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2008 News Archive
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Corps of Engineers Sues AmerenUE Over 2005 Taum Sauk Failure
December 23, 2008
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
By Jeffrey Tomich
The Army Corps of Engineers is suing AmerenUE, claiming Clearwater Lake in southeast Missouri was damaged by sediment from the 2005 collapse of the utility's upper Taum Sauk reservoir.
The Little Rock District of the corps, which owns and maintains Clearwater Lake and Dam on the Black River, seeks unspecified damages in the lawsuit, filed on Dec. 12 in U.S. District Court in Cape Girardeau, Mo.
The lawsuit says sediment and debris from Taum Sauk flowed down the Black River and reduced the lake's storage capacity.
The Corps of Engineers acknowledges that the extent of damage to the lake isn't known. The lawsuit was filed two days before the statute of limitations expired to preserve the right to pursue a claim, corps spokeswoman Tammy Moody said. In fact, the two sides continue to work together to determine the amount of sediment in the lake, she said.
"It was just a matter of procedure to file the lawsuit," Moody said.
AmerenUE denies there's any sediment damage. "Our studies show the breach had little or no impact on the lake's operational capacity," spokeswoman Susan Gallagher said in an e-mailed statement.
The Clearwater Lake and Dam, about 30 miles south of Taum Sauk, were built in the 1940s to help with flood control in the White River and Lower Mississippi River basins, so an influx of sediment could affect the project's lifespan. Today, the lake and area nearby are popular for camping, boating and fishing.
AmerenUE's Taum Sauk plant has been shut down since Dec. 14, 2005, when a 650-foot section of the reservoir atop Proffitt Mountain collapsed, releasing more than 1 billion gallons of water that scoured Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park and washed away the home of the park superintendent.
The company agreed in 2006 to pay $15 million after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission determined that operating errors led the reservoir to overflow and collapse. Last year, AmerenUE agreed to pay about $180 million to settle a suit by Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon.
The upper reservoir currently is being rebuilt and the Taum Sauk plant is scheduled to be operable again in early second-quarter 2010, Gallagher said.
Evasive But Legal, Factory Farms Crop Up in Missouri
December 20, 2008
The Kansas City Star
By Karen Dillon
It should not be that hard to find out if there is a factory farm near you.
But for some Missourians, it has turned into a cat-and-mouse game.
That is because some livestock corporations may have found a way to slip their farms past state pollution regulations, using a practice that is legal but has the potential to create serious pollution hazards.
Instead of building megafarms, they work with several smaller farms, each of which has fewer animals than would trigger the state pollution rules.
So while Missouri closely regulates about 450 indoor farms, there are hundreds possibly more than a thousand with confined animals and waste lagoons that don't fall under state law. No one knows exactly how many there are, said a Missouri Department of Natural Resources official.
The practice has created more than a stir in Barton County, south of Kansas City, where one corporation has contracted with at least a dozen farmers in the last couple of years.
Zach McGuire noticed several of the smaller factory farms cropping up near his home in Barton County, and he has joined a number of residents complaining about pollution and odors.
"In southwest Missouri they are going in like gangbusters to get in under the state's limits," said McGuire, a traditional farmer near Lamar. "It's like living in a porta-potty."
To find out how many indoor farms are in Barton County, McGuire and a friend began flying over the countryside to document them. So far, they say, they have found about 50.
But Martin Bunton, co-owner of a feed store in the county who lives less than two miles from a corporate contract farmer, said industrial farming is getting a bad rap.
"I get really upset when everybody acts like big corporate agriculture is odor and all that, and isn't doing any good anywhere," Bunton said. "In 10 years of living there, I have never smelled anything bad."
Factory farms are controversial in Missouri because of the massive pollution they generate. Since the mid-1990s, the state has regulated the largest ones, known as Class 1 farms, which require permits and extensive waste-management plans. Class 1 farms are divided into subcategories by size.
The smaller ones, known as Class 2 farms, can have thousands of animals too, but have few pollution regulations.
For example, state law categorizes a factory farm that has more than 3,000 sows as Class 1. It must have a permit to operate, annual inspections, setbacks from streams, and buffers to protect residents from the odors and pollution.
But a Class 2 that has 2,499 sows or fewer can begin operating no matter how close it is to a residence, and it doesn't have inspections or many of the other requirements.
Derek Steen, the Department of Natural Resources' agriculture chief with the water protection program, said Class 2 factory farms are not supposed to discharge into streams. But he acknowledged that state regulators normally would not know if laws were violated unless someone complained.
"It's an honor system to an extent," he said. "And there are some who don't do a good job, and some who do."
Steen acknowledged that Class 2 operations could pose a risk.
"The concern is when you take them all into account, it does add up to a substantial amount of manure that has to be managed," Steen said.
Leslie Holloway of the Missouri Farm Bureau agreed that corporations are no longer building megafarms in Missouri. The number of those types of farms has remained at about 450 for five years or more, she said.
To Connect the Arch to the City (and the River), Find the Middle
December 20, 2008
The St. Louis Beacon
By Robert Duffy
Making a connection between downtown St. Louis, the Gateway Arch and the Mississippi riverfront has been on the region's letter to the Santa Claus for decades. Saturday afternoon, a small but well-connected and well-informed group of citizens came together in the hope of doing something about the situation -- and doing it pronto.
The situation is this: The largest portion of the real estate occupied by the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, better known as the Gateway Arch or simply the Arch, is divided by what St. Louis Post-Dispatch writer/blogger Eddie Roth describes as scars. Those scars are Memorial Drive and the depressed (and depressing) section of Interstate 70 that slithers along the fringe of downtown and, down by the river, Leonor K. Sullivan Boulevard.
Together, these vehicle-bearing scars serve effectively to section off the Arch grounds from its urban environs to the west, north and south, and from the river. There is general agreement nowadays that were those scars to be bandaged or healed, the now-separated elements would benefit.
All three geographical areas offer enormous cultural benefits. Downtown is a rich, diverse urban habitat; the Arch is a modern marvel of art and engineering, and its grounds are the picture of serenity. The river is a monument -- a churning, majestic American waterway and a timeless metaphor. Each has its discreet value to the region. Were all three joined in ways that would make them not only contiguous but also a vast, various and dynamic unit, the whole would be enormously greater than the sum of its parts.
A desire for such an aggregation was the final product of Saturday afternoon's meeting at the Landmark's Association's new headquarters in the Lammert Building downtown. As might be expected, when a group consisting of planners, architects, preservationists, conservationists, interested private citizens and the superintendent of a National Park find themselves together in the same meeting room, individual agendas would be articulated, come what may.
Nevertheless, an apparent consensus came rather easily. Although the Danforth Foundation (which had taken a prominent leadership position in advocating substantial improvements to the Arch grounds) has taken itself out of the picture, at least for the moment, credit was given to the foundation, and to former U.S. Sen. John C. Danforth, for sparking serious interest in making positive steps to invigorate downtown, the Arch grounds and the riverfront.
Frederick Bonasch, who moderates the St. Louis Rising blog convened the group. As a starting place, he drew on the names of those who attended an exhibition of plans developed at a charrette that explored possible solutions for the problems of the Arch grounds.
Students representing five colleges and universities participated in the charrette, which was conducted over a long weekend in early November, and the results of their efforts are on show at the Landmarks office. "After the Arch charrette," Bonasch said, "all kinds of people came together." He thought such a response created an opportunity to create a coalition of ordinary people, one that would work to choose the best possible way to achieve connectivity.
Bonasch provided this caveat, however: "The purpose of this group is to think in terms of improving connections and that is it. We are not in opposition. The hope is to focus on connectivity."
He said also, "If we could create an organization to build consensus, we can create a strong voice and create a positive outcome."
Kathleen Logan Smith, executive director of the Coalition for the Environment, said, "I have thought from the beginning there is lots of room for agreement if we can identify the problem." She noted there is divergence of opinion on changes that might be made to the Arch grounds, but there is a core issue connectivity on which most can agree and can come together to work to ameliorate.
In the course of discussing connectivity, the issues that swirl around Eero Saarinen's soaring minimalist monument flickered into view from time to time. There was discussion of the National Park Service's process to create an Arch master plan, and whether an international competition similar to the competition that brought Saarinen's Arch to be constructed is a good idea.
The issue of polarization was discussed the tendency on the one hand to stake out positions advocating radical changes to the Arch grounds and on the other to do nothing, refusing to change anything, ever.
Arch superintendent Tom Bradley said that, in polarization, the middle ground is lost. "We're losing all the stuff in the middle," he said. The discussion Saturday and its intentions represented being "on the verge of doing something good," by reclaiming the middle, he said.
The group also seemed in agreement on another front: Connectivity does not mean bridging only the scar formed by Memorial Drive and the depressed lanes of I-70. Connections need to be made not only there and to the river but to the neighborhoods north and south of the Arch grounds. And there was recognition, at a minimum, of another point of view, that big problems can be addressed by committee only up to a point, and after that, strong, visionary leadership is required.
There was agreement also to move forward, and to build a grassroots organization of individuals and organizations around the issue of connectivity. Good ideas, Bonasch said, are too often talked and planned to death in St. Louis. "This needs to be about making things happen, about results and action."
Podcast: Nuclear Waste in Landfill
December 22, 2008
The Freshare Ozarks Outdoors Podcast
Listen to an interview with Missouri Coalition for the Environment Executive Director Kathleen Logan Smith about nuclear waste contamination at a St. Louis landfill on Freshare.net.
Stricter Water Rules Coming for Mississippi
December 16, 2008
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
By Kim McGuire
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has determined that new water quality standards are needed for about 165 miles of the Mississippi River as it flows along Missouri's eastern border.
At issue is how much of the river should be made clean enough for recreational use, a designation that carries a tough set of water quality protections meant to safeguard the river from pollution.
Two years ago, Missouri designated 3,600 stream segments and 400 lakes for recreational use, such as swimming, kayaking and jet skiing.
But in doing so, the Missouri Clean Water Commission did not extend that designation to a 195-mile segment of the Mississippi that flows from just upstream of St. Louis to its confluence with the Ohio River near Cairo, Ill.
On Monday, federal environmental regulators said that Missouri failed to provide information that shows why a designation that protects recreational uses shouldn't be set on 165 miles of that segment.
EPA officials said they reviewed public comments that indicated those portions of the river were used for recreational activities such as swimming, canoeing, kayaking and jet skiing.
The Missouri Department of Natural Resources is now recommending protecting recreational uses for the 165-mile stretch and the state clean water commission is scheduled to vote on the issue next month. The portions of the river are comprised of a one-mile segment north of St. Louis that flows from Dam 27 to North Riverfront Park and a 164-mile segment south of St. Louis that flows from the confluence with the Meramec River to the confluence with the Ohio River.
EPA officials commended the department's attempt to take a second look at its water quality standards.
"It's good that EPA and the state are on the same page now," said John DeLashmit, chief of the water quality management branch for EPA's regional office in Kansas City.
Under the Clean Water Act, the EPA is tasked with reviewing the water quality standards adopted by states.
The Missouri Clean Water Commission in 2006 decided that 142 streams did not warrant the recreational use designation including the 195-mile portion of the Mississippi River.
Federal environmental regulators later upheld the commission's decision on 42 of those 142 streams, and denied 99.
The Missouri Coalition for the Environment in 2004 prevailed in a lawsuit against EPA to force tougher scrutiny of the way Missouri sets water quality standards. Coalition members organized a statewide campaign last year to inform Missouri residents about the department's decision to exempt streams from the recreational use designation.
"I'm still really not sure why it took EPA so long to disapprove this portion of the Mississippi," said Dan Sherburne, the coalition's research director.
A department official said Monday the agency is also working on designation for the 30-mile stretch of the Mississippi River that flows past St. Louis.
The Herculaneum Case
December 13, 2008
Life... A Small Spark Between Two Eternities
By xtremeleafan
Herculaneum is a small town in the very heart of the United States, situated on the banks of the great Mississippi River. The folks who lived there thought of Herculaneum in the Old World sense as a village, their village. It was a place where the children could safely play outside in the streets. People knew their neighbors. A child could run down the street one direction and visit grandma, go the other way and visit an aunt or an uncle. The residents valued family, a sense of community, and small town life. Despite their blue-collar background, they were able to create comfortable homes and enjoyed an affordable lifestyle. It was a small, self-contained town, complete with a bowling alley, movie house, and all the stores one needed for life's necessities. Herculaneum felt like home, like their village.
Most of the men worked for Doe Run, a multi-metal smelting and processing plant right downtown. They could walk to work. Thanks to the support of the company, the people enjoyed steady employment, health benefits, good schools and recently a new fire station. In the truest sense, this was a company town. Not having higher education, most families felt dependent on the presence of Doe Run in their lives. One either worked for Doe Run, or businesses that supported those who did. The company encompassed their total existence and perhaps permeated more of their lives than they actually realized.
On a typical day, the sky was various colors of yellow or murky grey, depending on the plume that was emitted out of the 550' high smokestack from the plant. On more than one occasion, the emissions from the smokestack were so thick that a football game had to be halted because the announcer could not see the players on the field. But this was normal for Herculaneum.
A grey dust lay on the pavement, trees and bushes along the roadway where the Doe Run trucks delivered lead ore to the smelter. Cars drove over the dust, their tires brought it to their driveways, shoes tracked it into their homes. It got in their carpets, clothing, eventually even their beds. Over the years, this was accepted as merely a nuisance, causing no alarm. Residents assumed that surely if there was any real threat to their health from the dust, the company would alert them. After all they were the experts, right?
Over time some of the folks started wondering why their lawns were always dying, why their throats and eyes burnt, why the paint on the cars corroded, why some of their children seemed to be "slow," why some of their neighbors died at too early of any age, why even the feet of their dogs and cats seemed burnt.
One family in particular, Leslie and Jack Warden, started pursuing information about the health effects of environmental pollution from lead smelting. If it could take paint off of a car, what must it be doing to their 13-year-old son's lungs? The more they learned, the more they found that they needed to know. Questions lead to meetings, meetings lead to more meetings, with the company denying any danger. Some residents, now armed with scientific knowledge knew that Doe Run's assurances rang hollow.
The smelter's repeated violations of air pollution rules combined with findings of high levels of lead in their children's blood caused the government to become more involved. The testing of the frogs and critters in the local waterways confirmed the shocking truth: contamination due to lead, arsenic, sulfuric acid and cadmium were dangerous to the point of being declared a state of emergency.
But even with all this new information Doe Run tried to play down the seriousness of the situation. They used the classic tactics that dirty industries usually employ - first blame the victim: your house is too dirty; your children don't wash their hands enough. Then deny they are the cause: the lead is from car exhaust, or from your child's toy. Then question the researcher's findings, or present their own "unbiased research," which is always favorable. Then pit neighbor against neighbor, to divide and conquer. Meanwhile they stall for time, as the profits roll in, waiting for the storm to fade away.
Finally, after a long meeting, late at night, Jack Warden begged, cajoled, and finally convinced a visiting state environmental official to test the content of that all-pervasive grey dust that covered everything. The findings were shocking and confirmed the Warden's worst fears. The sample tested 30% pure lead! Hundreds of time more concentrated then what is considered safe or legal.
That was it. The Wardens felt they had no choice. To protect the health of their son they had to leave the home they'd come to love, leave the community that was their special "village." They could have just sold their home, cut their loses and left. But what about the folks who bought their house? What if they believed the company's lies? Wouldn't their children be equally damaged by the contamination? Morally they knew that they could not allow that to happen. Like it or not, they knew they had to fight on.
Historically, Doe Run had been helpful in the past in little ways: they'd occasionally replace one's lawn when it started looking sickly, or repaint the car when the paint corroded. But now these little fixes weren't going to do it anymore. The company could have changed their smelting practices. They could have upgraded their machinery, or the methods of transporting the ore. But their final solution did none of these. Instead they chose the cheapest of solutions rather than to tackle the true source of the problem.
Forced by the government to act, Doe Run purchased many of the homes within three-eighths of a mile of the plant and demolished them: over 100 homes for over ten million dollars. The shops and businesses haven't been rebuilt or replaced or even abandoned, they've just been scraped away. What you see now when you visit downtown Herculaneum is flat bulldozed earth. The "buy-out" as it was called, removed the problem, at least temporarily.
But what about the families who have homes a few feet outside the buyout zone? The air they breathe is still just as contaminated as before. And now since all the publicity, many are trapped financially because they can't afford to leave since their house values have plummeted. They are forced to continue living in the pollution, hoping it won't affect their families.
A continent away in La Oroya, Peru another highly productive smelting plant was in full operation at their sister company's Doe Run Peru facility. As the expensive troubles were escalating in Herculaneum, Doe Run focused more and more of its operation in a country with fewer health standards, fewer environmental standards, and fewer workers' protection standards. The pollution and contamination are so bad in La Oroya, that for the second year in a row it has made it to the top ten list of the World's Worst Polluted Places.
Leslie Warden, linked to La Oroya by a common fate, flew to Peru and testified before their Congress to fight a common enemy, the Doe Run Company and its negligent practices. Although there has been public outcry, court cases, and more hearings, little has changed in Peru. A full 50 percent of the income taxes that go into Peru's state coffers come from the mining industry. The government is weak and worried about jeopardizing future foreign investment and 4,000 jobs if they crack down on Doe Run, not to mention the tax revenue they depend on. This fear is what the owner of Doe Run depends on.
The American billionaire owner, Ira Rennert, often dangles the threat of closing either smelter if too much is demanded of him. With a stable of lawyers stalling for change, and an ability to ignore human suffering, he seems to be impervious to pressure. Meanwhile Rennert lives in luxury in New York spending lavish amounts of money on his personal residence and well-publicized charities ensuring his prominent reputation.
But Rennert cannot hide from the Leslie and Jack Wardens of the world. Many national and international organizations want and are demanding change: demanding policies that place public health over personal profits. Rennert is directly responsible for the suffering and deaths of people living in Herculaneum and La Oroya and will continue to be until he makes the environmental improvements. With increased public attention and pressure, and more governmental involvement in both countries, Rennert and his methods can be stopped.
Leslie Warden feels she is one of the lucky ones. "I was able to stand up and fight and get out. I didn't have to worry about losing my job..." The people of La Oroya are not so lucky. Most are trapped and have little hope of escaping the contamination.
Congress May Consider Putting the Arch's Riverfront Park in Private Hands
November 18, 2008
Riverfront Times
By Kristen Hinman
The St. Louis Arch grounds may have moved a step closer to local control. On October 3, U.S. Congressman William "Lacy" Clay introduced H.R. 7252, a bill that paves the way for a private trust to take over the publicly owned and operated property.
The legislation calls for the Department of the Interior and the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Trust to enter into an operating agreement in order to plan and develop the "riverfront," defined as the area between the Old Courthouse and the river, from the Poplar Street to the Eads bridges.
The property is currently controlled and managed by the National Park Service. The control could shift to a trust run by Walter Metcalfe, a Bryan Cave attorney and Danforth Foundation board member; Peter Raven, Missouri Botanical Garden director; and Bob Archibald, Missouri History Museum president.
Clay's bill would also authorize the trust to build a new "cultural facility" on the grounds devoted to "American migration."
Clay, whose district includes the Arch grounds, introduced the legislation as Congress was considering the emergency bailout, on the last day before the election recess. In a written statement to Riverfront Times, he describes the bill as a "technical placeholder" for the 111th Congress, which begins in January.
"The potential loss of a portion of a national park, even for a worthy public purpose, is a very serious matter," Clay writes. "And it will require extensive public input and community engagement before anything happens."
