The 1000-year climatic and environmental history of the Earth contained in various proxy records is examined. As indicators, the proxies duly represent or record aspects of local climate. Questions on the relevance and validity of the locality paradigm for climatological research become sharper as studies of climatic changes on timescales of 50–100 years or longer are pursued. This is because thermal and dynamical constraints imposed by local geography become increasingly important as the air-sea-land interaction and coupling timescales increase. Because the nature of the various proxy climate indicators are so different, the results cannot be combined into a simple hemispheric or global quantitative composite. However, considered as an ensemble of individual observations, an assemblage of the local representations of climate establishes the reality of both the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period as climatic anomalies with world-wide imprints, extending earlier results by Bryson et al. (1963), Lamb (1965), and numerous other research efforts. Furthermore, these individual proxies are used to determine whether the 20th century is the warmest century of the 2nd Millennium at a variety of globally dispersed locations. Many records reveal that the 20th century is likely not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium, although it is clear that human activity has significantly impacted some local environments.
1. INTRODUCTION
Are the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period widespread climatic anomalies? Nearly four decades ago, H. H. Lamb (1965, pp. 14–15) wrote,
“[M]ultifarious evidence of a meteorological nature from historical records, as well as archaeological, botanical and glaciological evidence in various parts of the world from the Arctic to New Zealand… has been found to suggest a warmer epoch lasting several centuries between about A.D. 900 or 1000 and about 1200 or 1300… Both the “Little Optimum” in the early Middle Ages and the cold epochs [i.e., “Little Ice Age”], now known to have reached its culminating stages between 1550 and 1700, can today be substantiated by enough data to repay meteorological investigation… It is high time therefore to marshal the climatic evidence and attempt a quantitative evidence.” …
Thirty-three years later, however, Jones et al. (1998) tentatively concluded that,
“[w]hile the ‘Little Ice Age’ cooling (with the seventeenth century being more severe over Eurasia and the nineteenth century more severe over North America) is clearly evident … we can only concur… that there is little evidence for the ‘Medieval Warm Period’… although the fact that we have only four series before 1400 and the timescale limitations described earlier [i.e., not resolving timescales of multidecades to century with tree ring proxies used in their study] caution against dismissing the feature.” …
These results are but a few of the many that have become available since Lamb’s pioneering analysis. Given advancements in retrieval of information from climate proxies, as well as their extensive surface coverage, we review the accumulated evidence on climatic anomalies over the last 1000 years. ..What are the regional and global patterns of climatic change over the last 1000 years? Accurate answers to these questions are important, both as benchmarks for the 20th century global average warming exhibited by surface thermometer records and as physical constraints for theories or mechanisms of climate change on timescales of decades to centuries.
To make progress towards this understanding, we address three questions of many individual climate proxies that differ too widely to be quantitatively averaged or compared:
(1) Is there an objectively discernible climatic anomaly occurring during the Little Ice Age, defined as 1300–1900 A.D.? This broad period in our definition derives from historical sea-ice, glaciological and geomorphological studies synthesized in Grove (2001a, 2001b) and Ogilvie and Jónsson (2001).
(2) Is there an objectively discernible climatic anomaly occurring during the Medieval Warm Period, defined as 800–1300 A.D.? This definition is motivated by Pfister et al. (1998) and Broecker (2001) and is slightly modified from Lamb’s original study (1965).
(3) Is there an objectively discernible climatic anomaly occurring within the 20th century that may validly be considered the most extreme (i.e., the warmest) period in the record? An important consideration in answering this question is to distinguish the case in which the 20th century warming began early in the century versus after the 1970s, as recorded by surface thermometers. This criterion is necessary in order to judge the influence of 20th century warming by anthropogenic forcing inputs such as increased atmospheric carbon dioxide content.
Anomaly, in our context, is simply defined as a period of 50 or more years of sustained warmth, wetness, or dryness within the Medieval Warm Period, or a 50-year or longer period of cold, dryness, or wetness during the Little Ice Age. …
4. RESULTS
… For questions 1 and 2, we find the answer to be ‘Yes’ when the proxy record shows a period of 50 years or longer of cooling, dryness or wetness during the Little Ice Age and a period of 50 years or longer of warming, wetness or dryness during the Medieval Warm Period. …
… most of the proxy records do not suggest the 20th century to be the warmest or the most extreme in its local representations, which seems surprising until one realizes the more limited and contrary view was drawn primarily from familiar instrumental thermometer records that yield no information on centennial-scale climate variability. … Another interesting feature of the result is that the warmest or most extreme climatic anomalies in the proxy indicators often occurred in the early-to-mid 20th century, rather than throughout the century.
4.1. Glaciers – Worldwide
Broadly, glaciers retreated all over the world during the Medieval Warm Period, with a notable but minor re-advance between 1050 and 1150 A.D. (Grove and Switsur 1994). Large portions of the world’s glaciers, both in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, advanced during the 1300–1900 A.D. period (Grove 2001b; see also Winkler 2000). The world’s small glaciers and tropical glaciers have simultaneously retreated since the 19th century, but some glaciers have advanced (Kaser 1999; Dyurgerov and Meier 2000; D. Evans 2000). …
Additional proxy records used here reveal that the climatic anomaly patterns known as the Medieval Warm Period (circa 800–1300 A.D.) and the Little Ice Age (1300–1900 A.D.) occurred across the world. …
4.2.2. North Atlantic and other oceans
The colonization of Greenland’s coastal area by the Vikings starting in 986 A.D. is well documented; and the generally mild and benign climatic conditions from about 800–1200 A.D. that helped to sustain the settlement are also well supported by ice core and borehole proxy information (Dansgaard et al. 1975; Dahl-Jensen et al. 1998). The Norsemen’s ‘Western Settlement’ (around the Godthab district) was mysteriously abandoned sometime between 1341 and 1362 A.D., while the ‘Eastern Settlement’ (actually near the southernmost tip of west Greenland, around the Narssaq and Julianehab districts) died out between 1450 and 1500 A.D. (Grove 1996; Ogilvie et al. 2000). The timing of the abandonment of the settlements coincided with a general cooling over Greenland, as established by both ice-core isotopic and borehole thermometry (Dansgaard et al. 1975; Stuiver et al. 1995; Dahl-Jensen et al. 1998). …
Over the equatorial Central Pacific, around the NINO3.4 (5N–5ºS; 160ºE–150ºW) region, Evans et al. (2000), in their skillful reconstruction of the ENSO-like decadal variability of the NINO3.4 sea surface temperature (SST), found an apparent sustained cool phase of the proxy NINO3.4 SST variability from about 1550 A.D. to approximately 1895 A.D., thereby extending the geographical area covered by the Little Ice Age Climate Anomaly. …
4.2.3. Asia and Eastern Europe
From 49 radiocarbon-dated subfossil wood samples, Hiller et al. (2001) determined that the alpine tree-limit on the Khibiny low mountains of the Kola Peninsula was located at least 100–140 meters above the current tree-limit elevation during the relatively warmer time between 1000 A.D. and 1300 A.D. The summer temperatures corresponding to the tree-line shift during this warm time are estimated to have been at least 0.8ºC warmer than today. …
