Master Well Owner Network Training Available – May 12th
Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment is conducting a Master Well Owner Network volunteer training in State College, PA on Saturday, May 12, 2007. Any interested PA resident can apply to the program and attend this workshop. This workshop is free and lunch is included, but travel to State College will not be reimbursed.
The deadline for applications is April 13th. More information and an online application can be found at http://mwon.cas.psu.edu/ or contact Stephanie S. Clemens at mwon@psu.edu or 814-865-2250.
Recycling for electronics announced for April 13-14 in East Penn
The recycling center for April 13 and 14 will be at the Lehighton public works building. Some of the things that will be accepted are VCRs, stereos, monitors, towers, printers, keyboards, scanners, circuit boards and more.
From the Times News
By ELSA KERSCHNERekerschnertnonline.com
April 4, 2007
http://www.tnonline.com/node/143263
“Filling Holes”… The Springdale Pit
Sarah Fulton and Matt Lewis of Post Sputnik Film and Video Production (www.postsputnik.com) have produced a documentary entitled “Filling Holes”. It’s about an abandonded mine pit (Springdale Pit) in the Pennsylvania coal region that is going to be filled with tons of dirt dredged from the bottom of the New York and Philadelphia harbors. The doc deals with the economic and enviornmental aspects of the plan, as well as its impact on the local communities receiving the harbor dredge. It is scheduled to air on WVIA (the PBS station for Wilkes-Barre/Scranton) at 7 p.m. May 21.
Fed agency focuses on rare disease in Schuylkill, Luzerne and Carbon counties
Fed agency focuses on rare disease
BY SHAWN A. HESSINGER
TAMAQUA BUREAU CHIEF
shessinger@republicanherald.com
03/10/2007
A federal agency has interviewed 51 patients who claim to have contracted a rare blood disorder in the region and say the state Department of Health’s cancer registry lists 97 total diagnosed with the disease since 2001.
Vince Seaman, toxicologist with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, said his agency still hopes to talk with more people diagnosed with polycythemia vera, a rare disease characterized with production of excess red blood cells.
He said data, including voluntary blood samples, would help determine the agency’s next step.
Hometown resident Joseph Murphy has been among community volunteers supplying data to the investigators and said he hopes the attention will raise awareness of the issue.
Murphy said Seaman, now circulating a toll-free number (1-866-448-0242) for those willing to be interviewed, has already received many calls and will continue interviews at least through the end of March.
“And a lot of them are people who moved out of the area and were diagnosed with it later,” Murphy said.
Seaman said the federal agency, originally created to assess potential health risks near federal Superfund sites, became interested in interviewing residents because of what appears to be an unusually high incidence of the disease locally.
Frequency of polycythemia vera, which became reportable to cancer registries in 2001, is estimated to be 1 in 100,000, Seaman said.
Investigators have examined an area including Schuylkill, Luzerne and Carbon counties.
Because this area’s population is estimated at 500,000, it might be expected to see five cases per year or 25 cases over five years instead of the 97 cases reported from 2001-05, the only period from which data is currently available.
Murphy and other residents have suggested a correlation between polycythemia vera, other local health disorders and past industrial practices that have included illegal toxic dumping.
However, Seaman said no documented cause for the disorder has yet been determined, making it hard to draw such connections between the disease and the environment.
“So the data we’re collecting will be important,” he said.
Caused by a genetic mutation, Seaman said the disease is known not to be inherited but certain factors may predispose an individual.
Seaman said he is hopeful exhaustive investigation into the possible exposures of residents who have contracted the disease may prove valuable when a cause for the affliction is determined.
©The REPUBLICAN & Herald 2007
Ten Things Wrong With Sprawl
Reprinted with permission.
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?3641
COMMENTARY: Ten Things Wrong With Sprawl
By James M. McElfish, Jr.
E/The Environmental Magazine
In just the next 34 years, the Census Bureau tells us, we 300 million Americans will be joined by another 92 million.(1) Where will all these people—mostly us and our direct descendants—live, work, play, worship, buy, sell, and serve? Where will 40 million additional households be located? What sort of built environment will we produce, and what will be the results for the nation’s and the environment’s well-being?
The prevailing form of land development is popularly known as sprawl or exurban sprawl.(2) Sprawl is characterized by low-density development that rigorously separates residential uses from other land uses, and that relies entirely or almost entirely on automobile transportation to connect the separate uses. There are strong reasons to prefer that the nation’s future development does not reproduce this pattern—reasons that have nothing to do with the price or availability of gasoline.
