Yard signs in Evans City, PA, in 2012 show residentials concerns

From an Article by James Saiers, Foreign Policy Magazine, March 14, 2020

The case of fracking in Pennsylvania shows that if experts and fossil fuel industry leaders can cooperate, innovation is possible.

Solar power, wind energy, smart grids, and energy storage often command the current discourse on energy innovation. Yet none of these technologies has transformed the U.S. energy landscape to the degree of high-volume hydraulic fracturing, known as “fracking,” which is unlocking previously inaccessible crude oil and natural gas from underground reservoirs. Thanks to fracking, the 40-­year decline in U.S. domestic crude oil production has reversed, and the United States has recently become a net exporter of natural gas for the first time.

For many, this record-setting pace of oil and gas production is no cause for celebration, because it reflects a continued reliance on fossil fuels. Nevertheless, fracking has made oil and gas plentiful and cheap, making these energy resources hard to resist. Like it or not, we may depend on oil and gas—and the technologies that produce them—for the foreseeable future.

Fracking begins after a gas or oil well is drilled and involves injecting a mixture of water, sand, and chemical additives into rock. The high pressure causes the rock to fracture, providing conduits for the oil and gas to flow into the nearby wellbore. Public perceptions of fracking are shaped by controversies between an industry that has downplayed the risks of fracking and the citizens alleging that it has polluted air, contaminated drinking water, and scarred landscapes.

People within communities hosting fracking were scared, looking to experts to make sense of this issue. While experts were easy to find, definitive answers were in short supply. The deployment of fracking had raced ahead of the science needed to illuminate its potential impacts. As fracking activities evolve, uncertainties remain. We must advance a science-based approach to management of fracking activities—one that engages the fossil fuel industry, while drawing from the research of independent scientists.

The natural gas company Range Resources inaugurated Pennsylvania’s shale gas rush in 2004, targeting the Marcellus Shale, which extends from West Virginia to the southern tier of New York State. The shale gas boom revitalized many of Pennsylvania’s small towns. Still, not everyone was happy. Residents grew frustrated with the traffic to and from drilling sites, noise, bright lights, and dust. Tensions mounted between residents who held lucrative natural gas leases and those forced to endure the inconveniences without benefiting from the financial windfall. And the public was becoming increasingly concerned about its water.

Although water withdrawals for fracking were not imposing undue stress on Pennsylvania’s streams and rivers, problems arose when industry tried to put this used water back. Fracking wastewater is exceptionally salty and may contain naturally occurring radioactive materials, such as radium, in addition to various hydrocarbon compounds. Much of this wastewater was discharged into streams and rivers after processing at treatment facilities.

The treatment plants were not equipped to handle the briny wastewater. Trouble sprouted in 2008, when monitoring of the Monongahela River in southwestern Pennsylvania — a source of drinking water for 1 million people — revealed that the waterway carried elevated loads of bromide, a precursor in the formation of cancer-causing brominated disinfection byproducts.

Two years later, the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority observed increases in those byproducts in its drinking water, linked to the discharge of Marcellus wastewater into the Allegheny River and its tributaries. Fears of contamination from intentional discharges were compounded by uncontrolled releases of fracking fluids, drilling fluids, and wastewater from leaks at fracking sites, trucking accidents, and illegal dumping.

Spills and stream salinization were not the only problems. Methane was detected in high levels in well waters of more than a dozen households in the small town of Dimock. The homeowners blamed nearby gas wells that were drilled and fracked by Cabot Oil and Gas. While not toxic, methane is flammable, and its release into the enclosed airspace at the top of a water well can lead to an explosion. Cabot Oil and Gas eventually reached a settlement, but, as part of the settlement terms, was not required to acknowledge responsibility for the contamination.

The first scientific study published after the Dimock incident received considerable public attention. By leveraging chemical fingerprinting techniques, the scientists attributed the source of methane present in a subset of 60 well-water samples to industry activities. Although methane does occur naturally in Pennsylvania’s drinking-water aquifers, a recent analysis of environmental records revealed that 39 wells drilled into the Marcellus Shale between 2004 and 2015 allowed methane migration that impacted 108 drinking water supplies.

The problems encountered at the outset of the shale gas boom did not arise from a lack of regulation.

Pennsylvania had a regulatory framework built around more than a century’s experience with conventional oil and gas extraction. Though bad actors existed, most natural gas producers did not operate with careless disregard for the environment, instituting practices to protect surface water and groundwater. But neither the state nor industry was fully prepared for the new management challenges posed by the rapid diffusion of fracking.

As awareness of the impacts grew, regulators strengthened policies intended to safeguard freshwater and human health. To address rising salinity, the state banned shipments of Marcellus wastewaters to municipal treatment plants unless the waste was pretreated to more restrictive standards. Regulations for storing and containing wastewater, drilling fluids, and fracking solutions were updated to lower the likelihood of uncontrolled releases at fracking sites. The state also issued new rules for well construction intended to reduce incidences of methane leakage.

These regulatory improvements have not put Pennsylvania in the clear. In the six years since regulations were strengthened, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection has documented more than 100 new cases of water supply contamination caused by oil and gas operations. This figure may underestimate the real extent of the problem, because settlements reached between the industry and homeowners need not be disclosed.

To compound these present dangers, new threats to freshwater quality and supply may emerge as infrastructure ages and as industry practices evolve to minimize costs and maximize fossil fuel recovery.

Pennsylvania’s experience suggests that the challenge of safeguarding freshwater resources from fracking will persist as long as fossil fuels continue to be pulled from the ground. Meeting this challenge in a sustained way requires management and policy approaches that better leverage data and science in decision-making.

