On Thursday, April 7th, 2011, on the Green rooftop of the Environmental Health Watch Building, Environment Ohio released a new report showing that smog-forming pollution from Ohio’s power plants puts children’s health and Ohio’s environment at risk - Environment Ohio - Clean Air Program Reports - Dirty Energy’s Assault on Our Health: Ozone Pollution - 2011-04-07.  From the press release for the news conference announcing this report:

Power plants create the ingredients for dangerous ozone pollution, commonly referred to as smog, and the report ranks which power plants emit the most smog-forming pollution in Ohio and nationwide, and highlights the latest findings about how smog impacts our health and environment.

The report comes as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is set to finalize a standard in July to help reduce smog pollution, which could save up to 12,000 lives per year. Yet Congress and industry lobbyists are working to keep EPA from doing its job by threatening to block rules that limit dangerous air pollution. Environment Ohio is urging Senator Sherrod Brown to stand up for Ohioans’ health and support the EPA.

Earth Month Tip of the Day: It's electric.

Today's environmental tip: It's electric! You can check how much of your electricity comes from renewable “green” power sources, such as wind or solar. Green power produces less carbon emissions, reduces air pollution, and helps protect against future costs or scarcity of fossil fuels. If green power is a consumer option, check price differences from suppliers before you buy.

Today's environmental tip: Be sensible! The Earth might seem like it has abundant water, but in fact only one percent of all water on the planet is available for humans. Buy fixtures and products that are water efficient - you can use less water to get the same job done just as well. When you go shopping, look for the WaterSense label to find water efficient products.

EPA Celebrates National Public Health Week April 4-10, 2011

Posted on April 4th, 2011 - 10:30 AM

By  Administrator Lisa P. Jackson

When we talk about environmentalism, it typically brings to mind sweeping vistas and wide-open landscapes. Some people might think of saving the whales, protecting spotted owls or preserving old-growth forests. Those things are critically important – but they only tell part of the story. When the modern environmental movement got its start in the 1960s, it took hold in our nation’s cities and was led by people concerned about pollution in the air they were breathing, toxins in the water they were drinking and chemicals on the food they were eating.

The effort to safeguard our environment started – and continues to be – an effort to safeguard our health.

Living in Cleveland, fighting against excessive polluting by popular local industrial interests, I've found environmental and climate awareness here brain-dead... zombified... people walking in an unnatural smog, accepting unnatural death around them. So I appreciate a mathematical explanation of how an entire city of 500,000 may become dominated by environmental zombies - from today's Climate Progress, which references a study of the proliferation of zombies finding they will drive humanity to the collapse of civilization.... I believe this effectively explains Cleveland (and much of America) today:

The model showed two equilibria: the disease-free equilibrium (with no zombies) and the doomsday equilibrium (where everyone is a zombie). The application of a linear stability analysis showed that — in the absence of further interventions — the disease-free equilibrium was unstable and the doomsday equilibrium was stable. This finding was not promising.

Simulations based on a city of roughly 500,000 people demonstrated that an entire such city would be replaced by zombies [rapidly]. Were this mass replacement of a population to occur in a city such as Washington, DC, it may be unlikely anyone would notice.

There is a solution: "the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to attack hard and attack often":

As a citizen interested in clean energy and renewable fuels, who lives in an environmental injustice hotspot, heavily polluted by fossil fuel emissions, that needs cleaner energy solutions in our region, I have been excited to see President Obama and his core department leadership - especially Department of Energy Secretary Chu and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Jackson - embrace and champion the urgency of moving America beyond our dependency on ecologically-destructive fossil fuels, toward development of a sustainable, localized, environmentally, socially and economically positive biomass and biofuels energy economy, which shall include industrial hemp grown in the United States of America once again, beginning in 2011.

