Monday, August 25, 2014
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
NY Raids Clean Water Funds to Pay for Broke Bridge Project
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is facing the wrath of environmentalists today following the news that he "raided" the state's clean water fund to help pay for the replacement for the Tappan Zee Bridge.
"More than $500 million was taken from New York’s water quality program
meant to protect the environmental health of the Hudson River estuary.
The Cuomo Administration says that the money is a loan between the two
quasi-state agencies, and will be repaid."
Link to AlterNet article on Cuomo's decision: http://www.alternet.org/new-york-raids-clean-water-funding-pay-broke-bridge-project
New Yorkers know the importance of this fund to ensuring the safety of the watershed that provides water for NYC's 9 million residents. The Watershed Agreement is a partnership between NYC and communities in the Catskills and the Delaware River Basin to protect the 125 mile area of the watershed, which is maintained through sewage management, sustainable farming practices, limits on development.
How many areas do know of that pay communities upstream to not pollute the water?
Historian and public policy expert David Soll calls NYC’s water supply system, "one of the largest, largely unfiltered municipal water supply systems on the planet." His book Empire of Water canbe found at: http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100180740
Here's a link to the NYC Memorandum of Agreement on the protection of the watershed: http://www.dos.ny.gov/watershed/nycmoa.html
Link to AlterNet article on Cuomo's decision: http://www.alternet.org/new-york-raids-clean-water-funding-pay-broke-bridge-project
New Yorkers know the importance of this fund to ensuring the safety of the watershed that provides water for NYC's 9 million residents. The Watershed Agreement is a partnership between NYC and communities in the Catskills and the Delaware River Basin to protect the 125 mile area of the watershed, which is maintained through sewage management, sustainable farming practices, limits on development.
How many areas do know of that pay communities upstream to not pollute the water?
Historian and public policy expert David Soll calls NYC’s water supply system, "one of the largest, largely unfiltered municipal water supply systems on the planet." His book Empire of Water canbe found at: http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100180740
Here's a link to the NYC Memorandum of Agreement on the protection of the watershed: http://www.dos.ny.gov/watershed/nycmoa.html
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Thursday, January 30, 2014
More Water Woes
The chemical spill in West Virginia still isn't cleaned up leaving residents without clean drinking water; and now, there's more bad news across the US with parts of California running out of water.
Wells are running dry or reservoirs are nearly empty in some communities. Others have long-running problems that predate the drought.
The communities range from the area covered by the tiny Lompico County Water District in Santa Cruz County to the cities of Healdsburg and Cloverdale in Sonoma County, the San Jose Mercury News (http://bit.ly/LmgFL2 ) reported Tuesday.
Most of the districts, which serve from 39 to 11,000 residents, have too few customers to collect enough revenue to pay for backup water supplies or repair failing equipment, the newspaper reported.
A storm expected to drop light and moderate rains on Northern California on Wednesday and Thursday won't help much.
The list of vulnerable communities was compiled by the state health department based on a survey last week of the more than 3,000 water agencies in California.
"As the drought goes on, there will be more that probably show up on the list," said Dave Mazzera, acting drinking-water division chief for the state Department of Public Health.
State officials are discussing solutions such as trucking in water and providing funding to drill more wells or connect rural water systems to other water systems, Mazzera said.
Read the full article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/29/california-drought-water-shortage_n_4689106.html
From The Huffington Post:
As Drought Persists, 17 California Communities Almost Out Of Water
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Seventeen rural communities in drought-stricken California are in danger of a severe water shortage within four months, according to a list compiled by state officials.Wells are running dry or reservoirs are nearly empty in some communities. Others have long-running problems that predate the drought.
The communities range from the area covered by the tiny Lompico County Water District in Santa Cruz County to the cities of Healdsburg and Cloverdale in Sonoma County, the San Jose Mercury News (http://bit.ly/LmgFL2 ) reported Tuesday.
