1. MSNBC, Melissa Harris-Perry Show, “Is W. Va. ‘On Sale To The Highest Bidder’?”
January 19, 2014
Watch the Interview: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/mhp/54118228#54118228
Josh Fox, Frances Beinecke and Bob Kincaid join the MHP panel to talk about the chemical spill in West Virginia and if corporate interests are affecting the water supply in the state.
2. Bloomberg News, “Water Utilities Review Plans After West Virginia Spill”
January 18, 2014
By Mark Drajem
Water utilities are reviewing safety plans after a chemical spill tainted a West Virginia treatment plant that hadn’t updated its assessment in 12 years, before a company began storing coal-cleansing chemicals nearby.
The 2002 Source Water Assessment Report for the West Virginia American Water Co. plant in Charleston listed the risk as high from industrial sites along the Elk River. There’s no sign it was updated to account for Freedom Industries Inc., which bought and converted a facility that had stored gasoline into a site for storing the coal-cleaning chemical that leaked Jan. 9, forcing 300,000 people to stop using their water.
Critics said the document shows the limits of laws meant to keep U.S. drinking water safe. The American Water Works Association, which represents the industry, said utilities will take a new look at their plans after the spill in West Virginia.
“Utilities across the country are looking again at their water assessment,” Tom Curtis, head of government affairs at the Denver-based association, said in an interview. They’re asking, “What’s in the watershed and what do I need to be aware of?”
In addition, regulators and lawmakers may learn more about the regulation for factories, storage facilities or farmers, said Curtis, whose group represents water utilities and manufacturers.
Senate Bill
West Virginia’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Joe Manchin and Jay Rockefeller, yesterday proposed legislation to boost inspections of above-ground chemical storage facilities and require companies to develop state-approved emergency-response plans. Their bill won backing from Senator Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat and chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee.
West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin also said that he will push for a state measure to require that public water systems have “proper contingency plans in place.” His office will propose that in a bill to the legislature next week, he said in a statement yesterday.
Environmental groups cite the leak of 7,500 gallons of a coal-processing chemical from a Freedom Industries tank on the banks of the Elk River, less than 2 miles miles upstream from a water intake serving the state capital, to show that protections are lacking for drinking water.
The leak of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol caused the largest do-not-use order ever by the West Virginia water utility, covering 300,000 people in the capital and nine nearby counties.
System Flushed
After days of flushing the system, the entire area was cleared yesterday to resume use of the water, with an exemption for a few towns and an advisory that pregnant women avoid drinking it.
Rockefeller yesterday asked West Virginia American Water for information on tests that led to the lifting of the ban.
“While there are a number of questions I have about the spill and your company’s response to it, many of my constituents have expressed concern that the levels of” the chemical “have spiked in certain areas despite the ‘do not use’ order being lifted,” Rockefeller said in a letter to the company’s president, Jeffrey McIntyre.
The senator asked McIntyre whether the company’s tests show levels of the chemical are rising, what steps are being taken to protect the public and the actions to further eliminate the chemical.
Freedom Industries separately filed for bankruptcy protection, after more than two dozen lawsuits were filed against the company. Lawyers have also been filed against West Virginia American Water, part of American Water Works Co. (AWK), the nation’s biggest publicly traded water utility.
Assess Risks
American Water, based in Voorhees, New Jersey, works with local, state and federal agencies to assess risks to water quality, said Denise Free, a company spokeswoman.
“American Water continuously coordinates with responsible state and federal agencies and participates or leads many joint industry and government research projects and working groups to review and recommend ongoing improvements to the water sector,” she said in an e-mail when asked about the West Virginia report.
The assessment for the Elk River, required by a 1996 drinking water law, was prepared by the West Virginia health department. It says the risk of contamination in the river is high, and recommends that efforts be made to collect information about possible pollution risks.
“Source water protection efforts should be directed toward the establishment of an effective and efficient emergency response plan if one does not currently exist,” according to the assessment.
Current Rules
The West Virginia case shows limits of current rules, which mandate that utilities or localities assess their risks without giving them the power or requiring the deficiencies be remedied, said Erik Olson, a lawyer focusing on drinking water at the Natural Resources Defense Council, the New York-based environmental advocacy group.
“It’s pretty clear that a lot of problems were identified, but it’s not clear that anything was done about it,” he said in an interview. “We’re hoping this is a wake-up call to regulators and Congress.”
3. Bloomberg Businessweek, “Beijing, Shanghai Step Up Rules Battle Against Pollution”
January 19, 2014
China’s capital city and the nation’s financial hub are stepping up measures to curb pollution as the meteorological agency warned of hazardous smog levels for a fourth day.
In Beijing, companies, construction sites, street vendors and vehicle owners who exceed stipulated emission limits will face fines and other penalties, according to a draft plan released by the city government on Jan. 18. Shanghai will phase out 500 polluting, hazardous and energy-intensive facilities, the city’s Mayor Yang Xiong said yesterday.
President Xi Jinping has pledged to tackle pollution amid rising public concern that smog and environmental degradation are affecting the nation’s health and the economy. The Ministry of Environmental Protection this month told all provinces and municipalities to cut air pollutants by as much as one quarter.
“This pollution is leading to much public worry,” Liu Jigang, deputy director of the standing committee of the Beijing People’s Congress, said in comments posted on the city government’s website. Beijing’s average reading of PM2.5, fine airborne particulates that pose the largest health risks, were more than 1.5 times higher than the national target of 35 last year, he said.
The city published a draft of a pollution prevention plan on Jan. 18 with new penalties, according to a Beijing Morning Post report yesterday. They include fines of 10,000 yuan ($1,653) to 100,000 yuan and possible closures for companies exceeding national or city emission limits. Owners of vehicles who exceed emission rules will face penalties of as much as 3,000 yuan, the newspaper said.
The National Meteorological Center issued a yellow alert for smog yesterday, the fourth straight day, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The warning covered areas in 10 provinces and municipalities including Shanghai and Tianjin, a coastal city neighboring Beijing.
Shanghai Warning
At a meeting of the municipal people’s congress yesterday, Shanghai’s mayor said the city will retrofit power plants with anti-dust and denitration equipment, and accelerate the replacement of coal-fired boilers and furnaces.
The city will also implement its clean air action plan, and pay more attention to the treatment of PM2.5 particulate matter, Yang said.
Shanghai’s government yesterday warned children and the elderly to avoid prolonged or heavy outdoor activities as PM2.5 readings hit six times the World Health Organization’s recommended level of daily exposure.
The order was made as the city’s environmental monitoring center said air quality readings signaled “heavy pollution.” The level of PM2.5 pollutants was 157.2 micrograms per cubic meter, compared with WHO guidelines of exposure of no more than 25 over a 24-hour period.
Exceeding Standards
Beijing and Shanghai have been told by the environmental protection ministry to cut PM2.5 average readings by 25 percent and 15 percent respectively by 2017.
