Environment – Page 22 – The Edge of the Wood

Do we wait for the river to die to call it ill?

The Susquehanna River Basin Commission reports its data collection funding has been cut, while more than 2,000 miles of waterways still suffering from mine drainage from coal mines abandoned nearly a century ago. And increasing numbers of smallmouth bass are being found cancerous and dying in the 100 miles of river below Sunbury, PA (near the Shamokin Dam).

Meanwhile, PA DEP Secretary Mike Krancer and PA Fish and Boat Commission head John Arway continue to spar over whether the river should be declared “impaired,” a declaration that would make the river eligible for federal funding to research the dying fish.

Continue reading on Rock The Capital …

Future holds promise for electric commuter cars

A recent story in Reuters posited electric cars are “headed toward another dead end.” The outcome was illustrated at the Pennsylvania Auto Show last month in Harrisburg, where there was plenty of emphasis on gasoline and precious little on electric – though hybrids were well represented.

But while Reuters was pronouncing Last Rites for all-electric automobiles, other’s were painting a slightly rosier picture. I submit the demise of the electric car is greatly exaggerated in a storyline carefully engineered by the oil industry.

Continue reading on Rock The Capital …

Judge’s finger on sunshine switch

A juge will decide whether Right To Know applies to government-based lobbyists. A Bloomsburg author’s challenge to a township agency’s claim of immunity to the state Right To Know law is in the hands of a Cumberland County judge. After about an hour of discussion, Judge Kevin A. Hess said he would “take it under advisement,” without specifying a possible time for a ruling. Continue reading Judge’s finger on sunshine switch

Promised Land: The popcorn was great.

Another pipeline path cuts across Loyalsock State Forest The hype made it out to be a movie about frackers coming to a small Pennsylvania town, population 880, and buying up leases from unsuspecting farmers. And then …

The “and then” was a little unclear, even in the trailers, but there was considerable implication there would be conflict of some sort. Alas …

As the story begins,

Continue reading Promised Land: The popcorn was great.

At what point does education become spying?

Our children are getting entirely too used to living in a police state.

I remember when Officer Friendly graced children’s book. He often was a bit portly in his double-breasted overcoat with the shiny brass buttons. He carried a shillelagh, often in both hands, behind his back. He smiled at children, joked with them, and helped them out of minor childhood troubles while encouraging them to avoid more serious transgressions.

What brought that to mind was an article in TechNews Daily about a new program that will allow teachers to look over their students’ shoulders – even when they’re not in school.

Continue reading on Rock The Capital …

Money and water flow naturally away from their source

I have an electric stream behind my house. Water flows down the rocks, offering a drinking fountain for the dog, birds and wasps that live here, and soothing sound for me. There is a pump submerged at the bottom of the stream to raise the water back to the top. Even with the pump running, I must regularly add water to replace what the critters and the sun take from the system during the day.

Money, I’ve noticed, is like my backyard stream, in reverse. Money naturally flows uphill.

Continue reading on Rock The Capital …

Planet Earth – our home, if we can keep it

The just ended election dealt, in part, with Lincoln’s economic formula. At least environmentally, the question seemed focused on whether “new beginners” were to be given a chance or whether their efforts would be stymied by the efforts of financially successful technologies to protect their treasure.

Somewhere deep inside most of us – 98-percenters and 1-percenters alike – is the understanding that we can’t go on the way we have. The forests once were thought to be too expansive, too fast growing, to ever threaten the nation with wood shortage, and few people were aware of the damage clear-cut mountains could render to rivers and streams.

Continue reading on Rock The Capital …

Of the two ways to vote, one will keep our planet livable

In high school, my son got in a little hot water with a social studies teacher who had said the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s was about oil. I’m guessing Mitt Romney went to the same class and decided it wasn’t about oil because, he said, Iran is supporting Syria to gain access to the sea.

It makes sense for Iran to want to whup Iraq, since the latter nation stands smack dab in the way between Iran and Syria, the latter which is on the Mediterranean Sea. On the other hand, it would seem cheaper for Iran to simply build a seaport or two on the Persian Gulf (named for Iran when it was called Persia), and the Gulf of Oman – both of which provide Iran with large expanses of ocean front property.