Most of the districts, which serve from 39 to 11,000 residents, have too few customers to collect enough revenue to pay for backup water supplies or repair failing equipment, the newspaper reported.
A storm expected to drop light and moderate rains on Northern California on Wednesday and Thursday won't help much.
The list of vulnerable communities was compiled by the state health department based on a survey last week of the more than 3,000 water agencies in California.
"As the drought goes on, there will be more that probably show up on the list," said Dave Mazzera, acting drinking-water division chief for the state Department of Public Health.
State officials are discussing solutions such as trucking in water and providing funding to drill more wells or connect rural water systems to other water systems, Mazzera said.
Read the full article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/29/california-drought-water-shortage_n_4689106.html
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Tributes to Pete Seeger - Water Advocate, Peacenik
Today fans of
Pete Seeger expressed love, admiration, and a great sense of loss at his
passing. Here are just a few:
From The Hudson Valley via Facebook
We're deeply saddened
at the passing of Hudson Valley legend and American treasure, Pete Seeger. We can't say
enough good things about Pete or thank him enough for the inordinate amount of
dedication he put in to restoring and preserving the beauty of our region, and the Hudson
River, for almost half a century. His work ethic was astounding - performing
for adoring crowds both locally and nationally, into his 90s, decades after
most people would retire. He now belongs to the ages - his spectacular work,
catalog of music, passion and memory will live on, continuing to inspire
generations to come. Rest in peace, Pete - thank you for being you, and
spending so much of your time with us.
 |
|
(Pete
Seeger, Clearwater Revival, Croton-on-Hudson, NY, 2001.
Copyright: Annie
Leibovitz.)
|
From the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater
via Facebook:
It is with great
sadness that we share the passing of our founder and inspiration, Pete Seeger.
His legacy will live on through the countless thousands of lives he touched
through his music, his kindness, and his work towards a better, more just
world. Rest in peace, Pete. You are already missed.
From Dickie Smothers via Facebook:
 |
| (The Smothers Brothers & Pete Seeger, 1968) |
Pete Seeger - It was a great honor to
have known him. His performance of his song, "Waist Deep in The Big
Muddy", was the highlight of our 1968 season. What a life he had. "So
long it's been good to know you"
From Joseph V. Kuca via Facebook:
THE LION SLEEPS TONIGHT...
Pete Seeger: 1919-2014
Singer, song writer and a friend of the mighty Hudson River, may you rest in peace. No doubt, you're already jammin' in that heavenly Folk City.
Pete Seeger: 1919-2014
Singer, song writer and a friend of the mighty Hudson River, may you rest in peace. No doubt, you're already jammin' in that heavenly Folk City.
Sunday, January 19, 2014
WV residents sickened after exposure to 'safe' water
HOW SAFE IS YOUR WATER?
From AlJazeera America:
West Virginia residents sickened after exposure to 'safe' water
by
Things may be returning to normal for thousands of West Virginia customers of American Water, which had its water supply contaminated by a chemical spill last week, but tens of thousands are still without fresh water, and many of those who’ve been told their water is OK to drink remain skeptical.
A week after a tank at a chemical storage site owned by Freedom Industries leaked thousands of gallons of 4-methylcyclohexane-methanol, or MCHM, into the Elk River, contaminating the drinking water of 300,000 West Virginia residents, some say they do not trust the insistence of the Environmental Protection Agency and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection that water from the river is becoming safe to drink.
Over 200,000 people are still under a “do not drink” order, but even those who have been told their water is OK are concerned about its health effects.
After getting the all-clear from American Water, Kanawha City resident Shane Casdorph jumped into the shower, but shortly afterward began to feel itchy.
"My ears were burning," Casdorph told the Charleston Gazette. "I've got red places on my feet and back and a red rash on my back."
Kanawha-Charleston Health Department officer Rahul Gupta told the Gazette that at least 100 people had entered the emergency room since the "do not drink" order was lifted. They complained of eye irritation, stomach pain, vomiting and diarrhea.