While most of the risks posed to freshwater resources by fracking-related activities have been identified, they have defied quantification. The efficacy of policies that aim to prevent contamination have not been thoroughly tested. Management in the midst of this uncertainty should be adaptive—a scientific way of learning while doing. Adaptive management begins by identifying actions or interventions that might solve a defined problem, followed by monitoring the outcomes of those interventions, and then making adjustments to resolve any inadequacies. For adaptive management to work, industry must engage with managers and scientists from the environmental community. The track record for this type of collaboration is not especially strong, but there are encouraging signs and reasons for hope.

The nature of interactions between the fossil fuel industry and environmental scientists typically ranges from disregardful to hostile. Environmental scientists have focused on the effects of unconventional oil and gas development on water and air quality, with studies that show adverse effects gaining widespread attention and industry scorn. The industry has tried to discredit these studies, inviting criticism that they are more invested in covering up problems than addressing them.

This adversarial relationship hurts industry and environmental scientists alike.

Environmental scientists are excluded from access to monitoring sites, operational information, and other industry data that would strengthen their research. Industry also misses out, scuttling the opportunity to partner with environmental scientists on problem-solving and giving up the chance for constructive dialogue. The tendency for each group to remain in its own silo has engendered mistrust, leading to disagreement that can paralyze progress toward better environmental management.

Though rare, cooperative arrangements with industry enabling scientific assessment of fracking impacts have been forged. For example, a consortium of companies has engaged with universities coordinated largely by the Environmental Defense Fund to assess atmospheric methane emissions from oil and gas operations. I lead a team of researchers at Yale University that has leveraged a collaboration with industry to explore the potential groundwater impacts of shale gas development in Pennsylvania.

A formal agreement with Southwestern Energy gave Yale researchers the schedules and locations of gas well projects for the company’s Marcellus acreage. With this information, our team installed groundwater monitoring wells immediately adjacent to gas wells and measured changes in water quality over two years as several gas wells were drilled, fracked, and brought into production.

The Yale-Southwestern Energy study is a proof of concept, demonstrating that collaborative, scientific analysis of freshwater impacts of fracking-related activities is feasible. It serves as a template that must be replicated with production companies that operate in different regions and that employ a variety of practices and methodologies. Coordination of this science is critical so that outcomes from different studies can be compared, adaptive management can proceed, and knowledge can be exchanged with policymakers. An advisory board, chaired by a delegate from the host state’s department of environmental protection and composed of industry members, as well as qualified scientists, could manage the process.

Someone must pay for this science, of course. The Yale-Southwestern Energy study cost just over $500,000—which may seem expensive but is less than one-fourth of the cost incurred to put one Marcellus well into production. Companies may elect to pay for these studies, recognizing that the investment helps build trust within local communities and contributes to science-based regulation that may be less burdensome to them. State taxes on oil and gas extraction could also pay for the science.

Consider that just 1 percent of Pennsylvania’s 2018 natural gas impact fee would pay for the first year of eight studies like the one led by Yale. In such cases, funding agreements must be structured to maintain the integrity of the scientific process. Our own experience indicates that it is possible to establish agreement on terms that ensure scientific analyses can proceed without industry interference and that place no restrictions on the dissemination of findings.

More science is essential, but alone it is not enough to guarantee clean drinking water in areas with fracking or determine how and where unconventional oil and gas development should proceed. Policymaking institutions must listen and be responsive to new science. Policymakers must also make resources available to ensure that policies are adequately enforced. And we must make a faithful accounting of fracking costs and benefits that reflects our best knowledge.

Although science is only part of the solution, its proper role in the management of unconventional oil and gas development is to lead the way by providing decision-makers with credible information on environmental impacts and innovative approaches for addressing them. When environmental policy builds on careful science, rigorously analyzed data, and solid facts—pursued without fear of upsetting interested parties or overturning prevailing wisdom—innovative solutions often emerge.

>>> James Saiers is the Clifton R. Musser Professor of Hydrology at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where he studies water quality and supply.

William Ruckelshaus, EPA Administrator

From Living on Earth, PRI, December 6, 2019

PHOTO: William Ruckelshaus swearing in as the first Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Seen from left to right: President Richard M. Nixon, William Ruckelshaus, Jill Ruckelshaus (wife), Chief Justice Warren Burger.

William D. Ruckelshaus served as EPA Administrator from 1970 to 1973, and again from 1983 to 1985.

STEVE CURWOOD: Only one person has ever served as an Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under two Presidents, and that’s William D. Ruckelshaus, who died the day before Thanksgiving. William Ruckelshaus was in fact the first EPA Administrator, appointed by President Nixon in 1970, and in addition to laying the foundation for the agency and defining its mission, he oversaw the implementation of the Clean Air Act in 1970. Soon after he was tapped to run the FBI as acting director and then named deputy Attorney General. He was also fired by President Nixon during “Saturday Night Massacre” for refusing to dismiss the Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. Back in 2010 we spoke with William Ruckelshaus about his career and his reflections on how the EPA had its origins in Earth Day activism that put pressure on President Nixon to protect the environment.

RUCKELSHAUS: To centralize that enforcement and regulatory responsibility at the national level made it much more difficult for industry to escape reasonable rules guiding their emissions into the air and water by running to a safe haven—to some state that did not as strictly enforce the standards. So, I felt that we had to initially show the American people we were serious about this by strictly—not only setting the standards—but strictly enforcing them to let people know that we meant business.

