Weed killer ‘castrates’ male frogs, study says
By Azadeh Ansari, CNN

(CNN) — Atrazine, a weed killer widely used in the Midwestern United States and other agricultural areas of the world, can chemically “castrate” male frogs and turn some into females, according to a new study.

New research suggests the herbicide may be a cause of amphibian declines around the globe, said biologists at the University of California-Berkeley, who conducted the study. The findings are being published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers found that long-term exposure to low levels of atrazine — 2.5 parts per billion of water — emasculated three-quarters of laboratory frogs and turned one in 10 into females. Scientists believe the pesticide interferes with endocrine hormones, such as estrogen and testosterone.

“The effects of atrazine in the long term have been shown to demasculinize or chemically castrate [frogs], combined with complete feminization of some animals,” said lead researcher Tyrone B. Hayes, a biologist and herpetologist at the University of Berkeley.

“We need to reconfigure how we evaluate chemicals in the environment and the impact on environmental health and public health,” he said.

Hayes found that 10 percent of the exposed genetic male frogs developed into functional females who copulated with unexposed males and produced viable eggs. The other 90 percent of the exposed male frogs expressed decreased libido, reduced sperm count and decreased fertility, among other findings.

Syngenta, a Swiss company that is the largest manufacturer of atrazine, has challenged the validity of Hayes’ study.

“We haven’t seen these kinds of responses that Dr. Hayes reports,” said Keith Solomon, an environmental toxicologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, who has served as a consultant to Syngenta. “Some of these studies are poorly conducted and are entirely inconsistent.”

The new study’s implications for atrazine’s effect on humans is unclear. But some scientists are concerned the herbicide may pose risks to reproductive health.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year launched a comprehensive evaluation of the herbicide to investigate any possible links between atrazine and cancer and to determine whether new restrictions are necessary. The EPA’s current safety standard for atrazine in drinking water is three ppb.

The European Union banned atrazine in 2004 because it was consistently showing up in levels higher than 0.1 ppb — its threshold for harmful chemicals — in drinking water.

Farmers in the United States continue to use atrazine on crops.

The herbicide has been a long-standing favorite among corn, sorghum and sugarcane farmers because it is affordable and can eliminate the need for tilling the soil. Tens of millions of pounds of atrazine are used each year in the United States. Syngenta estimates that 60 million pounds were used during 2008, most of it on corn.

A 2006 study by the U.S. Geological Survey found atrazine in approximately 75 percent of stream water and about 40 percent of all groundwater samples from agricultural areas tested between 1992 and 2001.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy organization, released a report in August 2009 that documented spikes of atrazine in the water supplies of Midwestern and Southern agricultural areas where the pesticide is primarily applied.

Home or municipal carbon filters can remove atrazine from water but some water filtration systems in small towns are not equipped to filter out atrazine. Water systems in a handful of states have sued atrazine’s manufacturers in an effort to force them to pay for removing the pesticide from drinking water.

Tim Pastoor, principal scientist for Syngenta, told CNN that the EPA’s current levels for atrazine are safe and that “there is political pressure to get atrazine re-examined.”

“Residues of atrazine and all our crop protection products in water do not pose a health risk for consumers,” Syngenta says on its Web site.

The company also says “ongoing laboratory and field research by university scientists shows that atrazine has no effect on the survival, growth or limb deformities of frogs.”

But Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist with the NRDC’s health and environment program, believes the research by Hayes and the other University of California, Berkeley, biologists is valid.

Sass also is skeptical of Syngenta’s claims.

“Their tactic is to flood the scientific literature with negative data to negate the other studies,” she said. “It’s only their studies that show that atrazine is not an endocrine disrupter.”

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

Toxic towns: People of Mossville ‘are like an experiment’
By David S. Martin, CNN Medical Senior Producer

Westlake, Louisiana (CNN) — Gather current and former Mossville, Louisiana, residents in a room and you’re likely to hear a litany of health problems and a list of friends and relatives who died young.

“I got cancer. My dad had cancer. In fact, he died of cancer. It’s a lot of people in this area who died of cancer,” says Herman Singleton Jr., 51, who also lost two uncles and an aunt to cancer.

Singleton and many others in this predominantly African-American community in southwest Louisiana suspect the 14 chemical plants nearby have played a role in the cancer and other diseases they say have ravaged the area.

For decades, Mossville residents have complained about their health problems to industry, and to state and federal agencies. Now with a new Environmental Protection Agency administrator outspoken about her commitment to environmental justice, expectations are growing.

“I’m pretty hopeful now,” say Debra Ramirez, 55, who grew up in Mossville and who lost a sister at 45 of sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease. “I do see her trying to do the right thing.”

Lisa Jackson, a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, and the first African-American administrator of the EPA, this year listed environmental justice as one of her seven priorities.

And the EPA held a meeting in Mossville last month formally kicking off a study designed to see if the community qualifies as a Superfund site, reserved for the most polluted places in the United States. Superfund site designation would bring federal funding for cleaning up Mossville.

Mossville Environmental Action Now (MEAN), the local environmental group, has asked government and industry to relocate residents who want to leave, offer a free health clinic and lower emissions from the plants. Superfund relocates residents only as a last resort.

“There are people that are getting sick; there are people who are dying because of what is happening in our community. These chemicals are killing us. They will destroy Mossville if nothing happens,” says Dorothy Felix of MEAN.

Thousands of pounds of carcinogens such as benzene and vinyl chloride are released from the facilities near Mossville each year, according to the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory.

Chemical boom
The industrial boom began in and around Mossville during World War II. Vinyl chloride makers, refineries, a coal-fired energy plant and chemical plants now operate in what was once rural country, rich in agriculture, fishing and hunting.

Robert Bullard, author of “Dumping in Dixie,” says it’s no surprise industry chose Mossvillle, an unincorporated community founded by African Americans in the 1790s.

“What happens is zoning becomes very political, and what happens is people with power, with lawyers and elected officials who can fight for them and make decisions for them, oftentimes will get things placed away from them and placed in locations where other people live” Bullard says.

