Mountain Top Removal

Most people in North Carolina have heard of the issues with coal ash ponds. The story of how the coal is shipped to the state is also full of broken lives. North Carolina has no coal of its own and is forced to import the black mineral from West Virginia. Up to half of all of North Carolina’s coal comes from a controversial mining process known as mountaintop removal (Sturgis, 2014).  

Mountaintop removal involves destroying all the vegetation from a mountaintop and blasting away the rock to access coal seams inside the mountain. In 2002, at the request of the Bush administration, Congress changed the Clean Water Act to allow the dumping of mountain top debris into rivers at the bottoms of valleys. The change in the law led to a rapid increase in mountaintop removal. A staggering 1.4 million acres of forests have been lost since 2002. The forest loss led to a decease in native species including endangered ones. The headwaters of streams in West Virginia have been so polluted by acid mine drainage that two thirds of fish in those streams are now gone (Ecological, n.d.). 

The health impacts to humans from mountaintop removal can be severe. Communities that live near mines see an increase in lung cancer and low birth weights. There have also been increases in diseases such as COPD and high blood pressure. Chemicals used in mine blasting have gotten into the water system and poisoned residents with heavy metals. Explosions from blasting have caused flying debris that have destroyed homes and even killed people (Health, n.d.).  
 
West Virginia exports up to a 100 million tons of coal every year. Each train coal car caries up to 120 tons of coal and can lose up to a ton of that coal per trip. Soil samples taken from neighborhoods near the coal lines have found arsenic levels five times normal levels. Coal from the trains coats nearby buildings with black stains. Most of the people forced to live near the coal lines are poor and lack political power. Living in close proximity to coal trains has negative health impacts and can reduce life expectancy by ten years. Norfolk Southern, which runs the trains, gives large campaign donations to local politicians who help insulate them from the health issues their trains create (Geiling, 2018). 

References can be found here

Green Metal

Most everyone has seen or read the Lorax at this point. If you haven’t, than fifty year old spoilers! In the Lorax, Dr. Seuss tells the story of the destruction of the truffula tree by unscrupulous industrialists. The industrialization of the forest leads to climate change and demographic change with the local wildlife. A classic tell of the tragedy of the commons. 

So what would happen if someone discovered the truffula tree today? Harvesters would have to deal with work stoppages for OSHA safety inspections. The EPA could put controls on emissions and limit water usage. The FTC could force earnings disclosers about truffula tree reserves. If the truffula tree became endangered, NGO’s would have standing to sue to stop additional harvesting. The natural result of these inspections would force truffula tree harvesters into parts of the world that don’t have worker safety or environmental laws. 

What are the truffula trees of today? One contender is rare earth metals/elements (REEs). According to Apple, the company has sold over one billion iPhones in the past decade. The phones wouldn’t be possible without rare earths. They fuel the modern economy from batteries, to computers. REEs are mined in countries that don’t have strong environmental and safety regulations. Those mines undercut the viability of mines in countries that do have, or follow, regulations. 

The US used to be one of the largest suppliers of REEs. Now, the US imports 70% of its rare earths from China even though the US has one of the largest rare earth mines in the world. The US mine went bankrupt due to environmental cleanup costs and “dumping” of cheap REEs by China. The mine recently reopened but it ships its ore to China for processing. In order for US REE mines to be truly viable, consumers would need to choose to pay more for better, and more expensive, mining practices.

Moving society to better mining practices is complicated. Part of the answer is to increase product lifespans by replacing the function REEs are serving in our economy with other materials that don’t require mining or toxic processing. For those functions that can’t be replaced, governments and individuals need to disincentivize imports of cheap REEs mined without regard to social or environmental costs. One possible way this could be achieved would be to raise the price of cheap minerals with environmental import taxes or a value added tax. These taxes could be invested to extended product lifespans or to develop greener product replacements.   

Another option would be voluntary. Behavioral economics could be used to incentivize consumers to purchase REE products at higher prices. Pushing the public to want to pay for more expensive metal could come in the form of explaining the damage current rare earth mining practices cause; a branding and marketing label centered around “green metal,” or “organic metal.” Consumers already pay more for “organic” food and might welcome a way to pay for greener electronics.

Effective Air Quality Legislation in NC

I read an interesting study on effective air quality legislation. The article is “Health and Air Quality Benefits of Policies to Reduce Coal-Fired Power Plant Emissions: A Case Study in North Carolina,” by Li YR and JM Gibson from the September 2014 issue of Environmental Science & Technology. In the article, the authors analyzed particulate matter to determine the effectiveness of air quality controls the state passed to comply with the Clean Air Act. The authors studied emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) over a ten year period to measure trends across the state.   

