Activists take stand against mountaintop removal

Latin America’s glaciers disappearing fast

By Gustavo González

Santiago, Chile, Aug. 16— Glaciers around the world are disappearing more quickly than initially thought, and global warming is believed to be the culprit. The deglaciation phenomenon — while most intense in Antarctica — is having a major impact on the mountains of Latin America, warn scientists.

One can no longer speak of “eternal ice” in reference to mountain glaciers. This is proved by the continual reduction of the glacier-covered areas of the Southern Ice Fields in Chile and Argentina, of the Mexican volcano Popocatépetl, and of the Callejón de Huaylas, known as “the Peruvian Switzerland.”

Latin America’s glaciers are suffering the devastating impacts of global warming and of the meteorological phenomenon of rains and drought known as El Niño and La Niña, and of volcanic eruptions.

Glaciers hold 70 percent of the planet’s freshwater, equivalent to a depth of 70 meters across the world’s oceans. Antarctica stores 91 percent of this ice, but the importance of the remaining nine percent is not to be underestimated.

As water sources, glaciers are vital for herding communities and for farmers, but environmentalists report that they are also being destroyed by mining companies, which consume large quantities of water in processing ore.

Interest in Mexico’s glaciers was spurred by the search for indicators of global warming, says Patricia Julio, researcher at the Geology Institute of the Autonomous National University of Mexico.

Popocatépetl, “mountain that smokes” in the indigenous Náhuatl language, rises 465 meters above sea level and is located where the states of Morelos, Puebla and Mexico meet, some 60 km north of the capital.

The process of glacier extinction there began to pick up speed in 2000, due to volcanic activity, though climate change and the impacts of human activities have long been affecting the ice fields.

“What happens next winter could be definitive” for the glaciers’ survival, Julio told Tierramérica.

Mexico’s glaciers are of particular importance because they are the only ones situated within 19 degrees latitude North. In 1997, scientists began systematic observations of Popocatépetl, whose total glacial area was estimated at 0.53 square km in 2000.

The ice fields lost 1,500 square meters per year from 1982 to 1996, and its current area is just 30 percent of what was measured in the 1950s by archaeologist José Luis Lorenzo.

Peru, meanwhile, with 470,000 hectares covered by “eternal ice,” possesses 70 percent of the mountain glaciers within the Earth’s tropics.

In the past 20 years the ice-covered area of the Peruvian Andes has been reduced 20 percent, says activist Jorge Alvarez, with the non-governmental Board for the Defense of Natural and Cultural Heritage.

“And the process is tending to accelerate,” he added.

“On Mount Huascarán, Peru’s most famous mountain, a loss of 12.8 square km of ice has occurred, around 40 percent of what it covered 30 years ago,” noted Alvarez.

“The acceleration of the deglaciation process is a catastrophic danger in the short and medium terms,” says Carmen Felipe, president of the governmental Water Management Institute.

In the short term, the melting could cause overflows of reservoirs and trigger mudslides, and in the medium term, reduction in water supplies, said the Peruvian expert.

In the southern Andes, the most detailed studies are focused on the Southern Ice Fields in the Patagonian region of Chile and Argentina.

It is the largest glacial area in the Southern Hemisphere, after Antarctica, covering an area of 13,000 square km.

A report from the University of Chile’s Glaciology Laboratory states that most of the ice field’s 48 valleys have seen a sharp reduction in recent years.

The giant glacier lost 50 square km in surface area from 1945 to 1986, while its thickness was reduced by as much as 14 meters between 1991 and 1993.

The same deterioration suffered in western Antarctica “is occurring on a smaller scale throughout the Andean glaciers,” reported award-winning researcher Claudio Teitelboim, of the Glaciology and Climate Change Laboratory at the Center for Scientific Research (CECS) of Valdivia, in southern Chile.

The director of the laboratory, Gino Casassa, warns that the deterioration of the mountain glaciers is a serious problem, as much for the climate and geographic implications as for the fact that “during droughts we rely on the water reserves provided by those glaciers.”

