April 21, 2014

Now Lisa Garcia, previously of NY then EPA, is going to Earthjustice....

April 14, 2014

  Over 20,000 people submitted comments in response to action alerts by public interest, labor, environmental justice and environmental organizations calling for the federal government to require facilities to use safer chemicals...

April 7, 2014

Here's a question: what are the environmental justice implications of moving the auto shops from Queens to Hunts Point in the South Bronx? The City says, "the relocation of the Sunrise Co-op to their new facility is an as-of-right transaction between two private parties." But what about EJ? Watch this site.

March 31, 2014

In Cali, "environmental justice groups have filed a federal lawsuit against the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and energy company Kinder Morgan after learning that the company has quietly been receiving crude oil by rail at its Richmond facility with the district's approval."

March 24, 2014

Lead paint in Sri Lanka: 97 paint samples from 57 brands were analyzed. Key Nation findings include:

• 59 of the 94 (63%) paints analyzed had lead levels above 90 parts per million (ppm) and would not be permitted for sale in most industrialized countries. Overall, more than three-quarters of the paints analyzed in all seven countries had lead levels above 90 ppm.

• 24 of 94 samples (25%) contained extremely dangerous levels of lead above 10,000 ppm. Overall, at least a quarter of all paints from all countries had lead content above 10,000 ppm.

• Overall, brightly colored paints (green, red and yellow) contained the highest lead levels.

• Some of the major paint brands that had high levels of lead in previously conducted studies in these same countries now have levels below 90 ppm.

• Paints with low levels of lead were available in all markets at prices comparable to the leaded products, suggesting that the technology exists to produce cost effective, lead-safe products.

• None of the paint cans containing lead stated this on the label or explained the hazards associated with lead.

March 17, 2014

Now Albany, NY County Executive Dan McCoy has halted the expansion of crude oil processing at the Hudson River Port of Albany, hub for rail shipments of volatile North Dakota crude to coastal refineries in the last two years. The order requires a health impact study by the county before Mass.-based Global Partners is permitted to add facilities to heat rail cars to liquefy thick crude like that mined in western Canada's tar sands.

March 10, 2014

Thou doth protest too much? The EPA's Gina McCarthy on March 3 defended the Obama administration's record on environmental justice, saying that new vehicle-emission limits will raise the standard of living for residents of heavily trafficked areas. "Millions of Americans still suffer from the health impacts of poor air quality, especially those in urban areas along high-traffic corridors," McCarthy said during a press call. "By reducing these pollutants we're really addressing an environmental-justice issue. Communities that live near major roadways often live, work, and play right along that roadway, and they're disproportionately harmed by air pollution."

March 3, 2014

In the US Congress, Progressive Caucus Cochairs Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva have requested in a letter to be sent to Obama "that the Climate Action Plan explicitly address the unique environmental justice concerns of low-income, minority, indigenous, and Native American communities across the country... Climate change compounds existing inequities. Droughts, floods, wildfires, and extreme weather events increase the vulnerability of people living in areas with limited climate resiliency—communities with poor air quality, unsafe housing, and insufficient resources to plan, prepare and recover from extreme weather."

February 24, 2014

Buffalo-ed: The US General Services Administration is under fire for quashing an August 2012 investigation into the high childhood asthma rate in Buffalo’s West Side, while also conducting a cursory environmental review of a Peace Bridge project. We're following this, as we are Buffalo based M&T and its branch closing plans. Environmental justice and CRA: two sides of the same coin of injustice.

February 17, 2014

In Texas, a protest at Port San Antonio about neighborhood health, environmental and safety concerns they say stem from the increased truck traffic serving the Eagle Ford Shale energy boom. Formerly the Kelly AFB, the inland port and its clients have become a focal point for residents and environmental justice activists who want to keep the trucks out of neighborhoods in the Quintana Road area...

February 10, 2014

In Albany, NY, the state DEC reversed itself and will now make owners of a crude oil terminal seeking to expand at the Port of Albany prepare a way of the predominantly poor and minority South End neighborhood of the plans...

February 3, 2014

Speaking on EJ at Bowdoin on Feb 8 is Angela Park of Diversity Matters (soon to be Mission Critical)...

January 27, 2014

In the city fighting for eminent domain to save under-water mortgaged homes: In August 2012, the Chevron Richmond Refinery in Richmond, California suffered a fire that sent upwards of 15,000 residents to local hospitals complaining of respiratory problems. If the fire had spread to the tanks of anhydrous ammonia at the plant, it could have spelled catastrophe, including potentially fatal exposures, for the 160,000 people who live within the five-mile dispersion zone surrounding the facility....

January 20, 2014

This week: abuse in Bangladesh's shrimp industry: http://www.ejfoundation.org/shrimp/impossiblycheapfilm

January 13, 2014

West Virginia: "a 48,000-gallon storage tank, Tom Aluise, a spokesman for West Virginia’s department of environmental protection, said, 'all we know is that they discovered a hole in the tank, and material was leaking. How that hole got there, we don’t know. The Freedom Industries plant is on the river, a mile from a water treatment facility where the chemical contaminated the tap water, Aluise said. It wasn’t clear how much of the chemical had leaked...

January 6, 2014

While Inner City Press is also focused on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement's threat to globalize the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act circumvention of freedom of the press, exemplified by a August 14, 2013 bad faith DMCA complaint by Reuters UN bureau chief to get a document leaked to Inner City Press banned from Google's search, TPP presents major threats to environmental protection. Bills to allow it to be considered under "Fast Track" may be introduced as early as January 7 in Congress. Watch this site.

December 30, 2013

In The Bronx, New York, 753 Melrose Avenue: "The site was historically operated as a dry cleaner in the 1950's, and had solvent tanks in the rear of the property. Soil vapor and groundwater at the site are contaminated with chlorinated solvents, primarily tetrachloroethene (PCE) and its breakdown products. Due to the concentrations of PCE detected in groundwater and soil vapor, in conjunction with the proximity of occupied buildings to the site, further investigation to evaluate the nature and extent of contamination and the potential for exposures to contamination from the site is warranted."

December 23, 2013

Critique of Obama's climate plan - it should

"Establish a policy that requires all climate change strategies to improve the economic conditions of environmental justice communities. Environmental justice communities suffer a wealth gap as a result of limited economic opportunities, lowered property values, and a degraded quality of life brought on by undesirable land uses that contribute to climate change. This wealth gap sets back the capacity of environmental justice communities to recover from the effects of climate change."

December 16, 2013

In Texas an agreement with Koch Industries’ Flint Hills Resources concerning its planned expansion at its Corpus Christi West Refinery has the company:

• reducing the permitted limits of smog-causing nitrogen oxides by 25 percent and install continuous real-time monitors to ensure these limits are in compliance;

• reducing volatile organic compound emissions from storage tanks by 154 tons per year;

• reducing sulfur dioxide emissions;

• and cap and monitor greenhouse gas emissions from new heaters that will be built as part of the expansion project.

We'll see.

December 9, 2013

At UNEP's United National Environmental Assembly next June in Nairobi, Kenya will be the policy director at Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice (DWEJ), who was in DC for UNEP’s North American Major Groups and Stakeholders Consultation to plan for the June event. US to UN - but is it real?

December 2, 2013

So there's been a settlement in the US Supreme Court case of "Mount Holly Citizens in Action v. Township of Mount Holly," which was scheduled for oral arguments before the Court in December. So disparate impact continues to be... the law of the land, as it should be.

November 25, 2013

In Warsaw, Amid Dispute on Loss & Damage, Ban Says It's Up to (Some?) States

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, November 20 -- After the developing countries in the Group of 77 walked out of the climate change talks in Warsaw on the issue of "loss and damage," Inner City Press on Wednesday in New York asked UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson Farhan Haq what Ban would like to see happen, since this along with Darfur now Syria are his main issues.

Haq replied that "the Secretary-General has made it clear that that’s an issue to be resolved by the States who are attending these talks. And we are leaving that decision there, in their hands."

  To some this approach seems strange. On Syria, when resolutions were vetoed Ban expressed disappointment. Before Ban even saw Ake Sellstrom's report on chemical weapons he called it overwhelming and said Assad had committed many crimes against humanity.

  After being nearly silent during the slaughter of 40,000 civilians in Sri Lanka in 2009, Ban has come out with, if not issued, a "Rights Up Front" plan which says his Secretariat will take leadership positions. But not on this?

  Some point at the smaller but more powerful -- read, richer -- roster of countries who don't want to deal with "loss and damage" before 2015, and wonder whether "the member states" means SOME member states.

  There was more to Haq's answer, and so in fairness we run this from the UN's transcript, cleaning up the choppiness the UN leaves or inserts we're told at direction to undermine the questions:

Inner City Press: From the climate talks in Warsaw it is reported that a block of developing nations are very angry and walking out due to the failure to address who should pay for damages like the typhoon in the Philippines under the loss and damage provision damage, and that Australia said it should only be discussed after 2015. Given the importance of this issue to so many countries and to the issue of climate change, does the Secretary-General have any view of whether this issue of compensation for damages caused by climate change should be dealt with now, or should be put back beyond 2015?

Acting Deputy Spokesperson Haq: Yes, while he has been speaking in Warsaw, the Secretary-General has made it clear that that’s an issue to be resolved by the States who are attending these talks. And we are leaving that decision there, in their hands.

But, he has been very clear about the need for nations to come together at these talks; he wants the Conference of Parties that is under way in Warsaw to be a useful stepping stone in this process.

And one of the things he said is I agree that we are all in this together. We need to work together. We need to be united and we need to have solidarity among all the people around the world.

No single country, no single organization, can address this problem on its own. Yet, every single country can benefit from climate action at the global level. So, he is urging a unified stance, and let’s see how that develops.

Yeah, let's see. Watch this site.

November 18, 2013

Dry eyes in the City : "Residents of major cities with high levels of air pollution have an increased risk of dry eye syndrome, according to a study presented at the world's largest ophthalmic conference, the 117th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, in New Orleans. Study subjects in and around Chicago and New York City were found to be three to four times more likely to be diagnosed with dry eye syndrome compared to less urban areas with relatively little air pollution."

November 11, 2013

California dreaming? Bakersfield, Merced and Fresno top the American Lung Association's list of cities with the most persistant air pollution in the country in 2013....

November 4, 2013

Mobil and Nigeria: Eket, Akwa Ibom State coincided with widespread community protests against the unpaid N26 Billion Naira compensation for the environmental atrocities committed by Mobil Producing Nigeria (MPN) Unlimited in the state. The aggrieved host communities: Eket, Ibeno, Ona and Esit-Eket are demanding compensation for the numerous oil spills within the state, especially the November 2012 spills which had destructive and deleterious effects on the environment and adversely affected the socio-economic development of the inhabitants of the areas of impact.

October 28, 2013

From Power Shift: In late 2010, Pittsburgh became the first city in the U.S. to ban drilling for natural gas within city limits in response to the health and environmental threats posed by fracking. This unanimous decision of the Pittsburgh City Council followed the May 2010 decision of the Delaware River Basin Commission to enact a moratorium on fracking within the basin, which supplies drinking water for 15 million people in four states.

October 21, 2013

Here's something those at Power Shift 2013 in Pittsburgh might want to consider:

When asked about fracking on Friday, the response of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon ignored the impacts on drinking water and instead said that "natural gas had an important role to play as we transition to lower-carbon sources."

