terra central

Stimulus Funds for Moab Uranium Tailings Cleanup

Uranium mine near Moab, Utah adjacent to the Colorado River. Photo source: Ecoflight

Lately, my go-to source for western U.S. water news and commentary is Coyote Gulch, a blog with it’s ear on the ground. Earlier this month, it reported here on a nice chunk of change from the U.S. Department of Energy going to clean up after the uranium industry. An excerpt:

Gary Harmon writing for the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. From the article:

The federal government will provide $108 million from the economic stimulus package to push ahead more quickly with the cleanup of uranium mill tailings from Moab, Utah. The new spending will more than double the number of employees from 125 to at least 275, officials with the U.S. Department of Energy said. The cleanup is scheduled to begin April 20 and is estimated to cost about $1 billion, which will be paid by the Department of Energy.

Footnote: Whole Earth Catalog writer/hipster Stuart Brand recently gave the New York Times an interview. He’s got a book coming out later this year in which he promises to explain why nuclear power is “green.” Can’t wait to see that.

Tip: Muck & Mystery

Ethanol Critics: What’s Their Beef?

Drive small, drive less, walk more, eat less beef.

In 1980 we had a biologist running for president. Barry Commoner, standard-bearer for the Citizens Party, gave a speech at Calvin College in Grand Rapids and I drove across town on a rainy night to hear him. I’d read his book, Science & Survival and knew he was critical of nuclear power and the complicated, centralized government-military-industrial apparatus that supported it.

During the speech, Barry brought up biofuels, or “gasahol.” He briefly described growing corn and distilling a mash to make ethanol to use as motor fuel. The residue, he said, was rich in nitrogen, phosphorus, and minerals that made an excellent fertilizer. At this, there was a collective “ooh” that wafted across the audience. We understood the balance. “Yeah, it’s a nice arrangement,” Barry said in his Brooklyn accent. Yeah. Yeah! He was having a good night, there among the believers. Barry referred to himself as a “congenital optimist.” The biosphere with its life and solar constant, not the lithosphere with its dwindling store of fossil fuels, would power our future.

Source: National Corn Growers Association

Today we’ve got ethanol – big time. Nearly a quarter of the Yellow Dent “King Corn” crop goes to fuel production. Farmers are doing much better. About three years ago, corn was selling around $1.50 per bushell. Last summer, it rose to over $7 before “crashing” to about $3.50 a bushel as speculators pulled out of commodities.

Today, the ethanol industry falls short of Commoner’s dream, however, with respect to the distiller’s residue. It’s not plowed back into the soil as fertilizer. It, along with nearly the half of the corn yield is sold to confined animal feed operations (CAFO’s), to make meat and dairy products. CAFO’s stink, and the reliability of rural manure management is poor. Spreading manure on fields is weather dependent and runoff is common. The CAFO’s and environmental regulators get sued for polluting the rivers and lack of enforcement of regulations. CAFO’s on the Plains are remaking the topography, building mountains of dung covered with thousands of cows like ants on an ant hill, fed and watered constantly and pumped with antibiotics. I’ve seen such places first-hand. A dark brown dung heap baking in the summer like an asphalt parking lot has to be a miserable place. The fact is, under prevailing conditions, beef production is a dirty business.

The third highest use of corn is export, much of it to China and Japan, not to feed hungry people, but to feed cows and pigs and support growing demand for meat in those countries. A lot of corn goes to producing High Fructose Corn Sweetener, which appears to be a factor in growing rates of metabolic disorders such as diabetes, and obesity as mentioned here, and here.

The charge that using corn to make motor fuel starves people is ludicrous. Only a tiny fraction of Yellow Dent corn goes directly into cereal and basic human food. It’s a raw material for a wide array of sometimes dubious products, like sweeteners, and the producers of those products are sore at having to pay higher prices for their raw materials.

One group defending ethanol against those who want to end mandates for biofuels is FoodPriceTruth.org. They argue that the number one driver of higher food prices is higher oil prices. Considering the food on our dinner plates has traveled an average of 1500 miles, they’ve got a point.

Some ideas to ponder: Barry Commoner’s Four Laws of Ecology

1. Everything is Connected to Everything Else. There is one ecosphere for all living organisms and what affects one, affects all.

2. Everything Must Go Somewhere. There is no “waste” in nature and there is no “away” to which things can be thrown.

3. Nature Knows Best. Humankind has fashioned technology to improve upon nature, but such change in a natural system is, says Commoner, “likely to be detrimental to that system.”

4. There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. In nature, both sides of the equation must balance, for every gain there is a cost, and all debts are eventually paid.

