Kay HaganKay Hagan, junior senator from North Carolina, is not a shoo-in on the Kerry-Boxer climate bill, but she appears to be leaning toward supporting it.

When asked in mid-October if she would support a climate bill with cap-and-trade, the senator replied, “We’re certainly talking about it. The Kerry-Boxer bill is ... out there but it’s not complete yet. So I’m certainly going to have to wait to look at the bill. I certainly say that climate change is real; I am extremely concerned about it. And I want to do what we need to do to be sure our country and the rest of the world is on the right track to reduce the CO2 emissions.”

The transition from candidate to senator seems to have affected Hagan's environmental agenda: in 2008, her campaign website called for reducing carbon emissions 60 to 80 percent by 2050, but the energy page on her Senate website doesn't mention climate or greenhouse-gas emissions at all, instead making vague calls for energy independence, energy efficiency, and cutting-edge energy technologies. In April, the senator, along with 25 other swing Democrats, voted against using the budget reconciliation process to pass a climate bill.

In a letter to a constitutent in early November, Hagan appears optimistic about climate legislation in general but stresses that she will closely review any bill before making a decision:

Thank you for contacting me regarding global climate change and federal efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions nationally and internationally. I greatly appreciate hearing your thoughts on this important issue.

On June 26, the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act of 2009 (H.R.2454). Similarly, on September 30, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S.1733) was introduced in the Senate. It has since been referred to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works for further review.

Both pieces of legislation would regulate carbon emissions by establishing a cap on greenhouse gas emissions from large U.S. sources like electric utilities and oil refiners. The goal of both bills is to reduce emissions through a system of tradable permits modeled after the successful Clean Air Act program to prevent acid rain. If emitters are unable to reduce their emissions, they will be able to purchase allowances from other sources that have excess permits. This market-based approach is preferred because it provides economic incentives to reduce carbon emissions at the lowest cost to the economy. The bills would also invest in renewable and clean energy, provide incentives to encourage increased energy efficiency, and create thousands of high-paying jobs that cannot be outsourced.

Like you, I believe that we must work together to address the potentially devastating impacts of climate change. As a state senator, I worked to place North Carolina at the vanguard of energy independence and sustainability by requiring local utilities to utilize renewable resources in the production of electricity. I was also a strong proponent of the North Carolina Biofuels Center, as well as cutting-edge energy research and development throughout the University of North Carolina system. I believe that North Carolina can become a leader in the new energy economy, and I support a commonsense approach to meeting emerging energy challenges while protecting economic competitiveness for our nation's workers and industries.

With this in mind, I anticipate the opportunity to work with my colleagues in the Senate to craft comprehensive energy legislation that will address vital environmental concerns while placing North Carolina and the nation at the forefront of the 21st-century energy economy. I believe strongly that we must work to ensure that the impact of any federal energy initiative does not fall disproportionately on North Carolina or low-income citizens, and will work with my colleagues and affected communities to achieve this goal. While comprehensive energy legislation has not yet been considered by the full Senate during the 111th Congress, I will review any proposal carefully to ensure that federal efforts to reduce greenhouse gasses do not negatively impact the citizens of North Carolina.

Again, thank you for contacting my office. It is truly an honor to represent North Carolina in the United States Senate, and I hope you will not hesitate to contact me in the future should you have any further questions or concerns.

Track the climate debate and take actionSincerely,
  
Kay R. Hagan

A Dear Kay website invites North Carolinians to send Hagan a message in support of clean energy and climate action.

As a state senator, Hagan earned an 85 percent rating [PDF] from the Conservation Council of North Carolina and helped to pass a renewable portfolio standard requiring the state's utilities to meet targets for use of renewable energy.

Do you know what your senators think about climate legislation?  Ask them, then tell us what you find out.

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Local food, local goods, local everything is in, as you’ve no doubt heard. Local is fresher. Local burns less shipping fuel. Local keeps the wealth nearby.

Naturally, there’s money to be made off local, so big businesses are muscling into the game. The emerging term is localwashing—a variation on greenwashing wherein businesses claim to be local when actually ... you get it.

“The ingenuity of the food manufacturers and marketers never ceases to amaze me,” said author Michael Pollan, who’s done more to articulate the need for local in the food realm than maybe anyone else. “They can turn any critique into a new way to sell food. You’ve got to hand it to them.”

