Climate Recovery Partnership News and Events

Illinois Waterways Cleaner Thanks to Water Sentinels

In May, more than 350 volunteers collected over 700 pounds of garbage and 150 pounds of recyclables from the Fox River. Local residents Fran Caffee and Cindy Skrukrud, both Sierra Club Water Sentinels, organized the massive clean-ups along the river, a tributary of the Illinois River: Two in Aurora, Illinois' second-largest city, and one in Elgin, about 25 miles to the north.

“Clean riverbanks do not mean clean water,” says Fran, “despite all the trash we collect!” Water Sentinels team members have also been testing the river’s water quality since 1995 for nutrients, phosphorus, and nitrogen to monitor the long-term health of the river. They share the data with the Club’s chapter volunteers and staff working on nutrient standards for rivers and ponds.

With a new, local kayak and canoe rental shop in town, as well as the River’s Edge Park running alongside its banks, the Fox River is a resource on many fronts. Clean water is important for the environment and human health and it is also beneficial for the local economy. Thanks to Sierra Club’s Valley of the Fox Group and Illinois Water Sentinels’ annual clean-up efforts, the river quality is improving, bettering the community.

Read more about it at The Beacon News.

(Photo: Volunteers display their trash collection from the Fox River clean-up.)

Sunnier Days Ahead For Indiana University

Indiana University has seen the light (sunlight, that is) thanks to Coal Free IU, a campus group sponsored by Sierra Club’s Sierra Student Coalition and Campuses Beyond Coal. A coal plant operates on the IU campus, burning roughly 68,000 tons of coal and emitting 1,300 tons of sulfur dioxide annually. Upon learning of the coal plant, Nick McKay - Coal Free IU’s vice president and director of research - decided to point his school in a more sustainable direction.

McKay, a sophomore, and fellow Coal Free IU members Lauren Kastner and Hannah Hunt, applied for and received a $12,000 grant from the Indiana University Student Foundation. The money will help fund a two kilowatt solar system to be installed on the giant Indiana Memorial Union. McKay notes the system, which will be operational by mid-April, is expected to prevent approximately 85,000 pounds of CO2 from entering the atmosphere over its lifespan.

Currently, the campus buys the majority of its power from Duke Energy, which harvests its coal from southwest Indiana. The on-campus coal plant provides water and building heating.The alternative energy system is the first of its kind on the IU campus.

To read an interview with Nick McKay on this topic, click here.

(Photo: Nick McKay (Vice President and Director of Research for Coal Free IU), Hannah Hunt (Vice President and Media Coordinator for Coal Free IU), Emily Winters (Research Group member for Coal Free IU), and Lauren Kastner (President of Coal Free IU))

Community’s Well-being Greatly Improved by Sierra Club Water Sentinel

Tired of the stench, dirty water, and negative health effects in her Michigan farming community, Sierra Club Water Sentinel Lynn Henning took action. On the receiving end of Lynn’s activism? Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), proliferating in Lynn’s town, that had been polluting the surrounding environment through unsound waste disposal practices. The CAFOs generated feces, urine, decaying carcasses, hormones, pesticides, and blood that eventually ended up in local, public waterways. Lynn gathered thousands of water samples and reported the horrifying results to state regulators. Despite experiencing intimidation practices like a blown up mailbox, Lynn remained undeterred and more determined to bring the CAFOs to justice.

As a result of her efforts, in October, Vreba-Hoff Dairy, a mega-dairy cartel in Lynn’s community, went into a $55 million foreclosure, got nailed by the State of Michigan for $580,000 lien for unpaid environmental fines, and decided to shut down 16 mega-dairies. For her hard work, Lynn was awarded the 2010 Goldman Environmental Prize for North America, giving her the opportunity to meet President Obama. Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine also named Lynn in its 2010 Power List.

(Photo: Lynn Henning meets President Obama on behalf of her Goldman Prize; Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Creating a Coal-Free Campus

The Sierra Student Coalition organizer and student leaders met with Iowa State University President Gregory Geoffroy to discuss concerns about the school's continued burning of coal on campus. After successful media and visibility efforts by the Beyond Coal group on campus, such as this piece in the Ames Tribune, the SSC secured the meeting. At the end of the meeting, Geoffroy directed facilities staff to research various energy options. In the meantime, the Club will continue its legal investigation into the campus plant's compliance as well as its recruitment and public outreach efforts.

Putting the Hoosier Heat on Coal

Sierra Club and its allies recently testified at hearings for Duke's Edwardsport, Indiana coal plant project. The plant has increased in cost from $1.6 billion to $2.9 billion—and costs continue to rise. The Club’s Hoosier Chapter, Citizens Action Coalition, and others spoke to the riskiness of the plant and ethical issues that have plagued Duke and the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission.

