The MVP is unnecessary and an insult to the environment and climate change

Letter to Editor from Jim Kotcon, Sierra Club of West Virginia, Morgantown Dominion Post, October 9, 2022

Hoppy Kercheval’s column (“Manchin’s Miscalculation,” Sept. 30) repeats claims from Sens. Manchin and Capito, who relied on industry propaganda calling for “permitting reform” and weakening the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

NEPA has, for over 50 years, required federal agencies to objectively analyze environmental impacts of proposed projects and to involve the public who will be affected by those agency decisions. This approach is both good science and good public policy. Rational decisions are best made with all the facts, and since agencies cannot be expected to know everything about the impacts of their proposals, getting input from those with expertise and interest just makes sense.

Unfortunately, this approach requires that agencies actually listen to people and consider their concerns. Agencies get into trouble when they try to rubber-stamp a decision already made, rather than objectively considering all the issues and reasonable alternatives.

The proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) is a classic example of this flawed approach. Courts tend to defer to agency expertise except when the agency is so arbitrary and capricious as to violate federal law. MVP keeps losing in court, not because environmentalists are obstructionists, but because it really is a bad idea — one that violates federal laws meant to protect all of us. The federal agencies that have pushed this have generated NEPA analyses that are so obviously flawed that courts have repeatedly asked that they be redone.

The claim that MVP is needed for domestic security and to supply Europe ignores climate change and the urgent need to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. Investing billions in a project that will not be completed in time to help Ukraine, but that will be obsolete before it pays for itself, while imposing excessive environmental costs on our land and water, is exactly the kind of bad decision that NEPA is intended to prevent.

In a democracy, legitimate permitting reform would not need to rely on a bill that would arbitrarily mandate a single project and prohibit any appeal by citizens.

>>> Jim Kotcon, W.Va. Chapter of the Sierra Club, Morgantown

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See Also: Summary of the National Environmental Policy Act, 42 U.S.C. §4321 et seq. (1969)

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was one of the first laws ever written that establishes the broad national framework for protecting our environment. NEPA’s basic policy is to assure that all branches of government give proper consideration to the environment prior to undertaking any major federal action that significantly affects the environment.

NEPA requirements are invoked when airports, buildings, military complexes, highways, parkland purchases, and other federal activities are proposed. Environmental Assessments (EAs) and Environmental Impact Statements (EISs), which are assessments of the likelihood of impacts from alternative courses of action, are required from all Federal agencies and are the most visible NEPA requirements.

We are learning to protect & share this planet

From the PRI Broadcast by Steve Curwood, et al., April 23, 2021

Over the last 30 years human-caused emissions have increased by 60 percent. Today the atmosphere holds the equivalent of about 420 parts per million of CO2. That is not good news. We began the industrial age in 1760 with concentrations of CO2 at about half those levels and we are now living through the hottest decade in modern human history. As a result we are seeing record breaking heat waves and wildfires from California to Siberia, floods, rising sea levels and shrinking Arctic sea ice. Not to mention, record-breaking Atlantic hurricane seasons, searing droughts and massive tornado clusters. And all this climate disruption is a result of just a single degree centigrade rise in average earth surface temperatures since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

But our broadcast today is not simply a look back or lament. We are also looking ahead, to shine a light on some possibilities to head off climate disruption before civilization as we know it becomes untenable. We will consider the possibilities of economics, politics, applied science and technology to address climate disruption, though so far they have fallen short. So, we will look to see what they may be missing.

CURWOOD: Correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation, but there are two striking trends that run parallel to the alarming rise in global warming gases. One is the astonishing growth of economic wealth, and in recent years that increase in wealth in the US has been confined to the very richest. In fact, most families in the US have seen little or no gain, with many losing economic power, as many young adults today can’t afford to buy homes like the ones they grew up in. The other trend is the loss of confidence in government action at the national and local levels and the failure of international rules governing climate change emissions to go beyond the honor system.

