Earthbytes

Celebrating Earth on Global Oneness Day 2013

http://www.globaloneness2013.org/

The Human Cost of Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining

Makayla Urias, 8, from Pike County, Kentucky holds contaminated water samples taken from her home which is surrounded by mountaintop removal coal mining.

 

If you haven't played with the new interactive map at iLoveMountains.org, please go check it out.

Over the past few years, several health studies on the interrelationship of human health and mountaintop removal coal mining have added to the urgency -- an urgency understood by citizens of Appalachia for many years -- to keep the mountains intact. Scientific evidence that this destructive mining practice hurts people and nature is piling up just about as fast now as surface mine operators can blow up the mountains and pile mining waste into Appalachian waters!

The interactive map will allow you to explore the relationship of mountaintop removal coal mining to poverty, changes in life expectancy, birth defect rates, or deaths from cancer, heart or respiratory diseases. The map allows you to view the data at various scales, from regional to state to county-level correlations.

You can also view summaries of the studies that correlate mountaintop removal coal mining with human health consequences.

After you play with the map, please visit the iLoveMountains action page. It lists several things anyone can do to make sure Makayla Urias and every other child in Appalachia has a fair chance for a long, happy and healthy life.

Tell Obama: No fastracking for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline permit!

Wow, NRDC couldn't have found a better celebrity to help stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. The Closer herself! Take a look:

 

Now -- if you haven't already done so -- please ask President Obama to close the valve for good on some of the dirtiest oil on planet Earth!

For a few precious moments, it seemed the Keystone XL pipeline permit would get a second look after Obama stood up to the oil industry and delayed a decision pending further environmental review. But Big Oil's Congressional lapdogs have now forced a 60-day review that is way too short for adequate analysis, let alone an informed decision from the President.

In the past few days, industry claims that the pipeline would be safe has been challenged by whistleblower Mike Klink, an engineer who says he was fired by Bechtel after he called them out for shoddy materials and poor craftsmanship during construction of the original Keystone pipeline.

Klink himself wrote an awesome article in December 2011 that called safety of Keystone XL into question.

 

Action Alert: Virginia Rising to Keep Ison Rock Ridge Standing

Please stand with me and thousands of others today to stop destruction of Ison Rock Ridge in southwestern Virginia. If a mountaintop removing mining permit is approved there, the mountain communities of Inman, Andover, Derby, and Callahan Avenue and Ridge Street in the town of Appalachia would be at risk for more damage to the health of people and nature.

The permit area is huge: over 1200 acres of this awesome mountain ecosystem would be deforested and blown apart, disrupting the natural processes that must be kept intact to support human beings and other species who know this place as home.

Google Earth image of the permit area. See this image and more information at Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards website.

I Love Mountains has a page that will help you ask President Obama, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Nancy Sutley of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and EPA Regional Administrator Shawn Garvin to deny the permit.  If another mine is permitted here, it will only compound the destruction by mountaintop removal coal mining that Wise County's land, air, water, wildlife and people have already suffered.

Here's a great video that will let you hear from folks in Wise County, in their own words:

 

Please take action now to help all of our relations in Wise County, Virginia to keep Ison Rock Ridge standing.

Knoxville Mayoral Candidates to Debate on Green Jobs and Energy Efficiency

The Steering Committee of the Knoxville Energy Alliance and Partnership for Green Jobs, also known as KEAP Green Jobs, will hold a City of Knoxville Mayoral Debate on Tuesday, Nov. 1. Doors open at 6:30 and the debate starts at 7 p.m.

The steering committee is made up of several organizations that promote energy efficiency and renewable energy in an attempt to bring green jobs to the City of Knoxville and promote environmental sustainability. Groups from the Alliance sponsoring the debate include SEEED (Socially Equal Energy Efficient Development), SOCM (Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment), TSEA (Tennessee Solar Energy Association) and TAP (Tennessee Alliance for Progress) in conjunction with the East Tennessee Chapter US Green Building Council and Jobs with Justice of East Tennessee.

In addition to questioning the candidates on their future plans for energy efficiency and renewable energy programs linked to green job development, the steering committee of KEAP Green Jobs will unveil its proposal to partner with the city in an “energy alliance” program to increase access to quality jobs, energy efficiency, and renewable energy for low and moderate-income residents. Examples of the job-creating projects KEAP Green Jobs proposes include weatherization of houses to save homeowners money on their utility bills and replacing some or all of a building's existing power source with solar power.

