Environment Archives - Page 90 of 106

WSU study finds no more genetically modified wheat

Credit: Getty ImagesWheat Field — Credit: Getty Images
Wheat Field

August 7, 2013

By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS — Associated Press

PULLMAN, WASH. — A study by Washington State University has found no additional sign of the genetically modified wheat discovered at one Oregon farm this spring.

The tests involved dozens of wheat varieties developed at Washington State, the University of Idaho and Oregon State University, plus varieties from Westbred/Monsanto and Limagrain Cereal Seeds, WSU said this week.

The time-consuming study included checking more than 20,000 individual plots, Washington State University said.

“WSU undertook its own investigation as part of its commitment to serving Northwest farmers,” said James Moyer, director of WSU’s Agricultural Research Center.

The study’s collaboration with the other universities and the commercial seed companies was unprecedented, and reflected the common goal of trying to determine if the genetically modified wheat discovered in Oregon was an isolated case or if the industry had a larger problem, Moyer said.

WSU’s data clearly suggests this was an isolated case, Moyer said.

The tests involved growing seed, spraying infant plants with the herbicide glyphosate and conducting molecular testing. None of the plants showed the glyphosate resistance found in the fields of an as-yet-unnamed Oregon farmer, WSU said.

Last month, the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service also said grain tests and interviews with several hundred farmers found no other instances of herbicide-resistant crops beyond that one Oregon farm.

The modified wheat was discovered in May when field workers at an eastern Oregon farm were clearing acres for the bare offseason and came across a patch of wheat that didn’t belong. The workers sprayed it, but the wheat wouldn’t die, so the farmer sent a sample to Oregon State University to test.

A few weeks later, Oregon State wheat scientists discovered that the wheat was genetically modified. They contacted the USDA, which ran more tests and confirmed the discovery.

Agriculture Department officials have said the modified wheat discovered in the Oregon field is the same strain as a genetically modified wheat that was designed to be herbicide-resistant and was legally tested by seed giant Monsanto a decade ago but never approved.

Most of the corn and soybeans grown in the United States are already modified, or genetically altered to include certain traits, often resistance to herbicides or pesticides. But the country’s wheat crop is not, as many wheat farmers have shown reluctance to use genetically engineered seeds since their product is usually consumed directly. Much of the corn and soybean crop is used as feed.

The USDA has said the wheat would be safe to eat if consumed. But American consumers, like many consumers in Europe and Asia, have shown an increasing interest in avoiding genetically modified foods.

The vast majority of Washington’s wheat is exported.

Firefighters make fast work of Omak wildfire

A plane drops water on the edge of a fire near Omak Lake east of Okanogan Tuesday afternoon. World photo/Don Seabrook

by Don Seabrook

Aug. 7, 2013, 9:53

OMAK — No lightning storms had passed over the Okanogan Valley since Sunday.

But a 200-acre fire on Tuesday afternoon was ignited by that storm. It’s called a holdover fire, and fire officials on the Colville Indian Reservation are expecting more will show themselves in the next day or two, said Ike Cawston, fire management officer for the Colville Tribes’ Mt. Tolman Fire Center.

Firefighters from the Colville Confederated Tribes, Bureau of Indian Affairs and Fire District 8 responded, along with air support from the state Department of Natural Resources.

With help from the air, firefighters surrounded the grass and sagebrush fire, Cawston said. But that was largely due to the fire’s close proximity to Omak Lake. “Being able to scoop water out of the lake with such a short turn-around really helped,” he added.

Cawston said close to 6,000 lightning strikes hit the reservation, and despite the heavy rain that came with it, fire can smolder for days while light fuels dry out, and then ignite a fire.

“Initially, as it passed over the reservation, our greater concern was three or four days out,” he said.

During Tuesday’s fire, officials were worried about one home in the area, but no structures were lost and no one was injured.

