Earth Day 2011 - RETRO Anti-Pollution Ad with Native American - 1970s

Many of us have seen this commercial a million times as children, and learned not to litter.

Diesel Trains May Go Green by Joe Anuta - YourNabe.com

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EPA grant could cut pollution from two Glendale-bound locomotives

Glendale residents Abignew Marczak and his wife Barbara have complained about the pollution from trains in the neighborhood.

Two antiquated diesel trains that belch out clouds of pollution as they haul waste through Queens may get an environmentally friendly makeover if a federal grant is approved in the spring.

Several organizations partnered with the city and applied for a grant from the federal Environmental Protection Agency to outfit the two locomotives with more fuel-efficient engines that will reduce the emissions and pollution that are inhaled by Queens residents.

“We are just so thrilled, and it’s very gratifying that people have latched on to this idea of having a cleaner and greener neighborhood,” said Mary Parisen, co-chair of Civics United for Railroad Environmental Solutions, a collection of civic associations around the borough.

“This is a small step, but it’s in the right direction,” she said.

But the grants must still be approved by the EPA for its 2011 budget, and if actually selected in March, the outlays are scheduled to begin in May and be completed in October 2012.

“We’re really hoping that this grant does come through in March,” Parisen said.

The first grant would be used to refurbish a 1980s locomotive owned by CSX Transportation. The train now transports garbage from a station in the Bronx through Astoria, Jackson Heights, Woodside, Elmhurst, Maspeth, Middle Village and Ridgewood before terminating in Glendale.

The new engine will actually be comprised of three smaller engines, which will allow the locomotive to use them in stages and thus conserve fuel and curb emissions..

Nitrogen oxide, a pollutant released into the atmosphere by the locomotive, will be reduced by 20 tons annually, which is 76 percent. And particulate matter will be reduced by 0.21 tons.

The total grant will cost about $1.8 million, with $1 million coming from the EPA and the rest from CSX Transportation.

The second grant will be used to rebuild a 1973 New York & Atlantic Railway locomotive using a similar technique. That train carries waste from its Fresh Pond base in Glendale through Middle Village, Ridgewood, Maspeth, Blissville and Long Island City and also goes into Brooklyn.

The refurbished locomotive will cut fuel usage by 50 percent, and cut 1.1 tons of nitrogen oxide annually, but 20 tons over the project’s 18-year lifetime. It will reduce particulate matter by 0.44 tons.

The project will cost about $2.5 million, with $1 million coming from the EPA and a majority of the remaining funds from Waste Management Inc., the company employed by the city to move garbage into landfills.

The grant from the EPA is part of the agency’s National Clean Diesel Funding Assistance Program, which aims to make rail travel more green.

The project is especially pertinent for Queens, according to the grant, which said the borough has child asthma rates well above the national average.

That is exactly why CURES had been advocating for reform on how railroads operate in urban neighborhoods in the borough, according to Parisen, and they still have a long way to go. People in the Glendale neighborhood complain that the smell of diesel fuel and the pollution are so strong that they have trouble staying outside for extended periods of time.

But Parisen also recognizes it as a positive development.

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” Parisen said. “We’re grateful that it’s a start.”

And it is a start for the city as well.

“Repowering the entire NY&A locomotive fleet is the ultimate goal of the city of New York,” the grant said.

But the one NY&A locomotive that is included in the grant is only one of 10 total trains. The other nine are owned by the Long Island Rail Road and were not given permission for this particular upgrade.

The grants enjoyed the support of a gaggle of politicians, nonprofits and even Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It was written by the city Economic Development Corp.

Gennaro Bill Slated to Clean Queens Air by Anna Gustafson - YourNabe.com > Queens

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Councilman James Gennaro (l.) speaks at a biodiesel plant in Brooklyn about his bill that is expected to reduce air pollution and create green jobs. Photo courtesy of William Alatriste

A bill sponsored by City Councilman James Gennaro (D-Fresh Meadows) and slated to pass the Council Thursday is expected to reduce air pollution, promote the use of alternative fuels and create green jobs in the city, Gennaro and Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this week.

The legislation, Intro 194-A, will require that buildings burn less No. 4 heating oil — one of the dirtiest types of fuel. Additionally, it mandates that the No. 4 oil will be phased out when buildings need to replace their heating system equipment, which city officials said will help to create environmentally friendly jobs.

“New York City consumes 1 billion gallons of heating oil annually — more than any other city in the United States,” said Gennaro, chairman of the Council Environmental Protection Committee. “Our legislation will annually replace 20 million gallons of petroleum with an equal volume of renewable, sustainable and domestically produced biodiesel. We are already home to what will be the largest biodiesel processing facility in the country, as well as a growing grease collection industry, and we expect to see more and more green-collar jobs and green economic growth as a result of our legislation.”

