The Job at Hand… Can the Women Deliver?

Posted 17 July 2011, by Staff, ThisDay Live (Leaders & Company Limited), thisdaylive.com

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala , Finance Minister

Fiscal Reform, Job Creation are Priorities for Okonjo-Iweala

Until her appointment as Minister of Finance by the then President Olusegun Obasanjo on July 15, 2003, only a few Nigerians, outside the economic and financial sectors, knew of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. By the time she left on August 3, 2006, shortly after her redeployment to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, she had become a household name.

Okonjo-Iweala, a product of two of the best American tertiary institutions —Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology- distinguished herself in the Obasanjo cabinet by establishing the Debt Management Office, but more significantly, when in 2005 she led the team that negotiated with the Paris Club to secure a historic $18 billion debt relief for the country.

She also engendered transparency in public finances through the publication of monthly allocations from the Federation Account to the 36 states and helped Nigeria to obtain its maiden sovereign credit rating from Fitch and Standard & Poor’s. She would also be remembered as being part of the economic team that set up the Excess Crude Account to shield Nigeria from the exogenous shocks of fluctuating oil prices, and drafted the home-grown economic blueprint, the National Economic Empowerment Development Strategy, which got the approval of the International Monetary Fund in its Article IV consultation with Nigeria.

Like his predecessor, President Goodluck Jonathan fished her out from her job at the World Bank, where she was the managing director, to head the finance ministry, with an expanded mandate to be in charge of the economy.

During her second stint on the job, Okonjo-Iweala will be expected to help drive the president’s transformational agenda, especially by instituting fiscal reform, a reduction in recurrent spending to the neglect of capital projects, job creation and ending a regime of deficit budgeting.

Largely, her success would depend on the quality of other members of the economic team and the political will of the presidency and legislature to institute widespread reforms in public finances. She would also play a key role in deciding what to do with the fuel subsidy regime, which skives off over N1 trillion from the treasury annually, as a decision on whether to remove the subsidy entirely or increase the pump price of petrol has become inevitable.

Airports, Airlines in Desperate Need of Turn Around

Stella Oduah-Ogiemwonyi was born in 1962 in Onitsha, Anambra State. She joined the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation in 1983 following her return from the United States where she had gone to further her education and had bagged both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Accounting and Business Administration. In 1992, she left the NNPC to establish Sea Petroleum & Gas Company Limited (SPG), an independent marketer of petroleum products in the country.

Today, Oduah-Ogiemwonyi is Nigeria’s Minister of Aviation, a key ministry in the economy. Unfortunately, Oduah-Ogiemwonyi has been posted to a ministry that is almost comatose. Her ministry superintends four international airports in the country – Lagos, Port Harcourt, Kano and Abuja – and a plethora of domestic airports that are all in a complete mess.

The Murtala Muhammed International Airport, the nation’s foremost gateway, in particular, is in dire need of an upgrade and facelift to burnish Nigeria’s image. This should include the installation of large baggage screening machines that would eliminate manual screening by security personnel at the airports. In addition to this is the reorientation of customs, immigration and security personnel posted to the airports to comport themselves professionally and discreetly.

Oduah-Ogiemwonyi would have to decide if the federal government has the capacity to modernise the airports itself or enter into public private partnership arrangements that would enable concessionaires to take over the management and operations of the airport.

Another area that should concern the minister is safety issues in the industry. With almost all the domestic operators under distress and burdened by massive debts, safety and standards might be compromised by airlines struggling to survive. The new aviation minister would have to work with the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority and airlines on a bailout plan that would help keep their heads above water.

Environmental Protection,Climate Change Will Task Mailafa

The new Minister of Environment, Hadiza Ibrahim Mailafa, is perhaps, coming into office at a most challenging period. No thanks to the recent flooding that nearly submerged many states of the federation including Lagos, Ogun and Rivers. This, of course, will not only put to test her track record, but further task her ingenuity in terms of her proactive reflexes and seeing to the passage of the bill on Climate Change.

For the record, the primary mandate of the environment ministry is to protect and improve water, air, land, forest and wildlife, as mandated by Section 20 of the constitution. The administration’s policy thrust is summarised in the Environmental Renewal and Development Initiative (ERDI). The objective of ERDI, however, is to take full inventory of all natural resources, assess the level of environmental damage, design and implement restoration and rejuvenation measures.

Also, the ministry is meant to work towards the sustainable utilisation of the environment and its resources by evolving tools for poverty alleviation, ensuring food security, foreign policy and international development and good governance. Besides, a number of priority progammes have been designed to address municipal waste management and sanitation, industrial pollution control, including oil and gas, afforestation and conservation of bio-diversity and wildlife. Key areas of priority for Mailafa will be tackling desertification in northern Nigeria, stopping gas flaring and cleaning up oil spills in the Niger Delta, flooding, and controlling gully erosion in the southern part of the country.

This, in summary, underscores the importance as well as the expectations as Mailafa takes over the ministry. With her public sector experience, having worked for M-Tel and the Nigerian Extractive and Transparency Initiative, Mailafa is expected to possess both the credentials and the managerial skills required to see through these challenges.

With PIB, Alison-Madueke Can Prove Her Mettle

If there is any minister who has to work twice as hard as her colleagues, it would have to be Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, Minister of Petroleum Resources. The fact that she got into the cabinet despite a virulent campaign against her is a testimony of the confidence President Goodluck Jonathan has in her.

This alumna of Howard University and Cambridge University, both in the United States and Britain respectively, first got into the cabinet, having spent several years working in Shell, on July 26, 2007 as Minister of Transportation. She was later redeployed to the Ministry of Mines and Steel and subsequently to the Ministry of Petroleum Resources in April 2010.

In her first year as petroleum minister, she was pitted against multinationals over her agenda, especially her enthusiasm to ensure compliance with the Nigerian Content Act that opened the door for more Nigerian participation in the oil and gas sector.

She was also instrumental to signing landmark agreements that would usher in investments worth billions of dollars in gas development and distribution for power generation and petrochemical and allied industries in the country.

With her return to the ministry, Alison-Madueke, 50, is expected to take measures to end the nation’s dependence on the importation of fuel, especially by ensuring the reification of her hope that Nigeria will become a net exporter of refined products by 2014. This she is vigorously pursuing with the memorandum of understanding signed by NNPC and a Chinese construction firm and banks for the construction of three Greenfield refineries in Lagos, Bayelsa and Kogi States.

Irrespective, pressure will be brought to bear on the minister to find a lasting solution to the artificial kerosene scarcity that has bedevilled the country since the beginning of the year.

Another extremely important task that should occupy Alison-Madueke’s time is the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill whose enactment into law has been stymied by needless controversy. A very important legislation that would transform operations in the oil and gas sector, set out new fiscal terms for companies operating oil acreages, and pave the way for the restructuring of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, the PIB has suffered four years of delay and numerous amendments that have made the bill completely unrecognisable from the original draft. Alison-Madueke would have to work with the National Assembly to get the bill back on track for its passage into law.

