What Does Heating Homes in New York City with Biodiesel Have to do with Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon?
The Oakland Institute
Many of us think we’re doing the climate and the environment a big favor when we consider meeting our liquid fuel needs through biodiesel. I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s time to think again.
Agribusiness is seeing dollar signs as cities and states across the country consider using biodiesel to fuel municipal vehicle fleets and heat homes and businesses. In New York City, over a million households depend on petroleum heating oil to stay warm every winter. Legislation currently wending its way through City Council proposes adding biodiesel to future supplies.
But where does this biodiesel come from and at what environmental cost?
Proponents of agrofuels have plugged biodiesel as a renewable and environmentally friendly alternative to petroleum, but the unfortunate reality is that America and Brazil’s industrial-scale soybean farms devour and destroy enormous quantities of non-renewable and irreplaceable resources. Whether in Iowa or the Amazon, powering the machines that plow, plant, harvest, cast fertilizers, spray pesticides, and pump irrigation water is energy intensive and the fossil fuels consumed by on-farm operations release significant quantities of greenhouse gases and toxic air emissions.
Adding to soybean agriculture’s formidable fossil fuel tally, large amounts of natural gas are needed to produce the nitrogen based fertilizers that promote their growth. These fertilizers break down in fields releasing nitrous oxides, a global warming agent hundreds of times more potent than CO2. When these fertilizers leach from farm fields they poison drinking water and ravage marine ecosystems. Run-off from Midwestern farm fields ends up in the Gulf of Mexico where it contributes to a New Jersey-size “dead zone” almost entirely absent of marine life.
A toxic rainbow of pesticides are sprayed on soybeans in an effort to combat weeds and insects. Making matters worse, 91 percent of the US soybean acreage planted in 2007 was genetically engineered to tolerate herbicides, a development that has boosted glyphosate applications several fold. Glyphosate, a powerful weed killer, is the third most common cause of pesticide illness in farm workers; exposure has been linked to rare cancers, miscarriages, and premature births.
And to top of the bad news, every acre of food diverted for fuel requires that another acre be planted to grow the missing food. In the case of Brazil, this virtually guarantees the continued destruction of the Amazon as rainforest gives way to soybean monocultures. A process which not only destroys valuable wildlife habitat, but also releases enormous quantities of greenhouse gases that intact rainforest normally retains and captures.
Using biodiesel would result in serious consequences for our health and the environment and communities are pushing back with a straightforward solution. By simply switching to ultra low sulfur diesel heating oil, a fuel standard already mandated for on-road vehicles, we can dramatically improve the quality of the air we breathe daily while reducing oil consumption through improved furnace efficiency. And we can do it without raising the cost of home heating or depending on unsustainable and environmentally destructive biodiesel!
Corn industry brazenly turns Gulf disaster into marketing opportunity
By Tom Philpott | Grist | 4 May 2010
As if being bombarded with oil from below and chemical dispersants from above weren’t enough, the Gulf of Mexico also has to endure marketing rhetoric from a long-time tormentor: the corn industry.
Industrial corn production is indisputably linked to the massive hypoxic “dead zone” that emerges in the Gulf every year. According to a 2008 peer-reviewed paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “Nitrogen leaching from fertilized corn fields to the Mississippi-Atchafalaya River system is a primary cause of the bottom-water hypoxia that develops on the continental shelf of the northern Gulf of Mexico each summer.” And as corn production ramps up to satisfy government ethanol mandates, the amount of nitrogen flowing into the Gulf will likely increase by between 10 and 34 percent by 2022, the report states. That surging nitrogen load will make it “nearly impossible” to slow the growth of the already New Jersey-sized dead zone, the report concludes.
Meanwhile, how the Gulf’s two ecological calamities–the spill and the dead zone–will interact is anyone’s guess. Early indications are not encouraging, reports the Minnesota Post.
So you might expect the corn shills to maintain a respectful silence as BP’s oil disaster unfolds. Instead, the corn industry is ludicrously presenting itself as the Gulf’s salvation.
From the Nebraska Corn Board:
As those along the Gulf Coast work tirelessly to manage a disaster due to an offshore oil drilling accident, this tragic situation provides even greater impetus for others to move the ball forward on renewable fuels.
A Corn Board functionary added: “Those green fields [in the Midwest] are a tremendous reminder of the potential and promise of renewable fuels like corn ethanol, and will stand in stark contrast to the images we’ll see from the Gulf … It is renewable, very safe for the environment and does not have the lingering and environmentally damaging impact of oil.”
(How can a “renewable fuel” command up such titantic amounts of nitrogen synthesized from natural gas and mined phosphorous — so much of which ends up in the Gulf?)
On Twitter, industry publicists are also using the Gulf calamity as a prop to boost corn-based fuel, reports Dan Mitchell on The Big Money.
It’s a brazen move, like a con man helping a victim of a brutal mugging stand so he can pick what’s left of his pockets. Besieged ecosystems like the Gulf need real protection, not opportunistic rhetoric from industries that contribute to their destruction.
The Biomass Incineration Plant Next Door
Clearing the Air — How a working-class neighborhood fought a dirty industry and won.
By Rusty Middleton | April 22, 2010
Aaron Hartsfield already knew his signature had been forged on the document submitted to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. There was no way he had withdrawn his opposition to a biomass energy plant near his neighborhood in Lufkin. Nevertheless, he exploded in anger when the document arrived in the mail. So he marched over to a community meeting held by the plant’s owner, Aspen Power.