Source: (Tierramérica)

Critics examine nuke plant safety
as industry revival looms

By Katherine Stapp

New York City, New York, Aug. 14 (IPS)— A controversial nuclear power plant just 35 kilometers north of New York City will remain open despite fears that it is an attractive target for sabotage and reports that its evacuation plans are inadequate.

Twenty million people live within a 80-km radius of Indian Point’s reactors in Buchanan, New York State, on the banks of the Hudson River. About 300,000 people live within 16 kms of the plant, the zone most vulnerable to radioactive fallout in the event of an accident or attack.

Tuesday, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said that security drills conducted in July found that Indian Point has a “strong defensive strategy and capability,” and that the private security force stationed there had “successfully protected the plant from repeated mock-adversary attacks.”

The news comes as the US nuclear industry appears set for a re-birth. In July, a Senate committee endorsed a bill that provides loan guarantees worth up to $16 billion for six potential new power plants. Three utilities are expected to apply for early site permits in September to reserve spots for the next generation of nuclear reactors.

Opponents of the Indian Point plant, who want it immediately closed, told IPS that the security drills were seriously flawed because they did not include attacks from the river or air. Other than declaring the exercises a success, the NRC has declined to release details of the drills, citing security concerns.

The grassroots movement to close Indian Point grew dramatically following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when the first plane that struck the World Trade Center flew almost directly over the reactors on its way to New York City.

So far, 45 municipalities and more than 300 elected officials from the three states surrounding Indian Point — New York, New Jersey and Connecticut — have joined the call by a coalition of environmental groups and local residents to close the plant.

A study by Indian Point’s owner, Entergy Nuclear Northeast, found that it would take nine hours and 25 minutes to evacuate the 16-km zone around the plant.

In a radio and television campaign, the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition charges that the plant’s location in such a densely populated region makes it a potential “weapon of mass destruction.”

These concerns were bolstered by a five-month independent analysis led by James Lee Witt, former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which determined earlier this year that existing emergency evacuation plans “are not able to protect the public from an unacceptable dose of radiation.”

Despite Witt’s critical report, FEMA approved the evacuation plans this month.

Indian Point’s 30-year-old reactors have also undergone six unplanned shutdowns over the last year, triggering an unusual investigation by the NRC into operations at the plant.

More than three shutdowns are considered grounds for concern, the commission said when it announced the probe on Tues., Aug. 12. Only the NRC has the authority to close the plant, which it has shown no inclination to do.

Those who want Indian Point mothballed say that in the short term, New York could import power from other states and introduce conservation measures similar to California’s during the recent energy crisis there. In the long term, there is a project set for 2006 to bring additional power from upstate New York.

“We also need to invest more in clean energy sources like wind and solar,” said Mark Jacobs, co-founder of the Westchester Citizens Awareness Network.

Jacobs noted that although the federal government has spent some $150 billion promoting “alternative” energy sources over the last few decades, 96 percent of that money has gone to the nuclear industry.

Due to a combination of safety concerns and economics, no new nuclear plants have been built in the United States since 1974.

More than 100 plants are operating countrywide, with an average age of 22 years.

In 1979, a near meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania forced more than 100,000 people to evacuate the area. It was the worst nuclear disaster in US history and played a large role in turning public opinion against the building of new plants.

In 2002, leaking coolant ate a gaping 15-cm hole near the top of the reactor at the Davis-Besse plant in Ohio State. It came within a fraction of a centimeter of breaching the reactor core and possibly setting off a Three Mile Island-like disaster.

Critics note that prior to the accident, the NRC had permitted the plant to skip its mandated year-end inspections.

Still, some experts are predicting a revitalization of the industry in coming years as the United States struggles to meet growing energy needs without increasing the carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.

“A new plant order within the next couple of years would not be surprising,” said Gilbert Brown, a professor in the nuclear engineering program at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. “Everything is aligned for this to happen — a refined licensing process, demand for electricity, high fossil fuel prices, recognition of the fact that nuclear emits no greenhouse gases, excellent operating performance of the existing fleet of plants.”

Other believers in nuclear power claim it is a matter of political and economic security.

“If we don’t look to nuclear power to provide an increasing share of the nation’s energy needs, we will remain hostage to the economic and political uncertainties associated with a growing dependence on fossil fuels,” said Bernard Weinstein, a professor of applied economics at the University of North Texas.

