HSBC refuses Santas' Coal Delivery!

Greg Palast

Ho Ho Ho!!! Santa just tried to deliver a ton of coal to HSBC in London because it's been one of the naughtiest banks in terms of investment in fossil fuel.

HSBC shuts down following a santa invasion in central London

Published on Dec 18, 2013

25 santa activists delivered coal to HSBC the week before Christmas to tell them they've been a naughty bank this year because of their fossil fuel lending. Each piece of coal was donated by a member of the public, to demand HSBC stop bankrolling climate change, and in particular pull out of coal lending. Add your piece here http://wdm.li/18WcT62

Fast Climate Mitigation

We've waiting too long to address GLOBAL WARMING and CLIMATE CHANGE because of the DIRTY ENERGY-FUNDED PROPAGANDISTS, now's the time for actrion!

FROM:



http://www.enn.com/makepage/template5.html



From: Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development
Published September 3, 2013 02:55 PM

Montreal Protocol Endorsed for Fast Climate Mitigation

World’s most effective environmental treaty asked to do more for climate Goal is phasing down HFCs, benefits equivalent to 100 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide


http://www.enn.com/press_releases/4199
Website : Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development

Obama gains allies for de-funding coal plants, expanding cuts in short-lived pollutants

September 05, 2013 By: Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development

Focus on heads of government critical for fast, near-term mitigation in Arctic, elsewhere Leader focus also critical for success with UN climate treaty in 2015 treaty Full Article

The Consequences of Dirty Coal

The bad effects of mercury pollution are known, the costs estimable. Decades were required to address Dirty Coal's pollution in the US over protests by the industry.
 
Great article with substantive links below:

Mercury poisoning is a growing global menace we have to address

As the US knows to its cost, coal-fired power is a major cause of mercury pollution. The world needs a treaty tough on emissions

 

Robert F Kennedy Jr and Marc A Yaggi

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 10 January 2013

 

Minamata sufferer Suemi Uemura, with benumbed legs stretched out, in her home in

Izumi, Japan. Minamata disease is caused by industrial mercury pollution.

Photograph: Katsumi Kasahara/AP

Next week, diplomats from around the world will gather in Geneva to negotiate a treaty on global emissions of mercury – a lethal neurotoxin that includes, among an inventory of grim effects, brain damage and the loss of IQ points in unborn children, injuries to kidneys and heart, and results in tens of billions of dollars in healthcare costs every year in the US alone. The Geneva conference is the final of five meetings, with a treaty expected soon thereafter.

While global mercury emissions are on the rise, negotiators, unfortunately, appear to be leaning towards a treaty with soft measures unlikely to prevent continued catastrophic impacts from this deadly and debilitating poison. Ironically, signatories propose to ink their treaty in Minamata, Japan, a town that famously suffered widespread mercury poisoning.

Health experts first described mercury poisoning, then called "Minamata disease", in Minamata city, in Japan, in 1956. Mercury discharges from the Chisso chemical plant contaminated finfish and shellfish, devastating the community's human and animal population for decades. Many of the region's citizens died and tens of thousands of people suffered mercury-related illnesses.

A former Japanese prime minister proposed naming the treaty the "Minamata Convention" to inspire delegates to reach an agreement that would prevent future mercury poisoning. Sadly, the treaty does not require identification or remediation of contaminated sites, does not require polluters to pay for health damages or environmental clean-up, or provide for protection from similar disasters occurring anywhere in the world. In fact, the treaty is not expected to reduce global levels of mercury in fish and seafood at all.

Poisonous mercury raining down from coal-fired power plants has contaminated fish in every US state. Now, a new report from the Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI) in Maine and IPEN, a network of 700 public interest organizations in 116 countries, shows the devastating global impacts of mercury pollution from coal-burning power plants and other mercury sources. The IPEN-BRI Global Hotspots report finds that coal-fired power plants, artisanal small-scale gold mining, chlor-alkali plants, and other industrial sources contaminate humans and fish around the world with mercury levels that exceed health advisory levels.



The US is only now starting to see progress in reducing mercury emissions. In America, citizen action forced EPA to adopt the first ever mercury and air toxics rule in 2012. This rule will prevent 90% of the mercury in coal burned at power plants from being emitted into the air. Experts estimate the rule will, among other things, prevent annually up to 6,000 heart attacks, 130,000 asthma attacks, 3,000 cases of chronic bronchitis, and 4,000-11,000 premature deaths.

Moreover, experts predict the rule will save $40-70bn in healthcare costs annually. Imagine the benefits if these reductions were implemented globally.

Coal barons and mining magnates are profiting from poisoning the rest of us. As coal consumption dwindles in the US, these companies are exporting their deadly product to the rest of world. A recent report from World Resources Institute (WRI) estimates that almost 1,200 additional coal-fired plants are planned for development around the world.

But the mercury treaty is likely to call simply for reductions on a per facility basis, rather than an overall reduction in mercury emissions to air and water. As a result, the treaty could legitimize increased mercury pollution as the number of coal-fired power plants increases globally. Moreover, there is no agreement that the treaty should even require existing facilities to apply the best available techniques to reduce mercury releases.

We need a mercury treaty that actually reduces global mercury pollution. A treaty that fails to include mandatory mercury reductions overall will dishonor the victims of Minamata disease and accelerate mercury poisoning across the globe.

Those of us who care about public health and clean water, must stand strong and shame the spineless diplomats in Geneva into crafting a treaty that truly prevents the devastating environmental and public health impacts of mercury.

• Editor's note: a number of minor editorial changes were made after publication at the request of the authors; none substantively altered the meaning of the article

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/10/mercury-poisoning-global-menace-treaty

Dirty Coal....Dirty No Matter What

From 350.org

Last night in Seattle over 2,000 showed up wearing red to protest plans for coal exports from the Pacific coast of the United States.

Shipping and burning this coal would add billions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere that we can't afford, and sicken people from mine to smokestack.

LIKE this if you stand with everyone fighting King Coal across the world.

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2019899522_coalhearing14m.html (Photo by Bonnie Frye Hemphill)

Three reasons Cape Cod (and Middleboro) air sucks

As Ben Wright, an advocate at Environment Massachusetts said:

“The least polluting, cheapest energy is the energy we never have to produce in the first place”

Interesting stuff below highlighting where poor air quality comes from.

Who ever thought SEMASS was such a Big Producer, impacting our air quality?

Three reasons Cape Cod air sucks
Power plants to the west of Cape Cod are the largest industrial sources of greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change in the state, according to new data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

MetroWest News offers a list of the state's worse polluters, and three of the worse are downwind from Cape Cod.

SEMASS Resource Recovery Facility, Wareham, a 95-acre facility which burns trash collected by about 60 cities and towns in southeastern Massachusetts and Cape Cod to generate power.

Dominion’s Brayton Point plant in Somerset (just over the Braga Bridge in Fall River) pumps out 5.8 million metric tons of the gas a year.

