Good News: It's Now Safe To Flush Your Toilet In Brazoria County, Texas... Drinking Tap Water, Though, Is A Little Dicey

 

New coronavirus cases in Texas have been leveling off. By Saturday, Texas had given up its usual place as the first or second daily nightmare and was "just" the 5th, behind a similarly leveling off California, a steady-as-you-go Florida and behind the big surges in Wisconsin and Illinois. But Texas has another nightmare to contend with instead-- a brain-eating amoeba in the tap water. The warning above came from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Who even ever imagined Texas has one!

There was some good news in the announcement to the 8 cities in jeopardy. Although your brain could be eaten if you use the tap water, it's A-OK to flush the toilet.

I was interested in knowing how the brain-eating amoeba (naegleria fowleri) got into Brazoria County's water supply. In the initial press release the warning was for the following cities: Lake Jackson, Freeport, Angleton, Brazoria, Richwood, Oyster Creek, Clute, Rosenburg, Dow Chemical, TDCJ Clemens and TDCJ Wayne Scott. Well, TDCJ stands for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice-- and I hope they're serving Fiji water to the inmates in the two facilities-- but Dow Chemical? Dow chemical, that's a city? Well, not exactly. I don't know for 100% if it was Dow that is responsible for the brain-eating water, but... come on-- until we hear it isn't, we know it is. On their corporate website, Dow brags that "Everything is bigger in Texas and that includes The Dow Chemical Company. Dow first came to Texas in 1940, building a plant in Freeport to extract magnesium from seawater. The company’s presence in the state has continued to grow through the years, and now it calls Deer Park, Freeport, Houston, La Porte, Seadrift and Texas City home... Dow facilities in Texas produce billions of pounds of products each year that enhance the quality of life for people around the globe. Dow products serve virtually every consumer market ranging from food to building and construction and from health and medicine to transportation. These products are used in a variety of end-use products-- office supplies, mouthwash, pharmaceuticals, computers, furniture, paints, carpet, garbage bags, cosmetics, chewing gum, lozenges, cleaning products and food." But don't despair... They saved the good news for last: "Dow is committed to the principles of Sustainable Development-- working to enhance economic prosperity, environmental stewardship and corporate responsibility."

Brazoria County is Trump country. In 2016, he beat Hillary there 72,653 (60.4%) to 43,075 (35.8%). Presumably, most of the voters oppose regulations that would protect them from brain-eating amoebas in their water. Otherwise they wouldn't have voted for Greg Abbott in 2018. He was reelected governor by Brazorians, 70,373 (63.1%) to 39,536 (35.4%). And they thought anti-environment, anti-regulation fanatic Ted Cruz would be a better senator than Beto-- 58.8% to 40.5%. Sociopath and anti-regulatory congressman Randy Weber represents Brazoria in Congress and the county performed at an R+40 level for him, far stronger than any other part of TX-14. He's running again this cycle-- again against Adrienne Bell-- and I'm sure anyone who has been impacted by Dow Chemical's presence in their drinking water will dutifully vote for him again-- and for John Cornyn.

This morning, I asked Bell if it's fair for me to blame Texas politicians like Weber for this environmental catastrophe in Brazoria. She did not shy away from the question, the way most candidates would. "There is real talk and political talk. The political talk gets complicated because it involves buzzwords like governmental regulation, the free market and the science of water quality. That’s the kind of talk Weber wants because it keeps voters and residents confused enough to keep voting for him. The real talk is this-- there is a brain-eating amoeba in the water in Brazoria County, and it is there because of Dow Chemical dumping their waste. Randy Weber took thousands from DOW Chemical’s official PAC back in June of 2019. Weber is content to let Texans drink poisoned water because of campaign donations. He doesn’t care about Texans as much as he cares about making a living at the expense of Texans’ health. So what if some people get sick and die, as long as he keeps his seat. You can retire this minion of Trump by voting him out in November, so you can rely on someone like me to give you the real talk."

Julie Oliver is running for Congress in a different part of Texas-- the center of the state-- but a few minutes ago she told me that "We see repeatedly that when left without oversight, companies fail to do the right thing by their communities and fail to comply with laws like the Clean Water Act, posing significant health risks and leaving working class communities the most severely impacted. Unfortunately under the Trump administration, the EPA has been neutered in its ability to enforce these laws through regulatory oversight. We need real leadership at the EPA-- not science--denying ideologues."

On Saturday, Brazoria County reported 59 new COVID cases, bringing the county total to 11,281. There were 2 more COVID deaths (for a total of 165 countywide). So far just one person has had his brain eaten by naegleria fowleri, a six-year old boy. The warning about drinking from the tap has been lifted in all the cities but Lake Jackson, where the region's water treatment plant is located. Somehow that doesn't sound reassuring.

The authority said in a statement that it was unclear how long it would be before the tap water was again safe.

The authority’s water source is the Brazos River.

Naegleria fowleri is a free-living microscopic amoeba, or single-celled living organism commonly found in warm freshwater and soil, according to the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It usually infects people when contaminated water enters the body through the nose, from where it travels to the brain and can cause a rare and debilitating disease called primary amebic meningoencephalitis.

The infection is usually fatal and typically occurs when people go swimming or diving in warm freshwater places such as lakes and rivers. In very rare instances, naegleria infections may also occur when contaminated water from other sources (such as inadequately chlorinated swimming pool water or heated and contaminated tap water) enters the nose.

The contamination of U.S. treated public water systems by the microbe is rare but not unheard of.

According to the CDC website, the first deaths from naegleria fowleri found in tap water from treated U.S. public drinking water systems occurred in southern Louisiana in 2011 and 2013.

The microbe was also found in 2003 in an untreated geothermal well-supplied drinking water system in Arizona, as well as in disinfected public drinking water supplies in Australia in the 1970s and ’80s and in 2008 in Pakistan.

Today, Trump Is Scaling Back Rules Restricting Air And Water Pollution

Last week, Roland made an announcement: we're done with India. I've been there at least half a dozen times since 1970-- once for over a year-- so I wasn't especially disturbed by the proclamation but I asked why. He said that the air pollution is so deadly in the major cities that it was absolutely unsafe. He has some app he uses that measures air pollution around the world. Last week when the fires in California had driven L.A.'s pollution levels into "unhealthy" (150 was the number and we were supposed to not go outside), the Delhi number was 999, and would have been higher had the app gone into 4 digits. Over the weekend, The Economist backed Roland up. "As part of a 'public-health emergency' declared on November 1st in Delhi, millions of face-masks are being distributed to children. Schools will shut until at least November 5th. The cause is polluted air, which Delhi’s chief minister says has turned the city into a 'gas chamber'. The measures are severe but not unusual. In the past year, schools around the world-- in Thailand and Malaysia, Mexico and America-- have cancelled classes on bad-air days. Air pollution does indeed do terrible things to schoolchildren. Globally, says the World Health Organisation, more than 90% of children under 15 breathe air that puts their health at serious risk. The young are especially susceptible, because their lungs are still developing and their breathing is faster than adults’, so they take in more pollutants relative to their body weight. A British study found that on school-runs young children were exposed to 30% more pollutants than the adults accompanying them, because their height puts them closer to exhaust pipes. One of the most common ailments that results is asthma. Poorer children are still more vulnerable, since their schools tend to be near busy roads."

Children’s brains are also at risk. This is not because pollution confines them to home. Assiduous teachers in Malaysia and China may instruct students online on days when the smog keeps them away from school. In any case, research in 2014 by the Harvard Kennedy School into the effect of shutting schools because of snow shows that missing a few days does not appear to impair learning.