Middle Russia (around 50–60ºN and 30–50ºE) seems to have experienced its coolest winters around 1620–1680 A.D., its coolest summers and springs around 1860–1900 A.D., and distinctively warm conditions during the first half of the 16th century, similar to conditions for western Europe described above. …
Based on less precise climate proxies like cherry-blossom-viewing dates, lake freezing dates and historical documentation of climate hazards and unusual weather, Tagami (1993, 1996) found that a warm period prevailed between the 10th and 14th centuries, and a cold period between the late 15th and 19th centuries, over large parts of southern Japan. …
4.2.4. North America
From an extensive collection of multiproxy evidence, Stine (1998) concluded that during the Medieval Warm Period prolonged intervals of extreme drought affected California, the northwestern Great Basin, and the northern Rocky Mountains/Great Plains, while markedly wetter regimes persisted over the Upper Midwest/sub-arctic Canada and Southern Alaska/British Columbia regions. …
Graumlich’s (1993) reconstruction of summer temperature and winter precipitation from trees in the Sierra Nevada confirmed the overall warm and dry conditions for California during Medieval times, when two of the warmest and driest 50-year intervals occurred – at 1118–1167, 1245–1294 A.D. and 1250–1299, 1315–1364 A.D., respectively. …
Hu et al. (2001), based on their high-resolution (multidecadal) geochemical analysis of sediments from Farewell Lake by the northwestern foothills of the Alaska Range, also found pronounced signatures of the Medieval Warm Period around 850–1200 A.D. During the Little Ice Age, the surface water temperature of Farewell Lake fell to a low in 1700 A.D. that was estimated to be about 1.75ºC cooler than at present. …
4.3. Southern Hemisphere
4.3.1. New Zealand
In New Zealand, the O-18 concentration in a stalagmite record from a cave in northwest Nelson shows the coldest times during the Little Ice Age to be around 1600–1700 A.D., while exceptionally warm temperatures occurred around 1200–1400 A.D., in association with the general phenomenology of the Medieval Warm Period (Wilson et al. 1979). …
4.3.4. Antarctica
The last important source of geographical information for conditions during the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age in the Southern Hemisphere is obtained from glaciers, ice cores and sea sediments on and around Antarctica. …
For the Little Ice Age, advances of glaciers on South Georgia Island (which is half-covered by glaciers) began after the late 13th century, with a peak advancement around the 18th–20th centuries (Clapperton et al. 1989). Glacier retreats occurred after about 1000 A.D., which corresponds to the timing for the Medieval Warm Period. Baroni and Orombelli (1994) noted a similar scenario for glacier advances and retreats during the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period for the Edmonson Point glacier at the Terra Nova Bay area of Victoria Land on the Antarctic continent (East Antarctica). The Edmonson Point glacier retreated in two distinct phases, around 920–1020 A.D. and 1270–1400 A.D., and then advanced at least 150 meters after the 15th century. …
5. DISCUSSION
The widespread, but not truly global, geographical evidence assembled here argues for the reality of both the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period, and should serve as a useful validation target for any reconstruction of global climate history over the last 1000 years. …
Another significant problem is the indication that an anthropogenic influence may have already left its fingerprint on the recent growth of trees across the Northern Hemisphere. If this anthropogenic effect were present in tree ring data, then the calibration and verification procedure designed for extended paleoclimatic reconstructions would be significantly corrupted by further uncertainties (Idso 1989). …
Karlén (2001), for example, notes that according to the Vostok ice core record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the present concentration of atmospheric CO2 is about 100 ppmv higher than it was during any previous interglacial during the last 400,000 years. Thus, if climate were to respond sensitively to carbon dioxide, global temperatures, or at least Vostok temperature, today ought to be considerably higher than previous interglacials. Yet evidence exists to suggest that the “present interglacial [at least for conditions around Vostok] has been about 2ºC cooler than the previous one and the climate is now, in spite of the recent warming, cooler than it was at the beginning of this interglacial” (Karlén 2001). …
6. CONCLUSIONS
This paper presents a survey of site-specific paleoclimatic reconstructions, then considers whether they indicate that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age were observed on broad area of the globe. We conclude that the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age are widespread climatic anomalies, although we emphasize the complex nature of translating the proxy changes into convenient measures like temperature and precipitation as well as confirming their spatio-temporal representation and resolution. …
The picture emerges from many localities that both the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period are widespread and perhaps not precisely timed or synchronous phenomena, easily within the margin of viewpoints conceived by Bryson et al. (1963), Lamb (1965) and numerous other researchers like J. Grove (1996, 2001a, 2001b). Our many local answers confirm that both the Medieval Climatic Anomaly and the Little Ice Age Climatic Anomaly are worthy of their respective labels. Furthermore, thermometer warming of the 20th century across the world seems neither unusual nor unprecedented within the more extended view of the last 1000 years. Overall, the 20th century does not contain the warmest or most extreme anomaly of the past millennium in most of the proxy records. …
However, it is also clear that human activity has shaped almost every aspect of past environmental and climatic changes on local and regional spatial scales …
It might seem surprising or frustrating that paleoclimatic reconstruction research has not yet provided confident and applicable answers to the role of anthropogenic forcing on climate change. This point is particularly sharp when considering the fact that even though some proxy records (e.g., those from Overpeck et al. 1997) show unprecedented 20th century warmth with most of the increase occurring in the early to mid-decades of the 20th century, when the amount of anthropogenic CO2 in the air was less than 20–30% of the total amount there now. Unless there are serious flaws in the timing of the early-to-middle 20th century surface thermometer warming, or unknown anthropogenic mechanisms that caused a large amplification of surface temperature of the then-small increase in anthropogenic atmospheric CO2, then the early part of the 20th century warming must be largely dissociated from anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Other anthropogenic factors still need to be studied on a case by case basis. …
Monday, June 22, 2009
CLIMATIC CHANGES THAT MAKE THE WORLD FLIP
