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Posts Tagged ‘epa’

Bristol Bay Tribes Don’t Give Up

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 8, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize.
Alannah Acaq Hurley is a Yup’ik leader, executive director of the United Tribes of Bristol Bay, and winner of the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize for North America.

It is inconceivable to most people in the modern world that if gold was lying around nearby, you wouldn’t help yourself to it. Indigenous communities are not “most people.”

At the environmental radio show Living on Earth, host Steve Curwood recently interviewed Goldman Environmental Prize winner Alannah Acaq Hurley, executive director of the United Tribes of Bristol Bay, Alaska.

Steve Curwood
“In 2001, a Canadian mining company proposed a massive gold and copper mine at the headwaters of Bristol Bay, a pristine water system on the coast of the Alaska Peninsula that’s home to the largest sockeye salmon run in the world. The salmon support a thriving ecosystem and are a cultural and economic lifeblood for native Alaskans, who have stewarded the land and water for thousands of years. And as the company moved ahead with plans to build the largest open pit mine in North America, those indigenous communities joined together to bring it to a halt. In 2023 they secured a rare ‘EPA veto’ of the proposed Pebble Mine, and the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize for North America recognizes an Indigenous leader in this fight.

Alannah Acaq Hurley
“My Yup’ik name is Acaq. My Irish name is Alannah Hurley. … Acaq is my great-grandmother’s name.

Curwood
“Alannah, before we start talking about your work protecting Bristol Bay, paint us a picture of the bay. What makes this such a special place? …

Hurley
“It has all the different types of terrain in all of Alaska, in one place. Where I live, at the mouth of the Nushagak and Wood River, we have everything from tundra and wetlands to mountains, freshwater lakes, freshwater rivers, the muddy waters of Nushagak Bay, the beautiful, crystal clear ocean waters as you go west towards Togiak and Twin Hills. … It’s so pristine you can still hunt and fish and pick berries and eat them straight from the land. You can drink right out of the lake and rivers. It’s paradise. …

Curwood
“It produces, what, more than $2 billion of annual revenue from Sockeye fishing alone. It’s also an important food source and cultural site for Indigenous communities, First Alaskans. Talk to me about what the bay means to the people in the area.

Hurley
“So there are three different Indigenous groups in Bristol Bay, the Yup’ik people, the Dena’ina people, and the Alutiiq people. And our homeland, you know, has been stewarded by our people for thousands and thousands of years. They’ve taken care of this place and entrusted it to us. Our lands, our water, and everything that that entails, the salmon, the moose, the caribou, the bears, us, our freshwater fish, our berries, our plants, our medicines, we very much view it as all very connected. So anything that happens to our lands and waters happens to us. And so it is everything to us. It is the health of our people, physically, culturally, spiritually, it sustains us. It nourishes us. We’re so blessed to be able to live in the ways that our ancestors have lived. …

Curwood
“In the year 2001 or so, the Northern Dynasty Minerals mining company proposed the development of what’s called the Pebble Mine. … What would have been the environmental impact of such a project?

Hurley
“The environmental impact of the Pebble project would have been devastation. … That picture is not a question of, if something will happen, but when, especially in an earthquake-prone zone, and in a very interconnected, you know, hydrologically interconnected place, they’re like the veins of the bay, like the body, everything is connected, all of that water is connected. …

Curwood
“Some say that there are literally hundreds of billions of dollars worth of copper and gold and other minerals in the area for the Pebble Mine. Sounds like a lot of money, but you didn’t see this as good news for your community if this got developed.

Hurley
“No, we did not. … Very early on, the vast majority of Bristol Bay’s people said, no, no way, this is not worth the risk. You cannot put a price tag on our water and what salmon mean to us as a people. …

Curwood
“Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding of a lot of Alaskan politics means that at the state level, there wasn’t a huge amount of pushback against this Pebble Mine proposal.

Hurley
“Yeah, our people’s concerns were really falling on deaf ears at the state level. We saw the state rewrite our area management plan illegally, without proper input or public process or consultation with our tribes. … And so because our concerns were falling on deaf ears at the state level, our tribal governments really saw the federal government as the place to put some energy, and that was where kind of the petition to the EPA came from, because the state was not listening. They were doing the exact opposite, to really grease the skids for the company to move forward. …

“The tribes petitioned in 2010 to prohibit all mines like Pebble within the Bristol Bay watershed. The EPA came back and said, we’re not going to act on a prohibition immediately under our authority under the Clean Water Act, but we are going to study Bristol Bay. We want to do an assessment. And we want to ask, is this place really unique, and what does this fishery mean to the state and people? … They took three years to do a bunch of studies. They were in a lot of different communities, there was a lot of peer review to answer those questions, and after that very long, drawn-out assessment, they determined what our people had been saying all along. …

“It was a bit of a roller coaster between the different administrations, but it’s really a testament to the dedication of our people and our region, that regardless of the administration, regardless of winning and losing court cases, they did not give up. And so the EPA, in January of 2023, finalized protections to stop the project.”

