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clean energy, energy policy, fossil fuels, marine pollution, natural resource management, renewable energy, sustainable energy

Our Power Campaign: Communities Unite Around A ‘Just Transition’ Away from Dirty Energy with Historic Training Camp

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http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2013/06/11-10

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 11, 2013 5:37 PM
CONTACT: Our Power Campaign
Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan
(415) 359-7324
Angela Angel
(510) 759-3177

media@ourpowercampaign.org

Groundbreaking Our Power Campaign Will Create Healthy Future for Communities Impacted by Climate Change

CENTRAL ARIZONA – June 11 – This week, Navajo community members of the Black Mesa Water Coalition will host a skills sharing and strategy camp for communities impacted by coal and other dirty energy. This camp marks the first of many convergences of indigenous peoples, communities of color, and working-class white communities building a powerful movement to take on climate change while fostering a new economy. The groups are uniting in a new national campaign launching this week called the Our Power Campaign: Communities United for a Just Transition.

Through the Our Power Campaign, communities are organizing to transition off of dirty energy to foster clean community power, zero waste, food sovereignty, public transit, housing for all, and restoration of ecosystems and watersheds.

“We can create quality jobs by retooling the infrastructure in our regions,” said Bill Gallegos, Executive Director of Communities for a Better Environment and Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) Steering Committee member. “We need to divest from dirty energy and the ‘greed economy’ and invest in a transition to local living economies and community resilience. This camp is about learning the skills and forging the strategies we need to bring this transition home.”

“We can have power without pollution and energy without injustice,” said Jihan Gearon, Executive Director of Black Mesa Water Coalition and CJA Steering Committee member. “Navajo people and Navajo lands have been moving central Arizona’s water and providing much of central Arizona and Southern California’s energy for 50 years. Renewable energy provides a new way forward to bring economic and health benefits to the Navajo people while cutting greenhouse gas emissions at the source.”

The backdrop for the camp is one of the communities creating a ‘just transition’. Navajo Generating Station, which is run by the Salt River Project and Peabody Coal’s Kayenta Mine, has depleted the Navajo Aquifer, severely impacted the land base, and adversely affected community health. Generating electricity from coal also pumps greenhouse gases into the atmosphere contributing to climate change which the Navajo Nation is already suffering the effects of.

The Black Mesa Water Coalition is proposing Navajo-owned utility scale solar projects and fostering local, sustainable land-based economies. According to their studies, there is enough old mine lands and good sun on the Navajo Nation to generate over 6,000 megawatts of solar power in the years to come. That would be thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars into the regional economy each year, billions of dollars during construction.

At the groundbreaking training camp, communities along coal’s chain of destruction from the Southwest, Appalachia, the Midwest, and beyond will come together to learn from and exchange with the Black Mesa community. Activities include:

June 14- sharing stories of struggles and victories in communities impacted by dirty energy
June 15- workshops on topics such as direct action and land-based resilience
June 16-17- sessions for communities to strategize together to win shifts away from dirty energy towards local living economies

The Our Power Campaign is launching in three communities impacted by dirty energy– Black Mesa, Arizona; Richmond, California; and Detroit Michigan –and will expand to communities across the country over the coming years. With nearly 40 organizations, CJA’s members are rooted in Indigenous, African American, Latino, Asian Pacific Islander, and working-class white communities throughout the United States. Together, they apply the power of deep grassroots organizing, direct action, coalition building, civic engagement, policy advocacy, and a variety of communications tools to win local, regional, statewide, and national shifts.