“I was hot. I went over to the community meeting and asked them who signed my name to something I didn’t want,” he says.
No one ’fessed up. But afterward, the alleged forgery and the stubborn determination of Hartsfield and other neighborhood activists succeeded in forcing Aspen Power to spend an additional $10 million dollars on air pollution controls at its plant. And it might lead to tougher emission standards for similar plants in Texas.
The battle between Aspen Power and low-income residents in Lufkin exemplifies the problems with renewable energy. Despite some activists touting these projects as solutions to global warming, and politicians promoting them as the key to economic prosperity, renewable energy projects tend to have their own sets of problems for local residents—probably none more so than biomass incineration.
There is no universally agreed-upon definition for biomass. Most often these projects mean burning organic material, usually waste wood, to create steam, which then turns power-producing turbines. Biomass incineration is considered to be a green alternative to coal because it produces fewer deadly gases, but because it still involves combustion, it remains controversial among environmentalists. And even if you agree that burning wood is better than burning coal, you don’t necessarily want a biomass plant next door. Hartsfield certainly didn’t, and he spent years fighting it in a case that dredged up accusations of racism, corruption and cronyism.
In 2007, the Lufkin Planning and Zoning Commission proposed to allow Aspen Power to construct a biomass incineration plant next to Hartsfield’s African-American neighborhood in north Lufkin. The plant would become the latest in a long string of forestry-related facilities in the same area. In an oversight of either towering arrogance or mind-numbing stupidity, the city failed to notify the people of north Lufkin about the plan.
It didn’t take long, though, for word to get around the mostly working-class neighborhood. Hartsfield and his neighbors got angry. They started a petition opposing the plant and sent it to TCEQ, the state agency that grants air quality permits. The neighbors began attending city council meetings and protesting. “There was a lot of people at those meetings and they were upset,” says Hartsfield. Residents accused the city of environmental racism. They raised fears about more pollution in a neighborhood that had for decades been filled with industrial fumes and noise.
Then a man named Eric Jones, an outsider, began organizing community meetings and talking to people about the benefits of the plant. He said it would bring good-paying jobs with a minimum wage of $15 an hour. Jones said he was there to educate people and insisted he was not on Aspen Power’s payroll. That turned out to be a lie. Jones was the point man of Aspen Power’s public relations strategy designed to win over the community, he would later say in a legal deposition.
Dr. Dallas Pierre, a neighborhood dentist, suspects Jones was only one element of a covert PR campaign run by Aspen Power owner Danny Vines. Pierre says he believes that Vines made donations to local churches to win support, but can’t prove it. Vines did sponsor a trip to Minnesota for neighbors and civic leaders to view a biomass plant in St Paul. Hartsfield and Pierre refused to go.
Trying to deflate concerns about pollution, Vines told the Lufkin Daily News that his plant was “capable of releasing no particulate matter into the atmosphere” when burning wood. But when called to testify, Bill Powers, a court-recognized air quality expert and consulting engineer opposed to the plant, explained that it is neither technically nor economically feasible to remove all particulate matter. In fact, the plant, as originally planned, would have produced so much pollution that it would have been “in violation of the Clean Air Act” according to Kelly Haragan, an environmental law professor at The University of Texas at Austin.
Nevertheless, the PR blitz paid off. The claims about pollution-free clean energy and the promise of good-paying jobs began to displace concerns about pollution, noise and truck traffic. In the Lufkin Daily News, letters of complaint were joined by letters of support. The community meetings got larger and turned more favorable toward the plant. Pierre complained publicly about “people, blacks and whites, from areas other than the immediate area of the proposed plant emerging from the woodwork attempting to dissuade North Lufkinites from opposing the industrial complex.”
The mood in the community turned toxic. Plant opponents were harassed. Pierre had his north Lufkin dental office picketed. “My office was vandalized,” Pierre says. “And I lost business.”
The city council, emboldened by shifting public opinion, passed the zoning change in August 2007. And happily for Vines, right wing state Rep. Wayne Christian had sweetened the deal by quietly passing House Bill 1090, which included a $20-a-ton state subsidy for waste wood fuel. Burning wood was probably going to be even more profitable. Now all Vines needed was an air quality permit from TCEQ.
Vines’ history of environmental compliance has been less than stellar. He and his family have been involved in two Superfund clean-ups at businesses they owned. Five years after entering into a TCEQ Voluntary Compliance Program, one of the sites, Lufkin Creosoting, has still not completed remediation.
So Vines didn’t want any more trouble from protesters. He got a copy of the original petition sent to TCEQ complaining about pollution issues. “Everyone who signed got a visit,” Hartsfield says. Some would get repeated visits from company representatives or proponents of the plant. “They came by my house a number of times,” Hartsfield says. Proponents also visited an elderly neighbor who also says that her signature was forged on the letter that withdrew the earlier objections to the plant.
If TCEQ ever considered denying the permit, it certainly didn’t show it. The agency granted Aspen Power permission to begin construction while the permit worked its way through the bureaucracy, something forbidden under EPA rules. When local residents alerted the EPA, they ordered construction stopped.
Aspen Power didn’t have to stop for long, though. The air quality permit came through in July 2008. Aspen Power got the green light to build a plant that would spew out as much particulate pollution as some coal-fired power plants. But there were still those pesky hardcore opponents in north Lufkin who weren’t giving up.
