pollution

Hazardous Science and Regulation at the EPA

April 28, 2014 Evaggelos Vallianatos, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Environment, pollution

I worked for the U.S. EPA from 1979 to 2004, spending most of my time with the program dealing with pesticides. It did not take me long to figure out that the EPA was reeling from the scandal of the Industrial Bio-test Laboratory, IBT. People would whisper in the corridors about fake lab studies. They would wonder aloud about the safety of our food. IBT was the country's largest testing lab from the 1950s to 1970s. Taking advantage of the legal requirements for animal studies for the licensing of drugs and chemicals, IBT became a huge national business, testing about 40 percent of America's drugs, pesticides and other chemicals. Animal studies, morally repugnant in many cases, when done honestly, reveal the danger or potential for harm of the substances fed the experimental animals -- mice, rats, rabbits and dogs. If the animal develops cancer from eating a farm spray in its food, watch out: Humans would probably become cancer victims from eating food treated with that chemical. Government regulators are crippled and blind without that picture or with a fake picture. Their decisions are then no better than the actions of witch doctors or executioners. The entire society becomes the real guinea pig for the perpetual stream of toxins of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

Indigenous Protesters Occupy Peru’s Biggest Amazon Oil Field

April 26, 2014 Dan Collyns, www.theguardian.com Resist! Indigenous Rights, Oil, pollution

Around 500 Achuar indigenous protesters have occupied Peru’s biggest oil field in the Amazon rainforest near Ecuador to demand the clean-up of decades of contamination from spilled crude oil. The oilfield operator, Argentine Pluspetrol, said output had fallen by 70% since the protesters occupied its facilities on Monday – a production drop of around 11,000 barrels per day. Native communities have taken control of a thermoelectric plant, oil tanks and key roads in the Amazonian region of Loreto, where Pluspetrol operates block 1-AB, the company said on Thursday. Protest leader, Carlos Sandi, told the Guardian that Achuar communities were being “silently poisoned” because the company Pluspetrol has not complied with a 2006 agreement to clean up pollution dating back four decades in oil block 1-AB. “Almost 80% of our population are sick due to the presence of lead and cadmium in our food and water form the oil contamination,” said Sandi, president of FECONACO, the federation of native communities in the Corrientes River.

How A Small Town Defeated Toxic Corporate Dumping

April 25, 2014 Democracy Now, www.democracynow.org Resist! Food and Agriculture, pollution

We spend the rest of the hour looking at a fascinating story of a small town ravaged by industrial pollution, a town suffering from astronomical rates of childhood cancers scientifically linked to local air and water pollution, a town that ultimately came together, fought back and won one of the largest legal settlements in the annals of toxic dumping. That town is Toms River in New Jersey, and it’s the focus of a new book that has just won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. In Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation, environmental reporter Dan Fagin recounts the 60-year saga of rampant pollution and inadequate oversight that makes Toms River a cautionary example for industrial towns, not just in the United States, but also in other countries like China. Two of the Toms River residents who share their ordeal in the book are Linda Gillick and her son Michael, whose fast-growing tumors decimated his body. This is Linda, followed by Michael, speaking to the show Earth Focus.

Oil Tanker Rail Disasters Inevitable Experts Testify

April 24, 2014 Curtis Tate, www.mcclatchydc.com Educate! Energy, Oil and Gas, pollution

None of the tank cars currently in service carrying Bakken crude oil is adequate for carrying that product, a rail industry representative testified Tuesday, but until new federal regulations are completed, the use of inadequate cars will continue. That includes tank cars built to higher standards adopted by the industry since 2011. Such cars have failed in at least two recent derailments. Yet in the absence of the new rules, crude oil shippers and refiners continue to rely on them to meet the demands of North America’s energy resurgence. In testimony opening a two-day hearing at the National Transportation Safety Board, rail companies and rail car makers agreed that crude-by-rail shipments would continue to grow. “We don’t see crude oil transportation slowing down or stopping anytime soon,” testified Robert Fronczak, assistant vice president for environment and hazardous materials at the Association of American Railroads, an industry group.

