• States Ask EPA to Disclose Inert Pesticide Ingredients
  
• Part of Rocky Mountain Arsenal Comes Off Superfund List
  
• Nisqually Tribe Receives Funds to Mitigate Gas Pipeline
  
• Releasing Sulfur to the Atmosphere Could Counter Global Warming
  
• Marine Microbial Research Center Opens in Hawaii
  
• San Ramon Golf Courses Could Become Scap Yards
  
• Sub Pop Records' Power 100 Percent Renewable
  

States Ask EPA to Disclose Inert Pesticide Ingredients

WASHINGTON, DC, August 2, 2006 (ENS) - Fourteen states and the U.S. Virgin Islands Tuesday petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to require pesticide manufacturers to disclose on the label of their products all hazardous ingredients. The petition says more disclosure will lead to greater consumer awareness of the potential health and environmental impacts of using pesticides.

The EPA now requires that pesticide labels disclose only the product's "active" ingredients; that is, those toxic materials that are intended to kill insects, weeds or other target organisms. However, pesticide products also contain many other "inert" ingredients.

Although intended to preserve or improve the effectiveness of the active ingredients in particular pesticides, these inert ingredients often are toxic themselves.

Although almost 400 chemicals used for this purpose have been found by the EPA or other federal agencies to be hazardous to human health and the environment, the EPA does not require them to be identified on pesticide labels.

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said, "Consumers have a right to know about toxic ingredients in consumer products, whether or not those ingredients are ‘active' or ‘inert.' There is no logical reason for EPA to mandate disclosure of those ingredients that harm pests but exempt from disclosure other ingredients that cause serious health and environmental problems."

Current EPA regulations allows the identity of almost all "inert" ingredients to be omitted from the label based only on their function in the product, not on their health or environmental effects. States are preempted by federal law from requiring additional labeling for pesticides.

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said, "We all have a right to know about hazardous chemicals contained in pesticide products we use, and the EPA has a duty to protect our health and the environment by requiring manufacturers to list these ingredients on product labels. EPA alone can and must take this long overdue step to protect the public, because States do not have this regulatory authority."

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said, "The EPA is inexplicably misleading the public - allowing hazardous substances in pesticides to be identified simply as ‘inert.' The EPA's failure to demand disclosure of these harmful substances is unconscionable.

"Our demand that EPA immediately require that these chemicals are identified on pesticide labels is supported by science and common sense, as well as law," Blumenthal said.

For its part, the EPA said that Americans can be confident that pesticides used in the United States meet the highest health and safety standards in the world.

By Thursday, the agency says it will have completed a a 10 year review of 231 food use pesticides that has resulted in changes to how these chemicals are regulated.

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said, "This 10-year review enables farmers to grow a bountiful, healthy food supply for generations of American families."

The EPA points to its proposed cancellation of the six remaining seed treatment uses of the pesticide lindane as part of the 10 year accomplishment.

Because EPA made the determination that the remaining uses of lindane are not eligible for re-registration, the manufacturers responsibly chose to seek voluntary cancellation, the agency said..

The chemical aldicarb remains to be completed this fall. When aldicarb is complete, EPA will be able to conclude the cumulative assessments for carbamates - aldicarb, formetanate, carbofuran, oxamyl and carbaryl - and complete the reassessment of the remaining tolerances.

To ensure that pesticides are continuously reviewed against the latest health and safety standards, EPA's final rule will include a registration review program for reviewing pesticides on a continuous 15-year cycle. This program will ensure that all pesticide registrations are systematically reviewed every 15 years.

Under the Food Quality Protection Act, the EPA review will cover 1,100 of 1,105 pesticides used in the United States.

Part of Rocky Mountain Arsenal Comes Off Superfund List

This action will enable the U.S. Army to transfer the property, known as the Internal Parcel, to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, more than doubling its size to 19 square miles.

"Through the hard work of many, the Internal Parcel is ready to become a public asset instead of a polluted liability," said Robert Roberts, EPA's regional administrator. "This deletion makes this land available for future beneficial uses, including open space and wildlife habitat."

Cleanup actions included the excavation and disposal of hazardous soil and materials, including munitions debris and red ash from mustard gas demilitarization.

Cleanup activities also involved the removal or destruction of 196 structures and the closure of 27 groundwater wells that posed a risk for cross-contamination between aquifers.

Some areas within the Internal Parcel boundaries are excluded from today's deletion. Final cleanup of these areas - former processing areas, waste disposal sites, munitions demolition areas, selected structures, haul roads, and drainage areas - is not complete.

In addition, groundwater west of E Street and in a small area east of E Street will remain on the Superfund List and will continue to be addressed by existing water treatment systems.

The deletion of the Internal Parcel from the NPL is the fourth and largest partial deletion at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal to date. In January 2003, EPA and the State of Colorado determined that the Western Tier Parcel, a 940 acre area now being redeveloped by Commerce City into Prairie Gateway, met cleanup requirements.

In January 2004, two additional areas totaling more than 5,000 acres known as the Select Perimeter Area and Surface Deletion Area met cleanup requirements and were deleted from the Superfund List.

