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The southern half of Keystone XL is now filling up with oil

The southern half of Keystone XL is now filling up with oil

Elizabeth Brossa

TransCanada had a nice little party last weekend.

The company has been battling for years to win the State Department’s blessing to build the Keystone XL pipeline over the Canadian border to help export tar-sands oil to American refineries. Meanwhile, it has been building the southern leg of that same pipeline from Oklahoma to Texas.

On Saturday, the company started filling that southern leg with the sticky, polluting, climate-changing fuel that it will carry cross-country to the Texan refineries — crude oil.

The achievement, which followed a problemplagued and deeply unpopular construction effort, was so momentous for the company that it noted the very minute of the event in its press materials: 10:04 a.m. Central Time.

From Fuel Fix:

The pipeline owner will need to fill the newly constructed line before it can begin delivering oil to refineries along the Gulf Coast, including those in Houston. TransCanada plans to fill the new pipeline system with about 3 million barrels of oil in the coming weeks, the company said. …

Although TransCanada is still waiting for approval to construct the northern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would connect with oil sands fields in Canada, the company has completed the $2.3 billion southern leg.

The line will be capable of bringing up to 700,000 barrels per day of oil to the Gulf Coast, providing more supplies of crude to refineries.

Still, it’ll be a few weeks before that oil actually gets to refineries. From Bloomberg:

The Calgary-based pipeline company estimates it will begin taking receipts and delivering oil in mid- to late January, a bulletin to shippers shows. …

“There are many moving parts to this process — completion of construction, testing, regulatory approvals, line fill and then the transition to operations,” [said a TransCanada spokesperson].

Let’s hope none of those moving parts include bits of the pipeline bursting out after a rupture. TransCanada already dug up and replaced many faulty sections of the pipeline, and anti-Keystone activists charge that the pipeline still contains numerous holes and flaws.


Source
Oil begins flowing through Keystone XL’s southern leg, Fuel Fix
TransCanada Keystone South Won’t Deliver Oil Before Mid-January, Bloomberg

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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The southern half of Keystone XL is now filling up with oil

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Washington State’s GMO Labeling Appears Headed for Defeat

Mother Jones

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Vote counts go slowly in Washington State, where ballots come in via mail and can be sent in as late as election day. But early returns suggest that—like its predecessor, California’s Prop. 37—Washington’s ballot initiative that would have required labeling of genetically modified food has been snuffed out under a fluffy pillow of cash from the agrichemical and food-processing industries.

As in California, the Washington initiative, known as I-522, polled strongly early and then swan-dived as the election approached amid a flurry of anti-labeling TV ads. Again, the anti forces outspent the pro forces by a wide margin; again, they promoted the trumped-up charge that labeling would dramatically ramp up food prices, which I debunked here. Here’s the money-in-politics group Maplight:

Maplight

You’ll note from that list that there are two distinct kinds of corporations that dumped cash into the effort to squash labeling in Washington: agrichemical/GMO seed companies (Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, BASF) and Big Food companies (Pepsi, Nestle, Coca Cola, etc.).

The agrichem firms are united in their zealous opposition to labeling. Their products dominate the corn, soybean, sugar beets, and cotton markets, and GMO versions of these crops suffuse the US food system, making up the great bulk of the sweeteners and fats that end up in processed food. They’d obviously prefer to keep that information off of labels, in fear that consumers might demand non-GMO versions of those products.

The Big Food firms, of course, buy those sweeteners and fats and turn them into highly processed foodstuffs. For them, labeling is inconvenient, but not a major threat. After all, they operate quite happily in Europe, where GMO ingredients are rare and labeling is mandatory. Even before the Washington fight, Big Food was ambivalent about continuing to fight labeling, as Tom Laskawy noted in January. Many of these companies have organic brands, and the cash they devoted to defeating labeling in California put them in a tight spot with fans of their organic lines.

