The death rattle of the Trump evangelicals

THE WEEK Opinion: The death rattle of the Trump evangelicals

Paul Waldman September 7, 2017

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

One of the many fascinating results of the 2016 election was that despite his history of enthusiastic sinning and his transparently phony professions of faith, Donald Trump won 81 percent of the votes of white evangelical Christians, which no candidate had matched since the question has been asked in exit polls. There are multiple reasons why, but at their root lies a changing society that has many conservative Christians feeling threatened and outnumbered.

Just how outnumbered? As a large new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute shows, a remarkable shift has taken place: White Christians are no longer a majority of Americans.

If you’re a millennial, that may not strike you as odd, since depending on where you live, you’ve probably grown up in a world where you took a good deal of diversity for granted. But if you’re over 40 or so, it’s positively earth-shaking. As the authors of the study note, in 1976, fully 81 percent of Americans identified as white and members of a Christian denomination. Today it’s only 43 percent.

That’s the result of two things happening simultaneously. The first is that America’s racial demographics are steadily evolving, with minority groups, particularly Hispanics, increasing their proportion of the population. In 1980 Hispanics were only 6.5 percent of the population, but today they’re over 17 percent.

At the same time, the population is becoming less religious. The group of religiously unaffiliated people — which includes atheists, agnostics, and those who say they don’t belong to any particular faith — has been rapidly growing, and now encompasses a quarter of the population. Even more importantly, young people are much less religious in general and much less likely to identify as Christian than older people. Take a look at this striking chart:

While 63 percent of Americans over the age of 65 are white Christians, only 24 percent of those under the age of 30 are, a group far outnumbered by the 38 percent of young adults who are unaffiliated. Unless there’s some kind of dramatic Christian awakening that produces millions of converts, that means that in the future the ranks of Christians in general and white Christians in particular are likely to shrink.

We should note that America is still easily the most religious of the advanced industrial democracies; when it comes to faith, we look more like a developing country than like our peers in Europe. One key reason is probably our tradition of religious liberty and the proliferation of faiths in America; in much of Europe for much of recent history, religion meant only the strict and stodgy Catholic Church or your country’s official Protestant denomination, which many populations were only too eager to turn away from as their societies progressed into the modern age. In America it was always possible to reject the religion of your parents and still find a church more to your liking somewhere else.

But up until now, white Christians knew that their faith, at least in the broadest terms, was the default setting for the country. Slowly that began to change, and with that change came the emergence of a new ideology, one that says that if we’re a diverse society, then maybe everyone’s traditions should be worthy not just of grudging tolerance, but of actual respect. Maybe — just to take one example — when a department store is decorating for the holidays, they’ll put up a sign that’s inclusive of everyone, and not exclusive to Christians.

Many Christians greeted that kind of change by saying, “Well of course that’s how we ought to act.” But not all of them. Spurred on by the grievance-mongers at Fox News, many decided that a “Happy Holidays” sign was a deeply offensive attack on their religion and symbolized everything terrifying about their diminished status.

Then came Trump. He didn’t mince words about having an inclusive society; instead, he just said outright that he was going to advocate for Christianity. When he went to Liberty University in January 2016, he was roundly mocked for referring to “Two Corinthians” instead of “Second Corinthians” (no biblical scholar he), but what really mattered was what he said afterward. “Is that the one?” he asked the crowd. “Is that the one you like? I think that’s the one you like.” No other candidate could not just pander but literally announce the fact that he was pandering — and still wind up winning the target of that pandering by an overwhelming margin.

If Trump does what they want, they don’t much care whether he’s sincere. “How about all those department stores?” he asked at a post-election rally, standing amid a forest of Christmas trees. “They have the bells and they have the red walls and they have the snow, but they don’t have ‘merry Christmas’? I think they’re gonna start putting up ‘merry Christmas.'” But if current trends continue, the Democratic Party will get more and more diverse while the GOP will continue to be the party of white Christians, a shrinking portion of the electorate.

That may not be an immediate threat to Republicans in places where they dominate, particularly in the South and Midwest. But it shows that in the years to come, they’re going to find themselves more and more alienated from a nation that’s changing around them. So far, they show little inclination to do much about it.

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Harvey’s floodwaters give way to festering piles of garbage

Yahoo News, Associated Press

Harvey’s floodwaters give way to festering piles of garbage

Brian Melley and Paul J. Weber, Associated Press September 7, 2017

View photos: In this Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2017, photo, Steve and Sherri Blatt pose for a photograph among the debris from theirs and their neighbors’ homes in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in Houston. Harvey’s record-setting rains now have the potential to set records for the amount of debris one storm can produce. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

HOUSTON (AP) — Roiling waters in the streets have given way to festering piles of garbage on the curbs.

Harvey’s record-setting rains created heaps of ruined possessions that now line entire neighborhoods, some nearly up to the rooftops of the homes that were swamped. All that sodden drywall, flooring, furniture, clothing and toys adds up to an estimated 8 million cubic yards in Houston alone, enough to fill the Texans’ football stadium two times over.

Texas and city officials have pledged to make a priority of the monumental task of cleaning it all up, though they stopped short of giving specific timelines, mindful that such cleanups have dragged on longer than anticipated after other major storms.

“We want to get it removed as quickly as possible,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told reporters Thursday.

For now, the piles big and small have become evidence, of sorts, of the losses from more than 200,000 damaged homes up and down the Texas coast.