Cape Cod Canal Power Plant Unit #1 is representative of the most efficient fossil fueled plants of the 1970 era. It's an oil fueled super-critical steam unit optimally designed to best operate between half load and full load.


Report: Power plants pollute
By David Riley/Daily News staff
MetroWest Daily News

Power plants throughout eastern Massachusetts are the largest industrial sources of greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change in the state, according to new data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The information comes from a website the EPA unveiled in January, publicly detailing for the first time emissions reported by the largest producers of carbon dioxide and related greenhouse gases in nine major industries.

All the top 10 sources of carbon dioxide emissions in the Bay State are power plants, including natural gas-fired facilities in Salem, Weymouth, Bellingham and Cambridge. The largest single producer of greenhouse gases in New England is the Brayton Point power station in Somerset, which is largely fueled by coal.

Similarly, the data shows power plants are the largest direct source of greenhouse gases nationwide.

Several owners defended local facilities, saying they take steps to be environmentally responsible, are highly efficient in meeting energy needs or turn waste into energy.

“It’s not a surprise that where you burn fossil fuel to make into electricity that is used every day to make our life a little better, you’re going to see carbon dioxide emissions,” said Jim Norvelle, a spokesman for the power company Dominion.

Dominion owns Brayton Point and the Salem Harbor power station, also one of the top 10 sources of greenhouse gases in the state. The Salem plant is set to close in 2014.

Norvelle noted there are no federal controls on carbon emissions, but Massachusetts is one of nine northeastern states that require power plants in the region to buy emission allowances. States use the proceeds help fund renewable energy initiatives.

Ben Wright, an advocate at Environment Massachusetts, said the new data from the EPA can help further develop the state’s plans to tackle carbon emissions.

“More data means we know better how to curb our greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. “You can’t reduce what you haven’t measured.”

The EPA’s new greenhouse gas inventory covers facilities that produce upward of 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. That does not include emissions from agricultural operations, nor small-scale sources that add up, such as cars and trucks.

But the data from 2010 represents the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., the EPA said. The agency said it was required to collect the data, which is from 2010, under a 2008 federal law.

The data can help businesses track and compare emissions in order to find efficiencies and inform state and federal environmental policy, the EPA said.


The agency is expected to propose limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new or upgraded power plants some time this year.

Overall, Massachusetts fared far better than much of the U.S., ranking 40th out of the 50 states and Washington D.C. in total carbon emissions. The five states with the highest emissions were Texas, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida.

Wright said Massachusetts has made headway in reducing emissions. In addition to participating in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the state Green Communities Act set a goal of getting at least 25 percent of the state’s power from renewable sources by 2030. It also established energy efficiency initiatives to cut power use.

“The least polluting, cheapest energy is the energy we never have to produce in the first place,” Wright said.

The state Global Warming Solutions Act also calls for cutting greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, Wright said.

Here’s a look at some of the largest producers in the state:

Fore River Station, Weymouth

The Fore River power plant generates about 787 megawatts of power, according to its owner, Constellation Energy. It is the third highest direct source of greenhouse gas emissions in the state, producing 1.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2010, according to EPA data.

SEMASS Resource Recovery Facility, Wareham

This 95-acre facility burns trash collected by about 60 cities and towns in southeastern Massachusetts and Cape Cod to generate power.

Owner Covanta Energy, which also runs three other waste-to-energy plants in the state, views its operation as a type of renewable energy. SEMASS manages about 1 million tons of waste per year, said Covanta spokesman James Regan.

The SEMASS facility produced about 890,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2010, according to EPA data. Covanta officials pointed to EPA studies indicating that waste-to-energy operations are a low source of carbon emissions nationwide.

Overall, carbon emissions from waste-to-energy plants are about half that produced by coal-burning plants, said Mike Van Brunt, Covanta’s director of sustainability. The process further cuts emissions by keeping trash out of landfills, where it produces methane, another greenhouse gas, he said.

“For every ton of waste we keep out of a landfill, we prevent all of the methane generation,” Van Brunt said.

The operation also recycles metals that otherwise would have to be mined anew, Regan said.

Salem Harbor

The Salem Harbor power station generates about 745 megawatts, enough to power about 186,000 homes, according to Dominion. The plant sits on 65 acres on the city waterfront.


The facility produced 1.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2010, according to the EPA data. That is far less than Dominion’s Brayton Point plant in Somerset, which pumped out 5.8 million metric tons of the gas the same year.

The facility uses three coal-fired generating units and one fueled by oil. Dominion is shutting down the plant and already closed two of its coal-burning units in December. The facility will close altogether in June 2014.

Norvelle said the company has made no plans for the future of the site. City officials have pressed Dominion to clean up the site.

Kendall Cogeneration Station, Cambridge

The Kendall Cogeneration Station has a production capacity of 256 megawatts, according to its owner, GenOn Energy.

The First Street facility produced roughly 717,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2010, according to EPA data.

The facility uses natural gas as its primary fuel, with oil as a backup. The plant produces two forms of energy — electricity and steam, which is sold for heating and cooling, according to GenOn.

The company is constructing a new steam line allowing it to sell commercial steam to downtown Boston, said GenOn spokeswoman Paige Kane.

Check out the EPA’s greenhouse gas inventory at ghgdata.epa.gov.

Read more: http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x123147680/Report-Power-plants-pollute#ixzz1lWIQ2S2i

Another Coal Ash Spill

You won't hear about the Destructionist Environmental Policies being perpetrated by the Republican controlled House of Representatives on MSM.

As our Democracy has been bought and sold by Dirty Energy and others, the risk to our drinking water and our environment escalates.

Don't breathe a sigh of relief that you're protected from Coal Ash Spills. There is no protection in Massachusetts!

Check out the photo collage, reminiscent of the TVA spill in Harriman, Tennesee. Pretty disgraceful - and totally avoidable if the right policies were in place to protect water supplies.

Coal Ash Spills in Lake Michigan
—By Kate Sheppard

Check out this photo that Mark Hoffman of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal snapped on Monday of a dam collapse at a coal ash pond:

Check out these images: LINK

The Journal Sentinel reports that a large section of a bluff used to contain coal ash at the We Energies Oak Creek Power Plant broke on Monday, dumping ash and dirt into Lake Michigan. As you can see in the photo, a truck and some heavy machinery were also pushed into the lake. One of the first responders in the area noted that the debris "stretched 120 yards long and 50 to 80 yards wide at the bottom." A spokesman for the company told the paper that the dam probably did contain coal ash, but said that they'd stopped dumping it there "several decades ago."

The spill calls to mind the catastrophic dam break at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant in Harriman, Tennessee, back in December 2008. That spill dumped 1.1 billion gallons of coal slurry, and prompted the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider how coal waste is handled. Although the EPA was on course to reclassify coal leavings as "hazardous waste" that needed special handling, that rule has been stuck in bureaucratic wrangling for more than two years. So for now, it's still perfectly legal to store coal ash waste in retention ponds that are likely not lined or particularly well maintained.


