Category Archives: old tired advice

More More Home Energy Services – Wisconsin does it right

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A self revelation here. I started this because I was bored. Well, I am ending it because I am bored. From here on I am going to blog about what is topical and interesting TO ME. I have done this blog for 8 years and I deserve this freedom. But first, Wisconsin.

http://www.homeenergyplus.wi.gov/

 

The Wisconsin Division of Energy, Housing and Community Resources provides services to Wisconsin qualified residential households with energy assistance and weatherization needs.  For more information call 1- 866-HEATWIS (432-8947).

The Wisconsin Home Energy Assistance Program (WHEAP) administers the federally funded Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and Public Benefits Energy Assistance Program. LIHEAP and its related services help approximately 230,000 Wisconsin households annually. In addition to regular heating and electric assistance, specialized services include:
  • Emergency fuel assistance,
  • Counseling for energy conservation and energy budgets,
  • Pro-active co payment plans,
  • Targeted outreach services,
  • Emergency furnace repair and replacement.

Services are provided locally through:

  • County social services offices,
  • Tribal governments,
  • Private non-profit or other government agencies.

For more information on WHEAP, call 1-866-HEATWIS (432-8947).

To log in to the WHEAP System click here

To log in to the Home Energy Plus System click here

 
The Wisconsin Weatherization Assistance Program (WisWAP) uses
energy conservation techniques to reduce the cost of home energy.
Correcting health and safety hazards and potentially life-
threatening conditions is the first consideration in WAP activities.

 

To log in to the WisWAP System click here

 

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Go there and read. More next week.

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The Pope’s Energy Message Spreads – Climate change comes to Catholics in Chicago

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I never thought I would applaud the Pope. But hurray for him as his message spreads to the Chicago diocese. By its self the church can not solve the problem but it could put a dent in Global Warming. Here is hoping it spreads.

 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-pope-francis-climate-change-encyclical-met-20150618-story.html#page=1

Pope Francis makes Chicago Catholics see green

By Manya Brachear Pashman Chicago Tribune contact the reporter

June 18, 2015, 7:56 p.m.

Answering a plea from Pope Francis to protect the planet, Chicagoans — Catholics and non-Catholics alike — pledged Thursday to collect rainfall, conserve tap water, recycle their cans and bottles, and switch off the lights when they leave a room.

It’s an unusually tangible, immediate and ecumenical response to a papal encyclical, a letter expounding on Catholic teachings.

But the encyclical itself is an extraordinary letter. Francis’ first solo encyclical (he co-wrote one with his predecessor) is the first time the leader of the world’s billion Roman Catholics has addressed the environment. And the letter is more than a manifesto for clergy and bishops to use as a teaching tool. It’s a call to action with scientific rationale, written in plain language and addressed to “every person living on this planet.”

“I’m so excited about the courage of this pope. He’s done his homework,” said Gina Orlando, an instructor of science and spirituality courses at DePaul University and a Catholic who recently returned to Ascension Catholic Church in Oak Park after spending the last several years church shopping. “I’m back now because of this encyclical and the possibility that it holds for spirituality and environmental change.”

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Go there and read. It is up lifting. More next week.

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Coal Is Dangerous To Humans – Even when it stays in the ground

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When homosapiens invented fire did we doom ourselves? Because it seems fire will always come into contact with fire and global warming is the result. I think this implies that there is a limit on large animals ability to survive on Earth. I think it means that the Earth is locked into cycles of mass die offs. Finally, I think it means humans better get out of here soon. Yet, I wonder why that is just dawning on me at 60?

