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Salem Alliance for the Environment (SAFE) is a group dedicated to addressing environmental issues through education, advocacy, and community organizing. Our goal is to assure that Salem is a healthy and prosperous place in which to live. To learn more about us, please explore this website. We are planning monthly informational meetings and hope you will watch this page for announcements.
Also watch for upcoming events from Salem Sound Coastwatch, a Salem non-profit coastal watershed organization that is dedicated to protecting and enhancing the environmental quality of the Salem Sound Watershed. And keep an eye on North Shore Wind, which aims to collect, share and disseminate information regarding offshore wind for the seaside communities north of Boston.
Just in time for Spring Cleaning - Salem Recycles is holding another free book and media swap on Saturday, March 5, 2011 from 10 am to 1 pm on the 1st
floor of the church school at St. Anne’s Church, 290 Jefferson Ave , Salem .
Mark your calendars now and start gathering your unwanted books, commercial CDs, DVDs and videos! All books will be accepted. Everything that doesn’t find a new home will be donated or recycled.
Materials can be dropped off in advance on Friday, March 4 from 6-7pm or bring them with you on Saturday. Volunteers will be available to help unload.
Everyone is invited to take books, etc.—no “swap” needed. For more information contact Julie Rose at 978-619-5679.
SalemRecycles is the official recycling committee for the City of Salem . The free book swap is held twice a year.
From Citizens for Salem/Beverly Water Resources
Minimizing Copious Cigarette Butt Waste
Cigarette butts are non-biodegradable and litter beaches all over Salem Sound Watershed, excreting more than 60 toxins that harm or adversely affect marine life. Each year millions of cigarette butts are collected in beach cleanups the world over only capturing a small portion of this ocean pollution. Providing convenient disposal points stems the tide of cigarette butts entering local waters!
20 Butt Bins Available
Reducing Bottled Water Waste Onsite
Supplying public tap water at public events is an easy way to lower event carbon footprints. With BPA-free water canteens, tap water is provided and plastic bottled water waste is reduced.
Congress could vote soon on important health and air pollution protections. Your U.S. Senators and Representative need to hear from you. Tell your elected officials not to prevent the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from doing its job.
Some members of Congress want to take away the EPA's ability to protect us from mercury, arsenic, carbon dioxide and other pollution from power plants and other sources. For almost 40 years, Clean Air Act programs have improved air and water quality and protected people's health. We can't let polluters take away that protection now.
What's at stake for our health and our communities? These are just a few examples:
Reducing mercury and other toxic pollution: Air pollution from power plants, cement plants and other sources causes asthma, heart disease and cancer, and also ends up in our water bodies, contaminating fish and causing learning disabilities in children far from the air pollution's sources.
Reducing carbon pollution: Curbing global warming pollution is critical for protecting our health, our communities and our water resources. We are already seeing impacts of climate change on our water quantity and quality and must do all we can to address this issue.
Preventing pollution at the source: Communities pay for higher health care costs, water treatment expenses and other burdens when we wait to address pollution after it happens. The Clean Air Act programs at risk will prevent problems at the source.
Congress should demand that the EPA do everything in its power to protect health and natural resources, not interfere with these efforts. Customize a message to your Senators and Represenative. Let them know you want the EPA to have the power to protect our water, air, and health.
[click the link at the beginning of this message to sign the petition]
(Updates to add prior mine accidents in fourth paragraph.)
Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Colombia said 20 miners are presumed dead and six workers injured after a blast and cave-in that follows recent fatalities in the Andean nation’s coal industry.
Rescuers have recovered eight bodies at the La Preciosa mine in northeastern Colombia, an official at the state-run Colombian Institute of Geology and Mining, who can’t be identified because of government policy, said today in a telephone interview from Bogota.
Accidents at coal mines in the past year have killed and injured workers in Colombia, South America’s largest producer of coal. The nation’s worst blast since the 1970s killed more than 70 men in June at a mine, where rescuers were hampered by toxic gases and collapsing walls. In October and November, at least 15 men died in separate detonations at coal mines.
Methane gas triggered the blast this morning at La Preciosa, which means precious in Spanish, said Rafael David Reyes, mining secretary for the province of Norte de Santander.
About 30 to 40 men usually work at any one time at the mine in a region near the border of Venezuela that is dotted with coal deposits. The mine is owned by a Colombian company, Reyes said, declining to provide the name of the owner.
