When Bush Comes to Shove, OCE Stands Firm
A new agreement settled out of court among Our Children’s Earth Foundation, Sierra Club and the Environmental Protection Agency forces the Bush administration to update clean air standards for petroleum refineries, thereby helping to protect communities from air pollution.
Petroleum refineries will have to meet stricter clean air standards thanks to a court decree that settles a lawsuit filed by Our Children’s Earth Foundation and Sierra Club against the Bush administration. According to the decree, over the next two and a half years the Bush administration must develop and enforce more stringent limits on pollutants like particulate matter, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide in light of technological advances in pollution control technology.
The two environmental groups sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in January because EPA failed to establish stronger pollution standards for new petroleum refineries as required by the federal Clean Air Act. Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is required to review and, if appropriate, update “new source performance standards” every eight years. EPA has not updated standards since 1974, allowing petroleum refineries to use 20-year-old technology in some cases. This lapse has made it possible for existing refineries to expand their operating capacities even though state-of-the-art technology could reduce substantial amounts of emissions, and despite scientific research linking air pollution to adverse health effects.
“This is an important victory for us because these technology forcing standards, which have been ignored again and again by the government, are finally going to be updated to ensure that refineries use readily available technology to control pollution,” said OCE executive director Tiffany Schauer. “With more reports out daily linking disease to air pollution, this is one much needed revision to the law.”
Trick or Treatment: Improving Bay Area Water Quality
There are many sources of contamination of San Francisco Bay, including industrial discharges from oil refineries, municipal sewage, storm water runoff and deposition from air emissions. However, a recent settlement between OCE and the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board will help the Bay Area to meet new, tougher Clean Water Act standards on toxic pollutants such as mercury and dioxin.
East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) collects and treats domestic and industrial sewage from nine communities in the East Bay area with a population of approximately 650,000. Every year, the district discharges hundreds of millions of gallons of inadequately treated sewage into the area harbors. During rainstorms, especially, EBMUD discharges large quantities of sewage from three “wet weather facilities” with very minimal treatment. These overflow facilities have discharged mercury at more than ten times the water quality standard meant to protect the Bay, dioxin compounds at six times the standard, pesticides at 20 to 50 times the standard, lead at nearly four times the standard, and cyanide at 28 times the standard.
EBMUD’s pollution control permit expired in January 2003. Although the district applied for a new permit, it was never issued by the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board – the state agency responsible for implementing the Clean Water Act (1972). Because of its leniency in enforcing compliance with clean water standards, and for its inaction in issuing a new EBMUD permit with updated pollution limits, Our Children’s Earth Foundation – in partnership with Ecological Rights Foundation – filed a lawsuit against the Regional Board.
The lawsuit will be dismissed, however, as the result of an out-of-court settlement between EBMUD and the environmental groups. EBMUD agreed that it would perform several multi-year studies aimed at devising environmentally preferable approaches to decrease the levels of wet weather overflows, upgrade the level of sewage treatment, and offset toxic pollutant discharges from its facilities by reducing the pollutant discharge from other sources that are not currently controlled.
EBMUD also agreed to perform a supplemental environmental project valued at $200,000 that will achieve substantial reduction in pollutant loading to San Francisco Bay over the next few years while EBMUD is working on the studies. EBMUD and the Regional Board have agreed to work with OCE and the other environmental groups in designing and implementing the project.
A Mantra for All Seasons
Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it. How do we continue to strive for economic, social and environmental justice, when all of our efforts seem like a drop in the ocean? (Hint: Because the ocean is made up of drops.) OCE executive director Tiffany Schauer shares her thoughts on the recent natural disaster in the southeast U.S., and on the pressing need to be the change we wish to see in the world.
When Hurricane Katrina hit last month I was riveted by the television images for days. I watched in horror as the New Orleans levee system gave way and the streets of that beautiful city were flooded with what most broadcasters described as a “toxic soup.” I cringed when I saw humans and animals alike wading through muck trying to find safer ground, and I waited.
