Tag Archives: water

This Eco-Friendly Smartphone Charger Generates Electricity from Plants

by MartinaLorenzo Posted on June 21, 2016

Could you imagine a world where you only had to look for the nearest houseplant tocharge up your smartphone? Believe it or not, plant-based electronic charging could be a reality much sooner than you think, thanks to Bioo Lite a new piece of technology that uses USB charger to harnesses the energy produced by plants via photosynthesis.

The USB charger is attached to a biological battery system that sits in the bottom of the pot beneath the plant. Thanks to the magic of water and bacteria within the system, electricity can be generated in one of the greenest and most energy efficient ways possible. Simply use any USB smartphone cable to plug into the USB port, which is disguised as a rock and sits at the plant’s base to begin charging your device.

According to Barcelona-based Arkyne Technologies (the creators of the charging system), electricity is collected around the clock so you can power up your deviceday or night. Depending on the type of plant being used and how well you’re able to stick with maintaining it, a single potted plant can produce anywhere from 3 to 40 watts of power, allowing you to fully charge up your device 2 to 3 times every day.

The charger also has equal output to charging up your device via USB from a laptop or desktop computer, so you don’t have to worry about waiting around forever for it to be fully charged. All you have to do is keep watering your plant as needed and you can keep using the charger for years. Even if your plant ends up dying, you can always remove the system and use it with another plant.

Although different types of plants will generate power at different rates, any potted plant can be used with the charger. The creators only recommend against opting to usethe charger with a cactus. Cacti don’t need a lot of water!

Now you might be wondering, if the system is relying on the plantfor power, doesn’t that harm it in some way? Arkyne Technologies claim that the the system doesn’t force the plant to do or create anything else or anything more than what it already does naturally. The technology used by the system and the process itself doesn’t stress or damage the plant in any way.

So, would you be interested in getting one of your own? Well, it looks like you may have to wait at least another year or two. The Bioo Lite project was launchedon Indiegogo as a crowdfundingand just recently closed.

Backers who got in while it was open were able to reserve a Bioo charging system of their own for about $135.Production is scheduled to start in September to deliver the systems to backers first and the creators hope to push the system into the commercial market sometime in 2017.

There certainly seems to be a lot of skeptics, which isn’t surprising, but hey any innovative technology that encourages people to have more plants seems worth a try!

Related Articles
Exposure to Bright Light Might Impact Metabolism
5 Plant-Based Remedies to Soothe Aching Joints
6 Natural Alternatives to Toxic Toothpaste

Photo Credit: Arkyne Tech via YouTube

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Read this article: 

This Eco-Friendly Smartphone Charger Generates Electricity from Plants

Posted in alo, eco-friendly, FF, GE, green energy, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This Eco-Friendly Smartphone Charger Generates Electricity from Plants

777 days later, Congress hasn’t lifted a finger for Flint

by LizaPerkins744 Posted on June 10, 2016

777 days later, Congress hasn’t lifted a finger for Flint

By on Jun 10, 2016Share

It’s been 777 days since Michigan switched Flint’s water supply from Detroit to Flint River and residents began complaining that it looked, tasted, and smelled wrong; 478 days since a Flint resident informed the Environmental Protection Agency that her water contained high levels of lead; and 157 days since Republican Governor Rick Snyder declared a state of emergency.

The U.S. Congress still hasn’t passed any aid to help Flint, or for any of the other communities that could use it.

Senate Republicans on Thursday abandoned an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would allocate $1.9 billion for lead-free clean water infrastructure across the country and in Flint. Before this bill, the Senate didn’t add aid onto a comprehensive energy package because Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) blocked the amendment.

Not only does the water in Flint still contain lead — which leads to physical and developmental problems in adults and children — it could take up to eight years and more than $200 million to replace the damaged pipes that lead to the crisis. And the water in Flint isn’t just dangerous, it’s also expensive: A report by Food and Water Watch found that the annual water bill for a Flint household was about $910 as of January 2015. That’s compared to $315 in districts where water is a government utility and $500 in districts where water is provided by for-profit entities. Making this all the more chilling, Flint is one of the most impoverished cities in the nation.