But Gupta insisted the water was still safe to drink.
Full article available here: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/15/residents-still-gettingsickafterwestvirginiawaterdeemedsafe.html
From AlJazeera America:
West Virginia residents sickened after exposure to 'safe' water
by
Things may be returning to normal for thousands of West Virginia customers of American Water, which had its water supply contaminated by a chemical spill last week, but tens of thousands are still without fresh water, and many of those who’ve been told their water is OK to drink remain skeptical.
A week after a tank at a chemical storage site owned by Freedom Industries leaked thousands of gallons of 4-methylcyclohexane-methanol, or MCHM, into the Elk River, contaminating the drinking water of 300,000 West Virginia residents, some say they do not trust the insistence of the Environmental Protection Agency and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection that water from the river is becoming safe to drink.
Over 200,000 people are still under a “do not drink” order, but even those who have been told their water is OK are concerned about its health effects.
After getting the all-clear from American Water, Kanawha City resident Shane Casdorph jumped into the shower, but shortly afterward began to feel itchy.
"My ears were burning," Casdorph told the Charleston Gazette. "I've got red places on my feet and back and a red rash on my back."
Kanawha-Charleston Health Department officer Rahul Gupta told the Gazette that at least 100 people had entered the emergency room since the "do not drink" order was lifted. They complained of eye irritation, stomach pain, vomiting and diarrhea.
But Gupta insisted the water was still safe to drink.
Full article available here: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/15/residents-still-gettingsickafterwestvirginiawaterdeemedsafe.html
Saturday, January 18, 2014
W. Virginia Chemical Spill Exposes a New Risk to Water From Coal
The following article can be found in its entirety at: http://www.wunderground.com/news/west-virginia-chemical-spill-exposes-new-risk-water-coal-20140118
By: Dina Cappiello and Seth Borenstein
By: Dina Cappiello and Seth Borenstein
Published: January 18, 2014
WASHINGTON — The chemical spill that contaminated water for hundreds
of thousands of West Virginians was just the latest and most
high-profile case of coal sullying the nation's waters.
For decades, chemicals and waste from the coal industry have tainted hundreds of waterways and groundwater supplies, spoiling private wells, shutting down fishing and rendering streams virtually lifeless, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal environmental data. But because these contaminants are released gradually and in some cases not tracked or regulated, they attract much less attention than a massive spill like the one in West Virginia.
"I've made a career of body counts of dead fish and wildlife made that
way from coal," said Dennis Lemly, a U.S. Forest Service research
biologist who has spent decades chronicling the deformities pollution
from coal mining has caused in fish. "How many years and how many cases
does it take before somebody will step up to the plate and say, `Wait a
minute, we need to change this'?"
The spill of a coal-cleaning chemical into a river in Charleston, W.Va., that left 300,000 people without water exposes a potentially new and under-regulated risk to water from the coal industry, at a time when the federal government is still trying to close regulatory gaps that have contributed to coal's long legacy of water pollution.
From its mining to the waste created when it is burned for electricity, pollutants associated with coal have contaminated waterways, wells and lakes with far more insidious and longer-lasting contaminants than the chemical that spilled out of a tank farm on the banks of the Elk River.
Chief among them are discharges from coal-fired power plants that alone are responsible for 50 to 60 percent of all toxic pollution entering the nation's water, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. And thanks to even tougher air pollution regulations underway, more pollution from coal-fired power plants is expected to enter the nation's waterways, according to a recent EPA assessment.
"Clean coal means perhaps cleaner atmosphere, but dirtier water," said Avner Vengosh, a Duke University researcher who has monitored discharges from power plant waste ponds and landfills in North Carolina.
In that state, Vengosh and other researchers found contaminants from coal ash disposal sites threatening the drinking water for Charlotte, the nation's 17th-largest city, with cancer-causing arsenic.
