Environmental justice: so far, just words on paper

Recently I've been thinking about Lois Gibbs. Remember her and Love Canal? In 1978 Lois found out that her child's school-- in fact, her whole neighborhood-- was built on Occidental Petroluem's toxic waste dump. Three solid years of community organizing eventually got then-President Carter to relocate 900 families from her community. That gives me a little hope. We're only a year and a half into our organizing here in Springfield, Massachusetts to stop construction of a biomass incinerator. The tough part is we're doing everything right and so far, it hasn't seemed to make a difference-- maybe that's just the way it goes until we win. We do have quite a few more cards up our sleeve. Nothing, from lawsuits and lobbying to direct action and civil disobedience, is off the table.

On Friday, we got the bad news from the Massachusetts Environmental Protection Agency (oxymoron) that the agency is not going to require a full Environmental Impact Report (EIR) of Palmer Renewable Energy's incinerator proposal-- this in spite of more than 450 comments submitted by area residents asking for the full study. You can read the decision here. This could put the proposal on a very fast track-- I think they only need an air permit from the state to start breaking ground-- that and the continued approval of the Springfield City Council.

OK, I'm scared and fighting mad. Our group, Stop Toxic Incineration in Springfield, isn't against this plant simply because of some intangible though legitimate fear of global warming. We're talking about our quality of life-- indeed our very lives themselves.. One in seven children in Springfield has asthma. Our kids' asthma rate is higher than Worcester and Boston, and 65% higher than the state average. We know that air pollution affects everyone, especially those with heart and lung disease. Hospital admissions climb on bad air days. And a new study from Boston Children's Hospital finds a strong correlation between air pollution and and an increase in Type 2 Diabetes, even when all other factors are accounted for and even when the pollution is within EPA guidelines and acceptable limits..

And herein lies the problem: "Acceptable limits" are not the same as safe limits; what's acceptable to the state doesn't mean people won't get sick in Springfield. I got the bad news about no EIR from David Cash, Assistant Secretary for Policy in the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. He kept talking about how the pollution from the plant-- which is undisputed-- was within acceptable threshholds, did not violate regulations, blah blah blah, and besides that, the developer intend to give $2 million to the city, mostly for "mitigation strategies!"

And what is a mitigation strategy, you might ask? That's where the developers get to make your child sick while paying for heath education for somebody else's child. It's supposed to all come out in the wash. But even if it were true that the negative health impacts from this plant could be offset by two million bucks, which I don't believe for a minute, we have no power over which children and adults get sicker and which get better. Hey, we don't live our lives on paper and in statistics, we're real people here.

Cash said I could ask him any questions I liked, but I have emailed him three times with these two questions and so far have had no response:

• Forgetting about allowable limits, regulations, etc., can you say unequivocally that this plant will cause no harm to anyone who lives in the Springfield area? Yes or no.
• If the answer to the first question is no, can you say unequivocally that any negative health impact will be entirely offset by PRE's mitigation strategy? Yes or no.

One issue MEPA clearly doesn't have a handle on is the cumulative effect of pollution. Stopping biomass incinerators isn't just a Springfield fight; residents of Greenfield and Russell have been fighting off plants, too. And it's not just Massachusetts-- tonight we heard from a group in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, which is fighting a plan by the same developers to burn 900 tons of tires a day to produce energy! Check out Crawford Area Residents for the Environment. The woman who contacted us from their group said that looking at our group's website was like looking in the mirror.

So what do we do next? We're looking at some legal strategies, but our big focus for the moment is on the Springfield City Council, which has the power to stop this plant by revoking its original permit. I've heard from several councilors, as well as from Mayor Sarno, that it's all in the state's hands. Well, the state has dropped the ball. I wrote about the last, very disappointing city council meeting, but the next meeting, on December 13, will be significant if not decisive. City Councilor Mike Fenton and several others are sponsoring a resolution calling for a public hearing, but at this point, with PRE now on the fast track, I think we're going to need something a lot stronger, something that actually stops PRE from breaking ground before the end of December.

