NJ Assembly voting session on Monday, Feb. 25, 2019
|
© 1983-2019 Government News Network. All rights reserved. Contents may not be published or distributed without permission
NJ Assembly voting session on Monday, Feb. 25, 2019 Read More »
Grand Canyon tourists exposed for years to radiation
Dennis Wagner reports for the Arizona Republic:
For nearly two decades at the Grand Canyon in Arizona, tourists, employees, and children on tours passed by three paint buckets stored in the national park’s museum collection building, unaware that they were being exposed to radiation.
Although federal officials learned last year that the 5-gallon containers were brimming with uranium ore and then removed the radioactive specimens, the park’s safety director alleges nothing was done to warn park workers or the public that they might have been exposed to unsafe levels of radiation.
In a rogue email sent to all Park Service employees on Feb. 4, Elston “Swede” Stephenson — the safety, health and wellness manager — described the alleged cover-up as “a top management failure” and warned of possible health consequences.
“If you were in the Museum Collections Building (2C) between the year 2000 and June 18, 2018, you were ‘exposed’ to uranium by OSHA’s definition,” Stephenson wrote. “The radiation readings, at first blush, exceeds (sic) the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s safe limits. … Identifying who was exposed, and your exposure level, gets tricky and is our next important task.” The building is located in Grand Canyon Village, Arizona.
In a Feb. 11 email to Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and Deputy Inspector General Mary Kendall, Stephenson said he had repeatedly asked national park executives to inform the public, only to get stonewalled.
“Respectfully, it was not only immoral not to let Our People know,” he added, “but I could not longer risk my (health and safety) certification by letting this go any longer.”
According to Stephenson, the uranium specimens had been in a basement at park headquarters for decades and were moved to the museum building when it opened, around 2000.
One of the buckets was so full that its lid would not close.
Stephenson said the containers were stored next to a taxidermy exhibit, where children on tours sometimes stopped for presentations, sitting next to uranium for 30 minutes or more. By his calculation, those children could have received radiation dosages in excess of federal safety standards within three seconds, and adults could have suffered dangerous exposure in less than a half-minute.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission measures radiation contamination in millisieverts per hour or per year. According to Stephenson, close exposures to the uranium buckets could have exposed adults to 400 times the health limit — and children to 4,000 times what is considered safe.
Emily Davis, a public affairs specialist at the Grand Canyon, said the Park Service is coordinating an investigation with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Arizona Department of Health Services.
Davis stressed that a recent review of the building in question uncovered only background radiation, which is natural in the area and is safe.
“There is no current risk to the park employees or public,” Davis said. “The building is open. … The information I have is that the rocks were removed, and there’s no danger.”
Davis declined to address Stephenson’s assertion that thousands of people may have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, or his allegation that the Park Service violated the law by not issuing a public warning.
“We do take our public and employee safety and allegations seriously,” she said.
Like this? Click to receive free updates
Grand Canyon tourists exposed for years to radiation Read More »
Despite pressure from President Trump, 2 coal-fueled power plants will be shuttered in Kentucky, Tennessee
The president tweeted that TVA needed to “give serious consideration to all factors before voting to close viable power plants, like Paradise #3 in Kentucky.”
Phil McCausland reports for NBC News
The Tennessee Valley Authority announced Thursday that it would close two coal plants, including one that buys its fuel from one of Donald Trump’s campaign contributors, despite public pressure from the president to keep it open.
In a 5-2 vote, the public utility’s board of directors chose to shutter Kentucky’s Paradise Fossil plant in 2020 and Tennessee’s Bull Run plant in 2023. The Kentucky plant buys much of its fuel from Murray Energy, which is owned by Robert Murray, a generous supporter of Trump. The two dissenting votes came from Trump administration appointees.
The board met Thursday to discuss the potential shuttering of the plants that are 50 years old after a series of TVA assessments deemed them to be obsolescent and wasteful of energy. The independent federal agency said earlier in the week that the facilities produced a steady, inflexible amount of power and could not bend to “the increased volatility in energy consumption” of its customer base.
“Making decisions that impact employees and communities is difficult as we fulfill our commitment to keep power rates as low as possible,” TVA President and CEO Bill Johnson said. “We value the contributions of the employees of Paradise and Bull Run, and we will be working directly with them and local communities to ease the transition as much as possible.”
The decision came even though Republican politicians, including Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul of Kentucky, urged the TVA to keep the plants open.
The president entered the fray over the potential closure Monday, stating on Twitter that the TVA needed to “give serious consideration to all factors before voting to close viable power plants, like Paradise #3 in Kentucky.”
