waterqualityquantity
Puerto Ricans pump drinking water from hazardous-waste: report.
Some Puerto Rico residents are turning to a hazardous waste site for drinking water as the island continues to reel from Hurricane Maria.
Puerto Ricans pump drinking water from hazardous-waste: report
BY MAX GREENWOOD - 10/14/17 08:54 PM EDT
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© Getty Images
Some Puerto Rico residents are turning to a hazardous waste site for drinking water as the island continues to reel from Hurricane Maria.
More than three weeks after Hurricane Maria tore across the island, many residents – U.S. citizens – remain without access to clean drinking water. As of Saturday evening, service had been restored to about 64 percent of the island.
But according to a CNN report, some residents are seeking water from potentially risky sources. That includes the Dorado Groundwater Contamination Site, an area designated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a so-called Superfund site.
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Superfund sites are areas considered so badly contaminated that they are subject to special federal oversight and cleanup efforts. The Dorado site was added to the list in 2016.
On Friday, according to CNN, workers from Autoridad de Acueductos y Alcantarillados (AAA), the Puerto Rican water utility, pumped water from a well at the Dorado site, and distributed it to storm-stricken residents.
According to the EPA, groundwater at the Dorado site is "contaminated with organic based solvents, primarily tetrachloroethylene (PCE) and trichloroethylene (TCE), which are commonly used in commercial and industrial operations such as dry cleaning and metal degreasing.
Exposure to PCE and TCE carry the risk of health problems, including liver damage and an increased risk of cancer, according to the EPA.
Whether the specific well that workers are pumping from contains the chemicals is unknown. CNN reported that the EPA is testing the site over the weekend.
Luis Melendez, sub-director for environmental compliance at AAA, said that the water utility was not aware that they were drawing water from a Superfund site until CNN notified them. But he said that the well has been opened on an emergency basis, and that the water was safe to drink.
CNN also noted that the EPA had found the site to be within federal limits for PCE and chloroform in 2015.
TAGS ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY PUERTO RICO HURRICANE MARIA
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Beyond biodiversity: A new way of looking at how species interconnect.
In a development that has important implications for conservation, scientists are increasingly focusing not just on what species are present in an ecosystem, but on the roles that certain key species play in shaping their environment.
In 1966, an ecologist at the University of Washington named Robert Paine removed all the ochre starfish from a short stretch of Pacific shoreline on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. The absence of the predator had a dramatic effect on its ecosystem. In less than a year, a diverse tidal environment collapsed into a monoculture of mussels because the starfish was no longer around to eat them.
By keeping mussel numbers down, the starfish had allowed many other species to thrive, from seaweed to sponges. Paine’s research led to the well-known concept of keystone species: The idea that some species in an ecosystem have prevailing traits — in this case preying on mussels — whose importance is far greater than the dominant traits of other species in that ecosystem.
Now, a half-century later, researchers are taking the study of traits much farther, with some scientists concluding that understanding the function of species can tell us more about ecosystems than knowing which species are present — a concept known as functional diversity. This idea is not merely academic, as scientists say that understanding functional diversity can play an important role in shaping conservation programs to enhance biodiversity and preserve or restore ecosystems.
“The trait perspective is very powerful,” says Jonathan Lefcheck, a researcher at the Bigelow Marine Lab in East Boothbay, Maine who studies functional diversity in marine environments. “Some species in an ecosystem are redundant, and some species are very powerful.”
Much about the concept is also unknown. One case study is taking place along the Mekong River, a 2,700-mile waterway that serves as a vital fishery for millions of people in Southeast Asia. While the fishery is healthy now, widespread changes in the ecosystem — including the proposed construction of numerous dams and the development of riparian forests and wetlands — could mean that key fish species might not be around to carry out important functions, such as keeping prey numbers in check or recycling nutrients.
“There is simply no understanding of how the construction of a dam today, and another five years from now, and another in 10 years — all in the same river basin — will impact the biodiversity and push it past a point of no return, where large scale species extinctions are imminent,” said Leo Saenz, director of eco-hydrology for Conservation International.
So a team of ecologists from Conservation International is trying to determine which roles various species in the Mekong fill that are critical to perpetuating a healthy ecosystem. Those species might be predators like the giant snakehead, which helps control other fish populations so they don’t become too numerous, or thick groves of mangrove forests in shallow areas that provide a nursery for a wide variety of fish species. Models can then predict the best way to protect these key species and ensure a healthy river over the long term.
“Ecosystem resilience is an important part of what we aim to maintain, both for the interest of biodiversity conservation and for the maintenance of the ecosystem services that nature provides,” says Trond Larsen, a biologist who heads Conservation International’s Rapid Assessment Program for biodiversity.
Some scientists now compare knowing which species are present in an ecosystem to knowing only which parts of a car are present. Functional trait ecology is a deeper dive into ecosystem dynamics to help understand how the parts come together to create a natural environment that runs smoothly, like a well-tuned automobile, thus enabling a more focused protection of the vital parts that keep it going.
“Say you have two habitats with 10 different species in each,” explains Marc Cadotte, a professor of Urban Forest Conservation and Biology at the University of Toronto. “Yet, they might not be comparable at all if in one of those habitats eight of those 10 species are similar and redundant, while in the other habitat, all 10 species are unique from one other. We need alternative measures for biodiversity that tell us something about the niche differences, trait differences, how species are interacting, and how they are using resources. Functional diversity and phylogenetic diversity are meant to capture that.”
Phylogenetic diversity refers to species that have few or no close relatives and that are very different from other species, which may mean that they can contribute in very different ways to an ecosystem. Protecting phylogenetic diversity, then, is part of protecting important functions. The distinctive pearl bubble coral is one example, as it provides shelter to shrimp, an important food for the highly endangered hawksbill turtle.
Better understanding these aspects of ecosystems is a game-changer for the conservation of biodiversity. The Indo-West Pacific region, between the east coast of Africa and South Asia, has the highest diversity of life in the world’s oceans. But many species there, such as damselfishes and butterfly fishes, have a lot of overlap with other species in terms of traits — somewhat similar body sizes, similar habitats and habits, how and where they school, etc. That means they may have a narrower range of traits that may be important for ecosystem function.
“In the Galapagos, on the other hand, there are fewer species, but each of those species is doing something much different than the others,” says Lefcheck, who worked on research looking at functional diversity there. “If you were prioritizing your conservation efforts, you might focus on the Galapagos. Even though it doesn’t have as much biodiversity in the traditional sense, it has a much greater diversity of form and function.”
“Functional diversity is incredibly difficult to determine,” says Larsen of Conservation International, “but generating an improved understanding of the relationship between species and their functional diversity is key to understanding and mitigating impacts or threats from development.” His organization works to protect tuna and sharks, for example, because these predators help maintain a healthy and balanced ecosystem by keeping numbers of prey from growing too large and by culling the sick and the weak.
In a recent study in the journal Nature, researchers say that focusing on species function and evolutionary heritage can narrow the focus on what needs to be protected most urgently. “Biodiversity conservation has mostly focused on species, but some species may offer much more critical or unique functions or evolutionary heritage than others — something current conservation planning does not readily address,” says Walter Jetz, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University.