Not only are the heaps eyesores, but they are starting to give off a musty funk. And the longer they sit, officials warn, they could become havens for mold, not to mention snakes, rats, skunks and other critters. The junk could also turn into projectiles if, heaven forbid, another hurricane strikes.

“I just can’t stand it anymore,” said Peggy Lanigan, who took a break from clearing out her Houston home that flooded for the first time in 22 years.

The city is pushing to complete a “first pass” of debris removal within 30 days, said Derek Mebane, deputy assistant director of Houston’s solid waste department. He said collecting subsequent piles could take months and warned that if Hurricane Irma causes extensive damage in Florida, the cleanup in Houston could be slowed if resources are diverted. While local crews do the pickups, FEMA covers 90 percent of the costs.

As it stands now, clearing even just one Houston street can take days. Some piles are so massive that a single stack of debris from one home can fill an entire truck.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner this week pleaded for help, asking for anyone with heavy equipment suitable for debris removal to reach out.

The trash will go into the city’s existing landfills. San Antonio trucks have been sent in as part of an agreement between the two cities to help each other in disasters, the mayor said.

Soon after the storm hit, state officials suspended some environmental rules on waste removal that they said could impede the pace of disaster recovery, which raised concerns among environmentalists.

Trash looters are another concern. Some homeowners spray-painted messages on mattresses to leave them alone because the debris is needed for insurance claims. Others posted signs saying they were just drying out items they intended to save.

Mike Martinez said a king-sized mattress that had been floating in his bedroom days earlier was taken from his yard along with a La-Z-Boy sectional couch. The $5,000 sofa still looked brand new after the flood but was like a sponge if you sat on it. He couldn’t understand why anyone would take it because it’s contaminated with floodwater and probably mold.

“It was like a parade of people going by looking at the devastation,” Martinez said. “Then there was a parade of people picking up the garbage.”

Overturned sofas, listing mattresses and toppled chairs dominate the rubble while smaller, more intimate items hide in the cracks.

The piles also created a sort of archaeological record of the households from which they came. There’s a moldering red cooler, a beat-up blue kiddie pool, a pornography stash spilling onto the street. Brand-new golf balls, a full jar of mangoes and a twisted artificial Christmas tree. A book titled “The Inheritance of Loss” seemed particularly poignant.

Sherri Blatt’s main concern is that it could be a long wait before the mess is carted away. “This is too long,” she said. “Once all the stuff is gone, I’ll feel safe.”

Almost on cue, a garbage truck rumbled around the corner. But it wasn’t there for flood debris — only for the trash that hadn’t been picked up in a week and was adding its own odor to the mix.

Weber reported from Austin, Texas. Associated Press writer Juan A. Lozano in Houston contributed to this report.

For complete Harvey coverage, visit https://apnews.com/tag/HurricaneHarvey .

Get the best of the AP’s all-formats reporting on Irma and Harvey in your inbox: http://apne.ws/ahYQGtb .

Under Trump The EPA is More About Politics Than Science

Newsweek

Under Trump The EPA is More About Politics Than Science

L. Lanktree, Newsweek September 5, 2017

A former Trump campaign aide is now vetting hundreds of millions of dollars in grant money the EPA gives out to worthy environmental science and projects each year. It could mean that thousands of science projects are in jeopardy under the Trump administration.

John Konkus—a public relations expert who chaired Trump’s 2016 campaign in Florida’s Leon County—has told agency staff he’s scrubbing climate change “the double C-word” from projects the EPA funds, according to The Washington Post.

In late August the energy and environment website E&E News revealed a directive from EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt instructing all grants to be routed to Konkus. If Konkus “has any concerns, comments, or questions on the solicitation,” it reads, he will intervene in the grant process.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt speaks during an interview for Reuters at his office in Washington, U.S., July 10, 2017. Yuri Gripas/Reuters

Konkus’ title at the agency is deputy associate administrator for public affairs, placing him in the EPA’s communications department. From 2013 to December 2016 he served as executive vice president at the political consultancy Jamestown Associates. Konkus joined the EPA in early February after acting as Pruitt’s “sherpa” during his confirmation hearings.

President Donald Trump, Pruitt has questioned the very existence of climate change and whether it is man made. President Donald Trump outlined his plan to cut $2.4 billion from the EPA’s budget in 2018 last March. About half of the agency’s annual $8 billion budget goes to grants.

Konkus is now making decisions about which scientific projects are worthy of funding. So far he has cancelled nearly $2 million for university and nonprofit organization projects.

An EPA spokeswoman pointed out to The Post that the figure represents just 1 percent of grants that have been given since Pruitt took office.

The new policy is a break with tradition and shows a politicization of the grant process. Public relations are not usually involved in funding decisions.

Yet Konkus is not the only political appointee at the agency. Pruitt is staffing the upper ranks of the agency, which regulates America’s energy and oil and gas industry, with climate change deniers.

At the end of August former secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Cathy Stepp was appointed to head one of the EPA’s regional offices. “Her qualifications?” a release from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) asked, “Stepp doubts human activity is the primary cause of climate change.”

While Stepp was serving in Wisconsin the EPA had to step in twice to spur her to deal with issues such as manure-contaminated drinking water. She also told her department to remove information from their website talking about how carbon emissions impact climate change. Fines for violating environmental rules shrank during the six-years Stepp headed Wisconsin’s DNR.