Cerrejon, the world’s largest open-pit mine of coal for export, said four workers died and 12 were injured in August after an accident at a coal storage unit in northern Colombia. The mine is jointly owned by Xstrata Plc, BHP Billiton Ltd. and Anglo American Plc.
Colombia is the world’s fourth-largest coal exporter and the world’s 11th-largest coal producer, supplying about 1.2 percent of global 2008 output, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
--Editors: Robin Saponar, Jessica Brice
To contact the reporter responsible for this story: Heather Walsh at hlwalsh@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dale Crofts at dcrofts@bloomberg.net
"Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream" Symposium
Created in response to a call from Indigenous people in South America to change the dream of the modern world
The Symposium will use short films, video clips, the insights of indigenous people, and dynamic group interactions, hoping to inspire change in the current direction of life on this planet. Share the opportunity to quicken the emergence of a spiritually fulfilling, environmentally sustainable, and socially just human presence on this planet. Members of the Pachamama Alliance committed to bringing indigenous tribal wisdom to our modern worldview will discuss these questions:
- What is the present state of Planet Earth, our souls, and our dreams?
- What are the fundamental causes of our current imbalance?
- What is now emerging as a future possibility?
- How does this affect you and your life?
Unitarian Universalist Church of Marblehead
28 Mugford St.
Sunday, Jan 23, 1-5 PM
GDF-Suez's Mount Tom Coal Plant in Holyoke is literally making us sick, causing 112 asthma attacks, 14 heart attacks, and 8 deaths in Massachusetts every year.1
Help us kick off the next phase in our campaign to move Massachusetts Beyond Coal.
GDF-Suez's Mount Tom Coal Plant is one of the top three polluters in Massachusetts.2 It pollutes the air we breathe and the water we drink with mercury, arsenic, lead, particulate matter3 and excess carbon dioxide.4
All coal is dirty and the promise of clean-coal technology is a myth. Help make Massachusetts clean and healthy by helping us close the door on coal and start a clean energy revolution.
As environmental advocates rolled out their legislative agenda at multiple events Tuesday, Rep. Frank Smizik and Sen. Jamie Eldridge promised a revival of the wind energy sitting bill that died at the end of the last session and put forth new legislation to create a new Office of Clean Technology to foster job growth in that sector.
Smizik and Eldridge are co-sponsoring a bill to create the new state office within the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development designed to encourage and foster growth in clean technology and help companies develop and manufacture products.
The legislation sets a goal of increasing clean tech jobs, businesses and research by 25 percent over the next 10 years. “It’s a bill for businesses to really create training and jobs and helping businesses develop products that can be sold around the world,” Smizik said.
Eldridge said he was cognizant that adding a new government entity as the state climbs out of the recession will be a consideration, but added: “With just the right amount of investment, the potential for jobs is immense.”
Both lawmakers also promised a return of the wind energy siting bill that died last session, despite majority support in both branches, because legislative leaders were unable to pass it before the end of formal sessions July 31.
Bill supporters say the legislation will streamline the wind energy approval process, boosting the so-called clean energy sector while protecting local decision-making powers. Critics say the initiative will erode local control and gives the industry unwarranted special consideration.
The House enacted the wind-siting bill in the waning hours of formal session July 31, but the Senate received the bill just after midnight. Senate President Therese Murray led a months-long effort to secure the bill’s final enactment, but Republican senators repeatedly stood in the bill’s path during sessions where objections from a single lawmaker can halt any bill.
“The House passed it and we think we can pass it again. We’re going to file it again with some very minor changes and we’re going to fight for it,” Smizik said.
Eldridge said he believes the Senate also has the votes to pass the bill.
Among the other environmental initiatives on the table for the coming session will be many familiar issues and some new ones.
Rep. Lori Ehrlich plans to file two pieces of legislation that she said may get packaged into an omnibus bill phasing out coal-burning in Massachusetts and placing a moratorium on the construction of new coal burning facilities and coal-gasification plants.
Sen. Cynthia Creem intends to file an updated bottle bill that would expand the deposit law to cover sports drinks, bottled water, and iced teas.
Creem and Rep. Kulik also plan to file a bill that would update the state’s Community Preservation Act in an attempt to make it more attractive to cities. The changes would allow cities to use the CPA to rehabilitate existing recreational fields and facilities rather than just build new ones, would allow communities to use other sources of revenue in addition to a surcharge on the property tax to fund open land preservation, and the bill would set a minimum state match at 75 percent, requiring an increase in Registry of Deeds surcharges currently used to fund the state share.
