Earthbytes

EPA, Army Corps draft rule to clarify protection of streams and wetlands

Today the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Army Corps) released a proposed rule to clarify Clean Water Act protection for streams and wetlands that form the foundation of the nation’s water resources. Over the next 90 days, EPA and the Corps will reach out to citizens, groups and businesses to gather input they need to shape the final rule.

EPA has released two short videos as part of this outreach:

  

 

 

 

The proposed rule is based on the latest peer-reviewed science, including a draft scientific assessment by EPA (pdf: 11MB!), which presents a review and synthesis of more than 1,000 pieces of scientific literature. According to the EPA, a final version of the rule will not be published until the scientific assessment is complete.

The EPA has a portal page for protection of waters of the US that includes access to the scientific assessment, the proposed rule, press releases, fact sheets and other background information. People can also find a link for submission of comments on the proposed on this page.

Just a side note on the page itself: I thought EPA did a pretty good job making aspects of this complex issue accessible without overwhelming someone who prefers summaries, talking points and overviews. People who want to dig deeper can certainly do so easily by exploring the drop down info and links on the page.

Several court cases in the past decade or so -- U.S. v. Riverside Bayview, Rapanos v. United States, and Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (SWANCC), and Rapanos v. United States (Rapanos) -- challenged EPA jurisdiction in several ways.This draft rule attempts to address issues of the agency's regulatory reach into small but critical upstream waters whose protection was thrown into question by the court decisions.

For example, around 60 percent of stream miles in the U.S. only flow seasonally or after rain. Though they be small, they have a mighty impact downstream. Approximately 117 million people get drinking water from public systems that rely in part on these small, intermittant streams. EPA and the Army Corps hope the rule will clarify protection of these waters.

Specifically, the rule proposes that under the Clean Water Act (and based on the science)

• Most seasonal and rain-dependent streams are protected.

• Wetlands near rivers and streams are protected.

• Other types of waters may have more uncertain connections with downstream water and protection will be evaluated through a case specific analysis of whether the connection is or is not significant. However, to provide more certainty, the proposal requests comment on options protecting similarly situated waters in certain geographic areas or adding to the categories of waters protected without case specific analysis.

During the comment period I'll try to post updates, analyses and other information on this rule-making process, and the very critical challenge to return US waters to good health and keep them that way.

Here are a few direct links for now:

EPA Press Release, March 25, 2014

Unofficial version of the proposed rule (waiting for official publication in the Federal Register)

Fact Sheet: continuing exclusions and exemptions for agriculture

 

Related articles

E.P.A.'s Proposed Rules On Water Worry Farmers

EPA, Army Corps Propose New Rules Limiting Discharges

Fed Rule Proposed to Clarify Wetlands Protections

EPA Ignores Sound Science On Clean Water

 

World is watching Mora County battle vs. fracking - The Santa Fe New Mexican

I lived and worked in New Mexico for eight years -- though I didn't live in Mora County, I often traveled through it on days off or trips to Colorado. I wasn't so much a community activist at that time, either -- more aligned and active through one or another of the "big greens".

I like this article by Staci Matlock for several reasons. First, she  represents the issue of fracking in the context of life in this part of New Mexico. Then she goes a little deeper than many reporters are willing to go these days into the complexities of politics in multicultural communities and the dynamics shaped by colonization, settlement, land use, land ownership, water rights, and so on. Anyone who does organizing in multiracial/multicultural communities will likely appreciate the situation there. I really enjoyed reading this article and getting a deeper look at a place I was usually just traveling through...

People around the U.S. and the world who are deeply concerned about the influence of big corporations and the potential environmental damage from hydraulic fracturing methods — used to tap oil and gas supplies — cheer on Mora County.

But there’s more to this story — nuances and tensions that are hard to uncover unless you were born and raised in this hard-scrabble, beautiful and resilient Northern New Mexico county.

