The largest nutrient and sediment control device in the Chesapeake Bay watershed is likely to stop functioning in the next 15 to 20 years under current conditions, which could dramatically increase the amount of pollution to the Upper Bay.
The device is the Conowingo Dam, located 10 miles upstream from the mouth of the Susquehanna.
When the reservoir behind the 100-foot-high dam is filled, the millions of pounds of phosphorus and millions of tons of sediment now being trapped each year will reach the Upper Bay unless action is taken.
The latest study by the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that the reservoir behind the dam has about 30 million tons of remaining storage capacity, but it is being filled at an average rate of about 1.5 million to 2 million tons of sediment annually. Its total storage capacity is about 174 million tons.
"The reservoir continues to fill," said Mike Langland, a USGS scientist who resurveyed the sediment buildup last year. "There haven't been any real surprises as to where and how it is being filled."
The survey showed that sediment deposition in the lower part of the reservoir increased 8-10 feet compared with the last survey, which was completed in 1996.
Scientists have warned about the inevitable filling of the reservoir and its impact on the Bay since the early 1990s. But the problem has always been so far in the future-and so costly to deal with-that it has been largely ignored.
Now, it's a problem that can no longer be avoided. The states and the EPA have set 2025 as their new Bay cleanup deadline-a date that overlaps the projected filling of the reservoir.
The EPA is also requiring a cleanup plan, known as a Total Maximum Daily Load, to guide nutrient and sediment control efforts. The TMDL is a pollution budget that determines the maximum amount of pollution a water body can receive and still meet its water quality standards-essentially a pollution cap.
That means state implementation plans required as part of the TMDL will have to account for the reservoir filling to keep from exceeding the cap.
"We would expect to see a credible plan that looks at any major changes to major sources," said Jon Capacasa, water division director for EPA Region III.
The EPA expects states to update implementation plans every two years until the cleanup is complete.
"If the science is telling us that there is going to be a major change in the sediment dynamics behind the dams, I think a credible implementation plan will have to deal with that," Capacasa said. "If not in the initial plan, then in the updates over time."
It's a massive issue to resolve. The dam traps about 3.5 million pounds of phosphorus and 2 million tons of dirt every year-about a third of the phosphorus and more than half of the sediment moving downstream. (The dam traps little nitrogen because it is water soluble.)
In addition to sediment and phosphorus reductions already needed to meet Bay cleanup goals, a TMDL would require that all additional sediment and phosphorus be offset once the reservoir stops trapping it.
A filled reservoir also poses a greater threat to the Upper Bay in the event of another storm like Hurricane Agnes, which in 1972 scoured huge amounts of sediment from behind the dam and smothered much of the Upper Bay in several inches of sediment, obliterating underwater grass beds and other habitats.
A similar storm today would flush even more material downstream because of the additional sediment buildup. "There is more there to be scoured, and it is probably in areas that would be more rapidly scoured-closer to the dam," Langland said.
The Army Corps of Engineers' Baltimore District this year got $57,000 to begin looking at the reservoir issue. Funding for next year is uncertain. The Senate has proposed another $200,000 in next year's federal budget, although the House included no money in its legislation.
Those funds, though, would only set the framework for a study. A full-blown review by the Corps would likely cost a few million dollars, and take two to three years, said Dan Bierly, who oversees studies for the Baltimore District. It would also require a non-federal "sponsor"-such as a state agency, river basin commission or nonprofit organization-to share the cost. The sponsor will likely share 25 percent of the study costs, though the entire amount can be in-kind services or a combination of services and cash.
A full study would likely look at the practicality of controlling upstream sources of sediment, dredging sediment from the reservoir to increase capacity, and sediment impacts on the Bay downstream, Bierly said. In addition, the sediment needs to be examined for possible contaminants.
"It may be very appropriate to determine impact and potential benefits before anyone really wants to spend the big bucks," Bierly said. Dredging sediment from the reservoir, for instance, could cost tens of millions of dollars.
But the cost of doing nothing could be huge, said Michael Helfrick, the Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper, who called for a study that would assess the likely consequences for the Bay in the event of another catastrophic storm such as Agnes.
"Until we have a document that tells us how much we have to lose, it is going to be hard to get anybody to pay to not lose it, because the amount we have to pay is outrageous," Helfrick said. "But it may not look that outrageous when you look at the cost of losing everything."
While people search for solutions, Langland said more efforts should be made to promote actions that prevent erosion along streams in the watershed. If the amount of sediment is reduced, it will buy more storage time for the reservoir.
"You're not only improving the capacity of the reservoirs," Langland said, "but you are also improving the quality of the water upstream."
The filling of a reservoir is not necessarily visible to most people. Sediment builds up on the bottom, and once a reservoir is filled, currents prevent more from settling there.
http://www.bayjournal.com/article.cfm?article=3650
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Bethany Beach ends discussion of underground lines with NRG
BETHANY BEACH -- Town officials have voted to end talks with NRG/Bluewater Wind on its bid to run underground power lines from its proposed offshore wind farm through town.