The researchers noted that 26 percent of the world’s bird and mammal species are not included in protected reserves. Focusing on the most important traits and evolutionary heritage of those species would allow conservationists to narrow their protection of critical biodiversity with just a 5 percent increase in protected areas, and would be far less costly than trying to protect them all, the Nature study shows.
As traits are better understood in ecosystems, Lefcheck says, it allows tweaking and management of ecosystems for certain outcomes. “You could choose to conserve the species that are very different than others that might lead to changes in the ecosystem that could be considered beneficial,” he says. That has potential for fisheries management, for example. “When I tell someone, ‘This species has been around for 2.6 million years,’ that’s very esoteric in a way,” says Lefcheck. “But if I can say, ‘This large-bodied species produces a lot of biomass, and it can crop down invasive algae, and it plays a high-functioning and critical role in the ecosystem,’ you might want to protect species that have that trait.”
Such is the case with parrotfish and surgeonfish — “reef-grazers” that eat algae and keep coral reefs healthy. Because of these key traits, the government of Belize has enacted a law to protect these two species.
Understanding traits also can enhance ecosystem restoration projects. While building a new oyster aquaculture fishery can provide a commercial harvest, “we also know that oysters provide a lot of other services,” says Lefcheck. “They filter the water. They provide nooks and crannies for small fish and invertebrates to live in, and they are fish food for the tasty things we like to catch and to put on the dinner table. Where is the optimum placement of this restoration to enhance the variety of services we get from the oysters beyond just having the reefs there?”
The benefits of understanding functional diversity can go well beyond ecosystem restoration. In Toronto, for example, green (plant-covered) roofs are required on most new commercial buildings to help cool the city and reduce storm water runoff. A monoculture of grass called sedum is used. In studies, though, Cadotte and colleagues have found that if grass species that are distantly related and dissimilar are used in the mix, they have different traits that provide more shade for the soil and help the roof keep the building cooler. This mix also reduces stormwater runoff by about 20 percent.
The formal study of functional traits can be traced back to the 1990s, when ecologist David Tilman at the University of Minnesota did research on grasslands. He found that those regions with more species diversity did better during a drought, and only a few of the grasses resistant to drought were needed. Later, he and his colleagues discovered that the presence of some grasses with certain traits, such as an ability to fix nitrogen, was more important than overall species diversity.
Researchers in Jena, Germany established the Jena Experiment to follow up on this work. They found that there are plants, such as wild tobacco, that emit “messenger molecules” when they are under assault by herbivores to attract predators from miles away that eat their enemies. This trait not only benefits the tobacco, but other species in the neighboring plant community.
Experts say these findings could also help agriculture rely less on pesticides by understanding the right mix of plants to maximize predator defenses. “Varying the expression of just a few genes in a few individuals can have large protective effects for the whole field,” says Meredith Schuman, a researcher on the Jena Experiment at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. “It’s an economically tenable way to recover the lost benefits of biodiversity for the vast expanses of land that have already been converted from natural, biodiverse habitats into agricultural monocultures.”
These new approaches to ecology show how limited the science has been. Many researchers welcome the change. “Ecology has moved from counting species to accounting for species,” says Cadotte.
Jim Robbins is a veteran journalist based in Helena, Montana. He has written for the New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, and numerous other publications. His latest book, The Wonder of Birds: What they Tell Us about the World, Ourselves and a Better Future, is due out in May.
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These food and beverage companies are leading on conservation.
There is a growing awareness about water risk for businesses in the food and beverage industry.
There is a growing awareness about water risk for businesses in the food and beverage industry. A new report from Ceres shows which companies are leading and lagging, writes Ceres’ Kirsten James.
WRITTEN BY
Kirsten James
PUBLISHED ON
Oct. 12, 2017
READ TIME
Approx. 4 minutes
Worker shoveling a crop field in Fresno County, San Joaquin Valley, California. The state suffered millions in economic losses during the five-year drought. A new report highlights which food and beverage companies are working to assess and manage the water risk in their businesses.Citizens of the Planet/Education Images/UIG via Getty Images
After a punishing five-year drought in California that damaged harvests, caused job losses among farm workers and sent food manufacturers scrambling for commodities, many companies learned firsthand just how much of a business risk water scarcity can be.
The food and beverage industry is particularly dependent on water – indeed, agriculture uses 70 percent of the Earth’s freshwater supplies. In California, whose farms produce more than half of the nation’s fruits and vegetables, that use stretches to 80 percent.
Consequently, water scarcity is one of the biggest risks facing the $5 trillion food and beverage industry, causing spikes in operating and procurement costs and influencing reputations. And it’s likely to get worse as climate change brings more droughts and continues to intensify storms, which means more floods.
The good news is that the food and beverage industry is starting to realize this, and some major corporations have taken significant steps in recent years to better manage and conserve water and reuse it where possible.
After all, water shortages in California resulted in a $2.7 billion hit to the economy in one year alone at the height of the drought and job losses of 21,000.
The sobering news is that despite their growing awareness of water risk, most companies are not doing nearly enough to match the magnitude of potential problems.
Those are the findings of a recently released Ceres analysis of the 42 largest food and beverage companies, “Feeding Ourselves Thirsty: Tracking Food Company Progress Toward a Water-Smart Future.” My colleagues assessed companies on how they are responding to water risks across four categories of water management: governance and strategy, direct operations, manufacturing supply chain and agricultural supply chain.
They found mixed progress. “Feeding Ourselves Thirsty” data indicates that companies in the packaged food business generally did the most to manage water risk and protect watersheds for the future, followed by beverage companies, while meat and agricultural products companies did less. And yet individually, companies vary widely on how well they do, even within one sector.
It’s gratifying to see in the data, though, that progress is being made in California.
General Mills, Coca-Cola Company, Molson-Coors Brewing Co. and Campbell Soup Company were all cited for working with agricultural supply chains, such as their work in California’s San Joaquin Valley. These companies are involved in a groundwater recharge project with Valley farmers, in which farmers allow floodwater to be captured and stay on their fields to recharge the groundwater underneath.
Campbell’s Soup Co., which relies on California for tomatoes and carrots, has engaged with tomato growers in its agriculture supply chain to help them conserve water. Campbell’s asked tomato growers to consider replacing sprinkler irrigation with drip irrigation. The majority have done so, and the switch proved to be beneficial in many ways: Tomato growers not only reduced water consumption by 20 percent per acre, but also increased yield, improving efficiency by some 40 percent, according to Dan Sonke, Campbell’s director of sustainable agriculture.
General Mills, which turns to California for nuts, dairy and tomatoes among other commodities and has manufacturing operations here, managed to improve its water efficiency by 20 percent in its direct operations between 2006 and 2015. It is working to improve watershed health in five key water-strained regions around the world including California’s Central Valley.
PepsiCo also achieved a 20 percent improvement in water-use efficiency – across global operations, and four years ahead of schedule. It reduced water use in its own operations like its California Frito-Lay manufacturing operations, as well as its agricultural and manufacturing supply chains. PepsiCo also works to replenish watersheds where it has operations, including broad swathes of Latin America.
