for exemptions.
Because setback requirements are often the result of political compromises rather than scientific understanding of the risks of living near oil and gas operations or historical modeling of potential dangers, a 2016 study that looked at the efficacy of setback requirements in Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Texas found that “current natural gas well setbacks in the Barnett Shale of Texas, the Marcellus Shale of Pennsylvania, and the Niobrara Shale of Colorado cannot be considered sufficient in all cases to protect public health and safety.”
the real threat to the environment!!!
The US had 3 billion-dollar climate and weather disasters in the first 3 months of 2018
Winter storms are getting more costly.
KYLA MANDEL - think progress
APR 10, 2018, 12:28 PM
US BILLION DOLLAR DISASTERS FROM 1980 TO 2018. CREDIT: NOAA.
This year has been “anything but ordinary” according to the latest data released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In the first three months of 2018, the United States has seen three climate and weather disasters each resulting in more than $1 billion in damages.
Two of the four nor’easters to hit the central and eastern U.S. during a one month period resulted in record snowfall and more than a billion dollars in losses each. Millions were without power and hundreds of flights were grounded. Multiple deaths were reported across Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
In mid-March, a deadly storm also hit the Gulf Coast with reports of dangerous winds, hail, and tornadoes. At least three people died and 20 tornadoes were reported in Alabama.
“It has been quite some time since the U.S. has experienced multiple, billion-dollar winter storm events,” said Adam Smith, the NOAA scientist who compiled the data.
All told, the past three years have been the most expensive on record since 1980 — with 2018 surpassed only by 2016 and 2017.
As Smith told ThinkProgress via email, not only is the number of billion-dollar winter storms experienced in the past few years increasing, but the cost of these winter storms are increasingly above average compared to the 1990s, when a series of damaging storms — including a 1997-98 ice storm that hit the northeast — crippled parts of the country.
While the link between tornadoes and climate change is still tenuous, scientists know that climate change is making nor’easters more powerful.
Nor’easters form when warm ocean air converges with cold terrestrial air. They are more powerful in the winter when the temperature difference is greatest. Climate change is making the temperature contrast even more pronounced, both by warming the Atlantic and by distorting the jet stream, allowing frigid Arctic air to reach further south. Rising temperatures in the Arctic are responsible for reshaping the jet stream.
Like with summertime hurricanes, winter nor’easters start in the ocean. And with warmer waters, these storms become more intense. According to Accuweather, this year’s series of devastating nor’easters spent more time forming over the ocean, giving them a chance to increase in strength by absorbing more of the warmer ocean temperatures.
Additionally, with higher sea levels come more devastating storm surges. Massachusetts, for example, was repeatedly hit with coastal flooding during this year’s winter storms.
As Smith noted, the cost of winter storms still “often pale in comparison” to the costs of hurricanes and drought experienced during the summer and fall seasons. As ThinkProgress reported last month, insurance companies have reported billions in damages from the 2017 hurricanes alone. According to annual reports recently filed by 15 major U.S. insurers, natural disasters in 2017 have so far cost the industry at least $14.5 billion.
While many in Texas and in Puerto Rico are still trying to recover from the devastating impact of last year’s storms, early forecasts expect the upcoming hurricane season to be another big one. According to meteorologists’ estimates, there’s a 60 percent chance of a major hurricane hitting the United States in the coming year.
Two of the four nor’easters to hit the central and eastern U.S. during a one month period resulted in record snowfall and more than a billion dollars in losses each. Millions were without power and hundreds of flights were grounded. Multiple deaths were reported across Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
In mid-March, a deadly storm also hit the Gulf Coast with reports of dangerous winds, hail, and tornadoes. At least three people died and 20 tornadoes were reported in Alabama.
“It has been quite some time since the U.S. has experienced multiple, billion-dollar winter storm events,” said Adam Smith, the NOAA scientist who compiled the data.
All told, the past three years have been the most expensive on record since 1980 — with 2018 surpassed only by 2016 and 2017.
As Smith told ThinkProgress via email, not only is the number of billion-dollar winter storms experienced in the past few years increasing, but the cost of these winter storms are increasingly above average compared to the 1990s, when a series of damaging storms — including a 1997-98 ice storm that hit the northeast — crippled parts of the country.
While the link between tornadoes and climate change is still tenuous, scientists know that climate change is making nor’easters more powerful.
Nor’easters form when warm ocean air converges with cold terrestrial air. They are more powerful in the winter when the temperature difference is greatest. Climate change is making the temperature contrast even more pronounced, both by warming the Atlantic and by distorting the jet stream, allowing frigid Arctic air to reach further south. Rising temperatures in the Arctic are responsible for reshaping the jet stream.
Like with summertime hurricanes, winter nor’easters start in the ocean. And with warmer waters, these storms become more intense. According to Accuweather, this year’s series of devastating nor’easters spent more time forming over the ocean, giving them a chance to increase in strength by absorbing more of the warmer ocean temperatures.
Additionally, with higher sea levels come more devastating storm surges. Massachusetts, for example, was repeatedly hit with coastal flooding during this year’s winter storms.
As Smith noted, the cost of winter storms still “often pale in comparison” to the costs of hurricanes and drought experienced during the summer and fall seasons. As ThinkProgress reported last month, insurance companies have reported billions in damages from the 2017 hurricanes alone. According to annual reports recently filed by 15 major U.S. insurers, natural disasters in 2017 have so far cost the industry at least $14.5 billion.
While many in Texas and in Puerto Rico are still trying to recover from the devastating impact of last year’s storms, early forecasts expect the upcoming hurricane season to be another big one. According to meteorologists’ estimates, there’s a 60 percent chance of a major hurricane hitting the United States in the coming year.
Pennsylvania Superior Court Rules That Fracking Natural Gas From a Neighboring Property Is Trespassing
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
By Kristina Marusic, Environmental Health News | Report
Last week the Pennsylvania Superior Court issued an opinion that could have major ramifications for the hydraulic fracturing industry in the state: It states a company trespassed on a family's land by extracting natural gas from beneath their property while operating a fracking well next door.
The Briggs family owns about 11 acres of land in Harford Township in Susquehanna County. When Southwestern Energy began operating an unconventional natural gas well on the adjacent property in 2011, the Briggs declined to lease their mineral rights to the company for development. In 2015, they filed a complaint that Southwestern was trespassing by extracting gas from beneath their property without a lease.
Southwestern didn't dispute they'd removed natural gas from beneath the Briggs' land, but argued they weren't trespassing due to the "rule of capture," which says the first person to "capture" a natural resource like groundwater, gas or oil owns it, regardless of property lines.
A lower court agreed with Southwestern and issued a summary judgment in their favor, but last week's Superior Court opinion overturns that decision, stating that the rule of capture shouldn't apply to unconventional natural gas drilling because of key differences in the method of extraction.
