ValleyWatch

May 28, 2013- by John Blair, valleywatch.net editor 

My very first environmental involvement was when I was running for congress in 1976. At the time, industrial and agricultural interests, desiring a cheaper way to transport their wares around the globe were pushing the second coming of the nefarious 1860s Wabash Canal, which caused Indiana government to declare bankruptcy.

At that time, proposals, pushed mainly by then 7th District Indiana Congressman, John Myers, sought to both “canalize” and “channelize” the shallow and meandering Wabash River at least to Terre Haute, then on to Lafayette and beyond.

Those plans were thwarted by a rather loose band of environmentalists, headed up by Hoosier environmental icon, Tom Dustin and his wife, Jane. I was proud to have been a part of the group who fought and won a multi year battle to keep the Wabash natural and intact.

One thing I learned during that fight was that dam building to make reservoirs used to supply the required transportation depth of the shallow river were “the most environmentally destructive projects that could ever be built.” When dams are built, not only are thousands of acres of land inundated with water but entire ecosystems are completely wiped out along with family histories and local river cultures as homes are flooded.

Now, there is a proposal to build yet another dam and lake dubbed Mounds Lake which would inundate a path along the White River at least 2,000 acres of Madison and Delaware Counties, displacing around 400 homes, numerous businesses all presumably taken through the use of eminent domain by an appointed Commission. It will also require burying some yet to be determined amount of Mounds State Park.

Projected costs of building the unneeded reservoir exceed $400 million and as yet. no one knows just how it would be financed nor by whom.

Project proponents  claim benefits of flood control, water supply, recreation. But I suspect the real reason for the proposal is to create high priced “lakefront” housing for an elite group who could afford to build mansions on the new lake.

That is not without precedent in the area. Continue reading →

July 1, 2013-UPDATE: The Governor had a change of heart and now the Posey County Council has issued the necessary bonds and the county will now host a company that has ties to the Afghanistan Taliban which is proven to use their product to kill and maim American troops. 

May 17, 2013- The following is a press release issued today in response to the decision by Governor Mike Pence to stop State financial support for a Pakistani company implicated in supplying explosive materials used against American troops in Afghanistan.

This internet photo shows a Fatima fertilizer plant as it exists in Pakistan. Today, indiana Governor, Mike Pence stopped plans by Posey County economic development officials to build what they called a $2 billion plant to make fertilizer. Valley Watch objected to the siting of the facility as being in too close proximity to another explosive plant, the second largest ethanol plant in the US, operated by Aventine Renewable Energy.

Valley Watch applauds the decision by Indiana Governor Mike Pence to stop State financial support to the Pakistani company who was trying to build a giant fertilizer plant in Posey County. Governor Pence wisely discerned that the widely reported connection between the company and the manufacture of Improvised Explosive Devices in Afghanistan was more than Hoosier veterans should have to put up with just for some promised jobs.

Valley Watch had previously called for a “moratorium” on the construction of new Indiana fertilizer manufacturers until adequate safety assessments could be in place to determine the feasibility of locating such facilities so near to other facilities that have severe explosive potential. In the case of Posey County, it was proposed that Fatima be placed adjacent to the second largest ethanol plant in the US. The combined plants’  potential for a major catastrophe needed better assessment that the diligence given by local economic development officials who seemed nearly overwhelmed by their support for Fatima.

Valley Watch suggests that in the future, decisions like this should be given more public scrutiny and transparency before dangerous and essentially unvetted proposals are given the green light. Citizens of southwest Indiana deserve more from self appointed economic development regimes.

The Fatima proposal would have been build just east of Aventine’s second largest ethanol plant in the US as shown here in this file photo from 2011. © John Blair

The fate of the Indiana Gasification project is now apparently in the hands of the Indiana Supreme Court where Leucadia Project Manager is friendly with at least one of the Justices. See: http://www.in.gov/judiciary/citc/files/massa-lubbers.pdf
Photo © 2013 John Blair

April 30, 2013-Statement of Mark Lubbers, Indiana project director for Leucadia’s Indiana Gasification proposal

If the Supreme Court takes the case, the Ct of Appeals decision is immediately vacated, so the IURC approval is again live.  The Ct of Appeals opinion was not unanimous and we have asked the court to side with Chief Judge Robb’s dissent, which said that the Court could have upheld the IURC approval and dealt separately with the definition problem.  Since then, of course, the parties have dealt with that admittedly inartful definition language by deleting the offending 37 words from the definition of Retail End Use Customer; so the problem identified by the Ct of Appeals no longer exists.

