Author: Sue Sturgis

Two construction projects that threatened ancient sites sacred to American Indians in the Southeast are on hold for now, and further action is planned to keep them from moving forward.

In North Carolina, Duke Energy’s plans to build an electrical substation near the sacred Cherokee site of Kituwah have been halted temporarily by the local county government while a more permanent solution is sought.

Earlier this month, the Swain County Board of Commissioners voted for a 90-day moratorium on electrical and mobile telephone towers to give staff time to look into an ordinance to regulate their construction and require public input before they’re built.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians raised concerns that the substation would disrupt the view of Kituwah, the site of a sacred mound near the Tuckasegee River in western North Carolina. Kituwah is considered the Cherokee mother town, believed to have been inhabited for nearly 10,000 years and long used as a center for religious rituals.

EBCI Principal Chief Michell Hicks told the Asheville Citizen-Times that the moratorium will provide a chance for the tribe to present alternatives to the planned substation, which as originally designed would be only about 200 yards from Kituwah.

In Alabama, meanwhile, construction of a municipal sports complex in the city of Oxford have been halted following the discovery of ancient American Indian remains at the site — and the failure to report the finding to the proper authorities.

Last month, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers shut down the project after it learned that it had not been notified about the remains, which were discovered back in January, the Anniston Star reports. The wetlands permit for the site required the Corps to be notified if any remains or artifacts were found.

The mistake is proving costly for the city, which so far has shelled out about $200,000 to compensate the contractor for the stalled work. An Indian mound that had been located near the sports complex site has reportedly disappeared completely.

The sports complex site is near another sacred mound that was damaged last year during the development of a Sam’s Club — a retail warehouse store that’s part of the Arkansas-based Wal-Mart chain — at the Oxford Exchange shopping center.

The Woodland and Mississippian cultures that inhabited the Southeast before the arrival of Europeans constructed and used such mounds for various religious rituals, including funerals.

Meanwhile, a prayer meeting/protest action is planned for this Saturday, March 27 at the still-standing mound in Oxford.

The Strong Heart Preservation Movement, one of the grassroots efforts that sprung up in the wake of the controversies in Oxford, has posted this announcement to its Facebook page:

This Saturday at 10 AM we are all heading up to the stone mound behind the exchange for a “prayer meeting”…or at least, Oxford thinks we are holding a prayer meeting….we have other plans too. I say we just take over the exchange parking lot and park in the spots to avoid any traffic jams, and then we all meet behind Home Depot to march over to the hill where the mound sits.

(The Kituwah Mound is the slight rise
in the center of the photo above, by Brian Stansberry via Wikimedia
Commons.)

As in so many countries throughout the world, an important staple of the Haitian diet is rice, first brought by slaves from West Africa and cultivated on the Caribbean island nation for hundreds of years.

Until the mid-1980s, Haiti produced enough rice for domestic consumption — but that changed after U.S. President Bill Clinton took office.

A champion of trade liberalization policies, Clinton pressed impoverished Haiti to cut tariffs on rice imported from the United States. Much of the U.S. rice that flooded Haiti as a result — known by Haitians as “Miami rice” for the city where the shipments come from — is produced by Riceland Foods, a farmer-owned agricultural marketing cooperative based in Clinton’s home state of Arkansas.

The world’s largest miller and marketer of rice, Riceland — whose members include some 9,000 farmers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas — enjoyed sales of $1.3 billion in the last fiscal year. It’s also a major beneficiary of taxpayer support, as the recipient of more than $500 million in agricultural subsidies between 1995 and 2006.

What’s been good for Riceland and U.S. rice farmers has not been so good for Haiti, though. With its market flooded by U.S. rice, Haiti’s domestic rice production has dropped dramatically. That’s made the country dependent on other nations for food and driven farmers out of the countryside and into the crowded cities that proved so vulnerable in January’s earthquake.

Since the disaster, imported rice prices have climbed 25% and would probably be even higher if not for all the food aid, the Associated Press reports.

But it appears change may be coming. President Clinton — now serving as the United Nations special envoy to Haiti and helping lead U.S. fundraising efforts in the wake of the devastating January earthquake — acknowledged during a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this month that the trade policy he promoted has failed the Haitian people:

It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake. I had to live every day with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did … .

Agricultural trade policy is expected to be a topic of discussion at a U.N. Haiti donors’ conference set for next week in New York. The Haitian government is seeking $722 million for agriculture, including an estimated $31 million for quake-related damage to its agricultural sector, part of an overall aid request of $11.5 billion, according to the AP:

“A combination of food aid, but also cheap imports have … resulted in a lack of investment in Haitian farming, and that has to be reversed,” U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes told The Associated Press. “That’s a global phenomenon, but Haiti’s a prime example. I think this is where we should start.”

Haitian President René Préval — an agronomist by training — has said he wants agricultural investment in his country prioritized over food aid.

But Riceland isn’t pleased by the talk of changing agricultural trade policy vis-à-vis Haiti. Speaking to the AP, a spokesperson for the company insisted that its exports to Haiti are necessary to “feed countries which cannot feed themselves.”

(Graph from from “Trade and the Disappearance of Haitian Rice,” Trade Environmental Database, American University.)

The U.S. Senate passed a jobs bill yesterday that aims to tackle unemployment by providing tax incentives to businesses that hire jobless workers.

The measure passed with unusually strong Republican support — but as with the recent Senate vote on extending unemployment benefits, many of those lawmakers who opposed the bill come from states with above-average unemployment rates.

The HIRE Act exempts employers from payroll taxes through this year on new hires who’ve been unemployed for at least 60 days. It also extends the federal highway construction program and other public building projects. The measure is estimated to cost $13 billion over 10 years and is partly financed by tougher limits on offshore tax havens.