Over the weekend the EPA took a page from President Trump’s playbook and began attacking journalists from the Associated Press who reported that the EPA had not yet visited toxic dumps in and around Houston, Texas, after Hurricane Harvey made landfall August 25.

A majority of the sites, AP reporters found, were accessible by foot or vehicle. The EPA accused the newswire of ‘fake news.’

Since Trump’s inauguration the EPA’s news releases have taken a decidedly pro-energy industry turn, New Yorker magazine fact checker Talia Lavin pointed out in a series of tweets Saturday. The press releases, Lavin said, show an EPA “that has near utterly abdicated its duty to regulate” that industry.

In calling the AP’s reporting false and targeting Biesecker, the agency “is engaging in political smearing of the press and critics,” she said.

In late August a group of Democratic Senators accused Pruitt in a letter of taking “deliberate steps to thwart transparency” at the agency, including forbidding “staff from taking notes during meetings, so that they do not create records of your questions or directions.”

When questions about Konkus’ qualifications to evaluate scientific and other environmental projects applying for grants were put to the EPA by E&E News, a spokesperson said, the “grants are being reviewed to ensure they adhere to the Trump administration’s goals and policies and the EPA’s back-to-basics agenda.”

Corporate Tax Cuts Boost CEO Pay, Not Jobs

Inequality.org Taxation Report: Corporate Tax Cuts Boost CEO Pay, Not Jobs

The 24th annual Institute for Policy Studies ‘Executive Excess’ report offers a first-ever look at the jobs record of U.S. firms that pay taxes near the rates the Trump White House favors.

by Sarah Anderson and Sam Pizzigati, Research & Commentary August 30, 2017

House Speaker Paul Ryan is proposing to cut the statutory federal corporate tax rate from 35 to 20 percent. President Trump wants to slash the rate even further, to just 15 percent. Their core argument? Lowering the tax burden will lead to more and better jobs.

To investigate this claim, we set out to analyze the job-creating performance of the 92 publicly held American corporations that reported a U.S. profit every year from 2008 through 2015 and paid less than 20 percent of these earnings in federal corporate income tax.

These 92 corporations offer an ideal test for the proposition that lower tax rates encourage corporations to create jobs. By exploiting loopholes in the existing federal tax code, all these firms have reduced their tax rates to the level that Speaker Ryan and President Trump claim will stimulate job creation. Did these reduced tax rates actually lead to greater employment within the 92 firms? We crunched data available from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy to find the answer.

Our findings appear in the just-published 24th edition of the annual Institute for Policy Studies Executive Excess report. And what exactly did we find? Download report and graphics. Corporate Tax Cuts Boost CEO Pay, Not Jobs

Tax breaks did not spur job creation.

America’s 92 most consistently profitable tax-dodging firms registered median job growth of negative 1 percent between 2008 and 2016. The job growth rate over those same years among U.S. private sector firms as a whole: 6 percent.

More than half of the 92 tax-avoiders, 48 firms in all, eliminated jobs between 2008 and 2016, downsizing by a combined total of 483,000 positions.

Tax-dodging corporations paid their CEOs more than other big firms.

Average CEO pay among the 92 firms rose 18 percent, to $13.4 million in real terms, between 2008 and 2016, compared to a 13 percent increase among S&P 500 CEOs. U.S. private sector worker pay increased by only 4 percent during this period.

CEOs at the 48 job-slashing companies within our 92-firm sample pocketed even larger paychecks. In 2016 they grabbed $14.9 million on average, 14 percent more than the $13.1 million for typical S&P 500 CEOs.

Job-cutting firms spent tax savings on buybacks, which inflated CEO pay.

Many of the firms in our tax-dodging sample funneled their tax savings into stock buybacks, a financial maneuver that inflates the value of executive stock-based pay. On average, the top 10 job-cutters in our sample each spent $45 billion over the last nine years repurchasing their own stock, six times as much as the S&P 500 corporate average.

Several specific major corporations jump out from our analysis. ExxonMobil, for instance, emerges as particularly poor corporate “citizen.” The oil giant paid an effective tax rate of only 13.6 percent during the 2008-2015 period, at the same time cutting more than a third of its global workforce (the company does not reveal U.S. jobs data).

After pumping nearly $146 billion into stock buybacks, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, now the U.S. secretary of state, took home $27.4 million in total compensation in 2016, 22 percent more than he collected in 2008.

But ExxonMobil hardly stands alone. AT&T actually emerges as the top job-cutter among the tax-dodging corporations we analyzed. The telecommunications giant managed to get away with an effective tax rate of just 8.1 percent over the 2008-2015 period, while cutting more jobs than any other firm in our sample.

After accounting for acquisitions and spinoffs, AT&T had nearly 80,000 fewer employees in 2016 than in 2008. Instead of making job-preserving investments, the firm shoveled profits into stock buybacks ($34 billion over the past nine years) and massive CEO paychecks. AT&T chief Randall Stephenson pulled in $28.4 million in 2016, more than double his 2008 payout.

General Electric, meanwhile, stashed enough corporate earnings in overseas tax havens to achieve a negative effective tax rate during the 2008-2015 period. How can a tax rate be negative? GE received more dollars back from Uncle Sam than it paid into federal coffers. How did GE repay the taxpayers of America for their generosity? The company spent $42 billion repurchasing its own stock, a neat move that helped boost CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s pay to nearly $18 million in 2016.

What about jobs at GE? The company’s employee count has dropped by about 14,700 over the past nine years.

