I have been praying for years for this day!! Finally the voice of a new generation in front of the suits at the UN general assembly. Un-afraid and angry enough, yet not straying from the scientific facts and the truth of what her generation faces from those listening to 16 yr. old Greta Thunberg on Monday, Sept. 23rd.  She spoke following a march that Friday before as inspired youth by the millions left schools all over the world to march in protest against climate change. I can finally feel that my generation of environmental activists can rest easy now, knowing that a new generation has risen to take the mantle and move us forward!!!

This is the big shot in the arm we need if future generations are to have a chance at a decent future!  I do not say this as an alarmist, but as a pragmatist and realist given what I know as an  environmental science and policy specialist.  The climate data is against Greta’s and future generations if we don’t change our greenhouse gas emissions NOW!  This means how we consume fossil fuels and at the quantities we consume them.  The USA remains the only country that is still debating whether human caused global warming/climate change exists and is an immediate problem.  We are now the only country (out of 190) that are standing outside the Paris Climate Accord.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, is doing its best to roll back all efforts put in place by the previous administrations that would help us move toward reduced fossil fuel use and/or cleaner fossil fuel use, reducing greenhouse gasses (GHG). 

For example, since this Summer alone, EPA is: 1)  deleting parts of the 2015 Coal Ash Rule and/or postponing the rest until 2028 so coal-fired power plants burn and pollute as usual.  Andrew Wheeler, the administrator of the EPA, issued the proposed regulation, which relaxes rules set in 2015 imposing stringent inspection and monitoring rules at coal plants and requiring plants to install new technology to protect water supplies from arsenic, lead, selenium and other toxic effluent.  Coal plants are the top source of United States carbon dioxide emissions, the principal greenhouse gas warming the planet.  The new measures lower pollution limits, extend the deadline for power plants to comply with new technologies until Dec. 31, 2028, and exempt many coal plants altogether.

2)  EPA is rolling back methane standards from oil & gas facilities and extraction operations. EPA itself has acknowledged that its rule-making would increase greenhouse gas emissions and would likely degrade air quality and harm public health. In spite of this, President Trump and EPA Administrator Wheeler want to give their friends in the oil and gas industry a free pass to put our health and planet in danger by recklessly rolling back these protections.   Cutting methane emissions 45 percent by the year 2025 from the oil and gas industry alone will have the same 20-year climate benefit as shutting down one-third of the world's coal-fired power plants. 

This demonstrates how oil & gas majors are going full bore with future speculation on extraction sites and infrastructure. Raising capital for this "fossil fuel future" will blow us past a 1.5C Paris Agreement and a safe future for our grandchildren. We have ample data showing that we have reached our capacity of carbon output for this century with the wells already drilled.  The UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that existing wells will actually bring us to 1.8C.  If we don’t stop our current levels of GHG emissions, we will experience 1.8C by 2035 and 2.7C degrees above pre-industrial atmospheric temps by 2050.  The UN has pointed to 2.0C as a tipping point not to be exceeded and seen as globally catastrophic.

If you happen to be an investor, over-investment in oil and gas creates risks for investors, regardless of whether the world is effective in tackling climate change. Either investors face assets being stranded as demand for fossil fuels falls in a transition to a low carbon economy, or the over-investment contributes to excess emissions from fossil fuels, the failure to transition and the financial costs of a dramatically changed climate."

Where are we going, people? Time to wake up and smell the benzene!!  The Paris Agreement is the second global climate change pact that the United States joined under a Democrat and abandoned under a Republican. George W. Bush withdrew the United States from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.  I have always heard it said, “if you’re not at the table, you could be on the menu!”

 How does this all relate to us here on the Grand River? 

First, the obvious, we live in Oklahoma!  We claim the former oil capitol of the world (Tulsa) and now claim the largest oil hub in the lower 48 (Cushing), the pipeline crossroads.  Closer to home, however, GRDA operates two coal-fired power plants and maintains a large coal ash dump along with several wastewater ponds.  These have been found to have contaminated the groundwater with arsenic and other contaminants.  In addition, a tar sands pipeline runs from Illinois to Cushing, OK and it crosses under the Neosho River near Chanute, KS north of OK state line.  In 2010 a similar pipeline blowout spilled thousands of gallons of tar sands into the Kalamazoo River in MI.  To this day the river is not cleaned up and all the homes and businesses along that several miles of river are gone.  Many people became sick and some died. 