Audience questions will be allowed to please come prepared with your best questions for the candidates!

LOCATION: Pellissippi State Community College - Magnolia Campus

 

EcoWatch launches nationwide news service website today

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Joins EcoWatch to Announce Launch of Nationwide News Service Website

Live Webcast at www.ecowatch.org begins at 3 p.m. EST

WHAT: Launch of Nationwide News Service Website with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Keynote

WHY: Celebrate EcoWatch and Waterkeeper Alliance’s Nationwide News Service

WHEN:   Thursday, Oct. 27 at 2:30 p.m. EST

WHERE: Rivergate Park, 1785 Merwin Ave., Cleveland, Ohio 44113

Cleveland, OH—EcoWatch, in partnership with Waterkeeper Alliance, is hosting a public event today along the Cuyahoga River to celebrate the launch of their nationwide news service website with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., founder and president of Waterkeeper Alliance, as keynote speaker.  The website—www.ecowatch.org—went live this morning and will work to unite the voice of the grassroots environmental movement and mobilize millions of Americans to engage in democracy to protect human health and the environment.  

The website expands EcoWatch’s coverage nationwide and becomes the first media source to focus exclusively on environmental news culled from more than 700 environmental organizations across the country.  The site showcases original content in its Insights column from leading national voices in the environmental movement, including EcoWatch’s advisory board members. 

The news service provides timely access to relevant information that seeks to motivate individuals to become engaged in their community, adopt sustainable practices and support strong environmental policy.  The site focuses on five critical issue areas—water, air, food, energy and biodiversity—and covers topics including, renewable energy, water and air quality, sustainable agriculture, fossil fuel depletion, solution-based sustainability projects, species protection, global warming, climate change and pending legislation.

“The current assault on America’s environmental laws, like the Clean Water Act, creates a pressing need to educate and engage people to protect our infrastructure, the air we breathe, the water we drink, to provide our children with the same opportunities for dignity and enrichment as our parents gave us,” said Kennedy. “This website encourages people to be part of the solution and engage in democracy.”

EcoWatch, publisher of EcoWatch Journal with a distribution of more than 80,000 copies across Ohio, will launch the nationwide news service out of Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood and become part of the growing online news media market.

“Northeast Ohio is a national leader in sustainability and EcoWatch is proud to call Cleveland its home,” said Stefanie Penn Spear, founder and executive director of EcoWatch. “This news service website follows the model we developed in Ohio over the last five years and expands on my more than 20 years of publishing environmental news.”

The public event will feature brief remarks from Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson; Cleveland City Councilman Joe Cimperman; the George Gund Foundation’s Senior Program Officer for the Environment, John Mitterholzer; the Cleveland Foundation’s Program Officer, Nelson Beckford; and Kennedy, a member of EcoWatch’s advisory board, who will serve as keynote speaker. 

Other advisory board members are Wendy Abrams, an eco-advocate and philanthropist; Ed Begley, Jr., an actor and environmentalist; Lester Brown, a  prize-winning author and critical thinker; Laurie David, a bestselling author and activist; Paul Hawken, an environmentalist, entrepreneur and author; Randy Hayes, founder of Rainforest Action Network; Phil Radford, executive director of Greenpeace, and Harvey Wasserman, an anti-nuclear activist.

In addition to commemorating the launch of the national website, EcoWatch and Waterkeeper Alliance will acknowledge the significance of the celebration’s location, near the historic site where the then oily Cuyahoga River caught on fire in June 1969.  This event played a major role in the growth of the modern-day environmental movement and passage of the Clean Water Act. The event will also highlight the need for water advocacy and stewardship, public access to our waterways, human-powered recreation on the water and collaboration on solution-based projects like Rivergate Park. Immediately following the event, participants are encouraged to enjoy Rivergate Park, home to the Cleveland Rowing Foundation, by touring the grounds and watching rowing, kayaking and paddleboarding on the river.

Kennedy will also keynote a fundraising event at Windows on the River at 2000 Sycamore St. at 6 p.m. that evening. The event includes a VIP reception, dinner and keynote speech.  Tickets can be purchased at www.ecowatchohio.org.

To view the website, visit http://www.ecowatch.org/.

