Calling themselves “Clean Energy Patriots,” dozens of environmental leaders today asked the U.S. Senate to quit serving the interests of “Big Oil” and take action on behalf of Americans who want clean energy and climate solutions.

The leaders from nearly 50 environmental and social responsibility groups signed a declaration at the U.S. Capitol. It demands  that the Senate quit stalling on climate action, and kicks off a 40-day countdown until Earth Day, which celebrates its 40th anniversary on April 22.

They urged citizens to join in what they are calling the Earth Day Revolution.

“The first Earth Day was a success because 20 million Americans demonstrated an urgent need for environmental protection and action,” said Kathleen Rogers, President, Earth Day Network. “Together, we can make the 40th anniversary of Earth Day a pivotal moment in the environmental movement. We will use the next 40 days to build momentum around a demand for comprehensive climate legislation…”

Clean energy legislation would not only protect the environment, it would create jobs and improve national security, the leaders said.

“For too long Big Oil and their special interest allies have stood in the way of a clean energy revolution. It’s time for lawmakers to listen to the millions of citizens who will recognize this Earth Day by demanding the Senate gets working to pass comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation,” said Gene Karpinski, President of the League of Conservation Voters. “We need more Clean Energy Patriots this year. We need an Earth Day Revolution, not just another celebration.”

The campaign will wind up with a Climate Rally on the Sunday after Earth Day, on April 25.

The following groups have signed the Earth Day Declaration:

1Sky

Audubon

American Hunters and Shooters

American Rivers

American Values Network

Campus Progress

Center for American Progress Action Fund

Clean Water Action

Chesapeake Climate Action Network

Climate Protection Action Fund

Climate Solutions

Defenders of Wildlife

Democracia Ahora

Earth Day Network

Environment America

Environmental Defense Action Fund

Environmental Law and Policy Center

Green for All

Hip Hop Caucus

Interfaith Power and Light

La Onda Verde

League of Conservation Voters

National Catholic Rural Life Conference

National Wildlife Federation

NWF Campus Ecology

Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund

Oceana

Operation Free

Rock the Vote

Sierra Club

Southern Alliance for Clean Energy

SACE

Southern Energy Network

StudentPIRGs

SustainUS

Truman National Security Project

Union of Concerned Scientists

Veterans for Common Sense

Voces Verdes

World Wildlife Fund

The Wilderness Society

In a blow to the nuclear power industry, Vermont’s State Senate is pulling the plug on the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant,  which has been beset by environmental problems ranging from missing fuel rods to the uncontrolled release of radiation.

The Vermont Yankee Power Plant (Photo: NRC)

The Senate voted this week (26-4) to not renew a requested extension of the plant’s 40-year license, which expires in March 2012. The vote came after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission acknowledged this week that yet another radioactive leak had occurred at the Yankee reactor in 2005. It also followed President Obama’s declaration of a new era for nuclear, beginning with $8 billion in federal loan guarantees for a large nuclear power plant near Augusta, Ga.

Vermont’s House of Representatives may vote on the issue, but if either chamber denies the extensive of the license, the plant must be closed. The Vermont Yankee Power Plant, licensed in 1972, is permitted until March 2012, according to the DOE.

The power of Vermont lawmakers to shutdown the facility is unique among states, and the move by the Senate marks the first time a state legislature has closed a nuclear plant, according to Greenpeace, which lauded the move.

“Vermonters sent a message to President Obama and the nuclear industry today,” said Greenpeace’s Nuclear Policy Analyst Jim Riccio. “The nuclear renaissance is dead on arrival.  We can retire old, decrepit and leaking reactors like Vermont Yankee and help usher in the energy revolution that America needs.”

“When Americans have the choice about the kind of energy they want in their communities, they don’t want nuclear,” Riccio said in a news release. “… Greenpeace is calling on Vermonter legislators to vote against relicensing in the house as well so that the message to America registers loud and clear.”

Said Vermont Organizer Jarred Cobb, “From farmers and schoolteachers to businesspeople and students, the people of Vermont are overwhelmingly in support of a energy future that relies on clean and safe renewables like wind and solar. The communities living in the shadow of Vermont Yankee have had to worry for too long about this aging reactor.”