The question by Inner City Press came in the context of Canadian authorities arresting and pepper spraying members of the Elsipogtog First Nation as they protested fracking. From the UN's online transcript of its October 18 noon briefing, to which it appended Ban's answer before sending the answer to Inner City Press:

Inner City Press: the Elsipogtog First Nation in Canada yesterday were arrested and pepper-sprayed as they protested fracking or shale gas extraction near their land. So, I wanted to know if the Secretariat is aware of this, if there is any comment on Canada's response. I also wanted to know, the Secretary-General, since he is big in this field of green energy and various kinds of energy, does he have any view of this fracking which many environmental and other activists say is destructive, trying to get the last rinds out of the earth in terms of hydrocarbons?

Spokesperson Martin Nesirky: Well, first of all, we are obviously aware of the reports from Canada, but I don’t have any comment on that at the moment. And with regard to the broader question of fracking, I will have to have to look and see what I can tell you on that, but I don’t have anything at the moment, okay.

If Ban's Spokesperson's office gets an answer in the hours after the noon briefing, they have been asked to e-mail it to the questioner, for use in the reporting the question was asked for. But often Nesirky's office chooses to withhold answers to Inner City Press' questions until they can be given to all at once, put in the transcript or sometimes even given to other media, not Inner City Press, before that. The Free UN Coalition for Access protests this practice, as applies to all correspondents. But it continues. After 8 pm on October 18, this arrived:

From: UN Spokesperson - Do Not Reply [at] UN.org
Date: Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 8:05 PM
Subject: Question
To: Matthew.Lee [at] innercitypress.com

This was added to today's transcript after your question on fracking:

[The Spokesperson later said that natural gas had an important role to play as we transition to lower-carbon sources but that we must be aware that it cannot meet all our needs. He added that we must ensure that development of gas resources should go hand in hand with promoting clean energy solutions.]

So that's Ban Ki-moon's answer on and understanding of fracking? It'd be like asking about animal cruelty in the industrial production of poultry, and Ban saying, chicken is good, but so are other future foods.

Ban heads to Denmark on October 21 to discuss green energy -- with institutional investors. Is this what the UN has become?

October 14, 2013

Now in South Korea: the arrival of illegally caught fish transported by a Dutch cargo that was recently detected. The illegal cargo of fish is to arrive in the Korean port of Busan in about three weeks’ time, where it will then be sold at the seafood market in Asia. Korean vessel Kum Woong 101 had conducted illegal fishing activities between the 18th and 19th of September,off the coast of Sierra Leone’s Inshore Exclusion Zone (IEZ), which is off limits to foreign fishing ships. The fish was then transferred on to a Dutch cargo boat, the Holland Klipper, off the coast of Guinea. So why doesn't the Netherlands prove if the Holland Klipper was involved in any illegal fishing activities and issue the appropriate sanctions? We'll see.

October 7, 2013

DN: The oil giant BP is back in court for the April 2010 accident that caused the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, killing 11 workers and leaking almost five million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. On Monday, the second phase of the trial began with lawyers accusing the oil company of lying about how much oil was leaking..

September 30, 2013

Joan Martínez Alier, from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, says these goals are best achieved by fostering collaboration on environmental health monitoring, legal strategies and evaluation of environmental services. "Academically, this project is pushing the field of statistical political ecology," explains Alier. "In social terms, it makes environmental conflicts more visible. Environmental justice is a major force in making the global economy more sustainable."

September 23, 2013

So: "We don’t need less regulation. Less regulation and looking the other way will give us disaster," said Dr. Robert Bullard at Texas Southern University where he’s the dean of the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs. "The environmental justice movement has been advocating for more than three decades we need stronger regulations, we need stronger enforcement, we need a strong EPA,” Bullard said... With the drilling boom in Texas and the expansion of refineries and petrochemical plants along the Gulf Coast, Bullard foresees more Texans becoming aware that there’s a potential downside...

September 16, 2013

In South Africa the High Court in Johannesburg has ordered steel giant ArcelorMittal SA to hand over its environmental records to the Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance. VEJA had been seeking the documents since 2011. The documents contained Amsa's environmental master plan, which had details about the pollution levels at its plants...

September 9, 2013

Here's a nice case: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/09/07/18742863.php against Avenal Power Plant, a proposed 600-megawatt facility that would emit hundreds of tons of air pollution in the San Joaquin Valley in California.

September 2, 2013

From the Bangkok Post: "A decision by the National Environment Board (NEB) not to appeal a Phitsanulok Administrative Court order _which called for three tambons in Tak province to be declared environmental protection zones...."

August 26, 2013

EPA's “Draft Technical Guidance for Assessing Environmental Justice in Regulatory Analysis,” is open for public comment until Sept 6, 2013. - See more at https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2013/07/01/2013-15736/technical-guidance-for-assessing-environmental-justice-in-regulatory-analysis

August 19, 2013

Is this environmental justice? The New York State DEC is "going paperless." Ok for some - but what about the digital divide?

August 12, 2013

Well, alright: Gina McCarthy, the new administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said: “I have no intention of leaving behind the environmental justice communities. Those are exactly the same communities that will bear the brunt of a changing climate. We can't just rely on national rules to get the average up. We need to look at who is not winning in this equation." Come on down.

August 5, 2013

Sounds like a CRA officer: "Waste Management... published our 2012 sustainability report, we were able to show that operations associated with recycling and production of renewable and alternative energy increased from 49 percent in 2007 to 57 percent in 2011....This evolution in business focus reflects the importance of sustainability as a business model for our sector – and for any other. Customers seeking environmental services want to be able to demonstrate concrete environmental benefits and resource conservation. Communities know that a sustainable business operates as a good and respectful neighbor. Environmental justice must be a core element of any company’s social responsibility initiatives. --Sue Briggum is Vice President, Federal Public Affairs at Waste Management"

Is it real? We'll see.

July 29, 2013

Since the signing of Executive Order 12898 in 1994, many programs to improve communities focus on small issues like bike paths, parks and sidewalks, but we still plan to send hundreds of coal export trains through low income communities and site landfills in them. (Well said, Triple.) As Bullard says, “there is always the other side of the tracks” for the elderly, the poor, the disabled, the homeless and those without access to cars or to transit systems. Poor communities wind up with a “disproportionate share of the bad stuff and a shortage of libraries, sidewalks, parks and greenspace."

July 22, 2013

The European Commission has launched a public consultation on ways to improve access to justice in the field of the environment. Access to justice – the right to challenge decisions or omissions by public bodies that are suspected of not complying with environmental law – is an international obligation under a UN Convention ratified by the EU in 2005.Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik said: "It is very important that citizens and NGOs are able to play an active role in defending the environment. In the words of Advocate General Eleanor Sharpston: 'the fish cannot go to court.'"

They've got that right...

July 15, 2013

Advocates headed to Brussels hoping to end illegal and unreported fishing by the EU fleet, targetting Gabriel Mato MEP, Chairman of the European Parliament's Fisheries Committee, Struan Stevenson, Senior Vice Chair of the Fisheries Committee, and delivering their new report to the 49 members of the Fisheries Committee. EJF will present their findings to the Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Maria Damanaki's office and other key departments in the European Commission.

July 8, 2013

We recommend: environmental justice comic, Mayah's Lot -- download it here

July 1, 2013

In March 2014, it'll be the 20-year anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 12898, requiring the federal government to address “the environmental and human health conditions in minority communities and low-income communities with the goal of achieving environmental justice.” We'll be there.

June 24, 2013

Haze from fires in Indonesia blanketing Singapore could persist for weeks or longer, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on Thursday, as the smoke drove air quality to "hazardous" levels and disrupted business and travel in the region. Illegal burning of forests and other land on Indonesia's Sumatra island to clear space for palm oil plantations is a chronic problem during the June to September dry season...

June 17, 2013

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA Administrator is required to review and (if necessary) revise the emissions factors used to estimate emissions of carbon monoxide (CO), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and oxides of nitrogen (NOx) from emission sources at least once every three years. However, according to a notice of intent preceding a lawsuit, “EPA has not reviewed emission factors for flares since 1991,” for wastewater treatment systems since 1998, and emission equations for tanks since 2006.

June 10, 2013

Welcome to Buffalo’s West Side, where heavy car and truck traffic crossing the Peace Bridge has led to high rates of cancer and miscarriage, among other ill effects; and the Town of Tonawanda, where a heavily industrial section produces the highest levels of airborne benzene in the state and where Tonawanda Coke recently was found guilty of violating the federal Clean Air Act and its environmental control officer was convicted of obstructing justice. UB

June 3, 2013

In Lebanon, Suez Environnment has collaborated with contracting company, Al-Jihad for Commerce and Contracting to cover up the huge Siada dump site -- what could go wrong?

May 27, 2013

EPA has put out two publications describing how it is integrating environmental justice provisions into its permitting processes. 78 Fed. Reg. 27,220 (5/9/13). Titled “Actions that EPA Regional Offices Are Taking to Promote Meaningful Engagement in the Permitting Process by Overburdened Communities” and “Promising Practices for Permit Applicants Seeking EPA Issued Permits: Ways to Engage Neighboring Communities in the Permitting Process,” they're part of EPA’s “Plan EJ 2014,” which established the goal of including environmental justice considerations into all EPA issued permit processes. We'll see.

May 20, 2013

The owners of a Pennsylvania power plant -- GenOn Power Generation, GenOn REMA, and Dynegy –have agreed to stop burning coal in two generating units and to provide $1 million towards environmental mitigation in Connecticut and New Jersey as part of a clean air settlement outlined in a consent decree filed Wednesday, May 15 in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia. The settlement stems from a lawsuit filed by New Jersey in 2007 over the greenhouse gases sent downwind from the Portland Generating Station in eastern Pennsylvania. Connecticut intervened in the lawsuit in 2008.

May 13, 2013

The Los Angeles City Council has approved BNSF’s Southern California International Gateway railyard project, 11-2. Uh, disproportionate impacts on low income communities of color...

May 6, 2013

Community groups in Texas and Louisiana have sued to force the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to review archaic and inaccurate formulas used for reporting the levels of toxic emissions from refineries and chemical plants.

April 29, 2013

Manchester, a Houston neighborhoods, is ringed a Rhodia chemical plant; a car crushing facility; a water treatment plant; a train yard for hazardous cargo; a Goodyear synthetic rubber plant; oil refineries belonging to Lyondell Basell, Valero, and Texas Petro-Chemicals... The refineries around Houston have been called the “keystone to Keystone” because they’re expected to process 90 percent of tar sands crude from Alberta if the controversial Keystone XL pipeline is completed....

April 22, 2013

EJ comes to Buffalo: SUNY Buffalo Law School is hosting a housing seminar at the end of the month about sustainable living. "Green and Healthy Homes and Communities in Greater Buffalo: An Environmental Justice Forum," is scheduled from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., April 26 at the UB Buffalo Clinical and Translational Research Center, 875 Ellicott St., Buffalo. Speakers will include Matthew Tejada, director of the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Environmental Justice...

April 15, 2013

In New Hampshire, a jury found Exxon Mobil liable last week in a lawsuit over groundwater contamination by the gasoline additive MTBE, and ordered the polluter to pay $236 million...

April 8, 2013

RIP Emelda West, who died on Saturday, March 30, 2013, activist of Convent, Louisiana and the Lower Mississippi River...

April 1, 2013

In India, the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) on Saturday ordered closure of Sterlite Industries' copper smelter unit, located in Tuticorin, with immediate effect owing to leaks of noxious gas. The TNPCB, under instructions from district collector Ashish Kumar, issued a notice, directing the Vedanta group company to close the plant.

March 25, 2013

To see TD Bank challenged for funding the Keystone XL pipeline does good for the soul.

March 18, 2013

In Nigeria, the governor of Rivers State Chibuike Amaechi has threatened to sue the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation for indiscriminate pollution of Okrika environment. The governor noted that the UNEP report on Ogoniland which discloses high level of Benzene which causes cancer in underground water.