Much more dangerous is the toll that pollution takes on cognitive development and mental health. Research, also conducted in 2014, found that air pollution harmed Israeli students' exam performance. A study in Cincinnati, Ohio, showed an increase in pollution to be correlated with a higher number of psychiatric-hospital visits by children troubled by anxiety and suicidal thoughts. Even very young students are aware of the pollution problem: in a survey by Sustrans, a charity that aims to reduce car use, 45% of British pupils aged four to 11 said they were worried about air quality. Such “eco-anxiety” is the reason that some American school boards are riven by disagreements between environmentalists, who maintain that children need to understand climate change, and administrators who say studying it will traumatise them.

Clean-air campaigners have tried to stem the damage. In Britain, for example, they have, besides encouraging student pick-ups and drop-offs on foot or by bicycle, recommended imposing no-car zones around schools in Birmingham, or, in Sheffield, placing hedges between roads and playgrounds. Such measures are no substitute for bigger changes, though. If trends persist, warns the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, air pollution will cut 1% from global GDP by 2060, in large part from lost agricultural yield, lower worker productivity and higher health costs. Apart from choking on the fumes, today’s school children can look forward to bearing those burdens, too.

None of that bothers Señor Trumpanzee in the least. He has an election to win and he believes there's a constituency that demands deadly air pollution, particularly coal burning pollution. Yesterday, Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis, reported for Washington Post readers on how Trump is working diligently to hamper cognitive development among children and worsen mental health in our own country. Today, the EPA is relaxing "rules that govern how power plants store waste from burning coal and release water containing toxic metals into nearby waterways. The proposals, which scale back two rules adopted in 2015, affect the disposal of fine powder and sludge known as 'coal ash,' as well as contaminated water that power plants produce while burning coal. Both forms of waste can contain mercury, arsenic and other heavy metals that pose risks to human health and the environment." Take that, Obama!

The new Trumpist rules reflect Trumpanzee’s "broader goal of bolstering America’s coal industry at a time when natural gas and renewable energy provide more affordable sources of electricity for consumers. Under the Obama-era rule, coal ash ponds leaking contaminants into groundwater that exceeded federal protection standards had to close by April 2019. The Trump administration extended that deadline until October 2020 in a rule it finalized last year. In August 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit instructed the EPA to require that companies overhaul ponds, including those lined with clay and compacted soil, even if there was no evidence that sludge was leaking into groundwater.

In a statement, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the Obama-era rules “placed heavy burdens on electricity producers across the country.”

Andrew Wheeler by Nancy Ohanian

“These proposed revisions support the Trump administration’s commitment to responsible, reasonable regulations,” Wheeler said, “by taking a common-sense approach that will provide more certainty to U.S. industry while also protecting public health and the environment.”

... [I]f a company can demonstrate that it is shutting down a coal boiler, it can petition to keep its storage ponds open for as long as eight years, depending on their size. Slurry ponds smaller than 40 acres could get approval to stay in place until Oct. 15, 2023, officials said, while larger ones could remain open until Oct. 15, 2028.

Environmentalists have sharply criticized the proposals, arguing these containment sites pose serious risks to the public at a time when more frequent and intense flooding, fueled in part by climate change, could destabilize them and contaminate drinking water supplies that serve millions of people. The rules will be subject to public comment for 60 days.

During the past decade, Tennessee and North Carolina have experienced major coal ash spills that have destroyed homes and contaminated rivers, resulting in sickened cleanup workers and massive lawsuits.

The question of how to handle coal waste, which is stored in roughly 450 sites across the country, has vexed regulators for decades. The Obama administration negotiated for years with environmental groups, electric utilities and other affected industries about how to address the waste, which can poison wildlife and poses health risks to people living near storage sites.

Lisa Evans, an attorney specializing in hazardous waste law for the environmental group Earthjustice, said allowing the electric industry to extend the life of coal ash pits represents a particular threat to low-income and minority Americans, who often live near such installations.

“Allowing plants to continue to dump toxic waste into leaking coal ash ponds for another 10 years will cause irreversible damage to drinking water sources, human health and the nation’s waters,” Evans said in an email. She added it was not surprising the coal industry had lobbied against closing these storage sites. “Operating ponds is cheap. Closing them costs the utilities money,” she said.

It is also likely to add to ordinary consumers’ costs. Last year, for example, a member of the Virginia State Corporation Commission estimated it could cost ratepayers as much as $3.30 a month over 20 years-- between $2.4 billion and $5.6 billion-- to clean up Virginia-based Dominion Energy’s 11 coal ash ponds and six coal ash landfills in the state.

The Utility Solid Waste Activities Group, which lobbies on coal ash issues on behalf of electric utilities, said in its 2017 petition that the Obama-era rules were “burdensome, inflexible, and often impracticable” and that they “created a monolithic, one-size-fits-all regulatory regime.”

Delia Patterson, general counsel of the American Public Power Association, said the proposed rules would “bring more certainty to the industry and facilitate the safe management” of waste ponds.

...The vast majority of ponds and landfills holding coal waste at hundreds of power plants across the country have leaked toxic chemicals into nearby groundwater at facilities from Texas to Pennsylvania to Maryland, according to that analysis. The report acknowledged, however, that the groundwater data alone does not prove drinking-water supplies near the coal waste facilities have been contaminated. Power companies are not routinely required to test nearby drinking water wells. “So the scope of the threat is largely undefined,” the report stated.

The EPA on Monday will also revise requirements for how power plants discharge wastewater, which contain some of the same kind of contaminants. Under the Obama administration, EPA staff had concluded it was feasible to prohibit any releases of such toxic materials by having the units continually recycle their water. The agency has now concluded this is far more costly than originally anticipated, and technological advances have made it cheaper to filter and capture the waste through a membrane system, officials said.

Under the new rule, plants would be allowed to discharge 10 percent of their water each day, on a 30-day rolling average. The administration projects that the regulation would prevent 105 million pounds of pollutants from being released compared with the old standards because 18 affected plants would voluntarily adopt a more advanced filtration system. The administration also estimated it would save the industry $175 million each year in compliance costs and yield an additional $15 million to $69 million in annual public health and environmental benefits.

However, even if the 18 plants voluntarily adopted more advanced filtration techniques, they represent a minority of the nation’s total number of plants.

Elizabeth “Betsy” Southerland, former director of science and technology at the EPA’s Office of Water, said the proposed rule “relaxes the 2015 treatment requirements allowing increased selenium discharges and [the] release of contaminated water from coal ash handling. Even worse, it exempts a large number of plants from these relaxed requirements, allowing them to discharge more pollutants and continue disposing of ash in leaking ponds.”

Evans said environmentalists are likely to challenge the new rule on coal ash storage and the federal government could again reverse course if a Democrat wins the presidency next year. She noted that, because 95 percent of coal ash ponds remain unlined, two-thirds lie within five feet of groundwater and 92 percent leak more than federal health standards allow, they could pose a risk to the public even as litigation winds its way through the federal courts.

“We have to hope that no wells are poisoned and no toxic waste is spilled in the interim,” she said. “Crossing your fingers is not a legal or sane way to regulate toxic waste.”

ScienceAlert warned last month that air pollution had gotten significantly worse in the U.S. since Trump occupied the White House, "a reversal after years of sustained improvement with significant implications for public health. In 2018 alone, eroding air quality was linked to nearly 10,000 additional deaths in the US relative to the 2016 benchmark, the year in which small-particle pollution reached a two-decade low, according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University... Last year, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler disbanded the expert academic panel that reviewed and advised the agency on its standards for small-particle air pollution. In its place, the administration has hired consultants with links to the fossil fuel, pharmaceutical and tobacco industries... One thing that's clear at the moment is the effect that rising pollution is having on mortality and life expectancy."