Starting next week, the Arctic Sunrise will tour the East Coast, inspiring us to imagine a coal-free future – one in which communities are more powerful than coal executives, where politicians stand up for people, not polluter profits, and where clean energy has replaced dirty coal.
I’ll have the honor of sailing with the incredible crew on board, and swapping stories and strategies with dozens of citizen activists along the way. We're planning candlelight vigils, non-violence trainings, and marches. And at each top there will be opportunities for Greenpeace supporters to tour and visit the ship.
Stay tuned for more updates, and check out this page for more details.
SALEM — Doyle Sailmakers, a local company with an international reach, may be on the verge of turning ocean currents into electric currents, Gov. Deval Patrick learned on a visit to the Salem sail loft yesterday afternoon.
Doyle is working with a New Hampshire company to fashion an efficient underwater turbine to harness steady, underwater currents for power. The design of the turbine's blades relies on Doyle's deep understanding of how sails power boats.
The potential for a sailmaker to help bolster the state's green economy and jobs was not lost on Patrick.
"What I learned today is there are some very, very intriguing new technologies being developed here," Patrick said.
Patrick, Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll and state Rep. John Keenan, D-Salem, and their respective entourages visited Doyle's headquarters in a new industrial park on Swampscott Road.
Doyle Sailmakers started in August 1982 in Marblehead at a time when there were 10 or 12 sailmakers in town, owner Robbie Doyle said. Several years ago, it moved to Salem, where it employs 35 people locally, down two or three from a few years ago.
In addition, there are 70 Doyle sail lofts around the world, and the company not only makes and services sails for local day sailors, its sails propel some of the world's largest and most expensive super yachts.
The sailmaker's motto, "Better Engineered Sails," may take on a whole new meaning if the company can create efficient underwater power turbines.
The governor and officials toured the cavernous sail loft yesterday, gingerly stepping on slick floors as workers knelt to work on sails spread around the 32,000-square-foot facility.
"I have never had so many blue blazers in my facility at once," said Doyle's wife, Janet.
While Patrick liked what he saw, he did not come bearing state help right away.
"I don't know yet what we can do, but one of the conversations we were having is what their needs are to help them get to the next stage," Patrick said.
The state has, through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, some resources the state can tap to invest in green technologies, Patrick said.
Massachusetts is one of 10 states that sell power plant emission allowances through auctions and invest the proceeds in energy-efficient and renewable energy projects, according to RGGI's website.
"Doyle grew and expanded and helped ... embrace that technology because of a city investment and a state investment to actually put them here," Driscoll said. "They used to be in Marblehead, a much smaller company, a much smaller footprint. Now they are here, building sails, building airships, talking about other innovation."
Driscoll pointed out the building that houses the sail loft used to house Maynard Plastics. Several years ago, the facility was sold and carved into industrial condominiums.
"Now it's 10 different companies," many of which focus on innovation, Driscoll said. Driscoll met with Doyle a week ago, and, after she did so, she decided to take Patrick out to see what they were working on.
"You could see they are not designing it as a renewable energy product," Driscoll said. "They are designing it as an economic way to deliver electricity that happens to have a lot of renewable benefits."
So how did a sail company come to design an underwater power turbine?
Part of the reason, Doyle said, is the company takes an engineering approach to sail making. Doyle studied applied physics at Harvard University, and Doyle's son, Tyler, is the company's chief engineer.
About a year ago, Robert Houvener, president and founder of ScaleTera Renewable Energy LLC of Hollis, N.H., approached Doyle to create a new, more efficient water turbine using sail material.
The idea was to build big blades out of sail fabric that might withstand ocean currents.
"It turned out it was not cost-effective," Robbie Doyle said. But Doyle kept on working on the project.
"I loved everything I saw," Tyler said. "I had been working on wind turbines for the year or two before that." Tyler had been put off by the wind turbine's enormous cost for not a lot of power.
"The second you looked at the economics of this project, it just made so much more sense," Tyler said.
Turbines helped mills power the industrial revolution by harnessing power from swift-flowing rivers. However, traditional water turbines require high-speed currents of 8 to 10 knots and building structures that can stand up to that type of force, making them too expensive to build.
