pollution

- by Mimi Lau, April 9, 2015, South China Morning Post

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"464","attributes":{"alt":"Chinese Incinerator Protest","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 250px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: SCMP pictures"}}]]A western Guangdong city has cancelled a plan to build an incinerator that prompted a protest - of up to 10,000 people on some accounts - during which three police cars were flipped and a duty office vandalised.

Luoding city government posted two letters on its website on Wednesday announcing the decision. One informed the Langtang township government that it had decided to cancel the project, which Langtang had brokered with China Resources Cement Holdings. The second urged residents to stop blocking roads, vandalising property or disturbing public order.

The decision came after residents of the town engaged in a defiant stand-off with police on Tuesday, in protest against what they said was the violent handling of a peaceful sit-in against the incinerator on Monday.

"People are angry with the site selection of the incinerator as it is within a 1km radius of people's homes," said one young resident. "The cement factory is producing enough pollution, we don't need another polluter."

- by Melanie Scruggs, Texas Campaign for the Environment

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"396","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"216","style":"width: 216px; height: 216px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"216"}}]]Right now, the City of Houston is expanding its two-bin or “single-stream” recycling program to finally cover all the nearly 350,000 homes that it services. As an avid zero waster, you may be thinking two things: 1. It is fantastic that Houstonians finally have access to a curbside recycling program; and 2. It’s quite embarrassing that the nation’s fourth largest city took so long to extend curbside recycling city-wide. Those two thoughts are both true, but unfortunately Houston is considering trashing the progress it has made by investing in a boondoggle project that would eliminate real recycling altogether.

The proposal known as “One Bin for All” is a misguided plan designed to eliminate curbside recycling and direct all residents to go back to putting both trash and recyclable materials in the same bin—hence the name—which would then be sent to a new waste facility known as a “dirty MRF”(Materials Recovery Facility) where the recyclable materials would supposedly be separated out after the fact. This plan has met stiff resistance locally and across the nation for the past two years, and rightfully so—it’s a terrible idea, and not a new one either. Dallas and Austin officials have considered this proposal and rejected it within the past three years.

In Houston, however, the technology has been hailed as the “next revolution of recycling.” Mixed signals are coming from officials in the Mayor’s Office about whether or not they actually plan to invest in the program, especially considering the recent and significant investment in source separated recycling. Still, the official plan under consideration is to give everyone in the city a curbside recycling bin, then take away their old garbage bins and tell residents to put all their trash and recyclable materials together in their nice, big, green recycling bin. Presto, now it’s all getting recycled thanks to the magic of “One Bin for All!” But not really—in the real world, similar programs have been shown to send most of the mixed-together materials straight to a landfill or incinerator.

- by Norma Kreilein, MD, Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics

[The biomass facility proposed for Jasper, Indiana referred to in this letter was canceled this year thanks to the hard work of Dr. Kreilein and Healthy Dubois County –Ed.]

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"339","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"282","style":"width: 255px; height: 169px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"426"}}]]I am writing as a concerned pediatrician in Southern Indiana. We live in the heart of the power plant belt of the Midwest. For many years I have suspected that our local pollution is greatly responsible for our high rage of inflammatory processes, malignancies, and increasing rates of autism.

I have been trying to fight the addition of a biomass plant to our city. The city has long been an industrial base with many wood factories, so there has apparently been a high VOC load. In addition, we live near many power plants. There was a coal fired municipal power plant within the city limits and very near a residential neighborhod since 1968. The city has said that the plant has been shuttled for approximately the past 3 years because it isn't "profitable."

They have been planning a biomass refit for the past 3 years, although the plan became more public only less than a year ago.

Strong opposition was voiced from the time it was publicly mentioned, but the city has pushed the plant through, anyway. Much manipulation of emission data has occurred (averaging emissions out over the whole county to make them appear insignificant), but ironically one of the more interesting arguments is that the plant, though polluting and within 1/2 mile of a residential neighborhood, should nonetheless be built because the plant will decrease our dependence on coal fired plants.

