Enviroman No. 90

Monday, April 7, 2008

Environmental Laws Waived to Build Border Fence. It looks like they are trying to expiate the process of building the fence without going through the proper process to find out the environmental and community impacts of building a fence and series of roads in largely wild territory.

The Department of Homeland Security, DHS, says it is issuing two waivers of environmental laws to expedite security improvements at the border of the United States and Mexico.

Congress gave the Secretary of Homeland Security authority to waive all legal requirements necessary to expeditiously install additional physical barriers and roads at the border to deter illegal activity.

"Criminal activity at the border does not stop for endless debate or protracted litigation," said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. "Congress and the American public have been adamant that they want and expect border security. We're serious about delivering it, and these waivers will enable important security projects to keep moving forward. At the same time, we value the need for public input on any potential impact of our border infrastructure plans on the environment - and we will continue to solicit it."

One waiver applies to certain environmental and land management laws for various project areas in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, encompassing roughly 470 total miles.

This is all because it's so easy to walk across the Canadian border without being detected, by taking the trail up through Gulf State Unique Area in Moores, NY. Then again, we like the Canadians. The 9-11 hijackers who came through Canada where nice people, unlike those Mexicans who only want to babysit our children, clean our houses, and milk our cows.

Read Environmental Laws Waived to Build Border Fence on the Environmental News Service. P'Link

Plan to Expand Strategic Reserve of Oil Has Serious Environmental Problems. It seems as though many people are concerned about trying to drain a salt cavern to store lots of petroleum.

The strategic reserve, created by Congress after the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo, is the largest stockpile of government-owned crude in the world. It now holds a record 701 million barrels of oil at four locations in Texas and Louisiana.

The Department of Energy is boosting the reserve to 1 billion barrels, as Congress mandated, by adding Richton and expanding two existing sites. Richton was chosen because it is less vulnerable to hurricanes but close to a major pipeline system and the Gulf of Mexico for easy oil deliveries.

But many locals are horrified the government may drain 50 million gallons of water a day from the Pascagoula River for five years to dissolve the salt in the caverns. The resulting brine is to be carried away in a pipeline—which the Energy Department admits will probably leak many times—and dumped into the Gulf of Mexico not far from the state's coastline.

Read Oil reserve site raises ire, Bush policy tested in Reuters. P'Link

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Apple Sues NYC Over The Big Green Apple. In their zealousness to protect their trademark, they are suing the Big Apple for using an apple logo in their NYC green initiative.

The Big Apple has been known as such for nearly 100 years, but Steve Job's Apple doesn't want New York to actually advertise with an apple logo.

The Macintosh computer, iPod, and iPhone maker recently filed papers with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office complaining that New York City's apple logo, identifying the GreeNYC initiative, infringes on its trademark. Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched the initiative last June to encourage New Yorkers to help preserve the environment and reduce emissions by 30%.

NYC & Company, the nonprofit group that promotes tourism and development in the five boroughs, filed an application to claim its apple logo almost a year ago. The group began using the logo on its Web site and promotional materials. Most recently it appears on a limited-edition organic cotton grocery bag sold at Whole Foods Markets in the Northeast. Some of the proceeds from the bag sales will support a plan to plant 1 million new trees in New York City over the next 10 years.

New York City's apple logo is based on the infinity symbol. In most representations, it is green, with a left-leaning leaf and a stem, but the trademark application is based on style, not color.

This is pretty much bullshit, if you don't mind me saying. An apple is a common symbol, and everybody knows New York City is the Big Apple City, and that the Apple logo probably more belongs to the city then Apple Computer.

Read Apple Takes On Big Apple In Logo Dispute in Information Week. P'Link

Essex County fined for antennas. From the article:

Essex County lawmakers have agreed pay a $1,000 fine to the Adirondack Park Agency for putting antennas on the new County Public Safety Building without a permit.

