The World’s Dirtiest Power Plants

Virtually all power plants burning fossil fuels release insane amounts of pollution into the atmosphere – but some are definitely dirtier than others. And if you live in the Southeast United States, you’re practically surrounded by dozens of the world’s biggest carbon offenders.

Forbes has a new interactive map that lets you see where the world’s most polluting power plants are located, and learn all kinds of startling facts about them.

For example, France is the only G-7 country with no power plants among the world’s dirtiest – because they rely on nuclear power. Meanwhile, Taiwan’s got the nastiest one in the world – the Taichung Power Plant, which emits 40 million tons of carbon every year.

Check it out over at Forbes.com.

Link [Forbes]

Robot Seeks Out Toxic Waste Dumped by the Mafia

The mafia is going to have to rethink dumping toxic waste into Italian waters now that there’s a robot submarine on their trail. Italian authorities have deployed the underwater surveillance robot to a shipwreck off the Calabrian coast to see if it’s loaded with radioactive waste. An informant has told police that the ship may be part of a lucrative toxic waste-dumping scheme.

From The Huffington Post:

Calabrian prosecutor Bruno Giordano has cautioned in TV interviews that that until the contents of containers on the sunken ship are known, he can’t say if the allegations by a mob turncoat about the ship are true.

The robot sub began filming Saturday. On Tuesday, it was still unclear what the cargo held, or even if the ship was the Cunsky cargo vessel that turncoat Francesco Fonti has spoken about to magistrates and in interviews on Italian TV.

No name of the ship is visible, and it wasn’t known if someone had removed the name or if algae might have covered up writing.

Giordano said the former mobster, Francesco Fonti, from the Calabria-based ‘ndrangheta crime syndicate, has claimed the mob sank “hundreds” of barrels of illegally disposed of waste.

It won’t be surprising at all if it turns out the ship is carrying toxic waste. The Italian mob is renowned for orchestrating serious offenses against the environment in addition to their other crimes, dumping toxic waste on rural lands and in the waters off foreign countries for huge sums of money.

And, crazy as it may sound, this surveillance submarine is far from the first robotic pollution-detector. UK scientists developed creepily lifelike robotic fish that will be released off the coast of Northern Spain in 2011 to collect data on pollution.

Link [The Huffington Post]

Great Pacific Garbage Patch Researchers Find Even More Plastic than Expected

Scientists with ‘Project Kaisei’, who spent three weeks gathering plastic debris from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, returned to the Bay Area this week with a rather horrifying sample of the trash that can be found floating in the ocean.

Chunks of styrofoam, cracked patio chairs, bleach bottles, tangled nets and old toys were among the junk they brought back – but the bigger concern is the amount of tiny, “confetti-like” pieces of broken plastic floating in the garbage patch 1,000 miles west of California.

From Mercury News:

“Marine debris is the new man-made epidemic. It’s that serious,” said Andrea Neal, principal investigator on the Kaisei, a 151-foot research ship on the trip.

Neal, a Santa Barbara researcher who has a doctorate in molecular genetics and biochemistry, said crews on the three-week voyage discovered tiny jellyfish eating bits of the plastic debris. The jellyfish are, in turn, eaten by fish like salmon or tuna, which people eat.

Because the plastic pieces contain toxic chemicals — and are believed to be able to absorb now-banned chemicals such as DDT and PCBs, which can persist in the environment for decades — state toxicologists have taken hundreds of the objects, along with more than 300 fish, to an environmental chemistry lab in Berkeley to see if any chemicals are moving up the food chain.

“Every day, every night, we’d pull up samples and pour the water through a sieve. It would be completely clogged with tiny pieces of plastic,” said Margy Gassel, a research scientist with the California Environmental Protection Agency. “It was so disturbing.”

The garbage patch is estimated to be twice the size of Texas, and scientists believe that the trash comes from storm drains and rivers in places like Japan and the Bay Area. It accumulates in a slow-moving zone in the Pacific Ocean. Most of the plastic fragments that make it up are too small to be visible from the air or from satellites.

Doug Woodring, one of the founders of Project Kaisei, believes that two possible solutions to keeping the problem from getting worse could be biodegradable plastics and specially designed storm drains that filter plastic debris from ocean-bound streams of water.

Stopping its spread is essential, but scientists aren’t even sure how to begin cleaning up what’s already collected in the garbage patch. The use of fine nets would likely result in the accidental killing of marine life. Hopefully, now that scientists are taking a closer look at the problem, a solution will be found soon.