Environmentalists are divided on whether nuclear power should play a role in a new clean energy economy. Some like that nuclear reactors do not emit carbon emissions, but many others fear that just the sort of leaks and difficulties faced by the Vermont Yankee Plant make nuclear power risky and damaging to the environment.

The Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, a boiling-water type reactor, is owned by Entergy.

The images from Haiti are grim, and Americans already have rushed forward with millions of dollars in donations to help the residents of the earthquake-ravaged nation.

Cell phone users can contribute $10 by texting “Haiti” to 90999; the donation will be charged to their accounts with their service providers.

Most charitable organizations have discouraged donations of clothing, contending that money is the best way to make a difference. This leaves citizens to figure out which avenues will be the best to assure that their dollars make a difference.

A few are obvious:

• American Red Cross: One of the most effective and reputable relief organizations in the world. Two planes carrying Red Cross humanitarian assistance were due to land Friday afternoon (Jan. 15) in Port-au-Prince. The first carried a field hospital, and the second carried tarps, blankets, hygiene items, buckets, shelter supplies and kitchen sets.
• Salvation Army: Another organization with impeccable credentials. Has already set up two online donation systems to accommodate overwhelming demand.

Other organizations of note:

• CARE places special emphasis on the needs of women in poverty-stricken regions.
• Doctors Without Borders already had a presence in Haiti and is treating earthquake victims.
• Oxfam: With its Latin America emergency response team headquartered in Haiti, the organization was on-hand when disaster struck.
• Grassroots International works with local organizations with existing charitable ties to Haiti.
• Action Aid has been working in Haiti already.
• Partners in Health has been offering medical care to the poor in Haiti since 1983.
• International Rescue Committee has provided relief efforts since the 1930s.
• Mercy Ships has operated hospital ships in developing nations since 1978.
• UNICEF focuses on the well-being of children in underpriviledged nations.

Meanwhile, Haiti native and musician Wyclef Jean was active in Haitian aid efforts before the earthquake. His web site (YeleHaiti.org) has since created a Haiti Earthquake Alliance and recommends the following organization for donations:

• Airline Ambassadors
• Americares
• Friends of the World Food Program
• ONExONE Foundation
• Pan American Development Foundation
• The Belinda Stronach Foundation

Prefer to do a little research for yourself? For lists of recommended charities, visit:

• Charity Navigator
• Guide Star
• InterAction

Copyright © 2010 Green Right Now | Distributed by GRN Network

Two prominent environmental groups have proposed a direct approach to controlling carbon emissions that doesn’t require a new climate law, or even a cap-and-trade agreement.

The strategy: Use the U.S. Clean Air Act.

On Wednesday, the Center for Biological Diversity and 350.org petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to set national limits for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas pollution under the Clean Air Act.

The petition asks that greenhouse gases be classified as “criteria” air pollutants, which would trigger national caps under the law, and that atmospheric CO2, be capped at 350 parts per million (ppm) which is the level that many scientists now believe is required to avert the worst impacts of global warming. Carbon is the most prevalent GHG, and is produced, in large part, by burning fossil fuels. Coal-fired power plants are the single greatest carbon emitter. Transportation and oil-burning manufacturing activities also contribute.

“The science, unfortunately, is all too clear,” says Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org. “350 ppm is the most CO2 we can have in the atmosphere if we want a planet similar to the one on which civilization developed. …Ninety-two national governments have endorsed it as a target. Now it’s time for the nation that invented environmentalism to use its most progressive set of laws in the same effort.”

Most recently, the Obama administration proposed emission reduction targets of just 3 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. This is much less than the cuts of about 45 percent that are necessary to return to 350 ppm.

Today, the current atmospheric CO2 level is about 385 ppm.

The Clean Air Act petition notes that the Obama administration already has the legal tools it needs to greatly reduce greenhouse emissions. The work can proceed with or without a cap-and-trade bills.

But why file the petition now, on the eve of the Copenhagen talks that could solidify new emissions reductions?

