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Taxpayer Cost Of Illegal Dumping In Houston= $5 Million

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Kevin Develle says he is by no means an activist. Nor does he consider himself an environmentalist.

But the scene he finds every day while walking the West Lake Houston bridge over the San Jacinto river, connecting Atascocita and Kingwood, has become too disturbing to ignore.

“There is trash everywhere, under that bridge,” he said. “Some of it probably floated down from upstream and collected there, and has probably been there for a long time, but a lot of that trash also looks like it was tossed from cars as they drive across the bridge. I hate seeing this. It has turned into a big dumping ground. ”

According to Houston city council member Mike Sullivan, who under former Mayor Bill White called for the formation of a committee to oversee water quality issues around Lake Houston and other area waterways, two main concerns with the San Jacinto river are sedimentation and pollution.

“It is a critical issue,” he said. “The Coastal Water Authority has a contract with the city for debris removal, and we will see if it encompasses that particular area under that bridge.”

Sullivan said that it is not unusual for debris to collect in the nooks and crannies of a riverbed, especially after a period of rain. If the city’s financial resources and priorities allow, he said, his office will look into a clean-up effort.

“But the government is not the solution for everything,” Sullivan said, calling area residents to shoulder some of the responsibility to keep their community clean and take action. “Businesses and organizations often adopt a street – that’s how you get things done. The annual city-sponsored Trash Bash is coming up, and that’s a perfect example of volunteers cleaning up the banks of Lake Houston and the San Jacinto.”

Develle, who has walked the bridge regularly for the last five years, said he is saddened by the defacement of the riverbanks.

“I don’t want to imagine what the bottom of the lake looks like. This is our drinking water,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of wild areas anymore. There tare ducks, swan, pelicans, deer – it’s one of the few wild places that’s left, but people have no respect for the environment.”

A recent press release issued by Crime Stoppers of Houston stated that illegal dumping and the effort to clean up the trash others left behind costs the city nearly $5 million each year.

Read The Full Story at HConline www.hcnonline.com/articles/2010/02/06/kingwood_observer/news/0610dumpingko.txt

Plastic Industry Partners With LA River Keepers

LOS ANGELES — In an ongoing effort to increase recycling in California, support environmental education and keep litter out of our waterways, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) today joined LA City Councilman Ed Reyes and representatives of the Los Angeles Conservation Corps on the banks of the LA River to announce a $100,000 contribution from ACC’s Plastics Division, Progressive Bag Affiliates and Plastic Foodservice Packaging Group to the LA River Keepers program. This program, developed in partnership with the Los Angeles Community Development Department and the Bureau of Sanitization, works to restore and revitalize sections of the LA River.

“Thanks to this new partnership , the LA River Keepers program will be able to continue its efforts to remove and recycle litter and debris from the beautiful LA River and promote environmental education, as well as provide ongoing opportunities for job skills training for our area youth,” said Bruce Saito, Executive Director of the LA Conservation Corps.

Read the full Story at Los Angeles Business News

Taxpayer Cost of Illegal Dumps In Collin County, TX= $3Million

This week Detective Sidney Parker, the Travis County Sheriff department’s sole environmental investigator installed surveillance cameras off of Lazy Creek Drive in an unincorporated part of Travis County near L.B.J. high school because the illegal dumping problem has gotten out of hand there.

“We’re seeing more and more of it. People that are leaving their homes are just taking their stuff and dumping them. Contractors are not taking them to the landfill to save cost and dumping them so it’s on the rise,” said Detective Parker.

This weekend KVUE took a deeper look at the root causes of the growing phenomenon with illegal dumping.

We found the problem is not exclusive to central Texas.

According to Dr. John Ockels with the non-profit Texas Illegal Dumping Resource Center there are several factors contributing to illegal dumping.

Ockels says 15  years ago there were some 800 landfills in all of Texas.  Tougher regulations has forced that number to dwindle to 200 statewide.

The slumping economy is another factor.  Fewer people are now willing to pay to discard of their waste properly.

The last factor has to do with the increasing cost of getting rid of waste period.

Read the full Story at KVUE

EcoSnoop iPhone App Allows You To Report Polluters

Eco Snoop iPhone app

Eco Snoop- iphone app allows you  report polluters in your neighborhood without being worried about repercussions. Plus you can post them on the web, and embarrass your neighbors into stop being such inconsiderate jerks.