CURWOOD: Now, you come back for a second bite of the apple of the EPA when you become administrator again—what, it’s 1983, it’s during the Reagan administration. Tell me, why did you come back and what changed for you in terms of your sense of the agency’s mission?
RUCKELSHAUS: I came back because the agency was in trouble and Burford who had been appointed by President Reagan had gotten herself in a whole lot of trouble, as did other appointees. They sort of bought the line that often is taken by Republicans in the administration that a lot of this social regulation—regulation to protect health, safety, and the environment—is an overreaction and the result of a sort of nanny state. She got in a lot of trouble as a result and president Reagan asked me to come back and help straighten the agency out.

CURWOOD: Now, wait a second—you’re a Republican.
RUCKELSHAUS: Right, well, I guess I still am. Barely.

CURWOOD: I believe you did support Barack Obama for president.
RUCKELSHAUS: Yeah, that’s right. I haven’t changed my mind all that much in the last 40 years, but the Republican Party certainly has moved. What I think the Republican Party has done recently is sort of give up on the environment. They rarely talk about it. I don’t think many of the candidates, or even their constituents think about it that often. And I think that’s a shame because these problems, many of them are real and need to be addressed in an aggressive way, or we’ll get in real trouble.

CURWOOD: William Ruckelshaus, the first and fifth Administrator of the EPA, died November 27th at the age of 87. He will be missed.

Related links:
- Listen to the full interview with EPA Administrators William Ruckelshaus and Lisa Jackson

- E&E News “William Ruckelshaus, twice EPA chief, dies”

- NYTimes | “William Ruckelshaus, Who Quit in ‘Saturday Night Massacre,’ Dies at 87”

Public Meeting, Tuesday, January 8, 2019, Charleston, WV

Public Advisory from the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC), January 3, 2019

Contacts: Robin Blakeman, OVEC, 304-522-0246, robin@ohvec.org
Angie Rosser, WVRC, 304-437-1274, arosser@wvrivers.org
Janet Keating, CCM, 304-360-4201, keatingjanet49@gmail.com

What: On the eve on the fifth anniversary of the 2014 water crisis, community members are invited to gather for “WATER: A sacred gift, a human right, and our stewardship role”

When: 6 – 8 p.m. Tuesday, January 8, 2019

Where: Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1600 Kanawha Blvd E, Charleston, WV 25311

More what: Community leaders will:
– Examine West Virginia water justice issues through a moral and faith-based lens
– Discuss current and legacy water pollution issues our community faces and ways West Virginia residents can be proactive in protecting safe drinking water
– Hold a candlelight vigil on the banks of the Kanawha River to mark the fifth anniversary of the West Virginia water crisis.

This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments served.

Who: Invited speakers include: Delegates Barbara Fleischauer and Mike Pushkin

Confirmed speakers include: Angie Rosser (West Virginia Rivers Coalition), Genevieve and Karan Ireland, Robin Blakeman, (OVEC–Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition), Janet Keating (Creation Justice Ministries), Fr. Brian O-Donnell (West Virginia Council of Churches), Rev. Rose Edington (West Virginia Interfaith Power and Light), Gary Zuckett (West Virginia Citizen Action Group)

Co-sponsoring groups: OVEC–Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition / West Virginia Rivers Coalition / Creation Justice Ministries / West Virginia Citizen Action Group / West Virginia Council of Churches / West Virginia Interfaith Power and Light / Christians for the Mountains / CARE–Call to Action for Racial Equality

###
SOURCE: The Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, PO Box 6753, Huntington, WV 25773-6753. Email: info@ohvec.org Phone: 304-522-0246

Protesting at VA Governor’s offices in Richmond on November 16, 2018

From an Article By Mechelle Hankerson, Virginia Mercury News, November 16, 2018

PHOTO ABOVE — Demonstrators outside the governor’s offices on Broad Street in Richmond Friday protest Gov. Ralph Northam’s decision to remove two members of the State Air Pollution Control Board as it weighs a crucial permit for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. (Virginia Pipeline Resisters)

Gov. Ralph Northam named new members for the state’s air and water boards a day after he ignited the ire of environmental groups by removing air board members whose terms expired months ago just as the panel weighs a crucial permit for Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

“We hope these new board members are qualified, but, frankly, we have no idea who they are,” said Mike Town, executive director of the Virginia League of Conservation Voters, in a statement.

“What we do know is that they are replacing two highly respected, well-qualified board members who dared to ask the hard questions about Dominion’s unnecessary and destructive pipeline, and that their appointments come just weeks before an important final vote on this project and on the heels of a contentious hearing where they raised serious concerns.”

The only explanation from Northam’s office for the timing of the move — the replaced members’ terms all expired in June — has been that he is “exercising his statutory authority to appoint members of his choosing to these board seats,” his spokeswoman, Ofirah Yheskel, said in a statement. “The governor’s decision is not because of anything pending before the air board,” she added Friday.

Northam chose Gail Bush, a clinical manager at Inova Fairfax Medical Campus and Kajal B. Kapur of Kapur Energy Environment Economics, LLC, to replace two air board members.

Bush is part of Virginia Clinicians for Climate Action, a group of medical professionals who advocate for climate change solutions that protect community’s health, according to its website.

Kapur’s firm performs economic, policy, regulatory and environmental consulting work, providing “expert advice on these issues to consulting firms, consumer counsel offices, federal and international agencies, state and local governments, regulatory commissions and environmental quality offices,” according to its website.

‘THE GOVERNOR HAS MADE A HUGE MISTAKE’

On Thursday, Northam removed Rebecca Rubin and Sam Bleicher from the air board. (Bleicher also serves on the board of the League of Conservation Voters).

Both of their terms expired in June, but they had continued to serve on the board, including during last week’s meeting on the proposed air permit for a Buckingham County compressor station that is part of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

Bleicher and Rubin had both expressed concerns about the siting of the station in Union Hill and whether the emissions produced would have a disproportionate effect on the largely African-American community.

