Categories for GreenPost

Dec 27

2012

Ups and downs of Lisa Jackson’s tenure

Published by Dan Telvock

Lisa Jackson’s announcement today that she is retiring as head of the Environmental Protection Agency guarantees she won’t be revisiting her plan to limit smog in 2013 after President Obama shoved it to the side more than a year ago. For Jackson, her tenure has had its ups and downs. Jackson was successful in creating the first national standards for mercury and other toxic emissions from power plants and increasing the fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. She told the New York Times that the most important decision in her four years is the endangerment finding that marked carbon[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Dec 27

2012

Seiche caused low water levels

Published by Dan Telvock

People took to Facebook and Twitter Wednesday wondering why water levels for Lake Erie and its tributaries were abnormally low. I thought I was going to have to make calls today to meteorologists and other weather experts to explain what happened, but our partners at WGRZ did it for us. Channel 2 WGRZ discovered that a seiche is the culprit. A seiche starts with a storm surge or high sustained winds from one direction that push the water up at the opposite — which in this case would be in Toledo, OH, — and cause the other side to drop like it[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Dec 20

2012

The Great Lakes are stressing out

Published by Dan Telvock

This map shows a sea of red off of Buffalo and many other Rust Belt cities where environmental stressors are harming the nation’s largest fresh water source, the Great Lakes. People can heed the data and maps as a warning — the red doesn’t mean death, but it helps point people to where the focus needs to be to reverse the impacts of these environmental stressors, said the chief researcher for the project, J. David Allen, a professor of aquatic sciences at the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment. Other Great Lakes experts might argue that the places[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Dec 13

2012

Vegetarians attack Buffalo’s chicken

Published by Dan Telvock

Those traveling to the Bills-Jaguars game on Dec. 2 may have seen the billboard on McKinley Parkway: “It’s a crapshoot: Feces taints 50% of Buffalo Chicken.” I hope you didn’t throw your chicken wings out the window after seeing the billboard because there’s another side to the story that the billboard sponsors aren’t telling us. Read on. The billboard came from the nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which advocates for vegetarian lifestyles and “encourages higher standards for ethics and effectiveness in research.” The Buffalo findings were posted on the group’s website on Nov. 29. Out of the hundreds of[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Dec 12

2012

A snapshot of the homeless in Buffalo area

Published by Dan Telvock

The snapshot of homelessness that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development released today shows a slight decline in the total population of homeless people in the United States for a single day in January 2012. “Our local numbers sort of mirror the national numbers,” said Dale Zuchlewski, the executive director of the Homelessness Alliance of Western New York. But that doesn’t mean Zuchlewski is breathing a sigh of relief. The Buffalo/Erie County Continuum of Care reported 120 chronically homeless people on that January day, down from 129 in 2011. Another positive that Zuchlewski pointed out is that the number[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Dec 7

2012

EPA moves to ban boat sewage in Lake Erie

Published by Dan Telvock

Gross as it is, boaters have been able to pump out their sewage into Lake Erie, but this may soon come to an end. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a statement today “tentatively” determining that there are plenty of pump-out stations around Lake Erie that allow for boats to remove the sewage in a more environmentally friendly way. The federal agency wants to ban boats from pumping out the sewage into the lake based on a proposal from the state Department of Environmental Conservation. “This proposal will help protect water quality and marine life in Lake Erie for years[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Nov 28

2012

Texting out idling trucks around Peace Bridge

Published by Dan Telvock

More light may be shed on just how big of a problem idling trucks are for the Lower West Side. The Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo and the Clean Air Coalition of WNY launched a program this week called Grow 716 that allows people to text a six-digit number whenever they see an idling heavy-duty engine truck or bus in the Lower West Side. The foundation provided the technology and the Clean Air Coalition will be responsible for the outreach campaign. This is how it works: If you see an idling truck in the Lower West Side, text TRUCK to[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Nov 26

2012

Can fracking threaten the Great Lakes?

Published by Dan Telvock

It is against the law to drill for natural gas under the Great Lakes, but that doesn’t mean they are safe. Lois Gibbs, an environmental activist famous for leading the charge to clean up the Love Canal in Niagara Falls, points out that it is still legal to drill for natural gas underneath rivers, streams and creeks that feed into the Great Lakes. Gibbs says the natural gas industry is already starting hydrofracking around the Great Lakes. “This is insane,” she wrote. “It’s unbelievable, hundreds of chemicals injected all around our fresh water lakes that both the U.S. and Canada have[...]

Posted 12 years ago