“Frankly, litigation may be the best way forward on this issue,” Ed Ryerson wrote in a letter last week to Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), defending his ex-employer’s ability to regulate water on forest lands.

In his letter, Ryerson, who coordinated the Forest Service’s ski area program from 1992 until his retirement in 2005, excoriated “the ‘bad actors’ in the ski industry who welshed on their agreements with the United States, and obtained water rights, justly belonging to the American people, through fraud and deception. These are the ski areas on who’s behalf NSAA has been lobbying.”

Udall, along with Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo), John Barrasso, (R-Wyo.), James Risch, (R-Idaho), and Rep. Scott Tipton, (R-Colo.), recently asked the Forest Service to suspend a new clause in its permitting process that ski resorts contend is an illegal taking of valuable water rights.

The Forest Service did not act on the advice of the politicians. Federal officials say the National Forest Ski Area Permit Act of 1986 concedes water rights on federal forest lands to the U.S. government. They also cite statutory authority based on the Organic Administrative Act of 1897, and other laws.

But in 2004, high-level meetings between ski industry executives and Bush administration officials resulted in a new policy that awarded permit owners joint ownership of water rights on federal lands.

“The 2004 water rights clause was implemented during my tenure and accordingly, I experienced how the ski industry exploited the lax regulatory environment that characterized the Bush Administration to attempt to effectuate the transfer of valuable water rights, that justly belong to the American people, to private ski areas,” Ryerson wrote in his letter to Udall. “The 2004 water rights clause is the legacy of this effort and should be seen in the context of that administration’s regulatory failures that allowed greed to jeopardize our economy and environment.”

Before the 2004 clause, there was a particularly cantankerous meeting between Ryerson, accompanied by a Department of Agriculture’s Office of General Council (OGC) lawyer, and NSAA.

“They reacted to every concern we voiced with hostility and let us know that they had the support of the Under Secretary’s Office to make the  changes they wanted,” Ryerson wrote of the NSAA officials. “Following this unproductive meeting, all discussions on modifying the clause were conducted between NSAA representatives, the Director of Recreation in the Chief’s office, and the Under Secretary’s staff. Agency permit specialist and water rights experts with OGC were excluded from the meetings that resulted in the development of the 2004 water rights clause.”

When the Forest Service tried to convey water rights under the 2004 joint-ownership policy, officials say agency lawyers learned Colorado’s laws wouldn’t allow it. That led to the 2011 interim directive, which authorizes the Forest Service to begin to wholly reclaim water rights at ski areas through permit actions. The new directive is limited to new permit requests and it is only valid for 18 months.

Ryerson’s letter questions whether any ski areas have intentionally deceived the Forest Service.

“If, in fact, some ski area operators signed their permits under the pretense of agreeing to transfer these water rights to the Government, when their intent was not to do so, they knowingly and willfully deceived the Forest Service and defrauded the United States,” he wrote. “Accordingly, these ski area operators risked criminal penalties under 18 USC 1001, as well as termination of their permits. That they would resort to such reckless behavior clearly illustrates the power of greed.”

Asked for a response, Geraldine Link, the policy director for NSAA, emailed the Colorado Independent to say “the 2011 clause – is retroactive in nature. It resurrects old, invalid and replaced clauses that are no longer in effect. It resurrects them from the past even though at this time the ski area and the water rights could very well be owned by a different entity who was not a party to the permit from 3 decades ago. The 2011 clause also applies to water that originates on private land and other non-USFS lands. Talk about shifting political winds. The ski industry is frustrated with the pendulum swinging back and forth between administrations. It is not good for business.”

Ryerson has a much different perspective but he agrees with NSAA officials on at least one point when they say they are going to sue the Forest Service: Let the dispute play out in court.

