There was a time when people only said “fracking” to avoid using a more objectionable word. Now it can be found in national headlines, and if it’s no longer a curse word, it is proving to be a serious new environmental curse.

Fracking is shorthand for hydraulic fracturing, a rapidly growing method for extracting oil and natural gas that may (or may not) have deadly consequences. Energy companies inject a mixture of water, sand and assorted chemicals — often including diesel fuel — at high pressure into underground wells, cracking open rock formations that would otherwise trap the valuable fossil fuels. Because this was a relatively uncommon practice until recently, oil lobbyists have been extremely successful in exempting hydraulic fracturing from many of the federal regulations that govern the release of dangerous chemicals into the environment. Today natural gas extraction is soaring and so is the practice of fracking, and the public is taking notice. It’s about time.

The worry is that the chemicals used in fracking, sometimes including the carcinogen benzene, are contaminating water supplies. No one has conclusively demonstrated such contamination, but then there has been shockingly little study of the issue — and considerable evidence that political interference has discouraged regulators from thoroughly examining it. Environmental Protection Agency insiders charge that a 2004 agency study of fracking, which found that the practice posed little threat to drinking water, was seriously flawed as a result of pressure from the Bush administration and industry. The EPA is working on a new study due next year.

Complicating efforts to understand the impact of fracking is that there is no federal rule forcing oil companies to disclose what chemicals they’re using. So states — including California — are taking action.

AB 591 from Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont) would require companies to disclose the chemicals injected into wells, which would be posted on a state website. It’s patterned on a similar bill in Texas that’s considered by environmental groups to be a national model, though the California version goes further. Industry officials are opposing the bill because, unlike the one in Texas (and similar disclosure requirements approved in such states as Arkansas, Wyoming and Colorado), it doesn’t allow companies to withhold information considered trade secrets.

Requiring disclosure of potentially deadly chemicals released into the environment is an extremely modest step (indeed, it should be a federal responsibility). We understand the need to protect trade secrets, and wouldn’t object if Wieckowski’s bill were amended to afford the disclosure protections typically granted to polluters in California. But this bill is too important to be overlooked by our distracted Legislature.

from our friends at the LA Times

Bees partly loaded with pollen return to their hive. (Frank Rumpenhorst, AFP/Getty Images / May 6, 2011)

The buzzing swarms may seem scary, but we humans—and our vegetables and flowers—couldn’t get along without them

I’ve grown accustomed to the bugs that flit around my desk at home while I write. They’re the buddies of my office mate, a puppy who naps straddling the doggy door, with his head propping open the plastic flap to outside.

That’s an open invitation to insects sweltering in our Valley backyard. Rio spends entire afternoons chasing down the flies that venture inside.

But Rio didn’t know what to make of the buzzing that greeted us on the hottest afternoon of the year last week.

Bees. Lots of bees. In the hallway, the bathroom, the office; moving as if they were in a stupor, hovering in the air while I swatted them down.

They milled against the windows and patio doors, and for each one I killed, two more seemed to show up.

I flung open the door to the garage, bent on getting the insect spray, and felt like I’d stumbled into a horror movie: swarms of bees, hundreds it seemed, buzzed frantically just above my head, in the corner near my water heater.

I did what any reasonable person would do: slammed the door shut, ran to computer and Googled “bee removal San Fernando Valley.”

I’m an animal lover and a green-leaning gal, but still I was surprised by what I saw online. There were a couple of “extermination” offers, but most listings sounded like the work of “Wild Kingdom” supporters.

“Saving bees is our business,” said one. “Don’t kill those bees!” urged another. “Bee removal and relocation,” most promised. “We save and remove hives.”

I wasn’t trying to relocate the little buggers. I just wanted them out of my garage.

I called the outfit that offered “emergency service at no extra charge.” A bee removal expert would be at my door at sunrise, he promised. In the meantime, he warned, don’t open that door. (As if!)

I expected an oddball guy in bee-keeping garb — a hood, long sleeves, some sort of Ghostbuster equipment to smoke them out. Instead I got Max, a chatty young man in a tank top and shorts, who’d been running from call to call.

Bee removal firms are working overtime now, because bees are as busy as … well, bees. Pollination demands soar in the spring, so bee colonies split up and spread out, searching en masse for new homes.

Seeking refuge from the heat — high temperatures melt the honey they make — bees love building inside of chimneys and walls. They’ll find a quarter-inch hole and make a beeline for it. Once they mark a space in your home with their pheromones, you might as well hand them the deed to your property.

Getting rid of the family apidae isn’t easy or cheap. It can run into the thousands of dollars if walls have to come down and hives pulled out.

But why all the obsession with keeping bees safe?

Because humans couldn’t exist without bees. Those vegetables at the farmers’ market, the lemons on my backyard tree, the roses ringing my front lawn … all courtesy of pollination by bees.

“They kind of have a bad image,” said Al Edrisi, whose company Bee Friendly is one of the largest in California. They donate the hives they remove to local beekeeping operations.

“Anything that can sting you, hurt you, send you to the hospital, maybe possibly kill you … you can think of that as the enemy,” he said.

But when they swarm — like those bees in my garage — they’re not about to attack us, he said. They’re just protecting the queen inside. “They twirl around her, keeping her safe. Because if she’s damaged or injured or dies, the whole colony dissipates and fails.”

The queen is the colony’s mother. And the most crucial mission in bee removal is to save the queen from harm. “When we take a swarm we don’t get all the bees. Some are out collecting pollen or water.” When they come back and realize the hive is gone, they cluster up in the size of a baseball, attach themselves to a wall and stay there together until they die off.

