Forget It Jake, It's Baltimore

TV Hill

From the Bay Journal, Lead paint flakes lead to $2.2 million settlement in Maryland

An incident that caused lead paint chips to rain down from a 1,000-foot broadcast tower onto homes, parks and daycare facilities in Baltimore has led to a $2.2 million settlement against a paint-removal contractor and the company that hired it.

The agreement stems from a civil lawsuit filed by Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown’s office, alleging that Television Tower Inc. (TTI) knew its tower contained lead-based paint before the repainting project began.

From May 28 to June 21, 2022, Skyline Tower Painting performed scraping and power washing along the exterior of the tower, officials say. Because no controls were in place to contain the paint chips, they fell onto the surrounding neighborhoods as far as a half-mile away.

TTI is owned by a trio of Baltimore-area TV stations: WBAL, WJZ and WMAR.

The tower is situated in an area informally known as TV Hill, surrounded by a community with an environmental justice score of 88 out of 100. The score indicates a high existing pollution burden and population vulnerability, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment’s environmental justice mapping tool.
...
Two paint chip samples taken from the fallout were tested and showed lead concentrations of 19.6 and 6.2 milligrams per liter, both above the hazardous material safety threshold of 5 milligrams per liter.

“We understand the impact this has had on the community, and it’s important to say clearly that this should not have happened,” said MDE Secretary Serena McIlwain. “This case underscores why strong environmental safeguards — and the careful handling of hazardous materials like lead — are so essential to protecting public health.”

In a separate criminal case, Skyline Tower and its president, Christopher Mecklum of Scottsbluff, NE, each pleaded guilty last December to violations related to the incident and were fined $50,000 apiece.

I'm really questioning the report of the concentrations here. Normally, concentration of lead in a solid like a paint chip would be in milligrams (or even micrograms) per gram, or kg. It makes no sense to consider a liter of paint chips. That looks like red lead paint on the tower at left. I'm going to guess it was red lead oxide paint, with a lot of lead sp it was probably mg/g (parts per thousand).

The Monday Morning Stimulus

Keilah Kang Killian in #s 1,3 and 5

Northwestern Now, Brewing tea removes lead from water

In a new study, Northwestern University researchers demonstrated that brewing tea naturally adsorbs heavy metals like lead and cadmium, effectively filtering dangerous contaminants out of drinks. Heavy metal ions stick to, or adsorb to, the surface of the tea leaves, where they stay trapped.

“We’re not suggesting that everyone starts using tea leaves as a water filter,” said Northwestern’s Vinayak P. Dravid, the study’s senior author. “In fact, we often utilize model experiments and tweak diverse parameters to probe and understand the scientific principles and phenomena involved in capture/release cycles of contaminants. For this study, our goal was to measure tea’s ability to adsorb heavy metals. By quantifying this effect, our work highlights the unrecognized potential for tea consumption to passively contribute to reduced heavy metal exposure in populations worldwide.”

“I’m not sure that there’s anything uniquely remarkable about tea leaves as a material,” said Benjamin Shindel, the study’s first author. “They have a high active surface area, which is a useful property for an adsorbent material and what makes tea leaves good at releasing flavor chemicals rapidly into your water. But what is special is that tea happens to be the most consumed beverage in the world. You could crush up all kinds of materials to get a similar metal-remediating effect, but that wouldn’t necessarily be practical. With tea, people don’t need to do anything extra. Just put the leaves in your water and steep them, and they naturally remove metals.”

Of course, if tea leaves work, it's quite likely coffee grounds do much the same.

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: South American Cowgirl ready and willing at The Other McCain.

Heavy Metal Source in Kiddy Food Poisonings Identified

Lead Chromate

Ars Technica Chromium found in lead-tainted fruit pouches may explain contamination

The Food and Drug Administration has discovered a second metal contaminant—chromium—in the recalled cinnamon applesauce pouches found to contain cinnamon contaminated with extremely high levels of lead. The products have now poisoned nearly 300 young children in 37 states.

The health implications of the additional contaminant are not clear. There is no antidote for chromium exposure, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends supportive care. But the finding does hint at the possible motivation behind the tragic poisonings.

In the FDA's announcement, the agency noted that "The lead-to-chromium ratio in the cinnamon apple puree sample is consistent with that of lead chromate (PbCrO4)." This is a notorious adulterant of spices used to artificially bolster their color and weight.

Lead chromate is a vibrant yellow substance that has frequently turned up in turmeric sourced from India and Bangladesh. In a 2017 study by public health researchers at Boston University, 16 of 32 turmeric products bought in markets in the Boston area had lead levels over the FDA's allowable lead level for candy (the FDA does not have guidelines for lead levels in spices, specifically). Two samples, the only two samples sourced from Bangladesh, exceeded the allowable lead level by two orders of magnitude. The researchers had conducted the study after a string of lead poisoning cases in US children were linked to contaminated spices, including turmeric. Other studies have also identified spices as a source of lead exposure in US children.