Steel factories and thermal power plants in eastern China that provide real-time emissions data frequently exceed national standards, according to a study led by Beijing-based environmental group Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs released on Jan. 14.
China’s smog will be tough to eradicate without addressing industrial coal pollution, according to Barbara Finamore, Asia director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a Washington-based environmental organization.
“In the past year China has announced significant plans to cut pollution and increase transparency,” Finamore said in e-mailed comments on Jan. 16. “Their challenge now is to put those plans into action fast because the public’s patience is running out.”
Xi said solving China’s environmental issues needs “bigger steps and patience,” Xinhua reported on Dec. 28, citing comments the president made during a visit to a power plant in Beijing. PM2.5 has generated heated discussion, Xinhua cited him as saying.
4. China Daily USA, “Pollution-Reporting Measures Seen Aiding Battle Against Smog”
January 21, 2014
By Jack Freifelder
China’s air pollution data- reporting initiatives mark a “turning point” in the country’s battle against choking smog and other environmental challenges, an official with the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) said.
Linda Greer, the director of the NRDC’s health program, said the initiatives which took effect at the start of this year “have more potential than anything else the government has done because it will really enable local officials and concerned citizens to target their concerns and focus attention on the big problems”.
Although it’s early, “it could be a watershed moment,” Greer told China Daily in an interview.
To be more transparent about the pollutants in the nation’s environment, the Chinese government has begun requiring some major cities to release hourly statistical updates on air quality and wastewater discharge. By 2015, the aim is to have every major city in China release pollution data to the public.
Seven of the 10 Chinese cities with the worst air pollution in the third quarter of 2013 were located in Hebei province, which surrounds the Chinese capital of Beijing.
Liu Jigang, deputy director of the standing committee of the Beijing People’s Congress, said public discontent with the pollution issue is on the rise. “This pollution is leading to much public worry,” Liu said in comments posted on the city government’s website.
President Xi Jinping has pledged to tackle pollution amid increasing public concern that environmental issues threaten the health of both citizens and the national economy.
Xi has said solving China’s environmental issues calls for “bigger steps and patience,” drawing on comments he made during a trip to a power plant in Beijing, Bloomberg News reported.
Barbara Finamore, Asia director of the NRDC, a New York-based nonprofit environmental advocacy group, said air pollution problems are tough to eradicate without tackling these issues head-on.
“China’s toxic air is not going to go away until the root cause is addressed – uncontrolled industrial coal pollution,” Finamore said in an e-mail to China Daily. “There are signals that the country is recognizing this. In the past year China has announced significant plans to cut pollution and increase transparency. Their challenge now is to put those plans into action fast because the public’s patience is running out,” she said.
In another initiative targeting air pollution, China recently began requiring 15,000 of the nation’s biggest factories to monitor air emissions and wastewater discharge continuously. More than 150 cities have been called on to report emissions data to the public, according to the NRDC.
Greer, who has a doctorate in environmental toxicology, said the increased availability of information is a pragmatic step toward further traction on this key environmental issue in China.
“Making information available on the sources of the pollution is the next logical step in this campaign,” Greer said. “It’s that kind of public pressure that in other countries around the world really inspires the sources to do a much better job of controlling their pollution.”
China “is doing this environmental reporting in 2013, so they really have all the electronic communication technology at their fingertips,” Greer said. “It’s a different ballgame now than when we were first doing our reporting. We hope that the NRDC’s experience could be useful to the Chinese government and other NGOs who are staffed there to help them fast-track activity, learn from our mistakes and make faster progress on this than they would make otherwise.”
5. National Public Radio, “Jerry Brown Declares A Drought Emergency In California”
January 17, 2014
By Richard Gonzales
Listen to the Interview: http://www.npr.org/2014/01/17/263494972/jerry-brown-declares-a-drought-emergency-in-california
California Gov. Jerry Brown declared a drought emergency on Friday, amid growing concerns about future water supplies for residents and for farmers. Brown called for a 20 percent voluntary reduction in water use and eased water transfer rights between farmers. However, mandatory measures will still be left to local communities to impose, for now.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
In California, Governor Jerry Brown has signed an emergency drought declaration, saying his state is seeing the driest weather in about a century. This is California’s third consecutive dry year with no appreciable rain in sight. As NPR’s Richard Gonzales reports, cities and counties across the state are taking drastic measures.
RICHARD GONZALES, BYLINE: January is usually a wet month in California but there’s hardly been a hint of rain. Throughout the state, from the coast to the inland valleys to the mountains, residents are beginning to see what those parched conditions really mean.
GOVERNOR JERRY BROWN: Today, I’m declaring a drought emergency in the state of California because we’re facing perhaps the worst drought that California has ever seen since records began being kept about a hundred years ago.
GONZALES: With that declaration, Brown urged state residents to voluntarily reduce their water consumption by 20 percent.
BROWN: This takes a coming together of all the people of California to deal with this serious and prolonged event of nature.
GONZALES: Brown has been under growing pressure to respond to reports of bone-dry reservoirs and an alarmingly low snow pack. Today’s announcement stopped short of imposing any mandatory conservation measures. For now, mandatory water restrictions are being left to individual cities. The Sacramento City Council, this week, voted to require residents to reduce consumption by between 20 to 30 percent. The city plans to dispatch a team of monitors to enforce rules restricting outdoor irrigation and car washing. Repeat offenders could face fines of up to $1,000.
In the Central Valley, the state’s ag industry praised the governor’s declaration. Gayle Holman is a spokeswoman for the Westlands Water District, the largest agricultural water district in the country. She says, the declaration will ease some environmental rules governing water allocations.
GAYLE HOLMAN: With this drought declaration, it provides flexibility and easing of some of the regulations that prohibit water flowing south of the delta to ag districts like Westlands.
GONZALES: Environmentalists are also hailing the governor’s action. Kate Poole is an attorney with the Natural Resource Defense Council’s water program. She says today’s declaration could be a boost for long-term conservation and water storage efforts.
KATE POOLE: The governor, for one, has a big bully pulpit. And so making sure that everybody in the state is aware that we’re in tough situation in terms of our water supplies and does what they can to cut back on water use is very important.
GONZALES: California isn’t the only state grappling with drought. Federal officials are designating portions of 11 western and central states as primary natural disaster areas due to the lack of rain. The move means that farmers in those areas can qualify for low-interest emergency loans.
6. Reuters, “Nuclear Power Is Set To Disappoint, Again”
January 21, 2014
By John Kemp
Nuclear power is the energy dream that refuses to die, despite serious accidents at Windscale (1957), Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011).
Many of the arguments that were employed in favour of nuclear in the 1950s and 1960s as a solution to oil supplies running out are now being resurrected in favour of nuclear as a solution to climate change.
But the promise of safe, clean and reasonably priced nuclear power seems as far away now as it was 60 years ago. We are still waiting for the safe, cheap and reliable reactor designs that were promised in 1956.
PEAKING OIL
Back in the 1950s, plentiful and cheap energy from fissioning uranium and thorium was seen as the only alternative to fast-depleting fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal.
