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May 16, 2024

New hope for long-polluted communities, but skepticism of Superfund success remains

By Barbara Reina and Carey Gillam

Jackie Medcalf was a teenager when she moved with her family to a small farm near the San Jacinto River in Harris County, Texas. It felt like a good life, playing in the river and “eating off the land,” as Medcalf describes it.

But the animals quickly grew ill, as did Medcalf, suffering a range of health problems. Her father developed multiple myeloma at the age of 51. Tests of the family’s well water would later reveal contamination with several toxic metals. Testing of the eggs collected from the family’s chickens also found an array of heavy metals. The family was not alone, as others in the area reported similar problems.

There was little doubt about the source of the contamination: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has designated the San Jacinto River Waste Pits as a Superfund site due to dumping in the 1960s of waste from a paper mill containing carcinogens and other types of toxins. The site has been on the EPA’s “National Priorities List” for cleanup since 2008. But 14 years later, those efforts have yet to be completed.

“For decades my fellow community members have unknowingly recreated around dioxin laden pits,” said Medcalf, now a 37-year-oldmother and the founder of a nonprofit that advocates for the cleanup of area’s contamination. “How many more decades must pass before this disaster is remedied?”

The suffering of the Medcalf family is but one story among far too many that are emblematic of the struggles behind America’s Superfund program, which aims to clean up sites around the country contaminated with a range of dangerous industrial toxins.

In February, the Biden administration said it was earmarking more than $1 billion to help clean up those long-standing hazardous waste sites that are jeopardizing the health of communities around the country. The money is to go to new and continuing projects, and is part of roughly $3.5 billion allocated in President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for work at Superfund sites.

san francisco Photo by Patrick Perkins on Unsplash

April 25, 2024

Postcard from California: State emits more of an obscure climate-heating gas than the entire rest of the US

By Bill Walker

Among US states, California is a leader in efforts to cut emissions of the greenhouse gases that fuel the climate crisis. But just three counties in Southern California emit far more of one little-known greenhouse gas than all other US states combined.

Blame termites – and the tragic, too-frequent mistake of replacing one environmentally harmful chemical with another that turns out to be just as bad.

Sulfuryl fluoride is a fumigant pesticide first made by Dow Chemical Co., marketed since 1959 as Vikane. To kill western drywood termites, pest control companies cover infested houses with tents and then pump in Vikane. Houses tented for fumigation are a common sight in Southern California, where warm, dry weather leaves wooden buildings highly susceptible to infestations of the hard-to-exterminate species.

The colorless, odorless, highly neurotoxic gas that kills termites is also a danger to humans. That’s why Vikane must be spiked with another toxic pesticide gas called chloropicrin, which has an intensely irritating smell that is meant to warn people against entering a house until the fumigant has dispersed in 24 to 72 hours.

California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) records show that between 1992 and 2017, at least 16 Californians died from sulfuryl fluoride poisoning after going inside fumigated houses too soon. In the same period DPR recorded more than 200 cases of human exposure that caused breathing problems, dizziness, nausea, and other symptoms.

But the biggest problem with Vikane is that, when fumigation tents are removed and sulfuryl fluoride disperses into the atmosphere, it is a greenhouse gas much more powerful than carbon dioxide (CO2).

November 30, 2023

US push to turn farm manure into renewable energy draws concerns

By Keith Schneider

AMES, IOWA – In a gathering that drew the attendance of both farmers and Wall Street financiers, US regulators joined with oil giant Chevron at a November conference here to promote what backers promise will be a monumental breakthrough – systemic changes that would turn polluting agricultural waste into a source of renewable energy that replaces fossil fuels and slows climate change.

Speakers at the conference, which was hosted by Iowa State University and co-sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Agriculture, assured attendees that the answers to agricultural and climate woes can be found in technology that already exists: Key, according to conference promoters, is the rapid expansion of large methane biodigesters, which capture manure waste from the nation’s cattle, hog and poultry operations and convert it into a harvest of both public and private riches.

Water and air would be cleaner and farmers could see billions of dollars in new farm income, among other benefits, according to backers.