Urban planning professor Jonathan Barnett, in his book The Fractured Metropolis, charges sprawl with over-consumption of resources, risks to the natural environment, and loss of community resulting from the time demands imposed by the physical separation of commercial, business, residential, and social land uses.(3) Economic critics of sprawl emphasize the high costs of duplicated infrastructure, the cost of time devoted to delays in commuting, and the distortions resulting from the mismatch between initial economic benefits of construction in sprawl areas and the costs of meeting subsequent demands for services (schools, roads, fire and police) by these same areas.(4)
On environmental grounds, opponents of sprawl decry the rising amount of land conversion per each unit of new development (more acres per person), the paving over of some of the nation’s highest quality farmland, and losses of biological diversity and open space.(5) Sprawl enthusiasts counter that people are getting what they want in low density housing and ubiquitous shopping, that a rising population will need more housing on cheap land, and that commute times, while rising, are not that bad for most people. They emphasize the number of construction jobs created and the higher assessed land value of developed lands over agricultural and forest lands.(6) Sprawl enthusiasts downplay the agricultural land issue by suggesting that America still has large areas of land suitable or at least potentially suitable for agriculture (there is no “food shortage”), while further noting that the direct contribution of agriculture to the nation’s gross domestic product is modest in comparison with other economic sectors.(7)
Many of these arguments talk past one another. For example, well-paying construction jobs need not depend upon future construction in sprawl patterns rather than in alternative forms of development. Ninety-two million more people will need somewhere to live and work and go to school, after all. Likewise, the arguments over agricultural lands are not really about whether food will run out, or even whether commercial retail buildings generate more net economic value than crop lands (a hotly disputed topic, by the way), but rather whether the location of agriculture, forests, retail and housing matters.
Arguments about traffic and travel times often gloss over whether alternative development patterns and transportation options can deliver comparable flexibility with fewer side effects. Whatever one thinks of these arguments and their critique of past practices and the current built landscape, at least when considered prospectively, sprawl has 10 undeniably adverse effects that should place it on the public policy agenda:
1. Sprawl development contributes to a loss of support for public facilities and public amenities.
In economic terms, sprawl encourages market failure; residents of sprawl communities have access to public facilities that they do not support with their tax dollars, and residents of older communities subsidize the existence of the these facilities. Sprawl communities typically lack parks, museums, civic spaces, libraries, and the like. This frequently occurs either because some of these amenities are privatized and made available only to a small segment (owners of large lots have less need for public open space), or because sprawl dwellers can be “free riders” on urban facilities supported in substantial part by others. Pittsburgh city officials have noted, for example, that their city’s land base includes substantial tax exempt properties—museums, universities, parks, hospitals, libraries, zoos—far in excess of those in suburban jurisdictions whose citizens can enjoy city facilities while also benefiting from lower suburban tax rates.(8) In many communities, property taxes in the exurbs are lower than those in the cities because of this mismatch.
2. Sprawl undermines effective maintenance of existing infrastructure.
Existing developed areas—cities and older suburbs—have sewers, water systems, city streets, bridges, schools, transit systems and other hard infrastructure to maintain. But exurban development draws population away from areas with existing infrastructure and into new areas where new infrastructure must be constructed or where some infrastructure costs are avoided, at least temporarily, through the use of wells and septic systems, or by reliance on undersized roads that are upgraded at great public expense long after the developments have been constructed. The frequent result is a shift of population regionally, leading to a decline in the urban and older suburban tax base. This decline in turn prompts increases in urban taxes and rates (needed to support the existing infrastructure across a smaller population), and/or to deferral of maintenance activities. Both of these effects further disadvantage the existing systems and encourage further exodus. John Fregonese, the Region 2040 lead planner for Portland’s Metro government makes this point, “When you have sprawl, all your resources are sucked to the edge for new roads, and schools and sewers. Then you have a lack of money for rebuilding…and you get these rotting cores.”(10)
3. Sprawl increases societal costs for transportation.
Costs rise largely because of the need for expensive retrofits. Typical scenarios include the conversion, after sprawl has occurred, of exurban two lane roads to four lanes or six lanes, adding signals, construction of grade separations for intersections, and building county or inter-county connector highways and metropolitan belt roads. This invariably occurs at great expense and disruption—because of increased right-of-way costs, difficulties in maintaining traffic flow during the construction period, and often substantial community opposition. This retrofit dilemma is a spin-off of the problem of traffic. People hate traffic—in fact, part of the reason for sprawl is the elusive promise that commuters and commercial offices can outrun traffic by continually expanding into lower traffic areas. And, at least initially, average commute times are generally lower within sprawl areas than commutes from sprawl areas to the center city. But traffic is, in general, extremely bad in sprawling metropolitan areas—often worse on weekends when travel is more diffuse and timing strategies intended to avoid peak travel times do not work. Catch-up transportation expenditures have to be made.(11) Unfortunately, often they can’t be made. For example, consider the sprawl area north of Chicago. Like many suburban papers, the local newspaper in Lake County, Illinois, has a daily “roads” column. A fairly typical letter printed in the column bemoaned the dai
ly backups at the intersection of a heavily traveled two-lane road with a four-lane highway. The Illinois DOT spokesman contacted by the paper responded that the intersection complained of had been completely upgraded and reengineered only a few years earlier. It had already been overtaken by increased traffic flow. The spokesman commented that there was no remaining engineering or right-of-way expansion solution on this road, so the only thing that IDOT could do would be new re-construction projects on parallel routes. The retrofit problem is a perennial feature of sprawl, as any sprawl dweller can personally attest, and its costs are high.