Shell geologist M. King Hubbert is best known as the grandfather of “peak oil” for his theories about the imminent exhaustion of oil resources in the United States and around the world.
But he was also a strong advocate for nuclear power. The 1956 paper that made him famous explicitly linked it to peaking oil production (“Nuclear energy and the fossil fuels”).
“It appears that there exist within minable depths in the United States rocks with uranium contents equivalent to 1,000 barrels of oil or more per metric tonne, whose total energy content is probably several hundred times that of all the fossil fuels combined,” Hubbert wrote.
“The world appears to be on the threshold of an era which in terms of energy consumption will be at least an order of magnitude greater than that made possible by fossil fuels.”
On a time-scale spanning millennia, “the discovery, exploitation and exhaustion of the fossil fuels will be seen to be but an ephemeral event”.
By contrast, nuclear offered an energy supply adequate to meet the planet’s needs for thousands of years.
Writing in the 1950s, when the United States and the Soviet Union were racing to build ever-bigger nuclear weapons, Hubbert could not be unaware of the perils associated with splitting the atom.
Nuclear scientists were still learning to master the peaceful uses of atomic energy to build utility-scale civilian power reactors.
However, provided the superpowers did not wipe each other out in the meantime with a devastating exchange of nuclear weapons, Hubbert thought civilian nuclear power would become a viable alternative to oil and gas by the 1970s.
“It will probably require the better part of another 10 or 15 years of research and development before stabilized designs of reactors … are achieved,” Hubbert predicted, but after that “we may expect the usual exponential rate of growth”.
Hubbert would probably have been surprised and disappointed about how little progress has been made in the intervening years.
CLIMATE CHANGE
Climate scientists are now revisiting many of the same arguments in favour of nuclear as a way to avert global warming.
In November 2013, James Hansen, formerly head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and the doyen of the climate science movement, published an open letter, with three colleagues, addressed “to those influencing environmental policy but opposed to nuclear power”.
“As climate and energy scientists concerned with global climate change, we are writing to urge you to advocate the development and deployment of safer nuclear energy systems,” Hansen and his colleagues said in the letter.
“In the real world there is no credible path to climate stabilization that does not include a substantial role for nuclear power,” they wrote.
“Continued opposition to nuclear power threatens humanity’s ability to avoid dangerous climate change.”
While acknowledging the risks associated with nuclear power, including accidents and the possibility of weapons proliferation, the scientists said these are dwarfed by the risks associated with pumping vast quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as a result of burning fossil fuels.
Echoing Hubbert, they insisted: “We understand that today’s nuclear plants are far from perfect. Fortunately, passive safety systems and other advances can make new plants much safer. And modern nuclear technology can reduce proliferation risks and solve the waste disposal problem.”
Hansen and his colleagues argued that wind, solar and biomass simply cannot scale up fast enough to provide cheap and reliable energy on the scale required, so anyone concerned about global warming cannot afford to rule out nuclear as a way to displace substantial amounts of fossil fuel combustion.
HOSTILE REACTION
Nuclear power arouses strong emotions. Hansen’s letter was immediately blasted by climate specialists at the U.S. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and other environmental groups, many of which have campaigned against nuclear power for more than three decades on safety grounds.
“The authors of this letter (and other nuclear energy proponents) are on the wrong track,” the NRDC wrote in a withering response.
“Given its massive capital costs, technical complexity, and international security concerns, nuclear power is clearly not a practical alternative,” they added (“Response to an Open Letter on the Future of Nuclear Power”, Nov. 5, 2013).
The NRDC wants policymakers to focus on energy efficiency and renewables such as wind and solar, and not become distracted by dreams of cheap, plentiful and clean nuclear energy.
“The open letter suggests that it is the environmental community that is somehow holding back a nuclear power surge. Nothing could be further from the truth,” the NRDC complained.
“No one can or should close the door to the prospect of improved nuclear power technology. But in a world with constrained capital resources and an urgent need to find the lowest-cost ways to cut carbon pollution, nuclear power ranks far down the list of promising or likely solutions,” according to the council.
“A U.S. nuclear renaissance has failed to materialize, despite targeted federal subsidies, because of nuclear power’s high capital cost, long construction times, the lower demand for electricity due largely to improvements in energy efficiency, and competition from renewables,” the NRDC said.
TROUBLED TECHNOLOGY
The NRDC’s critique is not the whole story, however. The industry’s hoped-for “nuclear renaissance” has been thwarted by three developments: cheap natural gas from the shale revolution; regulatory delays due to environmental activism; and the disaster at Fukushima.
Like renewables such as solar and wind, nuclear power plants have very high capital costs but low fuel and other operating costs. In contrast, gas and coal-fired power plants are cheap to build but relatively expensive to run.
In the United States, the economics of nuclear power have been fatally disrupted by cheap gas, and in Western Europe as a result of cheap coal.
The shale revolution also imperils renewables. But unlike wind and solar, nuclear has not benefited from the same level of subsidies and renewable portfolio standards to help it compete (except in Britain, where the government has guaranteed special high electricity prices for nuclear power producers, as it has for wind power).
A big part of nuclear’s high capital costs has been caused by regulatory and construction delays, most of which stem from a dogged campaign waged by environmentalists to tie up projects in administrative and legal delays to make them uneconomic and force their sponsors to abandon them.
So, it is not entirely true to say the environmental community has failed to hold back nuclear power.
However, the industry is not blameless. For 60 years, nuclear engineers and operators have been promising safer and cheaper designs. By the early 2000s, the industry had recovered from memories of Chernobyl and was promising a fourth generation of standardised reactor designs with more passive safety features. Then Fukushima revealed a host of design flaws and unsafe operating practices, damaging public confidence.
It is possible that large-scale nuclear power could offer part of the solution to global warming, just as it promised to avert Hubbert’s fears about peak oil. But the industry appears no nearer than it was then to building a favourable consensus or solving its cost and safety problems.
Hansen, like Hubbert, looks set to be disappointed.
7. USA Today, “Light Bulb Attack Sheds More Heat Than Light: Our View”
January 20, 2014
By The Editorial Board, USA Today
There are two ways to look at the great debate over light bulbs.
One is that government regulations meant to save energy by filling the nation’s roughly 4 billion light sockets with vastly more efficient light bulbs are an outrageous offense to personal freedom.
The other is summed up by a funny Internet spot last year for Cree’s superefficient light emitting diode (LED) bulbs: “The light bulbs in your house were invented by Thomas Edison in 1879. Now think about that with your 2013 brain. Do you still do your wash down at the creek while your eldest son stands lookout for wolves?”
REP. BURGESS: Let consumers decide watt’s up
The trillion dollar spending bill enacted into law last week makes a nod toward the first viewpoint. It bans the federal government from spending money to enforce the phaseout of the familiar incandescent bulb.