Intro 194-A will require the amount of sulfur in some heating oil to be capped at 1,500 parts per million, reducing the current cap by half. About 9,500 city buildings burn the dirtiest grades of heating oil, Nos. 4 and 6, according to a report by the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit. The report found that buildings burning Nos. 4 and 6 heating oils release more soot pollution than all cars and trucks on the city’s streets combined.

The pollution created by this heating oil contains heavy metals and other pollutants that damage lungs and hearts, contribute to asthma and decrease life expectancy, city officials noted.

“We all know the most cost-effective way to remove pollutants from any fuel is to never burn them in the first place,” Bloomberg said. “But the reality is that New Yorkers burn more than 1 billion gallons of heating oil each year. By changing the type of oil we use, we will reduce pollutants and spend less money on maintaining and operating our heating systems while simultaneously reducing our dependence on overseas sources of energy.”

Environmental advocates also cheered the bill.

“It’s a great day for the health of all New Yorkers, but especially for children, senior citizens and people with respiratory illnesses who are particularly vulnerable to soot pollution,” said Andy Darrell, New York regional director and deputy director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s national energy program.

Intro 650 Is All Wrong - Civil Liberties Will Be Gone

Watch a Music Video showing why we need to fight INTRO 650, a repressive Bill in the New York City Council...Call Christine Quinn - 212-788-7210

STOP INTRO 650 NOW!

Intro 650 is a New York City Council bill, introduced at the request of the Mayor, which purports to regulate chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons detectors. The bill goes far beyond its stated intent and gives the New York City Police Department (NYPD) expansive powers that could limit the freedom of individuals or organizations to engage in monitoring without undue interference. Although modified significantly from its initial introduction, as a result of criticism from unions and community, environmental, public health, and civil liberties organizations, Intro 650 will have a chilling effect on environmental testing. After 9/11, we know that independent environmental testing is invaluable in the face of government deception about poisons in the air. Intro 650 is a dangerous development in the trend toward limitation of civil liberties and will ultimately make New Yorkers less safe rather than more.

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Queens Air Gets an ‘F’ Report Says by Noah Zuss - Queens Tribune

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New Yorkers are breathing harmful air into their lungs every day according to a new report.

The American Lung Association of New York recently released their annual report on air quality in the Empire State finding that seven of 33 counties received failing grades.
Among the report’s findings, Queens County scored badly in ozone and particle pollution and received an ‘F’ in overall air quality.

The study, in its ninth straight year grades cities for three types of air pollution: Short-term particle pollution, year-round particle pollution and ozone pollution.
The report also ranks U.S. cities and counties with the dirtiest air and issues county by county report cards on the most pervasive pollutants; particle pollution-soot-and ozone-smog.

Findings are based on air quality monitoring devices, dispersed throughout the state and nation.

Michael Seilback, senior director of Public Policy and Advocacy, said the findings tell a cautionary tale.

“These illustrate far too many New Yorkers are being forced to breathe unhealthy air everyday,” he said.

In Queens, overall air quality received a failing grade and the county also scored an ‘F’ for short-term particle pollution. The grade reflects the number of days in the year with a dangerous level of soot in the air.

The report ranked the New York City metropolitan area eighth out of 10 cities most polluted by ozone.

Ozone pollution is formed when tiny particles mix with extreme heat and sun, creating a hazy mist on the horizon of major urban centers.

Particle pollution, or soot is made up of tiny particles much smaller than a human hair that can get into lungs and eat into the lungs in an abrasive manner.

Both have significantly damaging effects for lung health.

Ozone or smog inhalation is depicted by Seilback as “like getting sunburn on your lung tissue. Particle pollution or soot is described as having the “effect of sand paper on your lungs”, he said.

Particle pollution occurs year-round, with ozone a problem only during hot or sunny days.

This year Queens improved for ozone from a ‘D’ grade to a ‘C’.

According to Mr. Seilback, this is improvement, with a twist.

“It‘s encouraging,” he said, but cautioned against calling it progress. “I don’t think any parent is thrilled when their child brings home a ‘C’, but improvement is always a good thing.”

He also mentioned that there may be overall improvement in air quality, even though it remains harmful.

“There’s definitely less pollution in this report,” Mr. Seilback said, “but we can’t say for sure there is less pollution overall.”

