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Why the EPA Can’t Manage To Block This Gnarly Herbicide

Mother Jones

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In the February 10 issue of the New Yorker, Rachel Aviv has an outstanding piece on Tyrone Hayes, the University of California-Berkeley biologist whose research found that atrazine, a widely used herbicide, caused extreme sexual-development problems in frogs at very low levels. Aviv’s article follows a superb Hayes profile by Dashka Slater published in Mother Jones in 2012. Aviv’s piece gives some key background on just why it’s so hard for the US Environmental Protection Agency to take action on chemicals like atrazine, which in addition to harming frogs, is also suspected of causing thyroid and ovarian cancers in people at low doses. Here’s the key bit regarding the EPA and its reliance on cost-benefit analyses to determine what chemicals the public can and cannot be exposed to:

In the U.S., lingering scientific questions justify delays in regulatory decisions. Since the mid-seventies, the E.P.A. has issued regulations restricting the use of only five industrial chemicals out of more than eighty thousand in the environment. Industries have a greater role in the American regulatory process—they may sue regulators if there are errors in the scientific record—and cost-benefit analyses are integral to decisions: a monetary value is assigned to disease, impairments, and shortened lives and weighed against the benefits of keeping a chemical in use. Lisa Heinzerling, the senior climate-policy counsel at the E.P.A. in 2009 and the associate administrator of the office of policy in 2009 and 2010, said that cost-benefit models appear “objective and neutral, a way to free ourselves from the chaos of politics.” But the complex algorithms “quietly condone a tremendous amount of risk.” She added that the influence of the Office of Management and Budget, which oversees major regulatory decisions, has deepened in recent years. “A rule will go through years of scientific reviews and cost-benefit analyses, and then at the final stage it doesn’t pass,” she said. “It has a terrible, demoralizing effect on the culture at the E.P.A.”

Hat tip: Kathleen Geier.

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Why the EPA Can’t Manage To Block This Gnarly Herbicide

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Coal plant accident spews coal ash into North Carolina river

Coal plant accident spews coal ash into North Carolina river

Duke Energy

The Dan River Steam Station during less spilly times.

Retiring a coal power plant in North Carolina wasn’t enough to prevent it from fucking up the environment.

Tens of thousands of tons of coal ash and tens of millions of gallons of polluted water have burst out of Duke Energy’s shuttered Dan River Steam Station, severely soiling the Dan River — a waterway popular with hikers, campers, fishing folks, and recreational boaters. The pollution can be seen miles downstream.

The power plant operated from 1949 until 2012, and the coal ash being stored on site was residue left behind after coal was burned. Coal ash contains poisonous heavy metals including arsenic, mercury, and lead. A state agency and environmentalists have been suing Duke in an effort to force it to clear out 14 such coal-ash dump sites across the state, including the one that just ruptured.

But Duke insisted that its dump sites were safe. Just last month, Duke spokeswoman Erin Culbert told the Asheville Citizen-Times that the utility was monitoring groundwater around its coal-ash storage sites to ensure that its neighbors are protected. She rejected environmentalists’ calls for the coal-ash ponds to be cleaned up. “[S]pecial interest groups rely on emotion, not facts, to advance their mission to phase out coal,” Culbert told the newspaper.

It gets worse.

“We are confident,” Duke’s general manager at the power plant told the EPA in a 2009 letter, “that each of our ash basin dams has the structural integrity necessary to protect the public and the environment.”

We sure hope it felt nice to be so confident about that.

Specifics on the spill are still hard to come by, but it appears that a 48-inch stormwater pipe burst at the power plant, releasing enough ash from a 27-acre storage pond to fill 20 or 30 Olympic-sized swimming pools. According to company estimates, 50,000 to 82,000 tons of ash flowed into the river, along with 24 million to 27 million gallons of tainted water.

The pipe gave way on Sunday, and the company is being criticized for waiting until Monday to tell anybody about the disaster.

Cue inevitable statements from environmentalists about Duke’s utter irresponsibility in allowing this disaster to happen. From the Charlotte Business Journal

“This is the latest, loudest alarm bell yet that Duke should not be storing coal ash in antiquated pits near our state’s waterways,” says Frank Holleman, an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center.

He noted that two South Carolina utilities have taken steps to remove coal ash from earthen ponds and called Duke “grossly negligent” for not doing the same.

It’s not like this is the first time such a disaster has happened. After more than a million gallons of coal-ash slurry escaped from a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in late 2008, the EPA vowed to craft new regulations to help prevent such disasters from happening again. We’re still waiting for those promised regulations.


Source
Coal ash spills into Dan River from closed Duke Energy plant, Charlotte Business Journal
Broken pipe spills coal ash in Dan River near Eden Read more here, The Associated Press
Groups seek to join Duke coal ash lawsuits, Asheville Citizen Times
Update on Dan River Steam Station ash basin release, Duke Energy

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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Coal plant accident spews coal ash into North Carolina river

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