“This is a historic opportunity to unite working-class communities and communities of color across the nation who bear the brunt of the climate and economic crisis,” said Ife Kilimanjaro, Co-Director of the East Michigan Environmental Action Council in Detroit and CJA Steering Committee member. “Together, we are building a movement that is demonstrating and winning a shift away from dirty energy through investment in the root cause solutions we all need.”
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The Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) is a collaborative of over 35 community-based and movement support organizations uniting frontline communities to forge a scalable, and socio-economically just transition away from unsustainable energy towards local living economies to address the root causes of climate change.

energy policy, fossil fuels, gulf of mexico clean-up, Gulf restoration, marine pollution, national ocean politics, natural resource management, offshore oil

Times-Picayune: Gulf restoration draft plan lacks required priority list, spending allocation plan

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Noal.com

Mark Schleifstein, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune By Mark Schleifstein, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
on May 23, 2013 at 7:46 PM, updated May 23, 2013 at 8:10 PM

The federal-state body that will oversee the spending of billions of dollars in Clean Water Act fines resulting from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill on Thursday released a “draft initial comprehensive plan” for spending the money on projects that will restore the coast’s natural resources and also benefit the Gulf Coast’s economy.

The 20-page document released by the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council, accompanied by a 112-page environmental assessment and a list of several hundred potential federal and state projects and programs that have been authorized but not yet begun, is required under the federal RESTORE Act, which dedicates 80 percent of the oil spill fine money to restoration projects along the Gulf Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico. The other 20 percent goes into a trust fund to cover the cost of future oil spills.

But the plan doesn’t include a 10-year plan for allocating the money or a three-year priority list of projects and programs to be funded, both of which were required to be completed by now by the RESTORE Act.

The plan says the missed deadlines are the result of “uncertainty related to the overall amount and availability of funds deposited” in the RESTORE Act trust fund, the failure of the U.S. Treasury to issue procedures for spending trust fund money, and the council’s intent to request public input on the plan.

The five Gulf Coast states also haven’t completed development of their own plans to spend their share of the money, the report said.

Still, the plan contains a list of goals for spending the money: restore and conserve habitat, restore water quality, replenish and protect living coastal and marine resources, enhance community resilience, and restore and revitalize the Gulf economy.
As a result of a settlement of Clean Water Act civil claims with Transocean, the owner and operator of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that exploded and sank during the BP Macondo well blowout in 2010, the trust fund will receive $800 million during the next two years. It has already received $320 million of that.

Under the RESTORE Act, the council has oversight over 60 percent of that money. The council will select projects for funding using 30 percent of the money, and Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida will select projects using another 30 percent. Another 35 percent of the money is paid directly to the states, and the final 5 percent is divided between two sets of science and education programs.

A federal trial that will determine the remaining Clean Water Act fines to be paid by BP or its drilling partners is in recess until September.

The companies could be liable for $1,100 per barrel of oil spilled if their behavior causing the three-month-long spill is found to be negligent, or as much as $4,300 per barrel if its found to be grossly negligent.

Based on court rulings in the case so far, and early estimates of the amount of oil spilled, the fines could total between $4 billion and $17.5 billion, although the federal judge in the case could lower either of those sums for actions taken by the parties to limit the spill’s effects.

The council also will coordinate its projects with those funded in other ways with money emanating from the oil spill. Under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, a Natural Resource Damage Assessment process is expected to identify several billion dollars of projects designed to restore the coast and to compensate the public for lost natural resources.

Under Transocean and BP criminal plea agreements with the federal government, the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation will receive more than $2.5 billion in the next five years, with half going to projects to rebuild barrier islands and begin construction of sediment and freshwater diversions in Louisiana.

The National Academy of Sciences also received $500 million under those settlements for human health and environmental protection, including Gulf oil spill protection and response. And the North American Wetlands Conservation Fund was given $100 million from the BP criminal plea agreement for wetlands restoration and conservation, and projects benefiting migratory birds.
While the vast majority of projects governed by the comprehensive plan will be aimed at natural resources, council-selected projects may also include spending land on long-term land use planning, acquisition or preservation of undeveloped lands in coastal high-hazard areas, such as for use as buffers against storm surge and sea level rise; and for non-structural storm and surge protection. While the council has not defined “non-structural,” it generally refers to raising buildings above flood levels or buying structures in flood zones.

