ValleyWatch

April 7, 2011-by Sarah Boseley in the UK Guardian

A gene that causes a wide range of bacteria to become resistant to antibiotics has been found in the water supply in Delhi, with worrying implications for the rest of the globe.

International travel and medical tourism have already brought the gene, known as NDM-1, to the UK. A team of scientists reported last year that they had found NDM-1 positive bacteria in a small number of patients who had visited India for kidney or bone marrow transplants, dialysis, pregnancy care or burns treatment, while others had undergone cosmetic surgery.

Illustration © 2011 John Blair

A paper by Timothy Walsh from Cardiff University and colleagues,published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, reveals that the gene, known as NDM-1, is widespread in the water used for cooking, washing and drinking in Delhi. It will inevitably be brought into hospitals in the gut flora of patients. The potential for movement around the world is high. Continue reading →

Here is Obama’s energy speech given today at Georgetown University.

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March 26, 2011-by George A. Warner in the Government Executive

The Environmental Protection Agency recommended using coal waste in roads, buildings and other construction for about a decade without adequately assessing the damage it could cause, according to a new report from EPA’s inspector general.

File photo © 2009-John Blair. Vectren Energy's AB Brown power plant in Posey County, Indiana is currently "mining" one of their numerous waste facilities (bottom left) for Calcium Sulfate, the main constituent of gypsum that is shipped to Missouri for manufacture into drywall used in construction. In the early 2000s the coal and utility industry claimed that most of the waste materials, though containing hazardous components, could be used beneficially. The only problem was that there was little data to really support that belief.

From 2001 to 2010, EPA promoted coal combustion residues — the byproducts of coal-fired power plants, such as fly ash, bottom ash and boiler slag — as potentially useful materials for wallboard, road bases, golf course fill, concrete and other applications, in an effort to reduce waste. The residues contain low concentrations of arsenic, lead and mercury, which are known to leach into ground water sources if unprotected, the report said.

EPA’s recommendations came out of a government-industry coalition, the Coal Combustion Products Partnership, which included the American Coal Ash Association and Utility Solid Waste Activities Group, as well as other federal agencies.

The use of coal combustion residues as a structural filler nearly tripled between 2001 and 2008, from 4 million tons to 12 million tons a year, according to the report.

Yet, barring a single draft assessment examining the use of fluidized bed combustion waste –a specific coal combustion byproduct –in agricultural settings, EPA never undertook a risk assessment ofrecommended substancesin any of the uses it promoted. Continue reading →

March 8, 2011, By the American Lung Association

The American Lung Association today released Toxic Air: The Case for Cleaning Up Coal-fired Power Plants, a new report that documents the range of hazardous air pollutants emitted from power plants and the urgent need to clean them up to protect public health. The report highlights the wide range of uncontrolled pollutants from these plants including: toxic metals and metal-like substances such as arsenic and lead; mercury; dioxins; chemicals known or thought to cause cancer, including formaldehyde, benzene and radioisotopes; and acid gases such as hydrogen chloride. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is required to issue a proposal to cleanup this toxic pollution by March 16.[youtube id=”6hectXN9dnY” w=”640″ h=”440″]

The report details the dangerous mix of toxic air pollutants that flow from the stacks of uncontrolled coal burning power plants and the adverse health effects associated with these pollutants.  The report also discusses the technologies that are available for dramatically cutting these emissions—technologies that are commercially available and proven to work.

“It’s time that we end the ‘toxic loophole’ that has allowed coal-burning power plants to operate without any federal limits on emissions of mercury, arsenic, dioxin, acid gases such as hydrogen chloride and other dangerous pollutants,” said Charles D. Connor, president and CEO of the American Lung Association. “The American public has waited long enough—more than two decades. We are counting on EPA to protect all Americans from the health risks imposed by these dangerous pollutants once and for all.”

Key facts highlighted in the report:

• Coal-fired power plants produce more hazardous air pollution in the United States than any other industrial pollution sources;
• The Clean Air Act requires the control of hazardous air pollutants from coal-fired power plants, but absent these new rules, no national standards exist to limit these pollutants from these plants; and
• More than 400 coal-fired power plants located in 46 states across the country release in excess of 386,000 tons of hazardous air pollutants into the atmosphere each year.
  

  Tennessee Valley Authority's "Paradise" power plant near Central City, KY spewed forth nearly 10,000,000 pounds of toxic chemicals in 2009. In the region coal plants pollute a whopping 58,000,000 pounds of hazardous chemicals that impoact the health of all people who live in western Kentucky and southwestern Indiana. Photo © 2009 John Blair

Continue reading →

March 4, 2011 -by Jeff Biggers in the Huffington Post

When President Obama conferred the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal on several American heroes yesterday, including Kentucky poetWendell Berry, he forgot one last award: The Medal of Freedom to Tim DeChristopher.

Tim DeChristopher

Instead of being convicted today on two felony accounts for placing bids and disrupting an auction for pristine wilderness Utah sites that would have been opened to gas and oil exploration, 27-year-old Tim DeChristopher should have been receiving our nation’s highest honor for “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States.”

In truth, according to DeChristopher supporters, the leases auctioned to DeChristopher were later overturned by the Obama administration on the grounds that the George W. Bush administration’s Bureau of Land Management had failed to complete the analysis required by federal law for the “protection of national and cultural resources.”

Mr. President: Just as Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. admonished critics in 1963 from his Birmingham jail cell that our nation’s indifference to the civil rights crisis demanded acts of civil disobedience, Tim DeChristopher has followed in King’s call “to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.”

At his trial in Salt Lake City this week, DeChristopher declared: “I was there to raise a red flag. I wanted to delay [the auction] so that the government could take a second look, and make sure they were following their own rules.”

