Rebecca Clarren

Brad Crowder, a staffer at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Denver office, was trying to speak quietly – he was concerned that talking to a reporter might threaten his job - but his frustration and anger could not be contained. As he spoke inside a booth at a busy Denver restaurant, his voice rose louder and louder. Crowder was concerned about the public health impacts associated with natural gas extraction, but hadn’t been able to convince his superiors to conduct any studies to investigate the issue.

“We’re told not to ask anymore questions. We get actions taken against us just for asking questions. The regional administrator has said to my colleagues, ‘get on the train. Stay off the tracks or we’ll run you over.’”

This was in 2006. Before he was diagnosed with cancer. Before he quit his job. Sadly, Brad died last year, but his words remain hauntingly relevant. The political interference he identified within the EPA, this pressure to ignore science that might create trouble for the administration’s industry allies, has plagued the majority of scientists at EPA, according to a Union of Concerned Scientists survey released yesterday.
The online questionnaire, described in the LA Times today, found that 889 of the 1,586 EPA scientists that responded had experience at least one type of interference in the last five years.

In optional essays, scientists repeatedly singled out the Office of Management and Budget at the White House, accusing officials there of inserting themselves into decision-making at early stages in a way that shaped the outcome of their inquiries. They also alleged that the OMB delayed rules not to its liking. EPA actions “are held hostage” until changes are made, a scientist from the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation wrote.

(Read on …)

Sarah Gilman

Assistant Editor

Gather round folks, it’s time for a natural gas sing-along (a la the Beverly Hillbillies theme):

“Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed
A poor roughneck, barely kept his family fed,
Then one day he was drilling for some gas,
And up through the ground came a bubblin’ mess.

Salty coalbed methane water, that is. . .”

Gas companies seeking coalbed methane have pumped untold (and undoubtedly massive) quantities of the often briny stuff from the ground over the last decade and dumped it in streams, irrigation ditches and holding ponds in Wyoming and Montana’s Powder River Basin. Meanwhile (and much to the chagrin of many a Powder River area rancher), the feds have done little to study its impacts or regulate its discharge.

Federal officials are only now starting to review what’s known about CBM water and determine what information gaps need to be filled, reports the Associated Press, a full year after the deadline set by the 2005 federal energy bill. The review apparently came only after three environmental groups sued the Interior Department in February.

But this is not the first time the feds have dragged their feet on regulating this subset of the gas industry. (Read on …)

Rebecca Clarren

The folks at Ecotrust, an environmental group based in Portland, Ore. just released a nifty new tool. Find Your Watershed allows people who live in Idaho, Oregon, Washington and California to enter an address and learn about the watershed where they live: how many miles of streams host migrating salmon, the number of dams, its minimum and maximum elevation and how it connects to other watersheds. In the near future, Ecotrust plans to link users to information about what citizen groups work in each watershed.

If you live beyond the Pacific Northwest, check out the Environmental Protection Agency’s Surf Your Watershed site. Though far less aesthetically appealing than the Ecotrust site (and a bit drenched in the thick language of bureaucracy), it has links to all sorts of nerdy information, such as types of pollutants in certain rivers within the watershed, stream flow rates, and contact information for local environmental groups.

A tool for environmental educators, activists, politicians and journalists, these sorts of maps and data are usually developed with the hope that such information gives people a connection to their environment, engendering in them a certain consciousness about the things they do that affect water quality, like driving or dumping toxic stuff down the drain.

Francisco Tharp

If you’ll be spending any time in the San Francisco Bay area summer and fall, you may want to hold your breath–while you’re there, that is.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that California’s agriculture department plans to cover San Francisco, Marin County and the East Bay with Checkmate, a hormone that impedes the reproductive efforts of the light brown moth. Beginning in August, the dustings will occur at night.

State officials see the spraying as a preemptive strike against WMD (Widespread Moth Destruction), which could devastate California’s agriculture industry.