Global warming’s impact on the environment is not necessarily a drawn-out affair. Recent evidence shows that dramatic changes or ‘climatic flips’ could happen virtually overnight.The once-green land of Ireland turned into a frozen wilderness. Harp seals swimming among ice-floes off the coast of France. Polar bears prowling the streets of Amsterdam. These are the images conjured up by the latest research into global warming.Yes, you read that correctly: global warming–the rise in the world’s average temperature caused by the trapping of the sun’s heat by pollution in the atmosphere.If you are baffled by that, then prepare to be shocked. For the same research is now suggesting that such dramatic changes in the climate of northern Europe could take place in as few as 10 years. Again, this figure is not a misprint: no zero has gone missing. Scientists have recently uncovered compelling evidence that global warming can have a devastating impact on timescales far shorter than anyone believed possible. Not centuries, not even decades, but years, in what are being called “climatic flips”. One leading expert has recently gone on record to warn that some north Atlantic countries could find themselves plunged into Arctic conditions over the space of just 10 years.Risk of sudden upheavalIn geological terms, that is as fast as the blink of an eye. But even in human terms, such a rate of climatic change is incredibly–and quite probably intolerably–rapid. It is far from clear whether any economy or agricultural system could cope with such sudden upheaval.Yet evidence is now mounting that such “climatic flips” not only can happen, but have happened in the past. It is evidence that adds new urgency to the global warming debate, which has lost much of its momentum in recent years. It also highlights the frightening complexity of the task facing scientists trying to predict the earth’s response to human activity.Arguments about climatic change typically focus on how increasing levels of so-called greenhouse gases–principally carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels–in the earth’s atmosphere trap ever more of the sun’s heat. Huge efforts have been put into predicting the likely global temperature rise caused by the extra greenhouse gases, and current best estimates point to a rise of 1.5 degrees celsius or so over the next century.But while scientists warn that even so apparently small a rise in temperature could cause upheaval in everything from agricultural practices to the spread of disease, the rate of change hardly seems terrifying. Surely we can cope and have coped with events that change over several generations?Such arguments are buttressed by another, apparently compelling, argument against rapid climate change. The earth’s oceans have colossal thermal inertia, and would surely iron out any sudden upheaval: weight for weight, it takes ten times more energy to heat water than it does solid iron. Small wonder, then, that scientists were unsurprised when they failed to find any signs of rapid climatic changes when they first studied ancient ocean sediments, the isotope levels of which retain a record of past temperatures.The end of the Ice Age: a puzzling discoveryBut this apparently comforting confluence of theory and data is now known to contain two huge loopholes. The first reared its head in the early 1980s, when a joint U.S.-European team of scientists working in Greenland made a puzzling discovery. They had extracted an ice-core from a site in the southern part of the country, and had measured isotope levels in the gas trapped at different depths in an attempt to gauge the temperature in the region over thousands of years.Because the ice builds up relatively rapidly, the ice-core was expected to give the researchers the most fine-detailed picture yet of temperature changes in the region. Plotting out the corresponding temperatures, the researchers discovered something puzzling–and disturbing.As expected, the core showed the rise in temperature corresponding to the end of the last Ice Age around 11,000 years ago. But it also showed that the bulk of that warm-up had taken place in the space of just 40 years.At the time, no one knew what to make of the result, which flew in the face of everything scientists then knew about climate change–or thought they knew. In the years that followed, however, further ice-cores were extracted, and they revealed an even more dramatic story: a 5- to 10-degree increase in temperature and doubling of precipitation over Greenland in the space of just 20 years.Nothing in the earlier ocean sediment core data had prepared scientists for such a finding–nor could it. For this was the first loophole in the argument against sudden climatic flips: the absence of evidence from the original ocean sediment cores simply reflected the very broad-brush picture they gave of temperature change. They lacked the detail offered by ice-cores.Prompted by the Greenland findings, scientists have since tracked down locations where ocean sediment builds up fast enough to give a record of temperature comparable in detail to that from the ice-cores. And, sure enough, they reveal the same story of rapid climatic change in locations as far apart as California and India.The history of science shows that finding evidence for some astonishing phenomenon is often only part of the story. To convince the scientific community at large, the evidence has to be backed up by a more comprehensive explanation. And for many years the standard explanation for why Ice Ages begin and end provided yet more reasons for thinking all climatic change must be slow and graceful. That explanation rests on work by a Serbian scientist named Milutin Milankovitch, who in 1920 linked Ice Ages to changes in the shape of the earth’s orbit. Caused by the push and pull of the other planets, these orbital changes altered the concentration of sunlight reaching the planet. Such changes would naturally take place very gradually, on timescales of many thousands of years–a recipe for climatic change that is anything but abrupt.A global heat transporterYet, once again, there is a loophole in this comforting argument–as Wallace Broecker of Columbia University, New York State, realized around the time climate experts were puzzling over the ice-core data.This loophole centres on a very specific feature of the earth’s oceans: their circulation patterns. Ocean currents transport heat around the globe like a vast conveyor belt. In the Atlantic, for example, warm water travels northwards from the Gulf of Mexico, passing its heat to the air by evaporation as it goes. This makes the current progressively cooler, saltier and denser until eventually, near Iceland, the water is so heavy that it sinks, and begins a long journey southward, along the ocean floor.Broecker realized that this complex, subtle process–which he called “The Conveyor”–could be the Achilles heel of the earth’s climate, allowing subtle changes to be turned into dramatic upheaval. For instead of having to alter the whole body of the oceans, just a small change in temperature might be enough to alter the behaviour of the Conveyor–and trigger radical and rapid climatic change over a large area.For example, gradually melting ice from the Arctic could dilute the saltiness of the Conveyor to a critical density where it no longer sinks and begins its journey southward to pick up more heat. The Conveyor would, in effect, be switched off, isolating the north Atlantic from the warming waters of the tropics. The result would then be distinctly paradoxical, with a slight warming of the Arctic causing temperatures of north Atlantic countries to plunge.Broecker’s explanation is now widely believed to lie at the heart of rapid climate change in the past. Worryingly, however, global warming is predicted to have precisely the type of warming effect on the Arctic ice that threatens the existence of the Conveyor. Computer projections of the effect of pollution on global temperatures predict an inflow of cold, fresh water into the northern Atlantic–water that could dilute the Conveyor enough to switch it off.The Achilles heel of the earth’s climateIf that happened, says Broecker, winter temperatures in the north Atlantic region would fall by 10 or more degrees Celsius within 10 years, giving places like Dublin the climate of Spitsbergen, 400 km north of the Arctic Circle. “The consequences could be devastating,” he says.It is a scenario that gains credibility from ice-core data, according to climate expert Kendrick Taylor of the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada. He says that many cores suggest that around 8,000 years ago there was a sudden plunge back to a “mini Ice Age” which lasted around 400 years. The most likely cause, says Taylor, was the release of melted ice-water from lakes in Canada into the Atlantic, which switched off the heat-transporting Conveyor.