Wednesday, 29 May 2002

Is This the Place?

Tooele County, Utah, is already the hazardous heartland of the United States -- the place where the Army tests anthrax and other chemical, nerve, and biological agents, and incinerates half of the nation's chemical weapons; where the Air Force has its largest bombing and cruise missile ranges; where a private company buries low-level nuclear waste; and where some of the country's dirtiest industrial polluters spew their stuff. Now, if some members of the tiny Goshute Indian tribe have their way, Tooele County will also be home to 40,000 tons of highly radioactive waste. The waste would be kept on their reservation, 50 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, until a permanent depository is built, most likely at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The tribe's arrangement with eight utility companies, which would foot the bill for the $3.1 billion project, is awaiting only the approval of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, because tribes do not have to answer to most state and local regulations. That infuriates other Utahns, who do not want the waste stored in their state.

Marsh-a-Marsh-a-Marsh-a

An agricultural company has agreed to sell 16,500 acres of salt ponds around the San Francisco Bay, paving the way for what could be the nation's biggest wetlands restoration project outside of the Florida Everglades. Cargill Inc., an international agriculture and food company, signed a preliminary agreement yesterday with state and federal governments and private foundations to accept $100 million over five years in exchange for turning the land over later this year. The deal was brokered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.) and has been welcomed by environmentalists as the culmination of a 10-year campaign to restore tidal marsh in the San Francisco Bay, which has lost 80 percent of such marshes to development. Taken together, the salt ponds are twice the size of the city of San Francisco, and restoring them would vastly increase the amount of public shoreline in the Bay Area and provide habitat for millions of waterfowl and shorebirds.

They'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Gold

What if the environmental movement could do to gold what the animal-rights movement did to fur -- convince the public that far from being a badge of success, it is a symbol of cruelty and vanity? Some environmentalists would like to do just that, and they've got the facts to back them up: Gold mining leads to cyanide contamination in water sources, which is harmful for plants, fish, and humans. Even more alarming, gold mining is highly resource-intensive, with the industry using more water in Nevada -- where most gold in the U.S. is mined -- than is consumed by people. All that, for an entirely non-essential industry: Not only is gold unnecessary for subsistence and survival, 90 percent of the gold that has ever been mined is still around, either in bank vaults or dripping off the rich and famous. Still, anti-gold-mining activists are fighting an uphill battle: The industry is healthier than ever, and there are hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs on the line.

The Little Solar Station That Could

The Columbia Generating Station, a nuclear power plant at Washington state's Hanford nuclear reservation, sits just one mile from the White Bluffs Solar Station. For the past three weeks, Energy Northwest, the Pacific Northwest's nuclear power producer, has been generating a tiny amount of electricity from solar panels at White Bluffs and selling it to the Bonneville Power Administration. Energy Northwest says it's experimenting with solar power because it would like to be known as an environmentally conscious utility, and because it recognizes a growing market demand for clean energy. Still, the experiment is minuscule; the 1,200-megawatt nuclear power plant produces enough juice to power metropolitan Seattle, while the 38.7-kilowatt White Bluffs produces enough to light six houses. There's also a price disparity; although solar power from White Bluffs is affordable thanks to subsidies, the average national cost for electricity production is 8 cents per kilowatt-hour, while solar generally costs 20 to 25 cents per kilowatt-hour. Still, the BPA says it's happy to buy supplementary power from White Bluff, and the experiment could mark a shift in Northwest power production trends.

He's Madsen and He's Not Going to Take It Anymore

In yesterday's edition of the Daily Grist, we reported on the problem of international environmental crime. Today we're reporting on a guy who thinks he's got the solution. Frank Madsen, an advisor to the European Union on illegal logging, a former Interpol detective, and a former head of security for U.S. drug company Bristol-Myers Squibb, wants to create an international Environmental Crime Intelligence Unit. The unit would work closely with national environmental agencies as well as with Europol, Interpol, and nongovernmental organizations, but would have the cross-border power Madsen says is currently lacking in the fight against environmental criminals. The unit would conduct stake-outs, surveillance, and discreet detective work to track down smugglers, dumpers, and illegal loggers and build watertight cases against them for prosecution by national governments.