EcoWatch

David Suzuki: Wildfires Are a Climate Change Wake-Up Call

Dr. David Suzuki    August 16, 2017

Wildfires are sweeping BC. Close to 900 have burned through 600,000 hectares so far this year, blanketing western North America with smoke. Fighting them has cost more than $230 million—and the season is far from over.

It’s not just BC. Thousands of people from BC to California have fled homes as fires rage. Greenland is experiencing the largest blaze ever recorded, one that Prof. Stef Lhermitte of Delft University in the Netherlands called “a rare and unusual event.” Fires have spread throughout Europe, North America and elsewhere. In June, dozens of people died in what’s being called Portugal’s worst fire ever. Meanwhile, from Saskatchewan to Vietnam to New Zealand, floods have brought landslides, death and destruction.

What will it take to wake us up to the need to address climate change? Fires and floods have always been here, and are often nature’s way of renewing ecosystems—but as the world warms, they’re increasing in frequency, size and severity. Experts warn wildfires could double in number in the near future, with the Pacific Northwest seeing five or six times as many.

In the western U.S., annual average temperatures have increased by 2 C and the fire season has grown by three months since the 1970s, leading to “new era of western wildfires,” according to a recent study led by University of Colorado Boulder wildfire experts, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Climate change doesn’t necessarily start the fires—lightning, unattended campfires, carelessly tossed cigarette butts and sparks from machinery are major causes—but it creates conditions for more and larger fires. Lightning, which causes up to 35 percent of Canada’s wildfires and is responsible for 85 percent of the area burned annually, increases as temperatures rise, with studies showing 12 percent more lightning strikes for each degree Celsius of warming.

Drier, shorter winters and earlier snowmelt extend fire seasons. As the atmosphere warms, it holds more moisture, some of which it draws from forests and wetlands, and increasing precipitation is not enough to offset the drying. This means fuel sources ignite more easily and fires spread faster over greater areas. Outbreaks of pests such as mountain pine beetles—previously kept in check by longer, colder winters—have also killed and dried forests, adding fuel to the fires. Because trees and soils hold moisture on slopes, fires can also increase the risk of flash floods when rains finally arrive.

The human and economic impacts are staggering—from property destruction to firefighting and prevention to loss of valuable resources and ecosystems. As human populations expand further into wild areas, damages and costs are increasing.

Health impacts from smoke put people—especially children and the elderly—at risk and drive health care costs up. Wildfires now kill more than 340,000 people a year, mainly from smoke inhalation.

Fires also emit CO2, creating feedback loops and exacerbating climate change. Boreal forests in Canada and Russia store large amounts of carbon and help regulate the climate, but they’re especially vulnerable to wildfires.

Suggested solutions are wide-ranging. The authors of the PNAS study recommend letting some wildfires burn in areas uninhabited by people, setting more “controlled” fires to reduce undergrowth fuels and create barriers, thinning dense forests, discouraging development in fire-prone areas and strengthening building codes.

These adaptive measures are important, as are methods to prevent people from sparking fires, but our primary focus should be on doing all we can to slow global warming.

According to NASA, Earth’s average surface temperature has risen by 1.1 C since the late 19th century, with most warming occurring over the past 35 years, and 16 of the 17 warmest years occurring since 2001. Eight months of 2016 were the warmest on record. Oceans have also been warming and acidifying quickly, Arctic ice has rapidly decreased in extent and thickness, glaciers are retreating worldwide, and sea levels have been rising at an accelerating pace. Record high temperature events have been increasing while low temperature events have decreased, and extreme weather events are becoming more common in many areas.

Today’s wildfires are a wake-up call. If we are serious about our Paris agreement commitments, we can’t build more pipelines, expand oil sands, continue fracking or exploit extreme Arctic and deep-sea oil.

CNBC    Business

There are over 341,000 wind turbines on the planet: Here’s how much of a difference they’re making

Anmar Frangoul, CNBC     September 8, 2017 

William Campbell | Corbis News | Getty Images. Sustainable Energy takes a look at the nuts and bolts of wind power.

From the intense heat of the Californian desert to the green hills of Scotland, wind turbines are popping up all over the world.

