The Environment, The Bad, Is There Any Good Left?

AG_PhamD

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I am all for reducing our emissions but it needs to be done in a logical way. First, carbon offset/carbon credits programs are a joke- most are basically scams and very little good comes from these programs. Second, we need to be aware of so called “greenwashing”, such as the whole E85 corn-based ethanol scheme that is actually far more detrimental to the environment.

Solar and wind are great but are limited in what they can offer. They are not to be considered reliable forms of energy. That’s not to say they shouldn’t be used and that their use should not be expanded, I’m just saying they will not meet our energy demands. Battery storage at this point in time are way too expensive to be a universal method of storage. Plus they use a tremendous amount of resources to mine and refine the elements for. There are other types of storage, but batteries are the most efficient. Pumped water is decent but has a lot of limitations as to where it can be installed. Flywheels and mechanical systems are extremely expensive, take up a lot of space for relatively little energy, short duration of energy, etc.

I think our best solution is nuclear energy- especially with the development of these SMR (small modular) reactors which should theoretically be much cheaper and have improved safety. They should also be able to be retrofit into existing fossil fuel (or conventional nuclear) plants. And there are many other nuclear technologies on the drawing board that are safer and produce less waste. The biggest problem at this point is not safety, it’s waste. But nuclear waste storage is a far easier problem to solve than inventing some new zero-carbon energy source.

Power generation accounts for 25%+ of our carbon emissions, not to mention a slew of other contaminants. We have the technology (nuclear) to vastly decrease this in a relatively short amount of time, especially once SMRs go into production. Nuclear for decades has had a terrible reputation, but that tide seems to be changing.

All of this is pointless though if other countries don’t get on board- places like China, India, Russia, etc. It’s amazing people think Russia is serious about climate change when their entire existence depends on fossil fuel exports. China will go along with all sorts of climate pledges yet their actions are the complete opposite building coal plants at an astounding rate.
 

Huntn

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I am all for reducing our emissions but it needs to be done in a logical way. First, carbon offset/carbon credits programs are a joke- most are basically scams and very little good comes from these programs. Second, we need to be aware of so called “greenwashing”, such as the whole E85 corn-based ethanol scheme that is actually far more detrimental to the environment.

Solar and wind are great but are limited in what they can offer. They are not to be considered reliable forms of energy. That’s not to say they shouldn’t be used and that their use should not be expanded, I’m just saying they will not meet our energy demands. Battery storage at this point in time are way too expensive to be a universal method of storage. Plus they use a tremendous amount of resources to mine and refine the elements for. There are other types of storage, but batteries are the most efficient. Pumped water is decent but has a lot of limitations as to where it can be installed. Flywheels and mechanical systems are extremely expensive, take up a lot of space for relatively little energy, short duration of energy, etc.

I think our best solution is nuclear energy- especially with the development of these SMR (small modular) reactors which should theoretically be much cheaper and have improved safety. They should also be able to be retrofit into existing fossil fuel (or conventional nuclear) plants. And there are many other nuclear technologies on the drawing board that are safer and produce less waste. The biggest problem at this point is not safety, it’s waste. But nuclear waste storage is a far easier problem to solve than inventing some new zero-carbon energy source.

Power generation accounts for 25%+ of our carbon emissions, not to mention a slew of other contaminants. We have the technology (nuclear) to vastly decrease this in a relatively short amount of time, especially once SMRs go into production. Nuclear for decades has had a terrible reputation, but that tide seems to be changing.

All of this is pointless though if other countries don’t get on board- places like China, India, Russia, etc. It’s amazing people think Russia is serious about climate change when their entire existence depends on fossil fuel exports. China will go along with all sorts of climate pledges yet their actions are the complete opposite building coal plants at an astounding rate.
I view nuclear power currently as wanting your cake and eating it too. As nuclear currently stands you have clean power production at the expense of nuclear waste that no one wants in their backyard for the next 10k years (or whatever it is). I like the idea of Thorium Salt Reactors, recyclable fuel, and safer to operate.

 

AG_PhamD

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I view nuclear power currently as wanting your cake and eating it too. As nuclear currently stands you have clean power production at the expense of nuclear waste that no one wants in their backyard for the next 10k years (or whatever it is). I like the idea of Thorium Salt Reactors, recyclable fuel, and safer to operate.


I view nuclear power currently as wanting your cake and eating it too. As nuclear currently stands you have clean power production at the expense of nuclear waste that no one wants in their backyard for the next 10k years (or whatever it is). I like the idea of Thorium Salt Reactors, recyclable fuel, and safer to operate.


