- Sustainability - list.sfgreens.org

[Sustain] Fwd: Act now to keep nuke subsidies out of House Climate bill
by Eric Brooks 24 Jun '09

24 Jun '09

*Nuclear Information and Resource Service* <http://org2.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=pCY8XD8ReOfdCPD6P7fZZ…> *ACT NOW: KEEP NUCLEAR SUBSIDIES OUT OF WAXMAN-MARKEY CLIMATE BILL!* June 24, 2009 Dear Friends, The Waxman-Markey climate bill (HR 2454) is now scheduled to reach the House floor for a final vote on Friday, June 26. The House is apparently hoping to finish work on this enormous bill in one day, which means there likely will be few, if any, amendments allowed for consideration. Still, there is some threat that amendments will be considered. And we already have seen one proposed amendment, from Reps. Baron Hill (D-IN) and Fred Upton (R-MI), that would provide still more taxpayer nuclear subsidies--this time including subsidies and tax credits for reactor manufacturing, encouraging a nuclear workforce, and encouraging reactor exports, among other issues. If amendments are allowed, other pro-nuclear amendments are likely. Enough is enough! Help keep nuclear subsidies out of the climate bill! **Please send your Congressmember a letter here. <http://org2.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=8zl6gyAs%2FUYMrx%2F0x…> * * *Please call your member with this message as well: Capitol Switchboard, 202-224-3121.* **Please help us pay the continuing costs of this campaign to prevent taxpayer support for nuclear power--which, with your help, has twice blocked efforts to provide $50 billion in new nuclear loan guarantees. <http://org2.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=SQzFjHTqtyuFLYKJYiyYc…> We can't match the nuclear industry's spending, but your contributions of any size are greatly appreciated and keep this campaign going!* Even if amendments are not allowed, opponents of the climate bill are likely to be given the opportunity to offer a full substitute bill. We have not yet seen such a bill, but this could well include key provisions of the Republicans' energy policy, including support for construction of 100 new reactors. The climate bill itself, which aims to place a price on carbon, is an indirect benefit to nuclear power. As a low-carbon emitter compared to coal, nuclear will benefit economically as the price of using coal rises. And that should be enough support for nuclear--our taxpayer dollars must not be used to support this dirty and dangerous technology. Thus, it is important to contact your House members now and let them know that enough is enough: there must be no more taxpayer support for nuclear power in the climate bill. **Please send your Congressmember a letter here. <http://org2.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=4eJouGMw6DPgdw%2FAMIj…> * * *Please call your member with this message as well: Capitol Switchboard, 202-224-3121.* **Please help us pay the continuing costs of this campaign to prevent taxpayer support for nuclear power--which, with your help, has twice blocked efforts to provide $50 billion in new nuclear loan guarantees. <http://org2.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=TaB59D%2BuhMmDn75mYFw…> We can't match the nuclear industry's spending, but your contributions of any size are greatly appreciated **and keep this campaign going!**.* Note: While we believe the climate bill is very weak and have endorsed efforts to strengthen it <http://org2.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=w%2BxooGStGYrykQ5S1j3…>, we have not taken a position on passage of the bill. We recognize that some environmental groups oppose it because it is so weak, others support it as the best that can be achieved right now. If you want to express your position on the bill itself, please feel free to edit your letter to your House member appropriately. Thanks for all you do, Michael Mariotte Executive Director Nuclear Information and Resource Service nirsnet(a)nirs.org <mailto:nirsnet@nirs.org> www.nirs.org <http://org2.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ogRvtI%2FBtNg4dukGS1J…> ------------------------------------------------------------------------

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[Sustain] 06-17-09 USEPA OCR acceptance of Lynne Brown v. SFRA BVHP shipyard complaint 12R-04-R9
by Michael Boyd 20 Jun '09

20 Jun '09

06-17-09 USEPA OCR acceptance of Lynne Brown v. SFRA BVHP shipyard complaint 12R-04-R9

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[Sustain] FW: (MRGWA) California's Water Woes Threaten the Entire Country's Food Supply
by Martin Zehr 19 Jun '09

