It won't be long before the world has to confront its diminishing supply of clean water.
"We've had the same amount of water on our planet since the beginning of time, " Susan Leal, co-author of Running Out of Water, told GritTV's Laura Flanders. "We are on a collision course of a very finite supply and 7.6 billion people."
What's worse, private industries-and energy companies in particular-are using waterways as dumping grounds for hazardous substances. With the coal industry, it's an old story; with the natural gas industry, it's a practice that can be nipped in the bud.
In many cases, dumping pollutants into water is a government-sanctioned activity, although there are limits to how much contamination can be approved. But companies often overshoot their pollution allowances, and for some businesses, like a nuclear energy plant, even a little bit of contamination can be a problem.
Business as usual
Here's one troubling scenario. At Grist, Sue Sturgis reports that "a river downstream of a privately-owned nuclear fuel processing plant in East Tennessee is contaminated with enriched uranium." The concentrations are low, and the water affected is still potable. The issue, however, is that the plant was not supposed to be discharging any of this sort of uranium at all. One researcher explained that the study had "only scratched the surface of what's out there and found widely dispersed enriched uranium in the environment." In other words, the contamination could be more widespread than is now known.
Nuclear energy facilities must take particular care to keep the waste products of their work separate from the environment around them. But in some industries, like coal, polluting water supplies is routine practice.
The dirtiest energy
In West Virginia, more than 700 people are suing infamous coal company Massey Energy for defiling their tap water, Charles Corra reports at Change.org. In Mingo County, tap water comes out as "a smooth flow of black and orange liquid." Country residents are arguing that the contamination is a result of water from coal slurries, a byproduct of mining that contains arsenic and other contaminants, leaking into the water table. Residents believe the slurries also cause health problems like learning disabilities and hormone imbalances, as Corra reports.
Newfangled notions
Even so-called "clean coal," which would inject less carbon into the atmosphere, is worrisome when it comes to water. The carbon siphoned from clean coal doesn't disappear; it's sequestered under ground. For a new clean coal project in Linden, NJ, Change.org's Austin Billings reports, that chamber would be 70 miles out to sea. As Billings writes:
The plant would be the first of its kind in the world, so it should come as no surprise that the proposal is a major cause for concern among New Jersey environmentalists, fishermen, and lawmakers. According to Dr. Heather Saffert of Clean Ocean America, "We don't really have a good understanding of how the CO2 is going to react with other minerals... The PurGen project is based on one company's models. What if they're wrong?"
In this case, it wouldn't only be human communities at risk ("Polluted Jersey Shore," anyone?), but the ocean's ecosystem.
Frack no!
Coal communities in West Virginia have been dealing with water pollution for decades. But a another source of energy extraction-hydrofracking for natural gas-has only just begun to threaten water supplies. Care2's Jennifer Mueller points to a recent "60 Minutes" segment that explores the attendant issues: it's a must-watch for anyone unfamiliar with what's at stake.
Fortunately, some of the communities at risk have been working to head off the damage before it hits. In Pittsburgh this week, leaders banned hydrofracking within the city, according to Mari Margil and Ben Price inYes! Magazine. They write:
As Councilman [Doug] Shields stated after the vote, "This ordinance recognizes and secures expanded civil rights for the people of Pittsburgh, and it prohibits activities which would violate those rights. It protects the authority of the people of Pittsburgh to pass this ordinance by undoing corporate privileges that place the rights of the people of Pittsburgh at the mercy of gas corporations."
Environmentalists in other municipalities, in state government, and in Congress would do well to follow Pittsburgh's lead.
Mutant fish
Of course, you can't believe every tale of water contamination you hear. At RhRealityCheck, Kimberly Inez McGuire takes on the persistent myth that estrogen from birth control is making its way in large concentrations into the water supply and leading to mutations in fish.
This simply isn't true. As McGuire explains, "The estrogen found in birth control pills, patches, and rings (known as EE2) is only one of thousands of synthetic estrogens that may be found in our water, and the contribution of EE2 to the total presence of estrogen in water is relatively small." Where does the rest of the estrogen come from? Factory farms, industrial chemicals like BPA, and synthetic estrogen used in crop fertilizer. So, yes, the water is contaminated, but, no, your birth control is not to blame.
Greening the US
Stories like these, of environmental pollution by corporations, seem to come up again and again. They're barely news anymore and so easy to ignore. But it's more important than ever for environmentalists to fight back against these challenges and push for a green economy that minimizes pollution. The American Prospect's Monica Potts recently sat down with The Media Consortium to explain the roadblocks to a green economy. If green-minded people want to stop hearing tales like the ones above, these are the obstacles they'll need to overcome: watch the video.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
This is the fourth part of an analysis of the swing state Pennsylvania. It focuses on the industrial southwest, a once deep-blue region rapidly trending Republican. Part five can be found here.
Pittsburgh and the Southwest
Pennsylvania's southwest has much in common with West Virginia and Southeast Ohio, the northern end of Appalachia. Electoral change in the region is best understood by grouping these three areas together as a whole.