2012 Broke Climate Records, New Report Says

Surface temperatures in 2012 compared with the 1981 to 2010 average.Credit: NOAA map by Dan Pisut, NOAA Environmental Visualization Lab — Surface temperatures in 2012 compared with the 1981 to 2010 average.
Credit: NOAA map by Dan Pisut, NOAA Environmental Visualization Lab

by Becky Oskin, OurAmazingPlanet Staff Writer | August 06, 2013 04:17pm ET

2012 was a year of climate records, from temperatures to ice melt to sea level rise, a newly released report on the state of the global climate says.

Even though natural climate cycles have slowed the planet’s rising temperature, 2012 was one of the 10 hottest years since 1880, according to the report released today (Aug. 6) by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

One reason the world’s warming is slower in recent years is because of recent La Niña conditions in the Pacific Ocean, which cause atmospheric and ocean temperatures to cool, said Tom Karl, director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center during a news teleconference.”There are a number of factors that cause climate to vary from year to year, but when you look back at long-term trends, temperatures have been increasing consistently,” he said.

But in the Arctic, surface temperatures rose twice as fast in the past decade as lower latitudes, said Jackie Richter-Menge, a report co-author and research civil engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “The Arctic continues to be a region where we have some of the most compelling evidence of the fact that global temperatures are warming,” she said.

Difference from average annual snow cover since 1971, compared with the 1966 to 2010 average. Snow cover has largely been below average since the late 1980s.Credit: NOAA — Difference from average annual snow cover since 1971, compared with the 1966 to 2010 average. Snow cover has largely been below average since the late 1980s.
Credit: NOAA

A strong and persistent southerly airflow in spring 2012 contributed to the Arctic’s record warmth, Richter-Menge said. The effects included a record-low summer ice pack extent in the Arctic Ocean, and surface melting across 97 percent of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Richter-Menge said researchers are also seeing long-term changes, such as more coastal vegetation growing in the Arctic tundra and rising permafrost temperatures.

“The near records being reported from year to year are no longer anomalies or exceptions,” Richter-Menge said. “They have become the norm for us and what we expect to see in the near future.” [5 Ways Rapid Warming is Changing the Arctic]

Ice melt from Greenland and glaciers elsewhere are contributing to sea level rise, according to the climate report. In the past year, sea level rose a record 1.4 inches (35 millimeters) above the 1983 to 2010 average, said Jessica Blunden, a climatologist at NOAA’s Climatic Data Center and lead editor of the report. “It appears ice melt is contributing more than twice as much as warming waters,” she said during the teleconference. As the ocean warms, water expands, contributing to sea level rise.

The annual State of the Climate report compiles climate and weather data from around the world and is reviewed by more than 380 climate scientists from 52 countries. The report can be viewed online.

The planet hit several records or near records in 2012, the report said. These include:

Record ice loss from melting glaciers. 2012 will be the 22nd year in a row of ice loss.
Near-record ocean heat content, a measure of heat stored in the oceans. When the ocean holds more heat than it releases, its heat content increases.
Record sea level rise of 1.4 inches above average.
Record-low June snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere. The June snow cover has declined 17 percent per decade since 1979, outpacing the shrinking summer Arctic sea ice extent by 4 percent.
Record-low summer Arctic sea ice extent. Sea ice shrank to its smallest summer minimum since record-keeping began 34 years ago.
Record-high winter Antarctic sea ice extent of 7.51 million square miles (19.44 million square kilometers) in September.
Record-high man-made greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. In 2012, for the first time, global average carbon dioxide concentrations hit 392 parts per million and exceeded 400 ppm at some observation sites. The number means there were 400 carbon dioxide molecules per 1 million air molecules.

Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

Guards with Automatic Weapons Are Back to Intimidate in Mining Country

Mary Annette Pember, ICTMN

Bulletproof Securities, the company whose paramilitary guards were pulled from the Gogebic Taconite (GTAC) proposed iron ore mine site in the Penokee Hills is now licensed to operate in the state of Wisconsin according to a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on August 5.

A spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services announced that the company is now licensed in the state and will not face any charges for operating without a license in Wisconsin.