Link [Mercury News]

China’s Air Pollution Causes Reduction in Rainfall

Bad air quality may be affecting China’s ability to raise crops, in addition to the health and environmental problems it causes. Air pollution in the eastern part of the country has reduced the amount of light rainfall over the past half-century, and has also decreased the number of days of light rain by 23%.

From Science Daily:

The study links for the first time high levels of pollutants in the air with conditions that prevent the light kind of rainfall critical for agriculture. Led by atmospheric scientist Yun Qian at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the study appears August 15 in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres.

“People have long wondered if there was a connection, but this is the first time we’ve observed it from long-term data,” said Qian. “Besides the health effects, acid rain and other problems that pollution creates, this work suggests that reducing air pollution might help ease the drought in north China.”

Researchers discovered that pollution’s aerosols cause smaller cloud droplets, which then have a harder time forming rain clouds. Water drops in polluted skies are up to 50% smaller than in clean skies.

Meanwhile, in Australia, drought experts have found a definite link between rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and a decline in rainfall. A study confirmed that the continent’s drought is not a natural dry stretch, but a shift related to climate change.

Link [Science Daily] + [Sydney Morning Herald]
Photo credit: Flickr user robennals

GM Turns its Back on Safe Mercury Disposal

Emerging from bankruptcy, the new GM has made many a promise about becoming greener and more sustainable – but don’t ask them to do anything about the environmental impact of their ‘old’ cars. The company has announced that it will no longer participate in a partnership that collects toxic mercury switches from vehicles before they’re recycled.

With the popularity of the ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program, this decision means that thousands of GM mercury switches could end up polluting the environment.

From The Huffington Post:

GM said its new company is not a member of the partnership because it no longer makes vehicles with mercury switches and is not responsible for the older vehicles. The old company, which is still under bankruptcy court supervision, said it is reviewing agreements involving the former company and declined to comment.

Roughly 36 million mercury switches were used in trunk convenience lights and antilock brakes in vehicles built in the 1980s and 1990s. More than half of them are in GM vehicles built before 2000.

The auto industry partnership, called the End of Life Vehicle Solutions Corp., or ELVS, was created in 2005 to prevent mercury emissions from being released into the environment when vehicles are crushed and shredded. It works closely with the National Vehicle Mercury Switch Recovery Program, which the Environmental Protection Agency helped form with automakers, the steel industry and environmentalists in 2006.

Unfortunately, the loss of GM’s annual dues is having a huge impact on ELVS’ budget. Without those funds, the program may be forced to scale back operations or even stop what they’re doing entirely.

If GM is really serious about being green, they’ve got to take responsibility for things like this.

Link [Huffington Post]
Photo credit: Flickr user dave_7

Mother Nature’s Meth Mouth

When a methamphetamine laboratory is busted, DEA agents don hazmat suits and oxygen masks, protecting themselves against a host of extremely toxic substances with a thick barrier of tough plastic. But unwitting future occupants of these homes, hotel rooms and apartment complexes aren’t so lucky, and neither are the rest of us when the chemicals leak from equipment discarded in landfills around the country.

Meth is known as one of the world’s most destructive drugs. Its effects on the users’ bodies are so dramatic, so startling, that before-and-after photos are the main tool used to keep the public from ever trying it in the first place. A website called Faces of Meth shows one stomach-turning transformation after another, documenting extreme weight loss, skin sores and dental deterioration. What it doesn’t show are the psychological effects, which can include psychotic behavior, hallucinations, insomnia, confusion, delusion and paranoia.

However they came to be meth users, at least these people were volunteers. The same can’t be said for other victims, including property owners and residents who only learn of their homes’ secret pasts as meth labs once they’ve noticed a serious deterioration in their own health and that of their families.

Ether, paint thinner, freon and acetone. Ammonia, battery acid and brake cleaner. Explosives, heavy metals, iodine crystals and phosphorous… all of these common ingredients used to make methamphetamine permeate drywall, carpets, insulation, countertops and air ducts, causing health problems long after the labs have been dismantled. Cooking meth just one time contaminates a building enough to cause health problems.

The New York Times recently delved into the horrors faced by people who move into meth-contaminated homes. Newlyweds Jason and Rhonda Holt, who started their family in a Tennessee home they purchased soon after getting married, couldn’t understand why their children were so weak and pale, with breathing problems that required respirators and frequent trips to the emergency room. And it wasn’t just the kids. Rhonda, a nurse, started experiencing crippling migraines and her husband, a factory worker, developed kidney problems.

For five years they lived in that house without knowing that the previous occupant, who had been dragged from the attic by police, had used the home as a meth lab. With that discovery came another big shock: it was up to them to clean it up, to the tune of at least $30,000. Some would call the Holt family lucky, considering that cleanup can cost up to $100,000 and sometimes, contamination is so bad that the entire structure must be demolished.