Without the power, Bullard says, African-Americans have borne the brunt of living near industry, landfills and hazardous facilities.

“African Americans are more than 79 percent more likely to live in communities where there are dangerous facilities that pose health threats,” says Bullard, director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University.

Bullard says Jackson has breathed new life into environmental justice since she took office last year. During the previous eight years, he says, “environmental justice was non-existent or invisible.”

Mossville fears
Over time, Mossville residents became worried emissions from the plants were affecting their health.

Those fears heightened in 1998 when the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry tested the blood of 28 Mossville residents and found dioxin levels three times the national average.

Dioxins are carcinogens. Volcanoes and forest fires create dioxins naturally. They are also released during vinyl chloride production, at waste incinerators and by wood processing facilities.

Residents were retested for dioxins in 2001, with similar results, but in 2006 the agency concluded that residents did not face a health risk, an assessment echoed by local industry.

“The emissions from the plants are within the standards set by the various agencies, and they are of a level that they have no ill effects on the local community,” says Larry DeRoussel, executive director of the Lake Area Industry Alliance.

DeRoussel speaks for local industry. CNN invited all 14 companies to speak on camera. None of them accepted; some said interviewing DeRoussel would suffice.

DeRoussel points to statistics showing the cancer rate in Calcasieu Parish, the local county, is not significantly higher than the state average.

But Wilma Subra, a chemist from New Iberia, Louisiana, who has worked with Mossville residents, says the statistics are misleading because the parish covers such a large area, more than 1,000 square miles, and more than 180,000 residents. Mossville is a tiny fraction of that, with about 375 homes adjacent to the chemical plants.

“The people of Mossville are like an experiment. They know that they have high levels of dioxin in their blood, and they’re allowed to continue to live there and be exposed,” says Subra, recipient of the MacArthur genius grant in 1999 for her environmental work with communities.

After the EPA announced its Superfund investigation, Felix says she’s hopeful for the first time in years Mossville will be saved.

“This is the first time I’ve had a little hope in EPA,” Felix says.

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

Are These 3-D Glasses Dirty?
What happens to your plastic frames when the movie ends.
By Nina Shen Rastogi

James Cameron’s Avatar continues its march toward box-office domination: As of this weekend, its sixth since being released, it’s become the highest grossing film of all time (not adjusted for inflation). What happens to all those 3-D glasses after they’ve been used to goggle at floating mountains and blue aliens?

They usually get washed or recycled. There are a number of manufacturers battling for control of the 3-D market. Most of these companies make reusable glasses, though the market leader, RealD, primarily makes single-use spectacles. (RealD has also launched a line of reusable designer glasses.)

Reusable glasses are generally collected in trays and then cleaned in a dishwasherlike machine (or, in some cases, in an actual dishwasher). IMAX Corporation has its own, proprietary washers that exhibitors are required to use on-site. Dolby Laboratories demands that theaters use a commercial-grade dishwasher. XpanD Cinema says that most of their exhibitors use commercial dishwashers, too, but that any kind of dishwasher and detergent is fine as long as temperature is kept below 140 degrees and you use a nonammonia cleanser. (Otherwise, you could damage the lenses’ liquid-crystal display or discolor the plastic.) XpanD also says that some of its exhibitors, like the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, have a staff member hand-clean each pair with a cloth and some light soap, whereas others choose not to clean the glasses at all—instead, they hand out individual disinfecting wipes to each customer.

RealD established a recycling program for its disposable glasses in November 2008 and has collection containers in each theater with a RealD screen. When containers are full, they’re sent to a recycling center, where the glasses are cleaned using heat and other cleaning agents, checked manually and by machine for quality assurance, and then individually repackaged. In an April 2009 presentation (PPT) at the ShoWest exposition, the company noted that approximately 70 percent of theaters “actively participate” in the recycling program.

Explainer thanks Joshua Gershman of Dolby Laboratories, Rick Heineman of RealD, Jackson Myers of IMAX Corporation, and Michael Williams of XpanD Cinema.

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

Pollution rates rise as rulings hamper EPA
Some businesses declare law no longer applies to them, regulators say

By Charles Duhigg and Janet Robert
The New York Times

Thousands of the nation’s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act’s reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators.

As a result, some businesses are declaring that the law no longer applies to them. And pollution rates are rising.

Companies that have spilled oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria into lakes, rivers and other waters are not being prosecuted, according to Environmental Protection Agency regulators working on those cases, who estimate that more than 1,500 major pollution investigations have been discontinued or shelved in the last four years.

The Clean Water Act was intended to end dangerous water pollution by regulating every major polluter. But today, regulators may be unable to prosecute as many as half of the nation’s largest known polluters because officials lack jurisdiction or because proving jurisdiction would be overwhelmingly difficult or time consuming, according to midlevel officials.

‘Huge step backward’
“We are, in essence, shutting down our Clean Water programs in some states,” said Douglas F. Mundrick, an E.P.A. lawyer in Atlanta. “This is a huge step backward. When companies figure out the cops can’t operate, they start remembering how much cheaper it is to just dump stuff in a nearby creek.”

“This is a huge deal,” James M. Tierney, the New York State assistant commissioner for water resources, said of the new constraints. “There are whole watersheds that feed into New York’s drinking water supply that are, as of now, unprotected.”

The court rulings causing these problems focused on language in the Clean Water Act that limited it to “the discharge of pollutants into the navigable waters” of the United States. For decades, “navigable waters” was broadly interpreted by regulators to include many large wetlands and streams that connected to major rivers.

But the two decisions suggested that waterways that are entirely within one state, creeks that sometimes go dry, and lakes unconnected to larger water systems may not be “navigable waters” and are therefore not covered by the act — even though pollution from such waterways can make its way into sources of drinking water.

Some argue that such decisions help limit overreaching regulatory efforts.