This makes Tea Party activists happy. Getting the government out of Americans’ lighting fixtures has been one of their persistent demands. But it might have come too late to make much difference. A bipartisan 2007 law, signed by President George W. Bush, has been pushing up energy efficiency standards and pushing out the old-style light bulbs for the past two years.
Traditional bulbs convert only one-tenth of the electricity they use into light; the rest is wasted. Energy-saving rules made the old 100-watt bulb obsolete in January 2012, followed by the 75-watt last year and the 40-watt and 60-watt bulbs this month.
You can still find the old-style bulbs, but inventory is dwindling. Bulb makers and retailers have largely moved on. So have most consumers, according to polls.
True, affection for traditional bulbs is strong, and the first replacements were hard to love. They were expensive and slow to warm up. Some produced light that people found unpleasant. Competition and innovation have fixed most problems, including the price. Squiggly compact fluorescents, or CFLs, that once cost as much as $35 a bulb now commonly sell for about $2 or less.
LEDs are still more expensive but even more efficient, and those who want their old-style bulbs can buy modified incandescents virtually indistinguishable — except that they use about a quarter less electricity.
And that’s the point. The new bulbs may cost more, but they use so much less power and last so much longer that they pay for themselves. Over all, switching to new bulbs could save the electricity produced by 30 power plants — enough to power every home in Texas, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Critics complain that the government is “picking winners,” but the bill Bush signed did this the right way: It set efficiency standards that manufacturers could meet any way they liked, and the result is visible at any hardware store — a huge selection of competing bulbs.
Not every government-mandated standard works well or justifies its existence, but the light bulb rule has spurred remarkable innovation and is already saving significant amounts of electricity. A time when a boom in oil and natural gas production has brought the nation tantalizingly close to energy independence is no time to backtrack on bulbs.
USA TODAY’s editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.
8. National Geographic, “4 Ways Green Groups Say Trans-Pacific Partnership Will Hurt Environment”
January 17, 2014
By Brian Clark Howard
A leaked draft of a major free trade agreement among the United States, Canada, Mexico, and nations on the Pacific Rim raises alarming questions about environmental protections, several leading green groups say.
“If the environment chapter is finalized as written in this leaked document, President Obama’s environmental trade record would be worse than George W. Bush’s,” Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said in a statement after a draft of the agreement was published Wednesday on WikiLeaks.
“This draft chapter falls flat on every single one of our issues—oceans, fish, wildlife, and forest protections—and in fact, rolls back on the progress made in past free trade pacts,” he said.
The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership is a huge pact that would govern about 40 percent of the world’s gross domestic product and one-third of world trade, said Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
The agreement involves a sprawling cast of countries: Australia, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, Canada, Mexico, and the U.S.
The NRDC joined with the Sierra Club and WWF in criticizing the leaked draft of the environment chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange said proved the chapter was “a toothless public relations exercise with no enforcement mechanism.”
The White House has pushed back against such criticisms. In a blog post responding to the leak this week, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) wrote that “stewardship is a core American value, and we will insist on a robust, fully enforceable environment chapter in the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) or we will not come to agreement.”
Here are four grievances voiced by environmental groups over the leaked chapter:
1. They say the pact lacks basic environmental provisions.
This is all about what’s not in the proposed pact.
The NRDC’s Schmidt says that environmental groups are asking for “some pretty basic environmental provisions.
“We’re saying don’t subsidize unsustainable fisheries and don’t do illegal things,” he said.
Environmentalists say that the Obama White House has hinted that it will not support an agreement without enforceable environmental provisions, in recent remarks by some of the administration’s key environmental players.
But the “overarching” problem with the leaked draft, Schmidt says, is that “there’s no enforcement.”
The leaked document mentions that trade partners should take steps to protect the environment, but Schmidt says that “there are many caveats that effectively allow countries to not make these enforceable.
“References to the word ‘shall’ are very rarely used,” he says, “and are often paired with ‘seek to’ or ‘attempt,’ which are not legally enforceable.”
2. Green groups say the draft agreement does not discourage overfishing.
The nations considering the Trans-Pacific Partnership have a “responsibility” to provide adequate protection against overfishing, but the draft agreement fails to provide that, said Carter Roberts, president and CEO of WWF.
The countries negotiating the agreement account for about a third of global fisheries production, Roberts notes, so the stakes are high.
Those countries have a range of direct and indirect subsidies for their fishing fleets, including payments, discounted loans, reduced prices on fuel, and so on.
Photo of shark fins drying in the sun cover the roof of a factory building in Hong Kong.
Shark fins, which are overharvested for soup, dry on the roof of a factory in Hong Kong.
“What we have been pushing for is for countries to phase out harmful subsidies … that lead to greater harvest of fishing stocks than can be sustained,” said Schmidt. “We’re not saying end all fishing programs and support, but you need to make sure that any support is targeted at programs that don’t lead to overconsumption of fish stocks.”
For its part, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office responded that the U.S. is “proposing that the TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership] include, for the first time in any trade or environment agreement, groundbreaking prohibitions on fish subsidies that set a new and higher baseline for fisheries protections.”
3. The pact does not take a strong enough stance against illegal wildlife products, activists say.
Green groups would like to see stronger enforcement of international laws on products made from endangered species, such as elephant ivory or tiger pelts, as part of a new trade agreement.
“The lack of fully-enforceable environmental safeguards means negotiators are allowing a unique opportunity to protect wildlife and support legal sustainable trade of renewable resources to slip through their fingers,” WWF’s Roberts said in a statement.
The negotiating countries are already party to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which prohibits overseas trade of endangered species, “but we know that enforcement is not 100 percent,” Schmidt said.
4. Green groups say the agreement doesn’t go far enough in preventing illegal logging.
Many endangered trees are cut down around the world, often through logging in restricted areas such as parks, sometimes under the cover of darkness. The U.S. has a law, known as the amended Lacey Act, that prohibits import of illegally logged timber products. Australia has a similar law, and Japan is considering one.
The NRDC and allied groups want each country that signs onto the Trans-Pacific Partnership to enact an equivalent law.
1. National Journal, “EPA Versus Greens, Fracking Edition”
January 15, 2014
By Amy Harder, Clare Foran and Ben Geman
The brewing battle between environmentalists and President Obama over fracking is ramping up.
In a letter to Natural Resources Defense Council President Frances Beinecke, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy is seeking to address concerns about the agency’s policies and actions around the controversial drilling technology called fracking. Beinecke wasn’t happy with that letter, according to EnergyWire.
Grassroots environmentalists first launched the war against fracking a few years ago, and it’s taken hold in many parts of the country. Now, major environmental groups with big Washington footprints are getting more critical of the process.
This is a troubling trend for the natural-gas industry, which once considered many of these groups its allies.
It may not bode well for the Democratic Party either, whose policymakers risk alienating a key constituent group and triggering divisions within the party if they mishandle—politically and policy-wise—this issue of fracking.
Meanwhile, it is a testament to the power of grassroots environmentalism.