Bob Seitz, spokesman for GTAC told WiscNews.com that the company plans to use Bulletproof Securities to guard mine sites in the future but would not divulge a date.

“They’re one of the options we have and we’ll use. The violent protesters didn’t announce to me their plans and I’m not going to announce to them mine,” Sietz said.

Bulletproof’s paramilitary style guards were hired by GTAC after a June 11 incident in which several masked protesters verbally threatened mine workers and damaged property. One female protester wrestled a cell phone away from a female mineworker. Katie Kloth of Stevens Point was charged with felony robbery by force, misdemeanor theft and two misdemeanor counts of damage to property in the incident.

GTAC was criticized for using out-of-state guards armed with automatic rifles as a means to intimidate mining opponents like the occupants of the Penokee Hills Harvest Camp. The Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe tribe created the Harvest Camp to draw attention to the natural resources under threat from the mine as well as underscore Ojibwe treaty rights in the area.

Sen. Bob Jauch, (D-Poplar) and Rep. Janet Bewley, D-Ashland publicly criticized GTAC for using the guards and wrote a letter to the company requesting that they withdraw them. Both voted against changing mining regulations that have allowed GTAC to begin mining efforts in the Penokees.

Paul DeMain, spokesman for the Penokee Harvest Camp decried GTAC’s decision to reinstate the BulletProof guards describing it as a “third world response to citizen actions.”

He further noted that the decision does not change discussions that need to take place about the land, treaty harvest, the quality or cleanliness of the resources or the future of Iron County vis-à-vis the Chippewa tribes.

Mining opponents remain concerned about the environmental danger presented by the proposed GTAC mine and disapprove of the dearth of information provided by the mining company regarding its plans and the chemical composition of the rocks in the area.

Joseph Skulan, a research professor at Arizona State University who works out of Wisconsin, says that GTAC is circulating deceptive information about both the content of the minerals at the site as well as their plans for mining.

Skulan currently conducts medical research in geochemistry and biology and has done postdoctoral work on iron chemistry.

GTAC representatives maintain that the proposed mining operation would not release sulphuric acid because most of the taconite they seek is contained within the region’s Ironwood Formation that contains little pyrite. Pyrite, (iron disulfide) creates sulfuric acid when exposed to water and air. Skulan, however, maintains that much of the proposed mine is actually located under the Tyler Slate, a pyrite bearing rock unit.

There is serious potential for acid rock drainage to reduce water quality and leach toxic metals from mining waste rock. The overburden would be dumped into huge piles and could generate acid-rock drainage directly into the Bad River watershed. Sedimentation-filling and hydrological disruption of streams and wetlands in the immediate vicinity of the mine may have indirect effects on wild rice and fish. The massive dewatering process associated with open-pit mining could lower the water table around the mine, seriously affecting the fragile wild rice beds of the Bad River slough, according to Bad River Tribal chairman Mike Wiggins Jr.

Similar mining operations in Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range have created high levels of mercury and sulfate levels downstream in the St. Louis River and resulted in fish-consumption advisories.

RELATED: Wisconsin Mining War

Would you eat a burger grown in a laboratory?

A Dutch scientist has created ‘meat’ from stem cells – and wants Heston Blumenthal to cook the first batch. Steve Connor reports on the ultimate in culinary experimentation

Steve Connor, The Independent

The world’s first hamburger made with a synthetic meat protein derived from bovine stem cells will be publicly consumed this October after being prepared by a celebrity chef, according to the inventor of the artificial mince.

Heston Blumenthal is the favourite to be asked to cook the €250,000 (£207,000) hamburger, which will be made from 3,000 strips of synthetic meat protein grown in fermentation vats. Dr Mark Post, of Maastricht University in the Netherlands, said the anonymous backer of his research project had not yet decided who would get to eat the world’s most expensive hamburger, which will unveiled at a ceremony in Maastricht.

Dr Post told the American Association for the Advancement of Science that a hamburger made from artificial beef protein was a milestone in the development of novel ways to meet the global demand for meat, which is expected to double by 2050.

