• Internal EPA Report Blasts Bush Revision to Air Rule
  
• Judge Blocks Wisconsin Electric Clean Air Act Settlement
  
• Great Lakes Hit Hard by Stormwater Runoff
  
• Survey Catches High Mercury Levels in California Swordfish
  
• Parks Advocates Call for Hurricane Damage Funds
  
• Researchers Question Sun's Role in Past Climate Changes
  
• Ag Department Wind Energy Program Stalled
  
• Genetic Mutations Linked to Indoor Coal Emissions
  

Internal EPA Report Blasts Bush Revision to Air Rule

The report echoes many complaints of the Bush rule revision made by environmentalists, public health advocates and state pollution control officers.

It focuses on the administration's October 2003 rule that changed how the New Source Review provisions apply to existing facilities.

The New Source Review program was established in 1977 to ensure that older facilities built before the Clean Air Act took effect in 1970 would not hamper the nation's progress toward cleaner air.

It was written with an exemption for activities that qualified as "routine maintenance" - and it is this loophole that the Bush administration changed last year.

The new rule allows utilities to undertake projects up to 20 percent of the cost of the power-generating unit without triggering New Source Review requirements.

The rule change was stayed in December 2003 by a federal court in response to a suit filed by 14 states, several cities and environmental groups.

Despite the stay, the new rule has weakened the EPA's ability to obtain appropriate controls through settlements or court-imposed remedies has been weakened, according to the Inspector General's new report.

It finds three of nine utilities in ongoing active litigation with EPA have asserted the rule as cause for ceasing or reducing enforcement actions and "one major utility ceased negotiations."

If the rule is implemented, EPA enforcement officials "estimate that, of the utilities allege to have violated New Source Review in the past, only five smaller utilities … would be in violation."

The report finds "little basis for the 20 percent threshold and … no evidence that the percent of routine maintenance in ongoing enforcement actions was considered in determining the threshold."

It says that EPA enforcement officials believe the exemption threshold for utilities should be no higher than 0.75 percent.

This threshold would allow up to a $6 million project for a 1,000 megawatt, $800 million coal-fired plant before triggering New Source Review. In contrast, the 20 percent threshold could allow as much as a $160 million project before triggering New Source Review.

The report notes that the EPA recently announced plans to reconsider the rule before the stay is listed and called this "an excellent opportunity" to more fully consider the implication of the rule change.

The report can be found here.

Judge Blocks Wisconsin Electric Clean Air Act Settlement

The settlement, announced in April 2003, would resolve charges that the power company violated the New Source Review requirements of the Clean Air Act at five of its power plants in Wisconsin and Michigan.

The New Source Review program requires that new pollution controls be installed when plants are expanded or modified.

Sierra Club, Clean Wisconsin, and the Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin requested the stay in the proposed settlement so that they can investigate the nature and extent of the alleged violations of the Clean Air Act by the company.

In decision released Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Charles Clevert, Jr. said "unless the court accepts at face value the statements of the United States and Wisconsin Electric Power Company, it is unclear on this record whether the proposed consent decree is fair, reasonable and in accordance with the Clean Air Act."

The stay is reasonable, Clevert wrote, "because this court is not a rubber stamp and public as well as private interests hang in the balance."

Environmentalists, and some Wisconsin state officials, contend the settlement is inadequate because it does not require WE Energies to clean up two of the five power plants - the Valley power plant in downtown Milwaukee and the Presque Isle power plant on the shores of Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

These power plants lack modern pollution controls and under the settlement would be allowed to continue spewing large amounts of soot, smog and mercury into the air for decades.

"This gives us a chance to investigate the extent of violations at the Valley and Presque Isle power plants and persuade the Court to reject this terrible deal," said Pamela McGillivray, attorney for Clean Wisconsin.

The court's order requires that discovery be completed by December 23, 2004 and briefs be filed by February 4, 2005.

Great Lakes Hit Hard by Stormwater Runoff

The Environmental Integrity Project report can be found here.

Survey Catches High Mercury Levels in California Swordfish

The conservation group tested mercury levels in 25 samples of swordfish purchased at grocery stores in Los Angeles, Sacramento, Orange, Sonoma and Marin counties this past spring.