From the conclusion of a speech by President Obama, at Georgetown University, today, on the Blueprint for A Secure Energy Future for America:

We’re already paying a price for our inaction.  Every time we fill up at the pump, every time we lose a job or a business to countries that are investing more than we do in clean energy, when it comes to our air, our water, and the climate change that threatens the planet that you will inherit -– we’re already paying a price.  These are costs that we are already bearing.  And if we do nothing, the price will only go up.

So at moments like these, sacrificing these investments in research and development, in supporting clean energy technologies, that would weaken our energy economy and make us more dependent on oil.  That’s not a game plan to win the future. That’s a vision to keep us mired in the past.  I will not accept that outcome for the United States of America.  We are not going to do that.  (Applause.)

Thanks to Laura McShane for pointing out an excellent article on lead poisoning research at Case Western Reserve University, in the Fall/Winter 2010 Think Magazine - with multimedia features - on-line at Getting the Lead Out: Fifteen years after being effectively removed from the U.S. market, the prolific danger of leaded gasoline becomes clearer. 

This reports on Childhood lead exposure and uptake in teeth in the Cleveland area during the era of leaded gasoline - a recent Case Western Reserve University-affiliated analysis of the lead burden of Cleveland children through the period when leaded gasoline was introduced and later phased out (from about 1930 to 1990), surfacing critical implications.

Comparison of relative temporal changes in lead concentration in tooth enamel and lake sediments, and relative changes in the total amount of lead additives to gasoline. Maximum absolute values and symbols are:  4.94 μg/g (teeth, smoothed data, uninterrupted line), 72.7 ppm (“new core Lake Erie sediment, triangles), 41.1 ppm  (Graney et al., 1995 Lake Erie sediment, open circles), and 253,000 mt of lead additives to gasoline produced in the US, closed circles (see Methods).

U.S. Fossil Fuel Carbon Dioxide Map (red = most polluted, blue = least polluted)

I'm certain more people than ever in history are interested in the subject of global air pollution monitoring, as a deteriorating cluster of nuclear power plant disasters in Northern Japan are already contaminating the Earth's atmosphere with deadly radioactive emissions, which will blow across the Pacific Ocean and in other directions to all points downwind until they settle back to Earth, on us, our land, in our water, and into our food-streams.

From the Wall Street Journal's Monday, March 13, reporting about nuclear fallout from the meltdown in Japan, which has taken many turns for the worst since then...

If the Japanese nuclear core were to melt, certain radioactive materials, such as iodine, strontium and cesium, would also be released. These particles are one-quarter the size of a grain of salt and can be carried by winds. The larger the grains, the more quickly they would fall out of the air.

EPA's 2005 National Air Toxins Assessment looks at human health impacts from estimated, chronic inhalation exposures based on emissions data from the
2005 National Emissions Inventory for hazardous air pollutants, assuming these emissions remain constant throughout one's lifetime

On March 11, 2011, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sent a press release (below) and held conference calls supporting release of the fourth update of the National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) - a computer tool that helps federal, state, local governments and other stakeholders better understand the potential health risks from exposure to air toxics.  The EPA  states: "the National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) contains 2005 emissions data submitted primarily from the states for 178 pollutants. Models are used to make broad estimates of health risks for areas of the country.  The tool is not designed to determine actual health risks to individuals living in these areas." "Because the data submitted varies from state to state, it is also not possible to use the data to compare risks between different areas of the country."

As someone who lives in Cleveland, Ohio, which the Federal EPA and their NATA prove is highly polluted and unhealthy, I truly appreciate access to all environmental data management and mapping services the EPA may provide, as real-time as possible. These federal government tools offer citizens access to information that allows us to make better life-decisions - like where to live - and empowers us to be better environmental stewards - like shutting down coal pollution in our own backyards.

Data provided by U.S. Census Bureau.