Why Did My Plant Die?

by Geoffrey B. Charlesworth

You walked too close. You trod on it.
You dropped a piece of sod on it.
You hoed it down. You weeded it.
You planted it the wrong way up.
You grew it in a yoghurt cup
But forgot to make a hole;
The soggy compost took its toll.
September storm. November drought.
It heaved in March, the roots popped out.
You watered it with herbicide.
You scattered bonemeal far and wide,
Attracting local omnivores,
Who ate your plant and stayed for more.
You left it baking in the sun
While you departed in a run.
To find a spade, perhaps a trowel,
Meanwhile the plant threw in the towel.
You planted it with crown too high;
The soil washed off, that explains why.
Too high pH. It hated lime.
Alas it needs a gentler clime.
You left the root ball wrapped in plastic.
You broke the roots. They’re not elastic.
You walked too close. You trod on it.
You dropped a piece of sod on it.
You splashed the plant with mower oil.
You should do something to your soil.
Too rich, too poor. Such wretched tilth.
Your soil is clay. Your soil is filth.
Your plant was eaten by a slug.
The growing point contained a bug.
These aphids are controlled by ants,
Who milk the juice, it kills the plants.
In early spring your garden’s mud.
You walked around! That’s not much good.
With heat and light you hurried it.
The poor plant missed the mountain air;
No heat, no summer muggs up there.
You overfed it 10-10-10.
Forgot to water it again.
You hit it sharply with a hose.
You used a can without a rose.
Perhaps you sprinkled from above.
You should have talked to it with love.
The nursery mailed it without roots.
You killed it with those gardening boots.
You walked too close. You trod on it.
You dropped a piece of sod on it.

Exerpted from A Gardner Obsessed: Observations, Reflections, and Advice for Other Dedicated Gardners and Horticulture April, 1996.

Tip: Harold Kantrud.

Regulatory Fallout from Kingston Coal Sludge Incident?

Ruptured lagoon berm sends coal sludge into the confluence of the Clinch and Emory Rivers. Photo by Antrim Caskey used with permission.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be reviewing hundreds of wetland and watercourse permits formerly handled by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), according to this LA Times article. The EPA has had the authority to intervene for years, but rarely did under the Bush Administration.

Looks like things are different now. The EPA appears to have a new mandate from President Obama and its decision to flex some regulatory muscle may have been prompted, in part, by the TVA Kingston Coal Sludge Incident. The new action will focus on mountain top removal permit applications where coal companies are requesting to fill streams and wetlands with overburden (soil and rock), but the high-profile environmental disaster at Kingston may have helped prompt the EPA to step forward.

On the morning of December 22, 2008, an earthen dam on a 40-acre sludge lagoon broke releasing 5.4 million cubic yards of wet sludge, covering about 300 acres of land, destroying 3 homes, and breaking a major gas pipeline near Harriman, TN. The environmental cost will take a long time to assess.

Dave Cooper’s eye-witness account is an interesting perspective of the TVA Kingston incident.

What is this sludge? Coal doesn’t burn completely. It is an organic sedimentary deposit derived from ancient forested swamps containing, among other things, giant ferns the size of modern trees. After burning, the coal leaves a mineral residue called flyash that is collected from the power plant’s furnace. The flyash is the texture of silt, which is finer than sand but coarser than clay – about like flour.

Flyash can be used to make cement, concrete, asphalt, grouting materials, and other useful products, according to the Federal Highway Administration’s Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center.

The market for flyash doesn’t keep up with it’s production, apparently, so the stuff piles up, either in wet lagoons or in dry piles. When the wet sludge enters water bodies, it’s constituent metals like arsenic, mercury, and lead pollute the water. The silt is suspended in the water column or coats the benthic community, causing problems for fish, fresh water clams, and other aquatic life.

When the siliceous dry sludge is wind-blown, it’s an air pollutant. Fine silica dust is a respiratory irritant responsible for silicosis.

According to the Engineering News Record, the lagoon has recently shown signs of trouble:

…Jack Sparado, a former national mine safety and health engineer, says that the inspection report indicates serious problems that TVA should have addressed. He conducted the engineering analysis of a similar, 300-million-gal, coal slurry spill in Martin County, Ky., in 2000 and wrote the engineering report of the Buffalo Creek, W.Va., coal slurry spill that killed more than 100 people in 1972.

Sparado says the dike has been failing since 2003 because of foundation piping, or internal erosion. There had been two minor blowouts in recent years and TVA noted seepage. The agency took corrective measures, Sparado says, but the only solution would have been to drain the reservoir and reconstruct the dam. “It was completely irresponsible of TVA to allow the dam to continue to be used when they knew of these previous problems,” he says. “They should have done a complete stability analysis of whole dam and essentially reconstructed it. It certainly should have been engineered better than it was.”

Ronald Hall, Kingston plant manager, says that other than the blowouts, TVA had “no indication or concerns leading up to the event.”

“…other than the blowouts, TVA had no indication or concerns leading up to the event.” Hmmm.

The Knoxville News Sentinel is keeping an updated list of articles from various sources about the Kingston lagoon disaster.

The Natural Resources Defense Council’s blog OnEarth has a good summary of the incident, including an aerial video clip shot from a helicopter.

As America simultaneously rebuilds it’s economy and plans for it’s energy future, King Coal will fight hard to hold it’s current dominant position. Those of us who want clean renewable energy should gird their loins for a tough fight. Some oversight and enforcement from the EPA would help.