Two congressional candidates from Chicago had a lot to say about Trump's-- and conservatives' in general-- love affair with pollution-for-profit and how it impacts the families in their neighborhoods. Kina Collins: "In the predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods in IL-07, we see food deserts with a lack of fresh produce, industrial corridors pumping toxins into the air, and some areas that have higher levels of lead in the water than Flint, Michigan. In Chicago, there are hotspots where Black children are dying from asthma attacks at eight times the rate of white children because of the air quality and healthcare inequities. This is an environmental crisis. We need to be increasing funding for the EPA and other agencies to immediately and aggressively combat the causes of climate change, not cutting back on regulations and giving tax breaks to polluters. We cannot separate environmental justice from economic justice, and I plan to bring training and opportunities for green jobs into the south and west sides of Chicago so that they do not get left behind as we push to become the world leaders in the green industry. And we need leaders who are at the forefront of Congress pushing for the Green New Deal, who are actually fighting for Generation GND. We can afford to invest in the infrastructure and clean technology needed to end problems like lead in the water, we just need to have the moral authority to put the money where it is needed most. We don't need a Congressman who sits on the sidelines, because our planet doesn't have 20 more years to 'wait and see.' I will be fighting for environmental justice policies from Day One like my life depends on it-- because the future matters to me and to millions of other young Americans who are ready for bold action."

Marie Newman is also running for a seat held by a Democrat who doesn't seem to give a damn about corporate pollution. "With the undeniable amount of rebuilding and work we will have to do to address the climate crisis, my opponent’s lack of understanding and dismissal of the climate crisis alongside the amount of funding he is getting from the fossil fuel industries is truly disturbing. We must push past dinosaurs like Lipinski and get progressives elected ASAP. It is why I’m running."

New Study: Alarming Levels of Plastic and Dangerous Associated Chemicals in Children's Bodies

Surfing on our waste (source)

by Thomas Neuburger

We recently wrote about the astonishing amount of microplastic — microscopic pieces of ordinary plastic, byproducts of the breakdown of the residue of our trash — in both our environment and our bodies (see "It's Raining Plastic, From the Pyrenees to the Rockies to the Arctic"). As we noted there, environmental microplastic so ubiquitous, it's even falling from the sky onto the ice floes of the Arctic.

A recent German study has more information, finding that plastics and associated products have been discovered "in 97-100% of blood and urine samples from 2,500 children tested between 2014 and 2017." That's an astonishingly high percentage.

The study also refutes the defense that the presence of plastics in human bodies is relatively harmless since plastic is inert. Even if the plastic is inert (there's no evidence that it is), some associated products that enter our bodies with it are decidedly dangerous.

From a Common Dreams piece on the study (translation from the German by the authors):

Der Spiegel, the German weekly magazine, published the findings Saturday, which were part of a federal study focused on "human biomonitoring" of 3 to 17-year-olds. Traces from 11 out of 15 plastic ingredients were found in the test samples.

"Our study clearly shows that plastic ingredients, which are rising in production, are also showing up more and more in the body. It is really worrying that the youngest children are most affected as the most sensitive group," Marike Kolossa-Gehring, one of the study's authors, told the magazine.

Researchers said that they were especially concerned about high levels of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) that were found in the study. PFOA is an extremely persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic chemical frequently used in non-stick cookware and in waterproof clothing.

In 20 percent of those examined, they were above the limit, in the younger children, the proportion was even higher. The study also showed children from poorer families had more plastic residue in their bodies than children from higher-income families, according to German public broadcaster ARD

While PFOA is not itself a plastic, it's used in the manufacture or treatment of a number of materials, like Teflon and carpeting, and despite claims to the contrary, it persists in those products:

A study of workers living near a DuPont Teflon plant found an association between PFOA exposure and two kinds of cancer as well as four other diseases. A positive exposure-response trend for kidney cancer is supported by many studies. PFOA has been detected in the blood of more than 98% of the general US population in the low and sub-parts per billion (ppb) range, and levels are higher in chemical plant employees and surrounding subpopulations. How general populations are exposed to PFOA is not completely understood. PFOA has been detected in industrial waste, stain-resistant carpets, carpet-cleaning liquids, house dust, microwave popcorn bags, water, food, some cookware and Teflon (PTFE) products. (emphasis added)

The study also notes an increase in exposure to substitutes for previously banned chemicals.

As Madge might have said in the famous commercials, "We're soaking in it."

We're also eating, breathing, drinking, swimming and drowning in it. Not a good sign. If those whom we let control us get their way, I fear it will be with us till it kills us.
  

It's Raining Plastic, From the Pyrenees to the Rockies to the Arctic

Rainwater samples collected across Colorado and analyzed under a microscope contained a rainbow of plastic fibers. Photograph: USGS (source)

by Thomas Neuburger

I often worry whether we aren't one of those species that self-eliminates, that commits "ecological suicide" as many bacteria do when they turn their environment too acid to live in. It's certain we're polluting the air with CO2 in a way that will change the climate from habitable to very inhospitable.

But we're doing this in other ways as well — according to the latest news, surprisingly, with plastic. To be more exact, the microplastic that results from the breakdown of our trash, which as you likely know if you look at your garbage, is filled with plastic.

Microplastics are fibers that can be seen only with a microscope. The latest reports show that microplastic is not only present in abundance in the ocean, where much of our bulk plastic resides, but also in the air and, via the same settling effect that drops soot and dust to the surface of the earth, on the ground we walk across.

Day after day, year after year, minute after minute, a film of microplastic particles is raining on the earth. The more we produce it, the more we will live in it. If in a thousand years we revert as a species to Stone Age life, reduced in numbers and struggling to survive, we'll find the ground, not rich in minerals as it was when our ancestors first walked on it, but rich in the indestructible garbage our descendants' ancestors — us — cast off on the way to their own self-caused demise.

One report from April of this year in Science reveals the amount of plastic descending on the Pyrenees in France:

Prior studies have shown that microplastics, which can be ingested and inhaled by humans—and which may lead to reproductive issues in some marine mollusks—can rise up into the atmosphere and drop back to solid ground in the cities they come from. But scientists thought these plastics couldn’t travel very far from their urban sources.

To find out just how far they can go, the researchers collected particles falling from the sky in dust, rain, and snow for 5 months at the Bernadouze meteorological station in the Pyrenees mountains in southwestern France—100 kilometers from the nearest city.

To their horror, the authors found plastics, predominantly the kind from the single-use packaging used in shipping. From their sample, they determined that each day, an average of 365 plastic particles sifted down from above into the square meter surface of the collection device. If comparable quantities of airborne microplastic fall across the rest of the country, the researchers estimate roughly 2000 tons of plastic blanket France each year, they report today in Nature Geoscience.

Another report in the Guardian says this about plastic falling on the Rockies:

Plastic was the furthest thing from Gregory Wetherbee’s mind when he began analyzing rainwater samples collected from the Rocky Mountains. “I guess I expected to see mostly soil and mineral particles,” said the US Geological Survey researcher. Instead, he found multicolored microscopic plastic fibers.

The discovery, published in a recent study (pdf) titled “It is raining plastic”, raises new questions about the amount of plastic waste permeating the air, water, and soil virtually everywhere on Earth. ...

Rainwater samples collected across Colorado and analyzed under a microscope contained a rainbow of plastic fibers, as well as beads and shards. The findings shocked Wetherbee, who had been collecting the samples in order to study nitrogen pollution.

There's even plastic landing on the ice floes of the Arctic. According to the UPI in April: "New research published on Wednesday in Science Advances shows that even the remote ice floes of the Arctic have measurable amounts of microplastics and microfibers gracing their surfaces."

We eat it, we drink it, we breathe it. Does it hurt us? Hard to imagine it doesn't, though the subject is just now coming under scrutiny, as this study published in Science Direct notes:

Microplastics have recently been detected in atmospheric fallout in Greater Paris. Due to their small size, they can be inhaled and may induce lesions in the respiratory system dependent on individual susceptibility and particle properties. Even though airborne microplastics are a new topic, several observational studies have reported the inhalation of plastic fibers and particles, especially in exposed workers, often coursing with dyspnea caused by airway and interstitial inflammatory responses.

While the authors notes that inhaled microplastic can cause respiratory lesions, dispnea (shortness of breath) and inflammation, they don't mention the relationship of chronic inflammation with cancer.

