City sets goal for 2050 as threat from climate change worsens
Challenges include new housing, addressing federal buildings
Internal Revenue Service headquarters building in Washington, D.C. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Washington is announcing a goal of retrofitting or removing all of its flood-prone buildings by 2050, the first major U.S. city to set such a policy.
The proposal is part of a broader plan to protect Washington, which is home to 700,000 people and the headquarters of most federal agencies, from climate change and other threats. That plan, called “Resilient DC” and released Monday, sets a range of goals for coping with increasingly severe floods and heat waves, the major climate stresses projected for the city, which sits at the junction of the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers.
The U.S. Interior Department is still processing permit applications for companies to conduct seismic testing in the Atlantic – a precursor to drilling – despite shelving its plan to vastly expand offshore drilling, a spokeswoman said on Monday.
Atlantic coastal state lawmakers, businesses and conservation groups are adamant that Interior should not allow seismic testing – a process that often uses powerful air guns to map resources below the ocean floor – arguing the surveys hurt marine life, such as the endangered North Atlantic right whale.
Newly confirmed Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said last week the agency’s five-year plan for oil and gas drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) would be sidelined indefinitely after a March court ruling blocked drilling in the Arctic and part of the Atlantic Ocean.
But Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which is responsible for managing energy development on the OCS, continues to review the applications of a half-dozen seismic testing companies awaiting permits to test for oil and gas drilling potential on the Atlantic Ocean floor.
“BOEM is continuing to process the permit applications for conducting seismic surveys in the Atlantic, consistent with applicable law,” BOEM spokeswoman Tracey Moriarty said in an emailed statement on Monday.
Editor’s Note: While driving into Lancaster, Pa. on Saturday, where I was to attend a meeting of website users and developers, I marveled at the beauty of the individual farms bisected by Route 30 and I wondered how the Amish continue to live here with the chock a block proliferation of motels, hotels, furniture outlets, and fast-food restaurants. Later, during a break, I picked up a copy of the local newspaper and read the story below. While some Amish farmers have picked up and headed to more rural areas, the overall population of Amish families is far outpacing the population growth of the merchant class. If the Amish ever drop their aversion to politics, they likely could stop additional development in its tracks. At the voting booth. _____________________________________________________________________
Lancaster County’s fast-growing Amish population recently exceeded the 33,000 mark as the farming-oriented Plain sect continues to flourish despite the encroachment of urban sprawl.
The Amish, who typically have large families and drive horse-drawn vehicles and farm equipment, are growing so strongly that they accounted for an estimated 41% of the county’s overall population growth last year.
The U.S. Census Bureau says the county added 2,503 people in 2018. Scholars who track the local Plain community say about 1,020 of them were Amish.
Lancaster County’s ability to accommodate the burgeoning Amish population has become an issue in Manheim Township, where the commissioners will soon decide whether to allow the development of a 75-acre housing and commercial project, called Oregon Village, in the midst of a thriving, centuries-old Amish community.
Lancaster County’s Amish population reached 33,143 in 2018, up 3.2%, from the previous year, according to Elizabethtown College researchers. Last year’s growth was typical of what’s happened in recent years.
Elizabethtown College’s Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies bases its estimates for the Lancaster County settlement on a church district directory and Amish newspapers. (Lancaster County Amish comprise 87% of the entire Lancaster County settlement, which includes parts of neighboring Chester and York counties.)
Since 2014, Lancaster County Amish have grown annually by over 1,000 a year, on average, and at a 3.9% rate. That compares to a much slower 0.5% rate for the county as a whole. Overall, the county is growing by about 2,500 people a year.
Although some Amish families do leave Lancaster County, their population here doubles about every 20 years. In 1970, the Lancaster County portion of the local Amish settlement numbered about 7,000. That climbed to about 12,400 by 1990 and 16,900 by 2000. It has just about doubled since then.
The lawmakers say Patrick McDonnell’s re-appointment should be delayed until pipeline investigations are complete
Kimberly Paynter reports for WHYY
A bipartisan group of state senators from Chester and Delaware counties wants to put off the reconfirmation of Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Patrick McDonnell until multiple criminal probes of Sunoco’s Mariner East pipeline projects are complete.
Led by Chester County Democrat Andy Dinniman, the group asked Sen. Gene Yaw, majority chair of the Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, and Sen. John Yudichak, the minority chair, to delay what is typically a routine hearing on reappointment, which is scheduled for Tuesday.
In the memo to Yaw and Yudichack, the senators, who represent areas impacted by Sunoco/Energy Transfer’s Mariner East pipeline project, pointed to four separate probes including criminal investigations by both the Chester County and Delaware County district attorneys as well as an investigation by the Pennsylvania Attorney General.
In addition to Dinniman, the senators on the memo include Democrats Daylin Leach, Katie Muth and Tim Kearney, and Republican Tom Killion.
The memo also points to an investigation by the state Ethics Commission into the actions of Gov. Tom Wolf’s aide Yesenia Bane who is married to a gas industry lobbyist, and who acted as Wolf’s liaison to DEP during the permitting of the project. The commission closed its investigation of Bane on April 19, clearing her of wrongdoing.
The Trump administration’s move, similar to EPA’s ‘secret science’ effort, offers new ways for fossil fuel and other industries to challenge science-based policies.
The memo was signed by Russell Vought, a former top official at the political arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation who is now acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Credit: Oliver Contreras/For The Washington Post via Getty Images
APR 25, 2019
President Donald Trump’s administration has launched yet another attempt to control the use of science in federal policymaking—this time with a memorandum to government agencies from the White House budget office.
This story has been updated with EPA’s response.
The memo, quietly released on Wednesday, appears aimed at putting into effect some long-sought goals of industry foes of environmental regulations.
Described as “guidance” for executive branch agencies, it offers numerous new avenues for regulated industries to challenge the science used in policymaking. The memo was signed by Russell Vought, a former top official at the political arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation who is now acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Observers say the OMB is seeking to implement by fiat restrictions on environmental and health science that have failed to garner support in Congress and have foundered in a formal rulemaking process begun last year by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Hunters worry about marine mammals and a way of life, but there are also some mixed feelings as the Trump administration goes full bore on oil and gas drilling.
Martha Itta, tribal administrator to the Native Village of Nuiqsut, was relieved by a judge’s ruling on offshore drilling. Her community still faces pressure onshore from encroaching oil and gas drilling operations. Credit: Sabrina Shankman/InsideClimate News
If there is one place that has most felt the Trump administration’s push to rapidly expand fossil fuel development, it might be Nuiqsut, a small village nestled on Alaska’s North Slope.
The village has become almost entirely surrounded by oil and gas drilling over the past three decades, and the Trump administration has been aggressively pushing for more drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, just west of the village, and off the coast to the north.
“It’s really overwhelming to try to keep up with everything that’s going on,” said Martha Itta, tribal administrator to the native village and also its vice mayor. She is one of a handful of people in the community trying to ensure the village has a voice as the federal government works to open offshore areas to drilling, rewrite the management plan for the National Petroleum Reserve and clear the way for companies to expand drilling. “There’s a lot of times when we miss out submitting comments on projects or we didn’t fully get to analyze what’s being said and done in these projects,” she said.
On Friday, a federal judge brought a rare wave of relief for Itta with a rulingthat effectively halted plans for offshore drilling in much of the Arctic Ocean off Alaska.