4. Sprawl consumes more resources than other development patterns.
Because homes, offices, utilities, and other features are farther apart (requiring more asphalt, more lengths of pipe, more conduits, more wires), because each commercial and institutional structure requires its own acres of parking, and because much of the utility infrastructure is duplicative of the “stranded” infrastructure in nearby older communities —society’s overall consumption of metal, concrete, asphalt, and energy is higher.(12)
5. Sprawl separates urban poor people from jobs.
Ownership of an automobile and the resources to maintain it are essential for work in the suburbs, the site of most new jobs in the modern economy. However, the prevailing sprawl model of development drastically separates different price levels of housing from one another, as well as separating job areas from residential areas. These characteristics of sprawl mean that locating new affordable homes near jobs is quite difficult, and sprawl consequently reduces the availability of jobs for those in urban areas that lack reliable automobile transportation.(13) Overcoming sprawl patterns could result in either increasing the number of workplaces in urban areas, or making it easier to construct and maintain the availability of affordable housing near workplaces.
6. Sprawl imposes a tax on time.
Sprawl development requires that we spend more time on the road. Exurbia, including most post-war suburbia, rigorously separates residential housing, food stores, other retail establishments, warehouse and transfer facilities, industry, schools, and office buildings. This has adverse effects on neighborhoods, and leads to more automobile travel. In exurban areas, commercial establishments can be accessed only when people drive to each location. Nonwork automobile trips now comprise more than 80 percent of all daily trips.(14) Residents of sprawl areas do not forego the benefits of mixed uses of land, but they pay a price in time, and they lack choice in their mode of travel. Describing Tyson’s Corner outside Washington, D.C., where offices and commercial buildings are completely separate from any residential housing and all access is via main arterial roads, a Washington Post writer noted that “a six-mile commute home can stretch to 90 minutes.”(15) Sprawl also makes it take much longer for the one-third of Americans who reside in central cities and inner ring suburbs(16) to get to greenfields areas for recreation and enjoyment. Sprawl, in effect, imposes a hidden tax on time by making certain amenities more remote and harder to reach.
7. Sprawl degrades water and air quality.
Sprawl development is hard on streams, wetlands, and runoff quality. It reduces the resilience of streams and other waters by degrading headwaters and impoverishing habitat. For example, in the Chesapeake Bay region, sprawl is the largest threat to water quality. It increases the area of impervious surface, decreases retention time for rainwater and diminishes its infiltration into the soil and water table, and it leads to rapid erosion and structural degradation of streams and rivers, which therefore receive runoff in much greater volumes in a shorter period of time.(17) It also increases the frequency and intensity of flooding, placing further demands on the public treasury for preventive structures and disaster response.(18) In metropolitan areas, air pollution can be worse over a much larger area. Vehicle miles traveled as well as time sitting in traffic rises significantly in these mega-sprawl areas; for example, motorists in the Atlanta area log about 100 million miles per day with 2.5 million registered vehicles.(19) Another effect related to sprawl development patterns is the loss of a constituency that can be served by transit or other means. Residents’ inability to substitute other modes for the automobile, including walking and transit, is an undeniable drag on every area’s ability to meet clean air goals.(20)
8. Sprawl results in the permanent alteration or destruction of habitats.
Sprawl development converts large areas to asphalt, concrete, and structures, altering the landscape hydrology and reducing the biological productivity and habitat value of the land.(21) While any conversion of open lands to developed uses can impair the prior environmental values, sprawl development does so at a high rate of land conversion per unit of development.(22) A related problem is the loss of productive farmland near metropolitan areas. This feature of sprawl development has been documented by the American Farmland Trust through repeated studies under the rubric of Farming on the Edge.(23) Farmland contributes at least incidentally to wildlife habitat and potential for future restoration. Although there is, at least in the near term, no threat to the nation’s total food production given the amount of remaining farmland, as well as farmland currently fallowed under federal conservation, the loss of prime farmland is not desirable in the long term. Conversion of land near urban areas also presents an environmental loss in the sense that dense urbanization places stresses on habitat and aquatic systems that can best be offset by the beneficial effects of retaining larger tracts of nearby vegetated open space in the same watershed and habitat areas. Without this open space (farms, forests), metropolitan areas and their adverse environmental effects are unbuffered.