Cleveland Sees Plunge in Population, reports the Wall Street Journal today, announcing: "A larger-than-expected exodus from Cleveland during the past decade shrunk the city's population by 17% to about 397,000, according to U.S. Census data released Wednesday." That's right, Cleveland's population has crashed below the 400K floor for the first time since around the start of the 20th Century, which triggers all sorts of unsustainable, shrinking, un-re-imaginable financial and political realities for leadership and citizens here.

Perhaps the only silver lining is that this proof of Cleveland political and leadership failure will have a significant price of leaders' heads. From the Wall Street Journal:

Political observers said the decline could tilt the balance of political power in one of America's most hotly contested swing states.

"Ohio is expected to lose two congressional districts, and this big decline in Cleveland suggests that both could come out of northeastern Ohio," a Democratic stronghold, said John Green, a University of Akron political-science professor.

I just received an email from the EPA announcing it "updated its database that helps Americans understand the health and environmental impacts of electricity generation" and now provides a useful public interface - "Power Profiler is a user friendly online application that uses eGRID data to show air emissions information and the type of electricity generation, such as coal or nuclear, in various regions of the country.  By simply entering a zip code and selecting a utility, users can learn more about where their electricity comes from and what impact it has on air quality and the environment."

Good morning,

The state of the American education system today is unacceptable. As many as one quarter of American students don’t finish high school. We've fallen to ninth place in the proportion of young people with college degrees. The quality of our math and science education lags behind many other nations.

For the sake of the next generation, and America's economic future, this has to change.

EPA Awards $32 Million to Understand Health Impacts of Air Pollution

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded $32 million to fund four new Clean Air Research Centers at universities conducting cutting edge air pollution research. The research will focus on the impacts of air pollution mixtures on people’s health. It is important to understand the health risks associated with exposure to multiple air pollutants because people are exposed to more than one pollutant at a time.“These centers are critical to understanding how to improve air quality and protect Americans’ health from complex mixtures of air pollutants,” said Dr. Paul Anastas, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Research and Development. “The centers will focus on important scientific questions remaining in air research.”

Environmental Justice - It ain't a RACE thing - it's an INJUSTICE thing

As thoroughly documented on realNEO, over a course of many years - and now being thoroughly addressed by the EPA through their courses of action - Cleveland has environmental justice problems to solve.

Right now - through April 8, 2011 - the EPA is asking for your help determining how they carry out that responsibility, as they want public comment on THEIR Guide to Providing Environmental Justice for YOU.

As quoted from the EPA's Interim Guidance on Considering Environmental Justice During the Development of an Action, introduced and linked below: "Environmental justice (EJ) is central to the Agency’s mission and is the responsibility of everyone at EPA".

At the beginning of the 21st Century - a time when the pace of global evolution was certain to be astounding in every way, in accelerating change each day - especially as driven by transformational new Information Technologies (IT) and services - a serious, young college computer science student wrote some historic collaboration software, in his dorm-room, to help his fellow students communicate more effectively in their evolving, un-tethering, socially-networked world, and that software has been helping citizens freely interconnect with greater impact each day since, to save the world.

The early days of this software are beloved, in real geek-lore:

In 2000, permanent Internet connections were at a premium for University students, so two students set up a wireless bridge between their student dorms to share one of the students' ADSL modem connection among eight students. While this was an extremely luxurious situation at that time, something was missing: There was no means to discuss or share simple things.

This inspired the other student to work on a small news site with a built-in web board, allowing the group of friends to leave each other notes about the status of the network, to announce where they were having dinner, or to share some noteworthy news items.

The software did not have a name until the day after that student moved out after graduation. The group decided to put the internal website on-line so they could stay in touch, keep sharing interesting findings, and narrate snippets of their personal lives. While looking for a suitable domain name...

Sunset over Lake Erie from Whiskey Island, on a nearly perfect Summer's day. Dedicated to Citizen Ed Hauser.

Dear Mr. Wolstein,

Please hold off on using the Forum Architects' plans for your redevelopment in the Flats, as much has improved in the prospects for this city and region since they were conceived - there is new energy, life and opportunity coming into Cleveland that will improve the prospects for this most important historic site that I've been vocal in my disappointment to see go.