“They can’t join another colony because they won’t be accepted,” Edrisi said. “There’s nothing we can do to save them. That’s the natural cycle of life”—and the collateral damage of ridding ourselves of something that’s both a necessity and a nuisance in human lives.

My garage apparently didn’t make the cut as a suitable place for a hive to set up. When Max walked in, there were no bees around. He peered inside the walls, poked through boxes, scoured the floor around the water heater where I’d spotted them.

I was beginning to wonder if I’d dreamed it all when he spotted a clump of dead and dying bees plastered against the windows on my garage door.

The bees I had seen probably were scouts, looking for a place to set up shop. They were buzzing around the top of my water heater because it offered shade, seclusion and water.

Some had made their way inside through tiny holes around the pipes. Then their instincts drew them toward the light; they’d popped out inside my home through gaps in my recessed lighting. He found no hive, no hidden bees. They’d probably moved on not long after I called.

The dozens of tiny bodies we found were bees that died trying to find a way out. “They flew toward the windows,” he said, “and exhausted themselves trying to get out.”

He reached down and plucked one from the floor. His voice took on that tone I use with my puppy. “C’mon, little guy.” It stirred, barely alive.

And I know that it’s irrational, but I felt guilty for wanting them gone.

from our friends at the LATimes

sandy.banks@latimes.com

Keep in mind that there’s a bit of stats tweaking going on here. ISAAA has calculated that total by adding together all areas of land cultivated with GM crops since their introduction in 1996. In 2009 current land under GM cultivation was 148 million hectares.

Brazil saw the fastest increase in GM crop adoption last year, but area under GM cultivation fell in Europe. Just joining the GM crowd in 2010 were Pakistan and Burma which both began planting GM cotton for the first time.

We’ve detailed pretty much every talking point on why GM crops aren’t the saviors of humanity that their manufacturers would like you to think they are dozens of times–from corporate control of crops, to subversion of millennia-old agricultural practice, to farmers suicides in developing nations, to the fact that crop yields aren’t nearly as good as claimed (often), to increased use of herbicides (more profit), potential health problems, etc etc etc.

by Matthew McDermott, New York, NY

from our allies at TreeHuggers.com

A new office building for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is going to be home to a whole raft of green building technologies that are becoming pretty familiar, along with something a little unexpected: a beautifully disguised “green” sewage treatment plant right plunk in the middle of the lobby. Talk about hiding in plain sight! The installation, designed by the company Worrell Water Technologies, is integrated into the lobby design as well as exterior landscaping.

Constructed Wetlands for Wastewater Treatment

The installation is basically a constructed wetland, which is a wastewater treatment system that breaks down pollutants with plants and naturally occurring  biological processes. The result isn’t necessarily potable quality, but it’s good enough for irrigation, maintenance, and other res-uses such as toilet flushing. Constructed wetlands save a significant amount of energy compared to conventional treatment, and they can be used as an energy-efficient way to clean up sites contaminated with industrial pollutants. Constructed wetlands have the characteristics of a natural wetland, so they also double as wildlife habitats.

Constructed Wetlands Knocking at the Door

Worrell Water’s contribution is to move the concept into lush, formal landscaping for buildings through its “Living Machine” system.  The system uses a series of carefully engineered steps that mimic tidal flows, compressing natural decomposition into a fast, tightly controlled operation that can fit into a relatively small area.  That opens up some interesting possibilities for outdoor landscaping, such as the new walkway planned for one of the busiest border crossings in the U.S., which will take visitors on a pleasant stroll a through a Living Machine constructed wetland. But, why stop at the front door – Worrell has also introduced the system partly indoors, one stunning example being the tony El Monte Sagrado resort.

The New San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Building

Siting a Living Machine at a sprawling resort is one thing, but putting the concept to work at a high-rise building in a densely packed urban area presents quite a challenge. The PUC expects to save about 750,000 gallons of water yearly and produce another 900,000 gallons of treated water that can be use for non-potable purposes. Energy to run the system will come from the building’s solar cladding and wind turbines. If it proves adaptable and cost efficient, it could fit right in with President Obama’s new Better Buildings energy efficiency initiative, so stay tuned.

Story by: Tina Casey

From our allies at cleantechnica.com

AN OPEN LETTER TO JOURNALISTS FROM GASLAND DIRECTOR JOSH FOX IN RESPONSE TO ATTACKS BY GAS INDUSTRY

by Josh Fox on Tuesday, February 8, 2011

With the recent Oscar nomination of my documentary film GASLAND, Big Gas and their PR attack machine hit a new low in its blatant disregard for the truth.

In an unprecedented move, an oil and gas industry front group sent a letter to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences saying that the film should be ineligible for best documentary feature.

We are honored and encouraged by the Academy’s nomination.  It is terrific to be acknowledged as filmmakers by the film world’s most prestigious honor.  But perhaps more than that, I believe that the nomination has provided hope, inspiration and affirmation for the thousands of families out there who are suffering because of natural gas drilling.  The Oscars are about dreams, and I know that for all of us living with the nightmare of gas drilling the nomination provides further proof that someone out there cares.

Now Big Gas wants to take that away, as they have shattered the American dream for so many.

GASLAND exposes the disaster being caused across the U.S. by the largest domestic natural gas drilling campaign history and how the contentious Halliburton-developed drilling technology called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking threatens the water supply of millions.