Read Essex County fined for antennas in the Press Republican. P'Link

Waterviliet Looks To Building A Hydro Electric Plant. Studying what they are doing out in Rome, they seek to build a new hydro plant to provide cheap electricity to the city of Waterviliet.

An application was recently approved for a preliminary permit to study the feasibility of building a hydroelectric plant along the Mohawk River in Rome, Oneida County, said Mayor Michael Manning.

The application was filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to research developing at the Delta Dam which is about 90 minutes west of Watervliet.

“The permit will give the city the opportunity to study this project and absolute priority of application for a hydroelectric license if the project is determined to be economically feasible for the city to undertake,” said Manning. “The city has been operating hydropower and hydroelectric facilities since 1915 with great success. We are currently working on a comprehensive plan to expand the city’s municipal water supply and the additional hydroelectric power that could be provided by the Delta Dam project could be a valuable component in that endeavor.”

The city has three years to decide whether to pursue a possible $8 million project to develop a 5,000 kilowatt hydroelectric generating station which could be used to generate electricity for Capital District residents and areas along the Mohawk River.

Read Waterviliet Looks To Hydroelectric Plant in the Troy Record. P'Link

US D.O.T. Gives Congestion Pricing Money to Other Cities. Thanks to the decision of our state not to do congestion pricing, it seems like $354 million dollars will not be coming to our state, and will instead have to be raised by higher taxes.

“Thanks to the leadership of Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Paterson, Majority Leader Bruno, the City Council and many other state and local officials and civic, environmental, business and labor organizations, New York has engaged in one of the most vigorous and significant debates about transportation policy in modern U.S. history. While today’s announcement, if accurate, is deeply disappointing, New York’s mounting traffic and environmental woes point to congestion pricing as an inevitable solution, even if not in the next few months or with the assistance of federal Urban Partnership dollars. Starting tomorrow, we will engage with many of the largest cities in the United States that have put forward ambitious traffic fighting plans to discuss how they could use this money to cut traffic, improve transit and reduce pollution.”

That's the Empire State for you. We don't want your stinking grant money, if it means we have to do the right thing for once. Go figure.

Read U.S. DOT Says NY Money Going Elsewhere on CapCon. P'Link

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Dick Gottfried Blames Bloomberg for the Death of Congestion Pricing. He says that the New York City Mayor didn't spend enough time learning the legislative process or lobbying legislators for congestion pricing, instead preferring a top down strategy that focused on lobbying Shelly Silver and Senator Bruno.

In a Press Release that Daily News' Liz Benjamin posted, he says:

The current effort to enact congestion pricing failed because it received overwhelming opposition in the New York State Assembly's Democratic Conference. It also did not appear to have sufficient support in the State Senate, which did not vote on it.

I support congestion pricing and have since the beginning. My district includes the much of the central business district, Chelsea, Hell's Kitchen, Midtown, Murray Hill, and part of the Upper West Side - areas with some of the worst congestion in the country, and new development keeps making it worse. The millions of people who come into my district to work or visit suffer, as well as the people who live there.

Like many other legislators and New Yorkers, I have concerns with some aspects of the proposal that could have been addressed with changes. For example, the bill should have been limited to a three-year trial period; required an environmental impact review before it went forward, like other projects; and exempted people who drive on the FDR Drive or the West Side Highway but do not enter the business district. There should have been exemptions for people who need to drive because of medical conditions, and for non-profit organizations making deliveries, such as God's Love We Deliver and Meals on Wheels.

Mayor Bloomberg should have spent the last several months reasonably negotiating these and other concerns to try to win support for the plan, but that did not happen. He made little if any effort to reach out to allies in the State Legislature to help advance congestion pricing.

If the Mayor had reached out to supporters, opponents, and undecideds to resolve issues they were concerned with, the result could have been very different. He was the only one in a position to do that. As an advocate for congestion pricing, I am frustrated that he did not.