Coca-Cola Company, which has 53 plants in California, saved 280 million gallons of water at those facilities by implementing water reclamation and waterless processing technologies. It also got high marks in the “Feeding Ourselves Thirsty” analysis for governance because it makes water risk management a board responsibility, and for its watershed work. Like its main competitor, it too replenishes water to watersheds and communities near its operations.
I’m happy to say that General Mills, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are Connect the Drops members.
Molson-Coors cut its water use per barrel of beer produced to half the industry average in its Irwindale, California, brewery and now is trying to produce the same water efficiency in all its breweries. Its management set a goal to reduce overall water use intensity by 20 percent by 2020. Molson-Coors is also one of 12 companies that links executive compensation to water management.
As such experiences show, prioritizing water in a state that promotes – and needs – water conservation is a savvy business move that also saves money. In fact, smart water management has become an imperative for food companies as climate change, water scarcity and pollution accelerate around the world, the “Feeding Ourselves Thirsty” researchers say.
Yet there are companies doing very little about water risk. Monster Beverage, based in Corona, California, scored 0 in the “Feeding Ourselves Thirsty” analysis. Although the company website describes water conservation efforts generally, Monster does not discuss water risk in its publicly filed reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and there is no evidence that it includes water risk as part of corporate governance for top executives or its board to consider.
Kraft Heinz, which has many plants in Southern California, scored 9 points out of 100. It does little to conserve water and assess risk in its own operations and even less in its supply chains.
As a generality, the food and beverage sector has made progress in setting water goals in direct operations and assessing progress there. The vast majority of companies have informed shareholders about potential water risks to their operations.
But the industry hasn’t made enough progress in elevating water risk to the board level, integrating water risk into procurement processes, managing wastewater to reduce water use and collaborating with stakeholders – including other companies – to protect and restore watersheds. These could make the difference between having enough usable water in the future or not.
In California, we went from an epic drought that cost the economy $2.7 billion at its height to torrential rains and floods that cost $1 billion in infrastructure damage. Water risk is very real here. We applaud what companies have done so far, but encourage them to do much more.
The views expressed in this article belong to the authors and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Water Deeply.
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Trump’s global resorts put profit first, environment last, critics say.
Mongabay looked into Trump’s claims that he is an environmentalist, winning “many, many environmental awards.” We were able to locate just two — one a local New York award, and another granted by a golf business association.
Donald Trump’s negative environmental record in Scotland and elsewhere has conservationists concerned in Bali, where Trump firms are developing a major resort and golf facility known as Trump International Hotel & Tower Bali.
Another resort under development, the Trump International Hotel & Tower Lido, a 700-hectare facility including a six-star luxury resort, theme park, country club, spa, villas, condos and 18-hole golf course threatens the nearby Gunung Gede Pangrango National Park, one of Java’s last virgin tropical forests.
Mongabay looked into Trump’s claims that he is an environmentalist, winning “many, many environmental awards.” We were able to locate just two — one a local New York award, and another granted by a golf business association. The Trump Organization did not respond to requests to list Mr. Trump’s awards.
Trump’s environmental record as president, and as a businessman, is abysmal, say critics. His attempt to defund the U.S. Energy Star program, they say, is typical of a compulsion to protect his self interest: Energy Star has given poor ratings to nearly all Trump’s hotels, which experts note has possibly impacted his bottom line.
Who doesn’t like a luxury resort and 18-hole golf course set atop a sheer cliff with breathtaking views of the Indian Ocean? Revered Hindu Gods that inhabit the temple nearby, according to the local Balinese concerned over plans to open the Trump International Hotel & Tower Bali. Local environmentalists aren’t keen on the resort either.
The Balinese worry that the Trump development will loom over the centuries-old Tanah Lot, a temple that sits upon a rock off the west coast of the wildly Instagrammed and oft visited Indonesian island.
This particular holy site is one of the most venerated temples of the “Island of Gods.” And while the Balinese are ever welcoming to tourists — important to the island’s economy —their religion, and laws, stipulate that all non-religious buildings not exceed 15 meters, or the height of temples, and more or less the height of a coconut tree.
The Trump tower, resort and golf course, now still in the planning stage, also pose environmental concerns. Suriadi Darmoko — Executive Director of the Indonesian environmental NGO, Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia (WHALI) Eksekutif Daerah Bali — believes the island does not need more hotel suites and jacuzzis.
A 2010 study by Indonesia’s Culture and Tourism Ministry, he notes, found Bali had a surplus of 9,800 hotel rooms. And according to a report by the HVS consulting firm, the average occupancy of upper luxury hotels in 2013 in Bali achieved only 60 percent.
Darmoko is especially worried about the Trump project’s plans to expand the property around the existing Pan Pacific Nirwana Bali Resort. The amount of “farmland in Bali drops” when land is transferred to “becoming tourist accommodations and supporting facilities” he told Mongabay. “What Bali needs is a tourism accommodation moratorium,” during which the government could “conduct a study to calculate the supporting capacity and supporting ability of the environment in Bali.”
The Trump tower project will be developed by MNC Group, Indonesia’s leading investment firm, and will be managed by the Trump Hotel Collection. As reported by Reuters last February, Herman Bunjamin — the vice president director at PT MNC Land Tbk (MNC Group’s property unit) — has assured the Balinese that the company would follow local government environmental regulations, and respect the Hindu religion.
However, this is not the first time a Trump construction project has experienced a swirl of controversy around its potential environmental impacts. And that worries local Balinese communities and conservationists, even though Trump himself has claimed many times that he is an award-winning environmentalist — a claim we’ll explore in some detail later in this article.
Ever since the 70-year-old billionaire was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States in January 2017, watchdog organizations have paid extra close attention to the past, and ongoing, international environmental record of Trump’s companies, especially considering that Trump has largely retained his ownership interest in his businesses.
Trump: mixing politics, golf and the environment
According to Investopedia, before becoming president, Donald Trump had amassed a net worth of an estimated $3.5 billion. The Trump Organization LLC acts as the primary holding for Trump’s firms, and serves as an umbrella company for his investments in real estate, brands and other businesses, ranging from golf courses to hotels.
Among its key executives are two of his sons: Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, who last March told Forbes he will not talk business with his father in order to prevent the appearance of a conflict of interest, but will only pass financial reports to him. Ivanka Trump, the President’s elder daughter, resigned from her father’s company in January and today works as an unpaid adviser to him in the White House.
Golf is one of the many businesses that made Trump rich. According to the financial disclosure form published last June by the Office of Government Ethics, Trump’s golf courses alone reported $288 million in income from January 2016 through April 15, 2017.
In recent years the sport has increased wildly in popularity, and today golf is a multi-billion dollar industry: as of year-end 2016 there were golf facilities in 208 of the 245 countries in the world. However, the perfect manicured green color of the globe’s 33,161 courses comes at a high price to the environment.
A study by Kit Wheeler and John Nauright of Georgia Southern University found that golf course construction often consists in “clearing of natural vegetation, deforestation, destruction of natural landscapes and habitats and changes in local topography and hydrology” in order to roughly replicate the barren Scottish Highlands in which the game originated. That unnatural landscaping often leads to erosion and habitat loss, not to mention the fact that the maintenance of a standard 9-hole needs a great deal of synthetic chemicals — many deemed hazardous to wildlife — to keep it lush and green, including fertilizers, insecticides, pesticides and fungicides.