Well, we already have a lot of nuclear waste that has to go somewhere, eventually. And right now most of it is accumulating next to reactors. I thought Yucca Mountain was the designated site and billions have been spent on it, yet it’s been stuck in perpetual political limbo for decades. People seem to be relatively fine living with reactor in their backyard (most people on the east coast live relatively close to a reactor), but storage in the middle of nowhere in Nevada is too close for comfort. Even though it’s far safer than having a reactor nearby. No one in the US has a meltdown when a nuclear submarine or aircraft carrier is docked in their city or sailing off their coast. It’s an odd double standard.

The real case of wanting cake and eating it too is this idea that 100% clean green energy is a feasible goal anytime in the near future… if ever. Maybe someday with nuclear fusion, but that is a long, long, long ways off. Even if wind and solar could magically provide enough energy 24/7/365, the grid would still not be able to function correctly due to a lack of “kinetic inertia” produced by giant, consistently turning generators found in hydro, nuclear, and fossil fuel plants.
 
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Huntn

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Well, we already have a lot of nuclear waste that has to go somewhere, eventually. And right now most of it is accumulating next to reactors. I thought Yucca Mountain was the designated site and billions have been spent on it, yet it’s been stuck in perpetual political limbo for decades. People seem to be relatively fine living with reactor in their backyard (most people on the east coast live relatively close to a reactor), but storage in the middle of nowhere in Nevada is too close for comfort. Even though it’s far safer than having a reactor nearby. No one in the US has a meltdown when a nuclear submarine or aircraft carrier is docked in their city or sailing off their coast. It’s an odd double standard.

The real case of wanting cake and eating it too is this idea that 100% clean green energy is a feasible goal anytime in the near future… if ever. Maybe someday with nuclear fusion, but that is a long, long, long ways off. Even if wind and solar could magically provide enough energy 24/7/365, the grid would still not be able to function correctly due to a lack of “kinetic inertia” produced by giant, consistently turning generators found in hydro, nuclear, and fossil fuel plants.
Yeah, I'm thinking the human race is in for a lot of pain on our descent to extinction, at least several billion of us, but most likely everyone on the board will be long gone before it happens, unless we mange to blow ourselves up.
 

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We really are buggered.

Microplastics found in human blood for first time​

The discovery shows the particles can travel around the body and may lodge in organs

Microplastic pollution has been detected in human blood for the first time, with scientists finding the tiny particles in almost 80% of the people tested.

The scientists analysed blood samples from 22 anonymous donors, all healthy adults and found plastic particles in 17. Half the samples contained PET plastic, which is commonly used in drinks bottles, while a third contained polystyrene, used for packaging food and other products. A quarter of the blood samples contained polyethylene, from which plastic carrier bags are made.


“The big question is what is happening in our body?” Vethaak said. “Are the particles retained in the body? Are they transported to certain organs, such as getting past the blood-brain barrier?” And are these levels sufficiently high to trigger disease? We urgently need to fund further research so we can find out.”

The new research was funded by the Dutch National Organisation for Health Research and Development and Common Seas, a social enterprise working to reduce plastic pollution.

Link

This has happened in the last 60 years or so, during my life span…

Major everyday usage of plastics started during the 60s when high-density polyethylene bottles were introduced to replace glass bottles.

But I would wager we'll just collectively shrug and move on… wondering why the hell we're getting sicker and more disease prone.
 

lizkat

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We really are buggered.



Link

This has happened in the last 60 years or so, during my life span…

Major everyday usage of plastics started during the 60s when high-density polyethylene bottles were introduced to replace glass bottles.

But I would wager we'll just collectively shrug and move on… wondering why the hell we're getting sicker and more disease prone.

On that last bit: Big oil, long term worship of the almighty dollar and a shortsighted view of the future?

It's weird how lesson plans for that future are offered by events of the past, but today is the only day in which we can attempt to make change.

I used to quote a line from "Out of Africa" for the simple truth that we can't see tomorrow before it shows up:

The world was made round so we would not have to see too far down the road.​

But another truth is that we may not choose to look very far ahead anyway. Businesses peg the horizon to a rolling quarter-year. The world is littered with cautionary tales about what we're collectively doing that will hasten extinction of life on this planet. But see that's in the future. Today is still in the quarter-year during which the movers and shakers of this world focus on better profit margins.