“The change in freshwater flux to the oceans was large, but not that much different from what greenhouse-induced changes may produce in the future,” he said in a recent paper in American Scientist. “It is ironic that greenhouse warming may lead to rapid cooling in eastern Northern America, Europe and Scandinavia.”So just how close is the Conveyor to switching off once again? The short answer is: no one knows. Computer models have still to identify the critical density of sea-water at which the Conveyor will switch off, or the greenhouse gas concentrations needed to release the requisite amount of melt-water.Cutting pollution buys timeWhat computer models have shown, says Taylor, is that reducing pollution emissions buys time–both by slowing the rate of global warming, and also by driving the climate more gently, which seems to increase its stability against rapid change.But while scientists struggle to capture the full complexity of the climate on their supercomputers, evidence of other causes of dramatic climate change is beginning to emerge.Last July, Professor Martin Claussen and his colleagues at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Science, Germany, reported evidence that today’s Sahara desert was created in a sudden climatic “flip” that took place just 5,500 years ago, turning vast areas of lush grassland into an arid wilderness and devastating ancient civilizations.Using a sophisticated computer model of the land, sea and atmosphere, the team has discovered just how subtle are some of the effects that can turn Milankovitch-style changes in the earth’s orbit into major climate upheaval.The Sahara’s quick-change actThey found that over the last 9,000 years the gravitational pull of the planets has altered the tilt of the earth’s axis by about half a degree, and changed the timing of earth’s closest approach to the sun by around five months.By themselves, such subtle changes should not cause major climatic effects. But when Claussen and his colleagues included the effect of vegetation in their computer model, they found that it caused rainfall levels to plummet over the Sahara region.They traced the cause to “feedback” effects, in which a slight drop in vegetation level makes the earth’s surface slightly better at reflecting sunlight, which causes rainfall levels to drop–prompting more vegetation loss, and so on.According to Claussen, these feedback effects turned the vast, once-green Sahara into a brown wasteland within just 300 years. “It was the largest change in land cover during the last 6,000 years,” he says. “It was very severe, ruining ancient civilizations.”The discovery is likely to force historians to rethink their explanations of events in the region. For according to Claussen, it contradicts the long-held belief that the collapse of agriculture in the region was caused by ancient farmers exhausting the soil: “Although humans lived in the Sahara and used the land to some extent, we think that ancient land use played only a negligibly small role.”The findings are also being seen as another warning of just how unstable even today’s climate may be. “It is capable of changing very abruptly,” says climate expert Andrew Goudie of Oxford University. “We’ve known that the extent of the Sahara has yo-yoed back and forwards for millions of years, and that about 8,000 years ago it was much wetter than today, with big rivers feeding into the Nile. But I hadn’t realized just how rapid the changeover had been. It is salutary.”Temperature nose-divesAlso in July, a team of researchers from the universities of Illinois and Minnesota reported the discovery of another climatic “flip” in the northern hemisphere around 9,000 years ago, which temporarily plunged the region back into an Ice Age.Using lake sediments from Minnesota, the team confirmed the existence of the cold snap around 8,200 years ago, as revealed by the ice core data. But they also found evidence for another dive in temperatures around 8,300 to 8,900 years ago. The team thinks this older cold snap was linked to the release of melted ice from lakes into the Atlantic–which may have switched off the Conveyor. But the researchers now think that the more recent flip most likely had another–and as yet unknown–origin.What is clear is that until we know much more about the complexity of climate change, all bets about how much time we have to take action are definitely off. What evidence we do have increasingly points to the stark possibility that we may have far less time than we thought.“I used to believe that change in climate happened slowly and would never affect me,” admits Taylor. “Now I know that our climate could change significantly in my lifetime
Sunday, June 21, 2009
ENVIRONMENT:A TARGETED MESSAGE
Perhaps you've heard of Baldwin Hills. The southwestern district of Los Angeles has been called the multicultural Beverly Hills, and is the subject of a BET reality knockoff of MTV's "The Hills." It's also surrounded by more than 400 oil wells in a sector of Los Angeles that's consistently ranked the most-polluted region in the nation. Five years ago, Irma Muñoz watched as two of her closest friends and neighbors, both lifelong Baldwin Hills residents, fell ill. It was cancer—one colon and the other, breast—and within two months, both women, in their late 50s, were dead.
It hasn't been proved that the chemicals they'd inhaled over a lifetime in the region had anything to do with their deaths, but cancer is among the health risks warned to be associated with oilfield expansion in Baldwin Hills, according to a 2007 report from a division of the L.A. County Department of Regional Planning. And in Muñoz's mind, it couldn't have been any clearer. "A lot of people in my neighborhood have died of cancer, and I decided that women needed to start speaking up," says the Los Angeles native, a lifelong activist. In 2004, Muñoz, 56, founded Mujeres de la Tierra, an organization that works to empower women who've traditionally been excluded from the environmental conversation. In anticipation of Earth Day, she spoke with NEWSWEEK's Jessica Bennett:
NEWSWEEK: Describe the biggest environmental issues facing the Latino community in Los Angeles.Muñoz: That's a tough question, but I would say it's a lack of access to passive and active recreational opportunities, to green space to play, to parks. Latinos in many urban areas are the new mainstream, but unfortunately that does not translate in the equitable distribution of resources—especially in the "green world." A lot of power plants and factories are traditionally put in minority neighborhoods, and we suffer as a result of that. What we want are all the things that are necessary to good community health in any urban area: trees and clean air quality.
I know the creation of this organization has very personal roots. But why focus on Latinas specifically?Five years ago, the National Resources Defense Council released a report on Latino health—about how Latino children were suffering disproportionately as a result of environmental woes in their neighborhoods. The report was written in both English and in Spanish, and I remember being so happy it had been written in Spanish so that many in the community could read it. But a few days later, there was an article about the report in a local paper, and not one Latino was interviewed for it. I was really bothered by that, but it was a pattern I had begun to see: the Latino community not being involved in the environmental conversation.
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Why do you think that is?At the end of the day, it's all about power, influence and money, which we don't see that much of in our communities. Environmentalism is big business. And though there are good people working in our communities, often they're one-, two- or three-person [efforts], and it's harder to get the funding or recognition.
What does environmentalism mean to you?I think when you talk about the environment, most people are talking about the natural elements: air, water, the earth. But for me, and for many in my community, the environment starts with the family. Many of us come from farming backgrounds, and our relationship with the land is almost a spiritual experience. If you look at the history of Mexican-Americans, our whole lives are related to Mother Earth and the natural elements.
Is it possible that the history of Latinos in this country has actually fostered more sustainable practices?When you don't have the luxury of having a lot of stuff, you're resourceful because you have to be. Many of the women I work with live in apartments without access to yards or land, and when I ask them what would make their lives better, they say, "A place where we can grow our own vegetables." For many of us, land is very precious; we come from backgrounds where we grow our own corn and vegetables and fruit. And this is certainly sustainable, but many people don't continue it, because the land around us is very contaminated.