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/fire-in-the-hole-77895126/?no-ist

Fire in the Hole

Raging in mines from Pennsylvania to China, coal fires threaten towns, poison air and water, and add to global warming

By Kevin Krajick
Smithsonian Magazine | Subscribe

From the back kitchen window of his little house on a ridge in east-central Pennsylvania, John Lokitis looks out on a most unusual prospect. Just uphill, at the edge of St.IgnatiusCemetery, the earth is ablaze. Vegetation has been obliterated along a quarter-mile strip; sulfurous steam billows out of hundreds of fissures and holes in the mud. There are pits extending perhaps 20 feet down: in their depths, discarded plastic bottles and tires have melted. Dead trees, their trunks bleached white, lie in tangled heaps, stumps venting smoke through hollow centers. Sometimes fumes seep across the cemetery fence to the grave of Lokitis’ grandfather, George Lokitis.

This hellish landscape constitutes about all that remains of the once-thriving town of Centralia, Pennsylvania. Forty-three years ago, a vast honeycomb of coal mines at the edge of the town caught fire. An underground inferno has been spreading ever since, burning at depths of up to 300 feet, baking surface layers, venting poisonous gases and opening holes large enough to swallow people or cars. The conflagration may burn for another 250 years, along an eight-mile stretch encompassing 3,700 acres, before it runs out of the coal that fuels it.

Remarkably enough, nobody’s doing a thing about it. The federal and state governments gave up trying to extinguish the fire in the 1980s. “Pennsylvania didn’t have enough money in the bank to do the job,” says Steve Jones, a geologist with the state’s Office of Surface Mining. “If you aren’t going to put it out, what can you do? Move the people.”Nearly all 1,100 residents left after they were offered federally funded compensation for their properties. Their abandoned houses were leveled. Today Centralia exists only as an eerie grid of streets, its driveways disappearing into vacant lots. Remains of a picket fence here, a chair spindle there—plus Lokitis and 11 others who refused to leave, the occupants of a dozen scattered structures. Lokitis, 35, lives alone in the house he inherited from “Pop”—his grandfather, a coal miner, as was Pop’s father before him. For fans of the macabre, lured by a sign warning of DANGER from asphyxiation or being swallowed into the ground, Centralia has become a tourist destination. For Lokitis, it is home.

Across the globe, thousands of coal fires are burning.
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Nuclear Power Is Dangerous – I do not think I can say that often enough

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From Three Mile Island, to Chernobyl, to Fukushima, nuclear power has soaked up trillions of $$$ and awarded planet Earth with poisonous outputs  and death and destruction. The proponents point to the trillions of kilowatts generated without carbon emissions. The bottom line is what to we do to shut them down? Safely. The answer is – there is none. So we are in jeopardy for thousands of years.

http://nautil.us/blog/no-one-knows-what-to-do-with-fukushimas-endless-tanks-of-radioactive-water

No One Knows What to Do With Fukushima’s Endless Tanks of Radioactive Water

Posted By Eliza Strickland on Jun 09, 2015

This is what passes for good news from Fukushima Daiichi,  the Japanese nuclear power plant devastated by meltdowns and explosions after a cataclysmic earthquake and tsunami in 2011: By the end of last month, workers had succeeded in filtering most of the 620,000 tons of toxic water stored at the site, removing almost all of the radioactive materials.

After numerous false starts and technical glitches, most of the stored water has been run through filtration systems to remove dangerous strontium-90, as well as many other radionuclides. TEPCO, the Japanese utility that operates the power plant, trumpeted the achievement: “This is a significant milestone for improving the environment for our surrounding communities and for our workers,” said Naohiro Masuda, TEPCO’s chief decommissioning officer, in a press release.

But it’s not quite so easy to bounce back from a nuclear disaster of this scale. For one thing, don’t take TEPCO’s statement too literally: No one is living in the “surrounding communities”—they’re far too contaminated for human habitation. Furthermore, the filtered water is still full of tritium, a radioactive version of hydrogen. (When two neutrons are added to the element, it becomes unstable, prone to emitting electrons.) Tritium bonds with oxygen just like normal hydrogen does, to produce radioactive “tritiated water.” It’s impractical—or at least extremely difficult and expensive—to separate tritiated water from normal water.

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You will be depressed. Go there and read anyway. More next week.