They ended up coming out in force to fund the opposition to I-522, but not without making an awkward and ultimately failed attempt to hide their contributions by funneling them through a powerful trade group called the Grocery Manufacturers Association.

In a statement issued Wednesday, the GMA celebrated the likely defeat of labeling in Washington State but left the door open to supporting possible nation-wide labeling that would come from Washington, DC:

Because a 50-state patchwork of GMO labeling laws would be confusing and costly to consumers, GMA will advocate for a federal solution that will protect consumers by ensuring that the FDA, America’s leading food safety authority, sets national standards for the safety and labeling of products made with GMO ingredients.

National labeling? If Big Food does get behind it, it could conceivably happen.

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Washington State’s GMO Labeling Appears Headed for Defeat

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Watch: Rep. Jim Mc Govern Calls GOP Food Stamp Bill "Heartless"

Mother Jones

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Earlier today the House of Representatives approved a bill 217-210 that would cut funding for food stamps by nearly $40 billion over ten years. No Democrats voted for it and only 15 Republicans voted against it. If the measure were to become law, the Congressional Budget Office estimates, nearly 4 million Americans would lose their benefits in 2014. Massachusetts Democrat Jim McGovern voiced concern prior to the vote, calling out Republicans not only for the “heartless” bill itself, but the lack of hearings prior to the vote. Watch:

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Watch: Rep. Jim Mc Govern Calls GOP Food Stamp Bill "Heartless"

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Sally Jewell doesn’t want any climate deniers at Interior

Sally Jewell doesn’t want any climate deniers at Interior

BLM OregonSally Jewell.

Obama has staffed his second-term team with a couple of kickass women ready to take the lead on climate action. Two days after EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy called bullshit on the notion that environmental regulations kill jobs, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, in an address to her employees, made clear that she won’t tolerate any debunked theories, either. “I hope there are no climate change deniers in the Department of Interior,” she said.

E&E News reports:

If there are any [deniers], she invited them to visit public lands managed by the agency — be it the melting permafrost in Alaska or shrinking snowpacks in the Sierra Mountains — as proof. “If you don’t believe in it, come out into the resources,” she said.

Interior will be following through on President Obama’s climate change plan, including achieving 20 gigawatts of renewable power on public lands by 2020, she said.

“You and I can actually do something about it,” she said several times. “That’s a privilege, and I would argue it’s a moral imperative.”

Moreover, the former head of REI said the federal government is able to take action on climate change on a scale “orders of magnitude” larger than any individual business, even one as huge as Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Right-wingers flipped out over Jewell’s comments about employees who might not be conversant in basic scientific facts. Don’t be surprised if deniers start twisting her statement into a form of workplace discrimination. Globalwarming.org, a denier blog with the tagline “May Cooler Heads Prevail,” fumed:

Such moralizing would be funny were it not for the chilling effect it is bound to have in an agency already mired in group think. …

Ms. Jewel’s anti-’denier’ sermonizing is morally vacuous. It will, however, discourage candor and independent thought in an important and powerful agency.

Only a few months on the job and Jewell already behaves like a self-righteous bully. A good swift dose of congressional oversight is in order. It might just keep the thought police from harassing climate dissenters at DOI.

Just yesterday, Jewell’s bullying resulted in Interior’s first auction of offshore wind power rights. That’s $3.8 million for the federal government, and renewable power on its way to American ratepayers in as little as five years, in the first of many such auctions Interior plans to hold. If this is what self-righteous bullying looks like, bring it on.

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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Sally Jewell doesn’t want any climate deniers at Interior

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Calgary floods trigger an oil spill and a mass evacuation

Calgary floods trigger an oil spill and a mass evacuation

Epic floods forced more than 100,000 people to flee their homes last week in Calgary, Alberta, the tar-sands mining capital of Canada. More than seven inches of rain fell on the city over the course of 60 hours.