Here’s a look at some prime examples of that ingenuity/absurdity/deception.

Courtesy NEAFP.comCitgo: “Local. Loyal. Like it should be.” The crop of new billboards from the petroleum company owned by Hugo Chavez’s Venezuelan government makes sense only if the rather undemocratic president lives around the corner from you. Which he doesn’t.

Maybe you’ve heard of this cute little bookstore around the corner. It’s got a DIY-looking video blog with the tagline, “All bookselling is local.” Except when it isn’t.

“Hellmann’s Mayonnaise, a U.S.-based subsidiary of European processed-food behemoth Unilever, has seen fit to subject Canada (Canada?) to an eat-local campaign,” reports Grist Food Editor Tom Philpott. He’s dumbfounded. Here are those locally sourced ingredients of which Hellmann’s is so proud:

WATER, MODIFIED CORN STARCH, SOYBEAN OIL, VINEGAR, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, EGG WHITES, SALT, SUGAR, XANTHAN GUM, LEMON AND LIME PEEL FIBERS, COLORS ADDED, LACTIC ACID, (SODIUM BENZOATE, CALCIUM DISODIUM EDTA) USED TO PROTECT QUALITY, PHOSPHORIC ACID, NATURAL FLAVORS.

The Hellmann’s campaign also asks Canadians to take a hard look at the food-kilometers of the non-mayonnaise portion of their diet.

Potato farmers pitch chips fresh from the field in a series of ads from Frito-Lay North America, a subsidiary of PepsiCo. The five regional ads reportedly feature farmers who really do grow potatoes in those areas. “By this logic, all of us here in Iowa can begin referring to high fructose corn syrup as a local food as well,” writes Kurt Michael Friese.

Courtesy PSFK.comThese green “local” signs in a New York Whole Foods might point to brands that are local. But the coffee they’re selling wasn’t grown anywhere near Union Square. Blatant deception? No. But one blogger asks for a little clarity please.

In a bit of un-branding that caught the attention of its hometown, Starbucks stripped its name and logo from a Seattle coffee shop and reopened as the “rustic” 15th Ave Coffee and Tea.

Courtesy The Stranger.Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood greeted indie-Starbucks with mockery.

The “We buy local” website of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce includes such mom-and-pop establishments as Wal-Mart. Stacy Mitchell’s superb reporting on localwashing exposes how regional booster groups, through campaigns like this, enable multinational companies to brand themselves as local.

Photo: Whyibuylocal.comIn central California, the Economic Development Corporation of Fresno County launched its Buy Local campaign at the Fashion Fair Mall, with Macy’s in the background. Nearby chains Anthropologie and The Cheesecake Factory added to the confusing message, Mitchell reports.

Banners saying simply “Local” hang above the produce sections at some Wal-Marts. Don’t ask questions. Writes Mitchell: “The chain's local food offerings are usually limited to a few of the main commodity crops of that particular state—peaches in Georgia or potatoes in Maine—and sit amid a sea of industrial food and other goods shipped from the far side of the planet.”

Finally, HSBC calls itself “the world's local bank.” It’s a very large bank--one of the world's largest. This sign is from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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For the past two years, the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission has been crafting new rules to require water monitoring at factory hog farms, a significant source of pollution in the state.

But last week, even with concerns growing over the environmental impacts of hog farms, the North Carolina Senate unanimously passed a bill that puts the rules process on hold until 2011 -- a display of the mighty political power Boss Hog holds in the state.

The measure now moves to the N.C. House, where its fate is unclear.

The bill's sponsor was state Sen. Charlie Albertson, the Democratic Caucus secretary who represents eastern North Carolina's Duplin, Sampson and Lenoir counties, an agricultural center where many of the state's more than 10 million hogs are raised. In a recent interview with WUNC public radio reporter Laura Leslie, Albertson -- a member and former chair of the state Senate Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources Committee -- accused the EMC of unfairly picking on hog farmers:

Water quality problems, again, are not caused by swine farmers ... It's just not happening.

Unfortunately, that's not true. Agricultural operations, including confined animal feeding operations or CAFOs, are a source of water pollution nationwide, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Hogs produce enormous amounts of fecal waste -- three times as much as humans -- that's stored in giant open-air holding ponds known as "lagoons," which are vulnerable to leaking. The waste is eventually sprayed onto fields, where the nitrogen converts to nitrates, chemicals that move readily into nearby streams and groundwater. Nitrates have been linked to a blood disorder called methemoglobinemia, which is especially harmful to babies.