CEOs of large American corporations have for far too long been rigging the rules to enrich themselves at the expense of taxpayers, workers, and communities. America needs a serious unrigging. In this year’s Executive Excess report, as in previous editions, we’ve included a “scorecard” of CEO pay reforms that would help end the job-killing games that U.S. corporate executives play.

Our nation also desperately needs a tax reform debate that dispenses with the fantastical notion that corporate tax cuts will automatically create good jobs for American workers. Policy makers should be focusing instead on ensuring that corporate America pays its fair share of the cost of job-creating public investments in infrastructure and other urgent needs.

A solid first step would be to eliminate loopholes that grant preferential treatment of foreign profits. U.S. corporations should have to pay what they owe on their current offshore holdings and not be allowed to defer these payments indefinitely. By continuing to allow offshore tax sheltering, policy makers are shifting the tax burden onto ordinary Americans and creating a disincentive for job creation in the United States.

Beyond closing loopholes, we need new innovative policies — a tax on Wall Street speculation, for instance — that would help generate much-needed revenue for investments in real jobs. Americans for Tax Fairness is now offering online an array of promising ideas on how to reform tax rules to help make them work for all of us, not just big companies and their CEOs.

Corporate Tax Cuts Don’t Create Jobs!

Institute For Policy Studies August 30 2017

What you think of Bernie Sanders or his supporters isn’t important. The truth, however, is:

What Donald Trump and corporate CEOs don’t want you to know is that Corporate tax cuts don’t create jobs. They go into the pockets of wealthy CEOs who cut American jobs. Virtually every major corporation that has paid little or no taxes since the financial crisis in 2008 has laid off thousands of workers; they’ve created very few jobs.

Republicans have been trying to sell the same, lame load of snake oil for at least a century. Nearly 100 years ago, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge & Herbert Hoover rode a wave of support for this flawed philosophy into creating wealth disparity at almost the same level we have now straight into the Great Depression. It has never worked & never will because the real purpose of it isn’t to create jobs or better wages. Nor is it because they honestly believe the wealth will “trickle down”. It never was.

Corporate Tax Cuts Don't Create Jobs

Here's what Donald Trump and corporate CEOs don't want you to know: Corporate tax cuts don't create jobs. They go into the pockets of wealthy CEOs who cut American jobs.

Posted by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders on Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Toxic waste sites near Houston flooded by Harvey, EPA not on scene

Los Angeles Times

Toxic waste sites near Houston flooded by Harvey, EPA not on scene

At the Highlands Acid Pit, a “No Trespassing” sign on the barbed-wire fence encircling the 3.3-acre Superfund site barely peeked above the churning water from the nearby San Jacinto River on Aug. 31, 2017. (Jason Dearen / AP)

Jason Dearen and Michael Biesecker, Associated Press

September 2, 2017 Highlands, Texas

As Dwight Chandler sipped beer and swept out the thick muck caked inside his devastated home, he worried whether Harvey’s floodwaters had also washed in pollution from the old acid pit just a couple blocks away.

Long a center of the nation’s petrochemical industry, the Houston metro area has more than a dozen Superfund sites, designated by the Environmental Protection Agency as being among America’s most intensely contaminated places. Many are now flooded, with the risk that waters were stirring dangerous sediment.

The Highlands Acid Pit site near Chandler’s home was filled in the 1950s with toxic sludge and sulfuric acid from oil and gas operations. Though 22,000 cubic yards of hazardous waste and soil were excavated from the acid pits in the 1980s, the site is still considered a potential threat to groundwater, and the EPA maintains monitoring wells there.

When he was growing up in Highlands, Chandler, now 62, said he and his friends used to swim in the by-then abandoned pit.

“My daddy talks about having bird dogs down there to run and the acid would eat the pads off their feet,” he recounted on Thursday. “We didn’t know any better.”

The Associated Press surveyed seven Superfund sites in and around Houston during the flooding. All had been inundated with water, in some cases many feet deep.

On Saturday, hours after the AP published its first report, the EPA said it had reviewed aerial imagery confirming that 13 of the 41 Superfund sites in Texas were flooded by Harvey and were “experiencing possible damage” due to the storm.

The statement confirmed the AP’s reporting that the EPA had not yet been able to physically visit the Houston-area sites, saying the sites had “not been accessible by response personnel.” EPA staff had checked on two Superfund sites in Corpus Christi on Thursday and found no significant damage.

The Houston metro area has more than a dozen Superfund sites. Many are now flooded, with the risk that waters were stirring dangerous chemicals.

AP journalists used a boat to document the condition of one flooded Houston-area Superfund site, but accessed others with a vehicle or on foot. The EPA did not respond to questions about why its personnel had not yet been able to do so.

“Teams are in place to investigate possible damage to these sites as soon flood waters recede, and personnel are able to safely access the sites,” the EPA statement said.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, speaking with reporters at a news conference on Saturday after the AP report was published, said he wants the EPA “in town to address the situation.”

Turner said he didn’t know about the potential environmental concerns soon enough to discuss them with President Donald Trump.

“Now we’re turning out attention to that,” he said. “It is always a concern. The environment is very concerning, and we’ll get right on top of it.”

At the Highlands Acid Pit on Thursday, the Keep Out sign on the barbed-wire fence encircling the 3.3-acre site barely peeked above the churning water from the nearby San Jacinto River.