“It will be advantageous to the public’s interest to get the Justice Department involved in this matter,” Ryerson wrote in his letter to Udall, on which Bennet was copied. “It will provide them an opportunity to become familiar with the facts of the matter to help them determine if criminal prosecutions should be pursued, and to expedite acquiring title to water rights that justly belong to the American people.”

Photo: Flickr/Nashoba Valley Ski Area

Dr. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, announced the second annual Climate B.S. of the Year Awards on Huffington Post and Forbes blogs Thursday to make examples of bad climate science that was produced, cited, or used in 2011 to try to influence or confuse the public.

Scores of conservative lawmakers and Fox News personalities amplified their pro-greenhouse-gas mantra last year, even as extreme weather, record-breaking temperatures and billion-dollar catastrophesdominated the planet.

First place went to all of the Republican candidates running for president, none of whom sided with the science accepted by 97-98 percent of all climate scientists and every national academy of sciences in the world. Second place went to Fox News and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation “because of its regular misrepresentation of climate science and anti-climate science reporting among the different Murdoch outlets in the UK, the U.S., and Australia,” the Pacific Institute announced.

Third place went to Roy Spencer and William Braswell “for a debunked research paper on climate sensitivity, and John Christy, for an astounding piece of misleading testimony at a Congressional climate change hearing,” Gleick wrote.

Billionaire badboy brothers Charles and David Koch, who own Colorado property and bankroll lawmakers like Cory Gardner and Scott Tipton, slide into the fourth spot of the bad-science list. The Pacific Institute makes note of the Koch brothers’ well-funded network of anti-climate science groups and highlights a quote from the president of Americans for Prosperity, a Koch-supported super-PAC.

“If you look at where the situation was three years ago and where it is today, there’s been a dramatic turnaround. Most of these candidates have figured out that the science has become political. We’ve made great headway,” Americans for Prosperity’s Tim Phillips “brags outright,” Pacific Institute reports.

For a detailed report on how the Koch brothers influence environmental politics, click here.

Colorado’s conservative congressional delegation has helped the cause. Gardner, Tipton, Doug Lamborn and Mike Coffman have all taken the No Climate Tax Pledge and repeatedly voted to weaken protections for land, air and water. Calling out Gardner specifically, one report found Congress averaged more than one anti-environmental vote for every day it was in session.

Fifth place went to anti-climate-science blogger Anthony Watts, “who said he would accept the results of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature … even if it proved him wrong.” The Koch brothers actually funded the study but it backfired and, like many studies before it, confirmed the Earth’s surface is warming and doing so at an accelerating rate. In the end, Watts attacked the study.

The Pacific Institute’s runners-up for its 2011 Climate B.S. of the Year Awards were Harrison Schmitt and the Heartland Institute for ‘Arcticgate’ (documented errors in denying disappearance of Arctic sea ice); Rush Limbaugh for his consistent falsehoods about climate science; and Steve McIntyre for his smear of climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann of Penn State University.”

In a Dec. 7 letter (PDF) to Congress, a group of 14 agricultural, mineral and pulp and paper industries write that they “wish to support the inclusion of certain important provisions aimed at encouraging economic growth and reining in excessive regulation.” Among those provisions: one that “would prohibit EPA from using funds to implement, administer or enforce” a set of federally required water quality standards, known as the “numeric nutrient criteria.”

Industry interests have long been critical of the EPA’s draft, arguing that their implementation could add as much to $700 to the average resident’s water bill.

Several studies “indicate the impact of the EPA’s mandates to Florida’s citizens, local governments and businesses will be in the billions,” reads the Dec. 7 letter.

Though the criteria were mandated by the EPA, the agency has agreed to allow the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to implement its own rules in their place. In an interview last week with The Florida Independent, the Department of Environmental Protection’s Drew Bartlett said that recent studies reveal the cost of the state’s version to be somewhere between $50 and $130 million per year. During a River Summit held in Jacksonville last year, one state representative said that the department estimated the federal version to cost somewhere between $5 and $8 billion.