19 Jun '09

California suffers from the classic "too many chefs in the kitchen" when it comes to water. There is an agency for everything and no money for anything. There is a state plan with no regional planning processes. There are urban and rural conflicts ad nauseum. But, alas, not one cook who can deliver even the simplest of orders on their own. California suffers from bureaucratic suffocation, financial and economic crises, budgetary collapse, lack of regional water planning and drought and reduction in water supplies. Orange County is going ahead treating wastewater for drinking water and desal is the most pervasive option being presented by public officials to increase supply. The scenario is an invitation to disaster that will impact much of the United States food supply. Mato Ska Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:55:07 -0700 From: ehebard(a)yahoo.com Subject: (MRGWA) California's Water Woes Threaten the Entire Country's Food Supply To: mrgwa(a)waterassembly.org http://www.alternet.org/water/140487/california%27s_water_woes_threaten_the… California's Water Woes Threaten the Entire Country's Food Supply By Scott Thill, AlterNet. Posted June 6, 2009. Nearly a third of the country's food supply comes from California, but drought there may be a catastrophe for farmers -- and the rest of us. What a difference an administration makes. Samuel Bodman, the previous secretary of energy under the Bush administration, spent his short term stumping for nuclear power plant construction, polluting the hell out of the Earth, profiting off global warming and trying to significantly downplay America's singular role in greenhouse-gas emissions. The new one? Well, he's a doom prophet with a Ph.D. "I don't think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen. We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California. I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going," Steven Chu told the Los Angeles Times in February, shortly after taking office in January. "I'm hoping that the American people will wake up," he added, just in case there was any confusion about the gravity of the situation. That kind of apocalyptic foresight has made Chu a breath of fresh, dystopian air. For eight nearly insufferable years, the American public has had no shortage of political tools telling it everything is going to be all right, that the United States is the greatest country in the world, that reports of our impending environmental devastation have been greatly exaggerated, and so on. By contrast, Steven Chu is a Cassandra on a mission from reality. But few, especially in the state he singled out, feel like buying what he is selling. "Dr. Chu is not a climate scientist," argued Jim Metropulos, senior advocate at Sierra Club's California chapter, echoing the same conditional given in the Los Angeles Times article in which Chu was quoted. "Obviously, he's versed on it, but he's taking an apocalyptic view. I think it's not sustainable in its current form. We rely on imported water to grow high-value crops, but maybe the agriculture we have today may not be the agriculture we have decades from now." That's a big maybe. Here are some not-so-fun facts: California's agricultural sector grows approximately one-third of the nation's food supply and is nourished by diverted rivers and streams filled yearly by runoff from its prodigious Sierra Nevada snowpack, as well as groundwater pumping and other less-reliable methods. That snowpack -- which once sparked the first, but not the last, water war that helped transform a semi-arid Los Angeles into an unsustainable oasis less populous than only New York City -- is disappearing fast. Hence Chu's worrisome prediction. To make matters worse, a crushing drought, now well into its third year, has made simply everything problematic. In California's central valley, home to a majority of the state's agricultural output, farmers are leaving hundreds of thousands of acres fallow, and the resultant economic depression is having a domino effect that could cost California $1 billion to start and is causing residents of a one-time food powerhouse to go hungry. In April, a series of spring showers and storms upped the snowpack to 80 percent of normal. At the beginning of May, it stumbled to 66 percent, compared to 72 percent the year before. Complicating that are recent federal directives mandating reductions of water deliveries to California farmers and urban users by 5 to 7 percent in hopes of preserving the Pacific Coast's salmon fishery, which is hovering, like the state's snowpack, on the brink of extinction. "This federal biological opinion puts fish above the needs of millions of Californians," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger self-righteously fumed after the federal directive came down in June. His sound and fury is unjustified, but instructive. "Sooner or later California is going to change how it uses water," explained Environmental Defense Fund officials Cynthia Koehler and Laura Harnish in the Huffington Post. "We can do it before we lose our fish, or after." But these are short-term issues clouding, pardon the pun, an inevitably