You are browsing the Blog for Pennsylvania.

Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania Have Worst Toxic Air Pollution from Power Plants

Toxic 20’ States: KY, OH, PA, IN, WV, FL, MI , NC, GA , TX , TN , VA, SC, AL, MO, IL, MS, WI, MD, DE

WASHINGTON - August 9 - Residents of Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania are exposed to more toxic air pollution from coal-fired power plants than in any other state, according to an analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

At the same time, the report found a 19 percent decrease in all air toxics emitted from power plants in 2010, the most recent data available, compared to 2009 levels. The welcomed drop, which also includes a 4 percent decrease in mercury emissions, results from two key factors.

One is the increasing use by power companies of natural gas, which has become cheaper and is cleaner burning than coal; the other is the installation of state-of-the-art pollution controls by many plants--in anticipation of new health protections issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

“Toxic pollution is already being reduced as a result of EPA’s health-protecting standards,” said John Walke, NRDC’s clean air director. “Thanks to the agency’s latest safeguards, millions of children and their families in the states hardest hit by toxic air pollution from power plants will be able to breathe easier.”

“But these protections are threatened,” Walke said, “because polluters are intent on persuading future Congresses or presidential administrations to repeal them.”

Finalized in 2011, EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics standards will cut mercury air pollution by 79 percent from 2010 levels, beginning in 2015.

In the second edition of “Toxic Power: How Power Plants Contaminate Our Air and States,” NRDC also found that coal- and oil-fired power plants still contribute nearly half (44 percent) of all the toxic air pollution reported to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). The report also ranks the states by the amount of their toxic air pollution levels.

In an earlier assault on the EPA’s new standards, the House passed a bill to gut them last year; but a similar measure in June failed in the Senate.

Compared to 2010 levels, the standard will reduce mercury pollution from 34 tons to 7 tons, a 79 percent reduction, by 2015. Sulfur dioxide pollution will be reduced from 5,140,000 tons in 2010 to 1,900,000 tons in 2015, a 63 percent reduction. Another dangerous acid gas, hydrochloric acid, will be reduced from 106,000 tons in 2010 to 5,500 tons in 2015, a 95 percent reduction.

With those and other pollution reductions resulting from the standard, as many as 11,000 premature deaths and 130,000 asthma attacks, 5,700 hospital visits, 4,700 heart attacks, and 2,800 cases of chronic bronchitis will be avoided in 2016. The public health improvements are also estimated to save $37 billion to $90 billion in health costs, and prevent up to 540,000 missed work or “sick” days each year.

Franz Matzner, NRDC associate director of Government Affairs, said: “For too long, Americans have had no choice but to breathe toxic air pollution. Thanks to the EPA, the air is getting cleaner. But we need lawmakers who will help clean up the air we all breathe --- not lawmakers who do the bidding of Big Polluters trying to repeal safeguards that protect children’s health. This and future Congresses should let the EPA do its job so ALL Americans can breathe easier.”

Despite the overall reductions in total emissions, 18 of the Toxic 20 from 2009 remain in the 2010 list released today, although several states have made significant improvements highlighted in the report.

The states on the "Toxic 20" list (from worst to best) are:

  1. Kentucky
  2. Ohio
  3. Pennsylvania
  4. Indiana
  5. West Virginia
  6. Florida
  7. Michigan
  8. North Carolina
  9. Georgia
  10. Texas
  11. Tennessee
  12. Virginia
  13. South Carolina
  14. Alabama
  15. Missouri
  16. Illinois
  17. Mississippi
  18. Wisconsin
  19. Maryland
  20. Delaware

Of the Toxic 20 list, both senators from eight states supported a resolution by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., to stop the mercury and air toxics safeguard: Kentucky, Indiana, Georgia, Texas, Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi. Meanwhile, both senators from three states: Michigan, Maryland and Delaware voted against the measure. The remaining nine states had mixed votes among their senators.

ABOUT THE DATA

The EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory, known as the TRI, is a national database of toxic emissions self-reported by industrial sources. Power plants report emissions of mercury, hydrochloric acid, and other hazardous metals.

NRDC released the first “Toxic 20” report in July 2011. The analysis used publicly available data in the TRI to rank states by air pollution levels from 2009. Using the same methodology, today’s analysis compared TRI emissions reported for 2010 from the electric utilities sector to those from other sectors and ranked sources by total emissions by sector. The analysis identifies top emitting power plants based on toxic emissions reported to TRI.