“In October we’re going to provide a ‘proof of concept’ showing that with in vitro culture methods that are pretty classical we can make a product out of stem cells that looks like, and hopefully taste like, meat,” Dr Post said.

“The target goal is to make a hamburger and for that we need to grow 3,000 pieces of this muscle and a couple of hundred pieces of fat tissue. As long as it’s a patty the size of a regular hamburger, I’m happy with it,” he said.

A handful of researchers has been working for the past six years on the technical problem of extracting stem cells from bovine muscle, culturing them in the laboratory and turning them into strips of muscle fibres that can be minced together with synthetic fat cells into an edible product.

The technical challenges have included giving the meat a pinkish colour and the right texture for cooking and eating, as well as ensuring that it feels and tastes like real meat.

Dr Post admitted to being nervous about the final result. “I am a little worried, but seeing and tasting is believing,” he said.

Although some animals still have to be slaughtered to provide the bovine stem cells, scientists estimate that a million times more meat could be made from the carcass of a single cow, compared with conventional cattle rearing. As well as reducing the number of beef cattle, it would save the land, water and oil currently need to raise cattle for the meat trade, Dr Post said.

“Eventually, my vision is that you have a limited herd of donor animals that you keep in stock in the world. You basically kill animals and take all the stem cells from them, so you would still need animals for this technology.”

One of the economic incentives behind the research is the increasing cost of the grain used to feed much of the world’s cattle. This is helping to drive up the cost of meat.

“It comes down to the fact that animals are very inefficient at converting vegetable protein [either grass or grain] into animal protein. Yet meat demand is also going to double in the next 40 years,” he said.

“Right now we are using about 70 per cent of all our agricultural capacity to grow meat through livestock. You are going to need alternatives. If we don’t do anything, meat will become a luxury food and will become very expensive.

“Livestock also contribute a lot to greenhouse gas emissions, more so than our entire transport system. Livestock produces 39 per cent of the methane, 5 per cent of CO2 and 40 per cent of all the nitrous oxide. Eventually we’ll have an ‘eco-tax’ on meat.”

Growing meat in fermentation vats might be better for the environment. And it might be more acceptable to vegetarians and people concerned about the welfare of domestic livestock, Dr Post said. “There are many reasons why people are vegetarian. I’ve talked to the Dutch vegetarian society, which has said that probably half of its members will eat this meat if it has cost fewer animal lives and requires less intensive farming,” Dr Post said. Growing artificial meat would also allow greater control over its makeup. It will be possible, for example, to alter the fat content, or the amount of polyunsaturated fats vs saturated fats, according to Dr Post.

“You can probably make meat healthier,” he said. “You can probably trigger these cells to make more polyunsaturated fatty acids, just like grass-fed beef has more polyunsaturates than grain-fed beef. You could make any type of meat, you could make mixed meats. I’m pretty sure you could even make panda meat.”

Dr Post declined to reveal who his backer was, except to say that he was well known but not a celebrity – and not British. “It’s a very reputable source of money,” he said. “He’s an individual. There may be two reasons why he wants to remain anonymous: as soon as his name is associated with this technology he will draw the attention to himself and he doesn’t really want to do that.”

Dr Post added: “And the second reason is that he has the image of whatever he does turns into gold and he is not sure that may be the case here so he doesn’t want to be associated with a potential failure.”

LAB-GROWN MEAT THE CASE FOR AND AGAINST

Pros

– Billions of animals would be spared from suffering in factory farms and slaughterhouses

– Would reduce the environmental impacts of livestock production, which the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates account for 18 per cent of greenhouse-gas emissions

– Could reduce by 90 per cent the land- and water-use footprint of meat production, according to Oxford University research, freeing those resources for more efficient forms of food production

– Would provide a more sustainable way to meet demand from China and India, whose growing appetite for meat is expected to double global meat consumption by 2040

– Lab-grown meat could be healthier – free of hormones, antibiotics, bacteria such as salmonella and E.coli, and engineered to contain a lower fat content

