Rendering of the Forest County Potawatomi Community’s renewable generation facility (miron-construction.com)
Source: Indian Country Today Media Network
By this time next year, the Forest County Potawatomi Community-owned FCPC Renewable Generation, LLC is anticipated to complete its food waste-to-energy facility in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The company recently broke ground on the copy8.6 million renewable energy facility in the Menomonee Valley that will convert liquid and solid food wastes to biogas through an anaerobic digestion process. The biogas will fuel two 1-megawatt generators to produce a total of approximately 2 megawatts of gross electrical power output—enough electricity to power about 1,500 homes. The power will be sold to WE Energies, the local electrical utility.
The “Community Renewable Energy Deployment” project, better known as CommRE, is being developed one block west of Potawatomi Bingo Casino on tribal land.
Construction of the facility is expected to create nearly 100 construction jobs at its peak and an additional five full-time jobs after completion.
“This project is an example of how renewable energy projects can benefit both the environment and the local economy. It will not only keep waste from our landfills, but also provides opportunities to partner with other local businesses and industries,” Jeff Crawford, attorney general for the Forest County Potawatomi Community, told the Milwaukee Community Journal. “We hope that this project will allow others to see the many benefits that small-scale renewable energy projects can bring to communities.”
Beyond the renewable energy facility, the Tribe is also currently developing a $36 million data center on the Concordia Trust property on Milwaukee’s near west side and a copy50 million, 381-room hotel adjacent to Potawatomi Bingo Casino in the Menomonee Valley.
“The Forest County Potawatomi have called Milwaukee home for hundreds of years,” said Crawford. “We are proud of our ongoing investments in the area which help make Milwaukee, and Wisconsin, an even better place live and do business.”
Hurricane Sandy offered a glimpse of what future storms could mean for energy infrastructure Photo: Arlington County/cc/flickr
By Andrea Germanos, Common Dreams
The nation’s energy infrastructure is a sitting duck in the face of climate change.
This is according to a report released Thursday from the Department of Energy that looks at how the effects of climate change–from increasing temperatures, decreased water supplies and rising sea levels–threaten the nation’s energy network.
U.S. Energy Sector Vulnerabilities to Climate Change and Extreme Weather looks at examples where energy infrastructure has already been impacted by extreme weather events.
In the summer of 2010, for example, two nuclear power plants–Hope Creek in New Jersey and Exelon’s Limerick Generating Station in Pennsylvania–had to reduce power when the cooling waters from rivers was too high. Or take July 2011 when an Exxon pipeline beneath the Yellowstone River was ravaged by flood debris, spewing oil into the river.
And coming temperatures increases, heatwaves, droughts and shrinking water supplies are only set to worsen with runaway greenhouse gases, bringing further threats.
Rather than steering away from water-intensive and water-polluting energy extraction techniques like fracking, the report states that “attendant water demands for their development and production become increasingly important.”
“Water is obviously the big question,” the Associated Press quotes Jonathan Pershing, deputy assistant secretary of energy for climate change policy and technology, who oversaw the report, as saying. “In drought you don’t have enough water. As seas rise, you have too much.”
A press release on the report lists more of the upcoming challenges:
Increased risk of temporary partial or full shutdowns at thermoelectric (coal, natural gas, and nuclear) power plants because of decreased water availability for cooling and higher ambient and air water temperatures. Thermoelectric power plants require water cooling in order to operate. A study of coal plants, for example, found that roughly 60 percent of the current fleet is located in areas of water stress.
Increasing risks of physical damage to power lines, transformers and electricity distribution systems from hurricanes, storms and wildfires that are growing more intense and more frequent.
Higher air conditioning costs and risks of blackouts and brownouts in some regions if the capacity of existing power plants does not keep pace with the growth in peak electricity demand due to increasing temperatures and heat waves. An Argonne National Laboratory study found that higher peak electricity demand as a result of climate change related temperature increases will require an additional 34 GW of new power generation capacity in the western United States alone by 2050, costing consumers $45 billion. This is roughly equivalent to more than 100 new power plants, and doesn’t include new power plants that will be needed to accommodate growth in population or other factors.
