Saturday’s Washington Post crystallized a trend of reporting in recent days showing that neither misaligned floor mats nor defective pedals are to blame for all acceleration problems in Toyota cars, at least not in the 2005 model Camry. The car, which has neither piece of offending equipment, does have electronic acceleration controls that are beginning to emerge as a potential cause of the problem. If those computerized systems are at the heart of even a small universe of Toyota’s problems, as long-time auto safety expert Clarence Ditlow told the Post, the problem should raise “a huge red flag.”

Automobile manufacturers have been working for several years to perfect electronic controls in their cars because those systems are much lighter and therefore are important in the effort to improve fuel economy by giving engines less weight to drag around. But you can scour the public record …

Representatives Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak have released a batch of documents this afternoon on the day before their committee hearing on the Toyota debacle. Their focus is largely on the issue of the possible role of electronic failures as a cause of sudden unintended acceleration cases. They criticized Toyota's response to the reports of electronic problems, and in their letter to transportaiton secretary Ray LaHood, say:

Our preliminary review of the documents and the information learned from the meetings with NHTSA officials raises two significant concerns. First, NHTSA appears to lack the expertise needed to evaluate defects in vehicle electronic controls. ... Second, NHTSA's response to complaints of sudden unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles appears to have been seriously deficient.

Cross-posted from Legal Planet.

Cross-posted from Legal Planet.

The past couple of weeks have been crazier than usual on the Bay-Delta. The pumps were first ramped up and then ramped down. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) pandered to the irrigation crowd (or at least a part of it) by proposing to ease endangered species protections in the Delta. And the fall-run chinook salmon population, which supports the commercial fishery, crashed.

First, the pumps. Recall that last fall Judge Oliver Wanger ruled that the Bureau of Reclamation violated NEPA by implementing the 2008 smelt biological opinion without first undertaking environmental analysis. I think that’s incorrect as a matter of law; it can’t be a violation of NEPA to reduce pumping for conservation purposes, but not a violation to gradually ramp up pumping over the decades that the CVP and SWP have been operating. NEPA analysis should happen, but it should happen …

Just to give you an idea of the scope of the situation in Tennessee: More than 3 million cubic yards of coal ash were released into the waterways in the Kingston coal ash disaster in late 2008. This week comes news from cleanup officials that the removal of that waste is 70 percent complete. The EPA's PowerPoint shows that removal of the coal ash from the river is slightly ahead of forecast (slide 16).

So, just a half million cubic yards plus to go. Oh, but don't forget, says the Tennessean:

TVA plans to remove the more than 2 million cubic yards that lie just west of the river in a second phase that could take three years. The total cost of the cleanup effort could reach $1.2 billion.

Officials managing the cleanup can be forgiven for their enthusiasm at the progress to date …

In 2008 alone, coal-fired power plants produced some 136 million tons of coal ash waste – dangerous stuff, because it contains arsenic, cadmium, mercury, and a host of other toxins that are a significant threat to basic human health. Ironically, coal ash has been growing as a problem in recent years in part because better pollution-control devices capture more toxic contaminants before they go up power plant smokestacks. Last year, around 55 percent of the stuff was piled up in rickety “surface impoundments” – that is to say, holes in the ground – and other unstable structures at hundreds of disposal facilities across the country. In December 2008, we got a stern reminder of just how rickety, when a coal ash spill in Kingston, Tennessee demonstrated the catastrophic consequences that occur when these structures fail. Heavy rain that month combined with a leak in an earthen wall in one such …

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel had its latest article on BPA this weekend, this time looking at the role of the December 22 meeting between the industry and OIRA. Writer Meg Kissinger contrasts the forceful EPA statements on BPA from last year with the lack of an EPA action plan on the chemical now. As for the documents presented to OIRA at the meeting,

The Journal Sentinel reviewed the list and found 13 of the 19 papers and presentations cited were paid for by the BPA industry. The funding source for the authors of two other papers could not be determined. Only one was written by a scientist without ties to the industry.

Perhaps it's not surprising. But it bears noting that this is what's going on over there.

The concept of cap and trade took another hit recently with disclosures that hackers had been able to get into the accounts of several holders of carbon emissions allowances in Europe and steal some of the account balance. This, along with the continued snowstorm in Washington, D.C. seems to fill those opposing a federal comprehensive cap and trade plan with glee.

While the issue of record setting snows in D.C. should be addressed with basic scientific education (trends and averages are not the same as one time events; snow often results from warmer temperatures, etc…) the issue of possible fraud in carbon trading systems deserves examination to see if there is such a systemic problem with cap and trade that it is more subject to fraud and manipulation than other markets.

The short answer to this question is “no.” The fraud perpetrated on the E …

Tomorrow will be the 120th day since the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) began its review of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) star-crossed proposal to declare coal ash that is not safely recycled to be a hazardous waste. The number is significant because it marks the end of OIRA’s allotted review period for the proposal, under the Executive Order that governs OIRA.

The date will likely come and go without fanfare. By rights, OIRA ought to either release the proposal for public comment or return it to EPA for rewriting. You’d think OIRA would be eager to get the thing off its plate, since its staff have been compelled to sit through no fewer than 33 separate meetings on the subject in recent months, no fewer than 28 with industry lobbyists opposed to the rule. But I harbor no expectation …