Preservationists believe such an act of Congress is extremely rare. "It would be potentially damaging to the preservation of the landmark, and it creates a dangerous precedent that could really negatively affect hundreds of national landmarks throughout the national park system and beyond," says Lynn McClure, the Midwest regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association.
The legislation is the latest chapter in a showdown between the park service and the Danforth Foundation, two entities that agree the riverfront needs to be upgraded, but differ vastly on how changes should be made and who should be in charge.
In August 2007, the family foundation of former U.S. Senator John Danforth released a report stating that the long-neglected riverfront could not be improved without new construction on the Arch grounds. Danforth himself spoke forcefully about seeking congressional action for local control to transform the area, if necessary.
"You cannot have this great treasure that's the Arch and surround it by junk," he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "The highway is junk. The riverfront is now junk. The grounds of the Arch are zilch. There is nothing there."
The last blueprint created for the 91-acre site was in the 1960s; Danforth's maneuvering prompted the National Park Service in May to undertake a new plan. The agency received more than 2,000 written public comments, most of them stressing the need to better connect downtown with the riverfront.
At the same time, the Danforth Foundation has continued lobbying for support of an Arch grounds museum that would open for business by 2015 in time for the 50th anniversary of the Gateway Arch.
The long list of civic leaders on board includes Urban League president James Buford, Convention & Visitors Commission president Kitty Ratcliffe, Civic Progress executive director Tom Irwin, St. Louis American publisher Dr. Donald Suggs, along with the mayor and the president of the board of aldermen.
On June 11, Metcalfe, Raven and Archibald incorporated the trust. Four months later, Rep. Clay introduced his legislation. "Senator Danforth and I have a good relationship," says Clay. "The bottom line is that any change in the status of the Arch has to go across my desk. That's a huge responsibility and I'm keeping an open mind."
Tom Bradley, the Arch grounds superintendent, says he cannot comment on the pending bill, but says the park service is moving forward with its own site proposal.
"We keep coming back to the fact that this is a national historic landmark, which has a high degree of protection," says Bradley. "It belongs to the American people. That's a legal fact."
The park service plans to release a draft plan for the site in December or January. The public will have 45 days to weigh in before a final plan is released next spring or summer. At that point, an international design competition could be held.
Meanwhile, Bradley says he has a line of advocates at his door. "I'm worried that people in this region may not understand how important this site is to everybody in this country," says Janine Blaeloch, director of the Seattle-based Western Lands Project, who called on Bradley last week. "It is not just a piece of St. Louis."
'Near Perfect' Solar Breakthrough
November 3, 2008
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have discovered and demonstrated a new method for overcoming two major hurdles facing solar energy. By developing a new antireflective coating that boosts the amount of sunlight captured by solar panels and allows those panels to absorb the entire solar spectrum from nearly any angle, the research team has moved academia and industry closer to realizing high-efficiency, cost-effective solar power.
"To get maximum efficiency when converting solar power into electricity, you want a solar panel that can absorb nearly every single photon of light, regardless of the sun's position in the sky," said Shawn-Yu Lin, professor of physics at Rensselaer and a member of the university's Future Chips Constellation, who led the research project. "Our new antireflective coating makes this possible."
Results of the year-long project are explained in the paper "Realization of a Near Perfect Antireflection Coating for Silicon Solar Energy," published this week by the journal Optics Letters.
An untreated silicon solar cell only absorbs 67.4 percent of sunlight shone upon it meaning that nearly one-third of that sunlight is reflected away and thus unharvestable. From an economic and efficiency perspective, this unharvested light is wasted potential and a major barrier hampering the proliferation and widespread adoption of solar power.
After a silicon surface was treated with Lin's new nanoengineered reflective coating, however, the material absorbed 96.21 percent of sunlight shone upon it meaning that only 3.79 percent of the sunlight was reflected and unharvested. This huge gain in absorption was consistent across the entire spectrum of sunlight, from UV to visible light and infrared, and moves solar power a significant step forward toward economic viability.
Lin's new coating also successfully tackles the tricky challenge of angles.
Most surfaces and coatings are designed to absorb light i.e., be antireflective and transmit light i.e., allow the light to pass through it from a specific range of angles. Eyeglass lenses, for example, will absorb and transmit quite a bit of light from a light source directly in front of them, but those same lenses would absorb and transmit considerably less light if the light source were off to the side or on the wearer's periphery.
This same is true of conventional solar panels, which is why some industrial solar arrays are mechanized to slowly move throughout the day so their panels are perfectly aligned with the sun's position in the sky. Without this automated movement, the panels would not be optimally positioned and would therefore absorb less sunlight. The tradeoff for this increased efficiency, however, is the energy needed to power the automation system, the cost of upkeeping this system, and the possibility of errors or misalignment.
Lin's discovery could antiquate these automated solar arrays, as his antireflective coating absorbs sunlight evenly and equally from all angles. This means that a stationary solar panel treated with the coating would absorb 96.21 percent of sunlight no matter the position of the sun in the sky. So along with significantly better absorption of sunlight, Lin's discovery could also enable a new generation of stationary, more cost-efficient solar arrays.
"At the beginning of the project, we asked would it be possible to create a single antireflective structure that can work from all angles?' Then we attacked the problem from a fundamental perspective, tested and fine-tuned our theory, and created a working device," Lin said. Rensselaer physics graduate student Mei-Ling Kuo played a key role in the investigations.
Typical antireflective coatings are engineered to transmit light of one particular wavelength. Lin's new coating stacks seven of these layers, one on top of the other, in such a way that each layer enhances the antireflective properties of the layer below it. These additional layers also help to "bend" the flow of sunlight to an angle that augments the coating's antireflective properties. This means that each layer not only transmits sunlight, it also helps to capture any light that may have otherwise been reflected off of the layers below it.
The seven layers, each with a height of 50 nanometers to 100 nanometers, are made up of silicon dioxide and titanium dioxide nanorods positioned at an oblique angle each layer looks and functions similar to a dense forest where sunlight is "captured" between the trees. The nanorods were attached to a silicon substrate via chemical vapor disposition, and Lin said the new coating can be affixed to nearly any photovoltaic materials for use in solar cells, including III-V multi-junction and cadmium telluride.
Along with Lin and Kuo, co-authors of the paper include E. Fred Schubert, Wellfleet Senior Constellation Professor of Future Chips at Rensselaer; Research Assistant Professor Jong Kyu Kim; physics graduate student David Poxson; and electrical engineering graduate student Frank Mont.
Funding for the project was provided by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Sciences, as well as the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
BPA Ruling Flawed, Panel Says
October 29, 2008
Washington Post
By Annys Shin
The Food and Drug Administration ignored scientific evidence and used flawed methods when it determined that a chemical widely used in baby bottles and in the lining of cans is not harmful, a scientific advisory panel has found.
In a highly critical report to be released today, the panel of scientists from government and academia said the FDA did not take into consideration scores of studies that have linked bisphenol A (BPA) to prostate cancer, diabetes and other health problems in animals when it completed a draft risk assessment of the chemical last month. The panel said the FDA didn't use enough infant formula samples and didn't adequately account for variations among the samples.
Taking those studies into consideration, the panel concluded, the FDA's margin of safety is "inadequate". The panel is part of the Science Board, a committee of advisers to the FDA commissioner, and was set up to review the FDA's risk assessment of BPA.
Many of the studies that the panel said the FDA ignored were reviewed by the National Toxicology Program, which concluded in September that it had "some concern" that BPA can affect brain and behavioral development in infants and small children.
Officials at FDA, which regulates the chemical's use in plastic food containers, bottles, tableware and the plastic linings of food cans, accepted some of the criticism in the report.
"FDA agrees that due to the uncertainties raised in some studies relating to the potential effects of low doses of bisphenol-A that additional research would be valuable," said spokeswoman Judy Leon. The agency has commissioned new research on BPA.
The report adds fuel to the debate over whether to ban the use of BPA, which is used to harden plastic, particularly in baby bottles and cans of liquid formula. Infants are considered more vulnerable to the health effects of many chemicals.
"The current levels of exposure are not safe," said Sarah Janssen, a reproductive biologist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group. "We should get rid of it in food containers."
The American Chemistry Council, a trade group that represents BPA manufacturers, said its members would comply with whatever the FDA decides to do.
"If the agency determines that existing margins of safety are insufficient in infant applications, our member companies that manufacture BPA will put processes in place to promptly phase out the use of materials containing BPA in baby bottles and infant formula packaging," ACC spokeswoman Tiffany Harrington said.
Retailers have already begun selling BPA-free baby bottles in response to consumer concerns. This month, Canada banned its use in baby bottles.
House Committee on Energy and Commerce Chairman John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) and Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), as well as several state attorneys general, have called on formula-makers to remove BPA from their products.
The report likely will be fodder for critics of FDA who have accused the agency of relying too heavily on industry-funded studies. But it is likely to put to rest charges by environmental groups and public health advocates that the panel's chairman, Martin Philbert, co-director of the University of Michigan's Risk Science Center, was influenced by grants that his center received from Dow Chemical, a major BPA manufacturer. Dow gave the center $15 million for research on dioxin.
The center also received $5 million from Charles Gelman, a retired businessman who has been vocal in his support for BPA. Philbert has said that those donations did not influence his work or the center's.
October Waterborne Pathogen of the Month Giardia
October 18, 2008
Missouri Coalition for the Environment
Missouri Coalition for the Environment's first ever Waterborne Pathogen of the Month is the parasite -- which is truly out of sight, as it is microscopic -- commonly known as giardia or, more formally, Giardiasis lamblia. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Giardia is the most common waterborne parasite in North America.
Click here for the PDF
EPA Sets Rule to Get the Lead Out of Our Air
October 16, 2008
MSNBC
WASHINGTON -- Faced with a court order to set a new standard, the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday announced it would order industry to slash the amount of lead allowed in the nation's air by 90 percent.
EPA officials said the new limit would better protect public health, especially that of children.
"Our nation's air is cleaner today than just a generation ago, and last night I built upon this progress by signing the strongest air quality standards for lead in our nation's history," Stephen Johnson, the EPA administrator, said Thursday. "Thanks to this stronger standard, EPA will protect my children from remaining sources of airborne lead."
The new limit 0.15 micrograms per cubic meter is the first update to the lead standard since 1978, when leaded gasoline was phased out. That is 10 times lower than the previous standard, which was 1.5 micrograms per cubic meter.
The new standard will require that the 16,000 remaining sources of lead including smelters, metal mines, and waste incinerators to slash their emissions.
"More than 6,000 studies since 1990 have examined the effects of lead on health and the environment," the EPA noted in a statement, "Some studies have linked exposure to low levels of lead with damage to children's development, including IQ loss."
A representative for the Association of Battery Recyclers said the new standard would be difficult to meet. Several members of the group, which represents 14 facilities that recycle lead from car batteries, met on Oct. 2nd with the White House and EPA. They were hoping for a higher standard.
"We have put in the best controls and we are going to still have compliance problems," said Robert Steinwurtzel, an attorney for the group. "We explained to them our concerns that if the standard was promulgated at lower end of EPA's range it would threaten viability of industry."
EPA took experts' advice
Environmentalists hailed the move, but said the agency could have done more to monitor emissions to ensure that the standard is met. Along with the announcement of a new standard, EPA said it would require lead to be measured in 101 cities across the country, and near sources that release at least one ton of lead per year. Advocates said Thursday that EPA's plan would exclude hundreds of sources of lead.
"The EPA has followed the advice of its own advisers and public health advocates to set a more stringent standard for airborne lead," Gina Solomon, a health expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement.
In contrast, the Bush administration did not follow its own staff's advice or its science advisers when it set new health standards for smog and soot that were less stringent than recommended.
Solomon also noted, however, that the EPA only has half as many monitoring stations as it used to have. "With less than 200 air lead monitors nationwide, scientists don't even know how much lead is in the air in most communities," she said. "Now that the EPA has recognized the severity of lead exposure, it must rebuild the monitoring network."
"EPA must place air monitors at the locations where they matter most downwind of the big polluters," she added. "EPA's plan for only 236 new or relocated monitors is not adequate to detect problems, since there are thousands of serious lead polluters nationwide."
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. and chair of the Senate environment committee, shared that view. "I have concerns about the EPA's monitoring plan and its failure to fully protect communities near dangerous sources," she said in a statement. "I will work to ensure that the standards as well as the monitoring program protect children from toxic lead pollution."
The NRDC was also concerned that the EPA will allow companies to average lead exposures over a three-month period. "That means that large but brief 'spikes' of lead emissions from smelters and other polluters could contaminate the soil of playgrounds and backyards even in some areas that are in attainment of the new standard," Solomon said.
Lawsuit led to action
The EPA acted after a lawsuit brought by the Missouri Coalition for the Environment led a federal court in 2004 to order a review of the lead standard.
The group sued on behalf of two former residents of Herculaneum, Mo., the home of the last lead smelter in the U.S. The smelter has repeatedly violated the older health standard for lead in recent years, and blood taken from children in the area in 2002 showed elevated concentrations of the toxic metal.
The court later directed the EPA to issue its final rule by midnight Wednesday.
The lawsuit charged that the EPA had failed to review the lead standard every five years as law requires. Since 1990, more than 6,000 studies have examined the effects of lead on health and the environment, according to the agency.
"They still have to enforce it," said Kathleen Logan Smith, executive director of the coalition. "But it is there. It is a start."
No later than October 2011, EPA will designate areas of the country that fail to meet the new standard, requiring state and local governments to find ways to reduce lead emissions.
Based on air quality data from collected from 2005-2007, 18 counties in Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas would fail to meet the standard.
EPA said the cost of the reductions would be between $150 million to $2.8 billion, but the standard would produce economic benefits of approximately $3.7 billion to $6.9 billion. EPA assumed that children would be smarter and earn more money as a result of less lead in the air when it calculated the benefits.
Hazelwood Startup Sees Niche in Solar Energy Market
October 7, 2008
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
By Angela Tablac
Tom Cadwell hasn't yet turned on the lights in his Hazelwood manufacturing plant, but he hopes his company's idea high-efficiency solar technology at a lower cost will shine in the competitive solar energy market.
And with the startup's recent capital injection of $12.7 million, initial investors also see a bright spot in the market for Confluence Solar Inc.'s products.
Formed in December by Cadwell and John DeLuca, the privately-held company wants to quickly tap into the solar market, which is growing in both sales and players. Revenue for the U.S. solar industry, including labor and installation costs for solar energy systems, will total about $2.8 billion this year and is expected to soar to $22 billion by 2013, according to Lux Research in New York.
Confluence Solar's job, though, will be at the beginning of the solar technology chain, long before solar panels are placed on homes' rooftops. The Hazelwood-based company will make a single-crystal silicon substance that Cadwell said can be 20 percent to 25 percent more energy-efficient than multicrystal silicon a less pure substance that is less expensive to make.
The process entails melting raw material polysilicon and adding a single-crystal silicon seed. As the silicon is pulled from the heat, it solidifies into a tubular shape. This product is called a silicon ingot.
Initially, it will sell this product to companies that slice it into pieces thinner than the thickness of a dime. The slices are solar wafers on which solar cells are built.
Ultimately, 60 to 80 solar cells form a solar panel for houses or other structures, said Cadwell, the startup's chief executive.
Cadwell is a veteran in the silicon industry. His work history includes about 20 years with MEMC Electronic Materials Inc. of O'Fallon, Mo., where he held senior leadership positions. He left in 1997 and worked for several other companies, most recently Integrated Materials Inc. in Sunnyvale, Calif., as president and chief executive.
Several companies make the silicon ingots that Confluence Solar hopes to sell, but Cadwell said his firm will be different because it will use proprietary techniques to keep the cost of its product at the same cost or less than multicrystal silicon, the cheaper substance.
One of the company's investors, Scatec AS in Norway, said that potential piqued its interest.
"Solar energy is basically a cost game," Sven Rψst, vice president of communications for Scatec, said in an e-mail. "Confluence has developed a more efficient production process and is able to produce high-quality products at a lower cost than traditional processes."
Cadwell declined to give specifics on the techniques. He said he hopes Confluence Solar will finish its prototype by December and sell samples to a limited group of customers.
Because of the growth in the solar cell industry, Confluence Solar won't need aggressive marketing for its product, Cadwell said.
"You're sort of deluged with customers" trying to buy it today because of pent-up demand, he said. Polysilicon, the raw material used for ingots and ultimately wafers, has been in short supply in recent years, he said.
Still, the company will be entering the market at a potentially tough time.
Early next year, supply of solar technology will exceed demand, which will lead to a drop in pricing, said Ted Sullivan, a senior analyst for Lux Research. That will make it harder for companies to profit, thereby filtering out the weakest players. Small firms with innovative technologies will be acquired.
In a report last week, Sullivan said "the current bonanza in which all players are winners will come to an end."
Cadwell acknowledged that prediction by some analysts but said most of the industry sees demand in the single-crystal silicon.
In fact, he is counting on that growth. He hopes Confluence Solar will be profitable by next March and secure an additional $100 million in funding around that time.
And although Cadwell and his team expect to start working at their 20,000-square-foot Hazelwood facility this week, the firm will need another larger building as production increases.
Cadwell said Hazelwood is a likely site; a location will be selected later this year or early next year.
Assuming its goals are met, the company should employ 250 to 300 people by 2011, he said.
Ameren Rate Hike Request Draws Suspicion
October 3, 2008
Associated Press
By Alan Scher Zagier
A proposed double-digit rate increase by AmerenUE is drawing fire from environmentalists who say the utility is illegally seeking reimbursement for costs connected with the proposed addition of a second nuclear reactor at its Callaway County plant.
The Missouri Coalition for the Environment, Missourians for Safe Energy and the Great Rivers Environmental Law Center want to legally intervene in the case before the state Public Service Commission, which must approve any increases. The groups say that a 1976 state law prohibits a utility from charging ratepayers for a new plant before it is built.
"This is a direct attempt to circumvent the will of Missouri voters and start charging us for a power plant before it is built," said Mark Haim, spokesman for Missourians for Safe Energy.
The Construction Work in Progress law, or CWIP, was approved by state voters during a grassroots campaign to stop the utility - known then as Union Electric Co. - from building a second nuclear plant southeast of Fulton.
The utility recently submitted an application for a second reactor to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and plans to ask state lawmakers to overturn the construction restriction.
AmerenUE in April asked regulators for a 12.1 percent electric rate increase that would boost revenue by $251 million each year. The utility has spent an estimated $51 million preparing the nuclear plant license application and wants to include that amount in its rate increase.
The state agency will convene hearings to consider the rate increase starting Nov. 17. The quasi-judicial proceedings could last seven business days, Cleary said.
Public Service Commission auditors, engineers and accountants are advising the oversight board to deny Ameren's request related to nuclear license expenses, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
The St. Louis-based utility estimates that the full rate increase, if approved, would cost the average household $9 per month - an amount that could vary with usage.
The new request marks the utility's second such proposed increase in as many years. In May 2007, the Public Service Commission granted the utility a $43 million rate increase - a fraction of the $361 million it requested. Regulators said then they were sending a message that Ameren needed to improve its reliability and customer service.
That rate increase was opposed by Attorney General Jay Nixon, Gov. Matt Blunt and state Public Counsel Lewis Mills, who advocates for consumers before the commission. Ameren, Nixon and Mills each appealed, trying to overturn the commission's decision, but a Cole County judge upheld the ruling.