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The Nukes In Illinois – They want subsidies and they want to block renewables

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See the thing is, like coal, Nuclear Power Plants have rich investors. They are going to wring every last penny out of those investments no matter what. If the planet suffers? So what? Who cares about our suffering?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gabe-elsner/the-exelonpepco-merger-ex_b_7176948.html

Become a fanExecutive Director, Energy and Policy Institute

The Exelon-Pepco Merger & Exelon’s History of Anti-Clean Energy Lobbying

Posted: Updated: DT

Exelon has a long history of using political influence to oppose the deployment of renewable energy. Exelon’s political operations may impact the company’s ability to show that a merger with Pepco would provide a tangible benefit to customers on the criteria of conserving natural resources and preserving environmental quality – two factors that must be considered in the District of Columbia. According to the Office of the People’s Counsel, “the [Exelon-Pepco] merger is not in the public interest…as a result of Exelon’s longstanding resistance to policies promoting renewable energy.”

Exelon-Pepco-Merger.jpgIf approved, the Exelon-Pepco merger would empower the company to continue its anti-renewable campaign in Washington, D.C., and Maryland, negatively impact ratepayers, and hinder the growth of the renewable energy industry.

Lobbying Against the Renewable Portfolio Standard in Illinois

Exelon has routinely worked against renewable energy policies and used its financial resources and political influence to benefit the company at the expense of environmental quality and renewables. Most recently, Exelon has proposed a bill in Illinois, the Low Carbon Portfolio Standard (LCPS), that would subsidize nuclear plants that are struggling to compete with the cheap cost of electricity from natural gas plants and wind turbines. As written, the LCPS would increase rates for ratepayers, and Exelon’s nuclear plants would earn an estimated $300 million per year from low carbon credits while renewables would get almost nothing. Crain’s Chicago Business Journal documented that “Exelon long has complained that profits at its six nuclear power plants in Illinois are under pressure in part due to competition rom tax-subsidized wind farms. Exelon is backing state legislation that would create a new surcharge on most electric bills throughout the state that would funnel as much as $300 million a year to the company’s Illinois nukes.”

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Light A Third World House – With a used laptop battery

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When I first saw this I thought it was from The Onion. But this for real.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/532896/discarded-laptop-batteries-keep-the-lights-on/

Discarded Laptop Batteries Keep the Lights On

Millions of batteries discarded with computers have more than enough life to power home lighting for one year, researchers in India say.

Many of the estimated 50 million lithium-ion laptop batteries discarded every year could provide electricity storage sufficient to light homes in poor countries, researchers at IBM say.

In work being aired this week at a conference in San Jose, researchers at IBM Research India in Bangalore found that at least 70 percent of all discarded batteries have enough life left to power an LED light at least four hours a day for a year.

While it’s possible to combine LED lights with solar panels and rechargeable batteries (see “Innovators Under 35: Evans Wadongo”), using discarded batteries could make the approach far cheaper.

“The most costly component in these systems is often the battery,” says Vikas Chandan, a research scientist at the lab’s Smarter Energy Group, who led the project. “In this case, the most expensive part of your storage solution is coming from trash.”

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The Burden Of Illinois Fracking – It is all on us

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Please spare the people of Illinois of having the burden of Fracking disasters placed on their shoulders.

 

 

There was a full house–over 200– at the Carbondale IDNR hearing last night.  That makes over 1000 concerned Illinoisans have attended IDNR hearings against the weak IDNR fracking rules–many of them providing testimony.  IDNR and JCAR, are you listening?

Today (Friday) 12/20/13) is Day 36 of the comment period.

Today’s Topic: Starting the clock over when deficiencies are identified at, or as a result of, the hearing.

Comment:

Subsection 245.270(n), allows the applicant to attempt to correct deficiencies identified at the hearing, but places no time limit on such correction.  It also doesn’t require the Department to provide public notice of such correction. As such, applicants could, in principle, provide information to the Department on Day 59 of the 60-day permit issuance period, and the public would not find out about it until long after the permit had been issued.