Another coal ash spill—this time in Lake Michigan
How many more coal ash spills need to happen before Americans are protected by coal ash safeguards? The latest happened Monday in Oak Creek, Wis., at the We Energies Oak Creek Power Plant.

And since the TVA disaster, the industry has been lobbying hard to block the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from establishing new protections, arguing that states are doing a fine job regulating coal ash. As a result, communities across the nation remain at risk and unprotected.

Just two weeks ago the industry successfully lobbied the U.S. House of Representatives to pass a bill stripping the EPA of the authority to protect Americans from coal ash.

Monday's collapse on Lake Michigan is particularly troublesome because We Energies has known for years that its management of coal ash at this facility was a threat to human health. Indeed, they have been providing bottled water to neighbors whose wells have been contaminated.


New Lake Michigan Coal Ash Spill Raises Old Concerns

On Monday, a bluff surrounding a Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based power plant collapsed, sending a cascade of debris and coal ash waste from the power plant into Lake Michigan. No injuries were reported by We Energies, the company who owns the power plant, but the environmental assessment will likely be less optimistic. We Energies, a subsidiary of Wisconsin Energy Corporation (NYSE: WEC), has confirmed that the debris that made it into the river likely contained coal ash.

As of Monday afternoon, a “fuel sheen” appeared on the surface of Lake Michigan as a result of the bluff collapse. Cleanup crews from Clean Harbor were contracted by We Energies to help contain the spread of the sheen, and will be deploying about 1,500 feet of boom to help contain the waste on the surface. Shortly after the accident, residents living up to a mile away from the site along the lake were already reporting debris washing onshore.

As we have reported extensively in the past, coal ash contains countless toxic substances, including mercury, hexavalent chromium, arsenic, and cadmium. It has also been reported to be more radioactive as nuclear waste. In spite of these findings, the EPA has yet to issue any firm stance on whether or not coal ash will be regulated as a “toxic waste,” partly due to the fact that the coal industry has unleashed a cadre of lobbyists to Washington to fight to protect their coal ash interests.

The EPA’s delay in issuing a ruling on coal ash has allowed the Republican-controlled Congress to gain the upper hand on the issue. In early fall 2011, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation that would prohibit the EPA from regulating coal ash, and preventing them from classifying the substance as “hazardous.” Instead of EPA regulations, the bill would allow states to issue their own standards on coal ash and prevent any federal standards.


The House legislation was put forward by Republican West Virginia Congressman David McKinley, who has received more than $275,000 from the mining industry during his four years in Congress, making them his highest single donor industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

McKinley said that the regulation from the EPA would result in a loss of jobs in the coal industry, yet estimates show that the EPA’s standards would actually create as many as 28,000 new jobs in America.

Less than a week after the House bill passed, the U.S. Senate took up similar legislation sponsored by Republican North Dakota Senators John Hoeven ($147,000 in campaign contributions from the mining industry) and Kent Conrad ($827,000 in campaign contributions from the energy sector.)

Two Democratic Senators, Joe Manchin and Jay Rockefeller from West Virginia also signed on as co-sponsors of the bill. Manchin has received $367,000 from mining interests throughout his career, and Rockefeller has received $288,000 from mining companies.

The Senate bill would enact the same measures as the House bill, although the Democratic majority in the Senate is unlikely to pass the bill, or even bring it to a vote, and President Obama has vowed to veto the bill.

The new spill in Milwaukee could change the tone in Washington regarding the regulation of coal ash, but that will remain to be seen. After all, a disastrous incident in Tennessee nearly three years ago – where 1.7 million cubic yards of coal ash spilled into the environment – hasn’t changed the direction of coal ash legislation.

Flaming Water. Poisoned Water

Flaming drinking-water well in Kentucky illuminates Big Coal's abuses

The flaming drinking water well at a home in eastern Kentucky's Pike County first came to public attention back in May, thanks to a report by a local TV station.

WKYT visited the home of Calvin and Denise Howard on Big Branch Road, where the Howards reported that the water, which runs orange and black, burned their skin when they bathed. They also said that Excel Mining, the operator of a nearby coal mine, had offered to install a water filtration system -- but only if the residents signed a liability waiver.

The Howards refused the company's offer -- and when WKYT checked back in July, the flames that had been just about to the top of the well were shooting out at least a foot and a half.

Since then, the Howards have filed a lawsuit [pdf] over the contamination. In addition, environmental advocates have gotten involved, arranging for the delivery this week of clean water to 13 area families amid inaction by the company and state environmental regulators.

"In all my 20 years of working on water quality problems, I have never seen a drinking water well catch on fire and burn continuously for days on end," says Donna Lisenby of Appalachian Voices, who with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth has arranged for the delivery of bottled water from Nestle and Keeper Springs Natural Spring Water, a company founded by environmental advocate Bobby Kennedy Jr. that gives 100 percent of its profits to clean-water causes.

According to the lawsuit, the trouble for the Howards began back in late January when they started hearing explosions beneath their home. About the same time, their well water turned gray and took on an offensive odor. Around May 1, the well exploded into flames, destroying the well house. It's burned continuously ever since.

Earlier this month, Ted Withrow, a former regulator with the Kentucky Division of Water who now works with the grassroots citizens group Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, and KFTC activist Sue Tallichet visited the community, where residents confirmed the water contamination. Residents also reported mysterious health problems they feared could be connected to the poisoned water, including a teenage girl's hair falling out and a boy vomiting blood.

The Kentucky Department of Mining Reclamation has investigated the burning well and confirmed that it "is creating an environmental and public safety hazard." At that point, the company began providing bottled water to the Howards, but other impacted families did not get any assistance. The Howards have been advised to evacuate their trailer home but can't afford to do so. The lawsuit seeks compensation for their replacement housing and their water.

"Based on my direct, firsthand experience with contamination of water by coal operations, I am deeply worried about the safety of the drinking water of these families," says KFTC's Withrow.

An 'ineffective, choregraphed sham'

The water contamination along Big Branch Road illustrates a larger problem facing Kentucky: the coal mining industry's abuse of communities and regulators' failure to protect them from harm.

The Pike County situation is unfolding against a backdrop of coal company lawlessness and regulatory inaction in Kentucky. Back in June, an alliance of environmental groups including Appalachian Voices and KFTC sent notice-to-sue letters to two mining companies after discovering they had exceeded their pollution permit limits more than 4,000 times in the first quarter of this year alone.

The companies targeted by that action are International Coal Group, which is owned by Arch Coal of St. Louis, one of the world's largest coal companies, and Frasure Creek Mining, a subsidiary of West Virginia's Trinity Coal, which is owned by India's Essar Group. They are the largest producers of mountaintop-removal-mined coal in Kentucky.