The Eco Snoop allows you to report on wastage of water, energy, trash or toxic waste, plus you can view cases filed near you via GPS. I like this, my condo association checks sprinkler heads in the middle of the day, they were watering the golf course in the middle of the day, we are in a drought in California. Not only that , I can’t tell you how many times the freeways get watered in the middle of the day. Not only is California on water rationing and we are broke!

I like it.

Costa Rica Eco-Tourism

Illegal Dumping on BLM Lands Cost Taxpayer Money

Source: http://www.thesunnews.com/253/story/1234089.html

SKULL VALLEY, Utah — During a warm spell this fall, vandals hauled 18 decrepit televisions and computers down a narrow gravel road in Utah’s picturesque Skull Valley, dumped them on a hillside, blasted them with guns and left them for dead.

Nearby on the scrubby valley floor, other items have met the same fate: a hot water heater, paint cans, a candy vending machine, a couch and even a pile of mannequin heads.

Illegally dumped garbage is piling up on federal lands, often creating toxic hazards and costly cleanups. And nowhere is it more apparent than on the vast, often-stunning tracts owned by the Bureau of Land Management, the nation’s largest landlord with some 412,000 square miles, mostly in 12 Western states.

We can’t keep up with it,” Ray Kelsey, a BLM outdoor recreation specialist said on a recent trip to an outlaw dump site about 80 miles west of Salt Lake City. “It’s happening every day.”

The BLM doesn’t keep a nationwide tab on the number of illegal dump sites, but hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent each year to clean them up, said Georgette Fogle, who oversees the BLM’s solid waste program from Washington D.C. “Every state has a problem,” Fogle said.

That includes junk from meth labs in Alaska, solvents in Idaho, tires in Wyoming, burned-out cars in Colorado and washing machines in New Mexico. BLM officials fear more TVs will be abandoned as part of the switchover from analog to digital signals.

And where one pile of garbage shows up, others follow. ”If there’s trash there already, (people) feel like they can dump their own trash,” said Beth Barrie, project manager for Take Pride in America in southern Nevada.

BLM officials there say that over the last year, they’ve cleaned up more than 100 illegal dumps sites outside Las Vegas. Another 100 are scheduled for cleanup and about 35 are perpetual problems that may never be remediated.

Faced with mounting dump sites and expenses, BLM is now preparing a national appeal to the public to halt illegal dumping. A nationwide campaign could launch next year.

It’s no sure bet though. In many places, the BLM has put up signs asking the public not to litter. Many end up vandalized, destroyed or shot to pieces. It’s frustrating, said Kelsey, who worked on a recent cleanup that yielded more than 60 cubic yards of trash – enough to fill the beds of 20 to 30 pickup trucks – from a site in Skull Valley only to have it quickly littered again.

Dumpers tend to prefer places outside metropolitan areas with easy road access and scant law enforcement. The junk they leave behind not only fouls the landscape but can be hazardous to people and wildlife, such as the lead, mercury and other nasty substances in leaky TVs and computers.

The BLM is left having to hire a private hazardous material cleanup contractor. In Utah, BLM officials estimate they’ve spent more than $125,000 since 2005 to clean up dumped electronics. Catching the litterbugs in the act however has proven difficult, with rangers being outnumbered by the illegal dumpers and charged with patrolling millions of remote acres.

Those tenacious enough to dig through piles of trash for a name or address label sometimes come up with a lead. That’s how they caught a New Mexico woman who told authorities she paid a contractor to haul her garbage away and was surprised to learn it ended up on BLM land. Scofflaws are sometimes caught and fined but it’s rare. “I’d say 5 to 10 percent we can trace it back,” said Linda McGlothlen at BLM’s office in Colorado’s Royal Gorge office.

The dumps can sometimes mirror the state of the local economy, such as in the desert outside Las Vegas. In boom building times, there was construction waste like leftover wood, bricks and pipes. Now, it’s a grimmer reality. As the economy has flagged and people have been forced out of their homes, there’s been an increase in abandoned couches, toys, toilets and other household goods.

Barrie, of Take Pride in America, is part of a team at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas’ Public Lands Institute that’s working with federal agencies to find ways to curb dumping by improving stewardship and raising awareness. They’ve launched public ad campaigns and started an “adopt-a-parcel” program for neighbors to patrol nearby BLM land.

Successes against the dumping however have been hard-won.

