The Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force released its final strategy for long term ecosystem restoration for the Gulf Coast Monday following extensive feedback from citizens throughout the region. The Task Force delivered its final strategy recommendations on Friday to President Barack Obama, who established the Task Force by executive order.
The strategy is the first restoration blueprint ever developed for the Gulf to include input from states, tribes, federal agencies, local governments and thousands of involved citizens and organizations across the region, according to the release. The plan represents a commitment by all parties to continue to work together in an unprecedented collaboration to prepare the Gulf region to transition from response to recovery and address the decades-long decline that the Gulf’s ecosystem has endured.
EPA Administrator and Task Force Chair Lisa P. Jackson, partnering with Task Force Co-Chair Garret Graves, made the announcement during keynote remarks at the 2011 State of the Gulf of Mexico Summit in Houston. Ms. Jackson was joined by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator Jane Lubchenco, Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley, USDA Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment Harris Sherman, according to a press release announcing the plan.
“After the Deepwater Horizon disaster, this Task Force brought together people from across the Gulf Coast in unparalleled ways to talk about how we tackle both the immediate environmental devastation, as well as the long-term deterioration that has for decades threatened the health, the environment and the economy of the people who call this place home,” Jackson said. “It has all come to this moment – when we move from planning and researching to supporting real, homegrown actions aimed at restoring this vital ecosystem.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing changes to Clean Air Act standards for boilers and certain incinerators that would achieve public health protections through significant reductions in toxic air pollutants, including mercury and soot, while increasing the rule’s flexibility and addressing compliance concerns raised by industry and labor groups, according to a press release just out via e-mail. The agency is accepting public comments on these policy changes now (see below).
Soot and other harmful pollutants released by boilers and incinerators can lead to adverse health effects including cancer, heart disease, aggravated asthma and premature death. In addition, toxic pollutants such as mercury and lead that will be reduced by this proposal are linked to developmental disabilities in children. The new standards will help avoid up to 8,100 premature deaths in the U.S., prevent 5,100 heart attacks and avert 52,000 asthma attacks per year.
“With this action, EPA is applying the right standards to the right boilers,” said Gina McCarthy, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. “Gathering the latest and best real-world information is leading to practical, affordable air pollution safeguards that will provide the vital and overdue health protection that Americans deserve.”
The changes cut the cost of implementation by nearly 50 percent from the original 2010 proposed rule while maintaining health benefits, according to the agency. These standards meet important requirements laid out in the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments.
Woke up this mornin’
there was frost on the ground.
Opened up Facebook,
and there was hot air all around.
I’ve got the bad news blues,
the bad news blues, baby.
What you gonna do…
The bad news is, the Republicans are still in charge of all three branches of government in my home state.
The good news is, more and more people are waking up on the Web and finding out that is a bad thing.
In the interest of keeping you abreast of what is in store for you in year-two of the Republican so-called “super majority” in the Alabama legislature, check out this article from the Dekalb County Times-Journal.
Conservative Senator Shadrack McGill, who replaced long-serving Democrat Lowell Barron, gives some indications of what is in store next year. In addition to “tweaking” the much criticized anti-immigration law, getting rid of the state retirement system for public workers and destroying teacher tenure, McGill indicates he will be doing everything he can to get rid of the Forever Wild program for preserving some of the state’s most valuable and environmentally sensitive areas for future generations.
Perhaps it’s true that the people united will never be defeated. But they can be arrested.
That was the local Alabama authorities’ instinctive reaction to the uprisings of the 1960s. And it worked really well — if rights and consequences are no concern.
Find a reason, in some obscure or rarely enforced municipal ordinance, to arrest the agitators. Or just invent an offense, snatch the pesky ones, and drag them away. Rights have no role in this drama.
The plot is simple: Make the troublemakers disappear, tangle them in legal proceedings, bust their budgets with bail and fines and lawyer fees, and scare off sympathizers who see all this and decide to cower.
An autumn view of the Lake Chinnabee campground with no one around (click on the image for a larger view)
Secret Vistas
by Glynn Wilson
LAKE CHINNABEE, Ala. — It drizzled rain in the dark all the way from the Oxford, Alabama exit off Interstate 20 through Munford on Highway 21, making it hard to find all the turns that lead to Lake Chinnabee in the Talladega National Forest. But somehow between a detailed atlas and the Google iPhone map, we found the turnoff at McElderry Road that led to Cheaha Road, which took us past Camp Mac and wound up into the mountains toward the highest point in Alabama at Cheaha State Park.
All the way there, photographer Kenny Walters and I had gone back and forth over whether we would find the place empty, or whether other knowledgeable campers would have found the place and staked out a position in the middle of the second week of November. I figured it was 60-40 the place would be deserted.
It was still drizzling when we pulled into the Lake Chinnabee campground on Wednesday evening at about 6:30 p.m. — and there was not another vehicle or camper in site. The place was deserted, just the way we like it.
A pair of pileated woodpeckers dryocopus pileatus hang out regularly in the vicinity of Lake Chinnabee Recreation Area in the Talladega National Forest, just down the mountain from Cheaha State Park, Alabama’s highest point. These huge birds are nearly as large as a crow and are sometimes mistaken for the ivory-billed woodpecker, believed by many experts to be extinct, making this the largest woodpecker in most of North America. Its loud ringing calls and large rectangular excavations in dead trees reveal its presence in forests across the continent, although try getting close enough to one to get a full frame sharp photograph. They are shy and elusive for the most part, and dip when they fly, making them hard to photograph in flight. I got a few frames of this one Saturday morning, from too far away, across the creek running out of Lake Chinnabee.
The final episode of this series about the natural and human history of Appalachia sparks both heartbreak and hope for the region’s ransacked mountain ecosystem is now running on public television.
Early 20th-century mineral barons ruled Appalachia with an iron fist. Company spies tracked miners’ every move. If they found a man’s union card, he would be fired, even killed.
Inspired by a brave little old lady who talked like a preacher and cursed like a sailor, mineworkers organized and demanded better treatment. The dams of the Tennessee Valley Authority drowned ancestral homesteads, but the project eliminated abject poverty for thousands.
During the Bush years, we specialized in covering the politicization of the U.S. justice system as much as any news organization. Our archives are about the most comprehensive for anyone researching the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, and the original case against Richard Scrushy, which Glynn Wilson covered for The New York Times.