In June of 2009, maybe fifty people (most in the city administration) knew about PRE's incinerator proposal. Now thousands of people know, and 99.9% oppose it. But now is not the time to oppose the plant just in your head. Call city hall at 787-6000 and ask for the mayor's. Call your ward councilor and all the at-large councilors-- you can get their numbers on the city council's webpage. Call Helen Caulton-Harris, Health and Human Services Director, at 787-6740, and tell her to find a way to stop this. Call Secretary of Environmental and Energy's Ian Bowles' office-- whosae decision it was nmot to require an environmental impact report, at. 617.626.1000. And Call the Governor's office-- 617.725.4005, 888.870.7770 (in state).

Most important, turn up at City Council on Monday, December 13, and let your councilors know it's time to stand up for the people of Springfield. And if you want to come to our planning meetings, let me know. The more of us fighting, the more likely we are to win.

Did we kill the incinerator?

I won't hold my breath just yet, but there's a good possibility we have finally stopped Palmer Renewable Energy's biomass incinerator.

A quick recap: more than two years ago,  Palmer Renewable Energy made a proposal to Springfield City Council and the East Springfield Neighborhood Council about the wonderful benefits of their energy-producing incinerator.  Both councils fell for it-- city council liked the jobs and the the taxes; the neighborhood council liked the half million in "community benefits" PRE would contribute to the neighborhood.

It took about eight months for some of us in the community to find out about the plant, and, as soon as we educated ourselves about the pros and cons, we were against it.  Springfield's air quality is bad enough already, why make it worse?  Why have more kids with asthma and more adults with lung and heart disease? We formed a group, Stop Toxic Incineration in Springfield, and turned out more than 300 people at a public hearing to oppose the state giranting an air permit..  We got the state to agree to a health impact assessment for Springfield (still to happen).  We pushed the mayor, we pushed the city council, we held forums, we flyered the community, you name it, we did it.

A couple of months ago, PRE made a move that 1) I think they felt was necessary and 2) I think they thought would help get their plant approved: they decided not to burn primarily construction and demolition debris, but instead to burn wood trimmings.  I think they didn't want to wait 6 months for the state to conduct a study on the impact of burning C & D.

Instead, their decision opened doors for us.  PRE had to file an amended permit, which means we could submit comments on the Notice of Project Change to the state, and more than 400 of us did.  PRE has to go back before city council, which means we could let the new council know that people don't want this incinerator.  Through dint of our hard work, seven, possibly eight councilors have now expressed opposition to the plant and will be letting PRE know that when PRE returns to the council. .  And PRE had to go back to the East Springfield Neighborhood Council, where people in the neighborhood now know a lot more about the dangers of the plant than they did when the neighborhood council first voted approval.

When our group found out that PRE had to go back to East Springfield for approval, we asked Kathy Brown if we could get on the neighborhood council's agenda before PRE.  We are set to present our case on December 7.

Then we found out, from an East Springfield resident, that PRE was appearing before the neighborhood council this month, this past Tuesday!!  One of our members called Kathy Brown and was told that the East Springfield Neighborhood Council had already voted against PRE's new proposal.  And why hadn't they told us?  Five STIS members went to the meeting anyway, flyered the attendees and debated PRE executives and lawyer.

Now, it's been my understanding that this project can't move forward without the approval of the East Springfield Neighborhood Council.  So is the project dead?  Or will  PRE find a way around this vote?  I've put a call into City Soliciter Ed Pikula, but haven't heard back yet.  But is this the end for PRE?


Photo from Shawnrozzi's photostream at Flickr.

How well would you understand food if you were paid to know?

USDA Secretary of Agriculture Edward Schafer was wrong by more than 90% when he told a U.N. emergency food that biofuels were only responsible for 2-3% of the increase in food prices. According to the International Monetary Fund, the real figure is nearly 30%.