Fracking is a whole-scale industrialization process that pumps millions of gallons of toxic material directly into the ground. Thousands of documented contamination cases show the harmful chemicals used have been turning up in people’s water supplies in fracking areas all over the map.

We stand behind the testimonials, facts, science and investigative journalism in the film 100 percent.  We have issued a point-by-point rebuttal of the group’s claims (“Affirming Gasland”), posted on our website: www.gaslandthemovie.com

It’s not just us they’re after.  The gas industry goes after anyone who tries to punch a hole in their lie. Last week the same pro-drilling group, Energy in Depth (EID), attacked an investigative piece on drilling pollution by ProPublica, the highly credible public interest journalism organization.

And just last week, T. Boone Pickens, the most visible promoter of gas fracking, went on The Daily Show claiming that he personally has fracked over 3,000 wells and never witnessed any contamination cases, even when Jon Stewart asked him about GASLAND point blank.  He simply stated over and over again the industry lie, that fracking is safe.  Not a single word of acknowledgement, or responsibility for the claims of thousands and the threat posed to millions.

The gas industry believes it can create a new reality in which their nationwide onshore drilling campaign isn’t a disaster.  But no amount of PR money or slick ads can keep the stories of contamination coming from thousands of Americans from being any less true.

On Monday, Congressional investigators called out frackers for pumping millions of gallons of diesel fuel directly into the ground, exposing drinking water sources to benzene and other carcinogens. This makes EID’s specious and misleading attack on the science and data in GASLAND  especially ironic since Halliburton stonewalled Congressman Henry Waxman’s investigation into fracking, refusing to provide data on their use of diesel and other harmful chemicals injected in the fracking process.

There are major watershed areas providing water to millions of Americans that are at risk here, including the watershed areas for New York City and Philadelphia. The catastrophe has been widely covered not only in GASLAND, but also by hundreds of news stories, films and TV segments. This is a moment of crisis that cannot be understated.

Even before its release, the power of the film was not lost on the industry. In the March 24th edition of the Oil and Gas Journal, Skip Horvath, the president of the Natural Gas Supply Association said that GASLAND is “well done. It holds people’s attention. And it could block our industry.”

GASLAND was seen by millions and I personally toured with the film to over 100 cities. In affected areas, people came to the screenings with their contaminated water samples in tow. They came to have the truth they know shared and confirmed.

As Maurice D. Hinchey, U.S. Representative (NY-22) recently said, “Thanks to GASLAND and the millions of grassroots activists across the country, we finally have a counterweight to the influence of the oil and gas industry in our nation’s capital.”

Big Gas is blocking the truth in their pursuit of hundreds of billions of dollars of profit. Their clear goal is to ensure our nation remains addicted to fossil fuels for the rest of this century. They seek to stifle the development of truly renewable energy.

They’re playing dirty in more ways than one, attacking the film and the testimonials and science in it instead of taking responsibility and addressing the contamination, destruction and harm that they are creating. I now know how the people in my documentary feel, to have the things they know to be true and the questions they are raising so blatantly discounted and smeared. It is truly unfortunate that the gas-drilling industry continues to deny what is so obvious to Americans living in gaslands across the nation.

Josh Fox

Director, GASLAND

www.gaslandthemovie.com

Media Contact:

Josh Baran – jcbaran@gmail.com

Genetifically Modified Alfalfa Officially On The Way

by Barry Estabrook

On Thursday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that the United State Department of Agriculture (USDA) had approved the unrestricted planting of genetically modified alfalfa sold by Monsanto Co. and Forge Genetics, despite protests from organic groups and public health advocates and comments from nearly 250,000 citizens asking the department to keep this GMO genie in its bottle. With this announcement, the Obama administration showed whose side it is on in the battle between proponents of sustainable, organic agriculture and the big businesses that profit from conventional, chemical agriculture. Big Ag won. It wasn’t even close.

“Thousands of people spoke out about this contamination,” Fantel said.
“They were ignored”

If you eat meat or dairy, you indirectly consume alfalfa. It is a leading source of hay for cattle. In terms of acreage, alfalfa is the United States’ fourth biggest crop behind corn, soybeans, and wheat. It is also notoriously promiscuous, and its pollen can be carried by bees and other insects for five miles, making it all but certain that the GMO crop, designed to survive applications of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, will contaminate much of the country’s conventional alfalfa. Because GMO products are not allowed in USDA-certified foods, it could become all but impossible to produce organic milk and meat in many areas unless organic farmers switch to less desirable sources of forage.

Earlier, the USDA said that it was weighing three options: (1) complete deregulation of GM alfalfa; (2) allowing it to be planted but requiring five-mile buffers between it and non-GM alfalfa; and (3) allowing unrestricted planting except in seed-growing regions to prevent contamination. Vilsack went for the first: the most Big-Ag-friendly choice.

“This is very disappointing,” said Will Fantle, co-director of the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute, an organic and small-farm watchdog group that is a plaintiff in a lawsuit brought against the USDA claiming that it did not take the required legal steps before originally approving GM alfalfa in 2007. “Tens of thousands of people spoke out against this contamination,” Fantle said. “They were completely ignored. It looks like the biotech industry has all the political power.”

“This creates a perplexing situation when the market calls for a supply of crops free of genetic engineering,” said Christine Bushway, Executive Director and CEO of theOrganic Trade Association in a press release. “The organic standards prohibit the use of genetic engineering, and consumers will not tolerate the accidental presence of genetic engineered materials in organic products, yet GE crops continue to proliferate unchecked.”

