Base cleanup in Phillippines Urged

Good work Myrla!

US bases cleanup pinned on Obama
By Tonette Orejas, Central Luzon Desk

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – Officials of a Filipino group that has been pressing the United States since 1992 to clean up the toxic wastes left in its former military bases in Central Luzon said they are hoping that incoming American President Barack Obama would heed this clamor.

“We’re seeing there is more openness and more like us having an access to his office because there are a lot of allies [who] have supported him during his campaign and have gone to his conventions. [They are] Filipino-Americans who have been working on this issue to get the US to clean up,” Myrla Baldonado, executive director of the People’s Task Force for Bases Cleanup (PTFBC), said here on Monday.

These, as well as Obama’s background as a community organizer in Chicago and his social advocacies, including his receptive staff, make the campaign feasible now, she said.

“Also, I’m seeing more hope in the American people becoming allies especially in the peace movement so they can put pressure on the government for them to act in a way that’s very different from past administrations,” she said.

Obstacles

But the PTFBC, Baldonado said, still expected many obstacles in the campaign to repair the environment of the former Clark Air Base and Subic Naval Base.

The Philippine government converted these into economic free ports starting 1991 without removing the contaminants left by almost a century of military use by the US.

A possible obstacle is Obama’s appointment of Sen. Hilary Clinton as state secretary, Baldonado said.

“This could be a repeat of the [Bill] Clinton administration where we have eight years of them denying responsibility then as if accepting responsibility, giving promises without doing anything substantial,” Baldonado said.

For another, Obama faces tough times, mainly the responsibility to stem, if not stop, the economic recession.

“It was easier to talk to him then but now he’s president of the… US, and he’s trying to deal with all sorts of people in making decisions, and there are pressures from the military industrial complex,” Baldonado said.

“It might be narrow, or very small, but there is a window of opportunity of reaching out,” she said.

“We don’t know if there’s going to be a cleanup within our lifetime or the lifetime of our organizational campaign but we know we’re leaving a legacy of keeping on, struggling, keeping on the pressures, empowering the people so they would continue,” she said.

No RP move

Baldonado said the Republicans, under outgoing US President George W. Bush, had adopted a resolution to clean up Clark and Subic.

Efforts by PTFBC’s partner, the Filipino-American Coalition for Environmental Solution, ran aground when the Republicans did not pursue the resolution and the Arroyo administration did not make demands, she said.

In 2004, the Dominican Order in the Philippines lobbied at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to press the US to end its “toxic legacy” in the Philippines.

It said the Philippine government “lacked the political will in negotiating with the US for the environmental cleanup and compensation for the victims.”

The Dominicans also told the UNCHR that as of 2004, at least 375 people, 282 of them children, had died around Subic of leukemia. Twelve more cases have been monitored around Clark.

At least 8,000 workers at the former Subic Ship Repair Yard had been exposed to asbestos, radioactivity and other toxic chemicals.

Around 43,000 more Subic workers had handled toxic chemicals and ammunition. Many suffer from various types of cancer, the group said.

Toxic Triangle Testing Drags On

By Greg M. Schwartz, SA Current

The EPA took air samples back in May in the Toxic Triangle surrounding former Kelly Air Force Base, where local residents fear contaminated groundwater is responsible for a rash of cancer cases and other diseases. Results from these tests were revealed in August, but local station WOAI reported just last month that EPA is still running those tests. So what’s the deal?

Gary Miller, a senior permitting specialist for EPA Region 6, says the agency presented the results to homeowners in August and that none of the vapor intrusion test data for tetrachloroethene (PCE) was “above screening levels of concern.” Gas from soil was tested at 20 homes, while five homes received indoor air testing, but thanks to public pressure, EPA has agreed to come back for further sampling in February in the North Kelly Gardens area. Miller says EPA will also look at two other neighborhoods — one off Quintana Road, between the main base and East Kelly, and another off Commercial Street.

“The EPA’s study is too little and too late,” says Lara Cushing, environmental-justice coordinator for the Southwest Workers Union. She notes that two of the five indoor air samplings showed what EPA calls a “site specific” level of concern for PCE, meaning not high but not low either, and that indoor air was not sampled in the home with the highest soil-contamination results.

