To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
In this world, where everything and everyone is for sale, we must sustain independent media we can trust. If you believe independent journalism is critical to protecting democracy and the common good, please support Common Dreams this Giving Tuesday! We wouldn't exist without you.
Megan Corrado or Kirsten Stade (202) 265-7337
Pennsylvania has turned a blind eye to the environmental and health risks of using coal combustion wastes to reclaim old coal mines, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) which is asking the state Auditor General to look at alleged dereliction of duties by two state agencies. The Commonwealth now pursues a policy of so-called "beneficial use" of combustion wastes (coal ash) from power plants and kilns by pouring these wastes down abandoned mines despite severe water pollution, toxic vapor and even fire dangers.
PEER is targeting the principal report used to win state regulatory approval by minimizing concerns about using coal ash as mine fill - The Use of Dredged Materials in Abandoned Mine Reclamation based on the Bark Camp Demonstration Project. A hydro-geologic expert, Robert Gadinski, filed a formal complaint with the Pennsylvania Department of State in April 2008 about the lack of qualifications of the author of the Bark Camp report, under laws requiring state licensure for geologic consulting work in Pennsylvania. Two and a half years later, the Department has yet to act on Gadinski's complaint.
In addition, Gadinski prepared a detailed critique of the Bark Camp report detailing -
"Coal ash consists of the concentrated pollutants that we prevent from going out power-plant smokestacks and it is extremely toxic," stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting the U.S, Environmental Protection Agency is now pondering regulation of coal ash as a hazardous waste and discouraging un-encapsulated coal ash from coming into direct contact with water sources. "Filling coal mines with coal ash is akin to letting nuclear reactors throw their spent fuel rods down abandoned uranium mines and calling it a beneficial use."
Gadinski also filed complaints and reports with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), arguing that its reliance on the Bark Camp report was imprudent and legally questionable, yet the agency continues to permit coal ash use in mine reclamation based on the report's findings. Today, PEER requested that the state Auditor General conduct a "performance audit" on both the Department of State for failure to enforce licensure laws and on the DEP for issuing reclamation permits on the basis of illegitimate and unreliable information amassed from an individual unauthorized to practice geology, despite documented pollution and public health concerns.
"State agencies which neglect their core duties need to be called to account," added Ruch, pointing out that the Auditor General has a broad purview of investigatory authority that includes both specific cases and patterns of misconduct. "Pennsylvania should be concerned that it is taking the problem of un-reclaimed coal mines and making it worse by filling them with hazardous materials. This is definitely a case where the Commonwealth is in a hole and should stop digging."
###
Read the PEER letter to the Auditor General
Look at report detailing coal ash mine fill dangers
Examine proposed EPA coal ash regulations
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) is a national alliance of local state and federal resource professionals. PEER's environmental work is solely directed by the needs of its members. As a consequence, we have the distinct honor of serving resource professionals who daily cast profiles in courage in cubicles across the country.
"Someone tell Trump that Israel already unleashed hell on Gaza, and hostages were not released."
In an early signal of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's foreign policy plans for when he returns to office next month, the Republican said Monday "there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East" if Hamas does not release hostages taken from Israel, the occupying military force in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Trump demanded hostages seized during the October 7 attack of last year be released or his promised retribution would follow. Nearly 45,000 Palestinians have already been killed—mostly civilian men, women, and children—since Israel launched a full-scale invasion of Gaza in the wake of the Hamas-led operation.
Of the 251 people taken captive last year, 63 are believed to be still alive in Gaza, according toThe Washington Post's tracker, which was updated last week. So far, 117 others have been freed or rescued and 71 have been confirmed killed.
After dining with Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israel's prime minister, at the Trump International Golf Club in Florida Sunday night, the U.S. president-elect made his threat about the hostages on his Truth Social platform Monday afternoon.
"Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire World, in the Middle East," Trump wrote. "But it's all talk, and no action! Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity."
"Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America," Trump added. "RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!"
Stephen Pollard, editor-at-large The Jewish Chronicle, responded that "this is the message the president of the USA should have sent on October 8, 2023."
Noting Pollard's comments, Rohan Talbot, director of advocacy and campaigns at the U.K.-based Medical Aid for Palestinians, said: "Genuinely interested to know what Stephen thinks the U.S. could have supported Israel to do in Gaza beyond what it currently has. Nukes?"
"This statement is unhinged—'there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East,'" Talbot added.
Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer in the School of Security Studies at King's College London, said, "Someone tell Trump that Israel already unleashed hell on Gaza, and hostages were not released."
Drop Site Newshighlighted that "Trump's statement—which follows a video released over the weekend by Hamas' armed wing featuring U.S.-Israeli captive Edan Alexander and explicitly addressing Trump—does not acknowledge that Netanyahu has repeatedly sabotaged cease-fire deals that could have freed Israeli hostages. It also appears timed to position himself to claim credit for any progress in cease-fire talks, as negotiations between Hamas and Egyptian mediators are already underway."
As the American Jewish outlet Forwardreported Monday:
The White House is attempting a final push to get... a deal done. President Joe Biden said last week that the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon had created an opportunity to reignite stalled negotiations for a similar deal in Gaza. "We will use every day we have in office to try to generate as much progress towards that end as possible," Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security adviser, said Sunday morning on ABC's "This Week."
Given the failed efforts in the past, the families of the American hostages are hoping Trump could leverage his popularity in Israel and his relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take immediate action during the transition period. "Trump must not wait until he is inaugurated to help reach a deal that secures the freedom for Edan, six other Americans, and the rest of the hostages," Adi and Yael Alexander, the parents of Edan, said on Saturday.
Despite an abundance of evidence showing how Israel is using U.S. weapons to slaughter civilians in Gaza and severely restricting the flow of humanitarian aid while claiming to target Hamas, Biden and Congress have refused to cut off arms to Netanyahu's government. In fact, just hours after the cease-fire between the Israeli government and Hezbollah took effect—a deal that Israel has since violated approximately 100 times—the Financial Times reported last week that "Biden has provisionally approved a $680 million weapons sale to Israel."
"These deals essentially pay industry to inflict more suffering on already climate-ravaged communities," said one local opponent of efforts to further expand gas exports in the region.
How do local communities lose out when governments invest in fossil fuel facilities instead of community needs?
That's the question at the heart of a new Sierra Club report released Monday, titled "The People Always Pay: Tax Breaks Force Gulf Communities to Subsidize the LNG Industry"—which details the extent to which the export market for liquefied natural gas, or LNG, benefits from billions of dollars in tax breaks in Louisiana and Texas—revenue that could be invested in public infrastructure, schools, and other priorities.
In the past decade, after an export ban was lifted by the Obama administration in 2015, the United States has shifted from an importer to a mass exporter of LNG, which a recent Cornell University study revealed has worse impacts than coal. Critics warn that investment in LNG causes environmental harm and hampers the transition to a green economy. Export terminal sites are concentrated along the Gulf Coast, primarily impacting impoverished coastal communities in Louisiana and Texas, according to the Sierra Club's report.
"The immense scale of tax breaks granted to billion-dollar LNG projects—millions of dollars per job—is mind-blowing. These deals essentially pay industry to inflict more suffering on already climate-ravaged communities by polluting the air and water while depriving Gulf Coast communities of vital revenue for schools, infrastructure, healthcare, emergency services, coastal restoration and protection," said James Hiatt, founder of For a Better Bayou and a resident of Calcasieu Parish in Louisiana, who is featured in the report.
The report relies on interviews with community members and takes a close look at the primary tax abatement programs that LNG export projects have benefited from, respectively.
Under two Louisiana tax break programs—the Industrial Tax Exemption Program (ITEP) and another called Quality Jobs—nine operating, proposed, or under-construction LNG export terminals have been provided $21.6 billion. In Cameron Parish, for example, home to Cheniere Energy's Sabine Pass LNG facility, the company is set to receive $4.9 billion in ITEP subsidies between 2012 and 2040, according to the report. In total, Cameron Parish residents are set to lose out on $14.9 billion in revenue from 2012-2040 due to ITEP subsidies for various LNG export terminals.
That investment in fossil fuel facilities translates to a lost $3.8 billion that could go towards schools and another $2.4 billion that could go towards health services, according to the authors of the report.
The report also details how bolstering the LNG market has adversely impacted the local economy.
For example, for Cameron Parish and nearby Calcasieu Parish, the rapid development of petrochemical facilities in the area has increased ship traffic. The Port of Cameron was once the country's largest producer of seafood, according to the report, but dredging and erosion stemming from ship traffic has made it hard for aquatic life to thrive: "While Cameron Parish had a fleet of 250 fishing vessels in 2005, nowadays, only a few dozen remain and some fishermen claim to see only 12 to 15 people working on the water every day, with others forced to supplement their income with additional jobs."
