Washington Gas Starts To Pay The Piper

Washington Gas to clean Anacostia riverbank under new agreement

By Darryl Fears, Published: December 12

Washington Gas Light Co. has agreed to clean a section of land along the Anacostia River that it contaminated with harmful chemicals for more than a century, federal officials announced Monday.

As part of an agreement involving the utility, the U.S. Interior Department and the D.C. government, Washington Gas will also pay for a comprehensive investigation of toxic contamination of soil and groundwater on the site. It will repay nearly $1 million to federal agencies for investigations that revealed how badly the river was fouled where the company once processed gas.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar called the agreement “a milestone in our efforts . . . to transform what was once known as America’s forgotten river into a model urban park.” A walkway is slated to traverse the area once when the work is done.

But the Anacostia Watershed Society said much is unknown about the agreement, including its cost and how the utility will be held accountable for its work. “How much they’re committing is really unclear at this point,” said Brent Bolin, director of advocacy for AWS.

A Washington Gas spokesman said contaminated soil will be removed and replaced with clean soil over four acres. The spokesman, Reuben Rodriguez, declined to give an estimate of the cleanup cost.

For 60 years, from 1888 to 1948, the utility manufactured gas feed stocks at a facility along Water Street SE, just upstream from the 11th Street Bridge on the river. Waste created by the gasification process contained harmful organic compounds such as benzene, cyanide, arsenic and other contaminants such as tar, coal and coke.

The company continued to use the “East Station” site intermittently until it was closed in 1983 and demolished in 1986. Between that time and 1999, six major federal environmental investigations were performed at the site.

“This has been a cleanup 100 years in the making,” Bolin said. “These are known carcinogens. They are an exposure risk for people who fish, people who boat, people who row.”

The Anacostia River was called “one of the most polluted waterways in the nation” in a May report by the advocacy group DC Appleseed.

With its low flows, the Anacostia cannot easily flush pollutants, many of which come from combined sewage runoff and from chemical waste from the Navy Yard, according to the report. It called on the federal government, as one of the river’s biggest polluters, to take a larger role in the cleanup.

Despite of a 2006 federal decision that called for a cleanup amid hiking trails, yacht clubs and a fishery, work was never completed, Bolin said. AWS filed a suit in August to compel the utility and federal government to act. “You couldn’t get the federal government to care about this issue until the Obama administration,” Bolin said.

The city has been acquiring land nearby with an eye on its Anacostia Waterfront Initiative, a vision for recreational, residential and commercial development along the river.

“This settlement is a major step forward in restoring this vibrant river . . . [and] protecting habitat and wildlife,” Salazar said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/washington-gas-to-clean-anacostia-riverbank-under-new-agreement/2011/12/12/gIQAc0ihqO_story.html

Curb Alert: Illegal Dumping of Toxic Waste

Somebody left a TV in the tree box of a house near mine. I left the following note on it:

TO WHOEVER LEFT THIS TV HERE:

PLEASE REMOVE IT!!! It is illegal dumping – littering.

Take responsibility for your own garbage! If it works there are countless ways to get it to someone who wants an old tv. This TV has 5+ lbs of lead in it – before someone breaks it and spreads toxic waste, REMOVE IT!!!!

And be glad you didn’t get a ticket for illegal dumping!!!!!!!!

Called DC 311, #237552 is the number they gave me - we will see who gets it first - the Public Works Department crew or someone who breaks it.

TVs And Energy Efficiency

By 2011, greener screens in Golden State

By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 27, 2009

Nick Canzoneri weighed several factors when he went shopping for a new flat-screen TV at the Best Buy in Gaithersburg earlier this week. He wanted the right brand ("Sony. I've had one for 20 years. I tend to stick with what I like . . .") and the right price. Size mattered, too. Canzoneri's son talked him into the enormous 52-inch model he was trying to wedge into his Toyota sedan.

Suffice to say, environmental considerations weren't at the top of Canzoneri's list.

Soon, they might be.

Those big, bright flat-panel TVs suck down far more power than the puny cathode-ray tube TVs they're rapidly replacing. Which is why regulators and environmentalists -- who usually reserve their passion for shrinking rain forests, melting glaciers and gas-guzzling SUVs -- are turning their attention to the once-humble TV set.