Essentially the argument is to build more so we are not as dependent on the ones we can't seem to shut down. Many of the arguments against coal-fired plants are used by manipulative entities to justify continuing to poison the population. In our particular city, the greed for development appears to take precedence over the consideration of air quality.

Until the EPA begins to mandate states to use more accurate exposure models (better than averaging concentrated pollution over a county), states like Indiana and cities like Jasper will continue to actually increase pollution.

Biomass combustion is being sold to communities around the country by high pressure, ambiguous, unscrupulous carpetbaggers who promise "jobs" and "green energy" but are vacuuming precious federal funds to produce expensive energy that will never solve our dependence on foreign oil nor make our air any cleaner. Worse yet, they use existing knowledge about coal-fired plants and aggressive manipulative mathemathics to convince communities that the particulate/dioxin emissions will be nonexistent or "minimal."

The ultimate problem is that the same monitors and regulators that fail to close down coal plants will do no better with biomass. We will just spend more and think we feel better about it. 

Never fear, the December issue of Energy Justice Now — the national forum for the Dirty Energy Resistance — is here!

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"334","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"480","style":"width: 310px; height: 310px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"480"}}]]Inside this issue: Celebrating 16 Victories for Clean Air in 2014!

- 16 Victories for Clean Air

-  From Shock to Victory: The Planet’s “Immune System” at Work

-  Incinerator in Frederick, MD Canceled After Decade-Long Fight

...and more!

Please share the December 2014 issue of Energy Justice Now with your friends, colleagues, neighbors, media, and elected officials! 

Subscribe to monthly email issues of Energy Justice Now!

- by Katie Lannan, November 19, 2014,  NJ.com

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"312","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 221px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: Katie Lannan, NJ.com"}}]]Firefighters called to the scene of what was originally described to them as a "small spill" Wednesday afternoon instead found 500 gallons of ethanol that had leaked out of a collapsed tanker truck.

The truck, carrying 7,000 gallons of ethanol, split as it was offloading its contents at a North Michigan Avenue business, said borough Fire Chief Lou Giordino.

"The tank itself just collapsed and broke open," he said.

Firefighters called the county hazardous materials team and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection's emergency response team to the scene. Fire departments from nearby communities, including Union Township and Elizabeth, also assisted with the cleanup.

- by Duane Shimgawa, August  28, 2014,  Pacific Business News

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"254","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"line-height: 20.6719989776611px; width: 211px; height: 142px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: Cleanislands.com"}}]]The only coal-fired power plant in Hawaii, which is the single largest generating plant on Oahu, is under financial stress because there is no financial reserve, according to the Hawaiian Electric Co.'s new energy plan released this week.

Hawaiian Electric is also asking AES Hawaiito convert some of the energy being produced at the plant in Campbell Industrial Park to biomass from coal

Given the potential financial impact of an interruption of service associated with a financial default of AES Hawaii, HECO said it has been negotiating in good faith with the company to explore the possibility of an amendment to the power purchase agreement that would make financial sense to AES Hawaii and ratepayers.

As part of the ongoing negotiations for the change in the power purchase agreement, the state’s largest electric utility has asked AES Hawaii to convert some or all of the energy produced at the facility from coal to biomass, possibly from black pellets made from wood.

- by Anya Litvak and Maxwell Radwin, August 31, 2014, The Post-Gazette

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"252","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"line-height: 20.6719989776611px; width: 333px; height: 287px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]EQT Corp. told the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection that it sent 21 tons of drill cuttings from its Marcellus Shale wells to area landfills in 2013.

But landfills in southwestern Pennsylvania told a different story.

Six facilities in this part of the state reported receiving nearly 95,000 tons of drill cuttings and fracking fluid from the Downtown-based oil and gas operator last year.

The landfills' records are the correct ones, said Mike Forbeck, waste management director with the DEP. He said the agency has opened an investigation into drillers' under-reporting of landfill waste.

