• Everglades Rock Mining Threatens Florida Drinking Water
  
• Utah Refuses Requests for Road Claims Information
  
• E-Waste Meeting Ends Without Recycling Fee Agreement
  
• Kerry Blasts Bush for Nevada Nuclear Repository
  
• Pennsylvania Poultry Flock Down With Bird Flu
  
• Climate Change One of Many Threats to Coral Reefs
  
• The Influence of Aerosols
  
• Residents Fill First U.S. Eco-Friendly High Rise
  

Everglades Rock Mining Threatens Florida Drinking Water

"This alarming new information should finally put a stop to the 'the mine first, worry later' policy that's been followed here," said Brad Sewell, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). "The government needs to put public health ahead of the mining companies' bank accounts."

The analysis of government data was prepared for NRDC, Sierra Club and the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) by Dr. Stavros Papadopulos, an internationally recognized expert on well field protection and groundwater systems.

The report examined results from government tests on the ability of disease causing organisms to travel from mining pits into the drinking water pumps at the County's Northwest Well field.

In 2002, based on 1985 data, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had approved permits allowing 5,000 acres of mining within half a mile of the well field.

The setback was intended to ensure that any pathogens, like the microorganisms cryptosporidium and giardia, would no longer be alive by the time they reached the drinking water supply.

But the results of an extensively designed test conducted in April 2003 shows that a setback of more than five miles is necessary to comply with well field protection regulations.

Tracer dye used in the April 2003 study moved so fast through the aquifer that it entered the county's water supply before the test could be stopped.

The United States Geological Service, the federal agency conducting this test, has refused to provide its own analysis or interpretations of the 2003 test to the environmental groups, even in response to formal requests under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

The mining industry plans eventually to dig up 15,000 acres of wetlands around the well field. Together with the existing pits, the mining project would encompass 22,000 acres, an area of the Everglades equal in size to the city of Miami.

The Sierra Club, NRDC, and NPCA are challenging the permits in federal court in Miami.

The EPA originally opposed the mining project at the Northwest Well field but after the Bush administration took office, the federal agency, as well as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, withdrew their objections.

County officials continue to voice grave concerns, in part because any contamination would force local taxpayers to build a filtration plant at the cost of several hundred million dollars.

"The Bush administration can no longer ignore the clear scientific evidence that these mining projects threaten the public health, as well as the environment," said Barbara Lange of the Sierra Club Miami Group. "If the public knew what was happening with their drinking water supply, there would be a revolt."

Sierra Club, NRDC, and NPCA are asking the Corps of Engineers to suspend mining activities until the drinking water threat can be addressed.

The groups have also provided the Corps with information showing that the one widely touted benefit of the original mining plan - public acquisition of the private wetlands in the Pennsuco wetlands, which lie to the west of the mining area - is not happening.

The fee being paid by the miners under the permits is now far too small to pay for the land, which has tripled to quadrupled in price from what was assumed when the permits were issued.

"Not only have the agencies disregarded drinking water protection, but they are not accounting for the damage to the Everglades from the mining," said John Adornato of NPCA. "This project as it stands now will destroy increasingly endangered Everglades wetlands, as well as block improved water flows into Everglades National Park."

Utah Refuses Requests for Road Claims Information

E-Waste Meeting Ends Without Recycling Fee Agreement

Stakeholders had come together in a last ditch attempt to frame a nationwide policy to pay for cleaning up the growing mountains of toxic computer and TV wastes.

The participants, who have been meeting for over three years as the National Electronics Product Stewardship Initiative (NEPSI), failed to reach a consensus financing agreement for a final proposal to Congress.

"Industry still has not been able to come up with a financing policy that works," said attorney Ted Smith of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, an environmental group prominent in the debate over solutions to electronics waste.

"For three years, IBM and several TV manufacturers have lobbied for a skimpy recycling fee, which would pass on most costs to local governments," Smith said. "Now, late in the game, electronics companies have finally come up with a new vague outline that would allow some companies to take responsibility for their own products rather than charge consumers an extra fee."

Local solid waste officials will be swamped by an tidal wave of computers and TVs if the standard debated at the NEPSI had been adopted, critics say. The standard calls for an "advance recycling fee" or of $5 per unit.

The proposal could leave taxpayers footing a large chunk of a bill for e-waste that could easily top $10 billion, according to the Computer TakeBack Campaign, a coalition of environmental and recycling groups in the United States and abroad.

"Contrary to assertions by industry lobbyists that the problem is now solved, the ball is clearly in the electronics industry's court to finally come forward with a comprehensive financing solution that is supported by a significant portion of the market share for both computers and televisions," said David Wood of the GrassRoots Recycling Network.