"It is kind of a time bomb that can erupt in some kind of specific condition," said Vengosh. The water shows no signs of arsenic contamination now.
In southeastern Ohio, tainted water draining from abandoned coal mines shuttered a century ago still turns portions of the Raccoon Creek orange with iron and coats the half-submerged rocks along its path white with aluminum.
And public drinking water systems in 14 West Virginia counties where mining companies are blasting off mountaintops to get to coal seams exceeded state safe drinking water standards seven times more than non-mining counties, according to a study published in a water quality journal in 2012. The systems provided water for more than a million people.
What's more, the water quality monitoring in mining areas is so inadequate that most health violations likely were not caught, said Michael Hendryx, the study's author and a professor of applied health at Indiana University.
Even with those startling results, the effect of coal-fired power plants stands alone.
The EPA in an environmental assessment last year identified 132 cases where coal-fired power plant waste has damaged rivers, streams and lakes and 123 where it has tainted underground water sources, in many cases legally, officials said. Among them is the massive failure of a waste pond at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in 2008, which poured more than 5 million cubic yards of ash into a river and spoiled hundreds of acres in a community 35 miles west of Knoxville.
Overall, power plants contributed to the degradation of 399 bodies of water that are drinking water sources, according to the EPA.
But there are no federal limits on the vast majority of chemicals that power plants pipe directly into rivers, streams and reservoirs. The EPA just last year proposed setting limits on a handful of the compounds, the first update since 1982. And more than five years after the Tennessee spill, the EPA has yet to issue federal regulations governing the disposal of coal ash.
Experts say the agency is playing catch-up to solve a problem that began when it required power plants in the 1990s to scrub their air pollution to remove sulfur dioxide. An unintended consequence was that the pollutants captured were dumped into landfills and ponds, many unlined, where they seeped into underground aquifers or were piped into adjacent rivers, reservoirs and lakes.
"As you are pushing air rules that are definitely needed, you need to think of the water. And they didn't," said Eric Schaeffer, a former EPA enforcement official who now heads the Environmental Integrity Project, a group whose research has uncovered previously unknown sites of contamination from power plant waste pits. "Now they are running after the problem."
The federal government has in recent years issued the first-ever regulations for mercury released from power plant smokestacks, the largest source of mercury entering waterways. The EPA has also stepped up its review of mountaintop mining permits, to reduce pollution.
Efforts by the EPA to ease the problem, by requiring mine permits to be judged by a measure of the saltiness in downstream water, have been vacated by a federal court. That decision is now under appeal.
A spokesman for the National Mining Association said the industry operates in accord with extensive and rigorous permitting guidelines.
In addition, pollution still enters the environment from coal mined decades ago.
The EPA estimates 12,000 river miles are tainted by acid mine drainage from long-shuttered coal mines. One of them is Raccoon Creek in southeastern Ohio.
"These mines have been abandoned for a hundred years," said Amy Mackey, Raccoon Creek's watershed coordinator. "There is no one to fall back on."
States take the lead on the water pollution front, but advocacy groups from at least three states in coal country - Kentucky, West Virginia and Indiana - have asked the EPA to step in, arguing that state officials aren't doing enough.
For decades, chemicals and waste from the coal industry have tainted hundreds of waterways and groundwater supplies, spoiling private wells, shutting down fishing and rendering streams virtually lifeless, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal environmental data. But because these contaminants are released gradually and in some cases not tracked or regulated, they attract much less attention than a massive spill like the one in West Virginia.
The spill of a coal-cleaning chemical into a river in Charleston, W.Va., that left 300,000 people without water exposes a potentially new and under-regulated risk to water from the coal industry, at a time when the federal government is still trying to close regulatory gaps that have contributed to coal's long legacy of water pollution.
From its mining to the waste created when it is burned for electricity, pollutants associated with coal have contaminated waterways, wells and lakes with far more insidious and longer-lasting contaminants than the chemical that spilled out of a tank farm on the banks of the Elk River.