If the Supreme Court takes the case, we think we have a good chance of winning.

If the Supreme Court does not take the case, the project is dead.  The legislature and the governor knew this when they opted for the language in the law just-passed.  There was an alternative way for the IURC to have a “final look” at the project to consider if the contract was still good for ratepayers given supposed changes in the energy market.  That alternative was rejected in favor of adopting new standards that the legislature and the governor knew would kill the project.  (Because it would require a different contract and two years of review that the project cannot sustain.) The decision to take this path was a conscious decision to kill the project.

Since this conscious decision was made, the judgment of the state is very clear: neither the legislature nor the governor support the contract or the project.  Therefore, the claim made by legislative leadership and the governor that everything is fine if the Supreme Court sides with us is a false promise; no one would invest  $750 million where such clear opposition from the government is evident.  The institutions that provide the capital to build a plant of this size will not do business in a state that is so cavalier about the $20+ million dollars we have already invested.

We will finish the judicial review that has been going on now since December 2011.  We will file today a motion for the Court to schedule oral argument.  We will work hard for a win if the Supreme Court takes the case.  If we win, however, only a clear reversal of position by the Governor would enable the project to go forward.

 April 27, 2013- by John Blair, valleywatch.net editor

What happened in the legislature tonight was something extraordinary. Citizens came together to turn legislative direction, 180º on the Rockport Gasification fiasco.

Think about it. Vectren, the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, Farm Bureau all came together with environmentalists and consumers to stop something ridiculous form going any further.

For Valley Watch, like both the Marble Hill Nuclear Plant and Peabody’s Thoroughbred coal plant in Muhlenberg Couty, KY, this fight has been seven long years.

Frankly, I was expecting much closer votes in both chambers but was really surprised at the House vote of 70-28.  But Suzanne Crouch successfully carried the bill with grace and intelligence, informing legislators clearly and accurately about its contents at a late hour.

Valley Watch has worked closely with Vectren on this fight, so has the Hoosier Chapter of the Sierra Club for which I serve as Energy Chair. Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign came in at just the right moment and provided a huge level of grassroots support, generating phone calls and letters to legislators throughout the session. Instrumental in this effort was a dedicated Rockport group called Spencer County Citizens for Quality of Life. The unbelievably talented staff at the Citizens Action Coalition performed numerous services as professionally as any lobbyist there. So did Sierra’s lobbyist Mark St. John.

However, the issue is not finished. There is still the matter of the Supreme Court appeal and what they decide will determine the outcome. If the IURC does review the contract with the instructions from the legislature to insure savings during the term of the contract, Leucadia says they will walk away. But, they seem to never give up their quest to socialize their risk at the expense of consumers.

Already Rockport, Indiana sees annual toxic emissions of more than 30 million pounds from AK Steel and AEP’s Rockport plant. Now, Governor Mitch Daniels and others want to see those emissions increase while also increasing winter heating expenses for Hoosiers through the construction of the proposed Indiana Gasification facility. Photo © 2011 John Blair

Valley Watch has been an intervenor in the IURC proceeding and we are appellants now before the Supreme Court. We certainly will not back down now. We also intend to fight the plant’s proposed loan guarantee by the Federal Government. In fact, we have been doing that since 2009.

Not only is this proposal a financial disaster, it is also a terrible environmental justice issue since Rockport is already one of the most polluted towns on earth according to EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory. Their pollution and health burden is already too high. The loan guarantee coupled with forcing Hoosier consumers to purchase their product is far removed from anything considered “Free Enterprise.”

We feel that we will prevail for no other reason than it just makes sense to let this thing go. But we have multiple issues with which to continue our fight should Leucadia decide to stay the course.

April 22, 2013-by Lauren McCauley on the website Common Dreams

Pioneering environmental activist Tim DeChristopher was released from jail on Sunday—one day before Earth Day—after serving two years for disrupting an “illegal” Bush administration auction of oil and gas exploitation rights of pristine public lands in southeastern Utah.

Tim DeChristopher, one of America’s young environmental heroes served two years in jail for throwing a monkey wrench in the bidding process for rights to lease oil lands from the Bureau of Land Management, part of the Department of the Interior. His detention was little more than being a political prisoner in his own country.

After being released, DeChristopher said Monday in an exclusive interview withDemocracy Now! that in retrospect he was “even more glad that [he] did it.”