“The cost figures for EPA’s rules were higher,” said Bartlett. “We include so many provisions, certainty and speed by which they get implemented, and we recognize that it won’t cost as much to implement them.”

A separate letter, signed by more agricultural and industry interests, also references cost estimates “in the billions.”

In that second letter, which was published on Dec. 18 in the Jackson County Floridian, the groups also request the inclusion of the Numeric Nutrient Criteria Amendment  — which is part of the Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2012 (H.R. 2584)  — in the final version of the spending package.

That amendment, which is sponsored by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, would also block funding for implementation of the EPA numeric nutrient criteria. The bill also includes language that stops the attempted expanded regulation of waters under the Clean Water Act during fiscal year 2012.

“Florida’s existing nutrient water quality programs are more effective than the new EPA regulations because the current policies are based on scientific evaluations of the state’s vast, varied and unique ecosystems,” reads the letter. “We respectfully request that you stop EPA from implementing or enforcing its NNC rule for Florida, and allow the experts in Florida to take back control of its water quality programs.”

Florida’s current standard is ineffective, according to many state environmentalists, and hasn’t done enough to ward off harmful algal blooms and fish kills that negatively affect the bottom line in many communities across the state.

The rules will next require legislative ratification and then EPA approval before they can be implemented in the state.

White-nose syndrome was first linked to a bat cave near Albany, N.Y., in 2006 and it has since spread to 16 states and four Canadian provinces. The fungus that causes the disease has been found on asymptomatic bats in another three states. The little brown bat, as well as the northern long-eared bat and the eastern small-footed bat, are all potential candidates for federal endangered-species listings, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is currently reviewing their bleak outlook.

Other species of North American bats are endangered as a result of human habitat disturbance. Bats, which eat enough insects to save the U.S. agricultural industry between $3 billion and $53 billion a year, are also flying up against industrial-scale wind turbines that crush their thumb-sized bodies.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will be directed to earmark the money from the 2012 endangered species recovery fund to research and manage the deadly outbreak of white-nose syndrome.

Concern for North America’s bats is growing as the fungal disease that breeds in the nocturnal animals’ faces and wings continues to spread.

“The high number of bat deaths and range of species being affected far exceeds the rate and magnitude of any previously known natural or human-caused mortality event in bats, and possibly in any other mammals,” said Paul Cryan, a U.S. Geological Survey research scientist in Fort Collins and one of the authors of an analysis published in the journal Science last spring about bats’ economic contribution to the farming industry.

“It is obviously beneficial that insectivorous bats are patrolling the skies at night above our fields and forests. These bats deserve help,” Cryan said.

Scientists warn of more economic losses in the ag industry because of “the double-whammy effect” of bat deaths caused by white-nose syndrome and from wind turbines and other human encroachment.

“Because the agricultural value of bats in the Northeast is small compared with other parts of the country, such losses could be even more substantial in the extensive agricultural regions in the Midwest and the Great Plains, where wind-energy development is booming and the fungus responsible for white-nose syndrome was recently detected,” said Thomas Kunz, a distinguished biology professor at Boston University who studies bat behavior and ecology.

There are 18 species of bats in Colorado and at least two other types found in nearby parts of Utah and Oklahoma that may be here too. White-nose syndrome is not known to have reached Colorado.

The National Park Service has closed caves in the Pocono Mountains in the eastern United States and, out west, federal and state agencies partially closed some caves and abandoned mines on public lands in New Mexico in response to the spread of white-nose syndrome. Others, such as Carlsbad Caverns National Park and Mammoth Cave National Park, are enacting processes to screen visitors to prevent the transmission of the fungus that can develop into white-nose syndrome.

The Colorado Division of Wildlife is asking the public to report the sighting of any active or dead bats this winter. Last year, the agency, along with Orient Land Trust, established a 350-acre conservation easement including a defunct iron ore mine to protect 250,000 Mexican free-tailed bats.