Study: New Yorkers Breathing In Dangerous Mix Of Toxins - NY1: Queens

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A new report released today shows that nearly half of all New Yorkers live in areas where the air does not meet minimum standards.

The American Lung Association's 2008 State of the Air report says seven of New York State's 33 counties receive failing grades for air quality. More than 8.2 million people live in that area -- adding up to nearly half of the state's population.

New York City also finished eighth among all cities most polluted by ozone.

The Bronx and Manhattan both failed tests for annual and short-term particle pollution, while Queens failed for annual particle pollution, and Staten Island failed for ozone.

The ALA says New Yorkers are breathing in a dangerous mix of toxins.

"To a large extent, New York City's air problems are the result of high traffic, the density of traffic," said Louise Vetter, president and chief executive officer of the ALA of NYC. "We are also faced with power plant pollution blowing from the Midwest. And the power fuel used to heat our buildings is actually quite dirty."

"So building emissions, vehicle emissions, and then power plants create a triple threat for the New York City area," she continued.

Eight counties did improve to an A for ozone pollution.

"We've seen over the last nine years that the ozone levels are particularly high and the particle pollution is particularly dangerous," said Vetter. "Some boroughs have seen modest improvements, from and F to a D in ozone. But really, if your child brought home a grade of a D, you wouldn't be comfortable with that and New Yorkers require better air quality."

New Yorkers had a mixed reaction to the report.

"I don't think [the air quality is] that bad," said one New Yorker.

"Sometimes when it's really hot, there's a kind of heaviness and you feel like there's a lot of smog or smoke in the air and you draw a breath in, yeah you feel something uncomfortable," said another. "But you get used to it."

The Lung Association says poor air quality can contribute to respiratory diseases, such as asthma attacks, coughing, wheezing, chest pain and even death.

"There has been an increase in the patients that have been coming in with referrals from internists just to pulmonologists in particular for breathing," said Dr. Sonali Sethi of St. Vincents Hospital. "

Smog gets worse with heat, and with summer just around the corner, expect a decrease in air quality and an increase in respiratory problems.

One New Yorker suggested for improvements, "More mass transit, more carpooling, less cars."

Los Angeles retains its title as most polluted city in the country -- but Pittsburgh has grabbed the distinction of "sootiest."

Numbers are based on air quality measurements reported to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The 1970 Plowboy Interview with Dr Rene DuBos

The Plowboy Interview

This interview with 1969 Pulitzer Prize winner Dr Rene DuBos (February 21, 1901 - February 21, 1982 NY Times obituary), despite being conducted in 1970 is still important today...It also gives credit to Herbert Johnson (who signed off on my Boy Scout Birdwatching Merit Badge back in the early 70's) - the former NYC Parks Dept employee who was instrumental in making the Jamaica Bay refuge the world class birding location it is today...

I feel it is relevant to the current situation to Save the Ridgewood Reservoir environmental diversity...

Dr. Rene Dubos, winner of the 1969 Pulitzer Prize, first gained international recognition over twenty years ago when he demonstrated the feasibility of obtaining germ-fighting drugs from microbes. A native of France, Dr. Dubos has lived in the United States since the age of 24 and is currently a dynamic leader in the fight to save the environment. Dr. Dubos is a professor at The Rockefeller University in New York City and this interview was conducted in his office there by Allen Richards.

I was asked to remove the text of the interview from the blog, therefore please click on the following link to read the entire original interview...

Read entire interview...

Queens Gazette: Pollution Control Methods Generate Questions by Thomas Cogan...

The DEP's choice for the lower part of Flushing Bay (which has a volume of pollution nearly 40 times as great as the upper bay) is to install a 25-million-gallon collection tunnel there.

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The fifth and last of the Flushing Bay pollution control meetings sponsored by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection was held last week at the Olmstead Center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. At the meeting, the recommended water body/watershed plan for both Flushing Bay and Flushing Creek, the narrow channel that extends southward from the lower part of the bay, was revealed. It was no surprise that an industrial engineering or "end of pipe" plan was chosen, since it and all alternative plans constituted the DEP's presentation in previous meetings. But attendees at the meeting also heard a DEP official speak of and illustrate pollution entrapment measures. The source control plans he described are being applied to Jamaica Bay, at the south shore of Queens and Brooklyn. His description left attendees to infer that source control might eventually be applied on the north shore, in Flushing Bay.