Last week, after two years of debate and study, California became the first state to challenge America's heretofore unquestioned love affair with its TV set. A state panel established the nation's first energy-consumption limits for TVs up to 58 inches wide. Regulations for larger sets will be phased in later. The new rules do not affect TVs for sale now, but they will require TVs sold in California to use about a third less power by 2011 and about half as much by 2013. TVs that can't meet the standards would be banned from sale in California, which accounts for 10 percent of the 35 million new TVs sold in America every year.

The prospect of the government messing with its citizens' God-given right to a super-size TV turned what might have been a mundane regulatory proceeding into a shot heard around the world. At least three other states (Washington, Oregon and Massachusetts) and two national governments (Canada and Australia) then said they, too, would consider energy limits.

Television has long been accused of being a cultural polluter, but the California Energy Commission's move touched off debate about how much our national TV habit has contributed to fouling the physical environment as well.

The energy commission estimated that TVs account for 10 percent of household electrical use in the state, once "related devices" like digital recorders and game consoles are included. But the Consumer Electronics Association, which opposed the new rules, says that figure is misleading since it covers all of a household's electronic devices, from iPods to computers. The Arlington-based trade group estimates that the TV alone accounts for no more than 3 percent of a family's monthly power bill.

Further, the group warns that the new regulations could raise prices, limit consumer choice and stifle innovation not just in California, but nationwide, as manufacturers redesign their products to comply with the state's new law. The most vulnerable may be power-hungry big-screen models, sets that use the less efficient plasma technology, and a new generation of TVs that offer 3-D picture or combine the functions of a TV and a personal computer.

"It's not this generation of TVs that you have to be concerned about, it's the multi-function TVs of tomorrow," says Jason Oxman, the Consumer Electronics Association's senior vice president of industry affairs.

What's more, the new regulations include technical requirements that could prompt a costly overhaul in TV designs, says Jon Fairhurst, a manager for Sharp Labs, the U.S.-based research arm of the Japanese set manufacturer. To save power, he says, new TVs would have to turn off automatically when attached to a DVD player that is turned off, something no TV does now.

"As far as I know, there are no TVs that pass the standard," Fairhurst says.

State officials and environmentalists say it's about time that TVs followed other appliances whose energy use is regulated, from air conditioners to hot-water heaters. Powering down the set will not only save consumers money (roughly $8 billion over 10 years, or about $31 per household annually, according to a state report), but it will eliminate tons of greenhouse gases that otherwise would be generated by power plants.

Without the regulation, the state would need to build a $3 billion power plant to keep up with demand, the state commission says.

"Whether it's refrigerators or TV sets, anytime anyone has proposed regulation, the rallying cry is always the same: 'This will stifle innovation,' " says Noah Horowitz, senior scientist of the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental group. "Well, refrigerators are far bigger today, they have more features, and they use one-quarter of the power they did 25 years ago."

Hundreds of TVs already comply with the 2011 and 2013 standards, says Horowitz, and squeezing efficiencies out of noncompliant models won't be hard or expensive. Photo sensors that automatically adjust brightness and contrast based on ambient light add little to the cost of a new set, he says.

Vizio, a leading HDTV manufacturer based in Irvine, Calif., will have no trouble complying with the state standards by 2011, says Ken Lowe, a vice president and co-founder. This includes the company's largest set, a 55-inch model. "If little old Vizio can do it, I'm sure the bigger guys can do it, too," he says.

The irony of California's action is that it comes in the home state of the movie and television industries, which have their own concerns about the regulations. The Digital Entertainment Group, a nonprofit organization that represents 70 Hollywood studios and DVD manufacturers, has called them "arbitrary and inflexible limits" that could impede the introduction of new digital products.

The Hollywood group, like the manufacturers association, says that if consumers want energy-efficient TVs, they can find them now. Most manufacturers submit their products for review to the Energy Star program, which flags the most efficient appliances, including flat-screen TVs. The program, run in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, has power standards similar to California's new limits. The difference is, Energy Star's standards are voluntary.