It's not true that tomorrow never comes, but how convenient that whatever our plans may be for it, they are always and can only be just talk about the future. For today, we focus on making hay while the sun shines, even as we sagely predict that rainy days are coming and so of course we plan to do something else tomorrow.

So while there's still one more barrel of oil in the ground that we can extract to make plastics (no matter the cost to a thus foreshortened future), we can just keep talking about ideas for living life without oil in the picture.

Of course we can pick up our phones and collectively trigger change or else the un-election of heads of state and legislators who are bought and paid for by the wizards of short term profitmaking. But the bought and paid for crew are banking on our not all doing that today. So far that bet has worked out pretty well for them.
 

Yoused

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We really are buggered.



Link

This has happened in the last 60 years or so, during my life span…

Major everyday usage of plastics started during the 60s when high-density polyethylene bottles were introduced to replace glass bottles.

But I would wager we'll just collectively shrug and move on… wondering why the hell we're getting sicker and more disease prone.
In the US, the environmental movement of the '70s was trying to get bottle bills passed to address this issue, to reduce non-reusable packaging. Meanwhile, the packaging industry was fighting back with an Italian guy portraying an Indian crying at the sight of a river decorated with trash.

It was massive deflection, and it worked beautifully. Guilt is an effective power play, and people seem to adore the idea of use it once and throw it away (Keurig, anyone?). The packaging industry won big by blaming all the trash on litterbugs – it's not our fault that the mountains of waste we produce are not thrown in the proper garbage cans.

The convenience ethos – cars, fast food, disposable diapers, cheap new stuff – is ridiculously difficult to combat. The only way to fix this is a cultural sea-change, but with the seas choked with microplastics (perhaps the worst example being synthetic microfibers from laundry showing up in the arctic ocean), this change may not even be possible.
 

lizkat

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When my Keurig died, I made myself revert to a French press or else pour-over coffees using a ceramic filter and brown papers, instead of getting another Keurig -- which I had bought impulsively after visiting a bro upstate and seeing how fast one can acquire that first cuppa. My brain apparently latches on almost instantly to anything that demonstrates convenience, and lets go of that attribute with reluctance.

Also, I impulsively bought a couple of 2.7oz tuna packets once, when my grocery was out of stock on the brand of canned tuna I had wanted. Found myself back there the next month looking to see if they had 12-pack boxes of the packeted kind. Amazon had them and it took me a year to quit re-upping. I still struggle not to put those on my pantry re-stocking lists nowadays.

I guess Virgil had it about right: "The gates of hell are open night and day; smooth the descent and easy is the way,"
 

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On that last bit: Big oil, long term worship of the almighty dollar and a shortsighted view of the future?

It's weird how lesson plans for that future are offered by events of the past, but today is the only day in which we can attempt to make change.

I used to quote a line from "Out of Africa" for the simple truth that we can't see tomorrow before it shows up:

The world was made round so we would not have to see too far down the road.​

But another truth is that we may not choose to look very far ahead anyway. Businesses peg the horizon to a rolling quarter-year. The world is littered with cautionary tales about what we're collectively doing that will hasten extinction of life on this planet. But see that's in the future. Today is still in the quarter-year during which the movers and shakers of this world focus on better profit margins.

It's not true that tomorrow never comes, but how convenient that whatever our plans may be for it, they are always and can only be just talk about the future. For today, we focus on making hay while the sun shines, even as we sagely predict that rainy days are coming and so of course we plan to do something else tomorrow.

So while there's still one more barrel of oil in the ground that we can extract to make plastics (no matter the cost to a thus foreshortened future), we can just keep talking about ideas for living life without oil in the picture.

Of course we can pick up our phones and collectively trigger change or else the un-election of heads of state and legislators who are bought and paid for by the wizards of short term profitmaking. But the bought and paid for crew are banking on our not all doing that today. So far that bet has worked out pretty well for them.
Great post.

I suspect deep down we humans are still wired like scavengers on the savannah — we live in the moment, sucking a marrow bone — the horizon the extent of our concept of the future.
Mind you, while our brains may be a bit short term sighted, our bodies have definitely still not gotten rid of the idea of future proving proofing "Let's hold on to all that adipose tissue, because, ya know, famine!"
 
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Huntn

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Due to supply chain issues I find I now hoard to some degree, but not full blown hoarding. If I go to the store and they are out of something, if it is not perishable, I’ll buy 2 or 3 of them next time I see the item, and then when I get down to opening the last one, I’ll start looking again. The worst is toilet paper and paper towels, I have 4-5 of each large Costco packages kept in the attic, , and when I use one, I replace it with another.
 