The states also are allowed to direct as much as 25 percent of their money to infrastructure projects, according to the draft plan, with those projects benefiting the economy or ecosystem resources, including port infrastructure.
State money also can be used for coastal flood protection and related infrastructure, including levees, promotion of Gulf seafood and tourism, including recreational fishing, and improvements to state parks located in coastal areas affected by the spill.

Garret Graves, chairman of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority and Gov. Bobby Jindal’s representative on the council, said he expects Louisiana to request that some of the RESTORE Act money be used to pay the costs of building the Morganza to the Gulf hurricane levee in the Houma area. Some of the money may also be used for hurricane risk-reduction projects that had been part of the Donaldsonville to the Gulf project recently rejected by the Army Corps of Engineers.

The state’s use of money for ports could be in the form of dredging, with the dredged material used to build wetlands, Graves said. The state has unsuccessfully requested congressional funding to deepen the Mississippi River channel to 50 feet at its mouth to accommodate larger ships using the expanded and deepened Panama Canal.

But Graves said the CPRA will focus its expenditures on projects recommended by the Coastal Master Plan, which was approved by the state Legislature in 2012. Beyond some money for levees and wetland-related dredging, the state is not interested in using RESTORE Act money for infrastructure projects, he said.

“We are talking about the impacts of the nation’s worst oil spill, the future of millions of Louisianans, our economy, our fishermen and our coast — politics has no place here,” Graves said in an email messsage. “To deviate at this point would be irresponsible,” he said. “These other types of projects may be aesthetically pleasing, but they don’t function well under 15 feet of hurricane storm surge.”

The list of authorized but not built projects includes 73 in Louisiana, with 41 listed as Army Corps of Engineers projects and six as state projects. Most are projects awaiting funding under existing federal-state financed coastal restoration programs.
The council will hold public engagement sessions in each of the five Gulf states in June. with the exact locations still to be determined:

June 3, Pensacola, Fla.
June 5, Spanish Fort, Ala.
June 10, Galveston, Texas
June 11, Biloxi, Miss.
June 12, Belle Chasse
June 17, St. Petersburg, Fla.

A 30-day public comment period on the draft plan ends on June 24. Comments can be submitted on the web at a National Park Service web site. More information about the plan, and the location of the meetings, as it becomes available, will be found at www.restorethegulf.gov .
© NOLA.com.

fossil fuels, gulf of mexico clean-up, Gulf restoration, marine pollution, national ocean politics, natural resource management, ocean pollution, offshore oil

Center for Biologic Diversity, Surfrider, Pacific Environment: Settlement Protects Sea Turtles, Whales, Other Rare Wildlife From Oil-spill Dispersants

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SOURCE URL: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2013/dispersants-05-30-2013.html

For Immediate Release, May 30, 2013
Contacts:
Deirdre McDonnell, Center for Biological Diversity, (971) 717-6404 ordmcdonnell@biologicaldiversity.org
Angela Howe, Surfrider Foundation, (949) 492-8170
Kevin Harun, Pacific Environment, (907) 440-2443

SAN FRANCISCO- A court settlement filed today requires the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Coast Guard to ensure that toxic oil-dispersing chemicals used in federal waters off California will not harm sea turtles, whales and other endangered species or their habitats. Conservation groups sued to force the government to determine the dispersants’ safety for endangered species prior to their use – not afterward, as occurred during 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

“We shouldn’t add insult to injury after an oil spill by using dispersants that put wildlife and people at risk. During the BP oil spill, no one knew what the long-term effects of chemical dispersants would be, and we’re still learning about their harm to fish and corals,” said Deirdre McDonnell of the Center for Biological Diversity, which brought suit with Surfrider Foundation and Pacific Environment. “People can avoid the ocean after an oil spill, but marine animals can’t. They’re forced to eat, breathe, and swim in the chemicals we put in the water, whether it’s oil or dispersants.”