Widespread application of Roundup, Monsanto’s trade name for the weed-killing chemical called glyphosate, has already led to the proliferation of “superweeds” that have mutated and can survive applications of the chemical. Currently, Australia ranks first in the world for weed resistance to herbicides. Speaking to a farmers’ group in January, Stephen Powles, a renowned resistance expert at the University of Western Australia, warned that the United States might overtake his country if present trends continue.

The Obama administration’s decision makes it all but certain that the dubious honor will soon be ours.

Full article available from our friends at Atlantic Monthly

Author:
John DeCock

Environmental Activist And Writer

There’s no reason for concern about the mass death of bees through Colony Collapse Disorder. No reason at all unless you happen to be a plant who relies on pollination or a living being who is planning to sustain life by eating food. If you don’t fall into either of those categories, you might want to increase your stock in German agribusiness giant Bayer. They’re making a ton of money selling a pesticide called Clothianidin, marketed under the upbeat friendly name “Pancho.” ¡Olé! ¡Qué veneno excepcional!

If you’re in one of the other categories, and I confess to being in at least one, you have some cause for concern. A document leaked on Wednesday disclosed that the Bush Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency approved use of this pesticide in spite of the fact that there was clear scientific evidence that it represented a serious threat to bees. It has been in use since 2003, used broadly to treat corn. Agribusiness conglomerates have blanketed the midwest with corn monoculture over nearly 100 million acres. That’s a lot of bee poison.

Clothianidin is in a family of pesticides called “neonicotinoids”. This means the pesticide is used to treat seeds. The neonicotinoids are then transferred into the pollen where they kill pests, including the pollenators.

Bayer was granted “conditional registration” by the EPA and given a deadline of December 2004 to complete a study addressing the toxic effects of Clothianidan on bees. This meant they were free to market their product widely and this is exactly what they did. The use of the pesticide became pervasive and began having real world impact in the first growing season of its use.

Bayer applied for and was granted an extended deadline. Sales of Clothianidin continued and increased. When the final study was delivered in 2007, it was a complete joke, a poorly controlled and invalid study by any reasonable standard of scientific method. However, on the basis of this study, the pesticide was given full registration. Pancho continued to poison the bee population at ever-increasing levels.

Enter the Obama administration and a new and better era for the EPA under Lisa Jackson. Two scientists from the EPA Environmental Fate and Effects Division (EFED), Michael Barret and Joseph DeCant, issued a memo, leaked to Colorado Beekeeper Tom Theobald, on November 3, which documented the serious dangers of the pesticide to bee populations, stating:

Clothianidin’s major risk concern is to nontarget insects (that is, honey bees). Clothianidin is a neonicotinoid insecticide that is both persistent and systemic. Acute toxicity studies to honey bees show that clothianidin is highly toxic on both a contact and an oral basis. Although EFED does not conduct… risk assessments on non-target insects, information from standard tests and field studies, as well as incident reports involving other neonicotinoids insecticides (e.g., imidacloprid) suggest the potential for long term toxic risk to honey bees and other beneficial insects.

In spite of this assessment, Clothianidin has retained its registration and is going to be available for the spring planting season in the United States unless the EPA reverses itself. Several European countries have withdrawn registration in response to the weight of scientific evidence of harm to bee colonies.

You can take action on this issue by signing a petition to demand that the EPA withdraw registration for Clothianidin. Expressing your concerns directly to Administrator Lisa Jackson is also important.

We will live with the effects of the Bush Administration’s deference to corporate profits over the public good for many generations in many ways. Wherever we have the chance to right one of these wrongs, we need to push the big, clumsy mechanisms of government to grind forward and do the right thing.

from our friends at Huffington Post

Follow John DeCock on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jdecock

About the film

“The largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history has swept across the United States. The Halliburton-developed drilling technology of “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing has unlocked a “Saudia Arabia of natural gas” just beneath us. But is fracking safe? When filmmaker Josh Fox is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarks on a cross-country odyssey uncovering a trail of secrets, lies and contamination. A recently drilled nearby Pennsylvania town reports that residents are able to light their drinking water on fire. This is just one of the many absurd and astonishing revelations of a new country called GASLAND. Part verite travelogue, part expose, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, part showdown.”

• 1-7 million gallons of water per fracturing [fracking]
• over 590 chemicals pressured into each well
• Oil and Gas industry Exempt [in 2005] from Clean Air Act & Clean Water Act +++

A film by Josh Fox.

from our friends at:
gas land the movie

Oil no longer on surface, but scientists dig into the dirt of Gulf floor and strike black gold

CAIN BURDEAU
SETH BORENSTEIN
Associated Press Writers
2:01 PM PDT, September 13, 2010

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Far beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, deeper than divers can go, scientists say they are finding oil from the busted BP well on the sea’s muddy and mysterious bottom.

Oil at least two inches thick was found Sunday night and Monday morning about a mile beneath the surface. Under it was a layer of dead shrimp and other small animals, said University of Georgia researcher Samantha Joye, speaking from the helm of a research vessel in the Gulf.

The latest findings show that while the federal government initially proclaimed much of the spilled oil gone, now it’s not so clear.

At these depths, the ocean is a cold and dark world. Yet scientists say that even though it may be out of sight, oil found there could do significant harm to the strange creatures that dwell in the depths — tube worms, tiny crustaceans and mollusks, single-cell organisms and Halloween-scary fish with bulging eyes and skeletal frames.

“I expected to find oil on the sea floor,” Joye said Monday morning in a ship-to-shore telephone interview. “I did not expect to find this much. I didn’t expect to find layers two inches thick. It’s weird the stuff we found last night. Some of it was really dense and thick.”