More than 2,000 municipal water systems in all 50 states show elevated levels of lead, and yet, the U.S. Congress continues to ignore, to postpone, to deny funding to fix the problem. As John Oliver said, “Flint has become a city whose name is synonymous with disaster.” The same could be said of Congress.

Get Grist in your inbox

Continued:

777 days later, Congress hasn’t lifted a finger for Flint

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, solar, solar panels, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 777 days later, Congress hasn’t lifted a finger for Flint

New York City tries to end scourge of plastic bags. New York state says, “Nope.”

by FredericStonge Posted on June 8, 2016

New York City tries to end scourge of plastic bags. New York state says, “Nope.”

By on Jun 8, 2016Share

In May, New York City became the largest American city to tackle the plastic bag problem by narrowly passing legislation adding a 5 cent fee to each bag, both paper and plastic.

But, the New York Post reports, that law is hardly a done deal: The Republican-led New York Senate blocked the measure this week by passing legislation that prevents municipalities from imposing their own bag fees.

City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito quickly responded that she would work around the bill by changing the language for the bag fee and amending it to start next year.

But even city-wide support for the fee is mixed. Some, including Democrats in the state Senate, say it will disproportionately effect low-income and minority shoppers, although those buying groceries with government benefits would be exempt.

Others object to where the money is going — namely, the retailers themselves. “I was in Washington, D.C., when the bag fee happened, and you know what? It was to clean up the river,” Bertha Lewis, a social justice activist who opposes the measure told the New York Times. “These funds are being dedicated to the pockets of the retailers.” Lewis’ group, the Black Institute, collected signatures against the bill, and they were backed by plastic bag lobbying group the American Progressive Bag Alliance.

Plastic bags have long been a source of ire for environmentalists and litter-haters, and it’s easy to see why: As my colleague Ben Adler wrote, “When they’re not piling up in landfills, they’re blocking storm drains, littering streets, getting stuck in trees, and contaminating oceans, where fish, seabirds, and other marine animals eat them or get tangled up in them.”

There’s still the question of whether paper or reusable bags are really that much better for the environment. Plastic is undeniably bad, but the paper isn’t great either: A 2007 study found that the carbon footprint of paper is actually higher than that of plastic, mostly due to manufacturing and transportation. The same study noted that reusable cotton has problems of its own: A pound of cotton takes over 5,000 gallons of water to produce on average, and cotton isn’t recyclable in most places.

Clearly, the bag debate is far from over in New York and elsewhere. But we can be sure about one thing: While the environmental cost of any bag is high, it’s nothing compared to what you put in it.

Share

Get Grist in your inbox

Original post – 

New York City tries to end scourge of plastic bags. New York state says, “Nope.”

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, solar, solar panels, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on New York City tries to end scourge of plastic bags. New York state says, “Nope.”

Small-Town America Has a Serious Drinking-Water Problem

by GiaLhotsky1 Posted on June 6, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On a sweltering day last July, a team of scientists stood before a crowded room of people from the tiny town of Sanders, Arizona, and showed them a photo of a dilapidated wooden shack covered by hole-filled tarps. This, the scientists explained, was the town’s water source.

Tonya Baloo, a longtime resident and mother of two, did a double take. “It looked like a Third World country,” she says. “I was like, ‘Is this Africa?'”

The well serving Sanders residents Chris Shuey

The researchers’ next image—a chart with a flat red line cutting through yellow bars—was even more worrisome. Tommy Rock, a Ph.D. candidate studying water contamination at Northern Arizona University, explained that the red line was the Environmental Protection Agency’s threshold for uranium allowed in public water systems: 30 micrograms per liter. The yellow bars represented uranium levels in Sanders’ water supply dating back to 2003. They hovered around 50 micrograms per liter.

For more than a decade, the chart showed, people in Sanders had been drinking contaminated water.