Dominion has said the compressor station location is a result of the proximity to the existing Transco pipeline system, which the ACP will connect to, and nothing else. The board deferred a vote on the permit, and is scheduled to take it up again in December.

“We believe Gov. Northam has made a huge mistake and one that has immensely marred his standing and reputation in the conservation community and one that impacts overall public trust in this administration, as well,” Town said.

Town added that “the appearance that Gov. Northam replaced these board members to protect Dominion Energy at the expense of the predominantly African-American community of Union Hill is unconscionable and unacceptable.”

The Virginia State Conference of the NAACP also criticized the air board member removals. “It was expected their term(s) would be extended due to their involvement and knowledge of such a complex and monumental project. We fear disrupting the citizen review board midstream is a disservice to the Union Hill community’s right to a fair and impartial hearing,” the group said in a statement.

“The termination of two valued board members at this crucial juncture diminishes the ability of the board to effectively perform its assigned job. Furthermore, the governor’s action may signal to other board members that asking too many questions about an influential utility’s potential impact on a vulnerable historic community may lead to their removal.”

Northam also booted Roberta Kellam from the State Water Control Board, where she opposed permits related to the pipeline. However, Robert Dunn, chairman of that board, who voted to grant permits for both the ACP and the separate Mountain Valley Pipeline, is also out.

Northam replaced them with Paula Hill Jasinski, president of Chesapeake Environmental Communications and Green Fin Studio, and James Lofton, assistant chief counsel for Airports and Environmental Law in the Federal Aviation Administration to the water board.

Jasinski’s Studio is a marketing firm that specializes in working with environmental groups and she has a background in marine biology. “It’s a humbling appointment, I look forward to the challenge,” she said in an interview, adding that there are a lot of controversial issues the board will take up and it shouldn’t shy away from making tough decisions.

Environmental groups said they were most concerned with the air board replacements. The League of Conservation Voters, a major Northam campaign contributor and among the most active environmental lobbying outfits in the Capitol, is familiar with Jasinski, Town said, but the rest of Northam’s appointments are unknown to the group, who provided the administration with suggestions for replacements.

Protesters outside the governor’s office on Broad Street Friday blasted the decision to remove the air board members while the permit is in play, casting it as a forceful intervention in the regulatory process that contradicts Northam’s longstanding stated deference to the boards and agencies dealing with permitting on the controversial pipeline projects.

Many saw the influence of Dominion Energy, the politically potent utility, at work.

“Dominion has used their power in the Commonwealth of Virginia, which they have a lot of, to continue their taking over and dominating the property, space, and livelihoods of minority communities, particularly people of color, and it’s time for it to stop,” said Richard Walker, a descendant of the freed slaves who founded the Union Hill community, in a statement.

Heidi Dhivya Berthoud, a member of the Friends of Buckingham group, which has fought the project, said the governor “can no longer hide behind his stated faith in the state’s regulatory agencies to protect our air, water and communities.”

“The air board did their job and listened to our well-reasoned arguments about the compressor station and stood up to DEQ’s and Dominion’s deceptions,” she said. “Now we see what happens when the truth is told.”

Howard Zinn (1922 - 2010), historian & social activist

From the InfoShop Staff via The Progressive, October 6, 2018

#####. Essay by Howard Zinn on October 21, 2005 .#####

John Roberts sailed through his confirmation hearings as the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, with enthusiastic Republican support, and a few weak mutterings of opposition by the Democrats. Then, after the far right deemed Harriet Miers insufficiently doctrinaire, Bush nominated arch conservative Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O’Connor. This has caused a certain consternation among people we affectionately term “the left.”

I can understand that sinking feeling. Even listening to pieces of Roberts’s confirmation hearings was enough to induce despair: the joking with the candidate, the obvious signs that, whether Democrats or Republicans, these are all members of the same exclusive club. Roberts’s proper “credentials,” his “nice guy” demeanor, his insistence to the Judiciary Committee that he is not an “ideologue” (can you imagine anyone, even Robert Bork or Dick Cheney, admitting that he is an “ideologue”?) were clearly more important than his views on equality, justice, the rights of defendants, the war powers of the President.

At one point in the hearings, The New York Times reported, Roberts “summed up his philosophy.” He had been asked, “Are you going to be on the side of the little guy?” (Would any candidate admit that he was on the side of “the big guy”? Presumably serious “hearings” bring out idiot questions.)

Roberts replied: “If the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy’s going to win in court before me. But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy’s going to win, because my obligation is to the Constitution.”

If the Constitution is the holy test, then a justice should abide by its provision in Article VI that not only the Constitution itself but “all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land.” This includes the Geneva Convention of 1949, which the United States signed, and which insists that prisoners of war must be granted the rights of due process.

A district court judge in 2004 ruled that the detainees held in Guantanamo for years without trial were protected by the Geneva Convention and deserved due process. Roberts and two colleagues on the Court of Appeals overruled this.

There is enormous hypocrisy surrounding the pious veneration of the Constitution and “the rule of law.” The Constitution, like the Bible, is infinitely flexible and is used to serve the political needs of the moment. When the country was in economic crisis and turmoil in the Thirties and capitalism needed to be saved from the anger of the poor and hungry and unemployed, the Supreme Court was willing to stretch to infinity the constitutional right of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. It decided that the national government, desperate to regulate farm production, could tell a family farmer what to grow on his tiny piece of land.

When the Constitution gets in the way of a war, it is ignored. When the Supreme Court was faced, during Vietnam, with a suit by soldiers refusing to go, claiming that there had been no declaration of war by Congress, as the Constitution required, the soldiers could not get four Supreme Court justices to agree to even hear the case. When, during World War I, Congress ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech by passing legislation to prohibit criticism of the war, the imprisonment of dissenters under this law was upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court, which included two presumably liberal and learned justices: Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis.