Turmeric

 

The 2017 study highlighted the reason that lead chromate is used as an adulterant. A media outlet in Bangladesh quoted one turmeric trader's explanation: “Traders use the artificial color [lead chromate] to hide the marks of pest attacks and other spots on raw turmeric. It is used during boiling and polishing to make the spice look brighter to attract big buyers, including spice processing firms."

FURTHER READING Lead-tainted fruit pouches poison 22 toddlers; blood lead levels 8x threshold

The FDA's testing does not definitively conclude that lead chromate was in the contaminated cinnamon, which was sourced from an Austrofoods manufacturing facility in Ecuador and used in the recalled applesauce pouches. But it does bolster the FDA's suspicion that the poisonings were the result of "economically motivated adulteration," a specific category of food fraud defined by the FDA.

It seems that lead chromate is widely used internationally to give that nice turmeric color. Another reason to avoid foodstuffs processed abroad. Anyone knowingly involved in putting the lead chromate into children's food should be indicted, and brought to the US for trial, if possible.

Metals Found Near Chesapeake Bay Coal Ash Piles

Phys.org, Researchers find cancer-causing metals in a Chesapeake Bay tributary adjacent to a coal ash landfill

A recent study in Environmental Pollution unveils alarming discoveries: Researchers have identified cancer-causing contaminants in sediments and fish in a Chesapeake Bay tributary near a coal ash landfill.

The study, led by Dr. Tyler Frankel, the project's principal investigator and Assistant Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Mary Washington, uncovered long-overlooked impacts of trace metal contamination on waterways and aquatic species adjacent to coal ash landfills. Frankel emphasized the study's focus was on addressing the missing risk management component, spotlighting the role of sediments in storing, releasing, and transporting trace metals in aquatic ecosystems.

"These waterways serve as important routes for several migratory fish species and sensitive nursery habitats for various endemic species," Frankel said. "Our work highlights the importance of considering this exposure pathway in conservation strategies."

The research team examined water and sediment samples from aquatic environments surrounding five Virginia coal ash facilities. Coal ash, a prevalent industrial waste product produced in the United States, contains several water-soluble metals, including cadmium, selenium, mercury, lead, and arsenic. The study revealed significantly heightened concentrations of these trace metals in sediments at waterway bottoms and in banded killifish tissues near these coal ash landfills.

The implications are grave. Long-term exposure to metals like arsenic, cadmium, and chromium has been linked to cancer, increased cardiovascular risks, and other detrimental health issues, impacting both wildlife and humans. Furthermore, these contaminants increase in concentration as they progress up the food web, posing threats to predatory fish and birds, Frankel said.

I used to do this sort of thing for a living. Even back then, we could easily measure (well, not too easily) all of these metals in any environment we looked in. What bothers me about an alarmist article like this is that there is absolutely no mention of the the actual concentrations found, and whether or not they actually violated, or even approached any water quality criteria. I'm fairly confident that if they had, the article would have stressed it.

Steel Industry Returning to Baltimore Harbor

Sparrows Point MS

Bay Bulletin, Steel Industry Returns To Sparrows Point With New Offshore Wind Factor

For decades, Sparrows Point was the home of Bethlehem Steel—at its peak, the largest steel mill in the world, employing 30,000 workers.

When the steel industry modernized and moved overseas, the steel mill withered away. After a massive environmental cleanup and redevelopment, the site now thrives as Tradepoint Atlantic, home to a 3,300-acre global logistics center with access to deepwater berths, rails and highways.

Bethlehem Steel plant in operation

 

Now, in a full circle moment, a steel facility is returning to the area that used to be Bethlehem Steel.

Sparrows Point Steel, a partnership between Baltimore-based US Wind, Inc. and Haizea Wind Group Management S.L., will be Maryland’s first permanent offshore wind factory, manufacturing steel components like monopiles and towers.

Noting the “special historical relevance” of the site, US Wind says the United Steelworkers will support fabrication operations there.

US Wind CEO Jeffrey Grybowski says it will be one of the premier offshore wind facilities in the world. “Sitting on nearly 100 acres of waterfront in Baltimore County, Sparrows Point Steel is poised to become the best offshore wind heavy logistics and fabrication yard on the East Coast.”

Haizea Wind Group, a Spanish company, has significant experience in designing, building, and operating manufacturing facilities for monopile foundations and towers for offshore wind farms in other parts of the world, where the offshore wind industry is further developed.

US Wind and Haizaea say Sparrows Point Steel has the potential to be one of the largest offshore wind staging ports in the United States. US Wind’s MarWin and Momentum Wind projects (off the coast of Ocean City, Md.) will be among the first to procure components from Sparrows Point Steel.

