EPA’s updated Toxics Release Inventory available online

The Environmental Protection Agency’s latest data on industrial releases and transfers of toxic chemicals in the United States–and in your hometown–is now available online. It covers the period between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2009.

The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) database contains environmental release and transfer data on nearly 650 chemicals and chemical categories reported to EPA by more than 21,000 industrial and other facilities. 

Using either of two online tools — TRI Explorer or Envirofacts— you can learn about releases and transfers of chemicals in your home town –or anywhere else in the U.S.

I tried Envirofacts and found it easy to use.  The amount of information in the database is amazing. You would expect information on major utilities and chemical and petroleum facilities, but you’ll also find that the federal law can require submissions from your local gas station, auto body shop, and many other enterprises you might not expect, like schools and various commercial facilities. Envirofacts also includes a rich set of demographic and economic census data about the town you’re searching.

Facilities must report their data by July 1st of each year. Because the data is now submitted electronically, it is available for public inspection within weeks of the submission deadline.

What you’ll find today represents more than 80 percent of the data expected to be reported for 2009. The   EPA says it will continue to process paper submissions, late submissions, and to resolve issues with the electronic submissions.  The agency will update the data in August and again in September.

The EPA says it encourages the public to review the TRI data while the agency conducts its own analysis, which will be published later this year.

What’s your experience, as a business or individual, with the TRI reporting process? Does its value outweigh the time and cost of preparing and submitting the information?  How accurate do you find the data?  Does the information it makes available to anyone about specific facility locations (street addresses and aerial maps) pose an unwarranted security risk?  What else? Let us know.

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Canadians challenge Deepwater Wind in Rhode Island

A Canadian company that says it can provide Rhode Island with renewable power at a cheaper price than New Jersey-based Deepwater Wind is urging state regulators to stop their review of a long-term contract involving the offshore-wind developer, the Providence Journal reports today.

TransCanada Power has filed a motion to dismiss a case before the state Public Utilities Commission for a power-purchase agreement between National Grid, Rhode Island’s main electric utility, and Deepwater, the New Jersey company proposing an eight-turbine wind farm in waters off Block Island. The PUC will hold a hearing on the motion Tuesday morning.

TransCanada argues that the Rhode Island law governing renewable-power contracts violates the Commerce Clause in the U.S. Constitution because it favors in-state projects. The law, enacted a year ago, discriminates against out-of-state energy producers and thereby restricts interstate commerce, says TransCanada.

See the full story: Deepwater deal opposed by rival firm

Deepwater Wind, which is based in Hoboken, NJ, has a 20-year agreement to sell to National Grid up to 28 megawatts of electricity to be generated by the 8 turbines it plans to install off Block Island. It also plans to build the larger-scale 106-turbine Rhode Island Sound Wind Farm in federal waters about 15 miles from nearest landfall, for which it will need to execute a separate power purchase agreement.

Deepwater also is partnering with PSEG Renewable Generation on a joint venture, Garden State Offshore Energy, a proposed 350 megawatt wind farm in New Jersey waters some 20 miles east of Avalon. 

Related stories:


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New Jersey-based wind-energy company looks westward

NRG Bluewater Wind, the company which is on track to construct the nation’s first offshore wind-energy farm off the coast of Delaware (and is looking to install similar wind turbine clusters off New Jersey, Maryland and New York) is not focusing solely on the Atlantic Ocean.

The Muskegon Chronicle reports today that Mike O’Brien, the Hoboken, NJ-based company’s Great Lakes Director, introduced Bluewater to Michigan business leaders at an offshore wind briefing last week at Grand Valley State University’s Michigan Alternative and Renewable Energy Center.

Scandia Offshore Wind — a joint U.S.-Norwegian development company — has proposed a  plan for wind turbines in Lake Michigan that has generated a well-organized and well-funded opposition group, the newspaper reports.

