• NAFTA Panel Rejects Canadian Case Against California's MTBE Ban
  
• Unregulated Drinking Water Contaminants to Be Assessed
  
• Bird Flu Vaccine for Humans Shows Potential
  
• Arctic Drilling Splits Republican Congressional Representatives
  
• Pennsylvania Trout Benefit from $1 Million Mine Reclamation
  
• New York Petitions EPA to Set Outdoor Wood Boiler Standards
  
• Cleveland Hosts Burning River Fest Commemorating River Fire
  

NAFTA Panel Rejects Canadian Case Against California's MTBE Ban

Unregulated Drinking Water Contaminants to Be Assessed

Costs for the five-year program will total approximately $42.1 million. The EPA will conduct and pay for the monitoring for those water systems serving 10,000 people or fewer at a cost of $8.05 million.

The data collected will help the EPA determine whether to regulate the contaminants, their occurrence in drinking water, the potential population exposed to each, and the levels of exposure.

The rule encompasses some contaminants that are not regulated under existing law. EPA currently has regulations for more than 90 contaminants. The Safe Drinking Water Act requires EPA to identify up to 30 contaminants for monitoring every five years.

The first cycle, UCMR 1, published in 1999, covered 25 chemicals and one microorganism.

This second cycle of the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR 2) proposes the use of nine analytical methods to detect the contaminants.

EPA needs to collect more data on the 15 contaminants selected for screening surveys because analytical methods have been only recently developed.

All public water systems serving more than 10,000 people and a sample of 800 systems serving 10,000 people or fewer will monitor those contaminants on the assessment list for 12 months during July 2007 through June 2010.

Additionally, 322 systems serving more than 100,000 people and 800 serving 100,000 or fewer will conduct the screening surveys during a 12-month period from July 2007 through June 2009.

The substances were chosen through a process that included a review of:

An existing list of "reserved" contaminants for which no analytical methods were yet available.

EPA's Contaminant Candidate List, which contains priority contaminants that are researched to make decisions about whether regulations are needed. The contaminants on the list are known or anticipated to occur in public water systems. However, they are currently unregulated by existing national drinking water regulations.

Additional contaminants of concern based on current research of occurrence and various health-risk factors.

The contaminants are divided into two lists: assessment monitoring and screening surveys.

EPA has information from some public water systems on 11 contaminants chosen for assessment monitoring but lacks a national estimate of how widely they occur.

For general information on UCMR 2, visit the EPA Safewater website at: http://www.epa.gov/safewater/ucmr/ucmr2 or call the Safe Drinking Water Hotline at 800-426-4791 during business hours Eastern Time.

Bird Flu Vaccine for Humans Shows Potential

Arctic Drilling Splits Republican Congressional Representatives

The contentious issue of drilling in the refuge has not been voted on as a separate measure, but is contained in budget language due to come before Congress in September.

That is not the right forum to decide this issue, the GOP lawmakers wrote in an August 4 letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican. The letter also went to Budget Committee Chairman James Nussle of Iowa, and Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo of California, a proponent of drilling in the refuge.

"We believe the debate on opening this unique land to oil and gas exploration should be done outside the budget process," said the group led by Congressman Jeb Bradley, of New Hampshire.

REP America, the national grassroots organization of Republicans for environmental protection, joins these Republican lawmakers in calling on Congress to keep out of 2006 budget reconciliation legislation provisions that would authorize drilling in the Arctic Refuge under the guise of meeting revenue targets.

“Congressman Jeb Bradley and the 23 other Republicans who signed the letter did the right thing," said David Jenkins, REP America government affairs director. "A sleight-of-hand budget maneuver is not an appropriate way to settle a question with far-reaching implications for our nation’s energy policy, our increasingly dangerous oil dependence, and the future of protected lands and waters that we hold in trust for future generations.”

“Opening the Arctic Refuge to drilling is not good energy policy," said Jim DiPeso, REP America policy director. "It would undermine the political will needed for positive change by raising false hopes that America can ‘solve’ its energy problems by chasing the last barrels of oil beneath our wildlife refuges, wildlands, and off our coasts.”

