LilBambi’s Blog – BambisMusings

Adding insult to injury … Virginia waterways ranks second-dirtiest in country (HamptonRoads.com)

Virginia has the second-dirtiest waterways among the 50 states.

That’s according to a recent study by the Environment America advocacy group tallying the amount of pollutants discharged into bodies of water across the nation.

Based on numbers reported to federal authorities, only Indiana had more toxic chemicals released into its waterways by industry than Virginia’s 18 million-plus pounds in 2007.

Sad. Really sad.

So yeah, I see where they are going … the state’s waterways are already a disaster area, so let’s let ODEC add insult to injury by building the state’s largest coal fired power plant – running 24/7 at 1500 MW in Dendron, (Surry, VA.) Hmmm….

Air Pollution Increases Infants’ Risk Of Bronchiolitis (ScienceDaily.com)

Infants who are exposed to higher levels of air pollution are at increased risk for bronchiolitis, according to a new study.

The study appears in the November 15 issue of the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

“There has been very little study of the consequences of early life exposure to air pollution,” said Catherine Karr, M.D. PhD, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington and the paper’s lead author. “This study is unique in that we were able to look at multiple sources including wood smoke in a region with relatively low concentrations of ambient air pollution overall.”

Much more in the article!

American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine – part E. Environmental and Occupational Lung Disease of the current November 15, 2009 issue.

Registration is required to read the full article however, the abstract is available here which includes the conclusions below:

Conclusions: Air pollutants from several sources may increase infant bronchiolitis requiring clinical care. Traffic, local point source emissions, and wood smoke may contribute to this disease.

Under measurements and readings above the conclusions states:

An interquartile increase in lifetime exposure to NO2, NO, SO2, CO, wood-smoke exposure days, and point source emissions score was associated with increased risk of bronchiolitis…

What pollutants do coal plants introduce? At least a few of those listed, plus more: Power Plant Emissions Publications

County asks state to block fly ash dump (Maryland Gazette):

County Executive John R. Leopold asked Gov. Martin O’Malley yesterday to halt plans for a fly ash dump along the Anne Arundel County-Baltimore city border.

“Although the landfill itself is located in Baltimore city, the site is less than 1,000 feet from its border with Anne Arundel County and in close proximity to the surface waters of Swan Creek,” Leopold wrote in the letter to O’Malley.

John R. Leopold along with “Del. Steve Schuh, R-Gibson Island, and Sen. Bryan Simonaire, R-Pasaden”, and some residents were at a meeting in Brooklyn on the ’storm water discharge permit’ that would be needed for the landfill. (EEEK!)

Mr. Leopold rightly has asked that determination of this fly ash/coal ash dump be postponed until the EPA, which is ‘on track’ to make a determination by the end of the year in regard to whether “fly ash is a hazardous material and should be disposed as such.”

Constellation Energy is the company that is requesting the fly ash dump site and Mr. Leopold reminded “of the situation in Gambrills, where hazardous substances in private wells were found to be linked to a Constellation fly ash dump.” (OUCH! and well done Mr. Leopold!)

From the Washington Post article entiled “Energy Firm’s Dumping Sows Anxiety in Gambrills” in 2007 on this issue of Gambrills when fly ash was found in dust in homes and on dishes of residents:

Constellation, which has delivered bottled water to Greenleaf and neighbors for 11 months, acknowledges the contamination but disputes the severity of the problem. Last week, the company halted the dumping temporarily and is in talks with the state about how to clean it up.

Putting off the decision to build yet another power plant (and one of the largest in Virginia) — until the EPA makes its determination later this year on fly ash — would be the wise and prudent course of action that should be made by the Town Council of Dendron, VA and the Board of Supervisors of Surry County on behalf of the whole of Hampton Roads in Virginia regarding the ODEC proposed 1500MW Cypress Creek Power Plant (and it’s corresponding fly ash/coal ash dump/landfill) that they want to put right in our tiny town’s “backyard” particularly considering the closeness to the homes and water supply in Dendron, as well as the wetlands of the Blackwater River system and Cypress Swamp.

Clash in Alabama Over Tennessee Coal Ash (NYTimes)

Almost every day, a train pulls into a rail yard in rural Alabama, hauling 8,500 tons of a disaster that occurred 350 miles away to a final resting place, the Arrowhead Landfill here in Perry County, which is very poor and almost 70 percent black.

This ‘windfall’ of dumping all this dangerous coal ash in their landfill will “add more than $3 million to their County’s budget of about $4.5 million” the article goes on to say. This little Alabama county has an unemployment rate of 17 percent and only a chosen few really were able to get any work from this so called ‘windfall’ for the County.