The Sparrows Point Steel announcement comes just as the International Offshore Wind Partnering Forum was held in Baltimore. At the forum, Maryland Governor Wes Moore announced a state initiative to quadruple the amount of energy produced by offshore wind—from about 2 gigawatts to 8.5 gigawatts of power, enough to power nearly three million homes. The state says it’s working to establish new lease areas and strengthen the supply chain.

The establishment of Sparrows Point Steel will help with that. Moore’s office says another wind developer, Orsted, has committed to using Tradepoint Atlantic for its components’ assembly, too. Between Orsted and US Wind/Haizea, Moore says 15,000 jobs will be created.

Not everyone is enthusiastic about the booming offshore wind industry, however; Congressman Andy Harris (R-1) called Moore’s initiative “expensive and harmful”, indicating funding the offshore wind industry will raise residents’ energy bills and questioning the safety of offshore wind development for whales.

“In addition to the added cost of his new proposal to Marylanders’ monthly electric bills, there is now bipartisan opposition going forward with even the current plans to industrialize the offshore areas with 900-foot-tall windmills that may be causing the death and stranding of dozens of whales and marine mammals off the Atlantic Coast.”

It's not clear from the story whether the steel used to make the wind turbines will be produced at Sparrows Point Steel, or imported and then fabricated, but it sounds like the latter.  More here from the Dundalk Eagle, Planned steel fabrication in Sparrows Point aims to start production in 2024.

Does a Bear Poop in the Bay?

Sparrows Point and Bear Creek

Baltimore Fish Bowl, EPA to investigate contaminants in Bear Creek near Sparrows Point, adds site to national list of cleanup priorities

The Environmental Protection Agency last week added part of Bear Creek near Sparrows Point to a national list of sites prioritized for cleanup after the EPA found contaminants in the sediment there were at least three times greater than samples collected upriver and upstream.

The site of concern contains about 60 acres of contaminated sediments in the waters of Bear Creek, near where the creek meets the Patapsco River and along the northwestern shore of the Sparrows Point peninsula.

Sparrows Point is the former site of Bethlehem Steel, at one time the world’s largest steel producer and the Baltimore area’s largest employer.

During its operation at Sparrows Point, Bethlehem Steel also contributed to the contamination of nearby waterways, said Joe Vitello, EPA site assessment manager for the Bear Creek site.

“Bethlehem Steel discharged contaminants in stormwater, process water, and wastewater for manufacturing areas directly to the surface water, and placed slag directly into the water to create landmass, which allowed contaminants to settle into the sediment of the creek,” Vitello said in an EPA presentation in October 2021.

The EPA found hazardous substances in the sediments of Bear Creek, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a class of chemicals that are caused by burning materials such as coal, oil, and gasoline; heavy metals such as cadmium, chromium, cyanide, lead, mercury, selenium, silver and zinc; polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chemicals often used in electrical, heat transfer and hydraulic equipment among other uses; and oil and grease.

Vitello said the current property owner of the historic steel mill site, Tradepoint Atlantic, is already conducting an ongoing cleanup of the former industrial areas on land at Sparrows Point under the regulatory oversight of the EPA.

But the EPA is also working to address contamination in the water off of the peninsula.
. . .
The EPA also assessed the toxicity of the sediment and its effect on organisms. Test results showed that all macro-invertebrate organisms, like crabs and mussels, that were exposed to the sediment died, with the exception of two sediment locations where there was 90% mortality.

I sampled in Bear Creek for heavy metals, along with a colleague who studied organic contaminants. Yes, it's horrible contaminated.  

I don't know how they'll clean it up. Dredge it? Where do they put the sediment. Maybe they could dig a big lined pit on the old Sparrows Point site, and bury it there?

Forget It Jake, It's Baltimore

WYPR, Eastern Baltimore County may get its third Superfund site

The Environmental Protection Agency is considering adding a portion of Bear Creek in Eastern Baltimore County to its list of Superfund cleanup sites. It’s tied to the years-long cleanup of the old Bethlehem Steel site at Sparrows Point.

The state is spearheading the cleanup of the property while the federal government is charged with cleaning up the water around it, which includes Bear Creek.

At a recent Baltimore County Council meeting, David Lykens, the director of the county’s environmental protection and sustainability department, said the proposed cleanup will take a while.

“That will take many years to come to fruition and see where exactly that’s going to be and what they’re actually going to do about it,” Lykens told the council.

Doug Myers, Maryland senior scientist for Chesapeake Bay Foundation said in a statement, “We urge EPA to conduct a swift and thorough investigation leading to a remedy that will reverse this toxic legacy.”

Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski said while the county is not leading the cleanup of Bear Creek, they want to be at the table.

“We want to provide whatever information and support we can to ensure that there’s a full investigation,” Olszewski said. “There’s a long history there. It’s personal for me having grown up there. It’s personal for many folks who live over in Eastern Baltimore County.”

