EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson addresses reporters during Great Lakes Week, October 2011 (Photo: Celia Haven)

During her tenure, the administration finalized a new rule doubling fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks. The requirements will be phased in over 13 years and eventually require all new vehicles to average 54.5 mpg, up from 28.6 mpg at the end of last year.

She shepherded another rule that forces power plants to control mercury and other toxic pollutants for the first time. Previously, the nation’s coal- and oil-fired power plants had been allowed to run without addressing their full environmental and public health costs.

Jackson also helped persuade the administration to table the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would have brought carbon-heavy tar sands oil from Canada to refineries in Texas.

“Administrator Jackson has been one of the most effective leaders in the history of the Environmental Protection Agency. Her legacy will be cleaner air for all Americans, and she has set the Environmental Protection Agency on a new course to tackle climate change by establishing the first standards to reduce carbon pollution from smokestacks and tailpipes,” Larry Schweiger, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, said today. ”We thank her for her exceptional service and wish her well.”

Who might President Barack Obama nominate to follow Jackson as the next EPA administrator? The Houston Chronicle’s Jennifer Dlouhy has a rundown of the top candidates.

Women & the Environment Briefing at The White House, March 26, 2012 (image credit Microsoft Clipart)

The morning session was full of brilliant, energizing women from the EPA and other offices within the U.S. government talking about their roles and the continued need for women to take an active role in protecting our natural resources.

Highlights include:
Administrator Jackson states that, “it takes action, bold action to make things happen. We are counting on women to help with this work [protecting the environment] – environmental hazards that impact both women’s health and children’s health.”

Heather Zichal, Deputy Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change, highlighted several victories that the EPA has experienced during the Jackson administration, including the first ever mercury standards for coal fired power plants.

Panel discussions included EPA staff working on a variety of issues including water, air and working in the areas of finance and enforcement. Nancy Stoner, Acting Assistant Administrator in the Office of Water, also known as the “water lady” spotlighted a few water-related efforts of the EPA including the Mexico Border Program which ensures safe drinking water and waste water services for border residents both in the U.S. and Mexico; there is an estimated 8.5 million border residents.

Cynthia Giles, Assistant Administrator in the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, talked about her role in pursuing individuals or groups that are in violation of U.S. environmental laws; enforcement action ranges from fees to criminal action. Assistant Administrator Giles comments that YouTube as been a help with finding out about violators plus highlighted that tips are always welcome from concerned citizens at www.epa.gov/tips.

Gina McCarthy, Assistant Administrator in the Office of Air & Radiation said that the Clean Air Act (CAA) is the most successful and effective health (and environmental) law in the U.S; the CAA covers pollutants such as lead and ozone, just to name a few.  McCarthy said that the regulations are important, but “it’s not just about regulations, it’s also about changing behaviors.” Education and communication are key for the American public to understand how their daily choices impact the environment.

The briefing on Women & the Environment was a gathering to celebrate and acknowledge Women’s History Month – March.

Recently, tribal leaders, landowners, hunters, anglers, conservationists, business owners and government leaders gathered in Washington, D.C. for the White House Conservation Conference. Tourism and outdoor recreation, coastal conservation, river restoration and hunting and fishing were important topics of discussion, as well as other key conservation issues. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsak, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar also attended the event.

President Barack Obama addressed the crowd, stating that, “effective conservation is about more than protecting the environment, it’s about strengthening the economy.” The President also highlighted the historic significance of conservation within the United States. He spoke about the value of  protecting “the incredible bounty we’ve been blessed with” for current and future generations of Americans by placing conservation at the forefront of the national agenda. You can hear more of President Obama’s thoughts on conservation by watching the conference video above.

Power plant in Morro Bay, CA via kafka4prez/flickr

Twenty plus years in the making, the new pollution limits on power plants will cut mercury emissions by 91%, reduce acid gas emissions 91%, and significantly cut arsenic, lead and nickel emissions.

Mercury Standards a Long Time Coming

The announcement is a tremendous victory for people and wildlife. National Wildlife Federation’s effort to curb mercury air pollution started back in September 1999 when we released Clean the Rain, Clean the Lakes: Mercury in Rain Is Polluting the Great Lakes (pdf)

The report warned of mercury’s potency as a neurotoxin that can cause neurological and brain damage at low levels in people and reproductive hazards in wildlife.