DeChristopher’s example of civil disobedience helped catalyze a movement that, up until that point, relied predominantly on the Big Green groups that resided “in the Washington bubble,” as he told Democracy Now!. Citing examples such as Occupy Wall Street and the Tar Sands Blockade, DeChristopher added that the climate movement “has made a lot of progress in the past four years.”

“He thought the movement already had the numbers it needed to succeed, if people would step up and act—with the belief that their actions would propel more people into motion and build the movement’s numbers,” writes YES Magazine’sMelanie Jan Martin.

Below is DeChristopher’s interview with Democracy Now!

DeChristopher “was and is a complete inspiration to all of us. His courage permeated everyone’s thinking,” added 350.org founder Bill McKibben.

On December 19, 2008, DeChristopher—in a last minute decision—took part in a Bureau of Land Management auction of leases to drill on public lands. Brandishing the Bidder 70 paddle, he amassed rights to a total of 22,500 acres at at the price of $1.8 million, effectively safeguarding parcels surrounding Utah’s Arches and Canyonlands National Parks from drilling.

Though the incoming Obama administration invalidated the auction two months later and despite DeChristopher raising the requisite funds to actually purchase the land parcels, officials continued with his prosecution of and in July of 2011 he was sentenced to two years in federal prison.

Prior to his sentencing, DeChristopher read a 35-minute closing statement to the court: “You can steer my commitment to a healthy and just world if you agree with it, but you can’t kill it. This is not going away. At this point of unimaginable threats on the horizon, this is what hope looks like. In these times of a morally bankrupt government that has sold out its principles, this is what patriotism looks like. With countless lives on the line, this is what love looks like, and it will only grow.”

To celebrate both DeChristopher’s release and the 43rd annual Earth Day, Peaceful Uprising, the climate justice group he co-founded , has organized nationwide community screenings of the documentary feature “Bidder 70” which chronicles how DeChristopher’s example of civil disobedience inspired a resurgence in the climate justice movement.

Following the film, DeChristopher will take part in an hour long Q & A that will be streamed live to over 50 different venues.

You can see times and locations of the Earth Day screenings here.

For Immediate Release: April 19, 2013, 12:OO PM Contact: John Blair @ 812-464-5663

Valley Watch calls for immediate moratorium and re-assessment of siting criteria for locating fertilizer plants in SW Indiana

While our sympathies go out to the victims of the tragedy in the town of West, Texas on Wednesday night, that tragedy underscores the necessity for siting giant industrial scale fertilizer manufacturing plants in the safest, most common sense fashion, away from other explosive hazards and concentrations of people, be they workers or residents.

In southwest Indiana, two $1 billion + ammonium nitrate plants are proposed, one in Rockport, and one in Mt. Vernon. In both cases, economic development officials have proposed sites that are immediately adjacent to plants that could exacerbate not only the destruction but also the human injuries and loos of life should an “industrial accident” like that this week occur in either location.

In Rockport, where IDEM has already issued a “draft” air and construction permit for a plant that is proposed to make 3,600 tons per day of ammonium nitrate, the risk is huge should something go wrong since it is proposed to be built adjacent to the controversial Indiana Gasification facility that is designed to manufacture synthetic “natural gas” from coal.

In Mt. Vernon, the risk of an accident increases greatly due to its proposed location adjacent to one the largest ethanol plants in the world, producing 110,000,000 gallons annually at full capacity.

Both of these facilities are dangerous on their own but the combination of ammonium nitrate and other explosive materials like ethanol and syngas increases the risk dramatically.

By scale alone, the proposals for southwest Indiana are giant compared to the plant that blew up in Texas on Wednesday. Ohio Valley Resources’ Rockport draft permit calls for ammonium nitrate manufacture of 3,600 tons per day, compared to the West plant of 4,771 tons per year.

Valley Watch’s purpose is “to protect the public health and environment of the lower Ohio River valley.” In that capacity, we are calling today for an immediate “moratorium and site re-assessment” on environmental permits and State and local tax and other incentives for both of these proposed plants. In the case of the Rockport proposal, IDEM has already issued a draft air permit and is scheduled to hold a public hearing on it on the Evening of May 15 at South Spencer High School.

At Mt. Vernon, the state has already issued some kind of tax exempt bonding authority amounting to $1.2 billion which we understand is currently “on hold” at the direction of Indiana Governor, Mike Pence who has serious questions about the owners of that proposal, a Pakistani company named Fatima, as they relate to the supply of ammonium nitrate used in the manufacture of Improvised Explosive Devices, IEDs by the Taliban against American troops in Afghanistan.

