OUE
Update
A Publication of Organizations
United for the Environment
Summer 2002
IN REMEMBRANCE
As a special remembrance of our former President, Don Snyder, who passed away suddenly a year ago, OUE will plant a tree in the White Deer Community Park. The dedication will take place on October 19th at 3:00 PM. We invite all of you who wish to help us pay tribute to Don to join us for a simple ceremony at the park. Please mark you calendar now and plan to attend.
VALLEY OF THE HOGS!
As many of readers know already, an invasion of hogs, both human and animal, now threatens the Nippenose Valley with two huge hog "factories." When we heard about this situation, we invited the people in that Valley who are fighting against the hog invasion to use our pages to get the word out about what is happening and how our readers might help their cause. We were sent the following article by CCNV, which very clearly speaks for itself.
The Concerned Citizens of Nippenose Valley, CCNV, is a not for profit corporation formed, "to protect the health safety and welfare of the valley residents as a whole by preserving the precious and unique natural resources found in Nippenose Valley." Currently CCNV is working to prevent corporate swine factories from setting up shop in our beautiful Nippenose Valley. Two "hog finishing" facilities are proposed that will produce over 20,000 hogs and 5 million gallons of manure each year. As a farming community, our citizens understand the need to fertilize the land, but the amount and type of manure spread by our family farms doesn’t begin to compare to the millions of gallons of antibiotic and steroid ridden slurry produced by these corporate swine factories. Plain and simple, the byproduct of the swine factory is massive quantities of waste manure and they propose to store and spread this sewage directly over our precious water supply.
A description of our Valley will help you understand the danger that these factories pose to our health, safety, and welfare. The beautiful Nippenose Valley is oval shaped and completely surrounded by mountains. The Valley exhibits features, including karst formations, that are unlike any other in Pennsylvania. The word karst refers to a limestone, carbonate rock terrain, which has become honeycombed and channeled by the dissolving of the bedrock by the slightly acidic water that passes through it. Disappearing streams, sinkholes, caves, springs and subterranean passageways that hold the groundwater characterize karst terrain. We have five such sinking streams and hundreds of sinkholes that range in size from two acres to coffin-size. Groundwater flow in karst aquifers is quite different from other aquifers because of the solutionally dissolved conduits. The porous nature of the carbonate rock permits the influx of surface wastes that can contaminate the valuable groundwater resources. Studies have suggested that our groundwater system extends beyond Nippenose Valley to neighboring valleys. Sinkholes exist throughout the valley; they are particularly prevalent in the valley floor. And their collapse is common and unpredictable. New sinkholes form continuously. Engineers concerned with ground stability in this type of geology, warn of construction problems because of land subsidence. Sinkholes are windows to the valley’s groundwater supply on which most valley residents depend. At the north side of the valley is located the largest spring in the state, Nippeno Spring. A manual entitled "Spring of Pennsylvania" stated that Nippeno Spring produces on the average, 18,000 gallons per minute, or 25 million gallons a day. This headwater forms Antes Creek, which flows for approximately three miles and empties into the Susquehanna River. The stream is a beautiful, cold-water fishery that supports a wild brown & brook trout population. The Greater Nippenose Valley Watershed Association is currently working with the Department of Environmental Protection on receiving a proper designation/classification for the stream. Preliminary studies show that the stream will qualify as "exceptional value" to the Commonwealth. Universities including Bucknell, Penn State, and Lock Haven Universities have studied the valley’s geology, streams, sinkholes, springs, and Antes Creek, both physically and biologically for many years.
Our Township Supervisors in 1998 amended our zoning ordinances to protect our delicate underground water system. The amendment prohibits manure lagoons and holding tanks in particular areas of the Valley due to the danger of collapse from ground subsidence and fear of leakage from underground manure storage. The corporations/applicants have asked state permitting agencies to join them in ignoring this ordinance. The Lycoming County Soil Conservation Board, under pressure from the State Conservation Commission, unanimously passed the nutrient management plans. The CCNV is appealing that decision, citing numerous problems with the plans. In early June, applications were submitted to the Department of Environmental Protection for the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, NPDES, Permit. We have found incorrect information in these applications, and have notified DEP. We have requested that DEP hold public hearings so the community can voice its concerns.
The CCNV is a determined group of people that has the support of the vast majority of the community. Over ninety percent of the residents have signed our petitions to protect our natural resources. The residents of the valley are kept informed by our web site, community and our township meetings. We are working with Thomas Linzey, Esq. of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. He was a featured speaker at one of our community meetings.