Full methodology/analysis:
“Toxic Power: How Power Plants Contaminate Our Air and States” >

###

The Natural Resources Defense Council is a national, nonprofit organization of scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists dedicated to protecting public health and the environment. Founded in 1970, NRDC has 1.2 million members and online activists, served from offices in New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Beijing.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Comments Off

New Study Monitors West Pennsylvania Fracking Fluid

PITTSBURGH — A new study being done by the Department of Energy may provide some of the first solid answers to an extremely controversial question — whether gas drilling fluids migrate and pose a threat to drinking water.

DOE spokesman Richard Hammack says a gas drilling company in southwestern Pennsylvania has let researchers add tracing compounds to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking fluids.

More >

Tags: , , ,
Comments Off

Activists Lead Move to Outlaw Fracking Wastes

Environmentalists, faith-based groups and others are pressing the Legislature to ban the treatment, disposal and storage in New Jersey of any waste generated by fracking, a controversial process used to extract natural gas from deep bedrock.

While fracking is banned in New Jersey, the groups are concerned that waste will be brought here from Pennsylvania, where companies are injecting a mix of water and chemicals deep into the ground to release the gas trapped in rock fissures. The process produces a waste byproduct — a briny mix of water and chemicals — that is either sent to sewage treatment facilities or carted to Ohio, where it is sent deep in the ground through injection wells.

Concerns about the potential effects of the fracking waste on water supplies, as well as links between the waste and recent earthquakes in Ohio, have led that state to issue tougher restrictions on transporting and injecting the waste. Now lawmakers in New Jersey are considering the same.

"As other states such as Pennsylvania run out of places to treat the fracking wastes, we must not allow New Jersey to become the dumping ground of the mid-Atlantic region," said Assemblywoman Connie Wagner, D-Paramus, who introduced a bill to bar the treatment, discharge, disposal and storage of fracking waste in the state.

More >

Tags: , , , ,
Comments Off

Farm Owner Scatters Wife’s Ashes to Protect Land From Natural Gas Fracking

REYNOLDSVILLE — Thursday, Dr. J. Stephen Cleghorn staged a little rebellion of his own, but it was an emotional one.

“Now I feel empowered by a bond of love,” he said following an event he hosted Thursday on his Paradise Gardens & Farm. “No drill will ever penetrate this land, and I’m prepared to stand behind that.”

Cleghorn’s rebellion came with a declaration without weapons, and as well as with the spirit of his No. 1 confederate — his wife, Dr. Lucinda Hart-González, who died of cancer in November 2011.

In his formal statement — witnessed by numerous neighbors and representatives from environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club and the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund Thursday atop a hill that overlooks his 50-acre farm — Cleghorn said,

“Today, I act to declare my farm, all that lives above its surface, the very air and sunlight that caresses and enlivens all of us here today, and all that lies below it as firmament, all of this I hereby declare off-limits from shale gas extraction and its toxic impacts, in perpetuity.”

He sealed his declaration by spreading a portion of his wife’s ashes on the ground, saying,

“Here now, she declares a new right of love on the surface and below this farm that no gas drill will ever penetrate.”

More >

Tags: , , ,
Comments Off

Anti-fracking rally in Mahwah draws more than 200 people

They certainly don’t want a swath of North Jersey woodlands cut to make way for an expanded pipeline carrying gas from Pennsylvania. And they really want fracking — the controversial process used to blast gas from underground shale formations — stopped everywhere.

But the more than 200 people gathered Saturday in Mahwah on a tract just off Ramapo Valley Road — claimed as ceremonial land by the members of the Ramapough Lenape Nation — were focused on an even bigger picture of "collectively healing Mother Earth," as Victoria Shield explained.

"We need to raise our consciousness as a planet to facilitate healing," the Nutley resident said. "The environment is sacred, and anything that harms it, like fracking, needs to be stopped."

The anti-fracking rally, sponsored by the environmental group 350.org and the Ramapoughs, was part of a global Connect the Dots movement on Saturday to bring awareness to climate change, extreme weather, fracking and other environmental issues.

The Mahwah event was a protest of the planned Tennessee Gas project to finish an expanded pipeline another 7.6 miles from West Milford through Ringwood into Mahwah. The company has already installed an additional pipe from Vernon to West Milford but is awaiting approval from the state Department of Environmental Protection and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Known as the Northeast Upgrade, the $400 million expansion will run parallel to a nearly 60-year-old line and travel 7.6 miles — under the Monksville Reservoir, which holds up to 7 billion gallons of water — to the Ramapo Reservation, Bergen County’s largest park. This new pipeline will in part be ferrying fracked gas from the Marcellus Shale deposit, a gas-rich formation that stretches from New York to Tennessee. The Bergen County freeholders have agreed to a $700,000 deal to allow the pipeline.