Hartsfield, a slender, intense man who works the 3 p.m.-11 p.m. shift at the post office, was—and remains—one of the plant’s most steadfast opponents. He never signed a withdrawal letter. “It was a forgery,” Hartsfield says. He went to the District Attorney.
“At first they didn’t know what to do. They finally sent me to the police and after I didn’t hear anything from them for few weeks I went back, and they told me it was a state violation. That’s when I went to the Texas Ranger.” The ranger initiated a criminal investigation of Aspen Power. A case is under consideration by a grand jury.
The protesters also enlisted help from environmentalists who know the ropes at TCEQ. Nine in all, they headed for Austin and a showdown with the state agency.
The group wanted TCEQ commissioners to withdraw the air quality permit. The commissioners dismissed the appeals of those who complained about pollution and quality-of-life issues. But they could not ignore Aaron Hartsfield’s allegation that TCEQ relied on forged documents when granting the permit. In November 2008 Aspen Power’s air quality permit was withdrawn, and Hartsfield’s case was referred to the State Office of Administrative Hearings (SOAH). Administrative Judge Sarah Ramos stunned many by recommending denial of the air quality permit.
“Unfortunately SOAH decisions are not binding; they can only make recommendations,” says Enrique Valdivia, an attorney for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid who helped the protesters. “I’ve been before the TCEQ a lot over the years, and this is the worst set of commissioners we’ve ever had. And that’s saying something. They were probably going to grant the permit anyway.”
Valdivia’s low opinion of the TCEQ commissioners is shared by the EPA, which is now threatening to withdraw the agency’s authority to grant air quality permits. As a result, the commissioners—all appointed by Gov. Rick Perry—are now under tremendous pressure from the EPA to impose tougher standards. Aspen Power also found itself in legal limbo, and every day of uncertainty was costing it money.
The working-class protesters were also growing weary. They couldn’t keep disrupting their lives with expensive and time-consuming trips. Plus they were running the risk that the commissioners would grant a permit that would barely just manage to satisfy the EPA and would still expose them to pollution.
It was in everyone’s interest to settle.
Aspen Power attorney Robin Morse explains, “We made a business decision to settle. There was pressure from investors to move forward.”
In November 2009 Aspen Power agreed to what are “probably the most stringent air quality standards in the nation,” says air quality expert Bill Powers. “It’s going to cost them around $10 million to install state-of-the-art equipment that will cut pollution to about one quarter of what would be allowed under the old permit.”
“We got virtually everything we wanted,” he says.
The protesters’ attorney, Kelly Haragan, director of The Environmental Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law, was also happy with the settlement, at least on the environmental issues. “The Aspen case highlights the importance of public participation,” she says. “Without Mr. Hartsfield’s and the other protestants’ willingness to stand up for what they knew was right, in the face of serious opposition, the plant would have been allowed to emit excessive pollution, and the Lufkin community would be breathing much dirtier air in the years to come.”
Sierra Club’s Neil Carmen, who used to be an inspector for TCEQ’s air quality section, says that new biomass plants will be required to use the best available pollution-control technology. “The Lufkin plant will have that technology and other biomass plants will have to follow suit,” he says. “This settlement has set the bar much higher.”
But while the plant’s emissions should be cleaner, the people of north Lufkin will still have to live with a large, noisy, brightly lit industrial complex right next door to their homes and elementary schools.
“None of us were really satisfied,” Pierre says. They wondered if a notoriously slack TCEQ would effectively enforce the new standards—and what happens if it doesn’t? The protesters have the option of going back to the administrative judge if emissions are too high, but that could mean more court battles, lawyers and travel to Austin. “Aspen Power could get away with a lot by stalling their way through a new round of court battles,” he says.
The battle over the Lufkin biomass plant may be only the beginning of a larger environmental war in other parts of the state. The biomass industry is growing in Texas, especially in the forested east. Some mainstream environmental organizations, such as the Pineywoods Group of Sierra Club, have reservations. “Carbon dioxide output will be in the hundreds of thousands of pounds per year,” Powers says. That would add to the already-heavy load of CO2 that Texas is pumping into the atmosphere. Plus there is widespread concern that the demand for waste wood will actually hurt forests by removing the nutrients normally left behind as logging debris, which is the principal biomass fuel.
Environmental activist Dian Avriett, who lives near Austin Energy’s Sacul biomass plant, which is now under construction, fears that the plant will demand more than just logging debris and eventually start consuming forests. Avriett also worries the plants will start burning other waste such as railroad ties. “In fact there is really not much in the way of credible oversight of these plants,” he says.
In its rush to meet its goal of 30 percent renewable energy by 2020, Austin Energy is the only customer of the biomass plant. Even though biomass is often touted as “green energy,” it is unclear what standards Sacul will have to meet. The owner, Southern Company in Atlanta, has not responded to inquiries. Austin Energy has little say about the operation of the plant.
So unless TCEQ is forced to raise air quality standards, these plants may not be so green.
For the Philadelphia-based Energy Justice Network, which fights environmental racism, the larger question is whether biomass incineration is truly a better alternative to other forms of energy. Will it reduce pollution or simply create another dimension of the problem?