The company's brusque rebuff by Bethany Beach -- including a charge that it failed to negotiate in good faith -- comes five months after NRG representatives presented project plans proposing power lines below Wellington Parkway and Kent Avenue.
At the time, Mayor Tony McClenny told Town Manager Clifford M. Graviet to seek independent expert advice on the lines' potential impact on human health and the environment, and also told Graviet to ask NRG to cover the cost.
A memorandum of understanding sent to NRG in April was returned last month -- slightly changed and not signed -- saying the company agreed to pay up to $85,000 for independent research on the lines' effects.
Shortly thereafter, the company wrote to town officials saying it would offer an alternative route for the lines and conduct associated engineering studies for both routes.
"Based on this letter and previous actions, I do not believe that NRG/Bluewater has been dealing with the town in good faith," said Vice Mayor Jack Gordon, who made a motion to notify NRG the town no longer is interested in the project, or in continuing discussions.
"The townspeople cannot tolerate having this issue hanging over their heads for any longer," he said.
NRG/Bluewater founder and President Peter D. Mandelstam did not return calls Monday seeking comment about the vote, cast at Bethany Beach Town Council's regular meeting Friday afternoon. The company's state director could not be reached.
"As a council we've attempted through various means to ensure the town and its residents are protected if this project were to ever come into being," said Councilman Jerry Dorfman, adding the delay from NRG, not returning the memorandum of understanding "raises some serious red flags."
Councilwoman Margaret Young agreed, noting the alternative of Garfield Parkway was not something new. It was, in fact, the route NRG started out with.
Residents largely have opposed the construction, many asking the council to reject the proposal outright instead of researching its possible environmental and human effects.
http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20110719/BUSINESS/107190322/Bethany-Beach-ends-discussion-underground-lines-NRG
The company's brusque rebuff by Bethany Beach -- including a charge that it failed to negotiate in good faith -- comes five months after NRG representatives presented project plans proposing power lines below Wellington Parkway and Kent Avenue.
At the time, Mayor Tony McClenny told Town Manager Clifford M. Graviet to seek independent expert advice on the lines' potential impact on human health and the environment, and also told Graviet to ask NRG to cover the cost.
A memorandum of understanding sent to NRG in April was returned last month -- slightly changed and not signed -- saying the company agreed to pay up to $85,000 for independent research on the lines' effects.
Shortly thereafter, the company wrote to town officials saying it would offer an alternative route for the lines and conduct associated engineering studies for both routes.
"Based on this letter and previous actions, I do not believe that NRG/Bluewater has been dealing with the town in good faith," said Vice Mayor Jack Gordon, who made a motion to notify NRG the town no longer is interested in the project, or in continuing discussions.
"The townspeople cannot tolerate having this issue hanging over their heads for any longer," he said.
NRG/Bluewater founder and President Peter D. Mandelstam did not return calls Monday seeking comment about the vote, cast at Bethany Beach Town Council's regular meeting Friday afternoon. The company's state director could not be reached.
"As a council we've attempted through various means to ensure the town and its residents are protected if this project were to ever come into being," said Councilman Jerry Dorfman, adding the delay from NRG, not returning the memorandum of understanding "raises some serious red flags."
Councilwoman Margaret Young agreed, noting the alternative of Garfield Parkway was not something new. It was, in fact, the route NRG started out with.
Residents largely have opposed the construction, many asking the council to reject the proposal outright instead of researching its possible environmental and human effects.
http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20110719/BUSINESS/107190322/Bethany-Beach-ends-discussion-underground-lines-NRG
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Island off Alabama coast bursting with birds after oil spill
BIRMINGHAM, Ala (Reuters) - Thousands of baby pelicans grunt and hiss at their parents in tightly packed nests on Gaillard Island, a feathered paradise situated off the coast of Alabama.
The 1,300-acre, man-made island is hosting more than 50,000 birds this summer as nesting pairs gather to raise babies. That number would be considered high in any year, but it's a particularly surprising sight a year after oil from the BP spill fouled surrounding waters.
The Deepwater Horizon rig explosion spewed more than 168 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over three months, the largest spill in U.S. history. But so far, there is no evidence of deformities or ill health among the young on Gaillard Island.
Scientists speculate that the baby boom probably results from an abundance of fish left undisturbed in waterways where the federal government banned commercial and recreational fishing last summer, providing a feast for shore birds.
In a speech this spring, the executive director of the nearby Dauphin Island Sea Lab said the fish populations in that part of the Gulf were larger than he had ever seen.
The population of the pelicans, terns, laughing gulls, egrets, ibis and little blue and tricolored herons nesting on Gaillard Island is determined by the food supply, said Roger Clay, a wildlife biologist with the Alabama Division of Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries.
"If something was wrong with the food, the first place it would show is with the birds," said Clay, also known as the "the pelican guy."
That fact was painfully true in the 1960s and 1970s when the agricultural chemical DDT caused birds to produce deformed eggs. Many species, including the brown pelican, teetered on the brink of extinction.