Broadband Policy, Industry Consolidation are Key  for Omobola Johnson

Until recently, Mrs. Omobola Olubusola Johnson was the Managing Director of Accenture, Nigeria – the first woman to hold the position in the country. A Bachelor’s Degree holder in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Manchester, she also has a Master’s degree in Digital Electronics from King’s College, London. She joined Accenture, then Andersen Consulting in 1985. At Andersen, she majored in the areas of enterprise transformation, having worked with boards and management of several banks, including the Central Bank of Nigeria.

She is coming in as the first minister of a newly-created Ministry of Communication Technology. One of the primary challenges of communication technology ministry will be to draft a broadband policy and a legal and regulatory framework that would engender the broadband access for economic development.

Her biggest task, however, would be to consolidate the multiplicity of government agencies starting from the Nigerian Communications Commission, Nigerian Broadcasting Commission, National Information Technology Development Agency, Galaxy Backbone Plc, National Spectrum Board and Nigerian Communication Satellite Company, among a host of others, in the communications and technology sector that are duplicating and falling over each other in the sector.

Although Johnson comes with a resume that can take on the challenges of starting a new ministry, she would still have to contend with the overlapping role her ministry would have with the Ministries of Information and Communications, and Science and Technology, and the turf wars certain to take place as her ministry tries to instill sanity in the ICT sector.

Providing Water to Home and Agriculture

Ochekpe was born in 1961 in Benue State and is married to a Plateau State indigene, the state from which she got her nomination. She holds Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Political Science. She also has a Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Jos.

A civil rights activist, Ochekpe would be expected to bring her skills in advocacy and grassroots mobilisation, particularly in the area of rural development, by rolling out pipe-borne water schemes and dam irrigation projects for agricultural production.

As the nation diversifies its energy sources, her ministry will also be expected to play a vital role in hydro-electric projects, such as the proposed Mambilla power plant, among others.

Prof Rufai Needs a Transformative Agenda for Education

A former professor of education and former Dean, Faculty of Education at the Bayero University, Ruqayyatu Rufai was a health commissioner as well as an education and science commissioner in her home state, Jigawa State.

She joined President Jonathan’s cabinet shortly after he was named president last year. The education sector, admittedly, showed some promise during her brief tenure as the helmswoman of the Federal Ministry of Education.

It was under her watch that several developmental activities were jump-started. It is also to her credit that Jonathan increased the budgetary allocation to the sector. Her reappointment to this ministry could therefore be seen as a tacit endorsement by the president.

But does she really deserve to be returned? Yes, one year might indeed be too short to evaluate a minister’s performance in such a key ministry. Still, the current appalling state of the sector in Nigeria cannot be ignored. From primary to tertiary level, it is the same sad tales of falling standards, low enrolment records by pupils at primary and secondary school level, poor performance in examinations, poorly trained and ill-motivated teaching and academic personnel at all levels, and inadequate funding.

Worse still, the national policy on education is weighed down by bureaucratic hurdles and inability of the ministry to effectively implement its supervisory role. Even the minister attested to this during her screening for reappointment.

Nothing short of sanitising the sector and improving standards would appease Nigerians. Wholesale reforms that would see state governments playing a more active role in improving education standards and improving enrolment figures to wipe out illiteracy would also be required.

At the tertiary level, the ministry would have to evolve a transformative agenda that would reform university and technical education so that Nigeria will stop churning out semi-literate graduates. The university system would have to be restructured from the bottom up to employ the best qualified academics, engage in research, and must be adequately equipped to ensure that students are conversant with state-of-the-art global technologies. This would require that the ministry evolves a fee-paying, scholarship and grant structure with the Nigerian University Commission and the universities, so that Nigerian higher institutions can become financially autonomous and competitive.

Under Maina, Affirmation Action Moves to Centre Stage

Hajiya Zainab Maina is from Adamawa State, north-east of Nigeria. She attended the Kaduna Polytechnic where she bagged a Diploma in Administration and Higher National Diploma in Catering and Hotel Management. She later added a certificate in Secretarial Studies from the Federal Training Centre Kaduna and also Centre for Development and Population, Washington DC, United States where she received a Certificate in Institution Building Activities.

Before her appointment as Minister for Women Affairs, Maina had been board chairman of several financial and educational institutions. As a politician, she holds sway as a notable member of the Peoples Democratic Party in different capacities.

Importantly, however, as executive director, Women Affairs of the Jonathan/Sambo Presidential Campaign, Maina’s new posting may be the right fit for someone used to managing women initiatives. But beyond the limited scope of the ruling party’s arrangement, she is expected to have a broader and wider vision of her assignment, more so as a minister serving Nigeria and not the PDP.

Her activities are expected to reflect national spread while developmental initiatives for girl-child/female education, economic empowerment, and skills acquisition for the feminine gender should be given focus and priority.

Pepple Should Take Land Reform to the Front Burner

Pepple is from the Perekule ruling family in Bonny, Rivers State. She is an alumna of the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), Ile-Ife, where she graduated in 1975 with a First Class Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science. She also holds a Master’s degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. A seasoned technocrat, Pepple was named Head of Service of the Federation on June 16, 2008, a position she retired from on June 16, 2009 after attaining the mandatory retirement age of 60. Now as Minister of Lands and Housing at a period the country is in dire need of reform in many aspects of its national life, Pepple faces a critical challenge.

She would be expected to drive the executive’s input in the efforts to reform the Land Use Act, which have been in the works since the Obasanjo era. Pepple would also be expected to lead efforts to improve the country’s housing policy, particularly as it relates to housing for public servants and low income earners.

For Akinjide, Restoring Abuja Master Plan is Paramount

Olajumoke Akinjide was born on August 4, 1959 in Ibadan. The daughter of Second Republic Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Chief Richard Akinjide, she was educated at King’s College London, where she obtained a Bachelor of Law degree and Harvard School of Law, where she graduated in 1981 with a Master’s degree. She attended the Nigerian law School in Lagos and was called to the Nigerian Bar as a Solicitor and Barrister in 1982.

Akinjide cut her teeth in legal practice in her family’s law firm, Akinjide & Co, in Lagos, and later practised in London. In 2001, she was appointed Special Assistant to the President on the Federal Capital Territory by the then president, Olusegun Obasanjo, and subsequently held the office of Special Assistant on G-77 Matters and Nigerians in the Diaspora Organisation. She contested the Oyo Central senatorial seat in the last general elections on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party but lost to the Action Congress of Nigeria’s candidate.

As Minister of State for FCT, Akinjide is confronted with expectations from her native Oyo State and the federal capital. Being a nominee of the immediate past governor of the state, Chief Adebayo Alao-Akala, she faces the challenge of helping to further restore the Abuja Master Plan, a controversial mission that could pit her against elements who may want to deviate from the plan.

