Celebrate Earth Day-but Watch the Supreme Court

 

In April we see Spring arrive in its glory as trees, grasses, and flowers all come forth in beauty and abundance. April is also when we celebrate Earth Day, a date set aside way back in 1970 to encourage communities to focus on their environment.

Here is a poem about Spring ..and life by Philip Larkin, a British poet (1922-1985) who did not consider this poem his best, but knew it conveyed a message.

The Trees, by Philip Larkin

The trees are coming into leaf

Like something almost being said;

The recent buds relax and spread,

Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too,

Their yearly trick of looking new

Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In full-grown thickness every May.

Last year is dead, they seem to say,

Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

 

On that first Earth Day estimates were that over twenty million people took part at some level in their communities as they planted trees, removed rubbish from streams, and collected litter along roadways. From coast to coast, schools, and colleges, just regular folks, business owners, elected officials, and grandmothers, got out and about and looked at their environment. What they saw was not encouraging, as industrial waste polluted streams and groundwater, and smokestacks at chemical sites spewed noxious fumes into the air, causing smog and exposing nearby communities to carcinogens.

Later that year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was formed to address these concerns. Its mission, as described here by the Library of Congress research arm:

“Was established in response to the growing public demand for cleaner water, air, and land—its mission to protect the environment and public health. Earth Day also was the precursor of the largest grassroots environmental movement in US history and the impetus for national legislation such as the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the EPA announced new requirements for improving air quality in national parks and wilderness areas and establishing regulations requiring more than 90 percent cleaner heavy-duty highway diesel engines and fuel.”

“By the twentieth anniversary of the first event, more than 200 million people in 141 countries had participated in Earth Day celebrations. The celebrations continue to grow.”

Today, the EPA is still working to protect our communities and our environment. Its website suggests ways everyone can contribute to these efforts.

Lower your carbon footprint.

Reduce, reuse, recycle

Be water smart, conserve

Feed people, not landfills

The website also discusses the way an Act such as the Clean Air and Water Act became law and regulations were written. The EPA also works to enforce these regulations with inspections and fines when violations are found.

Industrial plants with polluting smokestacks that send pollutants into the air such as nitrogen oxide, sulfur oxides, carbon dioxides, carbon monoxides, and particulate matter were required to take measures to stop this contamination. These measures included adding particulate controllers such as cyclone separators, fabric filters, and electrostatic precipitators that removed certain pollutants while smoke stack scrubbers removed sulfur, incineration residue, and volatile organic compounds (VOC). Excess carbon was captured and pumped into the ground to remove the greenhouse effects it could cause in the air.

This is just a minor example of the issues the EPA deals with annually in one industry. It is known that some plants contribute to water pollution by discharging contaminated water used in their chemical processes into nearby streams, while other industries store chemicals in unsafe containers that can leak toxic materials into the ground. Additional regulations were added to address this issue, especially when factories closed and abandoned their former worksites, leaving contaminated acres behind. The provisions in Super Fund legislation allowed for long-term evaluation and clean-up as such sites were identified. The EPA website describes the process.

“Thousands of contaminated sites exist nationally due to hazardous waste being dumped, left out in the open, or otherwise improperly managed. These sites include manufacturing facilities, processing plants, landfills, and mining sites. 

In the late 1970s, toxic waste dumps such as Love Canal and Valley of the Drums received national attention when the public learned about the risks to human health and the environment posed by contaminated sites. 

In response, Congress established the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) in 1980. CERCLA is informally called Superfund. It allows EPA to clean up contaminated sites. It also forces the parties responsible for the contamination to either perform cleanups or reimburse the government for EPA-led cleanup work. 

When there is no viable responsible party, the Superfund gives the EPA the funds and authority to clean up contaminated sites. 

Superfund’s goals are to:

Protect human health and the environment by cleaning up contaminated sites;

Make responsible parties pay for cleanup work;

Involve communities in the Superfund process; and

Return Superfund sites to productive use.”

 

 I know I was stunned to realize that in the Love Canal community, residents had been vaguely aware of chemical drums along the canal. Here is a report at the time:

“NIAGARA FALLS, NY--Twenty-five years after the Hooker Chemical Company stopped using the Love Canal here as an industrial dump, 82 different compounds, 11 of them suspected carcinogens, have been percolating upward through the soil, their drum containers rotting and leaching their contents into the backyards and basements of 100 homes and a public school built on the banks of the canal.”

“In an article prepared for the February 1978 EPA Journal, {I wrote}, regarding chemical dumpsites in general, that "even though some of these landfills have been closed down, they may stand like ticking time bombs." Just months later, Love Canal exploded.