A fondness for pelican feathers in women's hats in the 1900s resulted in over-hunting and decimated populations. The four nesting pelicans on Gaillard Island in 1983 were the first sightings of the birds in years in Alabama.
The number of pelican pairs has grown since then to an average of 4,000, but this year looks to be nearly 5,000, Clay said.
"The pelican has made a terrific comeback," said Celeste Hinds, field trip coordinator for the Mobile Bay Audubon Society, which monitors the bird population.
"So far, we have seen very little impact from the oil spill, and we are pleased that it has not affected the nesting habits of the brown pelican," Hinds said.
Clay said nearly every shore bird commonly found in Alabama nests on the island, which was created with dirt from a dredged shipping canal. Far enough from land to prevent predators such as feral cats and raccoons from reaching shore, the island provides protected habitat for ground nesters.
People are not allowed either, but many boats circle the two-mile island for some of summer's best bird-watching.
Each nesting pair typically raises two youngsters, even in a three-egg pelican nest. The first two baby birds to break the shell generally out-compete the last arrival.
Pelican parents do little to protect their young, but the babies hiss, scream and aim their beaks at the eyes of intruders. Nests sit close to each other as a defensive measure.
The royal terns prefer 12 inches of space between nests and raise two young per nest. About 3,000 pairs inhabit the island, along with approximately 1,000 more pairs of Caspian, sandwich, gull-billed and common terns.
Bursting with birds, the island is hosting its maximum number of pairs. Clay began his weekly visits to the nests three years after the island was formed in 1983. He said the population peaked in 1992, with some years, such as this one, booming with babies.
"One year does not make a trend, so I hate to jump to any conclusions, but I am taking this as a positive sign," he said.
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE7692FL20110710?irpc=932
The 1,300-acre, man-made island is hosting more than 50,000 birds this summer as nesting pairs gather to raise babies. That number would be considered high in any year, but it's a particularly surprising sight a year after oil from the BP spill fouled surrounding waters.
The Deepwater Horizon rig explosion spewed more than 168 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over three months, the largest spill in U.S. history. But so far, there is no evidence of deformities or ill health among the young on Gaillard Island.
Scientists speculate that the baby boom probably results from an abundance of fish left undisturbed in waterways where the federal government banned commercial and recreational fishing last summer, providing a feast for shore birds.
In a speech this spring, the executive director of the nearby Dauphin Island Sea Lab said the fish populations in that part of the Gulf were larger than he had ever seen.
The population of the pelicans, terns, laughing gulls, egrets, ibis and little blue and tricolored herons nesting on Gaillard Island is determined by the food supply, said Roger Clay, a wildlife biologist with the Alabama Division of Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries.
"If something was wrong with the food, the first place it would show is with the birds," said Clay, also known as the "the pelican guy."
That fact was painfully true in the 1960s and 1970s when the agricultural chemical DDT caused birds to produce deformed eggs. Many species, including the brown pelican, teetered on the brink of extinction.
A fondness for pelican feathers in women's hats in the 1900s resulted in over-hunting and decimated populations. The four nesting pelicans on Gaillard Island in 1983 were the first sightings of the birds in years in Alabama.
The number of pelican pairs has grown since then to an average of 4,000, but this year looks to be nearly 5,000, Clay said.
"The pelican has made a terrific comeback," said Celeste Hinds, field trip coordinator for the Mobile Bay Audubon Society, which monitors the bird population.
"So far, we have seen very little impact from the oil spill, and we are pleased that it has not affected the nesting habits of the brown pelican," Hinds said.
Clay said nearly every shore bird commonly found in Alabama nests on the island, which was created with dirt from a dredged shipping canal. Far enough from land to prevent predators such as feral cats and raccoons from reaching shore, the island provides protected habitat for ground nesters.
People are not allowed either, but many boats circle the two-mile island for some of summer's best bird-watching.
Each nesting pair typically raises two youngsters, even in a three-egg pelican nest. The first two baby birds to break the shell generally out-compete the last arrival.
Pelican parents do little to protect their young, but the babies hiss, scream and aim their beaks at the eyes of intruders. Nests sit close to each other as a defensive measure.
The royal terns prefer 12 inches of space between nests and raise two young per nest. About 3,000 pairs inhabit the island, along with approximately 1,000 more pairs of Caspian, sandwich, gull-billed and common terns.
Bursting with birds, the island is hosting its maximum number of pairs. Clay began his weekly visits to the nests three years after the island was formed in 1983. He said the population peaked in 1992, with some years, such as this one, booming with babies.
"One year does not make a trend, so I hate to jump to any conclusions, but I am taking this as a positive sign," he said.
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE7692FL20110710?irpc=932
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Builders group sues EPA over Bay cleanup plan NAHB joins farm groups in claiming federal over-reaching
It appears that only the courts can save us from economic destruction by environmental extremism and junk science.