Peace and Modernising the Military Will be Daunting Tasks

Erelu Olusola Obada was the immediate deputy governor of Osun state. Trained as a lawyer, she acquitted herself well as the person in charge of coordinating some of the agricultural policies of the state. Some of that experience in government would come in useful in her new role as Minister of State for Defence.

The ministry is in charge of defending the nation’s territorial integrity, and coordinating the activities of the Nigerian Army, Nigerian Air Force and the Nigerian Navy, as well as other defence agencies.  She and her superior, Dr. Haliru Bello, will tackle the daunting task of professionalising and training the military and modernising its equipment to fit with the times. This has to be done in the face of fiscal restraint.

She would also have to contend with the serious security breaches on the nation’s borders as some elements of Boko Haram, a fanatical religious sect that is causing security havoc in the country, reportedly slipped in through them. Her ministry is also tasked with keeping the peace in crisis-prone regions such as the Niger Delta and Borno State through the Joint task Force, as well as Plateau State.

Nigeria in Need of Vibrant,Purposeful Foreign Policy

Recently, President Goodluck Jonathan remarked that the Nigeria’s foreign policy needs overhauling. He was dead right. There is the need to push a vibrant and purposeful foreign policy agenda for Nigeria, one that fosters the nation’s agenda as a people and its interest in the comity of nations.

It is no longer enough to expend resources – human and financial – in the name of fighting and containing violence in Africa and the rest of the world through peace keeping roles. There must be commensurate returns for all these efforts. Nigeria must henceforth weigh the cost and benefits of this policy.

It would therefore behoove on  Professor Viola Onwuliri, a professor of biochemistry and running mate of former Imo State governor, Ikedi Ohakim, in the last election, and her new boss in the foreign affairs ministry, Ambassador Olugbenga Ashiru, to spearhead the new direction of  decisive leadership with economic interest at the forefront of this agenda.  Perhaps it may make a lot of difference in the fact that Professor Onwuliri, who has been appointed minister of state in the foreign affairs ministry, will be working with a career diplomat to steer her in the right direction.

Striving to Stimulate Development in Niger Delta

Before her appointment as Minister of State of the Niger Delta ministry, Hajia Zainab Ibrahim Kuchi was the president/chief executive officer of the Daralkuchi Group of Companies and its subsidiaries. She was also an active member, Executive Committee of the Global Shea Alliance, an international, non-profit association of industry stakeholders whose mission is to represent and further the shared interests of the Shea sector.

Thus, her new placement could benefit from her capacity building initiatives and executive managerial skills. The Ministry of Niger Delta, though created by the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, is an initiative deemed long overdue in the light of the obvious marginalisation and underdevelopment of the region responsible for about 90 percent of the nation’s income.

As a coordinator of the intervening agencies in the zone, the Niger Delta ministry is of significant importance to the security and stability of the polity. Although, Kuchi is serving as a junior minister, she has an assignment that weighs up with some substantive ministries. While it may be safe to say the ministry has begun to enjoy a degree of stability owing to the amnesty programme and other similar initiatives designed to cushion the effect of long years of marginalisation, all eyes are on Kuchi and her senior minister, Elder Godsday Orubebe, to roll out development project in the Niger Delta states.

http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/the-job-at-hand-can-the-women-deliver-/95175/

Matawa First Nations form United Front to Protect Natural Resources

 

Posted 14 July 2011, by Staff, CNW (CNW Group), newswire.ca

TORONTO, July 14, 2011 /CNW/ – Today all nine Chiefs from Matawa First Nations communities signed a historic declaration, making the commitment to stand together to protect the natural resources and territories of member First Nations. The Mamow-Wecheekapawetahteewiin- “Unity Declaration”, states that the nine Matawa communities agree that they “must stand together in order to ensure our nation is protected. Therefore, we assert our Aboriginal and Treaty Rights to the land, water and resources by requiring our written consent before any development activity may proceed.” The “Unity Declaration” further states that; “Failure to consult, accommodate and receive the consent of the First Nation(s) to proceed with any work or activity is an unjustified infringement upon our Aboriginal, Treaty and Custodial rights as First Nations.”

The declaration that was unanimously supported comes after a Matawa summit that was held in Neskantaga First Nation in early June, 2011, that focused on the development of a unified strategy to move forward on future developments and the protection of the First Nations lands, waters and resources. Chief Sonny Gagnon of Aroland First Nation says; “With this declaration, we hope to send a very powerful message to industry and government – Matawa First Nations are working as one. Any development occurring around any of our First Nations communities will impact us as one and this needs to be recognized”.

Chief Peter Moonias of Neskantaga First Nation says; “The nine First Nations take the position that our traditional territories are under our control and approval to operate in our territories and cannot be given by the government or any other entities”.

To date more than 100 mining companies have staked claims in an area now known as the Ring of Fire, some even moving past the advanced exploration phase in the area that is located in territories of Matawa member First Nations. Matawa leadership has been raising concerns about the impacts of the potential developments over the last two years. Chief Elijah Moonias of Marten Falls First Nation says; “We know the Ring of Fire and other developments in our territories will provide opportunity for our communities, but with this also comes challenges for our people. Matawa First Nations must support each other and together we must insist that development cannot continue to move forward without First Nations consent and meaningful participation. Our First Nations do not oppose responsible development but as the people of the land, we want to benefit from these potential mining developments and negotiate meaningful employment and business opportunities for our communities, while ensuring the environment is not at risk.”

The people of Matawa First Nations live and rely on the lands and water entrusted to them by the creator. The Unity Declaration further states, “We are connected through our language, culture and social and economic interests. The First Nations have the inherent right of self-determination as determined by our First Nations.”

The Matawa Chiefs all agree that everyone can and will benefit from these mining developments and as First Nations will work with the industries and governments that want to work with the First Nations as equal and meaningful partners. The Mamow-Wecheekapawetahteewiin- “Unity Declaration”, states that “we will do whatever is necessary in order to protect our land, our resources for the future generations.”

http://newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/July2011/14/c5459.html

Will North America Be the New Middle East?

It’s Yes or No For a Climate-Killing Oil Pipeline — and Obama Gets to Make the Call

Posted 15 July 2011, by Bill McKibben (TomDispatch), Revista Amauta, revista-amauta.org

Article published in Amauta with permission from TomDispatch and the author
Source: TomDispatch

The climate problem has moved from the abstract to the very real in the last 18 months.  Instead of charts and graphs about what will happen someday, we’ve got real-time video: first Russia burning, then Texas and Arizona on fire.  First Pakistan suffered a deluge, then Queensland, Australia, went underwater, and this spring and summer, it’s the Midwest that’s flooding at historic levels.

The year 2010 saw the lowest volume of Arctic ice since scientists started to measure, more rainfall on land than any year in recorded history, and the lowest barometric pressure ever registered in the continental United States.  Measured on a planetary scale, 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest year in history.  Jeff Masters, probably the world’s most widely read meteorologist, calculated that the year featured the most extreme weather since at least 1816, when a giant volcano blew its top.