Animals kept in CAFOs are fed a variety of drugs including antibiotics that also present a threat to the environment. Twenty-two states have reported damage to streams and rivers caused by agriculture, with 20% of that attributed specifically to CAFOs, according to the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production. Health problems have also been documented among people living near hog farms.

In its report released in April, the Pew Commission noted that "one of the most serious unintended consequences of industrial food animal production is the growing public health threat of these types of facilities." 

Overruling the rulemakers

North Carolina, the nation's second-largest hog producer after Iowa, is among the states that have suffered serious environmental problems from industrial livestock operations, one of several significant sources of nutrient pollution along with municipal wastewater and urban runoff. Contamination from the state's factory farms has been linked to outbreaks of Pfiesteria piscicida, a microbe believed to be responsible for fish-killing algal blooms as well as skin irritation and cognitive problems in exposed humans.

In 2007, with concerns mounting over animal waste pollution, North Carolina's Riverkeepers filed a petition for rulemaking asking the state to consider whether it needed to impose monitoring rules for industrial livestock farms. Current law requires the facilities to undergo two inspections a year, but these are strictly visual checks that involve no environmental sampling.

In May of this year, following a process in which all stakeholders got a chance to be heard through comments and hearings, the EMC proposed rules requiring animal waste management facilities to sample water quality three times a year at three sampling sites to be determined by the state Division of Water Quality.

But that didn't sit well with Albertson, who sought to kill the rules. He turned to an existing piece of legislation that aimed to nix state regulation of toxic air emissions in certain cases. That bill was changed to prohibit the EMC from adopting any permanent rules at all until 2011 except in a few limited cases, such as an unforeseen public health crisis. There were as many as 10 rules under consideration at the EMC that would have been affected by this version of the bill.

It was that broad rule moratorium that Albertson got approved by the Senate Agriculture and Environment committee -- a body that has a history of being sympathetic to agribusiness interests. The committee was once chaired by Wendell Murphy, a hog farmer whose Murphy Family Farms are now part of Smithfield Foods of Virginia, the world's largest pork producer and processor. During his time in the legislature, Murphy sponsored and helped pass bills that exempted hog farms from local zoning laws and lawsuits and that gave the industry subsidies and tax exemptions. When Murphy retired from the Senate in 1992, he was replaced by Albertson, then a state representative.

When Albertson's bill was taken up on the Senate floor, several lawmakers with a record of advocating for the environment spoke against the measure. They included state Sen. Dan Clodfelter of Charlotte, who expressed concerns about the bill's impact on rules the EMC was creating to help his city deal with a serious air quality problem. Clodfelter asked Albertson for a narrowing amendment, which Albertson agreed to provide.

Senate insiders say it's customary that when a colleague does what you ask as Albertson did, you in turn support his legislation. That's why even those lawmakers with strong environmental records voted yes on the bill -- even though not all of them wanted to kill the hog farm rules.

At Boss Hog's trough

But other North Carolina senators spoke in praise of Albertson's bill, with some even accusing the EMC of harboring a "vendetta" against hog farmers.

That lawmakers are so sympathetic to a polluting industry is not altogether surprising considering the enormous clout the corporate agriculture lobby has in North Carolina -- influence that's apparent in Albertson's record of campaign contributions.

Since 2000 alone, Albertson has received $10,200 from the N.C. Farm Bureau, $8,000 from Smithfield Foods, another $7,250 from the N.C. Pork Council, and $5,000 from the N.C. Poultry Federation, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. He's also received tens of thousands of dollars in contributions from individual hog and poultry farmers, include E. Marvin Johnson, owner of the House of Raeford turkey farms, hog farmer William H. Prestage of Prestage Farms and Murphy, his Senate predecessor.

Albertson's hardly alone among North Carolina lawmakers in benefiting from industrial agriculture's largesse: According to a recent report [pdf] from campaign finance group Democracy North Carolina, the N.C. Farm Bureau contributed a total of $222,150 to state candidates and political parties in the last election alone, and the N.C. Pork Council -- which gets funding for its policy advocacy work from a mandatory fee on pork producers -- chipping in another $187,000.