According to the EPA, there is a minimum of 60 acres of contaminated sediments in Bear Creek near where it flows into the Patapsco River. It was contaminated by decades of steel making at Sparrows Point. The EPA said people who use Bear Creek are exposed to the contamination.

The 3,300-acre former site of Bethlehem Steel is being developed by Tradepoint Atlantic. Since 2014, Tradepoint has been transforming Sparrows Point from the contaminated site of a crumbling, abandoned steel plant to a global logistics center that includes distribution warehouses for FedEx, Amazon and Under Armour.

Way back when, I did some sampling in Bear Creek. It's actually a pretty place, but the sediments are terribly contaminated from the old steel works. While I wouldn't recommend eating it, however, it's difficult to show that the sediment is actually causing much harm at this point. A lot of it is slowly being buried by new sediment, and away from modern biota.

Chesapeake to Get New Superfund Site?

Bear Creek MD

Fox 45, Contaminated Bear Creek in Dundalk could become Superfund site

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing making the contaminated Bear Creek in the Dundalk area a Superfund site.

High levels of benzene, chromium, lead, naphthalene, benzo(a)pyrene and zinc have been found in the area's groundwater and sediment, thanks to contamination from Bethlehem Steel Corporation's 126-year dominance of Sparrows Point, according to information from EPA and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

The EPA wants to add at least 60 acres of Bear Creek to the Superfund National Priorities List. The public can comment on the proposal between Sept. 9 and Nov. 8 by clicking here.

The state of Maryland wrote to EPA on May 18 to encourage putting Bear Creek on the Superfund list, according to the EPA website.

Chesapeake Bay Foundation noted that area residents have traditionally used the creek for boating, crabbing and fishing. The state has issued a warning not to eat 10 species of fish, as well as blue crab, caught in the Patapsco River-Baltimore Harbor watershed due to the presence of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls).

A map to show the relationship of Bear Creek to Baltimore and Baltimore Harbor.  

I spent a day sampling in Bear Creek once, many years ago. For Baltimore, it's relatively attractive. Too bad it's so  heavily contaminated from decades of metal work at Sparrows Point

MD Orders Three Power Plants to Clean Up Their Acts

Chalk Point Power Station

Maryland tells 3 power plants to reduce toxic wastewater discharges

Maryland regulators have decided to make three power plants in the state reduce toxic wastewater discharges by 2020 under a federal regulation that the Trump administration has delayed and indicated it may roll back.

Heeding arguments made by environmental groups and some state lawmakers, the Maryland Department of the Environment gave NRG Energy until Nov. 1, 2020, to meet new limits on the discharges of certain pollutants — including toxic metals like arsenic, mercury and selenium — at its three plants.

The affected generating stations are Morgantown, on the lower Potomac River in Charles County; Chalk Point, on the Patuxent River in Prince George’s County; and Dickerson, also on the Potomac north of the District of Columbia, in Montgomery County. The facilities discharge water that’s been used in their air pollution scrubbers and to flush bottom ash out of their boilers.

Morgantown power plant 

In making its final determination on the renewal of the plants’ five-year discharge permits, the MDE backed away from its earlier, tentative decision to give the facilities up to five years before they’d have to curtail the discharges under “effluent limitations guidelines” from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA finalized those limits in 2015, making them the first federal limits on toxic metals and other harmful pollutants discharged to rivers and streams by coal-burning power plants. Citing technology improvements over the last three decades, the agency required coal plants to install or upgrade wastewater treatment systems or otherwise adjust the plant’s operations to curtail such discharges.

Dickerson power plant

The EPA decreed at that time that the rule would be phased in starting this year, with all plants to be in compliance by 2023. But last year, responding to industry complaints about the rule’s cost, the EPA initially stayed the rule, and then delayed its effective date to 2020 or beyond while the agency considered revisions. Environmental groups sued, and the case is pending in federal appeals court.

In the face of such uncertainty, the MDE had at first proposed giving the plants the option of complying with the federal rule by November 2020 or delaying until 2023 to await potential changes. Environmental groups, some lawmakers and others had submitted written comments urging the MDE not to wait, citing the impacts such discharges could be having on fish and human health.

In a written response to those comments, the MDE said it never intended to delay implementation of an active regulation. While the EPA rule did allow for granting more time beyond Nov. 1, 2020, the MDE said it had received no proposal from the company specifically arguing that it needed more time to comply. Indeed, the MDE noted that at the Morgantown plant, for instance, the company has already installed an advanced biological treatment system to help it meet the new limits.

I sampled for metals around all three of the power plants mentioned, and didn't find excessive levels of any of the metals mentioned. However, they are all coal fired power plants (although at least Chalk Point is now at least partly natural gas), and produce huge mounds of coal ash.  We would be better off the switch them to gas (or better, nuclear) ASAP.