Another occupant of a former meth lab, Francisca Rodriquez, had her home tested after her dog began having seizures and her son developed respiratory problems. The home was so contaminated that it couldn’t be cleaned, and the Rodriquez family had to let it go into foreclosure. The former owner had checked ‘no’ on a disclosure form asking whether the house had ever been in a meth lab, but the family had no recourse because he’s already in prison for meth-related offenses.

“It makes you crazy,” Rodriguez told The New York Times. “Our credit is ruined, we won’t be able to buy another house, somebody exposed my kids to meth, and my dog died.”

Almost all states with laws requiring meth contamination cleanup hold the property owners financially responsible once contamination is discovered, and only one – Colorado – helps innocent property owners with the costs. Though the EPA was ordered to publish national cleanup standards by the end of 2008, the agency is still reviewing a draft version.

Once known as “poor man’s cocaine”, meth use was once mostly relegated to the West Coast and Southern states, but has now spread across the country like wildfire. More than 12 million Americans have tried it and 1.5 million are regular users according to 2005 federal estimates.

All fifty states have had meth lab busts, with the highest number found in Missouri – though it’s unclear whether the state has more labs and users, or more enforcement. A number of cities have been called “the meth capital of America”, from Sarah Palin’s hometown of Wasilla, Alaska to Tulsa, Oklahoma, but statistics don’t show a clear winner of that dubious title.

It’s the sophisticated “superlabs”, mostly located in California, which have the biggest environmental impact. Smaller labs located in homes, apartment complexes, hotels, businesses and even vehicles have a smaller impact, but dumping is still a concern. The three meth ingredients that cause the most damage are ether, acetone and white gasoline.

Topsoil and groundwater, including drinking water wells, are often contaminated when the chemicals are dumped down drains or onto the ground outside homes. There are five pounds of waste for every pound of meth produced, and meth cookers sometimes go to extremes to get rid of it – like dumping it in public places including parks and waterways. Meth cookers moving from one site to another don’t exactly go through the same clean-up process as certified meth lab cleanup crews: they just toss everything in the trash.

And when a meth lab is identified, authorities have no choice but to throw everything last item in the home away. Clothing, wallpaper, photographs, alarm clocks, kitchen appliances – every single possession in the home is tossed into a padlocked bin so residents can’t get to them before they’re taken to the dump.

Some hazardous waste facilities don’t even want to take trash labeled as meth waste because it’s so dangerous. What happens to the waste in these cases isn’t always clear. Local officials are responsible for proper disposal, but when there are no clear national guidelines to adhere to, some of it is bound to end up in places it doesn’t belong.

Unfortunately, law enforcement authorities aren’t able to devote the kind of energy and manpower needed for a successful fight against meth – in large part, because of the fact that they’re too busy busting non-violent marijuana users.

Marijuana has been under siege since President Roosevelt signed the first federal anti-marijuana law 70 years ago, and the Bush administration made it the focus of its ‘war on drugs’, spending billions of dollars on catching and jailing pot smokers and dealers while more dangerous drugs like meth proliferated.

In fact, the argument that methamphetamine should be given priority over marijuana when it comes to law enforcement has an unlikely ally: Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control. Meth has hit his state hard, and he wrote to the Bush administration in 2005 to request a shift in resources from pot to meth.

“While we agree that any drug use is harmful to users and those around them, the problems associated with marijuana are not comparable to methamphetamine in terms of cost to society. We know that different drugs have different rates of use. Marijuana is a much more popular drug in terms of the number of people who use it,” Grassley wrote. “However, methamphetamine causes much more destruction in a much shorter period of time than marijuana.”

“We believe that reducing drug use is not just about reducing the number of users of a drug, but reducing the overall harm to society caused by the drug.”

Luckily, meth use seems to be declining among at least one large segment of the population – teenagers. The Partnership for a Drug-Free America found in February of 2009 that teen meth use was down 25% from 2005 levels.

That doesn’t mean that meth isn’t still an extremely worrisome problem, both for human health and the environment. However, there’s a glimmer of hope in drug policy changes being made by the Obama Administration. By scaling back the war against legitimate medical marijuana in states like California and Nevada, the DEA may end up with more funds to focus on more important things.

Photos: Faces of Meth, NowPublic, maveric2003

EPA to Investigate Waste Dumping in Poor U.S. Communities

With the news about Britain getting caught dumping toxic waste in Brazil and Ghana, the injustice of hazardous dumping in third-world countries is getting some much-deserved press and analysis. But what about poor communities right here in the U.S. that are experiencing the same thing? Industry polluters abuse low-income and minority communities across the country, something that activists like Robert Bullard and Irma Muñoz often refer to as ‘environmental racism’.