Ameren officials have repeatedly said the company is not committed to building a second reactor but filed the 8,000-page application for an NRC construction and operating license so it can decide by 2010 whether to move forward in time to have a new reactor on line by 2018.
Should that fail, the company likely won't build a second reactor but instead pursue more costly natural gas generators.
Ameren expects the new reactor to cost at least $6 billion, or $9 billion with financing.
Study Cites Savings From Energy Plan
September 22, 2008
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
By Kim McGuire
If voters approve an initiative to implement a renewable energy standard in Missouri, an average homeowner's electricity bill won't see a dramatic increase, according to an economic analysis released this week.
The study, sponsored by the initiative's supporters, found that over a period of 20 years, an average utility bill of $80 a month would see a peak increase of 53 cents a month during the first four years the standard was in place. Over the course of 20 years, that home-owner would see a peak savings of $1.65.
"If there are people who think clean energy is more expensive, it's not," said Erin Noble with the Missouri Coalition for the Environment. "I think the take-home point of this analysis is that Missourians will save $331 million over 20 years under this initiative."
Sponsored by Missourians for Cleaner Cheaper Energy, the November ballot initiative would require four utilities AmerenUE, Kansas City Power and Light, Empire District Electric and Aquila to acquire 15 percent of their electricity from renewable energy by 2021. Together, the utilities provide 76 percent of Missouri's power.
If Proposition C is approved, Missouri would become the 27th state in the nation to have a mandatory renewable energy standard. Other state requirements range from 8 percent in Pennsylvania to 40 percent in Maine.
So far, utilities have not publicly opposed the plan. In fact, Kansas City Power and Light has come out in support of the initiative. This summer the utility's parent company acquired Aquila.
AmerenUE forwarded questions about the initiative to the state utility's lobbying arm, the Missouri Energy Development Association.
"I think the main thing I want to stress is, I do not want people to get the impression that Ameren or Kansas City Power and Light is opposed to renewable energy," said Warren Wood, the association's executive director, adding that his group was neutral on the issue. "That's just not the case."
Wood, however, did question some of the cost assumptions used in the analysis, most notably the future cost of wind power and transmission line expenses.
Each of the utilities named in the ballot initiative currently either directly purchase some of their energy from renewable sources or sell renewable energy credits.
Empire, which serves much of southwest Missouri, currently gets 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources, Wood said, while others are planning to voluntarily increase their amounts.
The initiative defines renewable energy as electricity produced by wind, solar, biomass, landfill gas, small-scale hydropower projects and hydrogen fuel cells.
It also places any utility rate increases to comply with the mandate at 1 percent to safeguard customers.
The new analysis, which was conducted by Martin Cohen, the longtime director of the Illinois Citizens Utility Board, predicts that a typical residential customer wouldn't see a bill increase of more than 68 cents during any year the renewable energy standard covers.
Instead, the average net cost over the first 10 years is about 36 cents per month per household, according to the study.
"I would say that's pretty consistent with the two dozen or so state studies that we've seen," said Jeff Deyette, an energy analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Massachusetts-based science advocacy group supporting the measure.
A 2007 Department of Energy analysis of utility rates in states that have adopted renewable energy standards found that ratepayers have experienced minimal increases. That study found that, on average, state standards resulted in a monthly bill increase of 38 cents.
Deyette said those costs would likely go down even more, predicting that the cost of coal would dramatically rise if the United States adopts a formal policy regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
Crystal City Debates Return of Industry
September 16, 2008
Wall Street Journal
By Timothy Aeppel
When word leaked last summer that a big iron-ore smelter might be built in the middle of this sleepy riverfront town, creating hundreds of jobs and transforming the economy, it set off a firestorm of opposition and pointed to a rift that often emerges in such disputes.
On one side are those welcoming almost any decent-paying job, even relatively "dirty" ones, as employment that the community otherwise wouldn't have. The other side is dominated by those who see certain kinds of development as worse than no jobs at all.
The question boils down to a surprisingly philosophical one for communities caught in this quandary: Are all jobs created equal? Many economists don't think so.
"Concepts of prosperity have changed over time," and with them, notions of what constitutes desirable jobs, says Price Fishback, an economics professor at the University of Arizona. As the U.S. has shifted to a service economy, attitudes against heavy industry in the neighborhood have often stiffened into hostility. "Forty years ago, I suspect a project like [the smelter] would have been seen as a boon without any reservation," he says. "Not today."
Wealth was once unambiguously attached to sprawling industrial complexes and smokestacks, the engines that created stable jobs and drove local economies through much of the last century. During the hollowing out of the industrial landscape over the past half century, they disappeared, leaving towns a shadow of themselves. The U.S. was actually adding, rather than losing, more factories annually until 1998 -- but most were located next to new suburban highways, not breathing new life into faded mill towns.
Many former industrial strongholds have struggled and succeeded in determining what comes next. In Pittsburgh, the once mighty Homestead steelworks has been reshaped into a slice of suburbia on the edge of a densely built, blue-collar neighborhood overlooking a river, home to big-box stores and chain restaurants. Former mill town North Adams, Mass., has sought to reinvent itself as an arts and cultural center.
Yet industrial ghosts haunt even successful locales. In many cases, it is virtually impossible to erase the lingering pollution that permeates the ground and limits the options for redevelopment. Some estimate the U.S. has five million acres -- roughly three times the size of Delaware -- of abandoned industrial land. The U.S. General Accounting Office counts at least 425,000 "brownfields," pieces of land where contamination, real or perceived, from past use limits redevelopment options.
"Thinking of industrial development just in terms of jobs is a very limited way to look at it," says Richard Florida, director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto, which studies people's attitudes on economic progress. "It also means a clean environment, a good quality of life."
While those issues are on people's minds in Crystal City, the situation is complicated by history: The proposed site held this town's economic soul, a sprawling glass factory that employed thousands of people and gave the town almost everything, including the "Crystal" in its name. The first glass plant was built in 1871. By 1895, the factory, the town and all its holdings were acquired by Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co., now PPG Industries Inc., which added a glass factory billed as the world's largest.
Almost everything was bulldozed after it closed in 1990. With lingering environmental contamination on the 250-acre site, there was little rush to redevelop it.
In Crystal City, a good chunk of the town's 4,200 residents are eager to restore some sense of prosperity. That includes the town's mayor, Thomas Schilly, 56 years old, whose main job is welding. With little nearby industry, he drives 40 minutes each way to a factory across the Mississippi River in Illinois.
Many local residents blasted Mr. Schilly after he repeated early estimates that the project might create thousands of new jobs. The latest, more conservative view is 700. "It really wouldn't matter to me if it was 120 jobs," he says. "It's 120 jobs more than what we had before."
The project is also popular at the Crystal Tavern, a dimly lit bar down the street from Mr. Schilly's office. Owner Peggy Brown says people remember a 7 a.m. rush at the bar as nightshift employees stopped in for drinks after work. "Everyone I talk to is for it," she says. "They don't understand what the big deal is; they know we need jobs and we need industry."
The nearly two decades that have passed since the glass factory closed also works against the project. Many residents have grown accustomed to the quiet, off-the-beaten-track nature of the community. The city itself has morphed into a suburb, with more incoming residents holding jobs in St. Louis or its environs, about 40 miles to the north.
One is Roger Leonhardt, who moved to a bluff overlooking the factory site almost three years ago and owns a small video-production company. He views the project as a potential disaster and worked with a local opposition group, filming town-council meetings and posting relevant snippets on the Internet.
He admits the town needs revitalization. "But we'd like to shift to progressive jobs," he says. When pressed to explain, he says simply: "Something different than poisoning people. The problem around here is that many people think that if it isn't manufacturing, it isn't anything."
Jim Kennedy, the businessman behind the project, wants the smelter to process iron ore from his mine in another part of Missouri. Beyond that, he envisions creating a barge port on the riverfront to ship pig iron -- the raw material created from iron ore that goes into steelmaking -- to mills throughout the Midwest, along with new roads and parking lots for additional truck traffic. He says modern methods of iron-ore smelting are cleaner than those of the past. All together, the project would cost as much as $1 billion, he says.
Mr. Kennedy initially said he had financial backing from China Minmetals Corp., a trading company owned by the government of China. But after the local uproar, which included a sharp backlash against Chinese investors, the Chinese have backed away. Mr. Kennedy is confident he will find other financial backing, given the booming demand for iron ore.
The project's actual feasibility, from a business point of view, has been less of a focus than the cultural issue of desirable and undesirable jobs and the impact on the quality of life.
One reason the backlash may have been so intense is that the town council negotiated with Mr. Kennedy for almost 18 months in secret. The council signed a confidentiality agreement, which Mr. Kennedy insists was necessary to avoid a rush of real-estate speculators.
The town, in the meantime, has pushed ahead, agreeing to buy the land from PPG for $2.2 million and leasing it to Mr. Kennedy's Wings Enterprises Inc. "The community hasn't been informed about anything," says Tom Kerr, who wants to develop a sports complex on the land. A string of lawsuits have been filed and the main group fighting the project, Concerned Citizens for Crystal City, has 200 members.
One final twist: The proposed site of the barge port is owned by Bill Bradley, the former Democratic presidential candidate, who grew up in Crystal City. "I don't want to make any comment on the property or the situation," says Mr. Bradley. "It's just such a volatile situation. You have people in the community who really want it and others who are dead set against it."
Illinois Hazwaste Incinerator Permitted Despite Explosions, Fires
September 15, 2008
Environment News Service
The Veolia hazardous waste incinerator in Sauget, with its long history of explosions and toxic chemical releases, was issued a clean air permit on Friday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The incinerator has been operating without a permit since 1995.
Located on the Missouri-Illinois border next to the heavily populated, low-income neighborhood of East St. Louis, the incinerator is just across the Mississippi River from downtown St. Louis, near Busch Stadium and the city's trademark Arch.
As recently as November 2005, the owners agreed to pay $150,000 for alleged air pollution violations. The facility has been fined more than $3 million in recent years.
Normally, Clean Air Act operating permits are issued by states. In this case, the U.S. EPA issued the permit because of legal action by the Sierra Club and the American Bottom Conservancy objecting to a draft permit for the facility issued by the Illinois EPA in 2003 that they called deficient.
U.S. EPA issued an order in February granting many of the objections of the organizations and sent the permit back to Illinois EPA. When the state agency failed to issue an amended permit by May 2, the responsibility reverted to the federal agency.
Twice this year, the two groups sued the U.S. EPA asking the court to order the federal agency to either issue the permit or deny it. On Friday, the U.S. EPA issued the permit.
Verena Owen, the Illinois Sierra Club's clean air campaign chair, told ENS in an interview that the new permit is "an improvement" over the state draft permit that was floated five years ago.
"This is their first ever operating permit, which is great news," she said, because the facility now has federally enforceable limits that it must meet. "It's 10 to 12 years overdue."
There is a 30 day window of opportunity for the two groups to appeal this permit to the Environmental Appeals Board in Washington, DC, but Owen says they have not decided whether or not to take that action.
Kathy Andria, president of the American Bottom Conservancy and conservation chair for the Kaskaskia Group of the Sierra Club, told ENS that she feels "strongly both ways" about the newly issued permit.
"We're pleased they now have an enforceable permit that is better than what the Illinois EPA wrote five years ago," she said. "But we don't think they should have gotten any kind of permit because they can't comply with the terms."
"This is the wrong place to locate such a facility," said Andria. "We recognize there's a need for a hazardous waste incinerator, but workers have told us that when they've had explosions, they just open the windows to let it vent out into the neighborhood."
The fumes either blow to East St. Louis or to St. Louis and no matter where they blow, people can smell these noxious emissions.
Andria's group works to conserve the American bottom floodplain of the Mississippi River, where the Veolia hazwaste incinerator and other industrial facilities sit behind a levee that is structurally deficient.
"The Corps of Engineers and FEMA have declared that our levees are not certifiable," Andria said. "They are deficient, making the American bottom floodplain a hazardous area where steel mills, chemical factories, two Superfund landfills, a refinery, petroleum tanks, and a number of hazardous waste and toxic waste facilities are sited in the midst of several hundred thousand people," she said.
And there are other risks. The floodplain is near two earthquake faults and during this year's floods sand boils appeared as water under pressure welled up through the sandy bottom.
In public comments submitted to the EPA's proposed permit in July, the two groups wrote, "Sand boils in the levee were reported near the Veolia facility during the most recent high river levels. A road washed out just south of the facility. Many communities on the river above East St. Louis flooded. ... FEMA has sent all the American Bottom floodplain communities, including Sauget, new maps showing that they are now unprotected."
"Veolia stores hazardous waste waiting to be incinerated," the groups wrote. "Should a levee be compromised, that hazardous waste would be mixed with floodwaters and carried to adjacent communities and their residents."
While this issue is not covered by the Clean Air Act permit, the groups say federal and state agencies should recognize it.
"It's very scary," said Andria, who lives in the area. "It's so important that people start paying attention to this, our agencies have not taken this seriously. People are paying taxes to have the agencies protect them and they're not doing it. It's a gross miscarriage of justice."
One aspect of the U.S. EPA's decision has pleased Andria - that the federal agency considers this an environmental justice issue and conducted a health risk assessment requested by the groups.
"They did say there were issues of subsistence fishing at a nearby state park," said Andria, and the U.S. EPA lowered the amount of mercury the Veolia incinerator is allowed to release. Still, Andria wonders how this will be monitored.
The incinerator is owned and operated by Veolia Environnement, a French corporation that is the world's largest environmental services company. In July, Veolia selected Chicago as its new North American headquarters.
Michel Gourvennec, chief executive of the Veolia Environnement group in North America, as well as president and CEO of Veolia Environmental Services North America, said at the time, "The city of Chicago's many environmental initiatives mirror our focus on sustainable development and our interest in providing leading-edge environmental programs for our municipal, industrial and commercial customers."
"It is a large company," said Owen, "that could very well do the right thing, be proactive, and protective of their neighbors."
The neighbors are intimidated, Owen said. "There were evacuations, explosions, fires. They are frightened and upset. If they have put all their life savings into a house in that neighborhood and they want to get out, they can't find a buyer, they're pretty much stuck there. This is a classic environmental justice issue."
Renewable Energy on Missouri's November Ballot
September 9, 2008
Kansas City Star
By Jason Noble
JEFFERSON CITY -- A renewable energy question will be on the November ballot in Missouri after all.
A Cole County Circuit Court judge on Monday ordered Secretary of State Robin Carnahan to add the Missouri Clean Energy Initiative to the November ballot, one month after Carnahan rejected the petition and said it had failed to gather enough signatures in one of the state's congressional districts.
If approved by voters, the initiative would require electric utilities in the state to provide at least 2 percent of their power from renewable sources beginning in 2011. The mandate would rise to at least 5 percent in 2014, at least 10 percent in 2018 and at least 15 percent beginning in 2021.
Renewable energy resources include solar, wind and water power, and fuels made from agricultural products or refuse.
The initiative would require that at least 2 percent of utilities' power each year came from solar sources. It also would limit rate increases associated with moving to renewable energy resources to 1 percent.
Officials with the clean energy initiative called the ballot question an opportunity to make Missouri a leader in the development of renewable energy resources.
"This is an opportunity to create tens of thousands of new jobs and billions of dollars in economic development," said Jim Kottmeyer, a consultant for the initiative.
To be placed on the ballot, petitions to change state law must be signed by at least 5 percent of voters from six of Missouri's nine congressional districts.
Petition circulators for the clean energy initiative in May submitted signatures well in excess of this requirement, but the secretary of state's office rejected hundreds of signatures from the 3rd District, causing it to fall 526 short of the 14,860 required for the district.
The petition sponsors, a group called Missourians for Cleaner Cheaper Energy, sued, arguing the secretary of state's office and local election boards had failed to count valid signatures.
Judge Richard Callahan heard testimony Monday afternoon and agreed.
An order signed by Callahan declared the number of signatures gathered to be sufficient and directed the secretary of state to include the question on the ballot.
The secretary of state's office acknowledged the order and said it would have no trouble adding the item to the ballot.
"The process worked," said office spokeswoman Laura Egerdal. "If the judge found that enough signatures were on the initiative petition, it will be placed on the ballot for November."
The counting errors that led the office to initially reject the ballot question occurred at the local level, Egerdal said. Petitions are reviewed at local election offices and then submitted to the secretary of state for a final count.
MoDOT's Quandary: To Mow or Not to Mow
August 31, 2008
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
By Tom Uhlenbrock
Driving down Highway 19 through Shannon County for a date with the Eleven Point River, I grew madder and madder. This is one of Missouri's prettiest landscapes, but now both sides of the twisting blacktop were lined with dead vegetation.
Instead of a corridor of bracken fern in the shade and wildflowers in the sunny spots, the highway shoulders had been mowed. And what hadn't been mowed beyond that had been sprayed with a herbicide strong enough to blacken the limbs of overhanging trees. Same with nearby Highway 106, heading to Alley Spring.
Where was the usual roadside garden of pale pink milkweed, yellow black-eyed Susans, purple and yellow cone flowers?
John Regenbogen also is aware of the roadside distraction. He is executive director of Scenic Missouri, a nonprofit organization that works to preserve the state's rural scenery.
"Unfortunately, the MoDOT culture is imbedded with a lot of traditional thinking that frequent mowing is good, you need to have low vegetation," he said. "In the past decade, more and more states are seeing the benefit of native flowers that add beauty and reduce mowing, especially in this time of high gas prices."
EXOTIC INVADERS
Stacy Armstrong, roadside management supervisor for the state transportation department, said the department spent $3.4 million on herbicide spraying last year. Justin Hills of District 9 in the south-central part of the state, which includes Shannon County, said the herbicides were used to control three noxious weeds, including sericea lespedeza. Ironically, the state used to plant lespedeza on its roadsides for erosion control.
But this was not selective spraying of exotic invaders. The dead strips ran solid along the ditches, killing everything in their path, and continued right up to the bridges that go over Sinking Creek and the Current and Jacks Fork rivers, the first two rivers in America to get federal protection because of their pristine beauty. This is a land of swiss-cheese Karst topography; whatever goes on the surface, ends up in the sinkholes, springs and streams.
Regenbogen said previous testing of the Current River found high levels of herbicides, "including some that are commonly used in highway right-of-ways.
"One other thing MoDOT crews like to talk about is safety zones they don't want deer lurking and waiting to jump out. But other states have done research and found there really is no correlation between accidents and native vegetation. In fact, some have found mowed fescue often attracts deer, as opposed to native plants."
LOOKING FOR BALANCE
Armstrong said her department is cutting down on mowing, and spent $17.2 million in the mowing program in 2007, a decrease from the previous year.
"Some people like it mowed slick, that manicured look," Armstrong said. "Others like the natural look. We try to balance them both."
There is some good news. Representatives of Scenic Missouri and The Nature Conservancy have arranged a meeting in October to discuss the herbicide spraying with Armstrong and tourism officials. Regenbogen hopes the meeting will come up with what he called a "Green Highways/Clean Streams" pilot project in Shannon County.
"The question is how can we utilize the best practices where we are preserving the natural beauty of wildflowers, while also ensuring invasive species don't take hold," he said. "How can we use an alternative to herbicide spraying that will protect water quality, especially in that area of the Ozark National Scenic Riverways?"
Said Armstrong: "We will sit down and talk about it. Herbicides are a valuable tool. But we've got to figure out a way to have attractive roadsides, and at the same time safe roadsides. We don't want it to be ugly."