larger one. According to recent climate science, California is never going to get its regularly scheduled snowpack back. Which means that even well-intentioned conservation outreach programs and bad-faith battles over agricultural irrigation are missing the point. Like other geographies once sustained by an uninterrupted supply of water, California is going dry. And when it dries up, so does its cities, its people and its future. Simply put, global warming, human-induced and otherwise, has significantly broadened the range of the tropical belt by a rate of 70 kilometers per decade. Southern California, like the Sahara Desert and Sahel savanna, is already subtropical in the summer. But with climate crisis expanding its reach, that subtropical heat could claim not just Northern California's snowpack, but even part of Washington's and Utah's bounties. Game over. Right? "We don't share Chu's assessment," asserted John Andrew, executive manager on climate change for the California Department of Water Resources. "The hazard here is that you are trying to predict the future. Even if you are as brilliant as Chu, you're pretty much guaranteed to be wrong." Fair enough, one supposes. But then why does the DWR have its own internally generated climate models forecasting what Andrew claimed as a "25-40 percent reduction of the snowpack by midcentury," which is trying to predict the same future, albeit more optimistically? "We came up with that by looking at climate models that were out there," Andrew explained, "and applying historic hydrologic data in the state. We looked at every snowpack study out there, and they shoot the range of projections. Some are as high as over 90 percent reduction by 2100. But if you look at the linear trend, then you wind up with a smaller reduciton. It's not good science to look at one study; what we really wanted to do was take a responsible look at all the data." But a responsible look at the historical data, which has been mostly linear for a few hundred years, is inherently unreliable, given the exponential nature of global warming. Everything from glacial melt rates to the occurrence of so-called freak firestorms has been thrown into nonlinear chaos in the last few decades. Carbon emissions have exceeded projections of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, while ocean and land sinks, which suck up and store CO2, have decreased in efficiency. A study completed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Columbia University has argued that the southwestern United States could be headed for permanent drought by 2050. Given that the IPCC has been historically conservative, even out-of-date in its nevertheless sobering projections, playing it safe on climatological modeling is beyond conservative. It's reckless. "The modeling we used is uncertain," Andrew admitted, when pressed further on DWR's predictions. "I guess you could call it modeling. Historic data is going to be an inadequate indicator, but we still have to look at it." True that; you have to look at everything. But when it comes time to offer a prediction, it's best to, like Chu, prepare for the worst and hope for the best. In fact, if you shave 10 conservative percentage points off DWR's predictions, you arrive around where Chu explained you would. And that is when things come into finer focus. Instead of fighting over Pacific salmon and Central Valley cows, or junior and senior water rights, you are now fighting for survival. As Chu explained, cities like Los Angeles will not have to think about why it can't hose off its driveways or take long showers; it will have to think about whether it is going to run out of water altogether. "What are you going to say?" Metropolous asked rhetorically. " 'All you people have to move out and go elsewhere?' That's not going to fly. We're trying to promote things that are cost effective and pretty easy, like water conservation. It doesn't mean a radical change to the people's lifestyle, if we manage water better." Well, that depends on the lifestyle. It was barely a decade ago that the governor of water-challenged California was giving a thumbs-up to Hummer in a photo-op. Now he's had an environmental deathbed conversion? Please. The way California is currently wasting water -- on elaborate lawns in Beverly Hills, on cow death-camps in the San Joaquin Valley, on whatever -- it either doesn't know where its water comes from or simply doesn't care. So any significant conservation initiative is going to be a challenge to the status quo, to say nothing of lifestyle. And when the water vapor truly hits the fan in 2100 or 2050, or even sooner, given the cross-your-fingers modeling of not just the DWR but also the IPCC, what alternatives will there be other than to pack up and leave? Metropolous and Andrew and other well-intentioned enviros might balk, but I'll stick with the apocalyptic rants of a truth-telling Ph.D. nominated by Barack Obama to become the nation's chief brainiac on all things energy, thanks.. And you should, too. Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm. His writing has appeared on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others.