“We can’t. The drilling proponents’ claims don’t add up to greater energy security. America has only 2 percent of the world’s conventional oil reserves, but we use 25 percent of world production. As long as we depend on oil to meet 40 percent of our total energy needs, our security and economy will be at the mercy of events that we cannot control,” said DiPeso said.

“We must have a strategic energy policy that reduces oil dependence, boosts energy efficiency, and diversifies our energy choices with cleaner technologies,” DiPeso said.

Jenkins explained, “If the request of these Republican leaders is ignored, the budget reconciliation vote in September will be the climactic vote on the fate of the Arctic Refuge.”

Most Democrats oppose drilling in the pristine refuge on Alaska's North Slope.

Pennsylvania Trout Benefit from $1 Million Mine Reclamation

As part of the project, the groups coordinated construction of four passive mine drainage treatment systems that reduce the flow and severity of mine discharges into the Kettle Creek watershed in Sproul State Forest, Clinton County.

The mine reclamation project involved site grading, the addition of soil amendments and establishing vegetation on a 57 acre abandoned strip mine that contributed mine drainage to Twomile Run, which enters Kettle Creek four miles upstream from the West Branch of the Susquehanna River.

Twomile Run supports a Class A population of native brook trout upstream of the point where acid mine drainage enters the stream and destroys all aquatic life.

The four passive treatment systems were constructed in Robbins Hollow, a tributary of Twomile Run. The passive systems utilize treatment methods such as ponds that contain just limestone, or a bottom layer of limestone with mushroom compost on top, to generate alkalinity and help to precipitate toxic metals such as aluminum and iron.

The combination of treatment methods will treat one-third of the mine drainage that impacts Robbins Hollow.

A second phase of the project is underway to construct two more passive treatment systems to completely restore the headwaters of Robbins Hollow, and improve the overall water quality of Twomile Run and Kettle Creek.

The project was funded in part by a $576,712 Growing Greener Grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection in 2001. The U.S. Office of Surface Mining Appalachian Clean Streams Initiative, the Richard King Mellon Foundation, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation provided additional funding.

The main stem of Kettle Creek runs for nearly 43 miles and drains 244 square miles of remote mountain land in Northcentral Pennsylvania. It is home to over five percent of Pennsylvania’s Class A wild trout streams, but the creek’s final 15 miles are virtually sterile due to acid mine drainage from abandoned surface and underground coal mines.

Restoring the Kettle Creek and the 4.4 million acre West Branch Susquehanna watershed is a cornerstone of Governor Ed Rendell’s PA Wilds initiative to reclaim and protect this natural resource. For more information on PA Wilds, visit: http://www.visitpa.com/visitpa/wilds.do.

New York Petitions EPA to Set Outdoor Wood Boiler Standards

ALBANY, New York, August 12, 2005 (ENS) - New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer released a report Thursday documenting air pollution and health problems associated with outdoor wood boilers in New York State. He used the report to ask the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate the pollution these boilers produce.

The states of Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey and Vermont and the Northeast States For Coordinated Air Use Management, an interstate association of air quality control divisions in the northeast states, joined New York in the petition to the EPA.

Outdoor wood boilers came on the market several years ago as replacements for home oil and gas furnaces and wood stoves. They are not currently required to meet any national air pollution standards.

Spitzer also wrote to four of the largest outdoor wood boiler manufacturers, inquiring about representations they make in their advertising. Some manufacturers advertise that the devices can burn "just about anything," the attorney general complains.

"My office regularly receives calls from people living near outdoor wood boilers, complaining of severe air pollution and health problems," said Attorney General Spitzer. "After examining the complaints, we found that there are no standards for these devices. The last thing we need is more local air pollution. Just as wood stoves must meet air pollution emission standards, so should these outdoor wood boilers."

Homeowners, especially in rural communities, are increasingly turning to wood burning units installed outside the home in the hope that these devices will be more economical than oil or gas furnaces.

