Tag Archives: EPA

EPA hearings Tuesday and Wednesday in Atlanta and Climate Rally by Sierra Club

Mercury in the Alapaha River probably comes from coal Plant Scherer near Macon. EPA is holding public hearings on its proposed Clean Power Plan next week, 29-30 July 2014, in Atlanta. You can also comment online until 16 October 2014 on Docket ID EPA-HQ-OAR-2013-0602. And you can express your opinion outside with Georgia Sierra Club at the Atlanta Climate Rally Tuesday at high noon. Maybe you want to mention shifting from coal to “natural” gas (fracked methane) actually may make matters worse here, so EPA needs to go further.

While that proposed carbon rule may help clean up coal plants like Scherer, it says nothing about methane, which EPA says is Continue reading →

Proposed EPA Water rule

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposes some new rules to clarify Clean Water Act protection. Some people and organizations have concerns about that, and the EPA has now responded to those concerns. Comment periods are still open for you to provide input directly to EPA about the proposed rule.

Here’s the EPA’s Waters of the United States Proposed Rule. EPA says clarification of the Clean Water Act was requested by a broad range of state, tribal, and local government agencies and elected officials and NGOs, ranging from AASHTO to the National Association of State Foresters. One of the two examples EPA cites of state enforcement problems is on the Flint River in Georgia:

Recreation in Lake Blackshear, Georgia

Continue reading →

WWALS in Waycross at EPA Seven Out Superfund meeting

It’s a serious situation in Waycross, with people getting sick and dying. The contamination, whatever it is, may have crossed into WWALS watersheds, as well. Good interactions between WWALS, Satilla Riverkeeper, and silentdisaster.org, plus EPA, GA EPD, and GA Health Dept.


Matthew J. Huyser, EPA (l. standing blue shirt), Jim Brown, GA EPD (c. standing white shirt), Ashby Nix, Satilla Riverkeeper (facing Brown, paper in hand), Joan Martin McNeal, silentdisaster.org (r. in group)

For details, see these posts on Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE): Continue reading →

Waycross Superfund site in Georgia’s Dirty Dozen

EPA will be in Waycross 24 November 2013 to meet about this contamination, which has also been shipped over into WWALS watersheds. -jsq

Satilla River: Toxic Legacy in Waycross Needs Further Investigations, Cleanups, in Georgia Water Coalition’s Dirty Dozen 2013,

Satilla River

Toxic legacy in Waycross Needs Further Investigations, Cleanups

Introduction:

Lurking within Mary Street Park, a tree-lined neighborhood park in Waycross, is a silent killer—toxic pollutants from a defunct industrial wastewater treatment facility known as Seven Out Tank. Opened in 2002, the industrial waste handler operated only two years before multiple environmental violations led to the facility’s closure. Now, after Continue reading →

Nonpoint Source Pollution biggest water quality problem –EPA

EPA found phosphorus and nitrogen from fertilizers, bacteria and other pollutants from urban runoff, plus mercury, in most U.S. rivers and streams. And they didn’t even mention low dissolved oxygen.

Ian Simpson wrote for Reuters, carried by NBC, EPA: More than half of U.S. rivers unsuitable for aquatic life,

Fifty-five percent of U.S. river and stream lengths were in poor condition for aquatic life, largely under threat from runoff contaminated by fertilizers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Tuesday.

High levels of phosphorus and nitrogen, runoff from urban areas, shrinking ground cover and pollution from mercury and bacteria were putting the 1.2 million miles of streams and rivers surveyed under stress, the EPA said.

“This new science shows that America’s streams and rivers are under significant pressure,” Nancy Stone, acting administrator of the EPA’s Office of Water, said in a statement.

Twenty-one percent of the United States’ river and stream length was

Continue reading →