"Unlike oil and gas originating in a common reservoir, natural gas, when trapped in a shale formation, is non-migratory in nature," the opinion states. "Shale gas does not merely 'escape' to adjoining land absent the application of an external force. Instead, the shale must be fractured through the process of hydraulic fracturing; only then may the natural gas contained in the shale move freely through the 'artificially created channel[s].'"
Ultimately, the Court said, "In light of the distinctions between hydraulic fracturing and conventional gas drilling, we conclude that the rule of capture does not preclude liability for trespass due to hydraulic fracturing."
The case has now been remanded to a lower court, which will rule on whether the Briggs are entitled to compensation from Southwestern Energy for trespassing on their property by taking natural gas without a lease. In the meantime, the family has been given the opportunity to further develop their trespass claim, including getting estimates of how far the subsurface fractures and fracking fluid crossed boundary lines into the subsurface of their property.
"I think this potentially has big ramifications for both drilling companies and property owners," said David E. Hess, the director of policy and communications for Harrisburg-based government affairs law firm Crisci Associates and former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
"If on remand the case requires compensation of the adjacent landowner for trespass as defined in the court decision, I think this could open the door to hundreds of potential similar trespass lawsuits filed all across Pennsylvania where unconventional gas well drilling occurs."
Hess pointed out it's hard to find an area in Pennsylvania's shale patch where existing natural gas extraction leases don't come up against property belonging to other landowners who didn't sell their mineral rights. He also speculated that before this ruling changes the way hydraulic fracturing operates in the state, there would likely be an attempt to clarify the law.
"I think if people perceive this as a threat to the industry," Hess said, "we'll soon see legislative attempts to redefine the rule of capture in Pennsylvania."
Last week's Superior Court opinion differs from similar cases in other states.
Referencing a case in Texas where the fracking company won (Coastal Oil & Gas Corp. v. Garza Energy Trust), the Pennsylvania Superior Court noted in Monday's ruling, "we are not persuaded by the Coastal Oil Court's rationale that a landowner can adequately protect his interests by drilling his own well to prevent drainage to an adjoining property. Hydraulic fracturing is a costly and highly specialized endeavor, and the traditional recourse to 'go and do likewise' is not necessarily readily available for an average landowner."
The Court also noted that applying the rule of capture to hydraulic fracturing is problematic, since it would allow companies to extract natural gas from anywhere without the need for a lease as long as they could set up a fracking well on an adjacent property.
Hess noted that Pennsylvania's laws are unique, so what's happened with regard to the rule of capture and hydraulic fracturing in other states is unlikely to impact how things play out here.
"I think this is going to be an important decision," he said, "but I think people will be chewing on this opinion for a long time to fully understand what it means."
The Briggs family owns about 11 acres of land in Harford Township in Susquehanna County. When Southwestern Energy began operating an unconventional natural gas well on the adjacent property in 2011, the Briggs declined to lease their mineral rights to the company for development. In 2015, they filed a complaint that Southwestern was trespassing by extracting gas from beneath their property without a lease.
Southwestern didn't dispute they'd removed natural gas from beneath the Briggs' land, but argued they weren't trespassing due to the "rule of capture," which says the first person to "capture" a natural resource like groundwater, gas or oil owns it, regardless of property lines.
A lower court agreed with Southwestern and issued a summary judgment in their favor, but last week's Superior Court opinion overturns that decision, stating that the rule of capture shouldn't apply to unconventional natural gas drilling because of key differences in the method of extraction.
"Unlike oil and gas originating in a common reservoir, natural gas, when trapped in a shale formation, is non-migratory in nature," the opinion states. "Shale gas does not merely 'escape' to adjoining land absent the application of an external force. Instead, the shale must be fractured through the process of hydraulic fracturing; only then may the natural gas contained in the shale move freely through the 'artificially created channel[s].'"
Ultimately, the Court said, "In light of the distinctions between hydraulic fracturing and conventional gas drilling, we conclude that the rule of capture does not preclude liability for trespass due to hydraulic fracturing."
The case has now been remanded to a lower court, which will rule on whether the Briggs are entitled to compensation from Southwestern Energy for trespassing on their property by taking natural gas without a lease. In the meantime, the family has been given the opportunity to further develop their trespass claim, including getting estimates of how far the subsurface fractures and fracking fluid crossed boundary lines into the subsurface of their property.
"I think this potentially has big ramifications for both drilling companies and property owners," said David E. Hess, the director of policy and communications for Harrisburg-based government affairs law firm Crisci Associates and former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
"If on remand the case requires compensation of the adjacent landowner for trespass as defined in the court decision, I think this could open the door to hundreds of potential similar trespass lawsuits filed all across Pennsylvania where unconventional gas well drilling occurs."
Hess pointed out it's hard to find an area in Pennsylvania's shale patch where existing natural gas extraction leases don't come up against property belonging to other landowners who didn't sell their mineral rights. He also speculated that before this ruling changes the way hydraulic fracturing operates in the state, there would likely be an attempt to clarify the law.
"I think if people perceive this as a threat to the industry," Hess said, "we'll soon see legislative attempts to redefine the rule of capture in Pennsylvania."
Last week's Superior Court opinion differs from similar cases in other states.
Referencing a case in Texas where the fracking company won (Coastal Oil & Gas Corp. v. Garza Energy Trust), the Pennsylvania Superior Court noted in Monday's ruling, "we are not persuaded by the Coastal Oil Court's rationale that a landowner can adequately protect his interests by drilling his own well to prevent drainage to an adjoining property. Hydraulic fracturing is a costly and highly specialized endeavor, and the traditional recourse to 'go and do likewise' is not necessarily readily available for an average landowner."
The Court also noted that applying the rule of capture to hydraulic fracturing is problematic, since it would allow companies to extract natural gas from anywhere without the need for a lease as long as they could set up a fracking well on an adjacent property.
Hess noted that Pennsylvania's laws are unique, so what's happened with regard to the rule of capture and hydraulic fracturing in other states is unlikely to impact how things play out here.
"I think this is going to be an important decision," he said, "but I think people will be chewing on this opinion for a long time to fully understand what it means."
Environment worse for all races in segregated areas, research shows
Kendra Pierre-Louis - philly tribune
Apr 8, 2018
A half-century ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in Memphis, Tenn., on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. To get to the site, which is now the National Civil Rights Museum, you can cross through neighborhoods that are as much as 97 percent Black or as much as 93 percent white.
King preached that segregation was harmful not only to Black Americans but also to the nation as a whole. He died before the modern environmental movement, but a growing body of research around pollution and health shows that his belief about segregation hurting everyone extends to the environment as well.
Many American cities that are more racially divided have higher levels of pollution than less segregated cities. As a result, both whites and minorities who live in less integrated communities are exposed to higher levels of pollution than those who live in more integrated areas.
“The price that America must pay for the continued oppression of the Negro is the price of its own destruction,” King wrote in a 1962 address, “An Analysis of the Ethical Demands of Integration.” In it, he set out the political, ethical and spiritual reasons he believed that segregation was harmful for all. Some historians say his thoughts are applicable to understanding environmental issues today.