It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to uphold justice.

It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to uphold justice.

The distinction between law and justice is ignored by all those Senators–Democrats and Republicans–who solemnly invoke as their highest concern “the rule of law.” The law can be just; it can be unjust. It does not deserve to inherit the ultimate authority of the divine right of the king.

The Constitution gave no rights to working people: no right to work less than twelve hours a day, no right to a living wage, no right to safe working conditions. Workers had to organize, go on strike, defy the law, the courts, the police, create a great movement which won the eight-hour day, and caused such commotion that Congress was forced to pass a minimum wage law, and Social Security, and unemployment insurance.

The Brown decision on school desegregation did not come from a sudden realization of the Supreme Court that this is what the Fourteenth Amendment called for. After all, it was the same Fourteenth Amendment that had been cited in the Plessy case upholding racial segregation. It was the initiative of brave families in the South–along with the fear by the government, obsessed with the Cold War, that it was losing the hearts and minds of colored people all over the world–that brought a sudden enlightenment to the Court.

The Supreme Court in 1883 had interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment so that nongovernmental institutions hotels, restaurants, etc.-could bar black people. But after the sit-ins and arrests of thousands of black people in the South in the early Sixties, the right to public accommodations was quietly given constitutional sanction in 1964 by the Court. It now interpreted the interstate commerce clause, whose wording had not changed since 1787, to mean that places of public accommodation could be regulated by Congressional action and be prohibited from discriminating.

Soon this would include barbershops, and I suggest it takes an ingenious interpretation to include barbershops in interstate commerce.

The right of a woman to an abortion did not depend on the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. It was won before that decision, all over the country, by grassroots agitation that forced states to recognize the right. If the American people, who by a great majority favor that right, insist on it, act on it, no Supreme Court decision can take it away.

The rights of working people, of women, of black people have not depended on decisions of the courts. Like the other branches of the political system, the courts have recognized these rights only after citizens have engaged in direct action powerful enough to win these rights for themselves.

This is not to say that we should ignore the courts or the electoral campaigns. It can be useful to get one person rather than another on the Supreme Court, or in the Presidency, or in Congress. The courts, win or lose, can be used to dramatize issues.

On St. Patrick’s Day, 2003, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, four anti-war activists poured their own blood around the vestibule of a military recruiting center near Ithaca, New York, and were arrested. Charged in state court with criminal mischief and trespassing (charges well suited to the American invaders of a certain Mideastern country), the St. Patrick’s Four spoke their hearts to the jury.

Peter DeMott, a Vietnam veteran, described the brutality of war. Danny Burns explained why invading Iraq would violate the U.N. Charter, a treaty signed by the United States. Clare Grady spoke of her moral obligations as a Christian. Teresa Grady spoke to the jury as a mother, telling them that women and children were the chief victims of war, and that she cared about the children of Iraq. Nine of the twelve jurors voted to acquit them, and the judge declared a hung jury. (When the federal government retried them on felony conspiracy charges, a jury in September acquitted them of those and convicted them on lesser charges.)

Still, knowing the nature of the political and judicial system of this country, its inherent bias against the poor, against people of color, against dissidents, we cannot become dependent on the courts, or on our political leadership. Our culture–the media, the educational system–tries to crowd out of our political consciousness everything except who will be elected President and who will be on the Supreme Court, as if these are the most important decisions we make. They are not. They deflect us from the most important job citizens have, which is to bring democracy alive by organizing, protesting, engaging in acts of civil disobedience that shake up the system. That is why Cindy Sheehan’s dramatic stand in Crawford, Texas, leading to 1,600 anti-war vigils around the country, involving 100,000 people, is more crucial to the future of American democracy than the mock hearings on Justice Roberts or the ones to come on Judge Alito.

That is why the St. Patrick’s Four need to be supported and emulated. That is why the GIs refusing to return to Iraq, the families of soldiers calling for withdrawal from the war, are so important.

That is why the huge peace march in Washington on September 24 bodes well.

Let us not be disconsolate over the increasing control of the court system by the right wing.

The courts have never been on the side of justice, only moving a few degrees one way or the other, unless pushed by the people. Those words engraved in the marble of the Supreme Court, “Equal Justice Before the Law,” have always been a sham.

No Supreme Court, liberal or conservative, will stop the war in Iraq, or redistribute the wealth of this country, or establish free medical care for every human being. Such fundamental change will depend, the experience of the past suggests, on the actions of an aroused citizenry, demanding that the promise of the Declaration of Independence — an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — be fulfilled.

Endangered Species Day is this Friday! You can set up a fundraising page and personalize it to raise money on behalf of your favorite vulnerable species. The money you raise will go towards Sierra Club’s mission, which includes protecting vulnerable wildlife and the lands they live in. Bonus — you’ll earn the chance to symbolically adopt your own wild animal when you reach the $39 fundraising milestone*.

I hope you’ll join!

>> Jenny Muschinske, Team Sierra Coordinator,
jenny.muschinske@sierraclub.org

*When you pass the $39 fundraising milestone, I’ll send you a coupon code to redeem your adoptable animal. Shipping is US only and takes 5-10 business days. Join in here.

U S Leadership is Defunct .... Censorship is un-American

From an Essay by Adam Frank, 13.7 NPR Blog, October 29, 2017

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency abruptly pulled a group of its scientists from speaking at a scientific meeting set to take place the following Monday.

The conference was focused on exploring ways to protect the Narragansett Bay Estuary in Rhode Island. Climate change happens to be one of the threats to the estuary and the EPA’s researchers were set to talk on this issue.

