State legislatures and Congress could consider new laws to deal with pesticide regulations. That’s after an Oregon pest management company received what some consider to be a slap on the wrist by the Environmental Protection Agency. A bug killer sprayed in a home led to the death of an elderly woman. Angela Kellner reports:
Transcript
State legislatures and Congress could consider new laws to deal with pesticide regulations. That’s after an Oregon pest management company received what some consider to be a slap on the wrist by the Environmental Protection Agency. A bug killer sprayed in a home led to the death of an elderly woman. Angela Kellner reports:
76-year-old Florence Kolbeck died of cardiac arrest a few hours returning home, where Swanson’s pest management had fumigated. Her husband was hospitalized for respiratory distress. Six others who entered the home, including emergency responders, also became ill.
The EPA investigated and fined the company $4,550 for misusing the pesticides.
Chad Schulze with the EPA says that was the maximum fine allowed under the law.
“That does not take into account the seriousness of the results of the violations. It’s just the statutory max.”
The person who applied the pesticides had failed his licensing exam seven times.
The company denies liability and disagrees with the EPA’s decision.
Yucca Mountain is the nation's planned repository for spent nuclear fuel (Photo courtesy of the US Department of Energy)
Politically speaking, America’s nuclear waste storage policy is a mess. Hazardous spent nuclear fuel is supposed to be buried under Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, but after two decades – it’s not finished. Congress pushed the project onto Nevada in the 80s by passing what’s known as the “Screw Nevada Bill.” Shawn Allee met a man who regrets helping put nuclear waste at Nevada’s doorstep:
Transcript
Politically speaking, America’s nuclear waste storage policy is a mess. Hazardous spent nuclear fuel is supposed to be buried under Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, but after two decades – it’s not finished. Congress pushed the project onto Nevada in the 80s by passing what’s known as the “Screw Nevada Bill.” Shawn Allee met a man who regrets helping put nuclear waste at Nevada’s doorstep:
For twenty years Nevada’s tried to scuttle Yucca Mountain.
Along the way, it’s hired Robert Halstead to create a plan to soften the blow if it loses. He’s an expert on nuclear waste truck and rail transportation.
“My job would be to craft the safest, or least-bad, transportation system so that if Nevada got stuck with a repository they would at least have some control of the transportation system because the activity that most likely to injures people and the environment is transportation.”
Halstead didn’t start his nuclear career on Nevada’s side, though. Thirty years ago, he worked for Wisconsin. He says the federal government wanted states’ help in storing nuclear waste deep underground.
In 1982 Congress came to consensus about how to test sites. He trusted it – and built political support for it.
“There was a clear statement that safety was not enough and economic efficiency was not enough. You also had to deal with regional equity.”
The gist was that there’d be at least two nuclear waste repositories: one in the West, and one in the East.
“We were pretty optimistic. Unfortunately that all began to fall apart very quickly.”
Congressmen and even the public started getting cold feet about the site selection process.
There were rowdy protests, especially in states that may have had the right geology for a repository. That included Wisconsin.
“If there was an objective approach to picking the sites, we knew that we would be in the first tier of the sites that would be evaluated.”
After a few years, Eastern politicians got frantic.
“They asked for a fix.”
Halstead decided to help with this fix, because he’d lost faith in the system, too. He says he helped cut legislative deals to stop the nuclear waste law he’d supported just a few years earlier.
It worked.
In 1987, Congress ended the government’s search for a nuclear waste repository.
Yucca would be the only candidate.
“This law was written very carefully to ensure that Nevada got screwed. And you know what, it chilled my blood.”
Halstead realized he’d passed a law that broke that early consensus about regional equity.
He was disappointed, and nearly dumped nuclear politics, but then he got a call. It was from a chief nuclear official in Nevada.
“He said aren’t you ashamed of yourself? I would really like you to come out here and help us. And I said to him, ‘I’d just got done getting Wisconsin getting off the hook and if I help you get off the hook, I think it’s likely that they’ll have to come back to Wisconsin.’”