But those rascally health aficionados in the area (yes, the same area that outlawed plastic bags in 2007) are outraged. Hundreds of folks who were sprinkled with Checkmate in Santa Cruz and Monterrey Counties from September to December reported coughing, wheezing, and headaches, among other symptoms.

The article says,

The USDA’s Hawkins said the EPA has generally not been concerned over the toxicity of Checkmate. For example, he said, the agency never set a maximum limit for the pesticide in food or required farm workers to stay out of fields that had just been sprayed.

Somehow this doesn’t make me feel any safer. After all, the USDA doesn’t see anything wrong with genetically modified crops (see HCN’s “Brave New Hay”), and the Environmental Protection Agency extinguished California’s attempt to cut CO2 emissions.

Click here to see why one organization is ready to “run” and “escape” from “a toxic cloud of government corruption.”

Or, click here to see why we have nothing to fear…that’s right, nothing to fear at all.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

Two years ago after the Environmental Protection Agency abruptly began to dismantle its network of technical and scientific libraries, Congress finally has taken action to stop the agency’s self-inflicted lobotomy. It’s now handed EPA $1 million to restore libraries that were recently closed or consolidated.

In the meantime, both agency and outside scientists have lost access to vast research collections. And for a lot of that material, the move to save it may come too late. As Jeff Ruch reports in a recent HCN story, “More than a third of its libraries have already downsized through what EPA calls ‘de-accessioning,’ which is defined as ‘the removal of library materials from the physical collection.’ “

Environmental Science and Technology also notes the difficulty of undoing the damage:

“While the intervention of Congress is most welcome, it comes after several closures and much disruption, leaving the remaining EPA librarians with the task of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again,” said PEER Associate Director Carol Goldberg.

The Government Accountability Office is due to submit a critique of EPA’s library closure and digitization scheme by the end of February. Meanwhile, the 2008 budget statement directs EPA to submit a report within 90 days to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, describing how it plans to restore the libraries.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

Over the past twenty years, two poisons meant for livestock predators have killed thousands of unintended victims — dogs, bears, bobcats, raccoons and more (see our story here about one family’s experience).

The federal Wildlife Services Agency (an Orwellian agency name if there ever was one) places thousands of M-44 traps, which spew sodium cyanide when tugged on, on public land each year, and provides Compound 1080-laced collars for sheep and goats (see our story here about predator killing by Animal Damage Control, the agency’s former incarnation).

In 2006 alone, reports the Associated Press, these poisons killed more than 14,000 animals, including wolves, foxes and coyotes. M-44s have also harmed several unlucky humans, including Utah resident Dennis Slaugh, who back in 2003 tugged on what he thought was a survey stake and still suffers from the poison’s lingering effects.

(Read on …)

Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

In the old mining towns of Silverton, Colo., the sticky issue of acid mine drainage is getting some press, and it’s not all about death and environmental destruction. In Silverton, local volunteers and a host of government agencies are celebrating ten years of a cooperative effort to clean up abandoned mines.

Silverton’s issue has been a tough one for the public or the press to wrap its mind around. It lacks the sexiness of a David vs. Goliath, scruffy-hero-saves-the-environment from corporate rape and pillage. Sure, some people still try to frame it that way: The mines are spilling toxic sludge into the streams and killing all the fish. Only it’s not that simple.

(Read on …)

A couple of months ago Grist reported that prosecutions for environmental crimes had declined since Bush took office. Describing a report from the Environmental Integrity Project, Grist said:

The Department of Justice has filed fewer than 16 lawsuits per year against polluters since Bush took office; the last three years under Clinton saw an annual average of 52 lawsuits. Between fiscal years 2002 and 2006, polluters shelled out $81 million per year in civil penalties; between 1996 and 2000, they ponied up $107 million annually. Criminal fines have dropped 38 percent under Bush, and the number of new criminal investigations has declined by 23 percent.

