• EPA Faces Lawsuit Over Impact of Pesticides on Salmon
  
• MacArthur Foundation Funds Creative Threat Reduction
  
• Coal Industry Experiments With Clean Coal Technologies
  
• Rocky Mountain Institute Joins the Chicago Climate Exchange
  
• Nevada University Will Produce Biodiesel With Ethanol
  
• Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone No Smaller Than Last Year
  
• National Arboretum Helps Clean up Chesapeake Bay
  
• Researchers Reveal Benefits of Photorespiration
  

EPA Faces Lawsuit Over Impact of Pesticides on Salmon

“Pesticides are deadly by design and they’ll kill baby salmon after the poisons wash off fields, orchards, and lawns into salmon streams," said attorney Patti Goldman of Earthjustice, the nonprofit, public interest law firm representing the groups.

The disputed EPA action on the pesticides came only after a federal district court ordered a review of the pesticides because of their potential danger to federally protected salmon.

But the EPA’s superficial review was criticized by NOAA Fisheries, the federal agency responsible for enforcing salmon protections. "After review of the submitted information, NOAA Fisheries does not concur with EPA’s effects determinations," the agency wrote.

NOAA Fisheries is requesting that the EPA conduct a more extensive analysis of the effects of pesticides on salmon.

"EPA’s job is to regulate their use so they don’t violate the Endangered Species Act, but their own sister agency in the federal government has found them failing miserably at this obligation,” Goldman said.

The groups, which include the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides, and the Washington Toxics Coalition, are challenging EPA’s determinations of the effects of certain pesticides on salmon. These determinations suggest what actions the EPA must take to safeguard water quality and protect salmon.

The groups say that despite the fact that 90 percent of U.S. urban streams are contaminated with pesticides, the EPA failed to assess the risks of urban pesticide use on salmon.

EPA scientists lack necessary expertise on salmon life stages and habitat requirements, the groups allege, yet the EPA continually ignores the concerns raised by the wildlife biologists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries, the two federal agencies with the greatest understanding of salmon biology.

"EPA is trying to get away with decades old science instead of doing right by the salmon," said Erika Schreder of Washington Toxics Coalition. “We’re holding EPA accountable for truly complying with the Endangered Species Act because giving it lip service doesn’t help salmon."

The action comes as the Bush administration and the EPA prepare to change the way pesticide impacts on wildlife are evaluated to favor pesticide makers and users at the expense of imperiled wildlife.

The EPA proposed regulations in January 2004 that would exclude the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries when determining whether pesticides threaten endangered species. Instead, the EPA would conduct "self consultation."

The proposal would also allow the agrochemical industry to control the research on the environmental impacts of its products, with special rights in the process not shared by the public, Earthjustice says.

The EPA's proposal was opposed in a letter of “serious concern” sent to the EPA in June by 66 members of Congress. Conservation and pesticide reform organizations challenged the scientific basis and legality of the proposed rules and some 20,000 people submitted comments in opposition.

MacArthur Foundation Funds Creative Threat Reduction

The grant will support the development of an international framework for preventing the exploitation of biotechnology, contribute to the creation of new policy initiatives to prevent nuclear proliferation, and help promote security in outer space.

The funding is part of a set of four grants totaling more than $5 million announced last week by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation of Chicago aimed at reducing the threats from nuclear, biological and space weapons.

Jonathan Fanton, president of the MacArthur Foundation, says the foundation has been helping policymakers deal with the dangers posed by these weapons for 20 years, and at no time has the situation been more urgent than it is today. "Since 9-11, these dangers have risen to the top of the policy agenda," he said, "as governments seek to prevent biological or nuclear terrorism and stop the proliferation of such weapons to international terror networks."

"The Foundation's contribution to international peace and security is to increase scientific and technical expertise on weapons dangers, to promote new thinking about nonproliferation and disarmament, and to help educate policymakers working to reduce these dangers," Fanton said.

As part of this set of grants, $2.1 million over five years has been awarded to Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs for its Managing the Atom Project to identify and highlight opportunities for securing existing weapons-usable material within the next four years and to provide governments with practical ideas to strengthen the international nonproliferation regime.

The MacArthur support will fund close to 50 fellowships for young scientists and engineers to conduct research on nuclear weapons issues and the safeguarding and protection of dangerous fissile material.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies has been awarded a grant of $550,000 to help reduce biological weapons dangers by promoting cooperation between scientists generating new biotechnologies and policymakers responsible for international security and public health.

The Center will use the funds to build a consortium of international experts from the scientific, public health, public safety, law enforcement, and medical communities who will develop a common international agenda for biological threat reduction.

The research and consultation will help identify gaps in the policy agenda, develop practical steps for improved biosecurity, and build bridges between leading researchers in the life sciences and those responsible for preventing new biological hazards.

The Arms Control Association received a grant of $400,000 for continued support of its flagship publication, "Arms Control Today," which provides information and analysis, and acts as a forum for debate on policies to promote arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation.