Dispersants are chemicals used to break oil spills into tiny droplets. In theory, this allows the oil to be eaten by microorganisms and become diluted faster than if left untreated. However, dispersants and dispersed oil can also allow toxins to accumulate in the marine food web. People exposed to the oil and dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico disaster have also reported suffering lasting and damaging effects.

Today’s settlement, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, requires the federal government to analyze the effects of approving the California Dispersants Plan – which authorizes the use of dispersants in the event of a spill – to determine whether these toxins would harm endangered wildlife and make sure any harm is minimized. The Endangered Species Act requires the EPA and Coast Guard to consult with the National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regarding any activities that might affect endangered wildlife.

“The Pacific Ocean encompasses some of the most unique marine ecosystems in the world, providing habitat for many endangered and threatened species,” said Kevin Harun, Arctic Program Director for Pacific Environment. “The government needs to take the precautionary approach in order to prevent future harm to the health of the environment and people.”

“These chemical dispersants are dangerous to human health in addition to wildlife, and shouldn’t be allowed to threaten a family’s enjoyment of the beach. Surfrider Foundation members in Florida are so concerned about the aftereffects of the BP spill, they have taken it upon themselves to test the Gulf sand and coastal waters, and have found likely traces of Corexit attached to undissolved tar product in the coastal zone,” said Surfrider Foundation’s Legal Director Angela Howe.

Studies have found that oil broken apart by the dispersant Corexit 9527 damages the insulating properties of seabird feathers more than untreated oil, making the birds more susceptible to hypothermia and death. Studies have also found that dispersed oil is toxic to fish eggs, larvae and adults, as well as to corals, and can harm sea turtles’ ability to breathe and digest food.

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 500,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

The Surfrider Foundation is a non-profit grassroots organization dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of our world’s oceans, waves and beaches through a powerful activist network. Founded in 1984 by a handful of visionary surfers in Malibu, California, the Surfrider Foundation now maintains over 250,000 supporters, activists and members worldwide. For more information on the Surfrider Foundation, visit http://www.surfrider.org/.

Pacific Environment is a non-profit organization based in San Francisco that protects the living environment of the Pacific Rim by promoting grassroots activism, strengthening communities and reforming international policies. For nearly two decades, we have partnered with local communities around the Pacific Rim to protect and preserve the ecological treasures of this vital region. Visit www.pacificenvironment.org to learn more about our work.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

fossil fuels, gulf of mexico clean-up, Gulf restoration, marine pollution, ocean pollution, offshore oil, Uncategorized

Hudson Valley Press Online: Environment still feeling impact of BP oil spill

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http://www.hvpress.net/news/172/ARTICLE/12458/2013-05-29.html

May 29th, 2013

Dear EarthTalk: The three-year anniversary of the 2010 BP oil spill just passed. What do green groups think of the progress since in restoring the region?
– Mary Johannson, NY

When an undersea oil well blew out 50 miles off the Louisiana coast on April 20, 2010 and caused an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig above it (killing 11 workers), no one knew that an even bigger disaster was yet to come. Over the next three months, 4.9 million gallons of crude poured into the water before BP could get the wellhead capped to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

According to BP, which has already spent $14 billion on clean-up and restoration, the Gulf is returning to baseline conditions prior to the disaster. “No company has done more, faster to respond to an industrial accident than BP did in response to the Deepwater Horizon accident in 2010,” reports the company.

But not everybody sees the situation that way. Many environmentalists are concerned that, while BP has done a thorough job removing visible oil from the water column and surface, little has been done to repair damage to marine life and ecosystems.

“Three years after the initial explosion, the impacts of the disaster continue to unfold,” says Doug Inkley, senior scientist at the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). A recent report by the group found that the three-year-old spill is still having a serious negative effect on wildlife populations in the Gulf.

