Thursday, May 31, 2012

U.S. Taxes Chinese Wind-Turbine Towers

Story first appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

A Chinese industry group said a preliminary U.S. decision to impose tariffs on Chinese wind-turbine towers would have a "negative effect" on related U.S. industries and is an attempt to conceal that U.S. tower manufacturers aren't competitive.

The statement by the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products on Thursday was the latest salvo in an escalating battle between China and the U.S. over trade in the renewable-energy sector. Over the past three weeks, each side has accused the other of providing illegal subsidies to prop up its sector.

Chinese wind-turbine towers are favored by large-scale U.S. wind-power operators and have helped popularize wind power in the U.S.

China's Foreign Ministry said the dispute was best solved through negotiation and consultation.
Resorting to protectionist measures will not help solve these frictions; it will harm business ties between the two.

The U.S. Commerce Department said Wednesday that it would slap tariffs between 13.74% and 26% on Chinese wind-tower suppliers, after an investigation revealed that they received illegal subsidies.

The ruling came almost one week after China's Commerce Ministry said U.S. support for six clean-energy projects violated World Trade Organization rules and acted as barriers to trade. That was preceded by a U.S. decision to slap 31% tariffs on some Chinese solar-panel makers, used to make Solar Carports.

Among those hardest hit by Wednesday's tariffs were China's CS Wind and Titan Group, which sell towers in the U.S. mainly to European and U.S. wind-turbine manufacturers.

CS Wind alone represented almost 65% of all Asian tower imports to the U.S. market over the past two years, according to Denmark-based Make Consulting.


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Plastic Bags Go The Way of The Dinosaur

Story first appeared in USA Today.

Ah, the little plastic grocery bag, we hardly got to know you.

Although it seems as if the single-use grocery bag, as it's formally known, has been around forever, it wasn't until 1977 that it was introduced to U.S. supermarkets, a move that prompted perhaps the most asked question of the following decade: "Paper or plastic?"

As the years went by and plastic won, people began to find myriad other makeshift uses for the little bags with the briefcase-like handles. You could line small trash cans with them, use one to scoop up dog waste and another to carry wet towels home from the beach. You could even use them to take pictures in the rain and not destroy your camera.

The discarded bags, though, had a nasty habit of washing up on beaches by the thousands, clogging storm drains and getting tangled in all sorts of stuff. That raised the ire of environmentalists, who have been on a ban-the-bag quest for years.

Now, with the city of Los Angeles taking the first step toward joining nearly four dozen other California municipalities in outlawing them, the humble little polyethylene bag may be headed for the trash heap of history.

San Francisco already bans the bag. So do San Jose, Long Beach, Berkeley and Malibu.

But L.A., with nearly 4 million residents, goes through an estimated 2.7 billion plastic grocery bags a year, according to city officials, and environmentalists believe a ban here will have a huge impact and could even influence the rest of the country to follow suit.

This is a gateway for sustainability. This is meant to change consumer behavior and expand consumer consciousness.

So, using those handy little bags with the tie-shut handles for cleaning up after your dog or cat? Forget about it.

In Santa Monica, many people say they already have.

Santa Monica banned the use of plastic grocery bags more than a year ago, as did Los Angeles County for its unincorporated areas, which is where Artress lives. And although she misses her free bags, she figures it's a small sacrifice to make for the environment.

Plastic has done a lot of good things, we absolutely need it just to pick up our dog poop.

Indeed, every dog walker, jogger or bicyclist who stopped to talk about plastic bags on a recent sunny afternoon in the park that overlooks the Pacific Ocean agreed wholeheartedly with her.

Oh sure, most of them admitted, they've forgotten their reusable bag. They've had to fumble with paper ones, which cost them a dime apiece. Some even precariously juggled their purchases free hand on the way back to the car.

But the tradeoff, they say, was worth it.

The plastic bags have also been known to be handy for carrying baby bottles and for stashing dirty diapers until you find a trash can. But residents have found freezer bags serve the same purpose and don't seem to blow away in the wind, get tangled in trees or power lines or stuck in storm drains like grocery bags do. The biggest thing now is remembering to bring those reusable cloth bags to the grocery store.

