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Super statues

There’s so much awesome about this.

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Having recently visited the former East Germany and Prague, I can affirm that there is much weird remaining in the form of Communist-era buildings and monuments. For one thing, Prague still has Nazi and Communist numbering on buildings – and they’re still in use. Then you have this thing:

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But really, nothing outdoes the creativity of re-painting statues as some kind of frozen justice league. And there’s plenty more where that came from. Take a swing through the former East bloc.

 

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Algal Blooms Ohio

Sediment_and_Algae_Great_LakesNot a band name, but the question of how long 500,000 people can go without drinking water already has its answer: Not long.

Experts say the bloom, which was nurtured by excess phosphorus runoff, appears to be pinned to the western edge of the lake by a combination of winds, waves, and currents.

So far, the city of Toledo, which provides water to about 500,000 people in the region, has been the most severely affected. The Toledo Blade reports that city officials are still running tests and trying to figure out how to make the water drinkable again. They’re still not sure how the toxin could have gotten through the plant’s treatment systems — or how widespread the contamination actually is.

Ongoing. They’re now saying the water is safe, but something like this doesn’t just go away over night. Increased phosphorous levels in a body the water the size of Lake Erie qualifies as an environmental catastrophe, so what to do now? How quickly do people return to their normal routines without factoring in the causes and then trying to factor them out of thier everyday lives? Probably at something approximating the speed of sound, which means the problem will persist.

Learning is hard. Math is mean.

Image: streaks of blue and green that color the Great Lakes, via Wikimedia Commons. The green is Lake Erie is algae. NASA photo from 2011.

 

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Of Thermoclines and Open Spaces

The sudden temperature change between the warmish surface water of the ocean and colder deeper zone is known as the thermocline. The thermocline effects the way sounds move through water (the warmer the faster), so sound waves can hit it and bounce all kinds of weird directions. The phenomenon is connected to detections of a pulse signal from Malaysia Air Flight 370, making it still hard to pinpoint, even though the black box signals are an encouraging lead.

But I received a signal of different kind, similarly bouncing, a couple of days ago during a visit to Boston. That’s Boston Common above, a stunning example of devoted public space in a city with space at a premium. While not the biggest or perhaps best such park in the world, it makes Boston a proper city – considerate of its population as a place for people to breath, sit, walk, hold hands, fly a kite, propose. The Common makes the urban density not only more appealing, but workable and livable. It might have 99 other problems but those aren’t one.

Image: author photo(s) clumsily spliced using fancy software.

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Taken to dumping

This is amazing. Amazingly simple.

Duke Energy has been dumping toxic liquid into a public waterway in North Carolina for sometime, attention to which has prompted state officials to cite Duke for violations. But then, a funny thing happens to the story:

Internal emails released Thursday by environmental lawyers confirm what activists have long charged: the North Carolina authorities tasked with regulating Duke Energy — the company responsible for the Dan River coal ash disaster — have been colluding with the corporation behind closed doors to undermine concerned environmental groups.

“These documents reveal a very cozy relationship between the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources and Duke and a deferential approach from DENR to Duke,” said Nick Torrey, Associate Attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, in an interview with Common Dreams.

In January 2013, the SELC announced plans to sue Duke Energy on behalf of environmental organizations over dangerous coal ash ponds near Asheville, North Carolina. This was soon followed by similar action regarding the Riverbend coal ash dump north of Mount Holly. “For a long time, they’ve known their coal ash ponds are leaking and polluting groundwater,” said Torrey.

Under the federal Clean Water Act, citizens can sue a polluter to enforce environmental law. Yet, before they do so, they must give 60 days’ notice to the polluter to ostensibly give that polluter the opportunity clean up its act, explained Torrey. However, a state agency can file its own lawsuit, and if it does so on the exact same claims raised in the 60 day notice letter, then those groups cannot file own suit in federal court.

“Each time we sent 60 day notice letters, on approximately the 59th day, the DENR would file its own enforcement action,” said Torrey, explaining this effectively blocked the environmental suits.

So, if you are Duke Energy (or any number of other highly-profitable corporate entities) you can do as you wish with the land, sea and air, and when anyone notices you then can arrange with friendly state agencies, optimally peopled with your own people, to be hit with trivial fines and non-binding directives to “study” the potential effects of your pollution, ‘penalties’ that will effectively pre-empt other, perhaps more significant, law suits from environmental groups. Now that is authentic frontier gibberish corruption.

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The Way We Transport the Stuff is Not the Problem

It’s, well, amusing is not the right word but, fatuous how some might think that since trains have accidents and barges can spill oil into large rivers, that it somehow recommends a pipeline as the best way to transport crude oil:

The spill occurred on Saturday when a barge carrying oil crashed into a tugboat between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Authorities closed the stretch of river on Sunday and still can’t say exactly how much oil was spilled, though a light sheen of oil is being reported. No injuries were reported from the crash.

In St. Charles Parish, public drinking water intakes along the Mississippi were closed as a precaution, but a news release Sunday assured the public that the water supply “remains safe” in the parish. As of Sunday night, the closure was stalling 16 vessels waiting to go downriver and 10 waiting to go upriver.

