Daily Quick Read - August 2, 2019

Ash Holes

Coal ash is the waste left over from the burning of coal in power plants.  Its loaded with chemicals like arsenic, lead, mercury, selenium and other potentially toxic material.  Coal fired power plants generate 140 million tons of the stuff ever year.  They load up hazardous waste storage areas with it, but the EPA rules also allow coal ash to be used as replacement soil and in public landfills as a cover material.  The Obama EPA placed limit on the amount of coal ash that could be used in this manner.  The Trump EPA is pulling the plug on those limits.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed lifting some regulations on coal ash, the residue left after burning coal, which is filled with hazardous substances that can leach into the water supply and cause health problems.

“I can say without hesitation that this is an extremely dangerous proposal that will do lasting harm to communities near coal ash reuse sites and coal ash waste piles,” said Lisa Evans, senior counsel with Earthjustice.

Coal ash is used in a variety of ways, largely as a replacement for soil. It can be used to create level ground for construction projects or sprinkled over landfills as a protective cover.

Calling All Hackers

Two Australians, William Laurance and David Salt, have a modest proposal for internet users and aspiring hackers. Turn you net surfing and hacking skills to helping stop the $23 billion annual trade in illegal wildlife and wildlife parts. Much of this trade happens on sites like Facebook, eBay and Alibaba despite its illegality.

The trade in illegal wildlife and wildlife parts is estimated to be worth over US$23 billion per year, making it one of the most profitable criminal enterprises in the world. It affects thousands of species — not only elephants and rhinos but big cats, hornbills, orangutans, gorillas, songbirds, sharks, lizards, frogs and rare plants such as orchids.

Most countries have signed up to CITES — the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora — which makes it illegal to trade in imperiled animals and plants. But illegal trade just keeps growing. A key reason is that the Internet has transformed global markets — allowing consumers to buy almost anything anywhere, while remaining relatively anonymous and communicating across territorial borders with ease. In Thailand, for instance, a recent report by the wildlife group TRAFFIC found 200 wildlife species openly for sale on Facebook — more than half of which are protected by Thai law.

Most of the illegal trade is happening right before our eyes — on legitimate internet-auction sites such as eBay and Alibaba, in classified online ads, and in social-media chat rooms. (Some is superficially masked using code words to sell illegal ivory and other illicit wildlife items.) Hackers and even those with basic computer skills could have a big impact by searching out illegal traders and making the tech companies that own the online sites aware of them — and then pressuring the companies to shut the illegal traders down.

Frog Salad

It’s so convenient. Grab a plastic bag full of salad fixings – pre-washed and ready to serve – and presto, the salad course is ready to go.Sometimes some protein apparently slips into the mix.

A new study takes a look at the increasing problem of frogs, rodents, snakes, lizards, birds, and even a bat ending up in people's bagged produce.

A few years ago I wrote about all of the reasons that packaged greens are a horrible idea. Number 4 was the possibility of "free prizes" included inside. "The good news for one California woman is that she can be assured her choice of bagged salad was organic and uncut," I wrote, "as confirmed by the live frog she found in her package of greens. After recovering from the startle, she kept the frog and named it Dave."

You'd think stories like these are rare, right? Well it would be hard to know, since there is currently no public system to archive these incidents, write the authors of a new study taking a look at wild animals found in prepackaged produce in the United States.

One Born Every Minute

You have to wonder if the folks in West Virginia, after being thrown by the coal horse want to saddle up on a natural gas and plastic pony. And, you also have to wonder if the people of the region want the upper Ohio River corridor to become a rival to Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. But, Trump has their back.

West Virginia’s elected leaders see the vast reserves as a path to renewed political and economic relevance for the Mountain State, which they envision rivaling the Gulf Coast as a center for processing natural gas and producing plastics.

And to make that a reality, the state’s top officials have lined up behind a plan to spend as much as $10 billion to build a mammoth underground storage facility — big enough to hold the U.S. Capitol complex, or 10 million barrels of the liquid byproducts used in plastics manufacturing.

But a ProPublica examination has found that the proposed storage facility would be far larger than the region could support and that questions about its cost, its viability and its environmental risks have been overshadowed by a public relations strategy heavy on the politics of jobs and light on the economics of energy policy.

The Trump administration’s relations with China and Russia are adding to the questions about the hub. China had agreed to invest tens of billions of dollars in West Virginia’s natural gas industry but now is embroiled in a trade war with Trump. And American Ethane, a Houston-based company financed by three Russian businessmen, has signed 20-year contracts to send ethane produced in the United States to China, which could raise prices and weaken demand for the facility proposed for West Virginia.

It’s Infrastructure Week Again

                                                                                           Theo Stroomer for The New York Times

At Esquire, Charles Pierce links to a New York Times article about the collapse of a 100 year old irrigation tunnel in Wyoming. The result of this particular piece of crumbling infrastructure has been to shut off irrigation water for hundreds of farms. It’s unlikely that any of these folks will get any relief from the Trump administration. At least not until the next infrastructure week.

There is a massive crisis in the country's rural heartland. This crisis will not be solved by throwing some money at some soybean farmers. It involves the climate crisis. It involves the crumbling infrastructure.