“We don’t have a robust energy system, and the costs are significant,” the New York Times quotes Pershing as saying. “The cost today is measured in the billions. Over the coming decades, it will be in the trillions. You can’t just put your head in the sand anymore.”
The American Society of Civil Engineers also recently flagged the nation’s energy grid and distribution system as being in need of serious investment, giving it a grade of D+ in its 2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.
Tribal Elder Melvin Gasper is organizing the five acre site so they can hunt, fish and gather food as well as educate the public. Now, he wants the five acres to become 35 acres, adding room to harvest maple syrup. “We’re going to have two different maple sugar processes going on,” says Gasper. “We’re going to show people how — in just one little area — what it’ll produce and how we could use this one little area to make more money than GTAC’s planning on paying.” Gasper says this is their way of occupying an area where an open pit iron ore mine is proposed by Gogebic Taconite. He plans to keep it occupied until 2018.
The Kiowa Tribe has gathered cedar for ceremonies and prayed on Longhorn Mountain south of Gotebo, Oklahoma for generations. That practice is in serious jeopardy as efforts to mine gravel out of the mountain are scheduled to begin by summer’s end, turning generations of sacred usage into rubble.
“This is where we always come,” said tribal historian Phil Dupoint. “This is where our elders used to come. Maybe they were searching for some kind of power… They would go to Longhorn and different places in the area.”
Dupoint says the cedar gathered from the area has a unique scent, different from any other cedar in the United States and Canada. He said medicine people in the Kiowa Tribe would also leave spiritual power for future generations on the mountain.
The mountain being in jeopardy can be traced back to the creation of the Kiowa, Comanche and Apache Reservation through the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867, which placed the tribes’ reservation in southwest Oklahoma, where Longhorn Mountain is. By 1901, the Jerome Agreement opened the Kiowa, Comanche and Apache Reservation to non-Indian settelement, after the KCA familes were allotted 160 acres each.
Kiowa tribal historian Phil Dupoint and Kiowa Museum Director Amie Tah-Bone are both trying to stop the gravel mining on Longhorn Mountain in Oklahoma. (Brian Daffron)
Sections of the mountain were alloted to Kiowa families, but those lands were eventually sold to non-Indians—five non-Indian familes currently own the Longhorn Mountain area. It is through what Dupoint refers to as a “gentleman’s agreement” that the Kiowa have entered the mountain on the east side to gather cedar.
Mining is scheduled to begin on the west side of the mountain this summer. A blasting permit was issued by the Oklahoma Department of Mines to the Material Service Corporation, according to Amie Tah-Bone, the Kiowa Museum director. Rock crushing activities will then be under the supervision of Stewart Stone, based out of Cushing, Oklahoma. Calls placed to the Oklahoma Department of Mines and to Stone have not been returned.
Dust from the mining activities on the west side have the potential to impact the area’s environment, ranging from reduction of air quality, damage to surrounding crops and livestock, and killing of the cedar trees on the mountain.
“It’s a hard and complex situation,” said Tah-Bone. “We’re at a disadvantage. It’s not trust land. It’s not federal land. It’s privately owned land, and we don’t have a right to it. We thank the people on the eastern side for their generosity in letting us have access to it. They could throw us in jail for trespassing, but they don’t. We are working on it… and doing everything we can think of to stop it. It might take some time. We want people to know we’re doing the best that we can.”
The Kiowa have been meeting with landowners as well as state and federal officials about the issue. Kiowa officials have also been meeting with the farmers and ranchers in the surrounding region about the environmental impact of the mining. Dupoint and Tah-Bone encourage those who want to help to contact the Kiowa Tribe at 580-654-2300 or email pr@kiowatribe.org.
Previous attempts to purchase the land have not been successful. For now, efforts to halt construction rest with those who hold the surface and mineral rights to the mountain—the landowners—and those who are spiritually connected to the mountain.
“Right now, it’s just to work with the landowners,” Dupoint said. “Somewhere down the line, if it’s not them, maybe their offspring. They may feel passion; they may be able to talk with us and give us the opportunity to purchase it back, or they would deed it back to us. We don’t know what goes on in a man’s mind or in his heart.”