Do you think that through organizations like yours, we can move beyond the idea that environmentalism is a luxury of the elite?Absolutely. I think for many years, we had these alarming articles about if we don't take ownership, that global warming will result in all these horrible things. Well, now that's happening, and people are seeing it with their own eyes. I think we're beginning to realize that this is not someone else's problem; it's ours. And as a result of that, whether we call it the environment or not, we're doing things to change it. So it's no longer going to be a white, middle-class, affluent movement, it's all of us doing it. It just seems that some of us don't have the media or the publicity machines to show what we're doing.
What can NEWSWEEK readers do to help?On the very small scale, I think we can all look at what we do in our households. Do you take 20-minute showers? Do you turn off the water when you brush your teeth? All of those little things are big things, and it all starts at home. But I think people can also organize themselves and work toward a common goal: get involved in cleanup days, take ownership and pride in your neighborhood. If you want a community garden, look for empty land. Get to know your neighbors. I think all of these things are good for strengthening neighborhoods, and for raising the next generation of activists.
It hasn't been proved that the chemicals they'd inhaled over a lifetime in the region had anything to do with their deaths, but cancer is among the health risks warned to be associated with oilfield expansion in Baldwin Hills, according to a 2007 report from a division of the L.A. County Department of Regional Planning. And in Muñoz's mind, it couldn't have been any clearer. "A lot of people in my neighborhood have died of cancer, and I decided that women needed to start speaking up," says the Los Angeles native, a lifelong activist. In 2004, Muñoz, 56, founded Mujeres de la Tierra, an organization that works to empower women who've traditionally been excluded from the environmental conversation. In anticipation of Earth Day, she spoke with NEWSWEEK's Jessica Bennett:
NEWSWEEK: Describe the biggest environmental issues facing the Latino community in Los Angeles.Muñoz: That's a tough question, but I would say it's a lack of access to passive and active recreational opportunities, to green space to play, to parks. Latinos in many urban areas are the new mainstream, but unfortunately that does not translate in the equitable distribution of resources—especially in the "green world." A lot of power plants and factories are traditionally put in minority neighborhoods, and we suffer as a result of that. What we want are all the things that are necessary to good community health in any urban area: trees and clean air quality.
I know the creation of this organization has very personal roots. But why focus on Latinas specifically?Five years ago, the National Resources Defense Council released a report on Latino health—about how Latino children were suffering disproportionately as a result of environmental woes in their neighborhoods. The report was written in both English and in Spanish, and I remember being so happy it had been written in Spanish so that many in the community could read it. But a few days later, there was an article about the report in a local paper, and not one Latino was interviewed for it. I was really bothered by that, but it was a pattern I had begun to see: the Latino community not being involved in the environmental conversation.
placeAd2(commercialNode,'bigbox',false,'')
Why do you think that is?At the end of the day, it's all about power, influence and money, which we don't see that much of in our communities. Environmentalism is big business. And though there are good people working in our communities, often they're one-, two- or three-person [efforts], and it's harder to get the funding or recognition.
What does environmentalism mean to you?I think when you talk about the environment, most people are talking about the natural elements: air, water, the earth. But for me, and for many in my community, the environment starts with the family. Many of us come from farming backgrounds, and our relationship with the land is almost a spiritual experience. If you look at the history of Mexican-Americans, our whole lives are related to Mother Earth and the natural elements.
Is it possible that the history of Latinos in this country has actually fostered more sustainable practices?When you don't have the luxury of having a lot of stuff, you're resourceful because you have to be. Many of the women I work with live in apartments without access to yards or land, and when I ask them what would make their lives better, they say, "A place where we can grow our own vegetables." For many of us, land is very precious; we come from backgrounds where we grow our own corn and vegetables and fruit. And this is certainly sustainable, but many people don't continue it, because the land around us is very contaminated.
Do you think that through organizations like yours, we can move beyond the idea that environmentalism is a luxury of the elite?Absolutely. I think for many years, we had these alarming articles about if we don't take ownership, that global warming will result in all these horrible things. Well, now that's happening, and people are seeing it with their own eyes. I think we're beginning to realize that this is not someone else's problem; it's ours. And as a result of that, whether we call it the environment or not, we're doing things to change it. So it's no longer going to be a white, middle-class, affluent movement, it's all of us doing it. It just seems that some of us don't have the media or the publicity machines to show what we're doing.
What can NEWSWEEK readers do to help?On the very small scale, I think we can all look at what we do in our households. Do you take 20-minute showers? Do you turn off the water when you brush your teeth? All of those little things are big things, and it all starts at home. But I think people can also organize themselves and work toward a common goal: get involved in cleanup days, take ownership and pride in your neighborhood. If you want a community garden, look for empty land. Get to know your neighbors. I think all of these things are good for strengthening neighborhoods, and for raising the next generation of activists.
A Green Trade War?
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Be careful what you wish for. For years, much of the world has been bashing America for refusing to cooperate in the fight against climate change. Now that President Barack Obama has pledged American leadership in cutting greenhouse-gas emissions—and as a far-reaching package of green legislation begins to wind its way through the U.S. Congress—relief is giving way to worry. In recent weeks European, Indian and Chinese officials have warned that the result of America's long-awaited change of mind might not be cooperation but conflict, and possibly the world's first green trade war.
That's because as Washington debates how to regulate emissions, a powerful coalition of energy-intensive industries, labor unions and Rust Belt state legislators is clamoring for protection from imports. They argue that the new cap-and-trade system envisioned by Obama and congressional leaders, which will require major polluters to acquire permits for the right to emit CO2, will put them at a competitive disadvantage against competitors based in countries that don't have similar carbon-pricing schemes. In March Obama's energy secretary, Steven Chu, said the U.S. is prepared to use a border tax on imports as a weapon to force countries like China to limit their own emissions, triggering a warning by Su Wei, China's chief climate negotiator, that this would lead to retaliatory measures. India has since warned the West not to engage in "green protectionism."
So far, the threats have been limited to words, but that may soon change. Introduced in Congress on April 1, America's proposed scheme is loosely based on Europe's, which gives homegrown energy-intensive industries like steel, aluminum and cement generous free allowances of pollution permits, in effect grandfathering them into the new system. The president would have the authority to impose "border adjustments" only if U.S. companies were determined to be at a competitive disadvantage after a five-year trial period. But with the American debate over climate change increasingly driven by worries over jobs and competitiveness, some form of protection seems increasingly likely. In Europe, politicians have called for EU trade sanctions against both China and the U.S. if they don't agree to cut emissions.
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Because they already regulate emissions, the Europeans would likely be exempt from any U.S. carbon tariffs, which appear squarely aimed at China.
The biggest victim of a confrontation, however, would be the environment that U.S. legislators are purporting to save. China is just beginning to get serious about its own environmental record, and as a member of the G20 seems finally to be taking its first baby steps toward a more involved and constructive international role. The global climate regime that the world's biggest polluters will try to hammer out at the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen in December will not work without major developing-world emitters like China onboard. A nasty trade fight with the United States would make cooperation by Beijing even less likely, says Benjamin Görlach, emissions expert at the Ecologic Institute in Berlin.