The network and some other environmental groups are flatly opposed to incinerating anything, and they are especially outraged that biomass incineration is so widely accepted as a clean alternative to fossil fuels. Some biomass fuels contain chlorine or other halogens and would create dioxins when burned, the group says. Another issue is the governmental rush to adopt alternative green energy sources based on political imperatives while not looking closely at how that energy is created. Definitions of biomass vary widely from state to state, as do regulations about what can be burned. In some places old tires and sewage sludge are considered potential fuels.
Another company with a new Texas biomass plant at Woodville, 50 miles north of Beaumont, is now seeking an air quality permit. Construction will probably start late in 2010. At least three other similar plants around East Texas are in the planning stage. The Lufkin plant will be the first to go into operation sometime in late 2010.
Rusty Middleton is a freelance writer living in Wimberley.
Scotland: Biomass plant plans under attack
(David Cheskin) Wood piles at Scotland’s largest dedicated Biomass power station, Steven’s Croft station near Lockerbie
By Scott Hussey | Times Online | April 25, 2010
A spokesman said: “We want to see a balanced use of wood that allows all who depend on it to continue to flourish, and make the maximum contribution to growing Scotland’s economy.”
Earth Day in Israel: Apartheid Showing Through the Greenwash
By Stephanie Westbrook | April 24, 2010
On April 22, as part of the global Earth Day celebrations, homes, offices and public buildings in 14 Israeli cities turned out the lights for one hour in an effort to “increase awareness of the vital need to reduce energy consumption.” The Earth Day celebrations included scenes of green fields, wind generators and rainbows projected on the walls of the Old City in Jerusalem, the Green Globes Award ceremony recognizing “outstanding contributions to promote the environment” and a concert in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv powered by generators running on vegetable oil as well as volunteers on 48 bikes pedaling away to produce electricity.
The irony was not lost on the 1.5 million residents of Gaza who have been living with daily power outages lasting hours on end for nearly three years due to the Israeli siege on the coastal territory. The Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) reports that over 100 million liters of fuel were allowed into Gaza in 2009, however as Gisha points out, that amounts to only 57% of the need. As summer approaches bringing peak demands, spare parts and tools for turbine repair are in dire need. There are currently over 50 truckloads of electrical equipment awaiting approval by the Israeli authorities for entry to Gaza.
The constant power outages have led many families in Gaza to rely on low quality generators running on low quality fuels, both brought in through the tunnels from Egypt, causing a sharp increase in accidents resulting in injury and death. According to the UN agency OCHA, in the first three months of 2010, 17 people died in generator related accidents, including fires and carbon monoxide poisoning.
The mayor of the central Israeli city of Ra’anana, of which 48% is reserved for city parks, vowed to plant thousands of trees as part of the city’s sustainable agenda. Palestinian farmers from the West Bank village of Qaryut near Nablus had their own tree planting ceremony in honor of Earth Day, only to find the 250 olive tree saplings uprooted by Israeli settlers from Givat Hayovel. Another 300 were uprooted during the night of April 13 outside the Palestinian village of Mihmas by settlers from the nearby Migron outpost. The Palestinian Land Research Center estimates that over 12000 olive trees were uprooted throughout the West Bank in 2009, with Israeli authorities responsible for about 60%, clearing the land for settlements and construction of the wall, and Israeli settlers the rest.
Earth Day in Gaza brought armor plated bulldozers escorted by Israeli tanks that proceeded to rip through fields of winter wheat, rye and lentils at Al Faraheen near Khan Younis in the Israeli imposed buffer zone, destroying the livelihood of a Palestinian family because, as Max Ajl, who filmed the entire shameful episode, explained, “they could.” (http://www.maxajl.com/?p=3482).
But that’s not all that was being dug up in Gaza. The UN Mine Action Service uncovered and removed 345 unexploded ordnance, including 60 white phosphorus shells, left over from the Israeli assault on Gaza. Approximately half were found under the rubble of destroyed buildings.
As the Israeli Ministry of Environmental Protection was launching its “Clean Coast 2010” program for Earth Day, somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 million liters of raw or partially treated sewage was being pumped into the Mediterranean sea from Gaza’s overworked, under funded and seldom repaired sewage treatment plant. Damage from Israeli air strikes and lack of electric power and spare parts due to the siege make it impossible for the plant to meet the demands of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents, with the daily overflow creating serious health hazards.
In addition to the Green Globe awards, the Ministry of Environmental Protection had it’s own award ceremony last month recognizing Israeli Defense Force units, soldiers and commanders who “exhibited excellence in protecting the environment, environmental resources and the landscape.” The theme for this year’s annual competition was water and included projects related to the “protection of water sources” and “water savings.”
For Palestinians living in the West Bank, this “protection of water sources” was documented in Amnesty International’s October 2009 report Troubled Water: “The Israeli army’s destruction of Palestinian water facilities – rainwater harvesting and storage cisterns, agricultural pools and spring canals – on the grounds that they were constructed without permits from the army is often accompanied by other measures that aim to restrict or eliminate the presence of Palestinians from specific areas of the West Bank.”
The Amnesty International report also notes that for decades, Israeli settlers have instead “been given virtually unlimited access to water supplies to develop and irrigate the large farms which help to support unlawful Israeli settlements.” And nowhere is this more evident than the Jordan Valley where 95% of the area is occupied by Israeli settlements, plantations and military bases and where “Israeli water extraction inside the West Bank is highest.”