From 1998 to 2005, agricultural biotech giant Monsanto planted genetically engineered glyphosate-resistant wheat in experimental fields in 16 states. It was not intended for commercialization; genetically engineered wheat has never been approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for sale. But, nine years after Monsanto’s experiment was discontinued, strains of this GM wheat have been found in other wheat fields, the USDA announced on May 29.
Immediately after the news leaked, South Korea and Japan banned all U.S. imports of wheat. And a handful of wheat farmers have since sued Monsanto, charging that this genetic pollution is financially damaging their business, reported Natural News.
Monsanto’s other genetically engineered crops—including many currently available on supermarket shelves—have encountered a barrage of backlash as well, with debates raging about the need for GMO crops to be labeled as such. Environmentalists sound horns about GMOs spreading or “self-replicating,” and nutritionists question the long-term implications genetically engineered foods will have on our health.
All this, and many of Monsanto’s efforts to make plants insect- and herbicide-resistant have backfired, as pests have developed immunity, reported OpposingViews.
Mike Adams, the health ranger editor for Natural News, has warned that self-replicating GMOs, like the glyphosate-resistant wheat, have sparked a “genetic apocalypse”—with the potential to threaten the global food supply and destroy the human race:
Mark my words: there will come a day when Americans will wish they had burned all the GM corn fields to the ground. But by then it will be too late. The blight will be upon us, and with it comes the starvation, the suffering, the desperation and the riots. Hunger turns all family men into savages, just as greed turns all corporate men into demons.
Major earthquakes thousands of miles away can trigger reflex quakes in areas where fluids have been injected into the ground from fracking and other industrial operations, according to a study published in the journal Science on Thursday.
Previous studies, covered in a recent Mother Jones feature from Michael Behar, have shown that injecting fluids into the ground can increase the seismicity of a region. This latest study shows that earthquakes can tip off smaller quakes in far-away areas where fluid has been pumped underground.
The scientists looked at three big quakes: the Tohuku-oki earthquake in Japan in 2011 (magnitude 9), the Maule in Chile in 2010 (an 8.8 magnitude), and the Sumatra in Indonesia in 2012 (an 8.6). They found that, as much as 20 months later, those major quakes triggered smaller ones in places in the Midwestern U.S. where fluids have been pumped underground for energy extraction.
“[The fluids] kind of act as a pressurized cushion,” lead author Nicholas van der Elst of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University explained to Mother Jones. “They make it easier for the fault to slide.”
The finding is not entirely surprising, said van der Elst. Scientists have known for a long time that areas with naturally high subsurface fluid pressures — places like Yellowstone, for example — can see an uptick in seismic activity after a major earthquake even very far away. But this is the first time they’ve found a link between remote quakes and seismic activity in places where human activity has increased the fluid pressure via underground injections.
“It happens in places where fluid pressures are naturally high, so we’re not so surprised it happens in places where fluid pressures are artificially high,” he said.
The study looked specifically at Prague, Okla., which features prominently in Behar’s piece. The study links the increased tremors in Prague, which has a number of injection wells nearby, to Chile’s Feb. 27, 2010, quake. The study also found that big quakes in Japan and Indonesia triggered quakes in areas of Western Texas and Southern Colorado with many injection wells. The study is “additional evidence that fluids really are driving the increase in earthquakes at these sites,” said van der Elst.
Leanne Kroll / Brett BrownellDrillers inject high-pressure fluids into a hydraulic fracturing well, making slight fissures in the shale that release natural gas. The wastewater that flows back up with the gas is then transported to disposal wells, where it is injected deep into porous rock. Scientists now believe that the pressure and lubrication of that wastewater can cause faults to slip and unleash an earthquake.
Brett Brownell is the multimedia producer at Mother Jones.
Jaeah Lee is the associate interactive producer at Mother Jones.
Kate Sheppard was Grist’s political reporter until August 2009. She now covers energy and environmental politics for Mother Jones. Read her work and follow her on Twitter.
China and the U.S. continued their climate-protecting love affair Wednesday, agreeing to cooperate on five initiatives to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
The initiatives range “from bread-and-butter steps, such as boosting building efficiency, to what officials said would be a leading-edge effort to improve the technology for capturing carbon as it is released from power plants,” reports The Washington Post.
Wednesday’s announcement follows an agreement struck last month during meetings between Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping to work together to reduce climate-changing HFC emissions.