Not only does the debate over imports threaten to obscure the original environmental-policy goals, it also obscures the facts. The greatest share of carbon-intensive imports reaches the U.S. not from China but from heavily regulated Europe. What's more, a number of studies have found the effects on industrial competitiveness to be minimal. Among other things, they found that the cost of complying with environmental regulation plays little to no role when companies decide where to locate—access to local markets is by far the most important factor, followed by labor costs. In some cases, such as Germany's €160 billion chemical industry, efficiency improvements prodded by environmental regulation have even helped make the industry more competitive, not less. Even the Chinese case is anything but clear. China itself may be polluted, but its exports tend to come from modern, efficient plants, and the country already has higher efficiency standards for vehicles and appliances than the U.S., leading a Chinese official to remark at a Brookings Institution conference in Washington last year that it may be China that should slap carbon tariffs on U.S. products, not the other way around. The trouble now is that the debate is driven less and less by environmental concerns and is turning into one defined by longstanding domestic U.S. worries that cheap Chinese goods will continue to flood the U.S., take jobs and hurt companies. So far in this downturn, the protectionists have been held in check by fears of repeating the mistakes of the 1930s, when a global tariff war plunged the world into depression. Under the cover of green, they could yet have their day.
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Be careful what you wish for. For years, much of the world has been bashing America for refusing to cooperate in the fight against climate change. Now that President Barack Obama has pledged American leadership in cutting greenhouse-gas emissions—and as a far-reaching package of green legislation begins to wind its way through the U.S. Congress—relief is giving way to worry. In recent weeks European, Indian and Chinese officials have warned that the result of America's long-awaited change of mind might not be cooperation but conflict, and possibly the world's first green trade war.
That's because as Washington debates how to regulate emissions, a powerful coalition of energy-intensive industries, labor unions and Rust Belt state legislators is clamoring for protection from imports. They argue that the new cap-and-trade system envisioned by Obama and congressional leaders, which will require major polluters to acquire permits for the right to emit CO2, will put them at a competitive disadvantage against competitors based in countries that don't have similar carbon-pricing schemes. In March Obama's energy secretary, Steven Chu, said the U.S. is prepared to use a border tax on imports as a weapon to force countries like China to limit their own emissions, triggering a warning by Su Wei, China's chief climate negotiator, that this would lead to retaliatory measures. India has since warned the West not to engage in "green protectionism."
So far, the threats have been limited to words, but that may soon change. Introduced in Congress on April 1, America's proposed scheme is loosely based on Europe's, which gives homegrown energy-intensive industries like steel, aluminum and cement generous free allowances of pollution permits, in effect grandfathering them into the new system. The president would have the authority to impose "border adjustments" only if U.S. companies were determined to be at a competitive disadvantage after a five-year trial period. But with the American debate over climate change increasingly driven by worries over jobs and competitiveness, some form of protection seems increasingly likely. In Europe, politicians have called for EU trade sanctions against both China and the U.S. if they don't agree to cut emissions.
placeAd2(commercialNode,'bigbox',false,'')
Because they already regulate emissions, the Europeans would likely be exempt from any U.S. carbon tariffs, which appear squarely aimed at China.
The biggest victim of a confrontation, however, would be the environment that U.S. legislators are purporting to save. China is just beginning to get serious about its own environmental record, and as a member of the G20 seems finally to be taking its first baby steps toward a more involved and constructive international role. The global climate regime that the world's biggest polluters will try to hammer out at the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen in December will not work without major developing-world emitters like China onboard. A nasty trade fight with the United States would make cooperation by Beijing even less likely, says Benjamin Görlach, emissions expert at the Ecologic Institute in Berlin.
Not only does the debate over imports threaten to obscure the original environmental-policy goals, it also obscures the facts. The greatest share of carbon-intensive imports reaches the U.S. not from China but from heavily regulated Europe. What's more, a number of studies have found the effects on industrial competitiveness to be minimal. Among other things, they found that the cost of complying with environmental regulation plays little to no role when companies decide where to locate—access to local markets is by far the most important factor, followed by labor costs. In some cases, such as Germany's €160 billion chemical industry, efficiency improvements prodded by environmental regulation have even helped make the industry more competitive, not less. Even the Chinese case is anything but clear. China itself may be polluted, but its exports tend to come from modern, efficient plants, and the country already has higher efficiency standards for vehicles and appliances than the U.S., leading a Chinese official to remark at a Brookings Institution conference in Washington last year that it may be China that should slap carbon tariffs on U.S. products, not the other way around. The trouble now is that the debate is driven less and less by environmental concerns and is turning into one defined by longstanding domestic U.S. worries that cheap Chinese goods will continue to flood the U.S., take jobs and hurt companies. So far in this downturn, the protectionists have been held in check by fears of repeating the mistakes of the 1930s, when a global tariff war plunged the world into depression. Under the cover of green, they could yet have their day.
How to send electricity across the continent, virtually for free.
Remember the Woodstock of Physics? Probably not. Back in the spring of 1987, though, headlines were trumpeting it as the most exciting scientific meeting in history. Three thousand physicists crammed into a ballroom at the New York Hilton to talk about superconductivity-the transmission of electricity with literally zero resistance. The technology was suddenly within reach of being economical. So it appeared, anyway, and that could mean anything from superfast computers to tiny, powerful electric motors to power lines that could carry current with no loss of energy.
In the more than two decades since, superconductors haven't grabbed many headlines. That's partly because the new materials discovered in the late '80s proved to be a lot harder to work with than anyone expected, and partly because their energy-saving wizardry wasn't in high demand during most of the 1990s. But nowadays, using less energy is a key strategy in the fight against climate change-and a lot of the technical problems that have dogged superconductor technology have been solved. "Five years ago, I'd have been skeptical," says Robert Cava, a Princeton materials scientist who was in on the original Woodstock of Physics. "But after years and years and years of people beating their heads against the wall, they've finally got it."
"They" are scientists and engineers at a handful of companies in Europe, the U.S. and Japan who have figured out how to turn brittle, fragile superconductors into flexible wires. "We basically found a way to bend the unbendable," says Greg Yurek, who left the MIT faculty in the late 1980s to found American Superconductor in Massachusetts. Superconductors have found their way recently into ships, wind turbines and electric cars. But the big push now is for power transmission. A major element of the "smart grid" is a new set of long-distance power lines to carry electricity from renewables like wind and solar. Conventional power lines are expensive, unsightly and wasteful-they can lose 14 percent of their energy from the resistance of the copper cables.