Excerpt from NWF’s 1999 mercury report:

The Clean the Rain Campaign…will press for the control and eventual elimination of mercury emissions that are contaminating the rain. It will call for the implementation of the following actions…

Coal-fired power plants must cut and eventually eliminate their combustion of coal (a major source of mercury, as well as smog and acid rain-producing pollutants). 

New Rules Will Protect Children, Improve Health, Create Jobs

Each year, EPA’s new air toxic pollution rules will prevent 11,000 thousand of premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks, 130,000 cases of childhood asthma and 6,300 cases of acute bronchitis. And it will prevent mercury exposure to children that can adversely affect their developing brains – including effect on their ability to walk, talk, read and learn.

The rules will also provide employment for thousands. The updating of older power plants with modern air pollution control technology will support 46,000 new short-term construction jobs and 8,000 long-term utility jobs.

And as NWF has documented, the new pollution rules are also a huge present to wildlife. Mercury pollution belching out of power plants settles in our lakes and rivers where microscopic organisms convert the inorganic mercury into methylmercury. This form of mercury accumulates up the food chain in fish and then other into other animals when they eat fish. As a result, species from the common loon to the river otter to the Florida panther are impacted by mercury.

Read NWF’s report Game Changers: Air Pollution, a Warming Climate, and the Troubled Future for America’s Hunting and Fishing Heritage that shows how mercury, carbon dioxide, and other air pollutants are directly impacting numerous species, including black ducks, moose, and walleye, that are revered as part of our country’s angling, hunting and conservation heritage.

Over the last year, thousands of NWF members and supporters have continued the campaign started in 1999. They have attended public hearings, signed postcards, made phone calls, and sent over 50,000 messages supporting the EPA’s new efforts on mercury and pushing back against polluters attempts in Congress to stop these new air pollution protections.

So join NWF as we thank the EPA for taking action to protect your kids and wildlife from the dangers of mercury and toxic air pollution. Together, we can all breathe a little easier.

Learn more about mercury pollution >>

EPA' Administrator Jackson (image emagazine.com)

Let’s just say the sooner we get on with this effort the better.  As NWF’s Senior Scientist Amanda Staudt blogs today, a new report by the Nobel Prize winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says carbon pollution induced climate change will make the drought and flooding events that have battered the United States more frequent in years to come.  

Right now, our nation’s power plants can belch carbon dioxide pollution into our air without any limits. A recent piece in the New York Review of Books by Yale economist William Nordhaus aptly describes why it is urgent that we address this source of carbon pollution:

 

[The] burning coal is very dirty, releasing both conventional pollutants and greenhouse gases. Per unit of energy, coal emits 27 percent more CO2 than oil and 78 percent more CO2 than natural gas. . . . In the aggregate, the emissions of CO2 from coal-fired electricity- generating facilities are the largest single industrial source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. They make up one third of all emissions in an industry that constitutes only about one half of one percent of the US economy! Moreover, studies indicate that reducing coal-fired generation is the least expensive way for the US to reduce its carbon emissions in the near term (emphasis added).

The new pollution limits will be established into two parts. In January, the administration will propose limits that any new power plant must meet before it can be constructed.  NWF expects that the critically important second part of the standards - new carbon pollution limits on the nation’s existing power plants – will be proposed  later in the Spring of 2012.  

This is where you come in! The public will have an opportunity to (and needs to) comment in support of setting strong air pollution standards that reduce carbon pollution. Polluters will surely go all out to push back on this effort and we need to stop them in their tracks.

Visit our Action Center and see how you can help this effort!

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson addresses reporters during Great Lakes Week press conference, October 11, 2011. PHOTO / Celia Haven

We had a great Day 1 at the 7th Annual Great Lakes Restoration Conference in Detroit, where hundreds of Great Lakes advocates, scientists, policy makers and community leaders have gathered to help make Great Lakes restoration successful.