March 11, 2013

Recently near Philadelphia, Crystal Lameman of the Beaver Lake Cree nation in Alberta, Canada talked about the negative impact of the exploitation of tar sands in her people’s ancestral lands.

March 4, 2013

  Before the Obama administration green-lighted the Keystone SL tar sands pipeline "an estimated 40,000 people gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. for theForward on Climate Rally in the hopes of urging President Obama to reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Issues of climate injustice are of particular importance to marginalized communities. Indigenous people, people of color and low-income communities are disproportionately threatened by environmental hazards. A Commission for Racial Justice study found race to be the most potent variable in predicting where toxic and hazardous facilities would be located—more powerful than poverty, land values, and home ownership."

February 25, 2013

A gloss on EJ: “The environmental justice movement was born in September 1982 when a group of poor residents of rural Warren County, North Carolina laid down in front of trucks transporting waste containing toxic PCBs to a nearby landfill. Those primarily African American activists eventually lost their battle to keep toxic waste out of the area, but their actions eventually led to an executive order by President Clinton in 1996.” And?

February 18, 2013

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has given hundreds of permits for Marcellus Shale gas development in Pennsylvania's low income communities of color. But none of those permits has triggered intervention by DEP's Office of Environmental Advocate to inform residents of those communities about potential health and environmental impacts from proposed industrial developments.

That's because Marcellus Shale gas facilities are not included on the list of "trigger permits" the DEP uses to determine when to provide enhanced notification, information and public participation opportunities in those "environmental justice" communities. Holly Cairns, new director of DEP's Office of Environmental Advocate, said that's fine. "[Marcellus permit proposals] were not recognized as a trigger permit at the time this program was developed," she said. "And they're not something that's on the table for consideration at this time."

February 11, 2013

As Fashion week begins in New York, we have this: six leading fashion brands rejected a recent survey which asked about their supply chains, on toxic water pollution and deforestation. Dolce&Gabbana, Chanel, Hermès, Prada, Alberta Ferretti and Trussardi refused to disclose information for the survey....

February 4, 2013

On January 30 the district court in The Hague, The Netherlands, ruled that Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria has to pay compensation to plaintiff Friday Alfred Akpan, a resident of the Nigerian village of Ikot Ada Udo in Akwa Ibom State in the Niger Delta. Applying Nigerian law, the Dutch court found that Shell Nigeria had breached its duty of care and had committed negligence by failing to take sufficient measures to prevent sabotage by third persons to Shell Nigeria’s submerged pipelines near the Nigerian village...

January 28, 2013

Incoming at EPA's Office of EJ, Tejada was asked and said "Tejada: Since Lisa Jackson has been administrator of the EPA, they have systematically gone through what environmental justice means within the agency, and also what environmental justice means outside of the agency, and tried to fill in some very important gaps, whether it be permitting or enforcement or different sorts of rule-making, to make sure environmental justice had its requisite chair at the table. I see it as my job to get in there and make use of these new rules."

But what are his views of Jackson's evasion of FOIA? Will he commit to stop it?

January 21, 2013

"As she prepares to step down as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa P. Jackson says one of the 'prouder moments' of her tenure was President Obama's agreement to have the federal government take the lead in trying to ramp up the lagging Chesapeake Bay restoration effort."

What about the fake e-mail accounts to evade FOIA?

January 14, 2013

The Environmental Protection Agency has tapped a Texan to help integrate the concept of environmental justice into the agency's everyday decision-making. Matthew Tejada, who has led Air Alliance Houston for five years, will start as director of the Office of Environmental Justice in Washington in March, the EPA said Friday.

January 14, 2013

Ranking 378 coal-fired power plants on the basis of toxic emissions and demographic factors, the NAACP has found that more than two-thirds of African Americans live within 30 miles of a coal-fired plant. Of the four million people living within three miles of the nation’s 75 "failing plants" – which account for the highest levels of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides – 53 percent are minorities, while more than three quarters of the people living near the 12 "worst offending plants" are people of color.

December 31, 2012

So Lisa Jackson is out from EPA, perhaps for the right reasons. But her decision to use scam email accounts to evade the Freedom of Information Act, we cannot support. Click here for Inner City Press' FOIA work on the Federal Reserve.

December 24, 2012

EPA's agency’s inspector general has announced plans to begin an audit of “electronic records management practices.... Our objective is to determine whether EPA follows applicable laws and regulations when using private and alias email accounts to conduct official business." The question is whther the agency promoted or encouraged the use of private or alias email accounts to conduct official business and whether employees comply with federal records management requirements pertaining to electronic records from private or alias email accounts. Jackson appeared to use the name Richard Windsor on an official account that she utilized to conduct agency business. The researcher figured it out because he dug up an EPA memo indicating that alias email accounts were created by a former agency head and it appeared that this was common practice at the agency. Now it's in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

December 17, 2012

From FirstMerit's submission to the Federal Reserve about Citizens Republic, the entire "Environmental Matters" section is blacked out, in response to Inner City Press' FOIA request...

December 10, 2012

DOJ brags a Liberian corporation was ordered to pay a $500,000 penalty after pleading guilty to violating a federal pollution law. U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan handed down the sentence last week against Tyana Navigation Limited. The case involved a cargo ship owned by the company. The ship dumped engine room sludge directly overboard from late September 2011 until late July 2012, including time when it was in United States waters....

What about Trafigura?

December 3, 2012

The NAACP studied the 378 coal plants in the United States by combining emissions of pollutants – particularly sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide – the population within three miles of the plants, and the median income and percentage of minorities living nearby. In this view, 75 plants were identified as having a "disproportionate and considerable impact on people of color and low-income people."

November 26, 2012

What an absurdly low fine of Trafigura Beheer BV for illegally exporting waste to Cote d'Ivoire in 2006. The company's chairman bargained its way to a piddling fine of 67, 000 Euros, barely a slap on the wrist for owner Claude Dauphin. Where is accountability?

November 19, 2012

Ruling: New York City violated State environmental law when it built a Bronx school complex on contaminated land without making public a detailed long-term monitoring plan before construction, the state’s Court of Appeals has ruled, against the City’s Education Department and School Construction Authority. If the city wants to build a school on a polluted site, state law requires it to present in-depth remediation and monitoring plans to the public during the initial environmental review process....

November 12, 2012

  From 1985 through 2000, more than 1200 cases of cancer were reported in Ecuador's oil-producing regions, including Sucumbios, Orellana, Napo, and Pastaza -- this per Ecuador’s National Cancer Registry...

November 5, 2012

HSBC has bankrolled logging companies causing widespread environmental destruction and human rights abuses in Sarawak, Malaysia, violating its sustainability policies and earning around US$130 million in the process, a Global Witness investigation reveals today. The bank is also providing financial services to companies widely suspected of systematic bribery and corruption. Malaysia’s Sarawak region exports more tropical timber than South America and Africa combined and now has just five per cent of its forests left intact following decades of industrial-scale logging and plantation development. The Global Witness report, “In the Future There Will Be No Forests Left”, identifies loans and services to seven of the region’s largest logging conglomerates that would have generated HSBC an estimated US$130 million in interest and fees.

October 29, 2012

In the southwest Detroit neighborhood of Delray the population is now under 3,000 people, down from 30,000 in 1930. Now, the New International Trade Crossing bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, should it get built, would land squarely in the Delray neighborhood. Debate, it's said, is focused too much on Manuel "Matty" Moroun (the Ambassador Bridge owner and financier of a campaign calling the NITC project into question) and Gov. Rick Snyder. We hope to have more on this.

October 22, 2012

At U of Tennessee last week, Robert D. Bullard, was scheduled in the University Center Auditorium. Hosted by the UT Amnesty International chapter, the lecture focused on how environmental justice, racism and corporate accountability relate to human rights. Right on!

October 15, 2012

In Texas, an appeals court on October 12 vacated a sanctions award Wells Fargo Bank Minnesota NA had won against an Austin appraisal district that refused to grant it a property tax break for its pollution control measures, holding the bank didn’t follow tax protest procedures. The case revolves around a former landfill site owned by Wells Fargo that now houses an apartment building and qualified for a pollution control tax break based on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s determination the land has a "positive use"...

Wells Fargo scamming? We've seen it before.

October 8, 2012

In Alaska, "the long dormant Healy Clean Coal Plant, a $300 million state-owned fiasco that shut its doors soon after they were opened, may get a second lease on life, thanks to a commitment by the Golden Valley Electric Association (GVEA) to spend tens of millions of dollars to reduce pollution at the plant if it fires up again. Utility officials believe that bringing the plant back to life will reduce oil-dependent energy costs in the Interior, according to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. In a deal stuck with the Environmental Protection Agency and the state, the utility has agreed to pay the state $50 million for the 50-megawatt plant and plunk down more than $40 million on pollution-reduction measures. The utility must also take other steps, including speeding up installation of a $5 million pollution-control system at another coal plant the utility operates."

October 1, 2012

Which way forward? U Mich is asking about the "legacy and future of the environmental justice field" at the Ann Arbor Sheraton Hotel, and celebrating the work (and retirement) of Bunyan Bryant. New era in EJ?

September 24, 2012

Ah, Illinois: "Ameren Corp. will get more time to meet tougher state pollution-control rules that company executives claimed would have cost hundreds of jobs at downstate power plants. The Illinois Pollution Control Board, meeting in Chicago, voted 4-0 to grant the company's request for a five-year delay, to 2020, of new standards for sulfur dioxide emissions from coal plants."

September 17, 2012

The Scotts Miracle-Gro is subject to $4 million in fines after pleading guilty to the illegal application of insecticides to wild bird seed. It's the largest fine in history under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. Hear FIFRA roar!

September 10, 2012

We are watching: "The draft California Communities Environmental Health Screening Tool would use nvironmental, health & socioeconomic data to assign scores to areas by ZIP code. It would consider ozone pollution, traffic density, pesticide use, the number of hazardous waste dumps and cleanup sites, cancer and asthma rates, and the number of childrens and seniors." How would, for example, The Bronx come out?

September 3, 2012

In Hanford, California, opponents of the California High-Speed Rail Authority project now argue the route violates environmental justice laws. The argument came at a meeting at the Hanford Fraternal Hall to take official public comment on the Fresno-to-Bakersfield draft environmental impact report. The deadline for official comment is Oct. 19, an extension of 30 days over the original deadline of Sept. 20. Game on.

August 27, 2012

In the Philippines, environmentally-minded Associate Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno has been picked the new Chief Justice to replace Renato Corona, who was ousted in May. The EcoWaste Coalition said, "under her watch she will revitalize the green courts to serve as bastions of environmental justice upholding our people's constitutional right to a healthful and balanced ecology." We'll see.

August 20, 2012

  In Louisiana, residents near Baton Rouge’s ExxonMobil Chemical Plant last week spoke out against the June 14 spill of naphtha. What’s in the air? How to clear the air? Supposedly there a community dialogue with ExxonMobil... We'll see.

August 13, 2012

The California Supreme Court has ruled that the state can recover money from its insurance carriers part of the cost of cleaning up the Stringfellow acid pits in Jurupa Valley, where 35 million gallons of toxic industrial waste was dumped. The dispute now returns to the trial court to determine the amount the state will receive. A group of 16 insurers, including Lloyd's of London, settled in 2005 for $93 million...

August 6, 2012

In Toronto on July 30, more 150 people showed up to hear two indigenous leaders and two delegates to the People's Summit Rio +20. on Contested Futures: Tar Sands and Environmental Justice....

July 30, 2012

In North Carolina, Taylor Finishing Inc. is being sued in federal court alleging the concentrated animal feeding operation illegally dumped pig waste and pollutants near the coastal plain of the Neuse River Basin...