We are in this for the long haul. CCNV, as a nonprofit corporation, can accept tax-deductible contributions and we greatly appreciate any donations to help us in our legal battle against these corporations that seek protection under the "Right to Farm Act" while disregarding our local laws that prohibit storing and dumping their untreated manure waste byproduct directly over our precious water supply. We will try to keep everyone updated via our web site: http://sites.micro-link.net/limestone. Our address is: CCNV, P O BOX 831, Jersey Shore PA 17740.
WHO WILL TESTIFY?
In late June, four OUE board members testified at a public hearing on an air quality plan approval application submitted to the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP). (A detailed story on this project appeared in the Winter 2001 OUE Update.) The FBOP seeks a permit modification to burn landfill gas at Allenwood Federal Prison Camp in Lycoming County. The landfill gas would be burned in two prison boilers in addition to the already permitted burning of natural gas and No. 2 fuel oil. According to DEP officials who attended the hearing, OUE submitted the only comment on this application and the hearing was scheduled at our request. Vicki Smedley, representing Pennsylvania Environmental Network (PEN) and GreenWatch, gave eloquent testimony on the danger of increasing levels of dioxin in our already over-burdened bodies as the result of combustion processes.
In a lively question and answer session following the agency's initial presentation, DEP's Richard Maxwell stated that they will "likely" approve the application, since it appears to meet Best Available Control Technology (BACT) standards. During the Q & A and in subsequent testimony, OUE members raised important questions about this plan and these standards. Q: Why will there be no testing of landfill gas contaminants before they are burned? A: "It's not required." Q: How does DEP know that the destruction of non-methane organic compounds (NMOCs) will be achieved at the level projected? A: "We feel confident."
The main objectives of our testimony were to insist that DEP investigate new technologies for filtering the landfill gas before it is burned and that they require monitoring devices in order to determine the character and quantity of emissions. A standard DEP response, and one we have certainly heard before, is that acting on such considerations is "burdensome, expensive, and time-consuming." An even more troublesome response to our queries was, "We don't have to." Unfortunately, they're right. Unless required by law or regulation, our legislators, public officials, and bureaucrats don't have to protect our health and well being. We must ask them to---until someone hears us.
THE ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES OF GEORGE W. BUSH, PART II: A LONG RIDE IN A HOT CAR
An article in our last issue, about the environmental policies of George W. Bush, provoked several responses, two of them written. One, sent anonymously, castigated us for being "political," and, apocalyptically, said, "You have spoiled a good organization for our own agenda." The other, sent by a person from Selinsgrove, wrote in agreement with us that "The Bush administration is a disaster for the environment!" This is hardly a scientific sample of our 1500 readers, but given that it’s all the evidence we have, we’ll assume heroically that at least half our readers can tolerate another installment.
In our last issue, we stated that "Environmentalists see Bush as a genuine anachronism, whose environmental polices are thinly disguised efforts to pay back corporate sponsors, particularly those in the oil, gas, and mining industries." One of the examples, by which we made our case, was to quote from an article in the New York Times that "Recently Dick Cheney contemptuously dismiss[ed] as a mere sign of ‘personal virtue’ the idea that conservation could help reduce our energy needs" and thus ease global warming.
This response from Cheney might sound like a joke but it’s almost certainly not one. It appears more obviously to be the "vision" of the few oil men who now run the government. As we wrote in our last issue, they place their faith in unregulated markets to come up with new technologies and thus allow forever to expand our consumption of goods. We see this kind of thinking as essentially self-destructive, thus the title of this article. Why? Read on, please, for some evidence, almost all of which is in the form of direct quotes from others.
1. The National U.S. National Academy of Sciences Speaks
(The following quote is taken directly from an article by Jeremy Rifkin in The Manchester Guardian Weekly, 3-7-02.)
2. United States Environmental Protection Agency issues a report, U.S. Climate Action Report, 2002, in June 2002. (http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/publications)
A good overview of what’s in this Report is its first seven pages. For the Report’s details and implications, we have depended below on exemplary press responses to them. The following excerpts from one of them, by Andrew Levkin (The New York Times, 6-3-02), excellently summarize the Report:
In a stark shift for the Bush administration, the United States has sent a climate report to the United Nations detailing specific and far-reaching effects that it says global warming will inflict on the American environment. In the report, the administration for the first time mostly blames human actions for recent global warming. It says the main culprit is the burning of fossil fuels that send heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere…The new report's predictions present a sharp contrast to previous statements on climate change by the administration, which has always spoken in generalities and emphasized the need for much more research to resolve scientific questions.