One area popular with shooters outside Billings, Mont., was littered for years with discarded and bullet-ridden computers, microwaves, fire extinguishers and oil drums. Chuck Ward, a former BLM staff ranger who led efforts to clean up the site, theorizes a connection between testosterone and blowing things up. “They like to see stuff break,” Ward said.

Finally fed up, BLM officials and volunteers cleaned up the site and began regular patrols, handing out tickets and driving away lawbreakers.

“The only thing I’ve seen work is the way we did it: a clean slate after the cleanup and a physical presence there hard and heavy for 18 to 24 months,” Ward said.

Litter and Trash Taxpayer Cost In The UK

Photo:www.iowgreengym.blogspot.com/

LITTERBUGS spoiling Sutton town centre are to be shown the error of their ways thanks to some new devices.

Environmental wardens have been on hand to re-educate shoppers about litter disposal. The project, which continues until Christmas, has seen special pocket-sized bins given out to smokers to help them collect, rather than discard, their cigarette ends.

The plan is that multiple butts can be disposed of in one go when there is a larger bin nearby.

The cleaning up of individual ends flicked on the floor costs Birmingham City Council millions of pounds a year.

In total, the authority can spend up to £17.5m on street cleaning each year, with cigarettes and chewing gum – which can take up to five years to totally biodegrade – being the biggest blights. To support the anti-litter message, special wrappers to collect spat-out gum have been given to chewers.

Isle of Wight Green Gym – Official Blog.: Wed 19th Aug 2009 …

By Bob the Blog

We were also visited by a photographer from the County Press, as the Chairman of the CPRE (Council for the Protection of Rural England) presented our group with a certificate and a cheque for £100, for our work on their Anti-Litter …

Starbucks Recycles- Big Wow-Big Yawn- Another Me-Too

I am anti-Starbucks- because I think they are the biggest green hypocrites. I cannot tell you how many Starbucks coffee cups and lids are littered all over the streets. It’s not Starbuck’s fault that people litter- but they could do something about it such as big signs posted in their stores about recycling cups and lids- a sign that states’ please do not use lids if you don’t need them’- They could put recycling bins in the stores and the strip centers they operate out of. They could encourage people to bring their own mugs- not a measly $.05 cents off a cup of coffee for bringing your own mug. Their cups could be recyclable, they could have their staff picking up litter and participating in litter clean ups, since so much of the litter is theirs.

I read about how they opened up a store using reclaimed materials (another yawner), using solar energy (another me-too) not once, do you read about them picking up litter- which is more hazardous and toxic than opening 1 store using reclaimed materials.

I Just Gotta Tell Ya

• 2.3 Billion paper cups are used by Starbucks
• Currently, 58 billion paper cups are used in restaurants, events and homes in the U.S. each year. According to a Global Green press release, “If all paper cups in the U.S. were recycled, 645,000 tons of waste would be diverted from landfills each year, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2.5 million mtCO2e, equivalent to removing 450,000 passenger cars from the road.”
• Landfills are the final resting place for three billion Starbucks coffee cups annually. The polyethylene coating that lines and seals the inner cup makes the perfectly repulpable paper non-recyclable.

Here is Starbucks Social Responsibility Statement

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

‘At Starbucks, we strive to be a great enduring company by championing business practices that help produce social, environmental and economic benefits for the communities in which we operate. Starbucks focuses its efforts on providing a great work environment for our partners (employees); making a positive contribution to our communities; working with coffee farmers to help ensure their long-term success and minimizing our environmental impact. ’

So now that it is the ‘in thing’, 7 stores in Manhattan will start recycling. Big Wow! I mean really, litter has been an issue for over 500 years, and hardly anyone can walk down a street without seeing Starbucks litter. Coffee lids have been a problem for years- a problem that Canada is considering charging $.20 for coffee cup lids. Can you really tell me the people at Starbucks don’t see their coffee containers in the streets?

The last Starbucks I was in- about 1 month ago- carried only 1 organic coffee and no Fair Trade coffee. I asked the staff and THEY DIDN’T KNOW WHAT FAIR TRADE WAS. Unbelievable, especially when Starbucks talks about how they train their people and how ‘environmentally sensitive they are.