The final vote on the bill was 68-29, with 11 Republicans crossing the aisle to join with their Democratic and Independent colleagues in approving the measure.

The Republicans who voted for the bill were Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Kit Bond of Missouri, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, George LeMieux of Florida, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and George Voinovich of Ohio.

“I voted for this bill because, without increasing the federal debt, it permits small businesses to deduct their capital investments from their taxes, which gives them more money to create jobs; provides tax incentives for businesses to hire unemployed workers; and provides needed funds for our highways,” Sen. Alexander said in a statement.

Of the 29 Senators who voted against the bill, 11 come from states with official unemployment rates higher than the national average of 10.7% as of January 2010. And of those 11, 10 are from Southern states that have been hit especially hard by unemployment, as seen in this chart:

That follows a pattern similar to what we saw in the Senate vote earlier this month on extending unemployment benefits.

Following a controversial filibuster of the benefits extension by Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.), the measure passed by a vote of 78-19. And of the 19 Senators who voted against that bill, eight hailed from states that had jobless rates higher than the national average. And all but one of them — Sen. Jim Ensign (R-Nev.) — came from the South.

But not all the Senators who opposed extending jobless benefits voted against the jobs creation bill, and vice versa.

Among Senators from Southern states with higher-than-average unemployment rates, Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Georgia Republicans Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson did not oppose extending jobless benefits, but all voted against the job creation bill.

And while Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) opposed extending unemployment benefits, they supported the job creation bill.

Those lawmakers from states with higher-than-average jobless rates who objected to extending unemployment benefits and the jobs bill? Sens. Ensign, Bunning, Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Virginia Energy Resources — a company formed by last year’s merger of Canadian corporation Santoy and Virginia Uranium — wants to mine and mill uranium on 3,000 acres in Southside Virginia’s Pittsylvania County along the North Carolina border.

That would require lifting a ban the state placed on uranium mining back in 1982. The Virginia Commission on Coal and Energy created a subcommittee to study the issue, which is scheduled to be released later this year. Meanwhile, the National Academies of Sciences and Virginia Tech have also agreed to study the potential environmental and public health impacts of the mining plans; that study is expected to be released next year.

The push to open up the state to uranium mining comes as President Obama is promoting the expanded use of commercial nuclear power in the United States. His latest budget would triple taxpayer-backed loan guarantees for new reactors from $18.5 billion to $54 billion.

The Virginia uranium deposit holds an estimated 60,000 tons — enough radioactive fuel to power all the
commercial nuclear plants in the U.S. for about two years.

Last week, the Southern Environmental Law Center, Sierra Club and other groups opposed to uranium mining held a forum in Richmond to discuss the drawbacks associated with the plans. Here in the United States, uranium has traditionally been mined in arid regions of the West; if the Virginia mining plans were approved, they would mark the first time that full-scale uranium mining was done in the wetter climes east of the Mississippi River.

A major concern is the impact that uranium mining and milling — a highly toxic undertaking — would have on the Roanoke River basin, where the uranium deposit is located. That basin supplies drinking water to tens of thousands of people across a vast region stretching all the way to the tourist community of Virginia Beach and the naval base at Norfolk.

The company says the uranium could be mined safety. However, uranium mining has a
well-documented history of causing serious environmental health problems elsewhere, having
been linked to chromosome abnormalities, birth defects and cancer in
communities from Texas to Germany.

As the debate over the Virginia uranium mining plans continues, the Southern Environmental Law Center has released a short video taking a critical look at the proposal. Watch it here:

As a state that depends heavily on coal-fired power, North Carolina currently dumps more climate-disrupting carbon dioxide pollution into the environment from burning fossil fuels than 186 nations.

But a new analysis [pdf] by a clean-energy advocacy group finds that it would be relatively easy to break the state’s dirty energy dependency — and eliminate the need for expensive new nuclear reactors to boot.

The N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network will present the findings during this week’s N.C. Utilities Commission hearings on how Progress Energy and Duke Energy — the state’s two biggest power providers — plan to meet customers’ energy needs over the next 15 years. The analysis was conducted by John Blackburn, an economics professor emeritus at Duke University and a renewable energy expert.

“We are convinced that North Carolina can now phase out all coal-fired power plants,” says N.C. WARN Executive Director Jim Warren.

The analysis finds that this could be done by doing three things:

* Increase efficiency in electricity use at a rate of 1.5% per year over the 15-year planning period;

* Up the state’s renewable portfolio standard — the amount of energy that utilities are obligated to generate from cleaner sources — from the current 12.5 % to the 20% standard used by 17 other states; and

* Boost the use of combined heat and power or cogeneration facilities that utilize waste heat produced during electricity production for heating buildings.

This latest analysis by Blackburn comes on the heels of another released last week that showed North Carolina’s need for backup power generation would be modest if it were to switch to an energy system based largely on solar and wind power combined with efficiency, hydroelectric power and other renewable sources like landfill gas.

It also comes as the state’s utilities are planning to build costly and polluting new coal and nuclear facilities to meet customers’ power needs.

Duke Energy — which in its own filing with the commission dismisses Blackburn’s analysis as “so flawed as to be completely unreliable” — is currently about halfway through building a controversial new coal-fired unit at its existing Cliffside facility in western North Carolina, a project for which the company has budgeted some $1.8 billion. But in another filing submitted to state regulators earlier this month, the company reported that it “is experiencing cost and schedule pressure related to construction.”