With assets of about $4.5 billion, the Foundation makes grants totaling about $180 million each year. More information about the Foundation's International Peace and Security Program and the work it supports can be found in the Focus on Issues section of the Foundation's website: www.macfound.org.

Coal Industry Experiments With Clean Coal Technologies

The proposals form the second phase of the Bush administration's Clean Coal Power Initiative (CCPI). Earlier this year, eight projects were selected in the initial phase.

"Industry has enthusiastically responded to the Department's latest clean coal solicitation calling for technologies that would help make it possible for coal to remain a cornerstone of our domestic energy portfolio, particularly for power generation, and to continue that role into the long-term future," Abraham said.

Roughly 52 percent of U.S. electricity is generated by burning coal, which emits greenhouse gases, mercury, particulate matter and other gaseous pollutants.

Burning coal gas instead of solid coal is significantly cleaner, and that is the object of many of the new projects. Those selected for federal funding will demonstrate coal gasification system advances that enhance efficiency, environmental performance and reliability, and advancements that support the administration's air quality and climate change programs.

Abraham said the clean coal proposals will enable President George W. Bush's Clear Skies Initiative to reduce power plant emissions, particularly mercury, by about 70 percent by 2018, and the Global Climate Change Initiative to reduce carbon emissions growth over the next 10 years.

The projects will also support the technical foundation for the FutureGen Initiative to create the world's first zero-emissions, coal based power and hydrogen production plant, which will include carbon dioxide removal and sequestration, Abraham said.

Most of the proposals offer advancements for power generation based on commercial demonstrations of coal gasification technology and improvements to efficiency, reliability, availability, environmental performance, and economic performance.

These proposals also present opportunities to demonstrate potential readiness of energy technologies for carbon dioxide management, the energy secretary said.

Other proposals offer approaches for mercury and multi-pollutant control and for efficiency improvements that encompass coal treatment methods and post-combustion technologies, as well as integrated combustion and control system advancements that apply to needs of existing facilities and future energy plants.

To be favorably considered, each proposing company must plan to share at least 50 percent of the total allowable cost of the project, commit to repayment of the government's investment in the demonstration project. Qualifying proposals will be subject to detailed evaluation, and DOE anticipates announcement of selections by the end of 2004.

The Round 2 clean coal proposers and the location of their projects are:

• Alaska Cowboy Coal Power Consortium, Anchorage, Alaska
  
• Basin Electric Power Cooperative, Stanton, North Dakota
  
• Breen Energy Solutions, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
  
• ClearStack Combustion Corporation, Hutsonville, Illinois
  
• EnviRes LLC, East St. Louis, Illinois
  
• Excelsior Energy Inc., Hoyt Lakes, Minnesota
  
• FuelCell Energy, Inc., Kingsport, Tennessee
  
• Medicine Bow Fuel & Power LLC, Medicine Bow, Wyoming
  
• Minnesota Power, St. Louis County, Minnesota
  
• NeuCo, Inc., Baldwin, Illinios
  
• Peabody Energy, Milan, New Mexico
  
• Pegasus Technologies, Inc., Jewett, Texas
  
• Southern Company Services, Orange County, Florida

Rocky Mountain Institute Joins the Chicago Climate Exchange

The New Business Climate, published by RMI and written by Swisher, is designed to help companies and other organizations analyze their greenhouse-gas-related risks and determine appropriate mitigation strategies. Find it online at: http://www.rmi.org/store/p12details2421.php.

For more on CCX, visit: http://www.chicagoclimatex.com.

Nevada University Will Produce Biodiesel With Ethanol

Biodiesel fuel is non-toxic, biodegradable and creates less air pollution than petroleum diesel. It is less toxic than table salt and biodegrades as fast as sugar, the EPA says.

The grant will be used to fund a pilot project that will use ethanol to convert both virgin and waste cooking oil to biodiesel in a large-scale mobile continuous process unit.

The mobile production unit built by the university will be less expensive and cleaner to operate than the conventional process. Current methods to produce biodiesel are costly and require the use of methanol, which is toxic, corrosive and creates air pollutants. The project will use ethanol, which is less volatile, less toxic and cleaner.

There is no shortage of cooking oil to put through the process unit. U.S. restaurants and hotels produce over three million gallons of waste cooking oil annually, most of which ends up in sewers and landfills.

The university will utilize the biodiesel it produces to meet all of its diesel energy needs.

Another customer for the university's biodiesel fuel is just a few hundred miles down the road.

The Las Vegas area Clark County School district has 1,000 vehicles that are fueled with biodiesel, making it the largest biodiesel fleet in the world. Most of the biodiesel is produced with used frying oil from the Las Vegas casinos.

"Thanks to this project, yesterday's french fry grease is tomorrow's truck fuel," said Jeff Scott, director of the EPA's waste division for the PacificSouthwest office.