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[Sustain] Email to my Supervisor on the Moran appointment
by Martin Zehr 16 Jun '09

16 Jun '09

Supervisor Avalos: I ask that you vote NO on the appointment of Anson Moran to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. I am very concerned that he lacks the committment to sound and sustainable water policies. As the issue of San Francisco's water supply unfolds, we need someone with a demonstrated background in water planning who has demonstrated leadership and provided sound policy that represents urban users and the environment. Just recently SF Weekly had a story in regards to the issue of the supply issue of the Hetch-Hetchy that is on the horizon. http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-05-20/news/take-me-to-the-river/ As someone who worked in the area of water planning in the state of NM for ten years, I know how critical it is to establish a seat that will represent the urban users of San Francisco while establishing new mechanisms to address future water needs of the region. We can no longer presume that we have all the water we will need for the future. Neither should we go out of our way in divvying up the Hetch-Hetchy water without a planning body, a water budget and a Public Welfare Statement that represents all stakeholders. As the SFPUC is the agency responsible for water in our city, I urge you to consider the consequences of approving his appointment and urge you to have the Mayor appoint a more committed and experienced person on the water issue to approve as a Commissioner.

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[Sustain] S.F.'s tasty tap water about to get a little murkier
by Martin Zehr 16 Jun '09

16 Jun '09

S.F.'s tasty tap water about to get a little murkier By Matt Smith Published on May 19, 2009 at 9:41am Subject(s):Matt Smith on S.F.'s water We San Franciscans like to fancy ourselves unique, but most such claims don't hold water. We had 1960s counterculture movements, yes, but the thick of that action was at faraway events such as the Chicago Seven trial and the Stonewall riots. San Francisco is an unusually beautiful city, sure, but no more so than Truckee, Santa Cruz, or New York. One thing we have had that no other similarly sized city did was unusually pure water. Melted snow and glacial streams feed the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, and the water then piped across the Central Valley and into city faucets and showerheads is so clean and delicious that it's also sold in bottles. But that distinction could soon end thanks to a watershed agreement recently approved between San Francisco and the more than two dozen rural and suburban cities, water districts, and utilities that draw water from the Hetch Hetchy system. The new 25-year deal closes an epoch of seemingly limitless, perfectly pure water for San Franciscans. Thanks to regional growth and environmental concerns about the ecology of the Tuolumne River, the agreement will force San Franciscans, who consume mere drops of water per capita compared to people in other cities, to make do with even less. The new era of scarcity also means San Francisco will have to increase the amount of water the city obtains from local wells, which can contain trace contaminants such as manganese and iron, albeit at levels so low they don't threaten health. "San Franciscans think we're members of the Sierra Club, and take this great water, flush it once, and send it out into the bay," says Ed Harrington, general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. "Most people in the world don't get to do that. Now, we're talking about, one, reuse of water. And, two, bringing some of that water out of the ground." Some local residents fear Harrington's negotiating team has sold the city down the river by guaranteeing an average of 92 gallons per day to individual water users outside the city, while setting a goal of merely 54 gallons per day for San Franciscans (down from the current 57 gallons). "We're not going to have enough water," says Joan Girardot, former president of the Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods, who heads the group's water task force. "This is going to be a huge issue a few years down the road." Harrington denies San Francisco has negotiated itself into water shortages. And other experts I spoke to say the complex agreements by which San Francisco obtains water leave plenty of wiggle room to obtain more if need be. Nonetheless, the massive new water agreement is significant because it may mark the first time in recent history that famously green-minded San Francisco has to actually concern itself directly with limits imposed by Mother Earth. Unlike other cities, San Franciscans haven't worried about smog because ocean breezes blow our air pollution to the Central Valley. And while cities such as Modesto hire water cops to cite profligate lawn irrigators, San Francisco has used some of the purest water in the world to irrigate golf courses, while residents rarely give water use a second thought. There's nothing like personal pain to spur action. In that spirit, perhaps a new age of limits, prescribed by the city's new water agreement, could be a good thing. Most San