“There is no doubt in my mind that when Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972 they intended it to have broad regulatory reach, but they did not intend it to be unlimited,” said Don Parrish, the American Farm Bureau Federation’s senior director of regulatory relations, who has lobbied on Clean Water issues.

Widespread uncertainty
But for E.P.A. and state regulators, the decisions have created widespread uncertainty. The court did not define which waterways are regulated, and judicial districts have interpreted the court’s decisions differently. As regulators have struggled to guess how various courts will rule, some E.P.A. lawyers have established unwritten internal guidelines to avoid cases in which proving jurisdiction is too difficult, according to interviews with more than two dozen current and former E.P.A. officials.

The decisions “reduce E.P.A.’s ability to do what the law intends — to protect water quality, the environment and public health,” wrote Peter S. Silva, the E.P.A.’s assistant administrator for the Office of Water, in response to questions.

About 117 million Americans get their drinking water from sources fed by waters that are vulnerable to exclusion from the Clean Water Act, according to E.P.A. reports.

The E.P.A. said in a statement that it did not automatically concede that any significant water body was outside the authority of the Clean Water Act. “Jurisdictional determinations must be made on a case-by-case basis,” the agency wrote. Officials added that they believed that even many streams that go dry for long periods were within the act’s jurisdiction.

But midlevel E.P.A. officials said that internal studies indicated that as many as 45 percent of major polluters might be either outside regulatory reach or in areas where proving jurisdiction is overwhelmingly difficult.

And even in situations in which regulators believe they still have jurisdiction, companies have delayed cases for years by arguing that the ambiguity precludes prosecution. In some instances, regulators have simply dropped enforcement actions.

In the last two years, some members of Congress have tried to limit the impact of the court decisions by introducing legislation known as the Clean Water Restoration Act. It has been approved by a Senate committee but not yet introduced this session in the House. The legislation tries to resolve these problems by, in part, removing the word “navigable” from the law and restoring regulators’ authority over all waters that were regulated before the Supreme Court decisions.

But a broad coalition of industries has often successfully lobbied to prevent the full Congress from voting on such proposals by telling farmers and small-business owners that the new legislation would permit the government to regulate rain puddles and small ponds and layer new regulations on how they dispose of waste.

“The game plan is to emphasize the scary possibilities,” said one member of the Waters Advocacy Coalition, which has fought the legislation and is supported by the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Association of Home Builders and other groups representing industries affected by the Clean Water Act.

“If you can get Glenn Beck to say that government storm troopers are going to invade your property, farmers in the Midwest will light up their congressmen’s switchboards,” said the coalition member, who asked not to be identified because he thought his descriptions would anger other coalition participants. Mr. Beck, a conservative commentator on Fox News, spoke at length against the Clean Water Restoration Act in December.

‘Deluge your senators with calls’
The American Land Rights Association, another organization opposed to legislation, wrote last June that people should “Deluge your senators with calls, faxes and e-mails.” A news release the same month from the American Farm Bureau Federation warned that “even rainwater would be regulated.”

“If you erase the word ‘navigable’ from the law, it erases any limitation on the federal government’s reach,” said Mr. Parrish of the American Farm Bureau Federation. “It could be a gutter, a roadside ditch or a rain puddle. But under the new law, the government gets control over it.”

Legislators say these statements are misleading and intended to create panic.
“These claims just aren’t true,” said Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland. He helped push the bill through the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “This bill,” he said, “is solely aimed at restoring the law to what it covered before the Supreme Court decisions.”

The consequences of the Supreme Court decisions are stark. In drier states, some polluters say the act no longer applies to them and are therefore refusing to renew or apply for permits, making it impossible to monitor what they are dumping, say officials.

Cannon Air Force Base near Clovis, N.M., for instance, recently informed E.P.A. officials that it no longer considered itself subject to the act. It dumps wastewater — containing bacteria and human sewage — into a lake on the base.

More than 200 oil spill cases were delayed as of 2008, according to a memorandum written by an E.P.A. official and collected by Congressional investigators. And even as the number of facilities violating the Clean Water Act has steadily increased each year, E.P.A. judicial actions against major polluters have fallen by almost half since the Supreme Court rulings, according to an analysis of E.P.A. data by The New York Times.

The Clean Water Act does not directly deal with drinking water. Rather, it was meant to regulate the polluters that contaminated the waterways that supplied many towns and cities with tap water.

The two Supreme Court decisions at issue — Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. United States Army Corps of Engineers in 2001 and Rapanos v. United States in 2006 — focused on the federal government’s jurisdiction over various wetlands. In both cases, dissenting justices warned that limiting the power of the federal government would weaken its ability to combat water pollution.

“Cases now are lost because the company is discharging into a stream that flows into a river, rather than the river itself,” said David M. Uhlmann, a law professor at the University of Michigan who led the environmental crimes section of the Justice Department during the last administration.

In 2007, for instance, after a pipe manufacturer in Alabama, a division of McWane Inc., was convicted and fined millions of dollars for dumping oil, lead, zinc and other chemicals into a large creek, an appellate court overturned that conviction and fine, ruling that the Supreme Court precedent exempted the waterway from the Clean Water Act. The company eventually settled by agreeing to pay a smaller amount and submit to probation.

Some E.P.A. officials say solutions beyond the Clean Water Restoration Act are available. They argue that the agency’s chief, Lisa P. Jackson, could issue regulations that seek to clarify jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act.

Mrs. Jackson has urged Congress to resolve these issues. But she has not issued new regulations.

“E.P.A., with our federal partners, emphasized to Congress in a May 2009 letter that legislation is the best way to restore the Clean Water Act’s effectiveness,” wrote Mr. Silva in a statement to The Times. “E.P.A. and the Army Corps of Engineers will continue to implement our water programs to protect the nation’s waters and the environment as effectively as possible, including consideration of administrative actions to restore the scope of waters protected under the Clean Water Act.”

In the meantime, both state and federal regulators say they are prevented from protecting important waterways.