Continue reading on Rock The Capital …

Arizona threatens secession; it may be a growing trend

Come election day, the good citizens of Arizona will decide whether to amend their state constitution, granting themselves sovereignty over the Grand Canyon, allowing themselves to “take it back” from the rest of us. The goal, apparently is to increase mining and other commercial uses in the canyon, and funnel the proceeds into Arizona coffers.

The plan reminds me of the story about a dog walking across a river on a log, carrying a huge fresh bone. About halfway across the river, he looked down and spied another dog carrying a similar bone.

Continue reading on Rock The Capital …

Exploitation without conservation: a recipe for disaster

I love traveling. I enjoy meeting people in a variety of places, with different manners of talking and thinking. Though sometimes there aren’t as many differences as one might think.

A friend turned 40 a few years ago, nearly at the top of Engineer Pass, just outside and way above Ouray, CO. I was driving the Jeep that day as we climbed as high as I dared into the San Juan Mountains, part of the Colorado Rockies. One particularly impressive part of the hours-long climb up narrow, rock-strewn switchbacks was looking up at what someone later told me was, as I recall, Steeple Spire. Or something of that ilk.

Continue reading on Rock The Capital …

Adequate DEP funding should be budget priority

A truck crash dumped “minor amounts of petroleum fluids” into Pine Creek, in Lycoming County.

That’s important where I live because Pine Creek, at the southern edge of a heavily drilled natural gas field, flows into the Susquehanna River, which runs past Harrisburg and the City of York, in its way to the Chesapeake Bay. York Water Company draws water from the river, and sells millions of gallons a day to residents on the eastern side of Adams County, where I live.

Continue reading on Rock The Capital …

Shorting-funding DEP is false economy

Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection may not be protecting the environment and the Commonwealth’s citizens as much as they deserve.

That is the assertion of a report issued Tuesday by Earthworks, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental watchdog agency.

The report begins by noting “more than 5,700 ‘unconventional’ shale gas wells have been drilled (in Pennsylvania) since 2005.” It also acknowledges DEP’s claim that staffing has increased – including, in 2012, about 83 inspectors. If the “unconventional wells” – a euphemism referring to deep shale fracking wells – were the only wells needing oversight, that would mean about 68 wells for each inspector.

Continue reading on Rock The Capital …

Courts to rule on fracking regs

Approximately five acres of pad must be constructed for each drill site Citing a lack of regulations to complain about, a U.S. District Court judge Monday ruled against a requirement for a full environmental review of fracking in the Delaware River Basin.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania townships await a ruling by that state’s top court that may determine whether traditional municipal control over zoning applies to the controversial method of producing natural gas from deep underground shale.

Continue reading on Rock the Capital …

Support a farmer, eat heartily, and stomp to some great music

Farm Aid 2012 is Saturday, Sept. 22, at Hersheypark Stadium. This is Year 27 of the event begun in 1985 by Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp – Dave Matthews joined the team in 2001 – to raise money for programs that support family farms in their competition with land developers and huge factory farms.

I was raised on a farm, of sorts. There was Mom, Dad and four of us youngsters, and a 50-foot by 100-foot patch that kept us in veggies. We grew corn, asparagus, beets, carrots, and several other crops. And we picked crab apples from the Bates’ tree, bought raw milk from the Ellises.

Report says GHG cuts could be significant with more taxpayer money and different measuring

Study says fossil-fueld vehicles will be here for foreseeable future. A National Petroleum Council report chartered by the U.S. Secretary of Energy says fossil fuel-powered engines will be the motive power for the nation’s transportation machine for the foreseeable future.

Ya think? Gasoline-powered vehicles sold this year will need gas at least 10-12 years from now to keep them tooling down the road.

“Seen any deer?”

I let him eat, and he let me shoot. A few years ago, a friend and I took a week in Colorado, driving through the back roads of the Rockies, generally following one of our favorite country music artists – and premiere writer of environmental songs – on what we termed “The Ultimate San Juan Oddysey.” The trip took us above the tree line, to long defunct silver mines, historic avalanche sites, Silverton (via the Durango and Rio Grande narrow gauge railroad), and Black Bear Road, (“You don’t have to be crazy to drive this here road, but it helps.”).

Continue reading “Seen any deer?”