One such company helping to sustain the illegal settlement economy is Carmel Agrexco, Israel’s largest fresh produce exporter. By its own admission the company, which is half owned by the State of Israel, exports 70% of the produce grown in the West Bank settlements. Europe is by far its biggest market, though its produce arrives as far as North America and the Far East. Agrexco promotes itself as a green company, with a focus eco-friendly packaging and organic produce, though one could argue that transporting organic bell peppers from Israel to the US is hardly ecological. Even the self-proclaimed “green ships” used to bring fresh produce to Europe are named Bio-Top and EcoFresh. ”
But there is nothing green about occupation and colonization, nothing ecological in violating human rights and dignity. And that’s why an international coalition supporting the Palestinian call for boycotts of Israeli products has set its sights on removing Carmel Agrexco produce from supermarkets – and ports – across Europe.
The original Earth Day was about grassroots mobilization, public protest for change and political awareness of the issues. In Israel’s Earth Day celebrations, its Apartheid system is showing through the greenwash.
(For more information on the boycott campaigns targeting Carmel Agrexco in Europe, see: UK: http://www.bigcampaign.org – Italy: http://www.stopagrexcoitalia.org – France: http://www.coalitioncontreagrexco.com)
– Stephanie Westbrook is a U.S. citizen who has been living in Rome, Italy since 1991. She is active in the peace and social justice movements in Italy and traveled to Gaza in June 2009. Contact her at: steph@webfabbrica.com.
Mexico: The Lacandona Rainforest is being cleared of its People
By Ahni | Intercontinental Cry | March 13, 2010
The Mexican government is moving ahead with an ambititous new plan to surround the Lacandona Forest in Chiapas, Mexico, with oil palm plantations; while disguising the forest around the plantations with various eco-tourism sites.
In preparing for the two-faced project, the government—still in line with the old amibitous plan—and with the help of various corporations, is clearing the Rainforest of its Indigenous People.
The most recent evictions took place on Jan. 21 and 22 at the indigenous Tselales settlements of Laguna El Suspiro and Laguna San Pedro— “the last one a base community of the Zapatista rebel movement,” explains the WW4Report.
The Zapatista have since come forward to denounce the evictions, stating:
“The bad federal government, the PRD state government of Juan Sabines Guerrero and the municipal president of Ocosingo, Carlos Leon Solorsano Arcia, have carried out a military operation, including federal police accompanied by bad government officials of the Attorney General for Environmental Protection (PROFEPA). During the operation, four helicopters hovered over the community Laguna San Pedro, to scare the population.”
“Participating in this operation were police agents, the Mexican Army and government officials, as well as photographers and journalists of the government. They talked to the men and women, while the police took advantage of this to set the houses of the Zapatista support bases on fire.”
“How is it possible, that the bad government talks about dialogue, while its police and army burn down the belongings of the compañeros Zapatista support bases?”
The Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center, Fray Pedro Lorenzo de la Nada Human Rights Center, Serapaz and others have also denounced the evictions and demanded that the communities be compensated for their heavy loss.
They also warn that seven more communities are facing imminent eviction, including Nuevo San Gregorio, Nuevo Salvador Allende, Nuevo San Pedro, 6 de Octubre, Poblado Laguna El Suspiro, Ojo de Agua el Progreso and San Jacinto Lacanjá.
Throughout the current and previous administrations in Mexico, nearly fourty communities have been evicted from the Lacandona forest.
For more information, please visit Rainforest Rescue.
Trading our environment for wind power
By Nancy O’Toole | March 14, 2010
In 2008, the Kibby project, 44 turbines, miles of roads and hundreds of acres of cleared forest was approved. The Expedited Rule did its job for the developer, streamlining the necessary review since the location is part of over 14 million acres of land opened to wind development.
Now in 2010, TransCanada wants to expand the Kibby project and is proposing 15 turbines on Sisk Mountain, which overlooks the Chain of Ponds.
To do this TransCanada wants to expand the already expedited area of Maine to include the portion of Sisk Mountain not yet within this “umbrella.” TransCanada is petitioning to add another 630 acres to the expedited area, all of it overlooking Chain of Ponds, Big Island, and Massachusetts Bog.
Mountain tops and ridges above 2,700 feet will host all 15 turbines, 3.6 miles of crane road (34 feet wide), 3.6 miles of collector lines, (60 feet wide), 0.6 miles of access road to ridge and miles of “temporary” skidder trails. That does not include upgrades to a number of existing tracks.
A total of 90 wetland areas were identified with 11 Palustrine scrub — shrubs in the path of the collector line corridor. TC surveyed the area for vernal pools and listed 14 significant pools, meaning it has a high habitat value and is home to or has an abundance of threatened or endangered species. All will be impacted to some degree.
Clearing and grubbing will remove 140 acres of forest. Of that, 42 acres is described as fir-heartleaved birch sub-alpine community. Having a statewide S3 ranking means it’s a rare community type of forest and the clearing will isolate and alter the habitat adjacent to the community, allowing sunlight and wind, which removes moisture, deeper into the forest and impacting the rest of the community and altering it forever. The Bicknell Thrush, a threatened song bird, will lose 12.4 acres of critical habitat.
Blasting and excavating estimates are 750,000 cubic yards, with 650,000 cubic yards of fill. This is very significant, given that the soils, hydrology and the steep slopes above 2300 feet are very fragile. It is very difficult to build roads in this zone without significant blasting and it effects the surrounding environment.
Underlying hydrology needs to be identified and protected. This includes water from seeps, springs and streams disrupted by blasting of ledge and rock for roads and turbine placement.