Since we’re the volcano now, and likely to keep blowing, here’s his prognosis: “The ever-increasing amounts of heat-trapping gases humans are emitting into the air put tremendous pressure on the climate system to shift to a new, radically different, warmer state, and the extreme weather of 2010-2011 suggests that the transition is already well underway.”

There’s another shift, too, and that’s in the response from climate-change activists. For the first two decades of the global-warming era, the suggested solutions to the problem had been as abstract as the science that went with it: complicated schemes like the Kyoto Protocol, or the cap-and-trade agreement that died in Congress in 2010.  These were attempts to solve the problem of climate change via complicated backstage maneuvers and manipulations of prices or regulations.  They failed in large part because the fossil-fuel industry managed, at every turn, to dilute or defang them.

Clearly the current Congress is in no mood for real regulation, so — for the moment anyway — the complicated planning is being replaced by a simpler rallying cry. When it comes to coal, oil, and natural gas, the new mantra of activists is simple, straightforward, and hard to defang: Keep it in the ground!

Two weeks ago, for instance, a few veteran environmentalists, myself included, issued a call for protest against Canada’s plans to massively expand oil imports from the tar sands regions of Alberta.  We set up a new website, tarsandsaction.org, and judging from the early response, it could result in the largest civil disobedience actions in the climate-change movement’s history on this continent, as hundreds, possibly thousands, of concerned activists converge on the White House in August. They’ll risk arrest to demand something simple and concrete from President Obama: that he refuse to grant a license for Keystone XL, a new pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico that would vastly increase the flow of tar sands oil through the U.S., ensuring that the exploitation of Alberta’s tar sands will only increase.

Forget the abstract and consider the down-and-dirty instead. You can undoubtedly guess some of the reasons for opposition to such a pipeline.  It’s wrecking native lands in Canada, and potential spills from that pipeline could pollute some of the most important ranchlands and aquifers in America. (Last week’s Yellowstone River spill was seen by many as a sign of what to expect.)

There’s an even bigger reason to oppose the pipeline, one that should be on the minds of even those of us who live thousands of miles away: Alberta’s tar sands are the continent’s biggest carbon bomb.  Indeed, they’re the second largest pool of carbon on planet Earth, following only Saudi Arabia’s slowly dwindling oilfields.

If you could burn all the oil in those tar sands, you’d run the atmosphere’s concentration of carbon dioxide from its current 390 parts per million (enough to cause the climate havoc we’re currently seeing) to nearly 600 parts per million, which would mean if not hell, then at least a world with a similar temperature. It won’t happen overnight, thank God, but according to the planet’s most important climatologist, James Hansen, burning even a substantial portion of that oil would mean it was “essentially game over” for the climate of this planet.

Halting that pipeline wouldn’t solve all tar sands problems.  The Canadians will keep trying to get it out to market, but it would definitely ensure that more of that oil will stay in the ground longer and that, at least, would be a start.  Even better, the politics of it are simple. For once, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives can’t get in the way.  The president alone decides if the pipeline is “in the national interest.” There are, however, already worrisome signs within the Obama administration.  Just this week, based on a State Department cable released by WikiLeaks, Neela Banerjee of the Los Angeles Times reported that, in 2009, the State Department’s “energy envoy” was already instructing Alberta’s fossil-fuel barons in how to improve their “oil sands messaging,” including “increasing visibility and accessibility of more positive news stories.” This is the government version of Murdochian-style enviro-hacking, and it leads many to think that the new pipeline is already a done deal.

Still, the president can say no.  If he does, then no pipeline — and in the words of Alberta’s oil minister, his province will be “landlocked in bitumen” (the basic substance from which tar-sands oil is extracted). Even energy-hungry China, eager as it is for new sources of fossil fuels, may not be able to save him, since native tribes are doing a remarkable job of blocking another proposed pipeline to the Canadian Pacific.  Oil, oil everywhere, and nary a drop to sell. (Unfortunately that’s not quite true, but at least there won’t be a big new straw in this milkshake.)

An Obama thumbs-down on the pipeline could change the economics of the tar sands in striking ways. “Unless we get increased [market] access, like with Keystone XL, we’re going to be stuck,” said Ralph Glass, an economist and vice-president at AJM Petroleum Consultants in Calgary.

Faced with that prospect, Canada’s oilmen are growing desperate. Earlier this month, in a classic sleight of hand, they announced plans for a giant “carbon capture and sequestration” scheme at the tar sands. That’s because when it comes to global warming, tar sands oil is even worse than, say, Saudi oil because it’s a tarry muck, not a liquid, and so you have to burn a lot of natural gas to make it flow in the first place.

Now, the oil industry is proposing to capture some of the extra carbon from that cooking process and store it underground.  This is an untested method, and the accounting scheme Alberta has adopted for it may actually increase the province’s emmissions.  Even if it turns out to work perfectly and captures the carbon from that natural gas that would have escaped into the atmosphere, the oil they’re proposing to ship south for use in our gas tanks would still be exactly as bad for the atmosphere as Saudi crude. In other words, in the long run it would still be “essentially game over” for the climate.

The Saudis, of course, built their oil empire long before we knew that there was anything wrong with burning oil. The Canadians — with American help, if Obama obliges the oil lobby — are building theirs in the teeth of the greatest threat the world has ever faced. We can’t unbuild those Saudi Arabian fields, though happily their supplies are starting to slowly dwindle. What we can still do, though, is prevent North America from becoming the next Middle East.

So there will be a battle, and there will be nothing complicated or abstract about it.  It will be based on one question: Does that carbon stay in the earth, or does it pour into the atmosphere?  Given the trillions of dollars at stake it will be a hard fight, and there’s no guarantee of victory. But at least there’s no fog here, no maze of technicalities.

The last climate bill, the one the Senate punted on, was thousands of pages long. This time there’s a single sheet of paper, which Obama signs… or not.

Bill McKibben is Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College, founder of 350.org, and a TomDispatch regular. His most recent book, just out in paperback, is Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.

(Ed Note: Please visit the original site to view the illustration associated with this article)

http://revista-amauta.org/2011/07/will-north-america-be-the-new-middle-east/

Greening a city … and pushing other colors out

 

 

Posted 16 July 2011, by Rachel Waldholz, Grist, grist.com

The Hunters Point Naval Shipyard covers 500 acres on San Francisco’s southeastern flank, jutting out into the bay like the fletching of a giant arrow. Acquired by the U.S. Navy in 1940, it was once one of the West Coast’s largest shipyards, at its World War II peak employing up to 17,000 people, many of them African Americans who settled nearby. The Navy ended its work at the Shipyard in 1974, devastating the local economy, and it was eventually listed for cleanup as a Superfund-equivalent site. These days, it’s a rusting city unto itself, its drydock and warehouses abandoned. For a long time, its only tenants were the city’s crime lab and artists drawn by the cheap space and haunting surroundings: a boarded-up diner, its Pepsi sign intact; the giant crane where the Navy once tested rockets; deserted labs that hosted radiological experiments.

