"Biden wants to move energy offshore, but choppy seas are ahead" by Joshua Partlow The Washington Post, May 9, 2021
DORCHESTER, N.J. - In his three decades servicing oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, boat captain Keith Piper rode out all manner of storms and gales. Still, he had never faced the elements that tested him last winter at a wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island. Subzero temperatures. Snow. A nor’easter blowing 70 miles per hour. Coffee sloshing in the pot and his 500-ton liftboat - propped above the waves on four hydraulic legs - vibrating from the force of the wind.
Given the rock-hard bottom of the continental shelf, unlike the Gulf's forgiving sands, any mistake setting the boat legs down and the impact on board would feel like being slammed head first into concrete. "It shakes everything and breaks everything," he said.
These are the discoveries being made at the dawn of America's offshore wind industry. Up and down the East Coast, developers and government agencies are preparing for the massively complex and costly challenge of placing thousands of wind turbines taller than the Washington Monument miles out into the Atlantic. The Biden administration has set a goal that industry players call highly ambitious, if not unrealistic: to produce 30,000 megawatts of electricity from offshore wind farms by 2030, enough to power 10 million homes. Meeting this goal is one of the few available paths for President Joe Biden to reduce the country's reliance on fossil fuels and fight climate change.
The obstacles ahead are staggering. The United States is decades behind Europe and Asia in developing offshore wind. Only seven offshore turbines are running - the five in Rhode Island, plus two in Virginia - and together the projects produce just 42 megawatts of electricity. China alone installed more than 3,000 new megawatts of offshore wind energy last year, more than half the world's total.
Far larger efforts are on the horizon, though. Vineyard Wind, the first large-scale U.S. offshore wind farm, is expected to receive its final federal permit from the Interior Department within days. David Hardy, chief executive of Ørsted Offshore North America, the U.S. offshoot of the Danish energy giant that has been involved in both existing American projects and has applications pending for several more is encouraged by Biden's interest. A recent call with offshore industry leaders included four Cabinet members as well as White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy, with administration officials vowing to provide federal loans and accelerate permitting, he said. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has committed to processing the 14 pending proposals by 2025.
[It will ruin the view for no good reason.
The aggressive timetable will require a massive new industry, with steep investments in new ports, boats, factories, and upgrades to electrical grids. The first U.S.-built vessel capable of installing the offshore turbines is being completed in Texas at a cost of $500 million. Until more ships are ready, projects in this country must rely on boats from Europe, an exchange complicated by the continent's own demand for wind energy and maritime trade laws here.
There are other hurdles, too, particularly intense opposition from some coastal communities and commercial fishermen. Even when that's overcome, construction can only move forward during certain months because of bad weather and the threat to migratory patterns of the North Atlantic right whale, a critically endangered species.
It all makes offshore wind farms - multibillion-dollar infrastructure projects - a still-risky proposition, according to developers and others in the industry.
"Everybody's sticking their toe in the water right now," said Piper, the boat captain who's now based in Dorchester for that very reason, "but nobody wants to stick their whole foot in yet," yet two years from now, Bill White envisions 500 workers - electricians and engineers, longshoremen and seafarers, all tiny specks next to turbine blades longer than a football field, nose cones called nacelles that are large enough to hold elevators and 3.5-million-pound steel columns known as monopiles, which get hammered deep into the seafloor.
[The globali$ts and the bankers are literally making them walk the plank]
It is White's job to make Vineyard Wind a reality, and this lot at the Marine Commerce Terminal in New Bedford, Mass., a historic whaling community, is where it will happen. The site is the first port in the country built specifically to withstand the turbine components' crushing weights. Other facilities are being developed in New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Maryland. In New Jersey, a $250 million factory will be completed in two years and begin building the monopiles that anchor wind turbines in place. Siemens Gamesa is considering a future factory in Virginia to make turbine blades.
"These will be some of the biggest construction projects our country has seen," said White, vice president of offshore wind for Avangrid Renewables, one of two companies leading Vineyard Wind. "This will be a massive mobilization."