According to the L.A. Times, this practice will finally be getting some attention from the federal government. The EPA has announced its intention to look into the impact of hazardous waste recycling plants in poor communities.

From the L.A. Times:

The move hearkens back to a Clinton-era executive order that required federal agencies to consider the impact of their policies on disadvantaged communities. Although the Bush administration largely ignored the mandate, Obama-appointed EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson has promised to analyze those impacts.

Under the Bush administration, hazardous waste recycling plants had a free pass to process more than 1 million pounds of toxic material without federal oversight. In Los Angeles and other areas, such plants are disproportionately located in low-income communities and communities largely populated by non-whites, maps created by Earthjustice show.

For example, coal ash from a spill in east Tennessee last December has been relocated to areas largely populated by black people in Alabama and Georgia, noted Robert Bullard of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University.

That last bit is pretty shocking. The TVA already ruined the lives of hundreds of people in Harriman, Tennessee when the coal ash spill occurred last December and their idea of cleaning it up is to move it to poor Southern communities? It’s an outrage.

The EPA needs to tackle the problem at the source  – making life hell for the companies that carry out these injustices in the first place. A little karma would do them some good.

Link [LA Times]
Photo credit: WeAct.org

Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone Smaller Than Expected

Good news doesn’t come as often as we’d like nowadays, so it’s nice to be able to report that this year’s Gulf of Mexico dead zone isn’t nearly as large as experts thought it would be. NOAA-sponsored forecast models predicted that it would be bigger than usual at 7,000 – 8,000 square miles, but the actual size is about 3,000 square miles.

However, the change in square miles doesn’t mean it’s any less severe than usual. In fact, it’s worse. This year’s dead zone is “unusually thick”, reaching from the ocean floor almost to the surface of the water. And the smaller size doesn’t mean that the amount of pesticide-laden runoff that causes the dead zone in the first place has decreased.

From PhysOrg, via Treehugger:

“The results of the 2009 cruise at first glance are hopeful, but the smaller than expected area of hypoxia appears to be related to short-term weather patterns before measurements were taken, not a reduction in the underlying cause, excessive nutrient runoff.” said Robert Magnien, PhD., director of NOAA’s Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research. “The smaller area measured by this one cruise, therefore, does not represent a trend and in no way diminishes the need for a harder look at efforts to reduce nutrient runoff.”

The average size of the dead zone over the past five years, including this cruise, is now 6,000 square miles. The interagency Gulf of Mexico/Mississippi River Watershed Nutrient Task Force has a goal to reduce or make significant progress toward reducing this dead zone average to 2,000 square miles or less by 2015. The Task Force uses a five year average due to relatively high interannual variability.

The solution is reducing fertilizer use on farms along the Mississippi River. When too much fertilizer is applied, the excess runs off into the river and is carried all the way to the Gulf, depriving the waters of oxygen and making them unlivable for most marine life. Treehugger reports that one proposed solution is crop biodiversity, which would cut down on the need for chemicals on farms.

Link [Phys Org] via [Treehugger]
Photo credit: NOAA

Ghana, an E-Waste Graveyard

When you toss that old busted stereo or out-of-date analog television into the trash heap, where does it ultimately end up? Most likely in a poor community in a far-away country like Ghana, where electronic waste arrives on barges and sits in gigantic piles, contaminating the soil and water with toxic chemicals.

PBS Frontline investigated the e-waste disposal situation in Ghana, which has gotten so bad that some locals call the area “Sodom and Gomorrah”.

And, human health and the environment aren’t the only concerns that spring from this practice. It’s beginning to affect the very people who throw their electronics away in the first place, in the form of identity theft. Salvageable hard drives are sold on the street, many of which still contain personal information.

Watch:

Earth 911 reports that the U.S. is finally beginning to recognize how big a problem e-waste dumping really is – there currently aren’t any laws that prohibit dumping overseas, but a proposed bill would ban exports of certain types of electronics materials meant for recycling. The bill isn’t perfect, though – critics say it contains loopholes that make continued dumping inevitable.

Clearly, something needs to be done fast. We can’t continue to look the other way knowing that all of this waste is affecting poor communities all over the world.

Link [Earth 911]
Photo credit: Greenpeace

Tennessee Town Still Looks Like a Moonscape After TVA Spill

It’s been nearly 7 months since the residents of Harriman, Tennessee woke up to find their properties – and the once-pristine lakes that could be seen from their windows – engulfed in a toxic mess of wet, gray coal sludge.  Sadly, the view from their homes still hasn’t changed much, and their children are beginning to show signs of troubling health problems.

