Harvey: Worst rainstorm in U.S. history and it’s still raining

Reuters / Richard Carson
Eric Holthaus reports for Grist:
The pictures are heartbreaking, the statistics are mind-boggling. And, incredibly, it’s still getting worse.
Since Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas late Friday night, more than 40 inches of rain have fallen in parts of the Houston metro area, producing the worst flood in the city’s modern history. The latest forecasts show another 15-25 inches on the way before Harvey clears out of the area on Wednesday. Harvey is sure to rank as the worst rainstorm in U.S. history, according to an initial analysis from the Texas state climatologist.
“Of course I’m surprised,” Houston meteorologist Tim Heller told Grist. “We tell people to prepare for the worst, but this is worse than the worst! This isn’t isolated flooding, this isn’t neighborhood flooding, this is area flooding, regional flooding. The warnings were there for 15-25 [inches] of rain, then 30, then 40. I quit giving out storm totals because I’m not sure what we’ll end up with now.”
The amount of rain so far brings new meaning to the word “unprecedented.” In just three days, Houston doubled the previous record rainfall for a full month — 19.21 inches set in June 2001 during Tropical Storm Allison (which caused the city’s previously worst flood).
So much rain has fallen that the National Weather Service had to add additional colors to its maps, in order to show rainfall totals this huge. During the peak of the rainfall on Saturday night, the local NWS office in Houston ad-libbed a dire warning and issued a “Flash Flood Emergency for Life-Threatening Catastrophic Flooding” — the first time the already-dire “Flash Flood Emergency” was considered insufficient to describe the impending risk.
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Gibbsboro residents claim Sherwin-Williams cancer link

 
Gibbsboro, NJ  Mayor Ed Campbell at former Sherwin-Williams paint manufacturing  plant

Carol Comegno reports for The Courier-Post: 

A group of Gibbsboro, NJ residents filed federal legal action Tuesday claiming disposal of toxic waste from a former paint factory has caused a cancer cluster.

Nine families or individuals who live throughout Gibbsboro filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Camden as a personal injury class action against Sherwin-Williams.

The lawsuit alleges Sherwin-Williams, a Fortune 500 company, contaminated the town’s soil and groundwater with unsafe levels of lead, arsenic and other carcinogens that have caused a cancer cluster in the borough.

The plant, a paint burn site, a separate dump, Kirkwood Lake, lakeside properties, and multiple connected streams and their banks are part of a Superfund cleanup site that stretches for 1.5 miles through Gibbsboro and into Voorhees. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is overseeing the project.

Some members of the nine plaintiff families have been diagnosed with cancer or other serious health conditions, including children and one child as young as 3 months old, the suit contends. The contamination has migrated to surrounding residences and businesses within Gibbsboro, causing a cancer cluster within the town, according to the lawsuit.

Most of the plaintiffs live outside the boundaries of the designated Superfund sites.

“It is my firm belief that there has been contaminant migration beyond some of the Superfund sites and that this has caused cancer among some of the plaintiff adults and their children, including a 3-month-old baby,” said Haddonfield lawyer Craig Mitnick, who represents the residents.

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Editorial: Save the Levine Reservoir in Paterson, NJ




Editorial from The Record of Bergen County, NJ:


The fight to save the Stanley M. Levine Reservoir in Paterson is not going well. The federal Environmental Protection Agency is backing a plan to drain the reservoir and replace it with concrete tanks. As we have been saying for years now: There must be a better way.

The Passaic Valley Water Commission has to comply with federal water standards, which require utilities to either cover or retreat drinking water stored in open-air reservoirs to prevent fecal contamination by birds and other wildlife, as Staff Writer Richard Cowen reported. Three other area open-air reservoirs in the area are also affected by this regulation. We have advocated for all to remain open-air and not be replaced by tanks.

The Paterson case is unique because the reservoir abuts the Great Falls National Historical Park, but it is not part of the park. It is part of the Great Falls Society of Useful Manufactures National Historical Landmark District, and that means it is protected by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. The proposed reservoir change is being reviewed by officials within the U.S. Department of the Interior. Officials at the National Park Service, which is part of the Interior Department, have raised concerns that the review has not been sufficiently thorough.

