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You shall not pass.
Plans for two Oregon coal-export terminals have gone up in smoke in the last two months. That makes for a total of three scrapped terminals in the Pacific Northwest, after a proposed facility in Grays Harbor, Wash., bit the coal dust last year. Three others in the region remain in the works, but they face many of the same challenges — permitting and zoning issues, stalled negotiations, and delayed environmental reviews, not to mention fierce public opposition.
A spokesperson for Kinder Morgan, which announced Wednesday it was abandoning plans for a coal-export terminal at Oregon’s Port of St. Helens, “blamed site logistics for stopping the project, not the intense controversy over exporting coal from the green Northwest,” reports The Oregonian. He said Kinder Morgan would continue to explore options for a West Coast terminal.
The abrupt announcement came barely a month after the Port of Coos Bay ended negotiations with a California company looking to build a terminal there. There’s a chance the port could consider coal-export options with other companies, but the expensive rail improvements any project would require make a coal deal unlikely, said David Petrie, founder of Coos Waterkeeper.
Meanwhile, as options for shipping coal dwindle, the supply side has its own struggles. A deal to give Australian company Ambre Energy full control of a mine in Decker, Mont., has stalled amid reports of Ambre’s financial instability, and after the mine laid off 59 people — a third of its workforce — in December. The Associated Press reports:
Ambre has been seeking to ramp up production from the once-bustling mine, and ship coal to growing Asian markets through a pair of proposed ports along the Columbia River.
But the company faces stiff opposition in Oregon and Washington state, and critics have questioned whether Ambre has the financial wherewithal to see its ambitious plans to fruition.
And speaking of setbacks, the state of Oregon has delayed permits for a transfer station at the Port of Morrow — one of the three still-viable proposed terminals — where Powder River Basin coal would arrive by train, be loaded onto barges, and be shipped down the Columbia River. The state will give Ambre Energy until Sept. 1 to put together more information about the terminal’s potential impacts.
As for the other two proposed coal-export sites in the Northwest? Officials are still deciding what to cover in their environmental review of the Cherry Point terminal in Bellingham, Wash. (prompting one scientist to go rogue with his own crowdfunded investigation). The results won’t be out until 2014 or 2015. And the review process for the final proposed terminal, in Longview, Wash., lags behind by another year.
Meanwhile, China — the supposed market for all this coal — continues to boost renewable energy production and gradually wean itself off coal. If any of these terminals do finally start operating, will China even want our dirty coal anymore?
Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.
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Flooding at the Public Museum in Grand Rapids, Mich.
The good news: Heavy rainfall across the Midwest has helped ease a widespread drought.
The bad news: Rainfall has been so heavy that drought has been replaced by flooding
The scary news: The cycle of flood-drought-flood that has ravaged the Midwest over the past two years is the type of cycle that climate change is expected to bring to the region, and it could become the new normal.
Heavy river flooding in six Midwestern states that forced evacuations, shut down bridges, swamped homes and caused at least three deaths was at or near crest in some areas Sunday evening.
Rivers surged from the Quad Cities to St. Louis Sunday, with water levels reaching record heights. Hours earlier, National Guardsmen, volunteers, homeowners and jail inmates pitched in with sandbagging to hold back floodwaters that closed roads in Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Rain last week started the whole mess, causing the Mississippi and many other rivers to surge in Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana. Flooding has now been blamed in three deaths — two at the same spot in Indiana and one in Missouri. In all three cases, vehicles were swept off the road in flash floods.
Spots south of St. Louis aren’t expected to crest until late this week, and significant flooding is possible in places like Ste. Genevieve, Mo., Cape Girardeau, Mo., and Cairo, Ill.
Adding to concern is the forecast. National Weather Service meteorologist Julie Phillipson said an inch of rain is likely in many places Monday night into Tuesday, some places could receive more than that.
“That’s not what we want to see when we have this kind of flooding, that’s for sure,” Phillipson said.