Joye said 10 of her 14 samples showed visible oil, including all the ones taken north of the busted well. She found oil on the sea floor as far as 80 miles away from the site of the spill.

“It’s kind of like having a blizzard where the snow comes in and covers everything,” Joye said.

And the look of the oil, its state of degradation, the way it settled on freshly dead animals all made it unlikely that the crude was from the millions of gallons of oil that naturally seep into the Gulf from the sea bottom each year, she said. Later this week, the oil will be tested for the chemical fingerprints that would conclusively link it to the BP spill.

“It has to be a recent event,” Joye said. “There’s still pieces of warm bodies there.”

Since the well was capped on July 15 after some 200 million gallons flowed into the Gulf, there have been signs of resilience on the surface and the shore. Sheens have disappeared, while some marshlands have shoots of green. This seeming recovery is likely a result of massive amounts of chemical dispersants, warm waters and a Gulf that is used to degrading massive amounts of oil, scientists say.

Animal deaths also are far short of worst-case scenarios. But at the same time, a massive invisible plume of oil has been found under the surface, shifting scientists’ concerns from what can be easily seen to what can’t be.

For Ian MacDonald, a Florida State University biological oceanographer who wasn’t part of Joye’s team, the latest findings confirm that government assessments about how much oil remains — especially a report on the subject by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in August — were too optimistic.

The oil “did not disappear,” he said. “It sank.”

Not all scientists agree with this assessment.

Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University chemist who has analyzed the spill for NOAA, doubted much oil was resting on the bottom. He said the heavier components in oil — the asphalts — make up only about 1 percent of the oil that was spilled.

And Roger Sassen, an organic geochemist at Texas A&M University who has studied natural oil seeps, said so much oil seeps naturally into the Gulf each year that it’s hard to argue that the BP spill will make a significant difference.

Nonetheless, the big questions now are exactly how much oil is at the bottom and how many organisms are being exposed to it, said Robert Carney, an oceanographer and deep-sea expert at Louisiana State University. The answers to those questions could shed some light on the unseen damage to wildlife from the oil spill.

“Deep-sea animals, in general, tend to produce fewer offspring than shallower water animals, so if they are going to have a population impact, it may be more sensitive in deep water,” he said. “There is also some evidence that deep-sea animals live longer than shallower water species, so the impact may stay around longer.”

At first, scientists, the media and the federal government focused their attention on tracking rainbow sheens approaching land, tar balls hitting beaches, measuring oil in marshes and scouting for oiled birds and sea turtles. But a spate of recent studies increasingly points to the deep.

NOAA’s Aug. 4 pronouncement that the oil was mostly gone also indicated that some 53 million gallons remained in the Gulf. At the time, federal officials said some of that could be on the sea floor, adding that the rest was mostly broken down naturally or by the widespread use of chemical dispersants.

“As we get into weathered oil, there is more likelihood that it will get into the sediment,” said Steve Murawski, chief scientist at the National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of NOAA.

Getting a handle on where the oil is at extreme depths will not be easy. Scientists will have to use expensive 1,000-pound devices that look like moon landers. The spindly legged machines land on the bottom and shoot tubes into the sea floor to collect 20-inch-long samples.

The terrain is exceedingly difficult. The area where the busted BP well sits is on the continental slope, formed by millions of years of deposits from the Mississippi River. It’s a region of bumps and valleys, salt domes, canyons and slopes.

Government scientists acknowledge they’ve not done enough to look for oil in the obscure corners of the Gulf’s bottom, but promise to do a better job.

“There are plans to do a considerable amount of that” sampling, said Debbie Payton, an oceanographer with NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration. In the coming weeks, NOAA and BP vessels will sample the deep bottoms, she said.

Joye’s latest discovery backs up the findings of a University of South Florida crew that reported pulling up oily sediment in August.

“What we saw were flecks, little discontinued droplets, or spots” of oil on the sediment, said John H. Paul, a biological oceanographer on the USF survey. The oiled sediment was found about 1.4 miles down in the De Soto Canyon, an underwater canyon east of the blown-out well.

Sediment brought up still needs to undergo laboratory testing to verify that the oil found on the bottom comes from the BP oil spill.

For oil to sink, it must attach itself to materials that are heavier than water, such as detritus, flecks of mud, sands and other particles. Such materials are abundant in the Gulf in places where rivers, especially the Mississippi, flush mud and sand into the open sea. Oil also can sink as it ages and becomes more tar-like in a process known as weathering.

Scientists also say the oil may be sinking because it was broken up into tiny droplets by dispersants, making the oil so small that it wasn’t buoyant enough to rise. One problem with oil at the sea floor is that it will take longer to degrade because of cold temperatures in the deep.

____

Borenstein reported from Washington, D.C.

____

from our friends at gulfblog.uga.edu

Dave Letterman thanks Bill McKibben, “…for scaring the crap out of me..”

For the last three days, I’ve been sitting at my kitchen table in California cranking out press releases, calling reporters, and generally playing “pit crew” for Bill and our Put Solar On It road trip. It’s been a great ride: tens of thousands of people have shown their support for putting solar back on the White House, the crew had great stops in Boston, New York, and D.C., and we managed to secure a meeting with the Administration to discuss putting solar back on the roof.

As we expected (but secretly hoped wouldn’t be the case), the White House didn’t commit to … well, anything. We tossed them a big, fat soft ball to hit out of the park and they just watched it float on by.