Legislative insiders say there's now an effort underway to keep Albertson's bill from coming up in the House. However, the industry's considerable influence with lawmakers suggests environmental advocates could face a tough battle ahead.

"Hopefully, Albertson's bill will be seen for what it is when it reaches the House, and the EMC will not be bullied by the swine industry and its surrogates," says Rick Dove of the Waterkeeper Alliance.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South.)

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The crazy quilt of regulations governing coal ash disposal across the United States got a new patch this week when North Carolina lawmakers passed a law requiring stricter regulation of coal ash impoundments, the giant lagoons where utility companies store the nearly 6 million pounds of toxic combustion waste generated each year at electric power plants.

The state House passed the bill on Wednesday. Already approved by the state Senate, it now goes to Gov. Beverly Perdue (D) for her signature.

Despite the requests of environmental advocates, the federal government still does not regulate coal ash as hazardous waste, leaving oversight largely up to the states. However, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson has said she will propose a regulation by year's end.

As we reported earlier this week, Gov. Perdue already endorsed the legislation, which was championed by state Rep. Pricey Harrison, a Guilford County Democrat. The other original sponsors of the measure were state Reps. Grier Martin (D-Wake) and Susan Fisher (D-Buncombe).

The law moves responsibility for inspecting the dams from the N.C. Utilities Commission to the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources. The Utilities Commission required dam inspections by independent engineers every five years.

N.C. DENR will be required to inspect high-hazard dams -- those where a failure would likely kill people -- every other year. Steve McEvoy, North Carolina's dam safety engineer, told the Charlotte Observer that the state is already inspecting high-hazard dams every year in practice, while dams classed as low-hazard are inspected every five years:

McEvoy said state engineers will have to review the dams coming under their supervision to determine their hazard classifications under DENR standards. Ratings by different agencies can be inconsistent. The DENR database, for example, labels as low-hazard Duke's ash-basin dams at its Marshall plant in Catawba County and Buck plant in Rowan County. But the Environmental Protection Agency last month listed those dams, and dams at four other Duke plants, as high hazard.

The EPA's recent release of the list of high-hazard ash impoundments has highlighted problems with how those facilities' hazard ratings are determined. As we reported, the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston facility did not appear on the agency's high-hazard list -- despite the clear potential for deaths had the billion-gallon spill that occurred late at night last winter happened instead on a summer day.

The EPA's list of the nation's high-hazard coal ash dumps included 44 in all -- none of them in Tennessee.

It turns out this was because the EPA allowed TVA to rate its own facilities -- and it ranked all of its coal ash impoundments as "low hazard." The Knoxville, Tenn.-based Southern Alliance for Clean Energy called the self-rating system "outrageous." Since then, TVA has raised the hazard ratings on a number of its coal ash facilities, the New York Times reports:

... [T]he utility sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency saying that "in the interest of taking a conservative, self-critical approach," it had reclassified four of its sites, Bull Run and Cumberland in Tennessee and Colbert and Widows Creek in Alabama, as "high hazard." Most of the others were reclassified as "significant" hazards, which means that dam failure would most likely result in economic loss and environmental damage.

Meanwhile, a report released this week by consultants hired by TVA found widespread problems with how the federal utility is operating and maintaining its coal ash disposal sites. The consultants found that "the necessary systems, controls and culture were not in place" to properly manage ash at the company's 11 coal-fired power plants, the Associated Press reports:

The report found TVA had no standard operating or maintenance procedures and failed to conduct annual training for engineers doing inspections. It said there was little or no internal communication between the four TVA divisions responsible for ash retention.

The consultants also said that two earlier leaks at the Kingston facility were patched without "investigating the cause of the incidents beyond the specific physical occurrences." The consultants are with the law firm McKenna Long & Aldridge of Atlanta.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South.)

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Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue (D) has endorsed legislation that would increase oversight of the state's coal ash dumps, the massive surface impoundments that power companies use to store the toxic waste left over after burning coal.

Responding to watchdog pressure, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently disclosed the locations of 44 "high hazard" ash dumps, where a failure of the containment structure -- like the disaster at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston plant in east Tennessee last December -- could kill large numbers of people.

