Several North Carolina environmental groups recently asked the state to reexamine current legislation and tighten restrictions on coal ash disposal, saying that many storage sites have been leaking toxic substances and contaminating local groundwater for decades, constituting a major threat to public and environmental health.
The Southern Environmental Law Center filed the request with the N.C. Environmental Management Commission on Oct. 10, citing several sites where they said the commission should require corrective action. The Commission met to discuss the request on Nov. 8.
"All of North Carolina's ash ponds that have monitoring wells and test data are showing that they're leaking heavy metals in the groundwater," said Donna Lisenby, member of the Waterkeeper Alliance, one of the conservation organizations involved in making the request.
These toxic chemicals are being found in concentrations far exceeding typical state standards at 14 coal ash ponds across the state, Lisenby said in an interview. She said environmentalists have met with the commission three times in the past, but no action has been taken yet. "This has been going on for years," she said.
Lisenby said this is a serious problem because coal ash can cause serious health problems by spreading to the air, wells and surface water.
Kelly Martin, representative of the Beyond Coal campaign for the Sierra Club in North Carolina, said, "The chemicals that are in coal ash have the potential to harm every organ in our bodies if ingested." They can also damage aquatic wildlife by getting into creeks and streams, she said in an interview.
Martin said the operators of the ponds, Duke Energy and Progress Energy, and the state are all aware of the pollution, but they haven't done anything. "I think the state should require each facility to clean up the coal ash ponds."
Lisenby said the government has always been lenient with its regulation of the coal industry. "[The Waterkeeper Alliance] in North Carolina wants the utility industry to have to play by the same rules as everyone else," she said.
Duke denies claims of preferential treatment
Spokeswoman Erin Culbert for Duke Energy said the groups filing the request are exaggerating and oversimplifying the data. "In typical fashion, these organizations draw health conclusions that are not based in fact and well overstate the risks to communities from coal ash storage," Culbert said in an email interview.
Culbert said that the utilities have worked extensively with the state to monitor pollution. "Duke Energy and Progress Energy have been sampling groundwater around their ash basins for years, and all that data have been reported to state regulators along the way," she said.
Culbert said that many of the exceedances involve only chemicals like iron and manganese, which aren't toxic, and the high concentrations often aren't the fault of the utility industry. "These constituents often occur naturally at elevated levels independent of any influence by ash basins," she said.
"It's also important to note that an exceedance at or near the ash basin does not mean groundwater off the site has been or would be impacted," Culbert said. If an increase in these chemicals was found in local groundwater away from the individual sites, the companies would work with the state to resolve the problem, she said.
"Duke Energy continues to be committed to managing coal ash responsibly at all our plants," Culbert said.
Martin said new coal ash facilities in North Carolina are allowed to contaminate groundwater within a certain boundary, but old sites are supposed to clean up and eliminate the source of pollution if contaminants are found in the groundwater at the ash basin itself.
"The state has been treating [these coal ash basins] as if they are newer facilities," Martin said. "Most of them were built when the coal-fired power plants were built back in the 1960s."
Martin said the purpose of the complaint with the commission is to make the commission look closer at the law and clarify its position.
"It is high time for Duke and Progress to take responsibility for the contamination and for the threat they're posing to our health and our communities and clean up the coal ash ponds," Martin said.
The Commission voted at the November meeting to hold a full public hearing on the issue in Raleigh on Dec. 3.
Environmentalists Want Duke and Progress to Clean up Their Mess
http://campusblueprint.com/2012/11/08/environmentalists-want-duke-and-progress-to-clean-up-their-mess/
Coal ash leak: Environmentalists ask Duke and Progress to clean up mess:
Green organizations want utilities to address groundwater contamination around coal ash sites in North Carolina
http://www.mnn.com/local-reports/north-carolina/local-blog/coal-ash-leak-environmentalists-ask-duke-and-progress-to-cle
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Monday, November 5, 2012
Orange County to Vote on Public Transportation Sales Tax (Campus BluePrint Blog November 2012)
On the ballot next week in Orange County is a half-cent sales tax to
support public transportation, but what’s at stake is more than just a
slight increase in prices. Those who discuss the tax discuss the future
direction of public transportation in Orange County and its relation to
the environment.