A national home builders' group has gone to court to block the Environmental Protection Agency's plan for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.
The lawsuit filed Monday by the National Association of Home Builders in U.S. District Court in Scranton, Pa., accuses the federal agency of overstepping its legal authority and relying on flawed computer modeling in ordering Maryland, the five other bay watershed states and the District of Columbia to reduce nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment pollution by 20 to 25 percent over the next 14 years.
The complaint was combined with a similar lawsuit filed earlier this year by the American Farm Bureau Federation and joined by several other agricultural industry groups. Both suits seek to require EPA to withdraw its "total maximum daily load," more commonly known as a "pollution diet," and redraft the plan, leaving more discretion with the states and allowing more time for public review and comment.
"We're not against cleaning up the bay, but we are against bad science and bad rulemaking, and that's what we want them to go back and fix,'' said Tom Ward, a lawyer for the national builders group. John E. Kortecamp, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Maryland, said his group was not consulted on the lawsuit and declined to comment.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, representing local wastewater treatment plant operators, as well as a Pennsylvania utility association, have moved to intervene in defense of EPA's bay cleanup plan. William C. Baker, president of the Annapolis-based foundation, called the builders' lawsuit "yet another attempt by a special interest to avoid responsibility for their part of the total pollution loading."
http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/green/bs-gr-builders-bay-suit-20110628,0,185191.story
A national home builders' group has gone to court to block the Environmental Protection Agency's plan for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.
The lawsuit filed Monday by the National Association of Home Builders in U.S. District Court in Scranton, Pa., accuses the federal agency of overstepping its legal authority and relying on flawed computer modeling in ordering Maryland, the five other bay watershed states and the District of Columbia to reduce nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment pollution by 20 to 25 percent over the next 14 years.
The complaint was combined with a similar lawsuit filed earlier this year by the American Farm Bureau Federation and joined by several other agricultural industry groups. Both suits seek to require EPA to withdraw its "total maximum daily load," more commonly known as a "pollution diet," and redraft the plan, leaving more discretion with the states and allowing more time for public review and comment.
"We're not against cleaning up the bay, but we are against bad science and bad rulemaking, and that's what we want them to go back and fix,'' said Tom Ward, a lawyer for the national builders group. John E. Kortecamp, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Maryland, said his group was not consulted on the lawsuit and declined to comment.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, representing local wastewater treatment plant operators, as well as a Pennsylvania utility association, have moved to intervene in defense of EPA's bay cleanup plan. William C. Baker, president of the Annapolis-based foundation, called the builders' lawsuit "yet another attempt by a special interest to avoid responsibility for their part of the total pollution loading."
http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/green/bs-gr-builders-bay-suit-20110628,0,185191.story
Maryland Adds Environmental Literacy in High Schools
Brainwashing is mandated in Maryland schools by regulators, not lawmakers
Maryland is the first state in the country to impose a new requirement to graduate from high school -- something called environmental literacy.
But what is that? That is the question State Senator J. B. Jennings is asking.
"What kind of education is it going to be?” he asks. “Is it going to be fact-based? Or is it going to be theory-based, which is usually politically, theory driven. And you can think, it's going to be about global warming or climate change."
Sarah Bodor of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation supports the initiative and says there is no mandate.
"People express concern about the content but what is important to know is that this new requirement doesn't actually mandate any content at all."
The new rule is a regulation from the State Board of Education, not a law passed by the legislature, so it lays out no specifics. Governor Martin O'Malley offers no real details but praises it, saying it will "infuse core subjects with lessons about conservation and smart growth and the health of our natural world."
O’Malley also said it'll serve as a "foundation for green jobs," though one analyst says training for those is just like it is for any other job.
"You need to know how to get there on time, how to be alert, how to work hard, how to absorb a lot of information, how to - you know - learn new skills," says Myron Ebell of free market think tank, the Competitive Enterprise Institute."
The state education board leaves all content up to local school boards and a state official says " local systems will implement the requirement as they see fit."
Boder says students near the Chesapeake Bay could learn by doing.
"[K]ids have the opportunity to participate in some real world learning, such as raising native oysters and replenishing reef habitat,” Boder says. “By raising the oysters, they can learn math and read and write about the history of oystering in the state of Maryland and throughout the Chesapeake Bay and that gets them excited and that helps to boost their achievements."
No one would object to boosting achievement, but some analysts fear a broader, more political agenda would be in play. For instance, the local school boards won't get any extra money, so a group called the North American Association of Environmental Education offers a guide for teachers.
An early passage from the guide says “consumption of natural resources, air and water pollution, and the impacts of climate change are among the many complex challenges that threaten human health, economic development, and national security.” It goes on to talk about the need to "take informed action." And that raises some eyebrows.
"That is not really education," says Ebell. "It's propaganda and its designed to raise up a new generation of easily led and poorly educated and misinformed students."
And state lawmakers like J.B. Jennings note there are only so many hours in a school day, and only 180 days in a school year. So, he wonders, what in the current curriculum gets squeezed out?