But Halstead took the job.
I’ve asked him why several times. Sometimes he’s said guilt. Sometimes, regret. Sometimes, for a job.
Right now, Congress is considering cutting Yucca Mountain’s budget, and President Obama says he’s against the project.
But the law to make Yucca the only choice is still on the books.
I ask Robert Halstead whether that will change. He’s not sure – it’ll be tough to build a new consensus even close to what he saw thirty years ago.
“If nuclear waste disposal in a repository were safe and profitable, someone would have taken it away from Nevada years ago, so there won’t be an amicable ending to this story.”
More bio-fuels, like ethanol from corn, will be blended into petroleum (Photo by Scott Bauer, courtesy of the USDA)
The Obama administration wants us all to use more bio-fuels in our vehicles. Lester Graham reports on a proposed rule released by the White House:
Transcript
The Obama administration wants us all to use more bio-fuels in our vehicles. Lester Graham reports on a proposed rule released by the White House:
The Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, says this will mean blending more bio-fuels into petroleum.
“Under the proposed rule, the total volume of renewable fuel ramps up to a maximum of 36-billion gallons by 2022.”
But, for the first time, renewable fuels also will have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Bob Dinneen heads up the ethanol trade-group, the Renewable Fuels Association.
He says the carbon footprint of ethanol is 61% smaller than petroleum. But the government wants to include indirect effects – such as reduced corn exports leading other countries to slash and burn rain forest to grow corn.
“We believe when that is better understood, ethanol is going to continue to demonstrate significant carbon benefits.”
The government will hear about their concerns and others during a 60-day comment period.
Today almost everything that goes into your car's gas tank started as oil (Photo by Shawn Allee)
How you fuel your car could change pretty quickly. California air regulators are requiring gasoline producers to reduce greenhouse gases by 10% by 2020. That could force big oil companies to invest in alternative fuels. Tamara Keith reports when it comes to environmental regulations, what happens in California usually spreads from there:
Transcript
How you fuel your car could change pretty quickly. California air regulators are requiring gasoline producers to reduce greenhouse gases by 10% by 2020. That could force big oil companies to invest in alternative fuels. Tamara Keith reports when it comes to environmental regulations, what happens in California usually spreads from there:
Today almost everything that goes into your car’s gas tank started as oil. But in the future it could be very different.
“The fuels that we will be moving towards are electricity, biofuels and hydrogen mostly.”
Daniel Sperling is a member of the California Air Resources Board which voted in the new rule.
Sperling says the goal is to reduce the overall greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle fuels. That could mean oil companies might even have to buy credits from power companies for electric cars.
“You start transforming the oil industry, getting off of oil. I mean that’s what we talk about and this is a policy that will actually do it.”
The California rule even looks at how much greenhouse gas pollution goes into making corn ethanol.
Oil companies say fuel prices will definitely go up in California.
Democrats in the Senate are talking about climate change policy. (Photo courtesy of NASA)
Democrats in the US Senate are talking about climate change legislation again. But its fate is uncertain. Tamara Keith reports from Washington:
Transcript
Democrats in the US Senate are talking about climate change legislation again. But it’s fate is uncertain. Tamara Keith reports from Washington:
Barbara Boxer is the senator who chairs the Environment and Public Works committee. The committee will be putting together the climate change legislation. A climate bill didn’t get anywhere last year in the senate, but Boxer says things have changed since then.
“A lot of those who voted against us are no longer here.”
But what’s not changed is the argument over how sweeping controls on carbon emissions could affect the economy. Those opposed call climate legislation a job-killer. Steve Cochran with the Environmental Defense Fund argues the opposite.
“If those of us who want to see strong climate policy are effective and articulate and persuasive on the jobs argument then I think we can actually get this done. And if we’re not I don’t think we will.”
Boxer said she didn’t know when the full senate would take up the legislation.
