Category: Environmental

Well, that was worth waiting for!

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

Somehow, I’m not surprised:

On May 16, the Obama Interior Department announced its long-awaited rules governing hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) on federal lands.

As part of its 171-page document of rules, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), part of the U.S. Dept. of Interior (DOI), revealed it will adopt theAmerican Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model bill written by ExxonMobil for fracking chemical fluid disclosure on U.S. public lands.

ALEC is a 98-percent corporate-funded bill mill and “dating service” that brings predominantly Republican state legislators and corporate lobbyists together at meetings to craft and vote on “model bills” behind closed doors. Many of these bills end up snaking their way into statehouses and become law in what Bill Moyers referred to as “The United States of ALEC.”

BLM will utilize an iteration of ALEC’s “Disclosure of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Composition Act” – a bill The New York Times revealed was written by ExxonMobil – for chemical fluid disclosure of fracking on public lands and will do so by utilizing FracFocus.org‘s voluntary online chemical disclosure database.

In a way, it’s all come full circle. As we covered here on DeSmogBlog, the original chemical disclosure standards and the decision to utilize FracFocus’ database came from the Obama Dept. of Energy’s (DOE) industry-stacked Fracking Subcommitteeformed in May 2011. DOE gave a $1.5 million grant to FracFocus.

Thanks to Thomas Soldan.

Oops

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Another nuclear reactor on an active fault?

A panel under the Nuclear Regulation Authority on Wednesday concluded that a geologic fault running beneath a reactor in western Japan is active, raising the possibility of the unit’s permanent shutdown.

The move is expected to lead NRA commissioners to decide that the No. 2 unit of Japan Atomic Power Co.’s Tsuruga plant does not meet the conditions for undergoing a safety assessment that the country’s reactors need to clear in order to resume operations in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi complex disaster.

[…] The panel, consisting of NRA commissioner Kunihiko Shimazaki and four academics from outside, had agreed at its first gathering in December after a field survey that the No. 2 reactor is likely to be sitting above an active fault.

But it spent five more months on further discussions amid criticism from Japan Atomic Power and some ruling Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers that the panel had not sufficiently listened to the arguments of the plant operator.

Thanks to Price Benowitz LLP, Maryland Wrongful Death.

Oh dear

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

I wonder why they don’t trust TEPCO?

Tokyo Electric Power Co. officials underestimated Fukushima fishermen’s anger and distrust toward the company whose failures continue to threaten their livelihoods.

After meeting fisheries leaders several times since last summer, utility officials believed they had won approval from a prefectural fisheries federation for a plan to reduce the amount of contaminated water at the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

However, the fishermen themselves lashed out against TEPCO at a meeting in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, on May 13.

“An explanation from TEPCO alone will not be enough to win the confidence of union members,” a participant at the meeting said.

TEPCO officials emphasized the safety of its plan to pump up groundwater at the plant and release it into the ocean before it can flow into the basements of reactor and turbine buildings and mix with highly radioactive water accumulated there.

Groups push for webcast of San Ofre hearings

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

None of our damn business, right? After all, what could possibly go wrong?

An initial round of hearings was set to begin Monday in a California Public Utilities Commission investigation of the costs to ratepayers from the San Onofre nuclear plant’s ongoing outage.

Activists were incensed that a CPUC administrative law judge ruled against allowing videotaping of the hearings, which are set to take place in San Francisco, far from the plant’s location in northern San Diego County.

State law requires the public utilities commission to launch an investigation and consider lowering or refunding rates when a plant has been out of service for nine months. San Onofre’s outage due to faulty equipment has now dragged on for more than a year.

Southern California Edison has requested permission from federal regulators to restart one unit at partial power, but it remains unclear when or if the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will give permission for a restart.

The public utilities commission investigation promises to be a lengthy process.

Hallelujah

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

This means Jesus is coming! No going back now — yeehaw!

The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported on Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years.

Scientific monitors reported that the gas had reached an average daily level that surpassed 400 parts per million — just an odometer moment in one sense, but also a sobering reminder that decades of efforts to bring human-produced emissions under control are faltering.

The best available evidence suggests the amount of the gas in the air has not been this high for at least three million years, before humans evolved, and scientists believe the rise portends large changes in the climate and the level of the sea.

“It symbolizes that so far we have failed miserably in tackling this problem,” said Pieter P. Tans, who runs the monitoring program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that reported the new reading.

H/t Kush Arora.

Uh oh

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Maybe someone should do something?

The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported on Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years.

Scientific monitors reported that the gas had reached an average daily level that surpassed 400 parts per million — just an odometer moment in one sense, but also a sobering reminder that decades of efforts to bring human-produced emissions under control are faltering.

The best available evidence suggests the amount of the gas in the air has not been this high for at least three million years, before humans evolved, and scientists believe the rise portends large changes in the climate and the level of the sea.

“It symbolizes that so far we have failed miserably in tackling this problem,” said Pieter P. Tans, who runs the monitoring program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that reported the new reading.

H/t Colleen Kirby.

What a brave new world

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

Yep. I have to admit, my friends were right about the dangers of GMO food. I didn’t want to believe it, because I’m 1) lazy and 2) poor, and didn’t want to have to search out special food, but I do it as much as possible now:

Biotech giant Syngenta has been criminally charged with denying knowledge that its genetically modified (GM) Bt corn kills livestock during a civil court case that ended in 2007 [1].

Syngenta’s Bt 176 corn variety expresses an insecticidal Bt toxin (Cry1Ab) derived from the bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) and a gene conferring resistance to glufosinate herbicides. EU cultivation of Bt 176 was discontinued in 2007. Similar varieties however, including Bt 11 sweet corn are currently cultivated for human and animal consumption in the EU.

The charges follow a long struggle for justice by a German farmer whose dairy cattle suffered mysterious illnesses and deaths after eating Bt 176. They were grown on his farm as part of authorised field tests during 1997 to 2002. By 2000, his cows were fed exclusively on Bt 176, and soon illnesses started to emerge. He was paid 40 000 euros by Syngenta as partial compensation for 5 dead cows, decreased milk yields, and vet costs (see [2] Cows ate GM Maize and Died, SiS 21). During a civil lawsuit brought against the company by the farmer however, Syngenta refused to admit that its GM corn was the cause, claiming no knowledge of harm. The case was dismissed and Gloeckner remained thousands of euros in debt.