But outdoor wood boilers can pollute the air more than either an indoor wood stove or an oil or gas furnace. Recent research shows that under certain conditions outdoor wood boilers may be among the dirtiest and least economical methods of heating.

Since the boiler's chimney is often lower than a typical house chimney, the boiler's smoke more directly reaches neighbors.

The boilers function most efficiently and cleanly when they burn clean, dry wood; however, when wood treated with chemicals, or garbage and scrap are used as fuels, more smoke is produced and additional toxic chemicals are released into the air.

The EPA has established pollution limits on wood stoves, resulting in reductions in air pollution from stoves manufactured since 1992. Recent tests show that outdoor boilers may release as much as 12 times the fine particle pollution released by EPA certified wood stoves, 1,000 times more than oil furnaces and 1,800 times more than gas furnaces.

Since 1999, some 77,500 outdoor wood boilers have been sold nationwide, with 7,500 of those sales in New York, according to the report written by Judith Schreiber, Ph.D., chief scientist, New York Attorney General's Environmental Protection Bureau.

The pollutants emitted by outdoor boilers can cause or contribute to health problems such as asthma, heart and lung disease, cancer, eye, nose, throat and lung irritation, coughing and shortness of breath, health officials agree.

Peter Iwanowicz, vice president of the American Lung Association of New York State said, "With 90 percent of New Yorkers already living in areas where air quality fails to meet federal health standards, we cannot afford to let these sources of pollution go unchecked."

"Airborne fine particles make people sick and cut short lives," Iwanowicz said. "Since outdoor wood boilers belch out excessive amounts of fine particles compared to other residential heating systems, federal policy makers need to step up and set stringent emissions limits to protect public health.

John Spengler, Ph.D., professor of environmental health at the Harvard University School of Public Health said: "I am pleased that the New York Attorney General is addressing the public health problem of outdoor wood boilers. Particulate pollution and irritating gasses from poorly controlled wood burning sources has produced health problems that must be addressed."

The report and petition are available at: www.oag.state.ny.us.

Cleveland Hosts Burning River Fest Commemorating River Fire

CLEVELAND, Ohio, August 12, 2005 (ENS) - On Saturday, environmentally friendly Cleveland residents will gather at Voinovich Park - just behind the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Great Lakes Science Center - for the annual Burning River Fest.

The Burning River Fest highlights the Cuyahoga River, neighboring waterways and environmental issues.

Fires plagued Cleveland's oily, contaminated Cuyahoga River beginning in 1936 when a spark from a blow torch ignited floating debris and oils. Fires erupted on the river several more times before June 22, 1969, when a river fire captured national attention. Flames climbed as high as five stories until fireboats brought it under control. The fire was attributed to wastes dumped into the river by the waterfront industries.

This event helped spur an avalanche of pollution control activities resulting in the Clean Water Act, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, and the creation of the federal and state Environmental Protection Agencies.

The event was created to highlight vital natural resources, raise awareness of environmental issues affecting our region and promote cleaner waterways, while educating the community through programs, music and art on how to sustain a cleaner and healthier community and quality of life. Many of the area’s environmentally focused nonprofit organizations will be showcased.

Proceeds from Burning River Fest will be used to support local environmentally focused non-profits that educate and promote a cleaner and healthier region.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Great Lakes Research Vessel Lake Guardian will be open for tours at the end of 9th St. in North Coast Harbor. Tours will be conducted every 30 minutes from noon to 5:30 pm.

The RV Lake Guardian is a floating science lab operated by EPA's Great Lakes National Program Office used by scientists from EPA, universities and other government agencies to conduct monitoring and research in the Great Lakes.

EPA scientists twice annually assess the biology and chemistry of all the Great Lakes to help determine their health. In addition, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency used the ship this summer to study the dead zone in Lake Erie and the potential causes of hazardous algal blooms.

The ship is 180 feet long and has biology, chemistry and multipurpose labs on board. The ship is equipped with state-of-the-art water, sediment and air sampling equipment.