The report highlights that a grassroots organization in Louisiana found that ITEP applications from 1998 to 2017 pledged over 121,000 new jobs, but that the companies actually experienced a net loss of over 26,500 jobs.
The impact on communities is not just economic. According to the report, in Texas' Golden Triangle, a highly industrialized petrochemical corridor that includes the cities of Port Arthur, Beaumont, and Orange, residents breathe in polluting vapors that increase potential health harms.
"Among other pollutants, refineries produce benzene, a carcinogen that can result in leukemia or severe bone marrow damage. On average, an estimated one in 5,000 people in the Golden Triangle are at an incremental lifetime cancer risk, despite the EPA’s upper limit of acceptable cancer risk being one in 10,000," the report states.
Given the sizable tax exemptions in both Louisiana and Texas pledged for projects that are not yet up and running—in addition to the environmental degradation that is guaranteed with further expansion—the Sierra Club argues that making sure they are never built is "exactly what is necessary to avert the worst of the climate crisis."
"President Biden must use the power of the pen to protect those seeking sanctuary from the coming deportation machine that will crush the human rights of our immigrant neighbors," said one Amnesty leader.
As an estimated 11.7 million undocumented immigrants brace for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's return to office, Amnesty International on Monday called for immediate action from the outgoing Biden administration to "protect people seeking safety."
While Amnesty and many other migrant rights advocates have forcefully criticized President Joe Biden's immigration policy, Trump's dehumanizing attacks, promises of mass deportations, and history of forcibly separating families at the southern border have heightened fears of what his second term—with a Republican Congress—will mean for immigrants with and without papers.
"Time and time again, President Biden said he was committed to a humane immigration system, and this is [his] final opportunity to help those coming to the United States in search of safety and a new beginning, like his ancestors did many years ago," Amnesty International USA executive director Paul O'Brien said of a president who often references his family's Irish roots.
"President Biden must use the power of the pen to protect those seeking sanctuary from the coming deportation machine that will crush the human rights of our immigrant neighbors and those who have dreams of finding refuge here," O'Brien argued.
"President-elect Trump already has plans in place to start a massive deportation effort and completely gut the very foundation of asylum on day one of his second term."
Specifically, Amnesty is urging Biden to issue new Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and deferred enforced departure designations, extend authorization dates for individuals who have already been paroled into the United States, and expand legal pathways and protections for farmworkers and undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children.
The group also wants the president to prioritize additional resources for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to address the long backlogs and issue protections for those who have applications pending for advanced parole, asylum, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, TPS, and work permits.
The group is further calling on him to "stop detention expansion efforts, shut down the most problematic detention centers that have long perpetuated violence and harm toward people seeking safety, and release vulnerable individuals and those who are eligible for TPS and parole."
Amnesty's demands of Biden come just seven weeks away from Trump's inauguration—and the Republican has already made clear that he's prepared to make immigration policy a priority with some of his leadership picks: South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem for homeland security secretary; family separation architect Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff for policy; and former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting Director Tom Homan as "border czar."
As USA Todayreported Sunday, Miller and Homan have promoted different approaches to Trump's pledged deportations. Under an ICE-focused plan that Homan laid out shortly before the election, it would be "business as usual, but times two," Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told the newspaper.
"Stephen Miller is absolutely apocalyptic about what mass deportations would look like on his end," Reichlin-Melnick continued. "He talks about detention camps in Texas with very clear, specific operational details."
According to the newspaper:
By all accounts, it appears Trump is siding with Miller for now.
Trump recently confirmed reports that he plans to declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military to conduct mass deportations.
But no matter how Trump carries out mass deportations, Reichlin-Melnick said the damage to the United States will be significant.
"Even if it doesn't end up being 11 million people, the fear has real effects on the people who become the target of this very hungry deportation machine."
Given the looming threat, Amy Fischer, director of refugee and migrant rights at Amnesty International USA, stressed the urgency of Biden acting now.
"President-elect Trump already has plans in place to start a massive deportation effort and completely gut the very foundation of asylum on day one of his second term. There simply is no time to lose," Fischer said. "We cannot allow the continued disintegration of the country's immigration system and the targeted rhetoric and violence toward people seeking safety at the border and new arrivals thriving in cities and towns across the United States."
"Some of these actions that President Biden must take will help slow down any mass deportation efforts and will send a strong message to people seeking safety that they are welcome in the United States," Fischer added. "This is his last chance."