"You can see the damage to the environment from fracking — the water, the air," said Nan Lavoie of Waldwick, who attended the rally with her husband, John. "Fracking is dangerous, and there’s no way to get rid of the toxins once they’re in the water."

More >

Tags: , , , , ,
Comments Off

Pennsylvania Becomes First State In 2012 To Enact Voter ID Law

By Scott Keyes, ThinkProgress

With a stroke of a pen, hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians were potentially disenfranchised last night.

Gov. Tom Corbett (R) signed into law HB 934, which requires all Pennsylvanians to show a certain form of photo ID in order to be allowed to vote, after the Republican-controlled state legislature approved the bill this week. It will have a disastrous impact on the 700,000 Pennsylvanians who currently lack photo ID, half of whom are senior citizens. With the new voter ID law in place, they would not be permitted to cast a vote in the November general election. (In 2008, a watershed Democratic year, Barack Obama only won the state by 600,000 votes.)

The Montgomery News details which forms of photo ID are acceptable under the new law:

A valid ID would include a driver’s license, military ID, passport, and ID card from state-accredited colleges and universities and state-licensed care facilities. Pennsylvania residents who attend college out-of-state could not use their student IDs to vote.

Not all student IDs are considered acceptable, however. Only student IDs with expiration dates are permissible; those that lack them will not be accepted at the polls.

The law, which will be in effect for November’s presidential election, makes Pennsylvania the ninth state since 2008 to pass a strict voter ID law. A number of other states, like Michigan and Louisiana, request a photo ID at the polls, but unlike strict voter ID states, they still allow people who lack photo ID to vote once they sign an affidavit affirming their identity. In Pennsylvania, those who show up without photo ID will be allowed to vote on a provisional ballot, but it will only be counted if they present acceptable photo ID within the next six days.

Voter ID laws in Texas and South Carolina were recently blocked by the Justice Department because of their biased effect on minorities. Those two states have a history of discrimination and must get federal clearance for any changes to their elections under the Voting Rights Act. Pennsylvania, however, is not subject to the Voting Rights Act and does not need preclearance from the Justice Department.

Though voter fraud is as non-existent in Pennsylvania as it is elsewhere in the nation, Republicans in the Keystone State have nevertheless used fraud as justification to enact a law that could bar hundreds of thousands, predominantly minorities and the elderly, from the ballot box.

Original post >

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Tags: , , , , ,
Comments Off

The Natural Gas Industry Finds another Loophole in Pennsylvania

Harrisburg Rally4
Pennsylvania Chapter Director Jeff Schmidt speaks at a rally urging state leaders to protect our water, air and communities from fracking.

If you live in Pennsylvania, yesterday the State House voted through a bill that allows natural gas companies to drill only 300 feet from your house, your child’s school, the hospital, and sensitive natural areas.

This dangerous pro-fracking bill is disguised as an "impact fee" bill, but it provided many more loopholes the natural gas industry can exploit. This bill will now go to Governor Corbett's desk to be signed.

The bill, HB 1950 effectively rewrites the drilling laws and adds several new dangerous provisions, including:

  • It allows all types of gas operations in all zoning districts, including residential neighborhoods, near schools, parks, hospitals, and sensitive natural and cultural resource protection areas.  This means people could be forced to live only 300 feet away from a gas well pad, open frack waste pit, or pipeline, despite growing evidence that such development causes pollution, damages health, and lowers property values.
  • The bill also mandates a one-size-fits-all ordinance that supersedes all existing ordinances and prevents municipalities from adopting any zoning provisions that are stricter than the weak, mandated standards.
  • Municipalities will no longer be able to play a central role in protecting the health, safety, and welfare of residents from the oil and gas industry.

By tying the hands of the local municipalities, the State has taken complete control of where drilling takes place and is handing it over to the industry.

In response to this disastrous bill, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune released the following statement:

"The natural gas industry has once again found a way to exploit more loopholes and endanger more communities.  This bill shows politicians in Pennsylvania decided to put the gas industry profits ahead of their own people.  If Governor Corbett was to stand up for the citizens of Pennsylvania instead of the gas companies, he would veto this bill."

--Deb Nardone, Director of the Sierra Club Natural Gas Reform Campaign

Original post >

Tags: , , ,
Comments Off

Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group: Food and media companies donated generously to lawmakers opposing food marketing guidelines for kids

Last summer, a bipartisan group of House members from Pennsylvania wrote federal agencies complaining that proposed guidelines restricting the marketing of unhealthy food to children marked “an alarming regulatory overreach.” They emphasized their sugary roots in “the leading confectionary producing state in the nation.” 

