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“If Only I Would’ve Known” Oil & Gas Whistleblowers Speak Out About Exposure to Radioactivity on Fracking Jobs

The year is 2014, and the sleepy mining and agricultural towns of Northern Appalachia have transformed into gold-rush towns. But this is a new type of gold – Shale gas.
These towns sit above an underground formation called the Marcellus Shale that could help make America the world’s greatest producer of natural gas – and in 2014 the Marcellus region is booming. The restaurants are buzzing, bars packed, hotels full for the first time since many people can remember. Each generation of this area has seen the boom and the bust of other major industries – timber, coal, steel – and shale gas  is the next one. It’s marketed as energy independence, good paying blue collar jobs, the American Dream. In areas where decades of economic decline have created a culture of need, this dream is welcomed with open arms.
Read more…
Photo credit: Amanda Gillooly

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Inside the climate battle quietly raging about US homes

Some challenges to US climate action are obvious – like when Donald Trump boasts about leaving the international Paris agreement and rolling back pollution rules.
But many more play out behind the scenes. One of those is the battle over efforts to make America’s new homes and buildings more energy-efficient.

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How Climate Migration Will Reshape America

Millions will be displaced. Where will they go?
August besieged California with a heat unseen in generations. A surge in air-conditioning broke the state’s electrical grid, leaving a population already ravaged by the coronavirus to work remotely by the dim light of their cellphones. By mid month, the state had recorded possibly the hottest temperatures ever recorded on Earth – 130 degrees in Death Valley – and an otherworldly storm of lightning had cracked open the sky.
Read more…

Photo credit: Meridith Kohut | The New York Times

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Babies Born Near Natural Gas Flaring Sites are 50% More Likely to be Premature

Recent studies have linked air pollution from the burning of excess natural gas to increased birth rate of premature babies. Many mothers that live near natural gas flaring sites are from low-income and minority communities, signally the environmental injustices linked deeply to these issues. In addition, there are few health-protective regulations that help control the high level of flaring that takes place across the country. Read More
Photo Credit: Trudy E. Bell

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Airborne Microplastics Have Infiltrated Most of Our Planet

Many recent studies have involved the effect of microplastics in drinking water on both human and marine health. However, more and more studies have begun investigating the impact that airborne microplastics have on both human and ecological health. Inhaling fragments of microplastics have largely detrimental human health impacts. The most surprising finding is that airborne microplastics have not just been found in highly industrialized and polluted areas, but also ones that we normally see as “pristine,” such as national parks. Microplastics can come from obvious sources such as plastic bottles, but also from waterproof outdoor gear and tents used for camping. The human health risks involved with breathing in fragments of microplastics have been recently linked to lung disease and tissue damage. Read More

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Renewable Energy Overtaking the Coal Industry

During the COVID-19 outbreak, the United States has experienced a record low in coal energy production and use. The decline in fossil fuel energy has opened the door for renewable energy production to pick up the slack. For 90 straight days, America’s wind turbines, solar panels, and hydroelectric dams have produced more available energy than the coal industry. Read More.
The following article is reposted on our website from the New York Times and written Brad Plumer.
 

In a First, Renewable Energy Is Poised to Eclipse Coal in U.S.