The Tennessee Valley Authority, which is responsible for the December 22nd, 2008 spill at its coal power plant in neighboring Kingston, Tennessee, insists that the coal ash waste is safe, but residents – including the Hampton family, who live near the spill site – say that their health tells a different story.

CNN reports:

“Everything here is changed,” Hampton said, her eyes glistening. “[The landscape] reminds me of what you see on the moon. It breaks my heart.”

Residents are afraid of the chemicals that were released into the environment: arsenic, selenium, lead and radioactive materials including chromium and barium.

Whatever the official reports say, the Hamptons believe that the air outside their home could be toxic to their children. Pamela Hampton says she first noticed that her children were having health problems only days after the spill.

First, 11-year-old Monica started complaining about headaches. Then, all three children — Monica, 6-year-old Noah and 3-year-old Joshua — began to experience upper-respiratory problems, fevers, ear infections, runny noses and red eyes.

“You’re taking your child to the doctor yet again, or two children, and then in a week, the next child is sick,” Hampton said. “After about the third or fourth time, that’s when I started realizing that this is not a coincidence. It’s like being sucker-punched.”

Noah Hampton’s ear infections were so persistent, his ears so inflamed, Pamela Hampton says, the family’s doctor said it looked like he had growths in his ears resembling small grapes.

The doctors’ visits over the past six months have been frequent, expensive and inconclusive.

Here it is, July, and yet all the residents have received from TVA and the government is unfulfilled promises. The EPA, which doesn’t consider coal ash a hazardous material, still hasn’t revisited that stance despite reassurances from administrator Lisa Jackson that it would. TVA told residents that it would set up clinics to test community members’ blood for potential toxics – but they’ve been saying that for months.

In contrast to TVA’s finding that the water and air in the area was safe, a Duke University study concluded that toxic elements from the coal ash could be suspended in the air, which poses a health risk. It also found that coal ash caused contamination in surface waters, and that accumulation of toxic substances found in the river sediment could poison fish. Sure enough, researchers have noticed fish with gills coated completely in coal ash sediment, a sign of what it may be doing to humans’ lungs as well.

Sadly, these families don’t have the funds to leave the area and start a new life somewhere else – they’re participants in a lawsuit against the TVA, but that could be drawn out for years. They have little choice but to wait, and hope that things don’t get any worse.

Link [CNN]
Photo credit: Dirty Coal TVA

Cruise Ship Features Gigantic Green Roof, but it Still Ain’t Eco-Friendly

Cruise ships are pretty much the antithesis of green. They’re gigantic floating pollution factories, spewing CO2 and dumping waste like bilge water, graywater, sewage and trash. So, it’s pretty much impossible for these floating cities to ever really earn the ‘green’ label – but, that’s not stopping some cruise lines from trying.

Maryland-based Green Roof Service LLC just got done installing a massive 15,000-sq-ft green roof on the cruise ship Celebrity Solstice at Meyer Werft (Ship Yard), in Germany, the first of its kind. However, it’s more like a giant resource-intensive lawn than a real green roof.

Treehugger disputes its supposed eco-friendliness:

But beyond the literal greenness of this thing, I wonder about its ecological impact. After all, photos and press releases suggest this is about maintaining pristine turf for putting, croquet and picnics – which means this is hardly likely to be a wildlife haven for passing bees (?!). Not to mention irrigation needs, and the requirement for “easy replacement of turf”. There will, undoubtedly, be some benefit in avoiding oil and other toxic runoff from the deck, but overall this doesn’t get the TreeHugger in me overly thrilled. (Somebody with more knowledge of green roofs may be able to tell me if I am overly cynical.)

At least this ‘green roof’ isn’t the only way the Celebrity Solstice ship is trying to go green. Its other efforts are far more laudable. From the press release:

• Entire ship with mostly LED lightning technology saves over 20% of power.
• Four Hybrid (Common Rail Diesel-Electro) engines.
• All roofs have photovoltaics (including glass roofs).
• Advanced biological waste water treatment facility.
• Recycling and separation of trash and waste.
• Fresh water production with reused heat and reverse osmosis and low chlorine.
• Reuse and refining of oil on board.
• Run-off collection tank only for green roof.
• Corporate leadership with “Save The Waves” program.

Bottom line: cruise ships aren’t green, and putting a big green lawn on the top of one isn’t going to change that. However, real efforts to at least cut back some of the waste & pollution are a step in the right direction.