Humans have been using wind energy for thousands of years. Today, its scope and scale is big and getting bigger. According to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), at the end of 2016 more than 341,000 wind turbines were spinning and generating energy.

CNBC’s Sustainable Energy takes a look at the nuts and bolts of wind power – how turbines work, wind energy’s impact on the environment, and its role in the planet’s energy mix over the coming years.

Offshore and onshore

With their considerable height and large blades, modern wind turbines are instantly recognizable.

How they produce energy can be broken down into several parts. Put simply, when the wind blows, a turbine’s blades turn around a rotor. As the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) explains, the rotor is connected to a main shaft, which in turn rotates a generator to produce electricity.

Wind energy can be produced both offshore and onshore. While the U.S. offshore wind industry is still in its infancy – America’s first offshore wind farm only began commercial operations last December– it is well established in other parts of the world.

According to the GWEC, at the end of last year Europe was home to 3,589 offshore wind turbines. Furthermore, almost 88 percent of the world’s offshore installations were based off the coast of 10 European countries.

The U.K. is a world leader in offshore wind, representing just shy of 36 percent of installed capacity, with Germany and China close behind.

Environmental impact

The GWEC says that in 2016 wind power helped the planet avoid more than 637 million tons of CO2 emissions.

The executive director of Renewable UK explained to CNBC how wind power had several plus points when it came to the environment.

“Wind energy doesn’t require a fuel source… once we’re built we don’t need to mine for anything and we don’t need to burn fossil fuels which, as we know, are contributing to climate change,” Emma Pinchbeck said.

“It’s sustainable as a form of energy production, but then it’s also fairly sustainable as a form of infrastructure because of how we build it,” she added. “The amount of energy that goes in to building a wind farm is ‘paid off’ after one year of generation from that wind farm.”

There are some drawbacks, however. To give just one example, while the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) acknowledges that wind power has a “significant” part to play in the U.K.’s efforts against climate change, it adds that available evidence suggests that wind farms “can harm birds in three possible ways – disturbance, habitat loss and collision.”

The future

Looking forward, the GWEC says that in the European Union, 520,000 people are expected to be working in the wind industry by 2020.

The DOE’s Wind Vision Report says that wind could potentially support more than 600,000 jobs by the year 2050 and help avoid 12.3 gigatons of greenhouse gases.

Unsurprisingly, Renewable UK’s Pinchbeck was incredibly positive about the future when it comes to renewables. “If I were an investor and I wanted to put my money on what the cheapest forms of energy were going to be, not just today but in ten years’ time, it would be in renewables by a country mile,” she said.

EcoWatch

World’s Largest Solar Thermal Power Plant Approved for Australia

Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Plant in Nevada. SolarReserve

Lorraine Chow August 16, 2017

The South Australian state government has approved the construction of a 150-megawatt solar thermal power plant.

The AU $650 million (US $510 million) structure will be built in Port Augusta and is slated for completion by 2020. It will be the largest such facility in the world once built.

California-based SolarReserve was awarded with the contract. The company is also behind the 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Plant in Nevada, the world’s first utility-scale solar thermal power plant.

Solar thermal plants are different from traditional photovoltaic panels on rooftops and solar farms around the world. These plants, also known as concentrated solar plants (CSP), consists of a large field of mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays to heat molten salt, which then produces superheated steam to drive a generator’s turbines.

A major advantage to this type of power plant is how it can store up to eight hours of molten salt thermal energy storage, allowing for power usage when needed.

“The significance of solar thermal generation lies in its ability to provide energy virtually on demand through the use of thermal energy storage to store heat for running the power turbines,” said sustainable energy engineering professor Wasim Saman, from the University of South Australia. “This is a substantially more economical way of storing energy than using batteries.”

This technology is critical for South Australia, which has been plagued by blackouts. Australia itself also has a major gas shortage looming and its decades-old coal plants are shutting down, sparking potential price hikes and putting energy security at risk.

Looks like the state is firmly placing its bet on renewables. The state government also recently approved the construction of the worlds largest battery farm in the Riverland region with help from Tesla.

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 .

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.”

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.

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.”