Update: News articles in Boston Globe, Salem News and Boston Business Journal about this announcement.

Puts Dominion Energy On Notice Of Clean Air Act Lawsuit

BOSTON, MA (January 27, 2010) In a continuing effort to bring the Salem Harbor Station coal-fired power plant into compliance with the federal Clean Air Act, Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) today announced that it intends to file a federal suit against Dominion Energy of New England for ongoing violations of smokestack emissions limits. The suit focuses on the emissions of particulate matter – small particles of chemicals, metals and ash which have been linked to severe health and environmental problems.

If successful, the suit would hold Dominion responsible for paying millions of dollars in penalties retroactively for violations of the smokestack emissions limits. The violations are documented in Dominion’s own quarterly reports of mandatory monitoring at the Salem Harbor Station power plant.

“These continuing violations show that Dominion Energy is indifferent to the hazards it is imposing on the residents of Salem and the neighboring communities,” said Shanna Cleveland, staff attorney for CLF. “Dominion Energy must be held accountable for abiding by the laws that are meant to protect our health and the environment. If it cannot meet those standards, then we have to ask why this dirty, obsolete coal-fired power plant should be allowed to continue to operate.”

For two decades, CLF, along with residents of Salem and neighboring communities, has fought to force Dominion, and before them the prior owners of the plant, to clean up or shut down Salem Harbor Station. The plant has a long history of violations related to its coal-burning operations, repeatedly exceeding legal limits on the discharge of known pollutants including, over time, mercury, coal ash and now, soot.

Recent studies have shown that even short-term exposure to soot has been linked to higher rates of hospitalization for heart and respiratory problems. Children and the elderly are the most vulnerable, experiencing health problems ranging from decreased lung function to premature death. Jane Bright, of the public health advocacy group Healthlink stated, “The soot that Dominion is pumping into our air has been proven to be damaging to the health of our community. It is outrageous that they have been routinely exceeding limits on these dangerous emissions, while leading us to believe otherwise.”

Residents throughout the North Shore feel the effects of Salem Harbor Station’s toxic plume. Lori Ehrlich, state representative for Marblehead, Swampscott and parts of Lynn stated, “I see that filthy plume heading right for my community and I want to tell everyone to hold their breath. Instead, we endure the daily assault of black soot that sticks to everything from our cars to our throats. The people of this region should not be forced to pay for the effects of Dominion’s negligence with their health, while Dominion continues to get off scot free.”

“Moving beyond coal is vital to fighting climate change and creating a green economy in Salem and throughout the Commonwealth,” said Jeff Barz-Snell of the community group SAFE (Salem Alliance for the Environment). “The time has come for Dominion to invest in cleaning up Salem Harbor Station, or make way for clean energy solutions like energy efficiency, solar and wind.”

Lisa Abbate, with the Salem citizen’s group A Vision for Salem, is advocating for a clean alternative for the Salem Harbor Station site. “Salem Harbor Station takes much more away from our communities than it gives. We need to take bold steps to shut the plant down and move swiftly toward the cleaner future we all envision for Salem and the surrounding region – for our health, for our environment and for our economy.

NOTE: Photos of Salem Harbor Station’s plume are available on Flickr.

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The bad news: Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski introduced a resolution designed to tamper with the science driven regulatory process of Greenhouse gas emissions by the U.S.E.P.A.

The good news: The two Republican Senators from Maine, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, courageously refused to follow their party line and did not sign on to the resolution.

“Maine should be proud to have two senators with the courage to do the right thing for Maine and the country when it comes to critical environmental issues,” said Sean Mahoney, director of the Conservation Law Foundation’s Maine Advocacy Center.  ”Unlike Senator Gregg of New Hampshire and his Republican cohort of climate change deniers, Senator Snowe and Senator Collins withstood the pressure of party politics and did not join in this attack on the authority of the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide as an air pollutant. This country needs to address the harmful impacts of carbon dioxide emissions and, in the absence of new federal climate legislation, it is vital that the EPA retain that authority under the existing Clean Air Act.”

UPDATE: Sadly, when push came to shove on the Senate floor both Senators Snowe and Collins voted against science and climate protection and in favor of the Murkowski resolution.

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If you’ve ever tried to calculate your “carbon footprint“–the measure of the greenhouse gas emissions you create directly or indirectly as you live your life–then you know that your footprint grows larger and larger with each trip you take on an airplane.  Like the cars we drive, the planes we fly in burn lots of fossil fuels and emit greenhouse gases as a result. 

Scientists say jet airplanes also contribute to global climate change through the “contrails” they leave in their wake and the effect this has on how the sun’s earth-warming radiation is trapped in our atmosphere.

This photo from NASA shows how the particles and condensation--contrails--left in the wake of jet airplanes effect cloud formations that attract and trap the sun's radiation thereby contributing to harmful climate change.

 According to a forthcoming study from Standford engineering professor Mark Jacobson, “commercial aircraft flights have contributed between four to eight percent of global surface warming since air temperature records began in 1850.”  You can read more about the complex scientific interactions that cause this warming here.  In the meantime, let’s focus on the ways in which the professor thinks the airline industry and the flying public it serves can start to fix the problem.