The concentration of economic and political power related to those trends has historically thrived on the extraction and burning of fossil resources. Climate policy critics including Van Jones, Kristina Karlsson and Bill McKibben say that has to change, if we are to halt our present march toward climate Armageddon. Kristina Karlsson is a program manager for the climate and economic transformation team at the Roosevelt Institute.

JONES: The first industrial revolution hurt the people and the planet, too. The next industrial revolution has to help the people and the planet.

KARLSSON: Meaningfully addressing climate requires an economic transformation in basically all corners of our economy.

MCKIBBEN: I think we’re reaching a turning point. I think that the political power of the fossil fuel industry has begun to wane after a century or two of waxing. And our job is to accelerate that to push hard for really rapid, rapid change.

CURWOOD: There are plenty of ideas about how to preserve a livable climate. And the conventional answer so far has been to double down on approaches that have yet to work, including unproven technology. To save us many advocates say we need market-based solutions such as pricing carbon and technologies such as renewable electricity from solar, wind and other clean energy sources to power our lives. They say we just need to update the systems of the Industrial Revolution that relied on abundant fossil fuels.

GROSS: We had all this energy available, a huge quantity that had never been available before. And that allowed just a complete revolution in the world: revolutions of transportation and manufacturing, all kinds of things that we just never had been able to do before.

CURWOOD: Samantha Gross was a senior climate and energy official for the Obama Administration. Now at the Brookings Institution, she notes that by the twentieth century, oil had become the most valuable commodity on world markets.
GROSS: If you were to design a fuel to be used for transportation, you really couldn’t do a lot better. It’s very energy dense, it has a lot of energy within it for its weight and its size. It’s easily transportable. It’s a liquid, so it works in an internal combustion engine. It’s really an excellent transportation fuel.

CURWOOD: So, she calls for new technologies to power the world while avoiding more climate disruption.
GROSS: We absolutely need both cleaner energy and more energy. There’s roughly a billion people in the world right now who don’t have access to modern energy services. And so, dealing with climate change, while not providing those people with a better standard of living is no solution at all.

CURWOOD: But even with the advent of electric cars like the Tesla and pricing of solar power well below that of coal, the growing profits of green tech have yet to halt the climate emergency. More is needed, says Kristina Karlsson, program manager for the climate and economic transformation team at the Roosevelt Institute.
KARLSSON: The markets will have to be a part of this, we can’t do this without private money. But focusing on those types of mechanisms alone will not get us anywhere near where we need to be in terms of mitigating climate, and it will also further deepen the unequal structurally racist outcomes that that system has already created.

CURWOOD: She says systemic racism has distorted government policies and spending when it comes to environmental justice and climate justice at home and abroad.
KARLSSON: All fiscal policy, even if it seems completely unrelated to climate will have climate implications. So, it’s, it’s really a framing argument and a sort of a policy development principle that saying, you can’t, you can’t ever be climate blind as you’re making choices.

CURWOOD: And Kristina Karlsson adds that if human rights and fairness guide the conduct of governments and businesses it would have a more positive economic impact in the long run than self-centered free market approaches.
KARLSSON: Climate is already an economic cost and an economic drag on our economy. Not only are we actually spending money to mitigate climate disaster that’s happening now. But we’re also seeding risk in our financial system by not dealing with the issue that we all rely on fossil fuels, you know, so we are actively paying for inaction. And as the more we put it off, the more these economic costs are going to compound over time.

The Green New Deal is good for everyone in the long run

RE: Climate Change, Economic Sustainability and Environmental Preservation

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey just re-introduced the Green New Deal resolution in Congress.

Since this landmark resolution was first introduced two years ago, one thing has become clear: the fight for climate justice can only be won by tackling jobs, justice, and climate. Together.

The Green New Deal is one of the most popular policy proposals in the country. 57% of voters want their members of Congress to co-sponsor the resolution.1 It has inspired countless other bills like the Green New Deal for Public Housing introduced by Sen. Sanders, and the Green New Deal For Cities that Rep. Cori Bush introduced on Monday.