Data compiled by the Energy Information Administration shows that the Paradise Fossil plant, outside Drakesboro, Kentucky, has trucked in millions of tons of coal since at least 2013 from the nearby Paradise #9 Mine, which is owned and operated by Murray Energy.
Robert Murray, chief executive of Murray Energy Corp., speaks during an interview in his office at the Crandall Canyon Mine, in Huntington, Utah on Aug. 22, 2007.Jae C. Hong / AP file
Murray is a prolific donor to Republican causes through the Murray Energy Corporation Political Action Committee. The group donated almost $350,000 in the 2016 election, including $100,000 to the Trump Victory Super PAC, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Murray Energy said in an email earlier this week that its chairman “did not have any contact with President Trump or anyone in his administration on this issue.”
In a statement Thursday, Murray said that his company is “extremely disappointed in the TVA board decision.”
“We have 690 employees in the vicinity of the plant,” he said. “Further, every coal mining job, according to university studies, results in up to 11 additional jobs in our communities. This is up to 7,500 jobs in West Kentucky that could be affected.”
Neither he nor the company immediately clarified whether those employees faced losing their jobs because of the decision.
The White House declined to comment Thursday.
Like this? Click to receive free updates
As EPA prevaricates on PFAS standards, PADEP plunges in
The decision comes after the EPA fell short of committing to setting a federal standard
Kyle Bagenstose reports for the Bucks Courier-Times:
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection will work to set its own drinking water standards for toxic chemicals popping up in drinking water across the state, a department spokesperson said Friday.
The announcement comes on the heels of a news conference held by the Environmental Protection Agency in Philadelphia on Thursday, in which the agency kicked a decision on whether to regulate perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctance sulfonate (PFOS), until the end of the year. While acting EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler said he had “every intention” of developing a standard for the chemicals, the agency stopped short of promising it would do so, drawing criticisms from environmental groups and lawmakers.
The DEP, which has been considering the idea of setting its own drinking water standard for the chemicals dating back to last year, said the EPA’s position factored into its own decision to move forward. The DEP development was first reported by environmental news website StateImpact Pennsylvania.
“Governor Tom Wolf and (DEP Secretary Patrick) McDonnell have been advocating for the U.S. EPA to take the lead in addressing PFAS chemicals, and are pleased to see them taking the first steps towards making a regulatory determination for setting a Maximum Contaminant Level for PFOS and PFOA in drinking water and working towards cleanup standards,” wrote DEP spokesman Neil Shader in an email. “However, EPA would not commit to a specific time frame and the people of Pennsylvania cannot wait on the federal government.”
Shader said the DEP would be “moving forward” with a request for proposals to hire a consulting scientist, whose job will be to examine existing health studies to determine a safe drinking water level for the chemicals. Shader did not spell out the process further or give any timeline for actions. Those familiar with the DEP have noted the department has never before set its own drinking water standard, and will likely have to lay the framework as it goes.
Shader said the DEP also is “moving forward” with obtaining the necessary laboratory equipment, personnel and training to conduct in-house testing for the chemicals.
The state has ramped up action on PFOS and PFOA, which belong to a wider suite of chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. The department held an inaugural “PFAS Action Team” meeting in Harrisburg in November, bringing together representatives from various state departments to discuss this issue.
At the meeting, state Department of Health officials said they are working with the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) to try and get additional funding to perform health testing in the state. Officials from the fire commission said they were reviewing their files to try to identify areas where firefighting foams containing the chemicals were previously used, and along with the Department of Transportation, ensure emergency responders are trained in disposing of or capturing any PFOS-based foams that still exist.
Officials from the DEP also said at the November meeting that the information would be used as part of a strategy to look for areas where PFAS contamination might exist, saying the state lacks the resources to sample all of the more than 8,000 community water providers in the state for the chemicals.
Related news: Members of Congress will ‘put pressure on the EPA’ to address PFAS-contaminated water
EPA ‘moving forward’ with PFAS process
EPA ‘moving forward’ with PFAS process
Like this? Click to receive free updates
As EPA prevaricates on PFAS standards, PADEP plunges in Read More »
‘Most villainous act in the history of human civilization.’
Michael E. Mann, the renowned U.S. climate scientist and Tyler Prize winner from Penn State, speaks out
Michael E Mann in his office at Penn State University. SYDNEY HERDLE photo
Samantha Page reports for Cosmos.
Michael E Mann is one of two climate scientists who have been awarded the 2019 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.