The watchdogs notified the same companies last October of their intent to sue over more than 20,000 violations of the Clean Water Act, including falsification of pollution monitoring reports. But Kentucky's Energy and Environment Cabinet stepped in at the last minute and fined the companies a total of just $660,000 -- less than 1 percent of the maximum fine that could be imposed under the law. Environmental advocates denounced the state's action as an "ineffective, choreographed sham."

Excel Mining, the mine operator implicated in the burning-well situation, is owned by Oklahoma-based Alliance Resource Partners, among the largest coal producers in the eastern United States. Alliance reported record profits in 2010, with a 67.1 percent jump in net income over the previous year to $321 million.

The company landed in the spotlight last year when a roof collapsed at its Dotiki Mine in Hopkins County, Ky., killing two miners. News reports after the incident revealed that inspectors from the Kentucky Office of Mine Safety and Licensing issued 31 orders to close sections of the mine or shut down equipment because of safety violations between January 2009 and the time of the collapse, according to Sourcewatch. Reporters found that the company received a total of 649 citations in 2009 alone.

In addition, Alliance was involved in a 2009 controversy over the firing of the director of Kentucky's Division of Mine Permits. Ron Mills' termination came after he refused to issue about a half-dozen mine permits -- most requested by Alliance -- because they failed to comply with federal and state laws. Mills' denials were ultimately overruled by higher state officials.

Joe Craft, the president of Alliance Resource Partners, is a major political powerhouse. He has contributed over $150,000 at the federal level over the past decade, including $10,000 to the Republican Party of Kentucky; $17,500 to the Kentucky State Democratic Central Committee; $4,600 to U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R); and $2,300 each to Barack Obama (D) and Mitt Romney (R), according to the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org database. The company's political action committee has also invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in politicians' campaigns -- $193,665 in the 2010 election cycle alone.

Craft and others affiliated with the company as well as Alliance's PAC are also major donors at the state level, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics' FollowtheMoney.org database. Alliance Coal employees were among the biggest campaign donors in Kentucky's primary election this year, together with their spouses contributing a total of $60,000 to three candidates, WBKO reported last month.

And in 2009, Craft organized a group of donors to pay for a new $7 million "Wildcat Coal Lodge" to house the University of Kentucky's basketball players on campus -- a move that sparked considerable controversy and led noted writer and environmental activist Wendell Berry to pull his personal papers from the school's archive. While the university's sports teams are known as the Wildcats, "wildcat coal" also refers to coal that's mined illegally.

Meanwhile, residents along Big Branch Road are hoping to connect to a clean municipal water source -- but price is a concern. Pike County officials have said it could cost as much as $150,000 to connect them to their existing water lines. The families have said they would pay to connect to closer lines in nearby Martin County, but that could take at least three months.

May: Asthma Awareness Month

Our Health Isn't A Cost of Doing Business

Coal-fired power plants—the nation's worst air polluters—aren't required to limit their emissions of pollutants that can cause cancer, asthma and other serious health problems. As a result, children suffer asthma attacks and thousands of our citizens die premature deaths every year. Power plants are also the biggest mercury polluters. If moms-to-be are exposed to this potent neurotoxicant, it puts their babies at risk of birth defects and learning disabilities.

But our health is unimportant to the coal-fired power industry and its allies in Washington, D.C., which is why they've fought tirelessly against reasonable limits on the toxic pollution they generate.

After years of work by Earthjustice and supporters like you, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is finally preparing to clean this dirty industry up. Please take a moment to tell the EPA that you support limits on power plants' toxic air pollution.

The health protections that the EPA recently proposed will reduce emissions of cancer-causing metals such as arsenic, chromium and nickel. And each year, the protections will save the lives of as many as 17,000 people and prevent 11,000 heart attacks, 12,000 hospital and emergency rooms visits, and 120,000 asthma attacks.

We aren't willing to sacrifice our health so that the rich coal-fired power industry can rake in higher profits. The technology to reduce air pollution that harms our health and the health of our children is readily available and affordable.

Help protect everyone's right to breathe clean air. Tell the EPA to issue strong health protections against coal-fired power plants' toxic air emissions!


Please send the email below to Administrator Jackson:

Every year, power plants release more than 386,000 tons of toxic air pollutants into the air we breathe. These emissions -- which aren't subject to any federal limits to protect our health and safety -- impose a heavy burden on Americans in the form of cancer, heart and lung disease, and thousands of premature deaths every year. The technology to reduce these costly emissions is available and affordable, and I strongly support the EPA's Power Plant Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which will make our air safer to breathe by requiring that power plants use these proven methods of pollution control to limit their harmful emissions.

In the coming months, I urge you to resist any efforts to weaken or delay your recent proposal to limit power plants' emissions of mercury, lead, arsenic, dioxin, acid gases and other toxic pollutants. The power plant industry has already used its financial and political influence to avoid these important health protections for more than two decades. We cannot wait any longer.

Power plants pump more mercury into our air than all other big industrial polluters combined. Mercury pollution damages aquatic ecosystems and contaminates fish species that many Americans rely on for recreation and nourishment. Pregnant women and young children are most at risk: mercury exposure can lead to birth defects and learning disabilities and can also irreparably impact a young child's ability to talk, think, read, write and learn. It is critically important that we protect these vulnerable members of our society from harm.

The Power Plant Mercury and Air Toxics Standards will prevent up to 17,000 premature deaths every year and spare many more Americans the physical and financial costs associated with illnesses brought on by breathing dirty air. These benefits to our society should be non-negotiable, considering especially that they outweigh the costs to polluters by as much as 13-to-1.


Anyone who has ever suffered from respiratory problems knows how devastating Dirty Air can be. It's time to move forward to improve air quality and the health of Americans.

Thanks for all you do.

Energy use, waste and lightbulbs

David Roberts offered America’s energy use, in one nifty chart that's worth examining - even offers the energy we waste. Pretty pathetic!

Jetson Green offers information about ESLs

-- Keep an eye out for the next acronym in energy-efficient lighting: ESL, or Electron Stimulated Luminescence. ESLs use “accelerated electrons to stimulate phosphor to create light, making the surface of the bulb ‘glow,’” according to Vu1 Corporation, a maker of ESLs. The technology is being touted for producing light that’s similar to an incandescent bulb but about 70% more energy-efficient.

If you live in Massachusetts, a Coal Ash Dump is near you

Attempts to regulate, control, impound or prevent a disaster have been met with well-funded lobbyists and congressional opposition bought and paid for by the Dirty Coal Industry.

If you live in Massachusetts, you're near a Coal Ash Dump.


Maybe if House Speaker DeLeo weren't so single-mindedly obsessed with meeting behind closed doors with the Gambling Industry and rewarding wealthy investors, he might have time to protect Massachusetts residents against the TVA disaster experienced by residents of Harriman, Tennessee.


It's clear from the intent of Congress, explained below, to protect Big Dirty Polluters, we can't count on the feds:

Southern Republicans launch sneak attack on coal ash regulation through budget bill

The House is expected to vote as early as today on amendments to a budget bill that would take away the Environmental Protection Agency's power to regulate toxic coal ash as a hazardous waste.