North Carolina had 12 facilities on the high-hazard dump list, more than any other state. It was followed by Arizona with nine and Kentucky with seven, with Southern states* home to 24 of the 44 high-hazard sites. Strikingly, the TVA's Kingston plant was not on the high-hazard list, despite the fact that had the billion-gallon spill occurred on a summer day when people were outside and on the adjacent Emory River lives could have been lost.

Citing her concern over the safety of ash dumps, Perdue last week endorsed legislation introduced by North Carolina state Reps. Pricey Harrison (D-Greensboro), Susan Fisher (D-Asheville) and Grier Martin (D-Raleigh) that would impose tougher state regulations on the facilities, subjecting them to direct inspection by the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Inspections are currently the responsibility of the owning companies.

"Because of where some of the ponds are located," Perdue said in a statement, "greater safety oversight and more frequent inspections will help reduce potential risks."

While American Electric Power of Ohio has the most facilities on the high-hazard list with 11, North Carolina's Duke Energy is a close second with 10 -- and several of its ash ponds are located near Mountain Island Lakes, which provides water for Charlotte, the state's most populous city. Duke maintains that its coal ash storage facilities do not present a safety risk to nearby communities, as spokesman Jason Walls told WFAE radio:

"We're confident -- because of our maintenance and our monitoring and our ongoing inspections that date back to the mid-1980s -- that our facilities are safe."

However, a catastrophic collapse of the containment structure like the disaster at TVA's Kingston plant is not the only safety hazard from coal ash impoundments. A more insidious risk is environmental contamination caused by toxins in coal ash seeping  into nearby surface and groundwater supplies. Among the poisons in coal ash are arsenic, lead, mercury and radioactive elements, as well as cancer-causing combustion byproducts.

A 2007 assessment by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that at least 23 states already have poisoned surface or groundwater supplies from improper disposal of coal ash, including Texas, Virginia, and the Carolinas.

In fact, one of the best-documented cases of environmental contamination caused by coal ash storage is north of Greensboro, N.C. at Duke Energy's Belews Lake, created in 1973 to provide cooling water for the company's largest coal-fired station. The contamination there involved selenium, which animal studies found can harm reproductive health.

The 2007 EPA assessment lists Belews Lake as a proven case of ecological damage from coal ash, and notes the important role state oversight played addressing the problem:

Fly ash produced by the power plant was disposed in a settling basin, which released selenium-laden effluent in return flows to the Lake. Due to the selenium contamination, 16 of the 20 fish species originally present in the reservoir were entirely eliminated, including all the primary sport fish. The pattern of selenium contamination from the plant and fish impacts persisted from 1974 to 1985. In late 1985, under mandates from the State of North Carolina, the power company changed operations for fly ash disposal, and selenium-laden effluent no longer entered the Lake.

But Belews Lake didn't immediately spring back to good health when the releases stopped. After studying the lake for two decades, U.S. Forest Service research biologist Dennis Lemly concluded that the long-term effects of selenium poisoning may be underestimated. Research he conducted in 1996 -- a decade after the plant halted the discharges -- found that the contaminant was still present at a moderate risk level in the lake's sediment and was accumulating to toxic levels in fish eggs, the Forest Service reports.

North Carolina is also home to another proven environmental damage case involving selenium at Caswell and Person counties' Hyco Lake reservoir, constructed in 1964 as a cooling water source for Carolina Power & Light's Roxboro Steam Electric Plant, now owned by Raleigh, N.C.-based Progress Energy. The state Department of Health and Human Services issued a fish consumption advisory at Hyco Lake in 1988, which was rescinded in 2001 after the company installed a dry ash handling system.

Other sites in the South that EPA identified as having suffered proven damages from coal ash contamination include the Virginia Electric & Power (now Dominion Resources) plant in Possum Point, Va.; the Virginia Power (now Dominion) Yorktown Power Station Chisman Creek disposal site in York County, Va.; Southern Co.'s Plant Bowen in Cartersville, Ga.; the U.S. Department of Energy's Chestnut Ridge plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn.; South Carolina Electric & Gas Canadys Plant south of St. George, S.C.; DOE's Savannah River Project in South Carolina; the Brandy Branch Reservoir near the Southwestern Electric Power (AEP) Pirkey power plant; Southwestern/AEP's Welsh Reservoir in Texas; and Texas Utilities' (now TXU's) Martin Lake Reservoir.

