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Backyard Talk

Solar in the US is Booming!

By: Katie O’Brien
Solar in the United States is booming! According to the most recent Solar Market Insight Report by Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), there are more than 58 Gigawatts (GW) of solar currently installed in the US. That’s enough to power over 11 million American homes! The amount of solar installed in the US generates enough power to offset more than 74 million metric tons of CO2 emissions, equivalent to taking 15.8 million vehicles off the road or planting 1.9 billion trees.
Solar is expected to keep growing in coming years…total installed capacity is expected to double by 2023. One of the fastest growing segments in the solar industry is community solar. Community solar is a large solar project shared by multiple community subscribers. These subscribers receive credits on their electricity bill for their portion of the power produced. This allows homeowners, renters, businesses and others who may not have the means or may not have the appropriate roof positioning/tree cover for their own systems. Community solar is also helping assist residents in low income communities. The in Fort Collins, CO is the largest low-income community solar project in the US. The 1.95 megawatt (MW) solar farm will directly benefit low income households, affordable housing providers and non profit organizations located in the utility’s service territory. The project is part of a Colorado state initiative to show the benefits of low income solar for utilities for their highest need customers.  Community solar allows more people to share in the economic and environmental benefits of solar.
Solar is not just good for the environment, it’s great for the economy, especially compared to other forms of electricity generation. More than 250,000 Americans are employed in the US solar industry. In fact, solar employees more people than the gas, coal and oil industries combined. With installations expected to boom, more employees will be needed to assist in installation. The solar industry has also accounted for over $159.5 billion in investment into the economy, with over $17 billion alone in 2017. The cost of solar has also been recently found to be the same or cheaper than other forms of generation. With such low costs, high jobs numbers, and investment, it’s hard to understand why there are still so many solar opposers out there.
The solar industry is also refereed to as the “solar coaster”. With most regulation being done at the state level, the benefits of solar can vary immensely from state to state depending on guidelines set by regulators. Florida is known as the sunshine and ranks as one of the top states in the country for solar potential, yet they fall 12th in total installed capacity. This is mostly due to poor solar policy, driven in part by the lobbying efforts of greedy, monopolistic utilities. With solar policy now changing in the state, Florida is expected to rank 2nd in the country growth over the next 5 years, with over 5.1 MW forecasted to be installed. Florida will truly be the sunshine state in so many ways!
Continued growth in solar will help replace other forms of generation that can be not only costly, but their emissions deadly. To learn more about the solar industry visit www.seia.org

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Backyard Talk

Periodic Mass Shootings Aren’t The Only Source Of Lead In Schools

By: Sharon Franklin
In a November 5, 2018 Katie LaGrone and Matthew Apthorp of ABC Action News Tampa Florida, reported that “most Florida school districts don’t test for lead on campus”.  They reported that Florida law requires school officials to protect children’s health and safety, but the law does not require schools to sample for lead in drinking water.  Throughout the United States, there are only six states that require school systems to test for lead in drinking water.  They are California, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey and New York.  Across the country and around the state of Florida, lead-contaminated drinking water has put schools in the spotlight and under the microscope.  In Florida’s Hillsborough County, 54 schools have tested above 15 parts per billion, the federal standard for action.   Water fountains at the school recently tested 50.5 parts per billion (ppb) and 73.7 (ppb), nearly four and five times above that federal standard. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends lead levels should not exceed one part per billion (1/ppb).
The lack of consistent lead testing at schools in Florida is a statewide failure spelled out in a 2017 Environment Florida Report, where the sunshine state got an “F” for failing to keep school water from becoming laced with lead.  Jennifer Rubiello, Executive Director of Environment Florida, a state advocacy group, said “lead testing is like Russian roulette”.
Believe it or not, there is no federal requirement for schools to test for lead in their water.  Only 43% of school districts in the United States are purported to say that they have tested their water for lead in 2016 or 2017, according to the Government Accountability Office, and 37 percent of those districts found at least some of the toxic metal.
In a report by the USPIRG Education Fund Environment America Research & Policy Center released in February 2017, Get the Lead Out Ensuring Safe Drinking Water for Our Children at School by John Rumpler and Christina Schlegel, they stated the health threat of lead in schools water deserves immediate attention from state and local policymakers.  They give two main reasons for this conclusion, (1) Lead is highly toxic and especially damaging to children, impairing how they learn, grow, and behave.  (2)  Current regulations are too weak to protect children from lead-laden water at school.
Where are we now on this issue? Currently, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has repeatedly delayed revisions to the Safe Drinking Water Act, which had earlier stated that eliminating lead from plumbing materials is the only way to guarantee nobody will drink lead-tainted water.  .  However, while we wait, our children are being still being exposed to another lethal threat.   For additional information, see CHEJ resources fact sheets on water: http://chej.org/healthy-water-resources/