9. Sprawl creates difficulty in maintaining community.
People do have communities in their suburban neighborhoods, workplaces, and in their organized activities. Modern day exurbs are not the places of alienation described by some “new urbanist” writers, many of whom draw upon affection for the older urban neighborhoods of the early and mid-20th century.(24) But these new sprawl communities require more driving, and more complicated arrangements to maintain social connections. This also means that children are at the mercy of scheduled activities and “play dates” rather than neighborhood interactions, and exercise becomes an isolated activity on the schedule, rather than a natural consequence of walking, biking, or using public park facilities. These demands exact a social toll. Planner William Fulton recently described the effect of sprawl in the greater Los Angeles area as “a constant caravan between the residential cocoon, where citizenship is exercised only in narrow, self-interested ways, and the spending and working cocoons, where citizenship is totally surrendered to the commercial forces that run the place.”(25)
10. Sprawl offers the promise of choice while delivering more of the same.
In America, choice is not only a cherished value, it is also something that our market economy claims as its highest achievement. But, paradoxically, we have lost choice in our system of development. Sprawl constrains our choices. If you want a new house, you can have one on a half acre in the suburbs with no retail around. If you want to locate a store or an office, the arterial strip or highway interchange is for you. If yo
u want transportation, you can use your car. If you are poor you can live in substandard housing in the inner city or manufactured housing on the farthest fringes of the metropolitan area. This lack of choice is why every part of exurban America resembles every other part.
Portions of the building industry sometimes say that our current development patterns perfectly reflect the satisfaction of American social demands. Whatever we have, whatever we are creating, it must be what we want, or the market would provide something else. However, this position requires us to deny the influence of laws, institutions, zoning codes, financing rules, government subsidies and market failures. Much of the sprawl we see is the unintended result of laws and policies that were imperfectly aimed at something else, such as easing transportation delays, encouraging school modernization, providing healthy settings for housing, or stimulating home ownership. We will only be able to address these mismatches of law and policy, and to root out perverse unintended consequences, if we recognize that something is amiss with our current patterns of development. Some things really are wrong with sprawl. “We need to find a better word,” said a builder representative to a program on smart growth in which I participated a few years ago. Well, that’s one approach. But a better approach is recognizing that we have real problems ahead if current development patterns continue to prevail. Only such recognition will enable us to take steps to reform the laws and policies that hold us back—and enable us to find places and provide choices for our 92 million new neighbors.
JAMES M. MCELFISH, JR. is director of the Sustainable Use of Land Program at the Environmental Law Institute, (202)939-3800, www.eli.org. ELI’s Sustainable Use of Land Program and its projects are supported by the Heinz Endowments, the William Penn Foundation, the Keith Campbell Foundation, the Abell Foundation, Douglas Keare, and others. The Institute is solely responsible for the content of this publication. For more than three decades, the Environmental Law Institute has played a pivotal role in shaping the fields of environmental law, management, and policy domestically and abroad. Today, ELI is an internationally recognized, independent research and education center.
Notes:
(1) http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/usinterimproj/ The projection for 2040 is 392 million. Current U.S. population is 300 million.
(2) Exurban means “outside the city.” It is a more accurate term for today’s sprawl areas than “suburban,” as many sprawl areas have little direct economic or social connection to the cities in whose regions they lie. Their job centers are not in downtowns but in other exurbs.
(3) Jonathan Barnett, The Fractured Metropolis (1995), pp. 6-7.
(4) Real Estate Research Corporation, The Costs of Sprawl: Environmental and Economic Costs of Alternative Residential Development Patterns at the Urban Fringe (1974); Sierra Club, Dark Side of the American Dream: The Costs and Consequences of Suburban Sprawl (September 9, 1998); James E. Frank, The Costs of Alternative Development Patterns: A Review of the Literature (Urban Land Institute, 1989); Clint Yuhfill, The Invisible Economics of Real Estate Development, (Pennsylvania Environmental Council 1994); Robert W. Burchell, et al., The Costs of Sprawl-Revisited: Transit Cooperative Research Program Report 39 (Transportation Research Board, National Research Council, National Academy Press, 1998).
(5) See e.g., American Farmland Trust, Farming on the Edge (1997)(America is rapidly losing high quality farmland to development); Reid Ewing and John Kostyack, Endangered by Sprawl: How Runaway Development Threatens America’s Wildlife (National Wildlife Federation, Smart Growth America, Nature Serve: Washington, DC: 2005)(sprawl is fragmenting and degrading habitat).
(6) See e.g., Peter Gordon and Harry W. Richardson, “Are Compact Cities a Desirable Planning Goal?” Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol. 63, No. 1, Winter 1997; Peter Gordon and Harry W. Richardson, “Critiquing Sprawl’s Critics,” Policy Analysis (Cato Institute, Jan. 24, 2000); Randall G. Holcombe, “In Defense of Urban Sprawl,” PERC Reports, February, 1999. Roberta Maynard, “The Ripple Effect,” Builder magazine, July 1998 (“Each new home build in America is like a mighty economic engine…”). Of course, developed lands also usually require substantial municipal services, and the net economic outcome from a municipal finance point of view is often negative. See American Farmland Trust, Living on the Edge: Costs and Risks of Scatter Development.