The environmental problems associated with golf, the authors note, are particularly acute in Southeast Asia due to the sudden boom of the sport there and due the fact that golf course maintenance in the tropics is far more difficult than in other parts of the world because of the higher levels of rainfall, greater numbers of pests, diseases and weeds.
According to UNEP, golf course maintenance can also deplete freshwater resources — an average course in a tropical country needs 1,500 kilograms (3,307 pounds) of chemicals annually, and uses as much water as 60,000 rural villagers. This astronomical use of resources is hard to justify in the developing world where competition for water and cropland, amid soaring populations, is intense. The problem is further complicated by weak environmental regulation and enforcement plus corruption, all too typically seen in developing countries.
Today, Trump Golf boasts a portfolio of 17 courses across the globe stretching from the jagged California cliffs to the (previously) barren desert of Dubai. This empire is expanding, and 2018 will see the opening of Trump International Hotel & Tower Lido, a 700-hectare (1,730 acre) development including a six-star luxury resort, theme park, country club, spa, luxury villas, condominiums, and, of course, an 18-hole signature championship golf course.
This new Trump-branded property will be set in the mountains of West Java, around 65 kilometers (40 miles) south of Jakarta and beside the Gunung Gede Pangrango National Park, one of the island’s last virgin tropical forests.
The project has become a major concern to RMI, the Indonesian Institute for Forest and Environment, an NGO whose goal is the promotion of community-based natural resource management and biodiversity conservation in the region.
“[T]here are major concerns from the local villagers on [how much of the] water supply that will still be available to them because the project is estimated to demand [lots] of water for their luxury facilities,” RMI’s Executive Director Mardha Tillah told Mongabay, pointing out that the Trump facility will be built in an important water catchment area.
After “a public discussion that was organized by local youth, the local sub-regency government officials stated that the environmental impact assessment was not complete yet, although some construction had been undergone — e.g. a reservoir,” she said.
The Associated Press reports, that the development is causing concern among Indonesian environmentalists, who fear for the nearby national park and its threatened animals, including the Critically Endangered Javan slow loris (Nycticebus javanicus), the Endangered Javan leaf monkey (Presbytis comata), the Vulnerable Javan leopard (Panthera pardus melas), and Endangered Javan silvery gibbon (Hylobates moloch).
Tillah shares these fears. “I am very much keen on looking at the EIA [Environmental Impact Assessment] document that shows how this resort does not affect any wildlife in this area,” she said.
Considering the President’s abysmal environmental record and his anti-environmental pro-business views, it is hard not to imagine that this anti-regulatory philosophy permeates Trump’s companies. During the election, Donald Trump stated that, “[W]e’ll be fine with the environment. We can leave a little bit, but you can’t destroy businesses.”
Both Trump’s Balinese and Javan projects will be developed in partnership with MNC Group, who is also building the new Bogor-Sukabumi toll road, scheduled for completion at the end of 2017 which will provide direct access to Lido Lakes, reducing the drive time from Jakarta.
The highway, like tropical pavement around the world, is transforming the pastoral region. “The toll road has changed the landscape of rural areas of Bogor — paddy fields are replaced by the toll road projects,” said RMI’s Tillah. “If only it was not for this resort project, [the] toll road might not be constructed, because it was neglected due to lack of investors for more than a decade.”
“On the other hand,” she added, “improvement in [regional] train service and an increase of [operating] frequency [could] already [have served as an alternative] solution for [moving] people.”
ABC revealed that Donald Trump personally lobbied for the road with senior Indonesian politicians in September 2015 at Trump Tower in New York, when he was both in negotiations over the Lido development and running for the presidency. According to ABC, the meeting was not authorized by the Indonesian Government, and was held with the direct assistance of Trump business partner Hary Tanoesoedibjo, President Commissioner and Founder of the MNC Group.
Tanoesoedibjo, a media mogul who created his own Indonesian political party in 2015, attended Trump’s inauguration last January. As the Nikkei Asian Review pointed out, he is the subject of a police investigation for allegations of intimidation and corruption, which he claims are politically motivated.
The Scottish saga
One of the best places to view the ongoing relationship between Trump’s businesses and the environment is in Scotland; the fact that golf originated there has done little to make that association run more smoothly.
For more than a decade, Trump’s golf course on the coast of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, has been at the center of a heated dispute between those who support and oppose it. Trump International Golf Course Scotland won planning permission in 2008, but conservationists objected to the project because it would radically transform large parts of one of the country’s rarest coastal dune habitats.
“The construction of Trump International Links has had an irreversible and unjustified impact on a fragile dune system, in particular a large area of the internationally important Foveran Links Site of Special Scientific Interest [SSSI],” Bruce Wilson, Senior Policy Officer of the Scottish Wildlife Trust, told Mongabay.
“Unfortunately this planning application was approved by the Scottish Government despite evidence that it was easily possible to build two world class courses on the Menie Estate without destroying the SSSI,” he added.
Trump has also been involved in a long-running row with the Scottish government over the impact of windfarms on his golf course.
Before his White House campaign, he sent letters to the then first minister of Scotland Alex Salmond to urge him to withdraw his support for windfarm development. In this series of messages, obtained by the Huffington Post thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, Trump labeled windfarms as “monsters,” suggested without evidence that “wind power doesn’t work,” and told Salmond “your economy will become a third world wasteland that investors will avoid,” if the green energy alternative was embraced by Scotland.
Trump’s resistance didn’t end there. The U.S. president-elect exhorted the leader of UK Independence party (UKIP) Nigel Farage and key associates to lobby against the Scottish windfarms. However, none of this aided Trump’s crusade against the turbines, and in December 2015 he lost a Scottish Supreme Court battle against the installation of an windfarm located several miles offshore of his course.
Last July the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, the country’s principal environmental regulator, also raised formal objections to the Trump company’s proposals for a second 18-hole course in Aberdeenshire. Now the organization will have to revise its plans to make sure its project does not violate sewage pollution, environmental protection and groundwater conservation rules.
A statement by Trump International Golf Links published by the BBC reads in part:
The recent correspondence between Trump International, the local authority and statutory consultants is a normal part of the planning process and the regular ongoing dialogue conducted during the application process. SNH and Sepa always reference a range of policy considerations and factors which is standard practice and nothing out of the ordinary. Our application is making its way through the planning system and this dialogue will continue until it goes before committee for consideration. The Dr Martin Hawtree designed second golf course is located to the south of the Trump estate and does not occupy a Site of Special Scientific Interest therefore is not covered by any environmental designations.
We are extremely confident in our proposal and that this process will reach a satisfactory conclusion acceptable to all parties on our world class development.
What’s good for Trump is good for the U.S. and world…
During his campaign Donald Trump said he wanted to get rid of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “in almost every form.” Now that he is President, Trump appears to be moving toward that goal, and some of his businesses are among the institutions that could benefit from a dramatic roll back in environmental regulations. A look at Trump’s attacks on the U.S. EPA, and the business rationale for those assaults, is enlightening when studying the actions of Trump businesses around the world.