Doyle's technology requires slower but steady currents of about 3 knots. The turbines can be assembled in standard shipyards and don't rely on special, and expensive, ships and facilities.
The goal is to someday harness the currents of the Gulf Stream, the swift Atlantic Ocean currents off the East Coast or the Bosphorus Strait in Turkey.
"We had never built a propeller blade in our life," Robbie Doyle said, "but, again, it's just like a twisted sail, it's no different."
If all goes according to plan, Robbie Doyle said it could be a billion dollars-plus business in six years.
"We just have to come up with a technology, which we've done," Doyle said. "Now we just have to build it."
Staff writer Ethan Forman can be reached at 978-338-2673 or by e-mail at eforman@salem news.com.
Monday, Jan. 3 at 7:00pm at the First Church in Salem, 316 Essex St.
Join us if you'd like to hear about or help plan our next event (which will feature updates on all things green in Salem to be held in Jan. or Feb.) We will be joined this week by Drew Grande of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign.
By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 1, 2011; 5:42 PM
The headline news for the coal industry in 2010 was what didn't happen: Construction did not begin on a single new coal-fired power plant in the United States for the second straight year.
This in a nation where a fleet of coal-fired plants generates nearly half the electricity used.
But a combination of low natural gas prices, shale gas discoveries, the economic slowdown and litigation by environmental groups has stopped - at least for now - groundbreaking on new ones.
"Coal is a dead man walkin'," says Kevin Parker, global head of asset management and a member of the executive committee at Deutsche Bank. "Banks won't finance them. Insurance companies won't insure them. The EPA is coming after them. . . . And the economics to make it clean don't work."
From 2000 to 2008, construction started on 20 units in 19 plants, according to Edison Electric Institute. Last year, utilities and power-generating companies dropped plans to build 38 coal plants while announcing that they would retire 48 aging, inefficient ones, according to the environmental group Sierra Club.
Although 2010 saw the collapse of climate legislation in the Senate, the Sierra Club is trumpeting such statistics as a sign that "coal is a fuel of the past."
The battle over coal plants could sharpen in 2011, as the Environmental Protection Agency deploys regulations to improve the efficiency - and lower the greenhouse gas emissions - of big power plants.
Starting Sunday, the EPA will require builders of plants big enough to emit 75,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year to use the "best available control technology" in order to obtain air permits, needed before construction. Utilities, oil refiners and other industries argue that this will add prohibitive costs, and many Republican lawmakers have vowed to handcuff the EPA, which is also planning to issue broader guidelines later in the year.
In the wake of the midterm elections, President Obama identified promotion of natural gas use as an area of potential bipartisan action. He hopes to prod utilities and manufacturers into switching from coal to natural gas, which emits half the amount of greenhouse gases. The choice looms large given that the average age of the U.S. coal fleet is 43 years, with more than half the plants built before 1967.
Word of coal's death might be premature, says Luke Popovich, spokesman for the National Mining Association. He said that several coal-fired plants begun earlier are still under construction. Duke Energy, for example, is expecting to finish its Cliffside and Edwardsport coal plants in 2012.
Other companies have scrambled to get permits before the EPA regulations take effect, and projects in Texas, Kansas and Illinois have succeeded. A project in Mississippi is poised to break ground, though the Sierra Club is still fighting in court to revoke the plant's permits.
Moreover, Popovich adds, the federal Energy Information Administration expects that the nation will need to build 30 to 40 new plants to supply the 21 gigawatts of new electricity demand expected by 2035.
"Coal will remain the dominant source for electricity generation for the foreseeable future," he says. "So the big problem with the 'death of coal' message is that it is not, as we say, reality-based."
It's the economy
Even if coal is not dead, developments of the past two years have dimmed its future.
The fate of the long-planned Smith Unit No. 1 coal plant in Kentucky is one example. The East Kentucky Power Cooperative announced plans five years ago to build the 278-megawatt plant, and it obtained permits from the Kentucky Public Service Commission. But environmental groups, joined by critics of federally subsidized loans to rural electric cooperatives, fought the project.
Then the recession hit and tipped the scales. A couple of months ago, the cooperative slashed 9 percent from its forecast of electricity demand among the half-million customers it serves.
As a result, East Kentucky Power canceled the Smith coal plant construction on Nov. 18, even though it has spent about $150 million stockpiling steel and parts. "And that's almost entirely due to the economy," says Nick Comer, the cooperative's manager of external affairs. The total cost of finishing the plant was estimated to be $819 million.
