Posts from the staff at Landmark Science & Engineering, an integrated civil engineering and environmental sciences consulting firm located in the north, mid-Atlantic region, with a sustainable design focus. Including news, tips and other helpful information about responsible, low-impact site design for land development projects today.
Bob Thornton - Builder of the Year
Dear Mick McLaughlin and LandmarkJCM,
I wanted to personally thank you for coming and speaking to our high school classes on Friday November 5th. Our students thoroughly enjoyed the ability to learn from an expert, and see where their interests in animals and nature can lead in future careers. The students had a life changing experience they will never forget. It means so much to us as faculty and students to have people from our community come and give their time and support. Your presentation was invaluable and we hope you will be able to visit again soon.
Sincerest Thanks,
Ms. Karen Wiener and Jen Taylor
Agriculture Department
Sincerely,
Ms. Karen Wiener
AHS Agriculture
FFA Advisor
EXT 4127 Room #D127
The Federal Trade Commission has new guidelines out for comment on Green Claims in Advertising..jpg)
EPA Regional Administrator Shawn Garvin has recommended that his boss, Administrator Lisa Jackson, veto a Clean Water Act permit for the proposed Spruce Mine No. 1 in West Virginia.
If allowed to go forward as currently envisioned, the Spruce Mine would be “one of the largest mountaintop mining projects ever authorized in West Virginia. If it is fully constructed, it will disturb approximately 2,278 acres and bury approximately 7.48 miles of streams,” the recommendation, dated Sept. 24 but released today, said.
LandmarkJCM hosted a Brownfield Breakfast yesterday at the Vandiver Inn in Havre de Grace Maryland (just down the street from our office on Congress Street). August 31, 2010, The Baltimore Sun
The "waterkeeper" and "riverkeeper" who argue against the use of nutrient trading are missing the point and misleading Baltimore Sun readers ("Cardin bill undermines Clean Water Act," Commentary, Aug. 25).
Both the science and economics of cleaning the Chesapeake Bay make it clear that using nutrient trading programs will be necessary to prioritize pollution reduction measures that match high environmental benefits and lower costs of compliance.
The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency is in the final months of setting binding caps on the amount of nitrogen, phosphorous and sediment that can enter the Chesapeake Bay. In the years to come, Maryland and the other bay states will be required to identify and implement all manner of actions that will permanently reduce these pollutants and improve bay water quality.
In May, Maryland implemented the next generation of storm water management regulations on new land developments that require the permanent post-development storm water runoff to have the same characteristics as the runoff from a healthy forest. This means that new development will always maintain existing conditions or, when building on grassland, agriculture or existing urbanized lands, new developments will permanently improve the existing environmental conditions.
How the rest of the mandated pollutant reductions will be achieved is a difficult problem that is being worked out now in Annapolis and other state capitals. It is easy to write that "polluters" should be accountable, but we all are polluters. When we drive our cars, flush our toilets, wash clothes, buy local sweet corn, or fertilize our lawns, we all contribute to bay pollution. Most Marylanders live in a county or town that must make changes that further reduce storm water and wastewater pollutants as dictated by EPA.
The science of bay pollution argues strongly that nutrient trading programs be part of the clean-up strategy. Take nitrogen as an example. One pound of nitrogen that runs off your yard does not always stay in your local creek or river, it migrates downstream until it reaches the main stem of the Chesapeake Bay where it is concentrated with nitrogen from as far away as Cooperstown, N.Y., creating the oxygen-starved "dead zone" that has come to symbolize the decline of the bay.
What most people find surprising is that a pound of nutrients from, say, the Susquehanna, Potomac or James Rivers, the three largest sources of bay pollutants, impacts the bay differently. For example, every pound of nitrogen that leaves the Susquehanna has three times the impact on deep water oxygen concentrations in the middle bay than does a pound of nitrogen originating from many parts of central Maryland located much closer to the bay. Because of differences in geographic impact, it makes sense to concentrate pollution control efforts in areas of Maryland's Eastern Shore, as well as northeast and southern Pennsylvania, where controls will have the greatest effect and achieve the most rapid improvement to bay water quality. One of best ways to do this is through nutrient trading programs.
Economics also argues for nutrient trading. In the 2003 report, "The Cost of a Clean Bay: Assessing Funding Needs Throughout the Watershed," the Chesapeake Bay Commission (CBC) projected that meeting the less rigorous 2000 Chesapeake Bay Agreement goals would cost governments $18.7 billion across the three Bay Commission states (Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania). But much of bay cleanup will be achieved by pollution control regulations that impart enforceable obligations on private interests. The costs of these measures are not borne by government but by individuals and entities in the watershed, making the total cost to the public many billions more than the CBC's $18.7 billion estimate of direct government costs.
The CBC encourages the application of strategic spending in order to reduce bay pollution in the most cost-effective manner. The five most cost-effective ways to reduce nitrogen pollution are agricultural practices that range in cost from $1.57 to $4.41 per pound of nitrogen removed. In contrast, the six most commonly applied urban nitrogen reduction practices carry a direct cost of $280 to $2,698 per pound of nitrogen removed.
Nutrient trading does not allow more pollution than the EPA limits, but it does present the potential for cities, counties, individuals and wastewater treatment plants to be matched with low cost water quality improvements in other locations and do their part for bay clean-up by providing more environmentally beneficial mitigation at far lower cost. Without nutrient trading, most Marylanders will have only the most prohibitively expensive options available when deciding how to comply with EPA's bay cleanup mandates.