For instance, Trump issued an executive order commanding the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers to review the Obama-era Clean Water Rule, also known as the Waters of the United States rule (WOTUS) — a rule that greatly irks golf course developers.
Last March, Bob Helland, director of congressional and federal affairs of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA), issued a statement that makes clear why his association opposes the Clean Water Rule as written: “Under the rule, golf courses could likely be required to obtain costly federal permits for any land management activities or land use decisions in, over or near these waters, such as pesticide and fertilizer applications and stream bank restorations and the moving of dirt. The impact on golf course management could be dramatic.”
In 2016, the GSCAA praised Trump as “a president who understands the value of the game of golf, both as a golfer and golf course owner,” who “is also familiar with the H-2B Visa program that a number of golf facilities utilize, including one of his own in Florida.” This visa program allows U.S. employers, or agents who meet specific regulatory requirements, to bring foreign nationals to the U.S. to fill temporary nonagricultural jobs. “This could lead to a breakthrough in the red tape that makes using the program so frustrating,” said GSCAA. These statements shine a bright light on the imbalance between the administration’s business, environmental and immigration policies.
World-class hotels form another cornerstone of the Trump financial empire. So when the president proposed cutting all funding to EPA’s very successful 25-year-old Energy Star Program, a program meant to save energy and cut greenhouse gas emissions, CNN launched an investigation to see how Trump businesses might benefit from its elimination.
It turns out that the government’s Energy Star for Hotels ranking process provides an assessment of the energy performance of a property relative to its peers, taking into account local climate, weather and business activities at the property. Energy Star claims these ratings can affect the value of a property — the media investigation discovered that Trump’s properties tend to receive low ratings.
According to CNN, “[t]he most recent scores from 2015 reveal that 11 of his 15 skyscrapers in New York, Chicago and San Francisco are less energy efficient than most comparable buildings. On a scale of 1 to 100 for energy efficiency, Manhattan’s old Mayfair Hotel, which Trump converted into condos, rated a 1,” the lowest rating possible.
The House Appropriations Committee rejected the Trump’s administration proposal to eliminate Energy Star, but its spending bill for 2018, which came out in early July, proposed reducing funding by roughly 40 percent, a cut to $31 million.
Critics say that such a deep reduction will be significantly harmful to the environment. “We appreciate that the committee has rejected the administration’s proposal… but a 40 percent cut would be crippling as well,” said the President of the Alliance to Save Energy Kateri Callahan in a press statement.
In 2014, EPA estimated that Energy Star has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 2.5 billion metric tons since 1992, while also providing energy cost savings to consumers, hotels and other industries.
“I have to wonder where this is coming from,” Callahan said, stressing the fact that Energy Star is one of the most popular government programs in U.S. history and has enjoyed broad bipartisan support since it was created under President George H.W. Bush.
Donald Trump, award-winning environmentalist?
Donald Trump has been claiming he is an environmentalist at least since 2011, when he told Fox & Friends that “I’ve received many, many environmental awards”.
“I am a big believer in clean air and clean water. I’m a big believer. I have gotten so many awards for the environment,” Trump said during a campaign rally in Des Moines, Iowa. “I won many environmental awards, I have actually been called an environmentalist, if you believe it,” he repeated at a rally in Atkinson, New Hampshire.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross echoed that assessment on NBC’s Today show. Trump, he said, “is an environmentalist. I’ve known him for a very long time. He’s very pro-environment.”
Politifact found a grain of truth in Trump’s statements. A decade ago two local groups did award Trump for specific projects. In 2007, he received the Friends of Westchester County Parks’ inaugural Green Space Award for donating 436 acres to the New York state park system, and in the same year his Bedminster New Jersey Trump National Golf Course received the first annual environmental award of the The Metropolitan Golf Association (MGA).
MGA’s press statement reads: “Through the leadership of Donald J. Trump, [director of grounds] Nicoll has implemented an environmental strategy that has resulted in the preservation of a dedicated 45 acre grassland bird habitat on the property, as well as intensive erosion control and stream stabilization management plan. The impacts of golf construction and operations on this land have resulted in a significant environmental net gain from the previous land use. Trump National has made itself readily available to Bedminster Township officials by way of monthly meetings to keep them up to date on the club’s environmental monitoring activities.”
MGA also said that, while planning the construction of an additional course, the club integrated environmental awareness into their golf course maintenance and construction plans by maintaining more stringent standards than those required by state and local regulations.
However, critics note, if Donald Trump is an environmentalist, he is not an orthodox one. In his tweets, he has referred to global warming as “a canard,” something “mythical,” “based on faulty science and manipulated data,” “nonexistent” or “created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive,” and also as “a total, and very expensive, hoax,” not to mention “bullshit.”
Nor does he show his environmentalism in the associates with which he surrounds himself. When choosing someone to lead his transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency, Trump picked climate science denier Myron Ebell, who believes the environmental movement is “the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity in the modern world.” His EPA head is the former Oklahoma attorney Scott Pruitt, a climate change skeptic whose LinkedIn profile says he is “a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.” Pruitt in the past sued EPA 14 times to block clean air and water safeguards, and recently denied that carbon dioxide causes global warming.
However, big business can save big bucks by being environmentally friendly, and that is something that did not go unnoticed at Trump’s environmental award-winning New Jersey golf courses. The Wall Street Journal reported that both of them qualify as a farmland because they are not only sports fields, but also home to activities associated to farming such as hay production and woodcutting. The Bedminster golf course is even home to a small goat herd that grazes overgrown grass. It is not clear exactly how much the tax breaks save Trump, but the Journal estimates the courses pay less than $1,000 in annual taxes instead of the $80,000 that would be standard for such properties.
Still, experts note, anyone saying that Donald Trump always puts profit and his assets ahead of the environment would be wrong. In truth, Trump’s policies could do serious harm to his businesses. As Buzz Feed News notes, Trump’s withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement likely means continuing rising sea levels and more extreme storms, which both threaten his low-lying properties, including the Trump National Doral in the Miami suburbs, a luxury golf resort that could end up submerged. Indeed, had Hurricane Irma tracked east of Florida instead of west, as originally expected, it’s likely the storm, supercharged by some of the warmest Caribbean waters on record, would have made a direct hit on Mar-A-Lago, the so-called Winter White House.
Conflict of interest?
The U.S. Congress has exempted the president and vice president from conflict-of-interest laws Title 18 Section 208 of the U.S. code. This decision was based on the premise that the presidency wields so much power that virtually any possible executive action might pose a potential conflict of interest (COI).
Last November, during his first news conference since his election, Trump declared: “I have a no-conflict situation because I’m president, which is — I didn’t know about that until about three months ago, but it’s a nice thing to have, but I don’t want to take advantage of something.”
Many watchdog organizations have been less complacent than Congress and the President concerning COIs — including those involving presidential power, the Trump companies, and the environment. These NGOs are watching to see if Trump international and domestic business deals have political implications, or if any policies promoted by his administration seem designed to benefit Trump businesses.