As one of the largest chunks of vacant land left in San Francisco — which has some of the highest land values and housing costs in the country — the shipyard represents an immense opportunity. And so last summer, after decades of wrangling and neglect, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved an ambitious redevelopment plan for the site. If completed, it will be one of the largest developments here since the creation of Golden Gate Park — and perhaps the most contentious.

The city has hired Florida-based Lennar Corp., a major housing developer, to transform the site. Lennar’s plan calls for 10,500 new housing units, and space for retail and artists’ studios. It’s chock-full of green goodies: parks, mass transit upgrades, and a “green tech” campus. Thirty-two percent of the housing will be sold at prices well below the city’s sky-high market rates. It’s the kind of mixed-use, mixed-income development that sprawl-weary environmentalists have cheered from Denver to Portland — dense, transit-oriented, and built on reclaimed brownfields near the city center.

But many locals have received the plan with deep ambivalence. “The project is flawed from stem to stern,” says Saul Bloom, executive director of Arc Ecology. The local nonprofit has advocated for the Shipyard’s cleanup and redevelopment since 1984, but contends that the current plan won’t benefit the community.

Bayview Hunters Point, which wraps around the Shipyard, is the last of San Francisco’s historically black neighborhoods. Rows of modest, pastel-colored houses march up its hills, with breathtaking views of the bay. But it is among the city’s poorest communities. Before the recession, the unemployment rate reached 10 percent. Activists and city officials estimate it could now be as high as 30 percent, compared to 9.1 percent citywide. The neighborhood hosts a panoply of polluting industries besides the shipyard. An aging sewage treatment plant processes two thirds of the peninsula’s waste on a residential street, and a dense commercial district houses everything from plastics manufacturers to commercial drycleaners. Until 2006, when local pressure shut it down, one of California’s oldest power plants sat at Bayview’s edge. All this has contributed to some alarming health statistics: More than 15 percent of the community’s kids have asthma, compared to 5.6 percent of Americans nationally. Hospitalization rates for chronic illness are three times the state average, and breast and cervical cancer rates high.

But the industries that have so burdened the neighborhood have also, to some extent, sheltered it, keeping housing relatively affordable as rising prices forced low-income residents out of other neighborhoods. For decades, activists urged the city to redevelop the shipyard, hoping it could revive the neighborhood’s economy. Now that redevelopment is finally under way, though, many worry that it’s come at too high a cost.

If the typical environmental justice story involves a poor community of color living in the shadow of toxic industry, Bayview is the next chapter. What happens after the mess is cleaned up? From New York City to Denver to Seattle, sustainable redevelopment projects promise to address festering issues of environmental injustice. But instead of delivering economic lifelines to struggling communities, they often threaten to displace the very residents who for years endured the burdens of pollution and fought to relieve it.

In recent years, a growing number of cities have adopted “smart growth” policies aimed at encouraging infill — the development of unused space within city limits. And in 2009, the Obama administration announced a major shift in federal policy — which it dubbed the Partnership for Sustainable Communities — to push more cities to adopt such codes. For the first time, the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Transportation, and Department of Housing and Urban Development will work in tandem to direct federal money to projects that curb sprawl and are close to mass transit.

In booming cities, old industrial sites, railyards, shipyards, and decommissioned military bases are frequently among the last large empty spaces ripe for infill. The communities near these sites are often low-income. Like Bayview, many have weathered the economic and environmental blows of declining industries and their toxic legacies. Now, they find themselves caught between hope for much-needed investment and fear of the change it might bring.

“One of the complaints about the (smart growth) movement has been, ‘It’s always upscale, it’s expensive, it drives people out,'” says John Frece, the director of the EPA’s Office of Sustainable Communities. To prevent displacement, federal funding for smart-growth projects through the Partnership includes requirements for affordable housing, job-training programs, and community engagement in the planning process. The administration’s goal, Frece says, is to make sure communities aren’t “penalized just because their environmental problems get cleaned up.”

Accomplishing that, though, isn’t easy. Says Malo Hutson, assistant professor of city and regional planning at UC Berkeley, “You would get the Nobel Prize in Economics — or Peace — if you could figure out a way to keep the community that existed before the redevelopment project came along.”

In Bayview, the debate over redevelopment has been heated. After 30 years of neglect, many residents welcome the project, with its promise of jobs and amenities in a neighborhood with few stores, no major supermarket, struggling schools, and limited access to public transit. But others say the job projections are unrealistic, the plan doesn’t include enough affordable housing, and most of what it does include is still too pricey for the average resident.

“If I see one more report on how sustainable our developments are, the top of my head’s going to come off,” says Arc Ecology’s Bloom. A New York native with a grizzled ponytail, Bloom organized against the Vietnam War, in the labor movement, and once tried to fly a hot air balloon into the Nevada Test Site to stop a bomb test. Now, he’s among the leading critics of the city and Lennar Corp. “I support development on the site. There’s no question about it: This community needs development,” he says. “But we’re talking about smart development.”

Compounding the economic worries, some doubt that the Shipyard will be fully cleaned up and fear that the construction itself could put local residents at risk. (The EPA insists that it will not.) The Shipyard houses the typical detritus of heavy industry — plumes of solvents in groundwater, PCBs, lead, and chromium from metalwork — as well as more bizarre souvenirs of its days as one of the Navy’s radiological testing laboratories. Ships exposed to radiation during nuclear tests in the Pacific were towed to Hunters Point for study, and animals as large as cows were irradiated to observe the effects of fallout.

The Navy is responsible for cleanup, under the oversight of the EPA and the state of California. Parts of the Shipyard will be cleaned to residential standards; one of the most contaminated sections, a former landfill along the waterfront, will be partially excavated, and then capped and topped with a park. In 2004, the Navy handed over the first parcel of land to the city; the full cleanup is set to be completed by 2018 — 29 years after it was listed for cleanup.

Lennar, meanwhile, has not endeared itself to the neighborhood. Starting in 2008, a subcontractor for the company did heavy grading that kicked up clouds of dust, including puffs of pulverized serpentine, which contains naturally occurring asbestos. Local activists maintain that the dust caused nosebleeds and rashes. And assurances from the EPA, San Francisco Department of Public Health, and Bay Area Air Quality Management District that it did not pose a health risk have done little to alleviate their concerns. In the San Francisco Bay View, a local paper that calls itself “the voice of Black Liberation,” Bayview resident and physician Ahimsa Sumchai wrote that the development would have such significant health impacts and displace so many black residents that it “meets the UN standard definition of genocide.”