Researchers have known since at least the 1980s that Black and Hispanic communities have higher levels of pollution and its associated harmful health effects than white communities, even when controlling for income. Studies show that racial discrimination leads governments and companies to place polluting facilities, like landfills, power plants and truck routes, in Black and Hispanic communities.
Race is not the only factor in environmental inequality — poorer people experience more pollution than wealthier people. But for Blacks, race trumps income. Middle-class Blacks experience higher levels of pollution than low-income whites.
Over the past decade, more researchers have focused on the correlation between segregation and broad pollution exposure. Residents of a city like Memphis, they have found, are exposed to more pollution than those living in a city like Tampa, Florida, which is less racially divided.
“Even though white residents in segregated cities were better off than residents of color in those segregated cities, those white residents were worse off than their white counterparts in less segregated cities,” said Rachel Morello-Frosch, a professor of environmental health at the University of California, Berkeley.
Studies have found this relationship between segregation and air pollution, water pollution and even noise pollution. A large body of literature shows that high exposure to certain pollution can cause asthma, heart disease and many other negative health effects.
“It’s so much pollution that it led not only to very high exposure to minorities but it actually bounces back to at least some whites,” said Michael Ash, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and an author of a study that looked at the impact of segregation on pollution levels.
There are several ways to look at segregation: by isolation, defined as the degree to which ethnic groups are clustered together, or by dissimilarity, defined as how evenly two groups are spread across an area. By either method, pollution is higher in more segregated communities.
The average white person in metropolitan America lives in a neighborhood that is 75 percent white. The average Black person lives in a neighborhood that is 35 percent white and 45 percent Black. Those numbers have not changed much since 1940.
These studies do not prove that segregation leads to more pollution, or vice versa. But the outcomes showing that all people who live in racially divided communities are exposed to higher levels of pollution probably would not have surprised King, according to King scholars.
“King thinks that racism divides the people who are most vulnerable and most disempowered for economic and political reasons,” said Brandon M. Terry, an assistant professor of African and African-American studies at Harvard and an editor of a new book on King’s political theories.
“In a community where there are really stark racial tensions it’s going to be really difficult to organize a large enough group to fight back against exploitative industries or corporations that don’t want to do their fair share to take care of environmental hazards,” Terry said. “All those people have to do is invoke the idea of a racial interest and they can split those groups quite easily.”
Several studies have shown that unequal societies invest less in environmental policies, monitoring and research.
“In more segregated cities, communities of color and the poor might be less able to have civic engagement power and influence land-use decision making,” said Morello-Frosch. “They have less ability to resist” when decisions are made about polluting activities, she said.
King may have foreshadowed this in a 1963 speech in Detroit. “Segregation is a cancer in the body politic,” he said, “which must be removed before our democratic health can be realized.”
King preached that segregation was harmful not only to Black Americans but also to the nation as a whole. He died before the modern environmental movement, but a growing body of research around pollution and health shows that his belief about segregation hurting everyone extends to the environment as well.
Many American cities that are more racially divided have higher levels of pollution than less segregated cities. As a result, both whites and minorities who live in less integrated communities are exposed to higher levels of pollution than those who live in more integrated areas.
“The price that America must pay for the continued oppression of the Negro is the price of its own destruction,” King wrote in a 1962 address, “An Analysis of the Ethical Demands of Integration.” In it, he set out the political, ethical and spiritual reasons he believed that segregation was harmful for all. Some historians say his thoughts are applicable to understanding environmental issues today.
Researchers have known since at least the 1980s that Black and Hispanic communities have higher levels of pollution and its associated harmful health effects than white communities, even when controlling for income. Studies show that racial discrimination leads governments and companies to place polluting facilities, like landfills, power plants and truck routes, in Black and Hispanic communities.
Race is not the only factor in environmental inequality — poorer people experience more pollution than wealthier people. But for Blacks, race trumps income. Middle-class Blacks experience higher levels of pollution than low-income whites.
Over the past decade, more researchers have focused on the correlation between segregation and broad pollution exposure. Residents of a city like Memphis, they have found, are exposed to more pollution than those living in a city like Tampa, Florida, which is less racially divided.
“Even though white residents in segregated cities were better off than residents of color in those segregated cities, those white residents were worse off than their white counterparts in less segregated cities,” said Rachel Morello-Frosch, a professor of environmental health at the University of California, Berkeley.
Studies have found this relationship between segregation and air pollution, water pollution and even noise pollution. A large body of literature shows that high exposure to certain pollution can cause asthma, heart disease and many other negative health effects.
“It’s so much pollution that it led not only to very high exposure to minorities but it actually bounces back to at least some whites,” said Michael Ash, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and an author of a study that looked at the impact of segregation on pollution levels.
There are several ways to look at segregation: by isolation, defined as the degree to which ethnic groups are clustered together, or by dissimilarity, defined as how evenly two groups are spread across an area. By either method, pollution is higher in more segregated communities.
The average white person in metropolitan America lives in a neighborhood that is 75 percent white. The average Black person lives in a neighborhood that is 35 percent white and 45 percent Black. Those numbers have not changed much since 1940.
These studies do not prove that segregation leads to more pollution, or vice versa. But the outcomes showing that all people who live in racially divided communities are exposed to higher levels of pollution probably would not have surprised King, according to King scholars.
“King thinks that racism divides the people who are most vulnerable and most disempowered for economic and political reasons,” said Brandon M. Terry, an assistant professor of African and African-American studies at Harvard and an editor of a new book on King’s political theories.
“In a community where there are really stark racial tensions it’s going to be really difficult to organize a large enough group to fight back against exploitative industries or corporations that don’t want to do their fair share to take care of environmental hazards,” Terry said. “All those people have to do is invoke the idea of a racial interest and they can split those groups quite easily.”
Several studies have shown that unequal societies invest less in environmental policies, monitoring and research.
“In more segregated cities, communities of color and the poor might be less able to have civic engagement power and influence land-use decision making,” said Morello-Frosch. “They have less ability to resist” when decisions are made about polluting activities, she said.
King may have foreshadowed this in a 1963 speech in Detroit. “Segregation is a cancer in the body politic,” he said, “which must be removed before our democratic health can be realized.”
Five Western Pennsylvania Facilities Are Dumping Toxics Into Local Rivers -- Often Without Punishment
Saturday, April 07, 2018
By Kristina Marusic, Environmental Health News | Report
A new report from environmental advocacy group PennEnvironment found five industrial facilities in Western Pennsylvania violated their federal water permits a total of 153 times in a 21-month period.
All violations came from four corporations: Eastman Chemical Resins, Hussey Copper, Hatfields Ferry Power Station, and Max Environmental Technologies, Inc. (Max Environmental Technologies had two facilities on the list.)
The report found Pennsylvania had the second highest number of Clean Water Act infractions in the nation -- 633, which was second only to Texas, which had 938.
