After high water from Hurricane Katrina inundated their nursing home, residents waited for assistance in New Orleans in 2005. Federal officials are trying to avoid these types of situations with new requirements for health care providers ahead of emergencies. Credit Mario Tama/Getty Images

nytimes.com - by Sheri Fink - March 11, 2014

Federal officials are proposing sweeping new requirements for American health care facilities — from large hospitals to small group homes for the mentally disabled — intended to ensure their readiness to care for patients during disasters.

cdc.gov

One of the nation's key preparedness challenges has been determining appropriate state and local public health preparedness priorities. To assist state and local public health departments in their strategic planning, CDC developed 15 capabilities to serve as national public health preparedness standards.

CDC applied a systematic approach to developing the public health preparedness capabilities. The content is based on evidence-informed documents, relevant preparedness literature, and subject matter expertise gathered from across the federal government and the state and local practice community.

CDC's Public Health Preparedness Capabilities: National Standards for State and Local Planning now provides a guide that state and local jurisdictions can use to better organize their work, plan their priorities, and decide which capabilities they have the resources to build or sustain. The capabilities also help ensure that federal preparedness funds are directed to priority areas within individual jurisdictions.

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A truck dumps a load of sand at the loading terminal for Modern Transport Rail in Winona, Minn.  Andrew Link/Winona Daily News/AP/File

yahoo.com - csmonitor.com - by Richard Mertens - March 9, 2014

Sand is used in the fracking process, and there's plenty of it to be mined in the upper Midwest. As a sand-mining boom has emerged, residents are divided over whether it's lifting or ruining their communities.

. . . Sand has become a valuable – and deeply divisive – commodity in the upper Midwest. Hydraulic fracturing, a method of extraction also known as fracking that has boosted oil and natural gas production across the United States, requires sand, and there's plenty of it here. . .

. . . A big question about sand mining is the risk to public health from dust.

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The route of Enbridge’s Line 9, which would connect to a tar sands pipeline in Alberta on one side, and to Montreal on the other. The Montreal connection eventually goes to the eastern coast of Canada.  CREDIT: National Energy Board

thinkprogress.org - by Emily Atkin - March 7, 2014

While all eyes in America were turned to President Obama’s looming decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, Canadian regulators on Thursday approved their own, smaller version — a pipeline that would for the first time directly connect Alberta’s tar sands to Montreal.

Canada’s National Energy Board have approved a proposal by Enbridge Inc. to allow the reversal and expansion of their Line 9 pipeline. . .

. . . With the reversal and expansion approved, environmentalists say the controversial tar sands oil can now be pumped almost to the New England border.

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usgs.gov - March 6, 2014

PASADENA, Calif. — In a new study involving researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey, scientists observed that a human-induced magnitude 5.0 earthquake near Prague, Oklahoma in November 2011 may have triggered the larger M5.7 earthquake less than a day later. This research suggests that the M5.7 quake was the largest human-caused earthquake associated with wastewater injection.

"The observation that a human-induced earthquake can trigger a cascade of earthquakes, including a larger one, has important implications for reducing the seismic risk from wastewater injection," said USGS seismologist and coauthor of the study Elizabeth Cochran.

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CLICK HERE - STUDY - Observations of static Coulomb stress triggering of the November 2011 M5.7 Oklahoma earthquake sequence

submitted by Margery Schab

capitalnewyork.com - by Scott Waldman - March 7, 2014

ALBANY—A consultant hired by the state Health Department to assist in a review of the health effects of fracking recently published a study that concluded “substantial concerns and major uncertainties” should be resolved before it is expanded nationally.

Governor Andrew Cuomo has indicated that his final, long-awaited decision on whether to permit fracking will depend on the department's findings. 

John Adgate, of the Colorado School of Public Health, surveyed a number of recent health-related studies of fracking and published his findings last month in the Environmental Science & Technology journal.

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CLICK HERE - STUDY - Potential Public Health Hazards, Exposures and Health Effects from Unconventional Natural Gas Development

submitted by Margery Schab

(PLEASE SEE LINKS TO REPORTS WITHIN THIS POST)

huffingtonpost.com - by Kate Sheppard - March 6, 2014

WASHINGTON -- From roads and bridges to power plants and gas pipelines, American infrastructure is vulnerable to the effects of climate change, according to a pair of government reports released Thursday.

The reports are technical documents supporting the National Climate Assessment, a major review compiled by 13 government agencies that the U.S. Global Change Research Program is expected to release in April. Scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory put together the reports, which warn that climate-fueled storms, flooding and droughts could cause "cascading system failures" unless there are changes made to minimize those effects.