“It can provide a substantial portion of global energy needs,” Rudi Roeslein , CEO of Roeslein Alternative Energy, told the attendees. His company has built farm-based methane systems around the country that produce enough fuel to displace six million gallons of diesel fuel and 80,000 cars. “If we do this on a large scale in the US we could generate $63.6 billion worth of revenue for farmers around the country.”

Roeslein’s company promises on its website to “restore a balance” to farmland “by using the sustainably harvested biomass to create renewable natural gas.”

Chevron promotes its investment in manure biodigestion as “finding inspiration in nature.”

“I’m really excited about the innovation in this space,” Lisa Schulte Moore, a professor and co-director of the Bioeconomy Institute at Iowa State, said in an interview. “The renewable natural gas market is providing economic incentives for better management of manure.”

But critics argue that the emergence of an alliance of Big Ag, Big Oil, and Big Government to generate energy from livestock waste is ripe with peril. They say that air pollutants and waste discharged from farms and from already existing farm-based biodigesters receive scant federal and state oversight. They fear that without strict regulation, manure digesters could make water and air pollution worse, not better. Industrial-sized farms, including concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), already are one of the nation’s largest sources of water pollution, and among the principal causes of air pollution.

November 1, 2023

“Time is up” – EPA facing threat of citizens’ lawsuit seeking cap on climate pollution

By Dana Drugmand

US regulators are breaking the law by failing to set a national cap on climate pollution, endangering human health and the environment, according to a consortium threatening to file a citizens’ lawsuit against the government to force “stronger, faster actions to address the climate emergency.”

The states of Oregon and Minnesota, along with the San Carlos Apache Tribe and climate advocacy organizations 350.org and the Center for Biological Diversity, said this week that they plan to sue the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) demanding the agency respond to a 2009 petition for regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

In a letter addressed to EPA Administrator Michael Regan, the consortium pointed out that the EPA has long known that climate changes are occurring that are harming human health and that the “effects will only worsen over time” without regulatory action.

“In the nearly fourteen years since the petition has been pending before EPA, the climate crisis has become far more dire, devastating lives, livelihoods, and ecosystems,” the letter states.

The letter references a new “state of the climate report” from scientists that warns: “Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an uncharted territory” and that “time is up.” And the letter quotes the UN Secretary General warning of an approaching “climate time-bomb.”

The EPA has 180 days to respond to the letter, called a notice of intent to sue, after which time a lawsuit would be filed in federal district court in the District of Columbia.

August 15, 2023

GE, Bayer, blamed for child’s cancer in a community awash in PCB pollution

By Carey Gillam

A Massachusetts mother filed a lawsuit on Tuesday blaming widespread PCB pollution by General Electric (GE), Monsanto and its German owner Bayer AG, and several other companies for causing her 9-year-old son to develop leukemia and suffer repeated debilitating medical treatment.

Crystal Czerno alleges, among other things, that GE knowingly contaminated her son Carter’s elementary school and playground with PCB waste while downplaying the harm it could cause. The school is located in the town of Pittsfield, just north of a GE facility that made electrical transformers containing PCBS for more than 40 years. PCB-laden soil from the GE site was spread over the school grounds.

The lawsuit accuses the companies of using the community as a “dumping ground” for “toxic and cancerous” chemicals.

“As a mom I am supposed to protect my babies and I must now live with the fact that I moved them into a home and a school that put them in direct danger,” Czerno said. “My son Carter has paid the price.”

The young boy has undergone multiple rounds of chemotherapy, as well as full-body radiation, and multiple stem cell transplants and bone marrow biopsies, according to the lawsuit. Another bone marrow biopsy is scheduled next week, his mother said.

May 22, 2023

Postcard from California: “No one is safe” – state banning diesel trucks

By Bill Walker

Forty percent of all US imports of consumer goods come through the adjacent ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Most of the merchandise is initially trucked to one of thousands of distribution center warehouses in the Inland Empire of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, where it is sorted and packaged for delivery to American homes and stores.