The flooding of the Mississippi River is quite the contrast to the situation just a few months back, when low water levels were threatening the barge industry. But it resembles the flood of spring in 2011. From Weather Underground:
Residents along the Mississippi River have experienced a severe case of flood-drought-flood weather whiplash over the past two years. The Mississippi reached its highest level on record at New Madrid, Missouri on May 6, 2011, when the river crested at 48.35′. Flooding on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers that year cost an estimated $5 billion. The next year, after the great drought of 2012, the river had fallen by over 53′ to an all time record low of -5.32′ on August 30, 2012. Damage from the great drought is conservatively estimated at $35 billion. Next Tuesday, the river is expected to be at flood stage again in New Madrid, 40′ higher than the August 2012 record low. Now, that is some serious weather whiplash. …
The new normal in the coming decades is going to be more and more extreme flood-drought-flood cycles like we are seeing now in the Midwest, and this sort of weather whiplash is going to be an increasingly severe pain in the neck for society. We’d better prepare for it, by building a more flood-resistant infrastructure and developing more drought-resistant grains, for example. And if we continue to allow heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide continue to build up in the atmosphere at the current near-record pace, no amount of adaptation can prevent increasingly more violent cases of weather whiplash from being a serious threat to the global economy and the well-being of billions of people.
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Nonprofit news site InsideClimate has done killer work reporting on the dangers of tar-sands pipelines, work that’s gotten far too little recognition — until now. On Monday, three reporters at the organization were honored with a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on national affairs. The Pulitzer site notes that the prize was awarded to …
Lisa Song, Elizabeth McGowan and David Hasemyer of InsideClimate News, Brooklyn, N.Y., for their rigorous reports on flawed regulation of the nation’s oil pipelines, focusing on potential ecological dangers posed by diluted bitumen (or “dilbit”), a controversial form of oil.
The trio took top honors in the category for their work on “The Dilbit Disaster: Inside the Biggest Oil Spill You’ve Never Heard Of,” a project that began with a seven-month investigation into the million-gallon spill of Canadian tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River in 2010. It broadened into an examination of national pipeline safety issues, and how unprepared the nation is for the impending flood of imports of a more corrosive and more dangerous form of oil.
Speaking of unprepared:
The recent ExxonMobil pipeline spill in Arkansas, which also involved heavy Canadian crude oil, underscores the continuing relevance of this ongoing body of work, as the White House struggles with reaching a decision on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.
You can read the prizewinning series on the InsideClimate site, or get it as an e-book, or read Grist’s handy summary. And then follow InsideClimate every day. They do nonprofit green news sites proud!
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InsideClimate wins Pulitzer for reporting on tar-sands spill
This computer game lets players connect with their inner pipeline-loving capitalists.
You can now tap into your inner evil capitalist and lay virtual oil pipelines through meadows and fields while trying to avoid conflicts with virtual farmers and virtual environmentalists. Sounds like fun, right?
Well, not according to a number of government officials in Canada, where the game has been kicking up controversy since its release last month. Their big complaint is that the game includes pipeline bombings. From CBC News:
[W]hen the game play gets too heated, a level is sometimes ended with the bombing of the imaginary pipeline, which brings to mind several unsolved bombings that took place in B.C. in 2008 and 2009.
Oh, and they’re also not happy that the game was developed with taxpayer funds. From CTV News:
The game, called “Pipe Trouble,” was released by TV Ontario, the province’s public broadcaster. …
The game is described on a TVO blog as a “companion ethical game” to a documentary called “Trouble in the Peace,” which addresses local opposition to pipelines and the bombing of pipelines in Peace River, B.C.
A virtual farmer issues a virtual warning.
In Pipe Trouble, you race against a clock to clear plots of land and connect pieces of oil-carrying pipeline to earn money. Lay a pipeline too close to wildlife or livestock and the animals flee. Bulldoze a tree and a protest ensues. Piss off a farmer and you’re in real trouble.
TVO has removed the game from its website while it is being independently reviewed.
More from CBC News:
Alberta Premier Alison Redford said it is disappointing for a taxpayer-funded game to depict the blowing up of pipelines, and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne said she’s looking into the matter.
B.C. premier Christy Clark said there is no place for positions that advocate violence.
“In British Columbia, we have a long history of strong, vigorous debate on issues and it is always done in a respectful way,” she said.
“There is no place in debate for positions that advocate violence and it is disappointing this video would even suggest that approach is appropriate.”
According to the Canuck killjoys, the only real fun begins when you remove “virtual” from the scenario and start moving around actual bitumen that causes actual environmental catastrophes and makes actual evil capitalists richer.