July 23, 2012

Enviros want North Carolina regulators to force a full clean-up of PCBs in a waterway near the closed Alcoa Inc. aluminum smelter. Alcoa proposes covering a three-acre section of the Badin Lake bottom near the smelter it operated for 90 years to keep PCBs there from moving.

July 16, 2012

The city of Los Angeles has charged 4 Los Angeles-area scrap metal recyclers with criminal misdemeanor charges for environmental violations. Central Metal Inc. and its president Jong Uk Byun were charged with three violations of waste discharge requirements of the company's permit by allegedly allowing the discharge of stormwater containing toxic chemicals, such as copper, lead and zinc, and failing to implement best management practices designed to prevent releases of toxic chemicals by allowing lead pipes and aluminum to be stored on the ground, allowing bins containing metal scrap to remain open and peeling, allowing sediment to seep onto a nearby street and causing an oil spill; five violations for failing to label hazardous waste containers; and failing to maintain the facility to prevent spills or releases of hazardous waste.

July 9, 2012

Last on Rio, from the People's Summit / side event to Rio+20. It drew about 15,000 people a day: indigenous groups, environmental activists, unions, land rights groups and others opposing the timidity of proposals coming out of the official convention. Beyond timidity...

July 2, 2012

NY's environmental regulator last week adopted regulations requiring new and expanding power plants to meet stricter carbon dioxide limits and to conduct environmental justice reviews to mitigate pollution in poor communities. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation’s rule, proposed in January, will take effect July 12 and will apply to all new generating facilities greater than 25 megawatts and expansions greater than 25 megawatts at existing facilities. The rule limits carbon dioxide emissions from new and expanded fossil fuel-fired power plants to 925 pounds...

June 25, 2012

As noted from Rio , the word "reaffirm" is used 59 times in the 49-page document titled "The Future We Want." They reaffirm the need to achieve sustainable development (but not mandating how); reaffirm commitment to strengthening international cooperation (just not right now); and reaffirm the need to achieve economic stability (with no new funding for the poorest nations). And involved? Wal-Mart, Coca Cola and Unilever...

June 18, 2012

From Rio, Nikhil Seth, director of the U.N.'s Division for Sustainable Development, said on June 15 that consensus has been reached on just 28 percent of the Rio+20 outcome document. An estimated 130 heads of state are expected in Rio for the summit's three final days from June 20-22, culminating in the signing of some final document. Among the attendees? Some who are accused of war crimes...

June 11, 2012

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, whom Inner City Press has interviewed at the UN, went to Detroit ostensibly to support the M-1 light rail project. But the outcome is the cash-strapped and environmentally challenged city may have to wait two months longer for a federal verdict. Thanks, Ray....

June 4, 2012

Mexico's National Congress has given the Ministry of the Environment (SEMARNAT) 15 days to report on actions surrounding the environmental impact approvals granted to the controversial Cabo Cortés mega-tourism project. The Congress also urged the Ministry to consider canceling the project’s permits all together. The Cabo Cortés project is proposed by the local subsidiary of Spanish developer Hansa Urbana on land neighboring Cabo Pulmo National Park – a critical marine reserve in Baja California Sur that protects one of the region's most important coral reefs...

May 29, 2012

From a statement by Nnimmo Bassey and Laura Livoti: "Since the end of Biafra and the civil war in Nigeria, another war has been raging here and continues unabated. It is an ecological war. International oil companies are the source of the conflict, with Chevron playing a leading role. The latest front occurred on January 16, 2012 when an explosion rocked a gas well drilling rig at Chevron’s Apoi North field. That explosion killed two workers. This is the same Chevron that made oil rig safety the theme of its last shareholder meeting in May 2011. Following the explosion, Chevron offered initial information and updates on the incident, assuring that steps were being taken to contain and mitigate the disaster. This clearly was a half-hearted public relations gesture." And so: 99! 99!

May 21, 2012

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on May 20 announced the release of the New York City Wetlands Strategy... "The protection and preservation of wetlands is a critical component of the City’s strategy to improve water quality," said Environmental Protection Commissioner Carter Strickland. "The ability of wetlands to clean water is exemplified by our award-winning Bluebelt program which, from Staten Island to Queens, and soon the Bronx" --

What? Why does The Bronx come after?

May 14, 2012

In Newark, protests were rejected last week when the city's planning board approved a 655-megawatt natural gas power plant to be built in the East Ward. "The proposed new Hess natural gas power plant … will utilize the best available technologies and be one of the cleanest fossil fuel power plants ever constructed," said Adam Zipkin, Newark’s deputy mayor of economic development. Ah, Cory Booker...

May 7, 2012

At UN, Right to Info Stripped from Rio + 20, Extra Week Set, Indigenous Silenced?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, May 4 -- In the run up to the Rio + 20 conference, on Friday evening at the UN yet another week of negotiations was arranged, for May 29 to June 2.

  Four hundred paragraphs remain without agreement; Inner City Press asked about those dealing with the "right to information," switched by the US to "legitimate access" to information, limited by trade secrets, patents and copyright.

  After Friday night's deferral, the nine "Major Groups" were given two minutes each to speak. The Indigenous group, which started speaking in Spanish about la Madre Tierra or Pachamama, was cut off by the chair and told to speak in English. Ultimately this was translated by the Local Authorities group.

  Still the Groups hit hard, with Farmers criticizing the mention of the World Trade Organization in the agriculture section, and the Youth group denouncing greenwashing (if not Blue-washing, in a week where Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in Myanmar congratulated a company involved in spying technology, as exposed by Inner City Press.)

  At the front of the room was outgoing DESA chief Sha Zukang, urging that at least 90% of the text be agreed before Rio begins. China has put in two names to replace Sha, but Brazil is pushing hard now for the DESA post, as Inner City Press exclusively reported yesterday.

Now, this update: China might accept the top post at the Department of General Assembly and Conference Affairs as long as it also got the Number Two post in DESA, at the Assistant Secretary General level.

  But then what would sub Saharan Africa get? The Department of Public Information has, as Inner City Press reported, been promised to a European. And so it goes at the UN.

At a press conference Friday afternoon, Inner City Press asked about the right to information that was in Rio Principle 10. The response, from Neth Dano of the ETC Group of the Philippines, was that "one delegation" pushed to limited the right to only "legitimate" information.

Inner City Press asked her to name that delegation, but she declined. Afterward she said it was the US, "from the State Department." Meanwhile, the US was expected to make a statement on Friday night about no more funding - will that now come on June 2? Will Obama go to Rio? Watch this site.

April 30, 2012

Welcome to "Southwest Detroit's 48217 zip code area which a study by University of Michigan Professor Paul Mohai concluded was the most polluted in the state of Michigan and third most in all of the United States. Now, the struggle of some 13 residents caught between the near simultaneous erection of Marathon's multi-billion dollar tar sands oil refinery expansion and the city's Waste Water Treatment plant in 2008."

April 23, 2012

In Texas, they haven't had chlorinated drinking water since October of last year and now arsenic has been found in the water. Those are just two of the issues facing one of Nueces County's Colonias. Last week, those issues got a first hand look by a group of people representing several environmental agencies. It was billed as an opportunity for residents of the Cyndie Park Colonias, located about 10 miles North of Banquette, to talk to folks from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U. S. Environmental Justice Interagency Working Group.

And what will come of it?

April 16, 2012

The owner of rental properties in Bridgeport is facing up to $127,150 in Environmental Protection Agency penalties for violating federal lead paint disclosure rules. According to a complaint filed by EPA's New England office, Juan Hernandez allegedly violated lead-based paint disclosure requirements seven times when he rented apartment units in Bridgeport between 2008 and 2010. During the EPA's investigation, all of the apartment buildings owned by Hernandez were located in potential environmental justice areas.

April 9, 2012

The World Bank says it will showcase new initiatives on oceans and the valuation of ecosystem services at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20, in Brazil in late June, but is attracting criticism from civil society groups for its approach to ‘green growth’. We'll see.

April 2, 2012

A Corpus Christi, Texas group is calling on the Environmental Protection Agency to require Citgo to quit storing and using hydrofluoric acid and to switch to a safer alternative. In the letter to EPA Regional Administrator Al Armendariz, Citizens for Environmental Justice executive director Suzie Canales writes that hydrofluoric acid could kill thousands of people. "Citgo has repeatedly shown that it cannot be trusted to use HF and must be made to switch to a safer alternative for the sake of its employees and the community," the letter states. Could this have something to do with Citgo's ownership?

March 26, 2012

Enviros say President Barack Obama has decided to ignore the environmental devastation associated with tar sands mining and its disproportionate impact on global climate change, and the unconscionable contributions to local air pollution in Port Arthur, Texas. Port Arthur is one of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) “Environmental Justice Showcase Communities” due to a concentration of environmental health risks that disproportionally burden minority communities. They say Keystone XL also poses another risk – a risk to U.S. consumers and the fragile economic recovery. Analysts and economists agree that building the southern leg of this pipeline will alleviate a glut of oil in Cushing, Okla., and allow more oil products to be exported to other countries, thereby reducing domestic supply and raising gas prices.

The southern leg of this pipeline does not bring oil into the country (a goal our organization does not endorse), but does create a clear path to get oil out to export markets. Since refined oil products are now the largest export commodity in the U.S., it seems obvious that pushing more oil to the Gulf Coast will result in more export activity and less supply for Americans....

March 19, 2012

" In response to the State Assembly's budget proposal to sweep up to $200 million in ratepayer-funded clean energy and energy efficiency programs administered by the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority, more than 20 environmental, energy and community groups sent a letter to Governor Cuomo, the State Senate, and the Assembly opposing the the use of clean energy funds for non-energy related purposes." Sounds like the states which are trying to put their portion of the $25 billion mortgage settlement into their General Funds...

March 12, 2012

In El Salvador, 14 years have passed since the Environment Law was approved, establishing the creation for agro-environmental courts to hear cases involving contamination and environmental damage, but so far, this has not happened. The Supreme Court, which would be responsible for creating the new chambers, has failed to create them....

March 5, 2012

In New Bedford, Lisa Garcia, EPA's associate assistant administrator for environmental justice, and Curt Spalding, EPA Region 1 administrator, will host a meeting on March 6 at Keith Middle School. EPA says they've heard "a lot of reactions from the community as far as environmental justice concerns." EPA staff working on the Parker Street Waste Site and New Bedford Harbor projects will be at the meeting in order to answer specific questions on those projects...

February 27, 2012

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson now says hydraulic fracturing can be done safely: "I think that fracking as a technology is perfectly capable of being clean. I do. But it requires people who are doing it and innovators who use the technology to take some time to make sure that it's done right. And it requires smart regulation, smart rules of the road," Jackson said at Richard Stockton College in Galloway, New Jersey. Hmm...

February 20, 2012

On Rio + 20: "Twenty years ago, the UN played an important role in calling attention to the dangers that human and nonhuman life runs if the myth of endless economic growth goes on dominating economic policies... Unfortunately, this moment of reflection and hope soon disappeared" -- as did positive UN role. So, alongside the UN Conference, civil society is organizing the Peoples Summit in Rio. We'll have more on this.

February 13, 2012

With the focus on the Canadian government's push to export tar sands bitumen via the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline to Kitimat, and from there by ship to China, the British Colombia government reclaimed some attention on the energy file when it released a strateg. Rabble says: "The short of it is that shale gas from B.C.'s Northeast is to be pipelined to Kitimat and loaded onto tankers in liquid form (LNG) to be exported to China. But while the Enbridge pipeline has huge swaths of B.C. up in arms, particularly First Nations and "environmentalists, the LNG plans, which already have been approved and have an export permit, have not." Until now...