Residents listened, dumbfounded. Sanders sits on the edge of the Navajo Nation; uranium mines, relics of the Cold War, have long dotted tribal lands across the West. Long-term exposure to the heavy metal can cause kidney disease and cancer. But locals had never been notified of the contamination. Nor were they aware of the nearly 200 drinking-water violations that the local utility had amassed over the previous decade, ranging from uranium and bacterial contamination to failure to test the water.

“The initial betrayal,” Baloo says. “It was shocking.”

The meeting happened two months before researchers in Flint, Michigan, revealed that their city’s water was laced with lead. In both cases, curious scientists exposed years of drinking-water violations that affected predominantly poor, minority communities. (Most Sanders residents are Navajo and live on less than $20,000 per year.) But unlike urban Flint, Sanders is home to just 630 people and consists of a cluster of single-family homes, a gas station, a dollar store, two churches, and a trading post—all surrounded by miles of red rock and sage brush.

An aerial view of Sanders, Arizona Doc Searls/Flickr/Wikimedia Commons

The town is one of thousands of rural communities across the country where water quality has quietly evaded federal health standards for years. Many small utilities simply cannot afford advanced water treatment technology, says Jeff Griffiths, the former head of the EPA’s drinking-water division. (An inspection of the Sanders well in 2012, for example, found that “the owner pours an unapproved bleach product down the casing vent daily as the method of disinfection.”) According to EPA data, roughly 6 million Americans use one of 2,300 public water systems that qualify as “serious violators”—defined as having multiple, continuous, or serious health or reporting problems. Ninety-nine percent of those utilities serve fewer than 50,000 people. Together, they serve a population 25 times the size of Flint.

A week after Rock’s presentation, Sanders residents received a notice in the mail from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) informing them of the high uranium levels in the local water supply—a first since the contamination was reported to the state in 2003. Long-term exposure can increase the risk of kidney disease and cancer, it said, but the situation wasn’t an emergency. “You do NOT need to seek an alternate (for example, bottled or hauled) water supply,” it read. “The water remains safe to use until treatment is put into place.”

DV.load(“https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2843723-ADEQ-Communication-With-AZ-Windsong-Customers.js”,
width: 630,
height: 500,
sidebar: false,
text: false,
container: “#DV-viewer-2843723-ADEQ-Communication-With-AZ-Windsong-Customers”
);

ADEQ-Communication-With-AZ-Windsong-Customers (PDF)

ADEQ-Communication-With-AZ-Windsong-Customers (Text)

Many residents, wary of the state’s assurances, avoided the water. Baloo brought her kids an hour away to her mom’s house for baths. Genevieve Lee, a 73-year-old retired teacher, resorted to eating canned food and taking sponge baths out of a bucket. She made 40-minute treks to Gallup, New Mexico, for water and often found herself wondering about the uranium’s impact. Did it contribute to her breast cancer in 2008? To her neighbor’s kidney disease?

Lee, Baloo, and others formed a water task force, petitioning for the town to connect to a nearby, well-maintained utility in the Navajo Nation. “All we think about is water,” Baloo told me this spring.

The hubbub led Sanders school system superintendent Dan Hute to test the schools’ water supply, which comes from a private well unaffiliated with Sanders’ water system; the water in Sanders elementary and middle schools was also contaminated. Hute tapped into school budgets to provide bottled water to roughly 500 students and 150 teachers. “I’ve gotten no help from anybody,” Hute told me earlier this spring. According to Rock, no local, state, or federal agency provided the town with bottled water or filters.

Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, utilities are required to notify their customers if water has contaminant levels above the EPA’s threshold. If they fail to do so, the law calls for the “primacy agency”—in Sanders’ case, the state—to intervene. After 30 days, the EPA steps in.

Though the policy sounds simple enough, the reality is far murkier. Dr. Bruce Macler, an EPA toxicologist who helped decide to tell Sanders residents that their water was safe, explains that when it comes to uranium, the feds have a standard in place. “It’s no joke,” he says. “That’s why we go after them if they exceed it. But it isn’t terribly worrisome if they’re a little over the level.” If the contaminant were an “acute toxicant”—say, giardia—being over the standard wouldn’t be tolerated, he explains. But “when you’re looking at something that takes a lifetime of exposure” to produce health effects and the benchmark is already conservative, Macler says, it doesn’t make sense to tell residents to use other water sources: “The stuff isn’t that risky.”

