There is nothing more gratifying for CLF advocates than to be able to work with our members in translating big-picture policy goals down to the local level.  Over the last couple of years, I had that opportunity as a result of the City of Burlington’s efforts to adopt a stormwater pollution control ordinance to ensure that Vermont’s biggest city was doing its part to prevent pollution to Lake Champlain.  The idea was the brainchild of CLF member Scott Mapes, a lawyer and engineer who specializes in low impact development techniques to manage stormwater runoff.

As a member of the City’s Conservation Commission, a long-time lover of Lake Champlain, and a regulation-savvy lawyer, Scott was the City’s clean-water conscience and a driving force that overcame bureaucratic inertia to get the ball rolling on  this major project.  Scott’s principled persistence gradually led to enthusiastic buy-in at the highest levels of city government.  His multi-year effort to get the City to take stormwater more seriously was really something to watch.  As the process matured, CLF had a chance to weigh in by reviewing drafts of the ordinance, providing guidance and legal research assistance, and echoing Scott’s message that adoption of the ordinance was necessary for full compliance with the Clean Water Act.

After this experience working with Scott, it came as no surprise to read the headline in today’s Burlington Free Press announcing “Burlington man honored for stormwater efforts.”  In recognition of his work on the stormwater ordinance, Scott was named “Citizen Planner of the Year” by the Northern New England Chapter of the American Planning Association and he received a similar award today from the Vermont Planning Association.

Congratulations to Scott and to all CLF members who advance CLF’s mission through their support of the organization AND their leadership on the local level.

Last week, the Patrick Administration took a giant step backward in protecting our streams and rivers, all the while claiming that it had the environment’s best interests in mind. CLF and the three other environmental members of the state’s Water Resources Management Advisory Committee needed to act swiftly and boldly. To that end, CLF and the three other environmental members resigned from the committee.

CLF has sent a clear message of protest – and now we need you to do the same.

What happened?

During its announcement of its new “integrated water initiative,” the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EOEEA) and Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) announced that the state was unilaterally revoking its earlier definition of “safe yield” that included environmental protections for rivers. EOEEA and MassDEP are now using a definition that would allow withdrawals of all water from rivers and steams.

CLF’s Peter Shelley stated:

In place of a legal requirement that protected some stream flow for fish and other life in our rivers and streams, MassDEP has adopted a new threshold that offers no environmental protection. In its place, EOEEA proposes a ‘task force’ to come up with a strategy for balancing all the other public interests in our waters. This move makes a mockery of sustainable water management.

You can read the details in our press release or in this Boston Globe article.

What does it mean?

Simply put, our rivers and streams are no longer protected. Our rivers could be drained entirely, resulting in massive fish kills and environmental damage. We already have rivers and streams that are being drawn dry and we are steadily losing trout streams and other cold water fisheries. We can and must do better than this.

What can you do about it?

CLF needs you to stand up with us. Momentum is on our side, but we need you to build on it.

1. If you live in Massachusetts, send a pre-written letter to Governor Deval Patrick, the EOEEA and MassDEP by clicking here.
2. Whether or not you live in Massachusetts, share this blog post to everyone you know that does. There is strength in our numbers.

Massachusetts has abundant natural water supplies that require smart stewardship, not more bureaucratic process. The state is in the process right now of issuing new long-term permits for many of the water systems that are already overdrawing our rivers and streams. We need you to act now.

CLF staff writing on this blog, smart commentators and allied climate advocates have taken issue with Verizon Wireless appearing on the sponsor list for a Labor Day rally and concert that includes gathering of signatures for petitions against, and statements opposing, climate legislation.

A telephone conversation with Verizon Wireless Vice President Corporate Communications Jim Gerace led to him sending the following email giving his side of the story:

I appreciate you taking the time to reach out to me.  You can use any of this email for your site if you’d like.

As we discussed, our involvement in the Labor Day event was initiated by some local sales people to do what we pay them to do — sell wireless phones.  When they were presented with the opportunity to spend $1,000 to have access to 50,000 (the estimate at the time) members of the community they sell in, they jumped at the chance.  The underlying purpose of the event was not made obvious to them.  They saw it as a Labor Day concert.  Our involvement is not a statement of our policy on these issues.  Many media and interested people have chosen to not believe that, but they need only look at our record to see how serious we are about protecting the environment we live and work in.  We didn’t wake up one day last week and change our minds.  The following link will bring you to some of our key initiatives in this area: http://aboutus.vzw.com/Green_Initiative/overview.html .  The first one called Hopeline is a program I created way back in 1995 and continue to direct today.  Our commitment to the environment is unwavering, that some want to believe otherwise is disappointing.

What do folks think?  They are saying this is an innocent mistake by a company that is generally trying to do the right thing. Do you buy it?  Comment below . . .

