EPA ANNOUNCES FINALIZED NESHAP FOR INDUSTRIAL, COMMERCIAL AND INSTITUTIONAL BOILERS

Notice of Final  Action on Reconsideration

In response to the public comments it received, the EPA has issued a Notice of Final Action on Reconsideration.

The EPA is retaining the minimum CO limit of 130 ppm and the PM CPMS requirements that were set out in the January 2013 rule.  The EPA has also made minor changes to the definition of startup and shutdown periods and work practices during these periods.

This final rule also makes a number of technical corrections and clarifications to 40 CFR Part 63, Subpart DDDDD.  This revision to the Boiler MACT affects facilities that operate industrial, commercial and institutional boilers and process heaters as well as emit 10 tons per year (tpy) of any single hazardous air pollutant (HAP) or 25 tpy of a combination of HAPs.

Source:

http://www.red-on-line.com/hse/2015/11/24/epa-decision-three-aspects-neshap-industrial-commercial-institutional-boilers-process-heaters-major-sources-us-ehs-002271

Sudden shutdown of Monticello nuclear power plant causes fish kill The sudden drop in temperature in the discharged cooling water resulted in a fish kill in the Mississippi River.

The Monticello, Minn., nuclear power plant was shut down suddenly on Monday after an equipment problem, causing a fish kill in the Mississippi River from thermal shock.

In a report to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Xcel Energy said it shut down the plant while operating at 100 percent power after a problem arose with a reactor pump. The utility said shutdown happened safely, with no release of radiation and no risk to the public.

But the sudden drop in temperature in the discharged cooling water resulted in a fish kill. Xcel said it counted 59 dead fish. The fish were crappies, sunfish, bass, catfish and carp, according to the state Department of Natural Resources, which was notified of the incident.

During unexpected shutdowns, the water temperature near the plant can drop from about 65 degrees to 40 degrees in a few hours, said Harland Hiemstra, a DNR information officer. The fish can't cope with the sudden change in temperature, he said. "It is thermal shock," he added.

DNR is monitoring the situation with Xcel's onsite biologist, he said. There is no evidence that the fish kill exceeded Xcel's count, he said. The utility will be assessed a penalty for each dead fish.

Read on at:

http://www.startribune.com/sudden-shutdown-of-monticello-nuclear-power-plant-causes-fish-kill/354007091/

Bacteria on the Brain

 The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/07/bacteria-on-the-brain

New process produces hydrogen from methane, without emitting CO2

Natural gas accounts for over 28 percent of US energy consumption. Its main component, methane, is a widely-used fossil fuel but also a major contributor to rising CO₂ levels, and thus climate change. To address this issue, researchers from the Institute of Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have developed a process that extracts the energy content of methane, in the form hydrogen, without producing carbon dioxide.

. Continue Reading New process produces hydrogen from Gizmag

Environmental health and justice and the right to research

Just now published in Environmental Health: A commentary on Alaska Natives' efforts to conduct breastmilk biomonitoring research, which to date, remains undone due to repeated IRB denials. We hope the commentary sparks conversations and more sharing of IRB experiences.

http://www.ehjournal.net/content/14/1/90

Home-sized biogas unit turns organic waste into cooking fuel and fertilizer, for under $900

 A startup from Israel has developed a home-sized biogas unit that can take organic waste and convert it into enough gas for 2-4 hours of cooking, as well as 5 to 8 liters of organic liquid fertilizer, every single day.

Please continue reading from: A-TreeHugger

Pesticide may be reason butterfly numbers are falling in UK, says study.

Neonicotinoids may be contributing towards the disappearance of butterflies from the countryside, according to the first scientific study on British butterflies. 
---- Environmental Health News

Parasite threatens honeybee populations this winter, scientist says

Parasite threatens honeybee populations this winter, scientist says
Honeybees could be in for a long, brutal winter, writes Dick Rogers, the principal scientist with the Bayer Bee Care Center in North Carolina. Since 2013, U.S. beekeepers have done a good job of reducing honey bee losses, mostly because of better management of the deadly Varroa mite, a parasite that attacks bees. But during hive evaluations this year, Rogers has found that "the vast majority of hives contained mite infestations well above the threshold level of concern."