Judge Bans CAFOs Near Historic Sites
August 26, 2008
Kansas City Star
By Dan Margolies
In a decision with implications for industrial hog farms throughout Missouri, a state judge has banned such operations within a 15-mile radius of the historic village of Arrow Rock.
The summary judgment ruling late Monday by Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia S. Joyce came in a highly contentious case pitting the village and preservationists against the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.
Joyce ruled that, because the department had failed to respond to the plaintiffs' requests to admit certain facts, all of the allegations in the requests were deemed to be true.
She then barred the department from issuing any permits for indoor hog farms within 15 miles of Arrow Rock, saying it was the constitutional duty of the state to protect Missouri's historic sites. She also prohibited the transport or spreading of hog waste within 15 miles of the village and nearby historic sites.
And in a harsh rebuke to the department, Joyce said she would retain jurisdiction over the case because the department and its director "have a history of failing to honor and enforce" orders issued "as to such situations."
The department's director, Doyle Childers, denounced Joyce's ruling Tuesday, calling it an example of "judicial activism" with "no scientific basis."
"It actually goes well beyond any state or federal law," he said. "The whole thing is really written in a strange way, I'll just put it that way. I was surprised to see it."
But Kansas City lawyer Richard W. Miller, who represented Arrow Rock, said Joyce had merely followed the law and told Childers and the department that "she expects them to abide by their constitutional and statutory duties."
"This ruling was very clear and very measured," he said. "Their primary obligation under the Constitution and statute is to preserve and protect the state's parks and historic sites."
Arrow Rock, the Missouri Parks Association and the Friends of Arrow Rock, a preservationist group, sued the Department of Natural Resources in October over a permit it issued the month before that allowed Arrow Rock farmer Dennis Gessling to build facilities to house 4,800 hogs two miles west of the village.
The village, which has a population of a few dozen, sits on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River about 90 miles east of Kansas City. Founded in 1829 and sitting at the intersection of the river and the Santa Fe Trail, it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964.
The village is the home of the Arrow Rock State Historic Site, a 300-acre state park. Three Missouri governors are buried there, and the home of George Caleb Bingham, the 1800s realist painter, is located there.
Opponents of Gessling's proposal, including Kansas City developer Whitney E. Kerr Sr. and retired KU Medical Center physician Thomas B. Hall, both of whom own homes in Arrow Rock, cited concerns about air quality and odor, and especially their potential effects on the village's tourism industry. The town draws about 140,000 tourists annually.
Hall, who is president of the Friends of Arrow Rock and whose ancestors settled in the village in the 1820s, said the department had repeatedly told him and other village residents it could not treat state parks differently from private property.
"So the citizens of the state were having to ask the state to take care of its own park," he said.
Rhonda Perry, program director for the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, which supports family farms, said that "there's a serious lack of confidence by Missouri citizens that DNR will adequately protect the waters of the state or state parks or other things that are important to citizens when it comes to CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations)."
The Gessling operation would have generated more than 2 million gallons of manure annually. Gessling, however, insisted that the operation would have a minimal effect on Arrow Rock.
Gessling could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Large indoor animal farms have been a source of controversy in Missouri, where regulators and residents have sued over odors and pollution. Hog farms are especially common in the northern part of the state.
Childers said that Joyce's ruling "effectively closes down CAFOs within a 30-mile circle, and there are some big CAFOs operating there, including some big research farms."
He said that if the department was barred from granting permits in the vicinity of Arrow Rock, then it probably couldn't grant permits in other locations "because we as a department are required not to be arbitrary or capricious."
He said that the ruling was especially surprising because Gessling recently decided not to proceed with his operation and the permit had expired.
"It appears she had her own agenda when she was following through with this case," Childers said, calling Joyce's decision a "prime example of judicial activism."
"You expect the Sierra Club, an activist group, to do that," he said, "but you don't expect the judiciary to do that."
Miller, however, said that the permit was not set to expire until the end of this month and that, though Gessling had not begun construction, he had done nothing to cancel or withdraw the permit.
"The issue had been before the judge for some time, and she wanted to rule on it," he said.
Childers also defended his department's handling of the lawsuit, saying the plaintiffs had "flooded" the agency with requests for admissions and that Joyce had denied its request for an extension of time to respond.
But Miller said that the department had ample time to prepare because all of the requests were based on the original petition in the case.
"I don't think there's any way to dispute the pollutants and the odors that are emitted from these factory farms," Miller said. "And I don't think the state is in a position to dispute it."
Residents of Little Flat Creek, DNR Officials Square Off
August 22, 2008
Joplin Globe
By Wally Kennedy
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. It was a night of trading figurative punches.
Residents in the of Little Flat Creek in Barry County were in no mood Thursday night to listen to the positions of representatives of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources in connection with the department's handling of a proposal to exempt a stretch of the stream from bacterial regulation because it is shallow.
Conversely, a representative of the department, Rob Morrison, with the water-protection program, was in no mood to hear pointed questions from Little Flat Creek property-owners who said they could not understand why the department would even consider such an exemption.
At one point during the meeting at the DNR's regional office in Springfield, voices were raised, fingers were pointed and accusations were made.
Morrison accused Tracie Snodgrass, who lives along the creek, of being "disrespectful and mocking" to a department employee, John Hoke, who is overseeing the department's program to exempt approximately 90 streams in the state from bacteria regulation. Final consideration on the plan most likely will be made before the year is out, but no decision is imminent.
When Snodgrass asked Hoke to explain comments he had made, Morrison said he would not tolerate treatment of a DNR employee in that fashion. But some who attended the meeting came to her defense. They said Snodgrass was "talked down to" by Morrison in a disrespectful manner for seeking answers to questions the department did not want to answer for fear of looking incompetent.
Others among the 15 or so people who attended the meeting then jumped in to accuse the department of doing nothing to rein in the water-pollution threat posed by confined-animal-feeding operations (CAFOs), noting that Barry County has more CAFOs than virtually any county in the state.
Morrison defended the operators of the CAFOs, saying those with complaints about individual operators should report them to the regional office in Springfield. Some residents of Barton County, where hog CAFOs are expanding, said they had filed complaints but had not received any response to those complaints from the regional office.
One Barton County resident, Darvin Bentlage, accused the department of collusion by protecting a CAFO operator from enforcement action for violating water-quality rules. He said he filed a complaint against a CAFO operator for an illegal discharge from a waste-water lagoon. Shortly after filing the complaint, an employee of the CAFO stopped the discharge and tilled the soil around the lagoon to hide the evidence of the activity. There was no enforcement action, he said.
Morrison said that workers in the regional office in Springfield would not do such a thing. Bentlage said he had taken photographs of the lagoon discharge and the tilled soil. He said the evidence speaks for itself.
The department was criticized for its handling of the notification of residents along Little Flat Creek. Snodgrass and others said they would not have known anything about the department's plan to delist a two-mile stretch of the creek from bacterial protection had she not received a letter from the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, based in St. Louis.
Residents said the DNR, in its survey of Little Flat Creek, relied almost exclusively on stream depth to determine whether the stream can support swimming and other recreation. If the stream isn't deep enough at the sites sampled, the state assumes a person can't swim in the stream and exempts it from protections normally required for swimming and other whole body contact recreation.
"Nobody with the department ever contacted us," Snodgrass said. "No interviews with property owners were conducted. If you don't do that, how do you know how we use that stream?"
Hoke said he did not know why property owners along the creek were not contacted. He said the department has learned lessons from this project and that in the future it will do a better job of notification.
The DNR program does not require the stream surveyor to contact or interview local residents about their use of the stream.
Others at the meeting questioned the purpose of the program. Morrison said the Missouri Clean Water Commission did "not want to go overboard on protection." The department has said that most of the streams are so small they do not flow in the summer, and if they are not used for swimming and other full-body-contact recreation, then it might be a waste of resources to regulate them with regard to bacteria.
Jim Riedel, a resident of Eagle Rock where the DNR has permitted a large chicken CAFO along Roaring River, said the condition of Missouri's streams and rivers are not improving, but are in a state of decline. He questioned why the department would take steps that he views as encouraging that decline.
"Why are we even talking about declassifying?" he asked.
Others said the DNR, instead, should "grow a spine and crack down on these polluters before we lose our rivers and lakes." One person suggested a statewide moratorium on the construction of new CAFOs, alleging that the DNR cannot regulate those in place now.
The meeting, which lasted more than two hours, is one of six across the state that were organized by the DNR in response to what it said was "misinformation" about the purpose of the bacterial exemptions. The DNR has extended the comment deadline on the stream issue to Aug. 31, officials said.
CAFOs a Drain on Economy
August 9, 2008
Joplin Globe
By Ken Midkiff, guest columnist
Several state governors -- including our own -- promote concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) as a rural economic development tool. But are they?
I set out to find an answer to a simple question. That simple question is: Are CAFOs economically beneficial?
The answer, I learned, is equally simple: No.
Realizing that I am entering an area that has traditionally been the stomping grounds of rural economists, I relied heavily on the studies of Bill Weida of Colorado College and John Ikerd of the University of Missouri. Both are rural economists and both are retired. Retirement has certain benefits. For one thing, it frees retirees from the dictates of the hierarchy at whatever institution employed them. The second benefit is that the retiree is freed up to work on the issues deemed important.
Both Weida and Ikerd have studied rural development and both have concluded that CAFOs do more harm than good to the rural economy.
For indicators, they cite:
- The increase in rural crime (burglaries, driveby shootings, drug deals).
- The decrease in property values on lands near CAFOs.
- The necessity (and increased cost) for local school districts to teach English as a Second Language.
- The necessity for local "C-Stores" to hire bilingual clerks.
- The closure of local retail outlets.
- That local banks and savings and loan institutions are purchased by larger entities or close altogether.
- That independent farmers go out of hog-rearing, dairy or chicken operations (and this has a ?domino? effect).
- The amount of direct and indirect subsidies to CAFOs.
- The few local workers hired by CAFOs.
- The growing numbers of documented and undocumented immigrants as the work force.
- The burden on the local community to provide social services for a foreign population.
Any one of these indicators would be problematic, but when all of them are added together, it becomes readily apparent that CAFOs are an economic disaster for rural communities.
No doubt, a few on the boards of Tysons, Smithfield, and Seaboard benefit. No doubt, that CEOs of ConAgra and Cargill do well. But the folks on corporate agribusiness boards and the CEOs don't live in rural communities. Indeed, Joe Luter, the CEO of Smithfield -- a self-described "family farmer" -- lives in a condo on Park Avenue in New York City.
So, while a few of the already-rich get richer, rural communities get poorer. While a few bigwigs vacation for months in Bermuda or a tropical island in the Pacific, rural residents can hardly afford to take a vacation at all.
Economic benefit? No. Economic development? No.
If this is, as some say, "the future of agriculture," rural residents had better hang onto their pocketbooks and hope that the invasion of the CAFOs goes away.
So what are the governors thinking in promoting CAFOs as a way to benefit rural communities? While my first impulse is to state "They aren't thinking," the adage of "follow the money" applies. Take a look at which business organizations bankroll gubernatorial campaigns. Take a look at the donations flowing in from advocacy groups such as the Farm Bureau, the Pork Producers Association, the Poultry Federation, or the American Dairy Federation.
Who are the governors listening to? Those with the most money for them.
Ken Midkiff is a spokesman for the Sierra Club.
Missouri Wind Energy Public Forum #2 Video Available
August 8, 2008
Missouri Department of Natural Resources' Energy Center
Due to technical difficulties, many people were unable to access the live videoconference of this event on August 6. Below is how to access the archived version of the August 6th videoconference:
Downloadable file:
Open a web browser or Windows Media Player and copy this link into the Address line(browser) or select File\Open URL(Windows Media Player) http://150.199.24.201/WMSDownloads/dnr/windenergy080608.wmv
Select File\Save As and it will save this to your desktop. Note, as the file is 750 MB it will take quite a while to download, even if you have high-speed internet access.
Archive link in video streaming mode:
Open a web browser or Windows Media Player and copy this link into the Address line(browser) or select File\Open URL(Windows Media Player) mms:\\streaming.more.net\DNRArchive\WindEnergy080608.wmv
Please note that the links provided above are just the video content. To simultaneously view the presentation files, make sure you've already downloaded the PDF version of the presentation files provided by the three presenters. Below are links to their presentations:
- Presenter #1 - Kemker - http://www.dnr.mo.gov/energy/renewables/wind-power-kemker2008-0806.pdf (0.2 MB)
- Presenter #2 - Flowers - http://www.dnr.mo.gov/energy/renewables/wind-flowers-economics20080806.pdf (4.2 MB)
- Presenter #3 - Waltemath - http://www.dnr.mo.gov/energy/renewables/windfarm-mikew2008-0806.pdf (1 MB)
For step-by-step instructions on how to simultaneously view the video and the presentation files, go to:
http://www.dnr.mo.gov/energy/renewables/windforums-videostream.htm
MIT Discovery to Unleash Solar Revolution
July 31, 2008
MIT News Office
By Anne Trafton
In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine.
Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today's announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.
Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. "This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said MIT's Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."
Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera's lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun's energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.
The key component in Nocera and Kanan's new process is a new catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; another catalyst produces valuable hydrogen gas. The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity -- whether from a photovoltaic cell, a wind turbine or any other source -- runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced.
Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water, the system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.
The new catalyst works at room temperature, in neutral pH water, and it's easy to set up, Nocera said. "That's why I know this is going to work. It's so easy to implement," he said.
'Giant leap' for clean energy
Sunlight has the greatest potential of any power source to solve the world's energy problems, said Nocera. In one hour, enough sunlight strikes the Earth to provide the entire planet's energy needs for one year.
James Barber, a leader in the study of photosynthesis who was not involved in this research, called the discovery by Nocera and Kanan a "giant leap" toward generating clean, carbon-free energy on a massive scale.
"This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind," said Barber, the Ernst Chain Professor of Biochemistry at Imperial College London. "The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production thus reducing our dependence for fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem."
'Just the beginning'
Currently available electrolyzers, which split water with electricity and are often used industrially, are not suited for artificial photosynthesis because they are very expensive and require a highly basic (non-benign) environment that has little to do with the conditions under which photosynthesis operates.
More engineering work needs to be done to integrate the new scientific discovery into existing photovoltaic systems, but Nocera said he is confident that such systems will become a reality.
"This is just the beginning," said Nocera, principal investigator for the Solar Revolution Project funded by the Chesonis Family Foundation and co-Director of the Eni-MIT Solar Frontiers Center. "The scientific community is really going to run with this."
Nocera hopes that within 10 years, homeowners will be able to power their homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power their own household fuel cell. Electricity-by-wire from a central source could be a thing of the past.
The project is part of the MIT Energy Initiative, a program designed to help transform the global energy system to meet the needs of the future and to help build a bridge to that future by improving today's energy systems. MITEI Director Ernest Moniz, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems, noted that "this discovery in the Nocera lab demonstrates that moving up the transformation of our energy supply system to one based on renewables will depend heavily on frontier basic science."
The success of the Nocera lab shows the impact of a mixture of funding sources - governments, philanthropy, and industry. This project was funded by the National Science Foundation and by the Chesonis Family Foundation, which gave MIT $10 million this spring to launch the Solar Revolution Project, with a goal to make the large scale deployment of solar energy within 10 years.
Green-Energy Mandate Could Be On Ballot
July 20, 2008
Joplin Globe
By Andy Ostmeyer
Missouri voters can expect to decide in November if the state's investor-owned utilities should be required to generate or purchase electricity from wind, solar, biomass or small hydro equal to at least 2 percent of their retail sales by 2011. If passed, the requirement ratchets up to 15 percent by 2021, with at least 2 percent of that coming from solar energy. The proposal also limits the rate impact to 1 percent per year.
More than half of all states now have the so-called Renewable Portfolio Standards, which require utilities to get a certain percentage of their power from renewable sources. Some states have had the mandates in place for more than a decade.
But Southwest Missouri residents will escape the impact of the initiative petition that would require investor-owned utilities in the state to boost their use of green power. That's because Empire District Electric Co. already is on its way to meeting the top requirement outlined in the mandate and also was recently exempted from the one piece of the proposal that Empire officials said could have pushed up costs for ratepayers in the area. Empire is the only investor-owned utility in Southwest Missouri. Other area residents are served by cooperatives or municipal power providers, which will not be bound by the mandates.
The push for renewables is being led by Missourians for Cleaner Cheaper Energy, which in May turned in about 170,000 signatures -- 90,000 were needed -- for the Clean Energy Initiative to the Missouri Secretary of State's office. That office is verifying signatures, but that isn't expected to be a stumbling block, said Warren Wood, executive director of the Missouri Energy Development Association, which represents investor-owned utilities in Missouri.
"We think there is a good chance it will go on the ballot and the polling data we've seen indicates support for it if it gets on the ballot this fall," Wood said.
While MEDA is "neutral" on the initiative, Wood said there are concerns. Missouri electric rates are the seventh lowest in the nation, and a requirement from voters that utilities develop more green power could push up costs, even if it is capped at 1 percent per year.
Already there
Still, Wood noted that Empire customers will be spared.
"For Empire, based on where they are right now, I don't see any impact," he said.
Empire already has a 20-year contract for energy produced by the Elk River Wind Farm near Beaumont, Kan., and has been purchasing it from that site for nearly three years. That wind farm has the ability to generate about 150 megawatts, or enough electricity to meet the annual needs of about 42,000 homes.
The Elk River Wind Farm can provide about 8 percent of Empire's needs, although the benefits of the wind are currently resold on the open market as green credits, said Brad Beecher, Empire vice president and chief operating officer for electric services. The credits are sold to utilities in other states that may already have renewable requirements, with the money used to keep rates lower for Empire customers, Beecher said, explaining: "It is a reduction in costs."
That renewable benefit can be brought online incrementally for all Empire's customers as the renewable standard creeps up each year and those costs already are built into the existing rates.
And last summer, Empire announced a 20-year agreement to purchase power from the Meridian Way Wind Farm near Concordia, Kan. Empire said that will generate about 105 megawatts annually for its customers, or enough electricity for 25,000 homes. That wind farm is under construction.
Combined, the two wind farms will be able to provide about 15 percent of Empire's power as early as 2009.
"We were first in getting into wind energy big," said Beecher.
Empire exemption
Last week, Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt signed Senate Bill 1181 creating the "Show-Me Green Tax Holiday," making certain energy-efficient appliances exempt from sales taxes on certain days.
That legislation also contained a provision put in at the behest of state Reps. Bryan Stevenson, R-Webb City, and Ed Emery, R-Lamar, Beecher said. It states that any electric company that achieves renewable-energy use equal to or greater than 15 percent by Jan. 20, 2009, "shall be exempt from a requirement to pay an incentive to any customer who installs a solar-energy system and shall also be exempt from meeting mandated solar renewable energy requirements."
Empire is the only utility in Missouri that fits that exemption, and worked with local legislators to get that provision in the law ahead of the initiative.
"We're not going to be shoved into solar if it doesn't make sense," Beecher said. "Right now, it is more expensive. ... We could meet it but it would add cost."
Beecher said he supports the goal of 15 percent and thinks it is attainable, but he doesn?t want to see utilities tied down to specific mandates -- like the 2 percent for solar -- if there is a better alternative.
"Right now, your main option to meet this is wind," he said.
Nor does Beecher like the idea that only investor-owned utilities are being held to the proposed standards, but not municipal power companies, such as those serving the communities of Carthage, Monett and Springfield, for example. Cooperatives also are not included.
"If it is good for Missouri, it ought to apply to all," Beecher said.