The coronavirus has pushed the coal industry to once-unthinkable lows, and the consequences for climate change are big.
By Brad Plumer
May 13, 2020
WASHINGTON — The United States is on track to produce more electricity this year from renewable power than from coal for the first time on record, new government projections show, a transformation partly driven by the coronavirus pandemic, with profound implications in the fight against climate change.
It is a milestone that seemed all but unthinkable a decade ago, when coal was so dominant that it provided nearly half the nation’s electricity. And it comes despite the Trump administration’s three-year push to try to revive the ailing industry by weakening pollution rules on coal-burning power plants.
Those efforts, however, failed to halt the powerful economic forces that have led electric utilities to retire hundreds of aging coal plants since 2010 and run their remaining plants less frequently. The cost of building large wind farms has declined more than 40 percent in that time, while solar costs have dropped more than 80 percent. And the price of natural gas, a cleaner-burning alternative to coal, has fallen to historic lows as a result of the fracking boom.
Now the coronavirus outbreak is pushing coal producers into their deepest crisis yet.
As factories, retailers, restaurants and office buildings have shut down nationwide to slow the spread of the coronavirus, demand for electricity has fallen sharply. And, because coal plants often cost more to operate than gas plants or renewables, many utilities are cutting back on coal power first in response.
“The outbreak has put all the pressures facing the coal industry on steroids,” said Jim Thompson, a coal analyst at IHS Markit.
In just the first four and a half months of this year, America’s fleet of wind turbines, solar panels and hydroelectric dams have produced more electricity than coal on 90 separate days — shattering last year’s record of 38 days for the entire year. On May 1 in Texas, wind power alone supplied nearly three times as much electricity as coal did.
The latest report from the Energy Information Administration estimates that America’s total coal consumption will fall by nearly one-quarter this year, and coal plants are expected to provide just 19 percent of the nation’s electricity, dropping for the first time below both nuclear power and renewable power, a category that includes wind, solar, hydroelectric dams, geothermal and biomass.
Natural gas plants, which supply 38 percent of the nation’s power, are expected to hold their output steady thanks to low fuel prices.
The decline of coal has major consequences for climate change.
Coal is the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, and its decline has already helped drive down United States carbon dioxide emissions 15 percent since 2005. This year, the agency expects America’s emissions to fall by another 11 percent, the largest drop in at least 70 years. While the pandemic has made these projections uncertain, the decline is expected to come partly because Americans aren’t driving as much, but mainly because coal plants are running less often.
Even if coal does manage to beat expectations and rebound later this year, experts say that the dramatic shift in the nation’s electricity system is unlikely to be just a blip.
Utilities and large technology companies, major consumers of electricity, are increasingly turning to wind and solar farms for their power, both because renewables keep getting cheaper as technology improves but also because of concerns over air pollution and climate change. Large power companies, including Duke Energy in the Southeast and Xcel Energy in the Midwest, are currently planning to retire at least four dozen large coal plants by 2025, and no utility is currently planning to build a new coal facility.
“The grid is changing so much faster than anyone expected,” said Daniel Cohan, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University. “A decade ago, I was teaching my students that coal was the ‘baseload’ source that runs all the time, and solar was something you might sprinkle in if you want to pay more. Now coal’s been pushed to the margins and it’s wind and solar that are the cheapest options.”
At the same time, electric companies used to worry that using more than just a tiny fraction of wind and solar would make it difficult to keep the nation’s lights on, since the sun isn’t always shining and the wind isn’t always blowing. But since then, utilities have discovered ways to tackle this problem by using technologies like natural-gas plants that can be quickly turned on to meet spikes in demand, better weather forecasting and, increasingly, vast battery storage projects such as those planned in Nevada and California.
The Energy Information Administration expects wind and solar generation to increase this year, although the Covid-19 outbreak is likely to put many projects on hold as supply chains are disrupted. For instance, Pacificorp, a major utility in the Northwest, said it was facing challenges in completing a large 503-megawatt wind farm under construction in Wyoming, though a spokesman said the company was trying to find “creative solutions” in order to meet a November deadline.
Last week, the Internal Revenue Service signaled that it would provide some flexibility for wind and solar developers at risk of missing deadlines for finishing projects this year in order to qualify for a key federal tax subsidy.
The decline of coal power has created turmoil across the industry. Mining companies have laid off hundreds of workers in states like Wyoming and Montana. In April, Longview Power, which operates one of the nation’s youngest and most advanced coal power plants, in West Virginia, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing the pandemic as a factor.
Analysts said that coal power could see a moderate rebound next year if natural gas prices rise from their current lows. Still, even under that scenario, the E.I.A. does not currently see coal overtaking renewable energy.
For now, it is often cheaper for many utilities to generate electricity from natural gas than coal because of a nationwide gas glut, thanks in part to a warm winter that reduced demand for gas heating, combined with the boom in hydraulic fracturing. In places like Texas, natural gas is frequently an abundant side product produced by drillers that use fracking to extract crude oil.
More recently, however, the coronavirus has caused oil prices to crash worldwide. Many oil drillers are now being forced to shut down their wells, which could mean less natural gas next year and potentially higher gas prices, helping coal recover.
There is a wild card, however: If the financial pain caused by the pandemic leads utilities to speed up their decisions to retire more coal plants, the industry would have a much harder time bouncing back in the years ahead. Once a coal-burning plant is closed, it is difficult to restart.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we do see some companies accelerate their plans to retire more coal plants,” said Manan Ajuha, a power industry analyst at S&P Global Platts.
One danger sign for many coal plants is that they are running less frequently. Back in 2010, the average U.S. coal plant ran at about 67 percent of its capacity. Last year, that fraction dipped below one-half for the first time in decades and is slipping further this year.
“The less you use these plants, the more expensive they are to keep around,” said Seth Feaster, a data analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. His group recently estimated that, by 2025, coal could make up 10 percent or less of the electricity generated in the United States.
The latest example: This month Great River Energy, a cooperative based in Minnesota, said it planned to close its giant Coal Creek Station, a 1.1 gigawatt coal plant in North Dakota, by 2022. While a utility official attributed the decision to long-term economic trends, not the pandemic, the closure is notable for what will replace it: The utility plans to add 1.1 gigawatts of new wind capacity, a small amount of gas, as well as a first-of-its-kind battery that can store wind power for long periods.
The coal industry, for its part, says that many of these retirements may prove shortsighted. Michelle Bloodworth, the chief executive of America’s Power, an industry trade group, argued that coal plants remained a critical pillar of the nation’s electricity mix and a valuable hedge in case natural gas prices rise, as they have done in the past during particularly severe winter storms when demand for gas heating can spike.
“The coal fleet is not dead,” Ms. Bloodworth said. “There is still a significant amount of coal that’s going to be needed in the future to make sure we don’t risk and threaten the reliability of the grid.”
While President Trump came into office vowing to save the coal industry and revive mining jobs, he has so far been unable to do so. His push to relax costly air pollution rules on coal plants has not stopped the plant closures. And several plans by the administration to indirectly subsidize coal plants, on the grounds that they can improve grid reliability, have gone nowhere.
The United States is not yet at the point reached in Britain, which now goes for weeks at a time without using any coal power at all. But some parts of the United States are now getting an early preview of life where coal is on the decline and renewables are soaring.
“In some parts of the country, we’re now seeing renewable penetration hit 60 or 70 percent on some days,” said Nat Kreamer, chief executive of Advanced Energy Economy, a clean-energy business group, “and no one’s screaming that they can’t do that.”
 