Franciscans know the rough history of this city's unusually luxurious water system, whereby city fathers, while rebuilding after the 1906 earthquake and fire, secured a reliable source of water by obtaining rights to dam the Tuolumne River at Hetch Hetchy Valley. After battling environmentalists and farmers for a few years, and then performing magical feats of engineering for a few more, in 1923 the city finished the O'Shaughnessy Dam, so that water could descend 160 miles to San Francisco. But while the dam is anchored in the granite walls of the Hetch Hetchy Valley, the scheme under which the city has shared the water with towns such as Hayward, Brisbane, and Los Altos Hills has always been on soft legal ground. The 1913 act of Congress giving San Francisco the right to dam the Tuolumne River named the city the primary beneficiary of the project; but it also allowed city officials to identify "other municipalities or water district(s)" to include in the system. Given that the reservoir contained vastly more water than San Francisco needed at the time, the city has, from early on, sold water to other districts. In the 1970s, when San Francisco sought to raise rates on upstream users while keeping water rates low in the city, the suburban users sued. To settle the lawsuit, the suburban customers and San Francisco struck a 25-year agreement in 1984 — set to expire in June — guaranteeing a maximum 184 million gallons per day, at cost, to the suburban customers, compared to 81 million gallons per day for San Francisco. The perpetual guarantee to the suburbs read as a one-sentence afterthought in the 65-page settlement agreement that focused largely on cost allocation. That's because the South and East Bay populations were smaller in those days, and didn't use nearly as much water as they do now. What's more, the tunnels and reservoirs in the Hetch Hetchy system were built to handle as much as 300 million gallons per day, leaving plenty of water for San Francisco even if the city were to grow larger. But the suburbs have grown at a faster clip than the city. And concerns about precarious fish species preclude sucking that much water out of the Tuolumne. Indeed, fears about possible environmental lawsuits last fall drove the city to cut a deal with environmental groups. Under the agreement, San Francisco would limit the total draw on the system to an average of 265 million gallons per day, and pay a steep fine for excess usage. Subject(s):Matt Smith on S.F.'s water Environmental documents completed last fall specify that San Francisco's customers would draw no more than the maximum 81 million gallons per day provided in the 1984 agreement, with everybody's quota cut in the event of a drought. Suburban customers such as Hayward had hoped to increase their draw on the Tuolumne. Instead, Hayward and others will also be compelled to curb their usage under the new deal. To make do under the new regime, they'll have to double their levels of conservation, says Art Jensen, general manager of the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency, the suburban users' bargaining group. "San Francisco imposed a limitation on us that we didn't ask for," he says. San Franciscans will likewise be asked to conserve. A 2004 PUC study predicted that by 2010, demand for water in San Francisco will be at 92.4 million gallons per day. In order for the San Francisco system to get by on a mere 81 million gallons per day, more well water will be drawn from an aquifer now used by Daly City and other communities just south of the city. Golden Gate Park, meanwhile, will be irrigated with recycled, purified sewage to be treated in a plant built in the park. For City Hall watchers such as Girardot and economist Brian Browne, who's been a member of the PUC's Revenue Bond Oversight Committee, the new usage restrictions put San Francisco in a precarious position, given that the city's population is expected to grow. "I believe in 10 years we'll be in a position to have to go out and buy water," Girardot says. Harrington, for his part, doesn't rule out this possibility. Current water plans, he says, assume the city will grow by 72,000 residential units by the year 2030. He says the most important part of the agreement wasn't limiting San Francisco water — it was in getting the suburbs to help pay upfront for infrastructure costs, thus giving San Francisco ratepayers a break. Water supplies, he says, are fluid no matter what the agreement says. Harrington suggests that if the need for more water became urgent, San Francisco could buy water from the Turlock and Modesto irrigation districts, which also draw water from the Tuolumne. Harrington leaves open the possibility of renegotiating last year's environmental deal when it expires in 2018. And he doesn't rule out someday revisiting the legally squishy 184 million gallons per day water guarantee to the suburbs. A water negotiator for a growing metropolis such as San Francisco is like the water in a stream, relentlessly seeking the path of least resistance. Whatever San Francisco's path may be, living here will mean contending with limits set by Mother Nature — just like everybody else. http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-05-20/news/take-me-to-the-river/1