The U.S.-China climate change working group, which officials from both countries formed in April, will work with companies and non-governmental groups to develop plans by October to carry out the measures aimed at fighting climate change and cutting pollution. …
Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew hosted a Chinese delegation, led by State Councilor Yang Jiechi and Vice Premier Wang Yang, at the talks that cover both economics and wider geopolitical issues.
The climate agreements will concentrate on improving technologies, and will not be binding and will not seek to cut emissions by specific volumes. Still, the hope is any cooperation could help lend support to wider international talks on greenhouse gas reductions and help finalize a global treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol on climate change by 2015.
Develop projects to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
Reduce vehicle emissions, particularly from large trucks, by strengthening efficiency standards and developing more efficient vehicles and cleaner fuels.
Increase energy efficiency, first in buildings but also in transportation and industry.
Improve greenhouse gas data collection and management.
Promote smart grids through collaborative projects.
Together, the U.S. and China produce some 43 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, and they’ve not been leaders on climate change in past years, so their increasing cooperation is notable. “Environmental activists say this holds immense potential because of the combined size and influence of the two nations — at a time when countries are struggling to agree on a global strategy,” reports the Post.
Nisqually Tribe uses tangle nets, beach seines to reduce impact on chinook
E. O’Connell Benji Kautz, Nisqually Tribe, unloads chinook during the tribe’s fishery last fall.
E. O’Connell, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission
Treaty Indian tribes in western Washington are experimenting with fishing methods that help conserve depressed salmon
and steelhead stocks. The Nisqually Tribe began using alternative gear a few years ago, and this spring, the Lummi Nation and Upper Skagit Indian Tribe both held tangle net fisheries. Tangle nets are similar to gillnets, but have a smaller mesh size.
The Nisqually Indian Tribe will continue to lower impacts on returning chinook salmon this year.
“To make good on our recent gains in habitat restoration in the Nisqually, fishermen need to decrease how many natural origin chinook are caught,” said David Troutt, natural resources director for the tribe.
In recent years, the tribe has implemented drastic changes to its fishing regime, including a decrease of 15 fishing days since 2004; reducing the number of nets that can be used by a fisherman from three to two; and having just less than a month of mark-selective fishing with tangle nets and beach seines.
This year’s fishing plan will continue implementing mark-selective fishing, but only with beach seines.
“A historically large run of pink salmon is forecast to come in alongside chinook and coho this year,” Troutt said. Tangle
nets – which ensnare fish by their teeth – would catch an un- usually high number of pinks, which tribal fishermen aren’t targeting.
“Since 2004, Nisqually tribal fishermen have already cut hundreds of hours off their chinook season,” Troutt said. “Tribal fishermen are bearing the brunt of conservation for these fish so we can help them recover.”
In a mark-selective fishery, fishermen release natural origin fish that haven’t had their adipose fin removed in a hatchery. The adipose fin is a soft, fleshy fin found on the back behind the dorsal fin. Its removal does not affect the salmon.
“Mark-selective fisheries are a useful tool and the Nisqually is a unique place in western Washington where it could benefit salmon and tribal fisheries,” Troutt said.
(UASHAT MAK MANI-UTENAM, QC) The Innu First Nation of Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam wishes to remind potential purchasers of Rio Tinto’s share of Iron Ore Company of Canada (IOC) that the Canadian Aboriginal group continues to fiercely oppose IOC’s mining, railway and port operations within their traditional territory. One of the measures the Aboriginal group has taken was to file legal proceedings against IOC on March 18, 2013, along with another aboriginal group, the Innu First Nation of Matimekush-Lac John, asking the Court to block IOC’s operations in Quebec and Labrador as well as to grant them damages in the amount of CAD$900 million – see press release of March 20, 2013.
IOC’s operations on the traditional territory of Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam and their Innu brothers and sisters of Matimekush-Lac John have scarred the land as well as people’s lives for more than 60 years now. The Innu are well pas their breaking point and in addition to the above legal action, IOC can expect further acts of opposition in the coming months.
Meanwhile, Rio Tinto continues to seek to sell its majority stake in IOC. And while it is clear that Rio Tinto is looking to offload assets, the Innu First Nation of Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam cannot help but feel that Rio Tinto is also seeking to offload the “Innu problem”.