If only to force our nation — and President — to recognize the escalating crisis of climate destabilization and the unacceptable human and environmental costs of unchecked extraction policies, Tim DeChristopher deserves the Medal of Freedom, not a prison sentence.

Even you, Mr. President, have said: “The issue of climate change is one that we ignore at our own peril.” Continue reading →

March 3, 2011-by John Blair, valleywatch.net editor.

Nature could care less what man does. It knows it will prevail. A couple of years ago a new channel was cut in the Wabash River near its mouth with the Ohio River creating a massive new island. Now another island has formed, at least when the River is high as it is this week.

In this picture, © 2011 John Blair, you can see the results of the new cuts rather plainly when color is added to the muddy flood waters. The light blue area depicts the older channel as it reaches the Ohio River, seen on the right. The newest channels are depicted as turquoise.

At the bottom center of the picture is a very old channel that is now devoid of water, even in this period of flooding.

March 2, 2011-by Lisa Evans in the EarthJustice blog.

If you live in Indiana, it’s best not to live below one of the state’s 53 coal ash dams.

Coal waste ponds like these at the Clifty Creek power plant in Madison, IN leave drinking water systems like the Ohio River (at right) vulnerable, especially if regulation of them is lax. Indiana has lax regulation. In fact, Indiana allowed the coal ash landfill to the left to place a liner (which was a positive development on top of the very coal ash the liner was to protect from groundwater. Bizarre to say the least. File Photo © 2010 John Blair

The state’s laissez-fare attitude toward these deadly structures has created a potentially disastrous public hazard. Recent dam breaks in Indianapolis should have sounded the alarm, but apparently it takes more than 30 million gallons of toxic waste to get the state’s attention. Even a failing report card last month from EPA inspectors hardly raised an eyebrow.  The colossal collapse in 2008 of TVA’s high hazard dam in Harriman, Tennessee is apparently a distant memory in the Hoosier State.

But forgetting this lesson may place thousands in harm’s way.

Last spring, the EPA conducted 69 inspections of coal ash surface impoundments (ponds) at 20 power plants across the country, including ponds at six Indiana plants.   The EPA inspectors gave a “poor” rating to 35 ponds– more than half of the ponds inspected  Most notable was that 24 of the “poor” rated ponds (two-thirds of the total) were found at just four Indiana power plants.  These 24 ponds include 6 high hazard dams, 15 significant hazard dams and 3 low hazard dams.

According to the EPA, high hazard dams are those “where failure or mis-operation will probably cause loss of human life.”
 Significant hazard dams are those dams where failure or mis-operation results will cause economic loss, environment damage, disruption of lifeline facilities, or impact other concerns.

Public Domain illustration © 2010 John Blair

The Indiana waste ponds rated “poor” together hold more than 3 billion gallons of toxic waste and cover an area greater than 600 football fields- or an area about two-and-a-half times the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  This extraordinarily number of poor-rated toxic ponds in Indiana is caused by operator neglect as well as the grossly deficient state regulatory program.  Despite the fact that Indiana is home to the largest collection of coal ash ponds in the United States, Indiana regulators fail to require even the most basic safeguards.  Witness:

• Dam design by a professional engineer is not required (only two other states fail to require design by a professional engineer)
• Indiana utilities are not required to inspect their own dams. The state inspects coal ash dams infrequently, if at all
• Indiana utilities are not required to report to the state on dam condition or operation
• Indiana utilities need not maintain an emergency response plan in the event of dam failure
• Indiana utilities are not required to create an inundation map (a map of the area that would be covered in toxic waste in the event of a break)
• Indiana regulations do not require the power plants to post bonds (financial assurance to cover damage in the event of the failure).

Indiana is the third-largest coal ash generating state in the U.S., and its primary disposal method is to dump the waste in unlined and poorly regulated coal ash waste ponds. Most of the dams rated “poor” will likely take human life or cause substantial economic and environmental damage if they fail.

It is the responsibility of the utility operating the ponds to ensure a break never occurs.  But when polluters fail to protect public safety, it is the responsibility of the regulators to step in.  It appears that all have failed the citizens of Indiana. (Go to Original)

February 21, 2011-by Norman Cox, Indychannel.com. Ed. Note-Valley Watch is an intervener along with Citizens Action Coalition, Sierra Club and Spencer County Citizens for Quality of Life in challenging the socialist style proposal before the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission.

A proposed multibillion-dollar plant to produce natural gas in southern Indiana is stirring controversy at the Statehouse.

The plan calls for Indiana homeowners and small businesses that use natural gas to take on part of the risk for the plant, which would be built on the Ohio River in Rockport, 6News’ Norman Cox reported.

The proposed site for the $2.6 billion plant is currently an empty field, but Gov. Mitch Daniels wants the facility to transform Indiana coal into natural gas, utilizing a technology that has never been used on this scale. Aside from that, some have questioned the financial arrangements.

“Never before in the history of the United States has a proposition like this ever been advanced,” said Michael Mullet, an environmental lawyer.

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The state has a deal with the plant’s builder, Indiana Gasification, to buy all its gas for the next 30 years. Indiana will then resell that gas on the open market.

As part of the deal, the state has agreed to pay the company a guaranteed minimum price of about $6 per British thermal unit (BTU).

If the state resells the gas for more money, it will split the excess money with Indiana Gasification. The state’s profit will be used to lower customers’ bills.

Rockport, Indiana is already one of the most polluted communities on Earth. This plant will add to those woes using one of the most socialistic business models ever in the US.

If the state resells the gas for less money, Indiana Gasification will get less money and the state’s loss will be passed along to natural gas customers in the form of higher bills. (MORE)