“While five is an extremely small number of homes, and the results are not off the charts, they do show for the first time that vapor intrusion is happening here,” says Cushing. “More importantly, they indicate that for decades while the plume concentrations were higher, hundreds if not thousands of families were likely breathing dangerous levels of gas inside their homes that elevated their risk of getting cancer. It also raises real concern about what workers at Boeing and Lockheed Martin may be breathing today, since they work above the most contaminated source area for the plumes. Port San Antonio and the Air Force have denied EPA access to test in those buildings. So while the Air Force continues to fund studies to test tortillas for cancer-causing fungi, and the EPA tells residents not to worry, the community’s right to a clean up, health care, and justice are as strong as ever.”

EPA’s Miller says the agency will select 10-15 homes to test further, but that EPA has only been able to access 50 percent of the homes they’ve requested permission to test. Anyone with concerns about a home in one of the aforementioned areas should contact Miller immediately at (214) 665-8306 or miller.gary@epa.gov. And do let the Current know about your inquiry so we can follow your efforts.

Nuke struggles featured in left turn magazine

Nix the Nukes: Dispatch from the Frontlines of the Texas Energy Wars

By Lara Cushing, November 2008

On October 29 of last year, two dozen community leaders found themselves banging against the boardroom door of their public utility, City Public Service (CPS). The board, which includes the mayor, was poised to approve an initial $206 million investment in two nuclear reactors – the first in the country in nearly 30 years. CPS had already quietly applied for a license along with its private partner, NRG Energy. We’d petitioned and been granted time to speak, but instead faced police – though they failed to shut us out.

Southwest Workers’ Union (SWU) recognized the nuclear proposal as a pivotal point in San Antonio’s energy policy, and a critical moment to intervene in the good ole’ boy system of dirty energy development, which planned to build a new power plant every four years. As a multi-racial, intergeneration, membership-based organization representing 2,500 local school workers and low income families – all CPS ratepayers –we felt we had to take on the nukes and demand a transparent CPS that prioritized efficiency and renewable energy as a matter of social justice.

While CPS likes to boast of its low rates, utility bills are high here because our low-income homes waste more energy than in any other large city in the South. The dirty plants that produce that energy are located in the same communities. Meanwhile, CPS’s conservation programs give rebates to folks that can afford to buy new appliances or solar arrays – leaving the majority of families out. A 2004 study commissioned by CPS found that San Antonio could save almost as much energy as it would gain from the nukes through efficiency programs. That goal was never implemented. In our campaign, we champion retrofitting and local renewable installations as vehicles for green job creation to lift working families out of poverty and lower utility bills at the same time.

As the debate on federal climate change policy finally heats up, most of us doing grassroots organizing anywhere but the coasts find ourselves left out in the cold. Restructuring our energy systems to combat global warming is an opportunity to take on larger issues of poverty and inequity, but only if we ensure that the green economy isn’t just a new emerging market for big business. Models for harnessing the green economy from the Bay Area or New York won’t necessarily work in poor communities like San Antonio, with a small tax base, few resources, and less political will. Nevertheless SWU is pushing to land climate justice on the ground locally in Texas in a way that lifts up working families of color and can serve as a model for similar communities around the country.

Hostile territory

We are in some pretty hostile territory. The Gulf Coast is a stronghold of the energy industry – home to 57 refineries and 60 percent of the US oil refining capacity. Texas generates more electricity from coal than any other state, and leads the nation in mercury emissions. If it were a country, Texas would be ranked number seven in greenhouse gas emissions. Ten new coal plants are in the works since Governor Rick Perry ordered fast-tracking of the permit process, shutting out community participation.

In San Antonio, CPS started building its third coal-fired power plant in 2005 after a long battle with the local community. Mercury- and smog-forming pollution from these plants blows towards the overwhelmingly Mexican and African-American side of San Antonio. Someone in nearly one in four households there suffers from asthma.

Now CPS wants to build two nuclear reactors at the South Texas Project, calling it “clean” power. But the communities living along the nuclear life cycle know nukes are anything but clean. We still have no way to safely dispose of radioactive waste. The federal government continues to push for the development of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository, despite concerns over contamination of the water relied upon for drinking and by dairy farmers; regular earthquakes; and the presence of a volcano in the area.