Rogers, who said it only takes three Varroa mites per every 100 bees to put the hive in trouble, said a hive of 40,000 bees would have thousands of parasites, "which weaken bees through their feeding and disease transmission activities," he writes. "This year I'm finding at least two-thirds of the hives I've examined contain mite counts above that threshold and many have exceeded seven mites per 100 bees, a level that is almost certain to result in colony failure this winter . . . Recent scientific presentations at bee health conferences indicate that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is finding infestation levels up to eight mites per 100 bees this fall, which agrees with our own assessment. This does not bode well for honey bee colonies going into winter."

Honeybees populations are "responsible for more than $15 billion in increased crop value each year," Daniel Enoch reports for Agri-Pulse. "About one mouthful in three in our diet directly or indirectly benefits from honey bee pollination, the department says on its website, and commercial production of many specialty crops—like almonds and other tree nuts, berries, fruits and vegetables—depend on pollination by honey bees."

"The Varroa mite is one of several possible factors that scientists blame for Colony Collapse Disorder, a phenomenon that began about a decade ago in which overwintering honey bee populations experienced dramatic die-offs," Enoch writes. "Other possible factors include the increased use of potentially toxic insecticides, called neonicotinoids, as well as habitat loss. From 2006 through 2011, about a third of U.S. honey bee colonies were lost each year, USDA says, with a third of these losses attributed to CCD by beekeepers. The winter of 2011-2012 was an exception, when total losses dropped to 22 percent." 

Northern white rhino dies in US, leaving only three alive - BBC News

One of the world's last four remaining northern white rhinos has died in a zoo in the United States.

The condition of Nola, a 41-year-old female, had deteriorated after surgery and she was put down on Sunday.

Nola had been a popular attraction at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park since 1989.

The remaining three northern white rhinos - all elderly - are kept closely guarded at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya.

BBC News
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34897767

ALERT: IC3 Warns of Cyber Attacks Focused on Law Enforcement and Public Officials

HACKTIVISTS THREATEN TO TARGET LAW ENFORCEMENT PERSONNEL AND PUBLIC OFFICIALS

http://www.ic3.gov/media/2015/151118.aspx

Water-Saving Agricultural System Wins Best Product

The 2015 Hackaday Prize included something new: a prize for the Best Product. The winner took home $100k in funding, a six-month residency at the Supplyframe Design Lab in Pasadena, and help turning a budding product into a full-grown success. And the winner is…

Vinduino

Water is a crucial element for farming: the plants need enough, but not too much. Water is also an increasingly precious resource all over the world. In California, five times as much water is used in agriculture as is used by residential consumers. A 25% reduction in agricultural use, for instance, would entirely offset all urban water use. With this in mind, a number of California farmers are trying to voluntarily reduce their water consumption. But how?

One important development is targeted irrigation. Getting precisely the right amount of water to each plant can reduce the fraction lost to evaporation or runoff. It's a small thing, but it's a very big deal.

Cue Vinduino, a long-running project of "gentleman farmer" and hacker [Reinier van der Lee]. As a system, Vinduino aims to make it easy and relatively inexpensive to measure the amount of water in the soil at different depths, to log this information, and to eventually tailor the farm's water usage to the plants and their environment. We were able to catch up with [Reinier] at the Hackaday SuperConference the day after results were announced. He shared his story of developing Vinduino and recounts how he felt when it was named Best Product:

The product that won Best Product is simple, but very well executed. It's a hand-held soil moisture sensor reader that couples with a DIY soil probe design to create a versatile and inexpensive system. All of the 2015 Best Product Finalists were exceptional. Vinduino's attention to detail, room for expansion, and the potential to help the world pushed this project over the top.

The System

The basic, handheld Vinduino is a calibrated AC resistance meter. An Arduino inside the rugged enclosure sends current first this way, then that, through the moisture sensors and measures the voltage drop across some known resistors. At least half of the development work, however, was focused on the in-ground humidity sensors.

As dirt gets wet, it conducts more easily. You could, in principle, simply measure this resistance. But different soil compositions make calibration difficult, and corrosion of the probes is equally a problem. Finally, the terminals of the probes themselves can create a battery when placed in the soil, vastly complicating the calibration problem by imposing a voltage across the resistance that you'd like to measure.

