Big Sandy coal plant. (Chris M / Flickr)

She’s big, dirty and 42-years old—that’s old in power plant years.

They call her Big Sandy in Kentucky and she has two and a half years to clean up her act until she’s either shut down or replaced with newer, cleaner energy resources.

Right now, she burns millions of tons of coal each year, equaling about 90 railroad cars of the black fuel every day. She emits more than 37,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, 3,700 tons of nitrogen oxides, and 5.6 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2010. That’s a whole lot of air pollution.

The Kentucky Power Company, owned by mega-energy giant American Electric Power, had proposed a near billion dollar upgrade to make the coal-fired power plant based in Louisa, legal and clean up her air pollution. But the price tag would be passed along to Kentucky ratepayers, who were bracing for a more than 30 percent increase in their electricity bills.

A giant ponderosa pine. Photo: USFS.

Over this past long weekend, spent backpacking in California's Sierra Nevada mountains, I was reminded of a memorable method for distinguishing two of our stateliest trees. Though these two specimens are similar in many respects, the pine cones of "prickly ponderosa" have small spikes that point outwards, while those of "gentle Jeffrey" curve inward. (The bark of Jeffrey pines additionally smells like butterscotch or vanilla, which makes ID'ing them doubly delicious.)

But lo, after a string of days spent with these gentle giants, I returned to some sobering news. The Associated Press reports that smog pollution is weakening the growth of ponderosa and Jeffrey pine stands in California's Sequoia National Park. Ozone, the primary component of smog, inhibits the trees' ability to perform photosynthesis, evidenced by a yellowing of their bundles of long needles.

If you need a refresher, photosynthesis is the process by which plants harness energy from the sun and convert it into cellular energy. That energy is conferred to us animals when we eat plants. So, you know, it's really important.

A bison, but not one of the 27 bison transported back to Yellowstone.

A group of 27 bison occupying privately owned grazing lands outside of Yellowstone National Park’s western border were detained by authorities on May 24. The group of animals included 12 newborn calves, 12 mothers, and three juveniles.

The Montana Department of Livestock led the raid with support from the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks; the National Park Service; the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service; and the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office. The bison were rounded up into a trap, placed on livestock trailers, and transported back inside park boundaries. They were released on their own recognizance into the Fountain Flats area. The raid was conducted following six weeks of surveillance and hazing that had been unsuccessful in persuading the bison to peaceably disperse and acknowledge the private property rights of landowners in the Yellowstone region.

All joking aside, whatever happened to wild animals being, you know, wild? And, for that matter, when did being a wild animal become illegal?

(Cambridge Brewing Company)

Breweries worry that extreme gas drilling will frack their beer
It turns out that hydraulic gas drilling or fracking doesn’t just contaminate the air and water; it could also mess up your favorite brew, reports Mother Jones. Brewmasters like Brooklyn Brewery and upstate New York’s Ommegang Brewery are raising the alarm about toxic fracking chemicals like benzene making their way to America’s beers through weak fracking regulations that don’t protect an area’s water supply. After all, beer brewing takes a whole lot of water and places like the Brooklyn Brewery often get their water from local watersheds. The Brewery’s founder, Steve Hindy, says that fracking threatens the purity of his beer. New York has promised to ban high-volume fracking in areas where the city sources its water, but environmental groups like Earthjustice say that the state’s rules are weak and leave aquifers vulnerable to contamination by fracking chemicals. Find out how we’re helping breweries like Ommegang to keep their beer from being fracked.

Domino’s pizza’s meat policy makes little piggies cry
Domino’s may have recently had an artisanal makeover, but the pizza giant still isn’t budging on its policy to continue serving pork from pigs raised in gestation crates, reports Grist. For the uninitiated, gestation crates are cages about the same width and length of a pig’s body, a space so small that the pigs are unable to even turn around in the crates. Given that pigs are extremely smart animals capable of feeling fear, pain and stress, many food vendors have been successfully pressured into working with its pork suppliers to eliminate the cruel practice, but not Domino’s, which is one of the last holdouts in the industry. It looks like Domino’s new “artisan toppings,” meant for food-conscious customers, is just lipstick on both the proverbial and the literal pig.  
 

The Green River has been listed as one of the "most endangered rivers" in the country. (NPS)

It’s been a tough spring for rivers in the Rocky Mountain West. After a winter that never really got started, the snow pack—our primary source for water in our rivers—is historically low in Colorado and throughout the region. Runoff from snow melt is sparse and came early, leaving behind disappointing river peak flows. The last time we were in this situation the river life suffered and it looks like we’re heading that way again.