For one, dolphin deaths in the region have remained above average every single month since the disaster. In the first two months of 2013, infant dolphins were found dead at six times pre-spill average rates. Says Inkley: “These ongoing deaths-particularly in an apex predator like the dolphin-are a strong indication that there is something amiss with the Gulf ecosystem.”

Gulf dolphins aren’t the only ones suffering. NWF found that more than 1,700 sea turtles were stranded in coastal areas of the Gulf between May 2010 and November 2012-almost three times the pre-spill rate for the animals. Researchers have also detected changes in the cellular function of Gulf killifish, a common bait fish at the base of the food chain. And a coral colony seven miles from the offending wellhead struggles due to oil and dispersants compromising its ability to rebuild itself.

“The oil disaster highlighted the gaps in our understanding of the Gulf of Mexico,” says Florida State University oceanographer Ian MacDonald. “What frustrates me is how little has changed over the past three years. In many cases, funding for critical research has even been even been cut, limiting our understanding of the disaster’s impacts.”

MacDonald and others are optimistic that a federal court will find BP accountable for further damages in a civil trial now underway. NWF says that substantially more money is needed to carry out restoration efforts vital to the biological and economic stability of the Gulf region. “Despite the public relations blitz by BP, this spill is not over,” says NWF’s David Muth. “Justice will only be served when BP and its co-defendants pay to restore the wildlife and habitats of the Mississippi River Delta and the Gulf of Mexico.”

Special thanks to Richard Charter

climate change, energy policy, fossil fuels, Keystone XL, national ocean politics, natural resource management, tar sands

Los Angeles Times: A New Mexico county’s fracking ban is all about the water

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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-fracking-ban-20130529,0,4631146.story

In acting to protect what’s important to them, the 5,000 residents of poor Mora County make it the nation’s first to ban hydraulic fracturing for oil.

By Julie Cart,
May 28, 2013, 7:36 p.m.
OCATE, N.M. – Sitting in the tidy living room of the home they built themselves, Sandra and Roger Alcon inventory what they see as the bounty of their lives: freedom, family, community, land, animals Š and water.

“We’ve lived off the land for five generations,” said Roger Alcon, 63, looking out on a northern New Mexico landscape of high mesas, ponderosa pines and black Angus cattle. “We have what we need. We’ve been very happy, living in peace.” Wells are the Alcons’ only source of water. The same is true for everyone else in Mora County, which is why last month this poor, conservative ranching region of energy-rich New Mexico became the first county in the nation to pass an ordinance banning hydraulic fracturing, the controversial oil and gas extraction technique known as “fracking” that has compromised water quantity and quality in communities around the country. “I don’t want to destroy our water,” Alcon said. “You can’t drink oil.”

In embracing the ban, landowners turned their back on potentially lucrative royalty payments from drilling on their property and joined in a groundswell of civic opposition to fracking that is rolling west from Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania in the gas-rich Marcellus shale formation. Pittsburgh became the first U.S. city to outlaw fracking in November 2010 after it came to light that an energy company held a lease to drill under a beloved city cemetery.

Since then, more than a dozen cities in the East have passed similar ordinances. The movement leapfrogged west last summer when the town of Las Vegas, N.M., took up the cause, calling for a halt to fracking until adequate regulations protecting public health are adopted. It has now reached California, where communities are considering similar bans. Culver City – home to the nation’s largest urban oil field – is drafting oil and gas regulations that call for a moratorium on fracking. Citizen groups in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara are preparing their own community rights ballot measures aimed at outlawing the procedure.

Hydraulic fracturing involves injecting a high-pressure mix of water, sand and chemicals deep underground to fracture rock formations, releasing oil and gas that is hard to reach with conventional drilling methods. A blizzard of applications to sink wells using fracking is spurring a nationwide energy rush sometimes called the “shale gale.”