As you are moving forward in new directions, Cleveland and regional leaders including myself must move forward in many new directions previously inconceivable. As such, planning needs frequent re-visioning - and may in fact be open sourced, real-time and community enabled with world class information technology, which we'll be developing more of in Northeast Ohio in the future.

Most significant, we are in the process of removing from our community the dangerous pollution emitted from the coal burning at FirstEnergy Lake Shore (already decommissioning), MCCO, in University Circle, and Cleveland Thermal, next door to your site (your greatest liability, easily made an asset), and the outrageous environmental injustice from Mittal and some other industrial operations - and the direct and fugitive emissions from the mobile pollution sources servicing them - ships, trains and trucks  - that are just not safe for dense urban neighborhoods, which we must save and restore. There are economically viable solutions to all these challenges - it does not need to be this way!

Dear Mr. Mowry, Chief Information Officer, Cuyahoga County, Ohio:

Welcome Home.

Without a doubt, you hold the most opportune and important office in the region, today, and I wish you great success.

As I informed the Very Reverend Lind, of Trinity Cathedral, I am posting this outreach for the help of her good people to move Cleveland Thermal and so Cleveland beyond coal. Please reach out to these friends of the community with your words of support for a cleaner, safer, healthier, more prosperous Cleveland and NEO for all, beyond coal.

Dear Reverend Lind and supporters of Trinity Cathedral:
Norm Roulet <norm [at] realneo [dot] us>     Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 4:01 PM
To: tlind [at] dohio [dot] org
Cc: Nachy Kanfer <nachy [dot] kanfer [at] sierraclub [dot] org>
Dear Very Reverend Lind and supporters of Trinity Cathedral:

I appreciate your presence and good work in this community, and know you are prominent preachers for goodness, on a good Earth.

It has come to my attention that Trinity Cathedral is a customer of the Cleveland Thermal coal steam plant in the Flats, providing excessively-polluting utilities to your facilities on Euclid Avenue - that is featured on their website at http://www.clevelandthermal.com/services/case-studies

Cimperman for Congress 2008 - Top Donors - featuring Charles Evans from Dominion Cleveland Thermal for $2,000 - I assume the DiSanto, Frederick D. of Ancora Advisors LLC listed here for $2,300 is the same Ancora of Grenwich, Connecticut that bought Cleveland Thermal from Dominion in 2004:

RICHMOND, Va., July 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Dominion (NYSE: D) announced today that it has agreed to sell Dominion Cleveland Thermal to Ancora Management LLC of Greenwich, Connecticut. Closing is expected in the fourth quarter of 2004. Terms of the sale were not disclosed and the sale is subject to regulatory approval.

Look at all the other corrupting industrial and developer scum on Cimpermans buy-list who have been screwing Cleveland... wonder what each one wanted in return for their $1,000s... lucky Cimperman lost by a mile. Time to rid Cleveland of the power of all these self-serving, citizen-killing parasites forever!
 

Top 100 Donations/Contributions in the '08 Election Cycle to
JOE CIMPERMAN FOR CONGRESS

Name/ Location	Employer/ Occupation	Contribution $ Amount	Primary/ General	Date
Adams, Al T. Cleveland, OH 44114	Baker/Attorney	$2,300	P	02/12/2008
Alexander, Anthony Akron, OH 44308	FirstEnergy Corporation/President	$2,300	P	02/28/2008

An ambient film of real NEO people walking, shot from outside the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper headquarters, featuring late afternoon activity in the newsroom as seen from Superior Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, realNEO... "Schism" by TOOL is playing in the background, accompanied by the sounds of realNEO..

I've often wondered why the Cleveland Plain Dealer has been so disrespectful and harmful to me - I believe the following documents will explain - The Cleveland Plain Dealer is a Cleveland Thermal customer and so Cleveland Environmental Justice criminal - I know the Pieces Fit!