LEAD Agency has studied and documented the mercury in the fish resulting from the fallout of mercury from GRDA and other regional coal-fired power plants that drop mercury into our watershed.  In addition, the groundwater under the GRDA facility is contaminated (what that means for the underlying aquifer and the Grand River is unknown).  What would happen if there was a tar sands spill in the Neosho River, or if a coal train or train carrying oil (bomb train) were to spill its content  s into our river and, thus, into Grand Lake?

Two things are happening that are contradictory and problematic to our world.  Fossil fuels are not the future for energy and transportation, yet infrastructure to accommodate those fuels is rapidly developed and pushed on communities as if these fuels ARE THE FUTURE!  At some point investors will pay the price for over investment in infrastructure, exploration and extraction that the market can’t bear. 

Look at tar sands.  Production with tar sands in Alberta Canada is going down to the point that all the majors have gotten out.  Yet, pipelines from there are a priority in the US!  Over production of natural gas has greatly reduced the price, yet production continues to the point that 5 new plants are being built in the Ohio river valley to manufacture pellets for feed stocks to make plastic, most of which will be exported to Europe, just so that the shale fracking boom in PA and surrounding area can continue.  All while the world chokes on plastic!!  And, methane rules are being reduced to accommodate more drilling, especially in national parks and wildlife areas where it was banned in the previous Administration.

Mercury and plastics are in our Grand Lake and her feeder streams, along with other petroleum based contaminants.  We don’t want tar sands either, that can’t be cleaned up!  And, as we see from other articles in this newsletter, we are suffering from toxic flooding as well.  I think the picture is emerging that we cannot count on our government right now to do the right thing.  It is going to take US, the citizens, to steer our country in the right direction.  After all this is a democracy isn’t it??  That’s how it should be!  Let your elected leaders know you are tired of this and tell them what you want.  Elect someone else if you are not happy with them.  They are elected to serve us.  We pay their salaries.  They serve us, not the corporations that fund their campaigns or the lobbyists that flood their offices.  They work for the people!!! 

From YOUR Grand Riverkeeper:  Earl L. Hatley

E.P.A. Weakens Rules Governing Toxic Water Pollution From Coal PlantsWorkers in Conway, S.C., checked a dam built to keep coal ash from reaching the flooded Waccamaw River after Hurricane Florence last year.Credit...Randall Hill/Reuters
By Lisa Friedman
Nov. 4, 2019
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Monday moved to weaken an Obama-era regulation aimed at limiting the seepage of toxic pollution into water supplies from the ash of coal burning power plants, a change that coal industry leaders say could keep plants open longer and which environmental groups fear will increase the risk of water contamination.
Andrew Wheeler, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, issued the proposed regulation, which relaxes rules set in 2015 imposing stringent inspection and monitoring rules at coal plants and requiring plants to install new technology to protect water supplies from arsenic, lead, selenium and other toxic effluent.
The rules are part of President Trump’s vast environmental deregulation agenda aimed largely at eliminating rules the fossil fuel industry finds burdensome and extending the life of coal burning power plants. In addition to discharging pollutants into the air and water, coal plants are the top source of United States carbon dioxide emissions, the principal greenhouse gas warming the planet.
The new measures lower pollution limits, extend the deadline for power plants to comply with new technologies until Dec. 31, 2028, and exempt many coal plants altogether.


So, after all the hoopla over the Coal Ash Rule the past two years, coming from EPA and Oklahoma (all the court cases also), the EPA now says forget about it, we're deleting parts of the 2015 Rule or postponing rest until 2028 so coal-fired power plants burn and pollute as usual. Oh, by-the-way, forget about climate change and keeping the atmospheric temp within 2C of pre-industrial level, we're burning coal!! Did I forget to mention all the contaminants in our streams and rivers? That too!!! By all means, lets have another Trump term for all you idiots who think this is great!! I would like to hear how you explain it to your children and grandchildren!

Clean Coal is still a dream of some. The idea is based on carbon capture (scrubbers) and storage (injection underground). Looking at commercials, one would think it's happening, or, well, it's around the corner. Wrong: "Carbon capture and storage has so far proven to be too expensive for utilities to be willing to invest in it, at least in the United States, without a federal climate policy that would put a price on carbon." A-ha!! Like I've been sayin', a carbon tax whether to subsidize a fossil fuel (coal) or rebate to tax payers, becomes a HABIT, that supports the burning of fossil fuels!

