Tuesday, 11 Mar 2003

Joy to the World

Fifty-two years ago, Joy Grant was born in a house with no indoor plumbing in the tiny Central American country of Belize; today, she directs one-third of the Nature Conservancy's global operations. As the only member of the organization's top management born outside the U.S., she urges her colleagues to get out "in the mud" and has helped bring about a shift in the kinds of conservation models used in developing nations. Read journalist Debby Knight's profile of Grant, only on the Grist Magazine website.

You Be Illin'

Almost 150 power plants, factories, and other businesses in Illinois are operating without federal clean-air permits, according to a statewide coalition of environmental and public-health organizations. Federal law required Illinois' 733 worst polluters to pass emissions standards and receive appropriate permits by March 1998, but as of yesterday, four years after the deadline, only 80 percent of the permits had been granted. More alarming, coal-fired power plants -- the state's very worst polluters -- are among those that have not yet been through the permitting process. In response, the Sierra Club, the American Lung Association, and other organizations asked the U.S. EPA to send Illinois a "Letter of Deficiency." Such a move could eventually lead to a federal takeover of the clean-air program and loss of highway funding.

Skull and Bones

In a victory for environmentalists, public-safety advocates, and nuclear-watchdog organizations, the federal Atomic Safety and Licensing Board yesterday rejected plans for storing spent nuclear fuel in Skull Valley, Utah. The ruling was also a win for the state, which had lobbied against the proposed storage facility, slated to be built on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, just a few miles from the biggest bomb-testing and pilot-training area in the nation. That proximity was the deciding factor in the board's ruling, which found that the possibility of an F-16 crashing into the proposed facility was too high to meet safety standards. The decision does not necessarily spell the end of the project, because it could be overruled by the board's parent agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or otherwise be successfully appealed by the consortium interested in building the storage facility.

Doo Process

Calling for more stringent regulations to control manure runoff from large-scale farms, three environmental organizations filed suit against the U.S. EPA on Friday. The current rules, which were approved last month and will be phased in by 2006, require concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, to obtain water-pollution permits every five years, have a waste-management plan, and file annual reports on their operations. Poultry and farm associations beat environmentalists to the punch in suing over the regulations, which they claim are too strong. The Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Waterkeeper Alliance responded with a suit countering that the rules essentially allow CAFOs to write their own waste-management plans with limited public review, thereby undermining Clean Water Act protections and posing a threat to public health.

Taken to the Cleaners

Under pressure from environmental organizations, the Florida legislature yesterday modified a bill designed to protect dry cleaners from being sued for toxic contamination. The original bill would have prevented people who owned land adjacent to dry cleaners from suing over groundwater contamination; the modified version would retain that provision but grant exceptions to those who sell, transfer, or change the use of their property and can prove economic damage as a result of contamination. For example, a property owner whose well water was contaminated by dry-cleaning chemicals (which can cause liver and kidney problems and are suspected carcinogens) could not seek damages unless she or he also sold the property containing the well. Hundreds of wells around the state are contaminated by dry cleaning chemicals, forcing homeowners to connect to public water sources.