Glynn Wilson / Southwings

A close view of the growing coal ash mountain in Perry County, Alabama (click on image for more photos)

by Glynn Wilson

Attorney David Ludder has filed an administrative complaint against the Alabama Department of Environmental Management that could result in a federal takeover of the state’s enforcement of national environmental laws by the Environmental Protection Agency and result in a loss of federal funding for the state.

The formal complaint was filed with EPA’s Office of Civil Rights on behalf of the people of Perry County in Alabama’s Black Belt. According to Ludder, they have been the subject of an environmental injustice due to their racial and economic disadvantage by the permitting and placement of a landfill near them that is now full of toxic coal ash from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s major environmental disaster in the Cinch River in 2008.

Ludder’s complaint alleges that the landfill and its contents pollute the environment in a poor, minority area without the means to fight it politically. In addition to potential health problems from the air and water pollution, the landfill exposes local residents to a constant bad odor, lowers property values and causes dangerous traffic problems in the area.

“If EPA determines that ADEM did violate EPA’s regulations without ‘justification,’ EPA must initiate proceedings to deny, annul, suspend or terminate EPA funding to ADEM,” Ludder said in an e-mail interview. “This could cripple ADEM, and no doubt would require ADEM to surrender EPA-authorized programs.”

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The U.S. House of Representatives will vote this week on a continuing resolution to keep the government operating for the remainder of the fiscal year, but the Republican bill slashes critical funding for water and other environmental protections, and includes language that would prohibit EPA from regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act or regulating coal ash as a hazardous waste.

Several environmental groups are asking the public to get involved to fight these proposals.

According to Eva Dillard, the staff attorney for the Black Warrior Riverkeeper, the proposed budget cuts $3 billion from the Environmental Protection Agency budget, which is already 29 percent below fiscal year 2010. It also cuts 1.4 billion from the Department of Interior, including $532 million from the Land and Water Conservation Fund. It cuts $5.2 billion from the Department of Agriculture, including $190 million from the Farm Services Agency and $173 million from the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

“In addition to these dramatic budget cuts to critical environmental programs, the House CR includes two provisions – one that would prohibit EPA from taking administrative action to clarify the definition of ‘waters of the U.S.’ and another that would prohibit EPA from regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act,” Dillard said in a press release. “These provisions have nothing to do with saving money and don’t belong in a spending bill. They are simply attacks aimed at preventing EPA from doing its job, which is to protect public health and the environment.”

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released its annual national analysis of the Toxics Release Inventory on Thursday, providing Americans with vital information about their communities, according to EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson.

The report shows “a major reduction in toxic chemical releases in 2009,” Jackson said in a statement posted on her Facebook page. “The analysis found that total releases to air decreased 20 percent from 2008, while releases to surface water decreased 18 percent. Releases to land decreased 4 percent from 2008.”

The TRI program publishes information on toxic chemical disposals and releases into the air, land and water, as well as information on waste management and pollution prevention activities in neighborhoods across the country. In 2009, 3.37 billion pounds of toxic chemicals were released into the environment, a 12 percent decrease from 2008.

TRI was recently recognized by the Aspen Institute as one of the 10 major ways that EPA has strengthened America.

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Gulf coast shrimpers and affected community groups from Alaska to Louisiana to Florida pressed the federal government to better regulate dispersants — the chemicals that oil companies sometimes use to break up oil slicks on water — before these chemicals are used in future spill cleanups.

The non-profit environmental law firm Earthjustice filed a petition Friday, Oct. 15 on behalf of the Louisiana Shrimp Association, Florida Wildlife Federation, Gulf Restoration Network, the Alaska-based Cook Inletkeeper, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, the Waterkeeper Alliance and the Sierra Club. The petition demands that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency write rules that would set out exactly how and when dispersants could be used in the future.

The group also filed a 60-day-notice of intent to file a lawsuit prodding the agency to provide information long required by the Clean Water Act identifying exactly where dispersants may be used and how much is safe.

“Never again should the oil industry be allowed to dump hundreds of thousands of gallons of dispersant into the sea as their preferred method of response to an oil spill,” said Cynthia Sarthou of the Gulf Restoration Network. “Because so little is currently known by EPA — or anyone else for that matter — about the long-term impact to fish and wildlife, the use of dispersants is a dangerous and potentially devastating experiment.”

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by Glynn Wilson

Alabama’s attorney general Troy “Toy Boy” King has now placed the state in the inauspicious company of the likes of Texas and corporate lobbying groups publicly fighting the opportunity to get on the international bandwagon to do something about climate change due to global warming as well as harmful air pollution.

The new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson of New Orleans, told Congress earlier this week that regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, deemed a danger to the public health, will be phased in starting in 2011 for large plants and 2016 for smaller ones.

King joined Texas, Virginia and the pro-business manufacturing association in filing the petition with the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., asking the court to review EPA’s decision.

In response to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding the constitutionality of the federal government’s role in regulating air pollutants, the EPA announced in December that the agency would move forward to force states and industries to begin reducing heat-trapping greenhouse gases that threaten public health.

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Locust Fork News-Journal Joins Call for Investigation

A waste pond at a coal-burning power plant in northeast Alabama ruptured early Friday about 30 miles southwest of Chattanooga, Tennessee, according to the Associated Press and other news organizations, the second ash spill in less than a month at a TVA plant.

“For the second time in less than one month, the citizens served by the Tennessee Valley Authority have been unnecessarily exposed to a multitude of health risks due to a failure of a coal-ash pond,” said Adam Snyder, executive director of Conservation Alabama. “This unfortunate incident highlights TVA’s over-reliance on coal for energy production and a lack of adequate health safety standards and enforcement. Conservation Alabama calls on Congress, TVA, and EPA to not only conduct an exhaustive evaluation of its current standards, but also to put into action whatever means necessary to ensure that the citizens of Alabama are not put in harm’s way again.”

On December 22, a spill in Kingston, Tenn., dumped 5.4 million cubic yards of sludge across 400 acres, burying homes, buildings, and heavy equipment, as reported in the story below.

The Locust Fork News-Journal joins the call for a full investigation by the incoming Obama administration and new regulations for the waste from these dirty coal-fired power plants. Perhaps power generators such as TVA and Southern Company should be forced to pay in some way for the newer, greener energy sources we are going to need for an environmentally sustainable and economically viable future.