Yucca Mountain is part of the Western Shoshone Nation’s traditional lands, and was recognized as such under treaty with the US government in 1863. The development of Yucca Mountain as a disposal site is desecration of Western Shoshone sovereignty and values. A resurgence of interest in uranium also has south Texas communities scrambling to resist mining permits in their sole source of drinking water. None of the drinking water aquifers subject to uranium mining in south Texas have ever been successfully restored.

SWU has a long history challenging environmental racism with the ultimate goal of community empowerment. Through grassroots organizing and direct action, we forced CPS to hold public hearings on the nuclear proposal. We shared the true story of energy alternatives in popular education sessions to develop the leadership of our members to advocate for themselves. We forged strong alliances with South Texas communities fighting expanded uranium mining to build statewide grassroots pressure.

Home-grown solutions

Mayor Hardberger said the nukes were a done deal. Though Texas has the most wind and solar potential of any state, CPS said we were crazy to think renewables were the answer. City Council never wanted to talk conservation, because one third of the city’s budget comes from selling power. The newspaper editorial board said it was nukes or back to the Dark Ages.

So it was a major victory when, instead of rubberstamping their request, City Council voted down a rate hike to finance the reactors, giving CPS 3.5 percent when they wanted 5 percent. In fact, eight months after banging down the board room door, $40 million more is on the table for renewables, CPS committed to doubling its energy conservation goals, and Mayor Hardberger said the phrase “green collar jobs” – count ‘em – five times while unveiling the framework for a city-wide sustainability plan that includes weatherization. It was a huge shift in the debate here in the belly of the dirty energy beast.

Of course we’ve got a long way to go. There is still a lack of transparency and no real vehicle for public participation at CPS, and the nukes are only delayed. The city’s sustainability plan lacks any real teeth. Instead of taking on proactive weatherization programs, CPS is funding ads to turn televisions off and thermostats down when most homes use window units. Local solar programs are getting pennies, while ratepayer money is spent to found Nuclear Energy for Texans and lobby against transmission lines for wind power.

SWU is committed to seeing this battle through and making energy policy a central issue in the upcoming mayoral election. Only with the environmental justice movement in the forefront of the battle will those in the shadows of the dirty fossil fuel and nuclear regimes get solutions to climate change that will benefit our communities. While we keep fighting, SWU is modeling the changes we want to see happen in our community with the organic Roots of Change Community Garden food security project and by retrofitting and solarizing our building. In the process we hope to create home-grown solutions that can act as models in low-income communities across the country.

Lara Cushing works with the Southwest Workers Union, who is celebrating 20 years of grassroots organizing in South Texas this year. Visit SWU at www.swunion.org

Vapor Intrusion testing at Kelly AFB

Additional testing will begin in February in the Kelly area

Toxic chemical levels ‘not alarming'

San Antonio Express-News

Underground toxic chemicals do not appear to be seeping into homes just north of the defunct Kelly AFB at dangerous levels, according to federal regulators who conducted air quality testing in five area homes.

The recently released test results show two of five homes with levels of toxins at or near screening levels that could trigger more federal scrutiny. But Cheryl Overstreet, a toxicologist with the Environmental Protection Agency, termed the results “not alarming at all.” Still, the agency would like to return this winter for a battery of tests to determine if there is any seasonal variability in the level of chemicals.

“I'm hoping that this is not the end,” Overstreet said. “To make the data more robust we would like to have more of it.”

The agency tested the sub-slab air quality or the underground crawl space, depending on construction, of 20 area homes just north of the old Kelly AFB. Based on those results, the air quality inside five homes was then tested twice.

Two of the 10 tests showed levels of chemical vapors at or slightly above the federal screening level. That level is based on enough of a toxin present in the air to increase a person's chance of getting cancer by 1 in 1 million over a 30-year period.

The results left some area residents uneasy and asking that their homes undergo the same testing.

“They didn't bother coming to our neighborhood,” Robert Alvarado Sr., 66, who lives just south of the base, said Saturday. “You have all these readings about contamination, but you don't have readings about all the people dying from cancer in our neighborhood.”