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EcoWatch is a Cleveland-based nonprofit dedicated to uniting the voice of the grassroots environmental movement and mobilizing millions of Americans to engage in democracy to protect human health and the environment. EcoWatch, founded in 2006, publishes the bimonthly newspaper EcoWatch Journal, distributed for free throughout Ohio printing 80,000 copies per issue. For more information, visit www.ecowatchohio.org

Waterkeeper Alliance is a global environmental organization uniting more than 190 Waterkeeper organizations around

the world and focusing citizen advocacy on the issues that affect our waterways, from pollution to climate change.

Waterkeepers patrol more than 1.5 million square miles of rivers, streams and coastlines in the Americas, Europe,

Australia, Asia and Africa.  For more information, visit www.waterkeeper.org.

Storm death toll rises in Central America - Al Jazeera English

Good report from Al Jazeera on historic flooding disaster affecting several Central American countries. Their report includes an informative video.

At least 105 people have been killed in flooding and landslides provoked by 10 days of heavy rains in Central America, officials have said.

More than a million people have been affected in the region, prompting officials to ask for humanitarian aid and urge those unaffected to show solidarity.

"El Salvador is going through one of the most dramatic disasters in its history" - Mauricio Funes, Salvadoran President

Much of the aid is expected to go to Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and to the hardest-hit country, El Salvador.

via english.aljazeera.net

TVA Board agenda next week includes decision on Bellefonte

Bellefonte Nuclear Generating Station, 21 June 2008 [Photo credit: Mandarax]

Several of my recent posts have focused on plans by the Tennessee Valley Authority to resurrect the zombie-esque nuclear plant known as Bellefonte. Next Thursday, August 18th, the TVA Board of Directors is scheduled to make a decision on what to do with this decaying, neglected and cannibalized facility.

This week, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy released a significant report on why the revival of Bellefonte is a really bad bet. The report was put together by Arnie Gunderson of Fairewinds Associates.

If you have followed the reactor disaster at Fukushima, you may have seen interviews and articles that featured Arnie's analyses. Arnie has 39-years of nuclear power engineering experience. He's a former nuclear industry senior vice president with degrees in nuclear engineering, and was a licensed reactor operator. During his nuclear industry career, Arnie managed and coordinated projects at 70-nuclear power plants around the United States.

What I really like about Arnie is that he can talk about nuclear reactors and nuclear safety in a way that makes a lot of sense to somebody like me who is not an expert on reactors and the inner workings of the nuclear industry and Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

In addition to writing the report, Arnie did a short video in which he summarized his primary concerns about TVA's plan for Bellefonte. If you are planning to speak at the TVA Board meeting, this video may help you decide where to focus your comments. If you are not planning to come to the meeting, this video may change your mind:

Fairewinds Report for Southern Alliance for Clean Energy on TVA Bellefonte Plant from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.

Here's a link to TVA August 18th Board Meeting Agenda, which includes some important information for people who wish to speak:

First, the public may comment on any agenda item or subject at a public listening session which begins at 8:30 a.m. EDT. Following the end of the public listening session, the meeting will be called to order. Bellefonte is the fourth item on the agenda.

Second, due to the possibility of a large number of attendees, speakers are asked to pre-register online before noon on Wednesday, August 17. On-site registration will be available until 15 minutes before the public listening session begins at 8:30 a.m. (ET). Pre-registered speakers are asked to check-in at registration 15 minutes before the listening session begins and they will address the Board first.

I registered a couple of days ago and it was a short, straightforward process. I hope to see you on Thursday!!!

 

Report from SEAB Natural Gas Subcommittee gives me some deja vu

Earlier this week I sat with a group of citizens, oil and gas industry people, and officials from the Department of Environment and Conservation to begin hammering out a proposal for regulation of hydro-fracturing in Tennessee.

This process essentially began with a bill to limit high volume hydro-fracking in the state. In a legislative compromise, Tennesseans got, instead, a resolution that encouraged specified citizen groups, the Tennessee Oil and Gas Association and TDEC to meet with the purpose of proposing regulations to provide necessary oversight for the use of hydrological fracturing as a method of modern natural gas extraction in Tennessee."

House Resolution 98 stated that the goals of these regulations would be

to protect Tennessee’s groundwater quality and drinking water supplies, to protect the collative rights of the land and mineral owners, and to allow for development, protection, and management of the resource of natural gas deposits.