2. Washington Post, “EPA: Mining would destroy fishery, villages, part of watershed in Alaska’s Bristol Bay”
January 15, 2013
By Darryl Fears
A large-scale mining operation in Alaska’s Bristol Bay would destroy a significant portion of the watershed, a pristine fishery that supports nearly half the world’s sockeye salmon and dozens of Native villages that have relied on fishing for thousands of years, according to a report released Wednesday by the Obama administration.
The long-awaited final assessment on potential impacts of mining in the western Alaska region, compiled over three years by the Environmental Protection Agency at the request of area tribes, dealt a serious blow to a Canadian company’s ambitions to dig one of the world’s largest pit mines to extract resources from the mineral-rich land.
The company, Northern Dynasty Mining, has yet to file a permit for its Pebble Mine, but the EPA estimated that up to 94 miles “of salmon-supporting streams and 1,300 to 5,350 acres of wetlands, ponds, and lakes” would be erased by the footprint of a mining pit, depending on its size.
Based on the recent records of similar mines in the United States, the EPA projected that polluted water from the site could enter streams from dredged solid waste and wastewater runoff. “Under routine operations, EPA estimates adverse direct and indirect effects on fish in 13 to 51 miles of streams,” the agency said in a statement released in combination with the report.
Northern Dynasty and its Republican supporters criticized the report as biased, premature and bad for business. Environmental groups and Democrats hailed the assessment as a first step to protecting fish, wildlife and Alaska Natives whose way of life rely on them.
“Publication of the final watershed assessment is really the final chapter in a very sad story,” said Ron Thiessen, Northern Dynasty’s president and chief executive, who hadn’t read the document. “We believe EPA set out to do a flawed analysis of the Pebble Project, and they certainly succeeded with both their first and second drafts” of the Bristol Bay watershed assessment. “We have every expectation that the final report released today is more of the same.”
The EPA began the assessment in 2010, when tribes asked the agency to intervene after Northern Dynasty expressed interest in a major dig for copper and gold worth an estimated $500 billion.
EPA officials said granting such a request is unusual, but scientists thought a peerreviewed study was crucial, given Bristol Bay’s historical importance to the tribes, which have fished there for thousands of years, and its distinction as one of the world’s last great, undisturbed salmon fisheries.
Thiessen noted that the assessment does not include recommendations or regulations that might affect the future development of the Pebble Project. He said Northern Dynasty would submit a proposal that can be reviewed by federal and state officials in the coming months.
“We have every expectation that the Environmental Impact Statement process . . . to be administered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will ultimately provide a much more rigorous, fair and transparent review of the science surrounding this important project,” he said.
A coalition of opponents made up of Alaska Native leaders, commercial fishermen, jewelers and environmental groups had a different view. They called on the EPA to end any chance that the project can move forward.
“It’s time for the EPA to take immediate steps to protect the fishery, the Alaska Native communities who rely on it as their primary source of food and the 14,000 jobs that depend on it,” said Luki Akelkok, a sport-fishing lodge owner who is chairman of Nunamta Aulukestai, an association of 10 Bristol Bay Native tribes and Native village corporations.
“EPA’s assessment is objective, clear and grounded in sound science,” said Taryn Kiekow, senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Now . . . it is time for the agency to take regulatory action to stop the Pebble Mine.”
Dennis McLerran, administrator for the regional EPA office that oversees the watershed, said the agency is unwilling to take that step.
“We have not yet made any decisions with respect to regulatory actions,” he said in a conference call with reporters.
Still, in its analysis, based on documents submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission by Northern Dynasty, the EPA painted a picture of potential devastation.
An 86-mile transportation corridor with the site would cross 54 streams and rivers where about 35 million adult salmon return from the ocean to spawn and young salmon migrate to the ocean to swim.
If a storage dam were to fail, it “would have a catastrophic impact on fish for decades,” said Jeff Frithsen, a senior scientist at the EPA.
3. The Cordova Times, “EPA says impact of Bristol Bay mine could be devastating”
January 15, 2014
By Margaret Bauman
A long-waiting final federal report on the Bristol Bay watershed says large-scale mining there could have potentially catastrophic effects on fishery resources.
The report, online at http://www.epa.gov/bristolbay, outlines a number of potential adverse results that could occur if the mine was developed and operated, including catastrophic damage to fishery habitat due to development, operation and accidents at such a large scale mine.
The report does not specifically mention the Pebble mine, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency notes that the assessment does not recommend policy or regulatory decisions.
“Thousands of hardworking commercial fishermen rely on the Bristol Bay fishery, and we’re proud to provide a sustainable and healthy source of food for the nation,” said Bob Waldrop, executive director of the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association. “Our industry is the economic engine for the region, and we’re calling on the Obama Administration to take immediate steps to protect it from all large-scale mining in the Bristol Bay drainages.”
The report was praised as objective, clear and grounded in sound science by environmental organizations including Trout Unlimited and the Natural Resources Defense Council, who called on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to protect fisheries habitat from adverse impacts.
Northern Dynasty Minerals, the Vancouver, British Columbia junior mining company that has spent millions of dollars already gathering data on the project, issued a statement saying the EPA’ final Bristol Bay watershed report “does not include any recommendations or regulatory actions that will affect future development of the Pebble project.
“Publication of the final watershed assessment is really the final chapter in a very sad story,” said Ron Thiessen, president of Northern Dynasty, a subsidiary of Hunter Dickinson Inc. “We believe EPA set out to do a flawed analysis of the Pebble project, and they certainly succeeded with both their first and second drafts of the BBWA. We have every expectation that the final report released today is more of the same.”
Thiessen’s commentary was echoed by John Shively, chief executive officer of the Pebble Partnership in Anchorage, who called the draft and final documents flawed.
Shively said the report does not assess effects of the Pebble project, for which the Pebble Partnership has not yet submitted a project for regulatory evaluation.
“Clearly”, said Shively, “this report should not be used as the basis for any type of agency decision regarding Pebble.”
Joel Reynolds, western director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the document objective, clear and grounded in sound science, and said it’s time for the EPA to take regulatory action to stop the Pebble mine.
The document makes it clear that the mine would deal a huge blow to the sportsmen’s paradise we have in Bristol Bay,” said Tim Bristol, director of Trout Unlimited’s Alaska program. “Bristol Bay is the last place you should put a mike like this,” he said.
A group of commercial fishermen, investors, jewelers, conservation organizations and Alaska Native leaders meanwhile applauded the EPA’s final assessment.
“The study documents the global significance of the Bristol Bay wild salmon fishery – the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world – and highlights the severe impact and risks of large-scale mining, including the proposed Pebble mine, in the Bristol Bay watershed,” the group said, in a statement issued by Earthworks, a national conservation group.
Jennifer Krill, executive director of Earthworks, said the fate of the nation’s greatest salmon fishery and jobs that depend on it now rests with the EPA.