“We simply wish to make clear that any purchaser of Rio Tinto’s stake in IOC will run up against the same fierce opposition that is currently underway against IOC. The conflict will not end until the more than 60 years of injustice we have endured at the hands of IOC comes to an end,” stated Mike McKenzie, Chief of the Innu First Nation of Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam.
“While Rio Tinto is looking to move on, our people are not going anywhere. We will still be here, occupying our traditional territory like we always have and unfortunately living with all the negative impacts IOC’s projects have caused and continue to cause,” added Chief McKenzie.
In fact, the Innu First Nation of Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam would like to take this opportunity to remind any potential investor looking to do business on their traditional territory (covering much of northeastern Quebec and Labrador) that they will defend to the end the principle that any project on their traditional territory requires their consent.
From New York’s Zuccotti Park to Egypt’s Tahrir Square, popular uprisings of the last few years have often been credited to the organizing power of digital social networks like Twitter and Facebook. But shared public spaces in dense urban areas have a lot more organizing power than hashtags or retweets, and there’s new research to back that up.
The Urban Affairs Review paper “Walk and Be Moved: How Walking Builds Social Movements” by Brian Knudsen and Terry Clark underscores how dense city-living exposes residents to new ideas and connections, and in turn fosters the creation of social movement organizations. The authors (Knudsen works at Urban Innovation Analysis, a Chicago design firm, and Clark is a sociology professor at the University of Chicago) base their research on the interaction between the urbs — our physical infrastructure, our streets, our parks, our commerce — and the civitas — the people who give those places meaning collectively.
Knudsen and Clark say they are “the first to discover and analyze electronic unpublished data for environmental, human rights, and other types” of social movement groups, and compare them to how city spaces are used and lived. Their analysis shows that it’s not just the existence of those shared public spaces, but the way we use them that contributes to making a city more politically active. Specifically, a more active city is one that uses its two feet.
“The study provides substantial evidence that it is not just density, or the crowding together of people in urban areas, that shapes political and social activism, but the direct engagement of the city through walking,” Richard Florida writes at Atlantic Cities.
We’ve intuitively known that cities spawn social movements for a really long time. It’s been 45 years since Henri Lefebvre wrote about our “right to the city” — our right, that is, to “demand a transformed and renewed access to urban life.” Lefebvre wasn’t the only, or the first, one to point this out. (Hey Jane Jacobs! Hey Aristotle!) But these ideas are especially relevant in light of the last few years of global political action.
“In our historic moment, social grievances are inextricably tied to urban living,” Marc Tracy writes about the recent uprisings in Brazil at the New Republic (uprisings that, it should be noted, were sparked by an attempt to raise bus fares). “And since the characteristic attribute of a city is density and the characteristic attribute of density is the flinging together of people from different walks of life, Brazil’s protests have engaged a broad swath of the population.”
Brazil made the right to the city national law in 2001. But do the same forces come to bear in U.S. cities? Stateside, cities seem more concerned about attracting “new talent” than fostering social justice these days. Talk among urbanists is more about bike lanes and coffee shops than lowering transit fares.
According to the study’s authors, “walking effects are larger than income, local rent, or racial diversity.” But it seems ill-advised to rule those factors entirely, especially when our cities are in flux, and when the authors are using data from the year 2000. Since then, many U.S. city centers have grown more affluent and white, while the formerly cloistered, non-walkable suburbs have become more poor and brown.
What might those shifts mean for the future of urban activism? A diversity of population and ideas is what makes the real magic behind walkability — not just the walking itself. People have to be exposed to the breadth of the human condition if they might be motivated to change it. Will social and environmental justice organizations sustain in dense neighborhoods that become richer, and more homogenous? Can that diversity of ideas sustain without a diversity of people?
Put another way, will new city residents still be motivated toward social and environmental justice issues, or will they be content to sip soy lattes and ride bikes while donning very hip-looking helmets?
Ultimately — ideally! — if these dense, walkable places can accommodate newcomers without losing sight of longtime residents, everyone stands to benefit. To do that, though, we’ll need to maintain a diverse political dialog — in the public squares, of course.