The DEP's choice for the lower part of Flushing Bay (which has a volume of pollution nearly 40 times as great as the upper bay) is to install a 25-million-gallon collection tunnel there. The plan would also include bending weirs on key regulators and netting systems at two points of outfall on the shore of the lower bay. The tunnel would be 26 feet in diameter, set in a loop about 7,000 feet long and laid 150 feet below grade in the lower bay. Its 25-million-gallon combined sewage overflow (CSO) could be transferred to the weir installation running to the bay from an initial point at 43rd Avenue and 105th Street; and from there to the Bowery Bay water pollution control plant (WPCP) on Berrian Boulevard in Astoria. Another part of the plan is a dredging operation which would be conducted to a level five feet below mean lower low water (MLLW), and the bottom then capped with a two-foot layer of clean sand. Dredging would remove CSO-related sediments that are exposed at low tide.

The Flushing Creek project has long since been undertaken (at a cost thus far of $332 million), and the CSO tank was, in fact, in operation as of the end of May, as reported at the meeting. A total of 43 million gallons of CSO can be stored: 28 million in the tank, 15 million inline. It is conveyed in a northeast direction to the Tallman Island WPCP on Powell's Cove Boulevard. Yet to come is the dredging operation, to be conducted to a level five feet below MLLW and capped with a two-foot level of clean sand.

It was not surprising that the DEP's Flushing Bay/Creek plan drew unfavorable commentary from skeptics, who may have had to resign themselves to it but didn't have to like it or believe it would succeed in its purpose. The bay and creek plans were related to the audience by Philip Hwang of the engineering firm O'Brien & Gere. On hand with him to handle the inevitable criticism were Stephen Whitehouse of Starr Whitehouse, a landscape architectural firm, and Chris Villari of DEP. Among the critics was the head of Community Board 7's environmental committee, who said that dredging could have unseen consequences; Villari could only agree. Tim Eaton of Queens College said the tunnel and weirs are subject to groundwater invasion that could dilute the volume of CSOs and simply increase the pumping burden. Hwang tried to tell him of the technical proficiency of these container systems but Eaton wasn't impressed, saying that nature would foil the plans of engineers. He cited a pipe system in Milwaukee that was opened with high hopes in 1986 but never worked well and recently had to be relined. Thomas Campagna, a consulting engineer in the Queens borough president's office, warned that the water table level is rising, which would affect the system. The example he cited was York College in Jamaica, also built in the 1980s. At the time it was built, he said, the water table was seven feet below the basement. Now, it is two feet above, and the impact on the York College buildings is acute.

In the early part of the evening, John McLaughlin, DEP ecological services director, talked about storm water management pilot projects within the Jamaica Bay watershed. He explained how existing roadways might allow for increased street-side tree planting, which could be modified to capture a portion of storm water runoff. Modification would "peel" water from the centralized combined sewer system and start a decentralization process. He showed an illustration of a hypothetical "Design Avenue, somewhere in the Jamaica Bay watershed" that had streetside swales for capturing storm water, saying that up to 25 gallons of it could be drained from each linear foot of roadway. Also, streetside infiltration swales could be planted in the understory of tree pits. He said the largest practical street tree sidewalk openings should be tried, and methods should be studied for storing water during rainstorms for later reuse by the trees through employment of soil moisture sensors and solar-activated pumps. Wherever possible, porous pavement should be used. (On playgrounds, it has the additional advantage of noise abatement; basketballs bounced on it don't make as loud a report as on standard blacktop or concrete.) "Typical urban runoff should be more than well treated by these methods," he said.

McLaughlin also spoke of constructed urban wetlands, which have been attempted at some places beside the Long Island Expressway but not yet in the Jamaica Bay area. He said that green roofs are more practical on commercial than residential buildings, but at least 20 such roofs exist in the city at present; an example is the Silvercup building in Long Island City, beneath the Queensborough Bridge. Restoration of oysters to Jamaica Bay will promote nitrogen removal, if not fishing for them, which hasn't been done in the bay since 1920; rib mussels, inedible to begin with, should be useful in the bay for pathogen uptake. But he warned that the rate of wetlands disappearance, 44 acres per year on the shoreline, would guarantee its elimination by 2025. Wave attenuators are a means of staving off wetlands deterioration. Tom Lowenhaupt asked McLaughlin when the pilot program starts in Jamaica Bay and McLaughlin said by the end of this summer. And when in Flushing Bay? McLaughlin had no sure answer.

New York Magazine: Exploring the Massive, Viscous Oil Blob That Lies Just Beneath the Streets of Greenpoint By Daphne Eviatar...

H/t: Queens Crap...The Ooze Under Brooklyn...

