October-November 2004 -
In This Issue:
 Current Projects & Initiatives
Member Profiles
Reports and New Research
OCE Staff News
Thanks to Our Lawyers and Community Partners for Your Help!
Current Projects & Initiatives
South Coast Air District: Cleaning Up Their Act
In September 2003, Our Children’s Earth Foundation and Communities for a Better Environment filed a lawsuit against the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) for improperly managing its air pollution trading program. SCAQMD had allowed participants of the trading program to avoid the federal Clean Air Act by calculating nitrous oxide trading credits on an annual basis instead of a quarterly basis, as required by law.
In June 2004, as part of the successful settlement of the case, mitigation fees totaling $1 million were allocated by SCAQMD for Supplemental Environmental Projects (SEP). The SEP fund provides one-time development money for qualifying projects to bring cleaner technologies to a number of low-income communities disproportionately impacted by pollution. Of 27 proposals submitted, a total of eight projects received funding from the District.
“This is a happy ending to an otherwise unhappy story,” said Charlene Schachter, managing director of OCE, and a participant on the review panel that selected the recipient projects for funding. “We are thrilled that the funds are going to a variety of projects in the community that provide innovative approaches to pollution reduction.”
With support from the SEP fund, the BP Solar Neighbors Program will be able to install solar panels in the rehabilitation of homes in South Los Angeles. In addition to reducing pollution, solar power systems lower household expenses, helping families to become one-step closer to financial stability. The SEP fund will also allow for diesel engine retrofits on boats operating in and around the Port of Los Angeles.
In the City of San Fernando, compressed natural gas (CNG) trolleys will offer much-needed public transportation in the downtown area, while also bringing the city closer to its ten-year goal of replacing the entire fleet of city vehicles. A new CNG fueling station will promote and encourage the use of CNG vehicles by the public.
Smoky Mountain Blues
For years, Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) Bull Run Fossil Plant in Clinton, Tennessee has spewed emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere, creating dangerous air pollution, impairing visibility, creating acid rain, and degrading nearby Great Smokey National Park.
In 2001, the Sierra Club and the National Parks Conservation Association filed suit against TVA, alleging that it is operating the Bull Run plant in violation of the federal Clean Air Act. Our Children’s Earth (OCE) Foundation has added its voice to the lawsuit, alleging that the TVA made a surreptitious major modification to the Bull Run plant in 1988, and, as such, it should have operated with economical, state-of-the-art pollution controls from that time forward.
The effort to decrease emissions from outdated, coal-fired power plants is important. OCE’s executive director Tiffany Schauer explains, “We are concerned for the people who live in and around power plants like Bull Run. Studies show that sulfur dioxide, which Bull Run emits in tremendous amounts, quickly transforms in the atmosphere into minute sulfate particles that EPA has recognized pose health risks to children and the elderly in particular.”
OCE expects the case to go to trial next year.
Depraved New World
OCE and seven other environmental and public health groups, along with concerned individuals, filed a brief November 24th asking the D.C. Circuit Court to reverse a rule change by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that allows industry to circumvent federal Clean Air Act standards. The new legal challenge is being brought by the Clean Air Council, Environmental Defense, Environmental Integrity Project, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Northwest Environmental Defense Center, Our Children’s Earth Foundation, Physicians for Social Responsibility and Sierra Club.
The lax EPA rule change supposedly was “forced” by a settlement negotiated in an earlier lawsuit brought by an industry group in September 2002. That settlement – which was opposed by six states and nearly sixty environmental and public health organizations from across the country – ignores stringent monitoring standards required by Title V of the Clean Air Act. Instead, the settlement allows power plants, refineries and other large industrial sources to check their emissions only twice every five years, providing illegal polluters with ample opportunity to escape detection for years at a time.
“EPA’s actions are blatantly illegal,” said Keri Powell, an attorney with Earthjustice. “The Clean Air Act clearly requires that industry conduct sufficient monitoring to demonstrate whether it is complying with air pollution limits. Sadly, EPA’s decision to ignore the Clean Air Act and allow industry to skirt its monitoring obligations is consistent with numerous other EPA actions ignoring the law.
“Basically, EPA has decided just to trust that industry will comply with the law,” said Kelly Haragan, counsel for the Environmental Integrity Project. “Without adequate monitoring, the public can’t know what industry is putting into the air it breathes and regulators can’t know when industry exceeds its pollution limits. So, it’s a lose-lose situation for everyone except industry.”
