In their submission, the environment groups charge that oil extraction processes leach contaminants into both surface and groundwater in the Athabasca watershed. (Photo courtesy of Aude CC-2.0)
You might think about imported oil and Saudi Arabia or Venezuela come to mind. But, the single biggest source of imported oil to the U.S. comes from Canada. And half of that comes from a dirty form of oil called tar sands oil. Lester Graham reports environmentalists are trying to use NAFTA to get restrictions on tar sands oil:
Transcript
You might think about imported oil and Saudi Arabia or Venezuela come to mind. But, the single biggest source of imported oil to the U.S. comes from Canada. And half of that comes from a dirty form of oil called tar sands oil. Lester Graham reports environmentalists are trying to use NAFTA to get restrictions on tar sands oil.
Environmental groups say extracting tar sands oil causes a lot of water pollution. Matt Price is with Environmental Defence Canada:
“We keep on presenting the evidence to the government, and they just sort of keep on ignoring it which is why we filed this citizens’ complaint.”
They’ve filed the complaint under the North American Free Trade Agreement. The say oil companies in Canada are not complying with Canadian environmental laws and that might be a violation of the NAFTA treaty. So, his group and others are taking the fight to Canada’s trading partners.
BPA doesn't line just baby products - it is in many canned foods and drinks (Source: Tomomarusan at Wikimedia Commons)
Food-packaging executives and
lobbyists for the makers of the
chemical bisphenol-A, often
called BPA, met in Washington
DC last week to come up with PR
strategies. Their message is:
BPA is safe. Lester Graham reports
someone took notes at that meeting
and then leaked them to reporters:
Transcript
Food-packaging executives and
lobbyists for the makers of the
chemical bisphenol-A, often
called BPA, met in Washington
DC last week to come up with PR
strategies. Their message is:
BPA is safe. Lester Graham reports
someone took notes at that meeting
and then leaked them to reporters:
Lyndsey Layton got ahold of those notes. She reports for the Washington Post.
“According to these notes, they called it the ‘holy grail’ spokesperson would be a pregnant, young mother who would be willing to speak around the country about the benefits of BPA.”
Ironic in that many studies associate BPA with birth defects.
John Rost is the Chairman of the North American Metal Packaging Alliance.
He says the reporters got bad notes. He says it only came up because environmental activists used pregnant women to testify against BPA.
“We discussed that as an option and dismissed it and actually find it a little ironic that we are being criticized.”
Some retailers have taken toys and baby bottles made with BPA off the shelf in response to a consumer backlash.
It’s likely most consumers don’t yet realize the chemical also lines beverage and food cans.
The Conservation Resource Alliance works with property-owners to repair their rivers from problems such as erosion (Photo courtesy of the Conservation Resource Alliance)
(Photo courtesy of the Conservation Resource Alliance)
American rivers have gone
through a lot in the last century.
Their twists and turns have been
turned into straight channels.
Their banks have been washed away.
And pollution is still flowing off
farm fields and city streets. Fixing
these rivers is a big challenge. A lot
of the land that rivers run through is
privately owned. So that means – to
fix a river, you often have to work with
landowners. Rebecca Williams has the story
of one group that thinks they’ve found
the secret to winning people’s trust:
Transcript
American rivers have gone
through a lot in the last century.
Their twists and turns have been
turned into straight channels.
Their banks have been washed away.
And pollution is still flowing off
farm fields and city streets. Fixing
these rivers is a big challenge. A lot
of the land that rivers run through is
privately owned. So that means – to
fix a river, you often have to work with
landowners. Rebecca Williams has the story
of one group that thinks they’ve found
the secret to winning people’s trust:
(bird sound)
Di Rau is the fourth generation of her family to farm this land in Northern
Michigan. Her grandpa homesteaded the land and set up a sawmill.
“It was the primary industry – I mean there was logging camps just
everywheres you turned.”
Back then the rivers were the only way to get those logs downstream. But
years of rolling logs down the bank into the river were causing serious
erosion. Huge trees were crashing into the water.
Rau says she didn’t know any of her family’s legacy until one day, when a
local group gave her a call. The more she learned about the problems, the
more she felt, well…
“Guilt! (laughs) Because of my ancestors. It’s like practicing medicine. It’s
always evolving and you don’t really know lots of times what you’re doing
wrong until another generation comes along and tells you this is what
you’ve created. Then it’s like okay let’s do something about it.”
So Rau let construction workers on her land. And now, ten years later, she
says it’s beautiful.
“Go down and just listen to creatures. You have deer come splashing
through, we have a bear around here, he likes to visit, couple bobcat.
There’s a lot of wildlife – it’s pretty cool.”
The woman who won Di Rau over is Kim Balke. She’s a biologist with the
group Conservation Resource Alliance. She says working with Di Rau was
pretty easy. But not everyone opens their doors so quickly.
There was the divorced couple who still owned land together, the fighting
brothers, the neighbors who nobody liked.
“Other people have said you know don’t go to their house they’ll greet you
with a shotgun!”
So far, no shotguns. Balke says she’s learned not to listen to what neighbors
say about each other. She approaches each person one by one, and talks to
them about what’s at stake. Her sales pitch? We’re just here to help – and
hey, we’ll pay most of the bill.
“You know a lot of our projects are erosion control, when banks are
completely falling into the stream – landowners, it’s not hard for them to
realize they’re losing property.”
But Balke says, still, you can’t just rush in and tell people what to do. She
says it can take months or even years to warm homeowners up to the
project.
That’s because fixing rivers is serious work. If a riverbank is eroding or an
old bridge is falling into the water, we’re talking about heavy construction
equipment. You have to be willing to have bulldozers and port-a-johns on
your lawn for a long time. And you might have to lose a tree.
“Things can look a little rough when you’re doing construction and some
people are a little worried about change.”
Balke says she just takes her time. She sends letters, sits down for coffee,
lets people think it over.
And it’s not just homeowners who Balke’s group needs to win over. There
are road commissions, tribes, sportfishers, and environmentalists. People
who sometimes just don’t trust each other.
Amy Beyer directs Conservation Resource Alliance. She says her group has
gotten all those people together.
“Yes they have been historically mortal enemies and that doesn’t mean all of
the baggage falls away but I can tell you it feels awfully good to go around
the circle when we complete a project and hear all the different voices and
how they’re celebrating that success.”
Beyer says this is not a quick and easy process – it can take years to get
people to actually find some little thing to agree on. But she says you can
fix a river without ever going to court.
In their submission, the environment groups charge that oil extraction processes leach contaminants into both surface and groundwater in the Athabasca watershed. (Photo courtesy of Aude CC-2.0)