Carve-outs
Asked why cooperatives are excluded, Erin Noble, energy policy and outreach coordinator for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, said: "There would have been some big opposition."
While cooperatives in Missouri have not opposed the petition, Noble noted that groups representing cooperatives have opposed any federal mandate for renewable standards.
P.J. Wilson, treasurer for Missourians for Cleaner Cheaper Energy and executive director of Renew Missouri, which crafted the petition language and initiated the volunteer signature drive, said the Missouri initiative is based on Colorado's, which initially excluded cooperatives, although they were added later. Of the 26 states with renewable standards, half exclude municipal power providers and nine exclude cooperatives.
Wilson said the proposal in Missouri is "feasible and noncontroversial. ... That policy, the way it is crafted, is the best policy in Missouri right now."
He also noted that investor-owned utilities serve the bulk of the state, providing between 70 and 75 percent of Missourians with power.
As for the solar requirement, Wilson and Noble said the inclusion is not extreme. Investor-owned utilities would need 2 percent of their power to come from renewable sources in 2011 and 2 percent of that would be from solar, or a total of .004 percent. Twelve states have solar "carve-outs" with some as high as 4 percent, they said.
Noble said the petition also includes a requirement that utilities offer a $2-per-watt solar rebate to help homeowners and small business lower the cost of installing their own solar systems.
Mandating solar also creates a market for it, said Wilson. "We still need policies that make solar cheaper."
Asked about the exemption for solar that was built into Missouri legislation for Empire, Wilson first praised Empire for its aggressive pursuit of wind power: "I really do commend them for where they are at."
But, he also said: "Empire is the only utility in the state that wanted to see that ... it all did happen at the last minute."
If voters endorse the petition in the fall, with the solar mandate, he said that "will speak more loudly than the actions of a couple of lobbyists and a couple of elected officials in the last 24 hours of the session."
"It's really the utility's customers who will end up paying for the rebate for the people who put the solar in," Beecher said.
He also noted that capital costs for commercial solar run about $8,000 per kilowatt, compared to $2,000 for coal and $2,000 for wind. Solar also can be utilized 40 percent of the time, compared to 15 to 20 percent for solar, meaning, according to Beecher, that solar is four times as expensive as wind but produces half the energy.
No blowback
As for the impact on rates, Wilson said the initiative will ensure that investor-owned utilities have more diversified portfolios, which means they will be subject to less volatility, which is better for ratepayers.
"A more diverse portfolio is a more secure portfolio. ... We predict this will make rates go down. Wind is on par with natural-gas plants right now," he said.
But once the wind farms are online there is no cost for the fuel as there is with coal or natural gas. There also are other costs, such as damage to the environment and to health, that aren?t built into the cost of coal, for example.
Some states that have adopted renewable standards found they can do it with little impact on rates.
Terry Dote, of the Colorado Public Utility Commission, said the first standard -- 10 percent by 2015 -- was adopted in 2004 following a petition process. In 2006, the legislature doubled that to 20 percent by 2020 and set a 2 percent cap to protect ratepayers and brought in the municipal companies and cooperatives but at a lower level.
In 2007, customers received a rate increase for the renewable mandate that amounted to six-tenths of a percent; this year it is 1.4 percent, Dote said.
But Jim Greenwood, director of the Colorado Office of Consumer Counsel, which represents residential and other small ratepayers, said they should expect the maximum increase allowed each year.
Still, he said, there hasn't been any fallout from the rate hikes.
"To my knowledge, there is no particular blowback at this point," he said.
Greenwood thinks the 1 percent cap proposed for Missouri "probably is doable ... simply because there is so much low-hanging fruit out there," he said, referring to wind.
Edward Garvey, director of the office of Energy Security in Minnesota, which has a standard for all utilities of 25 percent by 2025, also said utility customers have been on board with rate increases to pay for the renewable energy.
"The fuel is free and it is carbon free," he said. "It has not caused rate shock because they come on gradually by themselves."
Ameren UE To Expand Nuclear Plant
July 9, 2008
KOMU TV
By Noel Feldman
FULTON - As Ameren UE gets closer to expanding its nuclear power plant, some Missourians aren't pleased with the idea.
The plant located in Callaway County is just 10 miles southeast of Fulton.
With representatives from Ameren UE and the U.S. Nuclear regulatory commission in Fulton, some Missouri citizens held a conference nearby to express their distaste for nuclear power.
"If we invest in efficiency and we invest in renewable energy, we don't need nuclear plants," explained Mark Haim of Missourians for Safe Energy.
While those who support expanding the Callaway plant convened at Champ Auditorium, the opposition spoke its mind around the corner.
"We don't need any new reactors, nuclear power," Haim said. "It's a dead-end technology, a failed technology. One that has failed the test of the marketplace."
But Ameren UE says that while nuclear power isn't flawless, it is the right decision.
"It's got a proven track record," President and CEO of Ameren UE Thomas Voss said. "It's not the perfect solution, but it's certainly the best solution."
Voss says nuclear power creates no emmissions, is economically responsible, and has an outstanding safety record. Ameren UE awaits approval from the U.S. Government before beginning construction on the new wing of the Callaway plant.
The proposed new addition will require two new water cooling towers, standing 550 feet tall. They have the potential to cool 585,000 gallons of water a minute.
Ameren UE expects to get the green-light by 2012 and hopes construction will be completed by 2020.
While the opposition says nuclear power isn't worth the cost and possible dangers, Ameren UE officials say they're confident the proposed expansion will mean good things for Missouri's energy future.
The proposed addition to the Callaway plant will more than double its current power output.
Retired Scenic Riverways ranger hopes park prospers in future
July 7, 2008
Columbia Tribune
By Kathy Love, Special to the Tribune
The canoeist's foot slipped on a muddy bank, and she pitched forward, head-first, into the canoe. Her head wedged between the seat and the side of the canoe, which swamped and sank with its struggling passenger to the bottom of the river. Luckily for her, a ranger witnessed the mishap.
Bill Terry, who retired last year after 34 years as a ranger at Ozark National Scenic Riverways, rescued the woman before she drowned. All in a day's work for Terry, who earned the National Park Service's Yount Award for meritorious service in 2002.
Terry fell in love with the Current and Jack's Fork rivers, which make up Ozark National Scenic Riverways, as a Columbia boy scout. Troop 10 spent two weeks each summer camping on the rivers.
"We fished, we swam, we paddled, we jumped from the bluffs, we explored the caves by candlelight," Terry recalled. "By the end of the third summer, there was a feeling in my soul that this is where I needed to live."
He graduated from the University of Missouri in 1972 with a degree in park administration and wildlife management. Under the tutelage of MU emeritus professor of parks, recreation and tourism Glenn Weaver, he applied as a seasonal ranger at the national park. Terry had no trouble making his presence - all 6 feet, 4 inches of it - known on the rivers.
One of his early assignments was investigating a double murder on the Jack's Fork River in the mid-1970s. A canoeist was convicted of killing his wife in order to collect on an insurance policy. When the man's daughter witnessed the murder, he killed her, too.
No other incidents rivaled that grim case, but life-threatening situations occurred frequently. Terry and his wife, Susie, were on a vacation cruise to Barbados in 2000 when a tour guide made eye contact with him.
"Aren't you a ranger on the Current River?" he asked.
The young man had been a student at Rolla 10 years earlier when he and a group of friends camped on an island in the Current River. Torrential rains caused a flash flood that night, and Terry used a johnboat to evacuate their camp in the dark.
"I will never forget your face and voice from that night," the tour guide told him.
For the past two years, the park service has enforced new regulations aimed at curbing the excessive drinking that can change a wholesome float trip into an X-rated experience. Terry recalls checking a popular swimming hole one afternoon where a group of about 150 people had gathered to watch an attractive young woman on a bluff as she twirled her bikini top and danced to music blaring from a boom box. When the music ended, she jumped into the river.
By the time she swam to shore, Terry had already written her a citation for disorderly conduct. An onlooker asked what her fine would be. When Terry replied it would amount to about $150, the man asked, "If we get $300 together, will you let her do it again?"
The new regulations outlaw Jell-O shots, beer bongs and kegs. Terry says the new regulations, plus saturation patrols that combine park rangers with law enforcement staff from other agencies, are allowing canoeists to once again have a "national park-type experience."
The National Park Service had its share of controversies during Terry's tenure on the river, from limiting the number of canoes and the size of motors on boats to eliminating non-native species such as wild horses and tame tomato plants. When the park tried to remove a remnant band of wild horses, local residents enlisted U.S. 8th District Rep. Jo Ann Emerson and Sen. Kit Bond to amend the park's enabling legislation to permit them to remain free-roaming in the riverways. Terry says a local group known as the Wild Horse League has done a good job keeping the herd to about 50 horses. The park had better luck eliminating tubs of tomato plants being grown by a canoe concessionaire. He had to dig up his roses, too.
More serious issues await the new superintendent, Terry said. At the top of his list are horse trails and motorized vehicles in and around the rivers and scenic easements.
"Every unmaintained road and undesignated horse trail that penetrates the park boundary is a crack in the ecological integrity of this special place," Terry said.
All these issues will be addressed in a new management plan being drafted now that will guide park policies for the next 25 years.
"This is a critical time for the park," Terry says. "I encourage everyone who cares about these rivers to get involved in the planning process. We have the opportunity to preserve the Current River as one of the most unique river and karst systems in the world. It can be an inspiration for all Americans if we preserve and protect it."
Wetlands Needed to Reduce Flooding Disasters
July 2, 2008
The Wetlands Initiative
Despite a century of massive investment in flood control structures throughout the Upper Mississippi River Basin, flood damages have increased. Indeed, it could be argued that it is because of our emphasis on structural solutions, rather than ecological solutions, that we now face these damages. Clearly new solutions need to be explored.
The Wetlands Initiative believes the solution requires new thinking about the way we use our floodplains. Rather than immediately discharging water downstream after a precipitation event, we need to store that water on and in the ground for days, if not weeks. We need to restore the natural hydrology of the unleveed 100-year flood zone while reconnecting much of the leveed floodplain to its parent river. In short, we should be returning the floodplain to its basic functionsholding floodwaters, improving water quality, and supporting rich, biodiverse habitats.
To assess what it would take to implement this solution, the Wetlands Initiative (TWI) and its partners conducted a study, funded by the McKnight Foundation, to determine how much of the 100-year flood zone was existing or drained wetlands. Called Flood Damage Reduction in the Upper Mississippi River Basin: An Ecological Alternative, the study estimated the potential storage capacity of the floodplain if leveed lands and restored wetlands were pressed into providing the services of flood storage.
TWI began with an analysis of the 100-year floodplain within 77 counties of Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin. Within this study area, we identified the hydric soil, wetland, land use, and leveed areas. Our study area covered 24% of the total 100-year flood zone of the five states. These data were then used to extrapolate landscape characteristics for the entire area of the five states in the basin. We concluded that:
- Almost 7 million acres (37%) of the 18.4 million acres in the 100-year flood zone in the five-state region were wetlands prior to European settlement.
- Approximately 4 million acres of these former wetlands have now been drained for row crops (3 million acres) and for pasture (1 million acres). This means that nearly 60% of the former wetlands on the 100-year flood zone are now used for agriculture.
- Federal levees isolate approximately 2.3 million acres (13%) of floodplain from their parent rivers.
Read More
EPA Extends Lead NAAQS Comment Deadline
July 1, 2008
The Environmental Protection Agency has extended the deadline for submission of written comments on the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for the toxic metal lead. The comment period will continue for an additional two weeks to August 4, 2008 (rather than July 22). The new final rulemaking deadline will be October 15 (rather than Sept 15).
You can get additional info on lead air standard at the EPA website or by contacting the Missouri Coalition for the Environment at 314-727-0600 or moenvironATmoenviron.org.
Officials Worry About Collapse of CAFO Lagoons
June 27, 2008
Kansas City Star
By Karen Dillon
Along the Mississippi River, they're watching the levees. In northern Missouri, they're watching the walls of lagoons holding back millions of gallons of animal waste.
Rains this week were filling waste lagoons on industrial farms, and some were leaking and overflowing.
State officials, worried that lagoon walls might collapse, have told farmers that they can lower lagoon levels by spraying the waste on fields, even though the ground was soaked from rainfall.
"All the lagoons are overflowing or right at the edge," said Karl Fett, regional director of the Department of Natural Resources office in Lee's Summit. "It is a dire situation."
Missouri has never faced the failure of so many lagoons and potential contamination of waterways, state officials and environmentalists said. The lagoons were built to collect waste from animals on industrial farms, which have proliferated in Missouri in recent years.
"I have been with the department since 1999, and I haven't seen anything like this," said Joe Heafner, a natural resources industrial farm inspector.
Many lagoons are 1 to 3 acres and can be 8 to 15 feet deep. They can contain up to 25 million gallons of animal waste.
More rain was expected to fall Friday night in northern Missouri, which includes Carroll, Daviess, Gentry and Harrison counties.
On Wednesday, the state natural resources department issued a notice to factory farm operators in 20 counties after 8 inches in some place, more than 11 inches fell in less than 24 hours.
The notice told operators to begin following emergency management practices to try to prevent lagoons from collapsing. This allows fields to be sprayed with waste.
Normally, operators would spray the waste on dry fields to decrease the chances of the waste getting into waterways.
"I'm not going to deny that it is getting very concerning," said Derrick Steen, the Department of Natural Resources' agriculture chief with the water protection program. "The problem is, it has rained a little bit every week, and now the fields are saturated."
Premium Standard Farms, a major operator of industrial farms, confirmed that waste discharged from lagoons had made its way into a creek and in another instance into a ditch.
The company pledged to work with the state in order to minimize the impact on the environment.
A dispute over factory farms has been ongoing in the state for years because of pollution runoff and odors, but now concerns are heightened.
"This could result in an unprecedented environmental disaster," said Scott Dye, national director of the Sierra Club's Water Sentinel program. Several thousand gallons of waste from a lagoon leaked Thursday into a stream that flows through Dye's family farm near Unionville.
A collapsed lagoon would be even worse, Dye said.
"I have no idea how you clean up 25 million gallons of hog (waste)," he said. "This is exactly why people are opposed to them."
In the 20 northern counties that received the state warning, 122 industrial operations mostly hog farms have been authorized by the state to house thousands of animals under one roof. Numerous smaller factory farms are not tracked by the state.
A recent study by the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production found that factory farm animals present a serious and growing threat to humans, animals and the environment. The facilities are harmful because of pollution and the potential for the spread of disease, the report said.
But the Missouri Farm Bureau contends the report focused only on negative aspects of industrial farming, which keeps food abundant and affordable.
Estil Fretwell, communications director for the farm bureau, said the recent rainfall had created a unique situation.
"These are unusual rains and unusual times," Fretwell said. "Agriculture is really impacted by these rains, and I don't think this is the time to be coming down on farmers."
Heafner, who watched this week as operators applied the waste to a flooded field north of Kansas City, called it the lesser of two evils.
"It was flooded, but they didn't have anywhere else to go with it," he said.
But opponents of factory farms present few good options.
"The lesser of two evils is not a good argument," said Bryce Oates, a spokesman for the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, which supports family farms. "If the ground is saturated, it doesn't go into the ground. It runs off and goes into our water systems anyway, and that is not good for anybody in the state."
River Reclaims Its Natural Floodplain
June 22, 2008
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
By Tim Bryant and Terry Hillig
FOLEY -- Tim Johnson, shirtless and deeply tanned, looked out over his riverfront property, which was under several feet of the flooding Mississippi River.
Obscured by trees standing in algae-covered floodwater was his house, perched on concrete piers to try to keep it above harm. But record flooding in 1993 sent the river into his home, and the Mississippi returned last week.
"I had three feet of water in my house in 1993, and I expect I'll have three feet in it this year," Johnson said as he stood on the levee above his 62 acres.
A hundred yards away, the Mississippi could be heard gushing over the earthen levee. The river went over or through many levees in the area, sending floodwater across farm fields toward Foley, Winfield and elsewhere.
Johnson, 45, a carpenter, loves living on the river. He knows floods are part of his life but is somewhat taken aback by their growing size and frequency.
"It's not the 500-year flood anymore," he said. "It's the 15-year flood."
Environmentalists say the relatively rapid repeat of record floods should come as little surprise. In too many places, levees overtopped or washed away 15 years ago have been rebuilt or raised, they say, adding that squeezing rivers inevitably forces floodwater higher.
Some areas ignored the 1993 lesson that building in flood plains is unwise, said Dan Sherburne, research director for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment. Levee failures on the Mississippi show the river is a nearly irresistible force, he said.
"Levees breaking is an indicator of how the river is returning to its natural flood plain in some respects," Sherburne said.
This month's flooding gives the region another chance to reduce future floods, he said. The first step is to return areas of "good natural flood plains" to the river.
"A lot of old levees are failing or could fail," he said. "If this kind of flooding repeats itself, the question is: Do you invest a lot of money to restore and maintain them, or do you take into account the broader perspective of protecting communities up and down the river?"
Susan Heisel, Missouri director of the Nature Conservancy, said the current flooding demonstrated that levees disconnected the Mississippi from its flood plain.
"You see these levees break and then you see how the projected crests downstream are lowered," she said.
Alan Dooley, the corps' spokesman in St. Louis, said deciding which levees to maintain, strengthen or remove was complicated.
In many instances, levees are sensible and necessary, he said.
The corps began building the world's largest levee system on the lower Mississippi after the colossal flood of 1927 displaced more than 600,000 people.
In 1903, when East St. Louis lacked flood protection, the Mississippi swamped the city. Such flooding now would cause havoc with key rail and highway hubs, Dooley said. Levees in Wood River protect the ConocoPhillips refinery that not only produces gasoline but also much of the jet fuel used in the Midwest, he said.
In short, continuing to invest in levees is worthwhile despite the risk that some might fail, he said.
"In the end, even the best levee is not perfect," Dooley said. "But, hey, life has risk in it."
Adolphus Busch IV, a founder of the Great Rivers Habitat Alliance, said levee breaks allowed the Mississippi to spread naturally across its flood plain.
"This clearly shows how much this amount of flow 50 to 100 years ago would not be that big a deal because the water would have so much more room to spread out," he said.
Busch, who lives in the flood plain in St. Charles County, favors a halt to construction of levees designed to withstand 500-year floods. "You hate to see bad things happen to people, but it's nature," he said.
HOME BUYOUTS
Missouri and Illinois responded to the 1993 flood by offering voluntary buyouts to homeowners in flood-prone areas.
Susie Stonner, spokeswoman for Missouri's Emergency Management Agency, said about 5,000 homes had since been removed. The $100 million program has produced $400 million in savings in emergency services, flood-related rental help, infrastructure rebuilding and other costs, she said.
"That's a very substantial savings," Stonner said. "More important, you've moved people out of harm's way."
St. Charles County led the state with 1,374 residential properties purchased within the 100-year flood plain.
Illinois undertook a 3,100-property buyout program that included an entire town Valmeyer.
"A lot of the places that flooded in 1993 are now open space," said Paul Osman, who administers flood plain programs for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
Osman said communities, including Grafton, that lacked levees but enforced flood plain regulations suffered little flood damage this year.
"It is a very relaxed atmosphere in Grafton right now no worries, a completely different atmosphere than previous floods," he said. "You can feel it."
Osman said federal, state and local officials now discouraged construction in flood plains. He said there were far fewer structures at risk in Calhoun and Jersey counties than 15 years ago.