Either way, choosing a new TV could soon come down to more than price, brand, size and picture quality. As he puzzled over how to get his humongous Sony Bravia home the other day, Nick Canzoneri acknowledged that it may be time to start paying attention to the underlying cost of vegging out in front of the set: "Electricity isn't cheap, and it isn't getting any cheaper."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/26/AR2009112602164.html



Given our TV habits, what we need is a big, flat, green screen

By Curt Suplee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Watts up, Doc? They certainly are, thanks to the increased power demands of today's supersized flat-screen TVs. And that worries energy sentinels. So a couple of weeks ago California -- continuing in its role as the national Trendinator -- issued new efficiency standards mandating that by 2011 all TV sets with a display size smaller than Mount Rushmore must use 33 percent less energy to be legal for sale. In practical terms, this new television rule probably means the entire U.S. market will shift accordingly.

That's a good thing, and it could have a significant impact. But it's no reason to demonize the technology. Never mind hysterical news reports about the new regs, which described flat-screen TVs as "energy hogs" and "major power guzzlers." Somebody needs to switch to decaf. A 25-inch "tube" TV, the sort most of us watched for years, uses about 100 watts. Today, an average 47-inch liquid crystal display (LCD) TV consumes around 200. That difference, in itself, isn't exactly going to drain the power grid. Even monster plasma screens that need 400 to 500 watts aren't profligate per se. In fact, viewed solely in terms of cost per square inch, a set that uses four times as much energy as a 25-inch tube but produces an image more than four times larger is actually more efficient. As you might expect with TV, it all depends on how you look at it. (And if you're looking at screen sizes above 58 inches, the new California rules don't apply. Size matters.)

That doesn't mean TVs shouldn't be improved. But the trouble, as they used to say, is not in your set. It's in us. Americans now spend a record 151 hours a month watching TV, and the average household has 2.6 sets on the premises -- one per person. Plus, these sets are tricked out with all sorts of gaming gadgets such as PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, each of which draws something like 200 watts -- as much power as or even more than a 47-inch LCD itself. Throw in a Wii or two, a DVR and a sound system, and pretty soon your family-room energy demand is about the same as a strip mall's. Blaming TV wattage for this state of affairs is like blaming the national fat boom on Twinkies and potato chips.

For many households, TVs and their outriggers now account for fully 10 percent of total electric consumption, up from 3 percent in the 1980s. Sure, that's still only $8 to $12 a month -- a modest sum compared with the $30 monthly national average cable bill. But the new TV standard is not about saving money. It's about avoiding the need for more power plants and thus more schmutz in the air.

From that perspective, even a small efficiency increase can make a difference, especially in watt-conscious California, where the average home consumes a mere 580 kilowatt hours per month, compared with 1,200 in Virginia, 1,100 in Maryland and 800 in the District. Fortunately, help is on the way. For LCDs, there are new methods of illumination. That's important because liquid crystals are really smart engineering, but they're not very bright. That is, they don't emit light. They only control its passage by way of a special talent: If you hit the crystals with an electric charge, they twist around and change their orientation, sort of like the slats in a Venetian blind.

In an LCD screen, the crystals are sandwiched between two glass plates along with a set of transparent electrodes -- materials that conduct electricity. Behind the whole sandwich is a light source. According to a pattern of signals sent by the set's electronics, the crystals at each pixel (short for picture element -- the individual dots on your screen) either block the outgoing light or allow it to pass to the front of the screen. That ever-shifting pattern of pixels makes the picture.

Of course, something has to provide the light, and fluorescent tubes have traditionally done the job quite nicely. But light-emitting diodes (the ubiquitous "LEDs" found in cameras, digital clocks and other electronic gear, updated traffic lights and so forth) are a lower-power alternative. Hence the recent advent of "LED TV," a phrase that really means an LCD system backlit by LEDs, which are approximately 40 percent more efficient than conventional fluorescent systems.

LEDs are simple and literally really cool: Each diode contains two kinds of semiconductor material. One type has a surplus of electrons; the other has regions where electrons are absent, known as holes. If you run voltage across the LED, electrons from one type combine with holes from the other and emit light as they do so. The process produces very little heat. And the LEDs, which are basically just big transistors, last a long time.