“We need something to fix these gaps,” said Mr. Tierney, the New York official. “The Clean Water Act worked for over 30 years, and we’re at risk of losing that if we can’t get a new law.”

This story, “Rulings Restrict Clean Water Act, Hampering E.P.A.,” originally appeared in The New York Times.

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

Southeastern Legal Foundation Challenges U.S. EPA on Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Written by Tina Casey

Mix steel, oil, and chemical companies together with the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and you have a chunk of the financial backing behind the Southeastern Legal Foundation, which has just filed a petition challenging the U.S. EPA’ recent determination on greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

In challenging the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gasses, the Southeastern Legal Foundation joins the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a number of companies including Massey Energy (which includes mountaintop removal in its coal mining operations). Though these actions are taken against a government agency, they are also yet another indication that an epic battle of titanic proportions is brewing in the private sector, pitching old school fossil fuel industries against climate-conscious companies including Nike, Starbucks, Apple, and Exelon (the nation’s largest utility) – each of which has protested the Chamber’s position on global warming.

The U.S. EPA and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
The petitions were filed to block last December’s EPA determination that greenhouse gasses pose a threat to public health and welfare. EPA named carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexaflouride in its finding. The agency further determined that emissions from new vehicles and vehicle engines contribute to the problem. The action was prompted by a Supreme Court ruling from 2007, which directed the EPA administrator make a reasonable, science based decision regarding tailpipe emissions. Alternatively, the EPA could have determined that the science was too uncertain to justify the finding.

Science, Global Warming, and Greenhouse Gasses
Weather is what you observe when you stick your head out of the window, which we’re all pretty much capable of doing. If that is all we’re doing, then the climate change denier position makes perfect sense: one day it’s hot, another day it’s cold – eh, what global warming? However, the observation of long term global climate trends requires a somewhat more developed skill set, and the EPA went along with that one. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has never claimed that the science is perfect (and anyways perfection is a concept for religion and philosophy, not scienctific investigation), but it has made the case that the overwhelming body of evidence indicates a rapid warming trend that is directly linked to greenhouse gas emissions from human activity.

Battle of the Behemoths over Global Warming
The Chamber of Commerce and the Southeastern Legal Foundation might get a bit more than they bargained for out of their legal action against the EPA. Sustainability is becoming big business, and some of the biggest businesses in the world are committing their resources to it (Walmart much?). That includes a growing list of big time sports including the ski industry, professional golf, Major League Baseball, and the National Football League.

Does this Mean the Department of Defense Has It All Wrong?
As we’re fond of pointing out on this site, the U.S. military has been pushing sustainability measures for years, even under the previous administration which was hardly known for its support of climate science. Just last month the Department of Defense came right out and included climate change in the Quadrennial Defense Review, a periodic threat assessment. Among other considerations the document calls for all branches of the armed forces to prepare for the impact of rising sea levels, severe heat, and other variables that will affect military training and operations. DoD’s position is backed up by its own considerable, direct access to climate data. In contrast, the Southeastern Legal Foundation lists a number of partners in its global warming work, none of which appear to be independent science organizations. Perhaps that explains why SLF doesn’t see any cause for alarm, claiming that climate change is “natural, cyclical, and not as extreme as reported by the IPCC.” Nothing to see here, folks? Personally my money is on the Department of Defense.

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

BrightSource Gets Department of Energy Loan Guarantee if Tortoise Issue Solved

Written by Susan Kraemer

BrightSource got a boost from the Department of Energy this week with a loan guarantee of $1.37 billion to help build three concentrated solar thermal power plants producing 400 MW of clean solar power in the Mojave Desert of southeastern California.

However, it is predicated upon BrightSource meeting the environmental requirements before closing on the loan, and it is precisely those environmental requirements that have bogged it down. The desert tortoise has held up approval so far. The Bureau of Land Management is leading a federal review of the project with support from DOE.

Early this year, after working with environmental groups, Senator Feinstein of California stepped in with clarification on what is and is not an environmentally sensitive area, creating maps to make the approval process easier and more predictable, showing where solar plants are likely to encounter resistance – and where it is safe to plan one.

Then BrightSource filed a proposal on February 11 to shrink the footprint of the Ivanpah Solar Complex, reducing its environmental impact in response to public comments about the project.

The proposed changes would reduce the footprint of the third Ivanpah plant by 23% and trim the overall project by about 12%, while avoiding the area identified by environmental groups as posing the greatest concern. The new plans call for dropping the number of solar towers in the third Ivanpah plant from 5 to 1, which brings the overall total number of towers in the power plant to 3. It also cuts the number of heliostats by about 40,000. If approved, these changes would lower the site’s total gross capacity from 440 MW to 392 MW.

If this can be approved, Ivanpah Solar Complex would nearly double existing generation capacity of CSP facilities in the United States, and would become the world’s largest operational concentrated solar thermal power complex.

The technology uses thousands of flat mirrors, or “heliostats,” to concentrate the sun’s heat onto a receiver mounted at the top of a tower. Water pumped to the receiver is boiled into steam, which drives a turbine to produce electricity. Solar power towers allow the capture of a greater percentage of solar energy than other solar thermal technologies, and includes storage at night.

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

$250M biomass energy plant planned in Shelton, Washington

by KING5.com Staff and Associated Press

SEATTLE – Areva, the international energy company based in France, and Charlotte, N.C., based Duke Energy have formed a joint venture to build a biomass energy plant at Shelton.

The joint venture called ADAGE plans to spend $250 million on the plant that would burn logging waste and generate enough electricity to power 40,000 homes.

The project involves collecting, bundling, and transporting branches and other wood debris from regional logging operations to the ADAGE biomass power facility.

The Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce reports Adage chose Shelton because of its proximity to logging operations.

ADAGE spokesman Jarret Adams said more than 400 jobs will be created when construction begins later this year. More than 100 workers will operate the facility when it opens in 2013.