Despite this dark outlook, we received some great news (along with some refreshing heavy spring rains) here in Denver last week—news that gives us hope for one of our favorite rivers, the Green.

OR7, well camouflaged.
(Richard Shinn / DFG)

Oh, Journey, we know you are lonely. We know you have been searching for that special girl, maybe even from California. The search has been long—months long. We know you broke the pack rules, crossed the state of Oregon and then the California state border looking for love and made national news doing it.

But recent reports say you’ve been hanging out with the wrong crowd. They say you’ve traded in your lone wolf status and are hanging with … the coyotes.

I know they are fun. I hear them often, laughing and carrying on all hours of the night. But, Journey, you are not going to find that special gal hanging with those California cavorters. If you aren’t careful and officials see hybrid babies of yours and one of those coyotes, the California Department of Fish and Game has to kill them.

Sometimes an all-in strategy can tarnish the entire package.

Take for example President Obama’s recent decision to tout an “all-of-the-above” approach to achieving energy independence and lowering gas prices. It’s a catchy, feel-good campaign slogan perfect for banners and sound bites, but it’s a hollow energy strategy. Worse yet, it opens America up for destructive practices by painting the administration into a fossil-fuel corner.

Recently, House Republicans seized on Obama’s vulnerable position by successfully insisting that the administration add “clean coal” to its energy policy website. Never mind that coal is dirty at every step of the process, from mining to burning to disposing of the waste. It’s also the source of 99 percent of mercury from the U.S. power sector and the largest source of carbon pollution in the U.S.

Even the coal industry knows that coal is dirty, which is why it has tried desperately to rebrand its baby as “clean coal,” an oxymoron at its finest. The lynch-pin of “clean coal,” carbon sequestration, is wildly expensive and doesn’t address local pollution problems.

Trains transport coal to export terminals in open cars, a mile-and-a-half long. (Shutterstock)

(Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of blog posts by the author on issues related to proposed coal exporting from the Northwest.)

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."

—John Muir

We are often reminded—perhaps nowhere more profoundly than in nature—that life does not persist solely of its own volition. When we look closer, we invariably find that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In German, the phenomenon is called gestalt—the notion of the unified whole.

This is the proper lens through which to analyze the increasingly controversial issue of coal export in the Pacific Northwest. With domestic demand for coal waning in the United States, coal companies seek to ship as much coal as possible from Montana and Wyoming’s Powder River Basin to emerging Asian economies. Thus, there are six coal export terminal projects currently proposed for Pacific Northwest ports: Longview, Wash.; Bellingham, Wash.; Grays Harbor, Wash.; Coos Bay, Ore.; the Kinder Morgan terminal at Port of St. Helens, Ore.; and the Ambre Energy project with facilities at the Port of Morrow and the Port of St. Helens, Ore.

An environmental analysis examining each project in piecemeal fashion would not address the overall cumulative impacts to the region’s environmental health and quality of life. The cumulative impacts of the proposed coal export terminals would be significant:

Twenty-two environmental organizations including Earthjustice, representing more than 5 million Americans, sent a letter to President Obama on Friday, urging him to lead the U.S. delegation at the Rio+20 Earth Summit in June and be a strong advocate for action on clean energy, environmental rights and healthy oceans.

More than 130 heads of state and government leaders are expected to attend. Like the first Earth Summit in Rio 20 years ago, this gathering will help set the international agenda on environment and sustainability for the next 20 years.

The Earth Summit presents a rare opportunity for the global community to ratchet up action on issues like healthy oceans in the face of new challenges like ocean acidification. Ocean acidification is thought by many to be the greatest threat to marine ecology in this century, and is squarely on the agenda at Rio+20. Coral reefs—the nurseries of the sea—along with the shelled creatures that form the base of the marine food web are among the species and ecosystems most vulnerable to acidification.

New-fangled clothes washers (and dishwashers) save money, water and energy.

We know we have been critical of the Obama administration of late, calling on the Department of Energy to get moving on publishing crucial energy efficiency standards. But we are happy to applaud the administration when they make good on their promise for a clean energy future. The latest: new clothes washer and dishwasher standards will not only save American consumers money on their utility bills, but will lead to washers that use much less energy and water.

Earthjustice participated in negotiations that led to a joint agreement between manufacturers and environmental and consumer advocates recommending the standards that DOE has now adopted. Specifically clothes washers will use up to 35 percent less energy and water and dishwashers will use about 14 percent less energy and 23 percent less water.