Regulations like the one being considered in North Carolina would help to better protect the public from these kind of slow-motion coal ash disasters by requiring that the impoundments be lined and covered and that monitoring wells be installed to track contamination. But clearly coal ash contamination is not a problem only for North Carolina or the South: The EPA has identified over 600 coal ash sites nationwide with at least 67 proven or potential cases of related surface water or groundwater contamination.

Responding to the EPA's disclosure of the high-hazard ash dumps' location, environmental groups have renewed their call for federal regulation of coal ash as hazardous waste. Administrator Lisa Jackson has said her agency will release a proposed regulation by year's end, and the Sierra Club -- one of the groups that pressed the agency to release the list of high-hazard dumps -- has launched an online campaign encouraging concerned citizens to contact their U.S. Senators about the need for the agency to move forward quickly.

"Now that EPA has compiled this list of 'high hazard potential' sites, the next step is to clean these sites up expeditiously, so that they no longer present a hazard to downstream communities," said Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign. "At the same time, EPA must move forward to close the regulatory loopholes that the coal industry has enjoyed for far too long. It is time to require the coal industry to treat coal ash as the hazardous waste that it is."

* Facing South defines the region as AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, TX, VA, and WV.

(A version of this story originally appeared at Facing South.)

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Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Environmental advocates gathered at the North Carolina legislature yesterday for a press conference and prayer vigil asking the governor to create a task force to study and take action on health problems associated with industrial hog farms.

The action came the same week new findings were published about the critical role hogs played in creating history's deadliest flu, and the day after the Obama administration announced that it wanted to ban the routine use of antibiotics in farm animals in hopes of curbing the spread of dangerous bacterial infections that have been linked to hog farms and that kill 18,000 people a year in the U.S. -- more than AIDS.

But North Carolina lawmakers' reaction to the protest suggests it won't be easy to win change in a state where Boss Hog rules.

On July 14, about 30 people gathered outside the North Carolina General Assembly in Raleigh to announce they had sent a letter to Gov. Beverly Perdue (D) asking her to convene a task force examining the environmental, human health and economic impacts of industrial production of swine and other livestock.

"We're here today to elevate the concerns we have, outside the legislative building where people have the power to change things in our state," said Lower Neuse Riverkeeper Larry Baldwin.

Of particular concern is how the waste from these operations is handled -- by piping it into what are known as "lagoons." These stinking, open-air cesspools hold the animals' feces and are frequently sited within smelling range people's homes, schools and churches. They are concentrated in rural eastern North Carolina, part of the Black Belt region with a high percentage of African-American residents.

"People are eating cheap because North Carolina communities are getting dumped on," the N.C. Environmental Justice Network's Naeema Muhammed said at the press conference. "It's time for North Carolina officials to listen to the people. We must no longer be a sacrifice zone."

Organizers handed out copies of the July 6 letter calling on Perdue to assemble the task force. Advocates see it as a way to bring together experts from different fields -- public health, environment, economy, industry -- to examine adverse health effects from CAFOs and consider replacing open-air lagoons with more advanced waste treatment technology. The letter states:

The issues that need to be addressed by the Task Force include, but should not be limited to, the areas of asthma, chronic respiratory conditions, methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and now the swine flu (H1N1) and other emergent diseases. As a factor in our human health concerns, the Task Force also needs to address the issue of groundwater contamination, as many residents in close proximity to these facilities depend upon well water for their household uses. And finally, the impact that animal waste is having on water quality and fishery habitat will need to be addressed also, as this is both a health and economic concern.

The protest in Raleigh comes amidst growing attention to the link between hog farms and human disease.

This week, for example, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published new findings that hogs played a key role as what the Associated Press called "an influenza mixing bowl" in the pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide. Scientists studying the genetic origins of the flu found pieces of the 1918 virus had been circulating in hogs and humans as far as 15 years before the pandemic broke out and was not a more recent bird flu strain as previously thought.

Concerns have arisen during the current H1N1 pandemic over the role CAFOs played in the strain's development. There were reports that the disease first emerged in a Mexican community where a subsidiary of Virginia-based Smithfield Farms operates massive hog farms, and scientists reported tracing the virus's genetic origins to a 1998 outbreak at an industrial hog facility in eastern North Carolina. But as we have reported, more recent research suggests the 1998 virus was not a direct predecessor to the current H1N1, and there is also evidence that the current strain was circulating in Mexico months before it was discovered near Smithfield's operations.