The nuclear power plant in Braidwood, Illinois,
was started up just after the state banned new
nuclear power construction. For its entire history,
it's been operating without a permanent home for
its spent nuclear fuel. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
There’s been plenty of buzz
about dozens of proposed nuclear power
reactors in the US. Well, Wall Street’s
financial mess is making power companies
scramble to find all the investment money
for them. But, in twelve states, it won’t
matter whether power companies have cash
in hand or not; it’s illegal to build new
nuclear power plants there. Shawn Allee
reports there are efforts to repeal some
of those bans:
Transcript
There’s been plenty of buzz
about dozens of proposed nuclear power
reactors in the US. Well, Wall Street’s
financial mess is making power companies
scramble to find all the investment money
for them. But, in twelve states, it won’t
matter whether power companies have cash
in hand or not; it’s illegal to build new
nuclear power plants there. Shawn Allee
reports there are efforts to repeal some
of those bans:
JoAnn Osmand represents a state legislative district in northeastern Illinois.
Nuclear power is close to her heart – there’s an old, dormant nuclear power plant in her
district. Osmond thought, maybe that plant could be useful again. So, she sat down with
the plant owner.
”And I asked a question: ‘Why are you not taking some of the parts away and
putting them in other nuclear locations?’ They said, ‘there’s a moratorium, we’re
not building any more nuclear plants in the state of Illinois.’”
Osmond was stunned.
Illinois has six existing nuclear power plants – she didn’t know it’s illegal to build more.
She hears plenty of gripes about energy prices – so she thought, why leave nuclear energy
off the table?
“I don’t want my granddaughters to have to buy their electricity from another state.
I want to be able in 2020, 2030 to be able to plug in our electric cars.”
Osmond’s bill to lift the moratorium stalled – it’s still illegal to build nuclear power
plants in Illinois. California and Wisconsin recently had similar fights over their nuclear
moratoria.
Some veterans of nuclear politics are shocked anyone would want to life a ban on nuclear
power plants.
“It makes absolutely no logical, rational sense in any mode of analysis.”
I find Dave Kraft at a coffee shop. Kraft is with the Nuclear Energy Information Service,
a group that’s worked against nuclear power for almost thirty years.
Twelve states severely restrict or ban new nuclear power plants. Kraft says seven have
language almost identical to Illinios’.
“The moratorium simply said, no more new construction of nuclear reactors until
the federal government has a demonstrated means of dealing with the waste
permanently.”
Kraft says states tried protecting themselves from becoming dumps for the most
dangerous nuclear waste – the radioactive spent fuel.
The federal government is supposed to store spent fuel – maybe in Yucca Mountain,
Nevada. But so far, that hasn’t happened, so it’s piling up in nuclear power plants – like
this one in Braidwood, Illinois, southwest of Chicago.
(sound of a door)
Bryan Hanson manages the Braidwood power plant. He leads me to a square storage
pool. It has the bluest water I’ve ever seen.
Hanson: “This is where we store our spent fuel. It’s about thirty feet of water
between us and the top of the fuel bundles down there. So you’re looking at thirty of
water and another twelve feet down below.”
Allee: “If you look into it, it’s almost like honeycomb.”
Hanson: “Honeycomb … looks like an egg crate or honeycomb. Within those cells
are fuel bundles that have been used in the reactor, generated energy, and now
they’re waiting for eventual disposal.”
Braidwood’s pool was meant for short-term storage, but spent fuel’s been stored here for
nineteen years. Hanson says the company is planning for when spent fuel will have to be
stored on-site, but outdoors, perhaps for decades.
It’s a situation the nuclear industry’s is unhappy about, but it’s confident the federal
government will come up with a solution – some day.
So, most power companies support removing bans on new plants. This drives critics like
Dave Kraft crazy.
“To build more reactors at a time when we have no place to put the waste makes no
sense at all. The first rule of waste management is, stop producing.”