The chemicals in question leaked into the ground over decades of aircraft maintenance at Kelly AFB, which closed in 2001. It is also possible that industrial businesses off base contributed. The plume of chemicals, which is contained in the area's shallow aquifer, is underneath the neighborhood just north of the base and is estimated to have also stretched at least 5 miles south and east of the base. It now lies beneath more than 20,000 homes and businesses.

The contaminated aquifer is not a source of drinking water.

The toxins include tetrachlorethylene, or PCE, a probable carcinogen that the Air Force used for metal degreasing. Federal studies have found elevated levels of kidney cancer in neighborhoods around Kelly AFB, but the cancer has not been linked to the plume.

Many in the area insist the contamination has caused a number of health problems for local residents. Alvarado, who has lived in the neighborhood for 30 years, is among them. His kidneys are failing and he is legally blind, while his wife and daughter have throat cancer.

Lara Cushing, of the Southwest Workers Union, an advocacy organization that has organized community members, said the results are troubling. That's because, while the two highest PCE readings are on the borderline of the screening level, she said the levels of PCE were likely higher in years past before federal efforts to clean the contamination reduced levels of toxins in the aquifer.

Overstreet said it's not possible to determine what levels of contamination were present in the past.

“I have no way of knowing where the groundwater was 10 or 20 years ago or how it might have migrated or not migrated,” she said, adding that it would be about two months before the EPA would know if it could come back this winter for more testing.

Lenny Siegel, director of the California-based Center for Public Environmental Oversight, hopes the environmental agency does return. He agreed that the recent testing shows marginal danger when using current federal screening levels. But the EPA is currently reassessing the danger of PCE, Siegel said, and a draft report shows the chemical could be more dangerous than previously thought.

Siegel also pointed out that only a small number of homes were tested and said that, in some cases, chemical vapors are pulled from the ground at higher levels in the winter, when homes are more likely to use their heating systems.

“There is no reason to panic,” he said. “But it does suggest that there is a need to sample more homes.”

Speaking of unions, SWU is celebrating Dec. 6

November 17, 2008

San Antonio Express-News

The Southwest Workers Union is celebrating its 20th anniversary Saturday, Dec. 6 in the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church Hall, 602 Urban Loop, near the intersection of I-35 and Durango downtown.

It has a lot of activism to celebrate.

Over the years, SWU has represented workers, especially those in the lowest paying jobs, including janitors at local school districts. The union has been involved in a number of social justice issues, including migrant and border rights, economic fairness issues, such as one involving the Bill Miller company, and environmental work, specifically hazardous waste dumps and polluting businesses in areas where poor people of color live. Those in the Kelly AFB area have been of special concern and involvement.

SWU also has focused on young leaders. The goals of its Youth Leadership Organization are "to build a permanent strong base of youth leaders within public schools and the community to address the systemic barriers of poverty, militarization and marginalization, and simultaneously create alternatives though political education, art and cultural and movement-building." One of their projects is the Roots of Change Community Garden.

The union conducts a lot of training sessions around union organizing, the history of educational struggles, "Connecting the Local to the Global" and understanding the cause and effect of climate change, among others.

But on Dec. 6, it will focus on celebrating two decades of work. The event begins at 5 p.m. with a political program. Music by Bombasta and Los Conjunto Kingz de Flavio Longoria begins at about 8, and it's free. Call (210) 299-2666 for more.

Elaine Ayala

The Wall to nowhere

San Antonio Current, November 2008

Sixty-something days. For some, they can’t pass fast enough. By “some” we mean those losing land, liberty, and fraternity on La Frontera.

In honor of the fall of the Berlin Wall on a rowdy November day almost 20 years ago, Queque joined members of the Southwest Workers Union outside the U.S. Federal Building last week to raise a stink over the newest Berlin variant now under construction in the lingering hours of Bush twilight. As it turned out, Homeland Security officials announced that same day they were suspending construction of 14 miles in Hidalgo and Starr counties over flooding concerns.

This does not affect other portions of Texas borderland, like nearby Cameron County, or El Paso County — where seven-day-a-week schedules have crews erecting miles of steel curtain in the desert even as Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff dusts off his résumé.