National Campaign Launched to Clean Up ‘America’s Secret Fukushima’

April 23, 2014 Clean Up The Mines, www.cleanupthemines.org Organize! Indigenous Rights, pollution, Radiation

Organizations from throughout the United States held an Earth Day ceremony to launch a nation-wide campaign to clean up hazardous abandoned uranium mines (AUMs). Clean Up The Mines! calls for effective and complete eradication of the contamination caused by the estimated 10,000 abandoned uranium mines that are silently poisoning extensive areas of the U.S. Clean Up The Mines! volunteers from across the country toured abandoned mines this week. They donned hazardous materials suits at Mount Rushmore and carried a large banner to raise awareness of the 169 AUMs in the Southwestern Black Hills near Edgemont. There are another 103 AUMS in the Northwest corner near Buffalo. The Northern Great Plains Region of Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota contains more than 3,000 AUMs. In Riley Pass, one of the largest AUMs in South Dakota, the deadly effect of the mine was apparent. As the group approached the bluff, the tree line ended abruptly at the edge of the mine. At Ludlow, the group measured radioactivity with a Geiger counter at an elementary school playground that was 44 microrems/hour.

Top Manager At Fukushima: Radioactive Water Out Of Control

April 22, 2014 Yuka Obayashi, www.japantimes.co.jp Educate! Nuclear Energy, pollution, Radiation

The manager of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has admitted to embarrassment that repeated efforts have failed to bring under control the problem of radioactive water, eight months after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told the world the matter had been resolved. Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant’s operator, has been fighting a daily battle against contaminated water since Fukushima No. 1 was wrecked by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Abe’s government pledged half a billion dollars last year to tackle the issue, but progress has been limited. “It’s embarrassing to admit, but there are certain parts of the site where we don’t have full control,” Akira Ono told reporters touring the plant last week. He was referring to the latest blunder at the plant: channeling contaminated water into the wrong building. Ono also acknowledged that many difficulties may have been rooted in Tepco’s focus on speed since the 2011 disaster.

Coal Ash Unmonitored In Fill Sites Across North Carolina

April 22, 2014 Bruce Henderson, www.charlotteobserver.com Educate! Coal, pollution

Coal ash, infamous for its recent splash into the Dan River, also lies along Charlotte’s outerbelt. It’s next to a Huntersville car dealership and under a Lowe’s store in Mooresville. The ash was used to level ground and fill gullies. Duke Energy once sold it for 50 cents to $1 a ton, disposing of waste – and a liability – it would otherwise have had to store in ponds or landfills. At least 1.8 million cubic yards of dry ash are buried in nearly two dozen places around Charlotte, not counting power plants. That’s enough to cover 1,100 acres a foot deep in ash. An unknown amount of wet ash, removed from ponds and regulated separately, was also used as fill material. The state can’t locate records before 2011 that would show where or how large those sites are. State standards are so minimal that even property owners, much less their neighbors, might not know what’s underfoot. And while ash has a known ability to contaminate groundwater, fill sites are rarely tested.

BP: Four Years On, No Restoration in Sight

April 22, 2014 Dahr Jamail, www.truth-out.org Educate! BP, Environment, Oil, pollution

BP's oil continues to take its toll on other areas of the Louisiana marsh, where people living in low-lying coastal communities are having to contemplate moving, hence abandoning their culture and way of life, due to the erosion of oiled marsh coupled with rising seas from climate change. Despite all of this ongoing evidence of BP's deleterious impact on the Gulf of Mexico region, President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency has decided to allow the oil giant back into Gulf waters to search for more oil leases. The impact of the BP disaster is not going away: Crude oil persists in the environment for, in some cases, decades. A full 25 years after the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska, the ongoing presence of relatively fresh oil in Prince William Sound continues to surprise scientists. Migratory and reproductive cycles of regional wildlife continue to be severely affected, and at least one species of sea turtles in the area is now nearing extinction, according to a recent report by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). Migratory patterns of turtles, as well as other species, were impacted by the massive amount of oil injected into the region.