Some of us here in Dendron, Virginia, in Surry County, where ODEC proposes to build a 1,500 MW coal fired power plant with a coal ash/fly ash landfill in our little town’s back yard have been wondering the same thing some of Perry County residents have been wondering:

But some residents worry that their leaders are taking a short-term view, and that their community has been too easily persuaded to take on a wealthier, whiter community’s problem. “Money ain’t worth everything,” said Mary Gibson Holley, 74, a black retired teacher in Uniontown. “In the long run, they ain’t looking about what this could do to the community if something goes wrong.”

And in just one of many parallels between the thinking in Perry County Alabama, and here in Surry County:

County leaders, who are mostly black, bristle at accusations of environmental injustice, saying that the ash is perfectly safe and that criticism has been fostered by outsiders, or even competitors who wanted the ash disposal contract for themselves.

And this:

But in Perry County, a lack of trust has permeated the debate. Residents said they feared equipment failure, flooding, tornadoes or lack of oversight at the landfill, where the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, whose notably lax regulation of coal ash permits most landfills to use it as a cover material for other waste, will be responsible for enforcement.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Cownan River Map that includes the Blackwater River system in Virginia that flows to the Arlbemerle Sound, NC.

One of the major differences is the distance to the water table in Perry County and here in Dendron in Surry County. Here in Dendron, that water table is only about 4 feet (and many are still on their own wells in the surrounding area of the County), and wetlands are on at least two sides of the proposed site within contamination distance to the Blackwater River system that flows to the Albemerle Sound, NC:

The Blackwater River was a transportation route in the 17th and 18th centuries, connecting the Chesapeake Bay settlements with the Albemarle Settlements. It was one of the few rivers of colonial Virginia that did not empty into Chesapeake Bay yet lay close to the colony’s oldest settlements on the James River. Settlements in the Blackwater’s drainage basin were founded very early in Virginia’s history. As a result, the Blackwater River became one of the early migration routes southward from the James River into the region then called Southside Virginia, and beyond into the Albemarle District of Carolina (later North Carolina). Today’s usual definition of Southside differs somewhat from that of colonial times.

Of course, ODEC wants to build a 15 mile pipeline directly to the James River for ingress and egress of water for cooling.

One of the other major differences between Perry County and here in Dendron is the railroad cars. The railroad cars here in Dendron will bring in the coal to ‘make’ the coal ash to be stored in the landfill and when that gets full, to find some place to take the coal ash off their hands, like Perry County, or golf greens in other Counties, or maybe put it in concrete to build things all over the place.

Must read article.

gamkqrhtuy

One doesn’t have to be what some would consider to be traditional environmentalists to be against further polluting our air, water, land, blowing up ancient mountains, endangering children’s health, or the elderly and those that are ill.

Judge rules for environmental groups on Virginia power plant!!!!

You can download the decision here: http://wiseenergyforvirginia.org/downloads/Wise%20Decision.pdf

In a momentous victory for clean energy advocates in Virginia, a Richmond Circuit Court judge ruled today that the State Air Pollution Control Board violated federal environmental law in permitting Dominion Power’s coal-fired power plant in Wise County in the southwest corner of the state.

The Wise Energy for Virginia Coalition has raised a host of concerns about the Wise County coal plant over the last several years, including air pollution and the health of the local community, water quality, mountaintop removal coal mining, and the impacts of the plant’s carbon emissions on global warming. Some 42,500 Virginians from across the state signed petitions and sent letters and comments to state and company officials opposing the project.

CALE JAFFE, Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney:
“This is an important victory for the health and welfare of Virginians. Once a coal plant is completed, it may prove very difficult to retrofit after the fact to remedy violations of the Clean Air Act. So this decision is essential for assuring that the Clean Air Act’s most stringent health-based standards will be met before a coal plant is constructed. We hope Dominion will take this ruling as a sign that it needs to leave expensive coal-fired power plants in the past, and move quickly toward developing sustainable, clean energy sources for a 21st century green economy.”

Great job! If power companies will not do what is right by the residents, the courts are there to redress resident grievances.

Coal ash can harm environment

Coal ash is also known as fly ash, the result of burning coal in coal powered power plants and is increasingly known and being spoken out by those in the know as dangerous to humans and the environment:

“Coal ash contains heavy metals such as mercury and other toxic materials including arsenic, particulate matter, dioxin and furan,” said Dr. Romeo Quijano, Pesticide Action Network Asia Pacific Philippine coordinator in a forum in Cebu City on Wednesday.

I looked up furan and found several links to furan and coal plants – and even the government looked into the process used to help mitigate some of the mercury from the resultant process of burning coal – the best the government could say about, it in this case, was that it didn’t add to the toxicity of fly ash. Huh? So they acknowledge fly ash is toxic? So, why has it not been regulated in the past? Follow the money trail.