The President’s just proposed tax reforms are a case in point — watchdog groups, the media and financial experts began looking for COIs and policy points benefiting Trump’s tax bracket and his businesses within hours of the announcement of the merest sketch of a tax reform plan.
“Presidents have historically understood that there can be a conflict of interest even if the law doesn’t technically apply, and they have followed the same standards that apply to other federal employees,” Clark Pettig, American Oversight’s Communications Director, told Mongabay.
American Oversight (AO) is a watchdog organization that is investigating numerous COIs across the Trump administration. For instance, it sued EPA to force the release of communications between regulators and industry groups, and to uncover the role investor Carl Icahn has played in setting policy. AO has also launched a broad investigation of the administration’s payments to Trump-owned businesses, and has submitted FOIA requests for documents related to the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement.
Pettig believes Trump clearly has a conflict of interest as he serves as President while also owning and profiting from a global business empire.
“Rather than “draining the swamp,” the Trump administration has brought unprecedented conflicts of interests to Washington,” he said. “From rolling back environmental regulations that could impact his golf courses, to using diplomatic events to promote his own resorts, President Trump seems determined to use his power to enrich himself and his business empire,” Pettig said.
Laura Friedenbach, Deputy Communications Director of Every Voice, a Washington-based watchdog organization whose aim is to reduce the influence of money in politics, is concerned as well. “When a public official is making decisions on behalf of the American people and also has a large personal stake in the outcome, it presents a conflict of interest,” she told Mongabay.
“The conflicts of interest facing President Trump and his cabinet raise real questions about where the Trump administration’s priorities lie,” Friedenbach said. “Are they doing what’s best for the American people, or are they letting their own interests and the interests of their business partners get in the way?”
“If President Trump and his cabinet are more concerned with boosting profits for companies they have a stake in, and personal ties with, including fossil fuel companies, then the result will be slowing down progress on combatting the effects of climate change,” she declared.
The Trump Organization, Trump Hotels, Trump Golf, and MNC Land did not reply to Mongabay’s multiple requests to comment for this article; nor did they answer questions sent to them concerning their projects’ environmental impacts, Energy Star ratings, Trump’s environmental awards, and steps to reduce project carbon footprint.
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Hurricane Maria: Three weeks after landfall, Puerto Rico is still dark, dry, frustrated.
While the metropolis of San Juan inches toward normalcy, much of the rest of the island still awaits basic services.
Three weeks since Hurricane Maria, much of Puerto Rico still dark, thirsty and frustrated
By Manuel Roig-Franzia and Arelis R. Hernández October 11 at 7:56 PM Follow @RoigFranzia Follow @arelisrhdz
Neighbors sit on a couch outside their destroyed homes as sun sets in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, on Sept. 26 — about a week after Hurricane Maria hit. (Gerald Herbert/AP)
YABUCOA, Puerto Rico — Late each night, Rafael Surillo Ruiz, the mayor of a town with one of Puerto Rico’s most critical ports, drives for miles on darkened roads, easing around downed power lines and crumpled tree branches — to check his email.
At the wheel of his “guagua”— local slang for an SUV — he sometimes finds a spotty cellphone signal on a highway overpass, and there he sits, often for hours, scrolling through messages. During the day, with no working landline and no Internet access, he operates more like a 19th-century mayor of Yabucoa, orchestrating the city’s business in an information vacuum, dispatching notes scrawled on slips of paper — about problems such as balky generators and misdirected water deliveries — that he hands to runners.
On the other side of the mayor’s favorite overpass spot, one of the generators at the area’s biggest hospital has collapsed from exhaustion, and the frazzled staff have stopped admitting new patients. Deeper into the island’s mountainous interior, thirsty Puerto Ricans draw drinking water from the mud-caked crevices of roadside rock formations and bathe in creeks too small to have names.
“We feel completely abandoned here,” Surillo Ruiz said with a heavy sigh.
[A light amid the darkness, a Puerto Rico church stands up as its community struggles]
It has been three weeks since Hurricane Maria savaged Puerto Rico, and life in the capital city of San Juan inches toward something that remotely resembles a new, uncomfortable form of normalcy. Families once again loll on the shaded steps of the Mercado de Santurce traditional market on a Sunday afternoon, and a smattering of restaurants and stores open their doors along sidewalks still thick with debris and tangled power lines.
But much of the rest of the island lies in the chokehold of a turgid, frustrating and perilous slog toward recovery.
Cars pass through a damaged area in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, on Sept. 29. (Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images)
When night comes, the vast majority of this 100-mile long, 35-mile wide island plunges into profound darkness, exposing the impotence of a long-troubled power grid that was tattered by Maria’s winds and rains. Eighty-four percent of the island is still without power, according to the governor’s office, and local officials in many areas are steeling themselves — with a sense of anger and dread — for six months or more without electricity.
Roughly half of Puerto Ricans have no working cellphone service, creating islands of isolation within the island and cutting off hundreds of thousands of people in regions outside the largest metropolitan areas from regular contact with their families, aid groups, medical care and the central government. Christine Enid Nieves Rodriguez, who has set up a community kitchen near the southeastern city of Humacao, has dubbed the new reality Puerto Rico’s “dystopian future.”
The jumbled contents of a store lie exposed to the elements where a roof was torn away at the Palma Real Shopping Center in Humacao, as seen Sept. 22, two days after Hurricane Maria devastated large areas of Puerto Rico. (Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo/For The Washington Post)
Accompanying that vision of the future are worries about outbreaks of diseases such as scabies and Zika, which is transmitted by mosquitoes breeding in standing water. Just 63 percent of the island’s residents have access to clean drinking water, and only 60 percent of wastewater treatment plants are operating, according to figures released by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In poorer communities, such as the San Juan neighborhood of Carolina and the mountain town of Canovanas, doctors are seeing worrying numbers of patients with conjunctivitis and gastritis brought on by contaminated water and poor hygiene.
With electrical and cellphone outages complicating commerce, large swaths of the island — and even many spots within the biggest cities — are cash-only zones, as if credit cards never existed. More than 40 percent of bank branches have yet to reopen, according to the governor’s office, and barely more than 560 ATMs are functioning for an island with a population of more than 3.4 million.
Most of Puerto Rico is still in the dark after Hurricane Maria VIEW GRAPHIC
On the upside, chronic gasoline shortages that plagued the early days after the storm seem to be easing, at least in the larger cities, and 86 percent of grocery stores have reopened. But the journey to fill the gas tank or the shopping cart can be an exercise in faith and blind courage. In the sprawling metropolis of San Juan, crisscrossed by major highways and multilane streets, most streetlights are not functioning. Only a surge of post-hurricane politeness and patience seems to be preventing the morgues from swelling with traffic fatalities.
The roads in and out of San Juan are lined by denuded hillsides, their rocky, frayed surfaces exposed to the sunlight. The storm acted like a blowtorch, searing off leaves and stripping away topsoil. A surreal consequence of Maria’s transformation of the island’s landscape is the lack of shade in once-divine town squares and jungle-like hinterlands.