Link [Treehugger] + [Green Roofs]

Robot Removes Pollution from Water

As potable water becomes more scarce, a new invention offers hope, with the potential to clean up polluted waterways and make them suitable for drinking once again. The WatCleaner robot,  created by Chinese industrial designer Ye Yao, floats on the surface of the water and automatically filters oil, trash and other pollutants. It has the ability to detect fish, making sure that none are harmed during the cleaning process.

From Blue Living Ideas:

The WatCleaner has detectors on the bottom that monitor water for pollution, everything from basic garbage to oil, and clean the water. Absorbent socks on the top of the WatCleaner absorb oil and cleanse it. Additionally, garbage is taken in and directed to a disintegrator- clean water is then sprayed through the top of the WatCleaner and returned to the water system. Along the way the WatCleaner also detects fish in order to clean the water in their area.

Beyond just cleaning the water of contaminants, the WatCleaner is also set up to transmit water condition information to land based controllers and ask for help if it encounters conditions too polluted to handle alone. As the WatCleaner takes on oil and garbage, the bin and oil bags can be removed and replaced.

First a trash-cleaning robot, and now a robot that cleans up polluted water? Science fiction is really coming to life. This invention has major potential for use all around the world. If we could clean up dirty waterways and make them safe again, that would go a long way toward easing the coming water crisis and preventing a lot of suffering. Perhaps the team that’s trying to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch should give Ye Yao a call.

Link [Blue Living Ideas]

This Year’s Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone Might be Bigger than Ever

Every summer, a vast, oxygen-deprived ‘dead zone’ appears in the Gulf of Mexico, courtesy of runoff from Midwestern farms that travels down the Mississippi River. But this year, scientists say, that dead zone could be bigger than ever.

Farmland runoff containing fertilizers and livestock waste flood the Gulf with nitrogen and phosphorous, which fuel explosive algae growth. When that algae dies and sinks to the sea floor, bacteria consume vast amounts of oxygen while eating the decomposing organic matter. That creates a ‘hypoxic’ zone where very few sea creatures can survive.

From Science Daily:

University of Michigan aquatic ecologist Donald Scavia and his colleagues say this year’s Gulf of Mexico “dead zone” could be one of the largest on record, continuing a decades-long trend that threatens the health of a half-billion-dollar fishery.

The scientists’ latest forecast, released June 18, calls for a Gulf dead zone of between 7,450 and 8,456 square miles—an area about the size of New Jersey.

“The growth of these dead zones is an ecological time bomb,” said Scavia, a professor at the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment and director of the U-M Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute.

“Without determined local, regional and national efforts to control them, we are putting major fisheries at risk,” said Scavia, who also produces annual dead-zone forecasts for the Chesapeake Bay.

It’s possible that this year’s dead zone will be roughly the same size as last year’s, but that will still mean that the five largest dead zones on record have occurred since 2001, a clear sign that the problem is getting much worse. The dead zone’s official size will be announced following an NOAA-supported monitoring survey on July 18th – 26th.

Link [Science Daily]
Photo credit: NASA

Obama Picks Superfund Polluter Lawyer for Environmental Post

President Barack Obama has nominated a lawyer who has spent much of her career defending major polluters to a sensitive environmental post.

Yes, you read that correctly.

If you feel like you’re experiencing an especially vivid and painful flashback to the days of former President Bush’s environmental follies, you’re not alone. It was common Bush administration practice to put the fox in charge of the hen house. The term ‘conflict of interest’ was seemingly meaningless to an administration that put nepotism ahead of the interests of the people and the land.

But it’s not something that most liberals would expect from President Obama, who has sought to separate himself from such practices.

From Think Progress:

On Tuesday, Obama “announced his intent to nominate” Ignacia S. Moreno to be Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division in the Department of Justice. Moreno, general counsel for that department during the Clinton administration, is now the corporate environmental counsel for General Electric, “America’s #1 Superfund Polluter“: Number five in the Fortune 500 with revenues of $89.3 billion and earnings of $8.2 billion in 1997, General Electric has been a leader in the effort to roll back the Superfund law and stave off any requirements for full cleanup and restoration of sites they helped create.

Before General Electric, Moreno worked as a corporate attorney at Spriggs and Hollingsworth. Moreno’s name is found in the Westlaw database as an attorney defending General Motors in another Superfund case, the GM Powertrain facility in Bedford, Indiana: Historical uses and management of PCB containing hydraulic oils and PCB impacted materials has contaminated on-site areas as well as the sediment and floodplain soil within Bailey’s Branch and the Pleasant Run Creek watershed.

If confirmed, Moreno will be in charge of the office that enforces environmental laws and defends federal regulations in lawsuits. Her experience lies in defending polluters, not enforcing environmental justice. And considering the particularly heinous nature of the crimes she has defended – like GM’s PCBs – can she really be expected to do the right thing?