Doesn’t that tell you something about fly ash? Doesn’t that tell you that the powers that be are not looking at fly ash as a harmful substance that can actually harm humans and the environment in the vicinity of coal plants (and downstream/down wind) and dumping grounds of fly ash (read: poorer communities that no one seems to care about, like the poor/depressed county where Dendron, VA is located, or the the poor/depressed areas of Appalachia, or the poor/depressed areas in Alabama, etc.) at least when huge amounts of money can be made — because they want electricity for the power hungry in the country who wish not to curb their power hungry habits?

People in these financially depressed/poorer areas where new coal powered plants are wished to be built (or have already been built), or where they wish to dump the coal ash/fly ash — with promises of tax coffers that will help the poor counties, but not the poor people whose medical bills (they can ill afford) will go up due to toxicity related illnesses, allergies, breathing difficulties, cancers, etc., will go up and infant mortality rate will go up, as well as miscarriage rates, and potentially birth defects as well, all while giving the county more money to build better schools, libraries, county government centers, recreation centers, etc. A true paradox, no?!

Well, look at it another way. What has the county done with all the money that it already gets annually from the nuclear power plant already in the county of Surry? Has it really helped the county which over the last 20-30 yrs still does not look like a county that gets millions of dollars from any direction. And the county from it’s own minutes appears to be in debt up to it’s ears to do what it has already done in the county — to the tune of millions of dollars. Which may be why they are themselves pushing for this coal fired power plant in Dendron, VA?

So, I guess it is to sacrifice any individuals (infants, children, elderly, the ill) who can’t adjust to the additional toxins that will be thrown into the environment — in the entire of Hampton Roads — so that the remaining people in the county of Surry and their administrators (that can hopefully survive the additional toxins (at least for a while) will benefit from these things!? And to h*ll with those who will be the sad recipients of future illnesses, cancers, allergies, and other diseases that will come from this toxicity — that people will succumb to as time goes on. Yeah, let’s just burn that bridge when they come to it, eh?

Oh, wait, that’s not entirely true … they will have the money to provide health care and welfare for those who can no longer take care of themselves, and make themselves feel better about being the benevolent caregivers while reaping the profits?!?

More from the article:

“The routes of exposure are through inhalation, ingestion, skin contact and skin absorption,” said Quijano who is also a professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology UP Manila College of Medicine.

On human health, Quijanoc said was a risk of having cancer, immune system dysfunction, neurobehavioral impairment and blood diseases, as well as diabetes and thyroid dysfunction.

I guess there isn’t enough cancer, lung ailments, allergies, miscarriages, birth defects, etc. in Hampton Roads eh? Let’s tempt providence further….

After the unbelievable Dendron Town Council Meeting for August 2009, I no longer believe in the intelligence of those in charge; I no longer trust that right will prevail. I no longer believe that people who claim to be religious will stand up for the down trodden against financial gain. I have no reason to believe in it any longer.

NOTE: Don’t get me wrong here. I still trust in God to either vindicate us, or help us leave this forsaken place. It’s people with dollar signs in their sights that I no longer trust.

First of its Kind Onion Juice-Methane-Fuel Cell Project Underway:

Gills Onions has come up with a clever way to dispose of its daily 300,000-pound load of onion waste – turn it into methane, and use the gas to power fuel cells that can cover the plant’s baseload electrical needs.

That’s the gist of the $9.5 million project unveiled Friday at the Oxnard, Calif.-based onion processing plant.

The savings of $400,000 a year from deferred waste hauling, plus about $700,000 a year in deferred electricity costs – not to mention a $2.7 million self-generation incentive check from Southern California Gas Co. – should pay back the investment in less than five years, said Steve Gill, co-owner of the business.

This type of wonderful ‘thinking out of the box’ project is why I am so frustrated with the supposed ‘headway’ in pulling away from coal when it really means continuing to grow coal plants.

There should be no reason why smaller plants, maybe even community power plants made with waste or renewable energy can’t be done.

If we continue to think only in terms of ‘easy’ or ‘cheap today’ but ‘dirty’ solutions that damage our environment and the health of our sick, our young and our elderly, we will never get out of this mess we have created for ourselves. We need to get away from continuing to expand dirty coal and in the process prevent funds from moving into a more smart and/or renewable ways to create the electrical power needed.

I think that if all states, the governments, and countries did what SC (SCsaysNO) is doing, the companies that want to provide the power would have to think out of the box or they wouldn’t expand and others would take their place and build the more renewable/waste product plants that were safer, if they were foolish enough not to do what was needed.