Read the rest of the story at www.santafenewmexican.com

Related articles

Lawsuit challenges Mora County oil, gas ban

Oil and gas ban spurs lawsuit in New Mexico county

Is Fracking A Civil Right? A New Court Case May Decide

Oil and gas ban spurs lawsuit in NM county

Mora County oil and gas drilling ban heading to court

The wisdom of Sankofa: reconnecting with the Earth before we can move forward

Oh Sankofa, high on the Heavens you soar

My soul is soon to follow you, back to yesterday's moon

will it remember me?

Back to yesterday's sun, It will rekindle me

Rekindle the spirit into tomorrow and high on the wind

Sankofa flies again and again

-- Cassandra Wilson, SANKOFA/Blue Light 'Til Dawn

 

Before you can move forward, you must first return home. This is the meaning of the concept of Sankofa, said Zakiya Harris on today's Spring of Sustainability session entitled Sankofa: Regenerative Strategies for Connecting People to the Earth.

Before today, I was only familiar with the symbolism of the Sankofa bird through Cassandra Wilson's music. Before I heard Pandora Thomas and Zakiya Harris of Earthseed Consulting, I had not thought of it in terms of my interest in environmental justice. But they helped me connect the dots and it made total sense that resonated with my own discoveries. How does this apply to environmental justice work?

You can't start with An Inconvenient Truth to get people interested in climate change, for example, if people in the community have trouble securing basic life needs. But if you ask people if they know someone dealing with asthma, high blood pressure, diabetes, inadequate housing, poverty, or limited access to healthy food, says Zakiya, everybody in the room will raise their hand. Then you can help them connect the dots  between those more familiar day to day challenges in one's own community and dirty coal plants, climate change, toxic chemicals and other stressors and conditions of the environment.

If the African-American, Latino and other communities of color seem to be underrepresented in the mainstream environmental movement, it's not because they are not interested in environmental issues. All of these communities have their own stories, their own culture's way of relating to Earth, their own expertise to do what's needed where they live.

Too often, says Zakiya, environmentalists wanting to help don't ask the right questions to reconnect communities with the expertise they already have. We don't start off by meeting them where they are before we try to help them move forward. What we need to do is listen to their stories and then frame things in a way that allows them to share and bring their own expertise back into the light.

According to Pandora and Zakiya, education and training is a key to their successful work with people, because when people learn new things, that naturally sparks interest to become involved in something. Among the projects that Pandora and Zakiya talked about were The Green Life program at San Quentin, and the City Slickers Farms project in West Oakland.

At the end of the discussion, Zakiya and Pandora each had a final thought to share (I was typing fast to get this, but I think this is close to what each one said with minimal paraphrasing):

Zakiya: We are witnessing the greatest paradigm shift any of us have ever seen in our lifetimes. We will need to be more inclusive and recognize that their [communities of color that have largely been excluded from the environmental movement in the past] expertise might look different. Drop the guilt, start with your own inner work...we're not here to heal the Earth, we are healing ourselves so we can stay on the planet.

Pandora: Get outside. There are so many aspects of the movement that have actually disconnected us from life. Immerse yourself in the outdoors no matter where you are and just listen.

You can listen to the discussion by registering at the Spring of Sustainability program page, however I think there is a time-limited replay window.

Here's a video of a TedEX talk -- The Vision of Sankofa -- by Pandora and Zakiya:

 

 

For some great articles on race and environment, check out Colorlines.

From "sustainable" to "regenerative" agriculture with Holistic Management

I just heard an awesome discussion with Allan Savory, a pioneer of holistic management. Long ago, large herds of wild herbivores roamed grasslands throughout the world. Humankind shifted grassland ecology with a focus on smaller herds of domestic livestock that were confined to relatively small spaces. This has contributed to desertification of grasslands across the planet. Holistic Management helps people develop strategies for managing herds of domestic livestock to mimic those wild herds and heal the land.