It may be harder to reduce power demand in plasma sets. These units get their stunning display from a completely different process: At each pixel, a current zaps a tiny quantity of trapped neon or xenon gas, giving it so much energy that it blows the electrons right off the atoms. As the electrons return to their original locations, they emit the extra energy as high-frequency (chiefly ultraviolet) radiation. The UV in turn strikes minerals that glow red, green or blue depending on their chemical composition. Each pixel is its own light source. So when one is off, it's really black -- thus providing dramatic contrast ratios.

Some plasma TV manufacturers are already making progress in cutting energy consumption, and the task can't really pose an insuperable challenge to the nation that brought you high-fiber Pop-Tarts and Chia Pets in the shape of Abraham Lincoln. Just watch that space.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/30/AR2009113003056.html

Washington Gas Passes Expenses To Customers

D.C. gas customers face monthly surcharge

By: Michael Neibauer
Examiner Staff Writer
October 13, 2009

Washington Gas customers in the District face a surcharge on their monthly bills starting in 2011 to pay for a program aimed at preventing degradation of pipes and dangerous leaks. The surcharge amount has not been determined, but the District's share is expected to run more than $6 million a year divided among 151,000 Washington Gas customers -- an average of about $40 per year.

The settlement between Washington Gas and the Office of the People's Counsel, the District's utility ratepayer advocate, is nearly five years in the making. During that period, the utility was accused by experts of playing a "wait and see" game by failing to address segments of pipes vulnerable to leaks.

The deal allows Washington Gas to recover the costs of injecting hexane, an ingredient in liquefied natural gas, into its system. The utility also has agreed to spend as much as $28 million over seven years to replace aging pipes and mechanical couplings -- devices used to connect pipes -- in the District. Those costs would not be included in the surcharge. The fee would kick in each Oct. 1, starting in 2011, when the cap on gas rates expires. The agreement, which People's Counsel Elizabeth Noel said would ensure "safe and reliable service," is now before the D.C. Public Service Commission for approval. Washington Gas introduced hexane in 2004 following a spike in gas leaks, especially in Prince George's County. The utility said its liquid natural gas was losing hydrocarbons as it flowed from Dominion's terminal in Calvert County, which had a "deleterious effect on rubber seals in the mechanical couplings." Hexane stabilized its product.

The price of hexane, like gasoline, is volatile. Washington Gas uses roughly 1 million gallons a year alone at its Gardiner Road plant in Waldorf, which serves Prince George's and the District.

The Hudson River Group, a consultant hired by the Office of the People's Counsel, deemed hexane a questionable temporary fix and an ineffective permanent solution. Washington Gas should identify which couplings are failing and replace them as soon as possible, the group said.

"The safety code ... requires [Washington Gas] to recondition or phase out segments vulnerable to leaks," the group said in testimony. "It has not done so to date."

mneibauer@washingtonexaminer.com

Find this article at: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/D_C_-gas-customers-face-monthly-surcharge-8371330-64040967.html

eco toilet paper

The Unkindest Flush
Soft Toilet Paper's Hard on the Earth, But Will We Sit for the Alternative?

By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 24, 2009

ELMWOOD PARK, N.J. -- There is a battle for America's behinds.

It is a fight over toilet paper: the kind that is blanket-fluffy and getting fluffier so fast that manufacturers are running out of synonyms for "soft" (Quilted Northern Ultra Plush is the first big brand to go three-ply and three-adjective).

It's a menace, environmental groups say -- and a dark-comedy example of American excess.

The reason, they say, is that plush U.S. toilet paper is usually made by chopping down and grinding up trees that were decades or even a century old. They want Americans, like Europeans, to wipe with tissue made from recycled paper goods.

It has been slow going. Big toilet-paper makers say that they've taken steps to become more Earth-friendly but that their customers still want the soft stuff, so they're still selling it.

This summer, two of the best-known combatants in this fight signed a surprising truce, with a big tissue maker promising to do better. But the larger battle goes on -- the ultimate test of how green Americans will be when nobody's watching.