– Would reduce the threat of swine and avian flu outbreaks associated with factory farming

Cons

– Consumers may find the notion of lab-grown meat creepy or unnatural – a “Frankenstein food” reminiscent of the Soylent Green at the heart of the 1973 sci-fi film of the same name

– For some vegetarians, in vitro meat will be unsatisfactory as it perpetuates “meat addiction” – rather than focusing on promoting non-meat alternatives, and changing our meat-heavy diet

– Although the fat content can be tinkered with, other risks of eating red meat, such as an increased threat of bowel cancer, remain

– It’s not cruelty-free – animals will still have to be slaughtered to provide the bovine stem cells

– There could be unforeseen health consequences to eating lab-grown meat

– As a highly processed, “unnatural” foodstuff, lab-grown meat is a step in the wrong direction for “slow-food” advocates, and others who believe the problems in our food system have their origins in the distance between food production and the consumer

Watching Fox News makes you distrust climate scientists

ff-20110127-globalwarming630pix — Media Matters/Fox News

By Chris Mooney, Grist

In the past several years, a number of polls have documented the huge gap between liberals and conservatives when it comes to their acceptance of the science of climate change. Naturally, then, researchers have increasingly turned their attention to trying to explain this dramatic divide over what is factually true. And it wasn’t long before they homed in on the role of conservative media in particular — thus, a number of studies (e.g., here [PDF]) show that watching Fox News increases your risk of holding incorrect beliefs about the science of climate change.

Now, a new paper [PDF] just out in the journal Public Understanding of Science takes this line of inquiry further, beginning to unpack precisely how conservative media work to undermine the public’s acceptance of science. The paper shows that a distrust of climate scientists is a significant factor underlying the modern denial of global warming, and moreover, that watching Fox News and listening to Rush Limbaugh both increase one’s level of distrust of these scientific experts. Or as the paper puts it, “[C]onservative media use decreases trust in scientists which, in turn, decreases certainty that global warming is happening.”

The study, conducted by Jay Hmielowski of the University of Arizona and colleagues at several other universities, relied on a large polling sample of Americans in two phases: 2,497 individuals were interviewed in 2008, and then a smaller sample of 1,036 were reinterviewed in 2011. The respondents were asked about what kind of media they consumed — conservative choices included Fox News and the Rush Limbaugh Show; “non-conservative” media outlets included CNN, MSNBC, National Public Radio, and network news — as well as about how much they trusted or distrusted climate scientists. They were also asked about their belief that global warming is happening. (The study controlled for variables like political ideology, religiosity, and other demographic factors.)

The results showed that conservative media consumption led to less trust in climate scientists, even as consuming nonconservative media had the opposite effect (leading to an increased trust in climate scientists). Between people who said they don’t consume any conservative media and people who said they consume a large amount, “we see a 13 percent difference in the amount of trust in scientists,” according to study coauthor Lauren Feldman of American University.

The authors then proposed that distrust of scientists is a key link in the chain between watching Fox (or listening to Rush) and coming to doubt climate science. The idea is that because most people don’t know a great deal about the science of global warming, they rely on “heuristics” — or mental shortcuts — to make up their minds about what to believe. “Trust” (or the lack thereof) is a classic shortcut, allowing one to quickly determine who’s right and who’s wrong in a seemingly complex and data-laden debate. Or as the paper put it: “The public’s low level of knowledge and the media’s conflicting, often value-laden messages about global warming lead people to use heuristics to make sense of this complex issue.”

Evidence of Fox and Rush Limbaugh raising doubts about climate scientists — in a way that could generate distrust — isn’t hard to come by. Limbaugh includes scientists in his “four corners of deceit … government, academia, science, and the media.” As for Fox, there are myriad examples of coverage that could be said to cast doubt on climate science. For instance, there’s the 2009 memo, exposed by Media Matters, in which Fox Washington editor Bill Sammon instructed staff to cast doubt on climate research in their coverage.