We will be seeking meetings with government officials including the Governor, public safety, environmental and local government executives to ask, indeed, demand that an moratorium and site safety assessment be made prior to allowing the location of these time bombs to be constructed. We hope that others will join our call for this moratorium and demand that public safety take precedent over the prospect of perceived economic growth of the region and if these must be built that they choose sites that take public safety as their first consideration. -30-

April 18, 2013-by John Blair, valleywatch.net editor

The West, Texas plant that blew up is minuscule compared to the proposals for two new ammonium nitrate plants in SW Indiana. Image: Google Earth

In the last few months, economic development officials in southwest Indiana have courted two giant, billion plus fertilizer plants. One is proposed west of Evansville at the Southwind Maritime Center in Mt. Vernon and the other is proposed for Rockport about twenty five miles east of Evansville. The size of the plant that blew up on April 17 pales in comparison to the two proposed.

Both of these communities are among the most toxic polluted towns in America already according to the US EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory.

But that is only where this story begins.

The aftermath of a huge blast from a relatively small fertilizer plant in West, Texas. What if that plant had been located next to one of America’s largest ethanol plants?

In Mt. Vernon the proposal calls for the plant to be developed adjacent to one of the largest ethanol refineries in the nation. At Rockport, the proposal calls for the plant to be located adjacent to another proposal called Indiana Gasification, which is designed to convert coal to various explosive materials, primarily synthetic natural gas.

Had the much smaller plant in West, Texas been located so close to another time bomb like a huge ethanol plant or a syngas plant, who knows how much damage would occur?

It is apparent to anyone who cares about safety that it is not a good idea to locate such a plant immediately next to a facility that is already a giant explosion and fire hazard but that matters little to SW indiana economic development officials or their counterparts in Indiana’s Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) since already IDEM has issued a Draft Air and Construction permit for the Rockport plant which goes by the name-Ohio Valley Resources Limited Liability Corporation.

In fact, a public hearing is slated for that permit on May 15, in the little town of Rockport at South Spencer High School. IDEM always issues permits they get to the draft stage but still locals will have an opportunity to voice their concerns.

In the thirty-two years Valley Watch has watched these things, we do not recall a single permit that has been denied. On occasion IDEM will be forced by citizens to add new conditions to a permit but they do not deny them as long as applicants dot their “i”s and cross their “t”s.

The Mt. Vernon proposal has some issues of its own. Not only is it proposed to be built next to an explosive ethanol plant, it is also being proposed by a Pakistani company that has been implicated in the supply of explosive ammonium nitrate to the Afghani Taliban for use in the manufacture of Improvised Explosive Devices used against American troops in the war in Afghanistan.

Interestingly, an Indiana agency named the Indiana Finance Authority has ties to both these endeavors. The IFA signed a thirty year contract with Indiana Gasification to buy most of the production of that plant and in turn will force Hoosier consumers to purchase that gas at a significant premium over the price of natural gas to heat their homes.

In the Mt. Vernon case, IFA authorized $1.2 Billion in tax exempt bonds for the Fatima Corporation to use for capital expenditures to build their plant at the Southwind port.

In both case, there was no public involvement allowed in the drafting of either the bond issue or the contract, although the contract was later approved by the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission which did allow for public input which is now the subject of an Supreme Court proceeding.

Valley Watch wil hold a press conference to discuss future actions it intends to take on April 18 and we will report on that on this web site.

April 11, 2013-by Mark Gee

Full Moon Silhouettes from Mark Gee on Vimeo.

Full Moon Silhouettes is a real time video of the moon rising over the Mount Victoria Lookout in Wellington, New Zealand. People had gathered up there this night to get the best view possible of the moon rising. I captured the video from 2.1km away on the other side of the city. It’s something that I’ve been wanting to photograph for a long time now, and a lot of planning and failed attempts had taken place. Finally, during moon rise on the 28th January 2013, everything fell into place and I got my footage.
The video is as it came off the memory card and there has been no manipulation whatsoever. Technically it was quite a challenge to get the final result. I shot it on a Canon ID MkIV in video mode with a Canon EF 500mm f/4L and a Canon 2x extender II, giving me the equivalent focal length of 1300mm.
Music – Tenderness by Dan Phillipson : premiumbeat.com/royalty_free_music/songs/tenderness

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