And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
AmeriScan: March 22, 1999
Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 1999
For Full Text and Graphics Visit:
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/mar99/1999L-03-22-09.html
<excerpts
TEAM CHOSEN TO HANDLE SURPLUS WEAPONS-GRADE PLUTONIUM
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has contracted with Duke
Engineering &
Services, French state-owned company COGEMA, Inc., and Stone
& Webster to
provide mixed oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication and reactor
irradiation services in
support of the department's mission to dispose of surplus
weapons plutonium.
The team, known as Duke Cogema Stone & Webster (DCS), has
its corporate
headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. Subcontractors to
DCS include Duke
Power Company, of Charlotte, and Virginia Power Company, of
Richmond,
Virginia, who will provide the reactor facilities in which
MOX fuel will be used
upon receipt of Nuclear Regulatory Commission license
amendments. Other
major subcontractors include Nuclear Fuel Services, Inc.,
Erwin, Tennessee;
Belgonucleaire, Brussels, Belgium; and Framatome Cogema
Fuels of Lynchburg,
Virginia. "It is critical that the United States and Russia
dispose of surplus
weapons-grade plutonium so that it will never again be used
in nuclear weapons,"
said Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. "This partnership
with private sector
companies sets the stage for Russia and the United States to
work together to
eliminate tons of excess plutonium." Under the contract
announced today, DCS
will design, provide construction management services,
operate and deactivate a
MOX fuel fabrication facility. The team will modify six
existing U.S. commercial
light water reactors at three sites to irradiate mixed oxide
fuel assemblies. These
reactors sites are Catawba in York, South Carolina; McGuire
in Huntersville,
North Carolina; and North Anna in Mineral, Virginia. Two
technologies will be
used to dispose of surplus weapons-grade plutonium.<<end excerpt
PACIFIC NORTHWEST CAN EXPECT HEAVY FLOODING
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
hydrologists
released their flood assessment Thursday predicting parts of
Oregon and
Washington and much of Idaho have a greater than average
potential for flooding
this spring. The area's greater-than-average snow pack is
the primary factor.
NOAA's forecast is based upon hydrology studies that show
that some areas in
the Pacific Northwest have a snow pack that is as much as
200 percent above
normal. In Idaho, for example, the snow pack in places
represents up to 100
inches of water. Depending upon the snowmelt rate, severe
flooding could affect
many areas east of the Cascades and several drainages along
the Idaho panhandle
into the central part of the state.
* * *
BP TO PAY NEARLY $4 MILLION FOR FLARING VIOLATIONS
BP Oil Company's Toledo refinery will monitor, report and
correct process
operations that result in the flaring, or combustion, of
gases containing high levels
of air pollutants under a first-of-its-kind settlement filed
March 15 in federal
district court in Toledo, Ohio. The company must also pay
$1.75 million for its
alleged illegal discharges of pollutants and reporting
violations, the U.S.
Department of Justice and the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) said.
The agreement resolves claims that BP violated the Clean Air
Act by emitting
excess quantities of sulfur dioxide by unlawfully flaring
gases containing high
concentrations of hydrogen sulfide. Sulfur dioxide emissions
from flares are
released directly into the atmosphere and contribute to acid
rain. "Flaring at a
refinery can result in extremely high concentrations of air
pollution emissions in
very short periods of time," said Steven Herman, EPA's
assistant administrator
for enforcement. "This action serves notice to refineries
nationwide that if they
divert gases away from pollution control equipment or fail
to have pollution
control equipment available on a continuous basis, they do
so at the peril of facing
enforcement actions." BP must also pay a civil penalty of
$1.4 million and spend
$350,000 on two supplemental environmental projects. The
first requires BP to
spend $150,000 on an emergency response telephone
notification system for
Lucas County, Ohio. With this system, the county will be
able to dial thousands
of telephone numbers per hour to alert residents of
environmental, fire and other
emergencies. The second supplemental environmental project
requires BP to
spend $200,000 for an upgraded radio and paging system for
the Oregon, Ohio
Fire Department, which serves BP's Toledo refinery.