Even though Kraft says it doesn’t make sense to lift bans on nuclear power plant
construction, he predicts those bans will get challenged again soon.
Passing midnight regulations is nothing new. When presidents of a losing party are
packing up, there's not much of a political price to pay for unpopular rules. (Photo courtesy of the US Department of State)
It’s the Holiday Season – and
critics say industry lobbyists are getting
many of the gifts they’ve been asking for.
The Bush Administration is pushing through rules and regulations for them. Mark Brush
reports these midnight regulations will be
difficult to overturn:
Transcript
It’s the Holiday Season – and
critics say industry lobbyists are getting
many of the gifts they’ve been asking for.
The Bush Administration is pushing through
rules and regulations for them. Mark Brush
reports these midnight regulations will be
difficult to overturn:
Critics say President George W. Bush is doing a lot of last minute shopping for his
friends in big industries.
“What’s happening in Washington right now is a really quiet sneak attack on a lot of
fundamental protections that Americans enjoy under the law.”
That’s John Walke. He’s a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
He says these last minute Bush rules are not good for the environment – and they’re not
good for people.
“It’s important to realize we’re talking here about midnight de-regulation. These are
actions that are removing safeguards and protections of public health, and public welfare,
and the environment, and giving industry the permission to commit those harmful acts.”
So what kind of harmful acts is he talking about? Here are just some of the more than 60 rules and
regulations the Bush Administration is working on or have finalized.
A rule that makes it easier for coal mining companies to dump their waste into nearby
creeks and streams.
A rule changes that would allow older coal burning power plants to pump out more air
pollution without having to install clean up equipment.
A rule that would allow large dairies or livestock farms to police pollution from their own
operations.
And a rule that would make it more difficult to protect workers from toxic chemicals.
It’s a long list. But the main philosophy of the Bush Administration is that big industries
need a break from government regulations.
The Administration says they’ve been working on these rules for a long time. But
they’ve waited until the last minute to finalize a lot of them.
Passing midnight regulations is nothing new. When presidents of a losing party are
packing up, there’s not much of a political price to pay for unpopular rules. Your party
lost the election. So why not? Jimmy Carter’s administration was famous for it. The
term ‘midnight regulation’ was coined when Carter kicked last-minute rule making into
high gear. And every president since then has had his own last-minute rule changes.
The incoming Obama Administration is promising to go through these rules. Jon Podesta
is with Obama’s transition team. And he talked about that on Fox News Sunday.
“As a candidate, Senator Obama said that he wanted all the Bush executive orders
reviewed, and decide which ones should be kept, which ones should be repealed, and
which ones should be amended.”
Overturning some of these rules won’t be easy. Joaquin Sapien is a reporter for
ProPublica. He’s been following these midnight regulations closely. He says what
makes the end of this administration different is how it planned for the end. Last May,
White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten contacted all the federal agencies.
“What they did was they sent out a memo saying, ‘get your work done on these
regulations by November the first.’ So that would give these agencies plenty of time to
get them in effect before the next administration takes over, thereby limiting what the
next administration could do about some of these rules.”
Once the rules are finalized – they become effective in thirty to sixty days. And once that
happens – Sapien says it’s pretty much a done deal.
“And so, if a rule is in effect by the time the Obama Administration takes over, there’s
really very little he can do.”
For every rule that has gone into effect, it would take a lengthy rule-making process to
overturn it – a process that can take months and more likely years to complete.
There is another option. Congress can review the rules – and stop them before they’re
enforced. But with all the attention on the financial crisis, and with the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, experts think Congress won’t do that. And that these last minute rules will
be government policy for awhile.
A lead detector finds over 5000 parts per million of lead in this toy. (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)
Millions of toys were recalled
last year because of lead contamination.
There were about half as many recalls this
year, but lead in toys is still a problem.
Rebecca Williams reports there’s a new law
that will limit the amount of lead in any
toy or children’s product, but it won’t go
into effect until after the holidays:
Transcript
Millions of toys were recalled
last year because of lead contamination.
