A male polar bear patrols the pack ice edge in the Chukchi Sea, Alaska. (Florian Schulz / visionsofthewild.com)

As portions of the contiguous United States find themselves (perhaps a bit uncomfortably) in winter’s chilly embrace, a recently published study in the scientific journal Marine Biology may shed new light on the wintry lifestyles of the Arctic regions of our country.

During this season, Arctic areas like the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, off the northern coast of Alaska, experience months of ‘polar nights’—times when the sun fails to make an appearance (making for a veritable vampire haven, one might say).

The extreme degree of coldness of these winter months is key to the survival of species like the polar bear and ringed seals, who depend on the restoration of thick sea ice (long since diminished during the warmer spring and summer months) in order to hunt and raise their young.

The American Coal Ash Association is trying with might to mislead us. In a recent press release, they exaggerated the impact the Environmental Protection Agency’s rulemaking process is having on coal ash recycling, claiming a decrease in the recycling of combustion waste from coal plants since the EPA started work on a coal ash rule.The industry group stated the recycling rate “stalled in 2008 and 2009 as EPA reopened its coal ash regulatory agenda following the failure of a coal ash disposal facility in Tennessee.” 

However, the collapse of the TVA pond occurred in December 2008, and thus would have had no impact whatsoever on recycling rates that year.  The truth of the matter is that recycling rates fell in this period largely because of a downturn in the construction industry.

Coos Bay, Oregon. (Brian Burger/Creative Commons)

A new battle has emerged in the fight over proposed coal export terminals in the Pacific Northwest.

The Oregon Department of State Lands recently issued a permit allowing the Port of Coos Bay to conduct the largest dredging project in an estuary in state history. The permit allows for dredging of the first 1.75 million cubic yards (mcy) of a 5.6-mcy project.

The reason for the massive dredging effort: Coos Bay—a town of about 16,000 people on the remote southern Oregon coast—has been targeted for construction of a coal export terminal and a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility.

Earthjustice, representing a coalition of local residents, grassroots environmental, and clean-energy groups, in early January filed an appeal of the Oregon Department of State Lands’ decision to green light the $100 million project. While the “multi-purpose” dredging permit was initially sought to develop an LNG import terminal, the Port of Coos Bay recently entered into a confidential agreement with an undisclosed coal export company seeking to send coal overseas to Asia, and LNG backers have changed their plans to now export domestic gas instead.

The uplifting movie Big Miracle, opening this weekend, has the power to educate people across the country about America’s Arctic Ocean, along with the people and wildlife that call it home.

This is the same place Royal Dutch Shell is planning to drill in our Arctic waters this summer—with no viable method to clean up an oil spill in these extreme conditions. And President Obama has the power to stop them.

A Burmese python. (wildexplorer)

Pythons and anacondas put the squeeze on the Everglades
Forget snakes on a plane. Snakes like pythons and anacondas are taking over the Florida Everglades and eating everything—including rabbits, raccoons and even deer—in sight, reports the Washington Post. Thanks to reckless owners releasing pets they no longer want, invasive snakes are slowly climbing their way to the top of the swamp food chain to the detriment of the Everglade ecosystem, which has been listed as a World Heritage Site and boasts many rare and endangered species like alligators and wood rats. The ecological upset puts added stress on an area already plagued by water pollution from nearby industrial sugar growing operations—a problem that Earthjustice has helped clean up through recurring litigation over the last two decades. Though the Obama administration recently banned the import and interstate commerce of several snake species, others like the boa constrictor managed to slither by, which means that the snake problem may not be going away anytime soon.

Bagged greens industry gets down and dirty with contamination
The salad greens industry is trying to clean up its E. coli-tainted image by exploring new options to keep its greens clean, reports the LA Times. Over the past few years, headlines about people being sickened by bacteria-tainted greens have caused consumers to lose faith in the industry’s ability to keep salad greens safe. The easiest way to eliminate bacteria is to, of course, cook the greens, but nobody wants soggy baby spinach, so the researchers are looking into alternative methods like chlorine alternatives, radiation and even ultrasound to remove germs from tainted lettuce. In the meantime, health experts continue to argue about whether rinsing those “triple-washed” bagged lettuces makes them safer…or more dangerous. Until the debate is settled, many agree that bagging bagged lettuce and growing your own greens may just be your best (and tastiest) option.