* * *
BATTLE SHAPING UP OVER BATTLE MOUNTAIN GOLD
The Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service are now
considering
whether to approve the Plan of Operations for the Crown
Jewel Mine proposed
by Battle Mountain Gold, Inc., in north-central Washington
State. A letter to
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt from local, regional, and
national conservation
organizations this week opposing approval of the Plan says
the decision will have
far-reaching effects. The mine would be Washington State's
first-ever large scale,
open pit, cyanide leach gold mine and has been vigorously
opposed by citizens
groups and the Confederated Tribes of the Colville
Reservation since it was
proposed in 1992. The Crown Jewel Mine would develop
approximately 10-15
mining lode claims utilizing about 115 to 120 millsite
claims. Based on recent
Interior Department rulings interpreting the Mining Law of
1872 the Battle
Mountain Gold Plan would not be allowable, the groups argue.
That statute
prohibits the location or use of millsite claims that exceed
the number of
associated mining claims being developed. A number of other
proposed open pit
gold mines on federal land face similar issues. The most
pressing examples
include the Imperial Project in southern California and the
Yarnell Mine near the
town of Yarnell, Arizona.
* * *
TO FEE OR NOT TO FEE, THAT IS THE QUESTION
The promoters of fees to visit America's national forests
are working to make
fees permanent next year, locking fees in place well before
the current test
program's scheduled ending in September 2001. The Senate
Energy and Natural
Resources Committee held Fee-Demo hearings on March 3, but
they did not
invite testimony from anyone except those corporations and
motorized user
groups which support fees. On April 13th, environmentalists
intend to make their
criticisms of fees to enter national forests when the House
Interior Appropriations
subcommittee holds its Public Witness Day. Scott Silver of
the Washington, DC
based group Wild Wilderness says that environmental
activists oppose user fees
on public land, including wilderness lands, for reasons
beyond opposition to
payment of fees for use of public lands for which the public
already pays taxes.
"The more serious concern is that the recreation fee
demonstration program is not
a benign effort to fund needed programs but is the leading
edge of the recreation
industry's attempts to transform public land recreation into
commercial products."
The trend to deprive federal agencies of adequate recreation
budgets and force
them to charge fees instead is directly related to efforts
to privatize,
commercialize, and motorize recreation on the public lands,"
Silver says.
* * *
CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEES PASS MIGRATORY BIRD
CONSERVATION ACT
Last week, the House Resources Committee and the Senate
Environment and
Public Works Committee each passed the Neotropical Migratory
Bird
Conservation Act, H.R. 39 and S. 148, respectively. This
legislation would
establish a program to provide assistance in the
conservation of neotropical
migratory birds and their habitats.........
"This bill addresses the critical need of protecting and
enhancing the populations
of neotropical migratory birds in their winter homes," said
Dan Beard, the
National Audubon Society's senior vice president for public
policy. "The habitat of
hundreds of species of migratory songbirds is being
threatened in Latin America
and the Caribbean."
* * *
COULD THE DOLPHIN-SAFE LABEL ON TUNA CANS BECOME
MEANINGLESS?
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals (ASPCA) joins
more than 85 environmental and animal welfare organizations
in expressing deep
concern over an expected Federal ruling by Commerce
Secretary William
Daley that could dismantle decades of successful dolphin
conservation. On
March 31 Daley is expected to decide whether the use of
mile-wide nets to catch
tuna has had a significant adverse effect on dolphin
populations in the Eastern
Tropical Pacific. The ASPCA says the outcome of this
decision could make the
U.S. standard for "dolphin-safe" labels meaningless and put
millions of dolphins at
risk once again. For unknown reasons, large schools of tuna
can be found
beneath groups of surface-swimming dolphins that are then
caught in tuna nets
and drowned. Dolphin-safe labels have been on U.S. canned
tuna since the 1990
International Dolphin Conservation Program Act was enacted,
largely in response
to consumer pressure. The label means no dolphins were
encircled or caught in
tuna nets. But last May, the White House passed legislation
that lifted the
five-year-old U.S. embargo, allowing countries that still
use these nets to import
dolphin-deadly tuna into the United States. A compromise
amendment was passed
that temporarily kept the integrity of the dolphin-safe
labels until more research
could be done. Now, The ASPCA fears the Clinton
administration will back a
Federal ruling that may decide that chasing and encircling
dolphins in tuna nets
does not have a "significant adverse impact" on dolphin
populations. ASPCA
president Dr. Larry Hawk said, "Our concern is that the
Secretary's upcoming
decision will depend on only one survey of dolphin
populations and that survey is
incomplete."