That’s too bad. But it’s also a great reminder of who the real leaders are. As Joe put it, if the President can’t climb up on the roof and hammer in some solar panels, clearly we need to push him up.

That’s exactly what we’re going to do on 10/10/10. There are actions all around the world where people are putting up solar panels and finding other ways to get to work on climate solutions. In the Maldives, President Nasheed will be on his roof top putting in a set of panels donated by our friends at Sungevity. In Zimbabwe, students will trek out to a rural hospital to install a solar panel there. In thousands upon thousands of communities, we’ll be showing our so-called leaders what leadership really looks like.

…for more

from our friends at lateshowaudience.com

also from out allies at 350.org

BP report on well disaster faults mechanical, human failures

The oil company accepts a share of the responsibility for the deadly explosion and oil spill but also takes aim at contractors Transocean and Halliburton, setting off additional finger-pointing.

Richard Simon, Los Angeles Times

September 9, 2010

Reporting from Washington and Los Angeles

An internal investigation released Wednesday by BP concluded that a series of mechanical and human failures by its own crews and its contractors led to the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which killed 11 men and set in motion one of the world’s worst oil spills.

The oil company accepted a share of the responsibility but also took aim at contractors Transocean and Halliburton, setting off another round of finger-pointing that began soon after the rig sank.

No single factor caused the disaster, concludes the 234-page report summarizing the first of several investigations of the disaster. “A complex and interlinked series of mechanical failures, human judgments, engineering design, operational implementation and team interfaces came together to allow the initiation and escalation of the accident.”

BP’s investigative team cited eight problems, including an incorrectly read pressure test, a blowout preventer that didn’t function properly, a faulty cement seal job and the failure of the rig crew to recognize that gas was surging up the well just before the explosion.

“We have said from the beginning that the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon was a shared responsibility among many entities,” BP’s incoming Chief Executive Robert Dudley said in a statement.

“We deeply regret this event,” he added. “We are determined to learn the lessons for the future and we will be undertaking a broad-scale review to further improve the safety of our operations. We will invest whatever it takes to achieve that.”

Transocean, the drilling rig owner, assailed the BP report as “self-serving,” contending that BP’s “fatally flawed well design” set the stage for the rig explosion 50 miles off the Louisiana coast.

Halliburton, which did the well cementing, said it found a “number of substantial omissions and inaccuracies” in the report and “remains confident that all the work it performed … was completed in accordance with BP’s specifications.”

Based on a four-month investigation led by company safety chief Mark Bly, the BP document wraps up the first of a series of reviews looking into the gulf catastrophe. The U.S. Coast Guard, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement and President Obama’s National Commission are all investigating the accident. The Justice Department is also trying to determine whether BP skirted federal safety regulations.

Pieces of equipment key to the inquiries, including the failed blowout preventer, were recently retrieved from the seafloor and have yet to be thoroughly examined.

More than 200 million gallons of oil were released after the April 20 explosion, which occurred when workers lost control of the well and gas rushed into the rig and erupted in flames. In addition to the dead, 17 others were injured.

Although the 18,360-foot-deep well has not leaked since it was capped in mid-July, BP and the federal government are still working on a permanent seal at the well’s bottom. Officials now say that remedy may not be completed until early October.

Testimony at hearings conducted this summer by the Coast Guard and the Department of the Interior sketched a picture of deferred maintenance on the Deepwater Horizon rig, a confused chain of command and corporate pressure to finish the deep-sea drilling job, which was six weeks behind schedule and costing BP more than $1 million a day.

Federal investigators have questioned BP’s decision to replace its longstanding well site leader with a new man four days before the fatal explosion, as well as the replacement’s competency at reading critical pressure tests, which determined whether the well was properly sealed. An erroneous interpretation of a pressure test was among the eight “critical factors” identified in the BP report.

BP’s well design has come under scrutiny, particularly the use of six centralizers versus the 21 recommended by Halliburton. Experts say that using more centralizers — which keep the casing centered in the well bore — help produce a more consistent cement seal.

Hearing testimony also revealed that BP employed a well configuration that called for a single string of pipe rather than a more expensive design that would have created more barriers to prevent the flow of gas into the well casing and to the rig.

Transocean, responding to the BP report Wednesday, maintained that in its design and construction of the well, BP “made a series of cost-saving decisions that increased risk — in some cases, severely.”

BP’s outgoing chief executive, Tony Hayward, defended the well design Wednesday and pointed a finger at Halliburton’s work. “To put it simply, there was a bad cement job,” he said in a statement. “Based on the report, it would appear unlikely that the well design contributed to the incident.”

The BP investigation found human fault, concluding that rig workers should have known from computer data that gas was flowing into the well for at least 40 minutes before the explosion. But crew members testified at the federal hearings that some gas alarm systems had been either bypassed or disarmed on the orders of rig officials.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers faulted BP for not shouldering more of the blame. “This report is not BP’s mea culpa,” said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “BP is happy to slice up blame, as long as they get the smallest piece.”

Energy chair Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills), complained that the BP document failed to “address the corporate culture at BP that shortchanged safety and caused so much harm to the gulf and the Deepwater Horizon workers.”

Still, Elgie Holstein, oil spill response coordinator for the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund and a former Energy Department chief of staff, said the report “has some value.”