Under the proposal the City Council approved last week, Los Angeles will conduct an environmental impact study to see just what effect banning plastic grocery bags might have.

Then it will look at adopting a ban similar to Santa Monica's, which would allow people who forget to bring their reusable bags to the store to buy paper ones for 10 cents apiece.

No time frame for all that was given, prompting industry officials who oppose the ban to note it's still a long way from happening, and that they will argue that it would be a job killer for California while not significantly cleaning the environment.

Meanwhile, bans have begun to be adopted elsewhere. Every county in Hawaii has now banned plastic grocery bags, although all the bans won't fully take effect across the state until 2015. The bags have also been banned in Portland, Ore, and in the Outer Banks region of North Carolina, although there is an effort under way in that state to repeal the ban.

In L.A., the proposed ban wouldn't completely eliminate plastic bags.

People who feel they just can't survive without having a plastic grocery bag to entertain a cat with or slide over a broken parking meter could still obtain one by going to a takeout restaurant.

Unless, that is, they live in Malibu.

The bags have been banned from restaurants there too.


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High-Fructose Corn Syrup Denied Name Change

Story first appeared in USA Today.

High-fructose corn syrup won't get a wholesome new name after all.

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday rejected the Corn Refiners Association's bid to rename its sweetening agent "corn sugar."

Given the sweetener's bad reputation in recent years, the association submitted an application to the agency in 2010 to have the product renamed on nutrition labels.

But the FDA said that it defines sugar as a solid, dried and crystallized food — not a syrup.

Separately, the Corn Refiners Association has also been running a marketing campaign to explain that its syrup is actually a form of sugar and has the same nutritional value as the familiar white, granular table sugar with which consumers are familiar.

That in turn prompted a lawsuit from the Sugar Association last year claiming that the campaign is misleading.

A lawyer for the Sugar Association, said the FDA's decision confirms his group's position that sugar and high-fructose corn syrup are two distinct products.

The Corn Refiners Association issued a statement Wednesday noting that the FDA denied its petition on "narrow, technical" grounds.
The group said it stood by its claim that "the vast majority of American consumers are confused about HFCS."

High-fructose corn syrup came into the U.S. market in the late 1970s and 1980s. The product is used widely in cereals, sodas and other processed food and drinks because it's cheaper and mixes easily into recipes.

Despite the name, the Corn Refiners Association says the most common forms of it are about half fructose and half glucose.

The American Medical Association has said it wants more research on high-fructose corn syrup, but says there's not enough evidence to restrict its use for now. The Center for Science in the Public Interest has said that there was no evidence that the sweetener is any worse for the body than sugar — and that Americans consume too much of both of them.


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Wednesday, May 30, 2012

EPA Wants to Revise Stormwater Regulations

Story first appeared in The Seattle Times.
The Presidential administration wants to change the rules applying to stormwater running off logging roads, blunting a landmark court ruling that found the muddy water running into salmon streams and reservoirs should be regulated like industrial pollution.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) filed notice Wednesday in the Federal Register proposing to revise stormwater regulations to say hundreds of thousands of miles of logging roads on private and public lands nationwide don't need the same kinds of permits that factories must get. Some of the roads are paved, but most are graveled, and some are bare dirt.

Instead, they would be regulated under a less stringent system known as "Best Management Practices," where authorities set up guidelines for the design and maintenance of logging roads to minimize erosion that sends mud into rivers.

The EPA is reviewing how states and tribes handle the issue, and plans to issue the new rules by Sept. 30, when an exemption for the timber industry enacted by Congress expires.

An EPA spokeswoman said the agency was taking advantage of flexibility within the Clean Water Act and would consider a range of approaches that did not require permits.

The move comes as the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether to hear the case. The high court asked the Obama administration's top lawyer to suggest whether the question needed higher review. The U.S. Solicitor General's brief is expected in a few days.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2010 that the muddy water running off roads used in industrial logging is the same as any other industrial pollution, requiring a Clean Water Act permit from the EPA. The case was brought by the Northwest Environmental Defense Center in Portland against the Oregon Department of Forestry over logging roads in Tillamook State Forest.