“We filed the petition now,” says Kassie Siegel, an author of the petition and director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, “to make the point that Obama already has the tools he needs to agree to deep, rapid, and science-based emissions reductions in Copenhagen, and to then achieve those reductions. His excuses for failing to do so are unfounded.”

In other words, President Obama doesn’t have to beg off strong emissions targets just because Congress has aimed low with the climate bills under consideration. He doesn’t have to tell his counterparts in Copenhagen that all he can offer is what Congress will allow. The Copenhagen Climate Conference, which brings together negotiators and heads of state from around the globe to try to forge an accord on emissions reductions, runs from Dec. 7-18. Obama has announced he will attend early in the conference, and several U.S. cabinet members are participating, including the EPA’s Lisa Jackson, Department of Energy chief Steven Chu and Carol Browner, head of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy.

The Clean Air Act’s provisions have worked for 40 years, Siegel notes.

“This law has protected the air we breathe – and it’s done that through a proven , successful system of pollution control that saves lives and creates economic benefits vastly exceeding its costs,” she says.

Among others supporting the petition are the UN’s chief climate scientist, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and NASA’s top climate scientist, James Hansen. Both agree on the need to reach 350.

“The Clean Air Act is a bipartisan bill signed by a Republican president,” says McKibben. “Leading scientists at NASA and around the world say we need to get to 350 ppm. This petition simply asks EPA to do its job as science, the law and common sense require.”

By filing the petition now, says Seigel, the environmental groups such as hers, are trying to prove that “Obama’s hands are not tied, as he claims, by Congress’s abysmal response to the climate crisis.

Obama promised to lead the way to a science-based solution. Were he to do so as our petition requests, such leadership could still allow real success at the Copenhagen climate talks.”

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Dr. James Hansen, the NASA scientist known for sounding an early alarm about climate change, will join student protesters at a “sleep out” in Boston this weekend.

The students, from Boston-area and other Massachusetts colleges, have been sleeping out on Boston Common and at various campuses to push the state to pass a law committing to clean energy. Their target goal: Have Massachusetts pledge to be using 100 percent clean energy by 2020.

They’ve asked Gov. Deval Patrick, already known for signing the Global Warming Solutions Act, to again put the state at the forefront of combatting climate change by introducing clean energy  legislation before the legislature adjourns later this month. The students have won a meeting with the governor on Nov. 17.

The sleep outs began two weeks ago, with the overnight campouts followed by lobbying with legislators on Monday mornings. Four Last week, police ticketed the campers for trespassing, student leaders said.

This weekend the group expects at least 100 student activists to meet with Dr. Hansen (whose Phd is in Physics from the University of Iowa) at a 4 p.m. Sunday rally, followed by the camp out. Dr. Hansen is scheduled to hold a press conference at 9:30 a.m. Monday morning (Nov. 9).

In June, Dr. Hansen, along with actress and environmental activists Daryl Hannah, was arrested for civil disobedience for blocking a road at a coal plant protest in West Virginia. The pair, along with several local residents, were protesting mountaintop removal.

Known for his testimony to Congress in 1988, alerting leaders to the dangers of greenhouse gases, Hansen has said that the world needs to move away from burning coal to create electricity.

The student sleep out was inspired by the idea that protesters would not rely on the “dirty energy” heating their homes and dorms until lawmakers pledged to move in a new direction.

One could count a thousand ways humans have soiled the planet, from shearing off mountaintops to mine coal to dredging the bottom of the ocean with heavy, coral-destroying equipment.

Congress zeroed in on one needless wave of destruction this past week, introducing legislation in both houses to stop cruise ships from releasing untreated sewage into the ocean.

The Senate’s Clean Cruise Ship Act, proposed by Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), would extend the Clean Water Act to regulate the millions of gallons of waste water from cruise ships. The net effect would be a ban on the release of raw, untreated sewage.

In the House, Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.) introduced nearly identical legislation.

In the US, nearly 10 million people vacation aboard cruise liners that dump sewage into the ocean.

According to a news release from Durbin’s office, a single cruise ship can release more than 200,000 gallons of human sewage, one million gallons of gray water from kitchens and bathrooms and 10,000 gallons of sewage sludge each week.

Not to mention the small, but significant disgorging of hazardous waste and oily bilge. (Can we pause here for a collective “ick”?!)