The 1993 flood forced out hundreds of Grafton residents. Since then, federal, state and local governments have spent more than $2.7 million to buy out 100 homes, businesses and lots.
Before the 1993 flood, Grafton had about 980 residents. It now has about 700 but is slowly growing.
In 1994, city officials led by the late Mayor Gerald "Windy" Nairn established a tax-increment financing district and bought 235 acres of blufftop land that would become the Grafton Hills subdivision. Eighty-two homes have been built there, as well as an elementary school that opened in 2005.
Mike Prough, coordinator of Jersey County's flood plain management program, said that 70 structures in the county were flooded last week but that most were modest weekend or vacation homes. Since 2002, owners of about 25 such structures have agreed to raze them. Prough said there had been 900 buyouts of flood-prone property in the county since 1993.
A levee failure 15 years ago destroyed most of Valmeyer, in Monroe County. But the town was rebuilt on higher ground, thanks to buyouts by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and state, local and private funding.
"We're happy we're 400 feet higher than we were the last time this took place," said Dennis Knobloch, who was mayor during the 1993 flood.
Valmeyer had about 900 people before the 1993 flood. Now, it has about 1,200 and continues to grow, Knobloch said.
The population at Johnson's river home east of Foley is stable. It totals himself, his wife, Sandy, and their affable golden retriever, Diamond.
Last week, Diamond waded in the floodwater, then rolled in the grass atop the levee to dry himself in the sun, oblivious to the potential danger of levee failure.
Johnson plans to increase his home's elevation this fall by putting steel columns on top of the piers already holding up the house. He has no plan to move.
"You could live in hurricane alley," he said. "You could live in the flood plain. You could live in town with all the traffic. You just have to pick it."
CWIP Protects Against All Sorts of Costs
June 18, 2008
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Letter to the Editor by Margaret Hermes
David Miller rails against activists who succeeded in gathering signatures to put a "construction work in progress" (CWIP) measure on the ballot in the early 1980s. CWIP was approved by the voters two to one. Miller claims this vote is responsible for increasing electric rates.
I find flaws with his logic. Without CWIP, ratepayers not shareholders would have been footing the bill for a second nuclear reactor at Callaway even before they would have been receiving power generated by it. He cites our aging power plants, Callaway #1 among them, as cause for concern, but had the second reactor been built with ratepayers' dollars, it, too, would now be one of the aging plants he warns against.
Mr. Miller also fails to take into account the high costs of generating nuclear power once a plant is built. There are the costs of exposure from "routine releases" of radioactivity and from catastrophic accidents. There are the uncountable costs of disposal of radioactive wastes wastes that will remain extremely hazardous as far into the future as anyone can imagine as no technology exists as yet for safe disposal, let alone affordable disposal. CWIP has protected us from doubling our stockpile of those wastes. There are the costs of safeguarding these huge stores of nuclear plant wastes from political terrorists and unstable individuals in order to prevent them from being turned into weapons of mass destruction. There is the cost that results from diverting dollars from the development of safe, "green" energy sources.
Despite Mr. Miller's insistence, CWIP has protected us against costs to our bodies and our environment as well as to our wallets.
Residents Press EPA on Lead Standard
June 13, 2008
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
By Kim McGuire
Citing lead's harmful health effects, St. Louis-area residents urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday to adopt an air quality standard for lead that's tougher than what the federal agency has proposed.
Federal environmental regulators traveled to the Omni Hotel in St. Louis to take public comment on its plan to reduce lead air pollution, a harmful neurotoxin proven to cause developmental and learning problems in children. The agency also presented its plan in Baltimore on Thursday.
Last month, the EPA proposed strengthening the current standard of 1.5 micrograms of lead per cubic meter of air. Missouri is the only place in the nation with an operating lead smelter and does not always meet the current lead air standard.
Under the EPA's proposal, the new air quality standard for lead would fall within a range of 0.10 and 0.30 micrograms per cubic meter. But the agency said it would accept comment on a standard below 0.10 and up to 0.50 micrograms per cubic meter.
The proposed standard would affect several sources that emit lead, including iron and steel foundries, waste incinerators, cement manufacturers and gasoline used in piston-engine aircraft.
The majority of the 20 or so people who spoke at Thursday's meeting said the agency should adopt a maximum threshold that does not exceed 0.20 micrograms per meter a number recommended by its own scientific advisers.
"Why raise the high end of this range?" asked Judy Riehl, of the St. Louis Lead Prevention Coalition. "We cannot incrementally gamble with our public health."
Some residents of Herculaneum, where the smelter is located, told EPA officials what it's like living there. Catherine Malugen described how thoroughly she wiped down her children and dog anytime they came in the house from outside. She said that high levels of lead were found in her house that were not attributed to paint.
Larry O' Leary, who sits on a local citizens advisory group, pressed EPA to change the way it monitors for lead in the air from a quarterly system to a monthly basis.
"We live day to day," he said. "I breathe more often than a quarterly basis."
Officials with the Doe Run Company, which operates the Herculaneum smelter, did not directly comment on the EPA proposal. Aaron Miller, the company's environmental management coordinator, delivered a presentation that explained the significance of lead in everyday products and some of the company's environmental achievements, including an 82 percent reduction in lead emissions, from about 310 tons of lead in 1979 to about 24 tons in 2006.
"We all share a common goal of clean air for ourselves and our children," he said.
Asked by an EPA official what the company thought of the proposal, Miller said, "EPA has at its disposal many qualified science and health officials that will advise them on the standard and I'm sure EPA will come to an appropriate conclusion on that standard."
Miller later explained that the company is still working on the comments it plans to submit to the agency. The deadline for submitting comments is July 21 and the agency expects to issue a final rule by mid-September.
The EPA proposal was spurred by a successful 2004 lawsuit filed by attorneys for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment and a Herculaneum couple, Jack and Leslie Warden.
EPA hosts meeting in St. Louis on lead
June 10, 2008
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
By Kim McGuire
When the Environmental Protection Agency was discussing where to hold national meetings regarding its proposal to reduce lead air pollution, one location was obvious: St. Louis.
That's because Missouri is home to the last operating lead smelter in the nation. And Jefferson County where the smelter is located is the only place in the nation that violates the current federal standard for lead, a neurotoxin particularly harmful to children.
"It's because of the smelter," said Cathy Milbourn, an EPA spokeswoman about the meeting location. "But I think the most important thing to keep in mind is that EPA is taking a strong step to protect the public from lead sources around the country."
EPA has proposed a new air pollution standard for lead, which is a range that's 80 percent to 93 percent tougher than the current limit.
On Thursday, agency officials from Washington and Kansas City will be at the Omni Majestic Hotel to take public comments regarding the lead proposal, which is expected to finalized in September.
Current and former residents of Herculaneum, where the Doe Run Co. operates the smelter, say they will attend, as will local environmental groups, state environmental regulators and lead industry officials.
"I was almost in tears when I heard about the proposal," said Leslie Warden, a longtime Doe Run foe. "Finally, this validates what we've been saying all along our children are entitled to protection."
Lead is a neurotoxin that interrupts normal brain development and has been linked to behavioral problems in children. Adults can tolerate higher levels of lead than children can, but can still can suffer from health problems.
Concerned about the health effects of airborne lead, a group of Missouri residents spurred EPA to revise its standards.
In 2004, attorneys for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment and a Herculaneum couple, Warden and her husband, Jack, sued the EPA, demanding that the agency update the standard. They cited several new studies that showed children are harmed by lead at much lower levels than what was known when the current air pollution limit was set in 1978.
In 2006, the agency published a paper that concluded that the EPA should assess whether a federal standard was needed at all.
Then, last month the EPA proposed a range of limits that are significantly tougher than the old standard.
Doe Run officials say they are still unsure how the proposal could affect their operations.
"Our goal is and will continue to be to reach attainment of the standard with whatever is out there," said Aaron Miller, the company's environmental management coordinator.
While some Missouri residents cheered the move, national environmental groups argued that no amount of lead in the air is safe and EPA should have outlawed the pollution.
Missouri environmental regulators, however, will tell EPA officials on Thursday that they support the new standard and are pleased that the agency didn't abandon federal limits as once was suggested.
"That just wasn't an option we could support," said John Rustige an environmental engineer with the state Department of Natural Resources. "We're happy EPA moved forward."
Rustige said the department is still assessing which lead sources might have trouble meeting the tougher new standards.
On the department's radar are old lead mines and mills, metal processing facilities and aviation fuel, which still contains lead.
Rustige said that process might prove difficult as the state doesn't have air monitors in all of the places where lead might be a problem.
One of the places where the state does have a network of monitors is in Jefferson County, near the Doe Run smelter.
At times, those monitors have registered levels of lead that exceed the current standard of 1.5 micrograms of lead per cubic meter of air.
For example, for the first quarter of this year, two of the 10 air monitors near the smelter recorded lead levels that were 2.0 micrograms per cubic meter of air or more. The proposed standard for lead is a range between 0.10 to 0.30 micrograms per cubic meter of air.
Company officials said the exceedances were due to work being done at the facility that created dust. The facility met the standard during the last quarter of 2007.
Even though the plant has made several upgrades to its pollution control capabilities, Department of Natural Resources officials say they're not sure how Doe Run will be able to meet the new standard.
"I just don't know if it's possible," Rustige said.
Doe Run officials say the EPA proposal appears to have some flexibility that would allow them to meet a tougher standard.
For example, although EPA has proposed a range that has a maximum of 0.30 micrograms per cubic meter, it is seeking comment on a range that has a maximum of 0.50 micrograms per cubic meter.
The company also may look at technology-based options, Miller said.
Study: CAFOs affect neighbors' property
May 23, 2008
The Joplin Globe
By Wally Kennedy
GOLDEN CITY, Mo. - Darvin Bentlage has been connecting the dots, and he thinks they could spell trouble for his cattle.
Bentlage has three Angus herds in Barton County, where the number of hog CAFOs -- confined animal feeding operations -- is increasing. These CAFOs hold up to 2,500 hogs under one roof. Liquid waste from the hogs is put into lagoons and spread onto nearby farmland as fertilizer.
In 1998, Bentlage purchased 389 acres for his 1,160-acre farm operation and placed an Angus herd on it.
"I put cattle on it in 2000. I never had twins or I rarely ever had twins with three different herds. In 2001, I started having twins from 28 cows. Some were deformed. I have had 11 sets of twins since 2001. That's way above the national average," he said.
Bentlage said he should expect one set of twins from a herd of 200. He was getting one set out of 25.
"But what really bothered me was that they didn't survive and some of them were deformed," he said. "Only three of the 11 sets of twins survived. They all went full term, but some were born with no front legs or they were born hairless. It just seems odd that with the two other herds I never have twins."
Bentlage said his herd is downstream from a hog CAFO lagoon, which is 12 to 13 years old, and he wonders if wastewater has made its way into a creek used by the herd with the excessive numbers of twins.
"Lagoons are known to leak," Bentlage alleged. "I know hog hormones affect cattle. We do embryo transplants. They use pig hormones to get cows to produce more eggs."
Pew study
Two weeks ago, Bentlage received a copy of a new report by The Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production in the United States.
He didn't think much about it until he got to the part that sounded an alarm about "the routine use of specially-formulated feeds that incorporate antibiotics, other antimicrobials and hormones to prevent disease and induce rapid growth" in confined animals.
The report said the practice should be restricted because of growing concerns about the potential impact on humans and animals.
The recommendation was among several made by a 15-member panel of experts who have expertise in public policy, veterinary medicine, public health, agriculture, animal welfare and rural culture that looked at the impact of CAFOs over a period of 2 1/2 years. The commission was chaired by former Kansas Gov. John Carlin.
Bob Martin, chairman of the Pew group that looked at CAFOs, said the concern raised by Bentlage about his herd is justified.
"We have seen it elsewhere. Specific public health problems and threats to other species," he said. "It's what happens when you pack these animals together so closely. It's particularly true with hog CAFOs and their liquid-waste management. We have seen that in Iowa and South Carolina."
The Pew panel, he said, also documented that the downwind plume from hog CAFOs may cause higher rates of asthma among children stemming from the release of ammonia hydrogen sulfide and particulate matter from buildings in which the animals are confined.
"There are all sorts of pathogens in the waste," Martin said. "It sits untreated in the lagoon and then it is sprayed on the ground untreated. It contains pathogens, excess antibiotics, excess hormones and heavy metals. Anything fed to the animal and excreted out can show up in the water."
The Pew panel also found that the industry is not sufficiently regulated to protect nearby residents.
"Regulation varies widely from state to state. Most state regulation is not adequate. There are laws on the books, but not enough resources out in the field to regulate CAFOs," he said. "We found that the agro-industrial complex has an overwhelmingly and undo amount of influence at most every level of government. They dominant the research, too."
More research
Bentlage says he wants to find out whether his herd is being impacted by the hog CAFO and plans to contact a veterinarian with the College of Agriculture at the University of Missouri-Columbia to do a study. He also is looking for a laboratory to test water in the creek for antibiotics and growth hormones.
Dr. Robert Zinnikas, with Four Corners Embryo Transfer, of Langley, Okla., Bentlage's veterinarian, said he would have do a lot more research before he could take a position on what's happening with Bentlage's herd.
Zinnikas, who handles artificial insemination chores for Bentlage, questioned whether the same bull was responsible for the twins. If so, there could be something wrong with the blood line; Bentlage said different bulls were used.
Bentlage and some of his neighbors have been at odds with Synergy LLC, of Lamar, the owner of the hogs, and the company challenged a vote last year by township residents. The residents attempted to control CAFOs at the township level by giving the township board authority to regulate the numbers of animals in a CAFO.
The board unanimously voted to place the issue on the ballot last fall. It was approved by 81 percent of the township's voters.
A judge who was appointed to hear the case sided with the summary provided by the lawyers representing the companies.
That judge cited a zoning exemption for "farm structures," and an alleged violation of the Missouri Sunshine Law by the township board and zoning board as reasons for his ruling. The zoning was overturned.
Rebecca Haskins, a spokeswoman for Synergy, could not be reached for comment by telephone to respond to Bentlage's concerns.
But Paul Stefan, who owns a 10 percent stake in the hogs, said the use of antibiotics is strictly managed by the operators of the CAFOs and that he is not sure whether growth hormones are used with Synergy hogs.
Stefan also said the environment in modern hog barns is much better than it used to be and that the use of antibiotics to keep animals healthy in close quarters has actually declined from 30 years ago.
As far as Bentlage's herd is concerned, Stefan said, "I think some other factor is doing that. I like facts. This is just a theory. I think Bentlage has some kind of vendetta against this."
Stefan said cattle with access to creeks and streams, such as those owned by Bentlage, are contributing contaminants to the water, too.
Stefan said more CAFOs are coming to Barton County, saying "a modest expansion" is planned. As for state oversight by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, he said, "Yes they do come and check us out. We've been turned in by neighbors, and they have to come out every time there is a complaint. We have been visited by the DNR."
Stefan said the hog CAFOs provide quality food at low cost to the American consumer. That echoes comments made last fall by Dan Cross, general manager of Synergy, an Iowa-based hog company with five breeding farms and seven independent nurseries in Barton County. He said farmers would make less money and consumers pay more for meat by raising pigs the old-fashioned way. He also said he's not convinced it's possible to raise enough animals to feed everyone without CAFOs.
"The hog business is becoming more difficult all the time, and it takes a larger scope of operation to even make it profitable," he said.
'Roulette'
Zach McGuire, a farmer who lives near Bentlage, has taken his airplane aloft to count the number of CAFOs in Barton County and where they are located. McGuire also was a member of the Richland Township Zoning Board at the time of the vote that was overturned by the judge.
"They are all, it seems, connected to a theme in that they are placed next to a creek or a stream. It's going on all over the county and nobody seems to notice it," he said. "The Web site for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources shows six registered CAFOs in the county.
"I have counted 60 Class 2 and 11 Class 1 poultry and hogs CAFO in the eastern two-thirds of Barton County."
Bentlage questions the cumulative effect of the CAFOs and the fact that so many lagoons are positioned near creeks and streams.
"Parking a lagoon right on a creek, well, that's just Russian roulette," Bentlage said. "The Pew report goes right along with what we have been saying. It was a 2 1/2-year study where they went out to find out the good things about CAFOs. That study more or less speaks the truth. These CAFOs, because there are so many of them, are affecting country people and their livestock."
The Pew panel also found that agricultural corporations can control the market, shutting out independent farmers from the marketplace.
"It has created real problems for rural communities," Martin said. "The contract growers are really serfs on their own land. The contracts are very restrictive. They can only sell their hogs to a contract producer.
"We are recommending that the federal government aggressively enforce anti-trust laws to limit the power of integrators to give family producers a better shot at the market. We need new laws to help level the playing field so that everyone can get access to a market, not just the contract growers. They can't find a place to take your hogs to slaughter because the slaughter houses are all owned by the parent companies."
Martin said the existing system that is used to raise hogs is not the only model available to growers, but it is the least costly way to do business.
"We're not trying to go back to the 1950s, but there is a confinement system called a hoop barn that is better for the animals. The waste is composted. You don't need hormones and antibiotics. But more people would be involved in agriculture.
"What is happening now is not good for the animals or good for the environment, but the company makes more profit."
Rock Port, MO Gets Power From Wind
May 20, 2008
ABC News
Rock Port, MO gets all its power from wind. Watch the video on YouTube.
Clean Energy Initiative Submits 170,000 Signatures
May 6, 2008
JEFFERSON CITY, MO Missourians for Cleaner Cheaper Energy today turned in approximately 170,000 signatures for the Clean Energy Initiative to the Secretary of State's office.
More than 400 Missouri volunteers statewide circulated petition pages for the initiative, which would require investor-owned utilities to generate or purchase 15% of their electricity from clean energy sources, such as wind and solar power. Approximately 170,000 signatures were turned in from six US Congressional districts.
"We are pleased that so many Missourians have gathered signatures to put this clean energy measure on the ballot. Using clean, renewable energy works for everyone in Missouri, and voters will now get the chance to vote on the future of energy in Missouri," said P.J. Wilson, a spokesperson for the campaign.
Twenty-five other states have already enacted similar renewable energy standards to increase production of clean energy and promote energy independence. Renewable energy sources are often local, such as a wind turbine on a local farm. Using smarter power sources is good for the environment and is great for the economy. Because renewable energy is local, consumer prices won't be affected by foreign markets and risks. With the Clean Energy Initiative, Missourians will see the difference in the air, in the river, and in the local economy but they will not see an increase in their utility bills.
Missourians for Cleaner Cheaper Energy enjoys broad-based support statewide from community, labor, business, environmental and religious organizations.
EPA Proposes Stronger Air Quality Standards for Lead
May 1, 2008
EPA Newsroom
Washington, DC -- Today, EPA is taking steps toward revising the nation's air quality standards for lead for the first time in 30 years, proposing to dramatically strengthen the standards to reflect the latest science on lead and health.
"By tackling lead emissions, EPA is keeping America's clean air progress moving forward," said EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson. "With today's proposal, we can write the next chapter in America's clean air story."
The proposal recommends tightening the primary standard to protect public health by 80 to 93 percent. It would revise the existing standard of 1.5 micrograms per cubic meter of air to a level within the range of 0.10 to 0.30 micrograms per cubic meter. The agency is taking comment on alternative levels within a range from less than 0.10 to 0.50 micrograms per cubic meter.