And soaring costs are not a problem limited to Cliffside — or to new coal plants. The construction cost estimate for the two new nuclear reactors Duke Energy is planning to to build at its Lee Station in Cherokee County, S.C. near Charlotte has more than doubled from an initial estimate of between $4 billion and $6 billion to about $11 billion. Meanwhile, Progress Energy has also doubled the construction cost estimate for the two new reactors planned for its Harris plant near Raleigh, N.C. from about $4.4 billion to more than $9.3 billion.

“We think our plans are cheaper and more feasible than new nuclear reactors,” says Blackburn.

With analysis in hand, N.C. WARN plans to expand its ongoing organizing effort to halt construction of the new Cliffside plant and call for closing down all coal-fired power plants in North Carolina over the next 15 years. Citing scientific experts including James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute and Rajendra Pachauri of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Warren says ending coal burning is urgent to prevent runaway climate disruption.

The utilities themselves are already taking steps away from coal: Progress Energy recently announced plans to shut down 11 coal-fired units at four plants in the eastern part of the state by 2017 and replace some of that generation capacity with natural gas, which emits less carbon dioxide than coal. And as part of its Cliffside construction plans, Duke Energy is shutting down four older, heavily-polluting coal-fired units at that facility — though the new high-tech coal unit would still emit over 6 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.

North Carolina currently has 67 operating coal-fired units at 25 locations totaling 13,279 megawatts of capacity, putting it in ninth place nationally in terms of dependence on coal power.

Organizations and individuals that were involved in the Hurricane Katrina
recovery effort in New Orleans are now applying the lessons they
learned following that disaster to help the people of
earthquake-stricken Haiti.

Launched shortly after the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated the
Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince and surrounding region, the effort
was initially called the Haiti Emergency Village Project but has since
changed its name to the Louisiana/Haiti Sustainable Village Project. It
involves more than 40 disaster recovery and urban infrastructure
professionals who are working to build an emergency village in Haiti to
provide housing, infrastructure and other services as an alternative to
camps.

The project was launched by Jacques Morial, co-director of the Louisiana Justice Institute, and Charles Allen III, director of New Orleans’ Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development and chair of that city’s Holy
Cross Neighborhood Association. Also involved in the project’s
founding were Dr. Austin Allen, a landscape architect and professor
who’s been involved in recovery efforts in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth
Ward, and Tim Duggan of the Make It Right Foundation, LJI’s Justice Roars blog reports:

Date on which U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan delivered a speech
at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. calling for stepped up civil
rights enforcement in schools: 3/8/2010

Number of years earlier that the infamous “Bloody Sunday” civil rights
confrontation took place there, an event that Duncan’s speech
commemorated: 45

Number of civil rights investigations that Duncan’s department plans to open this year: 38

Number of states in which the department plans to examine school districts’ disciplinary practices: 5

Since 1980, percentage by which the staff in the Education Department’s civil rights unit has been reduced: 50

Number of times by which white students are more likely than black
students to be college-ready in biology at the end of high school: 6

Number of times by which white students are more likely than black students to be prepared for college algebra: 4

Number of times by which black students with disabilities are more
likely than their white counterparts to be expelled or suspended: more than 2

Number of times by which black students without disabilities are more likely than white students to be expelled: more than 3

Percentage by which students from low-income families who graduated in
the top testing quartile are more likely to attend college than the
lowest-scoring students from wealthy families: 0

Percentage of U.S. high schools that produce half of all U.S. dropouts: 12

Percentage of African-American and Latino students who come from those schools: 75

Percentage of teachers who had been let go and had trouble finding
another job who were placed in high-poverty schools, according to one
newspaper investigation: 75

(Click on the figure to go to the original source.)

(Photo of Secretary Duncan speaking in Selma from the U.S. Department of Education’s website.)

In making the case for a rapid conversion away from heavily polluting energy sources like coal and nuclear power to cleaner generation, renewable energy advocates often confront the argument that their scheme is impossible due to the intermittent nature of sun and wind.

But a groundbreaking study out of North Carolina challenges that conventional wisdom: It suggests that backup generation requirements would be modest for a system based largely on solar and wind power, combined with efficiency, hydroelectric power, and other renewable sources like landfill gas.

“Even though the wind does not blow nor the sun shine all the time, careful management, readily available storage and other renewable sources can produce nearly all the electricity North Carolinians consume,” said author John Blackburn, professor emeritus of economics and former chancellor at Duke University in Durham, N.C.. He’s also the author of the books “The Renewable Energy Alternative” and “Solar in Florida.”

The study was published last week by the Maryland-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, whose executive director, Arjun Makhijani, called it landmark research. “North Carolina utilities and regulators and those in other states should take this template, refine it, and make a renewable electricity future a reality,” he said.

Blackburn used hourly North Carolina wind and solar data for a total of 123 days in the sample months of January, April, July and October, with samples taken at three wind and three solar sites across the state. Solar and wind power generation were then scaled up to represent 80% — 40% each — of average utility loads for the sample months, with the rest coming from the existing hydroelectric system (8%) and assumed biomass co-generation (12%).

The study figured in projected energy efficiency by assuming an annual utility load of 90 billion kilowatt-hours, slightly less than the current 125 billion kWh load, and by calculating average hourly loads from Duke Energy’s 2006 load profile with modifications to show some reduction in summer and winter peaks due to more efficient buildings. It also assumed increased storage capacity from a smarter electrical grid.

In the end, with those conditions met, Blackburn calculated that the required auxiliary generation from conventional power plants to fill in the gaps would amount to only 6% of the annual total generation required to meet demand in North Carolina.

“This goes to the heart of the argument by power companies that have long dismissed solar and wind as future technologies,” said Jim Warren, executive director of the N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, a Durham, N.C.-based nonprofit that provided research assistance to Blackburn.