Reason #5899 That Trump Was Elected

Some Steel and Aluminum Makers to Restart Plant Operations Amid Tariff Plans

Some U.S. steel and aluminum makers are restarting idle mills and boosting capacity to make up for imports that face being priced out of the market if President Donald Trump’s proposed import tariffs take hold.

United States Steel Corp. on Wednesday said it would fire up a blast furnace in Granite City, Ill., and call back 500 workers. Century Aluminum Co. said last week it will restart lines at a smelter in Kentucky that have been curtailed since 2015, doubling its workforce there to 600.

“Our Granite City Works facility and employees…have suffered too long from the unending waves of unfairly traded steel products that have flooded U.S. markets,” U.S. Steel Chief Executive David Burritt said. The company had idled the furnaces and laid off hundreds of workers in 2015 as a flood of cheap imports pushed down domestic prices.

U.S. Steel shares rose 2.6% Wednesday to $45.69, making for a 28% increase in the past 12 months.

I'm generally free trade, but America needs to retain the ability to make it's own strategic metals. Either that, or plan on conquering Canada the next time we go to war seriously.

Melting Yukon Ice Reveals 900 Year Old Copper Arrowhead

'Incredible' 900-year-old copper arrowhead discovered on Canadian mountain

A rare copper arrowhead discovered on a remote Canadian mountain is almost 900 years old, archaeologists have confirmed.

The arrowhead, which is at the tip of a perfectly preserved antler arrow, was found sticking out of an ice patch in Canada’s Yukon Territory. The find, which was made in 2016 on an unnamed mountain, surprised experts.

“It was found near the top of a snow-capped mountain in South West Yukon,” Yukon Archaeologist Greg Hare told Fox News. “It was an incredible discovery, we really didn’t intend to be on that [ice] patch on that day."

Native Americans have long been known to have used native copper metal deposits, including in the Alaska and Yukon region, so that's really not the surprise.  But an artifact melting out of a 900 year old ice patch implies that, at least in that spot, the world was warmer than in has been recently in the distant past.

Getting the Lead Out of Eagles

Bald eagles are dying from lead in hunting, fishing products: 'This is starting to be an epidemic' 

. . . The Pennsylvania Game Commission responsibly issued a news release last month under the heading, “Lead poisoning in Pennsylvania bald eagles on the rise.”

In the past year alone, 12 bald eagles have been treated by licensed wildlife rehabilitators around the state with confirmed cases of lead poisoning. Only one of them survived.

One of the dead was a 30-year-old eagle that was one of the first brought here from Saskatchewan, Canada, to launch Pennsylvania’s riproaringly successful eagle restoration effort.

Aside from the poisoned eagles that have died in the hands of licensed rehabbers, the Game Commission has performed necropsies and tested for lead on 202 dead eagles since 2006. An unsettling 30 percent have had severe levels of lead.

A bald eagle from Lancaster County

 suffering from lead poisoning. 

The eagle was treated by a wildlife 

rehabilitator and was eventually released

 back into the wild.

That's quite a lot. I note that this article is from Pennsylvania where hunting with a rifle, which causes the kind of splatter seen on the right, is common. In most of Maryland, except for a couple of counties, deer hunting with rifles is forbidden, and shotguns with large buckshot and rifled slugs, which rarely fragment, are used instead.

Most dead birds are never found.

“Certainly, we do see some cases that coincide with big-game hunting in the fall,” says Dr. Justin Brown, the Game Commission’s wildlife veterinarian.

But lead-poisoned eagles also are showing up at other times of the year. Where is the lead coming from?

Lead from fishing sinkers or lures is one possibility. More likely, though, they ate the bodies of varmints, groundhogs or upland game birds and animals that were shot with shotgun pellets or rifle bullets and left exposed.

The vast majority of the lead that I lose fishing (and God knows I've lost some lead) is in half ounce or greater lumps, with huge hooks embedded. The eagle that swallows one of those has more immediate problems than lead poisoning. They were also mostly lost in water more than 10 feet deep, well out of the range of most eagles.

But an unsettling number of dead eagles are showing up right after deer-hunting seasons.

Studies have shown that lead bullets on impact throw out tiny fragments.  As much as 30 to 40 percent of a lead bullet can remain in the animal after the bullet passes through and the tiny fragments can be pushed into tissue up to 18 inches from impact, the Game Commission release notes.

Being part of the solution involves switching to lead-free ammo and fishing gear. Or, at least not leaving carcasses of animals in the open, and burying gut piles or covering them with leaves and sticks.

Demand for lead-free bullets — copper or copper alloys — is growing. Ballistic tests show they perform well, and are more likely to pass through an animal than lead bullets, increasing stopping power.