The sales tax will not apply to basic living expenses like food, gasoline, housing, medicine and utilities, and it will be used to improve and expand bus services and build an Amtrak station in Hillsborough. Triangle Transit plans on adding 35,000 new hours of bus service in its first
year of implementation.
The majority of the money, however, will go toward building a 17-mile light rail to move people quickly between UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University and Downtown Durham.
Jason Baker, executive committee member of the Orange-Chatham Group of the Sierra Club, said that the Triangle area is already very congested and the air quality suffers as a result.
“Providing access to a modern transit infrastructure is essential to our efforts to improve our air quality and reduce fuel consumption,” Baker said in an official endorsement of the sales tax referendum.
Traffic congestion in the area accounts for 18 million hours of traffic delays, 12.7 million gallons of wasted fuel, and $346 million in inefficiency costs, according to the Sierra Club and the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.
Triangle Transit says that a single light rail vehicle removes 60 to 125 cars from the road, and recent Orange County projections say that by 2035 the light rail would have more than 14,000 passengers a day, which would help to significantly reduce traffic congestion and air quality impact.
Orange County commissioner Earl McKee said in an interview that a light rail system might be appropriate at some point in the future, but it isn’t a good fit for Orange County now.
“Light rail is a fixed system that cannot be moved if it does not match up with commuter patterns as they evolve over time,” McKee said. “I don’t believe that we have the population base, the tax base or the population density to adequately support [it either].”
McKee said he is worried the rail will cost more than expected and “will actually cause a decrease in existing and future bus services.
“Any new revenues in transit should be focused on improvement and expansion of our local bus service needs first,” McKee said.
Pat Carstensen, Transportation Issue Chair for North Carolina’s Sierra Club, said the important thing is moving people away from automobiles. “Rail is just one part of it,” he said in an email interview.
“You need enough density to get people to walk around to get to [their destinations], and use transit to multiply their options,” Carstensen said. “Part of it is also increasing the cost of driving, either by not pushing natural limits on stuff needed for driving, or charging more for it.”
Carstensen said public transportation is very important for preserving the environment, but it’s also good for the economy. “Anything to ‘shock-proof’ our region against surges in gas prices will make us more competitive on a global scale,” he said.
Developments like the light rail system are essential for becoming more sustainable, Carstensen said. “We are urging folks to vote ‘yes’ on the referendum.”
http://campusblueprint.com/2012/11/05/orange-county-to-vote-on-public-transportation-sales-tax/
The sales tax will not apply to basic living expenses like food, gasoline, housing, medicine and utilities, and it will be used to improve and expand bus services and build an Amtrak station in Hillsborough. Triangle Transit plans on adding 35,000 new hours of bus service in its first
year of implementation.
The majority of the money, however, will go toward building a 17-mile light rail to move people quickly between UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University and Downtown Durham.
Jason Baker, executive committee member of the Orange-Chatham Group of the Sierra Club, said that the Triangle area is already very congested and the air quality suffers as a result.
“Providing access to a modern transit infrastructure is essential to our efforts to improve our air quality and reduce fuel consumption,” Baker said in an official endorsement of the sales tax referendum.
Traffic congestion in the area accounts for 18 million hours of traffic delays, 12.7 million gallons of wasted fuel, and $346 million in inefficiency costs, according to the Sierra Club and the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.
Triangle Transit says that a single light rail vehicle removes 60 to 125 cars from the road, and recent Orange County projections say that by 2035 the light rail would have more than 14,000 passengers a day, which would help to significantly reduce traffic congestion and air quality impact.
Orange County commissioner Earl McKee said in an interview that a light rail system might be appropriate at some point in the future, but it isn’t a good fit for Orange County now.
“Light rail is a fixed system that cannot be moved if it does not match up with commuter patterns as they evolve over time,” McKee said. “I don’t believe that we have the population base, the tax base or the population density to adequately support [it either].”
McKee said he is worried the rail will cost more than expected and “will actually cause a decrease in existing and future bus services.
“Any new revenues in transit should be focused on improvement and expansion of our local bus service needs first,” McKee said.
Pat Carstensen, Transportation Issue Chair for North Carolina’s Sierra Club, said the important thing is moving people away from automobiles. “Rail is just one part of it,” he said in an email interview.