The initial meeting for these purposes on Wednesday was interesting, to say the least. For me, it brought more into focus the ways different stakeholders fundamentally view humankind's relationship to nature, and how those views drive the behavior which -- if analyzed in terms of natural consequences -- tells us how future life on Earth will look.

Source:Energy Information Administration

The day after our meeting in Knoxville, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB) Natural Gas Subcommittee released a 90-day report on hydrofracking that had been called for in the Obama Administration's Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future. The purpose for this 90-day report was to identify any immediate steps that could be taken to improve the safety and environmental performance of the practice of fracking.

For me, reading this report was a little like deja vu because the recommendations of the Subcommittee closely paralleled the issues that citizen groups had put on the table in our meeting with TDEC and TOGA.

Deja vu all over again was reading responses to the Natural Gas Subcommittee's report. If I hadn't heard them all at the Wednesday meeting, I'd heard it at other meetings and hearings on oil and gas regulations in Tennessee.

For example, Erik Milito of the American Petroleum Institute commented on an analysis of the report and response to it by Michael Levi:

While I have great respect for your coverage of energy issues I have to take issue with your interpretation of my comment on the DOE report. It was meant to underscore that opponents of natural gas who claim that shale gas development is unregulated and unsafe are incorrect and that any work toward improving both the development of energy from shale and perceptions of that development must start with recognizing the hard work that regulators and industry already perform to ensure that this important resource has been, and will continue to be, developed responsibly. Far from being a dismissal of further studies and improvement – best practices and regulations are continuously evolving and part of that evolution is identifying problems and solving them– the comment was a reminder that any DOE recommendations must be based on reality and not on the alarmist rhetoric of those opposed to resource development.

And from Jim at Marcellus Drilling News:

The report says in the Executive Summary:

This 90-day report presents recommendations that if implemented will reduce the environmental impacts from shale gas production. The Subcommittee stresses the importance of a process of continuous improvement in the various aspects of shale gas production that relies on best practices and is tied to measurement and disclosure. While many companies are following such a process, much-broader and more extensive adoption is warranted. The approach benefits all parties in shale gas production: regulators will have more complete and accurate information; industry will achieve more efficient operations; and the public will see continuous, measurable improvement in shale gas activities.

MDN’s interpretation of the above paragraph: Some companies are doing it right, but others are not, and we think a heavy-handed top-down approach that forces everyone to follow our rules is the best solution. Bottom line: Get ready for the federal government to start interfering in states’ business. The federal government is building a case, via this report and no doubt the second report due from the Subcommittee in another 90 days, for a federal takeover of regulations for oil and gas drilling, instead of letting states oversee what is their constitutional right to oversee.

On the other side of the fracking divide, here's an excerpt from an Earthworks press release:

An Energy Department advisory panel today called for swift action to protect air, drinking water and public health from the impacts of the shale gas boom. Earthworks applauded the recommendations, but said loopholes in key environmental laws must still be closed to shield communities in America's gas patch from the risks of drilling and fracking.

Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), who coauthored the FRAC Act, which would mandate public disclosure of fracking chemicals and allow the EPA to regulate fracking under the Safe Drinking Water Act, also released a statement on the report:

I continue to have significant concerns that six of the seven members on the Natural Gas Subcommittee of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board have financial ties to the natural gas industry, which inherently creates a conflict of interest. Nevertheless, the fact that this same subcommittee found a wide array of improvements that should be made by the natural gas industry and government agencies underscores the fact that we as a nation are not adequately prepared yet to protect the public and environment from an unprecedented level of drilling across the country.

You can see more responses via links in Michael Levy's article and in this one by Tara Lohan at Alternet.

 

 The geology of natural gas resources. Source: EIA

The meeting on Wednesday, the Subcommittee Report, and the response to their recommendations has been revealing, and adds much to some research I'm doing on humankind's ambivalent relationship to nature and to the Earth. A core question going forward has to do with how systems change, how they evolve. More to come on that subject....

One more note for people who are concerned about natural gas development and extraction:

Next Monday, August 15th, SEAB will hold an open teleconference at which Natural Gas Subcommittee members will present their report. Members of the public will be able to comment during the teleconference. Registration for this event closed on August 10th, but anyone can still submit comments in writing to Amy Bodette, U.S. Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington D.C. 20585, or email to [email protected].

 

SATAN’s Code: another good reason to let Bellefonte R.I.P.

Last week I got an interesting link from a longtime anti-nuke activist to SATAN's Code: The Early Years of Accident Models, a post at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's blog.