Just wait ’til these boring old spoilsports learn what happens in Grand Theft Auto. Hooboy, once they find out about the computer games that kids are actually playing these days, their heads will explode like a tar-sands oil pipeline passing through a quiet Arkansas neighborhood.
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Canadian officials in uproar over pipeline video game, not over actual pipelines
These crunchy yuppies sure look happy with their Crosstrek Hybrid.
Just 16 years after Toyota first started selling the Prius, Subaru has unveiled its own hybrid.
Subaru is coming out with a gas-electric hybrid crossover SUV for the crunchy-granola crowd that wants to save fuel but still haul kayaks to the river.
The Japanese brand, which specializes in all-wheel-drive vehicles, unveiled the 2014 XV Crosstrek Hybrid on Thursday at the New York International Auto Show.
The company’s first gas-electric hybrid gets somewhat better gas mileage than the conventional Crosstrek and has stop-start technology that shuts down the engine at red lights to save fuel. It has all wheel drive and the same 8.7-inch ground clearance so it can go on trails. …
Subaru expects 28 mpg in the city and 34 mpg on the highway. That’s 3 mpg better in the city than the gas version with an automatic transmission, but only 1 mpg better on the highway.
Prices will be announced closer to the car’s arrival at dealerships this fall.
Wired reports that the Crosstrek Hybrid “stands to be the most fuel-efficient, low-emission, all-wheel-drive hybrid crossover in the United States.”
Therefore: “Urban hipsters and Portlanders, rejoice.”
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The Chinese are pissed, and if I were them I would be too.
One week after local residents first spotted them by a water treatment center, Chinese officials are still fishing dead pigs out of the Huangpu river. To date, they’ve used a dozen barges to pull 5,916 pigs out of the water. The pigs are believed to have originated from upriver farms after a series of investigations revealed illegal trade of meat harvested from diseased pigs. But don’t worry, the government says: The water’s fine!
While the cause of the incident is still under investigation, water quality tests along the river have identified traces of porcine circovirus, a virus that can affect pigs but not humans. …
China’s toxic smog, rubbish-strewn rivers and contaminated soil have emerged as a source of widespread anger over the past few weeks, as profit-minded officials jostle with aggrieved internet users over how to balance the country’s economic development with its environmental concerns.
Experts say the groundwater in half of all Chinese cities is contaminated, most of it severely, and that soil pollution could be widespread in 15 of the country’s 33 provinces.
If China’s trying to go green and quell community anxiety and anger over environmental pollution, it best get all those pigs out of the drink right quick.
This certainly puts U.S. factory farm pollution in perspective! But whether or not this should be a wake-up call for China doesn’t mean the country will actually take the incident to heart. This was day eight of “pig-gate,” but, well, so what? From Bloomberg:
There are worse things than learning, as the residents of Shanghai did this week, that the source of the water for your morning shower and tea was contaminated by at least 5,916 dead pigs. You might find out that lamb you ate for dinner was duck soaked in toxic chemicals. That those dumplings you had as a late-night snack were fried in oil recovered from a gutter running beside an open sewer. Or worse yet, that the baby formula you’ve fed your newborn is laced with a plasticizer that damages kidneys.
For Shanghai’s 20 million residents, and indeed for China’s entire population, these recurring food-safety nightmares form the backdrop to their daily lives.
Like I said: If I were the Chinese, I’d be pissed.
Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for
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River full of dead, diseased pigs is just another food safety nightmare for China
A new, green future awaits the concrete drainage ditch that we know as the Los Angeles River. But it may have to wait for quite a while.
The Army Corps of Engineers, which originally poured all that concrete about 80 years ago (thanks for nothing, dudes), is teaming up with city engineers on a $10 million study of the potential for restoring the river’s ecosystem, creating wetlands for animals and hang-outs for people. From The Wall Street Journal:
The study examines an 11-mile stretch of the river on the city’s east side, where some resilient plants have survived in a narrow, muddy strip of so-called soft bottom at the center of the channel.
Efforts to manipulate the river’s concrete form without losing its flood-control function will be a “delicate balancing act,” said Josephine Axt, the Corps’ local planning chief who is leading the study, known as Alternative with Restoration Benefits and Opportunities for Revitalization, or Arbor.
It’s like “setting the table,” said Omar Brownson, executive director of the L.A. River Revitalization Corp., which coordinates economic-development projects along the river. “We’re creating a more attractive destination for investment.”