Some say that Moreno’s industry experience could actually help her enforce the law, including Eric Schaeffer, director of the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project. Schaeffer, who resigned as chief of the EPA’s enforcement office in 2002 in protest of the Bush administration’s enforcement tactics, thinks that Moreno can use her knowledge to the government’s advantage. But who’s to say that Moreno has had a change of heart?

It’s an understatement to say that environmentalists are concerned about this nomination. I think ‘sputtering outrage’ more accurately captures the general sentiment. We expect better than this from President Obama.

Link [Think Progress] + [The New York Times]
Photo credit: The Daily Mail

EPA Bans Highly Toxic Pesticide

A toxic bird-killing, worker-poisoning pesticide will no longer appear in our food after an EPA decision to ban the chemical concoction. Tests have shown carbofuran to be highly toxic to mammals, marine animals, freshwater fish, birds and other creates and causes damage to the nervous system in humans, including respiratory paralysis and death.

From NRDC:

Initially, EPA had said that although uses of the pesticide in the U.S. would be cancelled, it would still be allowed as a contaminant on imported coffee, sugarcane, rice, and bananas. This would have meant that the manufacturer, FMC Corp., could still sell carbofuran in other countries that grow these foods  for U.S. markets, thus putting at much greater risk those foreign workers, their families, and their environment. Today’s decision will prevent all food contamination, including imports.

There are still two non-food uses of carbofuran that will remain: spinach seeds and pine seedlings will still be allowed to be treated with a granular form of carbofuran. EPA said that its future intentions are to cancel these uses as well, although today it is only the food uses that are being cancelled.

Isn’t it sad how we get all worked up over incidences in which the EPA actually, you know, does its job, protecting the environment and such? We got used to the EPA being not just ineffective but at times counterproductive under the Bush administration, so now every time Obama’s EPA makes a halfway decent decision we’re cheering them on like rabid football fans.

Link [NRDC]

Dirty Industries Seek Free Pollution Credits from Government

The very same industries that have helped get the world into this global warming mess in the first place are now asking the government for free passes to keep on polluting under legislation for capping greenhouse gases. Electric utilities, automakers, oil companies and natural gas refineries are among the industries that believe they should get pollution credits, complements of the Obama administration.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The measure by Reps. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) and Edward Markey (D., Mass.) calls for reducing U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions roughly 20% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% below 2005 levels by mid-century. It is largely silent on how much companies would have to pay for pollution permits under a proposed cap-and-trade system that would allow companies to buy and sell such permits.

“There are a lot of things in the bill I need to have changed,” said Rep. Gene Green (D., Texas). Mr. Green, whose district is home to the largest petrochemical complex in the world, wants Mr. Waxman to give some pollution permits to oil refiners for free. “If that’s not in the bill, I can’t vote for it,” he said.

Refiners are lobbying to get for free 30% of the pollution permits, an amount that corresponds roughly to the share of U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions produced by transportation fuel. Without such allowances, the industry says, it will lose out to refineries in India and the Middle East that ship their product to the U.S. and don’t operate under carbon caps at home.

“The electric utilities want 40%, and if they’re getting 40%, the refiners say ‘Why shouldn’t we get 30%?”‘ Mr. Green said. Mr. Green said he has asked Mr. Waxman to give the refining industry a smaller share of the allowances — roughly 5%.

These industries have had years to prepare – they should have known that greenhouse gas caps would go into effect eventually. Instead of being proactive and starting a long time ago to slowly reduce their emissions, they’re now finding themselves in the desperate situation of being forced into major changes in a short amount of time.

Link [Wall Street Journal]

Pacific Garbage Patch Cleanup to Begin Next Month

How many times have you read something about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, that huge swirling mass of plastic trash that’s currently floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and thought to yourself, “why hasn’t someone tried to clean it up?” Well, it’s just not that easy. It’s a huge, expensive task and extreme care must be taken to avoid harming wildlife in the process.

But, the good news is, an effort to retrieve and recycle the Texas-sized mass of junk will begin in earnest next month.

Charles Moore, an oceanographer who discovered the garbage patch in 1997, explains part of the challenge: the nearly microscopic size of much of the plastic rubbish makes it difficult to collect. However, that’s not stopping an expedition of scientists and conservationists from trying to collect the larger pieces.

From the Times Online:

Because of their tiny size and the scale of the problem, he believes that nothing can be solved at sea. “Trying to clean up the Pacific gyre would bankrupt any country and kill wildlife in the nets as it went.”