Mann, a professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University in the US and one of the most famous climate scientists in the world, is the man behind the infamous “hockey stick” graph, which came out in 1998 and for many became the first piece of understandable data that showed the effect humans were having on the climate.
The graph and Mann himself became lightning rods for climate skeptics and fossil fuel backers, thrusting him into the role of public persuader. For the past 20 years, he has tangled with politicians, Twitter users, and the occasional Russian hacker to help explain what, exactly, is happening to our climate.
He spoke with Cosmos from State College, Pennsylvania, in the US. The interview has been edited for clarity and concision.
Cosmos: In some ways, it seems like we have hit a tipping point for talking about climate change. The New York Times recently called it 2018’s “topic of the year”. From your vantage point, do you think that’s true? If so, why?
Yes, I do. It’s a confluence of a few different things, one of which is the unprecedented summer of weather extremes that we saw. There were unprecedented heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods and superstorms that played out at a global scale, and I think drove home the reality that climate change impacts are no longer subtle. We are seeing them play out in real time on our television screens and on our newspaper headlines, and our social media feeds, and so I think people are getting it.
I have certainly been focused, as many of my fellow climate science communicators have been, in trying to help the public and policymakers connect the dots and understand that this is the face of climate change. These unprecedented damaging weather extremes have been exacerbated by climate change and so climate change is not a distant and far-off threat. It is something that is impacting us now, adversely, where we live today.
But we have been seeing these things – every year, hotter and hotter – for a while now. You think it’s really just about people experiencing it on the ground?
I think there are a few things going on. First of all, the unprecedented weather. It is no longer this distant, almost theoretical construct. It is something very real that people are feeling.
And I think the public is getting it. They are expecting more from their policymakers. They are demanding, increasingly, that politicians focus on this issue. Look at the rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has made climate change a featured part of her political identity. Her message is really connecting with younger folks. Politicians are actually seeing that you can win by campaigning on climate change.
And the reality is that there are developments in science as well. We are increasingly able to connect the dots scientifically, to talk about how climate change is exacerbating weather extremes. We can identify the role that climate change is playing with events like hurricanes Harvey and Florence and the California wildfires.
Is a change in the way that we view climate change and the way that we talk about it going to keep us from those apocalyptic scenarios that we’re all kind of worried about?
All of these threads have come together in an almost perfect storm, if you’ll forgive the pun, that is creating a potential tipping point in the public consciousness.
There’s a race between two tipping points. The tipping point of the public consciousness, which we want to see, and the tipping point in the climate system that we don’t want to see and that we’re coming perilously close to. For example, the melting of major ice sheets and the global sea-level rise that would entail.
It’s a race between our ability to mobilize the public and policymakers to action and the increasingly devastating impacts of climate change we will see the further we go down this road of fossil fuel burning. That’s really the challenge, to turn this ship around as quickly as possible.
But we’re not going to avert all of the dangerous impacts of climate change. If you live in Puerto Rico or California, just about anywhere around the world – Australia is dealing with unprecedented summer heat right now, devastating heat and flooding events. Some bad stuff is already happening.
The challenge here is to avert as much of that damage as we can by bringing carbon emissions down as quickly as possible, by transitioning to renewable energy as quickly as possible.
You mentioned Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She garnered some attention from both sides recently for saying we have 12 years to act before the end of the world. Is that true?
There is substantial truth to what AOC said. She was really paraphrasing the most recent conclusions of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report, which basically says that if we are going to limit carbon emissions to below levels that commit us to two degrees Celsius, which would be devastating planetary warming, then we have to bring our carbon emissions down 5-to-10% a year for the next decade.
Scary stuff.
Yeah.
And a little bit overwhelming. You’ve been talking about this for a while. What is it like for you to give this dire warning all the time?
If I didn’t think there was hope, it would be very difficult. But I do think there is hope. I am cautiously optimistic that we are seeing some change now. Not enough to avert some pretty bad climate impacts, but we’re seeing enough to convince me that we’re getting onto the path we need to get on.
There are no physical obstacles to averting catastrophic warming of the planet. The only obstacles at this point are political ones. And those are surmountable.