In 1990, the US government passed the Acid Rain Program (ARP) as an amendment to the Clean Air Act. Congress sought to reduce SO2 emissions. Throughout the 1990s, North Carolina struggled to meet the ARP guidelines. In response, the state passed the Clean Smokestack Act in 2002. The Clean Smokestack Act targeted North Carolina’s coal plants to “progressively reduce SO2 emissions by 72% by 2013, relative to 2002 emissions.”

Previous studies of particulate matter pollution were more general in scope. The studies assumed that the health benefits were the same regardless of the source of the particulate matter; despite growing evidence that particulate matter toxicity is source specific. This study differed from previous studies by directly measuring SO2 concentrations from coal plants and comparing that to health burdens in North Carolina. The author’s hypothesized that as SO2 emissions decreased, the health of North Carolinians would improve. 

The authors gathered data from the EPA’s National Emissions Inventory (NEI) and Clean Air Market’s Program (AMPD) databases from 2002 - 2012. The authors divided the state into three different regions: the costal plain, the piedmont and the mountains. North Carolina, as a whole, was then compared to other states in the region using the EPA’s Air Quality System and Federal Land Management databases. The data collected was aggregated to create trends of SO2 pollution for the subregions in North Carolina and to compare North Carolina with other southeastern states. The authors compared their dataset to county level population and morbidity rates from the CDC. 

The authors found that coal plants remained the major source of SO2 in their research time period. However, the emissions of SO2 , measured in tons, were reduced by almost 90%. Most of this reduction came in the piedmont. During this same time period, sulfur dioxide particulate matter deaths decreased by 63% or an estimated 1,700 people. The decreases in SO2 and morbidity were greater in North Carolina than the rest of the region. These findings support the effectiveness of regulations in fighting particulate air pollution.

The authors did a lot of leg work here. The article made a persuasive case that regulations can improve the environment and human health. I was a bit surprised that the EPA had not done it’s own analysis since it was mostly their data being used. The article made me curious about other examples of positive impacts that regulation can have. Impacts that occur in rather short timeframes.

Arguments are often made against environmental regulations because they cost too much and hurt the economy. Durning the time period of this study, 2002 - 2012, North Carolina’s population and economy grew at a similar rate to the rest of the region. Which would seem to undercut that argument. The reductions of particulate matter in our air did not come at the cost of our state’s growth. This feels like a win-win that nearby states should model. 

Duke and DEQ, a Love Story: How Duke Manipulated the State Government To Perpetuate an Environmental Disaster

For decades, Duke Energy has generated most of the electricity in North Carolina, giving the company enormous power both literally and politically. In both cases, it created a lot of pollution. In the past decade, Duke has used its influence to warp the state’s executive, legislative and judicial system to their own ends. For close to a decade longer than it should have been allowed, Duke has polluted rivers and groundwater with unlined coal ash ponds. The state and DEQ enabled them.

After a massive coal ash spill in Kingston, TN in 2009, the EPA started inspecting coal ash ponds around the country. They determined that several of Duke’s ponds in North Carolina were a “significant hazard” and a potential huge environmental disaster (Smith, 2014). In North Carolina, coal ash ponds are under the purview of the Department of National Resources (DENR). Many states have separate departments for natural resources and the environment. The dual mission of both helping companies monetize nature and keep it clean creates a conflict of interest. In 2010, NC’s DENR inspected Duke’s 14 coal ash ponds and, in contrast to the EPA, found no issues (Porter, 2014).

Duke built a coal ash pond at the Dan River Power Station, in Eden, North Carolina, in the 1950s. They installed an 800 foot pipe under the pond to route fresh rainwater to the Dan River (Wireback, 2015). Inspectors discovered the pipe leaking coal ash in 1979 and first repaired the pipe in 1981. Duke then paid for inspections of the pipe every five years. Probably feeling bolstered by DENR’s report and not wanting to find conflicting information, Duke refused to pay for an inspection in 2011 (Henderson, 2015).

In 2012, the state elected 29 year veteran Duke employee Pat McCory (R) as NC’s governor (Henderson, 2016). McCory appointed businessman John Skvarla (R) to head DENR. Skvarla believed that DENR should focus on developing natural resources and reduced the power of state scientists to make water quality decisions without his approval (Woodman, 2014). As a result of Skvarla’s appointment, a lot of long term DERN employees either resigned or were removed (Wheeler, 2014).