Here's a couple of videos on this idea:

 

 

 

 

Savory's work has wide implications, from revitalizing grasslands to managing deterioration of national parks and other public lands, especially in the more arid regions of the United States.

Some links:

The Savory Institute

Holistic Management International

Back to the Start: a move we need to make in lots of human endeavors

I totally love this ad from Chipotle that aired during the Grammy's. It speaks most directly to the tragedies of factory farming and our unsustainable food systems, but the idea of getting back to the start -- relating to Earth and each other from heart space, and co-creating our world from there -- is one we need to bring into everything we do on this planet. Enjoy this reflection from Willy and Chipotle...

 

More Damning Evidence Points to Pesticide as Cause of Mass Bee Deaths | Common Dreams

Continuing saga of the bees...interesting article:

Bayer-produced imidacloprid harmful to bees even at very low levels

- Common Dreams staff

A new study published in Naturwissenschaften - The Science of Nature by a leading bee expert provides damning evidence that a widely used pesticide, even at low levels, is harmful to bees.

The pesticide that the study (pdf) looked at was imidacloprid, one of the most widely used pesticides worldwide. It is neonicotinoid insecticide produced by Bayer CropScience.

via www.commondreams.org

The bees of O'Hare

I found this great story about a beekeeping project in a recent American Farmland Trust newsletter. In May, the Chicago Department of Aviation joined efforts with Sweet Beginnings to start a 2,400 square foot apiary at O'Hare International Airport.

Twenty-three beehives were set up on a patch of vacant land on the east side of the airport's property. The unused space at large airports like O'Hare is a resource begging to be used in sustainable, creative ways. What better use of it than the production of urban honey that also provides employment and training for adults who have been incarcerated and need a chance at a new life?

According to the article in The Daily GOOD:

The "airport beekeeping movement" has been growing in Germany since 1999, when scientists realized honeybees could be helpful for monitoring air quality, but O'Hare is the first American airport to get an apiary. In a way, it's a return to the airport's agricultural roots: O'Hare was founded on a former apple orchard, which lives on in the three letter airport code "ORD."

via www.good.is

 

 

 

See another great story on this project:

O'Hare Airport Buzzing over Honey Bees

Food Sovereignty: our rights to a local, sustainable food system

I got an email link today about a little town in Maine that, in March of this year, unanimously adopted a local food and self-governance ordinance to preserve small-scale farming and food processing in their community. I also watched a video on food sovereignty (see below) and got supercharged by the words and the idea.

I was going to focus on blogging about the town until I found information at The Community Environmental Defense Fund (CELDF) website that clarified some of the details of the Sedgwick ordinance (94kb pdf) and several others being pursued in Hancock County at the same time.

CELDF had drafted a food bill of rights ordinance that could be used in Maine. The resolutions actually adopted by the towns in Hancock County, according to CELDF, did not go far enough:

CELDF’s rights based Food Bill of Rights protects local family farm corporations, provides for the humane treatment of livestock, prohibits trespass by Genetically Modified Organisms, mandates formula restaurants and grocery stores to carry food products raised on local farms, denies interference from permits issued to corporations that would violate the local law, denies interference from state or federal agents or agencies that is in violation of the rights of community members secured by the ordinance, and provides for the Rights of Nature.

The Hancock County ordinances, in contrast, are regulatory in nature, as they are narrowly framed on the issues of state regulations and inspections. These ordinances focus on exempting farmers and producers from state and federal food safety regulations when selling directly to end consumers. But the Hancock County ordinances do not address the fundamental problems that have pushed family farmers out of business, eliminated the farmer's relationship with the soil, and severed the connections between farmers and community members that are vital to the resilience of our local food systems.

 

 

According to CELDF, recognizing and asserting these rights is the first step to creating a local, sustainable food system. The need for such a system -- anchored in justice and fairness for all people -- reveals itself more clearly every day.