As much as we’d like to think the Valley decision was a portrait of political acquiescence, wall construction could conceivably live on past Bush. Legal challenges have, to date, been swept aside by the U.S. Supreme Court. Obama was a “yea” vote on the 2006 Secure Fence Act that demanded the wall to begin with. And until there is sweeping immigration reform, the wall will likely continue to be the Interior’s fall-back plan.

However, readers and activists are reminding Queque of statements Obama made in the Valley months ago, when the Dem Primary was still running hot: That he would “reverse that policy.” His appointment of University of Texas at Brownsville President Juliet V. Garcia to his transition team has a promising glint to it, considering Garcia was the rock-’n’-roller who challenged Homeland over plans to put the Wall through her campus.

Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva is said to be busily rewriting his failed legislation for a new Congress to undo provisions of the Real ID Act that allowed Chertoff so-called “mega-waiver” authority to override dozens of federal laws so he could erect the wall over environmental and other objections. Activists are planning two major gatherings: one this weekend at Friendship Park beneath San Diego, another in El Paso early next month, to plan their legislative assault to finally lay waste to the Border Wall.

What to do in the meantime, as our faltering economy continues to bleed $3 million-plus into each steel mile? •

CPS soft-pedals nuclear expansion

By Greg M. Schwartz, San Antonio Current

CPS Energy announced plans at its November 24 board meeting to address San Antonio’s energy needs via an aggressive conservation plan and by building a new solar power plant. But beneath the glossy green veneer of its self-proclaimed environmentalism, the company continued to lay the groundwork for increased use of nuclear power in South Texas with expansion of the South Texas Project in Bay City. [See “CPS must die,” October 24, 2007.]

CPS didn’t come right out and open the meeting by pushing for STP expansion, of course. The nuclear option was cushioned with lots of happy talk about “aggressive” action to reduce consumer energy use and costs. But in the end, it was all building toward a nuclear-power pitch that failed to acknowledge nuclear power’s radioactive waste as a “risk factor” and that wouldn’t save residential consumers a dime for at least 32 years. CPS announced that it will wait until next fall, however, to make a decision about STP.

“This was the meeting where they were supposed to say they were going full blast ahead [with nuclear],” says Karen Hadden of the Austin-based Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition. She found some hope that “they gave themselves two major outs,” noting that CPS is waffling over the uncertainty of investor confidence and loan guarantees.

On the plus side, CPS is moving forward with a $685-million energy-efficiency plan that aims to curb San Antonio’s power usage enough over the next 12 years to avoid building a new power plant. But it appeared CPS is trying to greenwash the nuclear option by juxtaposing it with plans to get a solar power plant going by 2010 or 2011.

The beating around the nuclear bush began with an extensive report on the company’s energy-efficiency study by Nexant, a San Francisco-based energy-consulting company that was spun off from a technology consultant group of multinational corporate titan Bechtel in January 2000. Readers of John Perkins’ best-selling Confessions of an Economic Hit Man may recall Bechtel being described as one of the world’s most powerful engineering and construction companies, “a prime example of the cozy relationship between private companies and the U.S. government,” with an executive staff populated by Reagan-Bush cronies.

After a cheery report by Terry Fry, Nexant’s Senior Vice President of Energy and Carbon Management on the “Demand Side Management Potential Study” (the City-owned utility could cut 569 megawatts by 2020 with “energy-efficiency technology” such as insulating older homes and changing out windows), CPS’s Paul Barham — senior director for electric generation research & planning — stepped in to lower the nuclear boom.

Barham touted the company’s goal of reducing carbon-dioxide emissions as part of its environmental commitment and said the STP expansion would help CPS cut 127 million tons of C02 emissions by 2033, as opposed to only 32 million through renewables or 49 million through the Save for Tomorrow energy-efficiency plan.

“Nuclear is the only one of these options that has no CO2 emissions,” declared Barham. He also noted that “solar and wind don’t look very cost-effective … but we do have a big place in our plan for renewables.”

Barham drove home his agenda with a selective “Risk Summary” that compared nuclear power to natural gas and coal in four risk areas: capital, technology, carbon footprint, and fuel cost. The lack of a fifth category for environmental risk left some in the audience scratching their heads, since radioactive waste can take anywhere from 10,000 to millions of years to decay. Nuclear received one red light for capital, with yellow for technology and greens for carbon and fuel cost, while natural gas received greens for capital and technology but yellow for carbon and red for fuel cost. Coal got two reds and two yellows.