A fishing bobber was caught in the chain link, and the air smelled bitter. A rusted incinerator sat just behind the fence, poking out of the murky soup.

Across the road at what appeared to be a more recently operational plant, a pair of tall white tanks had tipped over into a heap of twisted steel. It was not immediately clear what, if anything, might have been inside them when the storm hit.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has called cleaning up Superfund sites a top priority, even as he has taken steps to roll back or delay rules aimed at preventing air and water pollution. Trump’s proposed 2018 budget seeks to cut money for the Superfund program by 30 percent, though congressional Republicans are likely to approve a less severe reduction.

Like Trump, Pruitt has expressed skepticism about the predictions of climate scientists that warmer air and seas will produce stronger, more drenching storms.

Under the Obama administration, the EPA conducted a nationwide assessment of the increased threat to Superfund sites posed by climate change, including rising sea levels and stronger hurricanes. Of the more than 1,600 sites reviewed as part of the 2012 study, 521 were determined to be in 1-in-100 year and 1-in-500 year flood zones. Nearly 50 sites in coastal areas could also be vulnerable to rising sea levels.

The threats to human health and wildlife from rising waters that inundate Superfund sites vary widely depending on the specific contaminants and the concentrations involved. The EPA report specifically noted the risk that floodwaters might carry away and spread toxic materials over a wider area.

Dwight Chandler walks through his flood-damaged home in Highlands, Texas, on Aug. 31, 2017. Chandler, 62, said he worried whether Harvey’s floodwaters had washed in pollution from the old acid pits just a couple blocks from his house that are designated as an EPA Superfund site. (Jason Dearen / AP)

The report listed two dozen Superfund sites determined to be especially vulnerable to flooding and sea-level rise. The only one in Texas, the Bailey Waste Disposal site south of Beaumont, is on a marshy island along the Neches River. The National Weather Service said the Neches was expected to crest on Saturday at more than 21 feet above flood stage — 8 feet higher than the prior record.

In Crosby, across the San Jacinto River from Houston, a small working-class neighborhood sits between two Superfund sites, French LTD and the Sikes Disposal Pits.

The area was wrecked by Harvey’s floods. Only a single house from among the roughly dozen lining Hickory Lane was still standing.

After the water receded on Friday, a sinkhole the size of a swimming pool had opened up and swallowed two cars. The acrid smell of creosote filled the air.

Rafael Casas’ family had owned a house there for two decades, adjacent to the French LTD site. He said he was never told about the pollution risk until it came up in an informal conversation with a police officer who grew up nearby. Most of the homes had groundwater wells, but Casas said his family had switched to bottled water.

“You never know what happens with the pollution under the ground,” said Casas, 32. “It filters into the water system.”

The water had receded by Saturday at Brio Refining Inc. and Dixie Oil Processors, a pair of neighboring Superfund sites about 20 miles southeast of downtown Houston in Friendswood. The road was coated in a layer of silt. Mud Gully Stream, which bisects the two sites, was full and flowing with muddy water.

Both sites were capped with a liner and soil as part of EPA-supervised cleanup efforts aimed at preventing the contamination from spreading off the low-lying sites during floods. Parts of the Brio site were elevated by 8 feet.

This Saturday, Sept. 2, 2017 photo shows the heavily polluted Patrick Bayou in the Houston Ship Channel that was flooded during Tropical Storm Harvey in Houston. The bayou, which sits next to a chemical plant in an intensely industrial area of Houston, is polluted with pesticides, hydrocarbons, metals and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). (Jason Dearen / AP)

John Danna, the manager hired by the companies to oversee the sites, said in a phone interview that he went there after the storm and saw no signs of erosion. He said he didn’t know how high the flooding got in Harvey’s wake and that no testing of the water still draining from the area had been conducted. EPA staff are expected to visit in the next week, he said.

A security guard at the Patrick Bayou Superfund site, just off the Houston Ship Channel in Deer Park, said Saturday that flooding came hundreds of feet inland during the storm. The water has since receded back into the bayou, where past testing has shown the sediments contain pesticides, toxic heavy metals and PCBs. The site, surrounded by active petrochemical facilities, is still awaiting a final plan for cleanup.

The San Jacinto River Waste Pits Superfund site was completely covered with floodwaters when an AP reporter saw it Thursday. According to its website, the EPA was set to make a final decision this year about a proposed $97 million cleanup effort to remove toxic waste from a paper mill that operated there in the 1960s.

The flow from the raging river washing over the toxic site was so intense it damaged an adjacent section of the Interstate 10 bridge, which has been closed to traffic due to concerns it might collapse.

There was no way to immediately assess how much contaminated soil from the site might have been washed away. According to an EPA survey from last year, soil from the former waste pits contains dioxins and other long-lasting toxins linked to birth defects and cancer.

The EPA said Saturday the San Jacinto Waste Pits site is covered by a temporary “armored cap,” a fabric covering anchored with rocks designed to prevent contaminated sediment from migrating down river.

McGinnes Industrial Maintenance Corp., one of the companies responsible for the site, said in a statement Saturday that its contractors reported that “visible portions of the cap indicated the waste beneath remained in place following the storm.” Ken Haldin, a public relations consultant representing the company, said he did not know how much of the 34-acre site was above water at the time of the inspection.

According to an EPA review last year, the cap has required extensive repairs on at least six occasions since it was installed in 2011, with large sections becoming displaced or going missing.