Personally, I am waiting to see Verizon and/or Verizon Wireless step forward and take affirmative steps to show leadership as some of the true leaders in all sectors of American business have already done. Perhaps they will.

If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time thinking about where your garbage goes once it gets picked up from your curb. What’s that? You don’t wonder about the final resting place or you trash and recyclables? Well you should, and now, thanks to the MIT SENSEable City lab, you don’t have to wonder at all; you can know.

Trash Track  is a process in which a tiny tracking chip is placed on a specific piece of regular waste. The MIT system can then track the location of the chip as it navigates the waste management system. You can see if that scrap of pressure-treated wood ends up in the landfill on the other side of the state or a barge to South Carolina; you can see if your old battery actually makes it to the proper disposal location; you can see if that yogurt container actually gets sent to the recycling facility. How awesome is that?! Surely I’m not the only person excited by this…

Waste management in the US is “out of sight, out of mind” for most people. But if we continue to generate as much waste as we do now, it is going to become less and less out of sight for more and more people, with myriad social justice implications as well as environmental and human health impacts.

Hopefully Trash Track is just the start of better public information about our waste system; information that will allow all of us to better understand the impact of our “consume and dispose” lifestyle. And like anyone with a background in philosophy and faith in humanity I know that this new knowledge will result in meaningful change…right?

Suppose knowledge is not sufficient to elicit change; what can we do? I’ll share some thoughts in my next post. Feel free to share thoughts of your own in the comments below.

In the ongoing debate about allowing recreational ATV use on Vermont state wildlife management areas, forests, and parks it seems that hikers and rare, threatened, and endangered forest plants and animals aren’t the only ones who need to worry about getting run over.  The Sunday front-page article titled “State Biologists Worry About Wider ATV Use” written by Burlington Free Press reporter Candace Page details how Agency Secretary Jonathan Wood put the pedal to the metal on his proposal to open state lands to ATVs even as scientists and field experts from his own agency staff raised serious concerns about the negative environmental impact ATVs are already having in Vermont.  Here’s one representative comment from an email written by a Fish and Wildlife Department Ecologist regarding the first proposal to open legal ATV trails on state lands:

“I am concerned that development of this piece of state land for ATV travel will open the door to more trails on other wildlife management areas, state park and state forests…Illegal ATV trails are now a pervasive feature on public lands and I have had the opportunity to walk many of them.  In a majority of cases, ATV riding has a clearly negative impact on the natural resources we steward.”

ATV “mudding” causes water pollution and degrades sensitive wetland habitats

The article was based in large part on internal agency communications obtained by Conservation Law Foundation through the freedom of information process and that were shared with the Free Press as well as other members of the media and legislative leaders who will have to vote later this summer on whether to approve the Agency’s proposal to allow construction of ATV trails on state lands.  You can see more excerpts from these public records by reading our comments on the proposed rule.

In addition to ANR scientists, CLF and its coalition partners have been joined by hundreds of Vermonters who also filed comments opposing this environmentally irresponsible proposal, outnumbering supporters of the proposal by a nearly 3-to-1 margin.

A recent 3-part investigative report from the Minnesota Star Tribune titled “Renegade Riders” demonstrates that the scientists and other field experts in Vermont are justified in their concern over the decision of political appointees at the agency to open state lands to ATV trails.  Minnesota state officials opened public land in that state to legal ATV trail riding several years ago.  Ever since, the Minnesota agency has been struggling to get a handle on the environmental destruction and out-of-control illegal off-trail riding that exists despite the ample opportunities ATVers have on legally designated trails.  If you want to see what these powerful machines can do to sensitive forest habitat, spend a few minutes watching the hidden camera video shot by the reporters for the Star Tribune.

Later this summer, 8 members of the Vermont legislature “joint committee on administrative rules” have a chance to stop this scientifically unsound policy in its tracks.  Please contact CLF if you’d like to help make sure that happens.

Environmentalists tend to be the kind of people who hang on to things.  Keenly aware of the impact of constantly buying new things – whether it be cars, appliances or other “hard goods” – the kind of folks who are CLF members (and are likely reading this) tend to avoid buying new things.  This is especially true where buying something new, like a new car, simply means shifting the use of the old item to someone else.  Driving a new efficient hybrid car is not a satisfying experience if you are aware that your older, less efficient car, will end up back on the road.

However, if you own an older car and want to move to a newer more efficient model while being sure that your old car will be scrapped and taken off the road the Federal Government has a deal for you.