About this website
insideclimatenews.org
Inside a Southern Coal Conference: Pep Rallies and Fears of an Industry's Demise

This is a really good look at the state of our climate right now. It includes atmospheric temps, ocean temp, sea level and arctic ice.
About this website
carbonbrief.org
State of the climate: Heat across Earth's surface and oceans mark early 2019

"In many ways, OHC (Ocean Heat Content) represents a much better measure of climate change than global average surface temperatures. It is where most of the extra heat ends up and is much less variable on a year-to-year basis than surface temperatures. Most years set a new record for OHC and 2019 has been no exception so far, with the first three months showing the warmest OHC since records began."

"Changes in the amount or rate of warming are much easier to detect in the OHC record than on the surface. For example, OHC shows little evidence of the slowdown in warming in the mid-2000s, seen in surface temperature records. It also shows a distinct acceleration after 1991, matching the increased rate of greenhouse gas emissions over the past few decades."

Don't need no stinking science! The "Precautionary Principal" says that we figure out what the environmental and health costs of our technology will be before we advance a new technology, drug, chemical, etc. onto market/public practice. We don't do that. Our agencies aren't funded well enough to do testing, so, industry does it for the agencies or not at all. NOW, the push is to forget about that, even, and ignore the most crucial science studies about the object of new rules and go ahead anyway. Drop or create new rules based on what industry wants, regardless! This is how it was before. I was an organizer then, too. I helped work to get to where we are. Now we are going backwards if this works for Trump.

This report demonstrates how oil & gas majors are going full bore with future speculation on extraction sites and infrastructure. Raising capital for this "fossil fuel future" will blow us past a 1.5C Paris Agreement and a safe future for our grandchildren. We have ample data showing that we have reached our capacity of carbon output for this century with the wells already drilled. This report shows existing wells will actually bring us to 1.8C. KEEP IT IN THE GROUND!!!

"Overinvestment in oil and gas creates risks for investors, regardless of whether the world is effective in tackling climate change. Either investors face assets being stranded as demand for fossil fuels falls in a transition to a low carbon economy, or the overinvestment contributes to excess emissions from fossil fuels, the failure to transition and the financial costs of a dramatically changed climate."

It has been an interesting year so far and this month is no exception!  February is now officially the hottest ever recorded and March is vying for the title of the hottest month ever recorded.  Last year blew 2014's record as the hottest year ever recorded by a huuuge margin (as Bernie Sanders would say).  This season, North America saw an extremely warm winter and now an early Spring.   One thing that is happening on cue though is the March wind.  Blowing fast and furious as I write this.  Making lots of noise.

This past year tried to make up for the previous drought years.  Hard to do in just one year but sure tried hard.  Floods in most of the state.  Filled up most lakes and ponds but I don’t know if it has helped our ground water situation much at all, at least from all data and reports I am reading from various scientific sources.  We are still considered in a drought period so when this tap turns off again we could really be in for it.

In the Grand River/Grand and Hudson Lake watersheds climate change caused by global warming is having an impact on our water quality due to drought and flood cycles.  While it is true we have man-made causes for nutrient loading in our surface water impairing our streams and lakes here, the drought and flood cycles make this problem much worse. The wet weather cycle we just have had washes the fertilizer and nutrients from cattle and other sources into our water bodies and then during dry times, this loading of nutrients can cause extreme cases of algal blooms and bacteria issues.  We had this problem on Grand Lake during the Summer of 2012, which broke most of Oklahoma's all time heat records during a long drought lasting several years.

We need to be mindful of strategies designed to take climate change into consideration and to mitigate this problem to protect the environment and public health.  Grand Lake and all its feeder streams are on the state list of impaired streams for not meeting their Beneficial Use Category of Warm Water Aquatic Life.  This problem is the issue of Dissolved Oxygen which is caused by nutrients and sediment loading in the water body.  Except for the upper Neosho River the problem is nutrient loading.  This problem persists throughout the entire area of Grand Lake.

Fishers have always complained about catfish dying on trotlines if they weren't run regularly.  The fish were starved for oxygen.  I have seen the catfish surface for air.  It's not supposed to be that way!  People get sores that take a long time to heal on their hands from fishing and noodling.  That's due to bacteria in the water.  We need to make sure that septic tanks, boat sewage and marina sewage are not part of this problem!!  We are all in charge of this!  We need to follow the law on applying fertilizer and watch the Phosphorus application and stop at the right time and not over apply just to get the right amount of nitrogen.  All the excess goes into the water.  And, most important, do not apply on windy days.  I see this violation a lot.  Stop your neighbors if you see this.  It hurts all of us; our heath and our environment.  It is up to all of us.  Don't wait for a regulation to make us do what is right.  If we just do it, no government regulation is needed!!




​