The group looked at federal data from January 1, 2016, through September 30, 2017.
"Decades after the Clean Water Act was signed into law, nearly 20,000 miles of rivers and streams in Pennsylvania are still considered unsafe for fishing and swimming," Stephanie Wein, the Clean Water Advocate at PennEnvironment Research and Policy Center, said in a statement.
"And instead of ratcheting pollution down to zero, facilities are still dumping chemicals and other pollutants into our waters beyond the legal limits set to protect health and the environment."
Violations are documented when facilities release toxic substances into publicly-owned waterways at greater levels than permitted by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The violations reported in Western Pennsylvania included substances like aluminum, oil and grease, nickel, copper, xylene, cadmium and ammonia nitrogen.
The Western Pennsylvania facilities included in the report discharge into the Monongahela River in Allegheny County, Sewickley Creek in Westmorland County, and Racoon Creek in Washington County.
Eastman Chemical Resins, Inc., located upriver from Pittsburgh along the Monongahela River in Allegheny County, exceeded its permitted pollution limits 72 times in 21 months. On 10 of those occasions, they poured more than 500 percent of their permitted limits for zinc, aluminum, nitrites, styrene, and xylene into the Monongahela River.
During the same time period, Hussey Copper in Allegheny County had 20 violations, and Hatfields Ferry Power Station in Fayette County had 21 violations. Max Environmental Technologies' Yukon Facility in Westmoreland County had 23 violations, while the same company's Washington County location violated their permit 17 times.
The report also notes that most of these violations go unpunished: Less than half of the facilities that were non-compliant across the US from 2011 to 2017 faced any EPA or state enforcement action. "Even when fines are issued," the report notes, "they are often too low to deter polluters. In 2017, the median fine issued by the EPA was lower than it had been in any year since 2011."
Across the US the report found industrial facilities released pollution exceeding levels permitted under the Clean Water Act more than 8,148 times.
This is only gearing up to get worse: In fiscal year 2019, the Trump administration plans to cut the EPA's budget for civil enforcement of environmental protection programs, including the Clean Water Act, by $30.4 million. The proposed budget for state grants to improve the permitting process and enforcement of the Clean Water Act is is lower than it's been in at least the previous seven years.
"As the Trump Administration moves to weaken our clean water protections and has proposed slashing US Environmental Protection Agency funding for enforcement, local leaders must stand up and say no," said Pittsburgh City Councilwoman-elect Erika Strassburger in a statement.
"We must use our platforms to speak out and ensure that our rivers are safe and clean now, and for generations to come."
All violations came from four corporations: Eastman Chemical Resins, Hussey Copper, Hatfields Ferry Power Station, and Max Environmental Technologies, Inc. (Max Environmental Technologies had two facilities on the list.)
The report found Pennsylvania had the second highest number of Clean Water Act infractions in the nation -- 633, which was second only to Texas, which had 938.
The group looked at federal data from January 1, 2016, through September 30, 2017.
"Decades after the Clean Water Act was signed into law, nearly 20,000 miles of rivers and streams in Pennsylvania are still considered unsafe for fishing and swimming," Stephanie Wein, the Clean Water Advocate at PennEnvironment Research and Policy Center, said in a statement.
"And instead of ratcheting pollution down to zero, facilities are still dumping chemicals and other pollutants into our waters beyond the legal limits set to protect health and the environment."
Violations are documented when facilities release toxic substances into publicly-owned waterways at greater levels than permitted by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The violations reported in Western Pennsylvania included substances like aluminum, oil and grease, nickel, copper, xylene, cadmium and ammonia nitrogen.
The Western Pennsylvania facilities included in the report discharge into the Monongahela River in Allegheny County, Sewickley Creek in Westmorland County, and Racoon Creek in Washington County.
Eastman Chemical Resins, Inc., located upriver from Pittsburgh along the Monongahela River in Allegheny County, exceeded its permitted pollution limits 72 times in 21 months. On 10 of those occasions, they poured more than 500 percent of their permitted limits for zinc, aluminum, nitrites, styrene, and xylene into the Monongahela River.
During the same time period, Hussey Copper in Allegheny County had 20 violations, and Hatfields Ferry Power Station in Fayette County had 21 violations. Max Environmental Technologies' Yukon Facility in Westmoreland County had 23 violations, while the same company's Washington County location violated their permit 17 times.
The report also notes that most of these violations go unpunished: Less than half of the facilities that were non-compliant across the US from 2011 to 2017 faced any EPA or state enforcement action. "Even when fines are issued," the report notes, "they are often too low to deter polluters. In 2017, the median fine issued by the EPA was lower than it had been in any year since 2011."
Across the US the report found industrial facilities released pollution exceeding levels permitted under the Clean Water Act more than 8,148 times.
This is only gearing up to get worse: In fiscal year 2019, the Trump administration plans to cut the EPA's budget for civil enforcement of environmental protection programs, including the Clean Water Act, by $30.4 million. The proposed budget for state grants to improve the permitting process and enforcement of the Clean Water Act is is lower than it's been in at least the previous seven years.
"As the Trump Administration moves to weaken our clean water protections and has proposed slashing US Environmental Protection Agency funding for enforcement, local leaders must stand up and say no," said Pittsburgh City Councilwoman-elect Erika Strassburger in a statement.
"We must use our platforms to speak out and ensure that our rivers are safe and clean now, and for generations to come."
Three Countries Show How Near a 100% Green Grid Is
The world invested more in solar energy than in coal, gas, and nuclear combined last year.
By Juan Cole / Informed Comment - alternet
April 6, 2018, 6:57 AM GMT
The aspiration for a 100% green electricity grid is no longer a dream. It is regularly being achieved in the real world for weeks or months on end. This development is absolutely crucial, since burning fossil fuels at the rate we are burning them is rapidly changing the climate in ways that seriously harm our quality of life.
In this past March, Portugal not only generated enough electricity from renewables to power the whole country for the whole month, it actually produced extra electricity this way. Portugal is constructing an underwater cable to export green electricity to Morocco, and hopes to strengthen the links of its grid to Spain and France. But the important thing is that Portugal, a country of over 10 million people, may soon regularly avoid burning fossil fuels for making electricity nationally. 100% renewables are becoming normal.
Portugal has an advantage in that some 30% of its electricity comes from hydro. Still, if it had not invested heavily in wind and in re-engineering its national grid, it would not have a chance of getting to 100% renewables. Portugal still has enormous untapped wind and solar potential, too, and the costs of both are falling.
Scotland, with over 5 million people, got 68.1 percent of its electricity from renewables last year. In 2016, the percentage of electricity from renewables was only 54%. Scotland’s renewables percentage is 45% higher than the United Kingdom as a whole. Scotland is now perhaps the world leader in renewables, and has innovated recently in offshore, in-the-sea wind turbines. Much of the advance in green energy, however, has been driven by onshore wind. Britain in general also greatly increased its renewables generation last year, to over 28%, a record.