Hilton Kelly, an individual living in Port Arthur, TX., and a party in the coalition’s suit, said: “I live in a community surrounded by refineries and chemical plants. We wake every day wondering what toxics will be released into the air we breathe. In Port Arthur, we count on the EPA to watch out for us, for our government to monitor what these companies are emitting. They have let us down for years… and this is the final straw. EPA won’t even be able to collect the data needed to see what these industries are putting in our air.”
Earthjustice and the law firm of Carter, Ledyard and Milburn (working pro bono) are representing the parties in the lawsuit.
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Member Profiles
OCE would like to welcome its newest members Marilyn Bardet and Bonnie Weidel-Taylor! We would also like to extend our sincere appreciation to Suzanne Vitullo and Jeffrey Wycoff for their continued support of OCE. Ever wonder who else supports OCE? From the Volunteer State to the Aloha State, OCE members are rolling up their sleeves and helping to build a better tomorrow.
Shannon Burke, a published novelist and screenwriter, has been a member of OCE for a year and a half. He and his wife enjoy an active outdoor lifestyle in Tennessee. They have hiked most of the trails within a few hours of Knoxville and canoed almost all the rivers. They know firsthand the deleterious effects of poor environmental stewardship.
“My eyes have itched since I moved into the Tennessee River Valley, and the rivers here are some of the dirtiest in the country,” Shannon says. In keeping an ever-watchful eye on corporate business practices and championing environmental responsibility, he adds, “Corporations need to be kept in check, or they’ll devour everything indiscriminately. There’s no alternative – clean air and water are not a luxury, they’re a necessity.”
OCE member Koalani Kaulukukui grew up in Hawaii, and she has lived in such farflung places as Costa Rica, Washington state, Southern California, Atlanta and Washington D.C. Having studied environmental science in college, she interned with a Congressman in D.C. and decided that the best way to address environmental issues was through learning the legal system.
Now, as a second year student with the University of Hawaii William S. Richardson School of Law, Koa is committed to the environmental cause. She says, “It is essential that we take action now to save our earth for future generations. We are already seeing the devastating effects of mankind on our environment, and steps need to be taken now to stop the degradation, and hopefully reverse it.”
With members like Shannon and Koa, OCE continues to serve its mission: advocating for environmental standards, educating the public and empowering communities.
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Reports and New Research
Air Today, Gone Tomorrow
A study published in the September issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, conducted by the California EPA and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is the first of its kind in the United States to examine the relationship between respiratory symptoms and measured levels of traffic-related pollutants.
In an earlier companion study published in January in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers with Cal/EPA and the state Department of Health Services found that 709 schools statewide, or 9.5 percent, were located within 500 feet of roads carrying at least 25,000 vehicles a day. The new study confirms that children attending schools with higher exposure to traffic-related pollutants show higher rates of respiratory illness. By monitoring air and surveying the health of 1,109 Bay Area pupils, researchers found moderately higher rates of wheezing, excessive phlegm and other asthma and bronchitis symptoms. A follow-up study will measure the effects of traffic exposure on children at their homes.
In addition to the work of Cal/EPA, the UCLA Institute of the Environment has demonstrated that too much time in traffic increases exposure to cancer-causing emissions such as diesel exhaust. In its seventh annual Southern California Environmental Report Card, UCLA researchers emphasize a shift in recent years in the study of pollution. Instead of focusing solely on data from stationary monitoring stations, researchers are now homing in on “microenvironments” by measuring where people spend their time and how harmful pollutants reach them.
Using such techniques, UCLA researchers determined that one-third to one-half of the diesel particles that an average Californian breathes every day are taken in during the 1.5 hours spent in cars. Children riding older diesel school buses are even more at risk because of the tendency of such vehicles to “self-pollute.”
Public health groups have linked tiny soot particles found in diesel exhaust with lung and other types of cancer. The particles account for thousands of premature deaths in the United States each year, according to the American Lung Association of California. New regulations are aimed at cutting diesel pollution nationwide, beginning in 2007.
Rain, Rain, Go Away
Based on a Stanford University study, as part of the Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) Program, the California Energy Commission warned that urban pollution may be reducing rainfall in the Central Valley and along the heavily populated Southern California coast, as well as mountain snowfall that supplies much of the state’s drinking and irrigation water and hydroelectric power.
Computer modeling in the Stanford study shows suspended pollutants can cut Sierra snowfall by disturbing air pressure systems and thus disrupting cloud and wind patterns. In addition, more moisture-attracting particles means fewer of the resulting cloud droplets may grow heavy enough to fall to the ground as rain. In 2000, one scientist at Israel’s Hebrew University used satellite photos to show decreased snow and rain in pollution-contaminated clouds around the world.