The timber industry said maintaining the status quo through-best management practices as suggested by the EPA was the best course but urged Congress to make permanent the temporary exemption granted the timber industry after the appeals-court ruling.

If allowed to stand, the 9th Circuit approach will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, kill thousands of jobs and invite protracted litigation over permit technicalities without any corresponding environmental benefit. Federal, state, tribal and private resource professionals agree that complicated and costly federal permits will not make our rivers and streams any cleaner.

The executive director of the Northwest Environmental Defense Center said industrial permits would provide better protection for salmon habitat and clean drinking water, and that the EPA could award blanket permits similar to those held by the Oregon Department of Transportation for paved roads to makes things less complicated.

EPA ought to provide clarity and certainty through guidance and rule-making, but the substance of the proposal is off-base.

EPA has long recognized that there are some industrial logging activities and logging roads that pollute streams and require (National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System) permits. The EPA will continue advocating that permits are required for industrial-scale activities, while looking for opportunities to be flexible or responsive to concerns about small forest landowners and nonindustrial logging activities.


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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Weedkiller Dangerous to Humans

Story first appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

Syngenta AG agreed to pay $105 million to settle a class-action lawsuit in which water utilities in the U.S. Midwest claimed that one of the Swiss company's widely used weedkillers contaminated water supplies.

The proposed settlement, subject to federal court approval in Illinois, would resolve an eight-year-old suit over atrazine, a herbicide used by many corn growers.

Nearly 2,000 water utilities are eligible for the settlement, the lead plaintiff's attorney said Friday. In the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, utilities sought to be reimbursed for the cost of filtering atrazine from their systems.

300 utilities with the highest atrazine levels in their water will recover 100% of their costs, stated Kansas City Class Actions Lawyers.

Syngenta, an agricultural chemical and seed company, admitted no liability linked to atrazine as part of the settlement and said it reached the pact to end the business uncertainty and expense of protracted legal proceedings. The settlement will reduce its 2012 earnings by about 50 cents per share, the company said.

Settling this case will remove the burden of litigation from Syngenta's partners, customers, retailers, distributors and others who have been inconvenienced by the lawsuit.

The lead plaintiff's attorney, a St. Louis attorney, said the agreement will help protect many Americans' health. Water companies eligible to collect payments under the settlement serve 52 million people.

Atrazine is banned by the European Union, and critics of the herbicide cite studies indicating it can disrupt sexual reproduction in frogs, as well as some studies indicating potential human reproductive problems.

Syngenta, holding to its position that the product is safe, said Friday that the product is safe and no one ever has or ever could be exposed to enough atrazine in water to affect their health.

Atrazine is used on more than half of all acres of corn grown in the U.S., according to Syngenta.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is now reviewing the chemical, and has convened several meetings of its independent scientific advisory panel to examine atrazine over the past two years.

The EPA recently said that while there are still areas of uncertainty with atrazine, the agency's regulation is "robust" and effectively prevents exposure that could cause reproductive problems in humans.

A senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that has been critical of the EPA's regulation of atrazine, said there is increasing evidence that atrazine poses a threat to Midwestern women who become pregnant early in the crop-growing season, when the application of atrazine and other chemicals spikes.

Syngenta and farm groups said atrazine is a crucial herbicide and prohibiting the use of atrazine would cost farmers millions of dollars each year. Syngenta added that there is no substitute for atrazine, a 50-year-old product used in more than 60 countries.

The EPA's scientific advisory panel will meet again to examine atrazine in June. The agency said findings of the panel's meetings will be considered as it considers re-registering atrazine starting in 2013.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit included municipalities across the Midwest, from Greenville, Ill., to Oswego, Kan., as well as several Midwestern subsidiaries of American Water Works Co., the nation's largest non-government water company by volume.

Attorneys are notifying the communities that have detected atrazine in their water systems, and utilities will have until late August to test their water and submit claims.


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