Provisions benefiting energy industry folded into bill
Republicans drafting broad energy legislation have exempted a technique, known as “hydraulic fracturing,” from some of the controls of the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act.
Language agreed to by House-Senate negotiators would end a requirement that construction activities related to oil and gas exploration operate with a permit under the Clean Water Act.
House Republicans are pushing for revisions in underground gasoline storage regulations that could make it easier for companies to get federal aid to clean up leaks and spills even if the companies are financially able to pay, congressional sources said.
Meanwhile House GOP officials, led by Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), have insisted that the legislation limit the liability of manufacturers and refiners of the gasoline additive MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether), which has been blamed for polluting water supplies in California, New Hampshire, and other states.
Lyondell Chemical Co., based in DeLay’s home state, is the largest manufacturer of MTBE.
The provision would prevent communities from collecting damages resulting from MTBE infiltration into water supplies unless there is proof the product was handled negligently. Manufacturers and refiners could not be sued merely because their products contain MTBE.
Democrats and environmental organizations are also objecting to a provision in the bill that exempts fluids used in hydraulic fracturing from the law that regulates the underground injection of liquid wastes.
The drilling procedure involves injecting a mixture of fluids and sand under very high pressure to crack rock and coal seams, aiding the escape of trapped oil and gas. The technique is spreading because of a boom in drilling for methane gas in coal beds. Most of the richest lodes are adjacent to vast underground drinking water reservoirs.
Halliburton, which pioneered hydraulic fracturing more than 50 years ago and is a leading provider of the service, acknowledged in a statement that representatives “spent time educating many members of Congress and many staffers on the process and the issue.”
The issue has been heavily lobbied by the oil and gas industry. (Washington Post)

States act to stop global warming
Connecticut joined 11 other states Thurs., Oct. 23 in a court action aimed at forcing the Bush administration to control greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.
State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said President Bush’s environmental regulators are ignoring bipartisan federal studies that “show how greenhouse gas pollution causes disease, extreme weather, destruction of shoreline and loss of critical wetlands and estuaries.”
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruled in August that it doesn’t have authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and motor vehicles — air pollution considered by most scientists to be a major contributor to global warming.
Blumenthal cited scientific studies that found increased global temperatures are likely to lead to dramatic changes in weather, increases in tick-borne diseases, rising sea levels, changes in wetlands and erosion patterns.
Most scientists believe that gases such as carbon dioxide that are emitted into the Earth’s atmosphere help trap the sun’s heat, the so-called greenhouse effect, and thus lead to higher-than-average global temperatures.
The coalition of states petitioned the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in an effort to force the EPA to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions.
States joining Connecticut in the petition include California, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. The US territory of American Samoa and the District of Columbia are also joining the legal action.(New Haven Register)

Panel endorses US exemption on ozone pact
An international panel of experts has approved the Bush administration’s request for broad exemptions to a ban on methyl bromide, a pesticide that is popular with agricultural businesses but damages Earth’s protective ozone layer.
The ban, which applies to industrialized countries, is scheduled to take effect in 2005 under the Montreal Protocol, the 1987 treaty to eliminate chemicals that destroy ozone. The panel, assembled by the United Nations, can recommend exemptions if it finds that substitute chemicals would be unsafe or too expensive.
In a report released over the weekend of Oct. 18-19, the panel recommended a number of exemptions for the United States and a dozen much smaller countries. The largest were for American tomato and strawberry growers, who together are seeking to continue using more than 5,000 tons of methyl bromide a year. Other exemptions were for golf courses, flower growers and honey producers. The panel said it had recommended many of the exemptions with reservations, in the absence of hard data on possible substitutes. It said alternative chemicals were already being used on these crops elsewhere and wrote that it “could not determine why some of these alternatives were not feasible.” Environmental groups say the United States and some other countries could undermine the treaty if they gain too many such exemptions, often as a favor to business interests. (New York Times)