Under a law that President Bush signed in 2007, the Department of Energy on Jan. 1, 2012, was supposed to begin enforcing a ban on the incandescent bulbs that Thomas Edison perfected 132 years ago.

But the House and Senate’s massive spending bill to yet again avert a federal government shutdown includes a rider that will prevent the lightbulb rules from taking effect until at least October. Proponents of the lightbulb legislation promote it as an easy and logical way to improve the nation’s energy efficiency, but, to others, the law smacks of textbook government overreach.

Aficionados of the pear-shaped lights are stocking up on them at Home Depot — which reports lightbulb sales are up 10 to 20 percent over a year ago — and elsewhere before they fade away.

In Texas, the legislature passed a bill permitting the manufacture and sale of the traditional bulbs within its borders even though there is not a single lightbulb factory in the state.

Over the summer, a bill to repeal the energy-efficiency standards died in the House. Reps. Diana DeGette, Jared Polis and Ed Perlmutter, all Colorado Democrats, opposed it. Reps. Scott Tipton, Doug Lamborn, Cory Gardner and Mike Coffman, all Colorado Republicans, favored it.

Now there is a reprieve for the incandescent bulbs, but it may be too little, too late.

Even if Republicans are successful in further pushing back the efficiency standards that the incandescent bulbs don’t meet, the industry is already moving forward with a focus on compact fluorescent, halogen and light-emitting diode versions. With many of the world’s other leading nations also phasing out the old energy-guzzling bulbs, companies are investing in newer technologies.

Democrats, along with lightbulb manufacturers such as General Electric Co. and environmentalists, are urging for new rules to take effect sooner than later, citing energy and cost savings.

“If America is to have a rational energy policy, we need to make progress in efficiency,” Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said in a prepared statement. “Blocking funds to enforce minimum standards works against our nation getting the full benefits of energy efficiency.”

The original Deepwater Horizon fire (Photo: Flickr/Deepwater Horizon Response)

A new report issued by The National Academy of Engineering, a government-created nonprofit, concludes that the lack of regulation and ineffective safety-management practices that led to BP’s catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico have not been fully remedied — leaving communities in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana potentially vulnerable to another oil spill.

The blowout and explosion of BP’s Macondo well killed 11 workers and led to the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

According to National Academy’s Deepwater Horizon Committee, “companies involved in offshore drilling should take a ‘system safety’ approach to anticipating and managing possible dangers at every level of operation — from ensuring the integrity of wells to designing blowout preventers that function ‘under all foreseeable conditions.’”  In addition, according to the report, “an enhanced regulatory approach should combine strong industry safety goals with mandatory oversight at critical points during drilling operations.”

Some of the report recommendations:

• Expanding the formal education and training of personnel engaged in offshore drilling to ensure that they can properly implement system safety.
• Establishing guidelines so that well designs incorporate protection against the various credible risks associated with the drilling and abandonment process.
• Testing cemented and mechanical barriers designed to contain the flow of hydrocarbons in wells, to ensure that they are effective (and subjecting those tests to independent reviews).

The study, which was sponsored the U.S. Department of Interior, also recommends the formation of a single government agency that would be responsible for integrating system safety for all offshore drilling activities. Current offshore drilling operations are governed by a number of agencies, often with overlapping authorities.

In a press release sent out yesterday, Earthjustice attorney David Guest said that “lax oversight by government” hasn’t changed, putting jobs in tourism, recreation and fishing at risk.

“It’s back to business as usual as if the BP disaster never happened,” Guest said. “The National Academy of Engineering tells us that deep water drilling still has a high risk of disaster, that the culture of corner-cutting in the industry and lax oversight by government haven’t changed. That means that the fishing communities and all the jobs in tourism and recreation in the Gulf region are at risk.”