Yes, well, what’s a revitalized habitat without the business it attracts? I guess?
The Corps is expected to present the results of the study to the public in June. But that public might not take so kindly to the Corps and their master plans by then. Just last month, the Corps razed dozens of acres of the river’s wildlife habitat along the Sepulveda Basin, seriously pissed off the local water agency, violated the Clean Water Act, and potentially also violated endangered species protections.
State Sen. Kevin de León, one of several local officials who has demanded an explanation from the Corps, said the Sepulveda project “doesn’t bode well” for the future of efforts to revitalize the Los Angeles River’s natural landscape.
The Journal plays down the “Sepulveda incident” with this weird statement: “The federal interest, the public’s desires and a noticeable change in recent years in the way Los Angelenos view the river have cushioned the blow of the Sepulveda Basin shearing.”
If anything, the wetlands razing may just motivate the public to push the Army Corps harder to get this one right.
But even if the Corps cleans up its act, Los Angeles has a long way to go to clean up its river, which watchdog groups have found is periodically contaminated by mercury, arsenic, cyanide, lead, and fecal bacteria.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court ruled that L.A. area governments were not responsible for the polluted water that flows through storm drains and into the Los Angeles and nearby San Gabriel Rivers. But, fearing further litigation and fines (lead! fecal bacteria!), the county is looking at less painful ways to fund the clean-up. It is now considering an “ambitious” property tax to pay for pollution remediation, at about $54 per house, and up to $11,000 per big box store, per year. Not surprisingly, it is not terribly popular with the locals.
Without the cash to pay for the infrastructure to filter the water, these are going to be some dirty, dirty wetlands indeed.
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Los Angelenos may be fond of their cars, but they’re also fond of their diverse wildlife. That’s probably not what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was counting on when it unilaterally and without warning decided to clear-cut 43 acres of wildlife habitat on L.A.’s Sepulveda Basin.
Much of the area’s vegetation had been planted in the 1980s, part of an Army Corps project that turned that portion of the Los Angeles River flood plain into a designated wildlife preserve.
Tramping through the mud Friday, botanist Ellen Zunino — who was among hundreds of volunteers who planted willows, coyote brush, mule fat and elderberry trees in the area — was engulfed by anger, sadness and disbelief.
“I’m heartbroken. I was so proud of our work,” the 66-year-old said, taking a deep breath. “I don’t see any of the usual signs of preparation for a job like this, such as marked trees or colored flags,” Zunino added. “It seems haphazard and mean-spirited, almost as though someone was taking revenge on the habitat.”
In 2010, the preserve had been reclassified as a “vegetation management area” — with a new five-year mission of replacing trees and shrubs with native grasses to improve access for Army Corps staffers, increase public safety and discourage crime in an area plagued by sex-for-drugs encampments.
The Army Corps declared that an environmental impact report on the effort was not necessary because it would not significantly disturb wildlife and habitat.
By Friday, however, nearly all of the vegetation — native and non-native — had been removed. Decomposed granite trails, signs, stone structures and other improvements bought and installed with public money had been plowed under.
Since the razing, the Corps has posted many photos of happy birds in other parts of the basin habitat in an attempt to reassure the public, or at least the public that is aware of its Flickr page. The Corps said that “somehow” it “didn’t clearly communicate” its intentions to plow under the habitat. Is it any wonder that excuse didn’t go over so well with, well, anyone?
The state water agency, state senators, and city council members are demanding an explanation by Feb. 11, and a plan to remediate the newly crushed area. So far the Corps’ explanation has been, essentially, “Oops.” Char Miller at KCET is not having any of it:
Did the Corps believe that no one would care? Or that even if people came upon its hack job that the traumatized terrain would elicit no comment? Or did the agency simply decide to act as it so often has in the past with little regard to the environmental consequences, and the public be damned?…
It is impossible to imagine that the Corps’ construction of this sterile monoculture, so consistent with its concrete fixation, will ever come close to matching the rich biota that citizen-led restoration efforts have nurtured on and attracted to the site. Like a wolf peeing on its territorial boundaries, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, with bulldozer and chainsaw, has marked its turf, and the result has been a scandalous diminishing of nature and democracy.
Like a wolf peeing on its territorial boundaries. The Corps might’ve razed the land, but Miller’s raised standards when it comes to awesomely and appropriately rude similes to apply to the federal government.
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Libros