He has long envisioned this future. A veteran of the State Department and the Clinton White House, he spent more than a decade trying to advance offshore wind energy with the state of Massachusetts and then the private sector. He lived through Cape Wind, a proposed project off the coast of Nantucket, Mass., that was defeated by lawsuits and well-funded opponents such as the Koch brothers. The first meetings to discuss the location of what would become Vineyard Wind were in 2009.
"It's been a hell of a long road," he said.
[It will be if $elf-$erving $hits like him get their way. It will be a looting if nothing el$e, and we are in the position of hoping that is all it is.
That's when the print edition sank, but the web version stayed afloat for a while]
Thousands of wind turbines are already spinning across the country, but developers see greater potential offshore because of more powerful sustained winds, the proximity to large coastal cities thirsty for electricity and the space for vast activity.
White's company is a subsidiary of the Spanish energy company Iberdrola. Its partner is Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners out of Denmark. So far, European companies dominate these early efforts to bring offshore wind to the United States. Vineyard Wind's onshore substation will be built by a Swedish company, its cables by Italian and Belgian firms. General Electric will supply the turbines.
Developing the domestic supply chain and expertise to get U.S. wind farms up and running is one of the big obstacles ahead. When Dominion Energy in Virginia launched its two-turbine pilot 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, the only boats capable of doing the installation work were in Europe. Because of the project's small scale, it took three rounds of bidding to secure the parts and vessels needed, Dominion senior vice president Mark Mitchell recalled.
Even after a wind farm goes online, much can go wrong. That was why Piper and his men headed out last October aboard the Ram XV, a vessel that resembles a giant floating platform with 175-foot vertical legs. Its wind-energy niche is drilling and cabling work, and it was dispatched to the Rhode Island wind farm to help bury transmission cables that had become exposed by shifting sands.
[PFFFFFFFFFFT]
The liftboat left the dock in Dorchester, making its way down the Maurice River, into Delaware Bay and then up the New Jersey Coast before turning east. During the four-month assignment, several major storms hit, at times forcing the crew to shelter in the Block Island harbor, Piper recalled. Temperatures plummeted to minus-10 degrees at one point, freezing the boat's water-making machine. A sewage line had to be thawed with an acetylene torch. "It was brutal," said David Morgan of Aries Marine, the oil services company that owns the boat. "Very, very difficult job. Right through the worst time of the year."
Those who oppose wind farms find many reasons to do so. The sight of them can be enough to sour a waterfront homeowner's mood, although the projects in the pipeline are slated for many miles offshore and so turbines will appear tiny, if not invisible, from land. Environmentalists, who support moving away from fossil fuels to combat climate change, are torn. They worry about risks to birds, fish and marine mammals, particularly the North Atlantic right whale.
Only about 360 of the whales remain, migrating every fall from New England to as far south as Florida. Noise from underwater construction and increased boat traffic is the most serious threat posed by the new crop of wind farms, according to Mark Baumgartner, a marine ecologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute who uses buoys and underwater gliders to monitor right whale sounds.
The Biden administration’s goals will face the determined resistance of commercial fishermen, whose trawl nets and lobster pots ply the same stretches of ocean as several of the areas designated for future wind farms. This is no small business. New Bedford, Mass., with its scallop industry, has been the most lucrative fishing port in the country for the past two decades, taking in more than $430 million in 2018.
Wind farm developers have been negotiating extensively with fishermen, with Ørsted taking hundreds of meetings with them "to understand their concerns and try to adapt to work with their needs," Hardy said.
Vineyard Wind's developers have agreed to pay $37.7 million to commercial fishermen in Massachusetts and Rhode Island to compensate them for future losses. They also reduced the size of the project by 60 percent and agreed to place turbines one nautical mile apart.
"This is an unknown to them," White said of the fishermen, "and we've had them at the table, but there's still a lot of uncertainty."
[So go whichever way the wind blows?]
I'm told it’s crunch time and Biden’s climate gambit (a device, action, or opening remark, typically one entailing a degree of risk, that is calculated to gain an advantage, typically associated with chess where a player makes a sacrifice, typically of a pawn, for the sake of some compensating advantage) faces steep hurdles despite it allegedly being a broadly popular idea without any details.