First, we can reduce the amount of fossil fuels we need to burn per flight by reducing the weight of airplanes and the cargo they carry.  The lighter the plane, the less greenhouse-gas emitting fossil fuel it needs to burn.

Second, airlines must switch to hydrogen-based fuels that result in emissions that don’t create the same contrail problems caused by carbon-based fuels in use today.  Hydrogen-based jet fuels are already being used for the space shuttle, but it will cost lots of $ and take some time before they can be safely developed and widely deployed in the world’s commercial airline fleet.

(Of course the third option is that we all fly a lot less, but that’s a topic for another post).

So what does this have to do with baggage fees?

My hope is that fees for extra bags help us rethink how much we take along on trips.  If we travel lighter to avoid paying the fees, then the plane doesn’t need to burn as much fuel to get us there.  Those extra outfits, pairs of shoes, etc. come with an environmental cost.  Confronting that cost in dollars and sense is one way to get us to start changing our habits and expectations surrounding airline travel

Airlines are thinking “green” with these new fees, but not necessarily in the environmental sense.  To them it is all about the $$$.  Nonetheless, if we are going to get serious about slowing global warming and all its disastrous effects, then airlines must be able to seize on new more efficient technology that will reduce the negative climate imapcts of air travel.  Let’s make a deal with the airlines: We’ll live with the higher fees, if they are willing to up investment in new cleaner technology.

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The authors of the book The Rising Sea summarizes their conclusion that prudent planning for waterfront communities assumes a sea level rise of seven feet in a post on the Yale environment 360 website.

Chilling stuff, especially for those of us who remember when early iterations of this work nearly ten years ago labeled New Orleans as the American community most vulnerable to sea level rise and catastrophic storms.

They identify Florida as the most vulnerable place in the United States to sea level rise and aggressively argue that building new high rise developments on the waterfront is a big mistake.

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Who would have thought that Wearing Blue would turn out to be such a huge national event?  The interest in today’s Wear Blue for Oceans events is proliferating like so many amphipods. There are 13 “formal” events including the CLF and Ocean River Institute event in Cambridge. I’ll be with a hundred or so blue attired folks at Lafayette Park (in front of the White House) in Washington, DC. The public interest is coming from all over the country in about as many ways as people can express their love and desire for a healthy living ocean. One of my fave’s is the Beach Chair Scientist’s rendition of ”Love me Blue.” Meanwhile, friend and colleague Sarah Chasis of NRDC has this to say in the HuffingtonPost. And, the Wear Blue Facebook friends group is now over 1500 and Sherman’s Lagoon is Wearing Blue in about 200 papers nation-wide. This all came about in the last six weeks, which, I think, we can all admit is a pretty awesome effort.

What’s all the excitement about? The Obama Administration is leading on a issue that should have been addressed about, let’s say, 100 years ago by developing the country’s first ever national policy for how we protect and manage our coasts, oceans and Great Lakes. It is about time we address the stunning impacts of polluting, developing, overfishing, and drilling of our oceans in a more comprehensive fashion and stop pretending that the piecemeal approach is workable. The foundation of a strong National Ocean Policy needs to be the protection, restoration and maintenance of ocean and coastal ecosystems. We need real habitat protection for those special places in New England’s oceans. We need to give declining ocean wildlife species a better leg to stand on so they aren’t just treated as an afterthought. We are moving ahead in Massachusetts with better planning, ecosystem protection and facilitating clean, renewable energy. We can do that in the other coastal states. Wear your blue today, show you care and don’t stop there. Help use this opportunity of a lifetime to create the change we need for the next 100 years.

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In a web video interview (transcript) Rob Bradley, Director of International Climate Policy at the World Resources Institute, makes the following observation about the difficulties and challenges around the international climate negotiation process:

Well, some of the problems that occur are down to the sheer complexity of climate change as an issue. It’s too politically charged for the technocrats, but it’s way too technical for the politicians. You know, very often ministers come in and they’re handed, by their subordinates, simply too long and difficult a list of questions to get to grips with. But it’s true that the U.N. as a process offers a lot of challenges of its own and we saw some fairly ugly scenes really towards the end of Copenhagen. It operates by consensus. You’ve got every country in the world in the room and, in principle at least, if one of them disagrees with what’s happening they can block it more or less indefinitely. And so you have groups of countries, in many cases fossil fuel exporters who probably don’t see it in their interest to have a strong deal on climate change, objecting and preventing the process from moving forward. Confusingly, they were sometimes allied with countries like some of the small island states who objected on the grounds that the deal was not nearly ambitious enough and who obviously face an existential threat. But nevertheless, a process in which you’re trying to get all of that group of countries with such an incredibly diverse set of interests to agree on something is a process that is always going to raise problems.