“ADAGE came to Washington nearly one year ago because of the great potential in the region for sustainable biomass. This alliance and the Mason County project are an extension of that vision and can become a new economic engine for the state,” said Reed Wills, President of ADAGE. “The project will combine state-of-the-art biomass power technology with innovative forestry equipment that can make Washington a leader in the industry. We believe that building a vibrant biomass industry means new jobs, healthier forests, and a stronger energy portfolio for Washington.”

ADAGE says construction is expected to begin in late 2010. The company is planning to build other biomass plants in the Northwest.

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

Wow, You Can Recycle That?
by Lori Brown

A few weeks ago, Earth911 investigated some of the lesser known recyclables. Sure, they don’t receive as much media attention as some of their co-stars like the plastic bottle or the aluminum can, but your massive response to “I Didn’t Know That Was Recyclable!” proved that there is an outcry to dispose of those odd items.

From paint and batteries to wine corks and hair (really!), a little patience (and a search on Earth911.com) can make recycling these items a little easier. The list of qualified recycling candidates was long, so we figured we would feature a few more.

Blue Jeans
You know the regular routine. When you no longer need, like or fit into your jeans, you can always donate them to a charitable resale organization like Goodwill or The Salvation Army.

You’ve heard it a million times, so let’s not make it a million-and-one. We’re actually talking about physically recycling your jeans. After all, some clothes are just too far worn or damaged to head to a resale shop and deserve a proper [recycling] burial.

Enter pioneering companies like Green Jeans Insulation and Bonded Logic, which manufacture insulation products from recycled denim and cotton fibers. Based in Madison, Wisc., Green Jeans Insulation accepts donated jeans from the public, which are recycled into natural fiber insulation used for interior and exterior walls and ceiling applications.

The “Cotton. From Blue to Green” campaign works with schools and retailers to collect denim for processing into UltraTouch Natural Fiber Insulation, manufactured by Bonded Logic, and is donated to help rebuild communities in need. To date, they have received more than 180,000 pieces of denim, used to insulate homes with Habitat for Humanity.

Automotive Fluids
Are you a DIYer when it comes to car care? Many of the fluids that power your car are actually recyclable once you change them out, most notably used motor oil and antifreeze.

Used motor oil can be re-refined into brand new product that can go back into your car, recycled into clean lubricant or burned as fuel. As long as the used oil hasn’t been contaminated with other fluids, most oil change service companies or auto parts stores accept used motor oil for recycling from the public.

Used antifreeze can also be recycled by filtering out contaminants such as lead, then restoring the original properties through stabilizing additives. The recycled product is not only excellent quality, but it can also be less expensive to purchase and has a smaller carbon footprint. Antifreeze should never be left out or dumped as its sweet taste can poison animals and children.

Gift Cards, Hotel Key Cards and Wallet Waste Galore
A five minute clean-out of your wallet, purse or junk drawer is likely to yield a lot of plastic, from used gift cards to old library cards. Insignificant as they may seem, those cards are typically made of a plastic resin called polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which is infinitely recyclable yet most often landfilled, contributing to more than 75 million pounds of PVC entering the waste stream each year.

In the past, the magnetic strips in the cards made recycling a challenge, but more companies are beginning to accept the PVC cards to convert into new ones. Cleveland-based Earthworks System accepts PVC cards for recycling from consumers and retailers via collection and mail-in programs. The PVC cards are chopped up and melted into PVC sheets which are then sold to create new cards.

Cooking Oil
Cooking oil recycling has grown leaps and bounds in the last few years as its value to the biofuel industry has increased. While it may seem natural to pour your leftover cooking oil and grease down the drain, it can actually be harmful to wildlife and the environment and damage your pipes and local sewage systems. In fact, cooking oil and kitchen grease in our plumbing is the No. 1 cause of stopped-up sewer pipes.

Commercial facilities already contribute substantial amounts of used oil to alternative fuel programs, but there are household cooking oil recycling programs as well. Make a designated waste oil container, label it and add to it each time there is leftover oil from your cooking. Then search for a recycling location on Earth911 or contact local restaurants to see if they accept the cooking oil for recycling.

Six-Pack Beverage Rings
Those plastic six-pack beverage rings have definitely received their share of criticism over the years. Like any packaging material, however, they are not meant to end up in waterways or public spaces at end of life.

rings are made of plastic #4 (LDPE) and can be recycled in programs that accept low-density polyethylene resin. If your curbside recycling program is limited to plastics #1 and #2, or limits the types of LDPE accepted, consider getting a group collection together and participating in the Hi-Cone Ring Leader Recycling Program.

Hi-Cone’s Ringleader program will accept the six-pack rings in large quantities for recycling through various school programs, as well as through the mail. The company has worked with more than 12,000 schools and groups to collected and recycle the used rings.

A little known fact: Six-pack plastic beverage rings are actually photodegradable. Federal law has required the rings to be 100 percent photodegradable since 1989, meaning that, over time, the sunlight will break down the plastic into tiny pieces.

Makeup Containers
If you’re anything like said author, you have makeup in drawers and cabinets that you haven’t touched since the crimping iron was a regular part of your morning routine. OK, bit of an exaggeration there, but the truth is that many of us keep makeup around long after its expiration date has come and gone. (Check out our “360: Cosmetics” to find the average shelf life is for your makeup products.)

Cosmetic and toiletry bottles, tubes and containers are commonly made of plastic #5, which is not a common material collected for recycling.

Origins was the pioneer nationwide cosmetic company to offer consumer cosmetic packaging recycling, regardless of brand. Empty cosmetic tubes, bottles, lipstick covers, jars and caps can be brought to an Origins retail store or department store counter nationwide for recycling or energy recovery. As an added bonus, customers will receive a free sample of an Origins skincare product for bringing in their empty containers.

MAC cosmetics accepts its packaging back for recycling either in-store or online, and you receive a free MAC lipstick with the return of six containers.

