The Charleston Daily Mail reports that an Associated Press investigation of water in schools revealed thousands of schools across the nation with unsafe levels of lead, pesticides and dozens of other toxins.
"The AP analyzed an EPA database showing federal drinking water violations from 1998 to 2008 in schools with their own water supplies. The findings:
Water in about 100 school districts and 2,250 schools breached federal safety standards.
Those schools and districts racked up more than 5,550 separate violations. In 2008, the EPA recorded 577 violations, up from 59 in 1998 - an increase that officials attribute mainly to tougher rules.
California, which has the most schools of any state, also recorded the most violations with 612, followed by Ohio (451), Maine (417), Connecticut (318) and Indiana (289).
Nearly half the violators in California were repeat offenders. One elementary school in Tulare County, in the farm country of the Central Valley, broke safe-water laws 20 times.
The most frequently cited contaminant was coliform bacteria, followed by lead and copper, arsenic and nitrates."
Get the complete report here.
There's a growing debate about the safety of the recycled rubber chips used to cushion falls on many children's playgrounds.The Environmental Protection Agency has endorsed rubber play surfaces since 1991, both to protect children from head injuries and prevent tires from ending up in landfills, where they can catch fire or become breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
Yet EPA officials say they can't vouch for the safety of recycled rubber, which can be contaminated with lead and other toxins, according to internal documents released under the Freedom of Information Act to the advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER.
More here.
A coalition of environmental groups today formally asked the Department of Homeland Security, the Army Corp of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency to make public the list of 44 "high hazard" coal ash disposal sites across the country. The Freedom of Information Act request was submitted by the Sierra Club, Earthjustice, the Environmental Integrity Project, and Natural Resources Defense Council after the EPA refused to disclose which of the hundreds of coal ash sites pose such a threat to nearby communities that they have been deemed by the Obama administration to be a national security risk."The Department of Homeland Security has designated 44 massive coal ash piles as 'high hazard' because they present a clear and present danger to the people living near them," said Bruce Nilles, Director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign. "People have a right to know if mountains of toxic coal ash are threatening their communities so they can take action and put pressure on their local utilities to demand clean up."
The EPA was instructed by the Department of Homeland Security not to release information about the location of high hazard dams containing coal ash. Unspecified national security concerns were cited as the reason for withholding this critical information from the public, even though the locations of other hazardous sites, such as nuclear plants are publicly available.
More here.
You may still be waiting for EPA to fulfill your FOIA request, but you can at least check easily on the status of your request -- thanks to a new online status report.
The Web page, browsable here, may state the obvious, but it could also save you time on the phone. You have to know your Request Identification Number, since that's how the requests are listed.
The report lists the date the request was received, the date a response is due, and the status (pending, closed, etc.)
It does not identify the requester or the information requested -- so you can not browse the status of other people's requests.
The recently launched Google Public Data plans to start with U.S. population and unemployment data and add on emissions stats from the EPA, the Washington Post reported. The new tool "is taking data, reformatting it so it's immediately consumable ... so people don't have to go through rows and rows of data." Google says many agencies do not organize their Web sites in ways that can be easily indexed by search engines. Some embed codes into their sites, which makes the information invisible in searches.
Google launched a new search tool yesterday designed to help Web users find public data that is often buried in hard-to-navigate government Web sites.
The tool, called Google Public Data, is the latest in the company's efforts to make information from federal, state and local governments accessible to citizens. It's a goal that many Washington public interest groups and government watchdogs share with President Obama, whose technology advisers are pushing to open up federal data to the public.
The company plans to initially make available U.S. population and unemployment data from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, respectively. Other data sets, such as emissions statistics from the Environmental Protection Agency, will roll out in the coming months.
More here.
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility sued the Environmental Protection Agency for not releasing a report on the asbestos cleanup in Libby, Montana, the AP reported. The EPA has since released the document.
The government has released a report identifying communication gaps and other problems in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's asbestos cleanup in Libby.
The EPA's Office of Inspector General released the document Tuesday, about a week after the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility sued, charging the government withheld the report improperly.
The suit sought a court order requiring the document be made public because attempts to obtain it under the federal Freedom of Information Act were fruitless.
More here.
Federal government scientists originally sought a much tougher standard for the toxic chemical C8 than was included in a nationwide health advisory issued last month, according to an internal U.S. Environmental Protection Agency memo.More here.More than three years ago, EPA staffers proposed that the agency rewrite a deal with DuPont Co. to mandate a C8 limit of 0.2 parts per billion, according to the memo.
"EPA's intent is to seek consent through negotiations with DuPont," the memo said. "However, the order could be issued unilaterally if agreement cannot be reached."
The head of the EPA stood firm Thursday against a chorus of congressional criticism over his refusal to allow California and more than a dozen other states to impose greenhouse gas reductions on cars and trucks."I am bound by the criteria in the Clean Air Act, not people's opinions," EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson testified to the Senate's environmental panel. It was his first congressional appearance since issuing the controversial waiver denial last month.
"The Clean Air Act does not require me to rubberstamp waiver decisions," Johnson said. "It was my conclusion that California didn't meet the criteria, or at least all of the criteria."
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the committee chair, led committee Democrats in assailing Johnson's conclusion.
"You're going against your own agency's mission and you're fulfilling the mission of some special interests," she chided him.
Who's right? We don't know, because the EPA isn't telling, even though several staffers have been quoted in news stories saying that they all concluded that California met every criteria for a waiver.
We don't know because the EPA is using duct tape on its records...
Here is Boxer's take:
Colleagues, this is the tape, this is the tape that was put over — finally the administration had a way to use duct tape. This administration, this is what they did to us. They put this white tape over the documents and staff had to stand here. It’s just unbelievable. […]
I mean what a waste of our time. This isn’t national security. This isn’t classified information, colleagues. This is information the people deserve to have. And this is not the way we should run the greatest government in the world. It does not befit us. So that’s why I’m worked up about it and think we have been treated in a very shabby way.
Yesterday, Boxer released excerpts from an October presentation, revealing that Johnson had ignored the advice of EPA staff who were in favor of granting California the waiver. The excerpts came out after Boxer’s staff removed the duct tape from the documents and transcribed handwritten notes, under the supervision of EPA staffers.
The good news? Looks like the administration finally found a use for its duct tape.
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