Currently, this waste is regulated in some coastal regions, but unevenly so. Durbin’s Clean Cruise Ship Act would amend the Clean Water Act to:

• Place cruise ships under the EPA guidelines for pollution discharges (much as industries are).

• Prohibit the discharge of sewage, graywater and bilge water within 12 miles of shore

• Require state-of-the-art treatment of waste water that is to be released outside the 12 mile perimeter – Prohibit any dumping of sewage sludge, incinerator ash and hazardous waste in US waters

• Set up inspection and onboard observation to monitor the program.Durbin’s bill also would strengthen discharge requirements for cruise ships operating in the Great Lakes, holding them to the same 12 mile prohibition zone and requiring them to update their technology to treat sewage and gray water before it is discharged into the lakes.

Durbin’s office reports that several environmental groups support his bill, including: Friends of the Earth; Earthjustice; Oceana; Surfrider; Campaign to Safeguard America’s Waters; and Northwest Environmental Advocates.

By now you’ve heard the dire predictions for how sea level rise would affect Miami. Basically this city, already imperiled by worsening hurricanes, is in the bulls-eye for rising oceans too.

But did you realize that a one meter sea level increase — now believed by many scientists to be a likely outcome of global warming by 2100 — would put Philadelphia underwater?

Greenland Ice Flow (Photo: NASA)

Yes, the city of Brotherly Love would be among the large family of coastal cities potentially devastated by coastline changes. And not in the too-distance future either.

According to glacier and ice shelf expert Dr. Gordon Hamilton, Philadelphia could experience troubles decades before that 2100 benchmark if storm surges pushed rising oceans inland.

In other words, there is no magic threshold when the seas, warmed by the atmosphere and swelled by melting ice sheets, will spill over their old boundaries. There is a steady creep occurring now. But flooding, hastened by storms, could happen well before the ocean’s reach the 1 meter increase (absent any serious human action to slow the current progression).

Hamilton, a research professor at the University of Maine who studies melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica , and Dr. Asa Rennermalm, a Rutgers University professor who studies Arctic and Greenland ice sheets,  are kicking off a lecture tour today to spread this news about how the oceans are rising even faster than projected just a couple years ago.

The first talk was this morning at the Wagner Free Institute in Philadelphia followed by a demonstration at the Adventure Aquarium in Camden, N.J. Subsequent engagements will take the pair to Miami; Washington, New York City and several other cities. The tour, dubbed the “hip boot tour” to emphasize the reality of the coming floods, is sponsored by Clean Air-Cool Planet, a non-profit dedicated to fighting global warming.

None of these cities where the scientists will be speaking will be spared by rising sea levels. Just as most mega-cities around the globe will be affected, because so many population centers sit on the coast or on rivers that lead directly to the coast. Cities like Paris. And Philadelphia.

Talking to Hamilton is a bit like previewing one of those apocalyptic movies where the world suffers from monster storms, vast floods, temperature changes and incredible destruction of infrastructure.

At a one-meter rise, for instance, the subway entrances in Manhattan would be at the water level, which means the subways would be inundated, permanently, said Dr. Hamilton, whose degree is in geophysics.

One doesn’t need a degree in geophysics to understand the consequences of the nation’s financial capital being underwater. Having St. Louis and Chicago on dry ground would not ameliorate the devastation to humans and world trade.

In Philadelphia, a 1 meter increase would flood the downtown district and areas along the river. Harbor trade would be shut down and on the east side, Camden, N.J., would be inundated. Across New Jersey, aquifers would likely be contaminated with sea water.

Neighborhoods at higher elevations, north and west of Philadelphia would remain dry.

Parts of Florida at 33 feet above sea level and below are shown flooded (Image: NASA.)

In Miami, nothing would be unaffected. A 1 meter sea level rise would put most of the city underwater, and it wouldn’t be alone. “Most of Florida’s big cities would be severely affected,” Hamilton said. Models overlaid on satellite images show Miami, the Keys, St. Petersburg and Tampa under water. The everglades would become a saltwater marsh and aquifers in the state would become brackish or completely salinated.