Snack Wrappers, Drink Pouches and Chip Bags Galore
Any idea what material candy wrappers, drink pouches and chip bags are made of? If you answered “no,” you’re not alone as this is a common question we get asked a lot. This confusion is usually what makes these wrappers and bags so difficult to recycle. These items tend to be made of mixed materials, making the recovery of useful plastics and other materials difficult and expensive. In other words, most recyclers don’t want to touch the stuff!

But upcycling company TerraCycle has made a name of creatively reusing these snack wrappers, drink pouches, candy wrappers and chip bags. The company turns them into school supplies, bags, toys, pet products, household cleaner bottles and even materials for your garden.

Consumers can make some extra cash by sending in their “trash” to Terracycle. Drop it off at one of the thousands of participating locations or join a brigade to raise money for a school or nonprofit organization.

Sports Items
Similar to clothing, we all know the drill. There is always an organization or school out there that is eager to accept your unwanted sports items. But what about those old tennis balls that have simply lost their bounce? Or those running shoes you know wouldn’t make it past the sorting area of your local thrift store?

Tennis Balls: Rebounces accepts old tennis balls for recycling and refurbishing. The company will even e-mail you a prepaid shipping label to cover your expenses. Those brightly colored tennis balls should still be of reasonable quality, and you should wait until you’ve saved up a large amount.

Golf Balls: According to Arizona-based Dixon Golf, more than 300 million golf balls are discarded in the U.S. each year. That’s enough golf balls to make a solid line from Los Angeles to London! You can bring in golf balls to a Dixon Golf retail location or mail them in for recycling. Added bonus: Recycling Dixon brand golf balls will earn you a $1 towards a new ball (or 50 cents for other brands).

Ski Equipment: When your skis or snowboards just aren’t cutting (or carving) it anymore, consider recycling them instead of tossing them. Vermont-based Green Mountain Ski Furniture will recycle those old skis and snowboards and turn them into furniture and art. If you happen to live in Vermont, they’ll even pick up your old equipment for you!

Colorado Ski & Golf aims to keep obsolete ski equipment out of the landfills by accepting skis, snowboards, bindings, boots and poles for recycling or refurbishing. Also, newer organizations like Montana-based Ski Recycling and Promotion (SKRAP) are growing in popularity as sustainability and landfill diversion awareness grows in the industry.

Appliances…Recycle Them While They’re Hot
In case you haven’t heard, Cash for Appliances is the next government-funded program offering cash incentives for green improvements. If you trade-up your dishwasher, refrigerator or clothes washer, know that the old one is recyclable. In many cases, power companies offer free pick-up of your old appliances and provide you a cash rebate in return.

Appliances are largely comprised of steel, which is the most commonly recycled material in North America, according to the Steel Recycling Institute. In the recycling process, the appliances are shredded and the metal is removed for reprocessing. In some cases, the plastic components are turned into new material, but they can also be used as landfill cover.

The key challenge with appliances is the presence of Freon, which is DuPont’s trade name for the gas that cools appliances like air conditioners and refrigerators. For appliances that contain Freon, there can be a fee to properly remove it.

Keys
Keys, keys and more keys. We have keys for our front door, our cars, filing cabinets and more. And most of us are guilty of throwing them in a junk drawer or tossing them in a box in the garage when we move or change locks. Keys For Kindness is a small, family-run program designed to raise money through metal key recycling for the Multiple Sclerosis society. Though the shipping expenditure is on your own dime, we’re sure the good karma will be worthwhile.

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

Climate fight is heating up in deep freeze
Two sides in global warming debate seize on storms to bolster arguments
By John M. Broder

WASHINGTON – As millions of people along the East Coast hole up in their snowbound homes, the two sides in the climate-change debate are seizing on the mounting drifts to bolster their arguments.

Skeptics of global warming are using the record-setting snows to mock those who warn of dangerous human-driven climate change — this looks more like global cooling, they taunt.

Most climate scientists respond that the ferocious storms are consistent with forecasts that a heating planet will produce more frequent and more intense weather events.

But some independent climate experts say the blizzards in the Northeast no more prove that the planet is cooling than the lack of snow in Vancouver or the downpours in Southern California prove that it is warming.

As an illustration of their point of view, the family of Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, a leading climate skeptic in Congress, built a six-foot-tall igloo on Capitol Hill and put a cardboard sign on top that read “Al Gore’s New Home.”

The extreme weather, Mr. Inhofe said by e-mail, reinforced doubts about scientists’ conclusion that global warming was “unequivocal” and most likely caused by human activity.

Nonsense, responded Joseph Romm, a climate-change expert and former Energy Department official who writes about climate issues at the liberal Center for American Progress.

“Ideologues in the Senate keep pushing the anti-scientific disinformation that big snowstorms are evidence against human-caused global warming,” Mr. Romm wrote on Wednesday.

Recent controversies
It is perhaps not coincidental that the snowstorm scuffle is playing out against a background of recent climate controversies: In recent months, global-warming critics have assailed a 2007 report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and have claimed that e-mail messages and documents plucked from a server at a climate research center in Britain raise doubts about the academic integrity of some climate scientists. Earlier this week, Rush Limbaugh and other conservative commentators made light of the fact that the announcement of the creation of a new federal climate service on Monday had to be conducted by conference call, rather than news conference, because the federal government was shuttered by the storm.

Matt Drudge, who delights in tweaking climate-change enthusiasts, noted on his Web site that a Senate hearing on global warming this week was canceled because of the weather.

As the first blizzard howled last weekend, the Virginia Republican Party put up an advertisement on the Web — titled “12 Inches of Global Warming” — criticizing two Virginia Democrats, Representatives Rick Boucher and Tom Perriello, who voted for the federal cap-and-trade legislation last year. The advertisement urges voters to call Mr. Boucher and Mr. Perriello to ask if they will help with the shoveling.

Speculating on the meaning of severe weather events is not new. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and a deadly heat wave in Europe in the summer of 2003 incited similar arguments about what such extremes might — or might not — say about the planet’s climate.

But climate scientists say that no single episode of severe weather can be blamed for global climate trends while noting evidence that such events will probably become more frequent as global temperatures rise.