That's the pitch as longstanding protections for wild birds would be restored under a proposal unveiled Thursday to bring back prosecutions of avian deaths by industry that were ended under former president Donald Trump as Biden has sought to dismantle a Trump policy that ended criminal enforcement against companies over bird deaths that could have been prevented. Hundreds of millions of birds die annually in collisions with electrical lines and wind turbines, after landing in oil pits and from other industrial causes, according to government officials and researchers. The prohibition against accidental bird deaths was used most notably in a $100 million settlement by energy company BP, after government investigators concluded the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill killed about 100,000 birds.
Amazing how that unprecedented disaster under the Obama/Biden regime has sunk to the bottom of the pre$$ sea of slick propaganda, 'eh?
Now go worry about melting glaciers.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Here is a tall glass of water for you:
"More communities are finding toxic chemicals in their drinking water" by David Abel Globe Staff, May 23, 2021
In Wayland, local officials had been distributing cases of bottled water to 1,400 households a week — nearly a third of the suburb’s residents — and may have to seek a new water source that could cost more than twice the town’s annual budget.
Facing similar contamination in their drinking water, Natick officials plan to spend millions of dollars on a high-tech filtration system. In Wellesley, after shutting down the primary well that provided water to half their residents, officials are contemplating strict water-use limits for the first time.
“We’re definitely concerned,” said David Cohen, Wellesley’s public works director. “We’ll take all the steps we need to to address this.”
[Welcome to the planned communi$t takeover because this is how it is done.
The WEF-sponsored cyberattack will crash the economy as well as shut of the power, with food and water shortages resulting.
Oddly enough, as the state hollered drought the skies opened up this spring. He does indeed work in mysterious ways]
Since Massachusetts enacted new safety regulations last fall, more communities have found elevated levels of toxic chemicals known as PFAS in their drinking water.
Results are now available from half of those public water sources required to start testing — those that supply more than 10,000 people. Of them, 20 percent have reported concentrations above what state regulations allow.
[I need to stop here and bring something to your attention before continuing. The ‘forever chemicals’ pervading the drinking water are directly related to the pesticide used on millions of Mass. acres when spraying for mosquitoes.
Let that sink in for a moment. The GOVERNMENT POISONED THE WATER then TIGHTENED the STANDARDS so they could declare it undrinkable.
This is the same government pushing genocidal gene therapy upon you for your own protection, blah, blah, blah, and now, once again, they are poisoning and killing you for your own good out of a public health concern.
The only words one can use to describe it is CRIMINALLY EVIL!]
Many, including Easton, Holbrook, and Randolph, are continuing to deliver the water, despite a growing body of research that links PFAS exposure to health risks. Known as “forever chemicals” because they never fully break down in the environment, polyfluoroalkyl substances have long been used in everything from non-stick pans to water-repellant clothing. They have been linked to cancer, compromised immune systems, and a range of diseases.
[Diagnosed as CVD now, no doubt.
With all due respect, this is MUCH MORE of a DANGER than the ESOTERIC and INVISIBLE climate change crap and it doesn't get nearly as much attention from the pre$$. Yeah, they write a couple of articles and then turn off the faucet]
Last fall, state officials implemented some of the nation’s most stringent rules, which require public water systems to test for six of the more common chemicals. If their concentrations exceed more than 20 parts per trillion — the equivalent of about 20 grains of sand in an Olympic-size swimming pool — water providers must alert their users and reduce the concentrations as soon as possible.
The number of communities in Massachusetts — and beyond — with elevated levels of PFAS has increased the concerns of scientists.
Some assert that the chemicals are so toxic, no quantity is safe in drinking water.
[Never mind all the crap in the gene-therapy injection.
That's the other thing. Everything in the pre$$ is usually some sort of limited hangout for ulterior motives. Here, the goal is for the state to take control of the water, thus the people, and provides a possible cover for what is really being dumped on us.