Indeed, Pennsylvania is home to the 117-year-old Hershey Company, maker of the ubiquitous Hershey’s kiss. But what the lawmakers from the Keystone State didn’t say was that they had other “constituents”—out-of-state campaign cash constituents, many of them Washington-based trade associations. 

The massive lobbying push by food and media interests against the controversial guidelines appeared to reach its goal last weekend as Congress voted to delay the guidelines as part the budget deal. Tucked into the massive bill: A measure, backed by opponents of the guidelines, calling for the government to study the costs of any advertising limitations before implementing them. That will effectively put off any efforts to issuing the voluntary guidelines on the marketing of foods high in fat, sugar and sodium to children. 

The Pennsylvanians' letter, sent July 18, was one of two sent by members of Congress to head off the marketing guidelines that the Sunlight Foundation obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. An analysis using transparencydata.com of campaign contributors to the two groups of lawmakers reveals that some of the groups lobbying against the ad guidelines have plenty of chits to collect from members of Congress.  

The 15 Pennsylvania members of Congress who signed the letter raising concerns about the guidelines have together collected at least $546,765 in campaign contributions from interests that reported lobbying against restrictions on marketing unhealthy food to kids. The contributions included $159,291 from the National Cable Television Association (NCTA), $153,500 from the National Restaurant Association, and $61,660 from the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). 

Read all about it

Tags: , , , , ,
Comments Off

Substandard, Unsafe Work On Marcellus Shale Pipeline Goes Unregulated In Pennsylvania

Isn't it great that no one at all has the authority to deal with this? I can understand why. You wouldn't want to upset Gov. Corbett's much-loved job creators, now, would you? From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

WAYNESBURG, Pa. - Through the hilly fields here in southwestern Pennsylvania, crews worked for months this year, cutting a trench through woods and past farms for a new natural gas pipeline.

Like many other lines crisscrossing the state's Marcellus Shale regions, this pipe was big - a high-pressure steel line, 20 inches in diameter, large enough to help move a buried ocean of natural gas out of this corner of the state. It was also plenty big enough to set off a sizable explosion if something went wrong.

There was trouble on the job. Far too many of the welds that tied the pipe sections together were failing inspection and had to be done over.

A veteran welder, now an organizer for a national pipeline union, happened upon the line and tried to blow the whistle on what he considered substandard work.

But there was no one to call.

Pennsylvania's regulators don't handle those pipelines, and acknowledge they don't even know where they are. And when he reported what he saw to a federal oversight agency, an inspector told him there was nothing he could do, either.

Because the line was in a rural area, no safety rules applied.

"It's crazy," said Terry Langley, the union official, worried that any problems would literally be buried. "It seems to me that everyone is turning a blind eye."

In Pennsylvania's shale fields, where the giant Marcellus strike has unleashed a furious surge of development, many natural gas pipelines today get less safety regulation than in any other state in America, an Inquirer review shows.

Hundreds of miles of high-pressure pipelines already have been installed in the shale fields with no government safety checks - no construction standards, no inspections, and no monitoring.

"No one - and absolutely no one - is looking," said Deborah Goldberg, a lawyer with Earthjustice, a nonprofit law firm focusing on the environment.

Tags: , , ,
Comments Off

PA Is Going the Wrong Way on Gas Drilling Regulation

There is no more fundamental role for government than to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink. In Pennsylvania -- a state with a history of severe air and water pollution -- state government is abdicating that role in favor of natural gas drillers.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has strongly criticized Pennsylvania's new policy guidelines for regulating air pollution emitted by Marcellus Shale gas wells. EPA says that a draft Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection policy breaks with federal law and violates the state's own air pollution control plan in the way it proposes to regulate air pollution emissions from gas wells, compressor stations, and natural gas pipelines.

A policy consistent with the federal Clean Air Act would aggregate multiple gas development activities and treat them as a single major source of air pollution, requiring them to meet stricter emissions standards. EPA says that the new draft DEP policy de-emphasizes the inter-relatedness of oil and gas facilities and favors treating multiple emission sources as individual, minor sources of air pollution, and “appears to alter the conventional way in which aggregation determinations have been made federally and by PADEP."

Kathryn Klaber, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, was quoted by the Post-Gazette as saying that the industry supports the amended policy " because it "gives predictability for development. ... It’s a good compromise."

What is being compromised is air quality. Does Pennsylvania want to go the way of Wyoming, which is reporting smog worse than Los Angeles because of a boom in natural gas drilling?

More >

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Comments Off

 
← Previous Entries