This kind of hyperbole and caustic distrust has its own backstory. In the 1940s, African Americans began moving to San Francisco as part of the Great Migration from the South. The Shipyard was a major employer, and one of the few in the area that hired black workers. Even after World War II, it continued to employ some 7,000 workers, and Bayview developed into a solid blue-collar black neighborhood. By the 1960s, it had one of the highest rates of homeownership in the city, a distinction it retains. Many of the city’s neighborhoods had property covenants barring minority buyers or renters; Bayview was one of the only ones that welcomed African Americans.

“There were areas in San Francisco when we moved here that the only black person’s face that you saw were the ones working in the houses, doing childcare or housecleaning or cooking,” says Marie Harrison, a 44-year resident of Bayview, and a community organizer with the environmental justice group Greenaction who helped spearhead the campaign that led to the decommissioning of PG&E’s local power plant in 2006. “The only place for us to live was in the Fillmore or in the Bayview.”

Talk to anyone about the new development in Bayview, and pretty soon they will mention the Fillmore. Known as the “Harlem of the West” for its bustling black-owned business district and burgeoning jazz scene, the neighborhood was razed in the ’60s as part of San Francisco’s “urban renewal” campaign. It was one of many anti-blight drives that swept through cities at the time, earning the bitter nickname “black people removal.” The land sat vacant for years, and many Fillmore residents moved to Bayview. The Fillmore leveling was among the first projects of the nascent San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, now tasked with redeveloping the Shipyard.

The agency has come a long way since then. In an interview at its office downtown, Thor Kaslofsky and Wells Lawson, the city’s two point men on the project, listed Bayview’s environmental justice issues and discussed San Francisco’s history of African-American flight as well as any activist. They say the city has bent over backwards to ensure that Bayview residents have a voice in the development — and a chance to benefit from it.

“Gentrification issues are really a significant concern for the city,” says Lawson, who coordinates the project for the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development. “(But) we do want the land values to increase in this area. That’s the premise of redevelopment, fundamentally: to take what’s blighted and use public investment to increase the land value. The question then is, how do you maintain neighborhood stability?”

The city is attacking the problem with a suite of programs designed to prepare local residents, homeowners, and businesses to, as Lawson puts it, “ride the wave” of rising costs of living. The hope is that the jobs the build-out generates, primarily in construction, will raise local incomes alongside property values. The project includes a program to help local developers get contracts at the site, and requires outside contractors to make a “good faith effort” to hire locals.

Additionally, the city and Lennar have assembled an $83 million “community benefits agreement.” It includes $20 million to help homeowners retain and upgrade their homes and $9 million in job training programs to help locals get jobs during the build-out and afterwards, in the businesses the city hopes will follow. There’s also money for pediatric health programs and college scholarships. Perhaps most importantly, 32 percent of the housing units built will be sold below market rate. (The proportion was raised from 21 percent after local activists put up a fierce fight.) In fact, San Francisco has already put in place many of the measures pushed by the Obama administration’s Partnership for Sustainable Communities.

Despite all this, Marie Harrison remains deeply skeptical. “(They) promise these young folks: ‘This time, we’re gonna give you jobs, we’re gonna train you, and you’re gonna be able to buy these houses.'” But, she says, many Bayview residents simply lack the necessary skills or education to take the jobs that will be available. And similar promises have gone unfulfilled in the past. In 2004, the city began construction of a light-rail line down Third Street, the neighborhood’s main commercial corridor. Construction was supposed to create jobs and reinvigorate the struggling business strip. But almost no local residents were hired. Only after activists, including Harrison, raised a fuss, were some locals hired to handle traffic signs for short stints. The experience embittered many. “I cry when I hear my folks going through this,” Harrison says. “It is just miserable for them.”

Bayview has seen intense gentrification in the past 10 years. This is consistent with national trends — more affluent Americans are increasingly returning to city cores — and is, in part, a result of land speculation in anticipation of the redevelopment. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the median price of a single-family home in Bayview rose from $129,000 in 1996 to $570,000 in 2008, a faster increase than any other neighborhood in the city; some houses on the new light-rail line jumped from $200,000 to $800,000 over the same of the period. (The housing bust erased some of those gains.) Activists like Harrison see these figures as harbingers of what future development will bring. They agree that, in the long term, the project will help revitalize the community — but what community will be there then?

Despite their determination to maintain neighborhood stability, Kaslofsky and Lawson acknowledge that change is coming. Bayview will not be the same place 20 years from now, they say — and they insist that’s a good thing.

“From my personal perspective,” Lawson says, “the real community champions in this neighborhood are the ones who basically focus on, ‘I want to be able to raise my kid in this area, and I don’t care what has to change to make that happen, I don’t want it to stay the way it is.'”

“Invasion and succession — in planning speak — is a very natural urban ecological thing.”

Of course, how natural it feels depends on which side of the invasion you’re on.

Displacement in Bayview today happens in a different way than in the days of the Fillmore. Many Bayview residents live in subsidized housing or own their own homes, so they’re not at risk from rising rents. Instead, say Bloom and Harrison, the younger generation is moving out because they can’t afford to buy homes. And some longtime homeowners, who waited decades to see their homes appreciate, are now selling. But because what they sell for isn’t enough to buy a house elsewhere in San Francisco, they are leaving the city. Only the more affluent can afford to buy in.

Marie Harrison’s family is Exhibit A. She owns her home and has raised three children, seven grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren in the neighborhood. But when her son and his wife wanted to buy a house, they couldn’t afford anything in Bayview. They moved 80 miles away to Stockton, Calif., instead.

In 2000, Bayview was about 48 percent black — down from 65 percent in 1990. That figure has continued to decline. In 2010, the city as a whole was only 6 percent black, down from 13 percent in 1970. San Francisco lost 10,000 black residents in the last decade; Antioch, an hour inland, gained nearly that many, a 114 percent increase. Many of the Bay Area’s outer-ring communities have grown rapidly, attracting lower-income black and Latino residents, who move where their money buys more space while continuing to work in the city. San Francisco isn’t alone in this trend. You can find lower-income exurbs growing, says Berkeley professor Hutson, “from Seattle to San Diego.”

Many Bayview residents do support the development. “If they are able to do just what they say, I’d be pretty pleased,” says Angelo King, a resident for 13 years. King chairs the Project Area Committee, a volunteer citizens’ advisory board to the Redevelopment Agency. He believes the project could revitalize a stagnating economy while locking in middle-class housing in a city that sorely needs it.

The current situation is untenable, King says: Already-high property values will continue to rise, with or without redevelopment. The demand for housing in San Francisco is simply too great for Bayview to remain unaffected. Meanwhile, those who can afford to leave have been doing so for years, frustrated by the neighborhood’s struggling schools, isolation, and lack of amenities.

“We don’t have a problem with subsidized housing — we have more than any other ZIP Code in the damn city. We have a problem with middle-class housing,” King says, noting that he can’t afford to buy in. “There is housing for people who have not and who have. But if you live with your wife and you make $110,000, you don’t have a place in Bayview. You don’t have a place in the whole city.”