[Reinier] spent a lot of time getting his DIY gypsum water sensors accurately calibrated, standardized, and compensated for "concentration cell" battery effect. His great documentation of the process makes it replicable on a shoestring budget. Making the sensors robust and cheap is important, because the next step is to drive three (or more) of the sensors into the plants' root zone at varying heights.

Driving multiple sensors into the ground allows the farmer to target his plants exact water needs. Measuring how wet the soil is at the surface, in the root zone, and then just below the roots makes it possible to figure out the net water flow, and water the roots only when they get dry, not when the ground on top of the roots is dry.

The handheld unit connects up to these water sensors and makes measuring the soil moisture at these different levels as easy as walking around the vineyard with a log-book. And because the handheld unit's firmware is open source, nothing stops the farmer from using different soil humidity sensors that require different calibration curves, or from using the same setup to measure soil salinity.

But [Reinier] has a whole system in mind, and it's one that doesn't involve walking around the fields taking measurements. He's already built up prototypes of a networked, permanent version of the handheld unit that can stay in the field and record continuous moisture data. The next steps are fully-automatic watering control, by combining the control of irrigation valves and water pressure dataloggers.

Optimal, minimal water use in agriculture is an idea that can help save water on a large scale. By making the measurements easy and cheap, Vinduino helps farmers take the first step. By making it all open source, modular, and accessible, much more likely to have an impact. So far, [Reinier] estimates that he's cut his water consumption down by 25%, and by further developing his system, he's making it possible for others. Good luck with Vinduino and congratulations!

The 10 Best Product Finalists

There were 10 projects named as Best Product Finalists during the 2015 Hackaday Prize. Enjoy the recap video which touches on each of these, and dig into the lists of entries to learn more.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

Filed under: cons, Featured, slider, The Hackaday Prize
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New study maps Earth's hidden groundwater for the first time

A new study has, for the first time, estimated the total volume of groundwater present on the Earth. The results show that we're using up the water supply quicker than it can be naturally replaced, while future research will seek to determine exactly how long it will be until modern groundwater runs dry.

Groundwater is an extremely precious resource, being a key source of sustenance for humanity and the ecosystems we inhabit. It resides beneath the Earth's surface, ranges from millions of years to just months old, and exists in huge quantities – quite literally millions of cubic kilometers. While calculations back in the 1970s roughly estimated the global volume of groundwater, this new study represents the first detailed calculation of the exact quantity, and it could have big implications.

Researchers from the University of Victoria, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Calgary and the University of Göttingen created a map of groundwater distribution by carefully analyzing numerous datasets, and making use of more than 40,000 scientific models. In all, the study estimates a total volume of almost 23 million cubic kilometers (5.5 million cubic miles) of groundwater.

Two kinds of groundwater were detailed – old and modern. Old groundwater is located deep in the Earth, is salty and often contains uranium or arsenic. In contrast, modern groundwater is closer to the surface, and moves more quickly. Unfortunately, it's also far more susceptible to climate change than the deeper, ancient water.

The map shows the majority of the modern supply to be located in mountainous and tropical regions, such as the Amazon Basin, the Congo and the Rockies. Unsurprisingly, very little groundwater was detected in arid regions like the Sahara desert and Central Australia, which is something that has long been suspected.

"Intuitively, we expect drier areas to have less young groundwater and more humid areas to have more, but before this study, all we had was intuition," said team member Dr Kevin Befus. "Now, we have a quantitative estimate that we compared to geochemical observations."

Of the calculated 23 million km3 of groundwater, 350,000 km3 (84,000 mi3) of it is less than 50 years old. Futhermore, the study found that less than six percent of the groundwater located up to two kilometers (1.2 mi) deep in the earth is renewable within a single human lifetime. In essence, we're using up groundwater far quicker than it can be replaced.

Moving forward, the team plans to further analyze the data with the goal of furthering our understanding of exactly how quickly the modern and old groundwater is being depleted by human activity. Once those calculations are complete, we'll have a strong idea of exactly how long we have before the supply runs out.

In the meantime, the researchers believe that the results of the study will help inform various studies and individuals, from policy developers and water managers to scientists focusing on geochemistry, oceanography and more.

The researchers published the findings in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Source: University of Victoria

Time for another cup of coffee

Science 20 - People who drink three to five cups of coffee per day are less likely to die prematurely from some illnesses than those who don't drink or drink less coffee, according to a new study. Drinkers of both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee saw benefits, including a lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease, neurological diseases, type 2 diabetes, and suicide.

Web MD - Over 30 years, nonsmokers who drank three to five cups of coffee a day were 15 percent less likely to die of any cause, versus nondrinkers.. . . None of that proves coffee, itself, extends people's lives or directly protects against certain diseases. . .  Other factors might explain the connection. 

Cedar Creek cleanup in Cedarburg eventually would mean return of fish safe to eat

A proposed $24.8 million cleanup of little more than a mile of Cedar Creek east of downtown Cedarburg comes with this promise: 30 years from now anglers and their families will be able to eat one meal a month of fish caught there. 
Please continue reading from: JSOnline.com NewsWatch

Plastic recycling plant opens in Dundalk, adding 60 jobs

A plant that recycles plastics for use in bottles, carpet, drainpipes and other products has opened in Dundalk and expects to employ 60 people on three shifts when it reaches full capacity in January.

The joint venture between St. Louis-based QRS Recycling and Canusa-Hershman Recycling buys plastics...

Please continue reading from: // B'More Green - Baltimore Sun

New way to measure crop yields from space

A Stanford-led team has used satellites to measure a special light emitted by plants to estimate crop yields with more accuracy than ever before. This advance will help scientists study how crops respond to climate change.

Researchers are turning to technology to help safeguard the global food supply.

Scientists have used satellites to collect agricultural data since 1972, when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) pioneered the practice of using the color – or "greenness" – of reflected sunlight to map plant cover over the entire globe.

"This was an amazing breakthrough that fundamentally changed the way we view our planet," said Joe Berry, professor of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science and a co-author of the study. "However, these vegetation maps are not ideal predictors of crop productivity. What we need to know is growth rate rather than greenness."

The growth rate can tell researchers what size yield to expect from crops by the end of the growing season. The higher the growth rate of a soybean plant or stalk of corn, for instance, the greater the harvest from a mature plant.

"What we need to measure is flux – the carbon dioxide that is exchanged between plants and the atmosphere – to understand photosynthesis and plant growth," Guan said. "How do you use color to infer flux? That's a big gap."

Solar-induced fluorescence

Recently, researchers at NASA and several European institutes discovered how to measure this flux, called solar-induced fluorescence, from satellites that were originally designed for measuring ozone and other gases in the atmosphere.

A plant uses most of the energy it absorbs from the sun to grow via photosynthesis, and dissipates unused energy as heat. It also passively releases between 1 and 2 percent of the original solar energy absorbed by the plant back into the atmosphere as fluorescent light. Guan's team worked out how to distinguish the tiny flow of specific fluorescence from the abundance of reflected sunlight that also arrives at the satellite.

Global Change Biology - Improving the monitoring of crop productivity using spaceborne solar-induced fluorescence

Read more »

US homes have gotten huge — offsetting the gains from energy efficiency

Drew DeSilver of the Pew Research Center has some terrific charts on how the average size of American homes in has ballooned since 1970:

(Pew Research Center)

The energy angle here is particularly fascinating, though.

Overall, American homes today are about 31 percent more energy-efficient (as measured in energy use per square foot) than they were in 1970. But because they're so much larger, and square footage has risen about 28 percent, on average, there's basically been no change in overall energy intensity. The two trends balance each other out:

(Pew Research Center)

You could read this chart in one of two ways. First, as DeSilver puts it, this suggests the "growing girth" of US homes has wiped out basically all the savings from our hard-earned efficiency improvements. Not great news from, say, a climate change perspective.

Or there's a more optimistic gloss: All those efficiency gains have allowed us to own much bigger houses (and more stuff in those houses) without a corresponding explosion in energy use. It's a net boon for consumers, you might say.

But before we can settle this dispute, it's worth looking in more detail at whyhomes in the United States have gotten so much more energy efficient over time. Partly it's due to advancements in our refrigerators, boilers, dishwashers, and so on. But another surprising factor here is the fact that more and more people are moving to the South.

How home energy use is changing: less heating, more appliances

Back in 2013, the Energy Information Administration posted a valuable analysislooking at how home energy use in the United States has shifted over time.

They noted that newer homes (those built after 2000) are about 30 percent bigger than older homes (those built before 2000) yet still use roughly the same amount of energy. Here's a breakdown:

(Energy Information Administration)

The biggest change over time has been in heating. Newer homes use about 21 percent less energy for space heating than older homes do. Part of that is due to improved insulation and furnace efficiency. But another major factor, EIA notes, is that a greater proportion of new homes are being built in the warmer South and Southwest. They simply don't need as much heating.

The flip side, of course, is that those homes use more electricity for air conditioning in the summer. But as it turns out, it's a lot more energy-efficient to cool a house than it is to heat it. There are lots of reasons for that, as Emily Badger once explained: On an especially hot day in Miami, you might have to bring the temperature down from 100°F to 70°F. On an especially cold day in Minneapolis, you might have to bring the temperature all the way up from 0°F to 70°F. The latter is a much bigger gap to fill. Plus, she points out, "the typical air conditioner is about four times more energy efficient than the typical furnace or boiler."

So, on balance, the shift in US population to the South and Southwest has saved energy for heating and cooling homes. And you see that in the graph above.

But that's not the end of the story, either. The other crucial fact about new homes, again, is that they're much bigger and hence contain more gadgets and appliances: EIA found that newer homes are much more likely to have at least two refrigerators, to feature at least two or more televisions, at least two computers, and so on.* These appliances are all far more energy-efficient than they were back in the 1970s (due, in part, to increasingly strict federal standards). But we have more of them. Add it all together, and energy intensity has basically plateaued.

Please continue reading from: 
http://www.vox.com/2015/11/10/9705824/home-size-efficiency
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Common units and understanding energy and the global scale of energy

Dr. Ripudaman Malhotra, co-author of A Cubic Mile of Oil, discusses the moral imperative for increasing total global energy supply equivalent to several cubic miles of oil. He shows what it would take to scale any technology to produce 1 cmo of energy per year.

In 2006, the world used a cubic mile of oil. In total the energy the world used was equal to about 3.1 cubic miles of oil when we convert the other energy to be equal amounts of oil.

Read more » at // Next Big Future

So Much For The Death Of Sprawl: America’s Exurbs Are Booming

It's time to put an end to the urban legend of the impending death of America's suburbs. With the aging of the millennial generation, and growing interest from minorities and immigrants, these communities are getting a fresh infusion of residents looking for child-friendly, affordable, lower-density living.

We first noticed a takeoff in suburban growth in 2013, following a stall-out in the Great Recession. This year research from Brookings confirms that peripheral communities — the newly minted suburbs of the 1990s and early 2000s — are growing more rapidly than denser, inner ring areas.

Peripheral, recent suburbs accounted for roughly 43% of all U.S. residences in 2010. Between July 2013 and July 2014, core urban communities lost a net 363,000 people overall, Brookings demographer Bill Frey reports, as migration increased to suburban and exurban counties. The biggest growth was inexurban areas, or the "suburbiest" places on the periphery.

Homes stand in this aerial photograph taken above New Jersey, U.S., on Wednesday, June 10, 2015. Photographer: Craig Warga/Bloomberg

How could this be? If you read most major newspapers, or listened to NPR or PBS, you would think that the bulk of American job and housing growth was occurring closer to the inner core. Yet more than 80% of employment growth from 2007 to 2013 was in the newer suburbs and exurbs. Between 2012 and 2015, as the economy improved, occupied suburban office space rose from 75% of the market to 76.7%, according to the real estate consultancy Costar.

These same trends can be seen in older cities as well as the Sun Belt. Cities such as Indianapolis and Kansas City have seen stronger growth in the suburbs than in the core.

This pattern can even be seen in California, where suburban growth is discouraged by state planning policy but seems to be proceeding nevertheless. After getting shellacked in the recession, since 2012 the Inland Empire — long described as a basket case by urbanist pundits — has logged more rapid population growth  than either Los Angeles and even generally healthy Orange County. Last year the metro area ranked third in California for job growth, behind suburban Silicon Valley and San Francisco.

To those who have been confidently promoting a massive "return to the city," the resurgence of outer suburbs must be a bitter pill. In 2011, new urbanist pundit Chris Leinberger suggested outer ring suburbs were destined to become "wastelands" or, as another cheerily described them, "slumburbs" inhabited by the poor and struggling minorities chased out of the gentrifying city.

In this worldview, "peak oil" was among the things destined to drive people out of the exurbs . So convinced of the exurbs decline that some new urbanists were already fantasizing that suburban three-car garages would be "subdivided into rental units with street front cafés, shops, and other local businesses," while abandoned pools would become skateboard parks.

This perspective naturally appeals to people who write most of our urban coverage from such high-density hot spots as Brooklyn, Manhattan, Washington, D.C., or San Francisco. And to be sure, all these places continue to attract bright people and money from around the world. Yet for the vast majority, particularly families, such places are too expensive, congested and often lack decent public schools. For those who can't afford super-expensive houses and the cost of private education, the suburbs, particularly the exurbs, remain a better alternative.

Even as Houston, like other Sun Belt cities, has enjoyed something of a renaissance in its inner core, nearly 80% of the metro area's new homebuyers last year purchased residences outside Beltway 8, which is far to west of the core city.

If you want to know why people move to such places, you can always ask them. On reporting trips to places like Irvine, California, Valencia, north of Los Angeles, or Katy, out on the flat Texas prairie 31 miles west of Houston, you get familiar answers: low crime, good schools and excellent access to jobs. Take Katy's Cinco Ranch. Since 1990, the planned community has grown to 18,000 residents amid a fourfold expansion in the population of the Katy area to 305,000.

To some, places like Cinco Ranch represents everything that is bad about suburban sprawl, with leapfrogging development that swallows rural lands and leaves inner city communities behind. Yet to many residents, these exurban communities represent something else: an opportunity to enjoy the American dream, with good schools, nice parks and a thriving town center.

Nor is this a story of white flight. Roughly 40% of the area's residents are non-Hispanic white; one in five is foreign born, well above the Texas average. Barely half of the students at the local high school are Caucasian and Asian students have been the fastest-growing group in recent years, with their parents attracted to the high-performing schools.

"We have lived in other places since we came to America 10 years ago," says Pria Kothari, who moved to Cinco with her husband and two children in 2013. "We lived in apartments elsewhere in big cities, but here we found a place where we could put our roots down. It has a community feel. You walk around and see all the families. There's room for bikes –that's great for the kids."

Here Come The Millennials

Potentially, the greatest source of exurban and peripheral revival lies with the maturation of the millennial generation. Millennials — born between 1982 and 2002 — are widely portrayed as dedicated city dwellers. That a cohort of young educated, affluent people should gravitate to urban living is nothing new. The roughly 20% who, according to an analysis by demographer Wendell Cox, live in urban cores may be brighter, and certainly more loquacious, than their smaller town counterparts, dominating media coverage of millennials. But the vast majority of millennials live elsewhere — and roughly 90% of communities' population growth that can be attributed to millennials since 2000 has taken place outside of the urban core.

To be sure, millennials are moving to the suburbs from the city at a lower rate than past generations , but this is more a reflection of slower maturation and wealth accumulation.

According to U.S. Census Bureau data released last month, 529,000 Americans ages 25 to 29 moved from cities out to the suburbs in 2014 while 426,000 moved in the other direction. Among younger millennials, those in their early 20s, the trend was even starker: 721,000 moved out of the city, compared with 554,000 who moved in.

This may well reflect rising cost pressures, as well as lower priced housing many millennials can afford. Three-quarters, according to one recent survey, want a single-family house, which is affordable most often in the further out periphery .

Future trends are likely to be shaped by an overlooked fact: as people age, they change their priorities. As the economist Jed Kolko has pointed out, the proclivity for urban living peaks in the mid to late 20s and drops notably later. Over 25% of people in their mid-20s, he found, live in urban neighborhoods; but by the time they move into their mid-30s, it drops to 18% or lower. In 2018, according to Census estimates, the number of millennials entering their 30s will be larger than those in their 20s, and the trend will only get stronger as the generation ages.

Some might argue that millennials will be attracted to more urban suburbs, places like Bethesda, Md.; Montclair, N.J.; or the West University or Bellaire areas of Houston, all of them located near major employment centers with many amenities. These suburban areas are also among the most expensive areas in the country, with home prices often in the millions. And a number of older inner ring suburbs, as we saw in the case of Ferguson, are troubled and have lost population — even as the number of residents in downtown areas have grown.

So when millennials move they seem likely to not move to the nice old suburbs, or the deteriorating one, but those more far-flung suburban communities that offer larger and more affordable housing, good schools, parks and lower crime rates.

Among the research that confirms this is a study released this year by the Urban Land Institute, historically hostile to suburbs, which found that some 80% of current millennial homeowners live in single-family houses and 70% of the entire generation expects to be living in one by 2020.

The Future Of Exurbia....Please read full and follow at: 

http://opportunityurbanism.org/2015/11/so-much-for-the-death-of-sprawl-americas-exurbs-are-booming/
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Sickest states do little to snuff out smoking.

States hit hardest by the ravages of tobacco are often the least aggressive at hitting back, a USA TODAY analysis found. So a deadly culture of smoking lingers, which officials say is fueled relentlessly by tobacco companies targeting minorities and the poor.

Please continue reading from: 
// 1Environmental Health News

Flawed agricultural practices partly to blame for tainted Wisconsin drinking water, watchdog says

Hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin residents, including nearly 17,000 rural residents with private wells, lack safe, clean drinking water, says a study by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, Ron Seely reports for the organization. The study found residents were "at risk of consuming drinking water tainted with substances including lead, nitrate, disease-causing bacteria and viruses, naturally occurring heavy metals and other contaminants."

"The problem persists, and in some areas is worsening, because of flawed agricultural practices, development patterns that damage water quality, geologic deposits of harmful chemicals, porous karst and sand landscapes, lack of regulation of the private wells serving an estimated 1.7 million people, and breakdowns in state and federal systems intended to safeguard water quality," Seely writes. (Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism map)

Last month 16 Wisconsin residents petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency "to revoke Wisconsin's authority to issue pollution discharge permits under the Clean Water Act if the Department of Natural Resources does not correct deficiencies," Seely writes. "The discharge permits are a key mechanism by which Wisconsin limits pollutants, including manure from large farms, that reach the sources of Wisconsin's drinking water."

"Kimberlee Wright, executive director of Midwest Environmental Advocates, the Madison law firm representing the residents, said Wisconsin lacks an adequate regulatory program to protect water, including what flows from residents' taps," Seely writes. DNR spokesman Jim Dick told Seely that the DNR "takes its responsibility to protect Wisconsin's waters seriously and does enforce the Clean Water Act. We are working within the confines of current state and federal laws and rules to do just that." (Read more) 

NASA to pay fine for environmental violations at Wallops

NASA has agreed to pay $50,660 to settle environmental violations at its Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore, the Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday.

EPA cited NASA for several seemingly minor violations of federal hazardous waste and clean-air regulations at Wallops,... Please continue reading from: B'More Green - Baltimore Sun

China's Dirty Air Just Hit 'Doomsday' Levels

A thick smog engulfed the Chinese city of Shenyang on Sunday and Monday, sending air pollution levels 50 times above what's deemed safe by the World Health Organization (WHO) and marking the highest pollution on record since the country began monitoring air quality in 2013, according to the Associated Press.

The smog grounded flights, closed highways, and prompted officials to tell residents to stay indoors. Visibility in the northeastern industrial city of 5 million was just a few dozen feet, according to the New York Times.

The smog is particularly dangerous because of its high concentration of particulates measuring less than 2.5 microns (PM2.5) in diameter, which can be inhaled deeply into the lungs and absorbed into the bloodstream. PM2.5 pollution can contribute to a host of health problems, such as heart disease, stroke, emphysema, and lung cancer.

Fairyland or doomsday? Heaviest #smog this year shrouds NE Chinese city of Shenyang, PM 2.5 hit over 1400 pic.twitter.com/GLo82Abk4R

— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) November 9, 2015

A report by Berkeley Earth, a research organization focusing on climate change and emissions, estimatedthat air pollution in China contributes to the deaths of an estimated 1.6 million people every year.

While the WHO recommends a safe level of PM2.5 to be no more than 25 micrograms per cubic meter over 24 hours, levels in the city of Shenyang had reached up to 1,400 micrograms on Sunday, according to China's official news agency Xinhua.