February 6, 2012

"The indisputable health care and humanitarian crises from mountaintop removal coal mining should place it at the forefront of any litmus on President Obama’s commitment to health care, clean energy and dealing with climate change. Dr. Michael Hendryx of West Virginia University released a study that should have headlined every newspaper in the country—and launched an all-out national campaign on the level of the anti-tobacco campaigns of the past. Hendryx concluded: “Living in a mountaintop mining area was a bigger risk for birth defects than smoking.”

January 30, 2012

News from Ohio last week: FirstEnergy is closing units at six of the dirtiest coal plants in the nation. FirstEnergy temporarily idled its Lake Shore plant near Cleveland in 2010 because of lower regional power demand and the increasing costs of running a plant built in 1916 still using a 50 year old boiler. The plant was grandfathered in under the Clean Air Act and the company had avoided putting major new environmental controls on it for decades, even as it emitted a horrific plume of toxins and particulate matter on the surrounding community. The facility a target of the environmental justice movement for years because of its outsized impact on the African American community.

FirstEnergy’s nearly-60-year-old Bay Shore plant shares many of Lake Shore’s problems. But in addition to spewing toxic air pollution and climate changing-CO2 the facility is also one of the nation’s most efficient fish-killing machines. Located at the confluence of the Maumee River and Lake Erie, the plant sits astride one of the world’s most prolific fish spawning areas. Its water intake system and scalding water kill 46 million fish and 2 billion fish larvae annually, taking a significant bite out of the region’s $1.4 billion recreational and commercial fishing economy. Just to put the numbers into perspective, the State of Ohio says that the plant’s aquatic annihilation totals more fish than all the other plants in the state combined. h/t NRDC

January 23, 2012

South Bronx clean up of

"The site lies on the Hunts Point peninsula in the South Bronx. It was the former location of the Con Edison Hunts Point Manufactured Gas Plant (MGP), also known as the Hunts Point Coking Station. The initial coke oven plant at the facility was constructed over the period from 1924 through 1926 and had a capacity of 20 million cubic feet of gas per day. The gas produced was used as a primary source of energy for lighting and heating. Another battery of coke ovens was installed in 1931, increasing gas production capacity by 10 million cubic feet per day. The MGP included 46 buildings or structures and was devoted entirely to the manufacture of gas and its associated by- products, including coal tars, cyanide-contaminated purifier waste, sludge, and oils. The structures included two gas holders. The MGP operated into the 1950s."

January 16, 2012

It was only last month we received a notice from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s (“NYSDEC”) Brownfield Cleanup Program (“BCP”), specifically about its draft Final Engineering Report (FER) for the remedial actions performed at the 1800 Southern Boulevard Site....The Site is currently being developed with a new ten (10) story mixed-use building that will provide affordable housing to 68 moderate income households, as well as 12,579 square feet of commercial space and 4,922 square feet of community facility space. Historically the Site has been used as a filling station, auto repair facility and car wash beginning sometime between 1927 and 1940. The car wash operation closed in 1993 and the service station closed in 2003. BP-Amoco was operating the station at the time of closure in 2003.Removal of (17) 550-gallon underground storage tanks

Unstated was that this is where the gas was bought for the Happy Land Social Club mass murder... And now, dated January 13, comes a DEC announcement "that cleanup requirements have been achieved to address contamination related to the 1800 Southern Boulevard Site #C203046 (Bronx), under New York's Brownfield Cleanup Program." That was fast... 

January 9, 2012

NRC in Florida:

The environmental justice impact analysis evaluates the potential for disproportionately high and adverse human health and environmental effects on minority and low-income populations that could result from activities associated with the proposed EPU at St. Lucie Nuclear Plant... The NRC considered the demographic composition of the area within a 50-mi (80.5-km) radius of St. Lucie Units 1 and 2 to determine the location of minority and low-income populations and whether the proposed action may affect them.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau (USCB) data for 2000 on minority populations in the vicinity of St. Lucie Units 1 and 2, an estimated 1.2 million people live within a 50-mi (80.5-km) radius of the plant located within parts of nine counties. Minority populations within 50 mi (80.5 km) comprise 27 percent (274,500 persons). The largest minority group was African-American (approximately 135,250 persons or 13.3 percent), followed by Hispanic or Latino (approximately 111,000 persons or 11 percent). The 2000 census block groups containing minority populations were concentrated in Gifford (Indian River County), Fort Pierce (St. Lucie County), Pahokee (Palm Beach County near Lake Okeechobee), the agricultural areas around Lake Okeechobee, and Hobe Sound (Martin County).

Noise and dust impacts would be temporary and limited to onsite activities. Minority and low-income populations residing along site access roads could experience increased commuter vehicle traffic during shift changes. Increased demand for inexpensive rental housing during the EPU-related plant modifications could disproportionately affect low-income populations; however, due to the short duration of the EPU-related work and the availability of housing properties, impacts to minority and low-income populations would be of short duration and limited.

Oh really? For comment by February 6... http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-01-06/html/2012-32.htm

January 2, 2012

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board is getting petitions opposing Entergy's application to re-license the Indian Point nuclear power plants for another 20 years. Last summer the Atomic Safety Licensing Board accepted an Environmental Justice contention; there's a "potential for disproportionate impact" on inmates at Sing Sing state prison: "the ability of prisoners to respond to emergencies is completely different to that of the general population."

December 26, 2011

In the NY City Council two new bills on polychlorinated biphenyl will inform parents and school employees of contamination by PCBs, which was banned it in 1979 for its toxicity. Bill 563 makes the Department of Education to notify parents and employees of PCB testing results or if the school uses T12 fluorescents, an outdated type of lamp that often leaks PCB. Bill 566 asks for detailed reports from the DOE on their progress and plan eradicating PCB from schools. Nearly 800 city schools — built between the 1950s and late 1970s — are likely contaminated.

And how many are in The Bronx?

December 19, 2011

   For planning purposes: "July 1-7, 2012, Location to be announced when the time is right., Marcellus Shale Earth First! is working side by side with many local groups, attending meetings, offering workshops and trainings, and helping to build a campaign of direct action that is putting increasing pressure on the drillers, to show all of those fighting fracking that there is effective resistance growing in rural areas."

 From iWatch, "A March 2011 review of OCR by Deloitte Consulting, commissioned by the EPA, found that the office “has drifted in focus and struggled to perform fundamental tasks.” In its partially redacted report, Deloitte criticized OCR for focusing too much on “minor responsibilities” and “not enough on the critical cases affecting … disadvantaged communities.”

The Deloitte report suggested that Jackson and her predecessors were partly to blame for the office’s ineffectiveness. “The Director of OCR has a direct line reporting relationship to the EPA Administrator and takes administrative direction from the Chief of Staff or Deputy Chief of Staff on a day-to-day basis,” the consulting firm found.

In December 2010, Jackson chose Rafael DeLeon to lead the office. He manages an annual budget of $2.3 million and a staff of 38, nine of whom work on Title VI cases, according to the EPA spokeswoman.

In the wake of the damning Deloitte evaluation, DeLeon, who also headed OCR for a time during the Clinton administration, came under fire. The National Whistleblowers Center called for his ouster, alleging that he made disparaging remarks about former EPA whistleblowers and has had “numerous” discrimination complaints filed against him by female staffers.

“We call on you to make a clean break from the past,” Richard Renner, the center’s legal director, wrote in an April letter to Jackson. “We call on you to make a decision that visibly rejects discrimination, retaliation, and intimidation … We need your decisive leadership to end the paralysis of silence.”

December 12, 2011

When an eardrum piercing noise awoke residents of Roosevelt Island and Astoria and Long Island City, Queens last week, no one knew what it was. It can from a power plant run by TransCanada, which refused to answer press inquiries. TransCanada is the owner of the proposed XL Pipeline -- this should be another strike against them...

December 5, 2011

This is about the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s (“NYSDEC”) Brownfield Cleanup Program (“BCP”), specifically its draft Final Engineering Report (FER) for the remedial actions performed at the 1800 Southern Boulevard Site....The Site is currently being developed with a new ten (10) story mixed-use building that will provide affordable housing to 68 moderate income households, as well as 12,579 square feet of commercial space and 4,922 square feet of community facility space. Historically the Site has been used as a filling station, auto repair facility and car wash beginning sometime between 1927 and 1940. The car wash operation closed in 1993 and the service station closed in 2003. BP-Amoco was operating the station at the time of closure in 2003.

• Removal of (17) 550-gallon underground storage tanks; and

Unstated: this is where the gas was bought for the Happy Land Social Club mass murder...

November 28, 2011

On reports that the US and Saudi Arabia won't sign on to the Green Climate Fund, Inner City Press asked for the UN Ban Ki-moon's view. Spokesman Martin Nesirky said that beyond the Green Climate Fund, Durban's discussions will include other topics, "we need to wait and see." That is, unlike even the UK, no criticism of the Obama administration's positions...

November 21, 2011

The EPA has promulgated Plan EJ 2014 as its implementation of Executive Order 12898:

Plan EJ 2014 is not a rule or regulation. It is a strategy to help integrate environmental justice into EPA’s day to day activities.

Here is its plan document:

This implementation plan outlines a process by which the workgroup will research, solicit ideas for, prioritize, and then develop a suite of tools to better enable overburdened communities to have full and meaningful access to the permitting process and for permits to address environmental justice issues to the greatest extent practicable. For the first year, our activities will focus on developing a cohesive suite of tools most applicable to EPA-issued permits, and also collecting a larger set of tools for a public database.

Watch this site.

November 14, 2011

While one school under-participated, the Delaware County Alliance for Environmental Justice (DelCo Alliance) and the Chester Green youth group recently hosted Chester city’s first Environmental Justice collective during the last weekend in October during which they offered a tour pointing out all the polluters in Chester. The tour included stops at a coal power plant, two major natural gas burning power plants, a paper mill, the nation’s largest trash incinerator, a sewage sludge incinerator, two oil refineries, and various chemical plants and toxic waste sites. The paper mill, Kimberly Clark, burns waste coal and petroleum coke. It also produces six times more mercury than normal coal...

November 7, 2011

Of Keystone XL, Clayton Thomas-Muller of the Pukatawagan Cree Nation has said, "we were all overcome and awash with inspiration and positive emotion with the election of President Obama. Some of the things he said were very enchanting - that this would be the generation that our grandchildren would look back on and say that's when they took action on climate change. But through the continuation of deep sea exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, the permitting of Shell to drill for offshore oil resources in Bristol Bay in the outer continental shelf of Alaska, with the expansion of the fracking industry and now with the consideration of the Keystone XL pipeline, we know that Obama hasn't been able to meet his commitments to social movements in America that helped get him elected."

October 31, 2011

In Queens, NY until 1996, Jamaica Water Supply pumped millions of gallons of water out of the ground daily. When the City Department of Environmental Protection took over, DEP started bringing water from upstate, leaving the excess water underground with no place to go. In 15 years, the standing ground water level in Southeast Queens has risen to 30 feet, leaving many homeowners to deal with saturated basements each time there is heavy rainfall.

Now they should investigate...

October 24, 2011

The Aarhus Convention provides that environmental challenges should not be “prohibitively expensive." The UK system of “loser pays the costs” violates this. So the Ministry of Justice is proposing "that costs protection should be provided via codification of the rules concerning Protective Costs Orders. That means that a claimant in any public interest case may ask the court for a PCO, to “cap” his liability to pay the other side’s costs to such a figure as does not deter him from bringing those proceedings." We'll see.

October 17, 2011

By Matthew Russell Lee

WALL STREET, October 12 -- New York City police threatened to arrest protesters and the Press in front of a Bank of America branch on lower Broadway Tuesday at dusk, a block from Zuccotti Park which some now call Liberty Plaza. Click here for video by Inner City Press.