And Fred Blackwell, chief of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, says the city’s plan is the only viable option. “There are a lot of novel ideas out there. (But) I haven’t seen another one that works from a financial point of view.” San Francisco lacks the funds to develop the site on its own, he says. Redevelopment projects like the Shipyard require a developer with the ability to invest a lot of money up front. And it’s the massive amount of market-rate housing which subsidizes the cheaper units. The Shipyard needs basic infrastructure — grading, roads, sewers, streetlights — which Lennar will have to pay for before it turns a profit. Once the infrastructure is built and property values start to rise, the money the city collects in increased property taxes will be directed to the Redevelopment Agency to fund further investments — that’s where the funding for most of the affordable housing comes from, as well as for community benefits like job training.

Arc Ecology, however, remains steadfast in its disapproval of the city’s plan. Bloom argues that the city chose a conventional developer, endorsed its “off-the-shelf” plan, and then tacked on benefits to mitigate its impacts. He sees it as a missed opportunity to think more creatively about how to build a more sustainable — and fair — community. During the planning process, Arc Ecology proposed a “green maritime” industrial and research center to take advantage of local job skills and one of the country’s great deepwater ports, and return the shipyard to its role as the area’s economic engine. And Bloom suggested the city pay homeowners to turn single-family houses into multiple units, which he argues would increase density and local incomes, and generate the same amount of housing faster and more cheaply.

It’s admittedly unclear that such a plan could materialize. But the same could be said of the city’s plan for a green tech center, its major hope for generating jobs. So far, the proposal has no definite takers.

The Board of Supervisors voted to approve the current plan in August 2010, but Bloom and Harrison still hope to amend it. Harrison’s Greenaction has sued the city, arguing that the environmental impact report approved by the Board does not adequately address possible harm to local residents during cleanup and construction at the site. Bloom hopes that with the upcoming mayoral election, the political winds could shift, or that economic factors could persuade the city to consider changes. “If there’s anything true about development, it’s that what you see on paper isn’t what gets built,” he says. “Things change, markets change, opportunities change.”

For the moment, construction at the site is stalled, tied up by lawsuits and the unfavorable economy.

“You’re walking through housing right now,” says Bloom. In fact, we are walking through Candlestick Point State Park, the only major green space near Bayview. The park, which sits on a spit of land just south of the shipyard, wraps around the 49ers football stadium, hugging the shoreline. Under the city’s plan, housing will replace the stadium and part of the park. The city argues that the additional land is needed to make the development financially viable. Besides, the park is hardly untouched wilderness, project supporters say.

But, says Bloom, spreading his arms, “In this part of town, this is the best you get.” And it’s a surprisingly tranquil place. Birds chatter in the manzanita and Monterey pines. The bay itself stretches splendidly away, and, to the south, fog hugs the hills.

Bloom worries that the plan will effectively turn the remaining park from the area’s only real open space into a private park for the residents of the new condominiums. To him, it’s indicative of the problem at the heart of the whole project. “It’s not oriented towards this community,” he says. “It’s a completely different community that they plan to build.”

This article originally appeared in the May 31, 2011 issue of High Country News.

Rachel Waldholz is an environmental reporter based in Brooklyn, New York.

 

(Ed Note: Please visit the original site to view the photographs and illustrations associated with this article.)

 

http://www.grist.org/cities/2011-07-16-greening-a-city-and-pushing-other-colors-out

The summer of my disconnect

 

Posted 17 July 2011, by Carl Crumbacker Sr., Delmarva NOW! (A Gannett Company), delmarvanow.com

Well, it is truly July. For some reason, it feels like it started in June, or even before that.

Maybe it is my imagination running away, but things just don’t seem the same this summer. The budget apocalypse has spread and political discourse is as ugly as ever. I don’t think it is the heat, since the liberal vs. conservative fight has been going on for quite some time, even in the dead of winter.

Elections come and go, with a sense of excitement that we citizens will be saved from impending doom, only to watch as the newly elected folks get consumed by their power, put on the magic ring, go off and never return to their earthly roots.

There is no middle ground anymore, once the votes are counted and the official takes a corner. The problems haven’t changed for average people, who have to balance a budget while taxes and tolls are seen as the only solution to resolve an issue.

Many people are just shaking their heads in disbelief at the state of things in general.

I even heard a few people in line at the grocery store say our politicians have been taken over by extraterrestrials.

I don’t believe they were serious, but it does boggle the mind. There are times I wonder if the political climate has infected the average person.

It appears to me that many folks are edgy lately, living for the moment as though tomorrow is not a thought.

My favorite spot in summer is Assateague Island. This year, it is obvious that staffing has been reduced. I observed a frenzy of beachgoers attacking the pristine beach like an army of ants, leaving their residue behind for the wild ponies to clean up.

I have spent many a summer at Assateague. This is not a normal occurrence. Unethical behavior is fast becoming a normal way of life here on Mother Earth. We are even losing our ability to converse with one another face to face. Since the invention of text messaging, tweets and so forth, people talk with their texting devices.

Yes, even my own family members have caught the tweets and rarely look up anymore.

Speaking, it appears, is painful for a text master. I fear our civility is losing hold, and we are doomed to be hooked to a digital device that will only speak unemotionally and too quickly.

Courtesy, civility and kindness have a positive influence toward reducing real problems.

Enjoy your summer.

» Carl Crumbacker Sr. is an author, consultant and retired criminal justice executive who lives in Eden.

 

http://www.delmarvanow.com/article/20110717/OPINION01/107170327

Africa-Spain biosphere reserve promoted

 

 

Posted 16 July 2011, by Staff, The Olive Press (Luke Stewart Media SL), theolivepress.es

SPAIN and Morocco have signed an unprecedented cross-border agreement protecting a biosphere reserve.

The agreement has been formed in a bid to encourage sustainable development in the Mediterranean Intercontinental Biosphere Reserve established by UNESCO in 2006.

The 907,185 hectare area which stretches into the Malaga and Cadiz provinces incorporates the natural parks of the Sierra de las Nieves, Los Alcornocales, Sierra de Grazalema and Del Estrecho.

On the Moroccan side parks including Talassemtane and Jbel Moussa are included.

The latest agreement will ensure communities from both nations are dedicated to research, education and conservation of the natural environments.

 

http://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2011/07/16/africa-spain-biosphere-reserve-promoted/

Orissa’s Similipal Reserve Forests to be included in World Network of Biosphere Reserves

Orissa’s Similipal Reserve Forests to be included in World Network of Biosphere Reserves

Posted 17 July 2011, by Staff, Orissa Diary, orissadiary.com

Bhubaneswar: The Similipal Reserve Forests will soon be included in the World Network of Biosphere Reserves as a result of the decisions taken by the International Coordinating Council of Programme on Man and Biosphere. This fact came to light at a meeting of the Similipal Biosphere Reserve Management Council held under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary Bijaya Kumar Patnaik at the State secretariat on Saturday evening.