More at Living on Earth, here.

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Tech Tackles “Forever Chemicals”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 20, 2023| 5 Comments »

Photo: John and Suzanne’s Mom.
Do we know what’s in our drinking water? University of British Columbia researchers are working on an experimental material to remove toxic “forever chemicals” from water. 

As soon as we learn about a new hazard to humans, it seems, science labs pop up to address it. Lately, we’ve been hearing a lot about “forever chemicals,” dangerous compounds that are often in drinking water. Thank goodness, a variety of labs are on the case.

For example, as Allyson Chiu reports at the Washington Post, Canadian researchers “have developed a method to filter toxic ‘forever chemicals’ from water and potentially destroy the long-lasting compounds permanently.

“Commonly known as ‘forever chemicals’ because they can persist in the environment for years, these hazardous compounds have long troubled environmentalists and regulators. Their harmful effects on human health are well documented, but their ubiquitous use and the challenges in breaking them down have complicated efforts to eliminate them.

“Pressure to do so is growing. In March, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed the nation’s first drinking-water standards requiring water utilities to reduce levels of PFAS — perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

The new technology, described by one of its developers as a ‘Brita filter, but a thousand times better,’ could help address the problem, experts say.

“ ‘The potential impact will be huge,’ said Madjid Mohseni, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at the University of British Columbia who led the research. …

“Polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances are a class of thousands of different chemicals with varying properties. The highly durable chemicals have been used for decades to make nonstick cookware, moisture-repellent fabrics and flame-retardant equipment, and they are found in other commonly used consumer goods such as cosmetics and food packaging.

“Several U.S. states and other countries have banned certain types of PFAS, and many major companies say they have discontinued their use, but the compounds have shown up in the water supplies of communities across the country and the world. The chemicals have been linked to infertility, thyroid problems and several types of cancer.

“Technologies already exist to remove PFAS from water, but Mohseni and other experts say these approaches have limitations.

“Activated carbon, for example, can filter what is known as long-chain PFAS but does not as effectively trap the shorter-chain variants of the chemicals. Short-chain PFAS, some of which can be toxic at low doses, are becoming more prevalent as many manufacturers use them as a replacement for the long-chain compounds.

“Existing methods also typically create waste products that contain high concentrations of PFAS, which often end up in landfills or are incinerated, said Erik Olson, a senior strategic director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“From landfills, the harmful chemicals could leech back into the environment. Burning them is not ideal, either. ‘Only extremely high-temperature incineration can even start to destroy PFAS,’ Olson said. ‘Normal incineration just simply sends PFAS up the smokestack.’

“Mohseni said the material his team developed — which looks like tiny porous plastic beads — can remove long- and short-chain chemicals at rates that match or exceed industry standards. The PFAS it captures could be stripped away, also making the beads potentially reusable or recyclable, he said.

“Additionally, Mohseni said, the team engineered techniques designed to break the leftover PFAS down into harmless compounds.

“The beads eventually could be used in products to filter water in homes, industrial sites and at municipal levels, he added. However, for in-home applications, users would have to send the used filters to centralized locations for regeneration or recycling, and for the PFAS to be broken down fully — somewhat like how some used coffee pods are sent back to manufacturers for recycling, Mohseni said.

“His team’s findings have been published in several peer-reviewed journals.

“Although the technology is promising, experts not involved in the research say it has yet to be proved in real-world settings at scale. The UBC research team has launched pilot trials in British Columbia, but none of the sites are yet sources of drinking water. …

“Removing the chemicals from water and breaking them down is only part of the solution to the PFAS problem, said Cora Young, an associate professor of chemistry at York University in Toronto who studies the chemicals.

“ ‘Destroying PFAS that already exist is a useful thing, but a lot of other approaches have to be used to actually reduce its impact as an environmental problem,’ Young said.”

More at the Post, here. Good on you, Canada!

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On Videogames

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

From the Boston Globe comes a curious bit of research suggesting that videogames may allow people to “burn off the desire or the time to commit a crime.” Across U.S. counties from 1994 to 2004, a greater number of videogame stores is associated with less arson, car theft, robbery, and mortality.

Don’t you love counterintuitive findings like that? Does it mean that fantasy (or “Queen Mab” as Charles Dickens contended in Hard Times) continues to play a valuable role in our lives?  Read about the research here.

And while we are on the subject, the Innovators Insights listserv linked to an article on how playing a videogame has assisted city planners in their work.

“IBM has partnered with the Environmental Protection Agency to develop CityOne, a game simulation that provides city planners with an interactive tool to help them investigate complex energy and water interactions, learning how best to achieve certain performance goals under budget. Outside of the U.S., the tool has been used by governments in China, France, and South America.” Read more here.

These are just a couple examples. As Jane McGonigal, the author of Reality is Broken has written, today videogames are being used to “change the world.”

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