• Senate Votes Against Superfund's Polluter Pays
  
• EPA Administrator Says U.S. Water Supply is Secure
  
• Bush Administration Aims to Fuel Offshore Gas Development
  
• Environmentalists Warn of Wastewater in Florida Aquifers
  
• Study Shows Urban Impact on Rainfall
  
• Nation's Capital In Need of Smart Transportation Measures
  
• Organic Lobby Fears Loophole For Body Care Products
  
• Government Researchers Use Catnip Oil to Repel Termites
  

Senate Votes Against Superfund's Polluter Pays

The measure was presented as an amendment to the Budget Resolution by Senator Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat and would have reinstated all of the original Superfund taxes and fees on polluters and increased funding for the program.

Six Democrats joined the 50 Republican Senators to defeat the measure 56 to 43 on Tuesday. These Democratic Senators were Evan Bayh of Indiana, John Breaux and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, and Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

The decision adds to the concern many environmentalists have about the Superfund program. The Bush administration has cut funding and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's clean up at the nation's toxic waste sites has slowed by some 50 percent in the last two years.

"Reinstating Superfund's polluter pays fees would provide more money for toxic waste cleanups and shift the burden of paying to run the Superfund program from taxpayers to polluting industries," said Julie Wolk, environmental health advocate with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

"Every April 15, average Americans pay their taxes, but the Bush administration is letting polluters off the hook tax free."

Superfund's original mechanism that forced polluters to pay for cleanup expired in 1995, but its trust fund was at a historic high of $3.6 billion at that time.

The fund is likely to be completely depleted by 2004, forcing the government to pay entirely for future Superfund cleanup, Wolk explained.

She said that regular taxpayers, who paid only 18 percent of program costs in 1996, would pay 79 percent or more of program costs in 2004 under the President's budget request.

The Superfund program has experienced a major lack of funding in recent years, with site cleanups slowing down nearly 50% in the last two years.

Seventy million people live within four miles of a Superfund site and 10 million are children. Children are most vulnerable to the arsenic, DDT and brain-damaging toxins like lead and mercury that are found in the water and soil at these locations.

"When the corporate polluters care more about the bottom line than they do about the health risks the pose to our families, we have an obligation to do something about it," Lautenberg said after the vote.

"This is just the first attempt. I will continue to bring up legislation that deals with this issue whenever possible."

EPA Administrator Says U.S. Water Supply is Secure

The security efforts of the nation's water utilities are "a model for the nation's infrastructure," Whitman told attendees of the American Water Works Association (AWWA) Water Security Congress, held in Los Angeles.

The AWWA, a nonprofit scientific and educational organization dedicated to safe drinking water, has more than 56,000 members worldwide and its 4,500 utility members serve 80 percent of the U.S. population.

Whitman's remarks came a week before water utilities are required to complete vulnerability assessments for systems that serve more than 100,000 people. These assessments are due March 31 under the federal Public Health, Security and Bioterrorism Act, which was signed in June 2002.

The law requires all U.S. water utilities serving more than 3,300 people to conduct vulnerability assessments of local water treatment operations and develop security plans.

According to Whitman, the vulnerability assessments will be kept confidential. Their purpose, she explained, is to evaluate and improve the ability to secure water supplies and ultimately reduce the risks and vulnerabilities from attacks on utilities.

EPA is coordinating national efforts to further protect the nation's water supply and is developing partnerships with other countries to share best practices in securing water supplies, Whitman said.

The EPA Administrator assured conference attendees that money for the vulnerability assessments, emergency planning and the additional infrastructure costs are part of the Bush administration's $75 billion budget to fund the war in Iraq.

AWWA officials have estimated that an additional $450 million is required for smaller to medium sized facilities to conduct vulnerability assessments and training.

The majority of America's water supply is provided by utilities serving less than 100,000 persons.

Whitman did not detail how much money would be available to water utilities. The President's request includes some $2 billion for domestic preparedness, which could be a potential source of funding for water utilities.

AWWA's meeting concludes Wednesday.

Bush Administration Aims to Fuel Offshore Gas Development

The incentives are necessary, Norton explained, because of rising gas prices and declining production within many areas of the Gulf of Mexico. The proposal calls for the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) to provide royalty suspension incentives when companies take the risk of exploring and developing deep gas deposits in shallow water areas they have already leased.

"American families have felt the pinch of higher natural gas prices in recent months because demand is outpacing supply," Norton said. "We need to respond by encouraging production of deep gas resources that otherwise are financially risky for companies to explore and develop."

