From Surviving to Thriving: Hazardous Waste and Disaster Preparedness
This post is part of CPR's From Surviving to Thriving: Equity in Disaster Planning and Recovery report.
What Happened
According to the Houston Chronicle, there were more than 100 releases of hazardous substances into land, air, and water during and after Hurricane Harvey. At least one dozen of the Superfund sites listed in or near Houston were flooded during the storm.
On September 3, 2017, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) acknowledged breaches at 13 area Superfund sites. Later in September, the EPA reported that it had recovered 517 containers of potentially toxic hazardous waste from Superfund sites that flooded during Harvey. In its first mention of these releases on September 22, 2017, the agency provided no information as to where the materials had come from, what they were, or how hazardous they were.
More than a month after the hurricane, EPA acknowledged a serious breach at the San Jacinto Waste Pit Superfund site. According to ABC News, tests found very high levels of chemicals called dioxins at the site in Channelview. “Testing results released by EPA found levels at 70,000 nanograms per kilogram, more than 2,000 times the recommended level of 30 ng/kg, according to …
This story was originally published by The Revelator.
In his first 19 months in office, Donald Trump has repeatedly defied established presidential norms — so flagrantly that it almost obscures the many ways he's changed national policies for the worse. But despite all the scandals and mean-spirited tweets, it's likely that his most enduring impact will be his administration's systematic, reckless dismantling of ongoing efforts to curtail human-caused climate change.
The miseries of global climate disruption are already upon us. During the current decade, the world has experienced record heat waves, as well as intermittent periods of extraordinary cold, devastating floods, prolonged droughts, dangerous wildfires and large and powerful hurricanes. Despite these alarm bells and urgent warnings from scientists around the globe, the volume of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere by human activity has continued to rise each year.
One clear example of …
This op-ed originally ran in The Hill.
Federal laws and regulations play a crucial role determining the quality of our air, water, and natural resources. Well-researched and scientifically supported rules can bring enormous benefits to the American people, but regulatory rollbacks for little more than deregulation's sake can cause great harm.
One example of the potential damage that a poorly crafted regulation may cause is the new proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to roll back a requirement that automobile manufacturers improve vehicle fuel efficiency in the first half of the 2020s. With the rise of wind and solar energy, and the ongoing shift from coal-fired to natural-gas-fired power plants, motor vehicles are now the leading U.S. source of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change — along with other harmful air pollutants. If left in place, the …
This op-ed originally ran in the Miami Herald.
The forced resignation of Scott Pruitt as administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) brought celebration and relief in many quarters. Pruitt was a walking scandal machine who generated an endless stream of headlines about spending abuses, cozy relationships with industry lobbyists, first-class travel at government expense, and aides asked to perform personal tasks, including buying lotions and mattresses and unsuccessfully helping his wife land a Chick-fil-A franchise.
Of more lasting consequence, he loyally adhered to the extreme, anti-environmental policies of his boss, President Trump. So, while Pruitt's departure was good news for anyone who's serious about public corruption, it remains to be seen whether it will have any impact on environmental policy.
Pruitt initiated a massive rollback of EPA regulations. He openly questioned the well-established science of climate change, and he presided over the dismantling of …
This op-ed originally ran in the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
Recent events have underscored the vital importance of effective environmental regulation for Floridians. Blue green algae — apparently caused by releases of contaminated water from Lake Okeechobee — has blanketed significant portions of our state’s east and west coasts, causing major economic losses and posing a threat to the health of coastal residents. Pro-active regulation and enforcement of environmental laws could (and should) have prevented these abysmal consequences.
In fact, lawsuits play a critical role in shaping the laws that guide government regulation of the environment; and the U.S. Supreme Court — which has lately been almost evenly divided in important environmental cases — often has the last word on the government’s crucial ability to protect public health and the environment from the perils of pollution.
President Trump’s controversial nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to replace centrist …
The Trump EPA's shrinking commitment to enforcement of the nation's environmental laws has focused new attention on state-level enforcement and the extent to which it does or does not address problems of environmental pollution and threats to public health. One recent – and ongoing – controversy, involving toxic chemical contamination of a river in North Carolina by a large and profitable corporation, provides some insights into both the promise and the shortcomings of state environmental law enforcement. It also sheds light on some aspects of contemporary corporate culture and the salutary role that careful investigative journalism and public opinion can sometimes play in prodding state regulators to respond effectively to corporate pollution.
In 2012, a group of scientific researchers discovered that GenX, a fluorinated compound, was present in North Carolina's Cape Fear River – a finding that was confirmed the following year by a second team of …
Imagine that a hostile foreign power covertly manipulated our democracy and government to impose on Florida and other coastal states heightened risks of catastrophic sea level rise and an intensification of hurricanes, floods, droughts, and diseases carried by insects and parasites. Suppose, too, that the same foreign government then set about to demolish the work of American institutions that prevent serious diseases and avoidable deaths to our people. Without doubt, we would regard those acts as threats to our national security. That's just how we should regard Donald Trump's proposal for a 31-percent cut to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) budget.
EPA's statutory obligations, as assigned by Congress, have increased significantly in recent years. Yet its budget has been steadily reduced by Congress over the past two decades. Its inflation-adjusted operating funds are now at the same level as they were in 1979. Its …
This op-ed originally ran in The South Florida Sun Sentinel.
The most drastic cut in President Donald Trump's recently released budget outline is to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the agency tasked by law with setting and enforcing national standards to limit water, air, and land pollution; conducting scientific research to protect our health and the environment; and assisting state and local governments in reducing pollution.
Even as the tasks assigned to it by Congress have multiplied over the years, the EPA's budget has been cut sharply in the past two decades. From a high point of 18,110 employees in 1999, the agency's work force responsible for enforcing the nation's environmental laws now numbers fewer than 15,000 people. Despite this, the Trump budget proposes the elimination of 3,200 more employees in 2018 and to cut the agency's overall budget …
Efficient, professional law enforcement is a cornerstone of effective and responsible environmental protection. It is the cop on the environmental beat. While some regulated firms will likely continue to comply with environmental requirements in the absence of vigorous, evenhanded enforcement, other companies will certainly proceed to pollute America's air, water, and land with reckless arrogance. With these realities in mind, it is imperative to recognize the serious, potential threat posed to environmental enforcement by the forthcoming Donald Trump administration and the next Congress.
Perhaps the most extreme threat to environmental enforcement also seems the most unlikely one to be realized. That is a wholesale effort to repeal the current set of major federal environmental statutes and (perhaps) replace them with legal regimes that prevailed in the 1950s – an era when state governments dominated environmental protection and the federal government had a negligible role. This might occur …
Today, Florida residents are voting on a number of items including Constitutional Amendment 1, misleadingly titled "Rights of Electricity Consumers Regarding Solar Energy Choice." Although it gives the appearance of promoting solar energy, Amendment 1 is actually a deceptively worded attempt by big, investor-owned utility companies (including FPL and Duke Energy), masquerading under the banner of "Consumers for Smart Solar," to suppress the growth of solar energy in the Sunshine State and maintain the utilities' current monopoly in the state's energy markets.
While Amendment 1 purports to afford Floridians the right to install rooftop solar panels on their homes and businesses, that right already exists under Florida law. What is actually needed for solar energy to compete with and replace fossil-fuel generated energy is the installation of "net metering," a technique that will provide an incentive for rooftop solar power users to "sell back" rooftop-solar-generated power …