Since 1980, emissions of lead to the air have dropped nearly 98 percent nationwide, largely the result of the agency's phaseout of lead in gasoline. And average levels of lead in the air are far below the level of the 1978 standard. Lead in the air today comes from a variety of sources, including smelters, iron and steel foundries, and general aviation gasoline. About 1,300 tons of lead are emitted to the air each year, according to EPA's most recent estimates.
Lead that is emitted into the air can be inhaled or, after it settles out of the air, can be ingested. Ingestion is the main route of human exposure. Once in the body, lead is rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream and can affect many organ systems.
More than 6,000 studies since 1990 have examined the effects of lead on health and the environment. Evidence from health studies indicates that lead in the blood can cause harm at much lower levels than previously understood.
Exposure to lead is associated with a broad range of health effects, including harm to the central nervous system, cardiovascular system, kidneys and immune system. Children are particularly vulnerable: Exposures to low levels of lead early in life have been linked to effects on IQ, learning, memory and behavior.
Lead also can cause toxic effects in plants and can impair reproduction and growth in birds, mammals and other organisms. EPA is proposing that the secondary standard, to protect the environment, be identical to the primary standard.
EPA will accept public comment for 60 days after the proposal is published in the Federal Register. The agency will hold two public hearings on June 12, 2008: one in St. Louis and one in Baltimore. EPA must issue a final decision on the lead standard by Sept. 15, 2008.
Report Calls Factory Farms a Threat
April 29, 2008
Kansas City Star
By Karen Dillon
Industrial farms where animals are kept tightly confined present a serious and growing threat to humans, animals and the environment, a private commission reported Tuesday.
The facilities can be harmful not only to workers and neighbors but also to others because of pollution and the potential for the spread of disease, according to the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production report.
"One of the most serious unintended consequences of industrial food animal production is the growing public health threat of these types of facilities," the report said. "There is increasing urgency to chart a new course" in agriculture, which has been shifting over the last 50 years from family farms to large livestock meat producers.
The report came out of a 2 1/2-year project of The Pew Charitable Trusts, a nonprofit philanthropic organization, and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
It includes a number of recommendations, such as banning use of antibiotics to promote growth and stricter regulations on handling of millions of tons of animal waste.
But Garrett Hawkins, Missouri Farm Bureau national affairs director, said the report went too far and would force animal production to be shipped overseas.
"Essentially you are talking about driving production to Mexico, Brazil and other countries," said Hawkins. "It makes me question how can American family farmers and ranchers compete in that type of environment if those regulations that they call for go into effect? The question becomes how does that impact food security in this country?"
Hawkins added that a global economy would make it even more difficult for producers to compete under new requirements.
John Carlin, a former Kansas governor who was chairman of the 15-member commission, said the recommendations attempted to strike a balance.
"The American public has a growing concern about public health and their food," said Carlin, who now is executive-in-residence and teaches political science at Kansas State University. "We are not saying we can go back to the good old days of just small family farms."
Another commission member was Dan Glickman, former U.S. secretary of agriculture and congressman from Kansas and now the chief executive officer of the Motion Picture Association of America.
The commission studied industrial livestock facilities that housed dairy cows, hogs, chickens and other livestock. It addressed four broad areas of concerns about them, including their impact on:
Public health and the use of nontherapy antimicrobials for animal growth.
Humans and the environment because of massive amounts of animal waste.
Animals and whether their confinement is humane.
Rural life and how that has changed because of a lack of competition in farming.
Commission members said Tuesday that they hoped Congress and state and local governments would study the report and implement at least some of its recommendations.
Large-scale meat production already is controversial in Missouri, where the industry has grown rapidly. Kansas also has industrial farms, but they haven't been as controversial.
Regulators and residents have sued over odors and pollution in Missouri, where hog farms are common in the north and chicken facilities in the south.
There also has been a yearslong battle over regulations should the state or local government have control? The report recommends more power should go to local governments because state regulators cannot take into account all the particularities of a site.
In addition, the report says states do not have enough agents to inspect the regulated farms. There also are thousands of industrial, or "factory," farms nationwide that are not regulated because of their smaller size, but need to be because of pollution.
Rhonda Perry said that debate applied to Missouri.
"That is a major issue we need to address in the next legislature," said Perry, a livestock farmer and program director of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, which represents family farms. "In Barton County alone there are thousands and thousands of hogs in one area of the county, and there are no regulations" that apply to those farms.
Perry said the report had some very good recommendations. They include:
Phasing out and banning antibiotics and other antimicrobials that are used to promote growth but not treat illnesses. Experts believe the drugs are in the food supply and more people are becoming infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The cost of a ban would not be significant to producers, the report said.
Improving animal disease monitoring and tracking. The tracking system would follow food animals from birth to consumption and would include federal agency oversight of all aspects of the system.
Creating a new system of laws and regulations to deal with farm waste. The commission recommended that industrial farms be regulated as rigorously as other industries and factories. The regulations would outline what states must do to prevent pollution and to protect public health and the environment.
Phasing out within 10 years "all intensive confinement systems that restrict natural movement and normal behaviors" of livestock. That would include swine gestation crates, restrictive swine birthing crates, cages used to house multiple hens, and the individual housing of calves to produce white veal.
Increasing competition in the livestock industry. Livestock production from birth to the slaughter house has become concentrated, giving way to concerns that federal antitrust laws are not being enforced. To restore competition in the industry, the commission recommended enforcing existing antitrust laws.
Download a PDF of the Final Report
Are Missouri's Evangelicals Going Green?
April 16, 2008
St. Louis Platform
By Patricia Rice
Across the country, evangelical Christians are going green. To be sure, many are still leery about jumping onto a bandwagon already filled with in their view ultraliberal, even "unwashed," activists. Yet, in recent months, several national evangelical leaders have urged their fellow believers to protect the environment.
"We believe that our world was given to us by our Creator, and we must care for it," said the Rev. Francis S. Page, national president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest evangelical denomination, in a letter this winter. Page said his Southern Baptist members have long stood for stewardship of God's gifts but have not spoken outside of their assemblies about environment protection.
Evangelicals are not turning the volume up on the issue because it's a civics lesson. They say their actions are a Bible-based, moral imperative. In this, they join many other religious groups, including Catholics, Buddhists, Jews, mainline Protestants, Orthodox Christians and Sikhs and others who have talked about theological environmental obligations for decades.
This spring and summer, as candidates for public office make their rounds, they can expect evangelical Christians to pepper them with environmental questions, some Missouri evangelical Christian leaders said in interviews. Among their concerns are: air pollution, clean streams, household and hazardous waste disposal and tax credits for green construction or retrofitting. In interviews, the most popular issue among environmentalist evangelical Christians is alternative energy politics in Missouri.
GOD IS GOOD -- AND GREEN
Is God green? That's what a Clayton evangelical pastor asked three dozen college students in a bible session called "Open Swim" on a recent Sunday night.
"That's a no brainer, of course: God is green, he created the universe and all that's in it," said the Rev. B.J. Otey (left), Sunday evening service pastor at Central Presbyterian Church. (His evangelical congregation believes in the inerrancy of the Bible, which differentiates it from the Presbyterian Church USA denomination.)
"This issue is really on people's minds, and we need to bring it forward, see it from a faith view. It is much more than politics, it is about caring for God's gifts. It's about making good choices every day," Otey said.
After Otey's theological chat, church member Erin Noble took the floor and suggested practical ways to make eco-friendly choices. The students at the event from the University of Missouri, Washington University, St. Louis University and Webster University were eager to go greener.
Noble also offered more opportunities for them to use academic savvy to examine public policy on clear water, wetlands protection, air quality and alternative energy. Noble's day job is the Missouri Coalition for the Environment's outreach director, which fits neatly with her evangelical beliefs.
At the end of the Open Swim session, she collected the students' signatures to put a renewable energy measure on the November ballot. In recent weeks, Noble has recruited hundreds of volunteers to gather the signatures of Missouri registered voters for the Missouri Clean Energy Initiative. If passed, Missouri public electric utilities would have to green up by getting at least 15 percent of their product from clean renewal energy sun, wind, geothermal or sustainable energy crops in a dozen years.
"People understand that a law would make a difference," Noble say. "College students get this issue, they care about this."
THE CREED'S FIRST LINE
Still, there is just enough edginess about the green movement that one St. Louis evangelical theologian likes to tease his students with the line: "Is it OK for Lutherans to observe Earth Day?"
On Earth Day, April 22, millions will celebrate and educate themselves about caring for the planet and its people. Some evangelical Christians shake their heads in disapproval at even the name Earth Day, which they say sounds like a fling with a pagan Mother Earth.
"Of course, it is fine to celebrate Earth Day," said theologian Charles Arand (left), a professor at Concordia Seminary in Clayton. "Martin Luther had a robust attitude about the earth."
Arand is one of three professors at Concordia Seminary who teach biblical roots of environmental theology. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod is an evangelical denomination proclaiming the inerrancy of the Bible, unlike the less conservative Lutheran group called the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
"Those who see the earth as a prison or a place to endure until they are released to heaven may ask 'why bother?' to care for the earth," Arand said. But if Christians listen as they pray the first line of the Apostles Creed or the Nicene Creed: "I Believe in One God ... Creator of heaven and earth," they will treat God's creation with respect.
"We need to give more attention to the first line," Arand said. "Then acting as God's stewards will be more basic to Christians."
He'd like his seminarians to get beyond any skittishness about Earth Day and to visit "Going Green" informational booths at the Earth Day festival in Forest Park, three blocks from their campus. Mixing with people who disagree with evangelicals on other heartfelt issues is not bad, he said.
"Just as there are many ways to oppose abortion, including violent ways that we disapprove of, there are many ways to preserve the earth," he said.
Patricia Rice has written about the environment and religion for many years, both regionally and internationally.
Energy Activists Want Wind, Sun, Trash
April 8, 2008
South Side Journal
By Shawn Clubb
Jane Gramlich takes steps to conserve energy whenever possible.
She and her partner, Steven Sloan, have switched to a high-efficiency heating system in their home in the Southwest Garden neighborhood. They've switched to compact fluorescent light bulbs. They even hold potluck dinners at their home to engage friends in discussions of energy conservation.
Gramlich has now found a new way to try to make an impact on the energy she uses. She has begun collecting signatures as part of an effort to require utilities to obtain at least 15 percent of the energy they sell from renewable sources by 2020.If Gramlich and other like-minded people collect 150,000 by May 4, they could place an initiative on the November ballot calling for a mandatory renewable energy standard.
PJ Wilson, executive director of Renew Missouri, one of the agencies seeking the renewable energy standard, said the effort is aimed toward energy independence, energy diversification and to stave off global climate change.
Wilson said he became aware of the country's dependence on foreign oil after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He said producing energy in Missouri through renewable resources would lessen the need to use diesel-fuel powered trains to bring coal here from other states.
"The theme here is localization and energy independence. Ultimately in looking to the future we're not going to be running our cars on gasoline forever," Wilson said. "We're going to be running them on electricity. And where is that electricity going to come from."
Renew Missouri states on its Web site - www.renewmo.org - that 86 percent of the energy used in Missouri comes from coal-fired power plants. It also states that more than $9 billion per year is used to purchase coal from other states.
Under the proposed initiative, wind power, solar power, landfill gas and energy created from plant matter would all qualify as renewable energy.
Erin Noble of Missouri Coalition for the Environment, based in University City, said the group rallied its volunteer base to gather signatures to put the initiative on the ballot. They gathered signatures outside of Busch Stadium during the Cardinals' home opener and has plans to gather more at the St. Louis Marathon on April 6 and the municipal election on April 8.
Noble said 25 states have put renewable energy standards in place. Colorado and Washington did it through public ballot initiatives. The people of Columbia, Mo., passed a similar initiative in their city. Columbia Water and Light is now exceeding its targets for use of renewable energy, Noble said. It uses wind power generated in northwest Missouri and energy from landfills in Columbia and Jefferson City.
"The tides are turning. More and more people are understanding the importance of renewable energy," Noble said.
While energy independence and localization are big issued for Wilson, Noble said Missouri Coalition for the Environment is most concerned about global climate change. She said coal-fired power plants produce mercury and other pollutants.
However, Noble said renewable energy can appeal to many groups. She said it can create jobs and investment in rural areas.
Three wind farms operated in northwest Missouri by Wind Capital Group represent $300 million in investment, Noble said.
"I imagine it could create green jobs in the St. Louis area as well," Noble said.
Wilson said the only concern he has heard from Missourians is that a move to more renewable power would drastically increase the electric rates they pay. He said that is why a provision of the proposed ballot initiative stipulates the change cannot affect rates by more than 1 percent. He said that would be in line with how rates have changed in other states that adopted renewable energy standards.
Tim Fox, a spokesman for AmerenUE, said the company supports the development of renewable energy and will soon commit to purchasing 100 megawatts of wind power to add to AmerenUE's system. However, he said AmerenUE does not support mandates.
Fox said the price of renewable energy is high and there is competition for parts for wind turbines and other equipment used to generate the power. For a wind farm project to come together, Fox said, a company would need a lot of land, plenty of wind and a way to connect them to a power transmission system.
"At this point it's difficult in Missouri to build wind farms," he said.
AmerenUE would prefer the market dictate use of renewable energy, Fox said. If more becomes available the price goes down, it would become a more attractive option, he said.
An effort to pass a similar measure in the state legislature failed. An aide for state Sen. Joan Bray, D-St. Louis, said Senate Bill 1262 - which is making its way through the legislative process - is the third attempt by legislators to create a renewable energy standard. She said Bray has offered or supported amendments to each bill to make it mandatory.
Wilson said it would be cheaper to have the legislature pass its bill, but he doesn't believe there is time to wait for the legislature to come around.
Noble said politicians seem to lag behind the general public in supporting such issues.
"This hasn't happened nationally. This hasn't happened locally. We know we have to take the initiative and bring it to the voters," Noble said. "We're going to make it happen ourselves."
EPA Asked to Move Radioactive Waste
March 28, 2008
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
By Kim McGuire
Community members urged federal environmental regulators Thursday to remove radioactive waste from a local landfill which they say is vulnerable to flooding from the nearby Missouri River.
Those comments were made during a meeting sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency, which is once again seeking public input on its plan for the 200-acre West Lake landfill, a Superfund site slated for federal cleanup. The public has until April 9 to give comments on the proposed cleanup plan
By-products of uranium ore processing from the old Mallinkrodt Chemical Works' facility near downtown St. Louis were stored near Lambert Field and later blended with soil that ended up in the municipal landfill in the 1970s.
Rather than hauling the waste off-site, EPA officials proposed in 2006 to leave it there and place rock and rubble over the landfill to contain the waste. Since then, however, the agency has received many comments regarding the landfill's location in a floodplain. Some have questioned whether the Earth City levee, which is about one mile west of the landfill, might someday fail.
Last week's flooding on the Meramec River, "clearly showed us that floodplain sites are in jeopardy," said Dan McKeel, a retired Washington University associate professor in the School of Medicine.
Kathleen Logan Smith, director of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, questioned why the waste at West Lake would be left in place when similar radioactive waste in the St. Louis area was transported to an out-of-state facility for disposal.
"It's the same stuff," she said. "And it was illegal and wrong to dump it there in 1973 and it is illegal and wrong to leave it there."
EPA officials have said leaving the waste in the landfill is less risky than digging it up and shipping it elsewhere. They plan to monitor groundwater at the site to ensure that pollution is not escaping the landfill.
Jerry Leigh, a representative for the Earth City Levee District, said that levee has withstood all the major floods since it was built in 1972 including the record-breaking event from 1993. He showed photos of last week's floodwaters pooling far below the top of the structure.
"It was no big deal, folks not for the Earth City levee," Leigh said.
Similarly, Matt Hunn, an engineer with the Corps' St. Louis District, explained the agency's inspection program and added that the levee has received good marks for many years.
Radioactive Wastes On the Flood Plain: Let the Corps Haul It Away
March 27, 2008
St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial
By Kathleen Logan Smith
Dumping high-level radioactive residues in an unlined hole in the ground in the Missouri River floodplain at Earth City was illegal in 1973. And it was wrong. Leaving those wastes at the West Lake landfill site, as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency now proposes, perpetuates that crime and endangers the next 23 million generations of humans living nearby and downstream from it.
Leaving radioactive material in the floodplain upstream from St. Louis' drinking water intakes puts generations at risk of genetic mutations, cancers, birth defects and disorders of the reproductive, immune, cardiovascular and endocrine systems. Genetic damage can be passed down to successive generations. Must our grandchildren be burdened with such a toxic inheritance?
In 1973, someone -- whose identity never was investigated sufficiently -- paid truck drivers to haul radioactive waste from Latty Avenue in Hazelwood to the West Lake landfill on St. Charles Rock Road near Earth City. The waste was left over from two decades of Mallinckrodt's uranium processing for the U.S. government in the 1940s and 1950s.
Similar radioactive wastes had been stockpiled at a site north of Lambert Airport until they were excavated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and shipped out of state to a federally licensed waste facility. Wastes also are being removed from the downtown Mallinckrodt site, the Latty Avenue site in Hazelwood and Coldwater Creek.
Authority to clean up those sites is the responsibility of the Corps of Engineers under a program called the Formerly Utilized Site Remedial Action Program, and the cleanup is proceeding. The West Lake site, however, falls under the EPA's Superfund program, which has been gutted for decades and rendered virtually impotent. Thus, this site will not be cleaned up. Instead, it only will be covered over, literally, with clay and rock.
That leaves a radioactive time bomb in a floodplain. It is subject to the relentless flow of groundwater through the highly porous river bottom soil -- an underground conduit for contaminated water to flow into the major source of St. Louis' drinking water: the Missouri River.
Above ground, meanwhile, the risk is flooding. By leaving the wastes where they are, the EPA is counting on the Earth City levee to stand for more than 700 million years between the Missouri River and some of the hottest uranium residues on the planet.
In a letter last month, Doyle Childers, director of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, assured our organization that projections made for his department found that the floodwaters at the level of the 1993 floods would rise no higher than the base of the West Lake landfill. However, Missouri River researchers suggest that Mr. Childers' figures may not be accurate because many new, larger levees upstream increase the pressures on the Earth City levee.
As our climate warms and floods become a more and more common event, do we really want to risk a catastrophic, radioactive disaster for the sake of substandard government oversight?
As the uranium at West Lake decays over time, it gives birth to different radioactive substances: radium, actinium, radon, polonium, radioactive lead, bismuth and thallium. Some of these cell-damaging elements are difficult to detect in drinking water. And they make an attractive target for suicidal terrorists.
The EPA has ignored the West Lake site for 30 years, allowing contaminants to erode from the surface onto adjacent properties where unwitting workers have pushed around piles of it with earth movers. It is hardly secure. It is extremely unsafe.
At 6 p.m. today in the multi-purpose room at the Bridgeton Community Center (4201 Fee Fee Road), the EPA is scheduled to present its plan for the future of the West Lake landfill and the St. Louis drinking water sources downstream. However, concerned local citizens believe that authority for the site should be transferred from the EPA to the Corps of Engineers, something only Congress can do.
It is time to call out the corps.
Kathleen Logan Smith is executive director of Missouri Coalition for the Environment.
Restoring the Missouri River
March 26, 2008
St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial
For 60 years, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been managing the Missouri River as if it were nothing but a barge canal.
Now the corps under pressure from environmentalists and the federal government finally is trying to restore the river to something approaching a natural state. But Missouri officials seem determined to thwart the effort. The state's foolish and short-sighted approach favors agricultural interests at the expense of everything else.