Seventeen of the samples exceeded the FDA's action level of one part per million (ppm) - the average concentration of mercury in the collected samples was 1.28 ppm.

The highest sample had a concentration of 4.15 ppm of mercury - more than four times the FDA level that can be used by the federal agency to remove the fish from store shelves.

The study follows a 2002 survey by the conservation group that tested swordfish from several California supermarkets and found similarly high levels of mercury in swordfish.

"Mercury levels continue to be high enough in swordfish to warrant its removal from store shelves," said Andy Peri, an analyst for Sea Turtle Restoration Project. "Since the Bush administration's FDA does not have the political will to do so, stores need to take the lead."

The Sea Turtle Restoration Project and the state of California have made attempts to protect Californians from exposure to mercury in fish by suing Safeway, Albertson's, the Kroger Company and other California grocers under Proposition 65.

Proposition 65 requires businesses that sell products known to the state of California to cause cancer or reproductive harm to notify customers of their dangers with a warning sign.

"Our warning sign survey team has found that there are no signs or inadequate signs in 70 percent of California stores," Peri said.

In March the FDA advised that children, nursing mothers and women who are or plan to become pregnant should limit their consumption of fish with high levels of mercury, including mercury.

The consumer advisory says the groups at risk should not eat shark, swordfish, king mackerel or tile fish because they contain high levels of mercury.

Scientists have shown that mercury can cause brain and nerve damage and studies indicate young children and women of childbearing age are at the greatest risk.

Parks Advocates Call for Hurricane Damage Funds

In a letter to Interior Department Secretary Gale Norton, the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) says repairs will strain the already tight budgets of the National Park Service.

NPCA lists an array of damage from the recent hurricanes that have hit the Southeast and East Coast:

Hurricane Frances wiped out more than 1,000 sea turtle nests at Florida's Canaveral National Seashore - Hurricane Jeanne destroyed the few hundred that remained.

Hurricane Ivan washed out several miles of roads, flooded historic buildings, a visitor center, and parking lots, and destroyed pavilions at Gulf Islands National Seashore in Florida and Mississippi.

The Kittatinny Point Visitor Center at Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area in New Jersey was flooded and roads and trails washed out.

Hurricane Charley caused extensive damage to Dry Tortugas National Park in August.

Several of the storms also affected Everglades National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The nonpartisan parks advocacy group encouraged the Department of Interior to request sufficient emergency funding from Congress to help with repairs.

"The administration needs to request - and Congress appropriate - adequate funding to compensate for the frequent acts of nature that besiege our parks," said NPCA President Tom Kiernan. "Otherwise, storms drown the parks and their budgets."

The park advocacy group has long called for boosted fund for the national park system, which its says faces an annual operating shortfall of some $600 million.

The organization has criticized the Bush administration and Congress for placing additional burdens - including increased security, agency-wide pay increases and outsourcing studies - on the agency without boosting its budget.

And there is a recent history of the agency being forced to use existing funds to deal with storms.

Last year, Hurricane Isabel caused nearly $100 million worth of damages at several national parks, but no additional funds were allocated for repairs.

"The National Park System never received the additional funding necessary to recover from that hurricane," Kiernan said, "and it is imperative that the same mistake not be made again."

Researchers Question Sun's Role in Past Climate Changes

Scientists analyzed earlier studies of the Sun and Sun-like stars and found little the evidence of such cycles, their intensity, or their possible influence on Earth's climate.

The findings, by a solar physicist and two climate experts, appear in the today's issue of the journal "Science."

"... long-term irradiance variations used in climate models in the past decade may be a factor of 5 [five times] larger than can be justified," according to the study's authors. "The full impact of this changed outlook on attempts to explain past climate variations and estimates of climate sensitivity to external forcing remains to be seen."

Scientists have attributed observed climate changes to a combination of natural variations and human activities - in particular the massive release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels.

Computer models of global climate reproduced an observed global warming during the first half of the 20th century when two solar influences were combined - a well documented 11 year sunspot cycle and the decades long solar cycles now in dispute.

A more pronounced warming observed during the 20th century's later decades is attributed to greenhouse gases accumulating in Earth's atmosphere and is not part of the new study.