It is enough to make many Puerto Ricans consider fleeing the island for good, even though the thought of leaving a place they love can still seem implausible. What awaits many of them here is protracted subsistence living. In places such as the surfer haven of Playa Jobos on the northwestern coast, a woman whose wooden house was blown to bits has taken to living in a disabled food truck outfitted with a hammock.
“When I think about grandchildren, I know that I don’t want this for them,” said Lucy Rivera, an unemployed single mother who has crammed nine people, including her disabled mother and mentally ill brother, into a house that lost its roof in the town of Canovanas near El Yunque National Forest.
Rivera has no money, and her government assistance card is useless in the many businesses that have gone cash-only. So she sits in traffic for hours in a borrowed car trying to find food and get medical care.
On a recent afternoon on one of those choked Puerto Rican roads, cars jammed with children and plastic jugs pulled over to gaze at the ingenuity of Jesus Sanchez, a wiry 74-year-old retiree. Sanchez had fished a six-foot length of PVC pipe out of a ditch in Toa Alta, an ancient town 17 miles outside San Juan. He had lashed it to a forked branch with some shredded cloth and inserted the mouth of the pipe into a crook that began gushing water in the steep limestone hillside above his head.
“Now!” he called to his wife, Ana Marrero Nieves.
Marrero Nieves proceeded to toss plastic jugs — empty containers that once held cranberry juice and canola oil — over to Sanchez, who clung to the muddy slope, slipping and sliding, but smiling. More than 2½ weeks had passed since the storm, and he had not received any aid at their house, where the windows were blown out. But, from the hillside, he drew sustenance, just as he had done for days.
“If it wasn’t for this, how many would have died?” he said.
Ruth Santiago refreshes herself with water from a pipe in Morovis, Puerto Rico, on Oct. 4. Hurricane Maria destroyed the town's bridge. (Alvin Baez/Reuters)
The roads narrow as they snake up the mountains, then dip down into the jaw-dropping valleys of central Puerto Rico, passing by town after town where the wind tore roofs off nearly every humble cinder-block dwelling and splintered the yet-humbler wooden shacks. Flamboyant trees that once prettied the countryside with branches lit by brilliant red flowers lie by the thousands alongside thick-trunked rubber trees. Stands of bamboo with stalks thicker than the fat end of a baseball bat form archways that scrape the roofs of all but the squattest of cars.
Being miles away from the coast provided no safety to the residents of Morovis, a town of about 30,000 that sprawls over bluffs and into ravines in north-central Puerto Rico. Zerimar Rivera, a 31-year-old mother of twin boys, couldn’t stand the smell of sweat anymore and headed for a trickling creek south of town.
“We’re going to the washboard, like in the time of our grandparents,” she called out to a friend, as she plunged a shirt into a five-
gallon paint primer bucket filled with creek water and detergent. Rivera is a teacher, and like many middle- and lower-middle-class Puerto Ricans, she is paid only when she works, and she has not worked a moment since the storm hit on Sept. 20.
Rafael Reyes, his wife, Xarelis Negron, and their son, Xariel, stand next to salvaged belongings wrapped in plastic on the foundation of their shattered home in the San Lorenzo neighborhood of Morovis, Puerto Rico, on Oct. 7. (Ramon Espinosa/AP)
Rivera’s dilemma is the same as that facing Eric Bonet and Sherrie Berrios, a couple who work as dog groomers in the town of Barceloneta. One day after the storm, Berrios says, they were hungry and thirsty when Bonet turned to her and said, “I think I’m going to turn the car into a pickup truck.”
Bonet quickly stripped the seats out of the back of their 1994 Nissan Altima. He enlisted a buddy to join them and stuffed some couch cushions in the back so Berrios would have a place to sit, and they were off in search of aluminum.
In Morovis, they scored big-time, rifling through a pile of garbage across from an outdoor bar until they found an old-
fashioned restaurant sign with an aluminum frame. Bonet ripped it off with an eight-inch Ginsu kitchen knife and added the loot to the rest of the treasures they had strapped to the car’s roof. Days of work earned them $140 at 30 cents a pound.
[There was once a bridge here: A devastated Puerto Rico community deals with isolation after Maria]
There is almost no place on the island where the enterprising scavenger couple couldn’t stand a decent chance of adding to their pile. The storm was so brutal and so wide that it covered the length and breadth of the island, damaging at least 60,000 homes, according to government estimates that some here consider far below the real figure. But only one place can claim to be the spot where Maria made landfall, and that is down along the southeastern coast near Yabucoa, where Surillo Ruiz is mayor.
Yabucoa sits in a wide, fertile valley, which is perfect for growing plantains but is also an ideal funnel for hurricane winds. On an incline overlooking the valley, Carmen Manso presides at a senior center that doubles as a local museum inside a grand, century-old house with wide wooden beams and tile floors that resemble a checkerboard. Her handful of clients, including several who served in the U.S. military, stick to the lower floor because the storm tore off much of the building’s roof, exposing upstairs rooms filled with paintings, artifacts and beds.
“When it rains, this is like Niagara Falls,” Manso said with a chuckle. She does not have much choice but to laugh. One morning she set off with several of her clients’ ATM cards so she could withdraw money for them.
She drove 25 minutes to the town of Humacao, but the bank was closed.
She drove another half-hour to the town of Gurabo, but they had run out of money.
She pressed on another 20 minutes down the road and arrived at a bank in Caguas. The line at the ATM trailed down the street; 2½ hours later, she finally was able to pull out some cash for her clients. And she still had to drive home.
Motorists wait in line to buy gasoline in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, in Morovis, Puerto Rico. (Gerald Herbert/AP)
She returned to a place where the mayor had been run out of city hall by storm winds that punched a massive, jagged hole in the roof, turning the building into an outsize, end-to-end pass-through window. The mayor is now based in a small conference room in his town’s medical clinic. He got a satellite phone as government recovery aid, but he can’t make it work — a complaint other mayors with similar technology have echoed.
On his nightly trip in search of a cellphone signal, Surillo Ruiz keeps hearing from people on the U.S. mainland who want to help his town. One night it was Ricky Martin, the heartthrob Puerto Rican singer whose charitable foundation has been active in the relief effort. But Surillo Ruiz really does not know how to respond to most requests. He has little faith, he says, that aid intended for Yabucoa will make it to Yabucoa. He worries that it will either be misappropriated because of corruption or mishandled through incompetence or confusion.
He worries even more about the potential for a health crisis. The nearest full-scale medical center — Ryder Memorial Hospital, a 103-year-old nonprofit institution — is 13 hard-driving miles away. The hospital, too, is cut off from the world.
“When people say send me an email, I say, ‘What! By smoke signals?’ ” said Deana Hallman, Ryder’s medical director.
[Puerto Rico’s humanitarian crisis nowhere more obvious than at hospitals]
Hallman and other hospital executives were unstinting in their criticism of Puerto Rico’s health secretary, Rafael Rodriguez-Mercado, accusing him of wasting time “assigning blame” to others and sowing “divisiveness.” Health Department officials have not responded to requests for comment.
One of Ryder’s generators failed a few days ago, and several critically ill patients had to be flown to a U.S. Navy hospital ship. By last weekend, the other generators, which according to the hospital’s protocols are not supposed to run for more than seven days, had been operating for 17.
