by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 31, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Toxification
By Duke University
Water pollution from surface coal mining has degraded more than 22 percent of streams and rivers in southern West Virginia to the point they may now qualify as impaired under state criteria, according to a new study by scientists at Duke and Baylor universities.
The study, published this week in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology, documents substantial losses in aquatic insect biodiversity and increases in salinity linked to sulfates and other pollutants in runoff from mines often located miles upstream.
“Our findings offer concrete evidence of the cumulative impacts surface mining is having on a regional scale,” said Emily S. Bernhardt, associate professor of biogeochemistry at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment. “The relationship is clear and direct: The more mining you have upstream, the higher the biological loss and salinity levels will be downstream, and the farther they will extend.”
Numerous recent studies have demonstrated the water-quality problems caused at or near the site of individual surface coal mines, Bernhardt noted. So she and her team “set out to understand how the large and growing number of surface mines is affecting water quality throughout Appalachia.”
They used NASA satellite images and computer data to map the extent of surface mining taking place across a 12,000-square-mile area of the southern West Virginia coalfields between 1976 and 2005.
They found that companies had converted more than 5 percent of the land into mine sites and buried 480 miles of streams beneath adjacent valley fills during this period.
By overlaying the map with chemical and biological data from 223 streams the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection sampled in the study area between 1997 and 2007, the researchers determined that pollution runoff from the mines could substantially degrade more than 1,400 miles of streams in the region – four times the length of streams buried below the valley fills.
“It’s important to recognize that surface coal mining pollution doesn’t stop at mine-permit boundaries,” said Brian D. Lutz, a postdoctoral associate in Bernhardt’s lab.
“Our analysis suggests that mining only 5 percent of the land surface is degrading between 22 percent and 32 percent of the region’s rivers,” he said.
Substantial declines in insect diversity began to occur when companies had mined as little as 1 percent of upstream land, the analysis showed. In areas where companies had converted about 5 percent of the land into mines, sensitive species such as mayflies and stoneflies had vanished or declined to an extent that the streams would qualify as biologically impaired under criteria set by the state of West Virginia.
The designation means the streams could be placed on a list of waterways that the state must take steps to rehabilitate.
“What is so compelling is that we found many different types of organisms are lost downstream of surface coal mines, and most of them begin to disappear at similar levels of mining,” said Ryan S. King, associate professor of biology at Baylor. “Our analysis shows that coal mining is leading to widespread declines in aquatic biodiversity in Appalachian streams.”
Lutz and King co-authored the paper with Bernhardt. Other coauthors were John P. Fay, instructor of geospatial analysis at the Nicholas School; Catherine E. Carter, a 2010 master’s graduate of the Nicholas School, now at TetraTech; Ashley M. Helton, postdoctoral associate in Duke’s Department of Biology; John Amos of SkyTruth; and David Campagna, of Campagna & Associates.
The study was supported by unrestricted gifts in support of research from The Foundation for the Carolinas and the Sierra Club, and through a contract to Amos and Campagna from Appalachian Voices.
From Duke University
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 29, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Obstruction & Occupation, Worker Exploitation
By Charles Suggs, RAMPS organizer
More than 50 protesters affiliated with the R.A.M.P.S. Campaign have walked onto Patriot Coal’s Hobet mine and shut it down. Ten people locked to a rock truck, boarded it and dropped banners: ”Coal Leaves, Cancer Stays.” At least three have been arrested, with another in a tree being threatened by miners with a chain saw. Earlier in the day, two people were arrested at Kanawha State Forest before a group of protesters headed to the state capitol.
“The government has aided and abetted the coal industry in evading environmental and mine safety regulations. We are here today to demand that the government and coal industry end strip mining, repay their debt to Appalachia, and secure a just transition for this region,” Dustin Steele of Matewan, W.Va. said. Steele was one of the people locked to the rock truck.
Mounting scientific evidence shows that strip mining negatively impacts community health and miner health. Recent studies have found a 42 percent increase in risk of birth defects around strip mines, and miners who spend at least 20 years as strip-mine drillers have a 61 percent chance of contracting silicosis, a virulent form of black lung. “The coal companies are poisoning our water and air, and they’re treating the workers no better than the land – fighting workplace health and safety protections to get the most out of labor as they can,” said Junior Walk of Whitesville, W.Va.
As coal production declines, protesters are concerned that the region will be left with only illness and environmental devastation as the industry pulls out of the region and companies file for bankruptcy to shed legacy costs.
Patriot Coal is currently going through Chapter 11 bankruptcy, in which union contracts and pensions could be on the chopping block. Both UMWA pensions and the state’s Special Reclamation Fund are funded through a per-ton tax on coal. With Central Appalachian coal production in the middle of a projected six-year, 50 percent decline, this funding stream is increasingly unsustainable. Protesters are calling on the coal industry and government to ensure that funding is available both to honor commitments to retired workers and to restore the land.
