Oil Spill
Jackson County cities concerned about oil spill claims offices opening
tomorrow
Mississippi Press
By Kaija Wilkinson
PASCAGOULA, Mississippi - At 8 Monday morning, the BP oil spill Gulf Coast
Claims Facility is set to give way to a new, court-supervised process.
http://blog.gulflive.com/mississippi-press-news/2012/06/jackson_county_cities_concerne.html
University of West Florida: Most oil from BP spill gone from Gulf along
Panhandle
Pensacola News Journal
Pensacola, Florida (PNJ) -- Two years after tar balls from the Deepwater
Horizon oil well explosion began washing up on Pensacola Beach and Perdido
Key, there's good news: Most of the oil is gone from Florida waters.
http://www.wtsp.com/news/article/257748/19/Scientists-Most-oil-from-spill-gone-from-along-Panhandle
Gulf oil spill claims process is now governed by negotiated settlement
Published: Saturday, June 02, 2012, 10:00 PM
By David Hammer, The Times-Picayune
It's a new era for thousands of victims of BP's 2010 Gulf oil spill, as
facilities supervised by a federal judge will start taking economic-loss
and medical claims and begin paying them based on the strict terms of a
negotiated settlement. The Deepwater Horizon Claims Center, run by
court-appointed administrator Patrick Juneau, will open 18 intake centers
across the Gulf Coast next week to accept claims of economic and business
losses
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2012/06/gulf_oil_spill_claims_process_1.html
BP Judge in Criminal Case Discloses Owning Camp Near Spill Area
Bloomberg
The federal judge in New Orleans overseeing the first criminal prosecution
stemming from the BP Plc (BP/) Gulf of Mexico oil spill asked lawyers in
the case to weigh in on whether he has a conflict of interest.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-06-01/bp-judge-in-criminal-spill-case-may-have-ethical-conflict
State News
Beach warnings up but MDEQ says water is safe
Sun Herald
Published: June 2, 2012
More warnings of high bacteria levels along Coast beaches have been
reported in five months than in the past year, but records show waters
along the 40 miles of shoreline are not teeming with toilet flushings or
other unsanitary waste.
http://www.sunherald.com/2012/06/02/3984949/beach-warnings-up-but-mdeq-says.html#storylink=misearch
EPA grant to fund Hernando cleanup estimate
Commercial Appeal
By Henry Bailey
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Aiming to be proactive for development, Hernando will use a federal
$400,000 "brownfields" grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to do
a community assessment of blighted but potentially viable sites, city
officials said.
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2012/jun/03/grant-to-fund-cleanup-estimate/
Second industrial accident death at Mississippi Phosphates
WLOX
For the second time in two weeks, a worker was killed Friday at the
Mississippi Phosphates plant in Pascagoula.
http://www.wlox.com/story/18680719/second-industrial-accident-death-at-mississippi-phosphates
Outdoors Notebook for June 3
Commercial Appeal
Sunday, June 3, 2012
So, What's going on?
The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality said recently that no
obvious cause could be determined for the fish kill that occurred in late
May on Sardis Lake.
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2012/jun/03/no-headline---2012-06-02-232704006649/
"My yard is a sewer": Drainage woes plague neighborhood
Commercial Dispatch
Rachel Campbell has lived at the west end of Carver Drive in Starkville,
since 1981.
http://www.cdispatch.com/news/article.asp?aid=17344
Mississippi's Battle to Keep Nutrients in Place
Farm Futures
Chasing down farmers leads me to some fascinating places. This week I got
to visit the place where Muddy Waters, one of God's gifts to music and a
cherished American blues icon, cut his teeth.
Stovall Plantation, near Clarksdale, Mississippi, happens to be where
Waters grew up.
http://farmfutures.com/blogs.aspx?fcb=20&fcbp=3296&fcbpc=0&s=4/30/2012&e=6/30/2012
Some want states to regulate red snapper instead of federal government
By Ben Raines
Press-Register
MOBILE, Alabama -- For a growing group of scientists, regulators and
fishermen, the red snapper has come to symbolize all that is wrong with the
way the federal government manages the nation's fisheries.
http://blog.al.com/live/2012/06/some_want_states_to_regulate_r.html
National News
GOP senators question 'same old, same old' policies at EPA after court
ruling
The Hill
By Ramsey Cox - 06/01/12 03:26 PM ET
A group of Republican senators demanded an explanation from the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on how its practices will change
after a recent Supreme Court ruling on the Clean Water Act.
