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Fed-up Chicago residents sue over petcoke ashheaps

Fed-up Chicago residents sue over petcoke ashheaps

Josh Mogerman

Residents of Chicago’s southeast side aren’t going to sit idly by as their city, state and federal governments try to protect them from byproducts of tar-sands oil refining — the black dust that’s been blowing over their homes from nearby petcoke piles. The residents have called in a team of lawyers, and they are going after the companies that produce and store the uncovered piles of carbon powder.

The petcoke is left over after the refining of tar-sands oil, most of which is coming into the Midwest from Canada. Petcoke can’t be legally burned as fuel in the U.S., but subsidiaries of Koch Industries have been buying up the waste across the country anyway, presumably for sale into countries with less strict air pollution laws. And two of the defendants named in the lawsuit are subsidiaries of Koch Industries, including KCBX Terminals, which is storing some of the piles of petcoke along the Calamut River.

Koch isn’t the only familiar name listed as a bad guy in the new lawsuit. BP is also named as a defendant. That’s because much of the problem petcoke is coming from the company’s nearby Whiting refinery, where billions of dollars have been spent to help it process Canadian crude. From a Nov. 15 Bloomberg story:

The 420,000-barrel-a-day Whiting plant brought online a new delayed coker, according to a person familiar with operations at the plant. Combined with a crude unit that started in June, the equipment will allow Whiting to process as much as 85 percent Canadian heavy crude, up from about 20 percent, the company’s website shows. The refinery is scheduled to ramp up heavy oil consumption over a three-month period, the company said in an Oct. 29 presentation.

The Chicago Sun Times reports on the lawsuit:

The suit, filed Monday in federal court, accuses BP, Koch Carbon, KCBX Terminals [another Koch subsidiary], George J. Beemsterboer Inc. and KM Railways of each knowingly and intentionally producing, marketing and selling the chemical mixture of petroleum coke instead of destroying it, with residue coating the homes and property of residents throughout the surrounding South Chicago neighborhood. …

The six-count suit alleges willful and wanton conduct, abnormally dangerous activity, strict liability in tort, trespassing, public nuisance, private nuisance and declaratory relief. The residents are seeking an undisclosed amount in damages.

As the U.S. is flooded with tar-sands oil from the mining boom up north, you can expect this problem will only deepen.


Source
Canada Heavy Oil Gains as BP Refinery Said to Ramp Up New Coker, Bloomberg
Southeast Side residents sue companies over petcoke storage, Chicago Sun-Times

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Fed-up Chicago residents sue over petcoke ashheaps

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Who Was Vivian Maier? These Enigmatic Self-Portraits Only Add to the Mystery

Mother Jones

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If you open up Vivian Maier: Self-Portraits seeking answers as to who she was, prepare to be disappointed. Even when Maier turns the camera on herself, she doesn’t offer much.

In death, as in life, Maier left few clues about who she was, why she pursued photography, or what she was thinking. Four years after her death, and six years after the discovery of her photos (which author Alex Kotlowitz wrote about for Mother Jones), very little is known about her. She was born in New York in 1926, worked as a Nanny in Chicago, and died in 2009. She spent her life compulsively taking pictures. Most of those who knew her never even realized she was a photographer. Then again, she may not have considered herself a photographer.

May 5, 1955

With this book of Maier’s self-portraits, we hope for clues. We want to be a witness to her life. But we’re really just spectators, seeing only what she lets us—often just her shadow. Sometimes it’s almost like a game of Where’s Waldo: You need to find her in the frame, catching her reflection in the corner of a mirror that’s secondary to an otherwise great street photo. She is usually alone or with children. Rarely smiles. Mostly out in the world, on the street, experimenting with reflections, composition, shadows and shapes. We get more questions than answers.

The book, compiled by filmmaker and street photographer John Maloof, who first discovered Maiers’ work in 2007 while researching a book on the history of a neighborhood in Chicago, contains 60 never-before-published images. Most are black and white, shot with a medium format camera. However, in the ’70s and beyond, we see Maier more in color, shot on 35mm film. In the later work we see an aging Maier, generally even more alone than in earlier photos.