Costa Rica, a country of nearly 5 million, ran on renewables for 300 days of the past year. It has hydro and geothermal as well as having put in a lot of wind turbines. Costa Rica has a great deal of untapped solar potential, as well. There does not seem much doubt that the country can generate its electricity completely from renewables in the near future (its stated goal is 2021).
When the news broke about the 300-day record, some critics pointed out that Costa Rica still burns a lot of petroleum to fuel cars and trucks. The electricity sector is only one generator of heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas. The transport sector is also key. Costa Rica’s leaders heard the criticism.
The incoming president of Costa Rica, Carlos Alvarado Quesada, says he is going to decarbonize the transportation sector, making electric cars and trucks standard in the country. (He is a prominent journalist and novelist, and cleverly represented decarbonization as a national achievement on the scale of the 1948 abolition of the army). India has made a similar pledge, and this goal appears to be shared by more and more environmentally conscious countries.
In general, the world invested more in solar energy than in coal, gas, and nuclear combined last year. The Portuguese, Scottish and Costa Rican advances are not even very dependent on solar, which suggests that a whole new wave of further renewables implementation is around the corner.
In this past March, Portugal not only generated enough electricity from renewables to power the whole country for the whole month, it actually produced extra electricity this way. Portugal is constructing an underwater cable to export green electricity to Morocco, and hopes to strengthen the links of its grid to Spain and France. But the important thing is that Portugal, a country of over 10 million people, may soon regularly avoid burning fossil fuels for making electricity nationally. 100% renewables are becoming normal.
Portugal has an advantage in that some 30% of its electricity comes from hydro. Still, if it had not invested heavily in wind and in re-engineering its national grid, it would not have a chance of getting to 100% renewables. Portugal still has enormous untapped wind and solar potential, too, and the costs of both are falling.
Scotland, with over 5 million people, got 68.1 percent of its electricity from renewables last year. In 2016, the percentage of electricity from renewables was only 54%. Scotland’s renewables percentage is 45% higher than the United Kingdom as a whole. Scotland is now perhaps the world leader in renewables, and has innovated recently in offshore, in-the-sea wind turbines. Much of the advance in green energy, however, has been driven by onshore wind. Britain in general also greatly increased its renewables generation last year, to over 28%, a record.
Costa Rica, a country of nearly 5 million, ran on renewables for 300 days of the past year. It has hydro and geothermal as well as having put in a lot of wind turbines. Costa Rica has a great deal of untapped solar potential, as well. There does not seem much doubt that the country can generate its electricity completely from renewables in the near future (its stated goal is 2021).
When the news broke about the 300-day record, some critics pointed out that Costa Rica still burns a lot of petroleum to fuel cars and trucks. The electricity sector is only one generator of heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas. The transport sector is also key. Costa Rica’s leaders heard the criticism.
The incoming president of Costa Rica, Carlos Alvarado Quesada, says he is going to decarbonize the transportation sector, making electric cars and trucks standard in the country. (He is a prominent journalist and novelist, and cleverly represented decarbonization as a national achievement on the scale of the 1948 abolition of the army). India has made a similar pledge, and this goal appears to be shared by more and more environmentally conscious countries.
In general, the world invested more in solar energy than in coal, gas, and nuclear combined last year. The Portuguese, Scottish and Costa Rican advances are not even very dependent on solar, which suggests that a whole new wave of further renewables implementation is around the corner.
Pee and pesticides: Thoreau's Walden Pond in trouble, warn scientists
Immortalised for its beauty by Henry David Thoreau, the Massachusetts pond is under threat from increased human activity and climate change according to a new study
Alison Flood
the guardian
Fri 6 Apr 2018 08.17 EDT
The water of Walden Pond, which Henry David Thoreau described in 1854 as “so transparent that the bottom can easily be discerned at the depth of 25 or 30 feet”, is no longer quite so clear according to a new study.
The Massachusetts pond was made famous in Walden, the transcendentalist writer’s account of the years he spent next to it in order to “live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life”. The pond has been greatly affected by human activity. Everything from forest fires in the 19th century, to wood-cutting operations, the use of pesticides in the 1960s and increasing tourism have affected the water quality, according to the paper. Over half of the phosphorus in the lake in the summer “may now be attributable to urine released by swimmers”, while a footpath to Thoreau’s cabin “caused large amounts of soil to wash into the lake”.
“In the century and a half since Thoreau and his transcendentalist colleagues wrote of humanity as somehow separate from nature, we’ve become a force of nature in our own right, powerful enough to change the chemistry and temperature of the atmosphere and the ecology of lakes and ponds worldwide,” Curt Stager, a natural sciences professor at Paul Smith’s college, New York, and one of the authors of the paper told CNET.
Stager and his fellow researchers analysed sediment from the pond to determine how the growth of algae has changed. Their research revealed that the major changes in the lake’s algae happened in the 20th century. The closure of a nearby landfill site, the stabilisation of the shoreline and the upgrading of septic facilities have mitigated the effects of humans on the lake since 2000, but the researchers warn that the pond has not returned to the state described by Thoreau.
Writing in the mid-19th century, Thoreau referred to the “crystalline purity” of the pond, to its “remarkable transparency” and its “pure and well-like character”. “Successive nations perchance have drank at, admired and fathomed it, and passed away, and still its water is green and pellucid as ever,” he wrote. “Perhaps on that spring morning when Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden Walden Pond was already in existence, and even then breaking up in a gentle spring rain accompanied with mist and a southerly wind, and covered with myriads of ducks and geese, which had not heard of the fall, when still such pure lakes sufficed them … It is a gem of the first water which Concord wears in her coronet.”
The researchers warn that the lake would likely be further affected by climate change. “The sediment darkening and high percentages of [algae] in the recent sediments of Walden Pond … indicate not only that the lake ecosystem is now quite different from that described by Thoreau but also that it may be primed for more severe reductions in water clarity in a warming future.”
Increasing temperatures in coming decades, for instance, could also increase recreational use of the lake in summer, add researchers, who suggest that a nearby swimming pool would “relieve pressure on the lake”.
“If we’re not careful, this beautiful, iconic lake … could easily become more like a murky, green stew of algae,” Stager told CNET.
The Massachusetts pond was made famous in Walden, the transcendentalist writer’s account of the years he spent next to it in order to “live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life”. The pond has been greatly affected by human activity. Everything from forest fires in the 19th century, to wood-cutting operations, the use of pesticides in the 1960s and increasing tourism have affected the water quality, according to the paper. Over half of the phosphorus in the lake in the summer “may now be attributable to urine released by swimmers”, while a footpath to Thoreau’s cabin “caused large amounts of soil to wash into the lake”.
“In the century and a half since Thoreau and his transcendentalist colleagues wrote of humanity as somehow separate from nature, we’ve become a force of nature in our own right, powerful enough to change the chemistry and temperature of the atmosphere and the ecology of lakes and ponds worldwide,” Curt Stager, a natural sciences professor at Paul Smith’s college, New York, and one of the authors of the paper told CNET.
