Race, Pollution, Cancer in Louisiana; Dispatches from Bone Dry California
A petrochemical plant Issarawat Tattong / Shutterstock.com
Connecting state and local government leaders
Also: Ohio lawn-care refuseniks, making the Clean Power Plan bulletproof, Austin music festival lovers meet organic farmers
Here’s what we’ve been reading today …
BATON ROUGE, Louisiana: MSNBC Interactive this week posted the second in its four-part series on the “geography of poverty.” This week’s post, “Cancer Alley,” covers ties between pollution, race, poverty and illness in the industrial south, centering on the cluster of petrochemical plants that dominate life in the corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Author Trymaine Lee and photographer Matt Black document ways public policy and politics have failed the residents of the corridor for decades in a piece that shows off what high-end digital journalism can do.
LOS ANGELES, California: More than 200 wells in Tuolumne County near Yosemite National Park have gone dry, some of the wells as deep as 900 feet. A river that runs through downtown San Jose, the object of civic pride and successful restoration, is now a cracked, gray, dusty riverbed. Water-related news is bad across the long-drought-afflicted state. But as The Los Angeles Times reports, “innovation is blooming at water-wise urban farms,” which are forced partly due to space to be more resource savvy, using native plants and aquaponic closed-loop watering systems to increase yields and push farming technologies into the future. City Council members have taken notice and are looking to promote more farming in blighted areas. There’s also some good news on the conservation front. The Desert Sun reports that Coachella Valley Water District customers in July cut water use by 41 percent and nearby and Mission Springs customers cut use by 28 percent. The paper calls it a “major turnaround” because the districts ranked among the worst performing in the state in June. “A 30 percent reduction is pretty damn good when the temperature was 113 degrees last week,” Richard Oberhaus, a member of the Desert Water Agency board, told the paper.
[ The Los Angeles Times, The Desert Sun ]
ST ALBANS TOWNSHIP, Ohio: Sarah Baker refused to mow her lawn this summer, even after officials declared her overgrown yard a nuisance and fined her $1,000. Her blog post on the affair sprouted comments like weeds, 1,300 of them by one count, and started a larger reflection in the media about municipal/national lawn policy. Christopher Ingraham took it up at The Washington Post. It’s the most recent chapter in the long-running exploration of the madness of king turf grass—the largest irrigated “crop” in the nation.
Delaware is 10 percent lawn. Connecticut and Rhode Island are 20 percent. And over 20 percent of the total land area of Massachusetts and New Jersey is covered in grass, according to [a] 2005 NASA study.
NATIONWIDE: The recently released finalized version of the EPA’s “Clean Power Plan,” a sweeping set of rules aimed at reducing carbon emissions, changed little from the proposal version sent out earlier this year. But the changes that were made are significant. Mainly, according to The Atlantic’s David A. Graham, the updates have girded the plan against coming industry and Republican legal attacks and may make it more palatable to reluctant state officials.
The changes seek to offer states more flexibility in reaching targets, particularly early in the process. They’ll have more time to comply, be able to participate in an emission-credit trading market, and receive incentives to begin the process. States’ specific targets have been recalculated in the final rule.
[ The Atlantic ]
AUSTIN, Texas: It’s classic Austin, writes The Statesman. Organic farmer Brenton Johnson complained that noise and partiers from nearby Carson Creek Ranch music festival venue were spilling over into his space and harshing his mellow. Travis County commissioners sided with Johnson in the dispute. They capped decibel levels at 70 and set an 11 pm end-time for performances. “We’re unplugging the amps and turning up the lights, people. You don’t have to go home, but Farmer Johnson says you can’t stay here!”
[ The Statesman ]
John Tomasic is a journalist based in Boulder, Colorado.
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