I'm frankly not sure we can address the problem of plastic, for the same reason we can't address the problem of fossil fuel as a source of atmospheric CO2. Both are too embedded in the way our species lives.

As a result, both will be embedded in the way we die as well.
 

Do You Hate The Republicans Who Voted To Allow More Air Pollution? How About The Blue Dogs Who Voted With Them?

Lately, I've been writing a lot about how the DCCC is trying to bring on the dancing Blue Dogs again-- so, like clockwork, I'm hearing from a packing of simpering whiners about what an awful purist I am and how only Blue Dogs can win on this district or that district, ideas born out of nothing at all except the purest and most overwhelming ignorance (with some shear stupidity tossed in for good measure generally speaking).

So today Ryan and McCarthy were bragging how they passed corrupt Big Oil-and-pollution-owned Republican Pete Olson's H.R. 806, the Ozone Standards Implementation Act. Ryan said it was a bipartisan effort and, technically-speaking, it was. 11 Republicans refused to vote for the horrific bill-- primarily Republicans in swing districts like Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), Dave Reichert (WA), Bruce Poliquin (ME), Carlos Curbelo (FL), Frank LoBiondo (NJ), Elise Stefanik (NY)... you know, districts where people care something about... well, clean air. And then there were 4 Blue Dogs who crossed the aisle in the other direction and joined the GOP-- as they do on a regular basis-- to pay back the immense bribes they take from pollution industries who wrote Olson's bill. Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX), Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA), Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA) and Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN) all voted for the bill.

Naughty, naughty Blue Dogs-- but vote for them anyway? This is what the American Lung Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Medical Association. the Children's Environmental Health Network, the American Public Health Association and 10 other non-partisan public health groups told every member of Congress in a letter.

Clean air is fundamental for good health, and the Clean Air Act promises all Americans air that is safe to breathe. The undersigned public health and medical organizations urge you to oppose H.R. 806, the so-called “Ozone Standards Implementation Act of 2017.” A more fitting name for this legislation would be the “Smoggy Skies Act,” as it delays lifesaving standards to reduce ozone pollution, or smog, and permanently weakens the Clean Air Act.

Clear, up-to-date, scientific evidence documented the need for greater protection from ozone pollution, and drove the stronger limit on ozone that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized in 2015. To meet the updated standard, the states have clear authority and plenty of time to plan and then work to reduce pollution under the Clean Air Act’s long-established, balanced implementation timeline. Despite those facts, the Smoggy Skies Act imposes additional delays and sweeping changes that will threaten health, particularly the health of children, seniors and people with chronic disease.

The Smoggy Skies Act also reaches far beyond implementation of the current ozone standards. It permanently weakens the Clean Air Act and future air pollution health standards for all criteria pollutants. Specifically, the Smoggy Skies Act weakens implementation and enforcement of all lifesaving air pollution health standards, including those for carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, particulate matter, and sulfur dioxide. It would also permanently undermine the Clean Air Act as a public health law.

The Clean Air Act requires that EPA review the science on the health impacts of carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, particulate matter, and sulfur dioxide air pollutants every five years and update these national ambient air quality standards according to the current science. The Smoggy Skies Act would lengthen the review period of the air pollution health standards from once every five years to once every ten years for all criteria pollutants. As the science continues to evolve, the public deserves that their protections be based on the most up-to-date science, certainly not a schedule that is twice as long as they currently have under the law. The work that EPA and states do to clean up air pollution should be based on the best and most current science.

Emerging research adds crucial information to our understanding of the impacts that air pollution has on human health, and EPA should not have to wait a decade to incorporate it. For example, on March 29, 2016, a newly published study, Particulate Matter Exposure and Preterm Birth: Estimates of U.S. Attributable Burden and Economic Costs, showed new information linking particulate air pollution to nearly 16,000 preterm births per year. Under the Smoggy Skies Act, EPA would have to wait as much as a decade to consider such new evidence when setting standards. Ten years is far too long to wait to protect public health from levels of pollution that the science shows are dangerous or for EPA to consider new information.

In the 2015 review of the ozone standard, EPA examined an extensive body of scientific evidence demonstrating that ozone inflames the lungs, causing asthma attacks and resulting in emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and premature deaths. A growing body of research indicates that ozone may also lead to central nervous system harm and may harm developing fetuses. In response to the evidence, EPA updated the ozone standards. While many of our organizations called for a more protective level, there is no doubt that the updated, 70 parts per billion standard provides greater health protections compared to the previous standard.

The Smoggy Skies Act would delay implementation of these more protective air pollution standards for at least eight years. This means eight years of illnesses and premature deaths that could have been avoided. Parents will not be told the truth about pollution in their community and states and EPA will not work to curb pollution to meet the new standards. The public has a fundamental right to know when pollution in the air they breathe or the water they drink threatens health, and Congress must not add eight years of delay to health protections and cleanup.

Furthermore, the American public overwhelmingly supports upholding these more protective limits on ozone. A 2017 poll found that by a 2-to-1 margin, Americans believe Congress should leave EPA’s updated standards in place, showing clear public opposition to the Smoggy Skies Act.

The Smoggy Skies Act would also permanently weaken implementation of the 2015 and future ozone standards. The Act would delay implementation to a date when the evidence shows that most states would meet the standard with cleanup measures already in place. It would also reduce requirements for areas with the most dangerous levels of ozone. Areas classified as being in “extreme nonattainment” of the standard would no longer need to write plans that include additional contingency measures if their initial plans fail to provide the expected pollution reductions. The Clean Air Act prioritizes reducing air pollution to protect the public’s health, but the Smoggy Skies Act opens a new opportunity for communities to avoid cleaning up, irrespective of the health impacts.

Further, the bill would greatly expand the definition of an exceptional event. Under the Clean Air Act, communities can demonstrate to EPA that an exceptional event, such as a wildfire, should not “count” in determining whether their air quality meets the national standards. This bill would recklessly expand the definition of exceptional events to include high pollution days when the air is simply stagnant-- the precise air pollution episodes the Clean Air Act was designed to combat-- and declare those bad air days as “exceptional.” Changing the accounting rules will undermine health protection and avoid pollution cleanup.

Additionally, the bill would permanently weaken the Clean Air Act. The Clean Air Act is one of our nation’s premier public health laws because it puts health first. The Act has a two-step process: first, EPA considers scientific evidence to decide how much air pollution is safe to breathe and sets the standard that is requisite to protect public health with an adequate margin of safety. Then, states work with EPA to develop a plan to clean up air pollution to meet the standard. Cost and feasibility are fully considered in the second phase during implementation of the standard.

This bill states that if EPA finds that “a range of levels” of an air pollutant protect public health with an adequate margin of safety, then EPA may consider technological feasibility in choosing a limit within that range. Further, the bill would interject implementation considerations, including projections of adverse economic and energy effects, into the standard setting process. These changes will permanently weaken the core health-based premise of the Clean Air Act-- protecting the public from known health effects of air pollution with a margin of safety.

These changes would reverse the intention of the Clean Air Act explicitly included by its bipartisan authors in Congress: that basing the standard on the protection of public health would push technology to develop new tools and techniques to reduce emissions. They understood that pushing the cleanup technology to meet the urgent need to protect health would help to expand job development and growth. They were correct, as the emission control industry today has helped the nation meet stronger standards in creative, cost-effective ways.

The text also explicitly states that the Smoggy Skies Act does not authorize any additional funds to be appropriated to EPA for its work carrying out the bill’s provisions. Forcing EPA to perform the additional work of implementing this bill with no additional resources could put the agency’s current, lifesaving work at further risk.

