Tests Said to Find Formaldehyde in West Virginia Tap Water

Tests on the water supply in Charleston, W. Va., a week after a chemical spill tainted the city's water system turned up traces of formaldehyde, suggesting that "There's a lot more we don't know" about the consequences of the spill, an environmental expert told a state legislative committee on Wednesday. Dr. Simonton, an environmental science professor at Marshall University, in Huntington, W. Va., said the formaldehyde was a product of the breakdown of the leaked coal-washing chemical, commonly known as MCHM. The secretary of the state Department of Environmental Protection, Randy C. Huffman, said the government did not know whether the formaldehyde was related to the chemical spill or whether it was an isolated instance linked to the restaurant where it was found. In a statement issued later on Wednesday, West Virginia's public health commissioner, Letitia Tierney, called Dr. Simonton's claims "Totally unfounded," saying formaldehyde is ubiquitous in daily life and produced by the body in small doses, and that it could not logically have originated with the spill. On Saturday, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin ordered the company responsible for the spill, Freedom Industries, to remove the cluster of aboveground storage tanks on the banks of the Elk River, where the spill occurred.
Source: NEW YORK TIMES


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U.S. Issues Keystone XL Pipeline Environmental Review

In the Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement on the controversial pipeline, the department takes no position on whether it should be built but notes that tar-sand crude produces 17 percent more greenhouse gases than conventional crude and as much as 10 percent more than heavy crude. "Even though the State Department continues to downplay clear evidence that the Keystone XL pipeline would lead to tar sands expansion and significantly worsen carbon pollution, it has, for the first time, acknowledged that the proposed project could accelerate climate change," NRDC International Program Director Susan Casey-Lefkowitz said, adding that President Obama "Now has all the information he needs to reject the pipeline." Ahead of the report's release, a spokesman for the company in charge of the project, TransCanada Corp., said the expectation is that the report would affirm earlier findings that the $5.4 billion pipeline is manageable from an environmental impact standpoint. "The southern leg of the Keystone XL, which went into normal operation in January 2014, ties into the existing Keystone pipeline that already runs to Canada, bringing up to 700,000 barrels of oil a day to refineries in Texas. At peak capacity, the pipeline will deliver 830,000 barrels of oil per day. While the pipeline is initially carrying U.S. light crude, it is expected to carry more heavy Canadian oil harvested from tar sands over the next year."
Source: NPR


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Georgia Governor announces new severe weather alert system

The state will also email weather updates to school superintendents as they are deciding whether to close schools, Deal said. A state task force appointed by Deal will explore other ways to improve the government response to storms. Hundreds of school children were forced to spend the night at school, their parents unable to pick them up and school buses unable to take them home. Deal late last week admitted that he was not happy with the state's response.
Source: REUTERS


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Parched, California Cuts Off Tap to Agencies

LOS ANGELES - Responding to one of the worst droughts in California's history, state officials announced on Friday that they would cut off the water to local agencies serving 25 million residents and about 750,000 acres of farmland. With no end in sight for the dry spell and reservoirs at historic lows, Mark Cowin, director of the California Department of Water Resources, said his agency needed to preserve what little water remained so it could be used "As wisely as possible." It is the first time in the 54-year history of the State Water Project that water allocations to all of the public water agencies it serves have been cut to zero. The Metropolitan Water District, which serves much of Southern California, gets about 30 percent of its water from the State Water Project.
Source: NEW YORK TIMES


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Scout Leaders Who Toppled Ancient Rock Formation Are Charged

A former Boy Scout leader who toppled an ancient rock formation in Utah's Goblin Valley State Park, and another Scout leader who videotaped the incident, are being charged with criminal mischief. At the time both Hall and Taylor were leading a Scouting trip, but they were later ejected from the Boy Scouts over the incident. Hall is accused of criminal mischief and Taylor with assisting criminal mischief, both felonies. "Blackwell said any defense asserting the goblin-shaped rock was ready to tip over 'would need to have a lot of expert testimony, and it would probably go both ways.'".
Source: NPR


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Billions needed to fund deforestation prevention plan: report

Without the money to buy forest-based emissions reductions, the mechanism known as REDD+ will be largely undermined, restricting incentives to keep trees standing, it said. "There is currently no source of demand that will pay for medium to long-term emission reductions from REDD+ in the period between 2015 and 2020," says the report produced by the Global Canopy Programme, the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, Fauna & Flora International, and the United Nations Environment Program. The report estimates, assuming acceptance of the 50 percent target, that supply of forest-based emissions reductions could be up to 39 times greater than demand in the 2015-2020 period. The report says the intervention would use donor country government capital to purchase REDD emissions reductions.
Source: REUTERS


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California wildlife officials seek cougar that mauled homeless man

LOS ANGELES - Wildlife rangers in Southern California were hunting on Monday for a mountain lion that mauled a homeless man at his roadside encampment over the weekend in a rare attack, leaving him in critical condition, fish and game authorities said. The mauling of the 50-year-old man, believed to have occurred on Friday or Saturday in the Riverside County town of Perris, about 70 miles east of Los Angeles, marks only the 15th cougar attack on a person reported in California since 1986, the state's Department of Fish and Wildlife said. The circumstances of the mauling, including what time of day it occurred, whether the man was asleep when attacked, or whether he fought off the cougar, remained unknown because investigators have not been able to speak with him. A 63-year-old man survived an attack in July 2012 in Nevada County.
Source: REUTERS


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