Norton said the increased production spurred by the incentives will save consumers an estimated $280 million a year over the next 15 years.

MMS estimates that some 20 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered gas resources may lie within this area of the gulf. There are about 2,400 existing leases in the area targeted for relief in the proposed rule.

There are few wells in the Gulf of Mexico that have penetrated below 15,000 feet due to the high cost and associated risks. Bush administration officials believe incentives for companies to try and penetrate deeper reserves could bring added production on line quickly because infrastructure is already in place, in terms of platforms and pipelines.

U.S. demand for natural gas is expected to increase by 30 percent over the next 15 years, with supplies only available to meet 70 percent of this need.

Under the rule, lessees would be eligible for royalty relief on their existing leases if they are willing to drill for new and deeper prospects more than 15,000 feet below sea level.

"There is a clear and significant gap in the projection of domestic natural gas demand and the available supply," said MMS Director Johnnie Burton. "This new rule seeks to stimulate domestic production in the near term from our most abundant and easily accessible areas."

The rule provides for a 60 day comment period. MMS plans to hold a workshop during the comment period, the date of which will be announced shortly.

Environmentalists Warn of Wastewater in Florida Aquifers

The environmental group analyzed public notices issued by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) for 140 individual wells over two years.

It found the reported daily permitted use of Florida's deep aquifers for the injection of secondarily treated municipal wastewater grew from 400 million gallons per day to some 919 million gallons per day in the past three years.

And Sierra Club determined that the department is failing to fully inform the public of the pressures on the state's aquifers.

The report, "A Flood of Wastewater: Public Notices for Florida's Aquifer Exploitation," sharply criticizes FDEP for "poorly organized and erroneous information that is routinely published as public notices for underground injection control wells."

It finds that there appears to be "a lack of standards applicable to the various categories of public notices, including the inexplicable fact that not a single public notice is stamped with a date of issuance."

Florida's geology, much of which is porous limestone, has prompted the increasing use of deep underground layers for storage of wastewater. Sierra Club and other groups contend this needlessly endangers underground aquifers that are important sources of drinking water.

"Every year, hundreds of billions of gallons of inadequately treated sewage and other contaminated fluids are being injected into Florida's regional aquifer systems which are highly permeable," according to the report. "There is ample evidence that groundwater mining in Florida has widespread impacts and drastic alterations to habitats and a threat to public health where wells are leaking toxics flash treated with chlorine.

The report recommends that FDEP publish on its website general permitting data as well as regular summary reports to inform Floridians of the scope and scale of the state's underground injection control well program.

"Exploiting aquifers on a massive scale is a policy where everything good is theoretical, and everything bad, like destroying our aquifers, is irreversible," said Alan Farago, who coordinated the report for Sierra Club.

Study Shows Urban Impact on Rainfall

University of Arkansas civil engineering professor Steve Burian conducted the study, which used space based and land based rainfall data to quantify the impact of urbanization on rainfall.

Burian found elevated rainfall amounts within and directly downwind of Houston, Texas.

"There is increasing evidence that large coastal cities like Houston can influence weather through complex urban land-use-weather-climate feedbacks," Burian explained.

"During urbanization, natural land covers are removed and replaced by artificial structures and surfaces like buildings, parking lots and sidewalks. Ornamental landscapes replace natural trees and vegetation and the soil structure is modified."

These changes alter temperature, wind and precipitation patterns because they impact the exchange of water and energy between the land and the atmosphere.

The data in the study showed increases in rainfall during the time period of noon to midnight of some 110 percent in the urban area and 52 percent in the downwind region compared to the upwind region.

"This anomaly has significant implications for flood control in Houston," Burian said.

One factor in the urban impact on rainfall is from the Urban Heat Island effect, which occurs when the temperature in an urban area is higher than its rural environment. It affects local and regional temperature distributions, wind patters and air quality

Other factors identified by Burian are the increased roughness created by tall buildings, changes in atmospheric moisture and increased cloud condensation from automobiles and industry.

Burian presented the study Tuesday at the annual meeting of the North-Central Section of the Geological Society of America in Kansas City, Missouri.

He contends that better understanding of these phenomena becomes more important as populations become more urbanized. The United Nations Population Fund estimates that by 2025, 60 percent of the world's population will live in cities.

Nation's Capital In Need of Smart Transportation Measures

The groups are urging regional planners to consider several transportation control measures (TCMs) including the expansion of bus service, elimination of free parking for federal employees and increased financial incentives to encourage the use of mass transit.