CapCon quotes Assemblyman Joe Morelle as saying that 3/4th of the Democratic Conference where opposed to Congestion Pricing, which seems to back up what Assemblyman Dick Gottfried was saying that Bloomberg failed to woo the rank and file on the issue.

I doubt Joe Morelle of Rochester has much of a dog in the fight, so I have to respect his opinion on the issue.

A few other things come to mind too. Bloomberg didn't do Shelly any favors in recent times, so I'm sure Shelly wasn't itching to go out and a limb and make the Democrats look bad as they struggled to pass or defeat the congestion pricing bill on the floor. That certainly didn't help.

It also made Shelly look bad to his district, where many people believed he was invincible, and he could get anything done for his district. Paul Newell, on of Shelly's primary challengers must be celebrating about the defeat, as it gives him yet another issue to tar the speaker with. P'Link

Albany Has Record High Gas Prices. At $3.399 a gallon, gas prices are now more expensive in Albany then ever before.

Time to leave the truck home and walk. Take the bus. Drive less, take your bike. Or get out your wallet, and enjoy paying between $50 and $100 a fill-up. P'Link

NYS Receives $9.5M in Settlement By AES for Mercury Pollution. That means lots of money for special projects.

In its largest payment for a pollution settlement under the federal Clean Air Act, the state received $9.5 million Tuesday for environmental protection projects from the nation's largest coal-fired power plant owner.

Of the cash from Ohio-based American Electric Power, $500,000 is earmarked for the Lake Champlain region, which stretches from the Canadian border to Washington County.

Potential projects include efforts to combat invasive species, like zebra mussels and Eurasian milfoil, as well as protect drinking water from contamination and reduce pollution.

"By investing this money in green power, energy efficiency and pollution reduction, we will provide a tremendous boost to efforts to improve the quality of the air that New Yorkers breathe," Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said.

Read Utility pays state $9.5M in settlement in the Times Union. P'Link

The Daily Gazette Disappointed With Congestion Pricing Defeat. From Today's Editorial:

Upstaters have been known to feel resentment for New York City on occasion. After the death of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan at the hands of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, they should be feeling sorry for it.

The Big Apple can’t even run its own affairs, can’t adopt an innovative, needed plan that other cities in other countries have successfully used to cut traffic congestion and improve air quality in their downtowns.

Adding insult to injury, Silver says he was in favor of the plan — yet he wouldn’t even put it to a vote, claiming, vaguely and unconvincingly, that most of his Democratic members were against it. Even if this were true, here was a chance for Silver to show some real leadership, arguing for an enlightened program that not only the mayor but the New York City Council, governor and state Senate majority leader all support.

Read Editorial: Shameful inaction on congestion pricing in the Daily Gazette. P'Link

Thursday, April 10, 2008

State Found Not Liable Split Rock Falls Drownings. While I posted a link to this story yesterday, the ruling is an important one to discuss.

The Appellate Division of State Supreme Court said the state, as landowner, has a duty to take reasonable precautions against dangerous conditions, but that "does not extend to open and obvious conditions that are natural geographic phenomena" which can readily be seen.

This is important. We don't need or even want our government to be protecting us from morons who do things that will hurt themselves, even on public property. If the state had faced liability in such a case, whole swaths of state land could have been closed off, so the state could avoid being sued the next time some fool stepped off a cliff face or drown in a pond.

Liability should be limited solely to cases where it's clear that one party did actual negligence or provided an "improvement" to land that encouraged negligent behavior—like a swimming pool with a ladder, easily accessible to the public. But something like a naturally occurring whirlpool on state land, should not be the state's fault if somebody drowns.

Read State found not liable in drownings in the Times Union. P'Link

Our Consumption Footprint. There is an fascinating video on National Geographic Channel website about consumption.

One is about packaging which I've embedded below.

Also, they have a video on what goes into a car and what it consumes in it's lifetime.

This is all quite fascinating. They are going to have a special on this topic, so if you own a television and have cable, you might want to watch it.

