Pesticide makes rat grandsons unattractive.

Charlotte Observer | 06/06/2007 | Green groups lose effort to block Duke plant

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!! STOP BUILDING COAL POWER PLANTS NOW!!! – NO MORE COAL WITHOUT SEQUESTRATION!!

How’s that for a bumper sticker?

The N.C. Utilities Commission upheld its March decision to allow Duke to build one 800-megawatt unit. The commission in March had rejected Duke’s request to build two units. Environmentalists subsequently asked the regulators to reconsider their decision allowing one unit.

The commission’s ruling shifts the battle over Duke’s proposed Cliffside project to the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the agency that is considering an air quality permit for the proposed power plant. When the draft permit is issued later this year, the organizations will likely contend that the Cliffside project is not using the cleanest technology available and is falling short of federal air quality standards.

“We’re using all available legal tools to stop a dirty power plant from being built,” said Michael Shore, a senior air policy analyst at N.C. Environmental Defense. “Everything is an attempt to delay and hopefully prevent construction.”

In their appeal to the utilities commission, the environmentalists contended that the Cliffside project is not the most economical choice, but rather the “worst-cost” option. Last year, the capital cost of two Cliffside units was estimated at $2 billion, but this year Duke revised the costs, saying that building one unit would cost $1.8 billion.

The cost of building, financing, maintaining and operating power plants is paid by utility customers through electric rates.

Note that this project at the enormous cost of 2 billion dollars is funded entirely by increases in NC utility bills. So, not only are they shafting us thoroughly, they’re using our money to do it, the temerity. I am pissed off, and I have no choice to buy power from anyone other than the morons at Duke Energy where I live. it’s Duke, or candlelight for me!

The battle shifts to the NC-DENR, which will need to issue an air quality permit. It’s time for all groups involved to delay this project until NC comes up with a viable climate change mitigation policy that wil make plants like these completely unviable. It’s a good thing that this is the exact strategy they’re going for! Maybe our legislators and regulators should take the time to read their local paper.

On some days, stretches of Nags Head have no dry beach, and visitors have to sit under the front-row houses at high tide. The resort that once thrived by the sea is being swallowed by it.

“We are losing the town,” Cahoon said. “As sea level rises, our tax base goes away.”

Other, more subtle changes are under way along the coast, not just on the fragile barrier islands. As salt water pushes farther upriver, some rivers are widening into estuaries, tidal bodies of water where fresh and salt water mix. Freshwater swamps are changing to salt marsh.

The Navy is not “exempted from compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act” and a court injunction creating a 12 nautical-mile no-sonar zone off Southern California, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper wrote in a 36-page decision.

“We disagree with the (exemption) judge’s decision,” White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. “We believe the (exemption) orders are legal and appropriate.”Navy spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Cindy Moore said the military was studying the decision.

The president signed a waiver January 15 exempting the Navy and its anti-submarine warfare exercises from a preliminary injunction creating a 12 nautical-mile no-sonar zone off Southern California. The Navy’s attorneys argued in court last week that he was within his legal rights.

Judge to Navy: Limit sonar training – CNN.com

There is little doubt that sonar severely disrupts whale communication and can lead to bizarre behavior and decompression sickness. Here’s a video (narrated by Pierce Brosnan, no less!) that sheds some light on this issue.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8rZxmCejD0]

Just like that, the Supreme Court chips away at one of the foundations of this country’s Environmental Law.
Court Splits Over Wetlands Protections – New York Times

By DAVID STOUT. WASHINGTON, June 19 — The Supreme Court set the stage for a re-examination of the 1972 Clean Water Act, as it narrowly ruled today in favor of two Michigan property owners who have sought to develop tracts designated as wetlands.

By 5 to 4, the justices overturned lower court judgments against the Michigan land owners, who had run afoul of the Clean Water Act over their plans to build a shopping mall and condominiums.

The ruling was not the resounding, unambiguous triumph that the land owners, John A. Rapanos and June Carabell, may have hoped for. Instead, five justices found that regulators may have gone too far in trying to thwart their plans, and it returned the case to lower courts for further deliberation. One of the five justices, Anthony M. Kennedy, even suggested in a separate opinion that the property owners might lose once again in the lower courts.