It is worth reflecting on Bradley’s point that odd alliances have developed in the international climate negotiation process between fossil fuel exporting countries (like Saudi Arabia) who are trying to obstruct progress at every point and “small island states who objected on the grounds that the deal was not nearly ambitious enough and who obviously face an existential threat” (like the Maldives, Tuvalu and Kiribati) and to think about the equivalent phenomena here in the United States.

In the United States House of Representatives, when the Waxman-Markey climate legislation came up for a vote there were two distinct groups who voted no – the largest group were members of the Republican party and a handful of Democrats who objected to the bill as either unneeded or too extreme.  The vocal leader of this group was Rep. Joe Barton of Texas.   Barton’s skepticism about climate science and the proposed mechanisms for reducing greenhouse gas emissions is deeply reminiscent of similar sentiments coming from representatives of nations like Saudi Arabia in the international climate negotiating process (this is not just a Western view, an eloquent Lebanese blog has spoken out about Saudi Arabia’s approach to climate).    The other, much smaller, group of members of Congress (about 3  Democrats) who opposed the bill did so because it was not ambitious and aggressive enough. The most vocal of these Members of Congress is Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

The next stop for climate legislation in Washington is the floor of the US Senate.  There is little doubt that the science denying opponents of progress will be led there by Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, angry enemy of all climate legislation.  It is not clear if there will be a “left wing” in the Senate – objecting to the legislation because it doesn’t go far enough.  It is notable that some of the most aggressive supporters of climate legislation in the Senate have publicly supported the Kerry-Boxer legislation that most closely parallels the Waxman-Markey bill.  Whether that coalition can support the legislation that may emerge as a result of discussions between Senator Kerry of Massachusetts and Senator Graham of South Carolina remains to be seen.

At the end of the day what really matters is that we take all the action we can to address this most systemic of economic, environmental and public health challenges as quickly as we can.   The debate and process needs to be truly and open and those with concerns about the science should be heard but the denial-for-denials-sake we see coming from Saudi Arabia and Messrs. Barton and Inhofe should not derail progress.  The desire for maximum action from the island nations is, in contrast, a truly admirable impulse and we must rise towards it as much as possible but not curse ourselves just because we can not do all that is needed immediately.

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Happy Blue Year! With all the great progress we are making CLF is expecting 2010 to be one of the best years for America’s oceans and coasts yet. Earlier this week we declared a pretty major victory in Massachusetts with the completion of the much anticipated Mass Ocean Plan.  Not to be outdone, President Obama’s hardworking Ocean Policy Task Force is driving towards the finish line on the nation’s first ever comprehensive policy for oceans, coasts and Great Lakes. Part of the effort is to include a vital framework for coastal and marine spatial planning so we can finally stop managing our oceans with a single issue by issue approach. Poor management leads to more environmental impacts whether the cause is overfishing, drilling for oil, pollution or badly planned coastal development. 

One of the most stylish things you can do to kick off the Happy Blue Year is to be a part of Wear Blue for Oceans Day on next Wednesday, Jan. 13. Wear Blue Day is a fun way to show the Obama administration that we want a strong national ocean policy and they need to deliver on the full promise of protecting and restoring our oceans and coasts. You can join in a Wear Blue event like the CLF/Ocean River Institute event in Cambridge, Mass., you and some friends can Share Blue by creating your own event or you can join the fun by sending in a photo or video of You in Blue to the Wear Blue website. CLF and our colleagues will make sure that President Obama’s staff see the full spread.

Wear Blue on Wednesday, January 13th and show some love for New England’s oceans and coasts.

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Yesterday the Commonwealth of Massachusetts released the final management for all of the state’s ocean waters. Despite centuries of land use planning experience in the US, this is the first time in history that a state has developed such a comprehensive approach to planning uses of the ocean. This is a true victory for our oceans and all who use them. Much congratulations to Gov. Patrick and the hard working people in the Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs who were working on the details through the holidays. Read the joint release CLF and Mass Audubon issued yesterday.

What does it mean for the economy? A study by the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management estimates the annual output of the state’s marine economy at $14.8 billion a year. The results of better planning will help facilitate more responsible use and enable a serious leap to development of clean, renewable energy that will add to the economy. For me, I like that we have a state plan that protects special places and ocean wildlife habitat (about two-thirds of the state’s waters are protected in one way or another) so that we can continue to enjoy the waters, beaches and bays for a few more generations. Let it be an example to all other states!

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Determined journalist from Renewable Energy World takes the time in a long form NPR/radio style podcast to dig into this important topic.   If you are deeply ideologically committed to either “cap and trade” or to a carbon tax you should not listen to the last 5 or 10 minutes – or maybe you should . . .

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Former NY Times Reporter Andrew Revkin – now Senior Fellow at the Pace University Center for Applied Environmental Studies while still writing and moderating the NY Times Dot Earth blog – provides a good overview of how the media has fundamentally under reported the climate story drawing upon this cool diagram.

This is the challenge of addressing such a large and systemic problem – how do we sustain focus, interest and energy around an issue that by definition is global, long term, pervasive and does not have a signal moment of crisis.

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