Federal government takes action

In a recent op ed, epidemiologist Dr. Steve Wing with the University of North Carolina acknowledged that the role that industrial hog operations played in the current H1N1 pandemic is still unclear -- but he also pointed out that their damaging impact on human health and the environment are well known and include air and water pollution as well as dangerous microbial contamination that can be spread by workers, birds and insects.

His own research has found the likelihood of in-school exposure to air pollution from swine CAFOs in North Carolina is greater in schools with higher concentrations of low-income and nonwhite students.

At this week's press conference, Wing spoke about how CAFOs contribute to the problem of antibiotic-resistant infections by routinely administering the drugs to animals to promote growth. Meanwhile, recent research has found that hog farms are a source of a potentially deadly antibiotic-resistant staph infection that can be spread by consumers simply handling contaminated meat, with five out of 90 samples of retail pork in Louisiana testing positive for MRSA, according to a recent study.

"In North Carolina, migratory geese land on lagoons and become colonized with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and can carry it great distances," Wing said, adding that researchers in Maryland also discovered bacteria from hog chicken farms in cars following livestock transport trucks on the roads.

The link between CAFOs and dangerous infections has gotten the federal government's attention. On Monday, the U.S. House Rules Committee held a hearing on the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, which would phase out the non-therapeutic use of certain antibiotics in animal agriculture. In written testimony, the Food and Drug Administration's principal deputy commissioner, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, expressed support for the legislation's aims and also said farmers should not be allowed to use antibiotics in animals without veterinary supervision, the New York Times reports. The bill has the backing of the American Medical Association but is opposed by politically powerful farm organizations including the National Pork Producers Council.

But while the federal government is taking action to better regulate industrial livestock farms, North Carolina's leaders do not appear to be ready yet to confront the health problems associated with the operations.

Following the press conference and a group prayer in which Halifax resident and Concerned Citizens of Tillery member Claude Ford asked that "we might work together to get the job done," the participants headed inside for a meeting of the state House Environment and Natural Resources Committee, where they expected to hear from Dr. Jim Merchant, who had come all the way from Iowa to testify.

A UNC grad who teaches in the University of Iowa's department of occupational and environmental health and is former dean of its College of Public Health, Merchant served on the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, a joint project of The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The Pew Commission studied CAFOs and recommended solutions to their myriad problems in its landmark report titled "Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America."

The protesters sat through an hour-long discussion about an unrelated matter to hear Merchant's testimony -- only to have the committee adjourn the hearing before giving him a chance to speak.

Don Webb of North Carolina's Alliance for a Responsible Swine Industry said he was upset but not surprised.

"I can't believe the rudeness and disrespect afforded a distinguished gentleman like Jim," Webb said as lawmakers gathering up their things and filed out. "But I'm used to things like this happening in the General Assembly because of the power of pork."

Indeed, a recent report from the campaign finance watchdog group Democracy North Carolina detailed that power in numbers, finding that  the N.C. Pork Council PAC contributed a total of $187,000 to state candidates during the last election cycle, while its political allies at the N.C. Farm Bureau PAC contributed another $222,150 -- among the most generous and influential of all the state's PACs.

But advocates are trying to counter pork power with people power: They've launched an online petition encouraging Gov. Perdue to launch the proposed task force on hog farms and are asking supporters to sign it.

"Here in the General Assembly they make laws that control what man can do," Rick Dove of the Waterkeeper Alliance said as the hearing room emptied. "There are other laws that govern what nature does. And when man's laws are in conflict with nature's, we all lose."

(This report originally appeared at Facing South.)

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A proposal to mine uranium in south-central Virginia advanced this week when a key state body approved a study of the matter. The targeted site is in Virginia's Pittsylvania County just north of the city of Danville and close to the border with North Carolina's Rockingham and Caswell counties.

A subcommittee of the Virginia Commission on Coal and Energy OK'd the study yesterday after deciding on exactly what issues should be examined, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports:

Some opponents asked the panel to vote against the study, hoping that would kill the mining proposal.

But state Sen. John Watkins, R-Powhatan, a member of the subcommittee, said approval of the study did not mean approval of mining in Pittsylvania.

"That decision is a long way down the road," Watkins said.