Finally, an amendment adopted in committee would eliminate key enforcement provisions under the Clean Air Act. As amended, the bill could perpetuate poor air quality in communities with the highest pollution levels indefinitely. The provision waives the obligation for states with areas heavily polluted by ozone or particulate matter to write effective plans to attain the health standards. Currently, if an area with unhealthy air fails to write an adequate plan to meet air pollution standards, EPA can impose sanctions. Because that enforcement provision exists, EPA has almost never needed to use it-- states wrote effective plans. As amended, the Smoggy Skies Act would bar EPA from using this key enforcement tool for especially polluted areas, essentially eliminating the obligation for states to write a meaningful pollution cleanup plan that can demonstrate meeting the health standards.

The Smoggy Skies Act is a sweeping attack on lifesaving standards that protect public health from air pollution. This bill is an extreme attempt to undermine our nation’s proven clean air health protections. Not only does it delay the long-overdue updated ozone standards and weaken their implementation and enforcement, it also permanently weakens the health protections against many dangerous air pollutants and the scientific basis of Clean Air Act standards. Please prioritize the health of your constituents and vote NO on the Smoggy Skies Act.

This isn't a fucking game about purity tests. This is about life and death, health or sickness. And what--if anything-- the Democratic Party stands for. 188 Democrats voted NO, but Ryan is saying the bill passed 229-199 in a bipartisan effort. Three of those scumbag, bribe-taking Blue Dogs were also co-sponsors of the bill, presumably to get a few extra bucks in their Xmas stockings this year. You might expect this kind of behavior from Republicans; that's who they are as a party. But from Democrats too? That's supposed to be OK? Back them anyway because the GOP is so bad. Tell them to emphysema patients.

Carol Shea-Porter is a normal Democrat, not a Blue Dog, not a New Dem, not from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. She's the founder and co-chair of the Congressional Asthma and Allergies Caucus. She told her constituents in New Hampshire that she's "working to raise awareness of the connection between air pollution and breathing problems. That’s why I’m so disappointed that my Republican colleagues in the House just voted for the 'Smoggy Skies Act,' which will delay badly needed restrictions that would have tamped down how much smog polluters can release into the air we all breathe. Our job is to protect children’s lungs and to stop diseases like asthma and COPD-- not to make people sick, not to make it easier for polluters."

Sam Jammal is the newest Blue America endorsee. He's running for the Orange County seat occupied by right-wing Ryan rubber stamp Ed Royce. This morning he told us that "When Donald Trump withdrew our country from the Paris Agreement, Ed Royce touted his support for clean air and clean water. It looks like once again, Ed Royce says reasonable things in public, but he votes extreme and hopes no one pays attention. Considering Ed represents the birthplace of Richard Nixon-- who created the EPA, it's ironic that Ed can't even support something as bipartisan as clean air. But this is typical Ed Royce.

"I worked in clean energy and saw first hand that we have the technology to create jobs, save consumers money and help us have cleaner air. There is no technological barrier any more. It's just politics and whether or not someone like Ed Royce can say no to big oil money and yes to innovation. What's worse is that the EPA rules are ultimately about public health. Families are paying higher out of pocket expenses to deal with respiratory illnesses thanks to air pollution. These same families are watching as the Republicans attempt to dismantle their health care. The last thing we need are further attempts to erode clean air-- it affects jobs, health care and our environment."

Derrick is the progressive candidate vying to take on anti-science nut Lamar Smith in TX-21 (an Austin-San Antonio corridor district). Smith didn't just vote for the bill, he was a key co-sponsor or it! Crowe told us that "This isn't hypothetical for me. My wife suffers from asthma. When people try to weaken air standards, it directly affects my wife's health. Everyone who thinks that this is some technical adjustment should have to sit and watch Laurie during an asthma attack.Watching someone you love struggle to breathe is terrifying. Now couple this with Smith's vote on repealing 23 million people's health insurance, which would make it harder for families to afford asthma medications and maintenance treatments. I'd like to know how many people Smith would let choke to death to make his donors happy."

All-Electric Air Travel Is Not an Impossible Dream

A brief 2015 video report from the WSJ about the Airbus all-electric airplane, the E-Fan. Airbus is not the only company doing this. Go here for an interesting video about Pipistrel's electric plane.

by Gaius Publius

A brief follow-up to our recent piece on the coming death of Big Oil as a business (see "The Dying Fossil Fuel Industry"). One argument against the demise of Big Oil is that "there will always be a need for oil, somewhere." The most often-used examples for "somewhere" are in the global transportation industries — air travel and international shipping.

We've looked at these industries before and agreed that they do represent a problem. For example, from a 2015 piece: "Independent of the [Paris Agreement] pledges of the various nations — which are proving to be entirely inadequate to meeting even the modest goals of the U.N. — pledges by nations aren't the entire solution. In fact, the pledges by a number of nations would be entirely wiped out by the emissions of two international industries. These are international shipping and international air travel."

Take the Canadian climate pledge, for example. Canada has promised to cut its pollution by 30% below 2005 levels (a peak year) by 2030, and by 16% below the benchmark year of 1990, from 690 MtCO2e to 579 MtCO2e (megatons of CO2-equivalent emissions). Over the same period, 1990 to 2030, international aviation and international maritime emissions are expected to more than triple in a business-as-usual scenario, for a combined increase in emissions that's more than ten times the promised emissions decrease from Canada (pdf, page 42).

When most people think about how to cut global emissions to zero, that's were they get stuck, with an unsolvable problem when it comes to international travel and shipping. Those who don't get stuck there posit a world of less capitalism, less "buying for the sake of buying" — which is needed to feed the capitalists' constant need to "sell for the sake of selling." As admirable as that sounds as a goal, it also sounds impossible to achieve, at least voluntarily. Besides, less capitalism, defined as production of consumer goods, would certainly require less global shipping, but wouldn't solve the problem of global air travel.

Can these two industries, international maritime and international aviation, every be freed from the grip of fossil fuels?

All-Electric Planes Are Here Today

It turns out that all-electric airplanes are not that far from the horizon, and what works for air travel could well be adapted to shipping, given the right advances in energy storage. Consider this, from Scientific American in 2014:

"Impossible" Electric Airplane Takes Flight

The Berlin Air Show witnessed a silent, clean test flight by Airbus's E-Fan two-seater aircraft, which is entirely propelled by electricity

...The fully electric E-Fan aircraft, engineered by Airbus Group, made one of its first public demonstrations here last week following it's first-ever flight in France on March 11.

The novel two-seater aircraft was designed from the outset for electrical propulsion, from its energy management system to safety features. In developing this technology, Airbus aims to one day reduce the aerospace industry's carbon dioxide emissions by an order of magnitude.

"It's a very different way of flying," said Jean Botti, chief technical and innovation officer at Airbus Group, "absolutely no noise, no emissions."

A series of lithium-ion batteries fitted into the wings of the plane are the sole power source for the E-Fan's two 30-kilowatt electric motors. A 6 kW electric motor in the main wheel provides extra power during acceleration and taxiing to reduce electrical power consumption on the ground.

The obvious problem is range. The 2014 version described above had a one-hour range, which means it didn't stray far from the airport. The 2015 version of the same plane (see video above) performed a Channel crossing.

The plan, though, is ambitious: "Airbus will make a next-generation two-seater electric plane, set for launch in 2017, and a four-seater electric plane with a gas-powered range extender, set for launch in 2019."

These advances are steppingstones toward realizing Flight Path 2050, the European Union's aggressive goal to reduce the aviation sector's nitrous oxide emissions by 90 percent, noise pollution by 65 percent and carbon dioxide emissions by 75 percent by 2050.

What's holding these projects back is the current pace of advancement in battery technology. But changes are coming faster and faster, spurred by both economic and environmental motivation. (Imagine the payoff to the inventor who develops a reliable, light-weight, quick-charge, slow-drain battery cell. Imagine how many inventors, investors, and companies are looking for it — the battery and the payoff.)

In the meantime, it's not hard to imagine the day when air travel will be freed from the need to pollute in order to operate. When that day comes, one more barrier to fossil-free living will fall.