Among the leading concerns of opponents is the absence of any federal law requiring companies to fully identify the chemicals in their fracking fluids. Such formulas are considered by the industry to be a trade secret. Community-based anti-fracking campaigns – citing public health issues – call for complete disclosure of injection fluids. Many New Mexico counties welcome oil and gas production, an industry that adds to the tax base and employment rolls. But in sparsely populated Mora County, where 67% of the 5,000 residents are Spanish-speaking, people cherish their culture and way of life.

Sandra Alcon said her neighbors don’t care about mineral rights or oil money. They are angry about the way energy companies’ “land men” treated them. Residents here are seen as easy marks for hustlers offering little compensation for oil and water rights, she said. “They know we have a lot of elderly and rural people; some don’t speak English,” she said. “They don’t know that some of us went to college and some of us have the Internet. “I may look stupid, but I’m not. I know what they are doing.” Mora County, using its authority to regulate commercial activity, specifically barred corporations from fracking. The ordinance also established that citizens have a right to a safe and clean environment.

County Commission Chairman John Olivas said the ordinance is not a referendum on oil and gas. Rather, he said, it “is all about water,” estimating that 95% of the county’s residents support the ban, although some argue that the jobs and income that accompany drilling would help the depressed area. Olivas, a hunting and fishing guide, said he grew up watching his parents work in the uranium mines of eastern New Mexico. When the mines played out, towns shriveled up. Chasing that boom-and-bust economy is not worth despoiling an environment that remains remarkably untouched and provides a sustainable living for most people here, he said.

“We are one of the poorest counties in the nation, yes, but we are money-poor, we are not asset-poor,” Olivas said. “We’ve got land, we’ve got agriculture, we’ve got our heritage and we’ve got our culture.” The California community closest to adopting an anti-fracking ordinance is Culver City, which includes a portion of the 1,000-acre Inglewood Oil Field. More than 1 million people live within five miles of the field, where some 1,600 wells have been drilled since 1925.

The City Council is considering a fracking moratorium, even though only 10% of the field is within the city limits. The bulk of the wells are in unincorporated Los Angeles County. City officials and residents say they are concerned about air and water quality, as well as about earthquakes being triggered by drilling at 8,000 to 10,000 feet – the depths where the untapped oil is found.

Low-magnitude earthquakes have been associated with fracking, but Ed Memi, a spokesman for PXP, which operates in the Inglewood Field, called suggestions that high-pressure drilling causes earthquakes “hysterical accusations.”
“There is no evidence that hydraulic fracturing has caused felt seismic activity anywhere in California,” Memi said. “The practice of hydraulic fracturing has been subjected to dozens of studies in recent years, and the fundamental safety of the technology is well understood by scientists, engineers, regulators and other technical experts.”
But Meghan Sahli-Wells, Culver City’s vice mayor, said the city needs to see more study of fracking’s impact before it could be allowed.

“I grew up in L.A. All my life I’ve heard about air-quality problems, earthquakes and water issues,” Sahli-Wells said. “It just so happens that fracking really hits on the three major challenges of this area. Frankly, I’ve been waiting for people to wake up and say, ‘We are fracking on a fault line? Is this really in our interests?'”

If Culver City moves forward with a moratorium, it could take months to complete, she said.
Fracking is unregulated in California, and no accurate figures exist detailing how many of the state’s wells are completed using the technique.

A number of anti-fracking bills are pending before the state Assembly, and statewide regulations are being finalized by the state Department of Conservation.

Sahli-Wells endorses legislation sponsored by Assemblywoman Holly Mitchell (D-Culver City) that calls for a moratorium on fracking in California until a comprehensive six-year study can be undertaken.
“Look before you leap” legislation is pending in other states.

On a recent day back in Mora County, Roger Alcon drove his ranch with his herding dog, Pepper, at his side. He said the region’s aquifer has been depleted by oil and gas operations in the region. He sees no reason to hasten the water decline.
Alcon pointed out the truck window toward the snowcapped Sangre de Cristo mountains.
“We have what we need,” he said. “To me, the fresh air and the land, and water. It’s better than money.”

Special thanks to Richard Charter