Long-term trajectory?
Jeff Masters, a meteorologist who writes on the Weather Underground blog, said that the recent snows do not, by themselves, demonstrate anything about the long-term trajectory of the planet. Climate is, by definition, a measure of decades and centuries, not months or years.

But Dr. Masters also said that government and academic studies had consistently predicted an increasing frequency of just these kinds of record-setting storms because warmer air carries more moisture.

“Of course,” he wrote on his blog Wednesday as new snows produced white-out conditions in much of the Eastern half of the country, “both climate-change contrarians and climate-change scientists agree that no single weather event can be blamed on climate change.

“However,” he continued, “one can ‘load the dice’ in favor of events that used to be rare — or unheard of — if the climate is changing to a new state.”

A federal government report issued last year, intended to be the authoritative statement of known climate trends in the United States, pointed to the likelihood of more frequent snowstorms in the Northeast and less frequent snow in the South and Southeast as a result of long-term temperature and precipitation patterns. The Climate Impacts report, from the multiagency United States Global Change Research Program, also projected more intense drought in the Southwest and more powerful Gulf Coast hurricanes because of warming.

In other words, if the government scientists are correct, look for more snow.

This article, “Climate Fight Is Heating Up in Deep Freeze,” first appeared in The New York Times.

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

California Butterflies See Big Declines from Eco Double Blow
Written by Michael Ricciardi

Climate change is making things rough for many vertebrate and invertebrate species. But add to this a steady loss of habitat, and many species just can’t adapt successfully to the combined stresses.

From the coastal lowlands to the coniferous tree lines of Northern California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, scores of species of butterfly are in an existential fight for their evolutionary futures. The survival challenge seems to be most impacting those species whose preferred habitats lay in the lower elevations, but the effects are being felt further up as well, as more butterfly species are moving into higher-elevated habitats. This evolutionary struggle might have gone unnoticed but for the diligent work of one research team, lead by butterfly expert Arthur Shapiro of the University of California at Davis.

[Note to reader: The following article contains extensive quotes from a recent interview with University of California at Davis professor of Evolution & Ecology Arthur Shapiro, lead researcher]

For the past 35 years, Dr. Shapiro and his field team (often comprised of his graduate students), have been collecting data on some 159 species of butterfly at ten locations scattered throughout this biological “hot spot” that is the Sierra Nevadas. Mention butterfly collecting, and one might conjure up a comical image from some old movie of a net-wielding ‘Lepidopterist’ (a moth or butterfly collector) in pith helmet happily hunting his inconsequential quarry. But for Shapiro and his team, lepidoptera (the taxonomic order that includes butterflies) are serious science. No mere, showy examples of Nature’s handy work, butterflies are in fact important “harbinger” or “indicator” species. Their colonizing, migratory and mating behaviors offer scientists valuable clues to the ecological health and robustness of the ecosystems they are an integral part of. The team’s findings were dramatic: half of the monitored sites showed declines in “species richness” (the total biodiversity or numbers of species of a certain type). The monitored sites range in elevation from sea-level to nearly one and half miles above sea-level–with lower elevation sites showing the greatest reduction in richness.

“Individual species responses to climate change are guaranteed to be idiosyncratic.” – Arthur M. Shapiro, Professor of Evolution & Ecology, UC Davis

Some species are apparently adapting to the effects of warming by shifting their ranges higher up the mountain sides (where temperature are somewhat cooler), while a few others were expanding “horizontally”, moving northwards and east. Naturally, there will be ecological winners and losers in this “faunal shift”. Currently, treeline (montane) habitats are the only niches observed in the study that showed an actual increase in species richness (as more species shift to the higher, coniferous habitat). It would be natural to deduce that this colonizing shift is a consequence of warming. But the range shifts and overall declines could not be attributed solely to warming trends–only when adding the contribution of habitat loss (via human development) were the researches able to account for the declines. As noted earlier, species declines were greatest at low elevations–precisely where habitat destruction was greatest. Dr. Shapiro offered more detail on this trend:

“The heaviest impacts in our study clearly are at low elevations at this time, and our statistical analysis indicates they are being driven more by land-use changes than by climate (though climate is contributing). There has been little change in land use at the higher elevations, though massive urbanization/suburbanization has begun in the foothills along the Highway 49 corridor and we fully expect to see impacts from it appearing in the next decade, regardless of what the climate does.”

In the past several years, field biologists and ecologists have been focusing more and more on the vital role in species declines played by “habitat splitting” or habitat fragmenting–a factor that, apart from pathogens (such as the BD fungus), has led to amphibian declines (i.e., in frogs and salamanders) over the last couple of decades. Many invertebrate species start out their existence in one type of habitat (such as in or near water, as larvae) and then move to other habitats (e.g., dryer or “woodsy” locales) to mate and live out their adult stages. When these variable habitats are split up–mostly due to development–many species are unable to transition to their adapted mating habitats. So, how is this breaking up of habitat impacting the butterflies? According to Shapiro:

“Land use contributes to faunal decline in butterflies both by removing habitat and by fragmenting it such that colonization of remaining patches by randomly dispersing females becomes increasingly unlikely.”

And, regarding the larger scale effects of this colonizing dynamic, Shapiro elaborated further:

“Most butterflies display “metapopulation” behavior, with frequent turnover of local populations, which are temporary manifestations of the larger “meta” unit. This type of dynamic is seriously impacted when dispersing colonizers are forced to traverse extensive, butterfly-unfriendly habitat in an essentially random search for suitable sites.”

Many animal species live out their life-cycles in the same geographic regions or elevations–a function of natural adaptation to an ecological niche. But various environmental changes can induce whole populations to shift. As noted, many low-elevation butterfly species are being forced to seek out higher climes in which to colonize; butterfly species that once only inhabited middle-range elevations are now moving into much higher locales. Unfortunately, these shifting species do not always find sufficient host plants, which can impact their reproductive cycles.