But despite all this, the Green New Deal has yet to pass through Congress. We have a once in a generation opportunity to push forward transformational change through this resolution. The plan for a Green New Deal, and economic, racial, and climate justice is on the table, but it’s up to our grassroots strength to force Congress to act.

Will you sign on as a Grassroots Co-Sponsor of the Green New Deal, and send a message to every Democrat, Republican, and Independent in Congress that we’ve waited long enough and we won’t tolerate inaction any longer?

The Green New Deal is one of the most strongly supported pieces of legislation because people across the country want bold climate action now. Already, over 100 members of Congress signed on as co-sponsors of the resolution, but we need more – and we need bolder action from the White House.

The Biden administration’s current infrastructure plan doesn’t go far enough. $2 trillion over 10 years isn’t enough. We need a minimum of $16 trillion dollars to address the scale of the crisis we are facing.

The Green New Deal makes it clear that we need to transition from fossil fuel jobs to fair, clean energy union jobs that support people and the climate. We can make sure we have a livable planet for future generations if we take action today – if our leaders stand up for people, not profits. If we pass the Green New Deal.

Please add your name now as a Grassroots Co-Sponsor of the Green New Deal. We’ll be in touch with more ways you can help grow support for the Green New Deal and related bills in Congress.

With hope, Team 350

There is a wonderful world to be found after plastics

From the letter of Michelle Chan, Friends of the Earth, March 22, 2021

It’s the public health and environmental crisis that not enough people are talking about: PLASTIC.

Plastic will soon outweigh all the fish in the sea. It fills our rivers and oceans, chokes wildlife, permeates our drinking water and our food, and persists in the environment for centuries.

Discarded plastics don’t just disappear. They break down into smaller and smaller pieces, turning into microplastics that contaminate our water, soil, and the food we eat. Can we count on you to act now to stop plastics from overrunning our environment?

Scientists estimate that there are already 51 trillion pieces of plastic in our oceans. That’s 51 trillion deadly hazards that cause harm to ocean organisms — from the smallest of corals to the largest of whales.

In 2020, over 11 million metric tons of plastic was dumped in the ocean. If this trajectory is allowed to continue, by 2040, 29 million metric tons of plastic will be dumped annually.

One plastic bag, or bottle cap, or fishing net, can suffocate, strangle, or starve its helpless victim. After their bodies decompose, the plastic is released back into the environment where it can kill again — because plastics do not break down.

700 known marine species have been killed by either plastic entanglement or ingestion of plastic — resulting in over a million animal deaths every year.

Sea turtles, dolphins, seals, fish, and sea birds are all at risk if something isn’t done soon to address the plastic crisis. So, let’s take action to protect our vulnerable wildlife from deadly plastic hazards.

The world is facing an indisputable plastic pollution crisis. But it doesn’t end there: the plastics crisis is also linked to the climate crisis. More than 99% of plastic is made from fossil fuels, and one of the main ingredients is a byproduct of natural gas. The fracking boom is fueling an unprecedented surge in plastic production as well.

In fact, because of fracking, the fossil fuel industry plans to increase plastic production by 40% over the next decade. This not only means more fracking pollution, but also an explosion of new toxic petrochemical plants. These plants would be devastating to the health of millions of primarily low-income, Black, and brown Americans along the Gulf Coast and in Appalachia.

Here’s the dirty truth behind their actions: The fossil fuel industry is using plastics as their “get out of jail free” card. With the public demanding a shift away from burning oil and gas for energy or fuel, the industry wants to maximize plastic consumption, including unnecessary single-use plastics.

In short, this industry is destroying our planet with plastic pollution, harming the health of frontline communities, and pushing us further to climate catastrophe. It’s beyond outrageous.

That’s why Friends of the Earth is supporting The Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, which holds corporations and plastic producers accountable for the plastic pollution crisis. We are also working to push the Biden Administration to enact the Presidential Plastics Action Plan, a comprehensive set of Presidential actions to tackle the crisis with or without Congress. And we’re pushing Congress and the Biden administration to stop giving the fracking industry special treatment as a “clean energy” version of fossil fuels.