Keystone XL lurks as an epic, grand scale, Spielberg-meets-Ridley-Scott-on-the-steppes-featuring-Russell-Crowe-As-Tom-Hanks environmental disaster waiting to happen. TransCanada’s track record is already a Spotify favorite. Yes, that’s right.

As always, it’s the problem that’s the problem.

 

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Wangari Maathai and the Green Belt Movement

Wangari Maathai (1940-2011) was founder of the Green Belt Movement, 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and the subject of this terrific documentary I watched last night, Taking Root: the Vision of Wangari Maathai:

Her simple act of planting trees grew into a nationwide movement to safeguard the environment, protect human rights, and defend democracy in Kenya.

Their workshop topic of the ‘Wrong Bus Syndrome’ remains particularly applicable throughout the world.

 

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Operation Free

lavender_windmillIt’s the best use of either word I’ve seen or heard in a while:

Ohio’s clean energy law has come under attack by a lawmaker affiliated with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the group funded by fossil fuel companies, corporate interests and the ultra-conservative billionaire Koch brothers — but local vets are taking a stand.

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Despite failing in its previous effort to repeal any state renewable energy standards, ALEC convened for its 40th annual meeting in late July and leaked documents show the organization has no intention of backing down from its attacks on popular clean energy laws.

But in Ohio, a group of 2,000 veterans, military family members and supporters is pushing back against Seitz’s effort and other bills aimed at weakening Ohio’s renewable energy standard. Zach Roberts, a National Guard veteran and the Ohio director of Operation Free, a national campaign that gathers veterans and national security experts to advocate for clean energy policies, told Climate Progress that S.B. 58 would, “radically change the state’s clean energy standard,” and it ultimately “weakens Ohio’s energy security.”

The law in question, passed in 2008, requires Ohio to generate 25% of its electrical supply through alternative energy sources by 2025. Half of that must be from renewables and 0.5 percent specifically from solar. Is that too much? What are goals, enforced by law in this case, designed to achieve? A perfunctory ratio would have been 5%; a quarter is going to cause some pain but show people (and companies) how to move forward. Freedom, indeedom.

Image: Author photo, not from Ohio but just a bit east of that.

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London Takes Crap Crown

Crap Towns Returns by Sam Jordison and Dan KieranWhile often associated with envy, green is also the color of certain kinds of motion sickness. But the opposite of envy is, I guess, pity? A kind of misery? All of these are summed up in the new survey of crappiest towns of Britain, of which London is newly reigning, um, queen?

London was catapulted to victory by multiple nominations for its dismal suburbs, murder miles, high house prices, City bankers and a transport system that abandons late-night revellers to the mercy of rickshaws, minicabs or night buses, “a must for all fans of vomit, paranoid schizophrenics and R&B played through tinny mobile-phone speakers”.

The city’s trump card was undoubtedly its most affluent parish, Mayfair: “Its inhabitants are virtually without exception the biggest shower of needy, self-important bumwipes in London, with a self-pity complex and misplaced sense of entitlement to match. The architecture is either dull west London stucco or a twattish approach at some kind of meaningful landmark building. Either way it’s rubbish. Most importantly the pubs are shit. And full of people who live in Mayfair.”

Who are we to argue? Don’t miss the slideshow that accompanies the article – England at its remarkably dreadfulest. Maybe it’s a sly campaign to get people not to go there. A lot to work with either way.

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EPA Rolls [over]

There’s one thing about electing a progressive president, well there are many, actually. But one is that, even though media narratives coalesce around ‘a political savior’ or whatever, no one actually thinks that. It’s just a great relief not have a C-plus Augustus at the helm for a while. Otherwise, all other caveats about agitation, feet and fire hold true. You keep your expectations high, no matter what. Obama can disappoint, as can his agencies; that doesn’t mean I don’t like him or what he’s said he stands for or that his progressive stance was all a ploy all along. But some things may make you wonder.

Residents of Pavillion, Wyoming, had been complaining for years that their well water started smelling and looking foul after the oil and gas company EnCana began drilling in a previously drilled field near their homes. Some contracted weird health problems, including neurological disorders and rashes, after drinking or bathing in the stuff.

After their concerns were essentially passed over by both EnCana and the state of Wyoming, the EPA stepped in to conduct its own tests in 2008. As ProPublica and High Country News reported, the agency found suspicious quantities of hydrocarbons and trace contaminants in residents’ wells that could be linked to gas development. Then, after drilling two 1,000-foot-deep monitoring wells, the agency found high levels of benzene and other carcinogens in the deep groundwater underlying Pavillion. An EPA report released late in 2011, concluded that:

(P)ollution from 33 abandoned oil and gas waste pits – which are the subject of a separate cleanup program – (was) indeed responsible for some degree of shallow groundwater pollution in the area. Those pits may be the source of contamination affecting at least 42 private water wells in Pavillion. But the (deep) contamination, the agency concluded, had to have been caused by fracking.

Then:

On June 20, though, after vigorous complaints from industry and Wyoming that the agency flubbed its study, as well as years of delays, the EPA announced that it is abandoning the project completely.

I remember JamesWatt. And if you don’t look him up. THAT was a travesty. But this is serious. We can do better. We have to.

Via LGM.