By chance, Hallman was passing through an area with cell coverage a few days ago, and she lurched her car to a stop. An administrator at another hospital told her about a meeting with government health officials in San Juan, a gathering that was supposed to be an opportunity for the government to tell hospitals what it could do to help them.
Each hospital got a sheet listing the aid it would receive following government assessments of their needs.
Some of the lists were long. Ryder’s was short.
It had just one item: diesel.
There was only one problem: Ryder had not asked for diesel, Hallman said. It had plenty.
Instead, the hospital had been asking — over and over, through 10 site visits by Puerto Rican and federal officials — for repairs to the electrical grid that would end their reliance on generators.
“The government just needs to put the grid back,” Lirio Torres Sepulveda, a Ryder executive said. “That’s their job.”
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Judge deals blow to tribes in Dakota Access pipeline ruling.
The judge refused to shut down the oil pipeline during an environmental review. Lawyers pointed to a ‘historic pattern of putting all the risk and harm on tribes.’
The judge refused to shut down the oil pipeline during an environmental review. Lawyers pointed to a ‘historic pattern of putting all the risk and harm on tribes.’
Phil McKenna
BY PHIL MCKENNA
FOLLOW @MCKENNAPR
OCT 11, 2017
Members of the Standing Rock tribe had protested the pipeline route under their water supply, a lake on the Missouri River that they consider sacred. Thousands of people joined them. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty
The Dakota Access pipeline may continue pumping oil during an ongoing environmental review by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.
The ruling was a blow to the Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes of North and South Dakota, whose opposition to the pipeline sparked an international outcry last fall, as well as heated demonstrations by pipeline opponents who were evicted from protest camps near the Standing Rock reservation earlier this year.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said he would not rescind a previous permit for the pipeline issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers while the agency reassesses its prior environmental review of the 1,200-mile pipeline.
Errors in the Corps' prior environmental assessment are "not fundamental or incurable" and there is a "serious possibility that the Corps will be able to substantiate its prior conclusions," Boasberg stated in a 28-page ruling. However, he also admonished the agency to conduct a thorough review or run the risk of more lawsuits.
'Our Concerns Have Not Been Heard'
Jan Hasselman, an attorney with Earthjustice who is representing the tribes, called the decision "deeply disappointing."
"There is a historic pattern of putting all the risk and harm on tribes and letting outsiders reap the profits," Hasselman said. "That historic pattern is continuing here."
Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Mike Faith, who was inaugurated Wednesday morning, agreed.
"This pipeline represents a threat to the livelihoods and health of our Nation every day it is operational," Faith said. "It only makes sense to shut down the pipeline while the Army Corps addresses the risks that this court found it did not adequately study."
"From the very beginning of our lawsuit, what we have wanted is for the threat this pipeline poses to the people of Standing Rock Indian Reservation to be acknowledged," he said. "Today, our concerns have not been heard and the threat persists."
Energy Transfer Partners, the company that built the pipeline and has been operating it since June 1, did not respond to a request for comment.
Fears of a Missouri River Spill
On June 14, Boasberg ruled that the Corps had failed to fully follow the National Environmental Policy Act when it determined that the pipeline would not have a significant environmental impact.
Boasberg found that the agency didn't adequately consider how an oil spill into the Missouri River just upstream of the Standing Rock reservation might affect the tribe or whether the tribe, a low-income, minority community, was disproportionately affected by the pipeline.
The agency's initial environmental assessment considered census tract data within a half-mile radius of where the pipeline crosses the Missouri River. The Standing Rock reservation, where three-quarters of the population are Native American and 40 percent live in poverty, was not included in the analysis because it falls just outside that half-mile circle, another 80 yards farther from the river crossing.
Boasberg ordered a re-assessment of the Corps' prior environmental review but had not decided whether the pipeline had to be shut down in the meantime.
"The dispute over the Dakota Access pipeline has now taken nearly as many twists and turns as the 1,200-mile pipeline itself," Boasberg wrote in Wednesday's ruling.
The Army Corps anticipates completing its ongoing environmental review in April, according to a recent court filing. The agency could determine that the pipeline meets environmental requirements or it could call for a more thorough environmental study that could take years to complete.
Boasberg admonished the Corps not to treat the process simply "as an exercise in filling out the proper paperwork." Hasselman said he fears the agency may further delay a decision.
"A big concern is that process dragging on forever," he said.
PUBLISHED UNDER:
OIL SPILLS/PIPELINES
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Supreme Court to hear Florida-Georgia "water wars" case.
In an order issued Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would hear arguments in the long-running “tri-state water wars” case involving Florida and Georgia -- a case that has already run up astronomical legal bills for both states.
Justices say they will hear oral arguments “in due course”
By Craig Pittman 13 hours ago
Apalachicola's oyster industry has been hurt by the battle over the river. Florida, Alabama and Georgia have been fighting since 1990 over the use of water from the river system, which flows into Apalachicola Bay.
In an order issued Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would hear arguments in the long-running “tri-state water wars” case involving Florida and Georgia -- a case that has already run up astronomical legal bills for both states.
The high court did not say when it would hear oral arguments, except to say they would be scheduled “in due course.” The court’s current term began last week and will extend through next June or July.
The tri-state water wars, involving not just Florida and Georgia but also Alabama, have been going on since 1990. All three states lay claim to the water flowing through the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee and Flint River Basin. Georgia needs it for the thirsty residents of growing Atlanta. Alabama needs it for the power plants built along the river. And Florida needs it to keep its famed Apalachicola oyster industry going.
In 2013, a day after federal officials declared the Apalachicola oyster industry a disaster area, Florida Gov. Rick Scott announced he would be suing Georgia for causing the decline of the industry. A seafood industry official estimated that in just one year about 60 people had quit the oyster business and moved away, tearing apart the town’s culture as well as its economy.
Suits between two states go directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the court did agree to hear it in 2014. But the justices sent the two sides to a special master to hear the case and make a recommendation. In February, after five weeks of testimony and more than three years of proceedings, the special master ruled for Georgia.
Florida had sought to cap Georgia’s overall water consumption by metro Atlanta’s 5.4 million residents at 1992 levels, when the region’s population was 3 million. Forcing that cap would be the only way to save its oyster industry, the state argued.
Georgia officials, meanwhile, argued that Atlanta’s water usage is reasonable and that putting limits on it would cost the state’s economy billions of dollars. They also said an ongoing drought in the Florida Panhandle was more to blame for the decline of the oyster industry than anything they had done.
The special master ruled that Florida had failed to prove a consumption cap was necessary, and suggested that Scott had messed up by not including as a party to the case the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which bulit and controls the reservoir that supplies Atlanta’s water.
“Without the Corps as a party, the Court cannot order the Corps to take any particular action,” he wrote.
Florida, which has spent nearly $100 million on the case, objected to the special master’s ruling, and so it will at last face Georgia, which has spent $30 million, in front of the the black-robed justices sometime in the next eight months.
Craig Pittman
Craig Pittman reports on environmental issues for the Tampa Bay Times.
@craigtimes craig@tampabay.com
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