Many disagree. “It’s unbelievable to me that they would have such a cavalier, unconcerned attitude,” says Chris Shuey, a researcher at the Southwest Research and Information Center who studied Sanders’ water with Rock. “These people have been drinking this for years. It’s not a short-term exposure,” says Doug Brugge, a biologist at Tufts University who studies the impact of uranium. “I’m a little baffled by their lack of concern.” (An EPA spokeswoman says the agency was concerned about the contamination of Sanders’ water and was working on establishing an alternative source.)

State records show that over the past two decades, environmental regulators repeatedly approached the local utility’s owners, an elderly couple named Pat and Lillie Paulsell, about the poor water quality. (Pat maintained the well until his death in 2014, when Lillie took over the utility, Arizona Windsong Water Company. Lillie Paulsell declined to be interviewed for this article.) An inspection in 1995 found that Windsong wasn’t testing for bacterial or lead contamination. By 2002, the utility had risen to the top of the EPA’s “Significant Noncompliance” list due to a host of reporting and health problems. Yet, according to an ADEQ representative’s notes from that year, Pat Paulsell “continued to make no effort to comply other than to send me a package of analytical results, which I have not yet received.” In 2012, a state-commissioned water quality report noted live wiring on the floor of the well. Uranium contamination continued to be a “major problem.” In 2014, the utility paid a $1,000 penalty to the EPA for its violations—but the uranium levels continued to exceed federal standards.

The records also show that the Paulsells were struggling financially and unable to keep up with the growing number of required tests and treatment plans. “I don’t know what you mean by emergency operations plan. Also a microbiological sample plan,” Pat wrote to the ADEQ in 2001. “I have tried very hard to keep all samples done that are supposed to be done.” When an ADEQ representative asked if he had a copy of the rules for water utilities, Pat replied, “You people are always changing them!” In 2002, an inspector found that the couple’s “current health is poor.” Pat, 69, was using a wheelchair. In 2009, he faxed a handwritten letter along with water sample results. “It costs between $35 and $45 each month to send this water sample. The power bills have more than tripled in the last 3 years. I have worn out a ¾ ton new pickup just on the water co…I can’t continue to operate this co with this small income.”

“There are Sanders equivalents all over the country,” says Macler, the EPA toxicologist. “Small little communities that have limited ownership, no money, no resources.” Many, adds Griffiths, the former EPA drinking-water head, are unwilling to cooperate with state and federal regulators, which don’t have the financial capacity to force the matter. “We have a foolish system for how we deal with this stuff,” he says.

In early April, eight months after the state distributed a water advisory and more than a decade after the first reported uranium, Sanders residents got some good news: Arizona and the Navajo Nation agreed to let Sanders switch water sources to the nearby Navajo utility. Within the month, water from a new source was flowing through the old pipes, which will be replaced this summer.

“From my standpoint, this is more of a success than a failure,” Macler says. “Could it have been sooner? Yeah. Are we glad that it’s done? Yeah.”

“It’s a really big sigh of relief,” says Tonya Baloo, who’s now watering the trees in the yard and letting her kids bathe at home every once in a while. Her family still drinks from jugs of water she buys from Walmart. Maybe after the pipes are fixed, she says, they’ll once again start drinking from the taps.

More here: 

Small-Town America Has a Serious Drinking-Water Problem

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Small-Town America Has a Serious Drinking-Water Problem

New Data Proves Trump Is Completely Wrong About California’s Drought

by NoelKelsall Posted on June 3, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

California’s drought is far from over. Despite recent news that reservoirs are brimming in northern parts of the state, and a speech from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump denying the drought, the snowpack level is low and temperatures are high.

A June 1 report from California’s Department of Water Resources shows that current snow water equivalents—the amount of water contained in the state’s snowpacks—are at just 23 percent of the normal amount. Average temperatures in the state are still at record highs. “Runoff forecasts are below average,” agency spokesman Doug Carlson said in an email. “Despite the rain in the north and the relatively full reservoirs, things are still not looking good for the drought.”