The study was released just days after a new poll from Elon University in Elon, N.C. found overwhelming public support in North Carolina for developing the state’s renewable energy capacity. Nearly 80% of the poll’s respondents said they favor new wind energy facilities in the mountains or on the coast, while more than 83% favor construction of solar facilities.

Year in which Wake County, N.C. instituted an anti-segregation
diversity policy that assigned students by economics rather than race: 2000

Year in which Wake County voters elected a new Republican-backed school board majority that opposes the diversity policy: 2009

Percentage of the county’s voters that took part in that election: 4.5

Date on which the school board took its first formal vote to scrap the diversity policy and return to neighborhood schools: 3/2/2010

Date on which the board voted to hire the conservative, pro-voucher
Civitas Institute of Raleigh to provide its members’ training: 3/2/2010

Rank of Art Pope — primary Civitas benefactor and director of
Americans for Prosperity, the group behind the Tea Party anti-tax
protests — among individual contributors to the anti-diversity
candidates’ campaigns: 2

Rank of Robert Luddy, current chair of Civitas and operator of a chain of private and charter schools: 1

Year in which Luddy founded Thales Academy, a chain of private K-8 schools in Wake County: 2007

Year in which the chain opened an academy in Apex, N.C., with current
Wake School Board Chair Ron Margiotta serving as a trustee: 2008

Yearly tuition charged by Thales Academy: $5,200

Number of school buses provided for Thales Academy students: 0

Year in which Luddy plans to open a new Thales Academy location in Raleigh on a site his company recently acquired: 2012

Size of the tax credit for private-school students that Luddy advocated
in an op-ed titled “Encouraging alternatives to Wake County schools”: $2,500

Year in which Luddy won the first-ever entrepreneurship award given by
the Ludwig von Mises Institute, an economic think-tank based in Alabama
that promotes doing away with the public school system: 2006

Percentage of black students in majority-white schools in the South in 1954, when the Supreme Court outlawed segregation: .001

Percentage in 1988, when integration peaked: 43.5

Percentage in 1996, five years after a Supreme Court decision allowing school boards to return to neighborhood schools: 34.7

Nationwide, percentage of black students who now attend what a report called “intensely segregated schools”: 39

Percentage of Latinos who now attend intensely segregated schools: 40

Year in which the Education Trust published a report finding that
public schools serving the most economically disadvantaged students
within individual districts are typically underfunded: 2006

Date when the Wake County school board is scheduled to take a final vote to end the diversity policy: 3/23/2010

(Click on the figure to go to the original source. The chart is from “Racial Transformation and the Changing Nature of Segregation,” by Gary Orfield and Chungmei Lee, The UCLA Civil Rights Project, 2006.)

New Orleans-based power giant Entergy is in hot water following revelations that its Vermont Yankee nuclear plant has leaked radioactive contamination to the environment — and its trouble isn’t limited to Vermont.

The Mississippi State Attorney General is also taking aim at the company, questioning Entergy’s recent transfer of more than $1 billion from its parent company that oversees its Mississippi operations to its troubled nuclear division.

Some background: In January of this year, it was reported that groundwater monitoring wells at Entergy’s Vermont Yankee plant in Vernon, Vt. were contaminated with tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen routinely created in nuclear power plants. In early February, the plant reported that a new groundwater monitoring well at the plant showed levels of tritium at about 775,000 picocuries per liter — more than 37 times the federal drinking water limit of 20,000 picocuries per liter.

Subsequent tests showed even more dramatic levels of contamination, with direct testing of groundwater on Feb. 6 detecting tritium at levels of 2.45 million picocuries per liter — almost the same concentration found in reactor process water, which typically has about 2.9 million picocuries of tritium per liter. The Vermont Department of Health has raised concerns that the contamination is making its way to the nearby Connecticut River.

The tritium contamination has been linked to corroded underground pipes at the 38-year-old plant, where a cooling tower also collapsed in 2007 due corrosion of its support structure.

Adding to the controversy over the tritium contamination is the fact that Entergy had long denied that Vermont Yankee had the kind of underground piping system linked to such leaks, which are so common in the aging U.S. commercial nuclear fleet that the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has launched a special review of the problem.

In the summer of 2008, Vermont lawmakers created a special panel of nuclear experts to investigate Vermont Yankee’s reliability in light of its intention to receive a 20-year extension of its operating license. It was to that panel that Entergy officials — at times under oath — insisted there was no such underground pipe system, Vermont’s Times Argus newspaper reports:

With revelations … that Vermont Yankee is leaking tritium — a radioactive isotope — into nearby groundwater, it became clear that those statements were wrong. Entergy calls it a “miscommunication” and anti-nuclear activists call it a bald lie.

Last week, amid public uproar over the revelations of the tritium leak and Entergy’s misleading claims, the Vermont Senate voted 24-6 to deny the plant the necessary state permission to continue its operations past 2012, when its federal operating license expires. Since that state’s law requires both chambers of the General Assembly to approve any nuclear plant relicensing, it appears likely that Entergy will be forced to close the plant unless the state Senate revisits its vote. If shut down, Vermont Yankee would become the first U.S. nuclear power plant to go offline since 1998.

Two of Vermont’s leading environmental organizations have asked U.S. Attorney General Eric  Holder to launch a criminal probe into Entergy’s provision of false information under oath and carelessly disregard of obligations to maintain critical power plant systems, while the governor in neighboring New Hampshire has called for an NRC investigation.