June 1978, Chicago area

It’s tempting to approach the book with a modern sensibility of the self-portrait, thinking of these as Maier’s selfies. That would be a mistake. As Elizabeth Avedon puts it in her opening essay:

So often contemporary photography needs something…It demands an audience, requires funding. It needs someone to like it, share it or comment to it. Images today are not content to exist on their own, they constantly seek opinion and validation…Vivian Maier’s work is extraordinarily different in that it only needed to be made.

According to Maloof, Maier almost never showed her work. Most of it she never even saw herself. The pictures “only needed to be made.”

1956, Chicago area

Some people see a particular vanity in photographers’ self-portraits. But with Maier’s, it seems like a case of the photographer trying to figure out her subject. Given that she died with most of her film undeveloped and negatives unprinted, it’s a safe bet that she never found the answers she may have been searching for.

May 1978, Chicago area

Vivian Maier: Self-Portraits by Vivian Maier, edited by John Maloof, is available from powerHouse Books.

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Who Was Vivian Maier? These Enigmatic Self-Portraits Only Add to the Mystery

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The Environmental Impact of Eating Seafood

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The Environmental Impact of Eating Seafood

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Sea Turtles Are Nesting in Record Numbers

A green sea turtle. Photo: Roy Niswanger

We drove green sea turtles to the brink of extinction, by hunting them, collecting their eggs and killing them, accidentally, with fishing equipment. In 1978, says EarthSky, green sea turtles became protected under the Endangered Species Act, and it looks like those protections are bearing some benefit for the turtles. In the southeast United States, says the Fish and Wildlife Service, green sea turtles are nesting in record numbers:

“Green turtle nest numbers are through the roof,” says Bill Miller manager of Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge, FL., where a mid-August count of 1,147 more than doubled the 2011 record of 543. At Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge, FL, greens had built 10,420 nests by August 21, topping the 2011 record of 6,023. Nesting season won’t end until November.

Loggerheads are doing better, too, says the FWS, though their gains aren’t as dramatic as the green sea turtles. But just because there should be lots of baby sea turtles on the horizon, says the FWS, doesn’t mean the turtles are safe:

[H]ow long nesting gains will offset threats to sea turtle survival is unknown. Says Miller, “If we don’t do something about ocean debris, loss of habitat to erosion and sea level rise, and the pollution of lagoons and estuaries from runoff, nesting gains will be outweighed by environmental degradations.”

More from Smithsonian.com:

Captive Sea Turtles Extract Their Revenge by Making Tourists Sick
The ‘FlipperBot’ Is Almost as Cute as the Baby Sea Turtles It Mimics

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Sea Turtles Are Nesting in Record Numbers

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Hay contaminated with Monsanto GMOs rejected for export

Hay contaminated with Monsanto GMOs rejected for export

Shutterstock

Bad news for Washington farmers?

Pity a Washington farmer who grew a crop of GMO-free alfalfa only to have it rejected for export — because tests showed it had been tainted by a genetically modified variety.

An exporter found the farmer’s hay to have been contaminated with Roundup-resilient alfalfa, which was developed by Monsanto and approved for use by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2011. Farmers who grow the GMO alfalfa can douse their fields with the herbicide Roundup without hurting the crop.

Reuters reports:

GMO opponents have warned for more than a decade that, because alfalfa is a perennial crop largely pollinated by honeybees, it would be almost impossible to keep the genetically modified version from mixing with conventional alfalfa. Cross-fertilization could devastate conventional and organic growers’ businesses, they said.

But even though U.S. regulators have deemed biotech alfalfa to be as safe as non-GMO varieties, many foreign buyers will not accept the genetically modified type because of concerns about the health and environmental safety of such crops.

ACX Pacific — a major exporter of alfalfa and other grass hay off the Pacific Northwest to countries that include Japan, Korea, China and parts of the Middle East — will not accept any GMO because so many foreign buyers are so opposed to it.