"Since most people have very little confidence that the industry will be successful in this task," said Wood, "the states are continuing to aggressively move forward with their local legislative solutions."

Kerry Blasts Bush for Nevada Nuclear Repository

"Nevadans understand better than anyone why so many Americans do not trust George W. Bush," said front-runner Kerry last week on the campaign trail in Nevada. "Four years ago, candidate Bush promised not to ship nuclear waste to your state unless scientifically deemed safe. But after the election, President Bush caved to special interests and broke his promise to Nevada, and he has been doing his best to turn this state into a nuclear waste dump ever since."

The Yucca Mountain site was first identified as a possible location for storage of the nation's high-level nuclear waste in 1987, and legislation authorizing it has been passed by Congress and signed by President Bush.

But the project has been beset with criticism and skepticism and is the subject of an array of lawsuits brought by the state of Nevada.

"I have stood time and time again with Nevada families to stop George W. Bush from turning this state into a nuclear waste dump," Kerry said. "As your President, I will continue that fight for Nevada - and you will have the White House working for your top priority, instead of selling you out to the special interests."

The waste is spent nuclear fuel rods from the nation's 104 nuclear power plants and highly radioactive materials left from nuclear weapons production. It is currently stored where it was generated at more than 100 locations across the country.

Critics of the Yucca Mountain plan note that federal officials have raised many concerns about the project, including a finding that the manufactured storage containers in which the government plans to store nuclear waste at the facility will probably leak.

More than 250 other scientific questions about Yucca Mountain remain unanswered, and the state of Nevada has filed six lawsuits to block the project.

But U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has been a vocal defender of the plan and said the administration aims to apply for a license for the project with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the end of 2004.

"The department did an excellent job of conclusively establishing from a scientific point of view that the site would be safe," Abraham said earlier this month. "I believe that at the end of the day America will finally have a long promised, safe repository for nuclear waste."

In announcing the proposed fiscal 2005 budget for the Energy Department, Abraham said the Yucca Mountain geological repository "is key to ensuring the future use of nuclear power in this nation."

The administration has requested $880 million in funding next year for the program, including $186 million to study and develop transportation plans to haul the waste from 39 states by road and rail to the proposed facility.

Pennsylvania Poultry Flock Down With Bird Flu

Wolff said the state was notified about the identity of the strain by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa.

"This is not the strain currently in Asia or Delaware," said Wolff. "We believe this indicates no threat to human health and a low threat to the poultry industry. Based on this information, USDA is notifying our international trading partners to reassure them of the safety of U.S. poultry products."

"We have been working closely with the state Department of Agriculture from the very beginning of this situation," said Dr Calvin Johnson, state secretary of health. "Based upon our information from Ames, Iowa, we believe no health risk to humans exists at this time."

The virus was discovered during routine surveillance testing for avian influenza. The flock had no clinical signs to indicate illness with avian influenza, mortality is being monitored, and no decrease in egg production has occurred.

The farm in Mount Joy is under a quarantine, which has been extended to 16 poultry flocks in the surveillance zone. All these flocks are being tested for avian influenza.

"I would like to stress that consumers can be confident that meat and eggs are safe for human consumption," said state veterinarian Dr. John Enck. "We will continue surveillance activities in the poultry industry."

Pennsylvania officials say their excellent avian flu surveillance program is the reason this outbreak was caught quickly. In 2003, more than 211,000 samples were tested for the disease.

"While any disease discovery is unfortunate, we can be assured that our avian influenza surveillance program is working," said Wolff. "Because of our strong program, we were able to find virus activity early, quarantine the facility and, we hope, ensure the health of Pennsylvania's poultry industry," said Wolff.

Climate Change One of Many Threats to Coral Reefs

The report, produced by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, was released Friday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"Coral reef ecosystems are going to be significantly impacted by climate change," said study coauthor Joan Kleypas, a scientists with the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "They are already being degraded by both climate change and by direct impacts such as overfishing and habitat loss, and the combination of these stresses can be devastating."

Scientists are finding that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases, a primary cause of climate change, endanger reefs in two important ways.

First, higher water temperatures are promoting coral bleaching - episodes in which corals and other reef building species are weakened or killed after losing vital algae that live within their tissues.

Second, as CO2 builds up in the atmosphere, more of it is dissolved into the ocean, which increases ocean acidity.

This lowers concentrations of the carbonate ion, a building block of calcium carbonate that corals and other organisms use to grow their skeletons and build up the reefs.

