A bill that would set rules for the state to step in and allocate use of water during droughts, HB 476, would divide the state’s counties into surface water regions for purposes of determining water availability and needs. Read more.
BirminghamWatch’s Hank Black was inducted into the Wall of Fame for the University of Alabama’s Office of Student Media during an event April 26. Black, who covers the environment for BW, was honored for his role as editor in chief of the Crimson White during one of the most turbulent years in the university’s history. Black was editor in 1963, when Vivian Malone and James Hood became the first two black students to successfully enroll at UA, following Gov. George Wallace’s infamous “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door.” Read more.
The Birmingham City Council passed a resolution Tuesday opposing two bills in the state Legislature that would prohibit municipal and county governments from regulating the use of plastic bags and styrofoam cups. Read more.
WBHM Some cities recycle more than others. Every Wednesday, Birmingham Recycling and Recovery gets a really skinny load from the city of Birmingham, a situation recycling advocates chalk up to a lack of education and awareness. Read more.
For 14 years, residents of the Walker County community of Dovertown, near Cordova, have lived under a cloud. Coal companies have been wanting to strip-mine a nearby area along the Black Warrior River’s Locust Fork tributary. The threat to the 200 people who live there is existential, they believe, as they’ve seen other small towns nearly fade away once the ground around them was shoveled away to get at a seam of coal. At issue is whether the Alabama Surface Mining Commission will issue a new five-year permit to Mays Mining Inc. for the No. 5 Mine. Some of the people of Dovertown plan to speak in opposition at an informal public conference called by the commission for Wednesday, April 17. Read more.
The recent public hearing of a top air pollution advisory committee exposed faults so grave that a former chair of the group wrote an article in the Washington Post on Tuesday that was headlined, “If I Were Still Working At the EPA, I Would Resign.” Jefferson County air pollution engineer Corey Masuca, a member of the committee, wouldn’t go that far, but on Thursday he told BirminghamWatch that he thought the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee did need greater support from the Environmental Protection Agency to properly evaluate whether current pollution standards are adequate to protect public health. Read more.
WBHM State officials are looking into a fish kill that happened near Alabama Power’s Plant Gorgas in Walker County. The coal-fired plant sits along a tributary of the Black Warrior River. Riverkeeper Nelson Brooke says he first heard about the incident Friday morning from a local fisherman. Brooke says he was not allowed to access the fenced area of the creek near the power plant, but counted at least 100 dead fish downstream. Read more.
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler was asked Thursday by a key advisory committee to give it more expert help to review the hundreds of recent scientific studies on the effects of microscopic particles of soot on human mortality. The action came as a surprise as the deeply divided Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee met Thursday to try to agree on language of a draft report. A majority of the seven-member panel, including Corey Masuco of the Jefferson County Department of Health, agreed it was not large enough and its members did not have enough expertise in epidemiology and some other fields to plow through and adequately assess the large body of research developed since its most recent report. Plus, the committee has a fast-tracked December 2020 deadline. Read more.
After a protracted and often confused discussion, the Birmingham City Council passed a “post-construction stormwater ordinance” Tuesday, codifying a series of design specifications for new construction projects in the city and bringing Birmingham into compliance with Alabama Department of Environmental Management rules. The ordinance largely centered on changes to construction practices that would bring new development projects — and the way those developments manage stormwater runoff after construction is completed — into compliance with regulations. Read more.
Alabama has a voice on the recently appointed House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, but whether “climate crisis” is in Rep. Gary Palmer’s vocabulary is in question. Palmer, elected from Alabama’s Sixth District, is one of six Republicans appointed to the panel by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-California. Democrats have a majority eight members appointed by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-California, who said the panel would help Congress respond to “the existential threat of the climate crisis.” Palmer, in a statement announcing his appointment, said he wants the committee to “focus on sensible solutions” but did not acknowledge a crisis and placed “climate change” in quotation marks. That’s not a surprise to some local environmental activists. Palmer was described as a “known climate denier” by the Sierra Club’s Stephen Stetson, who called his appointment “further dismaying proof that congressional Republicans have no real plan to take action on what’s confronting us.” Read more.