There were about half as many recalls this
year, but lead in toys is still a problem.
Rebecca Williams reports there’s a new law
that will limit the amount of lead in any
toy or children’s product, but it won’t go
into effect until after the holidays:
There is already a federal limit on how much lead can be in the paint on
kids’ toys. But lead can also be in places you might not expect – like plastic
parts of toys.
The new law puts a limit on lead in any part of a toy. But the new law won’t
take effect until February 10th. So that means toys that you can buy now
can legally have very high levels of lead embedded in them.
Mike Shriberg is with the Ecology Center. It’s an environmental group
that’s been testing toys for lead.
(beep)
He has an analyzer that tells you what elements are in a toy – in this case, a
plastic building block.
“So when I look at the results here, this orange block has over 3,000 parts
per million of lead. Now remember this will be illegal to be on the shelves
in February. It’s legal now because the lead’s not in the paint, it’s embedded
in the plastic.”
Babies and little kids’ brains and bodies are still developing. Since they tend
to put toys in their mouths, they’re really vulnerable to damage from lead.
“There is no safe level of lead in blood. Pediatricians have said a little bit of
lead causes a little bit of brain damage and a lot of lead causes a lot of brain
damage. We think toys shouldn’t be involved in causing any amount of
brain damage.”
Mike Shriberg says there is no way to know just by looking which toys have
lead and which ones don’t. But he says children’s jewelry is by far the
worst. They found it’s five times more likely to have lead than other toys.
He says simpler toys, such as unpainted wooden toys, tend to be safer.
“Just to be clear there is no surefire rule.”
Shriberg’s group has tested 1,500 toys this year and has put the results up on
their website: healthy-toys dot org.
The group found about one in every five toys still has lead.
Mattel and Hasbro say they’re carefully testing their toys this year. And
retailers such as Toys R Us and Wal-Mart are also testing toys.
The National Retail Federation did not return calls for comment.
The National Association of Manufacturers did not want to comment for this
story. But in a recent Wall Street Journal article – a spokesperson for the
trade group said billions of dollars in inventory could be lost when the new
lead law goes into effect.
Three billion toys are sold in the US each year. So who’s going to make
sure all those toys comply with the new law? A small government agency.
Julie Vallese is with the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
“CPSC always has investigators in the field looking for products in violation
of safety standards. Now it is a big market and we do have limited
resources. But we have a systematic way of going about looking for
violations and we will be doing that come February 10th.”
Last year, the New York Times reported that just one man, named Bob, was
responsible for testing toys for safety.
Agency officials say that’s not true – they say many people test toys. We
asked how many. We asked repeatedly. We wanted to know the exact
number of people who test toys for lead. But they refused to tell us.
Congress has promised more money for more toy testers. But that has not
happened yet.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission says besides – industry has the
biggest responsibility here.
The agency says when the new toy law goes into effect in February, it’ll be
up to the manufacturers, the retailers and the importers to make sure the toys
they’re selling are not in violation of the new lead law.
Many Native American tribes say
they want to be part of the national debate
over climate change legislation. The
tribes at least have the attention of the
US EPA. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
Many Native American tribes say
they want to be part of the national debate
over climate change legislation. The
tribes at least have the attention of the
US EPA. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
The tribes are worried about climate change. They think it might be affecting natural resources
like wild rice beds, fish habitat and animals they hunt to feed their people.
The tribes got some provisions into a major climate change bill that recently failed in Congress.
They’re now preparing their arguments for the next go-round on Capitol Hill.
Stephen Hartsfield is with the National Tribal Air Association. He says one thing the Native
communities want is more incentives to produce cleaner energy – such as solar power in the
Southwest US.
“ We have 300 days of sunshine a year – so it just makes logical sense for tribes and states and
communities in the Southwest to look at those opportunities.”