O’Brien seized the opportunity to note that Bluewater has a different “methodology” than Scandia and believes that ‘stakeholder outreach’ is the most important and critical factor in developing such a project. He added that, while Bluewater it has no specific site in its cross-hairs, it definitely is interested in developing in Michigan.

State legislators are working on on a bill, expected to be introduced in the fall, that will lay out regulatory rules for any wind-energy projects in Michigan waters. O’Brien said Bluewater will not propose specific projects until those rules have been established.
 
Our most recent posts:
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Funding for Delaware River Basin conservation plan

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Study reveals tainted groundwater in northern Delaware

Tainted groundwater is spreading across thousands of acres in northern Delaware and has reached the Potomac Aquifer, which supplies drinking water to people across much of Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey.

In some areas of the upper Potomac near Delaware City and New Castle, concentrations of benzene, vinyl chloride and chlorinated benzene are so high that exposure poses an immediate health threat. Elevated levels of these industrial byproducts significantly increase the risks of cancer. Sustained exposure could kill.

These two, powerful paragraphs are the introduction to a must-read environmental news series launched yesterday by the (Wilmington, DE) News Journal. It’s based on a year-long investigation by the newspaper that uncovered “a damning history of corporate mistakes and lax government oversight, especially in the corridor bordered by the Delaware River, DuPont Highway and the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal.”

The newspaper says its report is based on thousands of pages of corporate documents, consultant reports, hydrology and geology studies, well-water monitoring reports and ecological tests on fish and plants. The majority of the documents, it says, were gathered through state and federal Freedom of Information Act requests and most have never been distributed to the public.

The opening story, Delaware Drinking Water at Risk, provides this backdrop to the report.

Northern Delaware is home to some of the worst chemical dumping grounds in America, a legacy of broken promises and corporate misdeeds. Regulators working for Delaware and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have long claimed that the deep clay layers above the aquifer protected it from the foul waters discharged by chemical and petroleum manufacturers.

“Those assurances have proved false.

The protective layer over the aquifer, scientists now say, is full of holes.

To prevent a public health disaster, the state has banned public use of groundwater under or near the Delaware City petrochemical complex.

Toxic pollutants, though, are now moving near the edge of that containment zone, outside the properties of Metachem, Occidental Chemical, Formosa Plastics and the Delaware City Refinery, and toward schools and houses.

One plume of chemicals has traveled a mile south of the refinery’s main production area and has seeped 190 feet into the earth.


We recommend that you read the entire series. It’s going to ruffle corporate and political feathers. Good journalism does that. It takes time, talent, experience, money, commitment and political courage to produce such an investigative report.  Like all valuable news series, the News-Journal’s contains sidebar stories, photos and graphs that expand the reader’s understanding of the problem and point to possible solutions.

As daily newspapers shrink in number, size and resources, reporting like this is less frequently seen. It may be a fact of current economic life, but it’s regrettable.  An informed public needs efforts like these.

There are some who cheer the demise of newspapers. Bloggers, pundits and  ‘citizen journalist’ will fill the void, they say. 

We say: Don’t count on it.  Long live feisty, independent newspapers like the News Journal.

Please feel free to share your thoughts in the opinion box below.  If one is not visible, click on the tiny ‘comments’ line below to activate it.


Related story:
Taxpayers stuck with $100 million mess
The abandoned Metachem plant is the most polluted site in the petrochemical complex near Delaware City. Based on government promises that poisoned soils and groundwater could be cleaned, taxpayers have already spent more than $100 million at Metachem. (News Journal photo by Fred Comegys)

Related story:
Drinking water filtering strongly recommended
Richard F. Davis, a former state representative and a DuPont Co. chemist, relies on a whole-house filter in his Mariners Watch neighborhood. “It’s impossible to know
where all the water comes from.”
(News Journal photo by Jennifer Corbett)

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Will mysterious NJ entrant delay DE offshore wind?

Bluewater Wind has done much of the heavy lifting needed to put itself and the state of Delaware at the head of a pack of developers and states hoping to build the first wind energy farm off the Atlantic coast.