Stager and his fellow researchers analysed sediment from the pond to determine how the growth of algae has changed. Their research revealed that the major changes in the lake’s algae happened in the 20th century. The closure of a nearby landfill site, the stabilisation of the shoreline and the upgrading of septic facilities have mitigated the effects of humans on the lake since 2000, but the researchers warn that the pond has not returned to the state described by Thoreau.
Writing in the mid-19th century, Thoreau referred to the “crystalline purity” of the pond, to its “remarkable transparency” and its “pure and well-like character”. “Successive nations perchance have drank at, admired and fathomed it, and passed away, and still its water is green and pellucid as ever,” he wrote. “Perhaps on that spring morning when Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden Walden Pond was already in existence, and even then breaking up in a gentle spring rain accompanied with mist and a southerly wind, and covered with myriads of ducks and geese, which had not heard of the fall, when still such pure lakes sufficed them … It is a gem of the first water which Concord wears in her coronet.”
The researchers warn that the lake would likely be further affected by climate change. “The sediment darkening and high percentages of [algae] in the recent sediments of Walden Pond … indicate not only that the lake ecosystem is now quite different from that described by Thoreau but also that it may be primed for more severe reductions in water clarity in a warming future.”
Increasing temperatures in coming decades, for instance, could also increase recreational use of the lake in summer, add researchers, who suggest that a nearby swimming pool would “relieve pressure on the lake”.
“If we’re not careful, this beautiful, iconic lake … could easily become more like a murky, green stew of algae,” Stager told CNET.
Pruitt Takes Clean Water Act Decisions Away from Regional EPA Offices
The changes outlined in a leaked memo reduce the regional offices’ leverage over projects like pipelines and mining that could damage streams and wetlands.
4/4/18
BY PHIL MCKENNA - ehn
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, who has been methodically weakening air pollution rules over the past year, is now taking control of key decision-making on the protection of streams and wetlands from the agency's regional administrators, an internal memo shows.
At issue is something known as "geographic jurisdiction," agency speak for which bodies of water do, or do not, fall under the Clean Water Act. Historically all waters, including major waterways, tributaries and wetlands were regulated under the Act. This broad jurisdiction was reaffirmed by the Waters of the U.S. rule in 2015.
In the memo, Pruitt notified EPA staff that he would now be in charge of such decision-making.
"Authority previously delegated to regional administrators to make final determinations of geographic jurisdiction shall be retained by the Administrator," Pruitt wrote to EPA employees on March 30. The memo was made public on Wednesday by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a non-profit organization of government employees.
Pruitt, who suspended the Waters of the U.S. rule (WOTUS) in January, has been clear about his plans to significantly reduce the scope of the Clean Water Act. The recent memo may be a first step toward that goal.
"If Scott Pruitt's record over last year is any indication, the reason he is pulling this decision making away from the local EPA staff is so he can hand over a lot of our natural resources to polluting interests, which has been his M.O. since day one," said Dalal Aboulhosn, deputy legislative director for the Sierra Club.
Regional EPA Offices Would Lose Leverage
Pruitt, who has also drawn scrutiny and calls for his resignation in recent weeks over alleged ethics violations, wrote in the memo that the change was part of an ongoing effort to "restore regulatory certainty and promote the rule of law."
"This memo explains that jurisdictional determinations that raise significant issues or technical difficulties should be handled in a consistent and uniform manner, particularly during the WOTUS rulemaking," EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said. "Regions will absolutely be involved in the process and work closely with the administrator's office when doing the work to assess jurisdiction for very select, and often rare, cases."
However, PEER warned that the new directive would reduce the influence of locally based EPA scientists and specialists in reviewing projects and making determinations on wetlands and other water-related issues.
Under the changes outlined in the memo, regional offices of the EPA would lose their ability to "veto" activities by the Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees permitting of oil pipelines and mine—projects that could adversely impact drinking water supplies, fisheries, wildlife habitat or recreation areas, PEER said.
"It takes away the one bullet that EPA had in its gun to stop a project," Kyla Bennett, PEER's New England director and a former EPA employee, said. "Any case, including coal, oil, power plants, nuclear, whatever it may be, anything that involves significant impact to wetlands and waters, this could have been used, and now it's been relocated to someone who will never use it."
Such veto power by EPA officials has been used 13 times since it was first allowed under the Clean Water Act in 1970, according to the EPA. The most recent case was in 2010, when the agency revoked an Army Corps permit for one of the nation's largest mountaintop removal projects, a coal mine in West Virginia that agency officials said would jeopardize the health of surrounding communities and the water on which they depend.
Though rarely used, the veto was a powerful stick that EPA officials used to coax the Army Corps to deny or revise permits, Bennett said.
Another Worry: Future of the Clean Water Act
Because the veto was so rarely exercised, the transfer of its power to Pruitt may not be that significant, Pat Parenteau an environmental law professor at Vermont Law School, said.
When viewed against the backdrop of a larger, ongoing effort to significantly reduce the power of the Clean Water Act, the consolidation of decision-making power outlined in the memo is, however, cause for concern, he said.
"What Pruitt is ultimately trying to do is significantly reduce the scope of the Clean Water Act," he said. "It all has to do with the geographic reach. We don't know how far back Pruitt wants to cut that."
At issue is something known as "geographic jurisdiction," agency speak for which bodies of water do, or do not, fall under the Clean Water Act. Historically all waters, including major waterways, tributaries and wetlands were regulated under the Act. This broad jurisdiction was reaffirmed by the Waters of the U.S. rule in 2015.
In the memo, Pruitt notified EPA staff that he would now be in charge of such decision-making.
"Authority previously delegated to regional administrators to make final determinations of geographic jurisdiction shall be retained by the Administrator," Pruitt wrote to EPA employees on March 30. The memo was made public on Wednesday by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a non-profit organization of government employees.
Pruitt, who suspended the Waters of the U.S. rule (WOTUS) in January, has been clear about his plans to significantly reduce the scope of the Clean Water Act. The recent memo may be a first step toward that goal.
"If Scott Pruitt's record over last year is any indication, the reason he is pulling this decision making away from the local EPA staff is so he can hand over a lot of our natural resources to polluting interests, which has been his M.O. since day one," said Dalal Aboulhosn, deputy legislative director for the Sierra Club.
Regional EPA Offices Would Lose Leverage
Pruitt, who has also drawn scrutiny and calls for his resignation in recent weeks over alleged ethics violations, wrote in the memo that the change was part of an ongoing effort to "restore regulatory certainty and promote the rule of law."
"This memo explains that jurisdictional determinations that raise significant issues or technical difficulties should be handled in a consistent and uniform manner, particularly during the WOTUS rulemaking," EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said. "Regions will absolutely be involved in the process and work closely with the administrator's office when doing the work to assess jurisdiction for very select, and often rare, cases."