Like this? Click to receive free updates
‘Most villainous act in the history of human civilization.’ Read More »
Cities that have slashed their waste by 80 percent
Llandfill after a landslide in Alpacoma, near La Paz, Bolivia, in January. (David Mercado/Reuters)
Little Kamikatsu was facing a big problem. The rural Japanese town of 1,500 residents didn’t know what it was going to do with its trash. Residents had always burned it, first in front of their homes or on the farms, then in a large community pit, then in an incinerator the government quickly banned out of fear of pollutants. The town didn’t have money for a newer, safer incinerator. It had to find a new way.“They had to look into zero waste,” said Akira Sakano, chair of the board of directors of the Zero Waste Academy, an educational institution in Kamikatsu, explaining the discussions of those days in the early 2000s.That research introduced the town to what was then a virtual unknown but has since grown into one of the most widespread and successful recycling efforts in history, bringing cities the world over to the precipice of what once seemed fantastical: the elimination of waste. Today, places in rural Japan to metropolitan Sweden send very little of their trash to the landfill. Many more — including the District — have a “Zero Waste” plan. In the United States, San Francisco leads the way, diverting more than 80 percent of its waste — two and a half times more than the national average. It has become a lifestyle, with millions of images flooding Instagram touting a #zerowaste existence, and generating new businesses. The concept calls on people to think differently about waste. It starts with the creation of categories. There are recyclables, like aluminum cans and glass bottles. Reusables such as clothing. Compostables such as uneaten food. And then those that shouldn’t be used at all such as plastic bags, which are very difficult to recycle. The number of categories might expand or contract depending on the location, but the goal behind the zero waste philosophy is the same: to vastly reduce the amount of trash going to the landfill — “diverting” it, in the parlance of waste experts, away from landfills and incinerators.
Debbie Raphael, director of the San Francisco Department of the Environment, who oversees the city’s zero-waste initiative, said it’s top-down and bottom-up. In San Francisco, there are three bins, one for recycling, one for compost and one for the landfill. The categorization is left to residents, and the sorting is left to the city contractor, Recology. “It takes policy,” Raphael said of the zero-waste philosophy, which has purportedly cut the city’s waste in half. “It takes financial incentives. It takes consequences for not participating. And it takes an ethic . . . of a sense of responsibility for the health of our planet.”
It is a planet drowning in trash. Every year, the world is making more of it. In 2016 alone, the world’s cities produced more than 2 billion tons of solid waste. Americans produce a disproportionate amount, throwing away the equivalent of their own body weight every month. And as the planet’s population grows, the problems are poised to become significantly worse. Large landfills, according to a Washington Post project on trash, get as many as 10,000 tons of waste every day and are filling quickly. Within three decades, trash will outweigh fish in the ocean, according to the World Economic Forum.If zero waste has an origin story, it would wind back more than 40 years to a man in Berkeley, Calif., named Dan Knapp. At the time, he was out of sorts. He’d just lost his job. His wife had left him. He was living with a college buddy in town, having just hitchhiked from Eugene, Ore. And he couldn’t stop thinking about trash. “My curiosity was inflamed,” he said.A former college professor with a PhD in sociology, he rode his bike to the Berkeley landfill nearly every day and scavenged — hands going through refuse for valuable metals, mind going through big questions. Where does all of this stuff come from? In the chaos of a landfill, could order be found? Patterns began to emerge, and from those patterns, categories. Here were the textiles. And the glass piles. And rotting food. And soil hauled from construction sites. This wasn’t at all what he’d expected. He’d thought he’d find a bunch of unusable stuff. But it was an untapped resource.
Recycling, he realized, could go way beyond what was then a lofty goal of 35 percent, beyond aluminum cans and paper. Our trash just needed to be categorized appropriately, he said. Recycling shouldn’t be made simple. It should be made complex. The thought ultimately led to a taxology of trash — called the “twelve master categories of recyclable materials” — laying some of the initial groundwork for the “zero waste” concept.But few people were listening. Knapp was just another Berkeley environmentalist — long hair, beard, the works. It took a city on the other side of the world, working on a plan that seemed stripped from the pages of the hippie manual. “In a natural ecosystem there is a balance,” began “No Waste by 2010,” a plan that Canberra, Australia, initiated in 1996. “The wastes from one process become the resources for other processes. Nothing is wasted. In a consumer society waste is an accepted part of life. A strategy is needed to reverse this trend.”Knapp, the owner of Urban Ore, which salvages Berkeley’s waste, said he was flown in as a consultant to advise the city. He brought back the town’s plan and soon was passing it around. He’d been calling his idea “total recycling.” But here was something much catchier, right there on the plan’s cover: No Waste, which quickly transformed to “zero waste,” according to interviews with environmentalists. “Dan was very instrumental in bringing [the plan] over,” said Neil Seldman, an official with the Institute of Local Self-Reliance in Washington.Read the full storyLike this? Click to receive free updates
Cities that have slashed their waste by 80 percent Read More »