Restoring native fish species, as the corps is trying to do, would boost tourism and improve the environment. During periods of high water, the corps' management plan also would relieve some of the strain from the flood-control levees that have blossomed along the Missouri River in recent years.
But as Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau Chief Bill Lambrecht reported this week, the state's powerful agricultural and barge industries have dug in their heels. They feel threatened by any change in the unnatural way the Missouri River has been managed its banks armored against erosion, its flow constricted in the spring and pumped up during the summer. Politicians looking to court those interests are happy to throw up roadblocks.
The latest is Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon, the presumptive Democratic candidate for governor. On Tuesday a federal judge blocked Mr. Nixon's attempt to stop the corps from creating a spring rise in the river's level by releasing water from dams on the upper Missouri. The higher waters are important to the spawning season of the pallid sturgeon, an endangered fish.
Mr. Nixon said he's worried that the rise will add to flooding problems that peaked last week. But it would take nearly two weeks for the pulse of water to reach the St. Louis area, giving current water levels time to subside. And major flood problems were in the watershed of the Meramec River, not the Missouri. Mr. Nixon's concerns were political, not hydrologic.
A more serious threat comes from Missouri's Clean Water Commission, which should be encouraging river restoration. Instead, it's trying to block the corps' multimillion dollar habitat rebuilding project. Part of the work involves dredging and dumping sediment along river banks to create shallow channels needed by native fish like the pallid sturgeon. Those channels existed naturally before the river was dammed for navigation and flood control.
Citing state law, the Clean Water Commission issued an order on March 12 that blocked the corps from dumping sediment into the river. That would be a sensible position if it were applied to naturally clear Ozark streams. But this is the river once known as Big Muddy because of the volume of sediment it carried. Turbidity is as natural for the Missouri River as pallid sturgeon, catfish and the spring rise.
Kristin Perry, who chairs the Clean Water Commission, is executive director of a group called Agriculture Leadership of Tomorrow. She says that her goal is to represent agricultural interests on the Clean Water Commission. But state law requires commissioners to represent the general public, not one narrow interest group.
A river must be more than a ditch with water running through it for the convenience of an occasional barge. Restoring the Missouri River enriches us all.
Court requires removal of nuclear waste
March 25, 2008
Twin Falls Times-News
By Matt Christensen
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed an earlier federal district court decision requiring the federal government to remove all transuranic nuclear waste from the Idaho National Laboratory near Idaho Falls.
The ruling is a victory for the state of Idaho, which has pushed the federal government to remove buried nuclear waste from the site since the late 1980s, and a setback for the federal government, which has said removing all the waste is unnecessary and too expensive.
"We're happy about this, of course," said Curt Fransen, deputy director of the state's Department of Environmental Quality.
The decision from the three-judge panel means the federal Department of Energy will have to remove tens of thousands of cubic meters of nuclear waste from the site by 2018, Fransen said. The DOE had proposed removing just a fraction of the waste.
The case stems from a 1995 agreement between the state and the federal government brokered by then-Gov. Phil Batt. In the deal, commonly called the Batt Agreement, the feds agreed to remove all transuranic waste at the site.
But shortly after the agreement was reached, the federal government began to question what it had agreed to.
"This whole case," Fransen said, "is about the word 'all' - whether 'all' means 'all.'"
The DOE argued it was not obligated to remove all the waste. The state of Idaho - and the courts - have disagreed.
Last week's decision marked the second time the buried waste question has gone before the 9th Circuit Court. In an earlier review of the case, a three-judge panel remanded it back to the federal district court in Idaho "to consider the parties' extrinsic evidence" of the agreement's interpretation.
The case returned to U.S. District Court Judge Edward J. Lodge, who sided with the state's interpretation of the word "all." Then on appeal, the 9th upheld Lodge's ruling.
The circuit court's recent decision could mean the DOE will have to abandon a $1 billion proposal that called for removing just some of the waste. Removing all of the waste would cost about $13 billion and unnecessarily expose workers to radiation, Rick Provencher, DOE's department manager for cleanup, has said in the past.
The DOE has already sent some of the material to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., for storage.
Tens of thousands of cubic feet of nuclear waste was buried at the INL site between about 1950 and 1970, sometimes haphazardly rolled into trenches in barrels off the back of trucks. Since then, nuclear waste has threatened an aquifer beneath the site that's a drinking water source for tens of thousands of Idahoans.
Fransen said he hopes the decision will lead to negotiations with the DOE on a plan to begin removing all the waste.
Calls to the DOE seeking comment for this story were referred to the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., where an agency spokesman said the department is reviewing the decision.
River flooding could be disastrous
March 4, 2008
St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial
By Nicholas Pinter, Robert Criss and Timothy Kusky
There exists today a major threat to the St. Louis-Metro East river corridor. By describing this threat in detail, we hope we can open a dialogue with Col. Lewis F. Setliff III, the commander of the St. Louis district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Three specific points all involving the Corps need to be discussed: the construction of river structures that magnify flooding; the failure of the Corps' St. Louis district to address this issue in the design, planning and implementation process; and a long-term pattern of insularity and professional bias among the district's technical staff.
Mainstream scientific and engineering research, some of it stretching back more than a century, documents that navigational structures in the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers have increased flood levels significantly. In the Corps' Kansas City district, for example, a report dating from 1933 noted flood magnification because of "dikes and revetments used in shaping and controlling the stream for modern barge transportation." A milestone paper in 1975 by Charles Belt of St. Louis University documented systematically higher flood stages over time, even with river flow rates that remained steady. Recent research has confirmed these links using hydrologic, statistical and numerical modeling techniques.
Sadly, the Corps' St. Louis district has ignored this growing body of evidence as it continues to build structures in the Mississippi channel. It has constructed some of its latest inventions arch-shaped chevrons in the St. Louis harbor directly opposite Illinois levees that are in the procees of being decertified as viable flood protection structures.
The district plans to build more chevrons, along with other large structures such as underwater walls called bendway weirs (another St. Louis district invention) and wing dikes, all of which will worsen a severe and growing problem. In terms of river water, these structures are the equivalent of loaded cannons pointed at St. Louis and East St. Louis, waiting to go off during the next large flood.
We fear that Col. Setliff may have been misled by staff engineers, some of whose statements are inconsistent with known scientific data. For example, through-the-looking-glass assertions that dikes lower river levels are flatly contradicted by more than a dozen peer-reviewed journal articles, as well as research by corps scientists outside the St. Louis district. These show clear and unequivocal data linking navigational structures to diminished channel conveyance and increased flood levels.
The National Science Foundation funded the compilation of a database at Southern Illinois University of more than 8 million hydrologic measurements and detailed construction histories for more than 2,500 miles of the Mississippi-Missouri River system. The pattern is clear: When and where dikes and levees were built, flood levels went up and not by inches, but by five feet, 10 feet and more. Between 1990 and 1992 alone, the St. Louis district built 25,700 linear feet of bendway weirs and 14,700 feet of wing dikes on the Mississippi, contributing to the unprecedented water levels of the 1993 flood.
Part of the problem is that the St. Louis district uses so-called tabletop micromodels of the river to help design its navigational structures. Yet these micromodels have been criticized heavily in scientific circles.
In a 2006 article in the "Journal of Hydraulic Engineering," the Corps' own engineers (notably, from outside the St. Louis district) concluded that the models' use "should be limited to demonstration, education and communication."
Such professionally reviewed published statements conclusively refute claims by St. Louis district engineers that the models can demonstrate what actually would happen in the river channel when their various structures are installed. In fact, the sandbox micromodels cannot even be run above flood stage and, thus, are useless in assessing the structures' effects on flood levels.
The Corps provides invaluable services to St. Louis and to communities all along the Mississippi River. But in the case of these new chevrons between St. Louis and the crumbling levees protecting the Metro East area, some terrible error seems to have been made. How could these structures have been built without even addressing what impact they would have on flooding?
The consequences of this experiment going wrong simply are too great to ignore. We call for an independent scientific panel preferably convened by the National Academy of Sciences to assess the evidence linking navigational structures and flood levels. The time to ask these questions is now not in the devasting aftermath of the next great flood.
Nicholas Pinter is a professor of geology, environmental resources and policy at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. Robert Criss is a professor of earth and planetary science at Washington University in St. Louis. Timothy Kusky chairs the department of natural sciences and directs the Center for Environmental Sciences at St. Louis University.
Ruth Park trees removed for driving range
February 28, 2008
KSDK
By Mike Owens
The woodchopper's ball began at Ruth Park Golf Course Thursday, as work crews began cutting down trees and brush in the way of a new golf ball driving range.
The range, funded by a Municipal Parks Grant of about $250,000, will have golfers lined up to hit balls into an area north of the main golf course.
University City parks officials said revenue from the driving range will help fund other park activities.
However, some environmental groups, including the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, said the driving range will damage a riparian environment that is a tributary to the River Des Peres.
Dan Sherburne of the coalition said that by removing trees from the hills around the tributary, there may be more flooding of the river.
The trees, according to Sherburne, are part of the natural environment, and should stay. However, a spokeswoman for the city parks department said many of the trees just grew in the last ten years or so, and need to be removed anyway.
But, in the middle of the small trees is a so-called "heritage tree", a post oak more than 250-years-old, according to Sherburne.
The tree will be saved from the wood chopper, but not from being in range of golf balls.
The city said they will put up netting to protect the oak, which was a sapling when the Declaration of Independence was signed.
Group seeks a return to natural waterways
February 19, 2008
Southwest City Journal
By Shawn Clubb
Danelle Haake bent down along a stretch of Deer Creek to take a sample of water for analysis.The creek, a tributary of the River Des Peres, is bordered by mud banks to one side and a gradually rising mix of mud and limestone on the other. The creek corridor that features trees, plants, rocks, ducks and kingfishers could distract visitor's from its urban surroundings. The creek has Deer Creek Park on one side, homes on the other and Laclede Station Road a mere 100 yards downstream. Other clues to the creek's urban setting include pieces of brick, white plastic grocery bags and a rusted, metal frame structure half the size of a man.
"That wasn't there the last time I was down here," said Haake of the structure.
As interim chairman of the River Des Peres Watershed Coalition, Haake is concerned about the futures of the River Des Peres and tributaries that include Deer Creek, Gravois Creek, Black Creek and Engelholm Creek. She hopes the group can generate a public dialogue on them.
"This is an asset to our community that many people have neglected and allowed to become less than it could be, less than it should be," Haake said. "We want to return these assets to something we could value and we could showcase."
The coalition will hold a public planning forum at 6 p.m. Feb. 26 at the Heman Park Community Center, 975 Pennsylvania Ave., University City. The River Des Peres watershed includes much of the area of St. Louis city, University City, Clayton, Richmond Heights, Webster Groves, Ladue and 37 other municipalities.
While the coalition engages in river cleanups and removal of bush honeysuckle and other invasive plants, it now wants to turn efforts toward a broader effort.
Dan Sherburne, research director for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, said the issues facing these waterways have changed over the years. Fewer and fewer of them are being channelized or lined with concrete. He expects them to remain mostly natural.
However, Sherburne said, the shear volume of storm water run-off that enters the creeks has become a major problem.
"They've been abused over the years and used essentially as storm sewers. They're dangerous places when there are storm water events. They can rise and flood people's basements, or worse, and lower property values of the houses along them," he said.
The flip side is the benefit these streams can provide to communities when they are cleaned up and the storm water flow is managed. Sherburne said children can then see nature in their own backyard, while the streams also become popular places for development of recreational trails and restaurants that want a scenic view.
"It works in everyone's benefit if these are healthy streams," he said.
But to curtail excessive amounts of storm water from entering the creeks, the coalition must get people to cooperate. Sherburne said this goes beyond any infrastructure improvement the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District might do. He said it needs to be a community effort, where people volunteer to use rain gardens and rain barrels and replace blacktop parking areas with permeable surfaces that allow water to soak through into the ground.
"People maybe would be anxious to do them, if they knew the benefits of doing them," he said.
These benefits can even be financial. In Portland, Ore., the municipality paid people $53 for each downspout they disconnected from the sewer system. Over ten years, people disconnected more than 49,000 downspouts and kept 1.2 billion gallons of storm water form reaching the sewer system.
Sherburne said if MSD would agree to offer a similar program it could prevent sewer overflows into homes and keep torrents of water from rushing through the creeks.
Haake said the area could adopt a program similar to the 10,000 Rain Gardens initiative in Kansas City, which uses grant money to provide residents with rain barrels and rain garden plants.
"Whatever the community wants to do, we can be the catalyst to make it happen," she said. "It's certainly a big slice we're cutting, but if we just take it bit by bit ever step is a step forward."
Incentives could help restore the Gulf of Mexico dead zone
February 11, 2008
St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial by Kathleen Logan Smith
A couple of weeks ago, the United States Geological Survey released a study confirming once again that agricultural activity in the states of the Mississippi River basin is the biggest source of water pollution in the northern Gulf of Mexico.
Excessive nitrogen and phosphorus applied to crops and pastures run into our waters, cause algal blooms that use up the oxygen in the water and destroy our fisheries. The Gulf of Mexico pays the highest price for the waste: an annual dead zone that by last summer covered an area of more than 7,900 square miles and that has devastated the fishing industry there.
And U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing this destruction through billions of dollars in subsidies that are part of the Farm Bill.
The USGS report shows that nine states in the Mississippi River basin are the source of the vast majority of the excessive nitrogen and phosphorus: Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Ohio.
The challenge is discovering how to persuade these states to reduce the excessive levels of agricultural pollutants that flow into Gulf when the damage they cause is so distant from them. The answer lies in the Farm Bill itself. Land owners in these same states receive big money from Farm Bill programs. To shrink the dead zone and enable the fish to return to the Gulf, the Farm Bill needs to be restructured to provide incentives to achieve this national clean water goal.
The USGS report specifies the crops most notably, corn and soybeans that are the largest sources of nitrogen in the Gulf. The ethanol boom only will make the problem worse.
Farm Bill programs already contain incentives to protect water quality on both crop and range lands, but incentives have not been specifically targeted, at the national level, to protect water quality in the Gulf. The Farm Bill can provide this national perspective by targeting at least a portion of its programs to the Mississippi River basin as it does through programs for the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay.
In releasing the report, Ben Grumbles, the Environmental Protection Agency's assistant administrator for water, said that the Gulf of Mexico is getting overfed and needs a more balanced diet. Just as a person's calorie output must balance her calorie intake in order to stay fit and healthy, the use of fertilizers must be similarly balanced. Without it, our environmental health in this case, the viability of the Gulf of Mexico and all that depend on it suffers.
The final form of the Farm Bill, now being hammered out in a congressional conference committee, should strive for healthy balance. Land owners and crop producers who take federal money not only should be required to deliver crops, but also manage their land responsibly in order to preserve our nation's soil and water assets.
Protecting our soil and water is an investment in long-term national security. At a minimum, tax money should go only to producers who demonstrate they are managing their operations responsibly. Americans have a right to insist that their money is not paying for damaging and costly pollution. Even payments for the five staple crops should be conditional on meeting minimum standards for soil and water conservation. The science for maximizing production while minimizing pollution is solid. Producers know how to do it.
As the EPA's Grumbles noted, targeting our tax dollars is critical. We now know where Farm Bill incentives should be directed in order to achieve our nation's goals for clean water. There is no good reason to enact another Farm Bill that lacks these important provisions.
Kathleen Logan Smith is executive director of Missouri Coalition for the Environment. She also chairs the farm working group of the Mississippi River Water Quality Collaborative.
Private lake in Augusta advances despite opposition
February 11, 2008
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
By Tim Bryant
AUGUSTA Plans for what would rank among Missouri's largest private lakes are moving ahead, with the proposal now in the hands of the Army Corps of Engineers.
If built, the lake in southwestern St. Charles County would cover just over 90 acres. It would inundate part of a valley within 437 acres of hills, woods and fields owned by business executive Bill Holekamp, 59, of Ladue.
The corps has set no deadline to decide whether to grant Holekamp a permit to build a 60-foot high dam, but the St. Charles County Council gave its go-ahead in 2006. The project also needs approval from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. A 147-acre lake in Putnam County is the state's largest private reservoir, an agency official said.
Holekamp has won over a neighbor who formerly opposed his project. The neighbor, David Dempsey Jr., said in 2006 that he was against the lake because it would obliterate a creek and endanger Matson Hill Park, which is about a mile downstream from Holekamp's dam site.
Dempsey said he changed his position after getting Holekamp's assurance that the dam would be safe and the lake would remain undeveloped. Holekamp said the lake would be for the exclusive use of family and friends.
An agreement between Dempsey and Holekamp allows lake water to cover a bit of Dempsey's weekend retreat. Dempsey, who operates a property tax consulting business in St. Louis, would have access to the lake.
"When it comes to the environment, there will always be man's stamp on it," he said. "You have to weigh the benefits, and that's the way I look at it."
Holekamp declined to discuss his agreement with Dempsey other than to say, "It is correct, he's a supporter of the project."
The lake plan still has detractors, including the Missouri Coalition for the Environment. Kim Knowles, the group's lawyer, noted that the lake would wipe out thousands of feet of creek beds.
"We're talking about more than 9,000 feet of stream nearly two miles of habitat that would be destroyed so that one family can have a 90-acre private lake," she said. "We know there are healthy populations of macro-invertebrates and fish in these streams."
Downstream water quality also would suffer, she said.
"These small streams are vital parts of a larger, interconnected system of rivers and streams," Knowles said. "This isn't just talk. Small streams, even the ones that only flow part of the year, really do matter."
Holekamp's lake would be on unnamed tributaries of Femme Osage Creek, which flows into the Missouri River. He wants the lake as a close-to-home place to fish and relax. Holekamp is a retired Enterprise Rent-A-Car executive who heads Holekamp Capital, a private investment fund.
Rick Hansen, a field supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, prefers stream preservation and said replacing creeks with lakes produced "a whole different aquatic situation."
Hansen said he was concerned that dam construction was reducing the number of free-flowing streams in the St. Louis area.
"We have way too few of those streams available in the metro area," Hansen said.
The stream Holekamp wants to dam flows nearly constantly, he said.
At a meeting at the dam site in January of last year, Holekamp listened to those who favor stream preservation, but Hansen said, "This is obviously a person with money who wants to create a lake for his own use."
He added, "We're not talking about a cheap project."
Holekamp has not revealed the cost.
He is proposing to create wetlands along his lake's upper reaches and to erect nest boxes for owls, wood ducks and purple martins. He also plans to submerge trees in the lake as gathering spots for fish.
Regardless, the people who live immediately downstream from the lake site prefer that the dam not be built.
George and Denise Persons, who for 30 years have lived on a 475-acre tract just below the dam's proposed site, want the Corps of Engineers to take a harder look at the project. In a letter to the corps, they said Holekamp's 950-foot long earthen dam would spoil the valley's beauty.
"It seems unconscionable that Mr. Holekamp would want something like this to go through, when our lives could be at stake considering a possible failure in the dam and the sudden flooding that would occur, along with all the other ecological problems and possible problems," they wrote.
The couple asked the corps to hold a public meeting to consider Holekamp's proposal, but an agency spokesman said such a meeting was unlikely. The time for the public to comment in writing ends today.
Denise Persons said the dam would be visible from her kitchen window. She said Holekamp was "a nice person" and had been upfront in explaining his desire to build a private lake. But Persons said it would be too large.
"This isn't some little fishing lake," she said. "He's talking about changing the entire valley."
Holekamp said he had no timetable for construction.
He said that the lake "is really a conservation and recreation project."
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