Reps. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) and David McKinley (R-W.Va.) have offered amendments to a continuing resolution on the budget that would prohibit any funding of an EPA rulemaking on coal ash under Subtitle C of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which regulates hazardous waste.

Last year the EPA released a long-awaited draft rule that proposed regulating coal ash -- the toxic waste produced by coal-burning power plants -- under either RCRA Subtitle C or Subtitle D, which applies to ordinary household waste.

The Subtitle C rules would set federally enforceable minimum standards for coal ash disposal and require the closure of dangerous coal ash ponds like the one that failed catastrophically at a TVA plant in eastern Tennessee back in 2008. However, electric utilities oppose the Subtitle C regulations, citing their expense. They want the EPA to regulate coal ash less strictly under RCRA Subtitle D, which would leave oversight up to the states and allow polluters to continue to dump coal ash in unlined ponds and landfills.

Earthjustice attorney and coal ash expert Lisa Evans writes about the sneak attack on coal ash regulation at her organization's blog:

There is no doubt that these amendments will totally derail the EPA's ability to move forward with the coal ash rulemaking. The amendments will render it impossible for the agency to consider the best science on the toxicity of coal ash.

Evans calls the effort by Stearns and McKinley "a compromise of our health on a grand scale." She is urging citizens to contact their congressional representatives and tell them to leave regulation of coal ash up to EPA.

By Sue Sturgis

The environmental problems with Sovereignty

Traveling through the Four Corners region, the pollution from the Four Corners Power Plant is visible for miles. The long overdue proposal described below is a step in the right direction for residents of the region:

Arizona Haze and NOx
From: Andy Soos, ENN

Four Corners Power Plant is one of the largest coal-fired generating stations in the United States. The plant is located on Navajo land in Fruitland, New Mexico, about 25 miles west of Farmington. It is located to the west of the Grand Canyon and many other national parks. It was the first mine-mouth generation station to take advantage of the large deposits of sub-bituminous coal in the Four Corners region. The plant’s five units currently generate 2,040 megawatts. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a supplemental proposal to reduce emissions from the Four Corners Power Plant. The new proposal will reduce nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions from approximately 45,000 tons per year to 5,800 tons per year, 3,200 tons less than EPA’s initial proposal. The proposal will also work to protect public health in the area by ensuring residents have cleaner air with fewer harmful pollutants. It will also reduce atmospheric haze and promote viability.

Other pertinent articles are included below [click on links for full articles]:
Policy Debate: Power Plants on Navajo Land
From: Brenda Norrell, Indian Country Today

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. — In a region quickly becoming known as another "Cancer Alley," the Navajo Nation is gaining air emissions control over two power plants on tribal land.

After years of litigation and negotiations, the power plants, in New Mexico and Arizona, have agreed to recognize the sovereignty of the Navajo Nation and its right to control air emissions.

The mercury and noxious gas emissions from power plants, combined with the dust from coal mines and oil company spills in the San Juan River, creates a toxic soup for Navajo Nation residents.

Oil discharges into the San Juan River flowing through the Navajo Nation are common, according to the U.S. EPA.


It All Sounds Familiar


Outsiders Target Indian Land for Risky Business
Developers Skirt State and Local Laws by Building on Indian Land

Does this even make sense?

At your fingertips, a world of information is opened to you if you choose to access it.

One of the areas that greatly impacts Americans is the consistent failure to address ENERGY SECURITY. (The Chinese are aggressively producing, promoting and employing 'alternatives' to enhance their ENERGY SECURITY and leaving the US in the dust.)

Yeah, it's kinda complicated because of all the misinformation tossed out there by profitable industries, well paid lobbyists and slick advertising, environment be damned!


Consider this -- Nuclear Energy costs

$7,500 per kilowatt to build

That’s more than double the capital costs for solar power and three and a half times the cost for wind.

And this is interesting --

In his address, Alexander criticized Democrats' for proposing billions of dollars in subsidies for renewable energy -- but he failed to note that nuclear power is already

the most heavily subsidized industry in the energy sector.

In 2005, Congress handed the nuclear power industry $13 billion in federal aid, and two years later went on to approve an additional $20.5 billion in loan guarantees, making U.S. taxpayers the cosigners on loans for new nuclear projects -- half of which are expected to end in defaults.

Taxpayers and ratepayers have also forked over $11 billion for the Yucca Mountain high-level waste disposal dump, which the Obama administration recently scrapped over concerns about long-term safety.

And of COAL? The Dirtiest Energy source is allowed to continue to 'extract' Cheap Coal and escape environmental protections through Mountain Top Removal that has destroyed 500 mountains and untold communities and drinking water in the process, leaving destruction in its wake.

While the rest of the world marches past the US toward Energy Independence, a few wealthy individuals who have generously fund the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, Jeff Perry and Charlie Baker have jumped on board.

This only proves that the Republicans will say and do whatever they have to in order to distort the truth and protect wealthy campaign contributors to the detriment of our future.

What a pity so many believe them.

Jeffrey Perry calls Cape Wind 'job killer'

CENTERVILLE — On the shores of Craigville Beach, with sun-drenched Nantucket Sound as a backdrop, 10th Congressional District candidate state Rep. Jeffrey Perry said Friday the proposed Cape Wind project is a "job killer."

Citing the signing Wednesday of the federal lease of the off-shore site as a subsidy for a private developer and the cost of electricity that will be generated by the 130 wind turbines, Perry said he would use the bully pulpit as a congressman to fight it.

"I will do whatever I can do to make sure this project does not go forward," Perry said, with members of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound holding anti-wind farm signs nearby.

Perry's position on Cape Wind is in sharp contrast to his Democratic opponent, William Keating, who started out the campaign opposed to the wind farm but now supports it. In a meeting with the Times editorial board earlier this week, the Norfolk County district attorney said he initially opposed Cape Wind because of computer images that depicted what it might look like. But his position on the Cape Wind project didn't jibe with his stump speeches on the need to get away from the country's dependence on oil, he said.

"I kept listening to myself in these speeches," Keating said. "It was not reconciling."

Cape Wind and other renewable energy projects, along with Massachusetts Maritime Academy and Woods Hole research institutions, provide the possibility for Cape Cod to become a leader in green jobs, Keating said.

"Short term, it's going to provide jobs, and long term, it's going to help too," he said.

Perry charged Friday that Cape Wind would be a drain on the economy. Electricity for a small grocery store would increase $500 per month if the state Department of Public Utilities gives the wind farm the green light, he said.

"That's a job killer," Perry said.

Mark Rodgers, a spokesman for Cape Wind, said the project is expected to create 600 to 1,000 construction jobs and, eventually, 50 permanent jobs on Cape Cod.