Meanwhile, Entergy hired an outside law firm to investigate the misleading statements made to Vermont officials. The probe found the company’s employees did not intentionally mislead anyone but failed “to specific the context of their communication” which “led to misunderstandings.” The company has placed five senior Vermont Yankee employees on administrative leave, reprimanded an another six, and passed the probe’s findings on to the Vermont Attorney General.

But that’s not the end of Entergy’s woes: The company is also facing scrutiny closer to home in neighboring Mississippi, where Attorney General Jim Hood is looking into its recent transfer of $1.3 billion from its utility division that provides retail electric services to Mississippi residents to its division that operates 10 nuclear power plants.

“My translation of the [transfer] means that the regulated utilities like Entergy Mississippi, which are subsidiaries of Entergy Corp., put $1.3 billion less in their pockets in 2009,” Hood said in a letter to Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell. “One of my claims in Mississippi is that Entergy Corp. has wrongfully transferred money from the regulated utilities to Entergy’s Nuclear businesses and that money should be returned to Mississippi ratepayers.”

Hood wants to know what the source was for the $1.3 billion cash payment to its nuclear program, the purpose of the transfer, and whether Entergy plans to use any of the money to pay for the decommissioning of its malfunctioning nuclear plants.

“The ratepayers of Mississippi — and the rest of those inside Entergy’s service area — have a right to know where their hard-earned money is going, and what it is being used for,” Hood said. “When our ratepayers are paying their light bills each month, they should not have to worry that their dollars are headed to Vermont to pay for a leaking nuclear reactor.”

(Photo of Vermont Yankee from Safe Power Vermont.)

When a group of reporters tried to ask U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning
(R-Ky.) yesterday about his efforts to block emergency legislation
extending unemployment and health insurance benefits to about a million
jobless Americans, he responded by flashing them his middle finger.

The gesture of contempt seems to pretty much capture Bunning’s
attitude toward the unemployed, whose benefits expired on Sunday due to
the Senator’s obstruction. The bill he’s blocking also would have
extended money for transportation projects, with his actions resulting in the furlough
of some 2,000 federal workers.

The reason for Bunning’s actions? He says he wants the legislation paid for up front, the Louisville Courier-Journal reports:

“Over three years under Democratic Congresses, Bunning said, “we
have run up $5 trillion in debt. There has to be a time to stop that.”

Bunning’s
decision to draw the line on this of all measures have been criticized by
everyone from White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, who called it “fundamentally not fair,” to Kentucky’s other Senator,
Bunning’s fellow conservative Mitch McConnell (R), who supports extending the
benefits and thinks any controversy over it should have been resolved weeks ago.

Bunning is also facing a firestorm of outrage back home, his offices inundated
with angry phone calls and even bomb threats. But how much impact that
public outpouring will have is unclear, since Bunning announced last
summer that he wouldn’t run for re-election this year, citing difficulty raising money.

During his long stint in Washington, first as a member of the House of
Representatives from 1986 to 1998 and then in the Senate, Bunning — a
former Major League Baseball pitcher — has distinguished himself as an unusually nasty lawmaker. Former President Bill Clinton once said Bunning was so mean-spirited that “he just sent shivers up my spine.”

There’s an effort underway in Louisiana to use the 2010 Census to pull in federal funding for Cajun and Creole cultural programs, and it’s stirring up some controversy over how to best classify members of the state’s French-speaking cultures.

Question No. 8 on the Census short form asks whether someone is of “Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin” — and that has inspired action by the World Studies Institute of Louisiana, a nonprofit based in Lafayette, La. that seeks to connect the state’s French speakers with the wider French-speaking world.

The Independent Weekly of Lafayette reports:

The WSI is urging the state’s Creole and Cajun communities to check the last box in No. 8 — “Yes. Another Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin” — and then to write beneath it either “Louisiana Creole” or “Cajun.” For the first time, this will allow Uncle Sam to get a head count of the state’s Cajun and Creole populations, provided those groups don’t skip over question No. 8.

The WSI’s Christophe Landry calls this year’s Census “a window of opportunity” for Louisiana’s French-speaking communities.

Kat Smith, a spokesperson for the Census Bureau’s Dallas field office, says Louisiana Creoles and Cajuns who write in their cultural identification in response to the question will be counted, according to the Independent Weekly:

“As long as they as a group or ethnicity or race decide that they want to make sure that their numbers are where they need to be — we do the same thing for tribes, American Indian tribes and things of that nature — they can make sure their numbers are counted as such by identifying themselves consistently by writing it a certain way,” says Smith.

However, Louisianans who want to identify as Creole need to be specific: If someone writes in response to the question “French Creole” or simply “Creole,” that could also mean Haitians or other groups. That’s why they’re being asked to write “Louisiana Creole” instead.

Not everyone supports WSI’s effort, though. Columbia University graduate student and Louisiana native Gus Gravot has formed a Facebook group titled Louisiana Cajun & Creole ≠ Latino, questioning what he calls the “misidentification” of those groups as Latino.

Instead, he’s calling on Louisiana’s Cajuns and Creoles to write in their identity in the “other” space provided in Section 9 of the Census, which asks about race.

But whichever side one comes down on, there’s a benefit to the controversy — and that’s increased public discussion and awareness of the Census, which helps drive decisions over the spending of billions of federal dollars. This is especially important in the South, where there’s a history of undercounting.

To see a copy of the Census form, click here.

Environmental groups have identified serious water contamination problems caused by coal ash dumps at 31 locations in 14 states, bringing to over 100 the number of U.S. sites where damages from coal ash have been confirmed — and strengthening the case for the release of delayed federal regulations.

The latest coal ash damage cases are documented in a new report by Earthjustice and the Environmental Integrity Project titled “Out of Control: Mounting Damages From Coal Ash Waste Sites.” North Carolina has six, tying with Pennsylvania for the state with the most sites in the report. The other states where new damage cases were found are Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia, with a majority of them in the South.