  At dusk a non-violent group long concerned with Bank of America funding of mountain-top removal coal mining crossed Broadway from the park. Inner City Press was among them. White suited Reverend Billy began an "exorcism," preaching how Bank of America finances wars -- then the police moved in.

  Other signs in the crowd spoke of Capital One, which in applying to buy ING DIRECT could become the fifth largest bank in the United States. It has sought to evade the protests against the Big Four -- Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase -- by means of comedic advertisements featuring such liberal icons as Alec Baldwin and Jimmy Fallon. Baldwin has yet to respond to mounting requests by NCRC and others that he distance himself from Capital One.

October 10, 2011

In (Occupy) Chicago there's been a call for the closure of the city's coal-fired power plants: Fisk Generating Station, 1111 W. Cermak Rd.—right across from the park—and Crawford Generating Station, 3501 S. Pulaski Rd. in Little Village. Both are owned by Midwest Generation...

September 26, 2011

Activists charges that the World Bank’s promotion of the controversial forest-carbon scheme called REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) harms both forests and forest dependent communities in developing countries, while encouraging continued pollution in vulnerable communities in developed countries like the USA. This follows the announcement of a new sub-national REDD agreement between the states of California, USA, Chiapas, Mexico and Acre, Brazil during the UN Climate Conference in Cancun last December. In Chiapas the REDD project claims to create carbon offset credits by quantifying the carbon stored by trees in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve in the Lacandon Jungle. The World Bank has been involved in the global forest/climate program known as REDD through its Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, announced by World Bank President Robet Zoellick, during the 2007 UN Climate Conference in Bali, Indonesia. The announcement met with strong popular protest, and the World Bank continues to draw criticism for its role in promoting schemes that displace forest dependent communities and promote large-scale industrial tree plantations that could potentially include socially and ecologically dangerous genetically engineered trees.

September 19, 2011

In San Fran / Oakland, the Superior Court has blocked the proposed early transfer of the toxic parcels of the Hunters Point Superfund site. “The court finds that the EIR does not adequately inform the public that the developer proposes to remediate portions of the shipyard instead of the Navy under an early transfer agreement. … Therefore, the court orders that the development of a parcel at the shipyard site may not proceed until the CERCLA remediation process for the parcel is complete and approved by regulating agencies as safe for human health and development, unless an early transfer is approved after completion of environmental review in compliance with CEQA,” according to the judge’s ruling. H/t Bayview.

September 12, 2011

The Keystone XL pipeline protest arrests took place in front of a White House without solar panels, that activists note the Obama Administration had promised to install by this spring....

September 5, 2011

Whither -- or wither -- Obama on the environment? He dropped the ozone regulations, just after calling for Congress to extend Bush-era funding for highway projects, and late August's go-ahead from the Obama State Department to construct an oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast. Will there be a Democratic Party primary challenge to Obama, on this or other issues? Watch this site.

August 29, 2011

Last week, the US State Department released its  for the proposed Keystone XL tar sands  pipeline, predictably finding that there will be no Final Environmental  Impact Statement (FEIS)  significant environmental impact to most resources. Activists say Secretary of State Clinton did not keep her promise to “leave no stone unturned” and the State Department’s pledge to do a “thorough and objective” assessment: the State Department is rushing this project.

August 22, 2011

In Los Angeles, we note the "MTA Cuts to Bus Service Lifelines" event begins at Immanuel Presbyterian in Koreatown about the impact that recent bus service cuts and fare hikes have had. Yes, it's an environmental justice issue...

August 15, 2011

In Kentucky, American Synthetic Rubber in western Louisville says it's "making plans to phase out the use of the moderately toxic chemical toluene. The plant has long used toluene to produce rubber, and it used to emit great quantities of it — as much as 4.7 million pounds in 1991, for example. That compares to 408,000 pounds of toluene emissions in 2009, the most recent year for which U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data is available. The company, which makes rubber for tires, is exploring the change because two replacement chemicals are considered safer and more useful, said Lynn Mann, a spokeswoman for Michelin North America, which owns the plant. It’s seeking a permit from the Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District, which is accepting public comment through Aug. 30."

August 8, 2011

In California, a Jurupa Valley-based environmental group has filed a lawsuit seeking to set aside Riverside County's approval of an industrial project that would put warehouses next door to a Mira Loma housing tract, contending that Riverside County and developers of the proposed Mira Loma Commerce Center project violated the California Environmental Quality Act by preparing an environmental study that failed to analyze the project's impacts on air quality and traffic. It asks the court to set aside the certification of the environmental impact report and order a new one. A status conference on the lawsuit is set for August 18...

August 1, 2011

In Connecticut the Bridgeport Harbor Station (owned by New Jersey based Public Service Enterprise Group or PSEG) is among the worst polluters, according to an algorithm combining levels of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions together with demographic factors to calculate the score for the 431 coal-fired power plants in the United States. So - will it be shut down?

July 25, 2011

New Hampshire, too, is a toxic state for coal plants. The TRI fingers PSHN's Merrimack Station as the worst...

July 18, 2011

In Indiana, in addition to the Hammond plant owned by Dominion Resources, Duke Energy’s R. Gallagher Generating Station in New Albany ranked seventh and a plant in Michigan City also received a failing grade...

July 11, 2011

In Michigan a new study gives Holland’s James De Young coal-fired plant a environmental justice grade of ‘F.’ Detroit’s River Rouge Power Plant is ranked as 9th-most harmful in the nation. Other failing plants include Eckert (Lansing); B.C. Cobb (Muskegon); Monroe (Monroe); Trenton Channel (Trenton) and Presque Isle ...

July 4, 2011

Sleazy is as sleazy does: now the Upper East Side of Manhattan is arguing that IT is a environmental justice community, because it has a housing project:

“'I have nightmares just thinking that there’s a possibility that they might come back,' said Ms. Johnson, 66, a disabled resident of the Stanley M. Isaacs Houses, at 94th Street and First Avenue. The proximity of public housing figures prominently in a battle by Upper East Side residents to derail a city plan to reactivate a waste transfer station on the East River at 91st Street. In lawsuits, rallies and lobbying in the State Legislature, they argue that economically disadvantaged residents, already struggling, should not be saddled with additional problems. 'How can you ignore the fact that the closest community is 80 percent minority?' said Anthony Ard, president of the Gracie Point Community Council, a neighborhood group that was founded to fight the plan.”

This argument is made in order to jam the waste transfer station back to the South Bronx. For shame.

June 27, 2011

Union Pacific Corp. and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway got letters last week warning to prepare for a federal lawsuit under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act if they don't undertake measures to clean up hazardous waste their facilities emit into the air from diesel engines in 16 California rail yards. NRDC argues that minute particles in diesel air pollution, which include lead, cadmium, nickel and other toxic elements, are solid waste. If successful, such a suit could open the door for legal action against similar air pollution sources such as ports, airports or anywhere with a lot of diesel equipment.

June 20, 2011

In Puerto Rico, the owner of the Ponce Municipal Landfill has had to enter a settlement that will reduce water pollution from the landfill into a local stream. Allied Waste of Ponce, Inc. will spend at least $200,000 to build a new sewer line from the Ponce Municipal Landfill through the Barrio La Cotorra community located south of the landfill, which will then connect to the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority wastewater treatment plant in Ponce.

June 13, 2011

In New York City, those opposing a waste transfer station on East 91st Street and the East River need to ask themselves: where else should it go? The South Bronx is full of such facilities. It's only fair...

June 6, 2011

As UN Flies 700 Staff to Copenhagen, Coup Leader Set to Speak, Major Emitter Excluded

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, December 10 -- In the run up to the Copenhagen climate change conference, Inner City Press on December 4 asked UN climateer Janos Pasztor how many UN system staff, officials and consultants would be traveling to Denmark, with what carbon footprint. Pasztor said it wouldn't be known until the conference began.

  On December 10, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky finally answered the question, or part of it. He said that the Copenhagen conference has among its participants 477 people from the UN Secretariat and 309 from 19 specialized agencies and related organizations. That is, 786 people from the UN. But does this include consultants? And what is the carbon footprint and will it be offset?

  Nesirky did however answer two questions Inner City Press asked on December 10, after an ill attended noon briefing held at the same time as a media stakeout by U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice. Inner City Press asked if Ban Ki-moon is aware of the request that the coup leader of Madagascar not be allowed to participate in the Copenhagen conference, just as he was barred from speaking before the General Assembly in September.

  Nesirky answered, "As for Madagascar, it is scheduled to speak on next Wednesday 16 December, sometime after 6 p.m., so they seem to have been invited." But what about the request that, as at the UN General Debate in September, they be disinvited?

  On December 8, Inner City Press asked Ban Ki-moon

Inner City Press: Has Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, has he indicated to you – we’ve heard that you’ve spoken to him weekly by videoconference – he represents the African Union. Is the $10 billion enough? They threatened to walk out if not sufficient funds were committed. What’s you stance on how that issue’s going to play out?

SG: As you know I, together with Prime Minister [Lars Løkke] Rasmussen [of Denmark], have been engaging in weekly videoconferences with major stakeholders on climate change - particularly the representatives of the most vulnerable countries, including the African Union and small island developing countries. We are going to continue to do that, as we did in Trinidad and Tobago. Now the idea of short-term fast-track financial support is supported by developing countries. We had a very in-depth discussion on this issue during our Commonwealth summit meeting in Trinidad and Tobago. As you know the 53-Member State Commonwealth adopted a consensus declaration where this financial support – fast-track support – was agreed by all the Member States, including a provision that 10% of this $10 billion will be provided to small island developing countries.

  So the Commonweath agreed -- but has the African Union? Inner City Press asked Ban's top humanitarian John Holmes on December 10, but he said he hadn't been involved in setting the $10 billion figure. So who was?

  Inner City Press also asking about the block on participation by Taiwan, which is a major industrial emitter. Nesirky answered only that "Taiwan is not a party to the UNFCCC." But why not? Would the UN want a major source of emission like Taiwan to participate?

  The answer, of course, in China, a senior diplomat of which told Inner City Press a good joke on Thursday. He noted that U.S.' Susan Rice had been harsh against Iran in that morning's Council meeting. She has to play to the electorate, he said, just as Iran's teetered regime tries to strengthen its power by being ever more hard-line. The Chinese diplomat said, "This is the problem with democracy." And then he laughed.

Footnote: New Jersey, more than 100 gas stations sued Exxon Mobil Corp. last week, saying the company is manipulating the quantity and timing of fuel deliveries to overcharge them for wholesale gasoline and rent. Sounds like Exxon...

December 7, 2009

Even as cleanup efforts are still under way for a North Slope oil spill discovered Sunday, BP reported a leak from another pipeline it manages on Wednesday. BP discovered the new spill Wednesday afternoon and reported it to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Officials estimate 7,000 gallons of "produced water" -- water pumped with oil from wells and then separated from crude at processing centers -- are at the leak site. The leaky 6-inch pipeline was inside a manifold building where different pipes come together. BP estimated that about 5,040 gallons remained inside the building while the remaining produced waters spilled out onto the gravel production pad outside... Beyond Petroleum?

November 30, 2009

In Lagos last week, Ngeri Benibo, the director general and chief executive of Nigeria's National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency, argued that “Africa should be equitably compensated in the context of environmental justice, for environmental resources, economic and social loses as a result of climate change...the Copenhagen outcome must provide new, additional, sustainable, accessible and predictable finance for climate change programs."