"It's sad that on the same day the Department of Energy announced that offshore wind power can create 43,000 American jobs over the next 20 years, with the first of these jobs being right here on Cape Cod, that Jeff Perry would stand on a beach and say 'no'," Rodgers said.

Audra Parker, president of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, said the $6 billion price tag for Cape Wind would put a burden on ratepayers already paying the fourth highest electric rates in the country.

National Grid, which has cut a proposed deal for half of the wind farm's power, has estimated that electric rates would increase by 2 percent once Cape Wind became operational. On Cape Cod, only Nantucket gets its electricity through National Grid.

Cape Wind has received federal approval but there are some lawsuits pending.

Perry said a congressman can use federal clout to block the project.

"Sen. (Edward) Kennedy certainly couldn't vote on this issue, but part of his legacy, I believe, is that he was always adamantly against this, and he used the power of his office to articulate his reasons why," Perry said. "I would like to pick up where Sen. Kennedy left off and be the voice of the 10th Congressional District in opposition to this."

Dirty Coal

From Sierra Club --




The only way the Coal Industry can convince people that coal is clean is by spending $120 million on a duplicitous advertising campaign over the next three years. We don't have that kind of money, but we do have something better: You.

Would $120 million make you swoon for coal?

That's what American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), a coal industry front group, is banking on. They are pouring $120 million into ads, slick websites, and an all out bus tour to get communities and lawmakers to forget how bad coal really is.1

Last week ACCCE's bus tour was in Missouri and just yesterday they were spotted at the Virginia State Fair. Do you think they mentioned that coal-fired power plants kill 24,000 people a year, are the largest source of human-generated mercury emissions, or waste and pollute vast amounts of our water?2

No - ACCCE is instead using outrageous scare tactics, like in this ad:

“We have to continue to advance clean coal technologies… If we don't, we may have to say ‘goodbye’ to the American way of life we all know and love.”3

some cameras can make coal into apple pie. Market-tested fear mongering can be a powerful force, but not nearly as powerful as the truth told to you by people you trust. Your friends and family listen and respect you a lot more than ads on the TV. That's why we’ve created some easy tools to help you get the word out. Will you do your part?

Let's make sure that the coal industry is pouring that $120 million down the drain. Help shutdown big coal's fancy propaganda machine with our video the grassroots way. It doesn't cost $120 million to send this to your friends.

[1] 'Coal Ad Blitz Launches New Spot at the Nytimes.com

[2] Read all about how dirty coal is here: www.coal-is-dirty.com/the-coal-hard-facts

[3] You can see this at Youtube.com


Beyond Coal Fact Sheet

Coal

Bryce Canyon

This spectacular photo by Luca Galuzzi highlights a incredible landscape that is breathtaking and a national treasure.
USA 10654 Bryce Canyon Luca Galuzzi 2007.jpg
This file was a candidate in Picture of the Year 2007.


So, it was dismaying to receive this from NRDC:

Redrock Wilderness

Stop the proposed Alton strip mine

Every year, thousands of visitors to Bryce Canyon National Park in southwestern Utah experience the park's unforgettable rock formations, panoramic views, pristine air and clear night skies. But now that Utah regulators have approved a proposed strip mine near the park, that unique visitor experience could soon become a thing of the past. The Alton Development Company has plans to strip coal from 600 acres of private lands adjacent to Bryce Canyon, producing two million tons of coal annually, and is hoping to eventually expand the project to thousands of acres of surrounding federal land in southern Utah. Local residents, conservation groups and tourists are concerned about the potential air and noise pollution from the mine, especially in such close proximity to the national park. Several environmental groups including NRDC have appealed the state's approval of the mine's permit. A decision on the appeal by the Utah Board of Oil, Mining and Gas is expected soon. In the meantime, urge Utah Governor Gary Herbert to drop his support for the mine.


Tell Governor Herbert to reject the Alton strip mine.

Do we have to allow Big Dirty Energy to destroy everything?

In the Midst of a Coal Field War

Coal Ash, Mountaintop Removal and Massey's poor safety record have been obscured by the Dirty Energy Disaster in the Gulf created by the arrogant energy giant BP.

The environmental degradation continues, as does the loss of life.

Maybe it's time for a sensible energy policy and time to adopt energy efficiency solutions.


Jeff Biggers: In the Midst of a Coal Field War (Video)


More GRITtv


Yet another coal miner was killed on the job this week, and journalist and author Jeff Biggers says that the situation has reached crisis level - that it's a war on miners. He also notes that abuse of the land and abuse of the people who work on it has always gone hand in hand, so as pressure for mountaintop removal and new coal mines mounts, so do safety violations - the latest being a story broken by NPR, that a methane gas monitor at the Little Big Branch mine, where 29 workers died in an explosion in April, had been deliberately shut down.

Biggers joins us to fill us in on the latest news from coal country--and from D.C., where Lisa Jackson and the E.P.A. faced a unique protest.

The Greatest Environmental Tragedy in American History: Dirty Coal

A President Breaks Hearts in Appalachia
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Friday, July 3, 2009

Mountaintop removal coal mining is the worst environmental tragedy in American history. When will the Obama administration finally stop this Appalachian apocalypse?

If ever an issue deserved President Obama's promise of change, this is it. Mining syndicates are detonating 2,500 tons of explosives each day -- the equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb weekly -- to blow up Appalachia's mountains and extract sub-surface coal seams. They have demolished 500 mountains -- encompassing about a million acres -- buried hundreds of valley streams under tons of rubble, poisoned and uprooted countless communities, and caused widespread contamination to the region's air and water. On this continent, only Appalachia's rich woodlands survived the Pleistocene ice ages that turned the rest of North America into a treeless tundra. King Coal is now accomplishing what the glaciers could not -- obliterating the hemisphere's oldest, most biologically dense and diverse forests. Highly mechanized processes allow giant machines to flatten in months mountains older than the Himalayas -- while employing fewer workers for far less time than other types of mining. The coal industry's promise to restore the desolate wastelands is a cruel joke, and the industry's fallback position, that the flattened landscapes will provide space for economic development, is the weak punchline. America adores its Adirondacks and reveres the Rockies, while the Appalachian Mountains -- with their impoverished and alienated population -- are dismantled by coal moguls who dominate state politics and have little to prevent them from blasting the physical landscape to smithereens.

Obama promised science-based policies that would save what remains of Appalachia, but last month senior administration officials finally weighed in with a mixture of strong words and weak action that broke hearts across the region. The modest measures federal bureaucrats promised amount to little more than a tepid pledge of better enforcement of existing laws.

And government claims of doing everything possible to halt the holocaust are simply not true. George Bush gutted Clean Water Act protections. Obama must restore them.

First, the White House should fix the "fill" rule the Bush administration adopted in 2002 to allow coal companies to use streams as waste dumps. Under this perverse interpretation of the Clean Water Act, 2,000 miles of Appalachian streams have been interred under mining waste. Obama could reverse the "fill" rule to reflect its original meaning, which forbids waste matter from being dumped into waterways.