“Coal companies must employ their surface mine workers in reclaiming all disturbed land to the highest standards. Instead of arguing about the ‘war on coal,’ political leaders should immediately allocate funds to retrain and re-employ laid off miners to secure a healthy future for the families of this region,” said R.A.M.P.S. spokesperson Mathew Louis-Rosenberg.
Appalachian communities, from union miners to the anti-strip mining activists of the 1960s, have a proud history of confronting the coal industry and demanding an end to its exploitive practices with direct civil disobedience. R.A.M.P.S. and other campaigns have returned to this tradition to eliminate strip mining once and for all. Since its founding in 2011, R.A.M.P.S. has organized a range of actions, from tree-sits to blockades of coal trucks.
Today’s protesters are among the hundreds of people across the country who are joining this summer’s National Uprising Against Extraction, using radical tactics to fight oppressive extractive industries and demand a transition to a sustainable economy.
From We Are Power Shift:
You can help support RAMPS by making a donation here: https://www.wepay.com/donate/57022?ref=widget&utm_medium=widget&utm_campaign=donation
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 22, 2012 | Toxification
By Environment News Service
Flares, leaking pipelines and tanks emitted 92,000 tons of toxic chemicals into the air during accidents, break-downs and maintenance at Texas oil and gas facilities, refineries and petrochemical plants over the past three years, finds a report released today by the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project, EIP.
Based on data from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, a state agency, the EIP report shows that, in addition to the emissions from normal operations, more than 42,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, and just over 50,000 tons of smog-forming volatile organic compounds were released from 2009 through 2011. The report shows a “pattern of neglect” as the pollution from these events drags on for weeks or months.
Community groups, including the EIP, notified the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today that they will take the agency to court if it fails to crack down on this toxic pollution.
Hilton Kelley, executive director of Communities In-power and Development in Port Arthur, Texas, sees the health effects of these emissions every day. “The EPA knows there are a disproprortionate number of people living with respiratory, cancer, liver and kidney disease directly related to what they’re being exposed to,” he told reporters on a conference call today.
“Within Port Arthur I personally know at least 12 people who have recently died from cancer and one young lady who died from an asthma attack,” said Kelley. “The Environmental Protection Agency must do a better job of counting the toxic pollution dumped into low-income and minority communities.”
In Houston, Juan Parras, founder of Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, said, “I am a firm believer and advocate for clean air, however, I live in an environment where ‘clean’ is dictated by petrochemical, gas plants, and oil refineries in the Houston Region. They decide what they can get away with and blame their highly toxic emissions on ‘accidents’ that they claim are beyond their control.”
While both sulfur dioxide and volatile organic compounds, VOCs, are linked to asthma attacks and other respiratory ailments, and can contribute to premature death from heart disease, because they result from these so-called “emission events,” they are usually not included in the data the government uses to establish regulations or evaluate public health impacts.
Natural gas operations, including well heads, pipelines, compressors, boosters, and storage systems, accounted for more than 85 percent of total sulfur dioxide and nearly 80 percent of the VOCs released during these emission events, the Environmental Integrity Project report shows.
The Clean Air Act makes polluters strictly liable for their mistakes, but loopholes in regulations either excuse violations that result from malfunctions altogether, or allow polluters to escape penalties by claiming that such mishaps are beyond the control of plant operators. As a result, federal or state agencies rarely even investigate these events, much less take enforcement action.
Read more from Environment News Service: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2012/2012-07-18-01.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 12, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Toxification
By Abrahm Lustgarten / ProPublica
New research has concluded that salty, mineral-rich fluids deep beneath Pennsylvania’s natural gas fields are likely seeping upward thousands of feet into drinking water supplies.
Though the fluids were natural and not the byproduct of drilling or hydraulic fracturing, the finding further stokes the red-hot controversy over fracking in the Marcellus Shale, suggesting that drilling waste and chemicals could migrate in ways previously thought to be impossible.
The study, conducted by scientists at Duke University and California State Polytechnic University at Pomona and released today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, tested drinking water wells and aquifers across Northeastern Pennsylvania. Researchers found that, in some cases, the water had mixed with brine that closely matched brine thought to be from the Marcellus Shale or areas close to it.
No drilling chemicals were detected in the water, and there was no correlation between where the natural brine was detected and where drilling takes place.
Still, the brine’s presence – and the finding that it moved over thousands of vertical feet — contradicts the oft-repeated notion that deeply buried rock layers will always seal in material injected underground through drilling, mining, or underground disposal.