“There are some places where mining cannot be done without forever damaging landscapes, wildlife, businesses, and communities,” said Michael J. Kowalski, chairman and chief executive officer of Tifffany & Co., the New York based jewelry firm. “Bristol Bay is one such place. We, along with many of our fellow jewelers, urge the EPA to use its authority under the Clean Water Act to safeguard Bristol Bay and the communities and fishery it supports.”
Trillium Assets Management, also supported the EPA report. “Anglo American’s withdrawal from the project highlights significant business and investment risks,” said Jonas Kron, senior vice president of Trillium.”We urge the EPA to take immediate steps to initiate the 404 © process to protect he fishery and provide regulatory clarity.”
Section 404 © of the Clean Water Act established a program to regulate the discharge of dredged or fill material into the waters of the United States.
It authorizes the EPA administrator to deny or restrict the use of defined areas as disposal sites, after determining that the discharge of such materials into that area would have an unacceptable adverse effect on fisheries, wildlife, municipal water supplies or recreational use.
Jason Metrokin, president and chief executive officer of the Bristol Bay Native Corp., also applauded the EPA’s assessment.
“From the very beginning, EPA was in Bristol Bay because our federally recognized tribes and Native organizations, including BBNC, asked them to be,” Metrokin said.
“With today’s release, science has weighted in. Bristol Bay, its existing jobs and way of life could be irreparably damaged by a large-scale mine that is the size and scope of the Pebble project- and therefore, our fish, our people and our cultures must be protected.”
Metrokin said BBNC reports responsible development where it can be done without causing unacceptable risks to the people, cultures and fishing economy of the region.
The proposed Pebble mine is not such a project,” he said. “It’s time for the agency to initiate a 404 © action to protect Bristol Bay.”
4. Bloomberg, “Canada Ambassador and Former Allies at Odds on Keystone XL”
January 16, 2014
By Jim Snyder
With his country’s foreign minister in tow, Canadian Ambassador Gary Doer walked the marble corridors of the U.S. Capitol yesterday pitching the prize his nation is seeking: the Keystone XL pipeline.
“It always makes more sense in our view to get energy from middle North American than the Middle East,” Doer said after a session with Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, a Keystone supporter.
Backing a project bitterly opposed by environmentalists is something of a shift for Doer. During his three terms as premier of Manitoba, he built a reputation as a champion of combating global warming. He backed the Kyoto Protocol to cut global carbon emissions, pushed to shut coal-fired power plants and promoted renewable energy such as wind and hydropower. He was named by Businessweek in 2005 as one of 20 people leading the fight against climate change.
Now Doer is on the other side of an issue that has inflamed his one-time climate allies.
“I’m just trying to put the puck in the net,” Doer said in an interview last month at the expansive Canadian embassy in Washington, a little more than a slapshot from the Capitol and decorated with drawings of Niagara Falls, a walrus and a polar bear.
Double Production
While environmentalists consider Keystone an assault on the climate, Canada is counting on TransCanada Corp.’s $5.4 billion project to connect its vast reserves of crude oil to the world’s largest refining center along the U.S. coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The pipeline would help oil-sands developers reach their goal of doubling production by 2025, and raise the prices they are paid for the fossil fuel — putting pressure on Doer and his colleagues to make a case in Washington.
Visitor logs show Doer has been a frequent visitor to the White House. He also meets regularly with U.S. and Canadian media outlets as well as labor groups and government agencies, highlighting the benefits of Keystone to both countries.
In October, the embassy co-hosted an event with an oil- industry group whose members include Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Dow Chemical Co. Yesterday, Doer took Foreign Minister John Baird to Capitol Hill where he met with both Democrats and Republicans. Baird is scheduled to meet with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry tomorrow.
“He is an immensely pragmatic politician,” Keith Stewart, a climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace Canada, which opposes the pipeline, said of Doer. “As premier of Manitoba, being good on climate is good politics. It’s not part of the job description to be Canada’s ambassador to Washington.”
‘Environmental Industry’
In the interview at the embassy, Doer dismissed opposition to Keystone as uninformed and driven by an “environmental industry” in Washington that has turned the controversy into a tool for fundraising. He said he promoted oil and gas development when he was premier, too.
“My view is the oil is coming from Canada now,” he said. “It’s just a question of how it gets there.”
Trains that fill a gap in transport capacity release more greenhouse gases and aren’t as safe as pipelines, Doer said. Canada is a reliable U.S. ally, and its oil will displace imports from Venezuela, which isn’t, Doer said.
With graying hair and a slightly grizzled voice, Doer, 65, has built his career, from president of the Manitoba Government Employees’ Association to chief of his nation’s most important embassy, by nurturing relationships. He employs humor, energy and a deft personal touch.
Hockey Match
He’s already planning a celebration of the U.S.-Canada gold medal hockey match he is betting will take place at the Winter Olympics in Sochi next month. If it does, it will be a replay of the game in Vancouver in 2010, which Canada won 3-2.
“Ovechkin won’t be happy,” he said. The Washington Capitals’s National Hockey League star, Alexander Ovechkin, is playing for Russia.
Paul Thomas, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, said Doer’s political skill gave Manitoba, with less than 4 percent of Canada’s total population, a national profile befitting a larger province for the 10 years he represented the liberal New Democratic Party.
“He has contextual intelligence,” Thomas said in a phone interview. “He can read situations in a very insightful way.”
When he held office, he was a member of a liberal party. Doer is now the face of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s conservative government in Washington.
“I like to think that I tried to focus on results rather than process,” Doer said.
Built Schools
As premier, he balanced budgets as he also expanded educational opportunities by building new schools in the north and inner city of Winnipeg, Doer’s hometown, said Paul Vogt, a former top aide who is now a visiting scholar at the University of Manitoba.
Education was a priority for Doer, who left college to work as a counselor at a youth corrections facility, Vogt said. Post- secondary enrollment increased by a third during his three terms in office, he said.
“He’s a person of principle,” Vogt said. “He had a very strong sense of what brought him into politics and what he’s there to achieve.”
Doer also racked up victories on energy and environment policy. He pushed for the first wind farms and the construction of a transmission lines to sell electricity to U.S. states in the northern plains, and promoted ethanol and stricter emissions standards for automobiles.
Keystone Test
Keystone is testing his salesmanship skills.
Critics — including supporters of President Barack Obama – – say it would deepen climate risks by promoting development of Alberta’s carbon-heavy oil sands. Obama said in a June speech on climate change that he wouldn’t back the project if it would significantly increase carbon-dioxide emissions.
A draft environmental analysis prepared for the State Department said it wouldn’t, because Alberta’s oil sands would be developed even if the pipeline didn’t go forward. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency called for a fuller review. Environmental groups also challenged the finding.
The fact that it has become a symbol by which to measure Obama’s commitment to climate change may not bode well for the project.
Oil sands development is Canada’s fastest-growing source of greenhouse-gas emissions.
“You have to be an incredibly good advocate to make the case that Canada is doing the right thing on climate,” said Clare Demerse, director of federal policy at the Pembina Institute, a nonprofit environmental research and advocacy group. “Clearly, Canada is not.”