(7) Samuel R. Staley, The Sprawling of America: In Defense of the Dynamic City (Reason Public Policy Institute, Policy Study No. 251, 1999)(“Urban development does not threaten the nation’s food supply”), Gordon and Richardson, supra, n. 6 (“America is not running out of open space.” And “Detailed economic data suggest that the direct contribution of agriculture to the nation’s economy is modest” in contrast with manufacturing and other uses of the land.)
(8) See, e.g., Timothy McNulty, “Tax-exempt properties are killing city financially, controller Flaherty says,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jan. 13, 2000.
(9) William Fulton, The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles (Solano Press Books: Point Arena, California, 1997).
(10) Dee Hall, “The Choice: High Density or Urban Sprawl – Portland Area Gets Creative to Control Growth, Wisconsin State Journal, July 23, 1995.
(11) D Schrank & T. Lomax, The 2005 Urban Mobility Report (Texas Transportation Institute, 2005) (constructed road capacity must increase faster than increases in travel if increases in congestion delays are to be prevented, but this has not occurred in the 85 metropolitan areas studied; indeed only four had a narrow gap).
(12) Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Liveable Communities, Energy & Smart Growth: It’s About How and Where We Build (2004)
(13) The research confirming this effect is summarized in Margaret Pugh, Barriers to Work: The Spatial Divide Between Jobs and Welfare Recipients in Metropolitan Areas (Brookings Institution, Sept. 1998). See also Robert Cervero et al., “Job Accessibiity as a Performance Indicator: An Analysis of Trends and Their Social Policy Implications in the San Francisco Bay Area,” Institute for Urban Regional Development, Univ. of Cal. at Berkeley (1997). The National Association of Home Builders argues that the job gap is a reason to support sprawl: build where the jobs are. “Sierra Club Report on Growth is Flawed and Biased, NAHB Says”, NAHB Press Release, Sept. 9, 1998.
(14) Surface Transportation Policy Project, High Mileage Moms (1999) (only 18 percent of automobile trips are commuting to work), available at http://www.transact.org/report.asp?id=184. (15) Alice Reid, “Tysons Growth Revs Up Concern About Gridlock,” Washington Post, March 13, 1999.
(16) Robert Puentes and David Warren, One-Fifth of America: A Comprehensive Guide to America’s First Suburbs (Brookings Institution, Feb. 2006), at 6.
(17) See e.g., Paul Nussbaum, “Paving way for environmental harm,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 9, 1999 (recounting water quality impacts of development in exurban areas surrounding Philadelphia). Dana Beach, Coastal Sprawl: The Effects of Urban Design on Aquatic Ecosystems in the United States (Pew Oceans Commission, 2002)(summarizing scientific research).
(18) Rutherford Platt, et al., Disasters and Democracy (Island Press, Washington, D.C. 1999).
(19) Robert D. Bullard, Glenn S. Johnson, and Angel O. Torres, “Atlanta Megasprawl,” Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy, vo. 14, no. 3, Fall 1999, p. 17, 19.
(20) Environmental Protection Agency, The Transportation and Environmental Impacts of Infill Versus Greenfield Development: A Comparative Case Study Analysis (Washington, D.C., 1998).
(21) Reid Ewing and John Kostyack,
Endangered by Sprawl: How Runaway Development Threatens America’s Wildlife (National Wildlife Federation, Smart Growth America, Nature Serve: Washington, DC: 2005); Bruce Stein, L.S. Kutner, J.S. Adams, Precious Heritage: The Status of Biodiversity in the United States (Oxford U. Press: New York: 2000).
(22) See generally, James M. McElfish, Jr., Nature-Friendly Ordinances (Envtl. L. Inst. 2004). (23) American Farmland Trust, Farming on the Edge (1997).
(24) E.g. James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere (1993)(a well-written jeremiad including riffs on the alleged alienation of exurbia).
(25) William Fulton, The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles,” (Point Arena, California: Solano Press Books, 1997), pp. 343-344.
Carbon County Groundwater Guardians to present free seminar
http://www.tnonline.com/node/134122
Times News
March 8, 2007
Carbon County Groundwater Guardians to present free seminar
Residents learn to protect water supplies during National Groundwater Awareness Week
The Carbon County Groundwater Guardians (CCGG) will be offering a free educational seminar entitled “How Well is Your Well” on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 7 p.m. at the Towamensing Township Municipal Building, 120 Stable Road.
The Groundwater Guardians are offering the seminar, which the group normally presents for a $50 honorarium, at no cost in response to residents’ requests and in honor of National Groundwater Awareness Week, which runs March 11-17, 2007.