At 15 of the 31 sites, arsenic and other toxic contaminants have already moved off the dump-site property at levels harmful to human health — and 25 of the problem dumps are still actively taking coal ash today. The report notes that the contamination is concentrated in communities with family poverty rates above the national median, raising environmental justice concerns.

“These unregulated sites present a clear and present danger to public health and the environment,” said Earthjustice attorney Lisa Evans. “If law and science are to guide our most important environmental decisions, as EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has promised, we need to regulate these hazards before they get much worse.”

The report comes as the White House Office of Management and Budget — which has been lobbied hard by industry groups as well as members of Congress and state government agencies opposed to regulatory reform — is sitting on a proposed rule from the Environmental Protection Agency that would take steps to establish federal oversight of coal ash. The rule was supposed to be released for public comment last December, but the latest word from Washington has it coming out in April.

A 2007 EPA report [pdf] acknowledged 67 proven and likely environmental damage cases across the U.S. related to coal combustion waste, and since then the agency has acknowledged four more cases. Those 71, plus the 31 documented in this new report, put the total number of documented coal ash damage cases over 100.

Among the cases detailed in the new report:

* At Tampa Electric’s Big Bend Station near Apollo Beach in Florida’s Hillsborough County, thallium and manganese leaching from a coal ash dump have been detected off-site at levels exceeding federal drinking water standards, while arsenic in on-site groundwater was found at levels 11 times above standards. Thallium has been linked to male reproductive system damage in animals, while manganese is known to cause nerve problems in humans and reproductive issues in animals.

* Arsenic in groundwater beneath Progress Energy’s Sutton Steam Plant on the Cape Fear River near Wilmington, N.C. has been detected at levels as high as 29 times the federal drinking water standard, and monitoring indicates the contamination is migrating off-site. Arsenic is a known cause of cancer of the skin, liver, bladder and lungs, and has been linked to male erectile dysfunction.

* At SCE&G’s Wateree Station in Eastover, S.C., arsenic was measured in groundwater at 18 times the federal drinking water standard, and recent data shows the contamination has migrated to adjacent property and is accumulating in catfish in the nearby Wateree River.

* Selenium discharges from ash impoundments at American Electric Power’s John Amos Plant along the Kanawha River in Winfield, W.Va. (map above right) have exceeded the facility’s permit limits, and fish taken from nearby Little Scary Creek have registered selenium levels above what the state considers safe for human consumption. Exposure to excessive levels of selenium in the short term can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, and over time can result in neurological effects.

‘Beneficial use’ of coal ash also a problem

Those four examples all involve coal ash impoundments — the massive waste ponds like the one that failed catastrophically at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston plant in December 2008. But the environmental contamination threat isn’t from wet coal ash impoundments only, the report found:

No fewer than 11 of the contaminated sites documented in this report involve so-called “dry landfills,” and two involve “structural fills” that were advertised as “beneficial reuse” of coal ash.

For example, at the Tran-Ash Landfill in Benton County, Tenn., which takes dry coal ash from TVA’s Johnsonville Fossil Plant, mercury levels in nearby residents’ private wells exceeded federal drinking water standards by more than six-fold. The contamination problem was so severe that EPA even took emergency action to connect the well of one affected resident to a municipal water supply.

And in Rocky Mount, N.C., the Swift Creek structural fill site (map above left) used coal ash from six power plants in North Carolina and Virginia to fill a 25-acre site that includes wetlands. Consequently, groundwater at the site violated state standards for mercury, which is known to harm human nervous systems, kidneys and developing fetuses; arsenic concentrations exceeded federal limits; and lead was found in off-site groundwater downstream from the ash at levels double federal drinking standards.

“While the catastrophic spill at TVA’s Kingston plant has become the poster child for the damage that coal ash can wreak, there are hundreds of leaking sites throughout the United States where the damage is deadly, but far less conspicuous,” said Jeff Stant, director of EIP’s Coal Combustion Waste Initiative.

Stant noted the irony that officials from some of the same states where new coal ash damage cases have been documented are lobbying against strict federal regulation of coal ash. Among the state agencies that have weighed in against tough federal action are the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the North Carolina Public Utility Commission, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection — all states with newly documented damage cases.

Meanwhile, it’s likely that the extent of the environmental damage caused by coal ash is still being underestimated, since most coal ash dumps lack monitoring systems to track off-site contamination, and since EPA has never actively investigated the sites for problems.

Environmental advocates are urging the White House to take action to prevent further harm — especially since evolving requirements for reducing air pollution from coal-fired power plants creates ever greater volumes of ash for disposal, increasing the risk to the environment and human health.

“The pollution present in this waste is among the earth’s most harmful to aquatic life and humans — arsenic, lead, selenium, cadmium and other heavy metals, which cause cancer and crippling neurological damage,” said Donna Marie Lisenby, Upper Watauga Riverkeeper with North Carolina’s Appalachian Voices. “If these poisons can be kept out of the fish we eat, the water we drink, bathe in, and need to survive, simply through regulation, than we must take that long overdue step, not only for the sake of our public waters but for humanity’s sake as well.”

(Maps from “Out of Control: Mounting Damages From Coal Ash Waste Sites.”)

The watchdog group Americans United for Separation of Church and State has asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate Liberty University in Virginia for what it calls a “clear pattern of partisan intervention” in the recent race for a state House of Delegates seat.