More on National Geographic's Human Footprint website. P'Link

Kunstlercast Up Now. One of my favorite podcasts now is Kunstlercast. You can listen below or go directly to kunstlercast.com.

James Howard Kunstler is one of the most vocal critics of modern urban planning. So it's only fair that in this show Jim fields some questions from the professional planning community. First off, the planners want to know how Jim answers to critics who challenge him on his lack of professional credentials in the planning and architecture fields. Next, a planning professor wants to know: what is the most important thing that cities can do to most improve the quality of the built environment? This show is the result of a special collaboration between The KunstlerCast and Planetizen, the online network for professional planners.

This week is both funny and informative. P'Link

Planetizen: Who Should Pay For Mass Transit? They have an interesting podcast on this topic this week.

Greenhouse gases – those pollutants that are being blamed for heating up the planet and destroying the environment – are increasingly on the minds of politicians. Outlawing them isn’t a realistic option, and entirely removing them from the atmosphere is impossible. So, many lawmakers are looking for ways to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases people produce. A major source of these greenhouse gas emissions is the automobile, and cities across the country and around the world are coming around to the idea that cutting the amount of greenhouse gas emissions means cutting the amount of cars on the road. For many, this means improving public transit. But while the idea of improving public transit is easy to think, funding those improvements is not so easy to actually do.

The Full Transcript is availiable online. P'Link

Friday, April 11, 2008

Ethanol is an Environmental White Elephant? That's what at least one writer is saying about the proposal to bring an ethanol plant to Albany's Port.

From Ethanol is an environmental white elephant LtE in the Times Union:

I've read with interest the recent articles in the Times Union about ethanol. I was disappointed that you did not point out one fact that should raise much skepticism about the use of this product as a fuel: It produces about twice the carbon dioxide as simply burning the gasoline it replaces.

How? It takes approximately 1.15 gallons of ethanol to equal the energy content of one gallon of gasoline. It also requires about 0.86 gallons of refined oil products to make that much ethanol, in the form of tractor fuel, fertilizer, transportation, distillation, etc. That's 2.01 gallons.

I did not include the CO2 released by the trillions of microbes that go on a binge every time an acre is plowed for corn production. I could go on, but the point is that ethanol is an environmental white elephant, and it also does not save us from having to import oil.

While I've gotten this wrong on the blog before, not being an organic chemist, let me explain the real benefit of ethanol.

In the summer we have to use a lot of ethanol—5-10% of a our gasoline must contain ethanol in a blend called E10. Ethanol has additional bonded oxygen to it's molecules, and is an oxygenate. That makes it burn cleaner, reducing carbon monoxide, nitrous oxides, and hydrocarbon emissions, that contribute to smog in our state.

If we had fewer cars on the roads, or if they where less dirty, particularly in the city, we could avoid using ethanol in our gasoline.

We used to use MTBE for the same purpose as ethanol, but MTBE has a natural affinity to water, and makes it taste like turpentine, and is a suspected carcinogen. We've spent a lot of bucks cleaning up MTBE spills near gas stations.

One other problem with using ethanol at E10 blend is there is not enough to boost the octane of gasoline sufficiently. That means we have to create alkylate from crude oil, which is relatively small portion of the oil, to get gasoline up to required octane levels. Too low octanes, in low elevations, will lead to engine knock and more pollution.

Higher elevations out west, regularly sell 83 or 85 octane gasoline. But in New York, especially in New York City at sea level, running at less then 87 octane would cause knocking on a rainy day when air pressure is an higher pressure.

See Dept of Energy on Banning MTBE and the EPA on Why They Require Oxygenates.

It's definitely possible that this summer that shortages of alkylate will force the federal government to choose between a gasoline shortage and high prices in New York State or more smog killing old people and giving small children asthma.

In the long run, the best solution to our demand for oil is to use less. That means drive less and use more mass transit. P'Link