Remember, colony collapse amongst the bees is due to pesticides, not GMOs. You need to see what ISN'T THERE when you read the pre$$]
Last year, a study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters estimated that as many as 80 million Americans could be exposed to more than 10 parts per trillion of just two of the chemicals in their drinking water. Scientists and environmental advocates are urging federal and state regulators to do more to protect the public, noting that there are no federal rules regulating PFAS and arguing the state’s standards should be more stringent.
“It is extremely concerning to see such a potent and persistent class of toxicants that are pervasive in drinking water remain unregulated at the federal level,” said Elsie Sunderland, a professor of environmental chemistry at Harvard University.
Kyla Bennett, a former scientist at the US Environmental Protection Agency, noted that Massachusetts requires testing for just six of more than 9,000 known PFAS, some of which were recently detected in breast milk.
[Just like the injections, and these are the same monsters pushing the Great Reset agenda and the genocidal jabs -- all to protect us!]
“We are only measuring a tiny fraction of potential contamination,” said Bennett, who now serves as director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility in New England, an advocacy group. “While Massachusetts has one of the strictest PFAS limits in the country, it is still not protective of human health. Scientists have yet to find a safe PFAS.”
As of mid-May, of 242 public water sources in Massachusetts that had reported test results, 50 had concentrations of PFAS that exceeded state rules. More than 1,000 smaller public water sources will be required to start testing later this year or next year.
State environmental officials say they’re constantly reevaluating their standards but have no plans to change the rules to make them more stringent or ban the chemicals in specific products, as have several states. Last week, Vermont became the first state to ban PFAS in ski wax, carpets, and after-market treatments to carpets. It also joined several others in prohibiting the chemicals in food packaging.
“Massachusetts is aggressively addressing PFAS,” said Martin Suuberg, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection. “We will continue to work with communities and water suppliers to find these contaminants and ensure that all residents have safe water.”
[They are the ones who made it unsafe!]
The state is allocating $2 million to help water systems with elevated PFAS levels, he said. Communities can use the money on short-term measures, such as providing bottled water or renting temporary filters. The state had previously set aside more than $28 million to help communities test for PFAS and improve their water systems.
“PFAS contamination poses a significant risk to public health, so it is imperative that public water suppliers address elevated PFAS levels in a timely manner,” Kathleen Theoharides, the state’s secretary of energy and environmental affairs, said in a statement.
[These people are un-f**king- believable!
The open their mouths and the lies spill forth]
While most suppliers have found ways to reduce their PFAS levels — either by blending contaminated wells with others that have lower concentrations of the chemicals or by connecting to alternate sources — at least 21 have had no choice but to continue delivering the contaminated water to residents, state officials said.
Among the communities still delivering water with elevated PFAS levels are Acton, Ayer, Dudley, Easton, Holbrook, Natick, Randolph, and Wayland.
“We’re in non-compliance,” said Louise Miller, town administrator of Wayland, which provides water to about 14,000 residents. “We need to provide another source of water.”
[How about desalination?
What to do with all the soil-destroying salt is another matter, but keep whacking the carbon mole]
With repeated tests this year showing their wells exceeding the state limit, and no other viable options in the near term, the town has been spending $20,000 a week to provide thousands of residents with bottled water — a significant cost for a community with an annual budget of $4 million. The town recently switched from giving out bottled water to a rebate program for residents.
For a permanent solution, the town is debating whether to buy a special filter that would likely cost millions of dollars or connect to pipes from the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, which could cost Wayland as much as $10 million, Miller said.
Like others, she worries what will happen if the federal government imposes more stringent regulations or the state stiffens its rules. It’s unclear whether they would have to spend more to ensure they remain in compliance.
“To impose all of it on ratepayers at the local level seems unfair and really burdensome,” she said. “I think both the federal and state government should look at spending more on specific water infrastructure. We’re talking about a lot of money.”
[Stolen elections do indeed have con$equences.
ENJOY the THIR$T!]
In Natick, officials had to shut down their largest well, which pumped as much as 5 million gallons a day to many of the town’s 36,000 residents. They’re now planning to spend at least $3 million on a carbon filtration system.
In recent weeks, as more people learn that their water had elevated levels of PFAS, town officials have been receiving more calls.