Revisions Needed: This provision should specify a time window for applicants to provide corrections. It should also provide that the post- hearing public comment period must remain open for a sufficient number of days after that time window in order to provide the public adequate time to meaningfully review and comment on those corrections. It would not be unreasonable for deficiencies to be viewed as an incomplete application requiring that the 60-day clock start over.

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Decatur Hearings Coming Up On December 17 – Everyone is welcome

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I do not know about the Dirty Dozen concept but the points are important and well made.

 

 

Four weeks ago today, IDNR released their weak fracking rules.  Many of you have been making comments every day.  THANK YOU!

For today’s comment, we’re switching things up a bit.  As we prepare for the Decatur, IL hearing and meetings with JCAR, we have put together what we are calling the “Dirty Dozen.” We believe these are the most egregious rules that pose a significant risk to public health, aquatic life, wildlife, or the environment. Read our “Dirty Dozen” and choose any one of them to make your comment for the day.  If you aren’t sure which radio button to choose or which Section is appropriate, just make your best guess.  IDNR tells us they will not reject a comment for being in the wrong Subpart or Section.

COME TO THE DECATUR IDNR MEETING

The Decatur hearing will be this coming Tuesday, December 17, at the Decatur Civic Center from 6:30-8:30.  Are you coming?   We have buses coming from Peoria, Bloomington and Springfield.  If you want to ride the bus, scroll down for information on the buses.

Will you testify?  Please consider testifying using one of the “Dirty Dozen” as the base of your testimony.  Choose a comment from the list, tell the IDNR Hearing Officer what is wrong with that Rule and then explain why this is personal to you in your own words.  For example,

  • “I am a nurse and the issue of keeping chemicals secret from medical professionals is an issue to me because it will impact the kind of care I can give someone who lives near a fracking operation and comes in with symptoms but doesn’t know what fracking chemical they were exposed to.”  OR
  • “I am a farmer and I need to protect my farmland from migrating water pollution from horizontal drilling legs that could run under my farm.” OR
  • “I am a grandmother and I want to make sure the water my grandchildren drink isn’t laced with chemicals and radioactivity.”

Translate the talking points into your own voice. Write it down so that you can submit it to IDNR at the end of the hearing.  Don’t worry about not being an expert on the subject.  You are an expert in your own life and IDNR needs to hear that citizens throughout Illinois aren’t happy about what’s happening with fracking.

BUSES

These are the times that buses will LEAVE for the hearing, so please, plan to arrive 15 minutes prior to departure with empty bladders and printed copies of your testimony!  Please eat before you come or bring a sack dinner.

  • 4:00 pm- Peoria – U.U. Church of Peoria – 3000 W. Richwood Blvd.
  • 5:00 pm- Bloomington – IPA Office -510 E. Washington
  • 5:00 pm- Springfield – First Presbyterian Church – 321 S. 7th St.

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510 E. Washington St. Suite 309
Bloomington, IL 61701
United States

 

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So Illinois Is Gona Protect Me From Fracking – Not the way it is going