Now the floodwaters are subsiding throughout the province, leaving in their wake an oil spill, power outages, and questions about how climate change might affect flooding.

Keltek Trust

Soggy Calgary

Alberta Premier Alison Redford said the crisis was “like nothing that we’ve ever seen before,” the Calgary Herald reported Monday. “We will live with this forever.”

The heavy rains also appear to have shifted the earth beneath a pipeline near the city of Fort McMurray, triggering a leak of synthetic crude oil. On Monday, energy company Enbridge said a cleanup operation was underway in a wetlands area; initial estimates placed the size of the spill at 500 to 750 barrels. From Reuters:

The spill, which may have been caused by heavy flooding that has paralyzed the Alberta city of Calgary, headquarters of Canada’s oil and gas industry, forced Enbridge to shut two much larger lines as a precaution, threatening a serious disruption in the flow of oil sands crude.

So what role might climate change have played in flooding this hotspot of climate-changing oil extraction? From the Vancouver Observer:

[Environment Canada climate scientist David] Phillips said this storm was very unusual for Calgary, where systems tend to move on quickly:

“The storm just kind of stayed put,” Phillips said. … “[The storm] stood around like an unwanted houseguest and wouldn’t leave …”

“That kind of rainy weather may become frequent in the years to come as the earth’s climate warms up.”

From Climate Central:

A study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on June 9 found that flood frequency as well as the number of people at risk of inundation from flood events are both likely to increase as the world continues to warm.

The researchers didn’t study North America, but in a statement to Climate Central they said, “if the warming unfortunately proceeds, the flood risk on a global scale becomes larger.”

Ricky Leong

Calgary’s Bow River is running very high.

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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San Francisco and 10 other cities move toward dumping stocks in fossil-fuel companies

San Francisco and 10 other cities move toward dumping stocks in fossil-fuel companies

Shutterstock

/ Nickolay StanevSan Francisco had another bright idea.

Oil companies might be awfully profitable right now, but political leaders in San Francisco and 10 other U.S. cities want to dump their investments in them anyway.

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors voted this week to urge the city’s investment fund managers to sell off more than $583 million worth of shares in Chevron, ExxonMobil, and some 200 other fossil-fuel companies. This makes San Francisco the biggest city to join the divestment campaign being pushed by 350.org, which began with a focus on colleges and universities. Seattle was the first city to join the campaign; its mayor got on board late last year. Divestment might still be months or years off, if it happens at all, but civic leaders calling for action is a critical first step.

Other cities where leaders have taken moves toward dumping their dirty stocks: Boulder, Colo.; Eugene, Ore.; Ithaca, N.Y.; Madison and Bayfield, Wis.; Sante Fe, N.M.; State College, Pa.; and Berkeley and Richmond, Calif., both in the San Francisco Bay area. Activists in 100 more cities have started circulating petitions calling on their leaders to divest, 350.org says.

Richmond is an interesting example: It’s home to a nearly 3,000-acre Chevron oil refinery, so its residents know firsthand about the evils of the oil industry. Not only does the refinery sicken its neighbors — with an extreme example coming last year when a huge explosion blackened the air and sent 15,000 people to the hospital — but Chevron is suing Contra Costa County, claiming it was overcharged tens of millions of dollars in property taxes. (And this is a company that made $26 billion in profits last year.)

When it comes to fighting climate change, cities are often described as being at the front lines of the battle. Many stepped up and took action even when George W. Bush’s administration was trying to stymie progress. Beyond its call for divestment, San Francisco is trying to reduce demand for fossil fuels by, for example, sponsoring a program that helps residents buy solar panels and trying to create a green electricity program to compete against investor-owned utility PG&E.

Keep it coming, cities. The municipal fossil-fuel divestment trend is just another example of local activism that could collectively have an international impact.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie 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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Koch brothers want to buy L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune, six other papers

Koch brothers want to buy L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune, six other papers

Charles and David Koch, aka the

Kochtopus

.