The results from diverting will change the temperature and volume of streams, thus impact salmon in North Branch Dead River, Horseshoe stream and wild brook trout in Clear Brook.
Roads and collector lines will cross 57 perennial and intermittent streams.
Gold Brook is a tributary of the north branch of the Dead River and provides temperature refuge for landlocked salmon and supports wild brook trout. Kibby Stream, a tributary of Spencer Stream, supports wild brook trout. When existing hydrology is disturbed and large amounts of sedimentation is deposited into these streams, significant impacts to our native fish population will occur.
In 2008 Roaring Brook Mayflies were discovered in Gold Brook, whose headwaters are on the southern slope of Sisk. This insect is listed under the Maine Department of Inland Fish and Wildlife as Endangered. First discovered at the base of Mt. Katahdin in the Roaring Brook, it is protected for its entire length in Baxter State Park. It is a significant source of food for the brook trout, bats, dragonflies and other wildlife.
The bog lemming, golden eagle historic nesting area, and Canadian lynx tracks were discovered in the Kibby and Sisk area.
Boreal straw and snowline wintergreen were found, both listed as a S2, imperiled in Maine due to rarity of species. Both grow along the margins of perennial streams.
All these and more species fall under some regulations for protection!
Where is their protection in all this fury to make money? This is an oxymoron if there ever was one — killing endangered species, some due to global warming species, in order to curtail global warming?
Nancy O’Toole is a member of the Friends of the Boundary Mountains, a nonprofit that intervened in the Kibby Mountain project as well as the Sisk Mountain project before LURC now. She has a bachelor of science degree in environmental engineering and 10 years of experience with high mountain road construction and hazardous waste cleanup in towns in Utah. She lives in Phillips.
Related articles
- Bingham Wind Project to Seek Expedited Wind Permitting towards the end of March (bangordailynews.com)
- Groups seek to shut down dam turbines, save Atlantic salmon (bangordailynews.com)
Family-farm advocates call for U.S. to ‘bust up big ag’
By Lynda Waddington – 3/12/10
ANKENY, IOWA — Whether they realized it or not, the roughly 250 family farmers, workers and consumers gathered in Ankeny, Iowa, Thursday night fired off their own point-by-point response to a letter from two Republican senators that urged the U.S. departments of agriculture and justice to maintain the existing status quo in the agriculture industry.
The often rambunctious townhall event was organized by a coalition of groups concerned that everyday people do not have adequate opportunity to express their opinions on the agricultural industry at a joint U.S. Department of Justice and USDA antitrust workshop on Friday. And it had one overarching message: “Bust up big ag.”
“We are here today to make sure that the voices of everyday people are heard loud and clear and send a simple but powerful message to our government regulators and elected officials,” said Barb Kalbach, a fourth generation family farmer from Dexter and board member for Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. “Bust up big ag, pass policies that promote sustainable agriculture and local markets, and put people first during the workshop series by prioritizing public comments and input and adding more family farmers and consumers to panels.”
On Wednesday, however, two Republicans in leadership positions on the Senate Agriculture Committee urged U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to do just the opposite.
“We urge you to ensure that these sessions are balanced and reflect the wide array of producers and business operations in modern-day agriculture,” wrote Sens. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Pat Roberts of Kansas.
After noting that “American agriculture is responsible for feeding the world,” that many industry “segments have become more vertically-integrated” and “other small and successful agriculture businesses have merged” to meet demands, the senators note that change is often met with frustration.
“Such change has led to better income margins for producers and processors as well as lower prices for consumers,” they wrote, adding that competition issues have been “studied extensively by several entities including the United State Congress and, specifically, the Senate Agricultural Committee.”
Although Chambliss and Roberts appear to call for a wide swath of American agriculture to have representation at the meeting, it is difficult to overlook the key point of their correspondence:
“Beyond our interest in a balanced review, we would hope that no correlation is planned between the upcoming workshops and current enforcement activity in your respective Departments. From recent news of lawsuits to undo mergers to heightened scrutiny of pre-merger activity and other investigative activities with agribusiness companies from a variety of sectors, it is readily apparent that both the Department of Agriculture and Department of Justice are already quite engaged in this area. We are concerned there is potential for your workshops to become venues for further fact-finding or public scrutiny of agricultural businesses that are already subject to existing antitrust laws and in some cases are under investigation or prosecution by the federal government.”
As of 2007, more than 45 percent of U.S. beef cattle are slaughtered by four companies (Tyson, Cargill, Swift and National.) Most U.S. Pork is also processed by just four companies (Tyson, Cargill, Swift and Smithfield). Seed corn is controlled predominately by two companies (Pioneer Dupont and Monsanto), and roughly 40 percent of the U.S. fluid milk supply is controlled by one company (Dean’s Foods).
Rhonda Perry, a Missouri livestock and grain farmer, said 30,000 cattle feed lots went out of business in the last 13 years. During the past 20 years, the nation lost 70 percent of its independent family hog farmers — but managed to keep production levels the same.
“We’ve been told that we have to have consolidation, concentration and vertical-integration in order to give consumers the cheap food they desire,” she said. “The reality is, if you look at the pork industry — a prime example because it has become really vertically-integrated in the last 25 years — that between 1985 and 2008 pork prices to consumers went up by 72 percent. At the same time the hog farmers’ share of that consumer dollar went down by 43 percent. So, somebody in this industry, in this consolidation process, is definitely getting rich. It’s working for somebody, but it is not working for producers and consumers.”