Chief among them are discharges from coal-fired power plants that alone are responsible for 50 to 60 percent of all toxic pollution entering the nation's water, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. And thanks to even tougher air pollution regulations underway, more pollution from coal-fired power plants is expected to enter the nation's waterways, according to a recent EPA assessment.
"Clean coal means perhaps cleaner atmosphere, but dirtier water," said Avner Vengosh, a Duke University researcher who has monitored discharges from power plant waste ponds and landfills in North Carolina.
In that state, Vengosh and other researchers found contaminants from coal ash disposal sites threatening the drinking water for Charlotte, the nation's 17th-largest city, with cancer-causing arsenic.
"It is kind of a time bomb that can erupt in some kind of specific condition," said Vengosh. The water shows no signs of arsenic contamination now.
In southeastern Ohio, tainted water draining from abandoned coal mines shuttered a century ago still turns portions of the Raccoon Creek orange with iron and coats the half-submerged rocks along its path white with aluminum.
And public drinking water systems in 14 West Virginia counties where mining companies are blasting off mountaintops to get to coal seams exceeded state safe drinking water standards seven times more than non-mining counties, according to a study published in a water quality journal in 2012. The systems provided water for more than a million people.
What's more, the water quality monitoring in mining areas is so inadequate that most health violations likely were not caught, said Michael Hendryx, the study's author and a professor of applied health at Indiana University.
Even with those startling results, the effect of coal-fired power plants stands alone.
The EPA in an environmental assessment last year identified 132 cases where coal-fired power plant waste has damaged rivers, streams and lakes and 123 where it has tainted underground water sources, in many cases legally, officials said. Among them is the massive failure of a waste pond at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in 2008, which poured more than 5 million cubic yards of ash into a river and spoiled hundreds of acres in a community 35 miles west of Knoxville.
Overall, power plants contributed to the degradation of 399 bodies of water that are drinking water sources, according to the EPA.
But there are no federal limits on the vast majority of chemicals that power plants pipe directly into rivers, streams and reservoirs. The EPA just last year proposed setting limits on a handful of the compounds, the first update since 1982. And more than five years after the Tennessee spill, the EPA has yet to issue federal regulations governing the disposal of coal ash.
Experts say the agency is playing catch-up to solve a problem that began when it required power plants in the 1990s to scrub their air pollution to remove sulfur dioxide. An unintended consequence was that the pollutants captured were dumped into landfills and ponds, many unlined, where they seeped into underground aquifers or were piped into adjacent rivers, reservoirs and lakes.
"As you are pushing air rules that are definitely needed, you need to think of the water. And they didn't," said Eric Schaeffer, a former EPA enforcement official who now heads the Environmental Integrity Project, a group whose research has uncovered previously unknown sites of contamination from power plant waste pits. "Now they are running after the problem."
The federal government has in recent years issued the first-ever regulations for mercury released from power plant smokestacks, the largest source of mercury entering waterways. The EPA has also stepped up its review of mountaintop mining permits, to reduce pollution.
Efforts by the EPA to ease the problem, by requiring mine permits to be judged by a measure of the saltiness in downstream water, have been vacated by a federal court. That decision is now under appeal.
A spokesman for the National Mining Association said the industry operates in accord with extensive and rigorous permitting guidelines.
In addition, pollution still enters the environment from coal mined decades ago.
The EPA estimates 12,000 river miles are tainted by acid mine drainage from long-shuttered coal mines. One of them is Raccoon Creek in southeastern Ohio.
"These mines have been abandoned for a hundred years," said Amy Mackey, Raccoon Creek's watershed coordinator. "There is no one to fall back on."
States take the lead on the water pollution front, but advocacy groups from at least three states in coal country - Kentucky, West Virginia and Indiana - have asked the EPA to step in, arguing that state officials aren't doing enough.
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