Charles and David Koch — the billionaire oil-baron brothers who’ve poured mega-millions into climate denial and right-wing causes and candidates — are looking to get into the media business. Watch out.

From The New York Times:

Koch Industries, the sprawling private company of which Charles G. Koch serves as chairman and chief executive, is exploring a bid to buy the Tribune Company’s eight regional newspapers, including The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Orlando Sentinel and The Hartford Courant.

By early May, the Tribune Company is expected to send financial data to serious suitors in what will be among the largest sales of newspapers by circulation in the country. Koch Industries is among those interested, said several people with direct knowledge of the sale who spoke on the condition they not be named. …

The papers, valued at roughly $623 million, would be a financially diminutive deal for Koch Industries, the energy and manufacturing conglomerate based in Wichita, Kan., with annual revenue of about $115 billion.

Politically, however, the papers could serve as a broader platform for the Kochs’ laissez-faire ideas. The Los Angeles Times is the fourth-largest paper in the country, and The Tribune is No. 9, and others are in several battleground states, including two of the largest newspapers in Florida, The Orlando Sentinel and The Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale. A deal could include Hoy, the second-largest Spanish-language daily newspaper, which speaks to the pivotal Hispanic demographic.

Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on

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While West, Texas, Burned, Its Famous Czech Bakery Kept the Kolaches Coming

Mother Jones

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There’s a Czech bakery, deli, and gas station combo in tiny West, Texas that’s world-famous for serving up fruit kolaches and hot chubbies to locals and tourists driving on I-35 between Dallas and Austin, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for the last 29 years. Last night was no exception. In the wake of the massive explosion and fire that rocked a fertilizer plant just three miles down the road, Czech Stop kept its doors open—and the kolaches coming—almost without interruption.

“I rushed up there after it happened because one of my employees said the ceiling was falling in,” says Barbara Schissler, president of the Czech Stop empire, who’s worked there since it opened in 1983. “One of our freelance carpenters recommended that we close the doors, but when I showed up, I saw only the ceiling tiles were buckling, so I reopened. The only thing we did was cut the gas pumps, because we were expecting another blast.”

When the plant exploded at 8 p.m., there were about seven employees on shift. Fifteen minutes later, fire trucks and police cars started rushing down the street to the site of the accident. Not long after, injured victims started walked in.

“Two women in a truck stopped by. One’s leg was bandaged and bulging, and she had a few cuts on her arms and legs,” says Schissler. “I don’t know why they decided to stop here first. When you’re in shock, you’re not always thinking. We did whatever we could to make them feel comfortable, gave them ice water.” Several more people with cuts and bruises stopped by through the night, but Schissler said her usual customers were missing. “All the bakery regulars were out there on the scene, helping out.”

In the morning, Czech Stop was ready to help first responders who stopped by, donating cases of water and handing out free food and drink. The store is also planning on donating baked goods to the Red Cross.

Like many local bars, diners, and coffee shops in many other towns rocked by calamity, Czech Stop has transformed virtually overnight into a hub of refuge. After December’s school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, the owners of Blue Colony Diner fed hundreds of volunteers, policemen, firefighters, and first responders, earning the nickname “The Food Angels.” The morning after Hurricane Sandy struck, David T. Holmes III turned It’s a Wrap, his lunch cafe in Plainfield, New Jersey into a relief station for 10 days, offering victims free coffee, soup, power, and a place to sleep. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Joann Guidos kept Kajun’s Pub open so that “the lonely and broke would not endure the ordeal alone.” Homeowners fleeing the deadly June 2012 wildfires in Colorado congregated at Bob’s Coffee Shop in Laporte, to figure out, over danishes, where the megafire was headed next.

A Jalopnik writer from Texas says when he first heard about the West Fertilizer explosion, his first thought was whether anyone was hurt. His second thought was whether the Czech Stop was ok. “It’s no surprise that, when I turned on the local news last night, the news producers had thought to call the Czech Stop and put an employee on the air,” he wrote. “It’s what everyone knows.”