California Department of Water Resources

Of course, none of this is great news for the impending fire season: Moisture from El Niño caused new grasses to sprout—which, when combined with dry trees, become a recipe for wildfires. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell told SF Gate on Tuesday that the relief brought by precipitation was temporary. “What we saw this spring is that snowpack has come down faster than we’ve seen,” he said.

Just five days before the snow water data was released, Trump suggested that environmentalists were inventing the water problems plaguing the state. He told supporters that when he asked farmers whether there was a drought, they said: “No, we have plenty of water.”

Source: 

New Data Proves Trump Is Completely Wrong About California’s Drought

Posted in FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Sprout, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on New Data Proves Trump Is Completely Wrong About California’s Drought

Here’s the real story behind Trump’s drought denial

by MikaylaBazile Posted on June 1, 2016

A little fishy

Here’s the real story behind Trump’s drought denial

By on Jun 1, 2016 10:09 amShare

Over the weekend, Donald Trump told voters in California, a state that is now suffering through its fifth year of drought, that “there is no drought.” Instead, Trump says, the state is suffering from harmful policies crafted by environmentalists. Or, in Trump-speak, “they’re taking the water and shoving it out to sea.”

A lot of outlets pilloried the remarks.  The Atlantic said they were “beneath contempt.” Slate called them “oblivious.”

But Trump has gotten far too much credit. He’s not being his usual creative self. He’s just repeating an argument that’s been popular among conservatives for years. Ex-Republican-darling Carly Fiorina made this same argument repeatedly during her brief presidential run, calling the California drought nothing more than a “man-made disaster.” Conservative media, including Fox News, National Review, and the Wall Street Journal, have long taken aim at environmentalists for exacerbating the drought.

Think of it as off-brand climate denialism. Drought deniers believe overzealous environmentalists got California into this mess. State and federal conservation laws call for a certain minimum level of freshwater to flow through the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta in Northern California, where two of the state’s largest rivers meet. Drought deniers say there’s an easy fix to the state’s water problems – take away those laws and divert more of that water to the agriculture industry.

The longstanding symbol at the center of this fight is the delta smelt, a three-inch-long fish protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Roughly half of the water that flows through the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta is supposed to be left to sustain the delta smelt and the broader environment, and the rest is to be divided for human uses like agriculture and household consumption. But that’s in a normal year; in recent drought years, California has already been making exceptions to regulatory safeguards. The U.S. House of Representatives is now considering a bill to amend the Endangered Species Act and allow even more water to be redirected to the dry Central Valley and Southern California. Even Senate Democrats are  considering a bill that would give the federal government more leeway to divert water for human use.

But as water from the delta makes its way out to the ocean, it doesn’t just nurture the delta smelt.  By supporting the whole ecosystem, it supports fishing industries as well. The health of the delta smelt population is a rough approximation of the health of the ecosystem and other species in it, including salmon, and right now that health is poor. Ironically, even the quality of human drinking water would be negatively affected by diverting more water from the delta for human use.

Letting farmers and other interests use as much water as they want wouldn’t begin to solve the larger problems posed by drought and climate change. It wouldn’t suddenly mean there is more snowpack and rain. It wouldn’t make California any less hot. In fact, this Band-Aid approach might only make California worse off in the decades to come, as megadroughts become a reality; if the state doesn’t figure out how to conserve water now, it will only have more problems down the road.

So it isn’t as simple as Trump promises: “If I win, believe me, we’re going to start opening up the water so that you can have your farmers survive.”

Trump and other drought deniers have another thing in common: They tend to ignore the role of climate change in making California’s drought more extreme, and reject climate science altogether. They are certain that the drought is man-made, but they’re still unconvinced that humans have caused climate change.