Clearly written by a typical gun illiterate journalist. The idea of a bullet is to transfer the energy of the gun powder into tissue damage.  A bullet that passes through has wasted energy. Hunting rounds are carefully calibrated to do the maximum damage in a typical kill shot. And this is the reason that the laws of war outlaw dum-dum (fragmenting) bullets.

Yes, copper bullets cost a little more. My cursory check online showed a box of 20 lead rifle bullets ranged from $23-$42, while lead-free bullets went for $30-$41.

The cost of the alloy is of little consequence, but the idea is that high density is ideal from a ballistic standpoint. Lead is easy to work and cast, and is the most dense metal commonly available. The military uses denser metals like tungsten and depleted uranium of certain purposes. The density of copper is 8.9 g/cc, the density of lead is 11.3, the density of uranium is 18.8, and tungsten 19.6. Osmium is the heaviest, at 22.6, but too expensive for throwing down range.

Gold, at 19.3 g/cc, is nice and tarnish free, but $1270 for a one ounce jig head is out of my price range. I often lose five or six of those a day fishing the rips in spring.

Ash Ponds Off Hook in Hexavalent Chromium Pollution

A study exonerates coal ash ponds, but leaves worries

There’s a good news-bad news quality to a recent report by Duke University-led researchers about hexavalent chromium in North Carolina drinking wells. The good news is that the toxic chemical in the water occurs naturally. That means it didn’t come from nearby coal-ash ponds.

Duke Energy and Dominion both surely breathed a sigh of relief, and the study should tamp down criticism from environmentalists who see power companies as the locus of evil in the modern world.

They won't be appeased. They'll just find another cause for opposition. If you read the report, it's not just that the hexavalent chromium didn't come from the ash ponds, it's clear that there is simply no evidence of any leakage from the ponds into the drinking water wells.

What’s more, the fact that hexavalent chromium is not coming from coal ash depositories does not mean those depositories are harmless. They still contain significant amounts of other toxic chemicals, such as arsenic. And coal-burning remains one of the dirtiest means of generating electricity — which is why the trend away from coal toward gas-fired and other forms of generation should continue as rapidly as possible.

Yep, coal burning is a terrible way to make power, but thanks to "environmentalists" previous (and only slowly weakening) opposition to nuclear power, it's a major part of what we need to supply the energy for our civilization.

USGS Lab Closed for Data Fraud

USGS finds data fraud, closes chemistry lab

Alleged misconduct and data manipulation at a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) laboratory may have affected thousands of environmental quality measurements processed between 2008 and 2014, according to the Interior Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG).

As many as 24 research projects, representing some $108 million in funding for the laboratory, may have been impacted, OIG said earlier this month. “At least seven reports have been delayed, and to date, one report has been retracted.”

The misconduct, which was discovered by USGS management in 2014, involves analyses performed using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry by the Inorganic Section of the USGS Energy Geochemistry Laboratory in Lakewood, Colo.

“Some data were manipulated both to correct for calibration failures and to improve results of standard reference materials and unknowns” and raw data were not retained, USGS says.

Having run an ICPMS lab, I understand the temptation well. While ICPMS is insanely sensitive (it literally counts atoms) , it is very susceptible to  matrix effects, and it can be difficult to get the "right" results for standard reference materials using standards from  clean matrices. However, it is always fraudulent to "adjust" the data based on SRM recoveries. You just don't do that.

Although USGS notified affected lab customers, some collaborators, and relevant journals about the misconduct investigation, OIG faulted the agency for taking too long to issue a public notification.

USGS permanently closed the lab on March 1 and issued a public notification on the lab’s website last month ahead of the OIG report. The lab routinely processed samples as a service for USGS scientists and scientists from other organizations.

It's going to be a nightmare to sort out what's good from what's bad. Georgia may know some of the people affected.

Exelon, Feds Agree on Conowingo Fish Lift

Hickory Shad fishing in Maryland

Deal reached on fish, eel passage at Conowingo Dam

Exelon Corp. has pledged in a deal announced Monday to work to enhance spawning fish passage at Conowingo Dam over the next 50 years, seeking to revive the Susquehanna River’s meager stocks of American shad and river herring.

The Chicago-based company and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said they had reached agreement to improve at least one of two fish lifts at Conowingo and meanwhile start trucking migratory shad and river herring upriver past it and three other dams in Pennsylvania.

The agreement comes after years of negotiations between the company and wildlife agencies and conservation groups, which were seeking to revive the once-legendary spawning runs of shad and herring. The number of returning fish each spring has been trending downward since the 1980s, and wildlife agencies and conservationists wanted Exelon to make potentially costly upgrades to fish lifts there as a condition of renewing its federal license to operate the hydroelectric facility.

Exelon, for it's part, did not create the problem, having purchased the damn and it's power production facility. In addition to being a primary black start power source if the regional PJM power grid ever had a widespread emergency shutdown (blackout), the damn has also trapped enormous amounts of damaging nutrient and toxic laded sediments from upstream, saving the Bay from their effects.