As the fossil fuel industry doubles down on plastic as the new frontier for petrochemical production, we must do everything in our power to shape a new future — A future that isn’t bought and shaped by the richest and most powerful industries in the world. A future with a sustainable economy that doesn’t leave anybody behind.

Help us win a plastic-pollution-free future. Support Friends of the Earth with a donation today.

Plastics are choking off our planet EARTH

Thank you, Michelle Chan,
VP of Programs, Friends of the Earth

NOTE: Friends of the Earth
1101 15th Street NW, 11th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20005

E-Day Activities In State Capitol In Charleston

Invitation from WV Environmental Council, Charleston, 1/23/20

You are invited to attend E-Day at the Legislature on Tuesday, January 28 from 9 am to 2 pm at the West Virginia State Capitol.

Activists and other visitors will have the opportunity to engage in hands-on civic engagement during our day at the Legislature! Our informational tables will be set up in the Upper Senate Rotunda. You can discover the importance of civic engagement, take part in citizen lobbying, and learn about our member organizations, resources, and initiatives.

Join us for a press conference beginning at Noon to hear from our lobbyists, legislators, and Tracy Danzey. Tracy, our keynote speaker is environmental activist from Parkersburg, now residing in Jefferson County. Tracy contracted hip cancer at age 21 which resulted in loss of her leg from the hip down, attributed to C8 in her water sources growing up. She recently walked across Denmark in protest of Rockwool.

Our member groups participating include: Eastern Panhandle Sierra Club, Eastern Panhandle Green Coalition, Buckhannon River Watershed Association, Cheat Lake Environmental & Recreation Association (CLEAR), Citizens Climate Lobby West Virginia, Citizens for Clean Elections, Friends of Cheat River, Jefferson County Foundation, Mountain Lakes Preservation Alliance, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, People Concerned About Chemical Safety, Sierra Club Student Coalition WVU, Solar United Neighbors, Sierra Club — WV Chapter, WV Citizen Action Group, WV Climate Action, WV Rivers Coalition, WV SORO, WV League of Women Voters.

Don’t miss this unique opportunity to learn more about the West Virginia Environmental Council & our involvement at the Legislature.

After E-Day, head on over the the Empty Glass for our GREEN JAM to further support the E-Council. it’s from 5-9 pm.

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See also: WV Environmental Council, GREEN Digest, Volume 30 Issue 2, 1/17/20

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Science journalist to talk radioactivity in Ohio Valley oil & gas industry

News Report by Brittany Grego, WTOV News 9, January 23, 2020

BELMONT COUNTY, Ohio — Barnesville resident Jill Hunkler has been working with a writer from Rolling Stone Magazine.
Science Journalist Justin Nobel will be coming to Belmont County Friday, Jan. 24, to talk about a recent article he wrote on radioactivity and the oil and gas industry in the area.

“These are very serious issues, Justin has found in government documents and early industry reports that link oil and gas to radioactive exposures and also court cases that involve oil and gas industry cancer deaths have been linked to radioactivity on the job,” said Hunkler.

The event will take place this Friday from 5:30 to 7:30 PM inside Ohio University Eastern’s Shannon Hall Theatre.

Anyone is welcome to attend.

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2020 Barbara Danko Political Forum, Sunday, Chatham University

14th Ward Independent Democratic Club and the Chatham University College Democrats to hold the 2020 Barbara Daly Danko Political Forum:

“The Petrochemical Build-Out: Not What It’s Cracked Up To Be?”

Sunday, January 26, 2020, Doors Open 1:00 P.M, Forum 1:30 P.M.,

Eddy Theatre, Chatham University, Woodland Rd., Pittsburgh 15232

FREE TO THE PUBLIC

Kavanaugh Also Lied About His Environmental Record

From an Article by Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch.com, October 6, 2018

Protesters demonstrated against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh outside the U.S. Supreme Court on October 3 thru 6 in Washington, DC.