Document Record

View Image

Date Filed:  Document Type:  Number of pages:  Case Numbers:  Summary: 

2/5/1997 7:20:03 AM

TX-Text

000012

89-0362-HT-AEC

Alternate energy steam service agreement between Cleveland thermal Energy and The Plain Dealer Publishing Company, filed on behalf of applicant by S. Howard. (12 pgs.)

Dear Sierra Club President and Nachy Kanfer - Campuses Beyond Coal:

Please Add Cleveland State University to your "Campuses Beyond Coal" Campaign and begin organizing against their primary energy provider, the astoundingly deadly, coal-polluting, private-investor-owned Cleveland Thermal coal furnace in the Cleveland Flats!

Cleveland State University (CSU) is the largest customer of Cleveland Thermal, and so must take a lead in moving this community beyond coal.

I don't imagine President Obama realized this sad situation, prior to his recent visit to Cleveland to meet with small business leaders and government representative at CSU about "jump-starting" our local economy, killed by pollution. I'm sure if he knew he was supporting environmental injustice here, in that way, he would have chosen a more socially-just venue to promote. Cleveland State University is not included in your "Campuses Beyond Coal" campaign, and should be added and activated immediately - Cleveland Thermal is one of the largest polluters in America - we must bring this to light and move them beyond coal to protect Clevelanders.

From realNEO:

There has been considerable conflict in industry and government - and Federal courts - over the emissions from large boilers and incinerators in America, and so Northeast Ohio, leading to new Clean Air Act standards for boilers and certain incinerators announced by the EPA today. As all America now acts to implement these new standards, it will be interesting to see what branches of government in Northeast Ohio monitor or even are aware of all the boilers and incinerators in this region - their current emissions and control technologies - which are out of compliance with the new standards - what they need to do to comply - what costs are involved to comply with the new act - what reductions in pollution will result, where - who will see reductions in their ambient and point source pollution - what benefits to public health will result - and how that will improve the value of property in this area. The public should be provided with this information immediately so we may make long term plans about where we live and what property we choose to own.

Battles over such rules are at the root of all evil in industry and America today - the heart of the tea party efforts to corrupt government by the Koch Brothers and their billionaire murderers and fans and followers in industries like coal and oil - The Fossil Boys - and the harm they have caused activists for clean energy, clean social networks like realNEO, the American people, and global climate. Thank you Federal EPA for your good fight for the health of Americans.

And you thought the tea party was actually about ending gays, abortion and unions! It was always all about the right to pollute and kill Americans! Time to end the party and fix America, everyone!

EPA Establishes Clean Air Act Standards for Boilers and Incinerators  

Sensible standards provide significant public health benefits while cutting costs from initial proposal by nearly 50 percentWASHINGTON – In response to federal court orders requiring the issuance of final standards, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is issuing final Clean Air Act standards for boilers and certain incinerators that achieve significant public health protections through reductions in toxic air emissions, including mercury and soot, but cut the cost of implementation by about 50 percent from an earlier proposal issued last year.

Mercury, soot, lead and other harmful pollutants released by boilers and incinerators can lead to developmental disabilities in children, as well as cancer, heart disease, aggravated asthma and premature death in Americans. These standards will avoid between 2,600-6,600 premature deaths, prevent 4,100 heart attacks and avert 42,000 asthma attacks per year in 2014.

 
Dear Fellow Ohio Sierra Club Members,

At the start of this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally began using its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Already, however, powerful forces in Congress--including some Democrats--are working to strip that authority away or delay its long-overdue implementation. We need to make sure Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown stands firm in defense of EPA's authority to cut greenhouse gas pollution right away.

EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gases is the only tool we have right now at the national level to start combating climate change. Taking it away--or delaying it after all these years of inaction--is absolutely unacceptable.

We all need to call Senator Brown today with a single message: