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Ignoring Legislature, Central Florida voters say clean water is a right
Nearly nine out of 10 voters in Orange County approved a change to their county’s charter that added a section declaring that humans have a right to clean water, and that natural features like rivers and lakes have the same legal rights as people. “The measure, known as the ‘Right to Clean Water Initiative,’ is the first in Florida to recognize the rights of nature, and empowers any resident to enforce the rights of waterways and the rights of people to clean water,” the measure’s backers announced in a press release. Orange County “has become the largest municipality in the United States to adopt a ‘rights of nature’ law,” they declared. |
Florida’s toll projects becoming reality despite minimal public support
The areas of biggest interest were the impacts to wildlife and the rural quality of life in areas where the roads may go. “Because no-build is always an option, the department has only tracked topics mentioned at a very high level, not the sentiment of the comment,” department spokeswoman Beth Frady said in an email Wednesday. “Tracking it this way has allowed the department to ensure the topics mentioned by the public were discussed at task force meetings. This means that, in the event the proposed corridors meet environmental and financial feasibility, the task forces have had the opportunity to consider all actionable feedback and input via multiple productive discussions.” |
Handing federal wetlands permitting to FL DEP is an idea that’s all wet
Florida Phoenix environment columnist Craig Pittman writes about something that won’t be a good thing if it happens: “Right now, under the Clean Water Act, two federal agencies are in charge of preserving wetlands: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which issues permits for dumping fill in them, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which can veto those permits,” Pittman writes. “But now both are considering handing the job of federal wetlands permitting in Florida over to the state DEP, according to a Federal Register notice published on Sept. 4 seeking public comment over the next 45 days.” Pittman adds: “Florida’s developers have been pushing for this handover to the state for a couple of decades…Why? Because they are convinced the state would grant them super-fast permit approvals, no matter how many acres of wetlands they were going to pave over, and because the state doesn’t protect as many different types of wetlands as the feds do.” |
EPA keeps public in dark about building roads from phosphate’s radioactive waste – so we can better see the eerie glow?
If you want to see some contradictory, nonsensical documents from our U.S. Government, check out the official description on phosphogypsum stacks and the new directive by our deeply politicized incompetent head of the EPA, Andrew Wheeler.
In one we see the dangers of the gypstacks (the document says “stay away from them”) as outlined in our post “Radioactive Material From Fertilizer Production. The second contradictory one is in the following article by Craig Pittman in which ex-coal lobbyist and Trump toady Wheeler makes a totally stupid statement:
“Allowing the reuse of phosphogypsum shows EPA’s commitment to working with industry in a way that both reduces environmental waste and protects public health,” Wheeler said in an EPA press release.
So Mr. Wheeler’s thinking is that by allowing the poisons from the stacks to run off the roads and sink into the ground, headed for the aquifer his politicized department is protecting our health. What about radioactive dust particles kicked up by autos and trucks?
Added to this insult to the public is the way in which this about-face from dangerous to “healthy” was quietly done. So in describing Andrew Wheeler’s thinking and actions, to “stupid” we can add “sneaky.”
Read the original article by Craig Pittman in the Florida Phoenix.
Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
jim.tatum@oursantaferiver.org
– A river is like a life: once taken,
it cannot be brought back © Jim Tatum
EPA keeps public in dark about building roads from phosphate’s radioactive waste – so we can better see the eerie glow?
By
Craig Pittman
–
October 22, 2020
Florida’s highways have frequently been built on a foundation of chicanery and political foolishness.
We’ve got toll roads that were built using fudged financial figures (Looking at you, Polk Parkway and Suncoast Parkway). We’ve got a Bridge to Nowhere that was built purely to benefit the then-speaker of the House but then went bankrupt (Hi there, Garcon Point Bridge). We’ve got a trio of expensive highways now under consideration that are opposed by the public but supported by wealthy roadbuilders and the politicians who took their campaign contributions.
But now we may soon see Florida roads that are built on something new: radioactive waste from phosphate mines.
When phosphate companies turn their mined rock into fertilizer, they produce about five tons of phosphogypsum waste to every ton of fertilizer. Since 1989, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has banned using that phosphogypsum waste for construction projects or anything else because it exceeds the level of radioactivity regarded as safe for humans.
With no other way to dispose of so much radioactive waste, the industry stacks it in huge piles, known as phosphogypsum stacks. The stacks tower over the flat Florida landscape. There are 25 of them scattered around the state and they can be up to 200 feet high.
Last week, with absolutely no notice to the public, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler announced the agency had changed its mind about phosphogypsum waste. Now, Wheeler said, the stuff that the EPA once deemed too dangerous is considered safe enough to use in building roads.
andrewwheeler2x3 In: EPA keeps public in dark about building roads from phosphate’s radioactive waste – so we can better see the eerie glow? | Our Santa Fe River, Inc. | Protecting the Santa Fe River in North Florida
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. Credit: Eric Vance/EPA
“Allowing the reuse of phosphogypsum shows EPA’s commitment to working with industry in a way that both reduces environmental waste and protects public health,” Wheeler said in an EPA press release. Finding a constructive use for radioactive waste “demonstrates President Trump’s commitment to ‘win-win’ environmental solutions.”
I am sorry to report that Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist, did not explain how allowing the use of radioactive material in roads “protects public health.” Maybe the radiation somehow provides us all with free x-rays.
Wheeler was right on the money, though, in talking about “working with industry.” Or perhaps “working for industry” would be more accurate. I say that because of the reason the EPA decided to flip-flop on this issue. According to the agency, the decision was based on a study — but not one that was done by EPA scientists or disinterested scientists at an academic institution. No, the press release says this decision was based on “risk analyses conducted by TFI and reviewed by the EPA.”
TFI stands for “The Fertilizer Institute” — in other words, the people who produce all the phosphogypsum that’s stacking up all over Florida. So close is the relationship between the EPA and this industry group that the feds’ press release announcing the change was issued jointly with The Fertilizer Institute. I suppose you could say it was at least 50 percent fertilizer.
To have an industry group providing the science for a decision like this is sort of like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration decreeing that it’s OK to sell hot dogs full of rat hair, based on a risk analysis by the meatpacking industry.
EPA keeps public in the dark
Maybe rat hair tastes like caviar, and maybe radioactive phosphogypsum is as safe as regular gravel and sand in a road base. It’s hard to say because the EPA didn’t hold any public hearings to explain the proposal and respond to questions about it, or even tell anyone it was considering this before dropping this A-bomb (so to speak).
The person who first alerted me about Wheeler’s announcement was a rather flabbergasted Jacki Lopez, a Florida native who’s the state director for the Center for Biological Diversity. She said in an email that it was “completely inappropriate to make such an announcement without first publishing it in the federal register so everyone else — who is not the industry itself — can be made aware of this potentially significant public health and environmental concern.”
The New York Times ran a story last week that said a lot of federal agencies led by Trump appointees are scrambling to create more industry-friendly regulations in the final days before the Nov. 3 election “using a tactic known as an interim final rule, more typically reserved for emergencies, to skip the public comment period entirely.”
In this case, an EPA spokeswoman told me there’s nothing in the law requiring Wheeler to tell the public before reaching such a decision, so it didn’t bother.
Lopez told me she couldn’t understand how the EPA could approve the use in road building of a substance that the agency had previously deemed a human cancer risk, one with a radiation exposure similar to that of uranium mill tailings. In the 1990s, the agency said it even had the potential to contaminate our underground source of drinking water.
On the day the latest announcement came out, the EPA kept the public in the dark, offering none of the decision documents for public perusal. But finally, on Tuesday — a week after the announcement and a day after I asked for them — the EPA got around to posting all of its backup material online so we could see what had changed. The answer was: Not much.
Gypsum stacks are costly — and unpopular
The analysis by The Fertilizer Institute looked at the risk to road construction workers, truck drivers transporting the phosphogypsum, utility workers performing work on utilities at or under roads, people who actually drive on the roads, and residents living near roads built with the radioactive stuff. The industry’s conclusion: Building roads with phosphogypsum “would be at least as protective as keeping [it] in stacks.”
The flaw in this logic, of course, is that while the stuff is stacked up on phosphate company property, the average citizen is unlikely to wander anywhere near it. A road, on the other hand, is something on which people would likely drive, skate, or ride a bike. Heck, they might even build a house next to it and live there. You never know — people might even like living by a road that, come nightfall, emits an eerie green radiance. Think of the money you could save on porch lights!…
I checked with the Florida Department of Transportation and was told that agency has no immediate plans to start using radioactive phosphate waste in its road-building, for some reason. So who might be likely to use this stuff?
If you want to see some contradictory, nonsensical documents from our U.S. Government, check out the official description on phosphogypsum stacks and the new directive by our deeply politicized incompetent head of the EPA, Andrew Wheeler.
In one we see the dangers of the gypstacks (the document says “stay away from them”) as outlined in our post “Radioactive Material From Fertilizer Production. The second contradictory one is in the following article by Craig Pittman in which ex-coal lobbyist and Trump toady Wheeler makes a totally stupid statement:
“Allowing the reuse of phosphogypsum shows EPA’s commitment to working with industry in a way that both reduces environmental waste and protects public health,” Wheeler said in an EPA press release.
So Mr. Wheeler’s thinking is that by allowing the poisons from the stacks to run off the roads and sink into the ground, headed for the aquifer his politicized department is protecting our health. What about radioactive dust particles kicked up by autos and trucks?
Added to this insult to the public is the way in which this about-face from dangerous to “healthy” was quietly done. So in describing Andrew Wheeler’s thinking and actions, to “stupid” we can add “sneaky.”
Read the original article by Craig Pittman in the Florida Phoenix.
Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
jim.tatum@oursantaferiver.org
– A river is like a life: once taken,
it cannot be brought back © Jim Tatum
EPA keeps public in dark about building roads from phosphate’s radioactive waste – so we can better see the eerie glow?
By
Craig Pittman
–
October 22, 2020
Florida’s highways have frequently been built on a foundation of chicanery and political foolishness.
We’ve got toll roads that were built using fudged financial figures (Looking at you, Polk Parkway and Suncoast Parkway). We’ve got a Bridge to Nowhere that was built purely to benefit the then-speaker of the House but then went bankrupt (Hi there, Garcon Point Bridge). We’ve got a trio of expensive highways now under consideration that are opposed by the public but supported by wealthy roadbuilders and the politicians who took their campaign contributions.
But now we may soon see Florida roads that are built on something new: radioactive waste from phosphate mines.
When phosphate companies turn their mined rock into fertilizer, they produce about five tons of phosphogypsum waste to every ton of fertilizer. Since 1989, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has banned using that phosphogypsum waste for construction projects or anything else because it exceeds the level of radioactivity regarded as safe for humans.
With no other way to dispose of so much radioactive waste, the industry stacks it in huge piles, known as phosphogypsum stacks. The stacks tower over the flat Florida landscape. There are 25 of them scattered around the state and they can be up to 200 feet high.
Last week, with absolutely no notice to the public, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler announced the agency had changed its mind about phosphogypsum waste. Now, Wheeler said, the stuff that the EPA once deemed too dangerous is considered safe enough to use in building roads.
andrewwheeler2x3 In: EPA keeps public in dark about building roads from phosphate’s radioactive waste – so we can better see the eerie glow? | Our Santa Fe River, Inc. | Protecting the Santa Fe River in North Florida
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. Credit: Eric Vance/EPA
“Allowing the reuse of phosphogypsum shows EPA’s commitment to working with industry in a way that both reduces environmental waste and protects public health,” Wheeler said in an EPA press release. Finding a constructive use for radioactive waste “demonstrates President Trump’s commitment to ‘win-win’ environmental solutions.”
I am sorry to report that Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist, did not explain how allowing the use of radioactive material in roads “protects public health.” Maybe the radiation somehow provides us all with free x-rays.
Wheeler was right on the money, though, in talking about “working with industry.” Or perhaps “working for industry” would be more accurate. I say that because of the reason the EPA decided to flip-flop on this issue. According to the agency, the decision was based on a study — but not one that was done by EPA scientists or disinterested scientists at an academic institution. No, the press release says this decision was based on “risk analyses conducted by TFI and reviewed by the EPA.”
TFI stands for “The Fertilizer Institute” — in other words, the people who produce all the phosphogypsum that’s stacking up all over Florida. So close is the relationship between the EPA and this industry group that the feds’ press release announcing the change was issued jointly with The Fertilizer Institute. I suppose you could say it was at least 50 percent fertilizer.
To have an industry group providing the science for a decision like this is sort of like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration decreeing that it’s OK to sell hot dogs full of rat hair, based on a risk analysis by the meatpacking industry.
EPA keeps public in the dark
Maybe rat hair tastes like caviar, and maybe radioactive phosphogypsum is as safe as regular gravel and sand in a road base. It’s hard to say because the EPA didn’t hold any public hearings to explain the proposal and respond to questions about it, or even tell anyone it was considering this before dropping this A-bomb (so to speak).
The person who first alerted me about Wheeler’s announcement was a rather flabbergasted Jacki Lopez, a Florida native who’s the state director for the Center for Biological Diversity. She said in an email that it was “completely inappropriate to make such an announcement without first publishing it in the federal register so everyone else — who is not the industry itself — can be made aware of this potentially significant public health and environmental concern.”
The New York Times ran a story last week that said a lot of federal agencies led by Trump appointees are scrambling to create more industry-friendly regulations in the final days before the Nov. 3 election “using a tactic known as an interim final rule, more typically reserved for emergencies, to skip the public comment period entirely.”
In this case, an EPA spokeswoman told me there’s nothing in the law requiring Wheeler to tell the public before reaching such a decision, so it didn’t bother.
Lopez told me she couldn’t understand how the EPA could approve the use in road building of a substance that the agency had previously deemed a human cancer risk, one with a radiation exposure similar to that of uranium mill tailings. In the 1990s, the agency said it even had the potential to contaminate our underground source of drinking water.
On the day the latest announcement came out, the EPA kept the public in the dark, offering none of the decision documents for public perusal. But finally, on Tuesday — a week after the announcement and a day after I asked for them — the EPA got around to posting all of its backup material online so we could see what had changed. The answer was: Not much.
Gypsum stacks are costly — and unpopular
The analysis by The Fertilizer Institute looked at the risk to road construction workers, truck drivers transporting the phosphogypsum, utility workers performing work on utilities at or under roads, people who actually drive on the roads, and residents living near roads built with the radioactive stuff. The industry’s conclusion: Building roads with phosphogypsum “would be at least as protective as keeping [it] in stacks.”
The flaw in this logic, of course, is that while the stuff is stacked up on phosphate company property, the average citizen is unlikely to wander anywhere near it. A road, on the other hand, is something on which people would likely drive, skate, or ride a bike. Heck, they might even build a house next to it and live there. You never know — people might even like living by a road that, come nightfall, emits an eerie green radiance. Think of the money you could save on porch lights!…
I checked with the Florida Department of Transportation and was told that agency has no immediate plans to start using radioactive phosphate waste in its road-building, for some reason. So who might be likely to use this stuff?