In June the 151ft brigantine Kaisei (Japanese for Planet Ocean) will unfurl its sails in San Francisco to try to prove Mr Moore wrong. Project Kaisei’s flagship will be joined by a decommissioned fishing trawler armed with specialised nets.

“The trick is collecting the plastic while minimising the catch of sea life. We can’t catch the tiny pieces. But the net benefit of getting the rest out is very likely to be better than leaving it in,” says Doug Woodring, the leader of the project.

With a crew of 30, the expedition, supported by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Brita, the water company, will use unmanned aircraft and robotic surface explorers to map the extent and depth of the plastic continent while collecting 40 tonnes of the refuse for trial recycling.

There’s simply no quick and easy fix for this tremendous problem, but Project Kaisei is a great start. Perhaps the next step should be putting a stop to the practices that caused this patch to accumulate in the first place.

Link [Times Online]

Endangered Blind Dolphins in Pakistan Fight for Their Lives

What’s more pitiful than blind, endangered dolphins swimming in rivers full of pollution? A handful of Pakistanis have dedicated themselves to helping these animals, which are struggling to survive against all odds. Inus dolphins’ numbers are decreasing rapidly as fishermen deplete their stock of food, pollution gets worse and a number of barrages in the waterways obstruct their travel.

From Yahoo News (AFP):

The Worldwide Fund For Nature Pakistan estimated in 2006 there were around 1,200 Indus dolphins left — 900 at a sanctuary near Sukkur in the southern province of Sindh and another 300 further upstream in Punjab.

The dolphin is blind because it lacks eye lenses and so hunts for catfish and shrimp using sophisticated sonar, said Hussain Bux Bhagat, a senior official in the Sindh wildlife department.

Dolphins swam freely in the Indus until about 100 years ago when engineers under British rule started slicing up the river with irrigation projects in the dry hinterland.

The barrages pose a critical threat to the dolphins, dividing their natural habitat into five separate segments of the snaking river.

“This species used to roam across 3,500 kilometres (2,190 miles) of the Indus but are now confined to 900 kilometres (560 miles),” Bhagat said.

As a result the risk of inbreeding “could lead to infertility and then extinction,” Bhagat added.

Untreated sewage dumps, illegal pesticides and industrial and agricultural waste threaten the Indus dolphins even further, and wildlife resources have limited resources to help the creatures. Fishermen used to kill the dolphins that would become trapped in shallow irrigation channels, but awareness campaigns have led to more rescues.

Some of the families that work to save the dolphins have been doing so for generations, and teach their children to continue the tradition. It’s nice to know that someone’s watching out for them, and the dolphins aren’t just being left to die out. But, what’s really sad is the thought that there are millions of species like the Indus dolphins out there in the world, struggling to survive because of our intervention in their ecosystems.

Link [Yahoo News]

More Polluter-Funded Front Groups Fighting Climate Action

Let’s face it: the general public doesn’t dig too deep into the background of organizations giving them supposed ‘facts’ about climate change. So, it’s all too easy for them to hear a name like ‘American Energy Alliance’ or ‘Institute for Energy Research’ and assume that these are reputable, non-biased groups that can provide them with information they can trust. But, these groups and many others like them are actually front groups for polluting businesses and for the energy industry.

NRDC explains:

Yesterday the American Energy Alliance announced it is running radio ads in the districts of some of the members of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which is currently looking at a bill that would establish polluter penalties on global warming pollution. The ads repeat Newt Gingrich’s false- and thoroughly debunked – claim that a climate bill will cost every American $1,300 per year.

So who is the American Energy Alliance? Another offshoot of the ExxonMobil and Koch Industries families of polluter-funded advocacy, it turns out. Described by NPR as “a new advocacy organization with strong ties to the oil industry,” AEA was formed in 2008 and is led by long-time polluter-pal Thomas Pyle, who serves as President.

Pyle is also President of the AEA’s counterpart the Institute for Energy Research (IER). What’s that? Well, the tobacco industry had the Tobacco Institute to peddle its smoke screens, deceptions and other propaganda. The energy industry has the Institute for Energy Research, which Sourcewatch describes this way:  ” … founded in 1989 from a predecessor non-profit organization, [IER] advocates positions on environmental issues which happen to suit the energy industry: climate change denial, claims that conventional energy sources are virtually limitless, and the deregulation of utilities.”

As we reported yesterday, the energy industry has been perpetuating the myth that “clean energy is a dirty lie”. Not that this is any surprise. The energy industry will do practically anything to stay afloat during these times of changing public sentiment, including ignoring their own scientists’ data on climate change because it wasn’t convenient to the story they had concocted.

Link [NRDC]

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