Fred Dowered, a Minnesota farmer, told the audience that when he began farming 34 years ago his state had 50 seed companies. Now, however, there are only four.
“When there were 50 seed companies, the price of seed corn was held to its own. Now they just let it go rampant,” he said.
That’s a situation that Jim Kalbach, an Adair Couty grain farmer, knows all too well.
“Monsanto soybean seed was $31 a bag last year. Now they jumped it up one third to $41 a bag — in one year,” he said. “That’s highway robbery.”
Many of the men and women in the audience also took exception to the belief that the U.S. food supply boasts the most healthy and inexpensive food in the world.
“The two things we are going to hear over and over on Friday is that we’ve got the cheapest and safest food supply in the world. Both of these statements are damn lies” said Gary Klicker, a southern Iowa producer that can trace his family’s agricultural roots to 1666.
Klicker believes that taxpayers will be out “billions if not trillions” of dollars cleaning up rivers, nourishing soil and dealing with abandoned animal confinement facilities.
“Have you ever heard of 19 million pound beef recall in Sweden or Germany or Russia or Cuba or anywhere else? The food isn’t safe. We are eating garbage off the floors of our packing houses. It’s being fed to our kids in schools, and it goes into our grocery stores. Most of the people have no idea what they are getting, and wouldn’t know what real food tastes like if they had it. This is a serious, serious situation — one that we will be paying for 100 years from now. It isn’t safe. It isn’t even cheap.”
Although U.S. Sens. Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley are on the schedule for Friday, along with U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell, no federal elected officials attended the townhall meeting in person. A handful of audience members used their very limited comment period to note their disappointment that the officials themselves did not attend, and at least two were openly hostile toward lawmakers who had long-served without providing notable solutions to the competition issues in their industry.
“This was a huge crowd,” Dave Campbell, district representative for Boswell, said following the meeting. “What I’m going to pass on to the Congressman is the fact that were a whole lot of people here who are hurting. He will have an opportunity to hear from both sides, and will hopefully make the best decisions possible.”
John Moreland, staff assistant for Harkin, also said that he would be taking his reflections on the “passion” expressed at the meeting back to his boss.
A notable appearance at the townhall was made by members of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. After the meeting Mark Lauritsen, vice president and director of the UFCW Meatpacking Division, explained that his members understand how closely their livelihood is tied to that of the farmer.
“We should have been getting together back in the 1980s and having these discussions. … Our lives are connected with farmers. Our members’ lives are connected to farmers. Our success rises and falls with the American farmer,” he said.
Producers from at least 10 states traveled to Ankeny for the townhall. Many also plan to attend the workshop, and would like opportunity to speak. Since only one hour at the end of the day has been allotted for public comment, however, it isn’t likely that there will be time for them all. That being said, it also isn’t likely that these motivated individuals are going to go away. Wisconsin Dairy producer Joel Greeno said several groups are already gearing up for the June meeting planned in their state, and that other producers are organizing in relation to the workshops planned for Colorado and Alabama later this year.
“The situation in agriculture these days, even though it has been coming on for a long time, is reaching critical mass,” said Frank Jones, a Missouri owner and producer. “I’m afraid that if we don’t have some type of meaningful change in the way business is done that agriculture will be lost forever.”
Greenpeace’s Corporate Overreach
Controversial Hire is an Opportunity to Start Building a Democratic Environmental Movement
By DRU OJA JAY, Montreal – March 11, 2010
Greenpeace has come a long way since the Rainbow Warrior, the retrofitted trawler used to challenge nuclear testing and whaling, was enough of a threat that the French government dispatched commandoes to sink her in 1985.
On February 13th, Greenpeace International announced that was hiring ForestEthics founder Tzeporah Berman as director of its global climate and energy campaign. The move has provoked intense outrage among many Greenpeace supporters, staff and activists. The conflict raging within Greenpeace has the potential to be an important first step in addressing two heretofore taboo subjects in the environmental movement: the corrupting influence of corporate cash and the absence of democratic structures.
The announcement marked an acceleration of a long-term drift away from Greenpeace’s origins in direct action environmental and anti-war work. Back in 2007, Greenpeace lauded Coca-Cola for its “commitment to use climate-friendly coolers and vending machines.” (The same year, campaigns against Coke’s complicity in paramilitary assassination of union leaders in Colombia were in full swing, while a year earlier, the government of Kerala had banned Coca-Cola after a revolt over overuse and pollution of groundwater.)
If the Coke deal was Greenpeace testing the waters of corporate collaboration, hiring Berman is Greenpeace jumping in.
The hire marks a full-circle return for Berman, who rose to prominence within Greenpeace but left in 2000 to found ForestEthics, where she broke new ground in the “collaborative approach” to conservation. According to Berman’s ethos, “the notion of activists vs. corporations, of good vs. evil, no longer applies… It’s about creating dialogue, and finding the solutions that will be mutually beneficial to all.”
While heading up ForestEthics, Berman undertook a series of collaborations with companies like Home Depot, Dell, Staples and most recently General Electric. Immediately before being hired by Greenpeace, Berman headed PowerUp Canada, an initiative funded mostly by the Tides and Ivey Foundations that pushed the privatization of British Columbia’s rivers in the name of green energy. She has since backed away from the fruits of her efforts, claiming she does not support the privatization of “all” rivers in BC.