Recently, well water tests throughout the county began showing signs of E-Coli and other bacterial contamination. Municipal authorities, who are not responsible for the quality of the water produced by privately owned wells, reported an increase in calls from concerned residents.
“When people hear that the water may be unsafe, they often call on their local township officials for answers,” said Rick Grant, president of the Carbon County Groundwater Guardians. “But when the wells are privately owned, it’s up to the homeowner to test the water and to keep it safe. CCGG is here to teach Carbon County residents how to do that.”
The Carbon County Groundwater Guardians is a Pennsylvania nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that exists to educate local residents about this important natural resource and answer questions about their wells and septic systems.
“How Well is Your Well” is an educational program developed by CCGG members Brian Oram, Keith Lotier and Cindy Kerschner and covers proper well construction and maintenance as well as septic systems. Lotier is an executive with Duane Moyer Well Drilling, Oram is a Professional Geologist (PG) and Laboratory Director of the Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences Department at Wilkes University and Kerschner is a former Penn State Master Gardener and freelance writer.
According to the National Groundwater Association, Pennsylvania has more private water wells then any other state in the nation. It is estimated there are nearly 1 million private wells in the commonwealth, and they are the sole source of drinking water for most rural populations. Water well tests often reveal contamination after periods of heavy rain, when rising surface water enters poorly constructed or improperly maintained wells. While the state requires owners of municipal water wells to test water regularly, there is no law that requires homeowners to test their water.
The Groundwater Guardians recommend that all homeowners have their water tested annually. To make that easier and more affordable, the group has an agreement with Wilkes University to provide low-cost well water test kits to local residents.
“Testing your well for bacterial contamination is not difficult or expensive,” Grant said. “Attendees of this free seminar will learn how wells become contaminated, how to get a well test and what options they have if they find a problem. Brian and Keith are experts in their fields and provide a very informative program.”
The Carbon County Groundwater Guardians will make this seminar available to other townships or municipalities that request the information for residential well owners that live in their jurisdictions. For more information, call Frank Waksmunski at (570) 645-8597 or Rick Grant at (570) 325-2818.
The National Ground Water Association (NGWA), the nation’s leading authority on the use and protection of ground water, sponsors Ground Water Awareness Week. The Automotive Oil Change Association is a cosponsor and promotional partners include U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and The Groundwater Foundation.
Groundwater Guardian is a community-based program affiliated with The Groundwater Foundation, based in Lincoln, Nebraska. Frank Waksmunski, CCGG cofounder, has served on The Groundwater Foundation Council for the past five years. Waksmunski and Grant are also Penn State Master Well Owners. Through Groundwater Guardian, communities bring business, government, educators, and citizens together to work on the common goal of groundwater protection. Carbon County Groundwater Guardians (CCGG) is dedicated to protecting private well owners from illnesses caused by our drinking water. We advance good groundwater stewardship through efforts to raise awareness of residents on a variety of groundwater issues. The CCGG meets on the first Monday of every month at the Emergency Management Agency Center in Nesquehoning. Meetings start at 6:00 pm and are open to the public. Find out more on the CCGG website at www.carbonwaters.org.
Time is extended for reporting cases of polycythemia vera
http://www.tnonline.com/node/133061
Times News
March 6, 2007
Rare blood disease study continues
Time is extended for reporting cases of polycythemia vera
By DONALD R. SERFASS dserfasstnonline.com
A federal agency conducting outreach efforts to try and get a handle on the locally-reported cases of a rare blood disease has extended the time frame for reporting cases.
The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), Atlanta, is coordinating a study regarding the incidence of local cases of polycythemia vera.
The disease is said to cause a thickening of the blood and can occur when bone marrow produces extra blood cells.
Anyone with the disease is asked to call the registry toll-free, 866-448-0242 by the end of Marcy 30 in order to participate in the initiative.
The agency originally planned to wrap up data collection in February but decided to extend the deadline for an additional month.
Results are expected to be announced in April.
Experts say polycythemia vera is associated, in part, with exposure to the chemical benzene. The chemical is one of many that had been dumped at the McAdoo Associates location, an area north, and uphill, of the Still Creek Reservoir and one which was later declared a federal Superfund site.
The Still Creek Reservoir supplies drinking water to the Tamaqua area.
Lora Werner, ATSDR Philadelphia regional representative, cautioned Monday against building up expectations based on data gleaned in the study.
“We hope it’ll a piece of the puzzle,” she said, noting that information gathered will not necessarily be a “smoking gun” in terms of identifying the cause.
In a related development, the agency will conduct DNA tests on about 45 residents in lower Luzerne and upper Schuylkill counties identified with the disease to help determine whether a genetic indicator is present.
Three of those interviewed for the testing live along Ben Titus Road, downhill from the McAdoo Associates site.