The thick, dark ooze is a hydrocarbon cocktail: part degraded gasoline, part fuel oil, part naphtha—the chemical from which napalm takes its name. All of it is toxic. Dig seven or eight feet down—the typical depth of a basement—and in some parts you’ll find benzene vapor, a known carcinogen, at concentrations as high as 1,560 parts per million. That’s more than 100 times the short-term (fifteen-minute) exposure limits set by OSHA for industrial workers. More recently, PCEs (perchloroethylenes) and TCEs (trichloroethylenes), suspected carcinogens that are able to dissolve in water, have been found in the underground oil plume—not to mention the Queens water supply. Whether the plume is the source of the contamination is a matter of dispute.

The good news is that the toxic goop saturating the sandy soil is at least partly capped by a semi-permeable clay layer, the natural legacy of Brooklyn’s 10,000-year-old geology. But the oil can still travel laterally. Experts advising some of the residents suing say they’ve found the stuff beyond the contaminated zone, leading them to believe the lagoon may be much larger—up to 30 million gallons—and encroaching deep into the residential side of Greenpoint. The oil companies have removed 9 million gallons so far. So depending on whose experts you believe, there could still be more than 20 million gallons of toxins sloshing around down below.

The disputed facts are the centerpiece of a lawsuit filed against ExxonMobil in 2004 by Riverkeeper and eight members of the Newtown Creek Alliance. But while Seggos has been instrumental in pushing the issue back into the public consciousness—mostly by highlighting the health risks the spill poses—he’s not the first to have noticed that something was amiss on the shores of Newtown Creek. The problem’s roots stretch back over a hundred years.

During the industrial boom of the 1890s, local activists calling themselves the Fifteenth Ward Smelling Committee paddled up the creek seeking the polluters responsible for the foul stenches wafting from the once-pristine waterway. They had plenty to choose from: glue-makers and fertilizer processors produced plenty of noxious by-product. But the oil refineries were the worst offenders: Workers transferring oil and solvents from one part of the plant to another inevitably spilled; storage tanks leaked; and the process of distilling oil to make kerosene, paraffin wax, naphtha, gasoline, and fuel oil left all sorts of junk. “If roughly 5 percent of the initial crude petroleum consumed by the refineries ended up as coke residue, gas, or other loss, as the contemporary literature suggested,” writes historian Andrew Hurley, “each of New York’s petroleum districts would have produced the equivalent of 300,000 gallons of waste material each week during the 1880s.” What couldn’t be resold or burned up was simply dumped on the ground or into the water. There were more than 50 refineries in Greenpoint in 1870, and by 1892, Standard Oil owned most of them.

At the time, Newtown Creek was one of the busiest waterways in the country, and the most hazardous: Fires routinely broke out at the refineries, sometimes burning down entire factories and leaving the chemical remains to soak into the soil. In 1919, twenty acres of the Standard Oil refinery, storing 110 million gallons of oil, went up in smoke. The oil that didn’t burn sunk into the ground. Given the natural order of things, one would expect this oil eventually to drain into the creek and escape into the ocean—but it didn’t. Instead, it slowly moved away from the creek and backed up into Brooklyn. That’s because until about 60 years ago, Brooklyn relied on its own wells for drinking water. And the borough pumped so much of its groundwater to the surface that it reversed the natural slope of its underground water table, tilting it away from the creek and toward the Brooklyn Navy Yard, near where the municipal water pumps were diligently sucking. And so the oil, slinking above the water table, flowed with it, filling the interstitial spaces where the groundwater had once been. By the forties, the aquifer was so depleted that seawater had begun to infiltrate it, making it useless. So in 1949 Brooklyn switched to water piped down from the Catskills.

One year later, on October 5, a vast underground explosion centered at Huron Street and Manhattan Avenue sent 25 manhole covers shooting into the Greenpoint sky, where they reached elevations as high as three stories. This was the first clue that anything was amiss. An investigation revealed that gasoline was leaking into the neighborhood’s sewer system, but at the time no one thought to measure the amount of manhole propellant that had not ignited. Meanwhile, with the municipal water pumps in mothballs, Brooklyn’s aquifer slowly started filling back up. By the late seventies, the water table had rebounded to its natural level. And the oil that floated on top of it reversed its flow. It now moved toward what was once again the lowest point: Newtown Creek.

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NPCA: Have you seen the But-if-Fly?

He's small. He's blue. He knows a lot about why the air in our national parks is filled with smog--and how we can clean it up.

If you haven't seen our new cartoon starring the But-if-Fly, you can still watch it online.

Click here to check out the But-if-Fly's Message.

You can also tell a friend about the cartoon by clicking here. Together, we can make clean air and clear views in our national parks a reality!