GP
 

Get Ready for a Two-Thirds Cut to EPA Personnel

Now more than ever...

by Gaius Publius

We've already seen several indications that EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, will be stripped of its mission — protecting the environment, including the climatic environment — and turned into a profit protection agency instead. At best, as I noted here, EPA would be reduced to a kind of janitor for the fossil fuel giants, "sweeping up after the energy industry's mess-making" as the toxic wastes, perhaps exponentially, increase.

We certainly know that Trump's intended head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, has sued the agency many times to prevent it from doing its legally mandated job. For example, from as late as 2015, via TulsaWorld (my emphasis):

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt sues EPA — again

He says the Clean Water rule is illegal and burdensome.

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt filed another lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday, this time over the definition of water.

Pruitt’s lawsuit, filed in Tulsa federal court, claims that a new rule promulgated June 29 illegally redefined the “waters of the United States” in a move that he described as executive overreach and flatly contrary to the will of Congress.

Pruitt claims that the EPA’s broad redefinition of long-standing regulatory jurisdiction places virtually all land and water under an untenable regulatory burden, according to a statement released by his office.

“Respect for private property rights have allowed our nation to thrive, but with the recently finalized rule, farmers, ranchers, developers, industry and individual property owners will now be subject to the unpredictable, unsound, and often byzantine regulatory regime of the EPA,” Pruitt said in the statement. “I, and many other local, state and national leaders across the country, made clear to the EPA our concerns and opposition to redefining the ‘Waters of the U.S.’

And:

This marks the second lawsuit in as many weeks Pruitt has filed against the EPA in Tulsa federal court. Last week, he asked a federal judge to halt the EPA’s plan to enact new rules designed to reduce emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Pruitt is also a party to several previous lawsuits challenging the EPA’s regulatory limits.

If Pruitt is approved as EPA Administrator — and woe to any Democrat who enables that approval — the nation will find itself swimming in waste.

But now we discover, via Joe Davidson at the Post's "Federal Insider," that even worse may be in the works for the EPA. Davidson writes:

Trump transition leader’s goal is two-thirds cut in EPA employees

The red lights are flashing at the Environmental Protection Agency.

The words of Myron Ebell, the former head of President Trump’s EPA transition team, warn employees of a perilous future. Ebell wants the agency to go on a severe diet.

It’s one that would leave many federal employees with hunger pains, and jobless, too.

Ebell has suggested cutting the EPA workforce to 5,000, about a two-thirds reduction, over the next four years. The agency’s budget of $8.1 billion would be sliced in half under his prescription, which he emphasized is his own and not necessarily Trump’s.

“My own personal view is that the EPA would be better served if it were a much leaner organization that had substantial cuts,” he said in an interview. Ebell is director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a small-government think tank where he pushes the notion of “global warming alarmism” and against the science that says it’s a crisis. He acknowledges cutting 10,000 staffers might not be realistic, yet he sees that as an “aspirational goal. … You’re not going to get Congress to make significant cuts unless you ask for significant cuts.”

If you think congressional Republicans (and more than a few Democrats) wouldn't jump at the chance to cut the EPA budget to the bone, you haven't been watching politicians and those who own them.

The argument, as always, is too much "regulatory overreach"...

One reason he favors such drastic cuts is that what he [Ebell] calls the EPA’s “regulatory overreach” would be much harder “if the agency is a lot smaller.”

...to which one critic of this proposal replied, "slashing staffing makes sense only if a safe environment is no longer important."

I guess for Trump and his wrecking crew, a safe environment (for us) is no longer important.

Get ready to go swimming in waste — and please don't blame Trump voters. We all got us to where we are, and we all have to work to get us all out again. Needless to say, for the resistance to have the largest good effect — there are several bad ones — it must be as broad as possible. This really is a crucial point; more on that in a bit.

GP
 

Poisoning The Air We Breath Is Part Of The Corrupt Conservative Agenda

Some corrupt conservatives thought of a way to save some money

I don't remember the last time I drank tap water in Los Angeles, which is probably because I never did. Over the weekend the Associated Press put out a feature emphasizing a poll that found that only 47% of Americans say they're extremely or very confident about the safety of their drinking water.

The lead-contaminated water in Flint, Michigan, has been in the headlines for months, and more than half of Americans believe it's a sign of widespread problems in the U.S. About seven in 10 drink tap water, but about half of them first run it through a filter.

As we discussed Friday, a lawsuit against the EPA-- Michigan vs EPA-- and a vote in the House by all 231 Republicans plus 7 corrupt conservative Democrats would permit deadly mercury gases to be released into the air to save a few dollars for manufacturers. One of the points of that post was that if all Republicans are corrupt conservatives, not all corrupt conservatives are Republicans. That more and more so called "moderate" (meaning right-wing, a word with negative connotations the corporate media never uses to describe establishment politicians) Democrats are conspiring with Republicans to realize the GOP agenda is illustrated in a move to poison Los Angeles' air, Los Angeles, a city with few actual Republicans in power, just some Democrats who enable then and behave like them when they can get away with it.

Southern California's air quality board moved forcefully to weaken pollution regulation Friday, firing the agency's longtime leader and reaffirming new smog rules backed by oil refineries and other major polluters.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District board dismissed Barry Wallerstein in a 7-6 vote during a closed-door session, a month after Republicans took control of the panel vowing a friendlier approach to industry.

Wallerstein, 62, was appointed executive officer in 1997 and presided over the agency charged with protecting the health of 17 million people in the nation's smoggiest region. During his tenure, pollution diminished sharply across the region, but remains far from meeting federal health standards.

The board's actions are expected to delay Southern California's progress toward achieving those standards by allowing industry to avoid costly air quality improvements.

Dwight Robinson and other new board members have been outspoken about the need to shift the balance between air quality regulation and economic impacts on businesses.

“With every rule-making and regulation we need to be looking at the economic impact as well as the environmental impacts,” Robinson said in an interview this week. The board's seven Republicans voted to fire Wallerstein. Its five Democrats and one independent opposed the dismissal.

The firing came just three days after board members posted an agenda item to evaluate Wallerstein's performance. The board named Michael B. O'Kelly, the air district's chief financial officer, as acting executive officer.

The ouster followed an emotional public hearing with dozens of speakers opposing Wallerstein's removal. They said he was an effective, fair-minded regulator and urged the agency not to veer further from its mandate to protect their health.

Board members heard testimony from residents of smoggy communities of the Inland Empire and near South Bay oil refineries and from people who struggle with asthma and other pollution-triggered health problems. No one spoke in favor of Wallerstein's firing.

“Your names will be etched on the lungs of our community members,” Sylvia Betancourt of the Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma told the panel before the vote.

Board members did not speak publicly about Wallerstein before their closed-door vote. No allegations of wrongdoing or mismanagement were made in the public hearing.

...Republicans gained a seven-member majority on the board in February after elected officials from Orange County cities voted in Robinson, a Republican councilman from Lake Forest, to replace Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido, a Democrat.

Environmentalists said Friday that Southern California's progress in cleaning its once-notorious smog shows clean air and economic growth are not mutually exclusive.

...Friday, the board voted 8 to 5 not to reconsider its controversial December vote to adopt an industry-backed plan to reduce smog-forming emissions. The regulations apply to refineries, power plants and other major facilities whose nitrogen oxide emissions have leveled off in recent years rather than continue to improve.

California legislators, state air quality officials and environmentalists criticize that vote as a violation of state law and harmful to public health.

The new plan, weaker than a version Wallerstein and his staff proposed, will delay the installation of costly pollution controls at the region's six major oil refineries and set back progress toward clean air.

...State Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) vowed legislative action in response to the board's move, calling it “only the latest in a disturbing trend of dirty energy interests dismantling clean air rules that the public overwhelmingly supports.”

“We need strong leadership to address some of the worst air quality in the nation, not a rubber stamp committee for the oil industry agenda,” De León said.