In July, a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University released a study recommending nuclear power as a long-term option, but warning that its prospects are limited by four problems: high relative costs; perceived adverse safety, environmental and health effects; potential security risks stemming from nuclear proliferation; and unresolved challenges in long-term management of nuclear wastes.

“I don’t think there will be any new nuclear power plants built in the US until the nuclear waste issue is resolved,” said Stanford Levin, an economics professor at Southern Illinois University, who was not associated with the study. “This is now moving forward, but due to federal government delays, it is a number of years behind schedule.”

The Department of Energy has identified a site called Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, to be the repository of the nation’s nuclear waste, which is currently stored at facilities scattered through 43 states. The plan is adamantly opposed by native groups and other residents, and is not expected to open until at least 2010.

Nuclear plants are initially licensed for 40 years, and by law are eligible for a 20-year extension.

Endangered Species of the Southern US
A weekly column by Shawn Gaynor

A reminder of an ecosystem lost

Although the Piedmont area of North and South Carolina is generally dominated by forests, a unique prairie ecosystem once stretched though much of this area. Piedmont prairies were open, savanna-like areas, with few trees and no forest canopy. Like the great prairies of the Midwestern Untied States, it was not a lack of soil fertility or rain that kept woody plants from dominating the area — it was disruption. Prairie fires, which had to have occurred at least every several years, destroyed the woody plants, leaving plants that had specifically evolved to survive fire. Herd animals such as bison and elk tilled the soil and trampled small trees that encroached on the open area.

As Americans with little understanding of natural systems displaced native populations in the area, the ecosystem of the piedmont changed. Fire was suppressed, herds of wild animals killed, and cleared land became a commodity to farmers.

Slowly woods (or development) encroached into these open prairies in the piedmont, leaving species dependant on a fire regime that they evolved with unable to compete.

One of these species pushed to the edge of extinction by the loss of the Piedmont prairie ecosystem is Schweinitz’s Sunflower. It is one of the rarest flowers in North America.

Schweinitz’s Sunflower, named for the father of North American Mycology, Lewis David Schweinitz, is endemic to the Piedmont area. It remains precariously perched on the edge of extinction, with only 16 populations.

Most of these populations are very small, with many including less then 40 individuals.

Most of these populations are in highway and utility right-of-ways, which has been a mixed blessing. The disruption of mowing and clearing has kept the forest from encroaching into these areas, saving the flower, but other problems persist.

Mowing and clearing these areas when the flowers are blooming can harm populations. Also, the abundant use of pesticides for roadside and utility right-of-way maintenance has harmed some populations. Three others have been partially bulldozed in recent years. According to the US fish and wildlife service, declines have been noted recently in six of the remaining populations, with decreases up to 89 percent in population levels.

One population and part of another are on land managed by the Nature Conservancy, which employs a prescribed fire regime, occasionally burning the areas to maintain them as open prairies.

Scientists continue to look for undiscovered populations of Schweinitz’s Sunflower. They are helped by the height of the plant, which towers over all other yellow flowers in the region and sometimes can be as tall as five meters.

The underlying problem, though, is that the habitat that Schweinitz’s Sunflower prefers is gone, and without its natural ecosystem, the plant is a relic of a forgotten time.

DESCRIPTION: This rhizomatous perennial herb grows from 1 to 2 meters tall from a cluster of carrot-like tuberous roots. Stems are usually solitary, branching only at or above mid-stem, with the branches departing from the stem at about a 45-degree angle. The leaves are opposite on the lower stem, changing to alternate above. In shape, they are lanceolate, wider near their bases, but variable in size, being generally larger on the lower stem, and gradually reduced upwards. Leaf margins are entire or with a few obscure serrations and are generally also somewhat revolute. Texture of the leaves is rather thick and stiff. The upper surface of the leaves is rough, with the broad-based spinose hairs directed toward the tip of the leaf. The lower surface is more or less densely pubescent (fuzzy), with soft white hairs obscuring the leaf surface. From September to frost, Schweinitz’s sunflower blooms with comparatively small heads of yellow flowers.