* * *
MOHAVE GENERATING STATION POLLUTES GRAND CANYON AIR
The EPA has released a report which indicates that the
Mohave Generating
Station in the gambling town of Laughlin, Nevada,
contributes to haze in the
Grand Canyon National Park. The seven year congressionally
funded study, also
known as Project MOHAVE, was a monitoring, modeling, and
data assessment
project designed to estimate the power plant's contribution
to visibility impairment
at the Grand Canyon. It was developed in cooperation with
the National Park
Service and the majority owner of the Mohave Generating
Station, Southern
California Edison Co. The final report will be available
this week on the U.S. EPA
Region 9 Web site under Air Programs at
http://www.epa.gov/region09/air. The
EPA will soon publish a notice in the Federal Register to
explain its regulations for
protecting visibility in national parks and wilderness
areas, summarize the findings
of the study, and solicit additional information from the
public. The Agency will
consider all available information before officially
determining any future
obligations of the Mohave Generating Station to reduce
emissions of
visibility-impairing pollutants.
* * *
FIRST WIND POWERED BREWERY IN AMERICA
On January 29, New Belgium Brewing Company, Inc. (NBB)
signed a contract
with the City of Ft. Collins, Colorado to purchase wind
power at a premium price
for the next 10 years. This agreement will enable the
installation of a new wind
turbine near Medicine Bow, Wyoming. The new 660kW turbine
will produce
about 1.8 million kWh of electricity per year, about the
amount of electricity that
NBB will consume in the next year. The new turbine is
expected to be operational
by October 1999. Power supplied to the brewery is not
dependent on whether the
wind is blowing or not at any given moment. Sometimes the
turbine may be
producing more power than the brewery is using, other times
the brewery will be
consuming more power than the turbines are producing. There
is not a power line
directly connecting NBB to the turbine in Medicine Bow. Both
the turbine and
NBB are connected to the power grid with all other electric
power producers and
consumers in the country, but NBB is paying a premium price
for the total
amount of power that the turbine supplies to the grid. By
adding this "clean"
power to the grid, not as much power needs to be produced by
coal fired power
plants. The amount of power produced by the turbine will
reduce the amount coal
burned by over 980 tons per year and eliminate over four
million pounds of CO2
emissions per year. Sulfur and nitrogen oxides emission will
also be reduced.
<<end excerpt
*********
EUROPEAN SUPERMARKETS PLEDGE BIOTECH-FREE FOOD
LONDON, UK, March 22, 1999 (ENS) - A move by European food retailer chains
to eliminate genetically modified (GM) ingredients and additives from their
own-brand food products is of "major significance," EU supermarket
association Eurocommerce claimed today.
For Full Text and Graphics Visit:
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/mar99/1999L-03-22-03.html
*****
BRAZILIAN TRIBES CONDEMN ARAGUAIA-TOCANTINS WATERWAY
BRASILIA, Brasil, March 22, 1999 (ENS) - Indigenous peoples in the North
and Midwest regions of Brazil do not want the Araguaia-Tocantins waterway
project to be implemented. Their opinion is expressed in a document called
"Declaration of the Children of the Rivers" that was issued in São Felix do
Araguaia.
Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 1999
For Full Text and Graphics Visit:
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/mar99/1999L-03-22-04.html
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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