The EQT case — 21 tons vs. 95,000 tons — may be the most dramatic example of how data submitted by oil and gas operators don't match up to reporting required of landfills. The DEP said it has been aware of the problem for "a number of months" and is looking into why the different reporting channels aren't yielding the same results.

- by Kelly Hatton, July 17, 2014, Western Confluence

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"242","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 319px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: Western Confluence"}}]]On a morning in early March, I ride with Cody Neff, owner of West Range Reclamation (WRR), in his truck from Frisco, Colorado, to the company’s nearby worksite in the White River National Forest. Light is just starting to reach over the high snow-covered slopes surrounding Frisco, but Neff is awake and ready to talk. He tells me that originally it was a love of cattle, not forests, that brought him west to the University of Wyoming, where he studied rangeland ecology while raising beef on a piece of leased land outside Laramie. Now, fifteen years later, he’s running a fifty-employee company and supervising forestry projects on Colorado’s Front Range and in Wyoming’s Medicine Bow National Forest. It’s a position he didn’t necessarily imagine for himself, but one that he has taken on with enthusiasm.

Neff and wife, Stephanie—who Neff credits for his success—started WRR in 2001. They saw a need for what Neff calls responsible and beneficial rangeland and forest management.

From behind the steering wheel, Neff interrupts himself to point out areas on the slopes where the company has completed projects. As he steers up the rough road, he takes phone calls, fields questions, and jots notes for himself on the pad of paper nested in the truck’s console.

When we turn off the main highway and bump slowly along the temporary dirt road that winds up the mountain, Neff points out tightly packed, small-diameter lodgepole pine as illustrative of the problems of this forest. The stands of thin trees are all the same species, the same age, and all are competing for the same resources, susceptible to the same pests. These stands are an easy target for bark beetles. Out the passenger window, I see the impact. Dead trees stand like skeletons among the green.

At the road’s end, the forest opens into a clearing where a fleet of machinery cuts, hauls, and chips trees marked by the Forest Service for removal. Neff hands me a hardhat and a neon vest to put on before we walk over to the semi parked on the edge of the clearing.

UPDATE: despite strong organizing efforts, an outpouring of community opposition and strong research we've compiled to show how awful this plan is, city council voted unanimously on Aug 13th to approve Covanta's plan that allows 30 years of New York City waste to be brought by train to Chester for incineration.  In fact, it'll go through Chester to Wilmington, DE, then will be trucked back into Chester, with five more trucks than they'd normally need since rail boxes are smaller than normal trucks.  It's an insane plan and we'll continue to fight it.  See Chester Environmental Justice for details.

-  by Vince Sullivan, July 24, 2014, Delaware County Daily Times

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"237","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"272","style":"width: 255px; height: 145px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: LancasterOnline.com","width":"480"}}]]Dozens of city residents attended Wednesday night’s council meeting to voice their opposition to a proposal that would allow the country’s largest trash incinerator to construct additional buildings on its property.

Covanta’s Delaware Valley Resource Recovery Facility, located in the first block of Highland Avenue, is seeking to construct a 16,000-square-foot building that would enable the facility to handle a different kind of truck traffic. The company recently entered into a 20-year contract with New York City to incinerate up to 500,000 tons of municipal waste each year. The waste would be brought from New York to Wilmington, Del., via train and then the rail boxes would be put onto tractor-trailers to be trucked to Chester.

A Covanta vice president attended two planning commission meetings where he explained that the incinerator is not seeking to increase its trash-burning capacity, which is regulated by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, but said the trash from New York would replace other municipal waste sources. He added that because more trash wouldn’t be coming into the facility, the number of trucks driving to the incinerator would not increase. The rail box building would enable the boxes to be removed from the trucks and emptied onto the tipping floor.

The proposal also calls for a 1,000-square-foot office building. The Chester City Planning Comission recommended that city council deny the application.