It seems unlikely, however, that conservative media alone can account for the distrust of science on the right. In a major 2012 study [PDF], the sociologist Gordon Gauchat showed that conservatives have lost trust in scientists across the board over a period of many decades, dating all the way back to 1974. Fox News only launched in 1996, however; Rush Limbaugh started national broadcasts in 1988.

Clearly, then, other factors must be involved in sowing distrust as well — including a long history of left-right policy fights in which scientists seemed to be on the “liberal” side, with a canonical example being the battle over Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” program in the 1980s.

As a result of these conflicts, politically attuned conservatives today are well aware that scientists and academics rarely seem to come out on their side. Perhaps Fox News and the Rush Limbaugh Show are, in the end, simply the media reflection of that long-standing conservative perception.

This story was produced as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Chris Mooney is host of the Point of Inquiry podcast and the author of four books, including The Republican War on Science and The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science and Reality.

Every Forest Once a Food Forest

By Billy Frank Jr., Chairman, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

OLYMPIA – Folks up in Seattle are developing a “food forest” on Beacon Hill. Right there, near the heart of the city, a place where anyone can come along and pick fruit, vegetables, herbs, berries and more. The first harvests from the forest are expected this fall.

It’s a great idea. Sharing food and community are two things that I care a lot about. Most of my life has been centered on food and the rights of tribes to be able to harvest their own food.

For us Indian people, all of western Washington was once a food forest.

The trouble is that it’s getting harder and harder for these forests, rivers and beaches to provide us with much food because they’ve been treated so poorly. For us, the U.S. v. Washington ruling that upheld our treaty fishing, hunting and gathering rights came too late.

Since almost the first day that Judge George Boldt’s decision became law, we’ve had to cut back on our fishing because of declining runs. This ongoing decline is being driven by habitat loss and damage, and it isn’t getting better.

Shellfish was always a dependable source of food for Indian people. But pollution from stormwater runoff, failing septic systems and agricultural impacts threaten that vital food source

Wildlife habitat in our forests continues to shrink. More and more animals are being forced into smaller and smaller areas.

We’re losing our mountain huckleberries to busloads of commercial harvesters who come in with rakes and other tools to strip the bushes clean, often causing damage to the plants and reducing future yields.

Salmon, shellfish, wildlife and huckleberries are all important, traditional and treaty-protected foods. Our ancestors knew their importance. That’s why they reserved the right to access and harvest them in treaties with the U.S. government.

Projects like the edible food forest in Seattle are important. I hope they make an effort to include native forest plants that were once up on Beacon Hill before the city came along.

We need to bring our rivers back to life, clean up and protect our beaches, and bring food back to the forests all around us.

The first rule of fracking is: Don’t talk about fracking

By Claire Thompson, Grist

The Hallowich children were just 7 and 10 years old when their family received a $750,000 settlement to relocate away from their home in Mount Pleasant, Penn., which was next door to a shale-gas drilling site. By the time they’re grown up, they may not remember much about what it was like to live there — the burning eyes, sore throats, headaches, and earaches they experienced thanks to contaminated air and water. And maybe it’s better if they don’t remember, since they’re prohibited from talking about the experience for the rest of their lives.

The terms of Stephanie and Chris Hallowich’s settlement with Range Resources included, like most such settlements do, a non-disclosure agreement preventing them from discussing their case or gas drilling and fracking in general. But the agreement’s extension to their children is unprecedented; one assistant law professor at the University of Pittsburgh called it “over-the-top.”

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports:

According to the transcript [of the settlement hearing], the Hallowichs’ attorney, Peter Villari, said that in 30 years of practicing law he never had seen a nondisclosure agreement that included minor children.

And, although he advised the Hallowichs to accept the settlement, he questioned if the children’s First Amendment rights could be restricted by such an agreement.