Global Climate Convergence Activists Protest BP Lake Michigan Spill

April 19, 2014 Jackie Spreadbury, www.globalclimateconvergence.org Resist! Oil, pollution, Protest

Monday afternoon, an estimated 500 gallons of oil from the tar sands in Alberta, Canada, leaked into Lake Michigan, poisoning the source of drinking water for 7 million people in and around Chicago. The BP Refinery on the lake’s shore has admitted responsibility, but has yet to take sufficient action to ensure the safety of our drinking water and ecosystem. This serves as further evidence that the reliance on fossil fuels in all its forms has serious and long term effects on the health of the planet and the people who inhabit. This is doubly true in the case of the processing or tar sands that goes on at BP’s Whiting facility. This most current spill comes after years of legal challenges to the Whiting plant that is one of the largest sources of industrial pollution in the nation.

It’s Not Just Keystone–Five Dirty Pipelines You’ve Never Heard Of

April 3, 2014 Tara Lohan, www.billmoyers.com Educate! Environment, Oil and Gas, Pipeline, pollution

By now most people have heard of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline and the fact that, after five years of deliberation and protest, its fate still hangs in the balance (the southern portion is already built, but the northern portion that crosses the Canadian-US border awaits a permitting decision). The issue has galvanized the environmental movement, inspired dozens of high-profile demonstrations and captured media attention. But while the impacts from Keystone XL are significant, it’s not the only tar sands pipeline project in town. Usually pipelines don’t draw much attention unless something goes wrong — like when a suburban Mayflower, Ark., neighborhood was flooded with heavy crude from the Alberta tar sands last May courtesy of a busted Exxon pipeline. But increasingly, communities aren’t waiting until catastrophe strikes to voice their opposition to new or expanded pipeline projects — partly because of environmental and public health risks from spills and partly out of concern for increasing the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.

Instead Of Cleaning Up, Duke Energy Lawyers Up

April 3, 2014 Lauren McCauley, www.commondreams.org Resist! Energy, Environment, pollution

Duke Energy is attempting to block citizens' groups from taking part in regulatory action against the company's 14 polluting coal ash dumps across North Carolina. According to the Associated Press, Duke filed a motion on Monday to remove the citizens’ groups from the case, arguing that the groups ought to be “prohibited from expanding this enforcement action beyond the claims asserted and relief sought by” the state environmental agency. The energy giant is hoping to block local and environmental organizations from having "any role in the case," leaving litigation and enforcement to state regulators—who have a long history of giving preferential treatment to Duke. "Duke fears that we would seek to strongly enforce the law against Duke's illegal coal ash pollution and dangerous storage on North Carolina rivers," said Frank Holleman, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, in an interview with Common Dreams. "Well, they're right. That's exactly what we will do and what we have done."

Duke Energy Coal Ash Spill Pollutes River and Threatens Drinking Water

February 5, 2014 Donna Lisenwww.ecowatch.com Educate! Food and Agriculture, pollution

Equally disturbing is that neither Duke Energy nor any of the government regulators issued a press release and informed the public about this massive spill until 24 hours after it was discovered. If a freight train full of this toxic waste had derailed, there would have been immediate notification and quick news coverage in order to inform and protect the public. The delay in reporting this spill is inexcusable. A security guard who noticed unusually low water in the ash pond at the shuttered coal plant led to the discovery of the spill. This means most of the water had escaped and contaminated the river before anyone at Duke noticed. Upon investigation, Duke discovered that a 48-inch stormwater pipe underneath the unlined 27-acre, 155-million-gallon ash pond broke Sunday afternoon and drained tens of thousands of tons of coal ash and water into the Dan River. How could they have missed such a large volume of waste spewing out of their ash pond? Especially since the town of Danville, VA withdraws drinking water just 6 miles downstream.

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