Canada’s Carbon
Canada has “some work to do to get to our target,” Doer acknowledged, as he defended his country’s policies, noting that it had put in place rules that would lead to the end of coal- fired power generation.
Danielle Droitsch, director of Natural Resources Defense Council’s Canada Project, said the regulations will allow coal plants to operate for decades. Canada is also much less reliant on coal than the U.S., where it generates about 40 percent of electricity. In Canada, coal’s total is around 15 percent.
“Coal is the U.S.’s problem,” Droitsch said. “Tar sands is Canada’s problem.”
In his push for Keystone, Doer has counted on relationships he developed as premier. The embassy held a reception on Feb. 23 for governors attending a National Governors Association meeting in Washington. Pointing to Alberta Premier Alison Redford, personable and unassuming, Vogt said Doer asked the group whether they wanted to get their fuel from her or Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s president at the time who once called the U.S. an assassin. Chavez died in May.
“The Harper government has staked a lot of its reputation on getting the pipeline through,” Thomas, at the University of Manitoba, said. “I can’t think of anybody among our recent ambassadors who would be better equipped to make this happen, if it’s possible.”
5. Forbes, “More Professional Sports Teams are Thinking Green, to Please Fans and Make Money”
January 15, 2014
By Heather Clancy
The requisite press releases have been issued proclaiming the uber green-ness of the upcoming Super Bowl XLVIII at MetLife Stadium in my home state of New Jersey.
Indeed, back in 2009, the venue was dubbed the “Greenest Stadium in the NFL” by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It even uses solar power (about 1,350 panels) to generate the electricity for the programmable LED light display across the top of the stadium.
For the big game in early February, the big focus has been on the green business practices embraced by the concession organization, which is converting all kitchen waste oil to biodiesel fuel, composting the kitchen scraps, donating leftover food and recycling the mounds of cardboard, plastic, glass and other materials that remain after fans leave the stands.
But if you really interested in innovative green technology applications in the professional sports world, you’ll need to look a bit farther west to Cleveland, where the Browns football team is testing an anaerobic digester from InSinkErator (yes, the garbage disposal company) as a means of diverting food waste at FirstEnergy Stadium.
It’s the first professional sports installation for the new technology, called Grind2Energy, although it isn’t actually on site. The system uses food scraps from the concessions – an estimated 35 tons per season — which is ground into a slurry and transported to the quasar energy group at Ohio State University. (It’s part of the school’s research and development organization for the agricultural department). There, the material is used as a feedstock. The end result is biogas and other fuels, along with nutrients that can be used for fertilizer (enough for three football fields full of crops).
This particular installation is a collaboration between the Browns, FirstEnergy Stadium, and the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy. That’s because an important ingredient in the process is cow manure, which produces methane.
Anaerobic digesters aren’t exactly new. They are traditionally used by forward-thinking dairy farms (like Stonyfield Farms) to offset electricity needs and reuse waste rather than carting it away and dumping it other places.
“Digester systems are something this country’s dairy farmers have used for years,” said Tom Gallagher, CEO of the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, said in a statement about the deal. “But we have just begun to tap what is possible. Through new partnerships – whether it’s with a stadium, or a hospital or a chain of supermarkets – dairy farms in all 50 states are able to house this type of system and turn food waste into value for local communities.”
The system hosted by the Browns will produce enough electricity to power one home for about 1.5 years, and enough natural gas for 32 homes. So, it’s not huge, but it represents an example of projects that might matter at a local level.
Consider how many homes have built-in garbage disposals for grinding up food waste. Now, imagine if municipal governments got involved to put that substance to a revenue-producing use.
From a business perspective, the interest in finding better ways to handle food waste is become more pronounced: driven in large part by the United Nations revelation in 2011 that up to 1.3 billion tons of food are wasted annually, about one-third of everything produced for human consumption.
From a marketing standpoint, professional sports teams could play an important role in making technologies for dealing with this problem – as well as other nagging natural resource concerns such as wasted water — more visible. There’s even a four-year-old organization dedicated to this, the Green Sports Alliance (GSA), which now has 212 members. (The group was founded by Paul Allen’s Vulcan and the Natural Resources Defense Council.)
“Cities and local communities really identify with their professional teams, so when we see franchises make these partnerships and these commitments, we think there’s a potential multiplier effect for every fan that’s going to walk through those turnstiles,” said Allen Hershkowitz, director of the Sports Greening Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
There’s even brand-new money to be made in thinking green, at least in the minds of the auto-racing world. The FIA Formula E organization (not a GSA member) is planning a Grand Prix series starting in September in Beijing specifically for all-electric vehicles. Pictured below is the Spark-Renault SRT_01E, which is capable of speeds in excess of 150 miles per hour. The car got its first public debut in early January during the International CES show in Las Vegas.
“We expect this Championship to become the framework for research and development around the electric car, a key element for the future of our cities,” said Alejandro Agag, CEO of Formula E Holdings
At the very least, it’s clearly a great way to break down many of the performance myths associated with electric vehicles.
6. KALW- San Francisco Public Radio, “Today on Your Call: How should we adapt to a drier California?”
January 15, 2014
By Ali Budner
Listen Here
7. Washington Examiner, “Light bulb provision will do little to bring back popular, inexpensive incandescents”
January 15, 2014
By Susan Ferrechio and Sean Lengell
Tucked into a 1,500-page budget bill now moving through Congress is a Republican provision that would restore the incandescent light bulbs that were phased out in favor of greener lighting technology.
But the legislation is likely to disappoint hopeful light-bulb hoarders and other haters of the new energy-efficient, squiggly tailed compact fluorescent and LED lights that replaced the iconic bulbs.
“The light bulb [provision] is mainly political theater at this point,” said Kit Kennedy, a lawyer for the energy and transportation program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.
“The efficiency standards for lighting are in effect,” Kennedy said. “The majority of U.S. manufacturers are committed to these standards, which they support, and are going to be complying with them, rider or no rider.”
Since Jan. 1, it has been illegal to produce 40- or 60-watt incandescent light bulbs in the United States. The 75-watt and 100-watt bulbs were banned earlier.
Incandescent bulbs that have been in use in America since the 1800s were banned in 2007 by green-energy legislation approved by Democratic lawmakers and signed into law by Republican President George W. Bush.
Supporters of the ban say the incandescent bulbs wasted energy and that a more environmentally friendly alternative was needed.
Defenders of the traditional bulb say the government is again overreaching, that the marketplace should decide what kind of bulbs are manufactured here.
While compact fluorescent bulbs have largely replaced the traditional bulbs, consumers also can opt for LED lights, which last longer than incandescent or fluorescent but cost much more — up to 20 times more than the bulbs they replace.
The iconic incandescent bulb has become a rallying point for Republicans and when the GOP recaptured control of the House in a 2010 wave election, lawmakers made several attempts to revive it.