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[Sustain] Sustain/Transpo Meeting?
by Eric Brooks 14 Jun '09

14 Jun '09

Hi all, I have been way too overwhelmed with campaign emergencies in the last few days to even think about lining up a meeting for Sustain/Transpo tomorrow. If folks want to meet, someone else should take the ball on this. peace Eric B -- "I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves." – Che Guevara

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[Sustain] Berkeley Says Bye To Biodiesel
by Eric Brooks 11 Jun '09

11 Jun '09

http://www.contracostatimes.com/berkeleyvoice/ci_12536568?nclick_check=1 Berkeley says bye to biodiesel By Doug Oakley Berkeley Voice Posted: 06/06/2009 04:24:15 PM PDT Berkeley has ended its six-year attempt to save the world by burning biodiesel in its trucks and machinery amid concerns it actually increases greenhouse gases worldwide and exacerbates hunger. The city stopped receiving shipments of biodiesel derived from soy bean crops last month. The City Council will consider formalizing its policy on the matter in September. "Four years ago we looked at this and thought it was a really good idea to do biofuels when there were no crop-based biofuels, but the situation has changed beneath us," said Robert Clear a member of the city's Community Environmental Advisory Commission which recommended the city change its policy on biofuels. In 2003, the city started using 100 percent biodiesel in its more than 100 cars and trucks that run on diesel fuel. But that biodiesel was derived from recycled frying grease. Over the years, the supply changed to a crop-based biofuel. New thinking on that product and its implications for global warming have changed for the worse. Although biodiesel pollutes less than regular diesel when it comes out of a tail pipe, the farming involved to produce crop-based biofuels actually increases pollution worldwide, city officials say. Clear said American farmers who are now converting their crops to grow soy beans to meet the biodiesel demand are decreasing the amount of land used to grow food for people and cattle. That in turn has caused an increase in demand for land to grow food in South America and South East Asia where farmers are burning down virgin forests. The burning of the forests releases carbon into the atmosphere and there is a decrease in the amount of carbon the plants suck out of the atmosphere: two big negatives for global warming. Add that to the fact that American farmers are growing less food because they are using their land for biodiesel production and you have a crimp on worldwide food supplies that contributes to global hunger problems. Both of those issues are something Berkeley policy makers don't want on their save-the-world agenda even though local pollution is reduced when their trucks are burning biodiesel. "It no longer looks like a thing to encourage," Clear said. "It's really too bad, because we'd love to see some magic bullets." One option is going back to using biodiesel from recycled fryer grease, but there just isn't enough of it to go around and it's hard on the engines, said Deputy Public Works Director Andrew Clough. In 2005 the city had two diesel truck engines explode when the city got a bad batch of biodiesel made from recycled fryer grease. "Right now it doesn't sound like there is a good option," Clough said. "What seemed like a really good idea maybe isn't such a good idea as we thought because of all the considerations." Reach Doug Oakley at doakley(a)bayareanewsgroup.com <mailto:doakley@bayareanewsgroup.com> ### -- "I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves." -- Che Guevara

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[Sustain] Action Alert: Leno's Lennar Toxic Trade - (we should never have endorsed him)
by Eric Brooks 08 Jun '09

08 Jun '09

Hi all, This toxic trade bill is now in the California Assembly, so calls opposing SB 792 should be made immediately to *Fiona Ma: *916-319-2012 and *Tom Ammiano:* 916-319-2013 http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/unfair-trade-sen-leno-wants-to-give-lennar-ou… *May 30, 2009* Unfair trade! Sen. Leno aims to give our clean parkland to Lennar, toxic land to the people <http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/unfair-trade-sen-leno-wants-to-give-lennar-ou…> /*by Alicia Schwartz */ By traveling to Sacramento with Caravan for Justice III on May 26, these precious children are learning to stand up for their community. Will you stand up for them and express your outrage about Sen. Leno's land grab? -- Photo: Francisco Da Costa By traveling to Sacramento with Caravan for Justice III on May 26, these precious children are learning to stand up for their community. Will you stand up for them and express your outrage about Sen. Leno's land grab? -- Photo: Francisco Da Costa Sen. Mark Leno's Senate Bill 792 would allow for the transfer of clean parkland at Candlestick Point to the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency for private development by Lennar and replace it with toxic land that is not an even exchange. Lennar, a developer that has endangered the community by exposing it to toxic dust from the Hunters Point Shipyard, is planning to build 10,000 luxury condominiums on the site as part of a brand new neighborhood they plan to build inside the boundaries of Bayview Hunters Point. Not only is this a prime example of environmental racism, it is also a marker of what is to come in our community if we don't make our voices heard right away. SB 792 will be voted on by the full state Senate very soon. Read the bill here <http://www.totalcapitol.com/?keywords=SB792>. POWER is gathering 500 letters for Sen. Mark Leno from San Franciscans and community based organizations everywhere who are concerned about the future of the Bayview Hunters Point community specifically and African American communities and working class communities of color broadly. If you want to sign the letter, contact POWER at (415) 864-8372 or alicia(a)peopleorganized.org <mailto:alicia@peopleorganized.org>. Or contact Sen. Mark Leno directly at (916) 651-4003, senator.leno(a)senate.ca.gov <mailto:senator.leno@senate.ca.gov> or State Capitol, Room 4061, Sacramento, CA 95814. Dear Sen. Leno, I am writing to register my opposition to Senate Bill 792 Tidelands and submerged lands: City and County of San Francisco: Candlestick Point and Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. *I am in opposition to SB 792 because this bill offers an unfair exchange of land for the residents and families of Bayview Hunters Point.* The bill authorizes an exchange of parkland that currently benefits the neighborhood for land that is not equal to the original parcel and land that is currently contaminated by toxins. *As you are aware, African American communities are disproportionately adversely impacted by environmental racism, and there is a long history of environmental hazards that have affected the health of families in the Bayview neighborhood.* Eighty percent of San Francisco's sewage comes into Bayview through the sewage treatment plant; the neighborhood is bordered by major freeway thoroughfares that daily expose residents to diesel and car emissions; Hunters Point Naval Shipyard hazards have plagued the community since it closed in the early 1970s; 50 percent of neighborhood residents are estimated to have cancer or respiratory illnesses as a result of radioactive elements and other toxic inorganics being left behind by the U.S. Navy and other polluting industries. Exchanging a clean piece of parkland, whose occurrence is rare in the community, for a polluted area would result in the state of California engaging in environmental racism. Giving clean land to a multibillion-dollar developer while providing dirty land in exchange to a working class African American community is environmental racism. The priority of the state of California should be to clean the Hunters Point Shipyard to residential standards, in accordance with Proposition P, passed by 87 percent of San Francisco voters, thereby ending the practice of environmental racism in one of the last remaining African American communities in San Francisco. Giving clean land to a multibillion-dollar developer while providing dirty land in exchange to a working class African American community is environmental racism. *I urge your office to oppose SB 792 as an unfair and unequal exchange of land that will adversely impact the residents of Bayview Hunters Point and the City of San Francisco as a whole.* /Alicia Schwartz, co-director of People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), can be reached at (415) 864-8372, ext. 305, or alicia(a)peopleorganized.org <mailto:alicia@peopleorganized.org>/ -- "I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves." -- Che Guevara