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The EPA gave polluters a license to kill

There are tens of thousands more communities where the pollution continues unabated. These are known as “sacrifice zones” — places where the health of residents is permanently sacrificed to industrial contamination. Our government just told polluters they are free to pump deadly chemicals into our air and water. That’s because the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has suspended all enforcement indefinitely, until the COVID-19 crisis is over.  Read more.

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Butte, MT Babies Have Heavy Metals 1,000 times Higher Than SC Babies

Last year, a team of independent researchers collected samples of baby poop from 32 infants born in Butte and Columbia, South Carolina and tested them for heavy metals. The results of the peer-reviewed study dominated local headlines, grabbing the attention of the community and government agencies. Federal officials this week called for the study to be retracted from the academic journal.
“I don’t think that we should attack scientific data because we don’t like the data that came from that scientific study. And I feel like that’s what has happened here.” Read more.

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No One Should Have to Breathe These Chemicals

Opinion NYT   In Texas and across the country, the E.P.A.’s gutting of the Chemical Disaster Rule is a matter of life or death.

By While families across the country celebrated Thanksgiving with their loved ones, more than 50,000 people in Port Neches, Tex., were forced to evacuate from their homes and spend the holiday in makeshift shelters. The reason? Two explosions at the Texas Petroleum Chemical plant sent flames into the sky, injured eight people, and released plumes of butadiene, a carcinogen, into the air.

The disaster erupted six days after the Trump administration gutted Obama-era regulations meant to improve safety at 12,000 chemical plants around the country.

It’s too soon to say whether these now abandoned rules would have made a difference in Port Neches. But there is no question that the communities that surround these thousands of plants are less safe now.

This regulatory rollback gives chemical plants across the country a free pass, in pursuit of greater profits, to operate in a way that endangers families and workers.

There are over 2,500 chemical facilities in the Houston area. Manchester, the neighborhood where Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services works, is among those most affected by this negligence. There are 30 chemical plants and waste sites in the Manchester area that report to the Environmental Protection Agency. When an explosion happens, nearby neighborhoods, mostly Latinx and people of color, are exposed to this toxicity.

And these toxic blasts are not infrequent. The last chemical explosion in Houston to garner national attention was in March at the Intercontinental Terminals Co., a few miles east of Manchester. This explosion led to high benzene levels in the air, school closures and community shelter-in-place orders for days: stay where you are, turn off air conditioning. Some advisories told people to put a plastic tarp over their windows, sealed with duct tape, to prevent air from coming in.