In a later phone interview, Barham said environmental risk factors were considered and, “we don’t see a large risk around that.” He expressed confidence in a federal plan to dispose of nuclear waste and added that if that doesn’t work out, “we still have the ability to safely manage the waste on site.”

Uncle Sam’s current nuclear waste dump, the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada, is already in jeopardy.

“It can take no more waste from the civilian nuclear industry without exceeding its statutory volume limit, and recent statements from the former US DOE project manager and a current NRC commissioner suggest the entire project may collapse,” said author and professor Jim Harding last year in a speech entitled “Seven Myths of the Nuclear Renaissance.”

Environmental-advocacy group Friends of the Earth recently reported that the DOE is predicting 108,500 shipments of nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain will be required over 38 years but that the exact routes and methods of shipment to be used have not been identified because they don’t want the public to know.

Regarding the radioactive waste that every plant generates and stores in pools of water adjacent to the reactors, FOE’s new site Nuclearlie.org reports that the accidental or intentional draining of such pools “could lead to a serious fire spewing highly radioactive material into the air.” A report from Brookhaven National Laboratory found that such an incident could cause as many as 28,000 cancer fatalities, cause $59 billion in damage, and render 188 square miles unfit for habitation.

With environmental and public-health concerns off the table at CPS’s board meeting, Barham’s “show me the money” moment came with the unveiling of a projected monthly residential electric bill chart. While nuclear would cost consumers more than gas or coal for the first 19 years, Barham argued that it would become cheaper than coal after 24 years and cheaper than natural gas after 29 — excluding the eight to 10 years it would take to get nuclear plants up and running in the first place.

San Antonio will have a year to debate the matter, as Barham recommended that final Board and Council decisions be delayed until fall 2009 for further analysis. This will include factors such as “community involvement,” a new presidential administration with new energy priorities, additional clarity on federal incentives (probably the most critical factor from CPS’s perspective), Congressional action on natural-gas supply, and ongoing developments with project partners NRG Energy and Exelon.

Cindy Weehler of the Consumers’ Energy Coalition was on hand to remind us that Exelon is being sued by the state of Illinois for taking more than nine years to inform a local community about leakage of millions of gallons of radioactive water from its Braidwood nuclear plant into groundwater, drinking wells, and a forest preserve.

“All of that is code for nuclear,” said Weehler of Barham’s report to the board.

CPS board member Mayor Phil Hardberger was “unavailable to accommodate” the Current’s request for comment on the matter.

STP expansion appears to have backing at the state level, with Governor Rick Perry declaring just last week that the “federal government should focus on … removing regulatory barriers for new nuclear plants.” Perry seems to know a little something about cozy relationships between private enterprises and U.S. government. In August, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality recommended that Waste Control Specialists receive a second license to operate a multi-million dollar, radioactive waste dump in West Texas’ Andrews County, despite objections from some of the commission’s own geologists and engineers. Waste Control Specialists is owned by Harold Simmons, a political donor to Perry, who appointed the environmental commissioners.

The Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club is protesting the license since the Environmental Analysis prepared by TCEQ showed that basic facts about the proposed site — including its final design and radioactive safety program — had not been provided by the applicant, forcing TCEQ to add conditions to the license.

“[STP and the Andrews dump] are connected in the sense that the nuclear industry wants Waste Control Specialists to get their license,” says Cyrus Reed, Conservation Director for Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter. Reed says Sierra Club’s argument against STP expansion is that it will be unnecesary if CPS follows through on its plans for energy conservation and use of renewables.

“We don’t think [the STP expansion is] a positive investment for the people of San Antonio or the planet,” says Lara Cushing, environmental justice coordinator for the Southwest Workers Union, which has actively opposed the project. Cushing said SWU does see the new energy efficiency program as a step in the right direction and hopes to see meaningful public participation both there and in further analysis of STP.

“I think [CPS] can bank on citizen opposition during the hearing process,” promised SEED’s Hadden, “and they know they’ll have that opposition,”.