“The biggest implication is the apparent presence of connections from deep underground to the surface,” said Robert Jackson, a biology professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University and one of the study’s authors. “It’s a suggestion based on good evidence that there are places that may be more at risk.”
The study is the second in recent months to find that the geology surrounding the Marcellus Shale could allow contaminants to move more freely than expected. A paper published by the journal Ground Water in April used modeling to predict that contaminants could reach the surface within 100 years – or fewer if the ground is fracked.
Last year, some of the same Duke researchers found that methane gas was far more likely to leak into water supplies in places adjacent to drilling.
Read more from TruthOut: http://truth-out.org/news/item/10244-new-study-fluids-from-marcellus-shale-likely-seeping-into-pa-drinking-water
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 10, 2012 | Climate Change
By Max McClure / Stanford University News
Yellowstone is the nation’s oldest national park – it has been protected since 1872. So when Stanford biology Professor Elizabeth Hadly saw several years ago that its wetland cover and amphibian populations were both declining, she was a little surprised.
“Practically its entire watershed is protected,” she said. “These changes weren’t caused by something from inside the park.”
Yellowstone was providing evidence to support a growing suspicion held by Hadly and a large number of other prominent environmental scientists.
Most current predictions of environmental change are based on extrapolations from current trends. But what if that isn’t an accurate picture of the future? What if we are approaching a critical threshold – one that, once crossed, would lead to accelerated, widespread and largely unpredictable environmental degradations?
This is the frightening conclusion of a paper co-authored by Hadly that appears in the new issue of Nature – an issue devoted to the environment, in anticipation of the United Nations’ June 20-22 Conference on Sustainable Development. The consensus statement by 22 respected scientists uses past examples to suggest that Earth’s current systems will experience a major disruption – perhaps within a few generations.
“The environment will enter a new state,” said Hadly. “And we don’t know exactly what that state will look like.”
Reaching the tipping point
It’s already established that global biological systems are capable of very rapid, wholesale shifts. Of the five major extinction events in Earth’s history, at least four of them were accompanied by this kind of critical transition. Global conditions that had remained relatively stable for millions of years changed dramatically over a period lasting less than 5 percent of that time.
There’s reason to believe that “pronounced change” in “assemblages of species,” as the paper puts it – such as extinction events – are a reliable marker of these shifts. And we happen to be in the middle of an ongoing human-driven mass extinction.
The litany of ways in which humans have altered the Earth’s environment is well known. But why do these scientists now believe that we are moving toward a major, irreversible shift?
“There’s the idea that, once you have more than 50 percent of wholesale disturbance in a given ecological system, major disturbance in the rest of the system will inevitably follow,” said Hadly, who is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
About 43 percent of Earth’s land has already been converted to agricultural or urban use and, if current trends continue, is expected to reach the 50 percent mark by 2025. By 2060, using current trends, the number will be 70 percent.
By comparison, the last critical shift Earth underwent was the end of the last Ice Age. That famously dramatic example of climate change only involved ice melting from 30 percent of Earth’s surface, and it resulted in a major transition in global climatic conditions and the distribution of life on the planet.
No escape
What Hadly saw in Yellowstone suggests these global shifts may already be affecting isolated, local environments.
“As an ecologist, I was trained to measure changes on a local or a regional level – looking at changes in a 1-by-1-meter plot,” said Hadly. “Now, there’s a heck of a lot of change in that 1-meter plot that has nothing to do with local processes.”
The global drivers that are working their way into every corner of the planet all have humans behind the wheel. Human population growth and increased resource consumption mean that anywhere from 20 to 40 percent of the planet’s energy produced by living things now goes to support human society.
The ecosystems that do survive are becoming more homogeneous and simpler – a combination of human-introduced species and habitat degradation and fragmentation.
“We’re fairly naïve in managing for new combinations of species that will exist,” Hadly said, “in part because we usually anticipate ecosystem change on a species-by-species basis.”
The human connection
Although the exact nature of Earth’s next state is unpredictable, the researchers expect it to resemble an accelerated version of these already-in-motion processes.
These shifts are potentially disastrous for humanity as well.
“Citizens of wealthy countries like the U.S. are less aware of catastrophic shifts in ecosystem services because we have the ability to cobble together short-term fixes that mask the global trend,” said Hadly. “But other countries aren’t so buffered.” In a world marked by water shortages and climate change, “we simply aren’t yet equipped with a flexible intergovernmental structure necessary to manage for this future.”
The United States may be buffered, but it can help with a crucial environmental task: monitoring ecosystems for evidence of this shift. America is large and geographically diverse enough that, Hadly says, “we could be some of the first to observe these changes, and if we are proactive, we can bear witness to the rest of the world.”
Which will be crucial for predicting when the shift is coming – or if it’s already here.
From Stanford University News: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/june/earth-tipping-point-060712.html