Share

Get Grist in your inbox

View article – 

Here’s the real story behind Trump’s drought denial

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, Paradise, solar, The Atlantic, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s the real story behind Trump’s drought denial

Duke Energy will have to clean up its filthy coal ash sites … eventually

by EfrenGDFDgoxeo Posted on May 19, 2016

Duke Energy will have to clean up its filthy coal ash sites … eventually

By on May 19, 2016Share

Duke Energy is finally being ordered to clean up its coal-ash ponds in North Carolina — more than two years after one of them leaked 40,000 tons of toxic muck into the Dan River. But it has eight years to get the job done, and the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) hopes to give the company even more flexibility.

Duke, the nation’s largest electric utility, has 33 sites around the state where it dumps toxic ash waste from its coal-fired power plants, and some of the sites are believed to be leaking hazardous chemicals into nearby water supplies. For a year, hundreds of households near coal ash ponds were told not to drink water from their wells, which was found to have high levels on a known carcinogen. This spring, they were told they could resume drinking the water, even though it hadn’t been cleaned up. (We wrote more about this earlier this week.)

In a proposal released on Wednesday, DEQ said Duke should excavate and close eight of the most dangerous coal ash sites by 2019, and the 25 others by 2025. But DEQ is asking the state legislature to be allowed to reconsider the timeline in 18 months. The agency has been accused of being lenient on Duke; last year, DEQ lowered the utility’s fine for the big 2014 spill from $25 million to $7 million.

Duke CEO Lynn Goode said the cost of the cleanup could be as high as $4 billion — and the company would seek to pass that cost on to the state’s residents. “It’s fair to say that if we have to excavate all of our basins, it would be significantly higher costs for our customers,” Goode said during a conference call with reporters.

Environmentalists say the DEQ’s recommendations don’t go far enough. “DEQ just ducked its responsibility and punted it into the future,” said Peter Harrison, attorney for the Waterkeeper Alliance. “As usual, North Carolina’s so-called leadership has shown it lacks the courage to stand up to powerful polluters, even when people’s health is at stake.”

Share

Get Grist in your inbox

Read original article:

Duke Energy will have to clean up its filthy coal ash sites … eventually

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Duke Energy will have to clean up its filthy coal ash sites … eventually

North Carolina’s anti-trans governor is dangerously cozy with major polluter

by BelindaStowers Posted on May 17, 2016

North Carolina’s anti-trans governor is dangerously cozy with major polluter

By on May 17, 2016 1:00 pmShare

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) has been in the news lately thanks to HB2, a bill he signed into law in March that forces transgender folks to use the bathroom of the gender on their birth certificates. The backlash for McCrory — who is up for reelection this year — was swift. Along with a myriad of businesses who have threatened to pull out of the state, North Carolina residents themselves are protesting in creative ways: An “air horn orchestra” regularly performs outside the governor’s mansion in Raleigh, a Durham-based advertising firm is giving away toilet paper printed with the text of HB2, and activists delivered a porta-potty to McCrory’s lawn.

But HB2 isn’t the only issue that could have North Carolina voters reconsidering McCrory when they go to the polls this November: There’s also the governor’s cozy ties to Duke Energy and allegations that his administration let the company off easy after serious pollution violations.

A fine reduced

The story goes back to 2014, when Duke Energy — McCrory’s employer for nearly three decades — was responsible for a spill that dumped 40,000 tons of toxic coal ash and 27 million gallons of wastewater into the Dan River, one of the largest coal ash spills in the nation’s history.

Initially, Duke was fined $25 million by the state, but in a retreat that many residents found disappointing — and fishy — the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) later privately negotiated the fine down to just $7 million. When the deal was announced in September 2015, an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center called it “a total surrender and collapse by DEQ.”

An investigation by TV station WRAL later found that McCrory and DEQ officials secretly met with Duke Energy leaders, including company CEO Lynn Good, at the governor’s mansion in Raleigh a few months before the fine was lowered.

Duke, as it happens, donated $3 million to the Republican Governors Association soon after the 2014 coal ash spill. The association, which contributed to McCrory’s campaign in 2012, is expected to be a big backer of his reelection effort this year.

Dirty drinking water

But the low fine wasn’t the only favor that the McCrory administration appears to have done for Duke Energy.