These measures, along with tighter standards for diesel engines, expanded bike paths and improved fuel efficiency for federal fleets, could help the region combat its dirty air, the organizations contend.

The coalition forwarded its suggestions to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, which is responsible for developing a plan to implement measures that will reduce the metropolitan area's air pollution.

The organizations believe the council has often overlooked or ignored the benefits many of the suggested TCMs could achieve.

"A number of the measures we advocate in this letter were first proposed by the Council of Governments itself in 1979," said Jennifer Kefer, an attorney at Earthjustice, a nonprofit public interest law firm that is urging support for TCMs. "The DC Region is more than two decades behind schedule in upgrading its transit system to fight dirty air."

The DC region is in severe violation of federal clean air standards and there is no question transportation is a leading contributor to its air pollution. The metropolitan area is consistently ranked within the top three areas in the nation for worst traffic congestion.

There have been no consistent sign of improvements in levels of ground level ozone or smog over the pat eight years, according to Neal Fitzpatrick, executive director of the Audubon Naturalist Society.

"It is time for elected officials to take meaningful action to protect public health," Fitzpatrick said.

Some implemented measures have shown promise, said to Michael Replogle, transportation director of the conservation group Environmental Defense, but these efforts must be built upon and expanded if real gains are to be expected.

"The Washington DC region has demonstrated that it can cut traffic and pollution with best practice incentives, like employer-supported transit benefit programs, which today take tens of thousands of cars off area highways every workday," he said. "It is time to make these incentives standard practice to better protect the health of our children from hazardous air pollution."

Organic Lobby Fears Loophole For Body Care Products

The OCA said the loophole consists of counting the water of "organic hydrosol" as "organic".

Organic hydrosol, OCA officials explaine, is "basically the copious amounts of leftover water" after an organic botanical, such as flowers, is put through a steam distillation process to produce oil.

Although hydrosol is more than 99 percent non-agricultural water, OCA believes this water is counted "organic" by some body care companies. This inflates the weight of organic ingredients in their products to make the claim that they use "70 percent Certified Organic Ingredients."

OCA's Executive Director Ronnie Cummins believes the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Organic Program, which oversees organic labeling, should step in to remedy the possible loophole.

If it is not addressed, Cummins said, "we are likely to see more and more companies replace the water in their products with hydrosol."

Hydrosols did not exist as an ingredient in body care formulations until companies started to use them to make fraudulent inflated organic claims, according to OCA.

"By using hydrosol, pseudo-natural body care companies claim they use 70 percent certified organic ingredients even though they are using mostly synthetic and non-organic ingredients mixed with what is basically flavored water," Cummins explained.

"To ensure consumers are getting organic ingredients when the label says so, companies should be compelled to only count the percentage of real non-water ingredients," he said.

The OCA contends that organic body care standards should mirror organic food standards. These set a mandatory 70 percent minimum weight of non water/non salt agricultural organic content in a product for a "Made with Organic" label claim to be made on the front panel.

Government Researchers Use Catnip Oil to Repel Termites

The researchers presented their findings at the ongoing national meeting of the American Chemical Society, which concludes Thursday in New Orleans.

For the study, sand was infused with catnip essential oil, which is the sold in pet stores, to test the effectiveness of the oil as a barrier to termite tunneling. In both tests, catnip oil reduced or eliminated termite tunneling.

"At higher concentrations, the oil does kill termites, but not as effectively as the commercial compounds currently used in soil treatments," said USDA Forest Service researcher Chris Peterson. "Our results show that catnip oil is a very effective deterrent to termite tunneling, with the effective doses tested much lower than those reported for similar natural products."

A potential problem with the use of catnip oil for termite control, Peterson explained, is that it breaks down quickly in the environment. Chemicals now used to prevent termite infestation must remain effective for more than five years in government testing.

"There is the inevitable tradeoff," Peterson said. "Chemicals that last a long time also have greater potential for environmental damage. We hope that the active ingredients in catnip oil can eventually be modified to last longer."

Another factor is cost - catnip oil is far too expensive to use at effective rates compared to other compounds, Peterson explained.

"Until a way is found to produce the oil competitively and formulate it for long-term use, its only practical use would be for controlling isolated populations of termites."

The US Forest Service is actively searching for new termite control products that are less toxic to humans and the environment. Some of the active ingredients of traditional termiticides, such as chlordane and chlorpyrifos, are now considered too toxic for use.