Researchers at University of Nevada’s Desert Research Institute reported similar findings earlier this year by measuring snow from actual winter storms in the Rocky Mountains. Pollution-contaminated clouds produced half as much snow, and what fell contained 25 percent less water and had as little as half the mass of its pristine counterpart.
Scientists have only recently begun to reach conclusions about the role of airborne particles in climate change. Carbon specks on snow, for instance, speeds the melting of snow each spring and cuts ice fields’ ability to reflect sunlight away from the earth. Carbon flecks suspended in the air may absorb sunlight, heating the atmosphere but blocking sunlight from reaching the earth. Other particles reflect sunlight away from the earth’s atmosphere entirely.
PIER is conducting preliminary studies before it attempts to project California’s future climate and how the state can prepare for changing conditions. As the population continues to grow, the effect of higher concentrations of airborne pollutants could be a more limited supply of water, in addition to more contamination of ground and surface water from the resulting rainfall. Air temperatures increased slightly in August along the Southern California coast, while sunlight reaching the ground decreased, meaning a possible reduction in crop yields.
In No Particulate Hurry: EPA’s Final Science Review
The Clean Air Act requires that the EPA carry out a periodic review and revision, where appropriate, of the criteria for national ambient air quality standards. Over the last five years, several drafts of the Air Quality Criteria for Particulate Matter have been made available for public comment and scientific advising, and the final draft of the newly revised criteria was issued in October 2004.
Particulate matter is composed of small solid and liquid particles suspended in the ambient air, and research studies have associated exposure to elevated levels of these particles with damaging health effects. During the last several years, EPA has been investigating fine particulate matter (PM2.5) to understand how particles form into pollutants in the air, how they are transported, how people are exposed to them, and the health effects people may experience after they breathe in these particles. EPA’s research has affirmed the need for air quality standards to reduce PM in the air to protect human health.
State, local and tribal governments will need to submit plans to EPA by February 2008 for how they will meet the updated national air quality standards, or, if an area is already in compliance, what steps they will take to prevent air quality from deteriorating. These steps may include stricter controls on industrial facilities and additional planning requirements for transportation sources.
New EPA rules require stringent pollution controls for reducing emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, the two most significant precursors to PM2.5. The Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) focuses on states whose sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions are contributing to fine particle problems in other downwind states. As proposed, CAIR would reduce emissions in 29 eastern states and the District of Columbia. Sulfur dioxide emissions would be reduced by roughly 40 percent below current levels by 2010, and by 70 percent below current levels when the rules are fully implemented. Nitrous oxide emissions would be reduced by roughly 65 percent from today’s levels by 2015. Also a priority is cutting emissions from non-road diesel engines used in industries such as construction, agriculture and mining.
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OCE Staff News
In October, Marcie Keever traveled to Washington, DC for the Equal Justice Works Annual Retreat. Marcie joined 100 other fellows who attended the Equal Justice Works Awards Dinner and numerous seminars on career development, media relations and lobbying. “It is always inspiring to meet so many other young attorneys working for social justice” said Marcie. “Without Equal Justice Works and the funding it provides, much of this public interest work would never occur.”
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Thanks to Our Lawyers and Community Partners for Your Help!
Altshuler, Berzon, Nussbaum, Rubin & Demain
American Lung Association
A Walk in the Woods
Bay Area Clean Air Task Force
Bayveiw Hunters Point Community Advocates
Bushnell, Caplan, & Fielding
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
Marc S. Chytilo
Clean Air Council
Clean Water Action
Coalition for Mercury-Free Dentistry
Communities for a Better Environment
Earth justice Legal Defense Fund
Ecological Rights Foundation
Environmental Advocates
Environmental Defense
Environmental Integrity Project
Environmental Law Foundation
Environmental Working Group
Get Oil Out
Golden Gate University Environmental Law & Justice Clinic
Matthew Hagemann
George Hays
Hilton Kelley
Latino Issues Forum
Planning and Conservation League
Montana Environmental Information Center
William Moore
National Parks Conservation Association
Natural Resources Defense Council
Nevada Environmental Coalition, Inc.
Northwest Environmental Defense Center
Physicians for Social Responsibility
Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles
Santa Barbara ChannelKeeper
Sierra Club
Chris Sproul
Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund
Union of Concerned Scientists
Urban Habitat, a project of the Tides Center
Reed Zars
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