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/230523-gop-senators-question-same-old-same-old-policies-at-epa-after-court-ruling
Moran: Trials, triumphs and intriguing future of EPA head Lisa Jackson
By Tom Moran
The Star-Ledger
WASHINGTON — To find the hottest flash point between President Obama and
his Republican opponents these days, take the Metro to the Federal Triangle
stop and visit Lisa Jackson.
http://blog.nj.com/njv_tom_moran/2012/06/moran_trials_triumphs_and_intr.html
TransCanada adjusts plan for pipeline near Texas coast to avoid wetlands,
address EPA concerns
By Associated Press,
HOUSTON — A Canadian company seeking to build a pipeline to transport crude
oil from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries has submitted a new application
for the southern segment of the project that avoids sensitive wetlands in
Texas.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/energy-environment/transcanada-adjusts-plan-for-pipeline-near-texas-coast-to-avoid-wetlands-address-epa-concerns/2012/05/31/gJQASGeS5U_story.html
Arsenic in drinking water deemed 'safe' could harm mothers and children,
study finds
By Loren Grush
Published June 01, 2012
FoxNews.com
advertisement
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), drinking water
with low levels of arsenic – 10 parts per billion – has been deemed
nontoxic and okay for human consumption. However, new research has
revealed that the water may not be so 'safe' to drink after all.
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/06/01/arsenic-in-drinking-water-deemed-afe-could-harm-mothers-and-children-study/
Opinion
Why we ignore low-tech fixes for the climate
Washington Post
By Brad Plumer, Published: June 1 | Updated: Saturday, June 2, 12:00 PM
Whenever the conversation turns to greening the world's energy supply, a
lot of the ideas tend to emphasize new and futuristic sources of power.
Build more wind turbines. Stack up more solar panels. Make sure fresh coal
plants don't get built.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/why-we-ignore-low-tech-fixes-for-the-climate/2012/06/01/gJQAVUUm7U_blog.html
Press Releases
EPA Draft Ammonia Assessment Available for Public Comment
Draft assessment continues agency's responsiveness to NAS recommendations
WASHINGTON – The U.S Environmental Protection Agency today announced the
release of its draft Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) health
assessment for ammonia. The draft assessment will be available for public
comment for 60 days and will be sent for independent expert peer review.
Ammonia is used in agricultural fertilizers, the manufacture of
pharmaceuticals and explosives, water purification, household cleaners, as
a refrigerant, and in many industries. Scientific studies show that ammonia
can affect the respiratory system. The draft assessment includes an
estimate of the amount of ammonia a person can inhale daily throughout a
lifetime that is not likely to cause harmful health effects, which is less
stringent than the current value for ammonia on IRIS.
The draft IRIS assessment for ammonia represents major progress for EPA in
implementing the April 2011 National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
recommendations for improving IRIS assessments. The draft assessment uses a
new streamlined document structure that is more transparent and clear;
includes a template for describing the literature search approach;
identifies the strengths and weaknesses of analyzed studies; and describes
how EPA applied their guidance, methods, and criteria in developing the
assessment.
When the assessment is final it will be posted to the IRIS database. IRIS
is a publicly available online database that provides high quality
science-based human health assessments used to inform the agency's
decisions on protecting public health and the environment.
The IRIS database contains crucial information on more than 550 chemical
substances and their impacts on human health. Governments and private
entities use data from IRIS in conjunction with exposure information to
help characterize the public health risks of chemical substances. These
characterizations are then considered in risk management decisions to
protect public health.
More information about IRIS: http://www.epa.gov/iris
More information about the draft IRIS assessment for ammonia:
http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncea/iris_drafts/recordisplay.cfm?deid=200305
More information about improvements to IRIS:
http://www.epa.gov/iris/process.htm
EPA Updates Clean Air Act Standards for Flares and Process Heaters at
Petroleum Refineries
Practical standards, informed by stakeholder and industry input, cut
harmful pollution while saving the refining industry money
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is issuing
common-sense standards informed by important input from stakeholders,
including industry, for new flares and process heaters at petroleum
refineries which maintain important public health benefits while
dramatically reducing costs. This final rule, which responds to petitions
requesting the agency to reconsider standards issued in 2008, provides
industry with greater compliance flexibility than those earlier standards
did and ensures that companies can make routine operational changes without
triggering new requirements. These updates will reduce emissions of sulfur
dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds, which can cause
respiratory illnesses, heart attacks and premature deaths, while saving the
refining industry approximately $80 million per year. These reductions will
also provide up to $610 million in annual health benefits.
Today's final standards are flexible and rely on proven, widely used
technologies and processes to cut pollution from flares and process
heaters. Flares, which are typically used to burn off waste gases from the
refining process, would need to follow work practice standards and meet
monitoring requirements. Process heaters, which are used to heat process
fluids, would need to meet emission limits for nitrogen oxides. The final
standards also encourage refineries to recover gas that can be used as fuel
to power equipment at the refinery.
These standards will reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen
oxides (NOx), and volatile organic compounds, which react in the air to
form fine particle pollution and ground-level ozone. While the revised
standards do not address greenhouse gas emissions, they will reduce carbon
dioxide emissions by as much as 2 million tons per year as a co-benefit.
EPA's final rule responds to petitions requesting the agency to reconsider
the final standards issued in 2008 and provides a clear path forward for
refineries to meet these important standards and protect public health.
More information: http://www.epa.gov/ttn/oarpg/new.html