The upper chamber of the Senate is set to vote at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time Friday on whether to end debate on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. If the motion passes, the Senate could vote whether to confirm him Saturday, CNN reported.

Much of the outcome will depend on whether key swing voters believe Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a party when they were both in high school, or if they accept Kavanaugh’s denials. But anyone paying attention to how he represented his environmental record would have reason to doubt his credibility, The Intercept reported Thursday,

In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kavanaugh presented himself as pro-environment overall. “In some cases, I’ve ruled against environmentalists’ interests, and in many cases I’ve ruled for environmentalists’ interests,” he said.

But an analysis from Earthjustice found that of 26 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cases he had written opinions for, he had ruled for rolling back clean air and water protections 89 percent of the time. The Natural Resources Defense Council came out against a Supreme Court nomination for the second time in 25 years to oppose his advance to the nation’s highest court. And an analysis by William Snape, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity, found that in 18 decisions he had made on wildlife cases, including split ones, he had ruled against protecting animals in 96 percent of them.

“He lied. He abjectly lied,” Snape told The Intercept of Kavanaugh’s testimony. “And if he’s going to lie about his record on environmental cases, what’s he not going to lie about?”

In one moment in particular during his testimony on Sept. 5, Kavanaugh said he had upheld environmental regulations in several cases, including what he described as “the Natural Resources Defense Council case versus EPA, a ruling for environmentalist groups.”

When senior NRDC attorney John Walke, who argued the case in question before Kavanaugh, heard his testimony, he was stunned.

“My immediate reaction was, I thought I had misheard him,” Walke told The Intercept. “But as he kept talking, I realized he was talking about my clean air case before him. And then, I honestly could not believe that a federal judge and Supreme Court nominee was misrepresenting my case to U.S. senators in order to bolster his environmental credentials.”

Walke wrote a Twitter thread explaining how Kavanaugh had misrepresented his own ruling. Walke pointed out that Kavanaugh had ruled against the NRDC and the Sierra Club, who had also participated in the case, on three out of four counts. He upheld lax pollution limits for soot, lead, arsenic and other metal emissions from cement plants and let the EPA grant polluters a two-year extension to meet the weakened limits. He only ruled in favor of the environmental groups on a procedural question.

“[T]he claim is revealing because my case was one of his own leading examples of pro-environmental rulings: that it is a very poor example ends up reinforcing the relative paucity of his ‘rulings in favor of environmentalists’ interests,” Walke tweeted.

Public review of UNFRACTURED in WV

From a Biography provided in Honor of a Life of Honesty and Courage

Sandra Steingraber said: “We are all musicians in a great human orchestra, and it is now time to play the Save the World Symphony. You are not required to play a solo, but you are required to know what instrument you hold and play it as well as you can. You are required to find your place in the score. What we love we must protect. That’s what love means. From the right to know and the duty to inquire flows the obligation to act.” (And to VOTE! dgn)

Sandra Steingraber spent most of her childhood in Tazewell County, Illinois, an area dominated by industrial agriculture and manufacturing. Her mother, a microbiologist and her father, a community college professor was influenced by Rachel Carson. He stimulated his daughter’s interest in sustainability and organic agriculture. When Steingraber was diagnosed with bladder cancer in college, she suspected that there was a cancer cluster in her hometown and her family. Once in remission, she began her life-long exploration of the environmental links to cancer and human health.

During her search, Steingraber began to study Rachel Carson. “For my father, who served as a teenage soldier in Naples where the pesticide DDT was first deployed, Silent Spring was an antidote to wartime thinking…. For me… Silent Spring was the reason I left the laboratory and became a science writer. Silent Spring was my father’s armistice. It was my call to arms.”

Steingraber calls Carson her “guiding spirit” and portrays herself as “laboring away in the vineyards that Rachel Carson planted, trying on a daily basis to find a language to talk with the public about various technical subjects.”

Steingraber’s highly acclaimed book, Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment, presents cancer as a human rights issue. Originally published in 1997, it was the first comprehensive effort to bring together data on toxic releases from US cancer registries. It won praise from the national and international media.