However, PEER warned that the new directive would reduce the influence of locally based EPA scientists and specialists in reviewing projects and making determinations on wetlands and other water-related issues.
Under the changes outlined in the memo, regional offices of the EPA would lose their ability to "veto" activities by the Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees permitting of oil pipelines and mine—projects that could adversely impact drinking water supplies, fisheries, wildlife habitat or recreation areas, PEER said.
"It takes away the one bullet that EPA had in its gun to stop a project," Kyla Bennett, PEER's New England director and a former EPA employee, said. "Any case, including coal, oil, power plants, nuclear, whatever it may be, anything that involves significant impact to wetlands and waters, this could have been used, and now it's been relocated to someone who will never use it."
Such veto power by EPA officials has been used 13 times since it was first allowed under the Clean Water Act in 1970, according to the EPA. The most recent case was in 2010, when the agency revoked an Army Corps permit for one of the nation's largest mountaintop removal projects, a coal mine in West Virginia that agency officials said would jeopardize the health of surrounding communities and the water on which they depend.
Though rarely used, the veto was a powerful stick that EPA officials used to coax the Army Corps to deny or revise permits, Bennett said.
Another Worry: Future of the Clean Water Act
Because the veto was so rarely exercised, the transfer of its power to Pruitt may not be that significant, Pat Parenteau an environmental law professor at Vermont Law School, said.
When viewed against the backdrop of a larger, ongoing effort to significantly reduce the power of the Clean Water Act, the consolidation of decision-making power outlined in the memo is, however, cause for concern, he said.
"What Pruitt is ultimately trying to do is significantly reduce the scope of the Clean Water Act," he said. "It all has to do with the geographic reach. We don't know how far back Pruitt wants to cut that."
voters elected repubs, now their water is stolen!!!
Despite Overwhelming Opposition from Residents, Michigan Permits Nestlé to Draw More Groundwater for Bottling
Out of 81,862 comments filed, only 75 were reportedly in favor of granting the permit.
By Lorraine Chow / EcoWatch - alternet
April 3, 2018, 11:57 PM GMT
The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) has granted Nestlé Waters a permit to increase groundwater withdrawal from 250 gallons per minute to 400 gallons per minute from its White Pine Springs well for the purpose of bottling drinking water.
The approval comes despite near universal opposition from residents, who cite the Swiss food and beverage giant's nominal $200-a-year fee to pump water from its wells. The fee will not change with the new permit.
Additionally, Nestlé's White Pine Springs well near Evart, Michigan happens to lie approximately 120 miles from the lead-poisoned city of Flint. Bottled water companies have drawn outrage from many communities for privatizing their public water supply in the face of Flint's years-long drinking water crisis, where some residents have been billed hundreds of dollars for water they cannot drink.
"Michiganders know that no private company should be able to generate profits by undermining our state's precious natural resources, which is why an unprecedented number of people spoke up to oppose this permit," State Sen. Rebekah Warren, D-Ann Arbor, who serves on the Senate's Natural Resources Committee, told Detroit Free Press. "Out of 81,862 comments filed by the people of our state, only 75 of them were in favor of the permit."
MDEQ said the application met the requirements under the Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act.
"The scope and detail of the department's review of the Nestlé permit application represents the most extensive analysis of any water withdrawal in Michigan history," said C. Heidi Grether, director of MDEQ. "We are hopeful that whether residents agree with the Nestlé permitting decision or not, they will acknowledge and respect the work that MDEQ staff did to thoroughly and conscientiously apply the law in reviewing the permit."
"In full transparency, the majority of the public comments received were in opposition of the permit, but most of them related to issues of public policy which are not, and should not be, part of an administrative permit decision. We cannot base our decisions on public opinion because our department is required to follow the rule of law when making determinations," Grether added.
Nestlé now must prepare a monitoring plan consistent with the requirements of the permit and submit it to MDEQ for consideration before it is authorized to take more water.
The Michigan League of Conservation Voters criticized the MDEQ's decision.
The group tweeted, "Sadly, the DEQ chose to give the green light to Nestlé to continue pumping our water—hanging a 'For Sale' sign on Michigan's water resources at a time when communities across our state lack safe, affordable access to drinking water."
"Folks are struggling to get clean water in Detroit and Flint and having a lot of issues with PFAS contamination," Nicholas Occhipinti, the organization's government affairs director told Michigan Radio. "It's just a hard, hard road blow to take for Michiganders to see water pumped out of the watershed for other states."
The approval comes despite near universal opposition from residents, who cite the Swiss food and beverage giant's nominal $200-a-year fee to pump water from its wells. The fee will not change with the new permit.
Additionally, Nestlé's White Pine Springs well near Evart, Michigan happens to lie approximately 120 miles from the lead-poisoned city of Flint. Bottled water companies have drawn outrage from many communities for privatizing their public water supply in the face of Flint's years-long drinking water crisis, where some residents have been billed hundreds of dollars for water they cannot drink.
"Michiganders know that no private company should be able to generate profits by undermining our state's precious natural resources, which is why an unprecedented number of people spoke up to oppose this permit," State Sen. Rebekah Warren, D-Ann Arbor, who serves on the Senate's Natural Resources Committee, told Detroit Free Press. "Out of 81,862 comments filed by the people of our state, only 75 of them were in favor of the permit."
MDEQ said the application met the requirements under the Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act.
"The scope and detail of the department's review of the Nestlé permit application represents the most extensive analysis of any water withdrawal in Michigan history," said C. Heidi Grether, director of MDEQ. "We are hopeful that whether residents agree with the Nestlé permitting decision or not, they will acknowledge and respect the work that MDEQ staff did to thoroughly and conscientiously apply the law in reviewing the permit."
"In full transparency, the majority of the public comments received were in opposition of the permit, but most of them related to issues of public policy which are not, and should not be, part of an administrative permit decision. We cannot base our decisions on public opinion because our department is required to follow the rule of law when making determinations," Grether added.
Nestlé now must prepare a monitoring plan consistent with the requirements of the permit and submit it to MDEQ for consideration before it is authorized to take more water.
The Michigan League of Conservation Voters criticized the MDEQ's decision.
The group tweeted, "Sadly, the DEQ chose to give the green light to Nestlé to continue pumping our water—hanging a 'For Sale' sign on Michigan's water resources at a time when communities across our state lack safe, affordable access to drinking water."
"Folks are struggling to get clean water in Detroit and Flint and having a lot of issues with PFAS contamination," Nicholas Occhipinti, the organization's government affairs director told Michigan Radio. "It's just a hard, hard road blow to take for Michiganders to see water pumped out of the watershed for other states."
Commentary: Coca-Cola’s “war” with the public health community
An inside look at Coca-Cola's manipulation masquerading as science
Gary Ruskin - ehn
4/3/18
In 2016, I obtained, via a public records request, an internal memorandum of The Coca-Cola Company proposing to launch a new scientific organization called the Global Energy Balance Network.