According to Villari, the settlement wouldn’t have gone forward unless the couple also signed a document stating their health was not affected by drilling operations. So all the record will show, as a spokesperson for Range Resources put it, is that “clearly the Hallowichs were not in an ideal situation in terms of their lifestyle. They had an unusual amount of activity around them. We didn’t want them in that situation.” Man, if you could get $750,000 just for having an “unusual amount of activity” near your home — say, the construction of some microapartments — development-related NIMBYism would cease to exist.

For people whose property values, health, and quality of life have suffered thanks to fracking, settlements like these can be a bitter pill to swallow. In exchange for much-needed compensation for damages, they’re barred from speaking up about their experiences, which slows the spread of awareness about fracking’s potential risks and helps the cycle of exploitation continue. ClimateProgress explains:

The Hallowich family’s gag order is only the most extreme example of a tactic that critics say effectively silences anyone hurt by fracking. It’s a choice between receiving compensation for damage done to one’s health and property, or publicizing the abuses that caused the harm. Virtually no one can forgo compensation, so their stories go untold.

Bruce Baizel, Energy Program Director at Earthworks, an environmental group focusing on mineral and energy development, said in a phone interview that the companies’ motives are clear. “The refrain in the industry is, this is a safe process. There’s no record of contamination. That whole claim would be undermined if these things were public.” There have been attempts to measure the number of settlements with non-disclosure agreements, Baizel said, but to no avail. “They don’t have to be registered, they don’t have to be filed. It’s kind of a black hole.” …

Sharon Wilson, an organizer with Earthworks, said … “These gag orders are the reason [drillers] can give testimony to Congress and say there are no documented cases of contamination. And then elected officials can repeat that.” She makes it clear she doesn’t blame the families who take the settlements. “They do what they have to do to protect themselves and their children.”

The Range Resources spokesperson said the company doesn’t believe this settlement should apply to the children. But according to the hearing transcript, Range Resources’ attorney asserted not only that the order does indeed apply to the younger Hallowichs, but that the company “would certainly enforce it.”

If Range Resources ever gets its official position straight, the Hallowich kids could be released from the gag order. Until then, they better watch what they say on the playground.

Transcanada to build tar sands pipeline to Atlantic

By John Queally, August 2, 2013. Source: Common Dreams

With the passage of the Keystone XL pipeline uncertain and under financial pressure to find export terminals so to justify expansion of vast tar sands operations in Alberta, the Canadian pipeline company—with backing from the Harper government— announced on Thursday that it will seek to build an enormous eastward pipeline so it can bring what critics call “the world’s dirtiest fuel” to market.

Called the “East Energy Pipeline,” the $12 billion project would connect with existing pipeline networks in Quebec province and will be able to move up to 1.1 million barrels of tar sands oil a day up and over the northeastern United States to the coast of New Brunswick.

The new project, according to TransCanada’s CEO Russ Girling, is not intended to signal that the company has given up on building Keystone but shows it is willing (and able) to push for multiple pipelines at any given time.

“What we know in North America is production is continuing to grow,” Mr. Girling said at a news conference in Calgary. “The marketplace needs both of these pipelines and probably more.”

Joe Oliver, Canada’s natural resources minister, welcomed the TransCanada announcement and said the Canadian government would offer its full support.

“Our government welcomes the prospect of transporting Canadian crude oil from Western Canada to consumers and refineries in Eastern Canada and ultimately to new markets abroad,” Oliver said in a statement.

Critics, however, were unimpressed and vowed to fight the pipeline with the same energy and intensity that Keystone XL has faced.

“TransCanada is desperate to show that tar sands are viable, ” said Michael Marx, the ‘beyond oil’ campaign director for Sierra Club. “The truth is they are not. This announcement of an eastern Canada pipeline is a fantasy. It’ll face the same opposition dirty, dangerous pipelines to the west or south through the United States face, if not more. Tar sands is the dirtiest source of oil on Earth and running it through Montreal, Quebec and the Bay of Fundy is like running Keystone XL through Manhattan and the Grand Canyon. It’s not going to happen.”