Given the administration’s hostility to climate science, the new leaders of the EPA were quickly accused of censoring their own scientists.

“They don’t believe in climate change,” John King, a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island, told New York Magazine, “so I think what they’re trying to do is stifle discussions of the impacts of climate change.”

The charges of scientific censorship that have been leveled at the EPA are indeed troubling. The EPA’s only defense of their actions was that “it’s not an EPA conference.”

Given these events, it’s worth remembering that there is a long, sad history of governments trying to muzzle, stifle or censor the fruits of scientific research. It’s a history Americans might want to pay attention to, given how poorly those muzzling efforts worked out for the nations that tried to implement them.

The most famous example of forcing a scientist to stop talking was Galileo and the Catholic Church. In the early 1600s, the Church wanted the astronomer and physicist Galileo to stop publicly arguing that the Earth revolved around the sun. The Church’s official position was that the sun orbited Earth and the Earth was fixed in space, the center of all things. Though Galileo was warned about his actions, he continued to argue for the “heliocentric” solar system his research supported. Eventually, in 1633, he was brought to trial, forced to recant his views and was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life. It is said that as Galileo was led away, he muttered in Italian “even so, it does move.”

Yes, the Earth moves. It does, in fact, orbit the sun — and no amount of politically motivated censorship could change that fact. More than 300 years later, the Church admitted its error.

A more modern and potent example of a nation shooting itself in the foot by censoring science comes via Soviet Russia. It was almost 100 years ago that agronomist Trofim Lysenko became a power in Russian science. Lysenko believed plants and animals could be “taught” new characteristics that would be inherited by the next generation. Ignoring everything biologists understood about evolution, Lysenko promised this methods would skyrocket farm production to new levels and feed a starving Russia. He made his ideas align with the political ideology of the day — Stalinism — and rose high enough in power to control Russian agricultural science.

Lysenko censored and persecuted scientific opponents even though his ideas were a disaster for crops yields. It was not until the latter 1950s and early 1960s that “Lysenkoism” was finally rejected as the non-science that it was.

Along with the vast scale of human losses, in the end it was Russia’s long-term viability as a scientific power that Lysenkoism hurt most. By censoring any idea that did not meet with government approval, the revolution that was DNA and genetics passed Russia by. Russian biology never really recovered.

Censoring science for political expediency is folly of the highest order. First, a nation cannot maintain its position as a leader in science and technology if it censors science and technology that doesn’t match ideology. Ideology can’t bind science for very long. But censoring science that doesn’t match ideology sends a very clear message to the rest of the world about how that nation values science.

Why does that matter?

Science runs on talent. For young talented people who want to develop the next round of life-saving drugs or the next billion-dollar technology, the message censorship sends is quite clear: Go somewhere else, somewhere that takes research seriously; go do your work there.

But in the end, the greatest folly in government scientific censorship is failing to recognize that you will be caught. But it’s not your political opponents that will catch you. Instead, it’s the world itself that will trip you up. It will come in the next “never-seen-before” hurricane, or the next dangerous epidemic. Nature, which is the point of scientific inquiry, will always have the last word. The censorship those in power impose does nothing but blind those powers to the consequences of ignoring nature. That’s because nature is, was, and always will, be the higher power.

You would think we’d have learned that by now.

>>> Adam Frank is a co-founder of the 13.7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester and author of the upcoming book Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth. His scientific studies are funded by the National Science Foundation, NASA and the Department of Education.

Diesel engines provide noise and dangerous air pollution

From the Guest Opinion-Editorial by David McMahon, Charleston Gazette-Mail, October 9, 2017

I write in response to the op-ed by the executive director of the West Virginia Independent Oil and Gas Association of West Virginia in which he opined that gas production in Pennsylvania and Ohio is increasing more than in West Virginia and that is because of our Legislature’s failure to adopt legislation the industry wants.

I do not know if it is true that production is increasing faster in Pennsylvania and Ohio or if the reason for the increase arises from what he claims or is from a variety of other reasons. I do know that some of the legislation the drillers have wanted here should not pass because it is so lopsided in favor of the drillers that any increase in production would mostly benefit the drillers and not our citizens.

During the 2017 session, drillers pushed so-called “cotenancy” legislation, which said that, if a number of family members own shared interests in one mineral tract, the drillers only needed a certain percentage of the family members to sign leases to drill on that tract. And then the driller could pay every family member according to the terms of the leases signed by only some. I have cousins who are a retired airline stewardess and a retired obstetrician. They left West Virginia decades ago. They know nothing about the Marcellus Shale and do not have the same financial or surface use concerns that I do. I know what drillers can afford to pay and what other provisions should and should not be in a lease. The drillers should not be able to get around me by getting my cousins to sign the driller’s unnegotiated boilerplate lease.

That “majority rules” legislation was bad, but the industry’s additional proposed “invisible ink” legislation was worse. Many leases signed early in the last century are still in effect today because there are still old, low-producing wells on the mineral tracts. Those antiquated leases do not have voluntary-pooling clauses that are required to drill using the new, mile-long horizontal well bore drilling techniques; and they have the pre-Marcellus, industry standard royalty rate of 12.5 percent. I know of one Marcellus Shale well drilled next to a conventional well that, in the first full calendar year of production, produced 60 times more gas than the conventional well a few feet away. And there were eight more Marcellus Shale gas wells drilled on the same new pad.

Things have changed.

Modern leases do have pooling clauses, but they also provide for royalties of 18 percent and even higher. Some drillers ask the mineral owners to modernize the old leases to add a voluntary-pooling clause (and often other fine print favoring the driller), but refuse to also modernize the royalty rate. Many mineral owners have refused to sign these one-sided lease amendments, so the drillers have gone to the Legislature asking for laws that say there is a pooling clause in these old leases even though there is not.