The premise for the network was to promote the idea that exercise, much more than dietary change, is the solution to the global obesity epidemic.
The organization collapsed after it was exposed as a front group by The New York Times and the Associated Press. But Coke's memo on the group lives on as worthy of attention and study.
My colleagues and I recently wrote about it for the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, presenting Coca-Cola's unvarnished thoughts on the "public health community" and how to deal with issues surrounding obesity and responsibility for this public health crisis.
There is much for citizens and public health professionals to learn from the Coke memo as it lays bare how the company aims to control the conversation over public policy and consumer choices pertaining to obesity.
The memo was sent by Rhona Applebaum, then Coke's chief science and health officer. It was sent amid increasing evidence that sugary sodas are in part responsible for the global obesity epidemic, as well as its death toll.
I'm going to quote often from the memo, to let Coke's words speak for themselves: "There is growing war between the public health community and private industry over how to reduce obesity." The "most extreme public health experts have gained traction with the media, with many policy makers, and with an increasing proportion of the general public." Such experts "have gained national and international exposure" by casting food companies "as the villain, even likening them to tobacco companies."
The memo emphasizes the need to "to counter the voices touting extreme solutions to the obesity problem" such as "food is tobacco."
The Global Energy Balance Network would address this problem by recruiting hundreds of scientists into a group that could act as a "credible honest broker in this battle" and "a reliable and trusted source for a balanced, science based view" – all while being covertly controlled by Coca-Cola.
The group would "promote collaboration [between industry and government] rather than regulation as the strategy most likely to be effective in reducing obesity."
And while the group was intended to look science-based, it was actually "a multi-year advocacy 'campaign' that serves as a counterforce to one-sided, regulation-driven proponents" to "change the conversation" and to "promote best practices that are effective in terms of both policy and profit," according to the memo.
This work is conceived of as "akin to a political campaign" as well as an effort to propel Coke's academic allies into power by "actively nominat[ing] GEBN scholars for key government panels".
One of the group's proposed activities was to use supposedly independent scientists in "educating journalists." The memo recounts that in 2012 the University of Colorado "hosted a 3 day educational event for 20 of the leading health & wellness journalist[s] in the country" which Coca-Cola believed was "an enormous success" and "needs to be scaled globally on an annual basis."
This dovetails with other documents that describe how Coca-Cola secretly funded such conferences for medical and science journalists.
The worldview presented in the Coke memo is further explained in an email between two former Coke executives, which we wrote about for Critical Public Health. That paper explains how Coke and the food industry manipulate external organizations like pawns on a grand political chessboard to defeat public health forces, "by co-opting academic contacts, infiltrating major scientific bodies and medical associations, and influencing the generation of scientific evidence."
These documents are useful because they inform us about the context of some public health work and how it might be more effective. They remind us that sometimes corporations see themselves at "war" with the "public health community."
The documents make clear that Coca-Cola viewed its new front group and the group's scientists as crucial to the deployment of effective messaging on obesity because these scientists would be more credible than corporate spokespeople. Coca-Cola was deeply concerned about analogizing its products to tobacco. And Coca-Cola viewed promoting alternate views of science – in this case, trumpeting exercise rather than drinking less soda -- as the "most effective weapon" in the "war" to defend its profits.
Perhaps more than anything else, these documents suggest the perils of working collaboratively with companies that harm public health, because they may intend such collaborations as a form of manipulation, to detract from the effectiveness of public health initiatives, as well as a shield against legislation, regulation and accountability.
The premise for the network was to promote the idea that exercise, much more than dietary change, is the solution to the global obesity epidemic.
The organization collapsed after it was exposed as a front group by The New York Times and the Associated Press. But Coke's memo on the group lives on as worthy of attention and study.
My colleagues and I recently wrote about it for the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, presenting Coca-Cola's unvarnished thoughts on the "public health community" and how to deal with issues surrounding obesity and responsibility for this public health crisis.
There is much for citizens and public health professionals to learn from the Coke memo as it lays bare how the company aims to control the conversation over public policy and consumer choices pertaining to obesity.
The memo was sent by Rhona Applebaum, then Coke's chief science and health officer. It was sent amid increasing evidence that sugary sodas are in part responsible for the global obesity epidemic, as well as its death toll.
I'm going to quote often from the memo, to let Coke's words speak for themselves: "There is growing war between the public health community and private industry over how to reduce obesity." The "most extreme public health experts have gained traction with the media, with many policy makers, and with an increasing proportion of the general public." Such experts "have gained national and international exposure" by casting food companies "as the villain, even likening them to tobacco companies."
The memo emphasizes the need to "to counter the voices touting extreme solutions to the obesity problem" such as "food is tobacco."
The Global Energy Balance Network would address this problem by recruiting hundreds of scientists into a group that could act as a "credible honest broker in this battle" and "a reliable and trusted source for a balanced, science based view" – all while being covertly controlled by Coca-Cola.
The group would "promote collaboration [between industry and government] rather than regulation as the strategy most likely to be effective in reducing obesity."
And while the group was intended to look science-based, it was actually "a multi-year advocacy 'campaign' that serves as a counterforce to one-sided, regulation-driven proponents" to "change the conversation" and to "promote best practices that are effective in terms of both policy and profit," according to the memo.
This work is conceived of as "akin to a political campaign" as well as an effort to propel Coke's academic allies into power by "actively nominat[ing] GEBN scholars for key government panels".
One of the group's proposed activities was to use supposedly independent scientists in "educating journalists." The memo recounts that in 2012 the University of Colorado "hosted a 3 day educational event for 20 of the leading health & wellness journalist[s] in the country" which Coca-Cola believed was "an enormous success" and "needs to be scaled globally on an annual basis."
This dovetails with other documents that describe how Coca-Cola secretly funded such conferences for medical and science journalists.
The worldview presented in the Coke memo is further explained in an email between two former Coke executives, which we wrote about for Critical Public Health. That paper explains how Coke and the food industry manipulate external organizations like pawns on a grand political chessboard to defeat public health forces, "by co-opting academic contacts, infiltrating major scientific bodies and medical associations, and influencing the generation of scientific evidence."
These documents are useful because they inform us about the context of some public health work and how it might be more effective. They remind us that sometimes corporations see themselves at "war" with the "public health community."
The documents make clear that Coca-Cola viewed its new front group and the group's scientists as crucial to the deployment of effective messaging on obesity because these scientists would be more credible than corporate spokespeople. Coca-Cola was deeply concerned about analogizing its products to tobacco. And Coca-Cola viewed promoting alternate views of science – in this case, trumpeting exercise rather than drinking less soda -- as the "most effective weapon" in the "war" to defend its profits.
Perhaps more than anything else, these documents suggest the perils of working collaboratively with companies that harm public health, because they may intend such collaborations as a form of manipulation, to detract from the effectiveness of public health initiatives, as well as a shield against legislation, regulation and accountability.
environment funnies