“They want to know how detrimental it is to their health,” said Bob Rooney, Natick’s interim town administrator. “People are really concerned, and all we can do is direct them to places where there’s more information.”
At least it still makes the grass grow, and the first ad said price drop $o.....
"As contaminated water concerns grow, Massachusetts towns urge the state to stop spraying pesticides in their communities" by David Abel Globe Staff, May 31, 2021
After announcing that the town’s water supply contained elevated levels of the toxic chemicals known as PFAS, selectmen at a recent virtual meeting in Pepperell turned to another thorny subject: Should the town try to opt out of state-mandated aerial and roadside spraying of pesticides?
[Mine did, thankfully]
The issues, in significant ways, were connected.
To reduce the spread of eastern equine encephalitis and other mosquito-borne diseases, the state has sprayed millions of acres in recent years with a pesticide found to contain significant amounts of PFAS. The PFAS leached into the pesticide from its packaging.
“Not only is this bad for human health and the environment, for the long-term effects it causes, but [the pesticides] can also pose an immediate danger to vulnerable populations, including children with chronic health problems,” Renee D’Argento, chair of Pepperell’s Board of Health, told selectmen.
Soon afterward, selectmen in this town along the New Hampshire border voted to make Pepperell one of at least 13 municipalities in Massachusetts to take advantage of a new law that allows communities to request the state’s permission to forgo pesticide spraying.
Over the years, residents throughout the state have complained about the potential health risks of widespread spraying of pesticides, especially from the air, and their concerns have only intensified as more communities have found elevated levels of PFAS in their drinking water.
Environmental advocates fear the broad dispersal of the pesticide, and the large amounts used over the years, may have resulted in the chemicals leaching into groundwater.
“I have yet to be convinced that blanketing the state with pesticides is a good public health strategy,” said Julia Blatt, executive director of Massachusetts Rivers Alliance. “It seems crazy to me that we’re asking water suppliers to spend millions of dollars to remove PFAS from public water supplies to make them safe, while continuing to spread pesticides, some of which we know contain PFAS.”
[No, it is CRIMINAL!]
Last summer, a year after six people died from EEE, the state’s deadliest outbreak since the 1950s, Governor Charlie Baker signed a law that gave state regulators new powers to fight mosquito-borne diseases.
[They are blanketing us with who knows what because SIX PEOPLE DIED?
They make a mountain out of a molehill and then use it to poison the water!]
For the first time, state officials could “engage in preventive, management, and eradication methods” in any municipality — without permission from local officials. Previously, the state could only spray pesticides from the air without local authorization if the governor declared a public health emergency.
Under pressure from environmental advocates who have long raised concerns about the ecological dangers of pesticide spraying, lawmakers added a provision that allows communities to seek exemptions from spraying, but the state can reject their requests.
[And they call it a self-governing democracy!]
“Any application will be reviewed with consideration of historical arbovirus risk, the impact of the opt-out application regionally, and the implementation of an alternative mosquito management plan,” said Craig Gilvarg, a spokesman for the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. Arboviruses include mosquito-borne diseases.
Alternative management plans “must contain a detailed public outreach and education component,” he said. That includes alerting residents to the risks of mosquito-borne diseases in the summer and if such disease is detected; reminding them to use insect repellent and dump standing water around their homes; and advising those who are vulnerable, such as the young and infirm, to avoid outdoor activity between dusk and dawn, but the state didn’t give municipalities much time to decide, notifying them in March that they had to vote on the matter and submit an alternative plan by this month. The state, facing complaints, extended the deadline by two weeks to Friday.
“There was physically no way [some] could have scheduled the necessary votes, written the opt-out application, and voted by the deadline,” said Kyla Bennett, director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility in New England, an advocacy group.
Environmental activists who oppose the widespread use of pesticides, which they contend is not only harmful to people and animals but also ineffective, have been prodding municipalities to opt out.
The communities that have sought permission to forgo spraying are mainly in Western Massachusetts. Joining Pepperell are Ashby, Erving, Gill, Gloucester, Greenfield, Harvard, Montague, Orange, Pittsfield, Plainfield, Wendell, and Whately.