And domestic organic dairy farmers have said that any contamination of the hay they feed their animals could hurt their sales.

“This is terribly serious,” said Washington state senator Maralyn Chase, a Democrat who fears alfalfa exports could be lost if it is proven that GMO alfalfa has mixed in with conventional supplies.

Washington’s agricultural sector will be holding its breath until Friday — and that’s not because of all the poisonous herbicides in the air. That’s when Washington state ag officials should be done with their own lab analysis of the farmer’s samples, which could confirm whether the crop was indeed tainted and possibly help identify the source of contamination.


Source
Exclusive: Washington state testing alfalfa for GMO contamination, Reuters

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Private Manning’s Next Battle: Gender Transition in Prison

Mother Jones

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Shortly after being sentenced to 35 years in a military prison for leaking classified information to WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning announced a decision to live as a woman and switch to the name Chelsea. Manning released a letter to the Today show Thursday morning that said, “As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female.” Manning requested being referred to with the feminine pronoun, except with official mail sent to her at Fort Leavenworth, the Kansas prison where she will serve her sentence.

Manning now faces some unknowns with gender transition, including what will likely be a difficult battle to receive hormone therapy, which she indicated in her statement she wants to begin as soon as possible. Officials from Fort Leavenworth confirmed they do not provide transgender inmates with treatment beyond psychiatric care.

Manning’s attorney, David Coombs, told Today he hopes Forth Leavenworth will decide to provide Manning with the hormone treatment; if not, Coombs said he will “do everything in his power to force them to do so.” Coombs did not provide details to Today about his plans for legal action, but during a press conference yesterday following Manning’s sentencing, he said he is “going to become the smartest person on ensuring that a soldier who is in confinement, who has gender dysphoria, gets appropriate medical treatment.”

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Private Manning’s Next Battle: Gender Transition in Prison

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A Tin Shed Turned Office & Studio

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A Tin Shed Turned Office & Studio

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5 Natural Ways to Ease Bug Bite Itching

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5 Natural Ways to Ease Bug Bite Itching

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Solar Power For Renters! 3

It’s practically a comprehended truth that in order to have solar energy in your home, you have to own your house. The installment of most panels calls for a permanent component to be placed on your roofing system. This has been a problem in the past as most tenants are not enabled or do not have the ability to install their very own panels. I am one of these boarders. I have been exploring solar power for a while, merely to see if it could be possible in my house and I found the excellent option!

Through my research I have actually discovered that a business called SpinRay Energy makes compact panels that do not need to be permanently fixed to your home! These panels are portable and connected to any kind of porch or deck. This is an ideal scenario as many tenants, featuring myself, might have to move usually and it would certainly not make good sense for them to put in permanent panels even if they were enabled to. A lot of homes likewise have some kind of a porch so, it goes without saying, I was really delighted regarding this opportunity!

When I considered this option further, I discovered that the panels that this company supplies link through the sites in your home without triggering any type of damages or adjustments to the electric device currently in position. This is also ideal for boarders. It is very important that these panels will not interfere with any of your house’s normal features that your property manager has actually already implemented. When you relocate and bring your panels with you, it will certainly look and function as if there were never even any sort of apparatus there!

Each of this being said, these compact panels are not capable of generating as much power as long-lasting panels. If you install five of them, you could rise to 1,000 watts of power. This may not suffice to power your whole residence, yet it will dramatically decrease your power costs and lower your ecological impact. Even if these panels do not offer all of your electric demands, they are the most effective choice for renters and modern technology is relocating the appropriate instructions!

These panels are not just good for your residence and your pocketbook, they are additionally so straightforward to put up that you can do it on your own! This concept is extremely attractive to tenants since the ease of install will certainly make it much easier to get and relocate if need be. These solar panels are the very best alternative for renewable energy for lessees. They are easy, portable, and will not make any type of final adjustments to your home! Even if you do not lease your house, these panels would certainly be a simple, reliable option.

Are you considering conserving money and the setting? Browse through build own solar panels installment today.

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