According to estimates, Similipal biosphere reserve spreads over 5,569 sq km with 1194.75-sq km core zone, 1335.86 sq km buffer zone and 3038.39 sq km transitional zone. The largest natural watershed of northern Odisha has been developed here, which feeds 10 perennial streams that drain into major rivers like Budhabalanga, Baitarani and Subarnarekha.

It is acknowledged as a biodiversity hotspot with 1076 plant species, 55 mammal species, 304 bird species, 20 species of amphibians, 62 species of reptiles, 37 species of fishes, 179 species of butterflies and 217 species of invertebrates. Different approaches have been chalked out for management of the core, buffer and transitional zones. For the core area management thrust has been laid on protection and management of wild life; for the buffer area the thrust is on eco-development and for the transitional area the thrust has been awareness of eco-development and development of eco-tourism.Review of the progress of Management Action Plan (MAP) shows that during the last 15 years a total of
Rs 563.22 lak has been received from the Government of India with yearly average of Rs 37.58 lakh.

Under the programme, 30 units of diary farming has been developed in the Baripada Division; 2 units of rubber plantation and apiary cultivation have been done in the Karanjia Division, 3 pisciculture units have been started in the Rairangpur Division and 10 mushroom cultivation units with 50 beneficiaries have been set up in the Rairangpur Division. Secretary Forest and Environment Aurobindo Behera, PCCF PN Padhi, Mayurbhanj SP Soorya Thaqnkappam participated in the discussion.

 

http://www.orissadiary.com/ShowDistrictNews.asp?id=27936

State agency will join Whatcom County in review of Cherry Point cargo terminal

State agency will join Whatcom County in review of Cherry Point cargo terminal

Posted 16 July 2011, by John Stark, The Bellingham Herald (The McClatchy Company), bellinghamherald.com

The state Department of Ecology has agreed to share the lead role with Whatcom County as the hotly contested Gateway Pacific Terminal project moves through an extensive regulatory process. Ecology’s acceptance of that role appears to resolve a squabble that developed in June between the county and the city of Bellingham, when Mayor Dan Pike sent a letter to Gov. Chris Gregoire. That letter asked her to order state agencies to take the lead on the Gateway Pacific issue away from Whatcom County. Pike’s letter questioned whether the county was capable of assessing the terminal’s potential impacts on Bellingham as well as areas outside the county. The county fired off its own letter to Gregoire in response. That letter, signed by Chief Civil Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Randall Watts, accused Pike of “erroneous and malicious statements” and “political grandstanding,” but the letter also agreed that a larger role for Ecology might be appropriate in the Gateway Pacific review process.

Emails exchanged by top state officials indicate that the dueling letters from city and county officials were duly noted in Olympia.

In an email to top Gregoire staffers, obtained by a public records request, Ecology Director Ted Sturdevant advised the governor not to take sides.

“My advice is to keep the Gov out of this spat between the City and the County,” the email said. “It won’t be the last on this project.”

Gateway Pacific, proposed by SSA Marine of Seattle, would be a deep-water shipping pier for export of coal and other bulk commodities at a Cherry Point site south of the BP refinery. Opponents say the project would cause local air pollution while promoting release of more greenhouse gases in China. They also fear that the added rail traffic through Bellingham to the site would mean noise, traffic disruption and coal dust problems.

In their own exchange of letters Friday, July 15, Sturdevant and Whatcom County Planning Supervisor Tyler Schroeder agreed that the proposed project presents statewide and regional issues that need to be studied as part of the environmental impact statement process.

The environmental impact statement will evaluate the project’s potential impacts as well as options for offsetting them.

Washington’s State Environmental Policy Act, SEPA, governs the environmental review process. That law makes Whatcom County serves as the lead agency but allows the county to enlist other agencies to share lead agency tasks.

Pike expressed satisfaction at the news of Ecology’s beefed-up role.

“It was the right decision,” Pike said. “I’m glad the state is stepping up.”

Bill Lynn, an attorney representing SSA, said the company has no problem with the new arrangement.

“It’s probably a plus,” Lynn said. “There are obviously some statewide issues here. … Ecology is always involved in the SEPA review anyway.”

Reach JOHN STARK at  john.stark@bellinghamherald.com . Read his Consumer Protection Blog at blogs.bellinghamherald.com/consumer.

http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2011/07/16/2103783/state-agency-will-join-whatcom.html

Oil Companies Kick the (Aluminum) Can Down the Road Toward Toxic Oil Sands

 

 

Posted 16 July 2011, by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov, allgov.com

Environmentalists loathe the rush to develop Canada’s vast oil sands reserves containing an enormous amount of crude and a wealth of potential harm to North American ecology.

Within the province of Alberta is an estimated 171.3 billion barrels of oil which, if fully developed, would put Canada in the same camp as OPEC’s leader, Saudi Arabia (which has reserves of 264.2 billion barrels). As Canadian oil businesses extract the crude from its sandy confines, the region has become polluted with toxic ponds and fouled terrain, leading one UN expert to compare the place to Mordor, the fictional dark realm of Middle Earth created by J. R. R. Tolkien.

Oil sands also pose a problem for the struggle to reduce emissions causing global warming, because it is one of the most greenhouse gas-intensive types of oil in existence.

But the environmental impact of the oil sands extraction doesn’t stop in Alberta. Some of the oil is piped to Cherry Point, BP’s refinery in Washington State. There, the crude is broken down to produce transportation fuel, and a leftover of this process is a tarry residue that eventually gets turned into petroleum coke, or petcoke, an industrial solid that helps manufacture aluminum cans.

Cherry Point’s website boasts that “one in six aluminum cans is made using BP Cherry Point’s calcinated coke.”

And along the way more greenhouse gases are released, with petcoke putting out twice the emissions of natural gas.

If Canadian and American oil companies get their way, oil sands will eventually be shipped to U.S. refineries near the Gulf of Mexico. This endeavor will require the building of a north-south transcontinental pipeline that has environmentalists alarmed. Just look at the recent spill in the Yellowstone River, they say, and what even a small amount of oil could do to endanger a pristine body of water. Imagine what it might be like if the proposed pipeline sprung leaks under, across or near any number of important waterways in the West?

Environmentalists don’t want to consider the risk and are steadfast in opposing the plan, which the Obama administration is still mulling over.

Toxic Pop: How Tar Sands Fuel Disposable Cans (by Geoff Dembicki, CorpWatch)

The Risks of the Keystone XL Pipeline (Editorial, Los Angeles Times)

Oil Sands Project in Canada Will Go On if Pipeline Is Blocked (by Ian Austen, New York Times)

Cherry Point Refinery (BP)

(Ed Note: Please visit the originl site to view a photograph associated with thius article)

http://www.allgov.com/Controversies/ViewNews/Oil_Companies_Kick_the_Aluminum_Can_Down_the_Road_Toward_Toxic_Oil_Sands_110716