At least eight others were considering asking for a waiver, Bennett said, while another four voted against opting out.
Officials in Halifax, which rejected a proposal to opt out, said a resident had died several years ago of EEE, which has been most prevalent in the surrounding communities of Southeastern Massachusetts. In 2019, six of the 12 people who contracted the disease died.
“There’s a huge amount of swampland here, and we’re a hotbed for West Nile virus and EEE,“ said Charlie Seelig, town administrator of Halifax. “The board felt that the dangers from mosquitoes and the diseases that they carry were enough of a concern to be more important than any potential downside from the program,” but environmental advocates and officials in other towns said they are more concerned about the risks of spraying than mosquito-borne diseases, which remain rare in Massachusetts but are likely to become more prevalent as a result of climate change.
[PFFFFFT!
It's not worth POISONING the WATER, you MONSTERS!]
They noted that the primary pesticide the state has used to spray, Anvil 10+10, was found last year to have PFAS concentrations that exceed the amount the state allows in drinking water. The so-called “forever chemicals,” which never fully degrade in the environment, have been found in other consumer products, such as non-stick pans, furniture, and food packaging. Scientists have linked the chemicals to cancer, compromised immune systems, and a range of diseases.
[They didn't care about it when it came to the con$umeri$m they pu$hed for so long.
Nw go get the kill shot so you are protected, blah, blah, blah
The BS runneth over like a waterfall]
The state has been reviewing whether to continue using Anvil, after state and federal regulators confirmed that PFAS in the packaging leached into the pesticide. Officials said they would decide whether to use Anvil — which they found didn’t contain the toxic chemicals when it came in new packaging — or other pesticides before spraying resumes this summer.
In Montague, local officials said their decision to opt out was based on advice from their Board of Health, Conservation Commission, and concerned residents.
“Montague is not the type of community to allow unproven pesticides to pollute our drinking water and pristine wetlands,” said Walter Ramsey, the town planner.
In Gloucester, there were other concerns, especially from the lobster industry.
Patti Page, an outspoken resident who works for a local lobster business, noted that mosquitoes and lobsters are both arthropods and vulnerable to the same threats.
“What kills a mosquito kills lobsters just as effectively,” she said.
[Aaaaah, a roundabout way to destroy the food supply as well!]
Before the new law took effect, she noted, Gloucester didn’t allow spraying and has seen no reason to change.
“This took away all local control,” she said. “This was very concerning to me.”
[But this is Ma$$achu$etts, the best state in the whole world!]
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Believe it or not, the problem doesn't end if they stop dumping poison on us:
"Thousands of homes in Massachusetts still have lead water pipes, and many residents don’t know" by David Abel Globe Staff, April 29, 2021
For much of the past three years, they lived in fear of their water.
After buying a home in Chelsea, Nathan Seavey and his wife learned their water pipes were lined with lead, and replacing them would cost thousands of dollars. Even though they had a newborn, they resigned themselves to live with it, filtering whatever they drank and relying on the city’s assurances that their water was safe.
Now take a big gulp and go fight climate change!]
Despite the grave dangers of lead, which can cause lifelong health problems, especially for children, there are as many as 10 million lead service lines in the United States, with an estimated 220,000 in Massachusetts, according to state and federal environmental officials.
Now, years after public health officials determined that no amount of lead in the blood is safe, President Biden has proposed eliminating the nation’s remaining lead pipes, calling them a “clear and present danger to our children’s health” during his address to Congress this week.
[Once again, an Obam/Biden regime scandal that swirled down the pre$$ drain after I was told managing water is the government’s most important policy challenge.
Look, I know he ate lead as child (explains a lot, really) because he said, with a chuckle, that ‘‘I'm sure when I was 2 years old I was somewhere eating a paint chip, and they will be fine . . . as long as we’re looking after them’’ as he encouraged parents to get medical checkups for their children.
The damage from lead poisoning is irreversible, jerk, and don't you miss him?]
In addition to replacing service lines to millions of homes, the president’s $45 billion plan would reduce lead exposure in some 400,000 schools.