This tiny community of around 3,000 boasts a remarkably vibrant and long-standing Czech heritage. In 1859, a popular Czech reverend immigrated to Galveston to minister to German protestants, and many of his compatriots followed. By 1990, almost 300,000 Texans claimed some Czech ancestry according to the Texas State Historical Association, seeding this part of Texas with Eastern European languages, cultures, and cuisines. “Most notably, the Czech pastry ‘kolache’ (pronounced koh-law-chee) is still served today in restaurants and rest stops from Columbus near Houston all the way up to West,” says Jalopnik’s Hardigree. “It’s a soft, sweet dough filled with some fruit, cheese, chocolate or some mixture of all of those. It’s fantastic.”

A box of kolaches. Kent Wang/Flickr

Czech Stop has been a fixture in town since it was opened in 1983 by Bill Polk, a former marine who bought the shop from a national chain and took it over with one employee, a small menu of sausage kolache, and a handful of fruit and poppy seed pastries. Its got lots of Czech neighbors in town. There’s Picha’s Czech-American Restaurant, known for its sausages and kraut. You can pick up a kroje at Maggie’s Fabric Patch, a dress traditionally worn by Czechs and Slovaks at communions, weddings, and funerals. A Czech-language radio station broadcast from here until just a few years ago. West is also home to a branch of Sokol, a Czech organization that started in Ennis, Texas with a mission to help young community members become leaders through the practice of gymnastics.

Today some 75 percent of the town can claim some Czech origin according to Radio Praha, the Czech Republic’s state radio station. Today, the Czech Ambassador to the US is scheduled to visit West in a show of support and solidarity. “The Czech authorities and the media are closely watching the latest news from this little outpost of Czech life in Texas,” writes Radio Praha reporter Rob Cameron. West’s mayor Tommy Muska agrees. “It’s a lovely little town. Everybody’s got a Czech last name it seems,” he said. (Muska’s Czech, too.) Author and journalist Brendan McNally, who grew up in Dallas but now lives in PelhÅ&#153;imov with his family, tells Radio Praha that Czech Stop’s kolaches put West on the map.

Last night’s tragedy has hit close to home in more ways than one: The bakery’s office manager lived three blocks away from the fertilizer plant, and lost her house to the explosion. But Schissler and her crew plan to keep serving up kolaches and coffee 24 hours a day, business as usual. “We’ve never seen anything like this, but we’ve never closed a single day in 29 years,” Schissler says. “You bet we’re staying open.”

Kent Wang/Flickr

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While West, Texas, Burned, Its Famous Czech Bakery Kept the Kolaches Coming

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No, You Can’t Officially Rename a Planet. But No One Can Stop You From Trying

An artist’s rendition of Gliese 581 g, a potentially habitable exoplanet with a decidedly boring name. Photo: NASA / Lynette Cook

The Kepler spacecraft is hunting down planets outside our solar system at a rapid clip. The total number of confirmed exoplanets is now at a whopping 861 and there are 2,903 more potential exoplanet candidates waiting in the wings. Space, it seems, is less of an empty void with each passing day.

The pace of discovery and the uncertainty in each finding—with exoplanets first being considered “candidates” before moving to full-fledged “discovered” status with subsequent observations—means that exoplanets are often given unwieldy placeholder names. Gliese 667Cc, for example, is the second planet around the third star in the Gliese 667 system. Gliese 581 g is the 6th planet around the star Gliese 581. But as useful as these names are for astronomers—more road map than moniker—they don’t exactly roll off the tongue.

A new organization—Uwingu–wants to fix this little dilemma. They’re offering a platform for you to suggest and vote on new planetary names. Their general goal is not to assign a specific name to a specific planet, but rather to tabulate a ready-made list from which astronomers can draw. They did, however, recently launch a contest to rename the planet Alpha Centauri Bb, the closest exoplanet to Earth. Drawing a wary eye from some, Uwingu wants you to back your votes with cash: one dollar, one vote.