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Backyard Talk

Cleaning up PFAS from the environment- and from our drinking water

By : Lauren Maranto
The analysis of water quality is a critical to both the environment and our daily lives. Water quality is often measured by the presence or lack of metals, toxins, and nutrients, and allows us to determine how these levels may affect human health. Although in the past we have focused on these determinants of water quality, recent attention has been brought to a chemical group called Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and their effect on human health.
According to the EPA, PFAS are a group of chemicals that include PFOS and GenX, among many others. These are a cause for concern not only for their prevalence in our daily lives, but also because they are highly persistent in the environment and in the human body, meaning that they do not break down and will therefore continue to accumulate over time.
PFAS have been used all over the globe, in products including cookware, stain repellents, and fire retardant foams. According to the EPA guide on PFAS, they can be found in things such as household products, waste from production facilities, and living organisms (including fish, animals, and humans). They can even be found in food due to contaminated packaging and processing, or in our drinking water.
Due to their persistence in the environment, PFAS are more likely to leach and spread through environmental processes, allowing them to leach into the water and affect areas further from the source. This has been a common occurrence with the use of fire retardant foams, which release PFAS that are then carried into streams and lakes through runoff, contaminating the water. It also leaches into the soil, which can contaminate crops. Therefore, people can be exposed to low levels of PFAS through exposure to contaminated water, soil, food packaging, and equipment used in manufacturing, according to the EPA. More direct exposure may also occur in an industrial facility that produces PFAS or at any large site that uses firefighting foams.
According to a recent report by Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, an organization dedicated to the implementation of strong chemical policy, approximately 110 million people in 39 states are exposed to drinking water that has been contaminated by PFAS. Studies have linked exposure to some PFAS to adverse health effects, including elevated cholesterol levels, weakened immune system, cancer, decreased infant birth weights, and thyroid hormone disruption. This is a serious, widespread issue that will not go away on its own, and action must be taken to clean up these communities.
However, the communities that have been affected by PFAS are taking initiative, spreading support and awareness for this issue. Toxic Action Center has worked with community leaders in these areas to form the National PFAS Contamination Coalition, a group that works with community groups to share their stories, information, and strategies to spread awareness and reduce the presence of PFAS. For more information on the coalition’s work, contact Shaina Kasper, Vermont State Director and New Hampshire Community organizer, at shaina@toxicsaction.org. In addition, Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families has worked with Congress to pass a provision allowing the commercial use of PFAS-free firefighting foam, and are now working on implementing these in locations across the world. For more information on their work to clean up drinking water, visit the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families report.
Although this issue is being addressed, there is still a lot of work to be done in terms of the continued clean up and monitoring of PFAS. However, we are optimistic that the increased awareness and understanding of this chemical hazard will allow for better regulation of PFAS in the future.

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Backyard Talk

The Importance of Civic Engagement and Grassroots Politics

By: Sharon Franklin
On September 18, 2018 CHEJ conducted a training conference call on The Importance of Civic Engagement, One question from the call included What happens if the people of this nation ignore their civic responsibilities and don’t help make important decisions?
Answer: Only a hand full of gerrymandered voters end up deciding who represents us and the majority of the voices of voters are not heard.  That is Why Civic and Political Participation and Engagement are important because it allows all peoples voices and positions to be heard, to enable all of us to fight for justice and equality on a more level playing field.
The discussion of Civic Engagement means working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and motivation to make that difference.  It means getting involved and promoting both the political and non-political processes.
Several but not all examples of civic engagement include:

  1. Public education campaigns regarding a local policy or issue that do NOT promote a specific voter action,
  2. Hosting House parties and potlucks events to build strong community connections, such as the national action Peoples Action Institute’s “Families Belong Together” event sponsored over the weekend of August 4-5, where local community leaders hosted forty-eight community cookouts — most of which were in rural areas and small towns,
  3. Educating legislators on your issues,
  4. Participate in Nonpartisan voter education,
  5. Educating About and Influencing Regulations (not legislation), and
  6. Encouragement of both Voter Participation and Registration.