Earthjustice filed suit against the federal government in June for conducting what it says is “a flawed environmental risk assessment” of Shell’s plan to drill in the gulf. According to Earthjustice, federal regulators have conducted “an irrationally optimistic risk assessment for  Shell Oil Company’s plan to drill for oil in deep Gulf waters near the site of BP’s devastating spill.”

After the House this week passed the Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act, H.R. 1633, the White House announced that President Barack Obama will veto it if it lands on his desk, citing an administration policy statement that says the bill “purports to address a problem that does not exist.”

The “ambiguously written bill would create high levels of regulatory uncertainty regarding emission control requirements that have been in place for years,” the Obama administration’s statement reads.

But U.S. Reps. Cory Gardner, Scott Tipton and Doug Lamborn, all Republicans from Colorado, co-sponsored the legislation anyway. Gardner claims he is wary of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s insistence that her agency has no designs to regulate farm dust.

“The EPA is notorious for trying to implement regulations through the back door, and that is exactly what is happening with regard to farm dust,” Gardner said. “Despite denials from agency officials saying they don’t regulate farm dust, the Energy and Commerce Committee has demonstrated that these denials are nothing more than semantics. During an October hearing on H.R. 1633, the ‘Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act,’ a top EPA official acknowledged that the EPA does regulate ‘course particles in the air,’ which includes farm dust. Therefore, the EPA is in fact regulating farm dust.”

Or could it be the polluters who are trying to go through the back door with H.R. 1633?

“The bill is sweepingly overbroad, creating numerous damaging consequences that appear to be unintended but that would cause real harms to Americans,” John Walke, a senior attorney and associate director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, wrote last month. “The result would be increases in harmful soot pollution – not just coarse particulate matter (PM10) but deadly fine particulate matter (PM2.5) – across the country. And not just in rural America but urban and metropolitan areas too. The legislation inexplicably eliminates, weakens or blocks federal Clean Air Act authority over overwhelmingly industrial soot pollution from power plants, manufacturing facilities, mines, other industrial facilities and even the nation’s fleet of motor vehicles …”

The Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act — an extension of the GOP-led House’s crusade to undermine the nation’s bedrock environmental laws — is spurring its share of confusion.

National Cattlemen’s Beef Association President Bill Donald issued a statement after the vote saying Americans are worried about being fined for moving cattle, tilling a field or driving down a dirt road.

Still, not everyone is buying it.

Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union, said he is “disappointed” the legislation passed the House and that representatives are wasting taxpayer time and money.

“As EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has repeatedly said, both verbally and in writing to members of Congress, the EPA is not proposing to revise farm dust regulations,” he said yesterday. “Despite this assurance, misinformation regarding potential dust regulation continues to spread across the country, creating unnecessary concern for farmers and ranchers. Congress should stop politicizing this issue and move on to passing meaningful legislation to help farmers, ranchers and rural communities.”

Got a tip? Story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

Louis Meeks’ well water near Pavillion, Wyo., contains methane gas, hydrocarbons, lead, and copper (Photo: ProPublica/Abrahm Lustgarten).

The EPA is publishing the draft findings in order to obtain public comment and independent scientific review, but the report is sure to be used as the most solid piece of evidence to date that hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” can taint groundwater. The oil and gas industry maintains the process has never been proven to communicate with drinking water supplies.

“EPA’s highest priority remains ensuring that Pavillion residents have access to safe drinking water,” Jim Martin, EPA’s regional administrator in Denver said in a press release. Martin is the former head of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. “We will continue to work cooperatively with the State, Tribes, Encana and the community to secure long-term drinking water solutions.

“We look forward to having these findings in the draft report informed by a transparent and public review process. In consultation with the Tribes, EPA will also work with the State on additional investigation of the Pavillion field.”

Pavillion is within the Wind River Indian Reservation. Residents there have been warned not to drink the local well water, and the Canadian oil and gas company EnCana has been supplying clean drinking water. However, the company disputes that fracking has led to well water contamination.

At the request of area residents, the EPA has been testing two deep water monitoring wells.