"They can't just keep adding on and on, so they will have to make room for this by pushing other things out of the curriculum, which is going to be a concern," Jennings says.
He wants to know what will be pushed out to make room for these yet-undefined lessons aimed at "environmental literacy."
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/06/27/maryland-adds-environmental-literacy-in-high-schools/?cmpid=cmty_email_Gigya_Maryland_Adds_Environmental_Literacy_in_High_Schools
Maryland is the first state in the country to impose a new requirement to graduate from high school -- something called environmental literacy.
But what is that? That is the question State Senator J. B. Jennings is asking.
"What kind of education is it going to be?” he asks. “Is it going to be fact-based? Or is it going to be theory-based, which is usually politically, theory driven. And you can think, it's going to be about global warming or climate change."
Sarah Bodor of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation supports the initiative and says there is no mandate.
"People express concern about the content but what is important to know is that this new requirement doesn't actually mandate any content at all."
The new rule is a regulation from the State Board of Education, not a law passed by the legislature, so it lays out no specifics. Governor Martin O'Malley offers no real details but praises it, saying it will "infuse core subjects with lessons about conservation and smart growth and the health of our natural world."
O’Malley also said it'll serve as a "foundation for green jobs," though one analyst says training for those is just like it is for any other job.
"You need to know how to get there on time, how to be alert, how to work hard, how to absorb a lot of information, how to - you know - learn new skills," says Myron Ebell of free market think tank, the Competitive Enterprise Institute."
The state education board leaves all content up to local school boards and a state official says " local systems will implement the requirement as they see fit."
Boder says students near the Chesapeake Bay could learn by doing.
"[K]ids have the opportunity to participate in some real world learning, such as raising native oysters and replenishing reef habitat,” Boder says. “By raising the oysters, they can learn math and read and write about the history of oystering in the state of Maryland and throughout the Chesapeake Bay and that gets them excited and that helps to boost their achievements."
No one would object to boosting achievement, but some analysts fear a broader, more political agenda would be in play. For instance, the local school boards won't get any extra money, so a group called the North American Association of Environmental Education offers a guide for teachers.
An early passage from the guide says “consumption of natural resources, air and water pollution, and the impacts of climate change are among the many complex challenges that threaten human health, economic development, and national security.” It goes on to talk about the need to "take informed action." And that raises some eyebrows.
"That is not really education," says Ebell. "It's propaganda and its designed to raise up a new generation of easily led and poorly educated and misinformed students."
And state lawmakers like J.B. Jennings note there are only so many hours in a school day, and only 180 days in a school year. So, he wonders, what in the current curriculum gets squeezed out?
"They can't just keep adding on and on, so they will have to make room for this by pushing other things out of the curriculum, which is going to be a concern," Jennings says.
He wants to know what will be pushed out to make room for these yet-undefined lessons aimed at "environmental literacy."
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/06/27/maryland-adds-environmental-literacy-in-high-schools/?cmpid=cmty_email_Gigya_Maryland_Adds_Environmental_Literacy_in_High_Schools
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
The EPA assault on Texas
The necessary precondition for Texas’s unique economic success – a beacon in a deep recession – is energy. And the EPA is closing in for the kill.
This would be one thing if Texas were an outlier among the 50 states in terms of dirty air or an otherwise demonstrably imperiled environment. But the truth is closer to the opposite: the air in Texas has been getting cleaner; in the urban areas, much cleaner. And in spite of being by far the largest electric power producer of the 50 states, and heavily reliant on coal, Texas has been steadily reducing its emissions of the EPA’s least-favored compounds from coal combustion (e.g., sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide). Its emissions of NOx and SO2 are substantially lower than the national average; Texas is ranked the 11th lowest in NOx emissions (.098 lb/mmBtu in 2009, versus a national average of .159 lb/mmBtu), and 24th in SO2 (.309 lb/mmBtu in 2009, versus a national average of .458 lb/mmBtu).
But the EPA isn’t really making the argument that Texas is an environmental pigsty. It’s not putting any data or findings behind that premise, at any rate. Instead, it is simply acting high-handedly, assuming an authority that nothing in written law confers on it, to pronounce Texas’s procedures in violation of EPA rules – even when there is no basis for making that claim. To put it bluntly, the EPA is making a power grab.
Overriding the state air-permit system
There are three principal facets to the power grab. One began with an EPA decision in January 2010 that the Texas air-permit program was invalid, and that every facility operating under such a permit in the state would have to be re-permitted. The argument was not that Texas plants were emitting too much. Rather, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, the Texas “air-permit program … caps emissions of air pollutants from an entire facility, but the EPA wants to scrutinize and restrict emissions from every polluting unit of a plant.” Texas, along with a number of other states, is concerned that regulating on the EPA’s basis will cost considerably more, without improving air quality.