Here are the basic rules for the program, as presented by the Feds:

• Your vehicle must be less than 25 years old on the trade-in date
• Only purchase or lease of new vehicles qualify
• Generally, trade-in vehicles must get 18 or less MPG (some very large pick-up trucks and cargo vans have different requirements)
• Trade-in vehicles must be registered and insured continuously for the full year preceding the trade-in
• You don’t need a voucher, dealers will apply a credit at purchase
• Program runs through Nov 1, 2009 or when the funds are exhausted, whichever comes first.
• The program requires the scrapping of your eligible trade-in vehicle, and that the dealer disclose to you an estimate of the scrap value of your trade-in. The scrap value, however minimal, will be in addition to the rebate, and not in place of the rebate.

Fortunately, the supply of cleaner and more efficient cars available for sale continues to expand, thanks in large part to the rules requiring a shift in the new car fleet mandated by the rules adopted by the Northeastern states (following the lead of California).   We are proud to note that CLF played a key role in defending those rules in court.

Update (August 6, 2009):

Unless you have been living in a cave you will have heard that the program is on the verge of running out of money and efforts are being made to “refuel it”.

Attempts at looking at the potential environmental benefits of the program range from the skeptical to the mildly positive to the fiercely negative.  A good middle ground was the comment of a leading environmental lawyer reported by CNET News:

“It’s not that it’s a bad idea; just don’t sell it as a cost-effective energy savings method,” Michael Gerrard, director of the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University said in an academic journal. “From an economic standpoint it seems to be a roaring success. From an environment and energy perspective, it’s not where you would put your first dollar.”

The critiques of the program have some serious validity.  Would it be better for this money to be spent on public transit operations ?  Would a fundamental change in the funding paradigm that would shift money from roads to transit (as CLF has called for in our Five Steps for the Next Five Years climate vision document) be much better? Absolutely yes.

But my pragmatic bottom line is that this program has far more environmental benefit than so many other things the Federal government does and pays for that it is hard to get worked up about this one.

Once upon a time Conservation Law Foundation and our allies in Maine waged a long and ardous battle to prevent the development of Sears Island, the largest undeveloped island in Maine, as a bulk cargo facility.   Many local citizens supported this effort both because of the environmental impact of the project but also because of the fact that such ports rapaciously consume land while generating very little high quality economic activity.

The nearby historic port city of Searsport is now experiencing a much more positive kind of shipping boom – the importation of wind turbines to build the new clean energy infrastructure needed to tackle global warming and build a safe and stable economy for Maine, New England and the nation.  A recent New York Times article detail the difficulty of moving these large structures on land from the port to wind farm sites and a followup blog entry describes the ironic problem of handling these structures when it is windy.

These are the kind of practical problems that need to be overcome if we are to build a new economy based on clean energy.   They are good problems to have – because as we overcome them we are really building for the future and moving beyond short sighted “economic development” that sacrificed the environment and the future for a project only of immediate and dubious benefit.

In her post here Lesley Bunnell, CLF’s Rhode Island office manager, persuasively deflates and rebuts an attack in the Washington Post by Sarah Palin on the cap-and-trade mechanism.   One important evolution in the idea of cap-and-trade that Lesley did not have a chance to get into is the key reform of auctioning the allowances and using the money generated by the auction for good purposes that reduce emissions and save money for all our citizens.

CLF, as part of a broad coalition, successfully fought for this model in the design and creation of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative regulating carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.   The states of New England have repeatedly pushed in Congress for this model to be recreated on the federal level.

The reason for embracing allowance auctions and using the money from the auction for energy efficiency is crystal clear – it will reduce the cost of the program and reduce emissions even further.  The cost reduction argument is quite powerful – analyses of the bill passed by the House by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and the US EPA estimate the cost of the program for an average household at between $111 and $175 per year by 2030.  Independent analysis of the bill shows that even modest gains in energy efficiency, like those that can be financed by allowance auction revenue can result in savings for citizens that dwarf these costs.

Indeed, during the presidential campaign this was precisely the position taken by President Obama:

• 100 Percent Allowance Auction: Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s cap-and-trade system will require all pollution credits to be auctioned. A 100 percent auction ensures that all large corporate polluters pay for every ton of emissions they release, rather than giving these emission rights away for free to coal and oil companies
• Invest Revenue for a Clean Energy Future: Some of the revenue generated by auctioning allowances will be used to support the development and deployment of clean energy, invest in energy efficiency improvements to help families reduce their energy prices, and to address transition costs, including helping American workers affected by this economic transition and helping lower-income Americans with their energy costs.

In a recent Op-Ed in the Boston Globe CLF President John Kassel reflected on our concern that the federal bill had drifted away from 100% auction, giving out a significant number of allowances for free – but at least the bill that passed the House accepts the importance of cap and trade, auctioning the allowances from that system and moves towards the RGGI model of  “auction and invest.”

The bottom line is clear.  Cap and Trade is a tool that can work to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases causing global warming.  It can work even better, and be implemented at even lower cost, if we do it right by auctioning the allowances at the heart of the program and using the money raised by the auction for clean energy projects like energy efficiency.