Back in the 1950s, nuclear engineers began to think about how mass-produced computers might help them to run nuclear reactor accident scenarios. It took a long time for such modeling to to emerge. Those older computer systems, of course, had limitations. For one thing generating data was very slow. All of this left engineers with a fair amount of uncertainty about how safe reactors actually were.

So, in order to speed up the modeling process, the engineers decided to use "gross simplifications" using far fewer accident codes than would have been ideal:

Engineers were confident that the codes would prove reactor designs were overly conservative. Their optimism proved unfounded.

When Westinghouse proudly unveiled its 70-volume SATAN code in 1970, AEC staffers discovered errors in the code indicating that the company’s Emergency Core Cooling System might fail in an accident. The problems of the SATAN code helped lead to a major rulemaking hearing in 1972 on the adequacy of both emergency cooling system designs and accident codes. Those hearings revealed just how embarrassingly uncertain and rudimentary the early codes were about what happened during an accident.

The AEC and later the NRC had to make a huge investment in creating more robust – and accurate – codes. Additional research that produced the RELAP-5 Code is still used today as an industry standard worldwide.

Nancy Allen* -- the activist who sent me the link -- explained why the NRC post had caught her attention:

"This is an amazing admission. I was an intervenor in the Pilgrim Plymouth MA licensing in 1970 and MIT grad student Dan Ford and I brought up the possiblity of failure of the emergency core cooling system. Many others testified around this time about this possiblity including John Gofman and Frieda Berryhill. In my case we were dismissed as nuts. The plant was licensed."

Back in March of this year, the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth was back in the news.You may also recall that, around that same time, another nuclear story had shocked humanity into a global re-evaluation of nuclear power. An earthquake and tsunami not only had seriously impacted the lives of thousands of Japanese people, but had wrecked reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. In March only a few long-time nuke experts and activists were warning that this was far worse than we were being led to believe.

The Pilgrim plant was built a year after Fukushima Daiichi. Its NRC license will be up for renewal in 2012. Operators of the plant announced that they were seeking a 20-year renewal of that license, and with the nuclear catastrophe in Japan still unfolding, people in Massachusetts were understandibly concerned.

Governal Deval Patrick assured citizens that the state was very involved in the recommisioning process, but -- according to a story from NPR's WBUR in Boston -- activists wanted Gov Patrick to take a tougher stand:

“I absolutely think we should be shutting down every nuclear power plant in the United States,” said John Rosenthal, an anti-nuclear activist who fought construction of the Seabook Power Plant in New Hampshire in the 1970s.

“The reactors at Pilgrim are the same reactors as the Fukushima nuclear plant,” Rosenthal said. “And the nuclear spent fuel pools are the same situation; they are not in inadequate containment structures. All the nuclear waste that’s been generated since 1972 is sitting on site in containment buildings not designed for long-term storage.”

In her email last week, Nancy Allen finished with this comment on the NRC blog piece:

This says the faulty code was discovered in 1970 and rewritten in 1972.  The NRC pats itself and the AEC on the back for this but it seems to me that their optimism was unwarranted and they came close to making a terrible mistake which could have proved catastrophic.

Now,in the present,they again refuse to listen to those, including Chairman Jazcko, who urge caution after Fukushima and want safety measures upgraded quickly.

Is history about to repeat itself, the NRC once again acting with too much confidence, and a US nuclear catastrophe even more possible?

Tomorrow, I'll be headed down to Knoxville to participate in a press conference and rally in opposition to TVA's plan to re-animate it's Bellefonte Nuclear Generating Station in Alabama.

The Babcock and Wilcox Mark C 205 reactor design at Bellefonte is an old one, dating back to the 1960's. This particular design has never been operated in the United States. And it has never even been lisenced by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. After Bellefonte was abandoned, the reactors were targets of asset recovery in which reactor parts were "cannibalized" for use elsewhere.

Last year, TVA authorized $248 million to resuscitate Bellefonte. What are they thinking! Where are their brains?

The TVA Board of Directors is scheduled to make a final decision on Bellefonte at its meeting on August 18th.

The No Nukes, No Zombie Nukes, No Kidding! Rally will convene at Market Square in Knoxville at 4:30 EDT tomorrow. You can use the sidebar link to the right of this post to get more information on the event.

 

[*Many thanks to Nancy for the great link and permission to quote her!]