Scientists are observing with increasing alarm that some very common hormone-mimicking chemicals can have grotesque effects.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/opinion/kristof-how-chemicals-change-us.html

The fact that water bottlers in Florida get free access to water they package and sell — and therefore make 100 percent profit on the materials — is often a sticking point for conservationists.
While giving away water bottling rights in a state expecting water shortages may seem to be the perfect illustration of bad water policy, it is worth taking a look at the actual consumption of the primary industries in the state that use water, industries like agriculture.
Water bottle companies have become an easy target for environmentalists because of their notorious use of plastic. But when agriculture’s use is brought into the picture, water consumption numbers may not appear as critics of the bottled water industry assume.
The total consumption of water for the agriculture industry statewide in 2005 was 2,766 million gallons per day, according to the 2005 state report, Water Withdrawls and Use. That is about 40 percent of the total water use in the state — for one industry.

via Agriculture vs. Water: Bottling the Consumptive Question : State of Water.

Artesian springs are one of the most unique natural and cultural resources in northern Florida.  However, their decline during the last several decades is well documented, especially with regards to reduced spring flow and increased nitrate-nitrogen concentrations.  Faced with budget cuts and declining tax revenues, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) and the various Water Management Districts are not currently able to support all of the efforts needed for springs assessment and restoration. Local citizens and governments are taking springs restoration into their own hands. To be successful all they need to proceed is a clear set of restoration actions that are technically feasible. 

The Florida Springs Institute has identified the urgent need for a Restoration Action Plan for Glen Spring so that the negative flow and nitrate trends increasingly apparent at this spring can be reversed before they become progressively worse.  There is an opportunity for revenue from this property, similar to the preservation efforts at Gainesville’s other urban spring, Boulware Spring. Since the spring pool house is still in good shape with the original flooring from the bar in the 1950’s, a porch that was added on in the 1970’s, and the Elks Lodge next door, the property could be rented out for special events, with the spring being the main attraction. Given the chance, many people would pay to have their wedding next to a spring or host conferences and retreats that come to Gainesville.

To view the complete plan and video: 

via Glen Spring Restoration Plan – H. T. Odum Florida Springs Institute.

Fakahatchee Strand hosts a diverse variety of ecosystems, from wet swamp prairies to dry hardwood hammocks and pine rock lands. Painter Margaret Tolbert captures the dramatic sweep of the prairie in December.

To View Video: 

via Greater Everglades Conservation Atlas: Fakahatchee Strand
- YouTube.

During the freeze of 2010, Plant City farmers pumped water out of the ground continuously for 11 days to insulate their strawberry crops against the biting cold.

“The massive water withdrawal dropped the level of the aquifer sixty feet in a week and a half,” Gainesville author Cynthia Barnett writes in “Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis.”

“One hundred and forty sinkholes opened up in communities surrounding the farms. Seven hundred and fifty residential wells dried up. An underground chasm closed Plant City’s Trapell Elementary School….”

Sinkholes are a natural phenomenon in porous, limestone-girded Florida. Even so, the cause-and-effect relationship between dropping groundwater tables and increased sinkhole occurrence is absolutely clear.

via The cause-and-effect relationship between dropping groundwater tables and increased sinkhole occurrence is absolutely clear | Gainesville.com.

The Frank Stronach Plant Science Center is the home of the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Science’s agronomic, fruit and vegetable research efforts.  Today marked the dedication of the conference center to Stronach himself.  The celebration wasn’t without controversy.  Protesters turned out from a variety of locations and organizations over Stronach’s plans for a 30,000 acre organic beef ranch and Stronach’s permit request to pump 13 and a half million gallons of water per day for the ranch.  As Florida’s 89.1, WUFT-FM’s Donna Green-Townsend reports, the Canadian businessman took note of the outside protests and promised to be a good corporate citizen in Marion County.

 To view Stronach’s remarks during conference: 

http://www.wuft.org/news/2012/05/15/frank-stonach-facility-dedication-also-draws-protestors-over-adena-ranch-water-permit-requests/

There are a lot of cheerleaders for the nation’s natural gas boom — in part because they believe it’s a lot cleaner than dirty coal. It’s pretty well-known that power plants that burn coal pump out far more greenhouse gases than power plants that run on natural gas.

But there’s a hitch: We don’t really know how much air pollution is created when companies drill for natural gas.

‘Not So Many Measurements’

Well heads, storage tanks and pipelines all leak methane in sprawling gas fields.

“We need to know a lot about methane itself, which is natural gas, if we’re worried about climate change,” says energy consultant Sue Tierney, “so that we don’t automatically think that gas is so much cleaner than coal.”

Science And The Fracking Boom: Missing Answers

Explore key components of the natural gas production process — and the questions scientists are asking.

NPRView Interactive

Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas. It’s very effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere.

“Fifty years from now, are we really going to be wondering if we really screwed up because we went on this big gas boom? You really wouldn’t want to be messing that up,” Tierney says.

She says that’s why it’s so important to study air pollution from natural gas production now.

Tierney was on an Energy Department advisory panel that recommended that gas companies start measuring and reporting their air emissions.

The way it is now, the government doesn’t really know how much methane comes from gas production.

“What the official estimates are based on generally are not so many measurements, but rather estimates,” says Greg Frost, an air pollution expert for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “They really are based on maybe a measurement here or there, but then they’re largely based on extrapolation.”

To really find out how much methane is being leaked, many scientists say you need to take lots of direct measurements: How much methane is coming off a well, or a pipeline, or a whole gas field?