A 2010 documentary by The People’s Picture Company of Toronto, Living Downstream, is based on the book and follows Steingraber’s travels across North America, as she works to break the silence about cancer and its links to the environment.

Steingraber’s next book, Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood, explores the intimate ecology of motherhood. Both a memoir of her own pregnancy and an investigation of fetal toxicology, Having Faith reveals the extent to which environmental hazards now threaten each stage of infant development. In the eyes of an ecologist, the mother’s body is the first environment for life. The Library Journal selected Having Faith as a best book of 2001, and it was featured in a PBS documentary by Bill Moyers.

In her most recent book, Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis, published in 2011, Steingraber identifies a safe environment as a human rights issue and explores the challenges and solutions to the ongoing chemical contamination of our children and our biosphere. Through individual stories, she relates how family routines are inextricably connected to public health issues: “Sunburn at the beach is linked to the stability of the ozone layer, which, in turn, is threatened by particular pesticides used in the production of tomatoes and strawberries.” Through her explorations, Steingraber suggests that we must realign our environmental policies to protect our children’s healthy development and free ourselves from dependence on fossil fuels in all their toxic forms.

Called “a poet with a knife” by Sojourners magazine, Steingraber was named a Ms. Magazine “Woman of the Year” and later received the Jennifer Altman Foundation’s first annual Altman Award for “the inspiring and poetic use of science to elucidate the causes of cancer.” The Sierra Club has called Steingraber “the new Rachel Carson,” and Carson’s own alma mater, Chatham College, awarded her its biennial Rachel Carson Leadership Award. In 2006, Steingraber received a Hero Award from the Breast Cancer Fund, and in 2009, the Environmental Health Champion Award from Physicians for Social Responsibility, Los Angeles. Steingraber was the 2011 recipient of the Heinz Award for extraordinary service to the environment.

Steingraber has delivered the keynote addresses at conferences on human health and the environment throughout the United States and Canada and has lectured at many universities, medical schools, and hospitals—including Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Columbia, and the Woods Hole Research Center. She is recognized for her ability to serve as a translator between scientists and activists. She has testified in the European Parliament, before the President’s Cancer Panel, and has participated in briefings to Congress and before United Nations delegates in Geneva, Switzerland. She is currently a regular columnist for Orion Magazine.

For a number of years Sandra Steingraber and her family lived just east of Ithaca in a log cabin in the woods, adjacent to wetlands where the “frogs kept them awake at night.” They drew their water from a well and belonged to a community organic farm and a cooperative grocery store. Although they loved the rural nursery school that their daughter Faith attended, Sandra and her husband Jeff felt compelled to withdraw her when they learned that the play structures were impregnated with dangerous amounts of arsenic.

When they discovered during a move that their television set had been stolen out of the back of their truck, they decided not to replace it. The result is that their children don´t experience television advertising. As a result, their food preferences have been shaped by their direct experience with the food itself and the farmers who grow it. No television commercials attract them with pictures of sweetened cereals and bubbly colas. Currently the family lives in a 1000 square foot house with a push mower, a clothesline, and a vegetable garden.

Sandra Steingraber has devoted her life to advocating for the human right to a toxic free environment. In an essay entitled “Mind Games” (Orion Magazine, March/April 2011), she wrote:

“So don’t give me any more shopping tips or lists of products to avoid. Don’t put neurotoxicants in my furniture and food and then instruct me to keep my children from breathing or eating them. Instead give me federal regulations that assess chemicals for their ability to alter brain development and function before they are allowed access to the marketplace… Give me chemical reform based on precautionary principles. Give me an architectural system that doesn’t impair our children’s learning ability or their future.”

Frack well pads & pipelines disturb hundreds of people and thousands of acres

Letter to Editor, Charleston Gazette (Opinion Section), August 4, 2018

Last month, our elected officials were hard at work to fund the Public Employee Insurance Agency (PEIA).