I have spent a career advising people who come to me asking if a driller can do something on their tracts. I tell them I have to read the lease (completely drafted by the drillers’ lawyers — no required consumer-protection language here); and if the lease says the driller can do it, the driller can do it and not pay for the privilege. Now the drillers want legislation that says they can do things even if their lawyer did NOT put the things in the lease.

To add insult to injury, initial drafts of this so-called “joint development” legislation allowed the new gigantic well pads to be placed on people who only own the surface even though the use of the surface that was contemplated in the severance deeds signed by their ancestors was the use that was contemplated before the Model T Ford.

If West Virginia is going to pass legislation, it should not make the mistake Pennsylvania made. West Virginia should look to the laws of states like Texas and Oklahoma, where there is plenty of drilling but the citizens are better off. Those states have legislation with policies that would achieve the drillers’ goals but balance the benefits to the drillers with the benefits to West Virginia citizens.

>>> David McMahon is a retired lawyer in Charleston. See also: www.WVSORO.org

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Utilities ask Federal Energy Regulatory Agency to step on it with ACP

From an Article by John Bruce, Highland Recorder, September 7, 2017

MONTEREY — Today, in a move to speed up the regulatory process, Dominion, Duke and Southern asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to approve the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline this month so tree clearing can start in November.

An urgently toned letter to FERC chair Neil Chatterjee, commissioners Cheryl LaFleur and Robert F. Powelson requested FERC “issue an order granting the certificate for the project at the earliest possible time, consistent with the rules and regulations of the commission.

“The commission staff issued the final Environmental Impact Statement for the project July 21, 2017. In the EIS, FERC staff concluded that the majority of impacts would be reduced to less-than- significant levels with the implementation of ACP’s proposed mitigation and the additional measures recommended in the EIS. We are pleased by the favorable findings in the EIS and have every confidence that the staff recommended conditions can be incorporated into our construction framework.”

It was difficult to determine whether the sense of urgency was related to what climate change scientists have decided is a link between fossil fuels emissions and the record hurricane season devastation. The request did not mention a U.S. Court of Appeals landmark Aug. 22 decision ordering FERC to write a second EIS of the Spectra (now Enbridge) Sabal Trail Pipeline taking greenhouse gas emissions into account as integral to the pipeline overall environmental impact.

Rather, the utilities pointed to agencies that, they claim, want the project to stay on schedule, plus purported economic benefits.

“Further, activities by other federal agencies including the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Army Corps of Engineers and the National Park Service for permits and related authorizations remain on schedule. Similarly, state actions for section 401 Water Quality Certifications and other state requirements are proceeding and align with our anticipated construction schedule to begin tree clearing in November 2017,” the letter urged.

The proposed “ACP will deliver 1.5 MMDt/day and has commitments for 93 percent of the pipeline capacity. Of this amount, 68 percent of the supplies will serve the electric generation needs in North Carolina and Virginia, thereby improving regional air quality. In addition, 24 percent of ACP’s capacity will provide expanded supplies of natural gas for local gas utilities to meet the critical needs of residential, commercial and industrial customers in gas constrained areas,” the letter said.

“Virginia Natural Gas, a gas distribution subsidiary of Southern Company Gas, serving nearly 300,000 customers in Eastern Virginia, best exemplifies the urgency with this statement on the FERC docket: There is not currently enough interstate pipeline capacity to serve any substantial economic development east of Richmond, Virginia, and often throughout the heating season, large transportation customers are adversely impacted by having their natural gas use restricted by operational flow orders issued from existing interstate pipelines,” the company wrote.

“Piedmont Natural Gas of North Carolina has documented similar critical needs: Increasing demand for natural gas in Piedmont’s rapidly growing Carolinas market is the primary driver for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which is the most competitively-priced option for our customers. Not only will ACP deliver the needed additional supplies to support customer growth, but it also will provide operational pressure critical to Piedmont’s physical infrastructures at strategic locations on its pipeline system. The significant natural gas pipeline also will create much needed economic development opportunities through a portion of North Carolina that historically has been economically challengers. The established record about the project confirms that natural gas delivered by ACP will enhance energy security and fuel diversity for the region.

“The associated economic benefits are well documented as the project will bring over 17,000 new jobs in the construction industry, $377 million in annual energy cost savings for customers and $28 million in new, annual tax revenues for local governments along the pipeline route. These are only a few of the project’s benefits. Since ACP formally filed with FERC in September 2015 for permission to build the project, it has gained an expansive record of support from state and local governments, skilled craft labor organizations and leading business groups.

“We recognize the commission has a number of cases pending consideration with the restoration of quorum,” Dominion continued. “The commission’s timely issuance of the order for the ACP project, however, is essential to meeting our contract obligations, ensuring customers realize the energy savings, providing manufacturing access to needed supplies of natural gas, and offering enhanced energy security and reliability to the region. For these reasons, we respectfully request that the commission issue an order approving the ACP certificate in September, so that the initial construction activities and tree clearing can begin in November and conclude in early 2018 as described in the final EIS.”

Those signing the letter included Diane Leopold of Dominion, Franklin Yoho of Duke, and Andrew Evans of Southern.

See also: Friends of Nelson County: Standing in Opposition to Dominion’s Proposed Pipeline

Paradise Gas-fired Plant -- Coal plants in the background

From a Report by Glynis Board, Ohio Valley ReSource, WFPL – NPR, July 17, 2017

‘Where Paradise Lay‘

Coal is showing its age. The average age of coal plants in the U.S. today is about 40 years and for the past couple of decades power companies have faced tough decisions about the investments needed to keep those coal-burners going in a way that meets both environmental requirements and economic competition.