But Mountain Top Removal and building more clean coal plants is not the answer. Clean Coal is an oxy moron:

Clean coal: Never was there an oxymoron more insidious, or more dangerous to our public health. Invoked as often by the Democratic presidential candidates as by the Republicans and by liberals and conservatives alike, this slogan has blindsided any meaningful progress toward a sustainable energy policy.

Chart showing Coal plants in the US, the states they are in as the data shows at Gapminder.org. We need to see where our state fits in the picture and see if we can stop progressing the move to more coal powered plants. We need to not allow more to be built. And we certainly don’t need Virginia to move further into the right side of this graph. We need to be doing what we can to move to the left on this graph.

Children At Risk PDF — must read.

Army Corps of Engineers Solicits Public Comment on Two Proposals Related to Nationwide Permit 21 in the Appalachian Region (Earthtimes.org)

Posted by the USACE:

WASHINGTON, July 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced today it is soliciting public comments on two proposals related to the use of Nationwide Permit (NWP) 21 in the nation’s Appalachian region. NWP 21 authorizes discharges of dredged or fill material into waters of the United States for surface coal mining activities.

The proposals would affect only the Appalachian region of the following states: Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. The use of NWP 21 for surface coal mining activities in other regions of the country would not be affected.

The first proposal is to modify NWP 21 to prohibit its use in the Appalachian region. In the absence of NWP 21, an applicant would be required to obtain an individual permit for surface coal mining projects. An individual permit includes increased public and agency involvement in the permit review process, including an opportunity for public comment on individual projects.

The second proposal is to suspend NWP 21 while the Corps evaluates the comments received during the 30-day comment period, and while the Corps completes the process to modify NWP 21. If NWP 21 is suspended during this interim period, an applicant would be required to obtain an individual permit for surface coal mining projects.

The Corps’ decision to issue these proposals is a result of the interagency action plan agreed to on June 11, 2009, as part of a Memorandum of Understanding signed by the Corps, the U.S. Department of the Interior, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The agencies agreed to work together to reduce the adverse environmental impacts of surface coal mining activities in the Appalachian region. A copy of the MOU is available at: http://www.usace.army.mil/CECW/Pages/moumoas.aspx.

A public notice on the proposals was published in the July 15, 2009 Federal Register, http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2009/pdf/E9-16803.pdf . Written comments should be submitted at the federal eRulemaking portal at http://www.regulations.gov under docket number COE-2009-0032; or mailed to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Attn: CECW-CO (Attn: Ms. Desiree Hann), 441 G. Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20314. Comments must be submitted on or before August 14, 2009. Email or faxed comments will not be accepted.

SOURCE U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

It would appear to me that the USACE does try to do what they can to protect the communities and nature when they have the support of the government, and the public. But, I would think it would be difficult to do so if their hands are tied by either weak laws, greed, or when those in places of power bend like reeds in the wind.

I am sorry to say that this is too little, too late. The existing laws it seems have not been fully enforced as they should be for a very long time — for 500 mountains are already blown up! And hundreds more are in the pike.

What ever happened to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” — is that too much to ask? Those who think these practices are good, or at least a necessary evil, could they, or more importantly would they, walk in the moccasins, drink the water, live in the homes of those who have suffered due to these destructive or at best polluting practices? Would they want this done to their home? The same holds true for coal plants.

Honestly, it seems to me that even the current laws would be difficult to adhere to when confronted with such a destructive process as Mountain Top Removal. The process itself is the problem.

IMHO, either those who are mining coal should figure out how to get the coal out without impacting the surrounding natural area (the forests, streams, animals, etc.) and the human communities that have put their entire lives and fortunes into their mountain homes, or find a new safer business model that doesn’t hurt people, places or things.

Certainly, renewable energy sources would be much safer for everyone and everything and not be the one shot that Mountain Top Removal is (once you blow up the mountain and take the coal, it’s gone). Not to mention the joke of supposedly trying to put the mountains back to rights after they’ve already been destroyed.

The effects of MTR (Mountain Top Removal) on communities and nature, and the other end of the spectrum, the effects of Coal Fired Power Plants on communities and nature, can be seen through many places including my postings, iLoveMountains.org, Environmental Justice or through searches in search engines. It truly is appalling.

Even if other methods are, or seem like they are more expensive right now, they won’t be for long as they become more ubiquitous. Just as in other areas, once the R&D has been paid for, the prices do come down.

NO ONE SHOULD SUFFER TO PROVIDE ELECTRICITY TO ANYONE.
EVER.

The Quest for Environmental Justice: Human Rights

Hmmm, ODEC has proposed a 1,500 MW baseload coal fired power plant — running 24/7, with two fly ash/coal ash landfills, two turbines, two 600 foot stacks polluting the air, land, water, livestock, humans, and additionally causing sight, noise and light pollution … yeah, I think this scenario certainly fits with the topic of Environmental Justice discussed in this video.