This is from a good fact sheet from the Organic Consumers Association on biofuels:

THE BAD NEWS

• The amount of grain it takes to fill an average gas tank with ethanol would be enough to feed a person for a year.
• If the US stopped growing food and converted its entire grain harvest into ethanol, it would satisfy less than 16% of its auto­motive needs.
• The majority of US biofuels are produced from pesticide intensive genetically engineered crops (soy, corn).
• Increasing portions of biofuels are now produced by mon­ocultures of soy and sugar cane in Latin America and palm oil in Indonesia and Malaysia, which have led to massive deforestation, the loss of invaluable biodiversity, and mas­sive outputs of Greenhouse Gases

THE GOOD NEWS

• Increasing fuel efficiency by just 3% would reduce US dependence on foreign oil more than all of the agrofuels combined, yet more than 500% more taxpayer money is spent on subsidizing ethanol than energy conservation, mass transit, solar, wind, and fuel-efficient technologies combined.

Are biofuels innately bad? No way! But why are we subsidizing big agribiz instead of developing non-food sources of biofuel production?

Not everyone can walk their way out of hunger

For every mile you walk, you burn about 250 calories. How much do North Koreans take that into account as they attempt to walk into South Korea and China? Surely they are aware of the shoot-to-kill orders issued to North Korean border guards. On the Chinese side of the border, Chinese border guards invade the homes of ethnic Koreans living in China who may be harboring refugees from starvation.

Biofuels, increased food demand in developing countries and the high cost of fuel are taking the blame for the current world crisis but there are many reasons more people are hungry right now.

Global warming may very well bear the blame for the cyclone that destroyed 65% of Myanmar's rice fields. That same area is responsible for 50% of its poultry and pork production and 85% of its aquaculture.

Global warming is definitely one of the factors responsible for the salmon shortage that is leaving the Stellat'en people in British Columbia with only one salmon for every twenty-five people, not enough to meet their caloric needs. Warmer waters mean fewer salmon spawn. The salmon shortage has involved the region in difficult discussions over catch-sharing and fishing practices. The Tyee.

The 1,100 inhabitants of Christmas island shouldn't be hungry, but the company the island contracts with to deliver food hasn't made a delivery since January. Planes fly over from Australia once a week with small amounts of fresh produce; lettuce is selling for $11 a head.

While the U.S. may be coming to think of the typical Indian as working in a call center, India still has more poor people-- some 600 million-- than any country on earth. Yet farmers are abandoning their farmland and rice fields because they cannot recoup the cost of seeds, fertilizer and pesticides, much of it a result of patented seeds from multinationals like Monsanto, which forbids farmers saving seeds from one harvest to the next. More than 36,000 farmers have committed suicide in the years from 1997 to 2006, the last year for which statistics are available.

Other people around the world are still (and increasingly) dealing with the shortage of rice and the cost of food, exacerbated in many places by poverty and unstable governments. Boarding schools in Zimbabwe are so short of food they are asking students to bring their own groceries. The Ugandan government said this week that increasing competition for scarce food supplies in Kenya and Sudan are leading to shortages in Uganda, also.

Finally, a full belly is one of the first casualties of war. 130,000 Iraqi refugees in Syria received subsidized food aid last month, but the U.N. agency that provides the food is running out of money.

Solutions to hunger exist, but the longer we wait, the more difficult it will become.

Auto site talks about biofuels

Wow-- here's a blog called Kicking Tires that, among other things, is blogging about biofuels, and how one tank of gas equals 528 pounds of corn-- enough to feed a person for a year, and suggesting that the U.S. change its policy on biofuels. You can research cars, write a review of your own car, find out about recalls, buy and sell-- in other words, a regular car site but writing about hunger and the environment.. Hope for the world?

Yet another plan the U.S. won't sign- this one to reduce hunger

Fifty years of industrialized farming has not prevented 850 million people from going to bed hungry each night.