At a meeting with Great Lakes area tribes in Milwaukee, an EPA official said it’ll be up to
Congress and the Obama Administration to determine how much clout the tribes will have in the
debate.
Toy makers use phthalates to make hard plastic pliable (Source: Toniht at Wikimedia Commons)
News about dangerous chemicals in toys,
cosmetics and cleaning products has a lot of
Americans spending extra money. People want to
make sure they’re choosing things that are safe
for their families. Julie Grant reports that
other countries are ahead of the US in efforts
to improve the safety of all products:
Transcript
News about dangerous chemicals in toys,
cosmetics and cleaning products has a lot of
Americans spending extra money. People want to
make sure they’re choosing things that are safe
for their families. Julie Grant reports that
other countries are ahead of the US in efforts
to improve the safety of all products:
So you might expect that the government has tested those
chemicals to make sure they’re safe. But you’d be wrong.
Daryl Ditz is senior policy advisor at the Center for
International Environmental Law.
He says the US Environmental Protection Agency has never
assessed the hazards of most chemicals used in every day
products.
“That means the EPA doesn’t know, and you and I don’t know,
which materials on the shelves are more dangerous and
which are less.”
Ditz says only a few hundred chemicals have been
thoroughly tested by the U.S. government, but there are
80,000 chemicals used in products on the market.
In the U.S., the EPA has to prove a chemical is harmful to
keep it off the market.
(sound of toy store)
Dorothy Bryan is shopping at this upscale toy store in Northeast Ohio.
She’s got three grandkids. She’s looking at an
organic cotton bunny, colorful wooden blocks, and of course
Thomas the Tank Engine. She
pays more for toys at this store than she would at the big box
retailer. But Bryan says they’re worth it.
“They’re not toxic. That’s the big part. They’re not the
plastic toxic things.
I purchase usually the wooden toys. The little one puts
everything in his mouth.”
But most kids’ toys are made of plastic. And lots of plastics are made with phthalates. It makes them pliable.
But phthalates are endocrine disruptors. They’re gender-bender chemicals that make girls develop earlier and reduce testosterone levels in boys.
That’s why
California has banned the use some phthalates in toys. So
have Japan and the European Union.
But Daryl Ditz, chemical expert at Center for International
Environmental Law, says regulators in the U.S. don’t have
much power to ban phthalates or other chemicals.
Chemicals here are innocent until proven guilty.
“That is, companies can sell virtually anything in a product or in a barrel unless it’s been proven
to be dangerous.”
But other countries are starting to take the opposite
approach. Ditz says the European Union is rolling out a new
set of laws that make chemicals guilty until proven
innocent.
“They’re putting the responsibility squarely on the shoulders
of the chemical makers. As opposed to having the
environmental authorities look for a needle in the haystack,
they’re saying, ‘this should be the responsibility of the
companies who make these materials.’”
Under the EU law, manufacturers will have to study and
report the risks posed by each chemical: whether they
cause cancer, birth defects, or environmental problems.
The Bush administration and chemical manufacturers tried to
block the European law. But they couldn’t.
Ditz says leaders in the
chemical makers’ trade group are now running around like
their hair is on fire. They’re worried – the costs to comply
could be in the tens of millions of dollars for some
companies that export chemicals to Europe.
But many individual companies have already started to
comply with the law.
Walter van het Hoff is spokesperson for Dow Chemical in
Europe. He says cataloging Dow’s 7000 chemicals is a
huge effort, but they don’t have a choice.
“You need to comply; otherwise you cannot sell them
anymore in the European Union.”
There are a half billion consumers in the EU and Dow wants to keep them. Dow and other
manufacturers might have to reformulate – or even abandon
some chemicals if the EU decides they’re unsafe.
While the U.S. is not considering a comprehensive chemical
review like Europe’s new laws, about 30 states are
considering new regulations on chemicals in toys. The Toy
Industry Association doesn’t want a patchwork of laws, so
it’s called for national toy safety standards.