The report emphasizes that global warming carries potential benefits for the nation, including increased agricultural and forest growth from longer growing seasons, and from more rainfall and carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. But it says environmental havoc is coming as well. "Some of the goods and services lost through the disappearance or fragmentation of natural ecosystems are likely to be costly or impossible to replace," the report says.
The report also warns of the substantial disruption of snow-fed water supplies, the loss of coastal and mountain ecosystems and more frequent heat waves. "A few ecosystems, such as alpine meadows in the Rocky Mountains and some barrier islands, are likely to disappear entirely in some areas," it says. "Other ecosystems, such as Southeastern forests, are likely to experience major species shifts or break up into a mosaic of grasslands, woodlands and forests."
Phrases were adopted wholesale from a National Academy of Sciences climate study, which was requested last spring by the White House and concluded that the warming was a serious problem."Because of the momentum in the climate system and natural climate variability, adapting to a changing climate is inevitable," the report says. "The question is whether we adapt poorly or well."If emissions continue to increase, temperatures in the United States will rise five to nine degrees during this century. [Overall long term negative effects include]: drought everywhere; snowpack melting in Alaska and the West; some alpine meadows, coral reefs and barrier islands may disappear entirely; more storms; rising sea levels; heat stress, air pollution, infestation of rodents, insets, and ticks. (Italics supplied.)
What should we do about global warming? The answer in the Report is "Not much," and that answer has produced a storm of protest from the press and environmentalists around the world. First of all, there was specific language in the Report about how Americans should "provide the means for successful adaptation to climate changes." And, second was the kind of policies that the Report proposes. On page 3, there is this all-revealing language:
Of course, to the Bush administration, "not harming the economy" means not veering from its strong and obvious commitment to an economy fueled centrally by oil and gas and in which economic problems typically seek "market" solutions`. Thus, the Report suggests a number of what it calls "voluntary and incentive-based" initiatives that will encourage private firms to come up with the solutions. This "policy" response, given that the Report suggests we might soon lose Alpine meadows and barrier islands and be overrun by rats and ticks, is what created the storm of protest. To exemplify this storm, we will provide two responses from the press. First is an editorial from the New York Times, on June 3:
As it is required to do under international treaty, the Bush administration
has sent to the United Nations a report on global warming that is much more
pessimistic than its earlier calculations about the environmental damage that
unchecked warming could cause. A White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said
the report is reason "to move forward on the president's strategies for addressing
the challenge of climate change." There is only one thing wrong with this picture.
President Bush has no serious strategies for climate change.
Indeed, Mr. Bush has essentially withdrawn from the field. He rejected the Kyoto
accord on climate change and repudiated a campaign pledge to seek firm limits
on carbon dioxide, the main contributor to the warming of the earth's atmosphere.
He then proposed a voluntary scheme. It appears from the U.N. report to consist
largely of finding ways to adapt to warming instead of preventing it.Unfortunately,
the biggest and dirtiest utilities, which make the most noise in Congress and
are also among Mr. Bush's biggest contributors, hate [the idea of new regulations]
because they rely almost entirely on coal and their cleanup costs are likely
to be quite large.
Here’s another version of the same response from Derrick Jackson, writing in the Boston Globe on June 7th:
Never underestimate the power of the seance to shroud enlightenment. Even though the EPA report was reviewed before publication by officials at the State, Treasury, Energy, Commerce, and Agriculture departments, the industry mystics worked Bush over so fast that less than a week after publication, Bush dismissed it as a "report put out by the bureaucracy." (For any of our readers who would like more of these press responses, you can find a couple of hundred of them at: http://www.lexis-nexis.com/universe. Once there, search for "global warming.’" Also, try to use this source at library that subscribes to "lexis-nexis," because it is expensive to use it on your own.)
If there is a tomorrow, we will keep you posted on this matter of global warming.
Scholarship awards from OUE to three area high school seniors were presented at high school awards ceremonies this spring. The awards of $150.00 dollars each were given to Rachel Gast, of Warrior Run High School; Charles "Chuck" Coup, of Milton Area High School; and Jordan Baker of Lewisburg High School. Recipients, selected by faculty members at each of the schools, are deserving seniors who plan to attend college and pursue studies in a field related to the environment. We wish them well.