  The call for unity comes as the UK and UN got the Commonwealth meeting to endorse the $10 billion proposal, lower than Africa's reported $67 billion figure. Then again, Ms. Benibo's comments were in a speech at the Nigerian Mining and Geosciences Society / ExxonMobil annual conference. Couldn't find another sponsor?

November 23, 2009

Alcoa said last week that it would suspend operations at two aluminum smelters in Italy, cutting about 2,000 jobs, over concerns that it would no longer receive what it considered affordable electricity rates. A recent ruling by the European Union struck down rate subsidies the Italian government had provided for the smelters, ordering the government to recover its previous aid...

November 16, 2009

In August, five months after the Mozambican government adopted its biofuels policy, two organizations released a study called "Jatropha! A Socio-economic Pitfall for Mozambique." In it, the groups Environmental Justice and the National Union of Peasants question what they say are "myths" propagated by the jatropha industry and government officials. "Almost all of jatropha planted in Mozambique has been on arable land, with fertilisers and pesticides," the report says. "Jatropha is planted in direct replacement of food crops," it adds. "Given that around 87 percent of Mozambicans are subsistence farmers ... major concerns arise when one considers the plan to encourage (them) to plant large amounts of jatropha."

November 9, 2009

As UN's Ban Admits Copenhagen Deal Unlikely, His Story Is Re-Written

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, November 4 -- For months, the UN and its Secretary General Ban Ki-moon have been calling for a legally binding agreement on climate change to be reached at the Copenhagen meetings in December. When Ban's advisor Jeffrey Sachs on October 6 said this would be unlikely, and Inner City Press asked Ban's spokesperson to comment, the response was that Sachs spoke only his his personal capacity.

   When UN climate negotiator Yvo de Boer later in October was quoted by the Financial Times that a legally binding agreement was unlikely, and Inner City Press asked Ban's climate point man Janos Pasztor about it, Pasztor said that de Boer had been spoken to, and was incompletely quoted by the FT.

   But when Ban was quoted in London that a legally binding agreement is unlikely, and Inner City Press asked his spokesperson Michele Montas to comment on this change of position, she replied "that has already been said here." Video here, from Minute 20:25.

  To some it seemed that comments portraying an agreement in Copenhagen as unlikely has been repudiated by Team Ban, and only now adopted. Why not admit to the change?

  Later a senior Ban advisor explained to Inner City Press, a legally binding agreement is now "physically impossible," given the amount of time remaining. But why publicly downplay the change? Inner City Press asked the advisor, and will continue to ask: what does "Seal the Deal" mean now? And who has the SealTheDeal2010 website, now that the 2009 version become of only historical interest? Watch this site.

November 2, 2009

Surreally, in the run up to this week's NJ governor election with its high profile endorsement, efforts to deepen the Delaware River's main channel would face a lawsuit if the Army Corps of Engineers begins the work without permits, New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine (D) said Monday. The Corps said last week that it would go ahead with its $300 million project, which has not yet received permits from Delaware.

October 26, 2009

China has started to evict 330,000 people to make way for a project to divert water from the south of the country to the north. The central route, which is scheduled for completion sometime in 2014, is supposed to supply about a quarter of Beijing's water. Critics argue that the water diversion will be harmful to the environment...

October 19, 2009

When even UN advisor Jeffery Sachs says a deal is unlikely at Copenhagen, there's little chance. Inner City Press has pursued whether Sachs spoke on behalf of or with the knowledge of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. No, it appears.

October 12, 2009

The UK's BP and the China National Petroleum Corp.have signed an initial agreement with Iraq to develop Rumaila, Iraq's largest producing oil field. According to the deal, which could lead to $15 billion in investment, BP will hold a 38 percent stake in the venture, with CNPC and the Iraq government holding 37 percent and 25 percent, respectively

October 5, 2009

In China, more than 100 children in Fujian province have suffered lead poisoning as a result of pollution from a nearby battery plant. Blood samples of children younger than 14 taken last week revealed 121 of 287 had excessive lead levels, officials announced. Local authorities have closed the local Huaqiang Battery Factory and promised to treat the poisoned children and provide them with extra nutrition

September 28, 2009

In Utah, the Mine Safety and Health Administration has taken a coal mine off of its special watch list. The Horizon mine had faced scrutiny for the number of roof falls and safety violations it had wracked up. The mine's present operator, American West Resources Inc., has retreated from the problematic mine section, abandoning 300,000 tons of coal. For now...

The Italian oil firm Eni SpA has decided against trying to take over Tullow Oil PLC, a British firm that has rich oil-development prospects in Uganda and Ghana. Tullow, which saw its value jump this week after it announced two additional finds in Africa, opposed the bid...

September 21, 2009

In Uganda, Tullow Oil PLC last week said it has made the largest oil find yet in the Lake Albert area of Uganda, a region where it has already found more than 700 million barrels of oil equivalent. The find could prompt bids for the company. Italian energy firm Eni SpA is one potential bidder...

September 14, 2009

New tests have confirmed extremely high levels of dioxin, a toxic ingredient used in the military defoliant Agent Orange, at the site of a former U.S. air base in Vietnam. The site, where Danang Airport now sits, shows dioxin levels in the soil, sediment and fish at 300 to 400 times higher than international safety standards.

September 7, 2009

The EPA is being asked to stay implementation of its rule changing the definition of solid waste (DSW) until the agency finishes the review of how the regulation would impact lower-income and minority communities. The concern is that companies with previously dubious environmental practices are taking advantage of regulatory exemptions in the Resource Conservation & Recovery Act (RCRA) rule...

August 31, 2009

In Michigan, a huge fire tore through a subsidiary of Sterling Oil & Gas, closing down rail service between Detroit and Pontiac. The fire sent black smoke hundreds of feet into the air. U.S. EPA says that it is monitoring the fire's residue, but that it expects it should cause no health risks. Oh really?

August 24, 2009

In California, the operator of the cargo ship that caused a 2007 oil spill in the San Francisco Bay has pleaded guilty to criminal charges and agreed to pay a $10 million fine. The Hong Kong-based company, Fleet Management Ltd., pleaded guilty to charges of obstruction, making false statements and negligent discharge of oil. The deal must still be approved by a federal judge. It shouldn't be...

August 17, 2009

Exxon Mobil had pled guilty to killing at least 85 protected birds in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming between 2004 and 2009 by exposure to natural gas well reserve pits and waste water storage facilities drilling and production facilities

August 10, 2009

In the U.S. Senate last week, Gary Guzy was asked how Browner and Mary Nichols, the head of the California Air Resources Board, decided to keep their discussions as quiet as possible during the run-up to new national auto standards proposed in May, holding no group meetings and taking care to not leak updates to the press -- what ever happened to transparency?

August 3, 2009

USEC won't withdraw a $2 billion loan-guarantee application for building a commercial nuclear-fuel enrichment plant, despite the Energy Department's request that it do so, the company announced last week. The Bethesda, Md.-based company said it is proceeding with the application to fund construction of the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio, because the proposal meets "the financial and technical requirements of the department's loan guarantee program as well as numerous Obama administration policy objectives," USEC said...

July 27, 2009

China's CNOOC and Sinopec have agreed to buy a 20% stake in an oil field off the coast of Angola for $1.3 billion, the latest in a series of Chinese acquisitions of overseas energy and mining assets. The companies would split ownership of the resources in an area known as block 32, which has already yielded 12 discoveries ...

July 20, 2009

  JPMorgan Chase has a Community Reinvestment Act duty in West Virginia and Kentucky, for example, and in neighboring states. Meanwhile, Chase is funding 6 out of the top 8 corporate producers of MTR coal in Appalachia. (Massey, International Coal Group, Arch Coal, Consol Energy, TECO and Foundation Coal.), per RAN. Chase was a co-lead arranger and underwriter for more than $1 billion in new financing to Massey Energy less than 12 months ago. Massey Energy is the biggest and most controversial MTR mining company in Appalachia, and is responsible for nearly 20% of all MTR coal mined. Others have stopped funding it -- why not Chase?

July 13, 2009

In Delaware, the federal government fined Sunoco more than $200,000 this week, citing multiple health and safety violations at the company's refinery near Wilmington. Sunoco did not provide employees with proper protective equipment and did not maintain diagrams that accurately reflect the refinery's piping structure, according to OSHA...

July 6, 2009

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will aim toward climate legislation with a hearing July 7 including three top Obama administration officials. U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack are slated to testify at the hearing. The Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved a broad energy bill last month, while Majority Leader Harry Reid has given other committees with jurisdiction expected to weigh in -- Agriculture, Commerce, Finance and Foreign Relations -- until Sept. 18 to produce their additions to the package. The Senate hearing follows the House's passage of a climate and energy bill last week. The 219-212 House vote shifts the battle to the Senate, where assembling the 60-vote coalition needed to pass a climate bill is expected to be as tough as securing House passage, if not harder.

June 29, 2009

In California, The company that operated a container ship that rammed into the Bay Bridge in 2007 and released 53,000 gallons of fuel oil was denied its request yesterday to limit its fine to $400,000 on criminal charges of polluting San Francisco Bay. Fleet Management Ltd., which operated the 901-foot-long Cosco Busan during the Nov. 7, 2007 spill, offered to plead guilty to two misdemeanors last month, but U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said federal prosecutors are entitled to file amended charges that could carry fines of $40 million...

June 21, 2009

Will the Obama administration release the locations of 44 coal-ash disposal sites deemed national security risks? The information has been requested under FOIA from the U.S. EPA, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Homeland Security requesting a list of coal-ash dumps designated "high hazard," meaning they could threaten human life if their barriers fail. Questions about health and environmental risks posed by ash impoundments arose following the collapse of an impoundment at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant last December. EPA collected information about impoundments from power companies that operate ash sites, but was urged by Homeland Security and the Army Corps not to make public the locations of those dumps. The requests argue that people who live near these sites have a right to know about their potential hazards, noting that locations of nuclear, Superfund and other hazardous sites are public knowledge. Is there a "we are embarrassed" exception?

June 15, 2009

In Kentucky, an agreement to allow 50 additional state counties and 20 more in Indiana at the the Outer Loop Landfill was discarded because it violated the state's open meeting law. Seven months ago, the chairwoman of the Louisville/Jefferson County Waster Management District board mailed the agreement to board members, asking for their approval. But it had to be done in public...

May 25, 2009

In California, two waste management companies, American Metal and Iron Inc. and California Waste Solutions are being fined by U.S. EPA for violating the Clean Water Act. Waste Solutions is in violation of sending trash and other pollutants from three of its locations in Oakland and San Jose into nearby waterways from 2002 to 2007, agency officials said. American Metal and Iron is in violation of sending polluted storm water discharges from two of its San Jose sites into Coyote Creek. The companies combined will pay a mere $306,000 in fines...

May 18, 2009

In China, more than 160 are in the hospitals and hundreds more are sickened by air pollution suspected to have come from a chemical plant in the country's northeast. Staff at the plant and residents living near the Jilin Chemical Fibre Group facility complained of headache, nausea, vomiting and general fatigue in late April. Air tests by authorities have not been able to identify what could be causing the illnesses

May 11, 2009

Asking, asking: The federal government is being asked to investigate whether scores of Crestwood residents are suffering any diseases or illnesses after drinking the village's tainted water for decades. Durbin sent a letter this week to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, asking it to at least try to answer the difficult question of whether illnesses could be linked to the tainted water. There appears to be very little information available to guide such a review...

Chevron is being asked to be more transparent with shareholders about the company's potential liability in a $27 billion environmental damages case in Ecuador. Texaco, which Chevron acquired in 2001, is accused of dumping toxic wastewater from drilling operations into unlined pits in Ecuador, causing widespread environmental damage and alleged cancer deaths. Chevron is fighting the lawsuit filed on behalf of tens of thousands of Ecuadorian villagers in the Amazon

May 4, 2009

In Oklahoma, Freeport-McMoRan and Phelps Dodge are defendants in a zinc smelter pollutions class action case returned last week to state court... Meanwhile on the other side of the world, Chevron is under fire in Western Australia for gas flares...