West Virginia Senate President Mitch Carmichael led 22 senators to vote down a proposal from Sen. Richard Ojeda that would have funded teachers’ health care through an increased severance tax on natural gas extraction. Their justification? The natural gas market is “too volatile” to provide adequate, secure funding into the future. What foresight!

Acknowledging this legitimate concern (which may or may not be connected to the fact that these 22 state senators have collectively received over $140,000 from oil and gas companies in the form of campaign contributions, according to the secretary of state), Delegate Mick Bates is proposing a production fee for natural gas extraction, which would not be at the mercy of the market, in contrast to gas prices and a subsequent severance tax.

Revenue from this fee could then be deposited in a West Virginia Trust Fund, such as Ted Boettner of the West Virginia Center for Budget & Policy advocates, where it could compound over time, securing this funding stream in perpetuity.

For years, West Virginians neglected to reap the full financial benefit of the black gold extracted so painstakingly from our hills. Let’s not make this mistake again

Just as the people of West Virginia should be fairly compensated for these resources, our teachers must be compensated for the time, energy and talent they invest in our children, who are our future.

What are they worth?

>>>> Moira Reilly, Morgantown

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Marcellus Shale companies say proposed permit fee hike is too high

From an Article by Laura Legere, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, August 15, 2018

Marcellus Shale companies are resisting a proposal by Pennsylvania regulators to more than double the price of drilling permit applications.

The PA state Department of Environmental Protection says it needs to raise permit fees from $5,000 to $12,500 per shale well to keep the state’s oil and gas oversight program from running out of money by next summer.

In response, shale companies and trade groups that have backed past fee increases now argue in public comments that the department has not sufficiently justified the need for this one.

Other funding sources — including the impact fee on shale companies and the department’s share of the taxpayer-supported general fund — should be tapped first, they say.

Pennsylvania would impose the highest well permit fee in the nation if the proposal is adopted, the Robinson-based Marcellus Shale Coalition said.

PA-DEP’s oil and gas program reviews permit applications, inspects well sites and develops policies to improve oversight of the industry.

The monthlong public comment period on the proposal closed Monday. Common industry complaints in the comments included that past fee hikes did not lead to faster permit reviews, which dragged on well past mandated deadlines last year amid a shortage of reviewers, and that there is no guarantee the new proposal will have a different outcome.

Also, shale companies say they are being asked to subsidize oversight of the state’s conventional, storage and legacy wells, which take up about 40 percent of the agency’s workload.

While none of the industry commenters recommend raising fees on conventional drillers — and the department is not proposing any changes in conventional well fees — “it is readily apparent that PA-DEP is looking at the unconventional industry as a ‘cash cow,’” the Wexford-based Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association said.

A statewide environmental group, the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, said it is clear that state regulators and lawmakers need to identify other options to “provide more stable funding for the agency while maintaining protections and balancing costs for the regulated community.”

Department officials acknowledge that one-time shale well permit fees are not a sustainable funding source for a broad program of oil and gas oversight, and they have pledged to advocate for a more balanced funding mix.

One goal would be to pursue funding “that doesn’t require someone else” — meaning, other PA-DEP programs or state agencies — “to get shortchanged for our benefit,” Scott Perry, the deputy secretary for the department’s office of oil and gas management, said at an advisory board meeting last week.

“I welcome everyone’s good ideas on how to do that,” he said.

It generally takes more than a year for a PA-DEP regulation to take effect after it is first proposed. The review process includes scrutiny by committees in the Republican-led General Assembly, which also determines the agency’s annual general fund appropriation in conjunction with the governor.

Thirty-two Republican state representatives wrote to criticize the permit fee proposal and questioned whether the department has the authority “to propose such a disproportionate share of funding responsibility upon one segment of industry.”

Instead, they suggested PA-DEP use part of its general fund appropriation to support the oil and gas program.

Are birds made of paper, to be manipulated?

Editorial of the Morgantown Dominion Post, May 14, 2018

EPA & Interior policy shifts focused on economics, not health or wildlife

Protecting the environment and wildlife often calls for balancing benefits and costs. No, it’s not written as such into relevant legal codes or regulations. And though this tradeoff is almost a matter of course for wildlife, it’s also apparent in many decisions for humans. However, the nation’s Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency are about to put an exclamation mark on that idea.