Neither of the two approaches can claim to be the obvious intent of the Clean Air Act. In default of a clear intent in written law, the point at issue is whose judgment ought to prevail in this matter. Texas argues that federalism was a key component of the Clean Air Act, and properly so; that’s how things work in the United States. The EPA is supposed to set air quality standards, and then the states choose their methods to meet them. Other states agree.
The EPA has made no philosophical arguments to justify its regulatory ukase – but, of course, it doesn’t have to. It is currently operating under a chief executive who endorses its approach and doesn’t require it to justify what it wants to do. Reining it in would require concerted action from Congress, and/or a favorable ruling for the states in a lawsuit.
Keep in mind that throughout the 16 years in which Texas issued its industrial air permits, air quality in Texas improved – a lot. The Texas system wasn’t failing to produce a compliant outcome. And it took the EPA 16 years to decide, in spite of that record of success, to invalidate all the existing state-issued permits. The motivation was clearly political.
The war on coal; New draconian air-quality standards
The permit invalidation was just the beginning, however. The second facet of the power grab, the Obama EPA’s war on coal, will have at least as damaging an effect on Texas as on other states, and in some ways perhaps more. The war on coal is part of a larger regulatory assault on emissions and industrial byproducts of all kinds, which will, if implemented as intended, ensure life as we know it cannot continue in the United States. The impact on Texas is discussed in the testimony submitted to Congress by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) in March.
The findings include the likelihood that the new regulations adopted by the Obama EPA will shut down more than 5700 MW of electrical generating capacity in Texas, or about one-twelfth of the peak demand levied by state users in the last couple of years. Meanwhile, based on economic trends, Texas expects to need as much as 25% more capacity by 2020. TPPF cites industry and independent think-tank estimates that the cost of compliance with the new EPA standards will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and will thus drive utility costs – and therefore the cost of living – up significantly, while at the same time eliminating thousands of jobs in many industries.
From regulating the naturally-occurring fine dust in the countryside, to treating the byproducts of coal combustion as hazardous waste, and preventing them from being sold for use in cement, the EPA’s proposals would shut down one aspect of human economic life after another.
TPPF gets in a number of good points about both the politics and the data; for example, it observes on p. 6 of the document that the EPA got around the rules governing its implementation of the new regulations by deeming its proposed action (dramatically tightening air quality standards) to be deregulatory. How did it do that? By positing that a comprehensive scheme of regulation would involve issuing permits for 6 million sources of emissions, and deciding instead to “tailor” its program to cover only large sources (e.g., the 12,000 emitters that currently require permits to operate).
Just imagine how we could fleece our fellow men if we all had the power to declare it “deregulation” – mercy, relief, a benefit to the regulated – when we don’t do as much as we could have done. There is a distinctly mafia-like ring to that thought process.
The TPPF testimony also alludes to the EPA’s extremely shaky case that fuel-burning plants need to have their mercury emissions reduced by 91% (mercury emissions from US industry have already been reduced considerably in the past 30 years). A number of studies suggest that many coal-fired electrical plants will simply find this impossible.
And there doesn’t appear to be a pressing need for it anyway. Besides the facts that the entire United States power sector emits only 1% of the globe’s anthropogenic mercury output, and that 50% of the mercury in the Atlantic is emitted from Asia, not the US (virtually all the human-emitted mercury in the Pacific comes from Asia), everything in the alarmist case about mercury is either undemonstrated (e.g., that mercury levels in fish have been rising), or wildly overestimated (e.g., the incidence of mercury in child-bearing women in the US, and how that compares to the level of mercury considered dangerous to humans). See here and here for evidence and counterarguments.
But wait – there’s more. If you’re wondering how Texas is going to make up that 5700+ MW of power-generating capacity, so is Texas. Nuclear power would do the trick, of course, but as TPPF observes, new nuclear power plants are an iffy proposition in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. Wind, solar, and biomass are laughably uneconomic sources, and wind and solar are unreliable as well.
Shutting down natural gas
But what about natural gas? The EPA is way ahead of us, with the third facet of its power grab. Ben Voth wrote a piece for American Thinker in January calling out the new EPA assault on the production of natural gas in Texas. And if you think the EPA’s particular beef is with fracking (hydraulic fracturing) chemicals, think again. The basis for the EPA’s abrupt move against a Texas natural gas driller in December 2010 was methane and benzene found in local water.
It all fit nicely with the emotional appeal of the “documentary” Gasland, which did for the natural gas industry what Michael Moore did for 9/11. The problem is that not only was Gasland full of errors and misrepresentations, the EPA case against Range Resources in Texas was full of holes as well. Based on analysis of their nitrogen content, the methane and benzene in the afflicted water came not from the natural-gas drilling by Range Resources, but through natural seepage from a shallower nearby gas formation – one that is not being drilled. In other words, there’s nothing humans could have done to prevent the seepage.
(The Energy in Depth write-ups point out also that methane is a naturally occurring gas and the hazards of its presence in drinking water depend, as with so many things, on concentration. They also cite a study by the Texas health authorities which demonstrated that benzene exposure in the gas-drilling areas of Texas is no higher than it is in the rest of the US, and that the only residents who have elevated levels of benzene are smokers.)