Photo simulations of the site from various angles are not taking into account the change of seasons, the loss of foliage from trees and the effects the tanks would have on all the views from the Great Falls park as it comes fully into being. These are not small concerns.

Several years ago, activists on both sides of the Hudson objected to a design for LG’s headquarters atop the Palisades. The building would be visible above the tree line of the Palisades. While it seemed a Sisyphean exercise against a major corporation, it was not. LG listened to the concerns, rethought the project and found a solution.

Private industry is more receptive to pushback than federal bureaucracy, but we hope that while there is still a chance for a federal agency to put a halt to the draining of the Levine Reservoir, clearer eyes will look at what is at stake.


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Hurricane Harvey: Probably the worst disaster to hit Texas




Joel Achenbach reports for The Washington Post:

William “Brock” Long, newly installed as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said in an interview a few weeks ago that there was one thing that worried him most when it comes to natural disasters: “You know what’s keeping me up at night? This country has not been hit by a major hurricane since 2005.”

That was the right thing to worry about, it turns out. Long, just two months on the job, is coordinating the federal response to Hurricane Harvey — the first Category 3 or greater storm to hit the U.S. in 12 years — and its lethal aftermath.

The storm has produced catastrophic flooding across thousands of square miles of south and Southeast Texas. Rain continues to fall in historic quantities. Rivers are rising to levels never before seen. People have taken refuge in attics or on rooftops awaiting rescue.

“This will be a devastating disaster, probably the worst disaster the state’s seen,” Long told The Washington Post on Sunday in a telephone interview from FEMA headquarters in Washington.


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Coming soon to Comcast cable customers: Solar roofs


Bob Fernandez reports for Philly.com:

Comcast Corp.’s deal to market Sunrun Inc.’s solar roofs to its cable and internet customers could lead the Philadelphia-based giant to take a stake in the San Francisco company if the arrangement generates enough new customers.

Comcast’s marketing for Sunrun — which will launch this year — will be through online banner ads, bill inserts, and direct mail to subscribers. Subscribers would have to contact Sunrun and would not be upsold on the phone for solar roofs when they call Comcast for repairs or questions about Xfinity cable or internet services, spokeswoman Jennifer Moyer said Friday.

With the pact, Comcast, which has 29 million customers, can realize a 5 percent equity stake if the agreement leads to 30,000 new customers for Sunrun or Comcast spends $10 million on marketing the program, according to the agreement filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Comcast will take up to a 10 percent stake in the company if its marketing leads to 60,000 new residential or commercial customers over the 40-month term of the deal.

Sunrun’s stock on the Nasdaq market soared by as much as 10 percent Thursday when the deal was announced, but then fell by almost the same amount Friday to a market capitalization of $738 million. Sunrun posted revenues of $453.9 million and a net loss of $303 million in 2016.



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Dept. of Energy study of electric grid called flawed

Andrea Sears reports for, Public News Service (NY)
The report recommends the U.S. EPA ease permitting requirements for new investments in coal-fired plants. (PublicDomainPictures/Pixabay)
The report recommends the U.S. EPA ease permitting requirements for new investments in coal-fired plants. (PublicDomainPictures/Pixabay)

NEW YORK – The U.S. Department of Energy has released its study of the electric grid’s reliability, but some environmental groups maintain it isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

The study concludes that cheap natural gas is the main reason for the decline of coal and nuclear power.

But according to Kim Smaczniak, a clean energy attorney with the environmental law firm Earthjustice, the final version of the report waters down key conclusions about the role of environmental regulations seen in an earlier draft.

And she says it adds recommendations to ease permits for coal power plants and safety requirements for nuclear power, and change how customers pay for power from older, less-efficient plants.

“Those are the findings that we see in the study that really aren’t backed up, and they’re findings that we didn’t see in the original version,” she states.

The coal and nuclear energy industries say the report confirms that the power they generate is critical to maintaining a reliable and resilient electric grid.



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