April 27, 2009

Last week, a federal judge gave residents living near two chemical companies the opportunity to "opt out" of a proposed settlement over
foul odors from the Louisville plants they say have degraded their properties. U.S. District Court Judge John G. Heyburn II's decision
extends the deadline to May 15 to ensure there has been adequate public notice about the settlements, which total an estimated $800,000
in joint scholarships but restrict participants' right to make legal claims against companies Rohm and Haas and DuPont...

Saudi petrochemicals maker Saudi Basic Industries Corp., the largest listed company in the Middle East, reported a first-quarter loss of $260 million, its first quarterly loss since 2001 -- which was the year when...

April 20, 2009

Defense lawyers in the W.R. Grace & Co. asbestos trial last week urged the judge to order federal agents to produce their pretrial communications with government witnesses and accused prosecutors of intentionally presenting false testimony and withholding evidence. Grace and five former managers are standing trial over allegations that the company and executives knowingly exposed Libby to a particularly lethal form of asbestos... Click here for Inner City Press' story last week about asbestos at the UN...

The Nigerian government has fined Shell $6,800 for its refusal to clean up its September 2008 oil spill in a timely matter. The oil company has also been ordered to pay damages to landowners adjacent to the spill. Civil unrest, vandalism and sabotage have lowered Nigeria's total crude production to 1.78 million barrels per day, down from 2.6 million barrels in 2006

April 13, 2009

  In New Mexico,  Espanola Mayor Joseph Maestas and a group of business owners plan to oppose a federal agency they see as the only obstacle to a multi-million dollar reconstruction project on Paseo de Onate. Maestas said Tuesday he plans to file an environmental justice complaint against the Federal Highway Administration’s New Mexico Division for allegedly discriminating against Espanola while favoring projects elsewhere. “We’re ready to go, but we have a federal agency that is obstructing the process,” said Maestas, a former Administration engineer. Under this administration?

April 6, 2009

   The U.S. Department of Justice is accepting public comments until April 25 on the proposed $52 million settlement agreement with Asarco for cleanup of its El Paso copper smelter site. The proposed settlement agreement can be found online at www.usdoj.gov/enrd/1043.htm

Separately, the Texas attorney general's office is accepting public comments on the proposed agreement until May 3.

March 30, 2009 -- annals of environmental justice: the president of the Sierra Club wrote in the New York Times, March 26, that "We offer at-risk young people in the Bronx their first wilderness experience."  No, we have some wilderness right here in The Bronx...

March 23, 2009

  Consider American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO), which filed for bankruptcy in 2005.  ASARCO faces some $7.9 billion in environmental claims.  ASARCO offered to submit payments for only  $1.1 billion for toxic cleanups. Who would pay for the rest? What ever happened to Superfund?

March 16, 2009

   We hear that the Ecuadorian government has closed Accion Ecologica in "retaliation against Accion Ecologica's opposition to mining, an activity eagerly promoted by President Rafael Correa's government." Hmm...

 While Detroiters fight to close down the garbage incinerator run by the Greater Detroit Resource Recovery Authority, some argue that it must remain open and receiving the city's waste, due to the one-sided contract with NJ-based Covanta Energy and Boston's Energy Investors Funds. Yes, we can call this contract a suicide pact...

March 9, 2009

As UN Covers For Obama Climate Backslide, It Does Not Carbon Offset, "Act Not Together"

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, March 6 -- As the UN provides groundcover for the Obama administration's retreat from its climate change rhetoric during the electoral campaign, the UN "doesn't have its act together" on even offsetting the impacts of travel by its Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other high officials, the UN's Yvo de Boer told the Press on Friday.

  Mr. de Boer held a press conference to announce positive movement on climate change in Congress, at least in the House of Representatives. Inner City Press asked if he and UN agree with the Denmark's Minister of Climate and Energy Conniee Hedegaard, who has said if the U.S. doesn't pass cap and trade legislation in 2009, it will be a step backwards.  De Boer responded that Rep. Markey (Dem-MA) told him legislation should emerge from his House committee in May. The Senate, de Boer said, is more complicated. That's an understatement.

  Inner City Press asked if he agreed that Obama's climate negotiator Todd Sterns statement that any 25% reduction in emissions by the U.S. by 2020 is unrealistic is a "diss" of the UN's IPCC.  De Boer said he agreed with Stern -- de Boer subtly moved the goal post being dissed to 40% -- but said that perhaps the U.S. could invest money in deforestation projects as a way to show seriousness.

  On that, Inner City Press asked de Boer whether he, Ban Ki-moon and the UN are offsetting the carbon emission of their travel. De Boer admitted that they are not, saying that they are trying to come up with a methodology but "we don't have our act together yet." Video here, from Minute 49:22.

  This seems the least one could expect from a Secretary-General who speaks so much about climate change. A senior Ban advisor, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Inner City Press that the Ban administration thinks that carbon offsetting is hype. Why not say that publicly, then?

  Inner City Press asked asked de Boer about a leaked draft of European finance ministers, that industry and not government should foot the bill of helping the developing world reduce its emissions. Governments print money, de Boer quipped, but they don't make it. One way or another, the taxpayer is on the hook. It's what the banks are saying, too. Some view it as competing ransom notes.

   De Boer was asked about the climate "mini-summit" with Obama that the Ban Administration had leaked and then undercut, when they thought Obama would not come. De Boer said that climate and summits will be on Ban's agenda in Washington next week. We will continue to follow these issues.

Footnote: in fairness to Ban Ki-moon, Inner City Press asked the spokesman for President of the General Assembly Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, before his recent trip through Iran, Syria and Geneva, if he would be carbon offsetting. Ask the PGA, the spokesman said.

  But the next day, when d'Escoto took questions in front of the Trusteeship Council, Inner City Press was asked to not repeat the question, an answer would be forthcoming. Then none was received, despite Inner City Press providing its previous coverage of UN offsetting -- in the case of one conference -- and not offsetting.

  It's like Ban's demotion of Tanzanian Anna Tibaijuku from the UN's top post in Nairobi, during women and gender week: practice what you preach. We'll see.

Click here for Inner City Press' Feb 26 UN debate

March 2, 2009

  Off the coast of New Jersey, there are proposals for three port storage and regasification (conversion of liquid back to gas) facilities for imported liquefied natural gas (LNG), including the "Atlantic Sea Island Group (ASIG) proposal that envisions building the world's first man-made opensea island, located 19.5 miles from Sea Bright and 13 miles from Long Beach, N.Y. A group of investors proposes to build a 116-acre LNG terminal and industrial complex for a project known as Safe Harbor Energy. Next is Excalibur Energy, a new conglomerate of Canadian Superior Energy and Global LNG, a Delaware company, is promoting the Liberty Natural Gas project, which would consist of four submerged turret buoys and 50 miles of new pipeline to be built 15 miles off Asbury Park. And there's ExxonMobil's BlueOcean Energy project, which proposes a LNG floating terminal with storage and regasification facilities. It is slated for 20 miles off Manasquan...

February 23, 2009

  In March 2005 in Texas City, Texas, BP killed 15 people and injured more than 170. Last week, BP paid a $180 million fine. "We are pleased to have achieved this settlement and will work to continue reducing emissions and to ensure regulatory compliance at Texas City," BP's spokesman said-in-a-statement...

 One of the 10,000 students heading to Washington for Power Shift '09 said was quoted that, "We need to make this movement more than just Whole Foods and Toyota Priuses." Yeah -- how about targeting corporate wrongdoers?

February 16, 2009

  We note "Palm Beach County Judge Laura Johnson, who ruled last week that environmental activists Lynne Purvis and Panagioti Tsolkas would spend 30 and 60 days, respectively, in jail. Their crime? Organizing a February protest that blocked the entrance to Palm Beach Aggregates — soon to be the site of the West County Energy Center. The natural gas-fueled power plant will one day have three 1,250-megawatt units, enough juice to power three-quarters of a million homes and businesses. It will require massive amounts of natural gas for burning and water for cooling." Some justice....

   Faith in action: The country’s environmental movement in Honduras has significantly slowed deforestation in one section of the country, but an activist priest says he will keep up the pressure against commercial logging. "We have neutralized the enemy," said Father Jose Andres Tamayo, the parish priest in this ramshackle town in Olancho, a once heavily-forested central department of Honduras. “We haven’t won everything we wanted, but we’ve achieved a greater level of awareness and changed the mentality of people in the government offices where decisions are made,” he told Catholic News Service.  “In this region we’ve stopped 80 per cent of the illegal logging.”  Hear, hear...

February 9, 2009

  American International Group has withdrawn its membership from the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, the company said Friday. AIG still stands to gain from the creation of a potential multi-trillion dollar market in insuring climate change policies that could range from protection for potential weather-related incidents to liability for carbon dioxide storage leakage.

In West Virginia, Patriot Coal Corp. will pay $6.5 million in fines to settle hundreds of water pollution violations at mining operations across the state. citizen groups likely will seek to intervene and oppose the government's deal with Patriot, saying it's not clear how much damage was done by Patriot's violations, and therefore impossible for the government to know if the fines are adequate.

February 2, 2009

  In Nevada, Native American tribes vowed to charge forward with their efforts to stall the expansion of a gold mine on federal land in Nevada despite the fact that a federal judge denied an injunction this week. U.S. District Judge for the Nevada District Larry Hicks this week said there was not enough evidence to force Barrick Gold Corp.  to stop digging its 900-acre, 2,000-foot-deep open-pit gold mine at its Cortez Hills site on Mount Tenabo in Lander County, Nev...

  In Australia, "uncertainty over the future of the Gunns pulp mill in Tasmania has again weighed down the forester's share price. The Environment Minister Peter Garrett has suggested the company may have misled the stock exchange by yesterday saying the mill's technology would meet approval requirements... After sitting in the red for most of the day Rio Tinto shares surged in late trade to close more than five per cent higher. But it has little option other than to go ahead with a carve-up in order to keep its promise to pay off $AU15-billion of debt this year.

Today it announced it's sold some of its South American operations to Brazilian iron ore giant Vale for $US1.6-billion or about $AU2.5-billion. And another miner with debt issues, OZ Minerals, is selling its eight per cent stake in zinc producer Nyrstar at a loss for $33-million.

OZ Minerals has until late February to refinance about $AU870-million in debt, and today it confirmed it's prepared to sell all of its flagship prominent hill mine in South Australia. BHP Billiton is seen as a likely buyer."

January 26, 2009

In Delaware, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has noted three "very low safety significance" problems at the Salem 1 nuclear plant after an investigation triggered by a cooling system control failure in October. The report was released the same day that regulators held a public meeting to review backup power problems at Salem Unit 1 along the Delaware River in New Jersey in 2005 and 2007

In Chile, BHP Billiton will delay a $3.5 billion expansion of its Escondida copper mine, the world's largest, because of slumping metal demand. BHP had planned a desalinization plant but now estimates that copper prices will stay relatively low for the next 12 to 18 month. BHP Billiton will also be cutting 2,100 jobs at the company's Australian nickel unit, 550 jobs in the U.S., the 2,000 in base-metals operations in Chile, 1,100 in metallurgical coal in Australia and 200 at the Olympic Dam copper-uranium expansion project in Australia. BHP will cut coal production in Australia by 10 percent to 15 percent, equivalent to an annual loss of 4 million to 6 million metric tons of metallurgical coal, said BHP CFO Alex Vanselow...