The EPA said its personnel planned to go to the site by boat on Monday.

Kara Cook-Schultz, who studies Superfund sites for the advocacy group TexPIRG, said environmentalists have warned for years about the potential for flooding to inundate Texas Superfund sites, particularly the San Jacinto Waste Pits.

“If floodwaters have spread the chemicals in the waste pits, then dangerous chemicals like dioxin could be spread around the wider Houston area,” Cook-Schultz said. “Superfund sites are known to be the most dangerous places in the country, and they should have been properly protected against flooding.”

Associated Press writer Jay Reeves contributed to this report. Biesecker reported from Washington.

Trump’s EPA lashes out at journalists who exposed Houston toxic risk – then deletes statement

RawStory

Trump’s EPA lashes out at journalists who exposed Houston toxic risk – then deletes statement

David Ferguson September 3, 2017

File Photo: Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt testifies before a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee confirmation hearing on his nomination to be administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, U.S., January 18, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo

A statement from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — now headed by Republican climate denialist Scott Pruitt — attacked the two Associated Press journalists who revealed on Saturday that multiple highly toxic “Superfund” sites had not been assessed for risks in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

Gizmodo.com reported on Sunday that the EPA issued “an extraordinary statement” attacking AP reporters Jason Dearen and Michael Biesecker — whose on-the-ground reporting broke the story on Saturday — and smearing their integrity as journalists.

However, by 7:30 p.m. EDT on Sunday, the statement had been scrubbed from the EPA website.

Gizmodo said the now-missing statement called the AP report “misleading” and said, “Here’s the truth: through aerial imaging, EPA has already conducted initial assessments at 41 Superfund sites—28 of those sites show no damage, and 13 have experienced flooding.”

Aerial imaging, however, cannot measure the level of poisons in the air and water around the sites or detect how far they have spread.

“Administrator Pruitt already visited Southeast Texas and is in constant contact with local, state and county officials,” the statement said, but failed to mention whether Pruitt had been to any of the sites or ordered inspections.

The statement went on to attack Biesecker’s credibility.

“Unfortunately, the Associated Press’ Michael Biesecker has a history of not letting the facts get in the way of his story. Earlier this summer, he made-up a meeting that Administrator Pruitt had, and then deliberately discarded information that refuted his inaccurate story — ultimately prompting a nation-wide correction. Additionally, the Oklahoman took him to task for sensationalized reporting,” the EPA said.

Gizmodo issued a correction to the agency’s “correction,” however, writing, “Biesecker did not make up the story, which is that Pruitt met with DOW CEO Andrew Liveris before deciding not to ban Dow’s chlorpyrifos pesticide, but instead issued a correction regarding the length of said meeting.”

EPA Associate Administrator Liz Bowman accused the AP of “once again” attempting to “mislead Americans” by “cherry-picking facts.” She called Saturday’s report “yellow journalism.”

Gizmodo said, “Since the EPA did not actually contest any of the facts in the AP article, this looks an awful lot like petty retaliation against journalists for having the temerity to report on things like the EPA’s response to an environmental catastrophe—or any number of other things, like Pruitt’s extremely sketchy ties to the climate change denial movement, war on environmental science, or plans to eliminate huge numbers of EPA staff.”

The statement — which contained links to white nationalist website Breitbart.com as references —lambasted Dearen and Biesecker as having authored their report from “the comfort of Washington,” when in fact, both reporters traveled to the sites in question and reported from Houston throughout the storm.

“As someone who was there,” Dearen wrote on Twitter, “I can confirm it was hot, and smelly.”

Harvey’s floodwaters mix a foul brew of sewage, chemicals

Associated Press

Harvey’s floodwaters mix a foul brew of sewage, chemicals

John Flesher, AP Environmental Writer, Associated Press Sept 4, 2017

FILE – In this Aug. 31, 2017 file photo, Alejandra Castillo takes a break from carrying water-soaked items out of her family’s home after flood waters receded in Houston. Experts say Harvey’s filthy floodwaters pose significant dangers to human safety and the environment that will remain even after levels drop far enough that southeastern Texas residents no longer fear for their lives. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

Harvey’s filthy floodwaters pose significant dangers to human safety and the environment even after water levels drop far enough that Southeast Texas residents no longer fear for their lives, according to experts.

Houston already was notorious for sewer overflows following rainstorms. Now the system, with 40 wastewater treatment plants across the far-flung metropolis, faces an unprecedented challenge.

State officials said several dozen sewer overflows had been reported in areas affected by the hurricane, including Corpus Christi. Private septic systems in rural areas could fail as well.

Also stirred into the noxious brew are spilled fuel, runoff from waste sites, lawn pesticides and pollutants from the region’s many petroleum refineries and chemical plants.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported Sunday that of the 2,300 water systems contacted by federal and state regulators, 1,514 were fully operational. More than 160 systems issued notices advising people to boil water before drinking it, and 50 were shut down.

The public works department in Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, said its water was safe. The system has not experienced the kind of pressure drop that makes it easier for contaminants to slip into the system and is usually the reason for a boil-water order, spokesman Gary Norman said.

In a statement Thursday, federal and state environmental officials said their primary concerns were the availability of healthy drinking water and “ensuring wastewater systems are being monitored, tested for safety and managed appropriately.”

About 85 percent of Houston’s drinking water is drawn from surface sources — rivers and reservoirs, said Robin Autenrieth, head of Texas A&M University’s civil engineering department. The rest comes from the city’s 107 groundwater wells.

