Environment

Newsflash: Fukushima Is Still a Disaster

 

 

The corporate media silence on Fukushima has been deafening even though the melted-down nuclear power plant’s seaborne radiation is now washing up on American beaches.

Ever more radioactive water continues to pour into the Pacific. 

At least three extremely volatile fuel assemblies are stuck high in the air at Unit 4. Three years after the March 11, 2011, disaster, nobody knows exactly where the melted cores from Units 1, 2 and 3 might be.

Amid a dicey cleanup infiltrated by organized crime, still more massive radiation releases are a real possibility at any time.

Why Increased Fracking Means More Fatal Auto Crashes

States like North Dakota, Texas and Pennsylvania are among those that have experienced the biggest fracking booms in the U.S. They also have reported more auto crashes as a result. To the supporters of oil and natural gas extraction, correlating traffic collisions with fracking will likely sound like another attempt to bash their favorite means of obtaining energy. However, The Associated Press has the numbers to back it up—there are more fatal car crashes in areas of heavy fracking. Many more. “We are just so swamped,” Sheriff Dwayne Villanueva of Karnes County, TX told the AP. “I don’t see it slowing down anytime soon.” The AP’s analysis reveals alarming figures. For instance, the average rate of deaths per 100,000 people in North Dakota drilling areas grew by an average of 148 percent from 2009 to 2013, compared to the previous five years. For the rest of the state, that measure fell by 1 percent in the same time frame. Even in drilling areas where an increase was nowhere near that dramatic, it still tells the same story. In Pennsylvania drilling areas, traffic fatalities rose by 4 percent during that time frame.

ODNR’s Press Release Raises More Questions Than it Answers

 

 

 

On April 11, 2014 the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) published on its website a press release stating that “recent seismic events in Poland Township (Mahoning County) … show a probable connection to hydraulic fracturing.” This finding is of both scientific and political significance. People in cities like Youngstown are voting on ballot issues to permit fracking within their communities, with wells as close as 150 feet of their homes.

 

Appalling Earth Day Video Actually Thanks Fracking For Reducing Carbon Emissions

It would have been hard to miss the reports of earthquakes, explosions, lack of clean air, nosebleeds and more attributed to fracking. These type of stories have been all over every form of media imaginable in recent years. But according to Energy In Depth (EID), a campaign launched by the Independent Petroleum Association of America, those stories have apparently been drowning out the real story—that fracking is somehow responsible for the drop in carbon dioxide emissions. Yes, this group actually released a video on Earth Day thanking shale gas and fracking for decreasing emissions. You have to see it—and its out-of-context remarks and data—to believe it. The Natural Resources Defense Council also found the video to be off-base, tweeting as much Tuesday morning. That led to a back-and-forth between the organizations, in which EID revealed that it didn’t understand the concept of fracking sacrificing communities. The video in question includes commentary and data from the likes of President Barack Obama and the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Earth Day: Can We Save the Planet From Climate Change?

With the arrival of Earth Day and our celebration of Madre Tierra (Mother Earth), most of us can’t help but be concerned about her health and the impacts that climate change is having on her and our own lives. The Earth is being ravaged by climate change and the evidence is overwhelming. The American Association for the Advancement of Science recently said: “Levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are rising. Temperatures are going up. Springs are arriving earlier. Ice sheets are melting. Sea level is rising. The patterns of rainfall and drought are changing. Heat waves are getting worse, as is extreme precipitation. The oceans are acidifying.” In 2012, air pollution killed about 7 million people, and last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned of drastic effects ahead, including food shortages and civil strife in countries already struggling to meet the basic needs of their people.

Mahoning County Earthquakes and ODNR Deja Vu all over again

March 2014 marks the third anniversary of the first reported earthquakes in the Mahoning Valley. The largest one was a magnitude 3.9. These tremors have been proven scientifically to be injection-induced earthquakes due to pumping fracking waste deep underground. March 2014 also saw twelve earthquakes at the Carbon-Limestone landfill in Poland Township, south of Lowellville, Ohio. The depths of these earthquakes were reported between 8,200 feet and 17,000 feet but the uncertainties in these values are very high. According to The Business Journal and The New York Times, Hilcorp Energy Company was fracking one of its wells at the site when the earthquakes occurred. The exact specifics regarding timing, fluid volumes and pressures have not been made public. A completion report for one of the wells puts the horizontal leg at 8,100 feet below the surface. I estimate the Precambrian basement to be an additional 1,500 feet below the well. After four earthquakes occurred between 2:26 and 11:44 am on March 10th, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) ordered Hilcorp to suspend all activity at the site.

CONSERVANCY DISTRICT ORDERED TO RELEASE PUBLIC RECORDS

The FreshWater Accountability Project (FWAP) prevailed in court last week in a lawsuit initiated under Ohio’s Open Records Act to obtain the addresses of those who lease residential and commercial property from the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD). FWAP sought the records as public information in order to directly communicate with people whose property rights and values can be affected by the Muskingum District's huge lease deals for oil and gas fracking on public lands around the District's reservoirs. The MWCD denied the public records and lost the issue in court. The Fifth District Court of Appeals courts fined the MWCD and awarded attorney fees to FWAP as plaintiff. “To force us to file a lawsuit to obtain records is just another example of how the MWCD believes it does not have to adhere to the principles of democracy and accountability as a public agency receiving tax dollars,” stated Lea Harper, co-founder and Managing Director of FWAP. “The MWCD receives a large amount of its revenue from people like me as a property tax payer within the district.

Coalition rallies against fracking at the Ohio Statehouse

 

 

 

Despite the chilly wet weather, over 70 fracking opponents held a spirited rally for the "Don't Waste Ohio" Legislator Accountability Day at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio on April 2, 2014. Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is the process of injecting mass amounts of water into rock formations in order to shatter the ground and release oil and natural gas.

The citizen groups were attempting to gain sponsorship for grassroots led legislation introduced in 2012 to ban Class II injection wells (HB 148, SB 178). This legislation would ban liquid fracking waste in Ohio including: Class II injection wells, enhanced recovery wells, road brine application and treated fracking flowback from being  re-introduced into public water supplies. There are currently 234 injection wells in Ohio and 202 of those are active.

Getting to Solartopia!

High above the Bowling Green town dump, a green energy revolution is being won. It’s being helped along by the legalization of marijuana and its bio­fueled cousin, industrial hemp. But it’s under extreme attack from the billionaire Koch Brothers, utilities like First Energy (FE), and a fossil/nuke industry that threatens our existence on this planet. Robber Baron resistance to renewable energy has never been more fierce. The prime reason is that the Solartopian Revolution embodies the ultimate threat to the corporate utility industry and the hundreds of billions of dollars it has invested in the obsolete monopolies that define King CONG (Coal, Oil, Nukes & Gas). The outcome will depend on YOUR activism, and will determine whether we survive here at all. Four very large wind turbines in this small Ohio town are producing clean, cheap electricity that can help save our planet. A prime reason they exist is that Bowling Green has a municipal­owned utility.
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