The company's license to operate Conowingo expired in 2014, but the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has extended the permit while the parties — including Maryland —attempt to hash out their differences. An even more contentious issue involves what Exelon may have to do about the buildup of nutrient-laden sediment in the dam’s reservoir, which studies have shown could complicated efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay’s water quality. 

Sure, you saved the Bay almost 100 years of problems, but what are you doing for me now?

Ron DeGregorio, president of Exelon Power and senior vice president of Exelon Generation, called the fish passage agreement a “significant step” toward the goal of reviving spring shad and herring runs.

“The trap and transport program allows fish to bypass Holtwood, Safe Harbor and York Haven Dams to successfully reach their spawning grounds,” DeGregorio pointed out. As part of the deal, Exelon pledged to truck as many as 100,000 of each species annually past all four dams.

It's not a perfect solution (they rarely are) but it's a lot better than nothing.

Wombat-socho has the giant "Rule 5 Sunday: Blue Shirt Double-Dip Edition"  ready at The Other McCain.

Did Freddie Gray Die of Lead Poisoning?

Not a bullet, but according to this Washington Post article, his behavior and criminality (which ultimately brought him into police custody) may have been the result of chronic lead poisoning from leaded paint acquired as a kid from leaded paint:

family photo of Freddie Gray from
 a court filing for a lawsuit in 2008
 against a former landlord

Freddie Gray’s life a study on the effects of lead paint on poor blacks

Before Freddie Gray was injured in police custody last month, before he died and this city was plunged into rioting, his life was defined by failures in the classroom, run-ins with the law and an inability to focus on anything for very long.

Many of those problems began when he was a child and living in this house, according to a 2008 lead-poisoning lawsuit filed by Gray and his siblings against the property owner. The suit resulted in an undisclosed settlement.

It's not just a vague allegation in this case (as it often is). Freddie Gray and family actually won a lawsuit on this basis. However, could the homeowner have settled rather than fight the actual data?

It is nonetheless hard to know whether Gray’s problems were exclusively borne of lead poisoning or were the result of other socioeconomic factors as well. From birth, his was a life of intractable poverty that would have been challenging to overcome.

Pro forma acknowledgment that the case is questionable, even if Freddie had excess lead levels.

Equally difficult to know is the total number of children lead has poisoned. That’s because the declared threshold for how much lead a body can safely tolerate has shifted dramatically over the years as researchers have come to better understand its dangers. Decades ago, city health officials tested for blood lead levels that were higher than 20 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood. Now, it is believed that anything higher than 5 micrograms can cripple a child’s cognitive development.

For those unfamiliar with the unit, a "deciliter" is one tenth of a liter (or 100 milliliters), making 20 micrograms/deciliter equal to 200 micrograms per liter (or 200 parts per billion. That's a shit load of lead.

“In 1993, we found that 13,000 kids in Baltimore had been poisoned with lead, but we weren’t collecting at the levels that we are today,” said Ruth Ann Norton, the executive director of the Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning. “If we had, we would have found 30,000 poisoned kids.”

Overall, more than 93,000 children with lead poisoning have been added to the state’s Department of the Environment lead registries over the past two decades, a time frame in which Baltimore and other cities have substantially reduced the number of houses with paint containing lead.

“A child who was poisoned with lead is seven times more likely to drop out of school and six times more likely to end up in the juvenile justice system,” Norton said. She called lead poisoning Baltimore’s “toxic legacy” — a still-unfolding tragedy with which she says the city has yet to come to terms. Those kids who were poisoned decades ago are now adults. And the trauma associated with lead poisoning ­“creates too much of a burden on a community,” she said.

Did the cock crowing cause the sun to rise? Is lead poisoning an actual cause of Freddie's mental and behavior issues, or was it coincident? Are the pathologies of the ghetto a result of lead paint, or are they independent problems.

Unfortunately, perhaps, we cannot run controlled, blind studies where one population is fed lead and another is not, allowing a fair comparison.

We'll Do it Right This Time, Promise!

Leaders of Chesapeake Bay states and the District sign new pact to improve bay’s health

Government leaders in the Chesapeake Bay watershed on Monday signed a broad agreement to restore the health of its waters, as the blue crab and oyster populations continue to fluctuate and scientists complain about toxins that are changing the sex of fish.

The Chesapeake Watershed Agreement is the third signed since the 1980s by the six watershed states — Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York — and the District.

Third time's the charm, they say.

Unlike in the previous agreements, the governors and mayor who signed it vowed to go beyond limiting the amount of pollution that rolls into bay tributaries from cities and farms. They pledged to investigate the effects of chemical contamination and toxins, look at how land use impedes the bay’s improvement and study the threat of sea-level rise.