In a letter last year to Dr. Dante Picciano of the Army for a Clean Environment, William Cibulas, Ph.D., Director, Division of Health Assessment and Consultation, said: “The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency’s review of the information for the McAdoo site shows no evidence that any contamination from the site is affecting the water quality in the reservoir.”
Cibulas said the ATSDR consulted with the PA Department of Health and other agencies to make its determination.
“Past, regulated monitoring of the drinking water supply from the reservoir has not resulted in detections of contaminants at levels of health concern.”
At that time, Cibulas promised that his agency would look into reports concerning cases of the disease.
“The primary concern that ATSDR has heard about is the significantly elevated incidence of polycythemia vera compared to other counties in Pennsylvania based on a PA DOH Cancer Incidence Study released to the public in early 2006. ATSDR is collaborating with the PA DOH on possible follow-up activities to further evaluate the findings.”
Power Plant Coal Waste Dumps Pose High Cancer Threat
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 6, 2007
Contact: Lisa Evans, Earthjustice (781) 631-4119
Eric Schaeffer, Environmental Integrity Project (202) 296-8800
Jeff Stant, Clean Air Task Force (317) 359-1306
Dante Picciano, Army for a Clean Environment (570) 386-5744
Power Plant Coal Waste Dumps Pose High Cancer Threat; Environmental Groups Demand Federal Controls
New EPA Risk Assessment finds extraordinary cancer risk; lack of federal regulations endanger U.S. water supplies
Washington, D.C. The risk of getting cancer from coal ash lagoons is 10,000 times greater than government safety standards allow, according to a draft report from the Environmental Protection Agency obtained by an environmental group. Although the EPA acknowledges this risk, it has neglected to adopt regulations that will limit exposure and protect against the health threats of America’s second-largest industrial solid waste stream, coal ash.
While EPA has not yet formally released the revised assessment, environmental groups received a summary of the draft, which indicates that the cancer risk for adults and children drinking groundwater contaminated with arsenic from coal combustion waste dumps can be as high as 1 in 100 – 10,000 times higher than EPA’s regulatory goals for reducing cancer risks
EPA’s failure to limit pollution from coal combustion waste, or coal ash, has poisoned surface and groundwater supplies in at least 23 states, by EPA’s own admission. Coal combustion waste is the solid waste produced by coal-fired power plants, which produce approximately 129 million tons of the waste each year. The waste is contaminated with toxic chemicals such as mercury, arsenic, lead, cadmium, chromium and selenium. There are currently about 600 existing coal ash landfills and surface impoundments in the U.S.
There are currently plans to build over 150 coal-fired power plants in the United States by 2030. Pollution from coal ash impoundments will undoubtedly worsen unless EPA takes the necessary steps to protect neighborhoods and communities from this dangerous pollution source. EPA acknowledges that coal ash landfills and surface impoundments have contaminated water above federal drinking water standards in the following states: Texas, Maryland, New York, Virginia, Wisconsin, Indiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The agency also acknowledges that more cases of drinking water damage occur, but that monitoring systems are not in place to detect contamination at a large percentage of the existing dumps.
A soon to be released study will show similarly contaminated waters from coal ash (fly ash) disposal in Pennsylvania. According to the Earth Justice Network, there are 18 waste-fuel-burning power plants currently operating in the United States. Fourteen are in Pennsylvania and five are in Schuylkill County, which has more than any other county in the nation. Schuylkill County’s Ben Titus Road community – where the Army for a Clean Environment has counted as many as eight cases of polycythemia vera, a rare bone marrow cancer – is adjacent to Northeastern Power Co., which burns anthracite coal waste or “culm” as its primary fuel and diesel or fuel oil as a secondary fuel, according to the Energy Justice Network. The resulting coal ash waste is then used for mine reclamation on adjacent lands as part of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s “beneficial use” program.
“We are now asking our elected officials to enact laws for the safe and proper disposal of these industrial wastes, ” stated Dr. Dante Picciano of the Army for a Clean Environment. “It is time for our legislators to stand up and do what is right for the health and safety of the people of Pennsylvania.”
A broad coalition of 27 environmental and public health groups, led by Earthjustice, Clean Air Task Force and the Environmental Integrity Project, recently submitted a proposal to EPA detailing ways to protect against pollution from the millions of tons of coal ash disposed annually by U.S. coal-fired power plants. The groups also requested that EPA take immediate action to investigate and abate pollution at coal ash dump sites.
“It’s very simple,” said Earthjustice attorney Lisa Evans. “Coal combustion waste currently disposed without adequate safeguards poses an imminent and substantial endangerment to health and the environment in dozens of communities throughout the country. EPA has made no effort to protect the public against these pollution sources for over seven years. We believe it is time to act.”