Tom Ballentine
The writer is vice president for policy and government relations at the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties in Baltimore.
The six (6) states and District of Columbia have submitted their Watershed Implementation Plans (WIPs) to EPA as required to show how they will reduce pollution in the Chesapeake Bay.
Not Labor with a capital L, as in organized labor unions. I mean labor as in skilled workers solving interesting problems. I mean craftspeople who use their hands, their backs and their heads to do important work.
Labor was a key part of the manufacturing revolution. Industrlalists needed smart, dedicated, trained laborers to solve interesting problems. Putting things together took more than pressing a few buttons, it took initiative and skill and care. Labor improvised.
It took thirteen years to build the Brooklyn Bridge and more than twenty-five laborers died during its construction. There was not a systematic manual to follow. The people who built it largely figured it out as they went.
The Singer sewing machine, one of the most complex devices of its century, had each piece fitted by hand by skilled laborers.
Sometime after this, once Henry Ford ironed out that whole assembly line thing, things changed. Factories got far more complex and there was less room for improvisation as things scaled.
The boss said, "do what I say. Exactly what I say."
Amazingly, labor said something similar. They said to the boss, "tell us exactly what to do." In many cases, work rules were instituted, flexibility went away and labor insisted on doing exactly what they had agreed to do, no more, no less. At the time, this probably felt like power. Now we know what a mistake it was.
In a world where labor does exactly what it's told to do, it will be devalued. Obedience is easily replaced, and thus one worker is as good as another. And devalued labor will be replaced by machines or cheaper alternatives. We say we want insightful and brilliant teachers, but then we insist they do their labor precisely according to a manual invented by a committee...
Companies that race to the bottom in terms of the skill or cost of their labor end up with nothing but low margins. The few companies that are able to race to the top, that can challenge workers to bring their whole selves--their human selves--to work, on the other hand, can earn stability and growth and margins. Improvisation still matters if you set out to solve interesting problems.
The future of labor isn't in less education, less OSHA and more power to the boss. The future of labor belongs to enlightened, passionate people on both sides of the plant, people who want to do work that matters.
That's what Labor Day is about, not the end of a month on the beach.
Citing Flawed Analysis, Feds Send EPA Storm Water Rules Back to the Drawing Board |
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August 13, 2010 - In a major victory for affordable housing, sound science and more sensible regulations, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been forced to withdraw a key portion of new storm water management regulations for builders and developers and devise new ones based on better research.
The move is the result of a lawsuit filed by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and petitions filed by both NAHB and the federal Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Advocacy asking the agency to revise its new Effluent Limitation Guidelines (ELGs) for the construction and development industry.
"After a big rainstorm, it's typical to see some storm water drain from a construction site. In these new regulations, EPA set a numeric limit on the amount of sediment that can cloud the water that both NAHB and SBA claimed was arbitrary and based on flawed analyses," said NAHB Chairman Bob Jones, a home builder and developer in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
"In addition, NAHB was able to show that trying to achieve these limits would have cost not $953 million – which the agency had estimated – but up to $10 billion annually, hurting small businesses and housing affordability, with little additional environmental benefit: EPA itself admits the ELG would control less than one quarter of one percent of all total sediment runoff," Jones said. "By forcing EPA to take a hard look at the facts and admit its error, NAHB scored a major victory for home builders and home buyers nationwide."
After reading NAHB's brief, the Justice Department asked EPA to defend the numeric limit. EPA was forced to admit several flaws in the final rule and that it had improperly interpreted the data. As a result, the Justice Department filed a motion with the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals asking it to vacate the numeric limit and place a hold on the litigation until February 2012—while EPA goes back and develops a numeric limit that builders can actually comply with.
Published in December 2009, the ELG imposed a nationally applicable—and potentially impossible-to-meet—limit of 280 "turbidity units" on storm water discharges from construction sites disturbing 10 or more acres of land at one time.
While today's ruling removes the numeric limit, the other requirements of the ELG remain in place. EPA is expected to issue interim storm water management guidance for construction site operators as the agency works to refine the rule.
"NAHB supports responsible development and the goals of the Clean Water Act. The association will continue to work with state and federal regulators to keep our waterways clean," Jones
Establishes a new regional approach to how we use and protect the ocean, our coasts, and the Great Lakes to decrease user conflicts, improve planning and regulatory efficiencies and decrease costs and delays, and preserve critical ecosystem services.
Creates a comprehensive alternative to sector-by-sector and statute-by-statute decision-making.
Establishes regional planning bodies, bringing Federal, state, and tribal partners together in an unprecedented manner to jointly plan for the future of the ocean, our coasts, and the Great Lakes.
Ensures science-based information is at the heart of decision-making.
Emphasizes stakeholder and public participation.
Find more information here:
http://nahbenews.com/nahbehs/issues/2010-08-06/2.html
Since 2009, the Agency has entered into 10 civil judicial settlements and issued 36 administrative orders to sources contributing to the Bay’s impairment.
These enforcement actions:
Cover 248 facilities in nine states and the District of Columbia
will reduce approximately 2100 pounds of nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) and 82 million pounds of sediment to the Bay watershed, along with 16 million pounds of nitrogen oxides to the Bay airshed annually once all required controls are fully implemented
Of the 28 sites in the Bay watershed where actions were taken under Superfund to clean contamination of hazardous substances:
actions at 18 sites ensured that cleanups are conducted by the entities responsible for the toxic contamination at the facility, 11 of which are federal facilities
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