After the Dan River spill, investigations found that Duke had more than a dozen coal ash storage sites across the state, many of which were leaching a carcinogen called hexavalent chromium into the water table. After this was discovered, 240 households located near coal ash sites were told not to drink from their wells. Duke Energy started supplying bottled water to those households in April 2015, as WBTV reports.

But a year later, the DEQ and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services reversed the do-not-drink order. Residents were told their water was just as safe as water coming from public utilities.

That wasn’t true, WBTV reports. Some of the wells near Duke’s facilities were found to have levels of hexavalent chromium hundreds of times higher than the average level in the state’s public water systems.

So why the about-face by the state agencies? Duke Energy, it turns out, lobbied the state to reverse the do-not-drink order, according to the TV station. When state epidemiologist Megan Davies was deposed by a lawyer for the Southern Environmental Law Center, she said that she and her boss questioned the reversal. She also said that McCrory’s office intervened in the wording of initial do-not-drink letters sent out in April 2015.

Still, the Department of Health and Human Services insists that the water contamination is nothing to worry about. “The water in these wells meets the standards of the Safe Drinking Water Act,” Kendra Gerlach, communications director for the agency, said in a statement. “Allowing the affected residents to return to drinking their water is within federal and state guidelines and is consistent with safe drinking water practices across the country.”

For those who live near Duke’s coal ash sites, however, the state’s position doesn’t bring much comfort. In the year between the do-not-drink order and its reversal, nothing has changed. The coal ash sites weren’t cleaned up and the carcinogen didn’t go away. In fact, one thing has arguably gotten worse: In March, McCrory shut down the commission charged with overseeing the cleanup of Duke’s coal ash sites across the state.

“The water isn’t any different,” said Tad Helmstettler, an environmental health supervisor in Rowan County, one of the areas affected by the order. “If you were worried about the water before, you should be worried about it now.”

If polls are to be believed, McCrory has his own reasons to be worried: His approval rating is at an all-time low, and he’s in a tight race with Democratic challenger Roy Cooper. And as the spotlight shines brighter on HB2, as well as the governor’s ties to Duke Energy, McCrory’s prospects may only get darker.

Share

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get Grist in your inbox

Continue reading here: 

North Carolina’s anti-trans governor is dangerously cozy with major polluter

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on North Carolina’s anti-trans governor is dangerously cozy with major polluter

North Carolina’s anti-trans governor is cozy with major polluter

by Panchito Zirman Posted on May 17, 2016

North Carolina’s anti-trans governor is cozy with major polluter

By on May 17, 2016Share

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) has been in the news lately thanks to HB2, a bill he signed into law in March that forces transgender folks to use the bathroom of the gender on their birth certificates. The backlash for McCrory — who is up for reelection this year — was swift. Along with a myriad of businesses who have threatened to pull out of the state, North Carolina residents themselves are protesting in creative ways: An “air horn orchestra” regularly performs outside the governor’s mansion in Raleigh, a Durham-based advertising firm is giving away toilet paper printed with the text of HB2, and activists delivered a porta-potty to McCrory’s lawn.

But HB2 isn’t the only issue that has North Carolina media outlets asking questions about McCrory, who is up for re-election this November. There’s also the governor’s cozy ties to Duke Energy and allegations that his administration let the company off easy after serious pollution violations.

A fine reduced

The story goes back to 2014, when Duke Energy — McCrory’s employer for nearly three decades — was responsible for a spill that dumped 40,000 tons of toxic coal ash and 27 million gallons of wastewater into the Dan River, one of the largest coal ash spills in the nation’s history.

Initially, Duke was fined $25 million by the state, but in a retreat that many residents found disappointing — and fishy — the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) later privately negotiated the fine down to just $7 million. When the deal was announced in September 2015, an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center called it “a total surrender and collapse by DEQ.”

An investigation by TV station WRAL later found that McCrory and DEQ officials secretly met with Duke Energy leaders, including company CEO Lynn Good, at the governor’s mansion in Raleigh a few months before the fine was lowered.