But subsequent testimony from EPA staffers, part of a reconstruction of the December 2010 decision to shut down the Range Resources drilling operation, showed that the EPA did not even consider the possibility that the methane and benzene appeared naturally in the water in question. This failure fit well with other patterns in the EPA action; the reconstruction (see the second EID link) indicates that it was an instance of activists and the EPA working together to jump the gun.
Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) is pursuing this issue. The Republicans in Texas’s congressional delegation have sent a letter to Cass Sunstein expressing strong disapproval of the EPA’s failure to abide by its own rules in implementing the new air quality and emissions regulations. As Pajamas notes, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers has sent a letter of its own decrying the new regulations – although the Texas Democrats have remained silent.
The fight continues among the states. At least 15 (including Texas) filed suit against the EPA over its “climate-change” regulations in 2010, even before the full slate of new air quality/emissions regulations were published. On the other side are 16 states
fighting back on behalf of the EPA, saying without regulations, climate change will adversely affect them.
Those states are: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
Remarkably, the states “fighting on behalf of the EPA” include the ones with the biggest state deficits, the ones with the highest taxes, the ones with the highest unemployment, and the ones hemorrhaging businesses and revenues and losing seats in Congress after the 2010 census. One principles-of-governance note: as long as there is an EPA, any president can put people in it who will abuse the agency’s portfolio. The courts are incompetent to decide how much the EPA “should” be doing. That’s a political decision that belongs in Congress – and we need to be telling Congress to do things differently.
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/06/19/the-epa-assault-on-texas/
This would be one thing if Texas were an outlier among the 50 states in terms of dirty air or an otherwise demonstrably imperiled environment. But the truth is closer to the opposite: the air in Texas has been getting cleaner; in the urban areas, much cleaner. And in spite of being by far the largest electric power producer of the 50 states, and heavily reliant on coal, Texas has been steadily reducing its emissions of the EPA’s least-favored compounds from coal combustion (e.g., sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide). Its emissions of NOx and SO2 are substantially lower than the national average; Texas is ranked the 11th lowest in NOx emissions (.098 lb/mmBtu in 2009, versus a national average of .159 lb/mmBtu), and 24th in SO2 (.309 lb/mmBtu in 2009, versus a national average of .458 lb/mmBtu).
But the EPA isn’t really making the argument that Texas is an environmental pigsty. It’s not putting any data or findings behind that premise, at any rate. Instead, it is simply acting high-handedly, assuming an authority that nothing in written law confers on it, to pronounce Texas’s procedures in violation of EPA rules – even when there is no basis for making that claim. To put it bluntly, the EPA is making a power grab.
Overriding the state air-permit system
There are three principal facets to the power grab. One began with an EPA decision in January 2010 that the Texas air-permit program was invalid, and that every facility operating under such a permit in the state would have to be re-permitted. The argument was not that Texas plants were emitting too much. Rather, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, the Texas “air-permit program … caps emissions of air pollutants from an entire facility, but the EPA wants to scrutinize and restrict emissions from every polluting unit of a plant.” Texas, along with a number of other states, is concerned that regulating on the EPA’s basis will cost considerably more, without improving air quality.
Neither of the two approaches can claim to be the obvious intent of the Clean Air Act. In default of a clear intent in written law, the point at issue is whose judgment ought to prevail in this matter. Texas argues that federalism was a key component of the Clean Air Act, and properly so; that’s how things work in the United States. The EPA is supposed to set air quality standards, and then the states choose their methods to meet them. Other states agree.
The EPA has made no philosophical arguments to justify its regulatory ukase – but, of course, it doesn’t have to. It is currently operating under a chief executive who endorses its approach and doesn’t require it to justify what it wants to do. Reining it in would require concerted action from Congress, and/or a favorable ruling for the states in a lawsuit.
Keep in mind that throughout the 16 years in which Texas issued its industrial air permits, air quality in Texas improved – a lot. The Texas system wasn’t failing to produce a compliant outcome. And it took the EPA 16 years to decide, in spite of that record of success, to invalidate all the existing state-issued permits. The motivation was clearly political.
The war on coal; New draconian air-quality standards
The permit invalidation was just the beginning, however. The second facet of the power grab, the Obama EPA’s war on coal, will have at least as damaging an effect on Texas as on other states, and in some ways perhaps more. The war on coal is part of a larger regulatory assault on emissions and industrial byproducts of all kinds, which will, if implemented as intended, ensure life as we know it cannot continue in the United States. The impact on Texas is discussed in the testimony submitted to Congress by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) in March.
The findings include the likelihood that the new regulations adopted by the Obama EPA will shut down more than 5700 MW of electrical generating capacity in Texas, or about one-twelfth of the peak demand levied by state users in the last couple of years. Meanwhile, based on economic trends, Texas expects to need as much as 25% more capacity by 2020. TPPF cites industry and independent think-tank estimates that the cost of compliance with the new EPA standards will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and will thus drive utility costs – and therefore the cost of living – up significantly, while at the same time eliminating thousands of jobs in many industries.