A "THANK YOU" FROM HOCA
Recently, HOCA decided to disband after six years of working to discover the possible connection between ground water contamination and the large number cases of cancer among people living along Route 405 in Dewart. We in OUE have long admired the commitment and the work done by HOCA, and we are sorry that they will no longer be working alongside us. We received the following note from HOCA with the request that we publish it.
On behalf of all of the Health in Our Community Association (HOCA) members, we wish to express our sincere appreciation for the guidance and financial support we have received from the OUE organization since our inception in 1996.
Without the guidance of OUE and your financial support we would not have been able to pursue the valuable resources and testing which were accomplished by Bucknell professor Alison Draper and her students. If at some time in the future you are in need of morale support for your environmental efforts, please feel free to call on the HOCA members.
Thank you for your undying support. When others were pessimistic about our intentions, OUE stood by us and provided the encouragement we needed to persevere. We appreciate your efforts on our behalf.
Gail Hampe and Ken Stahlnecker, President and Vice President of HOCA
VICTORY FOR CAMPAIGN TO REDUCE PESTICIDE EXPOSURE IN SCHOOLS
The Pesticide Notification Act was signed into law by the Governor in early April and will take effect in January, 2003. The Act requires schools to adopt the use of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices, prohibits pesticide application when students are on school grounds, and gives parents who request it advance notification of pesticide applications. This legislation was the result a nine-year effort by an impressive coalition of parents, teachers, public health organizations, religious and environmental groups and others coordinated by Robert Wendelglass, Pennsylvania Director of Clean Water Action. We thank these groups and the legislators who supported this important initiative.
GREAT STREAM COMMONS: AN UPDATE
More than two years ago the Union County Industrial Development Corporation (UCIDC) encouraged the board of directors of the Merrill W. Linn Land and Waterway Conservancy to seek grant money to purchase approximately 95 acres of Great Stream Commons - the portion that lies in the flood plain parallel to the Susquehanna River. The vision was for Linn to purchase the land, secure a conservation easement to prohibit certain uses, and then turn the land over to the Union County Soil Conservation District (UCSCD). The Soil Conservation District hopes to develop an environmental center in an existing house standing above the flood plain, create walking trails, and to replace introduced plant species with native ones.
As the Great Stream Commons project moves forward, however, it has become evident that some of this land would, in fact, be needed to create wetlands to collect surface runoff. Wetlands act as a natural filter to eliminate pollution before the water seeps into the adjacent Susquehanna River. The UCIDC may have acted precipitously when it encouraged Linn to seek grant money and now finds itself in an awkward position. While the UCIDC still wants to fulfill its original commitment to develop an environmentally friendly corporate park with a recreational component, board members also recognize an obligation to complete the park in the most cost effective manner possible. If in allowing Linn to create conservation easement the UCIDC were unable to develop future wetlands, dealing with surface water treatment would become prohibitively expensive.
Some on the Linn Conservancy board feel the UCIDC is reneging on its promise. Extensive negotiations between the UCIDC, Linn Conservancy and the Soil Conservation District have thus far failed to find a solution agreeable to all parties. The UCIDC still insists it wants to transfer ownership of the land but also insists it must retain the option to develop approximately
27 acres of wetland. To complicate matters further, the exact location of where the wetlands might be can't be determined until Great Stream Commons begins to develop.
Since much of the agricultural land along the river may have been wetlands prior to being drained more than a hundred years ago, the creation of new wetlands may simply serve to restore what had been there in the first place. But exactly where that might be is the question.
Great Stream Commons is a major regional project that only recently began marketing to prospective industry. Partly as a result of OUE efforts, the covenants for the business park are extremely rigid. Polluting industries are not welcome. The UCIDC has taken its share of criticisms from those who believe any and all industries should be encouraged because the region needs employment. OUE stands firmly behind the decision to be selective. One need only look at other areas where little thought was given to environmental quality to see the wisdom of standing tough. The area needs jobs; it also needs clean air and clean water. In any case, the long-range prospects are that the community can have both and gain a recreation area along the river as a bonus. Whether the UCIDC deeds the land directly to the UCSCD or passes it through the Linn Conservancy and Linn deeds it to UCSCD, it appears the land will ultimately be used as it was originally intended. We'll keep you posted.