Here are a few highlights from attendees:

• EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson Announces EPA will Prioritize Great Lakes Restoration Funds in 2012 | Coalition Reaction
• Ducks Unlimited Leads Urban Restoration Tour to Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge—a Model of Successful Partnerships and Results
• East Side of Detroit Photoblog: Restoring and creating access to the riverfront.
• Live Feed Recording from the Great Lakes Town Hall, Featuring EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and other U.S. and Canadian Leaders

Conference participants including staff from NWF’s Great Lakes Regional Center are sharing their photos, blogs, video clips and responses to the discussions and sessions on how to protect and restore the Great Lakes–the incredible “freshwater seas” that hold one-fifth of the world’s surface freshwater.

Check back throughout the week for updates, videos, photos and live feeds from the Coalition.

Cross-posted from conference.healthylakes.org.

Lake Michigan Beach

Detroit is hosting the Healing Our Waters® – Great Lakes Coalition’s 7th annual Great Lakes Restoration Conference. Lawmakers, scientists, clean water advocates, conservationists and others are discussing the challenges, game changers and safeguards for the world’s largest fresh water system. Green returns on blue investments, pollution, environmental justice, invasive Asian carp, off shore wind and organizing for clean and affordable water are just some of the conference workshops and highlights at the conference.

Even if you can’t join us for a session, you can still join us online. Detroit Public Television is streaming the events daily. You can watch the Great Lakes Restoration Conference live and on demand at www.healthylakes.org. You can also see updates from the conference on Twitter by following the hashtag #healthylakes.

The Great Lakes won’t stay great unless we help keep them clean, free of invasive species and healthy. This is why so many people are working on healing our waters in Motown and across the nation.

Click here to find out more about how the National Wildlife Federation works to protect and restore America’s waters, including the Great Lakes.

Power plants are the nation’s largest source of dangerous carbon pollution.

Adding to the controversy, less than three weeks ago the administration shelved long needed action to reduce ozone and smog pollution that costs the nation billions.

This marks the second delay in fulfilling your administration’s promise, made in settlement of litigation and in representations to the Supreme Court, to address power plants’ enormous contribution to the air pollution that drives climate change.

Here’s a link to the full letter.

The rules were scheduled to come at the end of September, when last week the EPA administrator said that schedule could not be met.  A new schedule was not announced.

NWF says it is critical that our nation build on the successful track record of the Clean Air Act in using the law as a tool to tackle urgent threats like climate change and toxic air pollution.

Send a letter to Congress asking them to support the Clean Air Act and Climate Action!

A 2007 Supreme Court case confirmed that the Act, as passed by Congress, requires EPA to take action on controlling air pollution that leads to climate change. Now, after decades of federal inaction, the Obama administration seemed poised to move forward on this urgent issue, that is until last week.

The letter ends,

Accordingly, we ask that you reaffirm the administration’s commitment to issue strong standards that significantly reduce carbon emissions from both new and existing power plants as the Clean Air Act requires.  We ask that the administration announce and stick to a remedial schedule requiring proposal of these standards without further delay and completion of them as soon as possible in 2012.

Your administration’s leadership in carrying out the law, without delay, is essential to securing a stronger, safer and more prosperous America.

via NWF

Smashing records from previous public comment periods, over 800,000 Americans, with tens-of-thousands of those being National Wildlife Federation members, sent a crystal clear message to the Environmental Protection Agency that it’s go-time to rein in harmful air toxics.

During the EPA’s comment period, NWF teamed up with a coalition of 200 public health, faith, and conservation groups to marshal support from every state and corner of the nation, support the EPA in their efforts to curb dangerous mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants.

When the comment period started last March, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson called the proposed new rules an environmental “milestone.”

“Once the standards are in place, widespread use of existing pollution-control technology will prevent an estimated 17,000 premature deaths and 11,000 heart attacks each year. These safeguards will also protect against 120,000 incidents of childhood asthma symptoms and ensure 11,000 fewer cases of acute bronchitis in children each year, making this is one of the largest steps forward in protecting our kids from toxic air pollution in a generation.”

Coal Pollution to Blame

via EDF.org

Where does all this nasty pollution come from?  Coal-fired power plants are the single largest source of mercury pollution, arsenic and acid gases, and account for 25 percent of all toxic metal emissions in the United States. Furthermore, coal-fired power plants are responsible for 99 percent of all mercury emissions from the power sector in the United States.