I was very afraid when I last thought about this challenge way back in February. It was pretty clear at that point that Kennedy was the swing vote and that 8 out of 9 minds were probably made up. Kennedy’s lawmaking seems to be a little incoherent in this case. He was obviously not comfortable with the Scalia-Alito-Roberts-Thomas cabal’s clearly ideological decision, but can’t bring himself to make the centrist decision.

But Justice Kennedy wrote that the evidence in the long-running Rapanos and Carabell cases suggests “the possible existence of a significant nexus,” or connection, between their properties and navigable waterways — a connection that, if established in the lower courts, would reaffirm the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act over the tracts and could cause the property owners to lose again.

If you thought that there was a “significant nexus”, what kind of logic would then make you turnaround and support the opinion that there is no connection?

But Justice Scalia had a different perspective as he questioned the extent of federal jurisdiction. Under the government’s logic, he said, “a storm drain, even when not filled with water, is a tributary.”

“I suggest it’s very absurd to call that ‘waters of the United States,’ ” Justice Scalia added. “It’s a drainage ditch.”

Where Hon. Justice Scalia pretends to misunderstand the concept of drainage? I wonder if he would feel the same way if it was a pollution issue in his neighbor’s backyard.

This will make things confusing for a while, and you all know who confusion favors!

Priority and Toxic Chemical Reduction | Resource Conservation Challenge | US EPA

Priority and toxic chemicals make up a fairly limited volume, yet potentially hazardous portion of the nation’s waste stream. We are working to eliminate or reduce priority chemicals and other chemicals of national concern from commercial products, waste streams, and industrial releases through pollution prevention, waste minimization, and recycling/reuse.The 31 priority chemicals are federal priorities because they are persistent, bioaccumulative, and highly toxic. We’re focusing on reducing priority and toxic chemicals to better protect human health and the environment.

By substituting or eliminating certain chemicals in their manufacturing processes, companies produce less waste and thus lower their waste disposal costs. Our goal is to substantially reduce the volume and toxicity of priority chemicals in waste by asking companies to voluntarily:

• Substitute safer alternatives when they can;
• Minimize the amount of priority chemicals they use, if they can’t substitute for them;
• Maximize their recycling efforts;
• Practice cradle-to-cradle chemical management; and
• Design products to minimize exposure to, and release of, priority chemicals during manufacturing and use.

Sounds good, and Worldchanging has more:

But nowhere near the progress some companies are making on their own in cleaning up toxic emissions — not simply to be good guys, but to reduce their costs, liabilities, and exposure to activist and shareholder pressures. And, in some cases, to meet their customers’ growing demands for less-toxic or nontoxic alternatives to business as usual.

Read the whole post, which sounds ambivalent about the scheme. The idea is Environmental Good Sense 101, use less, or none at all, practice cradle to grave economics and minimize exposure. Simple stuff, huh. The biggest problem, however, is that by setting limits on a voluntary basis, you always run the risk of setting the bar too low, and then indulging in relentless and pointless self congratulation about how the “market” solved everything, and how rules are so, well, 1970s?

you need a good mix of

1. Regulation, which sets a minimum, health based bar
2. Flexibility to the business on how to achieve their targets
3. Market systems to trade emission credits, etc
4. Voluntary industry-government initiatives like the one above
5. Relentless citizen activism that forces governments/business to act
6. Community outreach and education so consumers can make informed choices
7. Costing mechanisms that actually reflect free market efficiencies (no stupid subsidies, accurate costing of “externalities”, etc. )

Yeah, this does not fit neatly into the Mano a Mano, you’re with us/you’re against us false dichotomy of choice that seems to beset almost every policy debate (environmental or otherwise). It seems that you never have to do one or the other, but a bit of both, or all of them at the same time.

In the meanwhile, the voluntary program will work, but only in areas in specific instances where it is to a company’s advantage.

BTW, I think that good old fashioned regulation in Europe – See Reach and many many more existing regulations, such as this one for PCBs and Dioxins which I know a little too much about, have a little more to do with American companies reducing POP levels that they care to admit!