Tag: environment

Va. state senator files suit against Forest Service in support of pipeline protests

rjzimmerman:

Excerpt:

A Virginia state senator filed suit against the U.S. Forest Service on Wednesday, claiming that federal officials are illegally blocking access to a road in the Jefferson National Forest where several people are protesting construction of a natural gas pipeline.

State Sen. Chap Petersen (D-Fairfax), who is a lawyer, filed the suit at the federal courthouse in Roanoke after being prohibited from using the road to reach the protesters last week.

His action opens another legal front in the fight over the right to protest the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 303-mile project that starts in West Virginia and crosses through Virginia’s southwest mountains.

A separate set of tree sitters was in federal court in Roanoke on Tuesday, as EQT Midstream and other companies behind the pipeline argued that Theresa “Red” Terry, her daughter Theresa Minor Terry and other members of the family are illegally blocking a stretch of the planned pipeline through their land. The builders of the pipeline want a judge to hold the Terry family and their allies in contempt.

Petersen’s suit is aimed at a site on Peters Mountain in Giles County along the West Virginia line. There, a protester identified only as “Nutty” has been living suspended from a pole, or monopod, since March 27, blocking efforts to clear trees.On April 7, the Forest Service closed a gravel access road to the public but continued to allow Mountain Valley Pipeline trucks to use it, saying it was unsafe for outsiders to be around the construction zone.

Va. state senator files suit against Forest Service in support of pipeline protests

Virtually every day, the Department of Defense and its contractors burn and detonate unused munitions and raw explosives in the open air with no environmental emissions controls, often releasing toxins near water sources and schools. The facilities operate under legal permits, but their potentially harmful effects for human health aren’t well researched, and EPA records obtained by ProPublica show that these sites have violated their hazardous waste permits thousands of times.

portentsofwoe:

https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/burn-sites

Along the southern Virginia riverbank, piles of discarded contents from bullets, chemical makings from bombs, and raw explosives — all used or left over from the manufacture and testing of weapons ingredients at Radford — are doused with fuel and lit on fire, igniting infernos that can be seen more than a half a mile away. The burning waste is rich in lead, mercury, chromium and compounds like nitroglycerin and perchlorate, all known health hazards. The residue from the burning piles rises in a spindle of hazardous smoke, twists into the wind and, depending on the weather, sweeps toward the tens of thousands of residents in the surrounding towns.

Nearby, Belview Elementary School has been ranked by researchers as facing some of the most dangerous air-quality hazards in the country. The rate of thyroid diseases in three of the surrounding counties is among the highest in the state, provoking town residents to worry that emissions from the Radford plant could be to blame. Government authorities have never studied whether Radford’s air pollution could be making people sick, but some of their hypothetical models estimate that the local population faces health risks exponentially greater than people in the rest of the region.

More than three decades ago, Congress banned American industries and localities from disposing of hazardous waste in these sorts of “open burns,” concluding that such uncontrolled processes created potentially unacceptable health and environmental hazards. Companies that had openly burned waste for generations were required to install incinerators with smokestacks and filters and to adhere to strict limits on what was released into the air. Lawmakers granted the Pentagon and its contractors a temporary reprieve from those rules to give engineers time to address the unique aspects of destroying explosive military waste.

Virtually every day, the Department of Defense and its contractors burn and detonate unused munitions and raw explosives in the open air with no environmental emissions controls, often releasing toxins near water sources and schools. The facilities operate under legal permits, but their potentially harmful effects for human health aren’t well researched, and EPA records obtained by ProPublica show that these sites have violated their hazardous waste permits thousands of times.

portentsofwoe:

https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/burn-sites

Along the southern Virginia riverbank, piles of discarded contents from bullets, chemical makings from bombs, and raw explosives — all used or left over from the manufacture and testing of weapons ingredients at Radford — are doused with fuel and lit on fire, igniting infernos that can be seen more than a half a mile away. The burning waste is rich in lead, mercury, chromium and compounds like nitroglycerin and perchlorate, all known health hazards. The residue from the burning piles rises in a spindle of hazardous smoke, twists into the wind and, depending on the weather, sweeps toward the tens of thousands of residents in the surrounding towns.