Hamilton says he shows people how their city’s coastline would change, but also tries to get local audiences to see the global nature of the problem.  “Not only are you flooding downtown DC, but hundreds of millions of people in Southeast Asia like Bangladesh, ” he said.

The key point of the tour is not just to demonstrate impending devastation, but to explain that the threat is more imminent than was predicted by the Interplanetary Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just two years ago.

In 2007, the IPCC warned that the sea levels would rise a little more than half a meter and possibly more. Even at that less drastic increase, the “the impacts are virtually certain to be overwhelmingly negative,” scientists wrote.

That prediction was based on the best available science.

What didn’t make the report, Dr. Hamilton said, was that in 2005, geophysicists studying the freshwater ice sheets in Greenland and changes in Antarctica had witnessed an alarming quickening in the speed of some glaciers as they carried ice toward the ocean.

In Greenland, some of these rivers of ice “were doing these crazy things,” he said. Some were moving 45 meters in a day — about the distance of one half a football field. In glacial terms, they were moving very fast. You could hear the ice cracking, he said.

“Almost over night, in the course of 9 to 10 months, they started moving about three times faster than they had been,” Dr. Hamilton said.

Scientists know the changes were prompted by global warming, and that the ice melts can grow exponentially, with water in crevasses contributing to the problem. But they still don’t understand what it all means. Some glaciers later slowed, but others sped up, Hamilton said. The net effect is likely to be a faster melt, with more water raising the ocean levels worldwide.

“Our talks right now are to emphasize that the picture has changed dramatically. If you were to take a consensus among my colleagues who work in Greenland and Antarctica, everybody is likely to say that it (sea rise) is more likely to be a meter.”

If not more.

“Politicians,” he said, “regardless of their political leanings on climate change need to be aware that they’re ethically bound to consider the upper bounds of sea level change…It’s delinquent for people to say they’re going to plan for the minimum (possible change) and then in 50 years time find that huge amounts of their infrastructure is flooded because they didn’t pay attention.”

• The lecture tour dates and cities are:

• Oct. 20 – Philadelphia

• Oct. 21 -  Portland, Maine

• Oct. 22 – Tampa, Fla.

• Oct. 23 -  Tampa, Fla.

• Oct. 24 – Miami, Fla.

• Oct. 27 -  Wilmington, N.C.

• Oct. 28 – Norfolk, Va.

• Oct. 29 – Hampton, N.H.

For details on those talks see the Clean Air-Cool Planet website. For more information on melting ice and rising ocean levels, as well as other predicted outcomes of global warming, see the US Global Change Research Program 2009 report (East Coasters can see the section on the Northeast) or the  IPCC reports at the United Nation’s website.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Just when we got clear of growth hormones in our milk, now comes news that estrogens and other hormones are floating around our waterways, interfering with the biological functions of fish and wildlife — and causing yet untallied health issues for humans.

These synthetic and natural hormones from plastics, pesticides and prescription drugs that have been flushed into sewer systems are “seeping into rivers and streams and having unintended consequences on wildlife, causing some male fish to become feminized and lay eggs,” according to a news release promoting a conference on the subject.

The Tenth International Symposium on Environment and Hormones will be held later this month at Tulane University, bringing together experts from around the world to consider the latest research in this field.

Some of those findings, according to a report in Aquatic Toxicology, are:

• That almost all of the rivers and streams tested in the United States contained some hormonally active chemicals.
• That nearly one-third of 111 US river basics sampled contained feminized male fish that scientists suspect have been altered by pollution from industrial byproducts, pesticides and other chemicals, possibly including antidepressants, contraceptives and other medications that end up in waste water and cannot be filtered by most city waste water treatment plants.

The conference will also look at how these ambient hormones affect humans, by disrupting the endocrine system and playing a role in diseases like breast cancer.

It will include sessions about DES (diethylstilbestrol), a synthetic form of estrogen linked to increased cancer risks and Bisphenol-A, a compound found in plastic food containers and the resin linings of food cans that has been implicated as a hormone disruptor.

Terry Collins, a chemistry expert and advocate running a campaign to get companies to anticipate how their products might act in the environment, will be a key speaker. He will discuss the potential human harm from these plastic byproducts and pharmaceuticals and explain why companies need to develop biodegradable forms.