Here’s how NWF’s Joe Mendelson explains it:

“Nearly all of our exposure to mercury occurs through eating fish and shellfish. Mercury pollution spewing from power plants settles in our lakes and rivers where microscopic organisms convert the inorganic mercury into methylmercury. This form of mercury accumulates up the food chain in fish and then into people when we eat fish.”

The mercury safeguards proposed by the EPA represent a strong standard that will for the first time cut mercury emissions from power plants nationwide by 91 percent, reduce arsenic and acid gases by 91 percent, prevent 12,200 trips to the hospital, and save up to 17,000 lives each year once it is implemented.

Threats Are Dangerous and Widespread

via Charles and Clinton Robinson

Every state has issued a fish advisory of some type because of unsafe mercury levels according to the National Wildlife Federation’s recent report, “Game Changers.” Roughly half of U.S. lakes and reservoirs have mercury amounts exceeding safe levels and nearly all fish and shellfish contain traces of mercury, according to EPA. Over half of human-caused mercury in the U. S. comes from coal-fired plants.

via Sierra Club

Sportsmen showed they are fed up with mercury warnings, toxic fish and fouled waterways.  Hundreds of hunting and fishing groups organized events, signed letters and lobbied Congress to stop politicizing common sense steps to protect our health and heritage.

Mercury can also affect the human nervous system. At certain levels, mercury is particularly dangerous to babies and young children. In adults, mercury can harm peripheral vision, cause muscle weakness, affect coordination and impair speech, hearing and walking.

In the clip below, EPA Deputy Administrator Bob Perciasepe talks about why the proposed EPA rules on mercury and air toxics coming from power plants are good for public health and the economy and answers critics who say we should keep polluting.

Click here to view the embedded video.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson Attended the First Meeting of the Gulf Restoration Task Force

The November 8 meeting of the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force — created under an October 4 Presidential Executive Order to help the Gulf region address both damage from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the region’s longer term ecological decline — left me with two major impressions.

First, the people involved get the urgency of post-oil spill ecosystem restoration.  The Task Force had a chair (EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson), an Executive Director (former EPA Regional Administrator John Hankinson) and all of its members (including a Governor-recommended representative from the five Gulf States), and was holding its first public meeting in Pensacola, Florida a mere 35 days after the executive order was issued.

By government standards, that’s fast work.  And no wonder.  The Task Force has less than 11 months to propose a Gulf of Mexico Regional Ecosystem Restoration Strategy that includes a restoration agenda and how to implement it.

Second, the people of the Gulf region are paying attention and want to be involved.

With less than two weeks notice, more than 300 people showed up, representing businesses, community groups, NGO’s, local governments, state agencies and assorted others – all anxious to hear how the federal government can help a storm- and spill-battered region get back on its feet.

At stake, of course, could be the disposition of billions in fines and penalties that BP will inevitably pay as a result of the spill. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus recommended that a “substantial amount” of fines and penalties be dedicated to restoration, rather than be deposited in the Treasury or the Oil Spill Trust Fund.  This dedication may take Congressional action, but the Task Force recommendations are expected to shape both the “what” and the “how” of that restoration agenda.  So yes, it was standing room only.

All that said, it was a fairly ceremonial meeting.  Administrator Jackson opened with a passionate statement of her commitment to the health and vitality of the Gulf Region.  Federal agency members solemnly affirmed their commitments to conservation and restoration as well as to cooperation and coordination.  State actors gently laid down their markers—Florida wants to restore confidence in tourism and seafood; Alabama, with its tiny coastline, is more concerned about economic recovery than environmental restoration; Louisiana reminded everyone of its pre-spill problem of massive coastal land loss.  Then we all went to lunch.

Upon our return we organized into breakout sessions offering suggestions about how the Task Force should solicit input, communicate its findings and about what constitutes the substance of restoration.

Despite its 30,000-foot elevation, I think the meeting sent a good message.

There is broad consensus that the ecological and economic health of the Gulf region are intertwined, that the region contributes significantly to the national economy, and that the whole country has reason to invest in its recovery.

As Administrator Jackson said in her opening remarks, “This summer, during the spill, for a number of weeks, we lost the Gulf coast.  It made us all realize how valuable it is.”  Now it’s time to make sure we don’t lose it for good.

For more information about the Gulf Restoration Task Force meeting, you can read this article from the Times-Picayune or this recap from the Pensacola News-Journal.