Americans United says Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. — the son of the Evangelical Christian school’s now-deceased founder and conservative commentator Jerry Falwell Sr. — and other school officials used the school newspaper to attack incumbent Del. Shannon Valentine (D) and endorse her opponent, Scott Garrett (R), who won by only about 200 votes including strong support from Liberty students.

“I believe the evidence is clear that Liberty officials have violated the law,” said Americans United Director Barry Lynn.

The letter [pdf] documents how the Liberty Champion — a newspaper controlled and subject to censorship by the school’s administration — published numerous articles and columns attacking Valentine and supporting Garrett, and had copies of one issue with numerous anti-Valentine pieces distributed to the wider Lynchburg, Va. community:

This is significant because such distribution of the paper in the wider community may be unprecedented. The Liberty Champion normally circulates on campus only. The fact that Falwell sent the newspaper to city residents is strong evidence he wanted to get this issue, full of anti-Valentine material, into the hands of voters in an effort to influence the outcome of the election.

On Election Day, Falwell ordered classes canceled while the president of the school’s theological seminary drove around campus in a truck sponsored by the Liberty University College Republicans encouraging students to vote. The truck was decorated with GOP candidates’ signs and an elephant crafted from chicken wire.

Following the election, an article in a magazine published by the school quoted Falwell as saying “the LU student vote was responsible for Scott Garrett’s victory.” And a legal group operated by the school issued a press release that said Garrett’s “stunning victory is attributed solely to the voting block [sic] of the students, faculty and staff at Liberty University.”

The Americans United complaint points to a 2006 IRS document titled “Election Year Activities and the Prohibition on Political Campaign Intervention for Section 501(c)(3) Organizations,” in which the agency warns nonprofits against using official publications to endorse or oppose candidates.

“In this case, it’s clear that Falwell engaged in a pattern of activities that used university publications, resources and even staff to intervene in a partisan election and affect its outcome,” it says.

The brouhaha over Liberty University’s involvement in the House of Delegates race follows a controversy that erupted last May when the school revoked official recognition of the College Democrats. In an e-mail to the group’s leaders, Liberty Vice President of Student Affairs Mark Hine wrote:

“The Democratic Party platform is contrary to the mission of Liberty University and to Christian doctrine (supports abortion, federal funding of abortion, advocates repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, promotes the “LGBT” agenda, hate crimes, which include sexual orientation and gender identity, socialism, etc.)”

The Obama administration reached a historic settlement last week in a lawsuit claiming decades of racial discrimination against African-American farmers by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The settlement agreement announced by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack would provide a total of $1.25 billion for black farmers who were treated unfairly by USDA loan programs, with most aid going to farmers in the South — but now it’s up to Congress to appropriate the money.

“With the settlement announced today, USDA and the African American farmers who brought this litigation can move on to focus on their future,” Holder said. “The plaintiffs can move forward and have their claims heard — with the federal government standing not as an adversary, but as a partner.”

The agreement sets up a non-judicial claims process in which individual farmers can demonstrate they deserve cash damage awards and debt relief.

It comes as a result of a class-action lawsuit originally filed against the USDA in 1997 by Timothy Pigford, a North Carolina farmer who wanted to buy his own land after farming on rented land for years but was turned down by the Farmers Home Administration, created by the USDA in the 1930s as a lender of last resort. The local committees created by the agency to decide who got loans were often made up only of whites who were unsympathetic to the needs of black farmers. As the Raleigh News & Observer recently reported:

After Pigford filed his suit, thousands of farmers came forward to say that they, too, had been denied loans to buy land or pay for operating expenses, or had been approved for loans only when it was too late to plant. Many lost their land. Pigford lost his home.

Investigations into the claims showed that black farmers often had to wait more than twice as long as their white counterparts to get answers about loans; that their loans were denied or the amounts slashed more often than loans for whites; and that they were foreclosed upon faster.

A $1 billion settlement in the original Pigford case was reached in 1999, providing either a payout of $50,000 plus certain loan forgiveness and tax offsets, or a larger payment if the farmer could offer evidence to support it. The settlement was then expanded into what’s known as Pigford II to include thousands of other black farmers who’d been excluded from the first suit due to notification and communication problems. Last week’s settlement agreement came in Pigford II.

While Congress created a system in 2008 to review claims of racial bias from black farmers under the second Pigford case, it still has not provided the money needed for the payouts. It’s thought that as many as 70,000 black farmers could qualify.

Last week’s settlement agreement came on the heels of demonstrations by black farmers held earlier this month in Washington as well as historically black farming areas of the South including Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. Those demonstrations were organized by the National Black Farmers Association, founded in 1995 by Virginia poultry farmer John W. Boyd Jr., who almost lost his home and business due to the USDA’s discriminatory practices.

Boyd said the announcement of the settlement was a step toward a “just resolution” of the black farmers’ cases — but he emphasized the importance of Congress taking action. If federal lawmakers fail to act by March 31, farmers can walk away from the agreement and pursue a new one.

“Next week another Black farmer will lose his farm,” Boyd said. “Others are at risk of not living to see justice. These farmers have waited for years, and simply cannot wait any longer for final resolution.”

In 1920, one in every seven U.S. farms was owned by an African American. By the turn of this century, African Americans owned only 1 in 100 farms, with institutionalized racism a major factor in the decline, according to a 2004 study by the Environmental Working Group.

(Photo of John Boyd Jr. of the National Black Farmers Association from the Mo’ Better Food website.)

An industry group representing private security firms will meet in Miami next month to discuss business opportunities for its members in post-earthquake Haiti, deepening concerns among some observers about the growing privatization of disaster assistance.