Now it turns out that it’s not just Justice, but the Environmental Protection Agency, that has been slacking in its duty to the public. Forbes reported today that the number of EPA enforcement officers — real-life, gun-toting enviro-cops — is down to 174, despite a Congressional mandate of 200 and a budget that’s increased by 25 percent:

(Assistant EPA administrator) Nakayama said the EPA is reinvigorating criminal enforcement with an emphasis on pursuing high-impact cases, such as the recent felony air pollution convictions against CITGO Petroleum Corp. and convictions and fines worth millions of dollars against pipe and foundry divisions of McWane Inc. of Birmingham, Ala.

The EPA’s overall criminal caseload - investigations that could lead to prosecutions later - is declining, according to the agency’s figures. It has opened fewer investigations every year since 2002, when there were 484 new investigations and 216 agents. Last year, the number of new cases fell to 305.

(Read on …)

Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

In Rocky Mountain National Park, the wildflowers are disappearing. That’s because nitrogen, caught up in the haze over the park, is saturating the ground and fertilizing grasses and sedges, which then crowd out the flowers. The nitrogen comes from ammonia, much of which comes from agriculture, and nitrogen oxides, produced by combustion engines. The park currently has about 15-20 times the natural level, or twice the “critical load,” of nitrogen deposition. HCN covered the phenomenon last year.

Now, federal and state agencies have finally come up with a plan to tackle the problem, covered by the Denver Post here. The draft plan hopes to cut nitrogen deposition in half — or back down to the critical load — by 2032. In the beginning, only voluntary measures will be used; if that doesn’t work, the plan calls for actual regulation to kick in. It’s a tough row to hoe: The agencies executing the plan can’t just ask a few power plants to put scrubbers on their stacks. That’s because the main cause of the pollution is not power plants, but the thousands of cars driving around Colorado’s Front Range (including in the park itself) and hundreds of diesel engines powering natural gas compressors. Then there is the fertilizer spread out on fields and the ammonia rising up from feedlots. None of these sources are easy to pinpoint, let alone control or regulate.

But the plan includes tangible ways to tackle these problems. And it’s a truly remarkable effort, unprecedented in that it’s the first time so many agencies have come together to try to solve a problem like this in a particular park.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

The Environmental Protection Agency just posted a draft of its 2007 Report on the Environment: Science Report. The report’s five chapters assess the state of the country’s air, water, land, human health, and ecological condition; it’s meant to “help (readers) understand critical trends in the environment and human health.” But one of the most critical trends, global warming, is barely mentioned.

In more than 500 pages, this report on the environment refers to “global warming” only six times and to “climate change” only about a dozen times. The report’s glossary does not even define “global warming”, although it does include “climate change”,  noting that “in some cases, ‘climate change’ has been used synonymously with ‘global warming.’ Scientists, however, tend to use ‘climate change’ in the wider sense to also include natural changes in climate.”

The EPA now has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases, but it sure looks like it’s going to keep doing its best to avoid meaningful action against either global warming or climate change.

The Center for Public Integrity came out today with the results of a year-long investigation into the government’s handling of Superfund hazardous waste sites. The large-scale conclusions are eye-opening:

• Superfund site clean-up has slowed down significantly during the Bush administration.
• About 100 companies and the federal government are connected to more than 40 percent of the country’s most dangerously contaminated toxic sites, at least 114 of which “could pose immediate health hazards for people living nearby.”
• Companies connected to Superfund sites have tried to limit their environmental liability through a variety of questionable ownership shenanigans.
• Companies with apparent Superfund liability spent $1 billion lobbying Congress, the EPA and other federal agencies over a recent seven-year period. (Yes, that’s billion, with a “b.”)
• Companies and organizations paid for nearly $12 million in trips for Environmental Protection Agency employees over an eight and one-half year period ending in March 2006.

But the center’s investigation may be most notable for its depth; beyond the stories that explain the investigation’s main findings are a whole series of maps and databases that provide a window into the country’s toxic waste problem, locally and nationally, in macro and micro terms. This isn’t just superior journalism by one of the country’s leading investigative reporting organizations; it’s a research tool for scientists, journalists and citizens who wonder what kind of toxics they’re living with.