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[Sustain] Earth 2100,
by Don Eichelberger 03 Jun '09

03 Jun '09

I just finished watching the ABC News Special, Earth 2100, and while the advertisements of it appeared rather sensationalistic and "over dramatic", I found it to be a mostly thoughtful presentation of future "as it could be if we don't...". But I was concerned about a main underlying premise that might slip by someone who was not hard wired to watch out for subtle propaganda supporting nuclear power. Seems in this dramatization, the future hinged largely around the 2015 Climate Summit. And that summit was undone when the US refused to give China and India nuclear power technology. It was a fleeting connection, but clearly there. I do not believe nuclear power will get us out of the threat of global warming without presenting several larger frying pans: costs, security, safety, waste issues and weapons proliferation. I do not believe this was inadvertent on the part of ABC News, but a carefully planted (verging on subliminal?) seed that could have repercussions for the upcoming Copenhagen Climate Summit. I keep thinking with the current economic meltdown and climate crisis, anyone getting the billions of dollars and 10-15 years it takes to build a nuclear power reactor is unlikely. Yet there are also persistent efforts on the part of the nuclear industry to get in on all the money going to "clean energy technologies", which could get funding from carbon credits. I'd like to stop worrying, but can't while "all energy options remain on the table" for this administration. Nuclear power enthusiasts are nothing if not persistent and wily. I will remain alert. Don

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[Sustain] Los Angeles Times Obama walks a fine line over mining Environmentalists feel betrayed by the EPA's decision not to block new mountaintop mining projects.
by Michael Boyd 31 May '09