I waited for the government to go in and help. I waited for people to be rescued from roofs of houses and I waited for officials to find a safe and effective way to get rid of that dirty, contaminated mess that filled the streets and houses of New Orleans.
As I went to the store and purchased 600-plus toothbrushes and other essential supplies and packaged them carefully and shipped them off to a Mississippi school I found in the phone book, I waited for U.S. officials to tell me that they were in charge and had things under control.
And I, along with the rest of the country, am still waiting for answers and for solutions. I am especially waiting for someone to tell me why, when we knew this tragedy was inevitable, we did nothing to stave it. Last year, in newspapers across the country, articles outlined the possible outcome of a category four or five hurricane on the city of New Orleans. We knew about the possibility of floods, alligators and even fire ants, which are still to come in New Orleans.
But mostly I wonder why the current U.S. Administration is unwilling to even consider the possibility that this storm and future storms could be mitigated if we were kinder to the earth.
Admittedly, no one is willing to say, positively, that this storm is the direct result of global warming. What we do know is that the earth is getting warmer – and, with it, extreme weather events will both increase in their frequency and intensity. Earlier this summer, Kerry Emanuel, an MIT professor, published a paper saying that hurricanes have grown significantly more powerful and destructive over the last three decades due in part to global warming.
Let’s also consider for a moment what other world leaders are saying. The World Bank, Sweden’s King, the European Commission and many other European leaders agree, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, that the storm could be a portent of worse to come. "As climate change is happening, we know that the frequency of these disasters will increase as well as the scope," European Commission spokeswoman Barbara Helfferich said. "If we let climate change continue like it is continuing, we will have to deal with disasters like that [Katrina]," she said.
In fact, leaders around the world have been talking about global warming for years, and the United Nations has even asked the U.S. to join with them in a plan designed to combat its effects.
But President Bush pulled out of the Kyoto Treaty in 2001, saying it was too expensive, and wrongly excluded developing nations from a first round of caps until 2012, calling it an “unscientific document.”
While most scientists in the world agree that temperatures of the earth are rising due to the effects of greenhouse gases that are being spewed into the atmosphere, Americans are still not willing to face facts. We continue to drive our SUV’s and don’t want to even consider requiring power plants to install up-to-date pollution controls because it might raise our power bills. President Bush wants us to believe that global warming is a myth. It is easier to believe it is a myth, because if we truly believed, like the rest of world, that we are destroying our planet – which is, in fact, our children’s planet -- we would have to do something about it.
Each person in the United States produces 6.6 tons of greenhouse gases every year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and most of that is from driving our cars and burning fossil fuels to generate electricity. In fact, Americans produce more than a quarter of the entire world’s greenhouse gases, and we cannot even admit that global warming could indeed exist and could intensify storms in the future.
During his first term in office, President Bush talked about making reductions in pollution. But in reality he seems more interested in repaying his political cronies than believing, as the rest of the world does, that real changes in our environmental strategies are needed to stop the destructive force of global warming. Not only has his administration revoked New Source Review laws – which require old, coal-fired power plants to install state-of-the-art pollution controls – it also opposes mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions from industrial plants. President Bush is burying his head in the sand, ignoring leading scientists and choosing money over the future of our children, and we are condoning his behavior because we might have to make uncomfortable changes.
Hurricane season is far from over. We have two more months to endure this year, and more storms like Katrina are likely. In addition to stepping up and helping the devastated people whose lives and homes have already been destroyed, I hope more Americans will see the handwriting on the wall, look eastward and pledge to do something to change this trend. We can reduce the effects of global warming through car pooling, using public transit, buying cars which use less gas and emit less pollution, and choosing alternative energy sources. Climate change is inevitable, and while the victims of Hurricane Katrina have already seen its most devastating effects, it is not too late to be kinder to Mother Earth.