In addition to being Groundhog Day, Feb. 2 is World Wetlands Day. Say what? An international day to celebrate swamps? If you’re scratching your head wondering why in the world we’d throw a party for swamps (and bogs and marshes and fens and floodplains and other wet, buggy places), here’s why:

Wetlands protect us. They’re our best buffer from floods and storms, better than any levees we could ever build -- after all, an acre of wetland can store 1–1.5 million gallons of floodwater. They are also our best pollution filter, absorbing the nasty stuff we can't drink and easing the workload for our man-made drinking water sanitation systems. And they keep our ecosystems alive, providing healthy habitats and resting places to the birds, critters and plants we need in order to continue to thrive in our own environment, wherever that may be.

Great thinkers all the whole world over recognized this more than 40 years ago when they came together in the Iranian city of Ramsar and signed a global treaty called the Ramsar Convention to protect the planet’s invaluable wetlands.

You probably pass by them all the time on the street without giving them a second glance: those gray cylinders on telephone poles. They are called distribution transformers -- and they are a crucial component of the electric grid. They serve to reduce the high voltage used in distribution lines to the lower voltages we use in our homes, offices and businesses.

Earthjustice has worked for several years to strengthen efficiency standards for these units because the inefficient models waste a huge amount of energy. In 2007, along with Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and several states, we sued the Department of Energy to force improvements to weak standards adopted under President Bush. When DOE settled that case with us in 2009 and agreed to release revised standards, we had high hopes that President Obama’s professed commitment to energy efficiency would translate into strong new standards. But yesterday, DOE released dismally weak new standards that pass up the cost-effective energy savings that DOE’s own analysis shows that stronger standards would deliver.

While much has been made of the $535 million loan guarantee made to the failed Solyndra Corporation in 2009 to encourage alternative energy, you may have missed the court decision this week, halting expansion plans for a Kansas coal plant facing similar problems.

The ruling underscores how deadbeat coal plants can be even more costly for taxpayers.

Back in 1980, Sunflower Generation Corporation in Kansas received $543 million in federal loans and loan guarantees (taxpayer money). Like Solyndra, they were not able to pay that money back. So they arranged deals with the federal government to “restructure” the loans, multiple times. Sunflower was unable to repay taxpayers due to financial strain related to over-built Holcomb I, the existing coal plant Sunflower owns.

Sunflower now charges ahead with plans for an even bigger facility. The proposed multi-billion dollar, 895-megawatt coal-fired power plant expansion is designed to serve the western grid through a deal with Colorado-based Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association. Kansas gets the pollution, Colorado gets most of the power.

Josh Fox, in a scene from the Oscar-nominated documentary Gasland.

It’s no surprise that oil and gas industry friendly politicians have fought to allow industry to keep secret the list of chemicals they pump underground during the fracking.

But today, they apparently decided to extend that secrecy to congressional committee activities, when members of a House Science Subcommittee on Energy and Environment refused to allow an ABC television news crew and the Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Josh Fox to film today’s hearing on groundwater contamination linked to fracking in Pavillion, Wyoming. When Fox protested, he was arrested, despite the objections of some committee members.

Earthjustice Legislative Representative Jessica Ennis was there and caught the moment on film:

As Jessica later told reporters: “The public has a right to know what chemicals oil and gas companies are pumping into the ground. And they also deserve to know which politicians are trying to protect these same companies at the expense of the people of Pavillion, Wyoming.”

Grey whales are among the creatures threatened by sonar testing.

Environmental groups and some Indian tribes, represented by Earthjustice, have gone to court to get the U.S. Navy to change the way it trains off the West Coast to avoid harming whales, dolphins and porpoises.

The Navy currently has a permit from the National Marine Fisheries Service, allowing it to train from Northern California to the Canadian border. In its training, the Navy uses all kinds of weapon and surveillance tools, including mid-frequency sonar. This is super high-powered sonar blasts used to “see” underwater. The sound waves bounce off objects like the seafloor or enemy subs and the echo is picked up and read by the Navy ships.

The problem is that the high-powered underwater sound blasts can harass, injure or kill whales, dolphins and porpoises, which are already extremely sensitive to sound. These animals send and receive sound waves to “see” and communicate underwater. Their ability to pick up sound is so good that some whales can hear each other under water hundreds of miles apart.