“I would be concerned about what’s in the water that people will be drinking,” she said.

The city met federal and state drinking water standards as well as requirements for monitoring and reporting, said Andrew Keese, spokesman for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Keeping it that way will require stepped-up chemical treatments because of the flooding, Norman said.

It’s prudent to pump more chlorine and other disinfectants into drinking water systems in emergencies like this, to prevent outbreaks of diseases such as cholera and dysentery, said David Andrews, senior scientist with the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization. But doing so poses its own risks, he said.

There’s often more organic matter — sewage, plants, farm runoff — in reservoirs or other freshwater sources during heavy rains. When chlorine reacts with those substances, it forms chemicals called trihalomethanes, which can boost the risk of cancer and miscarriages, Andrews said.

“Right now it’s a tough time to deal with that, when you’re just trying to clean the water up and make sure it’s not passing illnesses through the system,” he said. “But we should do better at keeping contamination out of source water in the first place.”

Federal and state officials said about two-thirds of approximately 2,400 wastewater treatment plants in counties affected by Harvey were fully operational. They said they were monitoring facilities with reported spills and would send teams to help operators restart systems.

Sewage plants are particularly vulnerable during severe storms because they are located near waterways into which they can discharge treated water, said Autenrieth of Texas A&M. When they are flooded, raw or partially treated sewage can spill from pipes, open-air basins and tanks.

A report by the nonprofit research group Climate Central said more than 10 billion gallons of sewage was released along the East Coast during Superstorm Sandy.

The Houston Chronicle reported last year that Houston averages more than 800 sewage overflows a year and is negotiating an agreement with the EPA that would require system improvements.

Norman said Houston didn’t have a running tally of overflows during Harvey.

“Anytime you have wet weather of this magnitude, there’s going to be a certain amount of sanitary sewage that escapes the system,” he said. “That’s one reason why we advise people to stay out of floodwaters.”

A Texas A&M analysis of floodwater samples from the Houston area revealed levels of E. coli — bacteria that signal the presence of fecal matter — 125 times higher than is safe for swimming. Even wading through such tainted water could cause infections and sickness, said Terry Gentry, an associate professor and specialist in detecting tiny disease-producing organisms.

“Precautions should be taken by anyone involved in cleanup activities or any others who may be exposed to floodwaters,” said a statement from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state environmental quality commission.

They said they were developing a plan to sample residential wells.

Hazards will remain as waters gradually recede. Puddles, tires and other spots for standing water will attract mosquitoes, which can spread viruses such as West Nile and Zika, Autenrieth said.

Much of the dirty water will flow through rivers, creeks and bayous into Galveston Bay, renowned for its oyster reefs, abundant wildlife and seagrass meadows. Officials will need to monitor shellfish for signs of bacterial contamination, said Doug Rader, chief ocean scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund.

The waters also may be rich with nitrogen and phosphorus, which feed algae blooms. When algae die and rot, oxygen gets sucked from the water, creating “dead zones” where large numbers of fish can suffocate.

“You have a potential for localized dead zones in Galveston Bay for months or maybe even longer,” Rader said.

The bay opens into the Gulf of Mexico, where a gigantic dead zone forms in summer, powered by nutrients from the Mississippi River. This year’s was the largest on record, said oceanographer Nancy Rabalais of Louisiana State University.

Ironically, Hurricane Harvey may have done the environment at least one favor by churning the Gulf’s waters and sending an influx of oxygen from the surface to the depths. “A temporary silver lining,” Rabalais said.

But that also happened after 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, she added. “And within a week, the low-oxygen area had redeveloped.”

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Santa Fe Aiming for 100% Renewable Energy by 2025

EcoWatch

Santa Fe Aiming for 100% Renewable Energy by 2025

Lorraine Chow September 1, 2017

PNM, the largest electricity provider in New Mexico, has more than 1 million solar panels at 15 different solar sites to provide clean energy for the state.

New Mexico’s capital has joined the growing movement of U.S. cities committing to 100 percent renewable energy.

On Wednesday, Santa Fe’s City Council unanimously adopted Mayor Javier Gonzales’ resolution directing City Manager Brian Snyde to develop a feasibility study on how the city can transition to renewables by 2025. Snyde will report the findings in 90 days.

“The City of Santa Fe has historically been a leader in the fight against global warming and has a responsibility to continue to set a positive example for other cities, states and countries to follow,” the resolution states.

“Such a transition to utilizing 100 percent renewable energy will promote employment opportunities and economic growth in our community, facilitate local control and ownership of the city’s energy options, and bring tangible benefits of using renewable energy to the community as a whole,” it adds.

Gonzales celebrated the city’s ambitious clean energy goal with a tweet saying there is “work to do, but here we go!”

The New Mexican reported that a quarter of the city’s energy already comes from renewable sources, mostly from solar.

An Undocumented Journey Through Harvey

Esquire

An Undocumented Journey Through Harvey

When her trailer flooded, Maria and her children escaped on a makeshift raft. But with the risk of deportation, she didn’t know where to turn.

By Lorena O’Neil August 31, 2017

The water seeped in under the door of Maria’s mobile home in Houston Sunday night as she tapped out the numbers 9-1-1. No answer. “Just take the children and leave me,” her friend José urged in Spanish. Jose is paralyzed from the waist-down. Maria and her late husband took him in to live with them and their five children following his car accident six years ago. The water kept coming into the trailer. Now it crept towards Jose’s electric wheelchair.