To date, nearly 80 percent of the original Rocky Mountain Arsenal site has been deleted from EPA's list of most heavily polluted areas. Cleanup of the remaining property will be completed by 2011.

Located eight miles northeast of downtown Denver in Adams County, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal was established in 1942 by the U.S. Army to manufacture chemicals for industrial, agricultural and military uses. Shell Oil Company manufactured pesticides at the site from 1952 to 1982.

Industrial and waste disposal practices resulted in contamination of structures, soil, surface water and groundwater, and the EPA listed the Rocky Mountain Arsenal on the Superfund List in 1987.

Nisqually Tribe Receives Funds to Mitigate Gas Pipeline

The fund is an form of environmental mitigation used to minimize potential harm to aquatic resources when projects disturb the environment.

In this case, the mitigation agreement is tied to a new natural gas pipeline crossing through Pierce and Thurston counties, including a crossing of the Nisqually River to be built upstream from the town of McKenna.

Under state and federal law, mitigation is required when a construction project cannot avoid disturbing a wetland or other critical habitat area. This mitigation also compensates the tribe for potential losses from usual and accustomed tribal practices in and along the river.

"This agreement helps us fulfill one of our major goals, which is to protect fish and wildlife habitat," said Nisqually Tribe Chairwoman Cynthia Iyall. "Over 1,100 acres of habitat have already been put into permanent protection throughout the watershed, and the fund established through the agreement will help us build on those efforts. The Nisqually Tribe has always taken a leadership role in protecting natural resources."

The pact was signed Monday by Northwest Pipeline Corp., the Nisqually Indian Tribe and the state departments of Ecology and Fish and Wildlife.

Northwest plans to construct a trench across the river to install a new 36 inch pipe to replace an older 26 inch pipe as part of its Capacity Replacement Project that runs from Sumas in Whatcom County to Washougal in Clark County. The project is under a federal order to idle the smaller line and begin operation of the new larger pipeline sections by December 2006.

The company is unable to tunnel under the Nisqually River due to the cobble and boulder composition of the soil beneath the river bed.

Scott Long, project manager at Williams, Northwest Pipeline's parent company, said, "Williams has a long history of environmental stewardship. We work closely with tribes, as well as federal, state and local agencies to ensure minimal impact to the environment."

Department of Ecology Regional Director Dick Wallace said, "This is environmental mitigation that works - it works for the company and for consumers, and it works for the river and the watershed. This is the kind of creative problem-solving that will sustain our environment, our economy and our communities."

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, as well as officials from Thurston and Pierce counties, will provide oversight for a newly established board which will manage the fund. The board will be comprised of representatives from each of the agreeing parties. The agreement calls for the fund to be spent within three years.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued an environmental impact statement for the project in August 2005, which was adopted by the Department of Ecology. The document provides widespread environmental analysis, click here to view.

Releasing Sulfur to the Atmosphere Could Counter Global Warming

The 1995 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego published a paper demonstrating the technique in the August issue of the Springer journal "Climatic Change."

Fossil fuel combustion releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which contributes to global warming. Burning of fossil fuel also releases sulfur into the atmosphere in the form of sulfate particles.

These sulfate particles help to cool the planet by reflecting solar radiation back into space.

Crutzen's proposal to artificially inject sulfur into the Earth's stratosphere to offset greenhouse gas warming, is based on this phenomenon.

The same phenomenon is observed during volcanic eruptions.

Crutzen uses the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo as a model for his idea. The volcanic eruption injected sulfur into the stratosphere. The enhanced reflection of solar radiation to space by the particles cooled the Earth's surface by an average of 0.5°C (0.9°F) in the year following the eruption.

Crutzen proposes to artificially enhance the atmosphere's reflective powers by carrying sulfur into the stratosphere in balloons, using artillery guns to release it.

He says the reflective particles could have an effect within six months and could remain in the stratosphere for up to two years.

"Given the grossly disappointing international political response to the required greenhouse gas emissions," he said, "research on the feasibility and environmental consequences of climate engineering of the kind presented in this paper, which might need to be deployed in future, should not be tabooed."

His experiment should only be used as an emergency measure, Crutzen says, "not to justify inadequate climate policies but merely to create a possibility to combat potentially drastic climate heating."

Marine Microbial Research Center Opens in Hawaii

C-MORE will receive $19 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) over the first five years to establish a physical and intellectual space to facilitate collaborations and partnerships among the previously separate disciplines of oceanography, microbiology, ecology and genomics.

These new alliances are expected to enable a deeper understanding of the oceans, and their response to global environmental variability and climate change.

"We are on the verge of a revolution in our understanding of the sea around us, especially the role of microbes in global ecosystem processes," said David Karl, UH Manoa professor of oceanography and C-MORE director.

"The primary mission of the Center will be to increase understanding of the biology, ecology and biogeochemistry of marine microorganisms, including bacteria, archaea, single-celled plants and viruses," Karl said.