December 5, 2022

Amid energy policy debates, a battle over a natural gas pipeline in Appalachia

When developers first approached West Virginia farmer Maury Johnson in 2015 seeking to bury part of a 303-mile-long natural gas pipeline on his property, Johnson was not eager to comply. But with eminent domain laws giving Johnson few options to oppose the move, developers began construction a few hundred feet from his house in 2018.

It didn’t take long for Johnson to determine that the project was going to be a problem. Developers of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project did not appear to be taking into consideration the nature of the area terrain, blasting the fragile landscape without regard for the underground caves, sinkholes, and natural springs that characterize the region.

Soon he realized his well water he relied on for his household needs had become strangely murky. He started washing his clothes at a laundromat 25 miles away and catching rainwater to use for bathing. He remains without “usable” water now, he said in an interview.

Johnson is among a contingent of critics who have come to view MVP as a dire threat to the health of Appalachian communities. They have a range of fears, including the potential contamination of air, water and soil with toxic chemicals used in the project. One particular fear is tied to the fact that some scientists see the pipeline as uniquely dangerous: Because it snakes through highly unstable soils in landslide-prone mountain terrain, the pipeline could break and potentially explode, the critics warn.

August 25, 2022

Air pollution can raise risk of Covid-19 death 51%, study says

By Pam Strayer

People who are live in areas that come with long-term exposure to high levels of air pollution face a 50% higher chance of dying from Covid-19, and thousands of lives could have been saved during the pandemic if air quality standards were met, a new public health research study has found.

The study, which focused on California residents, is the latest of several exploring the impacts of air pollution on the incidence and severity of Covid-19 infections. And the research adds to a growing body of global research highlighting the importance of reducing air pollution.

The researchers determined that 9%, or at least 4,250 Covid-19 deaths could have been prevented if California met national air quality standards.

The most vulnerable people in terms of air pollution exposure were likely to be Latinos and those living in low-income areas, the researchers found.

The study, published in Environmental Advances, was authored by Paul English, director of the Public Health Institute and its “Tracking California” program, along with ten other researchers, including some affiliated with the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) department of medicine and the UCSF department of epidemiology and biostatistics.

“People of color live in communities that have some of the worst air pollution and also have greater chances of getting sick and even greater chances of dying from COVID,” English said in a release announcing the study.

August 9, 2022

Biden’s Justice40 initiative picking up speed after slow start

More than a year and a half after the Biden administration unveiled a sweeping commitment to bring opportunities and aid to disadvantaged communities, environmental justice advocates are calling on the White House to move faster with its implementation of its Justice40 Initiative.

Advocates fear some programs targeted in the initiative could be jeopardized if Democrats lose the White House in the 2024 presidential elections; and that some programs could be impacted even sooner if mid-term elections this November hand control of the House of Representatives to Republicans.

“My big hope is that the administration prioritizes and senses the urgency that we have to capture this opportunity to redirect investments,” said Ana Baptista, associate director of the Tishman Environment and Design Center at The New School in New York. Her research focuses on climate and environmental justice issues.

The Justice40 initiative, which President Joe Biden initiated through a January 2021 executive order, calls for delivering 40 percent of overall benefits of certain types of federal investments to disadvantaged communities around the country.

May 31, 2022

In South Carolina, residents battle paper mill pollution and say EPA falling short

A group of residents who say they are “prisoners” in their homes because of ongoing pollution from a South Carolina paper mill will have their complaints aired in federal court on Wednesday as the mill seeks to dismiss their class action lawsuit.

Two North Carolina and eight South Carolina residents, all living within a range of 2-1/2 to roughly 14 miles from the paper mill, are the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit. They blame the mill for alleged “egregious and wrongful emission of foul and harmful hydrogen sulfide, methyl mercaptan, methanol, and other pollutants and contaminants to the air,” along with discharging “inadequately treated wastewater” into the Catawba River.

They are asking the court to stop the plant from continuing to release the pollutants. The complaint includes data and reports showing that state regulators and federal regulators ordered the plant to clean up its operations more than a year ago. The finalization of a consent decree is still pending, however.

The pollution stemming from operations at New-Indy Catawba LLC in Catawba, South Carolina affects potentially more than one million people who live and work in the region, according to the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court of South Carolina.