"At what price softness?" said Tim Spring, chief executive of Marcal Manufacturing, a New Jersey paper maker that is trying to persuade customers to try 100 percent recycled paper. "Should I contribute to clear-cutting and deforestation because the big [marketing] machine has told me that softness is important?"

He added: "You're not giving up the world here."

Toilet paper is far from being the biggest threat to the world's forests: together with facial tissue, it accounts for 5 percent of the U.S. forest-products industry, according to industry figures. Paper and cardboard packaging makes up 26 percent of the industry, although more than half is made from recycled products. Newspapers account for 3 percent.

But environmentalists say 5 percent is still too much.

Felling these trees removes a valuable scrubber of carbon dioxide, they say. If the trees come from "farms" in places such as Brazil, Indonesia or the southeastern United States, natural forests are being displaced. If they come from Canada's forested north -- a major source of imported wood pulp -- ecosystems valuable to bears, caribou and migratory birds are being damaged.

And, activists say, there's just the foolish idea of the thing: old trees cut down for the briefest and most undignified of ends.

"It's like the Hummer product for the paper industry," said Allen Hershkowitz, senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "We don't need old-growth forests . . . to wipe our behinds."

The reason for this fight lies in toilet-paper engineering. Each sheet is a web of wood fibers, and fibers from old trees are longer, which produces a smoother and more supple web. Fibers made from recycled paper -- in this case magazines, newspapers or computer printouts -- are shorter. The web often is rougher.

So, when toilet paper is made for the "away from home" market, the no-choice bathrooms in restaurants, offices and schools, manufacturers use recycled fiber about 75 percent of the time.

But for the "at home" market, the paper customers buy for themselves, 5 percent at most is fully recycled. The rest is mostly or totally "virgin" fiber, taken from newly cut trees, according to the market analysis firm RISI Inc.

Big tissue makers say they've tried to make their products as green as possible, including by buying more wood pulp from forest operations certified as sustainable.

But despite environmentalists' concerns, they say customers are unwavering in their desire for the softest paper possible.

"That's a segment [of consumers] that is quite demanding of products that are soft," said James Malone, a spokesman for Georgia-Pacific. Sales figures seem to make that clear: Quilted Northern Ultra Plush, the three-ply stuff, sold 24 million packages in the past year, bringing in more than $144 million, according to the market research firm Information Resources Inc.

Last month, Greenpeace announced an agreement that it said would change this industry from the inside.

The environmental group had spent 4 1/2 years attacking Kimberly-Clark, the makers of Kleenex and Cottonelle toilet paper, for getting wood from old-growth forests in Canada. But the group said it is calling off the "Kleercut" campaign: Kimberly-Clark had agreed to make its practices greener.

By 2011, the company said, 40 percent of the fiber in all its tissue products will come from recycled paper or sustainable forests.

"We could have campaigned forever," said Lindsey Allen, a senior forest campaigner with Greenpeace. But this was enough, she said, because Kimberly-Clark's changes could alter the entire wood-pulp supply chain: "They have a policy that . . . will shift the entire way that tissue companies work."

Still, some environmental activists said that Greenpeace should have pushed for more.

"The problem is not yet getting better," said Chris Henschel, of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, talking about logging in Canada's boreal forests. He said real change will come only when consumers change their habits: "It's unbelievable that this global treasure of Canadian boreal forests is being turned into toilet paper. . . . I think every reasonable person would have trouble understanding how that would be okay."

That part could be difficult, because -- in the U.S. market, at least -- soft is to toilet paper what fat is to bacon, the essence of the appeal.

Earlier this year, Consumer Reports tested toilet paper brands and found that recycled-tissue brands such as Seventh Generation and Marcal's Small Steps weren't unpleasant. But they gave their highest rating to the three-ply Quilted Northern.

"We do believe that you're going to feel a difference," said Bob Markovich, an editor at Consumer Reports.

Marcal, the maker of recycled toilet paper here in New Jersey, is trying to change that with a two-pronged sales pitch. The first is that soft is overrated.