As the New York Times adds:

TransCanada’s new plan involves converting 1,864 miles of a natural gas pipeline to carry oil, and the construction of 870 miles of new pipeline, mainly in Quebec and New Brunswick. It has long-term contracts to carry about 900,000 barrels of oil a day along the route, Mr. Girling said.

“They’re in for a fight,” John Bennett, the executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, said shortly after the announcement. Mr. Bennett said he was particularly concerned about the possibility of oil spills in the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick and about harm to whales in the area from tanker traffic. In a statement, Environmental Defence said the plan was “yet another misguided scheme that puts Canadians in harm’s way for the benefit of the oil industry’s bottom line.”

Nebraska trial could delay Keystone XL pipeline

By Lenny Bernstein, August 4, 2013. Source: Washington Post

While environmentalists, energy executives and elected officials across North America await the State Department’s critical decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, a little-noticed trial scheduled for next month in Nebraska could spell problems for the $5.3 billion project.

Despite two attempts by Nebraska’s attorney general to have the case thrown out, Lancaster County District Court Judge Stephanie Stacy has set a Sept. 27 trial date for arguments in a lawsuit that contends the state legislature unconstitutionally gave Gov. Dave Heineman (R) authority to approve the pipeline route.

A win for the plaintiffs — three Nebraska landowners who oppose the pipeline — would force TransCanada, the company that wants to build the 1,179-mile northern leg of the project, to go through the entire siting process again. Even supporters do not believe that would permanently block the project, but it could add years to the timeline. Appeals through the Nebraska court system could have a similar effect.

“I don’t think [people] realize how Nebraska is a big monkey wrench in all this,” said Brian Jorde, attorney for the three landowners.

The State Department must sign off on the pipeline because it would cross a U.S. border, bringing as much as 830,000 barrels a day of diluted bitumen crude from oil sands in Alberta, Canada, to U.S. refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. A State Department official said the agency’s review of the pipeline is continuing and would not be affected by the Nebraska litigation.

But route decisions are left to the states along the way, which gives Nebraska jurisdiction over nearly 200 miles of the proposed project. That might not have been a problem for TransCanada until the state legislature, acting in the final hours of its 2012 session, took authority over review and approval of the route away from the five elected members of the Public Service Commission and instead gave it to Heineman and the state’s Department of Environmental Quality. The bill, LB 1161, passed by an overwhelming majority.

It also authorized the governor to give TransCanada the power of eminent domain over landholders, a valuable weapon as the company seeks easements from farmers and ranchers to run the pipeline through Nebraska.

“By all appearances, that bill was written by TransCanada. . . . I think at some point in time, ordinary citizens can’t tolerate that kind of behavior,” said Randy Thompson, a small farmer and one of the plaintiffs.

Shawn Howard, a spokesman for TransCanada, said in an e-mail that the company believes the Nebraska law “is constitutional and should be upheld.” The company will continue to plan the pipeline and seek easements, even with the threat of a new route review looming, Howard said.

The plaintiffs argue that, under the Nebraska constitution, the legislature had no authority to transfer route-approval powers from the commission to the governor or to give him the ability to delegate the power of eminent domain to TransCanada. The law also does not provide for judicial review of the governor’s decision, they contend, and is essentially “special legislation” designed to benefit the pipeline company only.

“The suit claims that the PSC has the exclusive jurisdiction” to review the pipeline and set its route, “and the legislature can’t take that power . . . and transfer the right to one person, a partisan person, the governor, to become the trigger for eminent domain,” Jorde said.

A spokeswoman for Attorney General Jon Bruning declined to comment on the case, but Deputy Attorney General Katherine J. Spohn argued in her brief that the legislature had acted lawfully. Spohn said lawmakers had the legal ability to give Heineman the power to delegate eminent domain authority to TransCanada.

Stacy, the district court judge, has scheduled an hour of arguments in her courtroom and subsequently could take months to rule on the issues, Jorde said. The losing side is expected to appeal as far as the state’s Supreme Court before the issue is finally decided, he said.

“When our legislature steps over the line,” Thompson said, “I think it’s important that ordinary citizens take them to task.”