Are the Cups even recyclable? A post from Organic Consumers -’The sleeves on the cups even plead, “Help us help the planet.”  But don’t be confused. Starbucks promotes recycling on its cups, but the cups themselves aren’t recyclable here or in most other cities nationwide. ”Well, they tricked me,” said Nicole Mejias, 22, a self-described Starbucks freak. “I immediately associate recycling with Starbucks because of their cups. That’s so hypocritical. I would have never guessed” that the cups weren’t easily recyclable.

The reason: The plastic coating that keeps the cup from leaking also prevents it from being recycled with other paper products. That could be overcome, but it would cost more.  Anything can be recycled, but “The system is not designed to take the individual Starbucks cups,” said Steve Sargent, director of recycling for Rumpke Recycling, Columbus’ largest recycler.

Waste Management, North America’s largest recycler, won’t take the cups, either. But many employees have been telling customers otherwise. They say their Seattle-based employer never made the situation clear.

“I totally thought the cups were recyclable. I think almost everyone did,” said Melanie O’Brien, an Otterbein College student studying environmental initiatives who has worked at Starbucks. Recently, workers at a Clintonville Starbucks started taking cups to recycling sites themselves, because they felt guilty that they were being thrown away.

But an employee from the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio informed them that their efforts were pointless because recyclers would accept neither their plastic nor paper cups. An official with the Ohio Division of Natural Resources commended Starbucks for using recycled materials, but said the company is missing a bigger point…… Starbucks cups aren’t compostable, and the company doesn’t offer free reusable cups. But it sells travel mugs and offers a 10-cent discount to customers who bring their own cups.

Customers in the United States and Canada took that offer more than 17 million times in 2006, saving 674,000 pounds of paper, said Starbucks spokeswoman Valerie Carlborg. Starbucks said that a more-recyclable cup wasn’t an option, but the cup manufacturer disagreed. ”It’s all about the money; the question is whether they would be willing to pay for it,” said Kelvin Okamoto, manager of materials and engineer at SOLO Cup Co., which is based in Illinois.  Making that change could double the cost of cups, he said, “which means consumers would likely have to pay more, too.”

If Starbucks really wanted to be sustainable- Here is what they should do:

1. Charge $1.00 for the cup and $.25 for the lid. $.25 for the brown wrap and $1.00 for the coffee.
2. Post Big Sign- Please Recycle lids and cups-
3. Put litter facts on their cups and signage.
4. Place Recycle Bins through out strip Centers or around area where their store is.
5. Have staff be responsible for litter pick up in 2 block radius of store
6. Have community litter pick up events.
7. Quit worrying about their solar energy- it benefits all in the long run-but will bring down their overhead and they will not pass the costs on to the consumer.
8. Convert to fully recyclable cups and lids

Again, I repeat Starbucks is not responsible for people littering. They could make it easier to recycle their products, they could pass on litter facts, they could live up to their corporate sustainability statement, they could encourage and reward people for recycling and picking up trash- they could be a leader again instead of a follower. When that happens- I will again start to support Starbucks.

Taxpayer Cost of Coal Ash Spill=$800 Million

Photo: World Socialist Web Site

On February 12, the Tennessee Valley Authority board met for the first time since the December 22, 2008 collapse of an earthen damn at their Kingston Fossil Plant. The collapse allowed 1.1 billion gallons of toxin-filled coal ash waste to pour over some 300 acres of farm and residential land and into two local rivers. (See “Worst coal ash spill in US history ruins huge area in Tennessee”)

In a press release, TVA stated, “Current estimates on clean-up costs range from $525 million to $825 million, depending on the method of ash disposal that is assumed. The range does not include costs for items such as regulatory actions, litigation or long-term environmental remediation.”

TVA President Tom Kilgore said the spill was worse than the agency’s public relations staff initially had suggested. “It was a ‘catastrophe,” he said, contradicting an internal talking-points memo, obtained by the Associated Press, in which the description of the disaster had been changed from “catastrophic” to a “sudden accidental” release, apparently to make it sound less devastating.

The same memo had also been edited to remove “risk to public health and risk to the environment” as a reason for measuring water quality, and eliminated a reference to the potential of an “acute threat” to fish.

After a much smaller blowout in a different section of the coal-fired Kingston power plant’s massive wet-storage landfill in late 2003, and a subsequent TVA investigation, several repair alternatives were suggested ranging in cost from $480,000 to $25 million. TVA chose to ignore their own report and addressed the 2003 leak as well as ones in 2006 and in 2007 with cheaper—and far less effective—methods.