Second, the Interior Department should strictly enforce the widely ignored "buffer zone" rule that forbids dumping waste within 100 feet of intermittent or perennial streams.

Third, our laws require companies to restore mined areas to their original condition. The administration should end the absurd fiction that extraction pits filled with unconsolidated rocks and rubble where trees will never grow and streams will never flow are "reclaimed."

Fourth, current law forbids the issuance of "fill" permits that will cause "significant degradation" to waterways. It is absurd for the Army Corps of Engineers to endorse the canard that filling miles of streams is not causing significant degradation. The president should require the Corps to deny and rescind permits where operations will cause downstream damage.

Fifth, the Clean Water Act requires mining operators to prove that they can restore the "function and structure" of affected streams. Operators have never been compelled to make the functional or structural analyses of the aquatic ecosystem required by the act. Obama should order his officials to stop ignoring this requirement.

Sixth, the administration should enforce the law requiring an environmental impact study for each permit when a mine "may have significant environmental impacts," individually or cumulatively. The Corps of Engineers routinely allows coal operators to escape this mandate -- an illegal practice that should stop.

Instead of acting to enforce these laws, administration officials indicated last month that they will allow more than 100 permits to go forward while they carefully review their regulatory options. If they act accordingly, the ruined landscapes of Appalachia will be Obama's legacy.

President Obama should go to Appalachia and see mountaintop removal. My father visited Appalachia in 1966 and was so horrified by strip mining -- then in its infancy -- that he made it a key priority of his political agenda. He complained that Appalachia, with our nation's richest natural resources, was home to America's poorest populations, its worst education system, and its highest illiteracy and unemployment rates. These statistics are even grimmer today as mining saps state wealth. In 1966, 46,000 West Virginia miners were collecting salaries and pensions and reinvesting in their communities. Mechanization has shrunk that number to fewer than 11,000. They extract more coal annually, but virtually all the profits leave the state for Wall Street.

The coal industry provides only 2 percent of the jobs in Central Appalachia. Wal-Mart employs more people than the coal companies in West Virginia. Last week a major study documented how coal imposes a net cost to Kentucky of more than $100 million per year. Coal is not an economic engine in the coalfields. It is an extraction engine.

Obama has the authority to end mountaintop removal, without further action from Congress and without formal rulemaking. He just needs to make the coal barons obey the law.

The writer is senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

WP

Footnote: 2,500 tons of explosives each day x 2,000 pounds per ton = 5,000,000 (that's million) Pounds by my calculations.

Racism?

During the Mashpee Wampanoag casino process in Middleboro, the Convicted Felon Tribal Leader, Glenn Marshall freely and easily tossed out the label of "Racism" in a carefully scripted speech to avoid answering the difficult questions about the casino's potential impacts.

.

Casino supporters, without considering the questions that were asked and the discussion that was stifled as a consequence, readily accepted the term to avoid questioning facts.

.

For those who rally around the term and express concerns about the issue of racism in our great land, it would seem that they would be particularly concerned about Environmental Justice.

.

What exactly is "environmental justice"? This is how the EPA's Office of Environmental Justice defines it:
Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this Nation. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.
.

ISS reports --
.
The Tennessee Valley Authority has begun shipping toxic coal ash from the massive spill that occurred last December at its Kingston power plant in east Tennessee's Roane County to landfills in the neighboring states of Georgia and Alabama as part of a test to determine a final resting place for the waste.The counties where the ash is going have large black populations and high poverty rates, raising questions about environmental justice.
.

.
Located in western Georgia's Piedmont, Taylor County is an agricultural area where almost 41% of the population is African-American and more than 24% of residents live in poverty, according to census data. By comparison, the state is 30% black with 14.3% of its residents in poverty. In recent years, Taylor County gained notoriety as one of the last communities in the South to still hold racially segregated high-school proms.
.
Part of the historic "Black Belt," Alabama's Perry County is 69% African-American with more than 32% of its residents living in poverty, making it one of the poorest counties in the state, which is 26.5% black with 16.6% of its residents in poverty.
.
Researchers have found that solid waste landfills tend to be located disproportionately in communities of color and low-wealth communities. For example, a recent study in North Carolina found that the odds of a solid waste facility were 2.8 times greater for communities with where 50% or more residents are people of color compared to those where less than 10% of residents are people of color. It also found that communities with lower housing values were more likely to have landfills.
.
Pennsylvania refused to accept TVA's waste.
TVA hasn't decided where it will send the rest of the ash. Limited dredging of some 3 million cubic yards in the river has just begun. The ash is 30 feet deep in some places.
.

As part of our national ENERGY dialogue, should we consider the legacy of Mountaintop Removal, Coal Ash, and Dirty Coal ?
.

One look at TVA's CEO Tom Kilgore just tells us we should trust him to do the right thing! [insert sarcasm emoticon]
.

Dirty Coal's Loud Voice

A little known federal agency, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry [ATSDR, a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] charged with protecting public health from environmental contaminants, is the latest subject of hearings for its failure to protect the public from the possible hazards of burning waste coal.

Scientific integrity was suppressed and compromised during an Administration that bowed to business, industry, lobbyists and wealthy campaign donors.

The hazards to health and the environment posed by Dirty Coal and burning dirty coal waste are included in an ISS article [excerpts below, but a definite must read in its entirety]:

[Dr. Ronald Hoffman, a blood cancer expert and professor at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York] was part of a team of researchers who recently discovered a statistically significant cluster of a relatively rare blood cancer [polycythemia vera] in Pennsylvania -- and the possibility that it could be linked to the burning of waste coal.


[Said Hoffman]....we questioned if there was some outside constituency who ATSDR was responding to that made them act like they just wanted this whole matter to go away."

[ATSDR] Agency officials made repeated requests that he not exhibit his maps suggesting a geographic relationship between the polycythemia vera cases and pollution sources [map shown in original article]

[Hoffman's study] includes the community where multiple cases of the cancer were identified along one road.This cluster happens to be located within a few miles of seven waste-coal-burning power plants. It's also located near several Superfund toxic waste sites. But the suspicion that the waste-coal plants are playing a special role in the cluster is heightened by the fact that an independent analysis of state cancer registry data found that two other populous Pennsylvania counties with dramatically elevated rates of polycythemia vera are also located near waste-coal-burning power plants.

Because these toxic waste dumps are often located on lands long abandoned by the mining companies, cleaning them up often falls to the government -- and it can be an expensive proposition. In Pennsylvania, for example, the average per-acre reclamation cost for coal refuse piles is as high as $40,000.

So when a technology came along in the 1980s that offered a cheap way of dealing with the waste, government officials across the coalfields rushed to embrace it. The technology -- known as "fluidized bed combustion" -- allows the waste coal to be burned for power.