“It is one of the hottest topics in environmental biology right now,” said John McLachlan, director of the Tulane/Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research, in a new statement promoting the conference.

“The biological activity of these compounds both in terms of other species and, potentially, ourselves is something that scientists are becoming more and more aware of through research.”

“They all [the chemicals] end up in different places in the environment,” he says. “What do they do to the wildlife that absorb them and, more importantly, what do they do to our water sources?”

The conference will be Oct. 21-24 at the Pere Marquette Hotel in New Orleans and is open to the public and students.

A version of this story appeared in the Albany Times-Union [1] on Oct. 8, 2009.

A preliminary report [2] from a consultant hired by New York City warns that “nearly every activity” associated with natural gas drilling could potentially harm the city’s drinking water supply and that while the risk can be reduced with strict regulations, “the likelihood of water quality impairment…. cannot be eliminated [2].”

That assessment contrasts sharply with the picture presented by an environmental review released by state officials last week [3]. Aside from clauses that ban some waste pits and promise additional consideration for drilling within 1,000 feet of the city’s reservoirs and water infrastructure in upstate New York, the environmental review does little to respond to New York City’s long-standing concerns [4] that the watershed deserves special environmental consideration and instead paves the way for drilling to proceed throughout the watershed.

The issue appears to be emerging as a point of controversy in New York City’s mayoral election.

City comptroller and mayoral candidate William Thompson criticized the state’s environmental review in a news release and said Mayor Bloomberg should be more outspoken. “I am also concerned that the City and the Water Board have been extremely lax in responding to this threat,” he said.

Marc LaVorgna, a spokesman for Bloomberg’s office, said the mayor will withhold judgment until he sees the final version of the report the city commissioned from Hazen and Sawyer, a New York City-based environmental engineering firm. The full report isn’t expected to be delivered until December, after the public comment period for the state environmental review has ended.

LaVorgna emphasized that the Bloomberg administration has invested heavily in the city’s water system and would not rule out a protracted fight to protect it.

“This is not a fringe issue for this administration,” LaVorgna said. “This is a mayor that adamantly orders tap water every night he dines out.”

In one of his few statements on the subject, Bloomberg, who has generally supported the idea of energy development, told WNYC radio Thursday [5] that “if this has the danger of polluting, we will fight it.”

The clashing reports seem poised to reignite long standing tensions between upstate New York and New York City, which depends almost entirely on water delivered from rural, upstate areas.

“The stakes are very high based on the conclusions of this report,” Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said in an interview with ProPublica. The report, he said, “suggests that city elected officials have a role to play here and a responsibility to step up and say, ‘What does frack drilling mean to New York City residents?’”

Last week Stringer announced he was launching a Kill the Drill campaign.

New York is one of four major cities in the United States with a special permit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allowing its drinking water to go unfiltered. That pristine water comes from a network of upstate reservoirs and rivers spread across 1,600 square miles in five upstate counties. Those reservoirs – which all lie west of the Hudson River – supply 90 percent of the drinking water for 9 million downstate residents, nearly half the state’s population. If the EPA were to rescind the city’s special permit, New York City would have to build a treatment facility that could cost between $10 billion and $30 billion, according to various estimates.

Hazen and Sawyer’s early findings [2] were summarized at a city meeting last week and posted on the city’s Department of Environmental Protection’s Web site Tuesday evening, after repeated requests for the document by ProPublica over the past several days.

The report [2], and an accompanying summary Powerpoint presentation, lays out several areas of concern. The consultants found that drilling “introduces hazardous chemicals into the watershed” and that “the well bore, which acts as a conduit between geologic formations, can allow previously isolated contaminants to flow into shallow groundwater or surface water.”

The research also warned of “enormous volumes” of wastewater and said there are no treatment plants in the region designed to treat these wastes. It said the disturbance from hydraulic fracturing could cause seismic shifts or otherwise damage the tunnels or aqueducts that bring the water to the city. Hydraulic fracturing shoots millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals underground with such force that it breaks rock and releases pockets of gas.