Led in the House by Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, Republicans tried unsuccessfully to repeal the 2007 ban and, failing that, to cut off funding for Department of Energy enforcement of the bulb ban. Burgess finally got the funding cutoff provision inserted into an energy and water spending bill that President Obama signed into law.
The provision lawmakers inserted into the 2014 bill would extend that funding cutoff for enforcement, but would do nothing to revive the production of incandescent bulbs. Burgess acknowledged the provision’s limitations in an interview with the Washington Examiner, but said he’s hopes the measure revives interest in the traditional bulb.
Democrats dismissed the Republican effort to revive the bulb as political grandstanding that did nothing to alter the 2007 law.
“This is just a messaging amendment for [Republicans in the] House to say they made the Senate take this thing,” said a senior Democratic congressional aide. “It practically, at least in the short term, really doesn’t make any difference, because everyone’s following these rules anyway.”
8. Merced Sun-Star, “Citing health risks, California lawmakers push to limit antibiotic use on livestock”
January 16, 2014
By Jeremy B. White
The salmonella outbreak that rippled out from California chicken processing facilities last year, sickening more than 400 and hospitalizing at least 134, came with a troubling footnote: Several bacteria samples taken from victims resisted multiple types of antibiotics.
They weren’t impervious to salmonella drugs, officials from Foster Farms are quick to point out, and no one has died. Officials conducting an investigation have yet to discern the precise causes of the outbreak.
But the presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria underscored concerns about new mutations of bacteria arising and afflicting humans. One of the medical breakthroughs of the 20th century, antibiotics have been victims of their own success, losing effectiveness as they have become ubiquitous medical tools.
“Any time you use an antibiotic, either in an animal or in a human, you are going to put pressure on those bacteria and you are going to create a resistance,” said Dr. Tom Chiller, a medical epidemiologist for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We know resistance is occurring across the food chain, really from farm to fork, and we know humans can become sick from those bacteria.”
Now California legislators are invoking public health as they seek limits on feeding antibiotics to livestock. They cite science that links overuse of antimicrobial drugs on farm animals to the prevalence of hardier bacteria.
“It’s a problem that I think we’re seeing more effects of,” said Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo.
Hill and Assemblyman Kevin Mullin, D-South San Francisco, have introduced bills that would restrict the use of antibiotics on livestock. Both lawmakers point to a growing body of evidence indicating that overuse of livestock antibiotics – often to help animals gain weight – has allowed drug-resistant bacteria to prosper and spread.
“There’s clearly a public health concern with the overuse of antibiotics,” Mullin said in an interview, and “we need to take a bold step now.”
Food producers have access to a range of different antibiotics, but the drugs can be divided into three broad categories: antibiotics used to treat an existing health issue; antibiotics used to guard against outbreaks, introduced before animals have fallen sick; and antibiotics used for “production purposes,” to help animals bulk up more quickly or with less food.
Representatives for California’s agriculture sector and its $2.8 billion cattle industry question the charge that farmers and ranchers habitually use antibiotics to fatten up their animals. While they support using antibiotics judiciously, they say food producers need the ability to swiftly treat ill animals.
“We really don’t want to use antibiotics, because that means we’ve got sick animals,” said Dave Daley, second vice president of the California Cattlemen’s Association. But “we want to make sure antibiotics, as needed, can be used by small farmers and ranchers to care for cattle that are truly sick.”
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria represent a serious issue: the Centers for Disease Control estimates they infect more than 2 million Americans a year, killing at least 23,000 of them. A recent CDC report warning of the perils of overuse noted that the amount of antibiotics given to livestock “contributes to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in food-producing animals.”
Consequences of the drug-defying bacteria can include lengthened hospital stays and treatment methods that carry higher costs and more potential side effects, according to Avinash Kar, a staff attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
“The antibiotic-resistant bacteria, once they’re generated and thrive on these facilities, can get out in a variety of ways,” including by permeating soil and water or migrating to workers, said Kar, whose organization is actively backing Mullin’s bill.
The federal Food and Drug Administration has spotlighted antibiotic resistance as a significant public health risk. In December, the agency released voluntary guidelines that would have pharmaceutical companies change how they label drugs, effectively prohibiting farmers from using antibiotics to promote growth.
Both bills before the Legislature would go further. Hill’s approach would build on the FDA advisory but make its recommendations mandatory, taking a tougher approach to banning over-the-counter weight-gain antibiotics.
“I think the FDA did not go far enough in their voluntary requirements,” Hill said. “You make them voluntary, there’s not a real incentive to focus on curtailing the use of antibiotics.”
Drug companies have said they will comply with the FDA’s framework, and the new guidelines are subject to a public comment period that ends in mid-March.
Assemblyman Frank Bigelow, R-O’Neals, said his colleagues should wait for the FDA process to play out before advancing additional regulations.
“There’s a hysteria that starts to occur, and people jump on bandwagons without knowing all the facts or looking at all the facts,” said Bigelow, a cattleman identifiable on the Assembly floor by his distinctive white rancher’s hat. “We already have an agency, the FDA, who has the oversight powers,” he added, “and we need to let them use those powers.”
Even more stringent than Hill’s proposal is Mullin’s bill, which would ban weight-gain antibiotics and sharply restrict access to the preventive kind.
Under the current system farmers and ranchers can obtain preventive antibiotics, intended to pre-emptively stem the spread of diseases like pneumonia, over the counter. The FDA has proposed having veterinarians sign off.
But making that oversight optional, as the FDA framework does, is not enough, according to Mullin. His bill would bar preventive use of antibiotics except in limited cases where there is documented risk of a sick animal infecting other animals.
To Mullin and allies, keeping those preventive antibiotics widely available would preserve a loophole.
“I’m concerned that, essentially, we’re not getting at the core problem and would still have a high volume of antibiotics in the food supply” if preventive use isn’t scaled back, Mullin said.
Beyond that, Kar said, some large producers use preventive drugs to compensate for cramped or unclean conditions that help incubate disease.
“It would really limit the circumstances when antibiotics are used to what we think are the appropriate uses: when the animal is sick or when there’s an outbreak on the premises that needs to be contained,” Kar said of Mullin’s bill. “It shouldn’t be because you’re raising the animals in crowded, unsanitary conditions.”
Building a barrier to obtaining preventive medicine is short-sighted, according to Noelle Cremers of the California Farm Bureau Federation. Cremers said the tightened standards Mullin proposes will delay treatment, comparing it to forcing a family to wait for a doctor to make house calls.
“Farmers and ranchers want to make sure that antibiotics remain effective for human health and animal health,” Cremers said, but “there’s a recognition that we need to prevent disease, and antibiotics applied through feed can do a really good job of preventing disease.”
California is in the midst of another withering drought, with dry grass leaving cattle more susceptible to respiratory issues and other problems, according to Daley of the California Cattlemen’s Association. Policymakers must give food producers the autonomy they need to keep their animals healthy, Daley said.
“Frankly, most cattlemen don’t want to see indiscriminate use of antibiotics, either,” Daley said, but “we need the flexibility to be able to use them when we need them.”
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