“You need enough density to get people to walk around to get to [their destinations], and use transit to multiply their options,” Carstensen said. “Part of it is also increasing the cost of driving, either by not pushing natural limits on stuff needed for driving, or charging more for it.”
Carstensen said public transportation is very important for preserving the environment, but it’s also good for the economy. “Anything to ‘shock-proof’ our region against surges in gas prices will make us more competitive on a global scale,” he said.
Developments like the light rail system are essential for becoming more sustainable, Carstensen said. “We are urging folks to vote ‘yes’ on the referendum.”
http://campusblueprint.com/2012/11/05/orange-county-to-vote-on-public-transportation-sales-tax/
Saturday, November 3, 2012
The American Culture War: Myth or Reality? (Campus BluePrint Fall Online Issue November 2012)
Americans are at war, voters are told. The overwhelming majority of the electorate consists of two sharply divided groups, interminably separated on serious ideological and moral grounds. Listening to many pundits and politicians on both sides of the political spectrum, this alleged conflict comes to sound like a given.
A number of books have been published on this schism, and political activists will often speak of themselves and their efforts with this same militaristic terminology; but is this idea of a deep cultural divide actually an accurate representation of America or its populace?
In the 2011 edition of "Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America," Stanford Professor Morris P. Fiorina claims that no such immense moral divide exists in the general populace. He argues that, contrary to popular belief, a majority of Americans actually agree on the issues which are supposed to be so polarizing.
On the contentious issue of abortion, for example, Fiorina refers to regular polling conducted from the 1970s to the mid-2000s which show that Americans are generally uniform in their attitude toward abortion; they say that abortion should be legal in cases of rape, threats to the mother's health and birth defects. Many Americans also say that extreme financial situations can also be suitable justifications for abortions.
Even when the polls compared results between religious and non-religious Americans, registered members of each political party and between genders, the gap in opinion was insignificant. Fewer religious people and registered Democrats approved of allowing abortions in more circumstances, but only small percentages of each group said they were completely pro-choice or pro-life.
Similarly, the Republican Party made the Terri Schiavo case a divisive moral issue in 2005 despite the fact that a majority of Americans agreed that Schiavo, a woman in a vegetative state, kept alive only by a feeding tube, should have been allowed to die. In fact, a clear majority, approximately 75 percent of Americans, say they support euthanasia.
Other polls conducted in the mid-2000s find that a majority of Americans feel that stem cell research is morally acceptable. Yet, Republican President Bush continued to make it a divisive moral issue.
Finally, when Fiorina took the time to examine public views on gay rights, he found a very similar public consensus. A series of Gallup polls showed that in the mid-2000s, Democrats and Republicans only differed by about 10 percent in their approval of legal homosexual relations like civil unions or marriages.
Going beyond these issues that are supposedly splitting America in two, Fiorina goes so far as to say that this moral division doesn't even have that strong of an effect on the outcome of elections. Looking at the 2004 presidential election, in which moral values are said to have played a decisive role, Fiorina found that 21 percent of voters said that "Moral Issues" was the most important issue of their decision.
This may seem significant, said Fiorina, but it misleadingly lumps gay rights, abortion and broader concerns about the candidates' "values" into one option.
While Fiorina acknowledges and provides statistical evidence that there is a significant positive correlation between regular church attendance and voting for the Republican candidate in the general election, he believes that economic issues are still more important to voters.
If Fiorina is right, and Americans are basically united on these controversial ideological issues, then why are there so many who believe so strongly in the Culture War and its reality? How has this idea of a deep moral division splitting the country gained so much momentum?
Fiorina puts the blame on a misinterpretation of election results, a polarization of the political choices that Americans are offered and a sensationalist media.
The elections of the 1990s were very close races, with no one candidate winning a majority of the popular vote, whereas before the 1992 election, it was the norm for one candidate to win a clear majority. Fiorina says that the media and the political elite misinterpreted this close electoral split as a deep ideological split.
And as evidenced by those perpetuating the idea of the Culture War themselves, the political elite of America have become more polarized. Fiorina suggests that the polarization of the elite has led to more polarized candidates as well.
The presidential candidates presented to the American people have become increasingly distinct and radical, but this doesn't mean that the people at large have followed suit. Fiorina says that the American populace can hover around the middle of the political spectrum, but as long as the candidates are equally polarized, the close division of the voters will remain.