"Back in 2006-07, the economy was roaring. In our service territory we were seeing growth at about twice the national rate," Comer says. "There were a lot of new houses, new businesses; even manufacturing was expanding."
But, Comer adds, "a lot of that has changed today. Housing starts are down. Manufacturers have cut back. So we expect demand for electricity is going to be down from what we had projected for a while."
The story is the same across the nation. Coal consumption in the electric power sector during the first nine months of 2010 was up from 2009, but still down 5.7 percent from 2008's near-record levels, according to EIA figures.
East Kentucky Power also signed a settlement with environmental groups under which it will install additional pollution control devices and further explore renewable energy options.
Cheap natural gas
American Electric Power, the nation's largest generator of electricity, is also taking a cautious approach. The only plant AEP has under construction is the highest efficiency model, known as "ultra supercritical." Under the new EPA guidelines, these high-efficiency plants could become the standard, reducing coal use.
"We have no other coal-fueled generation planned at this time," says Pat D. Hemlepp, a spokesman for AEP. "The decline in demand has delayed the need for additional new generation."
If AEP does need new generation capacity, it will turn to natural gas. In 2010, the wellhead price of natural gas has averaged $4.25 a thousand cubic feet, about 40 percent below the average price from 2005 to 2009 and well under half the peak price.
Discoveries of new ways to tap natural gas trapped in shale rock have unlocked supplies that could keep prices in check for years to come.
"When we do need new capacity, it is highly likely that we will look to natural gas plants instead of coal, especially if natural gas prices remain as low as projected," Hemlepp says. "The plants are less expensive to build, and current forward price projections favor gas over coal."
It's a decision being made by utilities across the country. A recent Deutsche Bank report says that if gas prices remain between $4 and $6 a thousand cubic feet, "we believe that a coal to gas switch makes sense."
States have their plans
Even though Congress failed to enact climate legislation, more than half the states have adopted measures requiring utilities to use more renewable energy. To meet those targets, most investment will probably go into solar, wind, nuclear and energy efficiency projects.
Environmental groups are gearing up to challenge coal plants state by state. The Sierra Club is expanding its ranks this year so that 100 full-time staffers will be working on the issue, and the Environmental Defense Fund is hiring additional lawyers to wage battle against coal.
Given the age of the coal fleet, many of the oldest plants also run afoul of clean air guidelines on traditional pollutants.
As a result, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission recently adopted a $1.4 billion plan that will end coal-fired electricity generation in the Denver area. It calls for Xcel Energy to close four coal-fired units in the region, switch another to natural gas and build a new gas-fired plant to help meet federal clean-air standards. The units are all more than 40 years old.
The plan was required under the Colorado Clean Air-Clean Jobs Act, signed by Gov. Bill Ritter (D) in April.
"Coloradans across the state made it clear that they did not want coal in their stockings this year," said Pam Kiely of Environment Colorado. "The PUC delivered an early Christmas present by deciding to stop burning dirty coal in the metro area."
Action without legislation
The Obama administration might also target coal-fired power plants as a way to meet its goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, even if legislation remains beyond its grasp. Administration officials have spoken of negotiating guidelines with big utilities, similar to automobile fuel efficiency standards, but utility executives say such talks are not yet taking place.
Deutsche Bank's Parker thinks that a path to lower coal use not only makes financial sense but climate sense as well.
"Switching coal to natural gas and renewable energy with a modest buildup of nuclear energy is achievable and could lead to a 29 percent reduction in CO2 emissions from the U.S. power sector by 2020 and a 44 percent reduction by 2030 compared to a 2005 baseline," the bank wrote in its November report on a low-carbon energy plan for the United States.
At international climate talks, negotiators often use the year 2005 as a baseline. At the Copenhagen climate talks a year ago, the Obama administration pledged a 17 percent reduction in overall U.S. emissions by 2020.
In 2002, there were plans to install 36,000 megawatts of new coal-fired power by 2007. Only one-eighth of that was completed.
Deutsche Bank predicts coal's share of electric power generation will tumble further, from 47 percent in 2009 to 34 percent in 2020 and 22 percent in 2030.
It put it this way in its report: "Based on today's energy fundamentals, the rational economic decision is to shutter inefficient coal plants and replace them with natural gas combined-cycle power plants."
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