Greenpeace delivers old-growth slab to Interior Dept.
As the US Senate prepares to vote on H.R. 1904, the legislative equivalent of President Bush’s so-called “Healthy Forest Initiative” (HFI), forest protection activists in Washington, DC delivered a 6-foot-diameter slab cut from the stump of a logged 440-year old tree to the Department of Interior on Oct. 23. A message on the slab read: “Clear-Cut Cowboy says, ‘No Tree Left Behind’” in protest of the president’s wholesale dismantling of environmental laws.
“Despite promises to the contrary, the Senate version of HFI provides so many loopholes that old-growth trees will continue to be cut down on public lands,” said Matt Stembridge, Forest Campaigner with Greenpeace. “This slab is symbolic of the bill’s defects and of the Bush administration’s attitude towards America’s forests.”
According to Department of Interior officials, including Director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Kathleen Clarke, the BLM is neither cutting old trees nor clear-cutting. However, the giant slab came to Washington, DC from an old-growth sale named “Mr. Wilson” on Medford BLM land in Oregon. 113 acres of clear-cuts and another 100 acres of logging are slated in the Mr. Wilson sale. (Greenpeace Press Release)

Flaw found in Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump site
The Energy Department’s design for burying nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, near Las Vegas, would cause corrosion that would perforate the waste containers and allow leaks, an expert panel is preparing to advise the department.
Nuclear waste gives off heat as well as radiation, and the Energy Department is considering taking advantage of that, by spacing the waste containers closely. That would heat the tunnels to nearly 300 degrees Fahrenheit in the first few decades, a factor that, the department says, would keep the metal dry and thus prevent corrosion.
But the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, a panel created by Congress to advise the department, believes otherwise, according to a letter the members have drafted. The draft, circulated on Oct. 20, said two new sets of laboratory tests “cast doubt on the extent to which the waste package will be an effective barrier under the repository conditions that have been presented to the board.”
One board member, Thure E. Cerling, a professor of biology and of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah, said that the problem was that “most reactions take place faster at higher temperatures,” and that this included rust.
Any available water would be mixed with salt, present in the tunnels’ dust, the experts said. And just as salt prevents water from freezing, it also makes it harder to boil. The salty water could lead to pitting and perforation, the experts said. (New York Times)

Oil firm escapes heavy penalties in Beverly Hills cancer case
An oil company accused of contributing to a cancer cluster among former students of Beverly Hills High School has escaped with a small fine and a promise to monitor toxic emissions from its drilling facility on the campus more carefully.
The settlement, reached with government air pollution regulators, clears the way for Venoco Inc. of Santa Barbara to resume full operations at the high school, an oil-rich site in the middle of Los Angeles.
It also puts a dent in the effort by Erin Brockovich, the environmental crusader made famous by the eponymous film, to sue Venoco and the city of Beverly Hills for negligence and wrongful death on behalf of 428 plaintiffs, more than half of them diagnosed with cancer. Brockovich said earlier this year that her law firm had found dangerous levels of potentially carcinogenic gas.
One of the mothers involved in the case denounced the settlement as a “small slap on the wrist” for Venoco.
Venoco has agreed to pay a $10,000 fine for what one official described as “concerns about potential emissions from the oil facility.” It will also install $60,000 of monitoring equipment to help detect emissions of toxic gases such as benzene, methane and toluene. (Independent (UK))

Breadfruit tree threatened by climate change, Western diet
Experts are warning that the Pacific breadfruit tree, which was once hailed as the solution to world hunger, is in serious decline.
The tree is vanishing at an alarming rate in some areas, mainly because of global warming and a switch to Western-style diets. Some varieties have been lost and, on certain atolls, the breadfruit has died out completely.
The tree’s large, starchy fruits were once a staple food in the region, a source of complex carbohydrates as well as vitamins and minerals. The tree is ubiquitous in the Caribbean and all over the tropics.
But in the Pacific, where it originated, many people have forsaken its fruit in favor of processed foods such as canned Spam. As a result, the trees — cultivated by islanders for at least 3,000 years — are being neglected, and ancient knowledge about fruit storage and preparation is being lost. The abandonment of the traditional diet is blamed for the region’s high rates of diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.
Climate change is another reason for the tree’s plight. The shallow-rooted breadfruit is vulnerable to rising sea levels and intrusion of saltwater into the soil and water table. It is also being damaged by cyclones and storm surges, which have increased in frequency thanks to global warming. Kiribati and Micronesia have suffered particularly severe storm damage.
Traditionally, all parts of the breadfruit — an attractive tree growing up to 60ft — were used: the timber for canoes, the bark for cloth, the dried flowers as a mosquito repellent and the latex as a medicine and adhesive.
Diane Ragone, director of the Breadfruit Institute at the National Tropical Botanic Garden in Hawaii, said a study carried out in Samoa had established that overall numbers had declined and many varieties, all of which had local names, had disappeared. Ragone said the narrowing of diversity had serious implications for countries still dependent on breadfruit as a staple crop, such as Tonga and Samoa. (Independent (UK)