From regulating the naturally-occurring fine dust in the countryside, to treating the byproducts of coal combustion as hazardous waste, and preventing them from being sold for use in cement, the EPA’s proposals would shut down one aspect of human economic life after another.
TPPF gets in a number of good points about both the politics and the data; for example, it observes on p. 6 of the document that the EPA got around the rules governing its implementation of the new regulations by deeming its proposed action (dramatically tightening air quality standards) to be deregulatory. How did it do that? By positing that a comprehensive scheme of regulation would involve issuing permits for 6 million sources of emissions, and deciding instead to “tailor” its program to cover only large sources (e.g., the 12,000 emitters that currently require permits to operate).
Just imagine how we could fleece our fellow men if we all had the power to declare it “deregulation” – mercy, relief, a benefit to the regulated – when we don’t do as much as we could have done. There is a distinctly mafia-like ring to that thought process.
The TPPF testimony also alludes to the EPA’s extremely shaky case that fuel-burning plants need to have their mercury emissions reduced by 91% (mercury emissions from US industry have already been reduced considerably in the past 30 years). A number of studies suggest that many coal-fired electrical plants will simply find this impossible.
And there doesn’t appear to be a pressing need for it anyway. Besides the facts that the entire United States power sector emits only 1% of the globe’s anthropogenic mercury output, and that 50% of the mercury in the Atlantic is emitted from Asia, not the US (virtually all the human-emitted mercury in the Pacific comes from Asia), everything in the alarmist case about mercury is either undemonstrated (e.g., that mercury levels in fish have been rising), or wildly overestimated (e.g., the incidence of mercury in child-bearing women in the US, and how that compares to the level of mercury considered dangerous to humans). See here and here for evidence and counterarguments.
But wait – there’s more. If you’re wondering how Texas is going to make up that 5700+ MW of power-generating capacity, so is Texas. Nuclear power would do the trick, of course, but as TPPF observes, new nuclear power plants are an iffy proposition in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. Wind, solar, and biomass are laughably uneconomic sources, and wind and solar are unreliable as well.
Shutting down natural gas
But what about natural gas? The EPA is way ahead of us, with the third facet of its power grab. Ben Voth wrote a piece for American Thinker in January calling out the new EPA assault on the production of natural gas in Texas. And if you think the EPA’s particular beef is with fracking (hydraulic fracturing) chemicals, think again. The basis for the EPA’s abrupt move against a Texas natural gas driller in December 2010 was methane and benzene found in local water.
It all fit nicely with the emotional appeal of the “documentary” Gasland, which did for the natural gas industry what Michael Moore did for 9/11. The problem is that not only was Gasland full of errors and misrepresentations, the EPA case against Range Resources in Texas was full of holes as well. Based on analysis of their nitrogen content, the methane and benzene in the afflicted water came not from the natural-gas drilling by Range Resources, but through natural seepage from a shallower nearby gas formation – one that is not being drilled. In other words, there’s nothing humans could have done to prevent the seepage.
(The Energy in Depth write-ups point out also that methane is a naturally occurring gas and the hazards of its presence in drinking water depend, as with so many things, on concentration. They also cite a study by the Texas health authorities which demonstrated that benzene exposure in the gas-drilling areas of Texas is no higher than it is in the rest of the US, and that the only residents who have elevated levels of benzene are smokers.)
But subsequent testimony from EPA staffers, part of a reconstruction of the December 2010 decision to shut down the Range Resources drilling operation, showed that the EPA did not even consider the possibility that the methane and benzene appeared naturally in the water in question. This failure fit well with other patterns in the EPA action; the reconstruction (see the second EID link) indicates that it was an instance of activists and the EPA working together to jump the gun.
Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) is pursuing this issue. The Republicans in Texas’s congressional delegation have sent a letter to Cass Sunstein expressing strong disapproval of the EPA’s failure to abide by its own rules in implementing the new air quality and emissions regulations. As Pajamas notes, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers has sent a letter of its own decrying the new regulations – although the Texas Democrats have remained silent.
The fight continues among the states. At least 15 (including Texas) filed suit against the EPA over its “climate-change” regulations in 2010, even before the full slate of new air quality/emissions regulations were published. On the other side are 16 states
fighting back on behalf of the EPA, saying without regulations, climate change will adversely affect them.
Those states are: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
Remarkably, the states “fighting on behalf of the EPA” include the ones with the biggest state deficits, the ones with the highest taxes, the ones with the highest unemployment, and the ones hemorrhaging businesses and revenues and losing seats in Congress after the 2010 census. One principles-of-governance note: as long as there is an EPA, any president can put people in it who will abuse the agency’s portfolio. The courts are incompetent to decide how much the EPA “should” be doing. That’s a political decision that belongs in Congress – and we need to be telling Congress to do things differently.
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/06/19/the-epa-assault-on-texas/
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