So far, New York City’s top officials have preferred a behind-the-scenes approach as the public debate over the state’s natural gas drilling policy unfurls in Albany. City DEP officials have protested to the DEC in private letters, but have said little publicly.

In a letter obtained by ProPublica in July 2008, then New York City DEP commissioner Emily Lloyd asked the DEC commissioner [6] to disclose the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing and to consider a partial ban on drilling near the reservoirs that supply New York City’s water. Shortly afterward, and following an investigation by ProPublica, Gov. David Paterson ordered the environmental review [7] that was released Sept. 30. Called the Draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement, it supplements gas and oil drilling rules established in 1992 [8]. New York City officials have since sent several additional letters to the state DEC voicing their ongoing concerns.

A spokesman for the state DEC did not return repeated calls for comment.

The state supplemental draft report discloses many of the drilling chemicals, as Lloyd had requested, and it also strengthens several other environmental protections. But it did not recommend a full or partial ban on drilling in the watershed.

The supplementary impact statement is now subject to a 60-day public comment period, after which final guidelines will be issued. But Stringer and others are pressing the state for a 30-day extension, which would allow the findings from the Hazen and Sawyer report to be included.

Read the “Rapid Impact Assessment Report [2]” by consulting firm Hazen and Sawyer.

Read our full coverage of natural gas drilling [9].

ProPublica reporters Joaquin Sapien and Saprina Shankman contributed to this story.

The Baltimore City Public Schools system has announced it will participate in the Meatless Monday campaign — the first school system in the U.S. to do so. Under the program, the school district’s 80,000 students will begin each week with a Meatless Monday menu.

The Meatless Monday campaign aims to get Americans to cut out steaks and pork chops on one day a week as a way of trimming the greenhouse gas emissions produced by the livestock industry and as a way of supporting locally grown foods.

The school system’s actions yesterday earned it the 2009 Award for Visionary Leadership in Local Food Procurement and Food Education from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. Dr. Robert Lawrence, director of the CLF, and Dr. Michael Klag, dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, presented the award to Neil Duke, chairman of Baltimore City Board of Schools, and Tony Geraci, director of Baltimore City Schools Department of Food and Nutrition.

Geraci said the school system hopes the Meatless Monday program will inspire people to understand there are other options than just “meat and potatoes” for every meal. He hopes Baltimore can lead the country in reconnecting the next generation with food cultivation and preparation.

The school system has introduced a wide variety of projects to ensure its students eat and learn about healthy, environmentally friendly choices. School system staff have been working with local farmers to provide fresh produce, and with its distributors to find local suppliers. the City Schools also introduced a teaching farm, Great Kids Farm, and is developing the resources to establish a garden at each of its more than 200 schools.

Related stories:

• Meatless Mondays: A way to reduce your carbon output and sat fat intake
• Food vs. the environment: getting to the meat of the problem
• Recipes for Meatless Mondays
• Guide to Good Food: Eat less meat

Your kids may be working on their ABCs, but is their school working on its IPM?

That’s Integrated Pest Management, an increasingly requested – or required – method of fighting pests without using potentially harmful pesticides. (Or using minimal pesticides.)

For decades, schools liberally applied toxic pesticides on their grounds and in their classrooms to beat back bugs and rodents. Exterminators or the school janitor might have sprayed DDT, diazinon or chlordane. If things got bad enough, teachers would (and still could) take matters into their own hands with a can of Raid.

But study after study has made it painfully clear that children are especially sensitive to pesticide exposure. All of their touching, crawling and putting little fingers into mouths makes a bad situation worse. Neurotoxins in pesticides can attack immune systems, organs, brains and nervous systems. Experts point to pesticides’ links to cancer, birth defects or neurological problems.

Letting the bugs or rodents run rampant isn’t an option. Pests also threaten kids’ health.  German cockroach feces have been linked to asthma in children, as has pesticide residue.

So, what is IPM? Common sense, basically. It means taking practical, relatively simple steps to pest control before thinking about hauling out the heavy pesticides.

With an IPM program, there will be scrutiny of all parts of the school, indoors and out. Part of the plan involves looking for and sealing cracks, crevices or gaps where pests can enter or hide.