“EPA’s analysis of samples taken from the agency’s deep monitoring wells in the aquifer indicates detection of synthetic chemicals, like glycols and alcohols consistent with gas production and hydraulic fracturing fluids, benzene concentrations well above Safe Drinking Water Act standards and high methane levels,” the report states.

“Given the area’s complex geology and the proximity of drinking water wells to ground water contamination, EPA is concerned about the movement of contaminants within the aquifer and the safety of drinking water wells over time.”

The EPA also conducted new sampling of drinking water wells in the area.

“Chemicals detected in the most recent samples are consistent with those identified in earlier EPA samples and include methane, other petroleum hydrocarbons and other chemical compounds,” the EPA reports. “The presence of these compounds is consistent with migration from areas of gas production. Detections in drinking water wells are generally below established health and safety standards.”

Republican politicians have already started attacking the EPA’s ongoing investigation in Pavillion, but the agency is taking great pains to point out that geological conditions are different all around the country and that what’s true in the Pavillion case may not apply to other areas where fracking is suspected of tainting groundwater.

“The draft findings announced today are specific to Pavillion, where the fracturing is taking place in and below the drinking water aquifer and in close proximity to drinking water wells – production conditions different from those in many other areas of the country,” EPA officials said in a release.

Anti-drilling activists in Colorado have also pointed to a 1984 EPA report on fracking in West Virginia as evidence that the process can contaminate drinking water supplies with carcinogenic chemicals. But the Pavillion case represents the most clear-cut contemporary example.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper this summer said with certainty that fracking fluids don’t communicate with groundwater, but he still ordered a new chemical disclosure rule to be drafted. That rulemaking process is still under way.

Participants lamented Canada’s new status as a “laggard country” when that nation’s conservative government announced its plan to quit the Kyoto Protocol, which it called a thing of the past. And, to almost no one’s surprise, people inside the conference halls and out on the streets joined together in labeling the United States “enemy number one” for the way it is wielding its vast global influence in the service of intransigence, backpedaling and obfuscation. A top South African religious leader Tuesday called the high-profile climate-change skepticism of many U.S. leaders “immoral.”

At a well-attended briefing Tuesday morning held by NGO umbrella organization Climate Action Network, Bishop Geoff Davies, executive director of the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute, highlighted what he saw as the contradiction inherent in the fact that the people of the United States are deeply religious but also alienated from the responsibility faith demands to address suffering tied to climate-altering pollution.

“The US is a nation of great faith, of Christian commitment. We find it extraordinary that they are behaving like this. We find it immoral,” he said when a Turkish journalist asked what additional pressure could be brought to bear on the world’s lone superpower. “Environmental destruction is a sin against God. We say to faith groups in the U.S.: You’ve got to recognize your responsibilities to combat climate change.”

Watch live video from OneClimate on www.justin.tv

At a press conference on Monday, Greenpeace Executive Director Kumi Naidoo said the U.S. government was criminally confusing the interests of corporate polluters with the interests of its people.

“The US delegation is not only betraying the people of the world but they are betraying the American People,” he said, calling on President Obama to “Get here and get with the program or move aside.”

The future of the Kyoto Protocol is the main question of the negotiations because major developing nations are demanding the treaty continue if they are to participate in any future climate-change agreements.

The protocol, signed in 1997 and meant to take effect in 2005, set up tiers of countries that were supposed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by specifically tailored rates. The plan was supposed to cut annual emissions to a rate 5.2 percent below 1990 emissions levels by 2012. The treaty failed spectacularly to meet that goal, with CO2 emissions alone now up to a reported 30 billion metric tons, or a third more than were emitted in 1990.

The United States is leading efforts to delay any new legally binding agreement until 2020. So far, the countries of Europe as represented by the European Union, are the only developed nations willing to sign on to extend the Kyoto Protocol, but they’ll do so only if the United States and other big polluters like China and India agree to a new pact that would take effect by 2020.