The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development has been working for the last five years to find a better approach to world food production, One would think that a plan developed by 400 scientists, 60 nations, private industry and consumer and activists groups would catch the attention of the U.S. Government, and so it did. The U.S., Canada and Australia rejected the report, among other reasons, because it cautions against expecting genetically modified crops to be a part of the solution, questioning production and safety issues. All three countries are big promoters of GM food, whereas the crops are are banned in Europe.

Other recommendations include:

• Land management practices to limit the effect of global warming
• Limiting the presence of pesticide resideues, heavy metals, hormones, additives antibiotics in the food system
• Sustainable use of resources like water, soil, biodiversity and fossil fuels
• More food production on the local level
• Low impact practices such as organic agriculture
• Shifting biofuels to non-food crops

A very good summary of recommendations can be found at GreenFacts.

I was tipped to this story by the London paper the Daily Mail. Interestingly, I could not find a single reference to the study in any U.S. publication except for Grist. an online environmental magazine.

Although this particular report has gone unheard in this country, aother news about the world hunger crisis is finally making its way into the media and people's consciousness. However, with more bad news everyday, the only thing that may prevent the same kind of public numbness Iraq is receiving is the pale shadow of our own deprivation-- food is still plentiful, just more expensive.

The U.N.'s World Food Program is warning that North Korea's chronic food shortages have been excacerbated by flooding and a disaster may be in the works. The Philippines has put a moratorium on the conversion of farmland to any use but food in an attempt to increase rice production. Wheat prices have gone up 60% in Afghanistan in the last year. And six years of drought in Australia, possibly the result of global warming, have reduced the country's rice crop by 98%.

We drive, they starve

Yesterday I wished there was a way for us to translate a gallon of gas into the exact amount of rice taken from a poor family's table.Well, the U.N. has come pretty close.

The UN says it takes 232kg of corn to fill a 50-litre car tank with ethanol. That is enough to feed a child for a year. Last week, the UN predicted "massacres" unless the biofuel policy is halted. Telegraph, UK.

The U.N.'s World Food Programme issued a report on solutions yesterday whose recommendations were supported by 60 countries and the World Bank-- but the U.S., Australia and Canada have not yet endorsed the report, because it calls for radical changes in farming policy and warns that biofuel production threatens to increase malnutrition worldwide. Guardian, UK.

PLEASE read these articles. We in the U.S. have simply got to understand the forces in play.

Photo: A demonstrator eats grass in front of a U.N. peacekeeping soldier during a protest against the high cost of living in Port-au-Prince. Telegraph, UK

Tiptoeing toward disaster

The City of Springfield is repaving St. James Ave. near the Rt. 291 entrances. I was headed that way yesterday when I saw the signs: Bump and Grooved Surface. I reduced my speed a little but what astounded me was the way the sports utility vehicles around me were practically tiptoeing over the bump! What the hell good is having a "rugged, adventurous, pathfinding, exploring, blah, blah, blah" vehicle when you treat it like a baby carriage carrying a newborn? And as usual, nearly every SUV held one person only-- the driver.

Ethanols and other biofuels are coming under increased criticism for turning farmland into fuel land; biofuels are tagged as one of the more immediate causes of the current world food crisis. But all fuel usage has its cost. I wish there was a way gas pumps could give a precise calculation of these costs, something like: "Using this gallon of gas will remove blank number of grains of rice from a poor family's food bowl, contribute to blank number of new asthma cases, etc."

One thing of which I am pretty convinced is that for every mile you drive in an SUV, you lower your emotional and moral IQ by an unknown but commensurate degree, sorta like, the more TV you watch, the stupider you get. I saw an SUV advertised on TV the other day which has two separate DVD players, so your kids don't have to fight over what to watch. OMG, does anybody remember looking out the window, playing Twenty Questions, License Plate Bingo, or I'm thinking of a color?

I have a TV and I have a car and I use both nearly every day. My knees are too bad to ride a bike and I'd certainly miss discussing the most recent episode of Battlestar Galactica with my sister, but I can't escape the growing unease of operating on borrowed time.

Cartoon: Chris Madden, The Beast That Ate the Earth