Duke COO James Turner, the company’s second-highest-paid executive, resigned on December 6 after an ethics issue involving his level of access to the head of the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission. Also on the heels of this ethics flap involving dealings with state regulators in November, Mike Reed, president of Duke’s Indiana operations, was fired along with Duke staff attorney Scott Storms. Duke CEO Jim Rogers spent three hours on the witness stand defending the cost of the project and the propriety of the regulatory process.

More here

Wisconsinites Challenge Dirty Coal

This week, the Sierra Club and its allies helped turn out more than 100 people to attend a public hearing on an air permit renewal for the Valley coal plant, which is located in downtown Milwaukee. Attendees voiced universal support for cleaning up the plant and a heavy concern for environmental justice, given the plant's location in a densely populated, lower-income area. The hearing came after the Sierra Club and Clean Wisconsin successfully sued the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to stop delaying action on the permit.

More here

Spotlight: Sierra Student Coalition

Sierra Student Coalition coal organizer Lindsey Berger is helping provide a big boost to our Beyond Coal work in Missouri. St. Louis is the home of Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, and Ameren—but it is also a hotbed of student activism at Washington University. Lindsey operates at the center of a coalition at Washington University that staged high-visibility protests at the school's coal-biased symposium on the future of global energy. She pulled together students, laborers/union members, the low-income community, and people of faith to stand against coal. The student activism in St. Louis lays the foundation for a statewide effort to take down the coal industry with youth and the Sierra Student Coalition at its core. Our efforts also manifested on October 21st at the Labadie coal plant Title V permit renewal hearing, when more than 100 people packed the room and gave unanimous testimony on our side.

More details on symposium here.

Michigan Says No to Coal

The Sierra Club filed a motion to intervene in the legal challenge that Wolverine Power Cooperative has mounted against the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment. Back in May, the state agency denied Wolverine's permit to build a massive 600-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Rogers City, Michigan. This denial received enthusiastic applause not only from groups concerned with public health and the environment, but also by consumer and ratepayer advocates who argued that construction of the unnecessary plant would lead to an increase in electricity rates. 

In August, Wolverine filed a lawsuit and appealed the agency's decision. Represented by NRDC and Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, the Sierra Club seeks to join with the state in defending its decision to reject the plant. Sierra Club has also filed a motion to intervene in a federal enforcement case against DTE's Monroe plant. That plant has been identified as a bigger threat to public health than any other coal plant in the country.

 

Coal gets the spotlight...not in a good way

Built in 1929 just outside Chicago's city limits, Indiana's State Line coal-fired power plant is one of the dirtiest in the United States. A recent front-page Chicago Tribune article slams the State Line plant for spewing huge quantities of harmful and even deadly pollutants like nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, and mercury out of its smoke stacks. The Tribune also denounces the harm inflicted on Lake Michigan and its aquatic inhabitants by the plant’s cooling system, which requires large volumes of water intake and discharge. The Sierra Club has signed on to a notice of intent to sue prepared by our allies for opacity violations at the State Line plant.

Read the full article from the Chicago Tribune here

Mr. Frank Goes to Chicago

Chuck Frank of The Sierra Club Foundation Board attended the Chicago EPA hearing on September 16:

“At the hearing, industry representatives were far outnumbered and read impassioned prepared statements. Private citizens spoke emotionally of personal and community tragedies from groundwater and airborne pollution, which has caused heartbreaking health issues for them and their families and also has despoiled family farms as the soil was destroyed. Not only did this ruin their family business, livelihood, and way of life, but pollution has also destroyed their land values in an already-depressed market. 

I don’t believe that I heard one person independent of the industry even attempt to argue that the waste was NOT harmful to human health. It was all about the money and how stipulating waste as a toxic substance would affect businesses and jobs and raise the cost of cement and some fertilizers. What I didn’t hear (and wanted to say myself) is that we need to consider the cost to our society of the health effects on insurance rates and hospital costs when uninsured individuals go to emergency rooms with ailments caused by coal ash. And how about the cost to businesses of absenteeism on productivity rates from ill employees? And what consideration is given to the loss of real estate values to those who live near these plants? Not only do we as citizens pay for all this through taxes and higher insurance and health care costs, but we actually subsidize coal through the tax system! We are incentivizing the industry to make us all sick.

I believe that if the electricity produced were priced with the real costs to society it would be more than that of clean alternatives, and we would see green alternatives grow substantially in a competitive environment. Let the free market reign, but let’s do it with fully-costed alternatives. In the process, we’d produce lots of new jobs here in the USA.”