Dear Friend –
Since taking office, President Obama has directed his Administration to craft policies to create a clean energy economy and protect our environment and public spaces. There is no better example of the achievements made towards those goals and the harmony between them than in the Southwest. For example, just two weeks ago, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the first ever Solar Energy projects on public lands, the first projects in a series to be built on public lands after complete environmental analyses by the Department of Interior.
We would like to invite you to join a conference call Thursday, October 21st at 5:00 PM ET to have a conversation with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and other Administration officials about clean energy and the environment in the Southwest. We would like to tell you about some of the initiatives this Administration has started, and then we would like to take your questions and hear your ideas and stories.
Please feel free send this invitation out widely to your networks. You can also RSVP by sending an email torfee@who.eop.gov. We are looking forward to it.
Call-in Information:
Date: Thursday, October 21th, 2010
Time: 5:00 PM EDT
Number: (800) 762-6085
Name: Southwest Energy and Environmental Call
This call is for information purposes only, and not for press or attribution.
Thank you.
Greg Nelson, Deputy Director, White House Office of Public Engagement
Dear Friend –
Since taking office, President Obama and his Administration have made environmental protection a top priority and have authorized new initiatives to protect our natural resources and great outdoors. In the Midwest, actions such as the EPA’s Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, Clean Air and Water Initiatives, and the America’s Great Outdoors Initiative all show the commitment the President and his Administration have made to protecting the environment and air and water conservation. This president also recognized the power of actively engaged citizens to contribute new ideas and has committed his Administration to engaging communities to hear their ideas on issues important to them.
As part of that commitment, we would like to invite you to a conference call this Friday, October 22nd at 3:30pm to have a conversation with Administrator Lisa Jackson and other Administration officials about environmental protection and the Midwest. We would like to share with you some of the initiatives this Administration has started, and take your questions and hear your ideas and stories.
Please feel free send this invitation out widely to your networks. You can also RSVP by sending an email torfee@who.eop.gov. We are looking forward to it.
Call-in Information:
Date: Friday, October 22, 2010
Time: 3:30 PM EST
Number: (800) 230-1092
Name: Midwest Environmental Call
This call is for information purposes only, and not for press or attribution.
More contamination from Duke Plants in NC:
Coal ash in water worries officials
Mecklenburg urges state to get stricter on Duke discharge at Mountain Island.
By Bruce Henderson
bhenderson@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010
Coal ash is showing in settling ponds next to Duke Energy's Riverbend Steam Station at Mountain Island Lake. The discharge is laden with heavy metals that can be toxic at high levels. 2008 OBSERVER FILE PHOTO - JEFF WILHELM
Charlotte-Mecklenburg says state regulators should enforce stricter standards over what a coal-fired Duke Energy power plant is putting into Charlotte's main water supply.
Twice this year, including this month, county staff have detected arsenic above state standards in Mountain Island Lake near an ash pond discharge pipe from the Riverbend plant. In May, at the same place, staff members found zinc at nearly four times the standard.
Arsenic and zinc are among the metals found in coal ash. The metals could cause cancer and other diseases if they're swallowed in high doses.
Duke's discharges into Mountain Island, Lake Wylie and Lake Norman are under scrutiny as its state permits come up for renewal. A public hearing on permits for the Riverbend, Allen and Marshall plants, which pipe an average of 23 million gallons a day from their ash basins into the Catawba, will be held tonight in Mooresville.
The N.C. Division of Water Quality has proposed permits that require Duke to monitor several metals, but doesn't set limits on how much is too much. A state official says limits are applied only when samples show a "reasonable potential" to break water standards.
"The absence of limits in the permit does not mean (the plant) will be allowed to violate water-quality standards," said Sergei Chernikov, a state environmental engineer.
Duke, too, says limits aren't needed because the state already scrutinizes its discharge.
"Test after test, sample after sample, shows that Mountain Island Lake has very good water quality and is protected by current regulations," said Dave Mitchell, Duke's environmental managing director. "Adding limits just for limits' sake doesn't protect the lake any more" than current procedures.
But David Caldwell, an environmental supervisor for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Storm Water Services, said the state is counting on the size of 2,914-acre Mountain Island to dilute Duke's wastes.
"That stuff is sitting on the lake bottom in sediment," he said. "It's got to go somewhere."
One of those places is in fish, which take in metals that accumulate up the food chain. Samples taken nearly a decade ago found high levels of mercury, a toxic metal also found in coal ash, in Mountain Island fish.
The county has asked the state to set limits for 14 metals in Riverbend's discharge, take samples more frequently and monitor water upstream and downstream of the plant. Mecklenburg also wants the state to analyze fish tissue once a year.
"It just seems to make good, common sense to be monitoring this," Caldwell said.
Duke says Riverbend, which dates to 1929, is scheduled to be closed by 2015.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg made a similar request for the Allen plant, which discharges into Lake Wylie. The county cited Duke's own sampling that found high levels of copper, arsenic and selenium, an element that can be toxic to wildlife, in its discharge water.
Duke says it regularly samples water upstream and downstream of its plants and analyzes fish, as the county asked, reporting their findings to the state. The utility says it would be redundant to add those requirements to its discharge permits.
Chernikov, the state engineer, said the water-quality division does a statistical analysis of previous water samples to learn whether limits should be placed on pollutants. The analysis is prescribed by state and federal rules, he said, and assumes worst-case conditions to err on the side of protecting environmental health.
Under their proposed permits, Riverbend, Allen and Marshall would have metals limits only for copper and iron.
The permit for the Marshall plant proposes new discharge limits for selenium beginning in mid-2012. The delay is intended to let Duke prepare for the stricter regulation, Chernikov said.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities, whose Mountain Island water intake is downstream from the Riverbend plant, won't be filing comments to the state, a spokesman said. The lake supplies drinking water for about 700,000 people in Mecklenburg County, Mount Holly and Gastonia.
"This is our primary water source," said Catawba Riverkeeper David Merryman, who has also called for limits on metals. "There's not really a fallback."
Merryman's own tests earlier this year also found high levels of arsenic near the Riverbend discharge. Tests of fish tissue found no metals above state guidelines.
Duke's new permits contain one major change that pleases environmental advocates like Merryman. For the first time, Duke will be required to monitor the groundwater around its ash basins and fix any contamination it finds.
Duke has already found contamination in wells it voluntarily sank close to its ash ponds at all three plants. Naturally-occurring iron and manganese accounts for much of the contamination.
The difference now is that Duke will be under state orders to fix groundwater violations it finds in a new, outer ring of wells around the ponds. The utility could face fines if it doesn't comply.
The water-quality division directed Duke and Raleigh's Progress Energy last December to install the wells at their 14 coal-fired plants by the end of this year. Groundwater monitoring will be added to the plants' discharge permits as they're renewed.
The Environmental Protection Agency is also mulling tougher rules on ash.
Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/10/19/1771891/coal-ash-in-water-worries-officials.html#ixzz12uG14dJj
Lisa Evans
Senior Administrative Counsel
Earthjustice
21 Ocean Ave.
Marblehead, MA 01945
T: (781) 631-4119
F: (212) 918-1556
www.earthjustice.org
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