Nearby, Belview Elementary School has been ranked by researchers as facing some of the most dangerous air-quality hazards in the country. The rate of thyroid diseases in three of the surrounding counties is among the highest in the state, provoking town residents to worry that emissions from the Radford plant could be to blame. Government authorities have never studied whether Radford’s air pollution could be making people sick, but some of their hypothetical models estimate that the local population faces health risks exponentially greater than people in the rest of the region.

More than three decades ago, Congress banned American industries and localities from disposing of hazardous waste in these sorts of “open burns,” concluding that such uncontrolled processes created potentially unacceptable health and environmental hazards. Companies that had openly burned waste for generations were required to install incinerators with smokestacks and filters and to adhere to strict limits on what was released into the air. Lawmakers granted the Pentagon and its contractors a temporary reprieve from those rules to give engineers time to address the unique aspects of destroying explosive military waste.

dendroica:

“The first Beijing sensor, installed a decade ago, was meant to provide warnings of bad-air days to U.S. citizens. The fine particles it measures, mostly residues of coal burning and vehicle emissions, are linked to respiratory and heart disease. Third party apps made the readings widely available to Chinese who wanted to monitor PM2.5—and got little information from their own government. China had been struggling to rein in air pollution ever since the late 1990s, after Beijing won the bid for the 2008 Olympics. But officials were embarrassed by the slow progress that the sensor readings highlighted, especially when the U.S. data undercut the Beijing government’s rosy pronouncements of “blue sky” days, when pollution supposedly fell. Officials demanded that the embassy stop releasing the data. “We said we couldn’t, since the data regarded the health of U.S. citizens,” recalls Gary Locke, who served as ambassador to China from 2011 to 2014. Beijing officials also challenged the usefulness of the U.S. data, pointing out, for instance, that the embassy sensor was in only one location and therefore could be giving an incomplete picture. In response, the embassy teamed up with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientists to validate the results. “Since we were being criticized, we wanted to make sure we were doing it correctly,” says Erica Thomas, a Department of State official who led air monitoring at the embassy in Beijing from 2010 to 2014. Tensions came to a head in late 2011, when Beijing’s smog got so bad that its airport canceled hundreds of flights. Based on monitoring of larger particles, municipal authorities insisted that the air was only “slightly polluted”—provoking ridicule from bloggers citing U.S. data. “It was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” says Angel Hsu of Yale University, an expert on pollution in China. Days later, China proposed new air quality standards that included PM2.5 for the first time. It now runs the biggest PM2.5 monitoring system in the world.”

— Rooftop sensors on U.S. embassies are warning the world about ‘crazy bad’ air pollution | Science | AAAS

The great nutrient collapse

hic-nihil:

“Goldenrod, a wildflower many consider a weed, is extremely important
to bees. It flowers late in the season, and its pollen provides an
important source of protein for bees as they head into the harshness of
winter… [Ziska & co.] found that the protein content of
goldenrod pollen has declined by a third since the industrial
revolution—and the change closely tracks with the rise in CO2.
Scientists have been trying to figure out why bee populations around
the world have been in decline, which threatens many crops that rely on
bees for pollination. Ziska’s paper suggested that a decline in protein
prior to winter could be an additional factor making it hard for bees to
survive other stressors.“

the whole article is depressing and important but this part was sort of poignant to me because it’s a reminder that beyond active destruction of habitat and widespread use of pesticides/insecticides industrial civilization is still killing wildlife.

The great nutrient collapse

bogleech:

bogleech:

A rare giant hellbender salamander found dead because some hiker’s rock-stacking collapsed on her.

I didn’t even know rock stacking was a thing until this year but there are many ways it disrupts the environment.

*Ever since it caught on as a form of white hipster “meditation” there are actually so many hikers who stack rocks now as a hobby that it collectively pollutes streams with sediment that the rocks would otherwise be filtering and reduces the populations of countless organisms that grow and nest among said rocks.

http://www.wideopenspaces.com/rock-stacking-natural-graffitti-ecological-impact/

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/stacking-rocks-wilderness-no-good-180955880/

http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/08/25/new-graffiti-national-parks-fight-stone-stackers/

Source: bogleech

Tree Sitters in West Virginia Aren’t Leaving; They’re Expanding – It’s Going Down

This is right around where I’m from.