Jim Leape, director general of World Wildlife Fund, called the negotiations “a huge failure of ambition on the part of governments.” He said that a delay in ratifying the Kyoto Protocol would be “binding ourselves to a 4-degree world.”

Scientists say that, at today’s warming-emissions rate, the global planet temperature is on course to rise by 4 degrees Celsius and they say that temperature would bring dramatic challenges to the way we presently live, causing the desertification of much farmland, widespread crop failure and major glacier loss.

Leape felt the need to point out to North Americans that climate change is not just some exotic problem for faraway lands but a domestic problem as well, whether or not politicians and corporate leaders care to admit it. He reminded reporters that 47 of the 50 U.S. states declared weather-related emergencies last year. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists warn that extreme weather conditions will only increase in frequency and intensity as the planet warms.

Some analysts say that, given the political and business realities of the contemporary world, the annual meetings– known as the COP conferences (the meeting in Durban is COP17)– with their focus on emissions reduction, detract from other more realizable goals. Paul Danish, writing in the Boulder Weekly, offered a typical example this week, arguing that, at this point, focusing so much attention on cutting emissions is a fool’s errand. “Global warming is a done deal,” he wrote. “[T]he conference should really be focused on learning to live with global warming and finding ways to adapt to it.”

Photos of the Global Day of Action in Durban by Adrienne Russell and Matt Tegelberg.

Reporters often ride along on police vehicles outside the conference.

South Durban is the toxic hub of South Africa and citizens there are demanding industry clean up the region and make efforts to limit waste.

Protesters here are strongly tying the right to secure freedom of information to the issue of climate change. Without access to data, corporate and industry interests can avoid accountability, they say. In South Africa, freedom of information has been threatened recently by a bill that attaches stiff prison sentences to unauthorized possession of classified information.

Reporting from Durban by Adrienne Russell, associate professor of communication at the University of Denver. Her most recent book, Networked: A Contemporary History of News in Transition was published by Polity Press this year.

Got a tip? Story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

The EPA seal (Photo: sentryjournal.com)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today announced that it had issued Consent Agreements and Final Orders against 25 entities throughout the Southeast for violations of the Clean Water Act. Three Florida wastewater utilities were also penalized, for improperly disposing of sewage sludge.

As part of the settlements, the responsible parties have agreed to pay $184,317 in civil penalties, and spend  an additional $284,791 to come into compliance.

Ten entities were cited for alleged stormwater-related violations of the Clean Water Act, which are a leading cause of impairment to the nearly 40 percent of water bodies nationwide which are not currently meeting water quality standards.

Wastewater utilities in 14 municipalities, including Florida, were also penalized for “failing to provide biosolids reports and/or otherwise failing to comply with Section 503 of the CWA covering requirements for land disposal of sewage sludge.” Plantation, Lake City and Starke were each fined $900 for their failure to comply.

“By taking these enforcement actions, we are sending a strong message about the importance of protecting rivers, lakes and streams,” said EPA Regional Administrator Gwen Keyes Fleming in a press release. “By addressing the violations noted in our inspections, these entities will prevent millions of pounds of pollution from entering the environment, in addition to protecting the quality of life for families across the Southeast.”

Pollutants of concern include nutrients, sediment, oil and grease, chemicals and metals. When left uncontrolled, water pollution can deplete needed oxygen and/or otherwise result in the destruction of aquatic habitats, as well as the fish and wildlife that depend on them. Water pollution can also contaminate food, drinking water supplies and recreational waterways, and thereby pose a threat to public health.

A coalition of environmental groups, including the St. Johns Riverkeeper and Sierra Club, recently filed a petition against a set of water standards recently drafted by the state Department of Environmental Protection. The groups allege that the standards are not strong enough to comply with the Clean Water Act, since they allow waterways to further degrade before they are cleaned up.