“It’s just plain wrong that in the United States of America today, millions of children still receive their water through lead service pipes,” Biden wrote on Twitter last month. “It’s long past time we fix that.”
[This from the guy who wants to get a gene therapy injection that they don't need it to them.
He is without a doubt one of the scummiest creatures to come along in a long time]
As the dangers of lead exposure became clear, Congress banned its use in house paint in 1978. Eight years later, lawmakers banned lead — a malleable, leak-resistant metal — in newly installed plumbing systems, but officials allowed existing lead lines to remain, with the prevailing view that slight changes in the chemistry of drinking water and lubricants would prevent the pipes from corroding. The limits of that approach became tragically evident when officials in Michigan seven years ago failed to apply the necessary corrosion inhibitors to a new water source for Flint, exposing about 100,000 residents there to elevated lead levels.
[What were we drinking all those years?]
The Environmental Protection Agency is now reviewing regulations approved in the final days of the Trump administration that would reduce the percentage of lead pipes that public water systems must replace every year, but advocates and attorneys general from Massachusetts and eight other states have urged the EPA to make the rules more stringent by lowering the maximum concentrations of lead allowed before triggering a requirement that municipalities replace the pipes.
[There she goes again with the political grandstanding while ignoring the corruption in the state. I gue$$ she just doesn't have the energy for everything, so the maybe the possible bid for governor and changing of the guard should be stayed for a while]
A report by the Natural Resources Defense Council estimated about 5.5 million people between 2015 and 2018 consumed excessive amounts of lead from public water systems.
“We have myopically focused on the risks from lead paint and have underestimated the risks of lead in water,” said Tom Neltner, chemicals policy director for the Environmental Defense Fund, a Washington-based advocacy group. “We were way too confident that corrosion control would solve the problem in water, but we now realize we’re vulnerable.”
The full extent of lead pipes remains unknown, given the lack of requirements for surveys. State environmental officials noted that many of the lead pipes in Massachusetts were installed nearly a century ago and acknowledged the limits of previous surveys.
Part of the problem of replacing them has been that few municipalities cover the full cost. Most only pay for the section of pipe that runs from water mains to the curb, leaving the private portion to homeowners, at an average cost of about $5,000.
In recent years, public water suppliers in Massachusetts have replaced more than 8,000 lead lines, costing about $40 million, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection. In 2019, state officials launched an incentive program to replace private lines, and last year they used a federal grant to increase testing of drinking water at schools and child-care facilities.
In Boston, which has been replacing lead lines with copper for decades, city officials have been scouring their records to identify the remaining lead pipes, an effort John Sullivan, chief engineer of the city’s Water and Sewer Commission, called a “massive undertaking.”
[It's a “systemwide problem that must be fixed, but it shouldn’t be this way.”]
How long before the plumbing is ripped out by the roots?
Also see:
Came out of nowhere, huh?
Was quickly covered by lava from the volcano.
Here is what washed up on the shores of Sri Lanka:
That's going to be tough to clean up; however, it is now the new definition of ‘normal’ for weather.
UPDATES:
Leave it to the New York Times to divide us over the most basic of small talk.
See ya' at camp:
"The Biden administration said it would spend $1 billion to help communities prepare for worsening disasters, the latest sign of the toll that climate change is already taking across the United States. The change will double the current size of a Federal Emergency Management Agency program that gives money to state and local governments to reduce their vulnerability before a disaster happens — for example, building sea walls, elevating or relocating flood-prone homes. The new money is less than what some disaster experts had said is needed, especially because the warming planet is making storms, flooding, wildfires and other disasters both more frequent and destructive. The formula that determines funding would have allowed the administration to put as much as $3.7 billion toward the program, which FEMA officials considered in the early days of Biden’s administration, but cities and states might struggle to spend that much money on climate resilience projects, according to Craig Fugate, who led FEMA under President Barack Obama and led President Biden’s transition team. “It’s a good start,” Fugate said of the new money announced Monday....."
Related:
That'$ what it i$ all about, and that is when I got out of the water.