"As far as we are aware from the data we have been observing over the past few years, this is the highest ever PM2.5 level recording" in the country, Greenpeace campaigner Dong Liansai told AFP.

Last month, the organization said 80 percent of Chinese cities exceeded the national standard on PM2.5 — 35 micrograms per cubic meter — while levels in 367 Chinese cities were more than four times more stringent WHO guidelines.

As popular discontent continues to grow, the problem of air pollution is becoming a thorn in the side of the ruling Communist party, which is slowly moving to make amends. In August, China's upper legislative body passed a law that will restrict several sources of smog and make information about environmental conditions more readily available to the public.

Please continue reading from: VICE News

https://news.vice.com/article/chinas-dirty-air-just-hit-doomsday-levels

Maintenance of U.S. Passenger Planes Outsourced to El Salvador, Mexico and China

Via: The Atlantic:

Over the past decade, nearly all large U.S. airlines have shifted heavy maintenance work on their airplanes to repair shops thousands of miles away, in developing countries, where the mechanics who take the planes apart (completely) and put them back together (or almost) may not even be able to read or speak English. US Airways and Southwest fly planes to a maintenance facility in El Salvador. Delta sends planes to Mexico. United uses a shop in China. American still does much of its most intensive maintenance in-house in the U.S., but that is likely to change in the aftermath of the company's merger with US Airways.

The airlines are shipping this maintenance work offshore for the reason you'd expect: to cut labor costs. Mechanics in El Salvador, Mexico, China, and elsewhere earn a fraction of what mechanics in the U.S. do. In part because of this offshoring, the number of maintenance jobs at U.S. carriers has plummeted, from 72,000 in the year 2000 to fewer than 50,000 today.

Electric-Car Startup Faraday Future Building a $1 Billion Factory In California

Faraday Future, an electric car startup based in California, wants to take on Tesla. They're building a $1 billion factory in California. Business Insider reports: "The startup of about 400 employees has poached executive talent from Tesla and also draws its name from a luminary scientist — Michael Faraday — who helped harness for humanity the forces of nature. Even Faraday's public announcement that California, Georgia, Louisiana and Nevada are finalists for the factory mirrors the approach Tesla took to build a massive battery factory. Nevada won that bidding war among several states last year by offering up to $1.3 billion in tax breaks and other incentives. Faraday hopes to distinguish itself by branding the car less as transportation than a tool for the connected class."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Indonesia is burning, not trees but the land itself in the largest recorded fire

A great tract of Earth is on fire in Indonesia. It looks as you might imagine hell to be. The air has turned ochre: visibility in some cities has been reduced to 30 metres. Children are being prepared for evacuation in warships; already some have choked to death. Species are going up in smoke at an untold rate. It is almost certainly the greatest environmental disaster of the 21st century – so far.

Fire is raging across the 5,000km length of Indonesia. It is hard to convey the scale of this inferno, but here's a comparison that might help: it is currently producing more carbon dioxide than the US economy. And in three weeks the fires have released more CO2 than the annual emissions of Germany.

It's not just the trees that are burning. It is the land itself. Much of the forest sits on great domes of peat. When the fires penetrate the earth, they smoulder for weeks, sometimes months, releasing clouds of methane, carbon monoxide, ozone and exotic gases such as ammonium cyanide. The plumes extend for hundreds of miles, causing diplomatic conflicts with neighbouring countries.

Why is this happening? Indonesia's forests have been fragmented for decades by timber and farming companies. Canals have been cut through the peat to drain and dry it. Plantation companies move in to destroy what remains of the forest to plant monocultures of pulpwood, timber and palm oil. The easiest way to clear the land is to torch it. 

Last big fire in Indonesia

1997 and 1998 – Unprecedented forest fires in Kalimantan and East Sumatra. 97,000 km2 (37,000 sq mi) of forest were destroyed, more than 2.6 gigatonnes of CO2 was released to the atmosphere. The underground smouldering fire on the peat bogs continue to burn and ignite new forest fire each year during dry season. There are other forest fires in Java and Sulawesi on the same year. 15,000 children were missing after the 1997 fire.

Children are being prepared for evacuation in warships already some have choked to death. Species are going up in smoke at an untold rate.' Photograph: Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images

Read more »// Next Big Future