Uwingu’s project to give exoplanets new names has drawn the ire of another group – the people who actually name exoplanets. The International Astronomical Union, says the CBC, wants to remind everyone that only they have the power to officially name extraplanetary bodies. Even if your exoplanet name of choice wins Uwingu’s contest, they say, it will have “no bearing on the official naming process.” Uwingu points out, however, that while the International Astronomical Union controls planets’ official names, they have no control over their common names. And, just because a name isn’t official doesn’t mean people won’t use it.

Back in October, The Weather Channel tried a similar trick when they unilaterally decided to start giving names to winter storms without first talking to the World Meteorological Organization or other large meteorological bodies. If you remember Winter Storm Nemo, thank The Weather Channel.

So while it may be true that you can’t vote your way to an official new planet name, the CBC adds that for many celestial objects their unofficial common name (say, the North Star) is used by many in place of the official name (Alpha Ursa minori).

Besides, says Phil Plait for his blog Bad Astronomy, the money being raised is going toward real science. Uwingu “will use the profits to fund scientific research. People will be able to submit proposals for the funding, which will be peer reviewed to ensure high-quality work. And it’s not just research: they hope to fund space-based projects, education, and other science-supporting ventures.”

Indeed, says Plait, even though only the IAU can make planet names official, the names on Uwingu’s list “will be seen by planetary astronomers, and eventually those planets are going to need names. Why not yours?”

More from Smithsonian.com:

Dennis Hope Thinks He Owns the Moon
What the Discovery of Hundreds of New Planets Means for Astronomy—and Philosophy
What if All 2,299 Exoplanets Orbited One Star?

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No, You Can’t Officially Rename a Planet. But No One Can Stop You From Trying

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CHARTS: Where Did the Money Donated to Columbine, Aurora, and Virginia Tech Mass-Shooting Victims Go?

Mother Jones

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Connecticut officials announced a couple weeks ago that they are asking the 69 charities publicly identified as raising money for victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown to explain how the money is being spent. The news arrived after dozens of families affected by other mass tragedies, like Columbine and Virginia Tech, urged the Sandy Hook charities to give the money directly to victims, arguing that in the past, money hasn’t been distributed effectively. Families are also petitioning the White House to establish a national fund so in the future, 100 percent of the money raised in the aftermath of mass shootings goes directly to victims. The local foundation in charge of most of the Sandy Hook donations (around $11 million) is still meeting with families and members of the community, and hasn’t yet distributed any of the money.

Mother Jones looked at the biggest charities set up for victims of mass shootings at Columbine High School in 1999, Virginia Tech in 2007, and a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, in 2012. We found that donations can be slow-moving and are not necessarily sufficient to cover victims’ medical costs, but the majority of money given to the largest charities in the wake of a mass shooting does eventually make its way to victims and their families, instead of alternatives such as violence prevention, mental-health services, or memorials.

Charities to support specific individuals (as well as an untold number of phishing scams) often spring up in the wake of mass shootings, but in each of the shootings we studied, one charity managed a large bulk of the total contributions. After Columbine, for example, over $6 million was donated to 30 charities, but the Healing Fund, organized by Mile High United Way in collaboration with the McCormick Tribune Foundation, took in about $4.5 million of that total. In the case of Virginia Tech, donations were spontaneously sent to the university, which was authorized through executive order to distribute the funds. And after the Aurora theater shooting, the Community First Foundation took in the vast majority of the donations. These are the organizations we looked at.