The center will train microbial oceanographers and will help to train teachers and develop curricula at the undergraduate and secondary education levels. One goal is to increase the number of students and teachers in quantitative sciences and engineering, particularly Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders.

The interdisciplinary team assembled for C-MORE also includes scientists, engineers and educators from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Oregon State University, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, and the University of California at Santa Cruz, as well as the UH Manoa College of Education and the Hawaii state Department of Education.

"Teamwork, strategic planning and implementation, and synergy are key factors in the success of the new NSF Science and Technology Centers," said Nathaniel Pitts, director of the NSF Office of Integrative Activities. "The expectation is that new knowledge will be one of the primary products, as will be the development of new instrumentation, new technologies, and future scientists and engineers."

MIT's Edward DeLong, who serves as C-MORE associate director for research, said, "A central objective of C-MORE will be to increase understanding about how biological diversity detected at the genome level expresses itself at the ecosystem function level, and then to transfer this knowledge to policymakers to assist them in their decision-making process."

"Marine microorganisms are invisible to the naked eye but their presence enables all multi-cellular life to exist, including human populations," said DeLong. "Novel methods in molecular biology combined with satellite and sea based remote sensing technologies provide an unprecedented opportunity to study microorganisms across broad spatial scales ranging from genes to entire ocean basins."

The science of microbial marine species is growing fast. A study reported in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the oceans contain many more types of microorganisms than previously thought.

Mitchell Sogin of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole says, "In our new study, we discovered more than 20,000 in a single liter of seawater, having expected just 1,000 to 3,000. The number of different kinds of bacteria in the oceans could eclipse five to 10 million."

Sogin and his team sampled bacteria by comparing small variable regions of DNA, known as sequence tags, rather than amplifying full genes.

Their work is part of the International Census of Marine Microbes, part of a 10 year project launched in 2000 involving researchers in more than 70 countries studying the diversity of life in the oceans.

San Ramon Golf Courses Could Become Scap Yards

SAN RAMON, California, August 2, 2006 (ENS) - Residents who live near public golf courses have filed an initiative with the northern California City of San Ramon to save their two public courses as open spaces. The older course, San Ramon Golf Course, was zoned as a Park for 44 years but it was rezoned on Tuesday to the Commercial Recreation classification.

Golf course neighbors became concerned when they discovered that city officials had redefined the Commercial Recreation zone.

The residents say the new definition of a Commercial Recreation zone bears no resemblance to the definition found in San Ramon's voter approved General Plan 2020 which calls Commercial Recreation zones, "Golf courses, sports and fitness clubs, horse stables and amusement parks."

In the new ordinance, the "switched" Commercial Recreation zone allows, amongst many other "permitable" uses, a cogeneration power plant, halfway houses for felons, and scrap and dismantling yards.

Golf course neighbors say they have been targeted by the city as a "dumping ground" for whatever more recently developed areas do not want in their own neighborhoods.

The zoning switch was made without input by golf course neighbors, who complain that they received no notification during a multi-year, "behind-closed-doors" redefinition of the Commercial Recreation zone.

Residents say City Council members, ignoring formal protests from hundreds of citizens, voted unanimously for the rezoning.

Meanwhile, Council members have been assuring citizens that "The golf courses are golf courses now and will remain golf courses for the foreseeable future, regardless of their zoning."

Golf course neighbors say the rezoning and redefinition is a prelude to redevelopment of the green open spaces that golf courses now provide.

Sub Pop Records' Power 100 Percent Renewable

SEATTLE, Washington, August 2, 2006 (ENS) - Sub Pop Records, the music label that has given rise to bands Nirvana, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, and The Shins, announced Monday that it has purchased enough renewable energy credits from the Bonneville Environmental Foundation to equal 100 percent of the company's energy use.

The credits are called Green Tags and are certified by Green-e, an independent certification and verification program for renewable energy products. Sub Pop records is the first Green-e certified record label company in the United States.

"I was made aware of the program by one of my co-workers. I was, quite frankly, shocked by how easy it is to support renewable energy. Green Tags are a simple way for anyone to choose wind energy, which, in turn, lowers dependence on burning fossils fuels for energy," said Jonathan Poneman, president of Sub Pop Records.

"Green Tags fulfill an important commitment to both the planet and the Pacific Northwest, where Sub Pop is rooted," Poneman said.

Earlier this year, Sub Pop Records' recording artist Kelley Stoltz released "Below the Branches" as the first album to be green powered and incorporate the Green-e label on its packaging.

"Sub Pop has been synonymous with helping talented new artists support their passion for creating music," said Patrick Nye, director of sales of Bonneville Environmental Foundation. "Now, Sub Pop Records is directing the same energy toward new, renewable sources of power."

The nonprofit Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF) began in 1998 to develop the market for renewable energy certificates, or Green Tags.

BEF reinvests all the net revenues from Green Tag sales to fund solar power systems for schools and businesses, wind power systems for farms and ranches, and restoration efforts for salmon-bearing streams.

Sub Pop Records and Kelley Stoltz hope to influence other artists and music fans to consider what they can do to utilize clean renewable technologies. Visit: www.SubPop.com.