The International Peace Operations Association — labeled the “mercenary trade association” by journalist and Blackwater/Xe watchdog Jeremy Scahill — is co-sponsoring the March 9 and 10 gathering with Global Investment Summits, a London-based company that describes itself as “a provider of business summits that transcend the boundaries of the traditional conference model” with a focus on “the promotion of trade and investment within countries that are vast in economic potential.”

All profits for the event — titled “Haiti: Resources for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance” — will go to benefit the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. Former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have been invited to take part in the conference, along with representatives of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and nongovernmental organizations including the American Red Cross and Save the Children.

The IPOA was founded in April 2001 to support the growing private military industry. Blackwater — the troubled North Carolina-based private military firm now known as Xe — was a member of the group until 2007, leaving after the association launched an investigation into a massacre of unarmed civilians in Iraq by Blackwater guards. Current member companies include DynCorp International and Triple Canopy, both based in Virginia.

IPOA Director Doug Brooks told the Inter Press Service that the first contacts his member companies got in Haiti were from journalists looking for security services:

Likewise, the private military contractor, Raidon Tactics, has at least 30 former U.S. Special Operations soldiers on the ground, where they have been guarding aid convoys and providing security for “news agencies,” according to a Raidon employee who told IPS his company received over 1,000 phone calls in response to an ad posting “for open positions for Static Security Positions and Mobile Security Positions” in Haiti.

Naomi Klein, author of “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” told IPS that “Haiti doesn’t need cookie cutter one-size fits all reconstruction, designed by the same gang that made same such a hash of Iraq, Afghanistan and New Orleans — and indeed the same people responsible for the decimation of Haiti’s own economy in the name of ‘aid.’”

Brooks’ responded: “If Scahill and Klein have the resources, the capabilities, the equipment, to go in and do it themselves then more power to them.”

But Patrick Elie — Haiti’s former defense minister under Jean-Bertrand Aristide and an advisor to current President René Préval — shares some of Scahill’s and Klein’s concerns, telling IPS:

“These guys are like vultures coming to grab the loot over this disaster, and probably money that might have been injected into the Haitian economy is going to be just grabbed by these companies and I’m sure that they are not only these mercenary companies but also the other companies like Halliburton or these other ones that always [come] on the heels of the troops.”

Meanwhile, the international community is promoting a plan to expand Haiti’s low-wage garment assembly industry as the road to recovery, with the Obama administration encouraging retailers to buy from Haiti at least 1% of the clothes they sell.

U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk unveiled the initiative at a recent Las Vegas apparel industry conference, where he was joined by officials from Gap Inc. and North Carolina-based Hanesbrands.

But as a recent Associated Press story pointed out, the Haitian garment industry does not necessarily provide a living wage to its workers. It offered the example of Jordanie Pinquie Rebeca, who earns $3.09 for eight hours of work piecing suits that JoS. A. Bank Clothiers will sell for $550 each.

Despite having the very sort of job the U.S. is promoting for Haitians, Rebeca — who lost her apartment in the earthquake — sleeps on the street and has little to eat.

The Alabama state senate has passed a pair of bills that would improve protections for American Indian burial grounds, a move that comes amid growing public outcry over destruction of sacred sites in that state and elsewhere in the Southeast.

State Sen. Wendell Mitchell (D-Luverne) sponsored the legislation in the wake of a controversy that erupted in the past year over the destruction of Indian mounds in Oxford, Ala. One mound in the city was partially destroyed while being used as fill dirt for a new Sam’s Club warehouse store, while the other disappeared completely during the construction of a municipal sports complex.

One of the bills would close a loophole in state law that treats differently burial sites for indigenous people vs. later settlers and their descendants, the Anniston Star reports.

Under current Alabama law, anyone who desecrates a grave is guilty of a Class C felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison — unless it’s an Indian grave. In that case, the felony charge applies only to those who maliciously desecrate Indian burial grounds on property they do not own themselves, meaning property owners now have final say over the treatment of Indian graves.

Another bill that passed the Senate last week would require people removing grave sites to get permission first from a local governing body.

Neither measure has any sponsors yet in the state House, according to the paper.

In recent years the Southeast has seen the destruction of a number of sacred Indian sites  in places including Nashville, Tenn. and Canton, Ga. And earlier this month, controversy erupted over Duke Energy’s plans to build an electrical substation near the sacred Cherokee site of Kituwah.

Last week Florida’s Miami-Dade County became the first county in the U.S. to pass an ordinance to combat wage theft, making it easier for workers to bring legal action against employers who fail to pay or underpay them.

“This is momentous,” said Jeanette Smith, executive director of South Florida Interfaith Worker Justice. “The passing of this legislation will make a difference for every worker in Miami-Dade County and, hopefully, will encourage groups all over the country to establish similar mechanisms for workers in their communities.”

The 10-0 vote last Thursday came after more than a year of work by Smith’s group and the South Florida Wage Theft Task Force. San Francisco already has a wage-theft law on the books, and similar proposals are being considered elsewhere across the country including New Orleans, where wage theft emerged as a major problem following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

In fact, a study released last year by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that New Orleans has the highest incidence of wage theft in the South. Of the New Orleans workers surveyed by SPLC, 80% said they had their wages stolen since Katrina.

Recovering back wages owed workers would “put more money in the local economy, send a message to crooked employers and create a more level playing field for honest employers,” according to a Miami Herald editorial endorsing the Miami-Dade measure.

“This legislation will provide justice for exploited workers using a streamlined hearing examiner process, at very little cost to our county,” said Miami-Dade Commissioner Natacha Seijas, the measure’s principal sponsor.

At the same time, U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has said her department is committed to enforcement, especially of laws related to the payment of minimum wage and overtime. She has increased staffing levels in the Wage and Hour Division, putting more investigators in the field.