Monday, 15 Jul 2002

Teaching Our Children Well

The three Rs could soon include "renewable" if Massachusetts has its way. Concerned about rising energy costs and student health, the state is offering financial incentives to districts to build environmentally friendly, health-conscious "green schools." Through a partnership with the Renewable Energy Trust, districts are being encouraged to make use of technologies, such as solar heating and natural lighting, that simultaneously save on energy bills and make schools better environments in which to teach and learn. The move is part of a national trend to improve energy efficiency in public buildings. That trend could be particularly appealing to educators, says Jeff Wulfson, associate commissioner for school finance with the Massachusetts Department of Education, because "[a]nything you spend on oil bills and gas bills is money you are taking away from the classroom."

Bangladeath

Arsenic has a long and glorious history in the annals of crime fiction, but for the people of Bangladesh, poisoning by arsenic is all too real. With 35 million people drinking arsenic-tainted water, the country is in the midst of what the World Health Organization is calling the "largest mass poisoning of a population in history." Ironically, the problem has its source in an ostensible solution: For two decades, the government and various international aid groups worked to wean the nation's poor off of pond water, often the breeding ground for lethal diseases, urging them instead to install wells. But it turns out that many of the underground aquifers from which the wells draw water are contaminated with arsenic, which is causing "the highest environmental cancer risk ever found," according to Allan Smith, an arsenic expert at the University of California at Berkeley.

The Daily Load

The Bush administration could slash a key program of the Clean Water Act requiring federal oversight of states' efforts to restore polluted bodies of water. About 300,000 miles of rivers and shorelines and 5 million acres of lakes in the U.S. are categorized as "impaired water bodies" in need of remediation, but for decades, some states neglected their cleanup. That began to shift in July 2000, when the Clinton administration took steps to beef up federal enforcement of the cleanups, in response to lawsuits from environmentalists. But farm groups, timber companies, and others who feared tight restrictions on pollution runoff were outraged by the move, and the rule has been kept on hold by the Bush administration. Now, internal U.S. EPA documents suggest the agency will change the rule to "trust states" to clean up their acts. Daniel Rosenberg, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, is skeptical: "The Bush EPA must be suffering from collective amnesia. The states had three decades to implement this program and failed."

I'll Do the Thinning Around Here, Baba Looey

Fanning a different kind of flame, Republican lawmakers are blaming environmental groups for contributing to the fires that destroyed more than 3.1 million acres of U.S. forests this year by blocking federal projects to thin undergrowth. Thinning removes brush and dead trees from the forest understory, thereby eliminating some of the dry matter and reducing the risk of wildfires, but enviros and timber industry reps have long disagreed on which forests should be thinned. Environmentalists say a minority of federal thinning projects are near homes or other buildings at risk from wildfires, and that many of the projects are just an excuse for logging. They further argue that commercial logging poses just as much of a threat by leaving flammable debris behind. The U.S. Forest Service claims that as many as 50 percent of all thinning projects are challenged in court, but the General Accounting Office found the actual number was less than 2 percent.

Whoa, Mexico

A standoff between farmers and the Mexican government over the construction of a new international airport is threatening to become a national crisis. The $2.5 billion, six-runway project has irked environmentalists since it was first proposed, because the airport is slated to be built on a former lake bed that is an important nesting ground for birds and is expected to worsen problems of urban sprawl. Environmentalists aren't the only ones who are upset: Area farmers have taken 15 hostages and are refusing to release them until the airport construction plans are halted. The government has offered the farmers about $3,100 per acre to vacate their land, but the farmers say the price is below market value. The standoff is widely seen as a litmus test for President Vicente Fox, who faces the difficult task of maintaining peace and stimulating economic growth without further alienating environmentalists, social welfare advocates, and the country's poor.