"Strength of toilet paper is more important, for obvious reasons," said Spring, the chief executive, guiding a golf cart among the machinery that whizzes up vast stacks of old paper, whips it into a slurry, and dries it into rolls of toilet paper big enough for King Kong. He said his final product is as strong as any of the big-name brands. "If the paper breaks during your use of toilet paper, obviously, that's very, very important."

The second half of the pitch is that Marcal's toilet paper is almost as soft as the other guy's anyway.

"Handle it like you're going to take care of business," company manager Michael Bonin said, putting this reporter through a blind test of virgin vs. recycled toilet paper. Two rolls were hidden in a cardboard box: the test was to reach in without looking and wad them up, considering the "three aspects of softness," which are surface smoothness, bulky feel and "drapability," or lack of rigidity.

The reporter wadded. The officials waited. The one on the right felt slightly softer.

That was not the answer they wanted: The recycled paper was on the left.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/23/AR2009092304711.html?hpid=topnews

Hazardous Waste and History Mix On D.C. Tour

Hazardous Waste and History Mix On D.C. Tour By Yamiche Alcindor Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, September 21, 2009 The manicured lawns and beautiful brick homes that line the streets of Spring Valley look like those in most affluent District neighborhoods. But the area looked much different during World War I, when the Army was using it as a testing ground for chemical weapons. On Sunday, visitors on a tour of the neighborhood heard how, 90 years after scientists ended their experiments, the remnants of toxic munitions remain. "The purpose of the tour is to encourage more historical research, investigation and cleanup here," said Kent Slowinski, who led more than a dozen people on the walk. "We want to raise awareness in both Spring Valley and nationwide." He and Allen Hengst co-founded "Environmental Health Group: Spring Valley," a group that advocates for more research into the locations and health effects of the chemicals. The one-mile walk was part of more than 120 free WalkingTownDC tours, presented by Cultural Tourism DC, that took place across the District over the weekend. During World War I, 661 acres of forested land around the American University campus were used for Army tests. The range became known as the American University Experiment Station. In 1993, a construction crew's discovery of an artillery round triggered an evacuation and cleanup of the area. Experts have since been scouring the neighborhood for buried munitions and chemicals. Workers have found several toxins, such as arsine, a vomiting agent called DA or Clark 1 and liquid mustard, a type of blistering agent. Slowinski, a landscape architect who grew up in Spring Valley, became interested in 1996 when a stonemason with whom he was working found munitions at a home in Spring Valley. For two hours Sunday, Slowinski, who has given several tours of the area, pointed to various campus buildings and houses where hundreds of chemical munitions might be buried. He began at the university's Ohio McKinley Hall, the birthplace of the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service. He pointed to trees, football fields and green patches around the university and neighborhood where he believes munitions still lie. Slowinski also talked about homeowners whose health problems might be linked to the neighborhood's past. "It's terrifying," said Chris Cottrell, 22, a senior at American University who took the tour. "There are dangerous munitions buried on campus, and I don't think most students even know about it. This is like the first thing the university should tell students about." Aaron Lloyd, 38, grew up in Spring Valley. Less than a decade ago, his stepfather found munitions buried in the back yard of the home where Lloyd grew up and where his mother had kept a garden. "It's very disturbing," he said. "Someone had to have known about these chemical weapons before 1993." Nan Wells, an advisory neighborhood commissioner from Spring Valley, said she hopes that the tour will help engage the public. "We need follow-up studies to know the health effects," she said during the tour. She also hopes that the Army Corps of Engineers, which along with the D.C. Department of the Environment is overseeing the cleanup and destruction of the munitions, will continue to fund the project. For fiscal 2010, the corps has allotted $11 million to the cleanup effort. The number drops to $3 million in fiscal 2011 and $500,000 the following fiscal year. Nazzarena Labo, 36, a epidemiologist, said more research needs to be done before health effects from the munitions can be determined. "It's very hard to go from anecdotal evidence to causation," she said. "People shouldn't be scared or anxious. But they should be concerned." Slowinski ended the tour at 4825 Glenbrook Rd., a vacant house where cleanup workers found a laboratory vial last month that tested positive for the World War I blistering agent mustard. The home's owner had a brain tumor and eventually moved away, Slowinski said. American University has since bought the house, where cleanup continues.