Fiorina attributes this polarization to activists and political elites who control political discourse. He also blames the media for focusing on and exaggerating the political conflict to increase interest.
Fiorina offers tentative explanations for why this polarization occurred over time, but he acknowledges that they are no more than hypotheses. His main message, however, is clear: there is no "us and "them." American culture is not fundamentally divided along social or religious lines, and political discourse does not need to be antagonistic.
www.scribd.com/doc/112000410
A number of books have been published on this schism, and political activists will often speak of themselves and their efforts with this same militaristic terminology; but is this idea of a deep cultural divide actually an accurate representation of America or its populace?
In the 2011 edition of "Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America," Stanford Professor Morris P. Fiorina claims that no such immense moral divide exists in the general populace. He argues that, contrary to popular belief, a majority of Americans actually agree on the issues which are supposed to be so polarizing.
On the contentious issue of abortion, for example, Fiorina refers to regular polling conducted from the 1970s to the mid-2000s which show that Americans are generally uniform in their attitude toward abortion; they say that abortion should be legal in cases of rape, threats to the mother's health and birth defects. Many Americans also say that extreme financial situations can also be suitable justifications for abortions.
Even when the polls compared results between religious and non-religious Americans, registered members of each political party and between genders, the gap in opinion was insignificant. Fewer religious people and registered Democrats approved of allowing abortions in more circumstances, but only small percentages of each group said they were completely pro-choice or pro-life.
Similarly, the Republican Party made the Terri Schiavo case a divisive moral issue in 2005 despite the fact that a majority of Americans agreed that Schiavo, a woman in a vegetative state, kept alive only by a feeding tube, should have been allowed to die. In fact, a clear majority, approximately 75 percent of Americans, say they support euthanasia.
Other polls conducted in the mid-2000s find that a majority of Americans feel that stem cell research is morally acceptable. Yet, Republican President Bush continued to make it a divisive moral issue.
Finally, when Fiorina took the time to examine public views on gay rights, he found a very similar public consensus. A series of Gallup polls showed that in the mid-2000s, Democrats and Republicans only differed by about 10 percent in their approval of legal homosexual relations like civil unions or marriages.
Going beyond these issues that are supposedly splitting America in two, Fiorina goes so far as to say that this moral division doesn't even have that strong of an effect on the outcome of elections. Looking at the 2004 presidential election, in which moral values are said to have played a decisive role, Fiorina found that 21 percent of voters said that "Moral Issues" was the most important issue of their decision.
This may seem significant, said Fiorina, but it misleadingly lumps gay rights, abortion and broader concerns about the candidates' "values" into one option.
While Fiorina acknowledges and provides statistical evidence that there is a significant positive correlation between regular church attendance and voting for the Republican candidate in the general election, he believes that economic issues are still more important to voters.
If Fiorina is right, and Americans are basically united on these controversial ideological issues, then why are there so many who believe so strongly in the Culture War and its reality? How has this idea of a deep moral division splitting the country gained so much momentum?
Fiorina puts the blame on a misinterpretation of election results, a polarization of the political choices that Americans are offered and a sensationalist media.
The elections of the 1990s were very close races, with no one candidate winning a majority of the popular vote, whereas before the 1992 election, it was the norm for one candidate to win a clear majority. Fiorina says that the media and the political elite misinterpreted this close electoral split as a deep ideological split.
And as evidenced by those perpetuating the idea of the Culture War themselves, the political elite of America have become more polarized. Fiorina suggests that the polarization of the elite has led to more polarized candidates as well.
The presidential candidates presented to the American people have become increasingly distinct and radical, but this doesn't mean that the people at large have followed suit. Fiorina says that the American populace can hover around the middle of the political spectrum, but as long as the candidates are equally polarized, the close division of the voters will remain.
Fiorina attributes this polarization to activists and political elites who control political discourse. He also blames the media for focusing on and exaggerating the political conflict to increase interest.
Fiorina offers tentative explanations for why this polarization occurred over time, but he acknowledges that they are no more than hypotheses. His main message, however, is clear: there is no "us and "them." American culture is not fundamentally divided along social or religious lines, and political discourse does not need to be antagonistic.
www.scribd.com/doc/112000410
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