To Read the full article click Here

Clear Up Pollution and Budgets At The Same Time

Here is what I think- all these states and in particular my home state of California have dire budgetary problems- Yesterday I saw 2 cars idling away- no ticket. Think of how much money we would save if the following happened:

1.) Every person who was not using a headset when using the phone and driving actually got a ticket. 

2.) People that littered actually were stopped and fined! 

3,) Greenbelts owned by HOA’s were actually fined for all the litter they produce. 

4.) Schools- charged parents for litter from their children- and charged athletic teams for litter pick up after the games. 

5.) Overwatering by HOA’s were fined. 

6.) All those GARAGE SALE SIGNS- still up 24 hours after the garage sale- fined again. You have the address! 

If I see this everyday when I walk- some cop- police officer and sheriff also sees this. Not only could we stop the problem of litter, we could save millions of dollars in litter pickups! 

E- Magazine 

New York City is cracking down on excessive vehicle idling in its aggressive statewide campaign known as the Stop Smoking Initiative for Trucks. Emissions from diesel-engine vehicles contain sulfur dioxide, particulate matter and nitrogen oxide, creating ground-level ozone that contributes to hundreds of thousands of asthma attacks in the U.S. each year.

Getty Images

Currently, NYC has a three-minute idling limit that targets all vehicles, with certain exceptions. But the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) has taken the matter to the streets by setting up so-called “enforcement actions” in heavy truck “hot spots” and issuing tickets to violating offenders. So far, the NYSDEC has committed to performing one operation per month in one of the five boroughs. And city residents can take part in the crackdown by calling 311 to report excessive idling.

The initiative comes on the heels of a successful city-state crackdown on truck and boiler pollution conducted in October 2008 in East Harlem, a neighborhood clouded by poor air quality caused by heavy truck traffic. During the operation, NYSDEC officers together with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection issued 43 tickets for excessive idling and an additional 163 tickets to diesel truck operators for various air and safety regulation violations.

The Empire State is not alone in its efforts to curb idling. Since there is no national anti-idling law, 15 states, including California, Maryland and Connecticut, and a number of local communities have created their own anti-idling laws. According to the American Transportation Research Institute, fines for excessive idling vary widely by state, ranging anywhere from $100 up to $15,000 for a first-time offense.

Air Pollution- 2009 Overview

American Lung Association has just released the results of their Annual State of the Air Report. Here are the results of their 2009 Health Risks Overview. 

Air Pollution

Ozone and particle pollution are the most widespread air pollutants and among the most dangerous. Recent research has revealed new insights into how they can harm the body including taking the lives of infants and altering the lungs of children. All in all, the evidence shows that the risks are greater than we once thought. Recent findings provide more evidence about the health impacts of these pollutants:

• Reducing air pollution has extended life expectancy. Thanks to a drop in particle pollution between 1980 and 2000, life expectancy in 51 U.S. cities increased by 5 months on average, according to a recent analysis.¹
• The annual death toll from particle pollution may be even greater than previously understood. The California Air Resources Board recently tripled the estimate of premature deaths in California from particle pollution to 18,000 annually.²
• Long term exposure to air pollution.especially from highway traffic.harms women, even while in their 50s. Exposure to particle pollution to appears to increase women’s risk of lower lung function, developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and dying prematurely.³
• Busy highways are high risk zones. Pollution from heavy highway traffic contributes to higher risks for heart attack, allergies, premature births and the death of infants around the time they are born.⁴ New studies looking at the impact of traffic pollution even in cities with generally cleaner air expanded the concern over the health effects of chronic exposure to exhaust from heavy traffic.
• Ozone pollution can shorten life, a conclusion confirmed by the latest scientific review by the National Research Council.⁵ New evidence appeared that some segments of the population may face higher risks from dying prematurely because of ozone pollution, including communities with high unemployment or high public transit use and Blacks.⁶
• Truck drivers, dockworkers and railroad workers may face higher risk of death from lung cancer and COPD from breathing diesel emissions on the job. Studies found that these workers who inhaled diesel exhaust on the job were much more likely to die from lung cancer, COPD and heart disease.⁷

Two types of air pollution dominate the problem in the U.S.. ozone and particle pollution. They aren’t the only serious air pollutants: others include carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide, as well as hundreds of toxic substances. However, ozone and particle pollution represent the most widespread.

FACT: Minorities and lower income groups are often disproportionately affected by illnesses that put them at higher risk from air pollution