The Los Angeles County Business Federation called for the agency's new leadership to act with sensitivity to the effects of its actions on industry and “with the active partnership of the business community.”

“Children deserve to breathe clean air and they deserve the healthy homes that result when a parent has a good-paying job,” said David Englin, the group's executive vice president.

The agency has been in the spotlight in recent years over its handling of years of dangerous lead and arsenic emissions from the now-closed Exide battery plant into communities of southeast L.A. County, its response to a massive gas leak near Porter Ranch and restrictions targeting smoke from beach bonfire pits in Orange County.

Business interests, however, have complained of the costs of complying with increasingly strict regulations. Regulated industries mounted a vigorous campaign to weaken the smog rules proposed by staff in December, arguing that they would force refineries and other facilities to spend billions upgrading pollution controls.

The plan that the board approved in December and affirmed Friday is backed by the Western States Petroleum Assn. and other industry groups.

Several Southern California political leaders are up in arms about this. Lou Vince, the progressive congressional candidate against pollution-protector Steve Knight in the Santa Clarita Valley area, was incensed "The last thing that Southern California needs is weaker air pollution standards," he told us this morning. "California leads the nation in environmental protections and now is not the time the start weakening any of our protections. As a congressman, I want to push Congress to follow California's lead and really start addressing climate change on the federal level." As a congressman, Ted Lieu (D-CA) has already been doing that. Earlier today, he told us "The action of the Republican majority in firing a dedicated public servant because he supported the environment can only be described as SHAMEFUL. If this makes you angry, make sure you vote for progressive officials at all levels of government." Thanks, Ted... I couldn't have said it better myself!

Corrupt Conservatives In Congress Pass A Bill Guaranteeing More Deadly Mercury Poisoning

Yesterday we had some good news and some bad news when it come stop air pollution. The good news, surprisingly came from the Supreme Court. The bad new, unsurprisingly, from Paul Ryan and his corrupt conservatives in Congress. First the good news: Chief Justice John Roberts rejected a plea to block an EPA air pollution rule for power plants that was led by America's most toxic Governor, Michigan Republican Rick Snyder, best known for poisoning the children of Flint. He still hasn't been indicted or lynched. Michigan and the states backing Snyder sued the EPA for the right to have their industries belch mercury into the air. Lead poisoning wasn't enough for Snyder apparently.

In a significant victory for the Obama administration, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Thursday refused to block an Environmental Protection Agency regulation limiting emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants from coal-fired power plants.

Chief Justice Roberts rejected an application from 20 states that said a federal appeals court in Washington had effectively thwarted their victory in the Supreme Court in June, when the high court ruled that the E.P.A. had failed to take into account the punishing costs its mercury regulation would impose. In that 5-to-4 decision, Michigan v. Environmental Protection Agency, the Supreme Court ruled that the agency had run afoul of the Clean Air Act by deciding to regulate the emissions without first undertaking a cost-benefit analysis to show the regulation to be “appropriate and necessary.”

“It is not rational, never mind ‘appropriate,’ to impose billions of dollars in economic costs in return for a few dollars in health or environmental benefits,” Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last month, wrote in June. “Statutory context supports this reading.”

...The action by Chief Justice Roberts is an indication that Justice Scalia’s death has altered the balance of power on the Supreme Court.

The bad news was also mercury-related. Ohio reactionary, Bill Johnson, complains that EPA rules to limit toxic gases, primarily mercury, from the brick and tile industry, is too costly to the industry and that the EPA emission standards are too strict and too onerous (on his campaign donors). Johnson's bill, H.R. 4557, which was cosponsored by 5 right-wing Republicans and two major bribe-taking corrupt conservative Democrats, Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA) and Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL), would, if passed by the Senate and signed by Obama, prohibits the EPA "from requiring compliance with Clean Air Act rules concerning national emission standards for hazardous air pollutants with respect to brick and structural clay products manufacturing or clay ceramics manufacturing until judicial reviews of the rules are complete." It passed 238-163, all members of the House Poison The Air Caucus (AKA, the Republican Party) voting for it and all the Democrats except 7 voting NO. The 7 Democrats who would like to see their constituents' children die of mercury poisoning:

• Brad Ashford (Blue Dog-NE)
• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL)
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)

Vaporized mercury poisoning can cause kidney malfunction, respiratory failure and death. Common symptoms include insomnia, mood swings, nervousness, irritability, muscle twitching, muscle atrophy, tremors and decreased cognitive functions. But corrupted conservatives don't feel it's worth the cost of cleaning up the process-- at least not to the guilty companies' bottom lines (their campaign donors).

Earth Day report: Man goes for swim in Gowanus Canal, lives to tell tale (so far)

Anyone for a swim? Popular Science labeled this photo by Dan Bracaglia: "A Swirl of . . . Something."

"We don't really know what's in there, we don't know what's in the soil and air around it, and we don't know how it affects the tens of thousands of people who live within a few blocks of it. . . .

"The EPA recommends people avoid the canal water, the land around it, the air above and adjacent to it, and anything that swims or crawls in it."

-- Popular Science's Dan Nosowitz
on the Gowanus Canal (October 2013)

by Ken

Not the winter just past but the one before that, on what turned out to be an exceptionally frigid day (single-digit temps) Francis Morrone led a never-say-uncle band of winter-walking warriors on a stroll around, of all things, the Gowanus Canal, which he explained he has been happily traipsing around through all the various decades he's lived in NYC.

Of course not everyone who had registered showed up -- for one of Francis's tours it's a good guess that the full complement of 30 tourers had signed up, and we certainly didn't have any 30 people on hand. But amazingly the people who did show up stuck it out to the frigid end. It was even crazier for me, because I had just come from doing a whole other walking tour, also in Brooklyn, of Bushwick, with Joe Svehlak, who had been amazed that anyone showed up in that bitter cold. In fact, we'd had a pretty decent-size group there too, and there too most everyone who showed up stuck it out to the end. We can be tough, us Gothamites.

Since then I know Francis has done the Gowanus Canal jaunt again, in presumably less crazy weather, and I would have loved to revisit the sights with him, but I had a schedule conflict. I bring up the subject of this tour, though, because it was either on that tour or one of the others I've done with Francis which put us in close proximity to the canal that he read us terrifying excerpts from an article about one of North America's most polluted waterways which had been published recently in Popular Science (by coincidence a journalistic alma mater of mine).

I just dug out what I'm guessing must be the article in question, "What Would Happen if You Drank Water from the Gowanus Canal?" by Dan Nosowitz, posted in October 2013., and here's a sample:

[T]he Gowanus is one of the most creatively and massively pathogenetic waterways on the planet. We know some things; we know that the quantity of fecal matter, usually measured in parts per million, can be measured in parts per hundred in the Gowanus. But the Gowanus isn't any one thing; water taken from different parts of the canal, from different depths, will have totally different levels of contaminants, microbes, radioactive materials, or carcinogenic materials. I took a sample, pictured throughout this article, by hanging off of some scaffolding underneath the Union Street bridge--but that's surface water, in the shade, near shore ("shore" in this case being foul, reddish mud), in one part of the canal.

That water is polluted and dangerous as hell, but it's polluted and dangerous in an entirely different way than most other water in the Gowanus. This is what happens when you have a huge, 1.8-mile waterway that's completely stagnant: you get micro-environments, because there's hardly any interaction between the water I grabbed and, say, water a few inches above the muck in the center of the canal.

The other, bigger problem is that there's essentially no funding for testing. We don't really know what's in there, we don't know what's in the soil and air around it, and we don't know how it affects the tens of thousands of people who live within a few blocks of it.