According to the Energy Justice Network, there are now 18 FBC plants nationwide using waste coal as a primary fuel. Pennsylvania has the most with 14, followed by West Virginia with three and Utah with one. There are another 13 plants nationwide burning waste coal as a secondary fuel -- four in Virginia, three each in Alabama and South Carolina, two in Pennsylvania, and one in Mississippi. And there are plans for as many as 17 more plants that burn waste coal in states including Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia. Some of these facilities also burn other wastes including fuel oil and tires.

Plants using FBC technology operate at lower temperatures and oxygen levels than conventional coal-fired power plants. They also use limestone to capture sulfur during combustion in order to reduce sulfur oxide pollution.

But this technology presents serious environmental drawbacks. Lower temperatures and oxygen levels, low-quality fuels and limestone injection have all been found to contribute to increased emissions of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), toxic compounds known to cause genetic mutations and cancer.


[In 2006, Pennsylvania Department of Health]...Conducted at the request of local residents concerned about unusual patterns of cancer, the assessment found that two of the counties had unusually elevated rates of polycythemia vera, a relatively rare malignancy marked by the overproduction of red blood cells.

ATSDR site

ISS

It sounds like major housecleaning is overdue at ATSDR to restore scientific integrity not beholden to Dirty Coal. It seems like these scientists have forgotten their charge.

Let's not forget that Massachusetts' residents are not immune to the hazards posed by Dirty Coal: Dirty Coal: Time To Kick Ash!

Coal is killing America

CapeCodToday included this widely circulated article --

Coal is killing America

Coal-fired power stations are death factories. Close them
By Jan Hansen
A year ago, I wrote to (British Prime Minister) Gordon Brown asking him to place a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants in Britain. I have asked the same of Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd and other leaders. The reason is this - coal is the single greatest threat to civilisation and all life on our planet.

The climate is nearing tipping points. Changes are beginning to appear and there is a potential for explosive changes, effects that would be irreversible, if we do not rapidly slow fossil-fuel emissions over the next few decades. As Arctic sea ice melts, the darker ocean absorbs more sunlight and speeds melting. As the tundra melts, methane, a strong greenhouse gas, is released, causing more warming. As species are exterminated by shifting climate zones, ecosystems can collapse, destroying more species.

The public, buffeted by weather fluctuations and economic turmoil, has little time to analyse decadal changes. How can people be expected to evaluate and filter out advice emanating from those pushing special interests? How can people distinguish between top-notch science and pseudo-science?

Those who lead us have no excuse - they are elected to guide, to protect the public and its best interests. They have at their disposal the best scientific organisations in the world, such as the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences. Only in the past few years did the science crystallise, revealing the urgency. Our planet is in peril. If we do not change course, we'll hand our children a situation that is out of their control. One ecological collapse will lead to another, in amplifying feedbacks.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air has already risen to a dangerous level. The pre-industrial carbon dioxide amount was 280 parts per million (ppm). Humans, by burning coal, oil and gas, have increased this to 385 ppm; it continues to grow by about 2 ppm per year.
Earth, with its four-kilometre-deep oceans, responds only slowly to changes of carbon dioxide. So the climate will continue to change, even if we make maximum effort to slow the growth of carbon dioxide. Arctic sea ice will melt away in the summer season within the next few decades. Mountain glaciers, providing fresh water for rivers that supply hundreds of millions of people, will disappear - practically all of the glaciers could be gone within 50 years - if carbon dioxide continues to increase at current rates. Coral reefs, harbouring a quarter of ocean species, are threatened.

The greatest danger hanging over our children and grandchildren is initiation of changes that will be irreversible on any time scale that humans can imagine. If coastal ice shelves buttressing the west Antarctic ice sheet continue to disintegrate, the sheet could disgorge into the ocean, raising sea levels by several metres in a century. Such rates of sea level change have occurred many times in Earth's history in response to global warming rates no higher than those of the past 30 years. Almost half of the world's great cities are located on coastlines.

The most threatening change, from my perspective, is extermination of species. Several times in Earth's history, rapid global warming occurred, apparently spurred by amplifying feedbacks. In each case, more than half of plant and animal species became extinct. New species came into being over tens and hundreds of thousands of years. But these are time scales and generations that we cannot imagine. If we drive our fellow species to extinction, we will leave a far more desolate planet for our descendants than the world we inherited from our elders.
Clearly, if we burn all fossil fuels, we will destroy the planet we know. Carbon dioxide would increase to 500 ppm or more. We would set the planet on a course to the ice-free state, with sea level 75 metres higher. Climatic disasters would occur continually. The tragedy of the situation, if we do not wake up in time, is that the changes that must be made to stabilise the atmosphere and climate make sense for other reasons. They would produce a healthier atmosphere, improved agricultural productivity, clean water and an ocean providing fish that are safe to eat.
Fossil-fuel reservoirs will dictate the actions needed to solve the problem. Oil, of which half the readily accessible reserves have already been burnt, is used in vehicles, so it's impractical to capture the carbon dioxide. This is likely to drive carbon dioxide levels to at least 400 ppm. But if we cut off the largest source of carbon dioxide - coal - it will be practical to bring carbon dioxide back to 350 ppm, lower still if we improve agricultural and forestry practices, increasing carbon storage in trees and soil.

Coal is not only the largest fossil fuel reservoir of carbon dioxide, it is the dirtiest fuel. Coal is polluting the world's oceans and streams with mercury, arsenic and other dangerous chemicals. The dirtiest trick that governments play on their citizens is the pretence that they are working on "clean coal" or that they will build power plants that are "capture-ready" in case technology is ever developed to capture all pollutants.

The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death. When I testified against the proposed Kingsnorth power plant, I estimated that in its lifetime it would be responsible for the extermination of about 400 species - its proportionate contribution to the number that would be committed to extinction if carbon dioxide rose another 100 ppm.

The German and Australian governments pretend to be green. When I show German officials the evidence that the coal source must be cut off, they say they will tighten the "carbon cap". But a cap only slows the use of a fuel - it does not leave it in the ground. When I point out that their new coal plants require that they convince Russia to leave its oil in the ground, they are silent. The Australian government was elected on a platform of solving the climate problem, but then, with the help of industry, it set emission targets so high as to guarantee untold disasters for the young, let alone the unborn. These governments are not green. They are black - coal black.
The three countries most responsible, per capita, for filling the air with carbon dioxide from fossil fuels are the UK, the US and Germany, in that order. Politicians here have asked me why am I speaking to them. Surely the US must lead? But coal interests have great power in the US; the essential moratorium and phase-out of coal requires a growing public demand and a political will yet to be demonstrated.

The Prime Minister should not underestimate his potential to transform the situation. And he must not pretend to be ignorant of the consequences of continuing to burn coal or take refuge in a "carbon cap" or some "target" for future emission reductions. My message to Gordon Brown is that young people are beginning to understand the situation. They want to know: will you join their side? Remember that history, and your children, will judge you.

James Hansen is director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. He was the first scientist to warn the US Congress of the dangers of climate change. This opinion piece appeared in many newspapers including the Guardian in the UK.