The company helped steer a funding law through the Delaware legislature, negotiated agreements with the state’s largest utility and others to buy the power its ocean turbines will generate, and is nearing the final hurdle–winning a federal lease for the site it has chosen 11 miles off Delaware’s coast.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a mysterious rival from New Jersey has appeared and is seeking to win a federal lease for its own wind farm at the very same location. 

What makes it a mystery is the fact that Occidental Development & Equities LLC, of Bayonne, N.J. has managed to shield virtually all details about itself other than its name.

Occidental was one of five developers that filed in 2008 to build a wind farm off New Jersey’s coast, but it was rejected for funding by the state’s Board of Public Utilities. In the New Jersey case, it also managed to keep its vital statistics out of public view.  

Based on that track record and Bluewater Wind’s long head start, the mysterious stranger does not appear to pose much of a danger to Bluewater Wind as a competitor, but it could delay the federal review and approval process–especially at a time when the federal focus is on offshore gas drilling.

Everyone loves a mystery. Is Occidental a serious wind energy developer?  If not, what game is it playing? 

Use the opinion box below to share what you know–or suspect. If one isn’t visible, click on the tiny ‘comment’ line below to activate it.

Related:
Bluewater faces competition for lease from secretive firm
Md., Del. govs ask feds to join wind energy pact

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Will mysterious NJ entrant delay DE offshore wind? Read More »

Google searches and purchases big stake in green energy

Lots of corporations talk a good green game, but Google, the internet information giant, is using its checkbook to make environmental news.

The Guardian reported today that :

“Google is officially in the green energy business. The search giant announced on Tuesday that its Google Energy subsidiary signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with NextEra Energy. Google will begin buying 114 megawatts of electricity from an Iowa wind farm on July 30.
Google, of course, cannot directly use the clean green energy generated by the wind farm; that power goes into the local grid. So Google Energy will sell the power on the regional spot market, where utilities and electricity retailers go to buy power when demand spikes and they have a shortfall. Google will use the revenue from spot market sales to buy renewable energy certificates (RECs) which will offset its greenhouse gas emissions.

Many companies buy RECs in an attempt to be carbon neutral, obtaining them from third-party brokers. But by purchasing RECs directly tied to the renewable energy it is also buying, Google is getting a bigger bang for its buck.

“By contracting to purchase so much energy for so long, we’re giving the developer of the wind farm financial certainty to build additional clean energy projects,” Urs Hoelzle, Google’s senior vice president for operations, wrote on a blog post Tuesday.

“The inability of renewable energy developers to obtain financing has been a significant inhibitor to the expansion of renewable energy,” he added. “We’ve been excited about this deal because taking 114 megawatts of wind power off the market for so long means producers have the incentive and means to build more renewable energy capacity for other customers.”

In a statement on its site, Google also noted that its motivations for signing long-term renewable energy contracts are not entirely altruistic.

“Through the long term purchase of renewable energy at a predetermined price, we’re partially protecting ourselves against future increases in power prices,” the company stated. “This is a case where buying green makes business sense.”

NextEra Energy Resources, the company that will supply Google with its wind power, is itself an alternative energy success story, having expanded its wind fleet from fewer than 500 megawatts a decade ago to more than 7,600 megawatts–the largest wind fleet in North America today.

NextEra hs more than 9,000 wind turbines in operation at 77 wind farms in 17 states and Canada. It boasts that the wind energy it generated in 2009 was he equivalent of removing some 2.4 million cars from the road.

Google’s green energy purchase will come from NextEra’s Story II Wind Energy Center in operation in Story and Hardin counties in Iowa. The company says in a news release that it has “nearly 700 wind turbines in operation in Iowa with a nameplate capacity of more than 1,000 megawatts that are capable of generating enough power to serve more than 250,000 average homes.”

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Bill would hike New Jersey Spill Fund liability 

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