In 2013, environmental groups gathered evidence of toxins in several rivers downstream of Duke’s coal ash ponds. They gave notice to Duke that they were going to sue the company in a civil action under the Clean Water Act. DENR responded to the lawsuit by claiming state supremacy; negating the pending civil lawsuit and moving the case to state court. DENR then moved to exclude the environmental groups from their lawsuit (Porter, 2014).

Since released emails sent from state lawyers to Duke indicate that DENR coordinated their lawsuit with the company (Light, 2014). Over objections, a NC judge allowed environmental groups to join DENR’s Clean Water Act lawsuit against Duke’s coal ash ponds. DENR entered into a consent decree with Duke to allow them to pay a modest, $100 thousand, fine that did not require Duke to stop leaching of harmful toxins from their coal ash ponds (Porter, 2014). As part of their lawsuit, DENR gathered water samples of their own that showed toxic levels of coal ash pollutants in rivers across the state; including in the Dan River. DENR never asked Duke to fix the issues (Smith, 2014).

Just a few months after the consent decree, in early 2014, the pipe that ran under the Dan River Power Station coal ash pond failed and the Dan River filled with over 30 million tons of coal ash and coal ash water. Duke CEO Lynn Good stated that customers wouldn’t pay for the coal ash cleanup (Henderson, 2014). A month after the disaster, DENR announced it would issue permits to Duke to continue to allow seeping of coal ash water at its coal ash ponds throughout the state. A judge disagreed and prevented DENR from issuing the permits. Environmental groups demanded that the EPA takeover cleanup efforts of the Dan River because Duke and DENR couldn’t be trusted (Smith, 2014).

In response to the Dan River spill and using the vehicle of the existing Clean Water Act lawsuit, a NC judge ordered Duke to cleanup all 14 of its coal ash ponds (Leslie, 2014). The Republican controlled NC General Assembly responded by passing a bill allowing Duke to keep its coal ash ponds in place. DENR then let Duke halt cleanup of the Dan River, calling the remaining coal ash, “naturally sequestered” even as riverkeepers continued to find coal ash in the river (Victory, n.d.). Suspicious of collusion, The US Department of Justice launched an investigation of 19 employees of DENR to determine if they received gifts or cash from Duke (Smith, 2014).

News headlines from the time question the relationship between Duke, DENR and the state government:
“Federal Prosecutors Launch Criminal Investigation of NC Environmental Regulators,” EHS Today, “Former NC DENR workers talk about coal ash, water quality and the department’s new direction,” News & Observer, “How DENR ran interference for Duke Energy and let the Dan River spill happen,” Indy Week, “Meet the environmental ‘regulator’ who hates science: John Skvarla's coal ash mess,” Salon, “McCrory’s Duke Energy ties, and coal ash response, become a campaign issue,” Charlotte Observer, “Were North Carolina Regulators Helping Duke Energy Avoid Big Fines?,” Billmoyers.

In 2015, the NC General Assembly passed a law reforming environmental regulations in the state. The law created a framework to prevent public disclosure of environmental inspection reports when requested by polluters. It also created exemptions to civil penalties for issues found during environmental inspections. The EPA, which has jurisdiction over the Clean Water Act, didn’t allow the regulations to take effect. As part of the law, DENR changed their name to the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). Despite the name change, very little differed in their scope (Ware, 2015). Later in the year, DEQ granted Duke a permit allowing the company to ship coal ash from the Dan River to unlined clay mines in eastern North Carolina (Song, 2019).

DEQ settled with Duke over the Dan River spill with a record $25 million fine (Schlanger, 2016). Duke then plead guilty to Clean Water Act violations for leaching coal ash ponds in Eden, Moncure, Asheville, Goldsboro and Mt. Holly. For the violations, the EPA fined Duke $102 million (Duke, 2015). Between 2000 and 2016, Duke accumulated 1.6 billion in government fines for 26 environmental violations (Violation, n.d.).

In early 2016, Duke claimed that it would not clean up six of its coal ash ponds because they’re low risk (Victory, n.d.). In response, DEQ reduced their fine from $25 million to $6.8 million. It later reduced the fine to just $6 million (Song, 2016). Frustrated by the lack of action, gubernatorial candidate Roy Cooper (D) accused governor Pat McCory of being too lenient on his former employer, Duke Energy. Cooper would go on to win the 2016 election for governor (Henderson, 2016).

