EPA7
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In New York City, 2010 is All About the Water
Has New York City hit a critical mass that will make it truly a green city? I’m beginning to suspect so, at least in terms of water issues. There have been an increasing number of initiatives both to remediate past damage and to prevent future water quality problems, that are worth looking at together.
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Another Superfund Site in New York City: Newtown Creek to Get a Makeover
The March designation of the Gowanus Canal in New York City as a SuperFund clean up site was an important step forward, and is now being followed by another leap: on Monday Newtown Creek, which runs between Queens and Brooklyn received the same designation.
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The Policy Buffet (Part 4): Eulogizing the Climate Bill that Wasn’t
On July 22, just days before the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared that the last decade was the warmest on record, the United States Senate abandoned its effort to put a price on carbon. Comprehensive climate and energy legislation was on life-support for weeks until Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) announced that…
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Beyond Carbon: How Fixing the Ozone Layer Contributes to Climate Change
The greenhouse effect is not all about carbon dioxide. Several other substances, such as water vapor and methane, also play a key part in trapping radiation. Recently, a family of relatively obscure chemicals called hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, has entered the spotlight due to its role in global warming. HFCs are highly potent greenhouse warmers –…
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How to Clean up the Gulf Coastline after the Oil Spill – EPA Workshop
On June 5th, Columbia Water Center collaborator Ponisseril Somasundaran, an Engineering professor at Columbia University, participated in a workshop organized by the EPA on how to best address the environmental recovery of the Gulf Coast shoreline after the disastrous oil spill. At a later date we will post a conversation with Prof. Somasundaran about the…
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A Visit to Gowanus
I recently took a trip to the Gowanus neighborhood in Brooklyn to visit its infamously polluted (and smelly) canal. After decades of controversy, the Environmental Protection Agency recently named the canal as a Superfund site—one of the few such designations in an inner-urban area. In its report, the EPA found that the Gowanus Canal “has…
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Hydraulic Fracturing – Potential for Contamination of Drinking Water Sources
Hydraulic fracturing is a technique used by the oil and gas industry to facilitate natural gas recovery in underground low permeability coalbed methane wells. This operation improves the extraction efficiency of methane by creating fissions or fractures in underground rock formations, generally 5,000 – 20,000 feet below the ground surface. Highly pressurized hydraulic fracturing fluids,…
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Good News from EPA – No Fooling
Recently, the Obama administration has been getting harsh reviews from some environmentalists for its decision to open several new areas of the US to offshore drilling. Putting this admittedly odd decision aside though, the Thursday April 1 (April Fool’s Day) decision to roll out tough new water quality standards that could severely limit some of the most destructive…
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Will the economy call the EPA’s bluff?
As expected, the Environmental Protection Agency is calling carbon dioxide (CO2) a danger to public health and welfare, a necessary first step for the agency to regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act. Commentators, including myself, have doubted that the endangerment finding will lead to comprehensive regulation of CO2 under the Clean Air Act, as…