As Noted in a recent article by Samantha Madison in the Observer-Dispatch, Utica, New York, What exactly is grassroots politics?
Alan Rosenblatt, Professor at George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management states candidates love to claim that they’re grassroots and they often wear the designation as a badge of honor, but most aren’t exactly right about the definition.
Rosenblatt further states, “In its purest form, grassroots campaigns are organized from the bottom up with average people rallying around a cause or issue” and “A grassroots campaign is about people.” “As far as a candidate goes, if they’re claiming their campaign is a grassroots campaign, then for sure the proportion of small donors to large donors is a measure of that.  I would say that you don’t necessarily (need to have no) corporate donors, but the more people donating small dollar amounts, the more authentic the claim that it’s grassroots.
 Additionally, it is important to realize that nonprofits may conduct a broad range of voter education activities, as long as they are nonpartisan and do not to support or oppose a candidate.
For more information about nonprofit voting visit: https://www.nonprofitvote.org/nonprofits-voting-elections-online/voter-education/

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Backyard Talk

Depression, A New Side Effect of Fracking — Pennsylvanians who live near fracking are more likely to be depressed

By: Sharon Franklin

July 29, 2018

Stress and depression are higher among those living closest to more and bigger wells.

People who live near unconventional natural gas operations such as fracking are more likely to experience depression, according to a new study, by Joan A. Casey, Holly C. Wilcox, Annemarie G. Hirsch, Jonathan Pollak and  Brian S. Schwartz  “Associations of unconventional natural gas development with depression symptoms and disordered sleep in Pennsylvania.”

Background:  The study is the first of its kind published in Scientific Reports.  The University of California at Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University Researched reviewed the rates of depression in nearly 5,000 adults living in southwestern Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale region in 2015.

They found that people living near fracking-related operations are more likely to be depressed than the general population, and that stress and depression went up among people living closest to more and bigger natural gas wells. One of the study’s co-authors, Joan Casey stated “Previously we’ve looked at the links between unconventional natural gas development and things like asthma exacerbations, migraine headaches and fatigue. The next step was thinking about mental health, because we had a lot of anecdotal reports of sleep disturbances and psychosocial stress related to unconventional natural gas development.”

At the end of 2015, 9,669 wells had been drilled in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale.  By 2016, the region led the nation in shale gas production. There have been other small sample studies on the links between fracking and depression, however, this is the first to investigate a link between the two using a validated survey among a larger population. The researchers in this study compared data on the number of wells, the phase of extraction, and the volume of production in order to group residents into categories of “very low,” “low,” “medium,” and “high” levels of exposure to fracking operations.  To assess the severity of depression symptoms, the researchers utilized a patient health questionnaire that included questions such as, “How often have you been bothered by feeling down, depressed, hopeless?

The study’s results: Dr. Casey noted that the greatest increases in rates of depression occurred among people with mild to moderate symptoms living near high-volume fracking operations.  She states “People in the highest group of exposure were 1.5 times more likely to have mild depression symptoms than those in very low exposure group.

Casey added, “Based on our observations, it seems like living near unconventional natural gas development may not cause an increase in diagnoses of severe major depressive disorders but might exacerbate symptoms in those with mild or moderate depression and create some depression and stress in otherwise healthy people.”

The researchers minimized over reporting by not informing the subjects that the study was related to fracking.

While that strengthened the study’s results, Casey pointed out that it also limited their ability to examine the causes of depression in those living near fracking operations.“Some people in these communities might have positive associations with natural gas extraction… Maybe they’re leasing their land and getting economic benefits, so it’s actually lessening their symptoms, while others may only be getting exposures and have concerns about its health impacts, which could be worsening their symptoms.”