“Basically, we are seeing more “7000′ [feet] – and – below” species at 9000′ than we used to. In many cases they are unable to breed at 9000′ because their host plants do not (yet) occur there. We appear to be seeing upslope movement in response to warming, and there is no reason to think this is temporary. As vegetation, which cannot fly, responds too and host plants colonize upslope, what are now dispersing butterflies will in many cases become breeding residents.”

One might deduce that eventually, as host plants shift upslope, their adapted butterflies might recover, in time. But apparently, this ecological over-crowding is leaving few options for the higher-elevation species.

‘The most “alpine” species have nowhere higher to go on Castle and Basin Peaks. If the climate warms beyond their ability to adapt, they will go extinct there. The Sierra Nevada is much higher farther south, where there are species (such as Hesperia miriamae and Chlosyne damoetas malcolmi (its taxonomy is polemical, by the way) that do not exist as low as the northernmost Sierran alpine islands. Someone should be tracking them. They could go globally extinct.”

This writer was curious about this upslope, multi-species crowding and asked Dr. Shapiro to what extent this is increasing competition over resources, and whether this might drive interbreeding amongst butterfly species and/or result in new species.

Data on competitive interactions between plant-feeding insects are hard to come by, and despite several excellent reviews there is still controversy over the importance of interspecific competition among leaf-feeders (flower, fruit and seed eaters are better documented). We do not have data bearing on these questions. We have seen two instances of subspecies replacement on the transect (not discussed in the PNAS paper) in which one taxonomic subspecies went extinct and after a short interval was replaced by another. Both of these occurred at Sierra Valley. Neither appears to have had any element of competition involved. In one of the cases the lost entity was in fact of apparent hybrid origin, and was replaced by one of the presumed parents!”

Shapiro continues:

“As far as hybridization is concerned, the most interesting case is the Hesperia colorado complex, in which Castle Peak receives strays of both the West- and East-slope entities, which are very different-looking subspecies; sometimes both in one year but sometimes not. The two entities hybridize in the Feather River canyon, which is a very low pass across the Sierra, and we have documented this molecularly (and published it). In theory, at least, the current climate change might trigger new interactions of this sort in somewhat higher passes, such as Yuba and Donner, but we have not seen it yet. As for changes in reproductive isolation [note: a condition required for generating new species] they would not appear “overnight!” but might require hundreds or thousands of generations to become detectable. Most of these critters have one generation a year.”

It is not uncommon with ecological “inventory” studies that findings vary significantly from study to study, and from region to region, due to many factors including strong, local effects. This writer asked Shapiro how his findings compare to other faunal research.

[Referring to the Grinnell Project at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Berkeley] “It is doing a 100-year comparison of the Sierran mammal fauna. My sites fit the pattern they observe: We have lost the pika [note: a small chinchilla-like animal, related to rabbits] completely from the Donner Summit area and the Golden-Mantled Ground Squirrel is extremely reduced in abundance there. At the same time, we are now recording the Belding Ground Squirrel at Donner for the first time. On my transect, it formerly occurred only at Sierra Valley, 2000′ lower. The butterfly patterns are consistent with other groups.”

The team published its long-term study results earlier this month on the website Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (’Compounded effects of climate change and habitat alteration shift patterns of butterfly diversity’). One of the most surprising discoveries by the team was the fact that the more critical species (from a conservation viewpoint) were not the most impacted by this compounded situation. Instead, it was the common, ruderal (or “weedy”) species–ones with less specialized habitats–that were experiencing the greatest declines. Says Shapiro:

“We did not anticipate this finding. It just came out of the analysis…These species made their accommodations with us a long time ago, with most of them now dependent on non-native host plants. The fact that they have declined precipitously in recent years–specifically, since the late 1990s–and on a regional basis points to a threshold phenomenon. We have done very detailed analyses (in another paper, in the pipeline) that show that although their declines are correlated with climate change, the contribution of different climatic variables to that decline varies from site to site, even though the declines are uniform and simultaneous across sites. In a nutshell, that says that climate is not the main driver. We think land use–habitat availability and especially habitat connectivity–is.”

Apparently, urban and suburban “sprawl”–decried by environmentalists and over-development critics for years–is especially bad for butterflies as well. But are any able to adapt to this land-use surge?

“Except for the Fiery Skipper, Hylephila phyleus, which eats Bermudagrass in lawns, few of these species can sustain breeding in extensive urban and suburban landscapes. Vacant lots, roadside ditches, and such are essential to their persistence. Tract sprawl is lethal.”

In the paper’s concluding thoughts, the team calls for expanding the scope of butterfly conservation efforts to include these ruderal species when attempting to estimate the effect of compounded, environmental stresses. As far as the long-term impact of butterfly declines on the ecosystem(s) of this region, Shapiro added:

“The crystal ball is cloudy. I am a student of paleoclimatology and paleovegetation dynamics and I know that “communities” are an illusion–as I put it in my book, freeze-frames from a very long movie. Change is the norm (though the rate varies); stasis is the exception. When the American Chestnut disappeared as a forest dominant in the east, the system did not collapse–and as far as we know, not one species went extinct. I doubt that butterfly faunistics will trigger a catastrophe, but I’d love to come back from the dead in a couple of hundred years (that is, two or three conifer generations!) to see what the Sierra looks like.”

Shapiro’s thirty-five year old (and growing) database is somewhat of a rarity in science; it is long-term, has had the same collector/team, and covers multiple sites and multiple species. Such an important data resource will no doubt prove even more invaluable in the coming years as the effects of climate change accumulate. But it seems that with butterflies, as with so much other flora and fauna, accurate prediction of long-range ecological impacts from loss of species is beyond Science’s abilities–even if you’re an expert with a prized database.

Research team members and additional listed authors of the paper include Matthew L. Forister, Andrew C. McCallb, Nathan J. Sanders, James A. Fordyce, James H. Thorne, Joshua O’Brien, and David P. Waetjen.

Visit Arthur Shapiro’s Butterfly Site

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com