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Superconducting cables have no such problem. A set of cables carrying five gigawatts of power-the output, of, say, five big nuclear power plants-can fit into a pipe just three feet across, and you could even bury it underground. Part of the pipe will be taken up with a cooling system: these superconductors work only when kept at the temperature of liquid nitrogen, about minus-170 degrees Celsius. Nitrogen is relatively cheap to manufacture and keep cold compared with the liquid helium (minus-269 degrees) needed for old-fashioned superconductors. The cooling equipment draws some energy from the cable, but still far less than the losses in copper cable. Even so, the power industry isn't likely to trash its old but serviceable transmission lines and install superconductors, even if they are more efficient. If the world is going to start using climate-friendly renewables, it'll require new transmission lines anyway. In the U.S., for example, the most abundant and reliable wind power comes from a belt stretching from Texas north to the Dakotas. The best spots for solar are in Arizona and New Mexico. The biggest consumers of electricity-the cities-are mostly along the coasts and near the Great Lakes.
So new power cables will have to link the source to the consumer. And if it's a choice between ugly, inefficient overhead lines and a pipe buried along existing interstate-highway rights of way, the choice seems kind of obvious-assuming that American Superconductor is correct in its claim that the costs are roughly the same. The Woodstock of Physics, in short, may finally be living up to its mostly forgotten hype.
In the more than two decades since, superconductors haven't grabbed many headlines. That's partly because the new materials discovered in the late '80s proved to be a lot harder to work with than anyone expected, and partly because their energy-saving wizardry wasn't in high demand during most of the 1990s. But nowadays, using less energy is a key strategy in the fight against climate change-and a lot of the technical problems that have dogged superconductor technology have been solved. "Five years ago, I'd have been skeptical," says Robert Cava, a Princeton materials scientist who was in on the original Woodstock of Physics. "But after years and years and years of people beating their heads against the wall, they've finally got it."
"They" are scientists and engineers at a handful of companies in Europe, the U.S. and Japan who have figured out how to turn brittle, fragile superconductors into flexible wires. "We basically found a way to bend the unbendable," says Greg Yurek, who left the MIT faculty in the late 1980s to found American Superconductor in Massachusetts. Superconductors have found their way recently into ships, wind turbines and electric cars. But the big push now is for power transmission. A major element of the "smart grid" is a new set of long-distance power lines to carry electricity from renewables like wind and solar. Conventional power lines are expensive, unsightly and wasteful-they can lose 14 percent of their energy from the resistance of the copper cables.
placeAd2(commercialNode,'bigbox',false,'')
Superconducting cables have no such problem. A set of cables carrying five gigawatts of power-the output, of, say, five big nuclear power plants-can fit into a pipe just three feet across, and you could even bury it underground. Part of the pipe will be taken up with a cooling system: these superconductors work only when kept at the temperature of liquid nitrogen, about minus-170 degrees Celsius. Nitrogen is relatively cheap to manufacture and keep cold compared with the liquid helium (minus-269 degrees) needed for old-fashioned superconductors. The cooling equipment draws some energy from the cable, but still far less than the losses in copper cable. Even so, the power industry isn't likely to trash its old but serviceable transmission lines and install superconductors, even if they are more efficient. If the world is going to start using climate-friendly renewables, it'll require new transmission lines anyway. In the U.S., for example, the most abundant and reliable wind power comes from a belt stretching from Texas north to the Dakotas. The best spots for solar are in Arizona and New Mexico. The biggest consumers of electricity-the cities-are mostly along the coasts and near the Great Lakes.
So new power cables will have to link the source to the consumer. And if it's a choice between ugly, inefficient overhead lines and a pipe buried along existing interstate-highway rights of way, the choice seems kind of obvious-assuming that American Superconductor is correct in its claim that the costs are roughly the same. The Woodstock of Physics, in short, may finally be living up to its mostly forgotten hype.
Coal ash spill cleanup slow; cause still unknown
Glen Daugherty watches from his wooden dock, just beyond his prized pontoon boat, as a floating dredging machine growls from across the channel of the Emory River.
When it isn't broken down, the machine has been slowly sucking up tons of coal ash that spilled six months ago from the Kingston Fossil Plant a few hundred yards upriver.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, owner and operator of the giant coal-fired Kingston plant, calls this progress. Daugherty, 67, who once delivered coal from local mines to the Kingston plant, just sees shattered dreams.
"I was going to be here the rest of my life," he said. "Now I don't know what I am going to do."
A Dec. 22 breach in an earthen dike unleashed 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic-laden ash into the river and 26 lakeside homes, covering some 300 acres with grayish muck.
The 1,900-square-foot brick rancher that Glen and Evelyn Daugherty built on their little acre of paradise along the Emory River in 1991 wasn't damaged by the spill. But it's now part of the cleanup zone. Most of their neighbors have moved or are moving with buyouts from the nation's largest public utility — TVA has paid out $20 million so far.
House or healthDaugherty said TVA won't pay enough to replace his home, and he refuses to take on debt at his age.
Still, Daugherty said his wife's doctor advised them: "Which is more important to you — your house or your health? I am going to tell you right now, you better get out of there."
The Daughertys, who celebrated their 40th anniversary in February, have until July 31 to decide.
The cause of the spill is still unknown, six months after the disaster brought national attention to the regulation and risks of coal ash storage. The ash — which typically contains traces of arsenic and other toxic materials — is stored at 43 other sites in 26 communities around the country, which are so hazardous the Army Corps of Engineers won't disclose their locations.
TVA hired engineering consultants AECOM USA Inc. to study the cause. Lead consultant William Walton, based in Vernon Hills, Ill., isn't taking calls from The Associated Press.
TVA spokesman John Moulton said the document should be out this month.
‘It was an embarrassment’A panel of engineering and environmental experts formed by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation is waiting to review the AECOM report. So are attorneys handling a half dozen federal lawsuits filed by victims against TVA.
University of Tennessee professor emeritus Bruce Tschantz, an expert in hydrology and dam safety engineering, is on the panel, which was briefed on the report a few weeks ago.
Tschantz wouldn't reveal any conclusions, but said he hopes the final version digs deep into the decisions that led to the wall's collapse. It should explain whether such a spill could happen again — and whether it can be prevented, he said.
Click for related content
Beetles threaten water, power suppliesMoney to shut nuclear plants falls shortEPA declares asbestos emergency in town
"My analogy is when an airplane goes down and they find out the direct reason is the wings were cracked," he said. "OK, so that is why it went down but why were the wings cracked? Why were the wings not inspected? Why were they allowed to crack? Is it because of poor management and inspection?"
Tshcantz added: "No matter what the findings are — it was an embarrassment."
This much is known. The Kingston plant's ash landfill began filling up with the byproduct of coal-fired electric generation in 1958, and the pile stood 60 feet high at the time of the spill. It was licensed to go even higher, to 80 feet, before closing in 2015. A layer of water sat on top to keep the ash from blowing away.