The explosion was triggered by a record amount of rainfall. Shortly thereafter, the leaching began.

I visited the canal area at that time. Corroding waste-disposal drums could be seen breaking up through the grounds of backyards. Trees and gardens were turning black and dying. One entire swimming pool had been popped up from its foundation, afloat now on a small sea of chemicals. Puddles of noxious substances were pointed out to me by the residents. Some of these puddles were in their yards, some were in their basements, and others yet were on the school grounds. Everywhere, the air had a faint, choking smell. Children returned from play with burns on their hands and faces.”

The state of NY evacuated the community, helped to resettle the residents, and started the cleanup. However, this did little to help the families with pediatric cancers and others with severe related medical conditions.

In eastern Washington state, the Hanford nuclear site is another known hazardous area. Here, nuclear waste including, plutonium, is stored in corroding and leaking tanks which are already contaminating the soil. Currently, the solution for containment has been to place tarps over the tanks. The US has no suitable spots for storing nuclear waste or even cleaning it up. The half-life of plutonium (the time it would take for half of the materials to be used up naturally by degrading, evaporation, etc.,) is over 24,000 years. There have been plans to place nuclear waste in deep salt mines, but nearby communities have made objections. So, what do we do with materials we cannot control? Sadly, there are no quick or easy answers.

For those in Maryland living near Fort Detrick, a former biological warfare laboratory test site, there is a plat called Area B where chemical, biological, medical, and radiological materials were discarded over many years. Even though the biological site closed in 1980, these toxic materials are still in the process of decontamination. Nearby wells were closed decades ago to lessen community exposure.

I have just touched on a tiny bit of the work being done in the areas of clean water and air. Also not mentioned are the increased asthma rates in the inner city from industrial pollutants and automobile emissions. I have not discussed the documented increased cancer rates in poor communities in Texas nestled against plants associated with chemical and petroleum-based products where residents are called to shelter in place whenever something goes wrong at the plant. I also have not reviewed the reality that industries are fighting back against many regulations. For many years, the EPA won these battles. Now, over the last few sessions, the Supreme Court is rolling back some of the established rules as excessive.

As reported by NPR:

Alex Brandon/AP Re: Sackett vs. EPA

The US Supreme Court on Thursday significantly curtailed the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the nation's wetlands and waterways. It was the court's second decision in a year limiting the ability of the agency to enact anti-pollution regulations and combat climate change.

Writing for the court majority, Justice Samuel Alito said that the navigable waters of the United States regulated by the EPA under the statute do not include many previously regulated wetlands. Rather, he said, the CWA extends to only streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes, and those wetlands with a "continuous surface connection to those bodies."

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined by the court's three liberal members, disputed Alito's reading of the statute, noting that since 1977 when the CWA was amended to include adjacent wetlands, eight consecutive presidential administrations, Republican and Democratic, have interpreted the law to cover wetlands that the court has now excluded. Kavanaugh said that by narrowing the act to cover only adjoining wetlands, the court's new test will have quote "significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States."

Others have argued that wetlands play an enormous role in water and land protections and this decision will be harmful in the long term.

“As in last year's case limiting the EPA's ability to regulate air pollution from power plants, the decision was a major victory for the groups that supported the Sacketts — mining, oil, utilities and, in today's case, agricultural and real estate interests as well.”

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation issued a detailed statement: (I only quote a part here, but follow the link for a detailed review.)

“The Supreme Court issued a disastrous ruling recently that eliminates federal safeguards for a broad swath of wetlands and waterways critical to restoring the Chesapeake Bay, its tributaries, and other damaged water bodies across the country.

The May 25 decision in Sackett v. EPA said the Clean Water Act only protects wetlands and other waters adjacent to streams, rivers, and other "navigable waters" that are "indistinguishable" from those waters because of a "continuous surface connection" between the wetlands and the navigable waters.

As a result, thousands of isolated wetlands unique to our region and integral to Bay restoration, called Delmarva Bays and pocosins, no longer qualify for protection under the Supreme Court's narrow new definition of "waters of the United States" covered by the Clean Water Act.”

(If you, like me, did not know what a pocosin is: it is defined as naturally occurring freshwater evergreen shrub wetlands of the southeastern coastal plains with deep acidic peat soils.)

More cases are on the horizon reports the NY Times, as Republican Attorney Generals from 24 states have already sued the Biden administration regarding changes reducing levels for pollution emissions on fine particulate matter. That issue is expected to work its way to the Supreme Court.

So, while millions and millions of Americans support clean air and water, the Supreme Court wants to reduce or gut regulations supporting those efforts.

Voting matters!

Til next week- Peace!