Grassroots environmentalists in Canada were furious at Berman long before she took the Greenpeace job, starting with the elimination of public oversight during her stint as lead negotiator of the Great Bear Rainforest deal. (In the deal that was finally signed, only 32 per cent of the rainforest was protected.)
Berman’s return to Greenpeace as it approaches its 40th year of existence has stoked the ire of the organization’s supporters to white-hot levels.
In an email that has made the rounds of Canadian environmental lists, Greenpeace International co-founder Rex Weyler called Berman’s hire “an all-out betrayal of environmentalism, of the groups and activists who built the environmental movement in Canada and in the world, and a betrayal of the Earth itself.”
70 people have signed a statement calling on Greenpeace to rescind Berman’s hire and “renounce collaboration and partnership with destructive corporations”.
Greenpeace staffers and activists in Canada — where Berman is well-known, and where Greenpeace has a high-profile anti-tar sands campaign underway — have privately expressed a mix of bafflement and rage at the decision.
One anonymous “Greenpeace activist or staff” remarked in testimony posted to http://www.SaveGreenpeace.org: “Greenpeace actually started the Kyoto Plus campaign to battle Power Up, the organization that Tzeporah started. And now they’re hiring her. The hypocrisy blows my mind. It’s astonishing. It’s like they just hired the devil. No one will take us seriously… with decisions like this.”
Greenpeace’s decision comes at a point when questions about Environmental organizations lack of democracy or accountability, and their corresponding closeness with corporations involved in environmental destruction, are looming larger than ever.
A recent report in The Nation ends with a 30-year veteran of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) stating outright: “We’re close to a civil war in the environmental movement. For too long, all the oxygen in the room has been sucked out by this beast of these insider groups, who achieve almost nothing…. We need to create new organizations that represent the fundamentals of environmentalism and have real goals.”
The report, whose author was subsequently interviewed on Democracy Now!, raises issues that are echoed in the anonymous testimonies of disgruntled Greenpeacers. Phrases like “disenfranchised,” “no consultation,” “no transparency,” “more concerned with getting a ‘seat at the table,'” point repeatedly to the same pair of problems: addiction to corporate and foundation cash and a total lack of democracy.
While the debate rages inside Greenpeace, early reports seem to indicate that many on the inside are channeling their frustration at the lack of consultation and their own disempowerment into rage against the small number of people willing to publicly oppose the Berman hire and discuss her record.
The frustration is understandable, but if the goal is a strong, democratic environmental movement, there are much better targets for their rage.
The overreach of Greenpeace’s turn towards corporate collaboration and the ensuing grassroots backlash affords the rarest of moments: an opportunity to articulate and push for demands that normally bounce harmlessly off of the bureaucratic carapace of big organizations like Greenpeace.
It’s an opportunity to demand an end to corporate collaboration, but it’s also an opportunity to demand democratic accountability to a supporting membership that is there because of the organization’s forty years of direct action. Small-scale financial supporters, volunteer activists and staff alike have no formal say in Greenpeace’s strategic direction. Nearly all of their complaints emanate from the frustration created by that contradiction.
At a moment where tensions are at their highest, the irony of an NRDC functionary describing “civil war” and calling for “new organizations that represent the fundamentals of environmentalism and have real goals” while Greenpeacers seethe, lash out at those pointing to Berman’s record, or quit, should not be lost on anyone.
Greenpeace International’s head office has raised the stakes. If the resistance to Berman’s hire is broken, the descent of the organization will be far swifter than the Coked-up years leading to its fortieth birthday. If the resistance continues to grow and spreads to supporters of other unaccountable, corporate-partnered big greens, then we’ll win with Greenpeace or without it.
If Greenpeace’s transformation into another public relations contractor for corporations and foundations is allowed to continue, everyone loses.
Corporate collaboration will never do more than slightly curtail environmental destruction. In many cases, the results of collaboration have been disastrous. The only things that can stop it are organizations rooted in communities and grassroots movements that are immune to “leaders” selling them out for money and ego.
If that’s what folks working with and supporting Greenpeace want, they won’t get a better shot at it than this one.
Tzeporah Berman is slated to start work in April.
Dru Oja Jay is co-author of the report Offsetting Resistance: The effects of foundation funding from the Great Bear Rainforest to the Athabasca River. He is a member of the editorial collective of the Dominion, and lives in Montreal.
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Aaron Siri’s Book: Vaccines, Amen
By Maryanne DemasiMaryanne Demasi | Brownstone Institute | June 15, 2026
For decades, vaccines have been treated as the sacred cow of modern medicine. I was taught that they were the holy grail. To question them was heresy. To raise concerns about safety was to risk professional exile.
Aaron Siri makes it clear in Vaccines, Amen: The Religion of Vaccines that the story we’ve been told about vaccine science rests far more on belief than proof.
“No child should be sacrificed on the altar of the religion of vaccines,” Siri writes, as he turns his focus to America’s overcrowded childhood immunisation schedule.
I assumed little in this book would surprise me. I’ve spent years reporting on drug safety, regulatory capture, and the corruption of science. But Siri showed me how wrong I was.
Siri is not a doctor or a scientist. He is an attorney, and this, he says, is his advantage. In court, rhetoric won’t save you. Evidence does. As he puts it, he doesn’t get to say “trust me” the way many doctors do. “I need to prove claims with real data.”
And he does. … continue
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