In identifying the various failures of “man and machine,” Holstein said, BP has provided “something of a blueprint that can be used to design new operating protocols, training programs, and equipment needs. In addition, I think it underscores the need to implement more robust, redundant safety systems that can ensure that we never have another accident of this magnitude.”

richard.simon@latimes.com

bettina.boxall@latimes.com

Simon reported from Washington and Boxall from Los Angeles. Times staff writers Julie Cart and Rong-Gong Lin II in Los Angeles and Richard Fausset in Atlanta contributed to this report.

from our friends at TheLATimes.com

Health testing way down at California beaches

The monitoring is at its lowest level since becoming law more than a decade ago, putting swimmers, surfers and divers at greater risk of exposure to contaminated water, a Times investigation shows.

By Tony Barboza, Los Angeles Times

August 30, 2010

Health testing of California’s beaches has slumped to its lowest level since ocean monitoring became law more than a decade ago, putting swimmers, surfers and divers at greater risk of exposure to contaminated water, a Times investigation has found.

Beaches from San Diego to the Bay Area are being tested less often and in fewer locations; some are going untested for months at a time. Statewide, the number of annual tests for bacteria has dropped by nearly half since 2005, according to a Times analysis of state records.

Beach closures and advisories have also fallen dramatically — in part because there’s less pollution, but also because health officials aren’t detecting the dirty water that remains.

At calm, sheltered Baby Beach in Dana Point, which attracts parents with young children but also traps contaminated runoff, health officials did not test for five months earlier this year.

In Long Beach, home to some of the most polluted ocean water in the state, 40% of beach sites are no longer being tested, city officials said. State records show that testing at Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro is down 80% and 65% in Santa Monica. At San Onofre State Beach at the northern edge of San Diego County, water at the legendary Trestles surf break was tested only four times last year, down from nearly 70 times in 2005.

The culprit is a familiar one: state and county budget cuts. In 2008, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the $1 million the state had provided each year to test hundreds of beaches for bacteria. Since then, emergency bond funds and stimulus dollars have been tapped to keep the testing program afloat, but the money is expected to evaporate by year’s end.

Overall, water quality at the region’s beaches is almost certainly better than it was in the past, experts say. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent to divert and treat runoff and wastewater before it washes into the ocean. Drought conditions have also reduced the amount of runoff reaching the ocean.

Nonetheless, clean-water advocates say the cutbacks have put people at risk. Those who swim in contaminated water are exposed to gastrointestinal viruses and to pathogens that can cause skin rashes and ear, eye and staph infections. Swimmers are most likely to get sick in poor-circulating water near river mouths and sewer outfalls, especially after rain.

“Water quality absolutely has gotten better during the summer months,” said Mark Gold, president of Heal the Bay. “But the reality is that less frequent monitoring means there’s a much greater chance of someone swimming or surfing in polluted water unknowingly.”

Tourism officials have also expressed concern. They say the cost to monitor beaches is inconsequential compared with the estimated $12 billion in tourist-related revenue California beach towns generate each year.

“California’s coastline is one of our biggest assets as a travel destination,” said Kathryn Burnside, a spokeswoman for the California Travel and Tourism Commission. “What makes sense from a health perspective certainly makes sense for the tourism industry.”

Health and wastewater agencies responsible for beach testing defend the scaled-back monitoring as adequate. Some officials said the amount of testing has been underreported, while others acknowledged severe cutbacks.

Schwarzenegger’s office said the state has continued funding beach water monitoring at a 90% level despite budget difficulties.

“It is not immediately clear why the number of tests taken by counties have declined this much,” spokeswoman Rachel Arrezola said in a written statement. She said the Department of Public Health and the State Water Board are investigating the reason for the declines while they search for a permanent funding source for future testing.

Los Angeles County health officials said their own testing has remained constant and disputed the state’s records for the county’s coastline.

“We continue to do the tests weekly, and we’re not doing less sampling because we don’t have money,” said Alfonso Medina, director of the county’s Environmental Protection Bureau. However, other agencies that test some of the county’s beaches may have cut back.

Public health officials say they are unable to gauge if reduced testing has caused more swimmers to get sick. Cases are rarely reported because they mimic ailments such as food poisoning or stomach flu.

The number of beaches in California closed by health officials has fallen 74% since 2005, The Times found. Postings, which alert swimmers to contaminated water, dropped 44%. State and local officials do not know how much of that decline is attributable to cleaner water and how much to less testing. Many beachgoers, however, assume that the lack of signs means the water is clean.

“If there isn’t a sign posted, I kind of assume it’s safe,” said Susan Thomas, who takes her 16-month-old daughter, MaKenzie, to the beach every other weekend. “We’re obviously taking a risk going into the water anywhere along this coast, but when she swims, she goes under.”

The beach where Thomas spoke, Baby Beach in Dana Point, was busy on a balmy afternoon earlier this month. Dozens of children and their parents splashed in a shallow, roped-off swimming area as a lifeguard watched from a tower nearby.

Historically, the beach has been one of the region’s dirtiest, sliding by with C’s and D’s on Heal the Bay’s annual beach report card. And yet health monitoring at Baby Beach and 38 other beaches in Orange County — including Little Corona in Newport Beach and Main Beach in Laguna — shut down for five months during the winter for lack of funds.

California’s pioneering 1999 law requires health officials to test at least once a week during the long summer beach season. If a beach fails, lifeguards post signs alerting swimmers to the risk. Congress used the law as its national model, and many Southern California beaches expanded to year-round, almost daily testing earlier this decade.

But the California law has a loophole: Testing isn’t required if the program is not fully funded. Without money from Sacramento, health agencies can cut testing or choose not to report results without violating the law, something state officials suspect is contributing to the declining numbers.

In Ventura County, the loss of state funds meant that monitoring of its 42-mile coastline was halted for eight months in November 2008.