CO2 levels in the atmosphere, which were about 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv) in 1880, increased to 367 ppmv by 2000 and are expected to reach from 463 to 623 ppmv by 2050.

An increase to 560 ppmv would cause an estimated 30 percent reduction in the carbonate ion concentration in the upper ocean and affect both skeletal growth rates and the structural growth of reefs.

"Reducing the direct impacts will go a long way toward slowing down the degradation, but if we don't also cut back on carbon dioxide emissions, we will probably lose some vital species," Kleypas said

The report details that coral reefs are among the most biologically diverse ecosystems on Earth, providing vital habitat to numerous species as well as economic benefits to society in the form of fishing and tourism. One recent estimate concluded the world's reefs provide annual net economic benefits of $30 billion.

To date, more than 10 percent of the world's reefs have been destroyed by human activity, and an additional 16 percent were extensively damaged in 1997-98 alone by coral bleaching during a major El Nino event.

"We are really outside of any normal envelope that coral reefs have existed in," Kleypas says. "We have not had carbon dioxide levels this high for thousands of years, maybe millions of years, and given the sensitivity of coral reefs to high temperature and ocean acidity, we cannot expect the ecosystem to stay the way it is."

The Influence of Aerosols

These effects include the growing belief among some atmospheric and climate scientists that aerosols are as significant as greenhouse gases.

"It has become clear that local effects on the heat budget from aerosols can be substantially larger than those from greenhouse gases," said Richard Somerville, a professor of meteorology at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and the organizer of the AAAS aerosols symposium. "I believe we are at a very early stage of understanding the effect of aerosols."

Aerosols are tiny atmospheric particles made up of various elements and produced by a range of sources.

"Aerosols come from all kinds of sources: dust blown off the Sahara by wind, particles emitted from smokestacks, gas from volcanoes," Somerville explained.

Human activities are believed to account for about 10 percent of the total aerosols in the atmosphere.

They have become a prominent concern due to their ability to influence atmospheric and hydrological phenomena and their important impact on localized regions.

"There are many, many complicated interactions with aerosols that we are just beginning to learn about," Somerville said.

Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blanket the Earth, trapping the Sun's heat close to the planet and warming the Earth's surface and atmosphere.

But aerosols can either absorb sunlight and thus produce a warming effect, or they can reflect or scatter sunlight and produce cooling effects.

Aerosols can change the heat balance of ocean surfaces, altering water evaporation processes and leading to a cascade of complex effects and indirect consequences, all of which scientists are now studying.

Somerville says the lifespan of aerosols is typically weeks rather than decades, a characteristic that leads to significant impacts in specific regions, in contrast to the long life of some greenhouse gases and their resulting long term global influences.

In addition to climate and atmospheric science, aerosols and their effects are garnering the attention of those concerned with issues of regional pollution, transborder environmental policies, and human health concerns.

Residents Fill First U.S. Eco-Friendly High Rise

All of the 293 residences available to the public in The Solaire, located at 20 River Terrace in New York's Battery Park City, are now leased, just six months after the first tenants moved into the building over last summer's July 4 weekend.

"The Solaire demonstrates that green building has a place in urban residential development and that there is a market for buildings designed to deliver healthy internal environments while performing with maximum responsibility to the external environment," said Christopher Albanese, a partner in the Albanese Organization. The company is preparing to break ground on its second green building in Battery Park.

Developed by the Albanese Organization in partnership with Northwestern Mutual, the Solaire was the first new residential construction to be completed in downtown Manhattan since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the first beneficiary of the state's green building tax credit.

The 27 story, 293 unit building has been environmentally engineered to consume 35 percent less energy, reduce peak demand for electricity by 65 percent, require 50 percent less potable water, provide healthier indoor air quality and offer more natural light than typical residential buildings.

The Solaire was constructed using green building materials that either have high recycled content, or were manufactured with renewable or rapidly renewable resources, free of formaldehyde and containing low or no volatile organic chemicals.

It contains photovoltaic cells, integrated within the exterior walls, that are capable of generating five percent of the building's base electric load. Fresh air supplies to each residence are filtered to remove 85 percent of particulate matter, and the building's air conditioning system is fueled by natural gas and free of ozone depleting refrigerants.

The Solaire has an on-site black water system to eliminate the use of drinking water for the building's flush system and to supply the heating, ventilation and air conditioning cooling tower. It also contains a storm water catchment system to irrigate the rooftop garden.

"We expected from the outset that The Solaire would be very attractive to prospective tenants because of the unique healthy living environment the building offers," said Lydia Haran, director of residential marketing for the Albanese Organization. "Six months exceeded even our leasing expectations."