Additionally, the researchers reviewed electronic health records to determine whether there was an increase in physician-diagnosed sleep disorders or prescriptions for sleep aids in the region but did not observe an increase in those instances associated with proximity to fracking operations.

Unanswered Questions
The study addressed whether exposure to the chemicals being released into the environment could play a role in the increase of depression symptoms among those living near unconventional natural gas operations.

Casey said “I think we’ve probably now done enough epidemiological studies showing the links between unconventional natural gas extraction and health.”

  1.  “The next step will be to tease apart what our exposure pathways are.”
  2.  “Is this being caused by air pollution and volatile organic compounds?”
  3.  “Is it more about perception and psychosocial stressors than actual exposure?”

Casey concluded that they don’t know the answers to these questions, and to be able to move forward, they will have to start unraveling those mysteries.

Visit this link to learn more.

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EPA’s Superfund site policy could advance gentrification in communities of color

“When it comes to exposure to hazardous waste, Chicago is a tale of two cities divided by color and income.
On the South Side, neighborhoods like Roseland, Englewood, and Riverdale are over 95 percent black. Across the Windy City, fewer than one in five households live below the poverty line, but eight of nine communities on the West Side – many of which contain Superfund sites – exceed that level. The concentration of toxic risk suggests that Chicago continues to fail to live up to a fundamental principle of environmental justice: a person’s race or income level should not increase their likelihood of living near hazardous waste. With more than half of the city’s Superfund sites on the South Side and more than a third on the West Side, maybe this injustice can be best addressed if we call it by its true name: environmental racism.
Disarray within Environmental Protection Agency’s leadership has drawn attention away from the urgent threat facing Chicago neighborhoods. There are 116 hazardous waste areas in Chicago classified as Superfund sites, 100 of which are on the city’s South or West sides. To cite but one example, the H. Kramer & Co. metal smelting facility in Pilsen has emitted airborne lead for decades, much of which settled in backyards and near a public high school.
A recent EPA policy shift favoring private redevelopment (led by former Superfund head Albert Kelly’s Superfund Task Force) may do more harm than good. In January, EPA published an incomplete list of Superfund sites with significant “redevelopment and commercial potential” based on factors like outside interest and land values. The EPA has also indicated a willingness to “work with developers,” perhaps even after sites are cleaned up. This sudden, proactive emphasis on private redevelopment screams gentrification. Whether the EPA can work with outside developers (whose primary interest is profit) while honoring its obligation to prevent community displacement is an open question. No matter the answer, the EPA has wrongly assumed that outside redevelopment is uniformly in the best interest of communities containing these hazardous sites.”
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This Young Environmental Activist Lives 500 Feet From A Drilling Site

““This is personal,” says 25-year-old organizer Ashley Hernandez. “This is my home, this is my family, this is my health.”
Hernandez’s parents, immigrants who fled El Salvador’s civil war, had worked diligently to save for their own home in Wilmington by working as a truck dispatcher and a housekeeper. But their home was just 500 feet from a drilling site. As a child, Hernandez was plagued with headaches and nightly nosebleeds so intense the blood would soak through her pillow. Soot would fall in their yard, tremors shook their home, and toxic air burned their eyes.

“There really is no escaping it,” said Hernandez, who is now 25 and still lives in the same home. “I couldn’t go out or have clear air. I felt like a prisoner in my own home. I felt like I couldn’t do anything, really.” ”
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Backyard Talk