“Once the money went away, there was no mandate to sample, so we suspended sampling,” said program coordinator Richard Hauge.

In some coastal areas, nonprofits are taking up the slack as government agencies cut back.

When Santa Barbara County reduced funding for year-round beach testing two years ago, the nonprofit Santa Barbara Channelkeeper raised money to pay interns to collect the water samples at 16 beaches through the winter, when the bigger waves draw more surfers.

Other places, such as Orange County, are collaborating more with sanitation districts, which are required to test ocean water as part of their license to discharge wastewater from sewage treatment plants.

And in San Diego County, which had to drop its monitoring program for half a year last winter, health officials have begun more frequent testing at pollution-prone coastlines, such as Torrey Pines State Beach.

Even with those assists, however, there is less information available for surfers and swimmers like Barry Gardner, a ninth-grade health teacher from Yorba Linda who takes half a dozen surf camping trips a year.

He’s wary of spending too much time in dirty ocean water and avoids a section of Doheny State Beach known as “Dead Bird Cove” because of its supposed toxicity. But for the most part, he prefers to push his luck.

“If the surf is good, I’m going to go in the water,” he said. “But if you don’t know what’s in it, it’s tough.”

tony.barboza@latimes.com

Times staff writer Doug Smith and data analyst Sandra Poindexter contributed to this report.

from our friends at the LATimes.com

BP Poisoning Marine Life and Workers with Corexit!

from CNN.com

BP Spill: Catastrophe, Sure. Disaster? Nah.

Why hasn’t a single Gulf governor asked Obama to declare the spill a federal disaster?

By Mac McClelland | Fri Aug. 13, 2010

Given the size and far-reaching devastation of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, you may have assumed that it qualifies as a federal disaster. Though you’d have been wrong, you wouldn’t have been alone. “I am shocked that the Stafford Act has not been used for a declaration of federal disaster,” says Mitchell Moss, disaster expert and professor of Urban Policy and Planning at New York University’s Wagner School. “This is exactly why we have this policy tool—to provide federal aid in this kind of crisis.” And that aid could be crucial to some coastal communities’ survival.

The Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act is the US law by which a federally declared disaster triggers the financial and logistical support of FEMA in any event that state and local governments aren’t equipped to handle, from hurricanes to terrorist attacks to chemical spills. It’s invoked by the president, by the request of an affected state’s governor. Though the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida have all declared states of emergency, none has publicly requested the federal designation. (Eight days of calls to the office of Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal—whose state got most of the washed-up oil—and to the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness didn’t turn up anyone who would comment on the issue.)

What difference would a federal disaster declaration make? FEMA could provide assistance to individuals, local organizations, and governments. For example, a FEMA spokeswoman explained to me, FEMA could step in and buy the food if a church that was running a food bank ran out of money to buy meals.

As it stands, “the only person responsible is BP, but BP doesn’t have any idea what response and recovery means from a human perspective,” says Tom Costanza, chair of the Greater New Orleans Disaster Recovery Partnership, a collaboration of 60 local organizations. BP is required to pay for certain environmental damages under a slew of federal laws—the Oil Pollution Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Marine Sanctuaries Act, and the Superfund statute. “But there’s no funding for human recovery.

Since May, Catholic Charities of New Orleans has been delivering more than $100,000 worth of emergency grocery and bill assistance; last week, the organization announced that it’s out of money [1]. “Right now we have people standing in food lines,” says Costanza. “If this were a federal disaster, we’d get disaster food stamps. We’d get disaster case management. Disaster mental health. Disaster unemployment.” The Stafford Act would also activate an interagency task force that includes the American Red Cross, which so far, Costanza says, “didn’t raise a dime. Neither did the Salvation Army.”

Congressman Anh “Joseph” Cao (R-La.), whose district includes fishing communities from New Orleans, “has not pressed the case for the Gulf Coast to be declared a federal disaster because he feels strongly that BP, not taxpayers, should be held strictly accountable for the damage it has caused,” according to a spokesman. But Costanza points out that government assistance doesn’t have to preclude BP accountability: The Department of Labor sent $27 million [2] in support to affected Gulf workers and will bill BP for the cost; the federal government has collected tens of millions from the company for its spill-response expenses.

Regardless of who ultimately foots the bill, NYU’s Moss says the Stafford Act is the communities’ best chance for long-term assistance at a time when initial relief is running out. Next week, Catholic Charities is cutting services to St. Bernard Parish, many of whose residents are struggling [3] with the spill’s effects. Many local fisheries still aren’t open. BP is drawing down its cleanup operations [4], the only job many unemployed fishermen have been able to get. The Greater New Orleans Disaster Recovery Partnership has repeatedly asked BP for a $12 million grant to help continue emergency humanitarian services for the next several months, but has yet to get a response. “There’s no legislation that tells them what to do,” Costanza says.

The fate of the fishermen rendered unemployed by the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill suggests the devastation that can occur in the absence of federal aid. Victims were ultimately able to extract $1.1 billion in compensation from the company, but only after 19 years of litigation. “A lot of them are dead, or bankrupt, or divorced,” says Brian O’Neill, the lawyer who tried the case. “The impact of the spill on both the natural environment and their abilities to make a living resulted in huge social disruption in the fishing communities. There were increased rates of alcoholism, domestic violence. Whatever social services existed were unable to handle it. Some communities didn’t survive or are half the size they were in 1988. Whatever assistance BP is giving these people now, that will taper off drastically when this is off the front page.”

from our friends at MotherJones.com