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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
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This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
contamination  ~ technical cleverness  ~ global warming  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ sustainability  ~ water issues  ~ invasive species  ~ climate impacts  ~ toxic sludge  ~ rights of nature  ~ renewable energy  



ApocaDocuments (9) matching "contamination" from this week
[see full week] ~ [see all stories tagged "contamination"]
Sun, Dec 28, 2008
from Merrillville Post-Tribune:
IDEM stops giving fines, punishments
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management has stopped issuing fines against other state agencies in Indiana that violate their environmental permits. For instance, the Indiana Department of Transportation violated wastewater permits for rest stops across the state more than 550 times over four years. It discharged sludge and ammonia into streams, causing algae blooms and potential damage to aquatic life. But INDOT got no fines. It got off with a legal slap on the wrist. Environmentalists are appalled, calling it a "creeping lack of accountability" and commitment to enforcing the law. ...


Ever had a slap on the wrist? It willy willy hurts!

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Sat, Dec 27, 2008
from New York Times:
Tennessee Ash Flood Larger Than Initial Estimate
A coal ash spill in eastern Tennessee that experts were already calling the largest environmental disaster of its kind in the United States is more than three times as large as initially estimated, according to an updated survey by the Tennessee Valley Authority. Officials at the authority initially said that about 1.7 million cubic yards of wet coal ash had spilled when the earthen retaining wall of an ash pond at the Kingston Fossil Plant, about 40 miles west of Knoxville, gave way on Monday. But on Thursday they released the results of an aerial survey that showed the actual amount was 5.4 million cubic yards, or enough to flood more than 3,000 acres one foot deep. ...


Somebody made an awfully big boo-boo!

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Sat, Dec 27, 2008
from Discover:
Super Trees Clean up Superfund Sites
Argonne, Illinois -- A legacy of the Argonne National Laboratory�s early foray into atomic energy lies buried here on its campus, about 25 miles southwest of Chicago. Although solid wastes from all sorts of experiments have been sealed in a landfill, certain liquids, mostly chlorinated solvents, still taint the water that runs under the site. The ongoing attempt to remove these contaminants occupies an enormous experimental facility that covers four acres and looks like a forest. "I like to brag that I have the biggest lab at Argonne," says agronomist Cristina Negri, indicating an expanse of 900 poplars and willows growing in rows. The trees stand about 30 feet high. More important, their roots extend 30 feet down, where they tap the contaminated aquifer and literally pull pollutants out of the ground. ...


This is a treeific solution!

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Sat, Dec 27, 2008
from Reuters:
Pollution at home often lurks unrecognized
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Many people may be surprised by the number of chemicals they are exposed to through everyday household products, a small study finds, suggesting, researchers say, that consumers need to learn more about sources of indoor pollution. In interviews with 25 women who'd had their homes and bodies tested for various environmental pollutants, researchers found that most were surprised and perplexed by the number of chemicals to which they'd been exposed.... The term "fragrance" on household-product labels can signal the presence of potentially harmful chemicals. One of the uses of phthalates, for example, is to stabilize fragrances. ...


I'd rather die than my home have housatosis!

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Fri, Dec 26, 2008
from Scientific American:
Court orders EPA to stick with Bush clean air rules--for now
A federal court this week did an about-face, ruling (pdf) that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must enforce admittedly faulty regulations restricting power plant emissions until they're replaced by new improved ones. "We are convinced that, notwithstanding the relative flaws of [the Clean Air Interstate Rule, CAIR], allowing CAIR to remain in effect until it is replaced by a rule consistent with our opinion would at least temporarily preserve the environmental values [translation: clean air] covered by CAIR," the federal Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., wrote in its decision (pdf) yesterday. ...


Just as we can keep buggering up this earth -- until it's replaced by a new one.

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Fri, Dec 26, 2008
from Discovery Channel:
Tenn. Sludge Spill Challenges 'Clean Coal' Future
When an earthen wall holding back 525 million gallons of ash slurry gave way at the coal-fired Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee in the wee hours of Monday morning, the resultant flood ruined a picturesque rural landscape, inundated more than a dozen houses, and blanketed as much as 400 acres of land with potentially toxic muck.... But the mud has done much more than just sully a countryside. Americans' energy consumption habits are a top-tier political issue, and as we look for new ways to curtail global warming, wean ourselves from oil, and find sources of clean energy, coal's role is still unclear. So the accident raises a serious question: Is there such a thing as "clean coal"? ...


Now this is what I call a shovel-ready project!

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Wed, Dec 24, 2008
from University of California - Davis via ScienceDaily:
Baby Fish In Polluted San Francisco Estuarian Waters Are Stunted And Deformed
Striped bass in the San Francisco Estuary are contaminated before birth with a toxic mix of pesticides, industrial chemicals and flame retardants that their mothers acquire from estuary waters and food sources and pass on to their eggs, say UC Davis researchers. Using new analytical techniques, the researchers found that offspring of estuary fish had underdeveloped brains, inadequate energy supplies and dysfunctional livers. They grew slower and were smaller than offspring of hatchery fish raised in clean water. ...


As long as everyone is deformed it will all even out.

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Tue, Dec 23, 2008
from Nashville Tennessean:
Flood of sludge breaks TVA dike
HARRIMAN, Tenn. — Millions of yards of ashy sludge broke through a dike at TVA's Kingston coal-fired plant Monday, covering hundreds of acres, knocking one home off its foundation and putting environmentalists on edge about toxic chemicals that may be seeping into the ground and flowing downriver. One neighboring family said the disaster was no surprise because they have watched the 1960s-era ash pond's mini-blowouts off and on for years. About 2.6 million cubic yards of slurry — enough to fill 798 Olympic-size swimming pools — rolled out of the pond Monday, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Cleanup will take at least several weeks, or, in a worst-case scenario, years. ...


Sounds like a shovel-ready project to me!

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Tue, Dec 23, 2008
from Associated Press:
More than 100 million Americans breathe sooty air
WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 100 million people living in 46 metro areas are breathing air that has gotten too full of soot on some days, and now those cities have to clean up their air, the Environmental Protection Agency said Monday. The EPA added 15 cities to the sooty air list, mostly in states not usually thought of as pollution-prone, such as Alaska, Utah, Idaho and Wisconsin. That's probably because of the prevalence of wood stoves in western and northern regions, a top EPA official said. But environmentalists said the EPA was only doing half its job on soot-laden areas, letting some southern cities with long-term soot problems — such as Houston — off the hook. ...


Hrmm mfffl grtmmm bakltmum.

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