Here's another chunk (links onsite):

Nasreen Haque, a microbiologist who has studied--or attempted to study--the microbial makeup of the Gowanus, was teaching at the City University of New York a few years ago. As an exercise, she decided to have her students test for microbes in water she assumed would have some--the Gowanus. "We found that everything we threw at it, every kind of imaginable pathogen, was growing there," she told me. But here's where it gets nuts: in the stagnant water of the canal, fed by chemicals from raw sewage, tar, and rotting garbage in the sludge at the bottom of the canal, they're breeding and evolving into new forms we've never seen before, in concentrations seen in few other places on Earth. It was only in 2008 that Haque conducted a study revealing the white clouds of "biofilm" that float just above the sludge at the bottom of the canal. The clouds aren't microscopic; they're giant clumps of white gunk that nobody had ever seen before, because hardly anyone has ever been submerged in the canal, because Jesus Christ, why would you go in the canal.

Microbes shouldn't be able to survive in the Gowanus; it's estimated that the oxygen levels are at 1.5 parts per million due to the lack of circulation, less than the 4 parts per million needed to sustain a healthy population of marine life. And yet they're thriving, mutating into new forms. "Nobody is researching the microbial makeup of the Gowanus," said Haque. But it might even be to their benefit; the purpose of her study was to see if these mutated microbes could hold the key to new antibiotics. As you can see in this sampling (PDF), taken by the EPA shortly after Hurricane Sandy, there's basically no test at all for microbial content. The test for Enterococcus you see there is basically a canary in a mineshaft; that particular bacterium is believed to have a strong correlation with the concentration of other pathogens in a body of water. If a body of water tests highly for Enterococcus--and boy, does the Gowanus test highly--it's a pretty good sign that there's a whole bunch of other nasty stuff going on in there too.

Haque only discovered the white clouds of biofilm because she is one of very few to have dived beneath its surface. Hardly anyone has every actually gone into the water; the Urban Divers Estuary Conservancy is about the only organization that does it (Haque made her dive with the help of the Urban Divers). The testing itself is very difficult for an environment as dense and varied and unknown as the Gowanus. "Normally, you'd get a sample, bring it to the lab, and try to grow it, but you'll only see the microbes that best respond to the nutrient you provided," says Haque. "If you put in ten different nutrient types, you'd grow ten different types of bacteria."

And, oh yes, we can't leave out this:

There's very little data on the microbial makeup of the Gowanus, but the EPA, the Department of Environmental Protection, and other governmental and non-governmental groups have measured other dangers lurking in (and beneath) the water: heavy metals, carcinogens, congeners, and more.

The EPA recommends people avoid the canal water, the land around it, the air above and adjacent to it, and anything that swims or crawls in it. There are highly carcinogenic materials in the land and water, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are found (and banned) in some plastics, or in the charred parts of grilled food. There is literally liquid coal tar in the Gowanus, bubbling up from the muck towards the surface. There are also high concentrations of heavy metals, like arsenic, lead, iron, manganese, cadmium, and zinc. Those aren't toxic immediately, and indeed humans need a small amount of some of those metals, but they're all rated at an unsafe level in the Gowanus. If they get into your system and build up, they become highly carcinogenic. Let's start off with a real easy one: arsenic.

"Arsenic at ten locations with maximum concentrations of 8.2 µg/L and 7.8 µg/L for dissolved and total concentrations, respectively, compared to the human health screening value of 0.14 µg/L," reads one EPA Gowanus report. Arsenic is a poison, plain and simple, and the dissolved concentration of arsenic in the Gowanus reaches nearly 60 times the human health screening value, which is the point at which exposure becomes unsafe. Arsenic needs to build up in the system, so one glass won't have too much of an effect--but a glass of that hyper-arsenic-filled water will lift your arsenic levels dramatically. Keep it up and you'll end up with drowsiness, then confusion, then severe diarrhea, then convulsions and cramping, then blood in the urine, and soon enough, a coma and death. Cool."

Cool indeed, Dan! And remember, this is just the arsenic component, one of about a zillion toxic substances known to lurk in the canal. So whaddaya say, everyone in the water? Last one in's . . . well, a candidate for drowsiness, then confusion, then severe diarrhea, then convulsions and cramping, then blood in the urine, and soon enough, a coma and death -- just to pick one among the known canal toxins.


SOUNDS LIKE A GREAT PLACE FOR A SWIM, RIGHT?

At this point you should be sufficiently primed for a story you may have heard about, where some crazy person announced that he was going to take a swim in the canal, and then did it! Our pal Mai Armstrong, the blogger for the Working Harbor Committee, filed this report (with more pictures onsite):

He Actually DID Swim In It


There he is! The tiny yellow blob! Photo by Mai Armstrong

by Mai Armstrong for the Working Harbor Committee

Yesterday, I went to watch clean water advocate Chris Swain’s earth day swim in the heavily polluted Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. Word was he would swim the entire toxic length.

Heading for the 3rd Street Bridge, I set myself up in the Whole Foods Market parking lot pocket-park – coffee and restrooms close by! – along with dozens of news media outlets, buzzing helicopters overhead, and a few bewildered local shoppers with their dogs.

It had rained the previous day, and I wondered how much raw sewage had been freshly discharged into the waterway.

We waited for a looong time. The reporters started to thin out, and eventually the helicopters left. My companion started to fidget so we abandoned the effort, and decided lunch on the outdoor roof deck at Whole Foods was in order.

At some point, the swimmer came into view, and I snapped a couple of shots of him splashing in the water before he climbed ashore. I was kind of glad not to be too close, I didn’t want any of that water on me!

I gathered from my fellow gawkers, that the swim had been cut short by the impending weather, and sure enough the skies darkened and the wind picked up as I wound my way home.

Did he accomplish his goal to raise awareness? The media were there… but I got the impression they were there to see a guy swim in poop. What do you think? Noble or reckless? Irresponsible or dedicated? Brave or stupid? Let me know in the comments.

WORKING HARBOR COMMITTEE IS DOING BOAT
TOURS OF BOTH NEWTOWN CREEK AND GOWANUS

It's a double-header May 31st: Newtown Creek from 11am to 1pm (with our pal Mitch Waxman, the Newtown Creek Alliance's official historian, providing commentary); Gowanus Bay and the Gowanus Canal from 1:10 to 3:10pm. Both depart from and return to East River Pier 11 (Wall Street), and tickets are $30, $25 for seniors. I've done a WHC "cruise" up Newtown Creek, but I signed up for this one as soon as it was announced. Thanks to the following boat trip, it should get me back in time to make my 2pm MAS

Newtown Creek
Sunday, May 31, 11am-1pm

Come explore Newtown Creek by boat with The Working Harbor Committee with Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman as your guide. Boarding begins at 10:30 a.m., and departs at 11:00 a.m. sharp. A 2-hour, fully narrated, round-trip excursion on a NY Waterway vessel.

Buy tickets here.

Gowanus Bay and Canal
Sunday, May 31, 1:10-3:10pm

Come explore Gowanus Bay and Canal including Erie Basin & Sunset Park by boat with The Working Harbor Committee. Learn about Erie Basin, GBX Gowanus Bay Terminals, the Historic Ferry Yankee, the giant Slag Ship MV Loujaine, the Big Grain Elevator, the Gowanus Canal, Sunset Park and more! A 2-hour, fully narrated, round-trip excursion on a NY Waterway vessel.

Buy tickets here.

LAST WORD: SO WHAT ABOUT DRINKING
GOWANUS CANAL WATER? HUH, DAN?

Dan Nosowitz himself allows that his title question, "What would happen if you drank a glass of water from the Gowanus?," is "flawed."

Even if the Gowanus is eventually repaired enough to pass EPA standards, the EPA has totally different standards for waterway water and for drinking water. You're not supposed to drink out of any canal, really. But it was my way to figure out what's going on in the canal. And it turns out that nobody really knows.

Still, everyone he asks the question comes back with, shall we say, an unencouraging reply. At the end of his piece he mans up and confronts the question. "For now," he says, the answer "seems to be a horrified 'nobody knows, but nothing good. And probably diarrhea.' "

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