Those involved in the IPM plan will search for pests’ food sources, such as students’ or staff’s dirty dishes or utensils. Cleaning garbage cans and dumpsters on a regular basis is another element. Checking for sources of water is another.

Planting landscape elements that are pest-resistant and suggestions of care for grass and athletic fields is part of the program.

Only after exhausting all the “natural” steps does pesticide become an option. IPM schools are urges to use pesticides that have minimal impact on people. Limited,  targeted use – in areas where students or staff aren’t likely to put their hands —  is the goal. Biopesticides can stop roaches from reproducing without creating hazardous conditions. Bait traps, removing weeds and moving plants away from buildings can help. Boric acid, a relatively harmless compound, can be used in gel form to deter ants.

An added bonus: Integrated Pest Management is probably going to cost less than all that hazardous spraying.

There are more than 53 million kids and six million adults in more than 120,000 public and private schools today, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). If it’s such a no-brainer, why hasn’t every state and school district signed on with IPM plans?

For those of us who are frustrated, daily, by the vast dispersed array of government information on environmental threats to our health, a new website assembled by the Centers for Disease Control may offer some relief.

The National Environmental Health Public Tracking Network aims to help us connect to information about the environmental causes of disease, such as indoor and outdoor air pollution and chemicals that creep into our lives in the air, on food and household products or through job-related exposures.

The site allows a person to, say, track their county’s air quality, finding specifics such as the number of ozone-alert days or days that exceeded safe levels for particulate matter. This is technical stuff, but only modestly so. These are the measures for air quality used by the EPA, and anyone with asthma is probably already familiar with them.

What you can do about it is another question. The CDC site is not an advocacy or action-oriented enterprise. Its goal is to organize public information and to educate. It will tell you to watch out for nitrates in your drinking water; but it won’t advise that you stop using pesticides on the lawn because they contribute to the problem of groundwater being contaminated with nitrates.

The site does provide a glossary of terms that’s useful and it also delivers the current public health consensus on many topics. On nitrates, for instance, we learn that: “Researchers continue to explore if there are associations with long-term exposures to nitrates, including adverse reproductive effects and some cancers. The studies are not conclusive at this time, and health standards are focused on protecting infants.”

It helpfully corrals issues into their own sections: “Environments” are divided into three areas of interest Home, Outdoor and Water; and “Health Effects” into seven categories that people may want to pursue, including “Cancer,”  “Heart Attacks” and “Birth Defects.”  Each category contains primers on key topics and details the role of environmental hazards.

We find out, for instance, that aside from smoking, exposure to asbestos, chromium, polycyclic aromatic compounds, vinyl chloride and radon gas can raise one’s risk of lung cancer. This information dispels the notion that smoking is the only lung cancer trigger. The lung cancer synopsis also reminds us that eating a range of fruits and vegetables can be protective against this leading fatal disease.

But we have to go elsewhere to decipher “polycyclic aromatic compounds.” These chemicals, also known as “polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon compounds” or PAHs, are found in pesticides, dyes and on grilled meats (which get coated with chemicals from unburned charcoal). Remember the grilled meat warnings of a few years back?

Similarly, we find out in “Health Effects” that consuming “disinfection byproducts” found in tap water (translation: the chlorine used to kill germs at the water treatment plant) “over many years” increases one’s “risk of developing bladder cancer”. We  are informed that we ingest these DBPs from tap water and also absorb them through our skin when we bathe. The CDC’s advises, however, not to worry because these chemicals are being more tightly regulated these days, and if your water exceeds safe limits temporarily “it does not mean that the people who consume the system’s water will become sick”.

Yet, the more one looks around the CDC site, the more worrisome our environment becomes. Grilled meat. Hot showers. A diet short in veggies and fruits. All these things can have health ramifications.

On the positive side, the CDC rounds this all up in one easy-to-use website.

But the government agency, in its effort to serve all masters and remain faithful to the wide consensus, wades in only so deep. It is a launching pad, validating our worries and clarifying definitions about environmental hazards, but leaving us needing more information in order to prioritize our personal health plan of action.

(Photo credit: Centers for Disease Control.)

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