Finding The Methane Source

At the foot of the Rocky Mountains, there’s a tall tower that tipped off scientists that estimates are poor substitutes for measuring. Imagine an open metal structure as tall as the Eiffel Tower and in the shape of a Toblerone chocolate box. A tiny elevator runs up the middle.

For the past few years, this tower has been Gaby Petron’s muse, spewing out numbers about air pollution. Petron works for the NOAA’s lab in Boulder, Colo.

“I look for a story in the data. … You give me a data set, I will study it back and forth and left and right for weeks,” she says.

Elizabeth Shogren/NPRGaby Petron, an atmospheric scientist with NOAA, stands in front of a natural gas well. Several years ago, Petron stumbled upon data suggesting northern Colorado’s natural gas production fields were leaking surprisingly high levels of methane into the air.

Four years ago, tubes at the top of the tower started sucking in samples of air every day. Petron noticed that data from the tower showed surprising levels of methane.

“Whatever was in the air here was really different than anywhere else,” she says.

Petron’s next step was to try to find out what was creating that methane. She talked a colleague into turning his Prius into a mobile lab for taking air samples.

“You want to see the invisible. You want to see what’s in the air, and you want to know exactly where the air is coming from,” Petron says.

She got into the Prius and headed east, in the direction of the tower. She took a good look around for potential sources of all that methane.

“Every time we drive east, the methane would go up. And I’m like, why is that? And then you come here and you see cows,” she says, “and you’re like, OK, maybe it’s the cows.”

Cows burp methane — but they weren’t a match. They didn’t have the right chemical fingerprint. Rotting garbage produces methane, too, but a nearby landfill wasn’t a match, either.

Next on her list: the gas and oil fields northeast of the tower. As she drove near, methane levels on her computer screen in the Prius spiked.

She had her match.

“So that’s when you have your moment. You’re like, all right, the story is right there. It’s really not the landfill, it’s really not the cows,” she says. “It’s really all the oil and gas equipment and activities that are going on in the region. And it’s not new. It’s always been there. We were just not measuring it.”

Petron’s measurements show the gas and oil fields in Northern Colorado are probably leaking twice as much methane into the air as the industry says they are.

“I think the atmosphere is a good way to look at things in terms of emissions because it’s not lying,” she says.

She published her work in the Journal of Geophysical Research a couple of months ago.

Making The Most Of Estimates

So why don’t gas companies measure their methane emissions? Cindy Allen, who heads the environment team for a drilling company called EnCana, says it’s not doable. There are a lot of gas fields, and some of them sprawl over hundreds of square miles.

Explore Shale: Go deep inside the natural gas drilling process – and how it’s regulated – in this interactive from Penn State Public Broadcasting.

Allen says it would take too much work for companies to maintain air pollution monitors near each well site.

“And they’re very expensive. It’s not realistic to install such devices on every single emissions source that there is,” she says.

Howard Feldman of the American Petroleum Institute says companies are trying to improve their estimates. His trade group is working on a new survey of methane emissions from tens of thousands of wells.

But Feldman says more measurements like the ones that came from that NOAA tower are needed, too.

“One in and of itself isn’t sufficient. Both are valid, and both add to the information that we have,” he says.

Feldman says it’s in the industry’s interest to find leaks and capture methane. That way, they can sell it instead of losing it to the atmosphere.

This story was produced for broadcast by Rebecca Davis.

Without fanfare, the nation’s nuclear power regulators have overhauled community emergency planning for the first time in more than three decades, requiring fewer exercises for major accidents and recommending that fewer people be evacuated right away.

The revamp, the first since the program began after Three Mile Island in 1979, also eliminates a requirement that local responders always practice for a release of radiation.

At least four years in the works, the changes appear to clash with more recent lessons of last year’s reactor crisis in Japan.

Without fanfare, the nation’s nuclear power regulators have overhauled community emergency planning for the firstWithout fanfare, the nation’s nuclear power regulators have overhauled community emergency planning for the first time in more than three decades, requiring fewer exercises for major accidents and recommending that fewer people be evacuated right away. The revamp, the first since the program began after Three Mile Island in 1979, also eliminates a requirement that local responders always practice for a release of radiation. At least four years in the works, the changes appear to clash with more recent lessons of last year’s reactor crisis in Japan. time in more than three decades, requiring fewer exercises for major accidents and recommending that fewer people be evacuated right away.

The revamp, the first since the program began after Three Mile Island in 1979, also eliminates a requirement that local responders always practice for a release of radiation.

At least four years in the works, the changes appear to clash with more recent lessons of last year’s reactor crisis in Japan.

via Nuclear Power Emergency Plans: Regulators Scale Back Community Readiness Efforts (VIDEO).

Scott Camil pictured in a cemetery in Dai Loc, Vietnam in 1967

(CNN) — As a veteran of combat in Vietnam, I am often asked about current wars. Recently I have been asked about soldiers posing with corpses or urinating on corpses in Afghanistan…
When I see these pictures, I am not shocked…Such pictures are part of our warrior culture…

Look at the famous photos from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The U.S. soldiers aren’t looking over their shoulders. None of them appears worried about being caught doing something wrong. They all look comfortable, often smiling for the camera. This tells me that the behavior captured in the photographs was S.O.P. (standard operating procedure).

What I find most disconcerting is all this attention to what is done to these dead bodies and absolutely no question or curiosity about why they are dead in the first place. No questions about why U.S. troops are still in Afghanistan at all.

via Why are we still in ‘Vietghanistan?’ – CNN.com.