"Removing these long term solar cycles from the input to climate models takes away about a tenth of a degree [Celsius] of the early 20th century warming," said Tom Wigley, a climate expert at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and a co-author of the paper. "Although this makes it harder to explain the warming, the difference falls within the noise range for natural variability. This suggests that other influences on past climate changes may play a greater role than the solar one."

Climate models have also linked long term changes in solar energy to preindustrial climate changes, such as the so-called Little Ice Age of the 17th and 18th centuries.

"Removing or reducing the long term solar influence is most important for understanding the Little Ice Age," Wigley said.

Although the Little Ice Age cooling occurred primarily in Europe, it has commonly been attributed to an inactive Sun.

Ag Department Wind Energy Program Stalled

The study by the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress finds the USDA has failed to implement a loan guarantee program for farmers to develop wind energy projects.

The 2002 farm bill authorized $115 million though fiscal year 2007 for renewable energy initiatives, part of which are earmarked for wind energy projects.

Many Midwestern lawmakers are eager to boost such projects in agricultural areas, where farmers can benefit from lease payments or direct ownership of turbines tucked between crops on their lands.

The department offered grants totaling $7.4 million for 35 wind power projects in eight states in fiscal year 2003, the program's first year, but it has not implemented the loan and loan guarantee components of the program.

"Without the latter, USDA has not fully fulfilled farm bill provisions and limits the ability of the program to promote renewable energy sources," according to the GAO report.

The report calls on the agriculture Department to form rules to govern the program that would enable it to offer loans and loan guarantees in order to "achieve a much higher level of program activity, potentially increasing the number of projects financed and providing benefits such as increased economic opportunities in rural areas."

The GAO study notes that wind power does not currently contribute much to total farm income in the 10 states with the highest installed wind power capacity, but it finds that some individual farmers and rural communities have benefited from this energy source.

In these 10 states, net farm income was about $14 billion in 2002, but total direct income to farmers from wind power ranged from only $10 million to $45 million, representing a fraction of one percent of net farm income.

But the report says that wind projects located on farms have increased some individual farmers' income by tens of thousands of dollars annually.

"Farmers generally find leasing their land for wind power projects to be easier than owning projects," the report said. "Leasing is easier because, unlike farmers, energy companies have the financial resources and legal and technical expertise to address the costs, complexity, tax advantages, and risks of wind power development."

Genetic Mutations Linked to Indoor Coal Emissions

The study focuses on individuals in Xuan Wei County, China, where lung cancer mortality rates in this county are among the highest in China in both nonsmoking women and men who smoke.

These high cancer mortality rates are associated with exposure to indoor emissions from the burning of smoky coal, said Dr. Phouthone Keohavong study author, an environmental and occupational health professor at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.

"In order to account for the high rates of disease within this region, we tested for mutations generally associated with lung cancer in people who had no evidence of disease," Keohavong said. "We found that a good number of these individuals had mutations that indicated they were at higher risk for developing lung cancer in the future."

The study analyzed 92 individuals who had no evidence of lung cancer and screened them for two mutations thought to be primarily caused by chemicals known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are emitted during the burning of smoky coal.

The study found that 15 individuals, or 16.3 percent, tested positive for genetic mutations.

Keohavong, also a faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, said these findings are similar to other studies in which he and colleagues found that the frequencies and types of the mutations in women from Xuan Wei who were nonsmokers were similar to the mutations found in men from Xuan Wei who smoked.

"Tobacco smoking is rare in women from Xuan Wei, yet the female population has an abnormally high lung cancer death rate," he explained. "Women in this region traditionally start the fires and cook, spending more time inside homes that lack ventilation. As a result, they are more likely to be exposed to potentially dangerous emissions."

Rural cook stoves are seldom properly ventilated, partly because of ignorance about the health effects, but in large part because people are desperate to keep as much of the heat in their homes as possible.

The lung cancer mortality rate in some communities in Xuan Wei County is among the highest in China, and more than 20 times that country's national average.

The levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons generated during cooking with smoky coal are comparable to exposure levels experienced by coke oven workers.

Keohavong will present the study October 3 at the 35th Annual Meeting of the Environmental Mutagen Society in Pittsburgh.