At least $15 million has been raised for victims of Newtown, but most of the money, almost $11 million, has been raised by United Way of Western Connecticut, which passed control of the money to the Newtown-Sandy Hook Community Foundation, which has local Newtown residents on its board. Patrick Kinney, a spokesman for the branch, tells Mother Jones that the funds “will not be limited to families of the 26 deceased adults and children” or spent only on health care costs. Instead a board will work with the community to distribute funds to “those most profoundly affected by the tragedy, such as families, survivors, teachers, and first responders,” in both the short and long term. The foundation did not accept designated funds.

Addressing why funds haven’t been distributed yet, Kinney doesn’t give a date, but says, “I’m not trying to be weasely; it’s everyone’s priority to have this process move as fast as possible.” Another smaller fund, My Sandy Hook Family, has already started sending checks to families.

Claudette Carveth, spokesperson for the Department of Consumer Protection in Connecticut, tells Mother Jones that she doesn’t have any information on how United Way and other charities have been distributing money, but the charities are expected to respond by April 12.

“This is not an audit. This is about transparency—providing information that is not otherwise available to the public,” says Susan Kinsman, spokesperson for the Connecticut Office of the Attorney General. “We are unaware of any misdirected money or sham charities at this point.”

In the aftermath of mass shootings, victims and their families have criticized the response time of donations, the difficulty of proving “hardship,” and how the money was distributed, arguing that it shouldn’t necessarily go to nonprofits that don’t directly assist victims. After the Aurora shooting that took place in July, for example, the Community First Foundation, which collected about $5.8 million in funds, initially only distributed $5,000 to each family through the Colorado Organization for Victim Assistance (COVA). The fund didn’t distribute the remaining funds until November.

Sandra Miniutti, vice president of marketing and CFO for Charity Navigator, which evaluates charities across the United States, agrees that the process isn’t perfect, because “victims shouldn’t have to wait so long to receive assistance that donors intended for them to have.” But she points out that there is a place for charities in the donation process, “if for no other reason than giving to a charity provides the donor a tax-deduction and greater transparency and accountability in how the donation is spent. Giving directly to someone has a much greater potential to turn out to be a scam.”

The donation process at Virginia Tech also illustrates how complicated charity laws can be: Michael Pohle, whose son was killed at Virginia Tech, told the Denver Post that the shooting created a $100 million “windfall” for the university, and only about $10 million of that actually went to victims, or designated memorial funds. But Larry Hincker, a spokesman for the university, tells Mother Jones that the shooting happened in the middle of a major fundraising campaign, and the money was largely designated by donors to go to building construction, scholarships, or other program funds. “We couldn’t have easily distributed the money to those injured…the law doesn’t allow for that and donors designate their gifts.” He also maintains that the shooting had “no causal effect on our institutional fundraising.”

Mass shootings can be a devastating financial blow to victims and their families, especially if they don’t have health insurance. Dr. Adil Haider, the codirector of the Center for Surgery Trials and Outcomes Research at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, tells Mother Jones that “if a person has insurance—it will mostly likely cover everything apart from the deductible.” But, he adds, “unfortunately, most of the patients we see do not have insurance.” If a victim is paralyzed by a gunshot wound, costs could easily surpass $1 million—although a patient could be eligible for Medicaid or disability at that point. The chart below shows the biggest amounts of money awarded to families of deceased or severely injured victims, but it’s not representative of the amount of money most patients receive: In Virginia Tech and Columbine, the most commonly awarded amount was $11,500 and $10,000, respectively, and payment amounts are often distributed based on number of nights spent in the hospital (after Aurora, victims who spent fewer than seven days in the hospital received $35,000).

“How much should people donate? As much as they can,” Haider says. Miniutti recommends that you give with your head, not just your heart. “Take the time to find the charity that is committed to providing the assistance that you want to fund—that could be helping the victims financially, preventing future gun violence, or providing funding for the mental-health issues that will develop overtime,” she says. “Make sure the charity is transparent.”

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CHARTS: Where Did the Money Donated to Columbine, Aurora, and Virginia Tech Mass-Shooting Victims Go?

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