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When we got in the faces of the 5 renegade environmental groups, they claimed that IDNR would tighten up things to take in our concerns. So far that ain’t been ahappening. We will just have to see what happens after the comment period closes.
Today (Tuesday, 12/10/13)  is Day 26 of the Comment Period of IDNR.   Getting tired of making comments?  We understand.  But if we don’t fight, the industry will win because their fingerprints are all over these rules.  Fight back.  Make a comment today.
Today’s Topic:  IDNR’s Duties and Responsibilities to Protect the Citizens of Illinois
Comment:
In Section 1-130 of the regulatory statute, the legislature granted IDNR authority to adopt rules to carry out the legislature’s purposes.
There are at least two legislative purposes in the regulatory statute:
  1. To allow horizontal fracking in Illinois,
  2. To approve horizontal fracking conditionally based on the safeguarding of public health and public safety, and the protection of the environment.
This purpose is set forth explicitly in two places in the regulatory statute–Section 1-75(a)(2) and Section 1-53(a)(4).  IDNR has acknowledged 1-75 verbatim, in Section 245.800(2) of the proposed rules: “All phases of high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing operations shall be conducted in a manner that shall not pose a significant risk to public health, life, property, aquatic life, or wildlife.”
But IDNR has changed the legislature’s language in Section 1-53(a)(4) of the proposed rules, lowering the standard explicitly created by the legislature.  Section 1-53(a)(4) of the legislation states: “The Department shall issue a high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing permit, with any conditions the Department may find necessary, only if the record of decision demonstrates that: the proposed hydraulic fracturing operations will be conducted in a manner that will protect the public health and safety and prevent pollution or diminution of any water source.”  The key phrase there is”will be conducted”.  Clearly the intent of the statute is that fracking will only be allowed if it is conducted in a safe manner.
IDNR’s proposed Section 245.300 changes the legislative words “will be conducted” to “as proposed, are reasonably expected to be conducted”.  This lowers the standard and is inconsistent with the legislature’s stated purpose.  “Will be conducted” is a mandate; “reasonably expected to be conducted” is not.
If hydraulic fracturing outcomes in Illinois mirror effects of other states, we can “reasonably expect” that the industry will cut corners and violate standards.  There have been over 3000 violations in PA since 2009 and they are not minor violations.  They involve infractions such as:
  • 224 violations of “Failure to properly store, transport, process or dispose of residual waste.
  • 143 violations of “Discharge of pollutional material to the waters of Commonwealth.
  • 140 violations of “Pit and tanks not constructed with sufficient capacity to contain pollutional substances.
The residents of Illinois are depending on IDNR to protect their health, their safety, and the safety of their water, air, and soil.  IDNR needs to return the legislation’s intent and mandate that hydraulic fracturing operations will only be conducted in a manner that will protect the public health and safety and prevent pollution or diminution of any water source.”
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510 E. Washington St. Suite 309
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What Toxics Are In That Fracking Soup – Under this regulation we may never know

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Seriously, this means that they can brink “stuff” into this state with no inspection and inject it into our soils? That is off the charts.

 

Today (Sunday, 12/1/13) is Day 17 of the IDNR Comment Period on Fracking.  Thanks for hanging in there with us even on this holiday weekend!
Day 17 
Topic – The term “Competitive Value” is not defined but affords fracking operators the right to withhold chemical disclosure
Section 245.720(d) of the Proposed Hydraulic Fracturing Regulatory Act administrative rules, states: IDNR allows permit applicants to withhold chemical disclosure information under a claim of “trade secret” if they can establish that (1) the information has not been published, disseminated, or otherwise become a matter of general public knowledge, and (2) the information has competitive value.
Problems with this section:
  1. “Competitive value” is not defined in the various administrative code definitions.
  2. There is no IDNR administrative criteria provided which is the basis of “competitive value” other than, apparently, a self-identified one provided by the fracking operator.
Why these are problems:
  1. Undefined and catch-all allowances for generic “competitive value” open the door for any and all dangerous chemicals to be undisclosed simply based on the operators desire to do so.
  2. Individual ingredients in the various chemical products used during hydraulic fracturing cannot be considered trade secrets under the criteria “competitive value”. The regulations should be revised to state that information on file with IDNR must be disclosed to the public.
  3. Raising such an allowance for a fracking operator to not disclose potentially dangerous chemicals based on “competitive value” automatically gives them more power than the basic claim of the law which is to protect the environment of Illinois.
Revisions Needed:
  1. “Competitive value” must be fully defined within the rulemaking.
  2. Competitive value must not in any way supersede a determination of the public right to know and the basic legislative and Illinois Constitutional provision of a healthy and safe environment for its citizens.
  3. Any conflict between “competitive value” and the public right to know must be decided on the inherent protection of the citizens and the environment.
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510 E. Washington St. Suite 309
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