“No—if we leave, we all leave together,” Maria told Jose. She was scared. She had called 911 three hours earlier and had been instructed to calm down and wait. So Maria waited, and waited, and now the water was coming in faster, and now there was more of it. Her children were crying.

As Maria began to panic, her friend’s husband, whom she had called earlier, showed up at her front door with his son and his two teenage friends. He pointed to the inflatable kiddie pool her family used during the hot Houston summer, and suggested they use it as a raft to push José through the floodwater. With José, her 9-year-old twin boys, and her 10-year-old daughter situated in the green and blue floating pool, the 5-foot-tall Maria pushed her family through frigid water that reached her chest. Maria’s other two daughters, just 11- and 12-years-old, walked alongside their mother in the dark. She wondered what would happen next. Both Maria and Jose are undocumented immigrants, and she feared being asked for papers once they reached a shelter.

Maria’s concern about potentially being detained by “la migra”—immigration officials—was one shared by many undocumented immigrants as Hurricane Harvey ravaged Houston and other parts of southern Texas. Pew estimates that the Houston metropolitan area is home to roughly 575,000 undocumented immigrants, the third largest population in the United States behind Los Angeles and New York. Even before the storm, the undocumented community was on high alert, due to Senate Bill 4, an anti-immigrant measure that allows local police officers to ask about a person’s citizenship status and had been scheduled to go into effect Friday. (It has since been temporarily halted.)

Houston is home to about 575,000 undocumented immigrants, the third largest population in the United States. Getty

The ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection put out a joint statement over the weekend in light of the storm saying they wouldn’t target undocumented immigrants at evacuation sites, shelters, or food banks. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner went as far as saying he would personally defend any undocumented immigrants who faced deportation as a result of seeking help in the storm. These reassurances never reached Maria, and she almost didn’t go to a shelter due to her fear. (Esquire is withholding the last names of undocumented immigrants profiled in this article.)

Maria had walked for 75 minutes through the water towards an elementary school on higher ground. She brought a change of clothes and blankets with her from home that were now soaked. The kiddie pool was becoming so deflated it was tough to push. As her legs began to fatigue from wading through the water, a black truck splashed by and three men jumped out to assist Maria, Jose, and the rest of the group. The Good Samaritans drove the family to a nearby school and Maria contemplated where to go next. She tried to call acquaintances, but claims it was tough to find someone who would agree to house them once she mentioned José was paraplegic. The men who had been in the black truck offered to take them to Gallery Furniture, a Houston furniture store that had opened its doors as a shelter for hurricane evacuees.

“I was so scared,” she says in Spanish, the language in which our interview was conducted. “I was scared I would go there and they would ask me for my papers.”

Maria left Mexico when she was 20-years-old and has been living in Texas for the past 17 years. Her husband passed away from a stroke a year ago, and now she is terrified of being deported and leaving her five American-born children without parents. But the men in the truck reassured Maria and José nobody would ask for their documentation at Gallery Furniture. Desperate for food, water, and a place to sleep, Maria went to the furniture store, where the family was greeted with hot dogs, coffee, and a temporary wheelchair for José. Still, she was anxious.

There have been dozens of Hurricane Harvey-related deaths since it made landfall in Texas over the weekend. Getty

“I didn’t want to stay there,” she says. At 4 a.m., two police officers walked in, and her anxiety grew. The pair spoke with some of the volunteers at the shelter and walked into the kitchen. Nobody asked for papers.

Maria, Jose, and the children slept at the furniture store for one night before moving to a family member’s house, where they are currently living. Maria has since returned to her mobile home to assess the situation. The water has damaged two of her four bedrooms, plus a bathroom. Her two trucks are flooded, as well, one of which she uses to pull the taco food cart that she depends on for her livelihood. Maria, like approximately 80 percent of Harvey’s worst flood victims, does not have flood insurance.

“I know [undocumented] people have been afraid before the hurricane, of just dropping their kids at school or going to work,” says Pancho Arguelles, executive director at Living Hope Wheelchair Association, a non-profit organization that assists people like José with spinal cord injuries who don’t have access to healthcare.

Houston’s Gallery Furniture store took in families like Maria’s Sunday night. Getty

He worries about the new anti-immigrant bill, and says he thinks undocumented people will mistakenly think it means every police officer is essentially becoming an immigration officer. The deterioration of trust between police officers and the community they serve is of serious concern to police chiefs in Texas, many of whom have spoken out against Senate Bill 4 both before and after it was signed into law by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. The legislation—nicknamed the “anti-sanctuary cities” law—would ban police chiefs, sheriffs, and other law-enforcement officials from preventing an officer from questioning a person about his or her immigration status. Jail officials would also be forced to honor all ICE requests to hold inmates for possible deportation. On Wednesday, a federal district judge temporarily blocked the bill from taking effect while a lawsuit against it continues. Houston is one of the cities involved in the lawsuit looking to strike down the law.

“I know [undocumented] people have been afraid before the hurricane, of just dropping their kids at school or going to work.”

Still, Maria feels uncertain about her future in the U.S. “I’m worried,” she says. Speaking on behalf of the undocumented community in Houston she says, “We have a lot of needs right now.” Maria hopes to move back into her damaged home and get her business back up and running as soon as she can.

“I will work hard and fight like always for my children,” she says. “I’m their only support.”