The panel will look at mining's effects on people's health and ecosystems, identify pollution issues and review current mining regulations. But it denied a request by Del. Watkins M. Abbitt Jr. (I-Appomattox) to consider how water pollution specifically might be prevented. The subcommittee's chair, Del. Lee R. Ware Jr. (R-Powhatan) argued that the study already included that issue.

The study, which will be conducted by the U.S. National Research Council, is expected to cost $1.5 million and last about 18 months. It remains unclear how the work will be funded, according to the paper.

As Facing South reported previously, Virginia has banned uranium mining for the past 25 years. Virginia Uranium -- a privately-held company formed several years ago by the owners of the land where the uranium was found -- has been pressing to get the ban lifted. To that end, Virginia Uranium contributed almost $30,000 to state lawmakers last year alone.

The Pittsylvania County site is believed to hold the largest undeveloped uranium deposit in the United States and the seventh-largest in the world. It holds an estimated 60,000 tons -- enough uranium to power all the commercial nuclear plants in the country for about two years. The company estimates its value at about $10 billion.

While the company has maintained that the uranium could be mined safety, uranium mining has a history of causing serious environmental health problems, having been linked to chromosome abnormalities, birth defects and cancer in communities from Texas to Germany.

Uranium mining also poses a serious threat to drinking water. In 1979, for example, a dam holding uranium mining waste at a New Mexico facility owned by the Virginia-based United Nuclear Corp. burst, sending more than 1,100 tons of toxic discards and 90 million gallons of contaminated water into the Rio Puerco. Once an important drinking water source for nearby Navajo communities, the river remains dangerously contaminated today.

Officials in Virginia Beach are among those opposing the uranium mining plans. They have noted that a tropical storm or hurricane could breach the mine's waste impoundment and pollute downstream water bodies including Lake Gaston, the city's drinking-water source.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South)

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When eco-minded people become parents, it seems like they frequently become even bigger green freaks.  I know that’s been true for my partner and me since we embarked on the journey to parenthood last year – decisions around our house that used to be made based on a variety of factors have become green mandates.  I admit to having once spent most of a Saturday night early in my pregnancy researching every personal care product we use on the Cosmetics Safety Database and finding replacements for the bad-scorers.

So for parents who’ve gone VOC-free on the paint, made the switch to organic foods, gotten pesticides and other toxic chemicals out of the house…  what about the other places the kids hang out all day long?  Like their school?  Child care center? 

While there is a concerted effort going on around the country to clean up hazardous pollutants in our schools, child care centers seem to be lagging behind.  I work at Toxic Free North Carolina, who just put out a new report (for which I can’t take any credit): Avoiding Big Risks for Small Kids, which takes a look at how child care centers are managing pests in our state – and reveals a less-than-heartening picture:

_ Most of the child care centers surveyed use old-fashioned, higher-risk practices like broadcast pesticide spraying inside the facilities.  Even when the center contracted with professionals, the survey found both widespread use of pesticides, and a troubling lack of safety precautions like warning signs or safety information provided about the chemicals being used. 

_ The survey also found very limited adoption of safer practices, such as Integrated Pest Management (IPM).  The US EPA (and plenty of other agencies) recommends IPM for schools, child care centers and other sensitive areas because it focuses on preventing pest problems and minimizing pesticide spraying.  In contrast with schools, at least in North Carolina where IPM in schools is required, child care centers have hardly begun to adopt this common-sense practice.  Less than 24% of child care providers in the NC survey reported using practices that qualify as IPM – but those who did also reported fewer serious pest problems.

So what can parents do about this?  The report comes with a list of five questions that parents can ask their child care providers to find out what they’re doing.  It also includes a resource for child care providers on how to contract for safer pest management in their facilities.  The bottom line is, start asking questions!  The report makes it clear that child care providers just don’t know enough about the hazards of mixing kids and pesticides – or that there is a better way.  It’s up to us parents to get them thinking about it.

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Eight protesters were Tased and arrested after locking themselves to bulldozers at a Duke Energy coal plant in North Carolina Tuesday morning. Activists say the plant under construction is, in short, a terrible idea. "In the face of catastrophic climate change, building a new coal plant is tantamount to signing a death sentence for our generation," said one protester. Umbrella group Rising Tide organized the protest, as well as other direct action in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom for "Fossil Fools Day."

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