"Biodiesel is not only a viable alternative fuel with air quality benefits, but its use can also reduce the amount and expense of waste that gets sent to landfills across the country," said Scott.

The University of Nevada will work with the Washoe County District Health Department and the Nevada Department of Agriculture on this project.

A current list of fuel marketers that are registered to provide biodiesel fuel is available at http://www.biodiesel.org.

Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone No Smaller Than Last Year

The forecast was issued on Monday by a team of scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and Louisiana State University.

The dead zone is an area in the Gulf of Mexico where seasonal oxygen levels drop too low to support most life.

It happens when algal growth, stimulated by input of agricultural nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers, settles and decays in the bottom waters. The chemicals run off fields where they were applied to fertilize crops, and enter the rivers where they fertilize algae instead.

The decaying algae consume oxygen faster than it can be replenished from the surface, leading to decreased levels of dissolved oxygen.

The forecast is based on the calculation of nutrient loads from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers in May and June provided by the U.S. Geological Survey. NOAA funds research cruises to track development of the dead zone. These have been conducted monthly since January and will be completed by the end of July.

Last year, the scientific team made the first advance forecast of the annual dead zone formation in the Gulf of Mexico.

"This effort is an example of an innovative environmental service - officially referred to as ecological forecasting - that NOAA scientists believe will become an important tool in coming years for both decision makers and the public," said Dr. Richard Spinrad, assistant administrator of NOAA's National Ocean Service.

Dr. Donald Scavia, professor of natural resources and environment at the University of Michigan and former chief scientist of NOAA's National Ocean Service, says looking back in time is as valuable as forecasting.

"By using river dissolved oxygen model based on Mississippi River nutrient loadings in the northern Gulf of Mexico, our research team was also able to look back more than 30 years and determine that these now virtually perennial events were uncommon before the mid-1970s," he said.

The northern Gulf of Mexico's bottom water summer dead zone in recent years has extended roughly 375 miles westward from the mouth of the Mississippi River across the Louisiana-Texas border.

National Arboretum Helps Clean up Chesapeake Bay

The arboretum, operated by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), is collaborating with the District of Columbia Department of Health and the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority on the project, says Alfredo Flores of ARS.

ARS is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief in-house scientific research agency.

"This agreement among ARS and cooperating agencies in the District will help significantly reduce pollutants entering the Anacostia River and eventually the Chesapeake Bay," said ARS Administrator Edward Knipling.

The discharge of the storm water drainage system for 800 acres of northeastern Washington, DC is located on the northern boundary of the arboretum adjacent to New York Avenue. This discharge is carried by a smaller stream, Hickey Run, into the Anacostia, which carries it into the Chesapeake Bay.

For the past 50 years, solid and liquid pollutants from roads, parking lots, residences, businesses and industries have been washed into this drainage system with every heavy rain. To help relieve this problem, ARS will design and construct a system to catch floating debris and to reduce oil and grease pollution that would otherwise enter Hickey Run.

Arboretum staff are working with their counterparts at the District of Columbia Department of Health and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to develop detailed plans for renovation of Hickey Run below the pollution abatement system. In this way, the arboretum will play a major role in reducing pollutants to the Chesapeake Bay watershed while improving the appearance of its own grounds.

Researchers Reveal Benefits of Photorespiration

The researchers have found that the biological process - once thought useless and wasteful - is necessary for healthy plant growth and if impaired could inhibit plant growth, particularly as atmospheric carbon dioxide rises as it is globally.

Photorespiration was thought to be wasteful because it undoes much of the work of photosynthesis by converting sugars in the plant back into carbon dioxide, water and energy.

"Photorespiration is a mysterious process that under present condition dissipates about 25 percent of the energy that a plant captures during photosynthesis," said Arnold Bloom, a professor in UC Davis' vegetable crops department and lead researcher on the study.

Believing that photorespiration is a consequence of the higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide in ages past, many scientists concluded that photorespiration is no longer necessary.

In a bid to make more productive and efficient crop plants, some have set about to genetically engineer crop plants so that the activity of the enzyme that initiates both the light-independent reactions of photosynthesis and photorespiration would favor photosynthesis to a greater extent and minimize photorespiration.

The new UC Davis study suggests that attempts to minimize its activity in crop plants would be ill advised.

"Our research has shown that photorespiration enables the plant to take inorganic nitrogen in the form of nitrate and convert it into a form that is useful for plant growth," Blooms said.

The UC Davis team found that when plants are exposed to elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide or low levels of oxygen - both conditions that inhibit photorespiration - nitrate assimilation in the plant's shoot slows down.

Eventually, a shortage of nitrogen will curtail the plant's growth.

"This explains why many plants are unable to sustain rapid growth when there is a significant increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide," said Bloom. "And, as we anticipate a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide associated with global climate change by the end of this century, our results suggest that it would not be wise to decrease photorespiration in crop plants."

The findings are published this week in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."