In 2000, EPA committed to establishing regulations for coal ash disposal. Since then, the agency has met repeatedly with industrial polluters and will soon issue a Notice of Data Availability (NODA), which is expected to defer federal waste regulation in favor of a voluntary industry agreement. However, the voluntary industry agreement, announced by a consortium of coal-fired electric utilities last fall, promises no controls on the hundreds of existing waste dumps and gives industry three years to place monitoring wells around dumps within a mile of drinking water sources.
Simple measures such as isolating the waste from groundwater, prohibiting dumping of coal ash in sand and gravel pits, and lining landfills and surface impoundments would have a huge impact on limiting pollution from these facilities.
“The people who are exposed to a greater cancer risk by drinking water poisoned by coal ash landfills and surface impoundments need to be heard,” said Jeff Stant, Director of the Power Plant Waste-Safe Disposal Project for the Clean Air Task Force. “EPA has ignored affected communities for far too long.”
“Many coal ash disposal sites lack the most basic safeguards such as liners, covers, and groundwater monitoring–standards that are routinely required for household trash at sanitary landfills,” states Eric Schaeffer, Director of the Environmental Integrity Project. “In fact, in many cases, the operators are simply dumping the waste straight into groundwater and face no cleanup requirements by states.”
The National Academies of Science (NAS) found in a March 2006 report studying the practice by utilities of dumping coal combustion wastes in coal mines, that high contaminant levels in leachate, or runoff, from coal ash dumps has contaminated drinking water and caused considerable environmental damage, including the local extinction of multiple species. The NAS report cited EPA’s commitment in 2000 to promulgate federal regulations to require adequate safeguards for disposal of toxic ash and called for the development of regulations mandating safeguards for minefilling. The Environmental Protection Agency, nevertheless, has neglected issuing these much-needed safeguards.
Simple Radon Test Can Help Prevent Lung Cancer
If there is radon in your home, it’s most likely in your private well water too.
News for Release: Thursday, Jan. 4, 2007
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) *
Simple Radon Test Can Help Prevent Lung Cancer
*Contact: Roxanne Smith, (202) 564-4355 / smith.roxanne@epa.gov
(Washington, D.C. – Jan. 4, 2007) Each year, nearly 20,000 people die from lung cancer caused by exposure to radon. A common source of exposure to radon that can be avoided is exposure in the home, yet only one in five homeowners has actually tested for radon. January is National Radon Action Month and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is urging people to test their homes.
“Healthy homes make for healthy families,” said Bill Wehrum, EPA’s acting assistant administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation. “EPA is encouraging people to test for radon ‚Äì a simple step to providing peace of mind.”
Radon is an invisible radioactive gas that seeps into your home from underground, and can reach harmful levels if trapped indoors. The only way to know if your home contains high radon levels is to test for it. Nearly 80 percent of American homes have not been tested for radon, even though a simple test costing as little as $25 can help detect a possible radon problem. If radon is found, homeowners should consult with qualified professionals who can reduce radon exposure for a cost similar to many common home improvement repairs. State radon offices can help the public find qualified radon professionals.
“The invisible and odorless nature of radon makes it a real challenge when trying to raise awareness about its public health risk,” said acting U.S. Surgeon General Kenneth Moritsugu. “Radon is the second-leading cause of lung cancer in the United States, and it is completely preventable. You can protect your family with a simple first step, and I urge people to take action to prevent radon exposure by testing their homes.”
EPA is launching a campaign to inform people about radon and is working with organizations across the country to educate the public on how to protect themselves from radon exposure in their homes. Local government agencies, non-profit organizations, schools, health care providers, radon professionals, and other community groups will work together to host events and activities to increase awareness about radon, promote testing and mitigation, and advance the use of radon-resistant new construction.
More information about Radon Action Month:
http://www.epa.gov/radon/rnactionmonth.html
Get your home tested:
http://www.epa.gov/radon/radontest.html
Environment the winner as court upholds waterway buffers
The New Jersey Supreme Court recently ended a two-year legal battle over how the state protects our most pristine waters. The court upheld an Appellate Court decision approving new rules designed to curtail storm water runoff, providing a major victory for New Jersey’s water systems and the millions who rely on them for drinking water.
One of the new rules expanded to 300 feet the buffers around our cleanest waters — those designated for Category 1 protection, meaning no measurable deterioration in water quality would be allowed. No building is generally allowed inside these buffers, since development destroys the natural function of the land. In addition, it usually adds a lot of pollution as rain water washes oil and other chemicals off parking lots, lawns, roofs and other “artificial” surfaces; all this extra crud, concentrated near a water body, is beyond the natural capacity of the land to filter before the water reaches the stream, lake or ground water table.
Seeing that the buffer rule would take a lot of valuable land off the paving schedule, the New Jersey Builders Association argued the DEP was dabbling in land use decisions that fall outside their jurisdiction. They sued and lost at every step, with the Supreme Court finally refusing to even hear their final appeal.
Read the full news story at the Asbury Park Press.