Duke, as it happens, donated $3 million to the Republican Governors Association soon after the 2014 coal ash spill. The association, which contributed to McCrory’s campaign in 2012, is expected to be a big backer of his reelection effort this year.

Dirty drinking water

But the low fine wasn’t the only favor that the McCrory administration appears to have done for Duke Energy.

After the Dan River spill, investigations found that Duke had more than a dozen coal ash storage sites across the state, many of which were leaching a carcinogen called hexavalent chromium into the water table. After this was discovered, 240 households located near coal ash sites were told not to drink from their wells. Duke Energy started supplying bottled water to those households in April 2015, as WBTV reports.

But a year later, the DEQ and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services reversed the do-not-drink order. Residents were told their water was just as safe as water coming from public utilities.

That wasn’t true, WBTV reports. Some of the wells near Duke’s facilities were found to have levels of hexavalent chromium hundreds of times higher than the average level in the state’s public water systems.

So why the about-face by the state agencies? Duke Energy, it turns out, lobbied the state to reverse the do-not-drink order, according to the TV station. When state epidemiologist Megan Davies was deposed by a lawyer for the Southern Environmental Law Center, she said that she and her boss questioned the reversal. She also said that McCrory’s office intervened in the wording of initial do-not-drink letters sent out in April 2015.

Still, the Department of Health and Human Services insists that the water contamination is nothing to worry about. “The water in these wells meets the standards of the Safe Drinking Water Act,” Kendra Gerlach, communications director for the agency, said in a statement. “Allowing the affected residents to return to drinking their water is within federal and state guidelines and is consistent with safe drinking water practices across the country.”

For those who live near Duke’s coal ash sites, however, the state’s position doesn’t bring much comfort. In the year between the do-not-drink order and its reversal, nothing has changed. The coal ash sites weren’t cleaned up and the carcinogen didn’t go away. In fact, one thing has arguably gotten worse: In March, McCrory shut down the commission charged with overseeing the cleanup of Duke’s coal ash sites across the state.

“The water isn’t any different,” said Tad Helmstettler, an environmental health supervisor in Rowan County, one of the areas affected by the order. “If you were worried about the water before, you should be worried about it now.”

If polls are to be believed, McCrory has his own reasons to be worried: His approval rating is at an all-time low, and he’s in a tight race with Democratic challenger Roy Cooper. And as the spotlight shines brighter on HB2, as well as the governor’s ties to Duke Energy, McCrory’s prospects may only get darker.

Share

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get Grist in your inbox

See the article here: 

North Carolina’s anti-trans governor is cozy with major polluter

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on North Carolina’s anti-trans governor is cozy with major polluter

A Manhattan-sized oil spill just hit the Gulf of Mexico

by AdeleSprouse Posted on May 13, 2016

A Manhattan-sized oil spill just hit the Gulf of Mexico

By on May 13, 2016 4:22 pmShare

Royal Dutch Shell spilled an estimated 2,100 barrels of oil off Louisiana’s coast in the Gulf of Mexico this week, the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement confirmed on Thursday. Though officials don’t know what caused the spill just yet, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it’s now contained.

That contained spill has left a sheen of oil the size of Manhattan in the Gulf.

For now, drilling activities at Shell’s Brutus platform have been suspended. The platform, which sits tethered to the sea floor atop 2,900 feet of water, has a maximum capacity of 100,000 barrels of oil per day.

BSEE

Still, this spill is tiny in comparison to BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, which released a 4-million-barrel gusher of oil into the Gulf. But Shell’s and BP’s spills aren’t the only ones to hit these waters — according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the area has seen six other large disasters in last few decades.

Despite the known risks of offshore drilling, the Gulf’s oil activities are ramping up. Oil and gas production in the Gulf is expected to hit new highs in 2016 and 2017, despite low crude oil and gas prices. Every time companies punch another drill-sized hole in the sea floor, they risk more harm.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get Grist in your inbox

Link: 

A Manhattan-sized oil spill just hit the Gulf of Mexico

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Manhattan-sized oil spill just hit the Gulf of Mexico