In 2018, Duke broke a promise and increased energy rates on NC consumers to cover $232 million of coal ash cleanup costs (Burns, 2018). Duke requested an additional rate increase of $472 million which the state denied (NC, 2018). The new administration in Raleigh took a tougher stance against Duke. In 2018, the state fined Duke $156 thousand for failure to clean up its coal ash ponds (Dalesio, 2018). NC regulators then ordered Duke to refund NC consumers $60 million in deferred taxes. The NC Utilities commission stepped in where DEQ wouldn’t and fined Duke $70 million for coal ash mishandling (N, 2018).

Amidst all the fines, an environmental group, NC WARN, exposed how Duke dropped more than $80 million a year on influence spending, “targeted philanthropy,” via the Duke Energy Foundation (Fain, 2018). Duke respond by threatening NC WARN with a libel lawsuit if they didn’t remove Duke’s lobbying information from their website. NC WARN refused to remove the data and explained that Duke funded its lobbying from fees collected on their customer’s power bills. NC Warn filed a petition with the NC Utilities Commission demanding a stop to the practice (Groups, 2018).

DEQ continued to side with Duke much later then would be otherwise expected. In 2018, DEQ agreed with Duke that its remaining coal ash ponds might be low risk enough to not need excavating (Boraks, 2018). Then disaster hit the state as Hurricane Florence caused a coal ash spill at a Duke plant outside of Wilmington, NC (Niquetteand, 2018). Perhaps influenced by the Wilmington spill, DEQ finally decided to break things off with Duke. In April 2019, DEQ ordered Duke to clean up all their coal ash ponds in the state. Duke didn’t take the breakup well and sued DEQ. Duke argued that the company should be able to cap their coal ash ponds in situ and that the company wasn’t granted enough due process (Downey, 2019).

In response to Duke’s lawsuit, in July, the Feds, NC and Virginia sued Duke for damage caused by the 2014 Dan River spill (Morehouse, 2019). In the fall, a NC Judge rejected Duke’s procedural arguments against DEQ’s order to clean up all the coal ash ponds. A different NC judge ruled that DEQ wrongly granted a permit to Duke in 2015 allowing the company to ship coal ash to clay mines in eastern NC (Song, 2019). Sensing the change in the judicial and executive climate, Duke settled the Clean Water Act lawsuit brought by DEQ and environmental groups in 2013 and agreed to move most of its coal ash to above ground landfills. Pundits hailed the agreement as a win for the environment. DEQ blew Duke a final kiss and structured the agreement to allow two coal ash ponds to only be partially excavated, saving the company $1.5 billion (Baker, 2020).

The story of Duke and its coal ash ponds is an actual life conspiracy. DEQ neglected its duty to the people of North Carolina and fought to protect its powerful friends, the polluters. DEQ can’t be sued and won’t be held responsible for its part in the Dan River disaster. Duke put the lives of countless people at risk long after it knew it should clean up its pollution. To achieve its goals, the company manipulated all levels of government in North Carolina and threatened legal action against its critics. If the company had simply accepted its responsibility to the state and its customers, the coal ash pollution could have been cleaned up years ago.

References can be found here

The Messy Straw

Everyone keeps saying Americans use 500 millions straws a day (Jacopo, 2018). The claim originated in 2011 with then nine year old Milo Cress (Langone, 2018). Since then, the claim has been published everywhere and had a huge impact on public policy. In the last two years, straw bans have been moving across the country one city at a time (Gibbens, 2019). This despite the fact that the central claim, that Americans use 500 million straws, has been widely debunked. Even Cress has said that people “should take it for what it is, which is a rough estimate from seven or eight years ago by a nine-year-old” (Graves, 2018). What gets lost in this debate is the truth. Straws aren’t a huge source of plastic pollution. 

No one actually knows how many straws are used in a day. It’s well below 500 million (Graves, 2018). Neither does most plastic come from the US. Close to 90% of all ocean plastic comes from only ten rivers in Asia and Africa (Patel, 2018). Not only do straws contribute little overall plastic to the world, eliminating them could be worse for the environment. Starbucks has developed new lids to replace straws. Those lids actually contain more plastic then the straws they replaced (Mahdawi, 2018).

We’re left with a dilemma. Is it better to signal to the world support for the environment with straw bans that might be counterproductive or should the messy truth be the message instead? Like most issues, reality is more complicated than the debate we’re having. 

References listed here