Pruitt’s Priority: Superfund Redevelopment

The Superfund program has long lacked the funding required to remediate the hundreds of languishing sites that continue to endanger communities across the country. Scott Pruitt’s answer to this dilemma? Promoting redevelopment.
At face value, incentivizing the cleanup of contaminated land through redevelopment seems to be a win-win solution that protects human health and revitalizes the economies of local communities. However, there are many reasons to be skeptical of Pruitt’s strategies to achieve this outcome.
On July 25, 2017, the EPA published its most recent Superfund taskforce report. Lois Gibbs, Love Canal community leader and ‘Mother of Superfund’, was concerned by the report’s focus on redevelopment:
“Scott Pruitt’s Superfund Task Force Report almost entirely void of public health concerns.  In fact, the report only mentions health six times with four of those in the Executive Summary. The report sounds like a blueprint to involve for bankers, investors and developers and a plan for corporations to reduce cleanup costs and increase profits at the expense of public health. Redevelopment is mentioned 39 times.”
Third party investment in the cleanup and redevelopment of sites brings about a host of liability issues. In many cases, end-users purchase sites without taking on future liability and when Responsible Party cleanup is deemed complete they are often released from liability as well. However, in the cases where containment fails or cleanup later proves ineffective, such properties are left without a liable party, and become orphaned sites which must be remediated with taxpayer money.
Another tool which the EPA plans to use increasingly is environmental liability transfer, in which redevelopers purchase sites and take on the cleanup responsibility. However, this process does not always run smoothly: last june, the company Environmental Liability Transfers Inc. attempted to back out of a remediation agreement by suing the original responsible party. The previous owner, Detrex, denies ELT’s allegations that the company failed to fully disclose the extent of the site contamination:
“There are no takebacks in environmental liability transfer. This move undermines ELT’s core business model and could be a red flag for any deal they’ve done,” said Tom Mark, CEO of Detrex. “ELT was unsuccessful in its attempt to extract itself from its commitments to Detrex and has now resorted to a lawsuit full of restated history and invented facts.”
Pruitt’s prioritization for Superfund redevelopment recently made Bloomberg headlines over news that the EPA’s Superfund special accounts may now be used to persuade companies to buy and clean up contaminated sites. There is about $3.3 billion in EPA’s Superfund site special accounts as of this week, about three times the amount Congress has appropriated to the Superfund program for fiscal year 2018.
If redevelopment becomes the EPA’s new solution to expedite cleanups despite Superfund budget cuts, we have to ask ourselves several questions: How do we ensure robust liability, cleanup standards, community involvement, oversight, and enforcement? Furthermore, how are we going to clean the many sites which lack redevelopment potential, yet pose a dire health risk?
In the end, the only way to both finance the cleanups of orphan sites and decentivize the use of hazardous chemicals which cause Superfund sites in the first place is to reinstate the Polluter’s Pay tax. We need the EPA to fulfill its true mission in protecting human health and the environment, not polluting corporations.

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The Superfund Sites of Silicon Valley

“Federica Armstrong discovered when she moved to Palo Alto, Calif., that Silicon Valley is not what it seems.

The world’s capital of tech innovation prefers to keep its superlatives, good and bad, under wraps. Along its Prius-choked roads, it looks like Anywhere, U.S.A.: single-family-home suburbs south of San Francisco, bordered by chain stores, auto dealerships and corporate parks — lots of beige, boxy corporate parks.

Inside these plain vanilla buildings, where C.E.O.s in hoodies and jeans stockpile more money than the G.D.P. of developing countries, newly minted techies complain that “S.V.,” the world’s largest wealth generator, is too expensive and that its exhausting work culture is toxic.

So, too, is the land beneath their feet.

From its origins as a manufacturer of silicon chips and semiconductors, Santa Clara County is riddled with 23 toxic Superfund sites, more than any county in the country. This was news to Ms. Armstrong, who lives a mile from one of the sites. Ms. Armstrong, a freelance photographer, moved to Silicon Valley eight years ago not because of tech but in spite of it — she and her husband had followed his career in agribusiness from Malaysia to the Netherlands and Japan. She could ignore the world of start-ups — until she couldn’t.

“Most people I talked to in the community seemed unaware of their presence,” she said. “Often, even the notion of Superfund sites is foreign to many people. We are used to taking for granted the safety of the environment we inhabit. I feel the need to pay more attention to it.””

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A once thriving coal town has turned toxic, and citizens are desperate for help

“West Virginia is one of the most beautiful places in the world. And people are tired of being collateral damage and they’re tired of living in a toxic waste dump,” Paula Jean Swearengin, a West Virginia native, told ThinkProgress.
“We’re just wondering if we do get on the NPL [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][National Priority List], will any of this happen fast enough to actually help the people in Minden?” Brandon Richardson of Headwaters Defense said. “If you wait 10 years to relocate people and come up with the money to do it, you may as well spend that relocation money on burial plots and tombstones because I don’t know if they’re going to have anyone to relocate.”
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