Many are opting to phase out coal and instead invest in cheaper, cleaner natural gas.

Some 8,000 megawatts of coal power generating capacity will likely be retired this year. That’s roughly the equivalent of 11 Longview plants. Last year, 13,000 megawatts of coal were retired, many of those before planned retirement dates.

Economists like Walter Culver with the Great Lakes Energy Institute at Case Western Reserve University say the boom in the shale gas supply and development of high efficiency technology to burn that gas are combining to force more coal out of the market. “So now the natural efficiency of generating electricity with gas for the same amount of gas energy as coal energy is about half of the costs, basically,” he said.

That was the strong selling point for TVA President and CEO Bill Johnson, who recently addressed a crowd gathered in Paradise, Kentucky. “It’s a big part of our priority here to diversify our fleet to make sure we are making electricity at the lowest feasible rate,” he said.

David Sorrick, TVA’s senior vice president of power operations, stood near the new 1100 megawatt facility. “Directly behind me is the new Paradise combined-cycle facility,” he said. “And it’s co-located with the unit down the hill, which is our Paradise coal facility.”

Gas power produces far less soot, no mercury, and none of the combustion ash that coal power produces. It also produces 40 to 50 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions compared to the coal unit.

Operations technician Kyle Jones conducted a tour at the dedication ceremony, and proudly pointed out the efficiency features. “The combined cycle portion where we’re using all the heat possible is what makes it so efficient,” he explained. “Our exhaust leaving the stack is as cool as we can make it to use all the energy we could, the most heat transfer possible.”

That even reduces the amount of water needed from the nearby Green River. Steam is returned to liquid form in cooling towers. Huge fans pass air over droplets to cool water until it can be reused.

Jones started at the Paradise coal facility a decade ago and worked his way from conveyer operator to unit operator and now a job at the new gas facility.
“I love it,” he said of the new plant. “It’s a whole lot more clean and makes a world of difference in terms of the work I do.”

Others in the community, however, see trouble in Paradise. At the nearby Paradise Cafe, a stone monument to Kentucky’s coal miners greets visitors at the door. Inside, patrons talked over burgers and BLTs about looming concerns over job losses, either at the TVA facility or the nearby coal mine that supplies it.

The TVA is eager to calm those fears. Sorrick pointed out that even though two coal units were retired here, a third one remains in operation and likely will for decades. However, the new gas facility employs fewer people than the coal plant did. Some employees found work elsewhere in the TVA system.

Health Effects of Power Plants

When John Prine put Paradise on the popular culture map, he was writing about the visible effects of strip mining.

But what Prine couldn’t see then were some of the profound public health effects of burning coal, effects that would take years to measure.

The TVA has been burning coal in Paradise for fifty years. But it started burning a lot more of it in the 1980s, after the public’s opinion of nuclear power changed dramatically. “It was completely related to the partial nuclear meltdown of Three Mile Island in 1979,” Carnegie Mellon University researcher Edson Severnini noticed.

When the TVA took some of its nuclear power generators off line, the power gap was met with coal, specifically, a big increase in the output from the Paradise Fossil Plant. That swap in power generation in the mid 80s provided Severnini an opportunity to study public health impacts in places where coal power generation increased.

He found a striking relationship between the uptick in coal burning at Paradise and a decrease in the size of babies born downwind. “Where Paradise coal-fired power plant was located there was a huge increase in coal-fired power generation, a high increase in air pollution,” he said. “And in that particular location there was a decrease in birth weight by 5.4 percent.”

Severnini’s study was published in the journal Nature in April. He looked at recorded birth weight in the first 18 months after the region’s switch to coal. It was accessible data and birth weight is a good indicator of human health outcomes later in life. Severnini explained that low birth weight can be linked to shorter life spans, higher susceptibility to disease, and even a person’s ability to thrive socially.

“What I wanted people to think about is: What are the consequences of energy choices?” he said.

The Paradise coal facility is now far cleaner than it was in the 80s thanks to stronger requirements under the Clean Air Act and pollution control technology TVA installed. But no matter how you burn it, coal is an organic material dug from the ground and will produce emissions. Recent environmental studies indicate that despite progress in pollution control, soot from coal power plants still accounted for an estimated 7,000 premature deaths each year in the U.S. as of 2014. That’s a lot fewer deaths than the country saw just a decade earlier.

“The cleaner you get that carbon-containing compound you’re burning, the better it is,” said University of Pittsburgh physician and public health expert Dr. Bernard Goldstein. “There are cleaner forms of coal, but none of them are as clean as, say, natural gas.”

Goldstein said despite a lack of data to understand the full health effects of the natural gas industry, it is a significantly cleaner fossil fuel to burn. And gas drillers probably face fewer health risks than coal miners.

“Anytime we’ve had areas that have switched from coal to natural gas there are far less particulates in the air and so the pollution levels have decreased because of that switch,” he said.

Uncertainty Exists Over Gas

But while natural gas offers improvements compared to coal, its environmental effects are proving difficult to fully measure.

Goldstein said he thinks the gas industry, which is highly fragmented, has missed opportunities to clearly address concerns about its own environmental effects. Those include air and water pollution near drilling sites, disposal concerns related to drilling waste, and the greenhouse gas emissions that result from methane leakage.

As a result, any health effects remain to be clearly understood. “For natural gas, the major uncertainties are weighing on the people who live next door,” he said.

Next door to gas drilling, that is. Put another way, the health and environmental risks for the industry’s host communities may take years to observe and measure. And the people of the Ohio Valley may well bear the brunt of those effects to come, just as they have with the effects of coal in the past.

See also: Why Are G20 Governments Financing Coal Over Renewables?