31 May '09

Los Angeles Times Obama walks a fine line over mining Environmentalists feel betrayed by the EPA's decision not to block new mountaintop mining projects...Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-mountaintop-mining31-2… Reporting from Washington — With the election of President Obama, environmentalists had expected to see the end of the "Appalachian apocalypse," their name for exposing coal deposits by blowing the tops off whole mountains. But in recent weeks, the administration has quietly made a decision to open the way for at least two dozen more mountaintop removals. In a letter this month to a coal ally, Rep. Nick J. Rahall II (D-W.Va.), the Environmental Protection Agency said it would not block dozens of "surface mining" projects. The list included some controversial mountaintop mines. The industry says the practice of using explosives to blast away a peak is safer and more efficient than traditional shaft mining. But critics say the process scars the landscape and dumps tons of waste -- some of it toxic -- into streams and valleys. The administration's decision is not the final word on the projects or the future of mountaintop removal. But the letter, coupled with the light it sheds on relations between the mining industry and the Obama White House, has disappointed environmentalists. Some say they feel betrayed by a president they thought would end or sharply limit the practice. The issue is politically sensitive because environmentalists were an active force behind Obama's election, and the president's standing is tenuous among Democratic voters in coal states. West Virginia, for example, voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election largely because Democrat Al Gore was critical of the coal industry. Moreover, Obama needs support from local lawmakers for an energy agenda that would further regulate home-state industries, but halting mountaintop mining could eliminate jobs and put upward pressure on energy prices in a time of economic hardship. Coal advocates have solicited help from officials as high up as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. And the issue has sparked contentious debates within the administration, including one shouting match in which top officials from two government agencies were heard pounding their fists on the table, according to sources briefed on the meeting who requested anonymity when discussing White House dealings. The White House is "searching for a way to walk this tightrope," said Phil Smith, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America. "They have a large constituency of people who want to see an immediate end to mountaintop removal, and an equally large constituency . . . whose communities depend on those jobs." Shortly after his inauguration, Obama won praise from the green lobby for taking a skeptical view of the mining process. And in March the EPA announced it would review the mountaintop projects, breaking from the Bush administration's practice of granting permits with little or no scrutiny. The EPA has the authority to block mountaintop removal under the Clean Water Act. But if the agency raises no objections, the final decision on projects is made by the Army Corps of Engineers, which historically has approved mountaintop mining. The corps previously had indicated its intention to approve 48 pending permits. Although environmentalists had expected the new administration to put the brakes on mountaintop removal, Rahall and other mining advocates have pointed out that Obama did not promise to end the practice and was more open to it than his Republican opponent, Arizona Sen. John McCain. A review of Obama's campaign statements show that he had expressed concern about the practice without promising to end it. On a West Virginia visit, when asked about the impact of the mining on the state's streams, he said he wanted "strong enforcement of the Clean Water Act," adding: "I will make sure the head of the Environmental Protection Agency believes in the environment." And his EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, has said that the agency had "considerable concern regarding the environmental impact these projects would have on fragile habitats and streams." She pledged that the agency would "use the best science and follow the letter of the law in ensuring we are protecting our environment." Soon afterward, the agency in effect blocked six major pending mountaintop removal projects in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio. But this month, after a series of White House meetings with coal companies and advocates including Rahall and Democratic West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin III, the EPA released the little-noticed letter giving the green light to at least two dozen projects. "It was a big disappointment," said Joan Mulhern, a lawyer for Earthjustice, an environmental law firm that has led court challenges to mountaintop removal. "It's disturbing and surprising that this administration, headed by a president who has expressed concern about mountaintop removal, would let such a large number of permits go forward without explanation." Mulhern charged that the EPA "blew off" Jackson's earlier promises that the agency would adhere to science and would conduct an open process. Ed Hopkins, a top Sierra Club official, said some of the projects that have now obtained the EPA's blessing "are as large and potentially destructive as the ones they objected to." "It makes us wonder what standards -- if any -- the administration is using," Hopkins said. EPA and White House officials say that about 200 proposed mining projects are under review and that the administration already had taken steps to break from Bush-era policies. "We want to make informed decisions guided by science and the law, and a change in such a practice is not something that happens overnight," said Christine Glunz, a spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. But after the EPA's initial announcement in March that it would conduct aggressive reviews, Manchin and Rahall took the coal industry's concerns to White House officials, including Emanuel and Nancy Sutley, who heads the Council on Environmental Quality. Manchin said he told the White House that "we are looking for a balance between the environment and the economy, and they assured me that they will work with us to find that balance." Environmentalists were stunned to learn from Rahall's office May 15 that the EPA had given its blessing to 42 out of the 48 mine projects it had reviewed so far -- including two dozen mountaintop removals. The news came in a letter to Rahall from Michael Shapiro, the EPA's acting assistant administrator, who wrote, "I understand the importance of coal mining in Appalachia for jobs, the economy, and meeting the nation's energy needs.

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