First, Interior is about to change how agencies under its umbrella enforce the more than 100-year-old Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Formerly, potential penalties served as incentive for businesses and agriculture to take reasonable measures to avoid killing birds. For instance, installing netting over oil waste pits or restricting certain pesticides spare thousands of birds annually. In other words, taking reasonable steps at a reasonable cost to protect bird populations.

But now, the Interior Department has decided it will only prosecute those that “d e l i b e r a t e l y” kill birds, not those that kill them by “accident.” This treaty has never attempted to altogether end the deaths of birds from unintentional consequences (wind turbines, skyscrapers, vehicles and power lines come to mind). There’s an unwritten understanding that such deaths are unavoidable. What this treaty does is aim to prevent those deaths that can be prevented. But to argue that gross negligence does not translate into criminal intent is as good as a blank check to ignore practical protections for birds.

Meanwhile, the EPA is intent on putting a price tag on the protections the Clean Air Act provides for breathing. The EPA now wants to calculate what the economic impact of your need to breathe clean air is.

Formerly, federal law and court decisions have required the EPA to focus on public health — not what it cost businesses or tax revenues — to set limits on pollution. Now, before defining regulations on pollution, smog, soot, etc. it will need to determine their impact on the economy. We don’t have a problem with having all the facts about such issues, but protecting public health should win every argument.

The EPA was never a perfect agency but once it cared as much about the environment as it now does the ability of polluters to get rich. This shifting of the principles of the EPA and the Interior Department to “reform” regulations can only muddy their efforts. What is clear though, is these policies tip the scales for wreaking havoc on clean air and wildlife.

National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) are for harmful pollutants

>>> Editorial of Morgantown Dominion Post, Earth Day, 2018

Oddly, the largest secular holiday in the world this year happens today — on a Sunday. It is estimated that more than a billion people will celebrate Earth Day in more than 190 countries. Unlike many of our holidays this is not just an American concept of a celebration that can be traced to elsewhere!

The first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, is embedded in events on America’s campuses, public schools and its communities. More than 20 million people celebrated and peacefully demonstrated then in favor of environmental reform. By that year’s end — Dec. 2, 1970 — the Environmental Protection Agency was created by an executive order of President Nixon. Its initial mission was to administer the Clean Air Act (also enacted in 1970), to reduce air pollution and enforce other landmark environmental legislation to come.

By the mid-1990s the EPA was enforcing 12 major statutes, including laws applied to ocean dumping, safe drinking water and asbestos hazards. This federal agency’s accomplishments are historic and have literally changed the world. For example, EPA enforcement was primarily responsible for a decline of up to one-half of most air-pollution emissions in the U.S. from 1970 to 1990.

Space does not allow us to list the EPA’s achievements, including significant improvements in water quality and waste disposal or agreements with automakers to install catalytic converters in cars.

Though vilification of the EPA predates the Trump administration, the EPA now prioritizes the very industries it’s supposed to regulate over the environment it’s sworn to defend. As mission statements go, the EPA’s is unequivocal: “Our mission is to protect human health and the environment.” We note that just so anyone today who had any doubts can rest assured.

But the truth is, the EPA’s administrator, Scott Pruitt, since taking office has driven this agency over an environmental and ethical cliff. He has halted guidelines to curb oil and gas facilities’ emissions. He has set his sights on regulations that protect wetlands ands streams. And he proposes to undo efforts to generate electricity by cleaner methods. This month, Pruitt also announced plans to scuttle requirements for cars and trucks to become more fuel efficient by 2025.

On the ethical front he spends millions on a 20-man around-the-clock security detail, first-class flights and a $43,000 soundproof phone booth. Yet, today we are more upset about the ongoing initiatives to not just relax, but to vacate environmental protections. Make no mistake these protections not only go the core of the EPA’s mission. They go to the core of planet Earth’s very existence.

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