Two small, localized problems with the dikes were found in 2003 and 2006, according to the utility's inspector general. Otherwise, state inspectors found no deficiencies in August, and a visual inspection the afternoon before the spill turned up no problems.
TVA officials noted immediately after the spill that the temperature dropped to 14 degrees that night. President and CEO Tom Kilgore said 4.9 inches of rain fell in December — almost twice as much as normal — which could have added significant weight to the pile.
Even so, the spill could have been worse. Just more than half of the 9.5 million cubic yards of ash the site holds spilled. Kingston has the largest ash pile of any of TVA's 11 coal-fired power plants.
Costly cleanupTo date, TVA has rebuilt roads and railroad tracks, restored utilities, offered compensation to victims, opened community outreach centers and public document rooms, begun dredging and awarded a contract to ship about half the spilled ash to an Alabama landfill. The cleanup cost could reach $1 billion.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is overseeing the cleanup, which could cost $1 billion. Anda Ray, TVA's top environmental executive, said the agency is working to get the ash out of the river by next spring to prevent it from being carried downstream during a storm.
When it isn't broken down, the machine has been slowly sucking up tons of coal ash that spilled six months ago from the Kingston Fossil Plant a few hundred yards upriver.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, owner and operator of the giant coal-fired Kingston plant, calls this progress. Daugherty, 67, who once delivered coal from local mines to the Kingston plant, just sees shattered dreams.
"I was going to be here the rest of my life," he said. "Now I don't know what I am going to do."
A Dec. 22 breach in an earthen dike unleashed 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic-laden ash into the river and 26 lakeside homes, covering some 300 acres with grayish muck.
The 1,900-square-foot brick rancher that Glen and Evelyn Daugherty built on their little acre of paradise along the Emory River in 1991 wasn't damaged by the spill. But it's now part of the cleanup zone. Most of their neighbors have moved or are moving with buyouts from the nation's largest public utility — TVA has paid out $20 million so far.
House or healthDaugherty said TVA won't pay enough to replace his home, and he refuses to take on debt at his age.
Still, Daugherty said his wife's doctor advised them: "Which is more important to you — your house or your health? I am going to tell you right now, you better get out of there."
The Daughertys, who celebrated their 40th anniversary in February, have until July 31 to decide.
The cause of the spill is still unknown, six months after the disaster brought national attention to the regulation and risks of coal ash storage. The ash — which typically contains traces of arsenic and other toxic materials — is stored at 43 other sites in 26 communities around the country, which are so hazardous the Army Corps of Engineers won't disclose their locations.
TVA hired engineering consultants AECOM USA Inc. to study the cause. Lead consultant William Walton, based in Vernon Hills, Ill., isn't taking calls from The Associated Press.
TVA spokesman John Moulton said the document should be out this month.
‘It was an embarrassment’A panel of engineering and environmental experts formed by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation is waiting to review the AECOM report. So are attorneys handling a half dozen federal lawsuits filed by victims against TVA.
University of Tennessee professor emeritus Bruce Tschantz, an expert in hydrology and dam safety engineering, is on the panel, which was briefed on the report a few weeks ago.
Tschantz wouldn't reveal any conclusions, but said he hopes the final version digs deep into the decisions that led to the wall's collapse. It should explain whether such a spill could happen again — and whether it can be prevented, he said.
Click for related content
Beetles threaten water, power suppliesMoney to shut nuclear plants falls shortEPA declares asbestos emergency in town
"My analogy is when an airplane goes down and they find out the direct reason is the wings were cracked," he said. "OK, so that is why it went down but why were the wings cracked? Why were the wings not inspected? Why were they allowed to crack? Is it because of poor management and inspection?"
Tshcantz added: "No matter what the findings are — it was an embarrassment."
This much is known. The Kingston plant's ash landfill began filling up with the byproduct of coal-fired electric generation in 1958, and the pile stood 60 feet high at the time of the spill. It was licensed to go even higher, to 80 feet, before closing in 2015. A layer of water sat on top to keep the ash from blowing away.
Two small, localized problems with the dikes were found in 2003 and 2006, according to the utility's inspector general. Otherwise, state inspectors found no deficiencies in August, and a visual inspection the afternoon before the spill turned up no problems.
TVA officials noted immediately after the spill that the temperature dropped to 14 degrees that night. President and CEO Tom Kilgore said 4.9 inches of rain fell in December — almost twice as much as normal — which could have added significant weight to the pile.
Even so, the spill could have been worse. Just more than half of the 9.5 million cubic yards of ash the site holds spilled. Kingston has the largest ash pile of any of TVA's 11 coal-fired power plants.
Costly cleanupTo date, TVA has rebuilt roads and railroad tracks, restored utilities, offered compensation to victims, opened community outreach centers and public document rooms, begun dredging and awarded a contract to ship about half the spilled ash to an Alabama landfill. The cleanup cost could reach $1 billion.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is overseeing the cleanup, which could cost $1 billion. Anda Ray, TVA's top environmental executive, said the agency is working to get the ash out of the river by next spring to prevent it from being carried downstream during a storm.
Vedanta gets award for environment management: Film on pollution by Vedanta’s refinery
Vedanta’s aluminium refinery at Lanjigarh gets the Golden Peacock award despite several notices from the OSPCB for non-compliance with environmental regulations This timely film by Surya Shankar Dash released today highlights the pollution caused by the refinery, plight of the suffering villages and their protest against it.
The Real Face of Vedanta a film highlighting the pollution caused by Vedanta’s refinery in Lanjigarh, Orissa was released. This 30-minute film has been made by independent film maker Surya Shankar Dash and draws attention to the plight of the communities suffering from the pollution caused by the one million tonne per annum aluminium refinery plant of Vedanta. The film also captures the public hearing held for the expansion plans where people lambasted the company for the pollution caused by it. Vedanta plans to expand its plant to 6 MTPA, making it the world’s biggest aluminium refinery. The public hearing was organised as part of the clearance process. Vedanta’s pollution is affecting more than twenty villages in its vicinity causing widespread skin and respiratory problems.
The Real Face of Vedanta a film highlighting the pollution caused by Vedanta’s refinery in Lanjigarh, Orissa was released. This 30-minute film has been made by independent film maker Surya Shankar Dash and draws attention to the plight of the communities suffering from the pollution caused by the one million tonne per annum aluminium refinery plant of Vedanta. The film also captures the public hearing held for the expansion plans where people lambasted the company for the pollution caused by it. Vedanta plans to expand its plant to 6 MTPA, making it the world’s biggest aluminium refinery. The public hearing was organised as part of the clearance process. Vedanta’s pollution is affecting more than twenty villages in its vicinity causing widespread skin and respiratory problems.
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