They have addressed toxics in the Bay previously, but not to the extent that they have focused on eutrophication from excess nutrients. No point in worrying if the fish and oysters are being poisoned by organics and heavy metals if they won't grow in the anoxic waters.

And yet another study (or 100) of the not particularly exciting  rate of sea level rise in the Chesapeake:

EPA Fiddles While Cities Burn

But it's for the kids: Cities Raise Alarms Over EPA’s Surprise Hydrant Lead Rule

Philadelphia has 119 fire hydrants that cost about $2,000 each waiting in a warehouse to be installed, yet they sit high and dry because federal regulators say their fittings might taint drinking water with lead.

The City of Brotherly Love and communities across the U.S. face the specter of hundreds of millions of dollars in useless hydrants after a surprise ruling last month by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that requires fireplugs put in after Jan. 4 meet stricter standards for lead content, said Tom Curtis of the American Water Works Association in Denver. That means cities must scrap or retrofit inventory or buy hydrants and parts that some vendors aren’t even making yet.

Manufacturers and Curtis’s group, which represents utilities that serve about 80 percent of Americans, are urging the agency to reconsider or at least allow more time to comply. American Cast Iron Pipe Co., one of the largest hydrant makers, is seeing some customers delay or cancel orders...

Isn't drinking out of a fire hose sort of a cliché?

...Hydrants pose little, if any, risk of long-term lead exposure because they are used to supply drinking water only on occasions such as a festival or when a main breaks, Curtis said by telephone from Washington.
...
The EPA said in a statement it is “meeting with stakeholders to listen to concerns and collect more information.”

The rule resulted from a law enacted in January 2011, the Reduction of Lead in Drinking Water Act. The measure changed the amount of the metal allowed in plumbing components that contact water supplies from 8 percent to a weighted average of 0.25 percent, according to the EPA.

The old stakeholders again; the interest group representatives that government agencies drag out of the shadows to validate the actions they wish to take?

Flash Floods of Chesapeake Bay

We (or at least I) don't tend to think of Flash floods as threat in the Chesapeake Bay.  I have a cousin who is a rancher in Arizona.  One year his Christmas letter included a paragraph on how he was caught in a flash flood in a gully while tending his cows (his daily commute involves a horse, and very little traffic) and nearly drowned.  Another year, it was a snake bite. (This is the same crazy cousin who, when we were teenagers and young adults) would catch live rattlesnakes by hand, by stomping on them barefoot and pining them.  I always thought the snake loop was a much better approach.

But I digress; this is supposed to be a comment on an article about how flash floods in the Chesapeake Bay watershed pose a danger to the Bay (to heck with the people, there's plenty of them):

Flash Floods and the Ecology of Local Waterways

So far this summer, Arlington has been subject to flash floods and flash flood warnings. While flash floods are obviously harmful to those who live in or are trying to navigate through a flooded area, the floods can actually be harmful to the ecology of the flooded waterway itself.

A flash flood is a weather condition defined by the National Weather Service as “a rapid and extreme flow of high water into a normally dry area, or a rapid water level rise in a stream or creek above a predetermined flood level, beginning within six hours of the causative event.” In other words, a tremendous amount of water in a short amount of time caused by thunderstorms or heavy rainfall.

These types of storms are most common in Arlington during the spring and summer months due to the weather and climate of the area, which explains why the flood threats have picked up recently.

I think this is a rather subtle attempt to blame it on global warming, but it fell a bit flat. It has been a wet summer this year, which is good for my lawn and crops, but, really, it's nothing exceptional for the mid-Atlantic. Any less, and the farmers would be screaming "drought"!

No, it's really a function of the rainfall rate, and the amount of ground covered by impermeable surfaces.  High rainfall rates, and urban areas routinely produce flooding.

The effects of flash floods depend on factors such as the amount of previous rainfall the area has experienced and how much rainfall can be absorbed in the area. Flash floods, therefore, affect all areas and environments differently and there’s no blanket formula to predict how a storm will affect a given area.

Aside from the potential danger presented from this type of extreme weather condition, heavy rainfall and flash floods can have negative impacts on our local streams and surrounding environments.

“When rainfall runs from developed surfaces in Arlington to local streams, it washes any nutrients on the surface into the watershed,” explains WJLA meteorologist and Arlington Public Schools high school science teacher Ryan Miller.

These nutrients can include fertilizer, pet waste, and gasoline, and when they infiltrate runoff heading towards local tributaries, they eventually end up in the Potomac River and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay. Waterways suffer from the introduction of these pollutants which catalyze a harmful process called eutrophication.

Um, that's the first time I've ever seen nutrients applied to gasoline, but I understand.  I think the word they are looking for is "pollutant," a word that covers both nutrients  (things that make plants grow and lead to eutrophication) and toxic materials including organic compounds (like pesticides) and unwanted heavy metals (like lead and mercury).