Most of the actions discussed here are actually on the Virginia side, but the state line runs across Peters Mountain. And of course the pipeline is planned to snake back and forth for hundreds of miles, over lots and lots of water and through other ecologically sensitive areas.

Social media accounts on Twitter and Facebook named Farmlands Against Pipelines have been also been launched, and are promoting and following the ongoing orchard tree sit.

A report read:

Today at 1PM EST Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC attempted to survey a family orchard in Bent Mountain of Roanoke County, Virginia slated to be devastated by the proposed 42-inch fracked gas pipeline. The surveyors discovered a 61 year old woman identified as “Red,” in a platform attached to two trees 30 feet in the air.

“I’m doing this because I love this mountain. I don’t want to see it violated like this. I want this land to go to my children.” Red said when asked why she had taken this stand in the trees. “I’ll probably be up here for a while.”

After discovering Red, MVP surveyors contacted Roanoke County Police, who drove by the property but did not confront her.

Red and her family will need support to continue resisting the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Red could lose her job to stay in the trees and is looking for financial support to pay her bills as well as fund materials like food and gear to sustain resistance. To make a donation, please visit: https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/farmlands-fighting-pipelines .

If you aren’t able to give financially, please consider reaching out to FarmlandsFightingPipelines@protonmail.com or reach out to Farmlands Fighting Pipelines on Facebook.

Appalachians Against Pipelines on Twitter: https://twitter.com/stopthemvp

Tree Sitters in West Virginia Aren’t Leaving; They’re Expanding – It’s Going Down

EPA forms posse to fix ‘broken’ endangered species regulations to speed up pesticide approval

rjzimmerman:

Excerpt:

The Environmental Protection Agency is looking to fix what it calls the “broken” process of balancing pesticide approvals with endangered species protections, which conservationists have warned could be the start of eroding key protections under the Endangered Species Act.

“The current Endangered Species Act pesticide consultation process is broken,” said EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt in announcing a new interagency working group with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Their goal is to fix the system which ensures endangered species aren’t harmed when approving the use of new pesticides.

The working group comes after the White House announced it will be taking actions to streamline environmental permitting and siting requirements as part of Trump’s infrastructure agenda.

The EPA said the new cooperation on endangered species comes at a “critical time” when the agency is looking to complete 700 pesticide registrations over the next four years.

“Today, the Trump Administration is taking action to improve and accelerate this process, harmonize interagency efforts, and create regulatory certainty for America’s farmers and ranchers,” Pruitt continued. Farmers and ranchers are principal users of pesticides.

The consultation process that Pruitt wants to improve falls under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act, which requires all agencies to consult with federal wildlife regulators on the effects of any actions, specifically pesticide approvals, which could harm animals protected under the law.

EPA forms posse to fix ‘broken’ endangered species regulations to speed up pesticide approval

TransCanada’s $8 billion Keystone XL pipeline got the go-ahead from the Nebraska Public Service Commission on Monday, clearing the last regulatory hurdle in a nine-year effort to build a line needed the carry thick crude oil from Alberta’s tar sands region to refineries on the Texas gulf coast. But the five-member commission rejected TransCanada’s preferred route and voted to approve an alternative route that would move the pipeline further east. The route of the new pipeline, which would carry 830,000 barrels a day of crude, would not cross any part of the state’s ecologically delicate Sandhills region. The commission’s decision could complicate TransCanada’s plans for the pipeline, forcing it to arrange different approvals from landowners. But the commission’s decision could also enable President Trump to claim a victory on a campaign issue. Trump revived the project with an executive order during his first week in office. The 3-2 decision comes just four days after a rupture in the existing Keystone pipeline also owned by TransCanada leaked an estimated 5,000 barrels of crude oil in a rural part of northeast South Dakota. The spill, the latest in a series of leaks on the existing pipeline, raised concerns about other potential spills, economic impact, and climate change.

Keystone XL pipeline gets Nebraska’s approval, clearing a key hurdle in 9-year effort and allowing Trump to claim a win – The Washington Post
(via dendroica)