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Source: USDA

huffingtonpost.com - by Emily Cohn - March 6, 2014

Look, there are lots of things to love about the South. It's clean and quiet. There's delicious food, good people and often amazing weather. But that's exactly why it makes us so sad to think about all the ways in which the region is struggling today.

First off, poverty rates are a lot higher in the South.

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epw.senate.gov

Senator Barbara Boxer
Keystone Pipeline and the Threat to Human Health
February 26, 2014
(As prepared for delivery)

We are here today to share dramatic new information that will shine a spotlight on the health impacts of tar sands oil - health impacts that are already being felt in communities exposed to one of the filthiest kinds of oil on our planet.

The Keystone XL pipeline will allow 830,000 barrels of tar sands oil every day to flow through our nation - an initial increase of 45 percent compared to what is being imported today - and this project could just be the beginning. In the long term, it is projected that Canada would produce almost 300 percent more tar sands oil by 2030.

Image: A fruit juice cafe in Road Town, Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands. Many Caribbean islands are turning to sustainable energy. Photographs: Jenny Bates

theguardian.com - John Vidal - February 10th, 2014

Aruba in the southern Caribbean has 107,000 people, a lot of wind and sun and, until very recently, one very big problem. Despite the trade winds and sunshine, it was spending more than 16% of its economy on importing 6,500 barrels of diesel fuel a day to generate electricity. People were furious at the tripling of energy prices in 10 years and the resulting spiralling costs of imported water and food.

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Leonard Patterson took a picture of a parcel of land on Detroit’s northwest side earlier this month as part of an emerging database. Credit Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times

nytimes.com - by Monica Davey - February 17, 2014

DETROIT — A midnight blue Chevy rolls slowly down a snow-covered street, an emergency strobe light on its roof and a sign on its side that promises this is “official business.” At each house, business, even vacant lot, workers in the car pause to decide whether someone lives there and what shape the place is in before snapping a photo and beaming it to “mission control” miles away.

All over Detroit, scores of these workers — on some days as many as 75 three-person teams — have been wending their way through the streets since December, cataloging on computer tablets one of this bankrupt city’s most devastating ailments: its tens of thousands of abandoned and dilapidated buildings.

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Photo by Gail Langellotto / Flickr.

yesmagazine.org - by Molly Rusk - February 18, 2014

Some residents of the Kanawha Valley in West Virginia lost access to clean drinking water on January 9, when a coal-processing facility spilled roughly 10,000 gallons of crude MCHM—a chemical used to treat coal—into the Elk River and surrounding land. The spill affected the water supply for more than 300,000 people.

The quality of the water remains in question, but residents aren't satisfied with a choice between expensive bottled water from the store and possibly polluted water from the tap. Increasingly, they're going for a sustainable and self-sufficient alternative: rainwater harvesting.

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Interior Department Endorsement Is A First Step Toward Allowing Drilling

wsj.com - by Alicia Mundy - February 27, 2014

WASHINGTON—The Interior Department endorsed seismic testing in Atlantic waters on Thursday, a first step toward allowing oil and gas drilling from Delaware Bay to Florida's Cape Canaveral.

In its long-awaited environmental impact statement on what's known as seismic air gun testing, Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said it would demand that the oil and gas companies exploring in the Outer Continental Shelf meet tough environmental standards to protect marine life from the underwater seismic blasts.

Environmental groups oppose the use of the controversial geological survey technology, contending that the seismic blasts pose a significant risk to whales, dolphins, fish and sea turtles.

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CLICK HERE - BOEM - Atlantic Geological and Geophysical (G&G) Activities Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS)

Natural gas is flared at a Pioneer Natural Resources well, in Karnes County, Texas in 2010. 
Photographer: Eddie Seal/Bloomberg

bloomberg.com - by Lisa Song, Jim Morris and David Hasemyer - February 20, 2014

. . . For the past eight months, the Center for Public Integrity, InsideClimate News and The Weather Channel have examined what Texas, the nation's biggest oil producer, has done to protect people in the Eagle Ford from the industry's pollutants. What's happening in the Eagle Ford is important not only for Texas, but also for Pennsylvania, Colorado, North Dakota and other states where horizontal drilling and high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, have made it profitable to extract oil and gas from deeply buried shale.

Our investigation and records obtained from Texas regulatory agencies reveal a system that does more to protect the industry than the public. . .

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