Federal regulations were supposed to protect us. For years, organizations like United Steelworkers, Greenpeace and dozens of other community and environmental organizations pressured the E.P.A. to make chemical disaster prevention a priority.

The turning point happened in 2013 when an explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Tex., 200 miles northwest of Houston, killed 15 people and injured over 260.

Later that year, President Barack Obama signed an executive order calling on federal agencies to create a task force. What emerged was the Chemical Disaster Rule, a proposal to improve plant safety and protect surrounding communities, which the former E.P.A. administrator Gina McCarthy approved one month before President Trump took office.

Two months later, the Trump administration blocked the regulations from taking effect, and now the E.P.A. has released a final rule that eviscerates the Obama-era requirements. The agency rescinded major accident prevention provisions, including requirements to consider safer technology, audits of accidents by outside parties and “root cause” analyses of accidents.

While Texas has the largest number of chemical facilities in the country, Illinois, California, Iowa and Louisiana are riddled with them, too. As The Houston Chronicle has documented, no state is spared from having at least one facility that could have toxic or flammable chemical accidents with consequences that extend beyond the site.

The E.P.A. calls these communities — areas that could be affected by a release from a chemical accident — “vulnerable zones.” One in three children in America attends a school in a vulnerable zone. This means that over 19 million children are at risk of exposure to the harmful chemicals that these plants use, store and can emit when they produce plastics, pesticides, adhesives and other products.

Our neighborhoods in Houston are a case in point. The oil and gas facilities and chemical plants along the 52-mile Houston Ship Channel have turned the air in Harris County into a public health hazard, significantly increasing the likelihood of residents’ developing cancer and respiratory problems — and shortening the lives of children. Children living near the Houston Ship Channel are 56 percent more likely to develop leukemia than those who live more than 10 miles away.

To me this issue is personal. Yes, explosions from chemical facilities can be deadly. But the long-term impact of exposure to toxic chemicals also kills. In 2016, I was found to have hypersensitivity pneumonitis, a rare autoimmune system disorder that arises from breathing in dust or toxins repeatedly. The doctors blamed indoor air, but I am convinced that exposure to chemicals in Houston led to my condition. In this town, there’s little distinction between the air indoors and what’s outside.

When traveling — I am now at the U.N. Climate talks in Madrid — I bring a portable oxygen machine in case I need it. I am unable to walk long distances, and I move slowly because of my shortness of breath. Public speaking is difficult, as is any exertion. My life expectancy is not long (10 years, one doctor told me). I hope it is more.

In my family, lung diseases are the norm. My diagnosis came the same year that my father, Gregorio V. García, died of lung cancer at 79. He worked in the Asarco Refinery in Corpus Christi, Tex., and was a member of United Steelworkers for 30 years. Workers in these refineries are the first exposed to toxic substances. Many, like him, have died of cancer.

Plants like the nearby Valero facility emit a slew of poisonous chemicals like benzene and hydrogen cyanide into our neighborhoods. Far too often, they fail to meet Clean Air Act requirements.

During Hurricane Harvey in August 2017, I felt what it was like to breathe in a concentrated amount of toxic air. On the day of the worst flooding, my husband and I drove his pickup truck into Manchester to document what was happening at the Valero refinery. We saw water running from Valero into Hartman Park, where children gather to play baseball and soccer, and down the streets we knew well. As we drove, we had to cover our nose and mouth with our hands. My lips turned numb. The odor was so strong that it made me nauseated.

Three days later we found out that we had driven into one of the largest benzene spills. Benzene is clear, colorless and flammable. To date, this spill has not been adequately addressed by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

In Houston, we struggle to get chemical facilities to follow the law. We ask our state to protect us from chemicals that no one should breathe. Now the federal government is ending safeguards that the E.P.A. only a few years ago said the industry needed to protect the lives of workers, emergency medical workers and communities like mine.

My life should not be a pawn for leveraging industry profits. Nor should those of my neighbors and their children. Families and workers in these neighborhoods deserve to be safe.

As disasters continue to happen, we — those most affected, those who breathe and live and play in toxicity — condemn the E.P.A.’s decision to repeal the Chemical Disaster Rule. We are denied basic health protections simply because the industry does not want to invest in our safety.

Families and workers across the country should not have to pay the ultimate cost of this administration’s refusal to do its job: our lives.

 Ana Parras is a co-executive director of Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (@tejasbarrios).