 

 

This weekend on LinkTV: Seed Warriors

This weekend, LinkTV's ViewChange series will air the documentary Seed Warriors:

In the remote Norwegian town of Longyearbyen, just 1000 kilometres from the North Pole, politicians from around the world came to celebrate the opening of the world’s first global seed bank. After years of difficult negotiations and searching for the right spot, this was deemed to be the safest place on earth. Eventually, 4.5 million seed samples will be stored in this "Doomsday Vault" and ensure the continued existence of biodiversity.

via www.linktv.org

 

The page for the Svalbad Global Seed Vault at Wikipedia has more info and some interesting links.

The first of several showings will air at 7pm eastern tomorrow, Friday, July 22nd on DirecTV Channel 375 and DISH Network Channel 9410.

GMOs: It's not nice to fool (with) Mother Nature

I've always had an uneasy feeling about genetically modifed organisms (GMO). Early on this feeling was generated primarily, I think, at the level of intuition. But it also came out of experience and knowledge of other situations in which human beings took a chance meddling with nature only to have the experiment backfire.

The history of Earth -- from records accessible to all of us as well as those that remain hidden, for whatever reason -- is full of examples. But that's a story that would be longer in the telling. The truth of it, though, plays out on a thousand stages every day. If you look at these with a hawk's eye (keen on the details but seen from a distance), the patterns that connect them all begin to be revealed.

My interest in GMOs took a huge leap recently when I heard evolutionary biologist Bruce Lipton talking about new discoveries from genome science (genomics). In the discussion (and in his book, The Biology of Belief) Lipton said that while we have long believed that genes are only shared through reproduction, we now know that genes are shared among members of different species:

This sharing of information is not an accident. It is nature’s method of enhancing the survival of the biosphere. As discussed earlier, genes are physical memories of an organism’s learned experiences. The recently recognized exchange of genes among individuals disperses those memories, thereby influencing the survival of all organisms that make up the community of life. Now that we are aware of this inter- and intra-species gene transfer mechanism, the dangers of genetic engineering become apparent. For example, tinkering with the genes of a tomato may not stop at that tomato, but could alter the entire biosphere in ways that we cannot foresee.

There are many studies accessible online that document negative consequences of GMOs in agriculture and food supplies. As we cast about for ways to dodge results of our indiscretions with energy production and consumption, some are looking to biomass from GM corn and Eucalyptus trees to burn for power generation, sacrificing Mother Nature's choices for what grows where.

The video below -- GM Crops Farmer to Farmer -- brings out some of the downsides, especially those playing out in American agriculture. For me, this film by Michael Hart really tapped the roots of the Kansas farm kid inside me still. Hart, a conventional livestock family farmer who has been farming in Cornwall for nearly thirty years, has actively campaigned on behalf of family farmers for over fifteen years. Here he speaks to some American farmers about their experiences with GM crops:

 

 

This video clearly illuminates the fact that GMOs represent a huge environmental justice issue, not only for people but for other species and the Earth itself. And its impacts have spread like a global virus. Not only are companies like Monsanto -- with their paid lobbyists and bought-off politicians -- messing with my country, but they are imposing their exploitive, dangerous business on brothers and sisters around the world. The consequences of that are getting ugly, and may get a lot uglier before we can all stand together as citizens to put a stop to it.

I plan to write more about all of this in future posts, covering other downsides as well as significant resistance to GMOs that is springing up around the planet. In addition, there are significant ethical questions regarding hunger, poverty, and basic rights for people and the Earth itself.

For now, here's a couple of links that I hope will add to your outrage and fuel your willingness to take a stand at home, and stand in solidarity with others around the world who have been, might be or will be hurt by GMOs:

Monsanto and Gates Foundation Push GE Crops on Africa

Monsanto Out to Monopolize African Agriculture

How the World's Population Is Being Forced to Succumb to Genetically Modified Organisms

GE Trees, Cellulosic Biofuels, and Destruction of U.S. and Global Forests (pdf 939KB)

GM maize "has polluted rivers across the United States"

The Corporate Climate Coup (David Noble)