Socially conservative (the region is famously supportive of the NRA) but economically liberal, the industrial southwest voters typify white working-class Democrats. These voters can be found in unexpected places: Catholics in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, loggers along the Washington coast, rust-belt workers in Duluth, Minnesota and Buffalo, New York.
To an ignorant few, the election of a black president signals a transition into a period of post-racialism, where all of the racial tensions and struggles of the past have been overcome and racism no longer exists. Even though there are signs of improvement, such as the election of Barack Obama, America is far from overcoming it's embarrassing racial past and becoming a 'post-racial' society. (Some of us hope that we never do become a post racial society. Even though race is a social construct, I believe that especially in America, it is important to understand and embrace our own and each other's racial identities and histories). It is inevitable, however, that we are increasingly becoming (or recognizing that we actually are) a multi-racial society, which can be very uncomfortable to those used to the status quo.
We at Sum of Change have been releasing lots of videos from Netroots Nation. We have released some 40 highlights videos, but today we release a panel in entirety for the first time. This was the first panel I attended, bright and early at 9:00am on Thursday, August 13th.
Three of today's video's come from 'Four Perspectives from the Social Change Blogosphere: Case Studies from Civil Rights/ Pro-Migrant Bloggers' a panel at Netroots Nation 2009 in Pittsburgh hosted by Kety Equivel, the New Media Manager for the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), with David Bennion, a non-profit immigration attorney, Prerna Lal, a blogger, youth organizer, and new media consultant, Edmundo Rocha, the Publisher and Content Producer of Para Justica Y Libertad, a latino centered political blog, and Dee Perez-Scott, who runs the blog 'Immigration Talk with a Mexican American'.
Netroots Nation '09 is over. Of course, we are still up until 5:30am (again) working on footage. Today we filmed Valerie Jarrett's conversation with Netroots Nation attendees, a keynote panel with Governor Jon Corzine, Anna Burger, Kevin Drumm, and Dean Baker, the closing keynote with Senator Jim Ferlo, Richard Tumka of the AFL-CIO, and Darcy Burner of the American Proggressive Caucus PolicyFoundation, and four more panels.
We'll start off with a real quick video on an issue that means a lot to me...
An interesting article by the NYT about Pittburgh as a possible model or not for other cities heavily dependant on a manufacturing industry that's going/gone by the wayside. It has some intresting detail, but I think this passage is telling:
Mark Conkle considers himself a retraining success, too, but his experience demonstrates how difficult it will be for many laid-off autoworkers to match their factory income.
Mr. Conkle worked for 15 years for Ross Mould Inc. in Washington, southwest of Pittsburgh, as a unionized production machinist. He was making $23 an hour when he was laid off in 2005.
Some laid-off colleagues went directly to machine shops for $10 or $11 an hour. Mr. Conkle took the harder route of retraining, enrolling in a 16-month technical program. His unemployment benefits and his wife Amanda's job as a postal carrier carried the family through.
Last February, Mr. Conkle, 40, was hired as a maintenance specialist at the Monongahela Valley Hospital, a 226-bed hospital that is the third-largest employer in Washington County and is still growing. He makes $15 an hour, and in this economy is happy to have it. "You've got to take a job, no matter what it's paying," he said. "Companies know it."
In a nutshell, it pretty much lays to rest the idea that "retraining" of laid off workers in the way that its currently done is at all fair. This man (and his family) took on enormous risk and cost after being laid off and ended up several years later with a job that pays less, without even taking into account inflation.
There are some other critiques I have of the article - for example, I'm curious if this were the economic situation and the steel industry was declining, then how the unemployment rate got to 5.5% - did a lot of people leave? did most of them end up in lower paid jobs? did something else happen? Or is there a less unpleasant story involved? Also, Pittsburgh is naturally very beautiful - I don't thinkn the same can necessarily be said of Detroit, though maybe a Detroit lover would correct me or point to some other appeal, like its grit or its musical history or some other such thing.
Anyway, it's a good article in that it covers a city that I love (as a short-term tourist) and one that isn't so widely written about, and offers an interesting angle with actual people! on an often-told story, so I recommend it.
Yesterday, I met Reagan Democrats waiting on line in Pittsburgh who are happily voting for Obama.
They're finally fed up, disgusted and know the whole thing was nothing more than a bunch of bullshit and one big con game on the American people.
Doors opened at 3PM at the Mellon Arena.
But before we got in, we waited on line. And what do you do on a long line? You talk to the people around you. I talked to two woman who had come from a Pittsburgh suburb about an hour away. They were unabashed Republican. One said, "they've (the Republican Party) destroyed us". Her Republican friend was a "straight up" healthcare voter.
Then they grabbed me by the arm and whispered, "we're Obama Republicans, don't believe what you read in the papers. So are lots of our neighbors, I'm positive there are thousands of us here."
The Mellon Center arena seats 16,958 for ice hockey, 17,132 at standing room capacity. It was PACKED!
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