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lizkat

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Great post.

I suspect deep down we humans are still wired like scavengers on the savannah — we live in the moment, sucking a marrow bone — the horizon the extent of our concept of the future.
Mind you, while our brains may be a bit short term sighted, our bodies have definitely still not gotten rid of the idea of future proving proofing "Let's hold on to all that adipose tissue, because, ya know, famine!"

Re that last bit, I wonder if that explains my late winter craving for carbos. In the wild it would have been a long and harsh winter around here, and one can occasionally even see the remains of a deer out in the meadow across the way, when one of the snowdumps clears away after a thaw. The critters are sometimes nearly starving by winter's end, which explains their attraction to the likes of our shrubbery or the faintest bit of grass poking up in our yards.

But I live in a heated house with plenty of food and water, and yet during late winter, I enter the kitchen on most days feeling famished, as if I'd forgotten to have supper the night before! Seems like in the rest of the year I'm pretty indifferent to more than a cuppa java for quite awhile into the morning.


Do to supply chain issues I find I now hoard to some degree, but not full blown hoarding. If I go to the store and they are out of something, if it is not perishable, I’ll but 2 or 3 of them next time I see the item, and then when I get down to opening the last one, I’ll start looking again. The worst is toilet paper and paper towels, I have 4-5 of each large Costco packages of each kept in the attic, , and when I use one, I replace it with another.

Do to supply chain issues I find I now hoard to some degree, but not full blown hoarding. If I go to the store and they are out of something, if it is not perishable, I’ll but 2 or 3 of them next time I see the item, and then when I get down to opening the last one, I’ll start looking again. The worst is toilet paper and paper towels, I have 4-5 of each large Costco packages of each kept in the attic, , and when I use one, I replace it with another.

There are thingsI don't want to run out of too, and of course the list includes toilet paper but also things like jarred or powdered cheese, not that I prefer them -- I loathe them-- but that they're there if I run out of real cheese. Also certain canned veggies like diced beets. Can always use them under chopped hardboiled eggs or tuna with a little mayo and pickle relish if I have run out of bread, pitas, tortillas etc for sandwich exteriors.

Not sure that my pantry has got anything stacked up enough to qualify as a hoarding level though. I keep enough stuff around to go six weeks or so without running out of things I regard as critical.

There was a time during early covid-related shortages when I found myself considering doubling my next order of something Instcart had refunded me twice in a row when it was on my list but unavailable along with the alternate I had suggested.

But that, I realized, actually WAS a hoarding impulse, since the item was peanut butter and really I don't even use it that much, still had some on hand and just happened not to have stuck it on my list when I first opened what was a spare. I'd have ended up with two spares if I'd succumbed to the hoarding impulse. which at my rate of usage would have been unjustified and even stupid, perhaps risking the stuff going rancid unopened in the cupboard. Next time around Instacart delivered one jar of the stuff and I only opened it five months later...
 

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… yet during late winter, I enter the kitchen on most days feeling famished, as if I'd forgotten to have supper …
I imagine that, even with the heating, your body still needs more fuel to keep it warm – probably a biological response to the light levels. I am in the difficult position of I do not like to be cold but absolutely detest breathing warm air. In summer, I manage because that is the air there is, but in winter, finding te right balance is a challege.
 

SuperMatt

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It’s amazing people think Russia is serious about climate change when their entire existence depends on fossil fuel exports
Who are the people that think that? I’ve never seen or heard a single person say that.


But I’ve also had enough with blaming other countries. America is the biggest polluter in the history of the world.

I‘m also tired of the idea that we need to be patient or that ”green energy” is unreliable.

We’ve had many decades to solve this problem and have simply allowed fossil fuel companies to keep polluting at insane rates. In 2022, with the world burning up, there are still people saying “slow down with the green energy stuff“? No! Absolutely not.
 

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Thinking this morning of Always Going Home, by Ursula LeGuin. It's an ethnographic study of a people yet to be born in the area south and east of a flooded-out San Francisco Bay Area. It's matriarchal (men are treated like women are now) and they live like Native Americans did in the past, close to the land with near to no population growth, but there's a self-aware computer network (TOK) the men can use to communicate with the other communities in the area, and with other places in the world, if they want to. They have no gods, nor religion. Their "origin story" if you can call it that is "they came out of the water". They don't remember any more of their past than that; history is now.

Coupling that story with Ecotopia by Earnest Callenbach, I'm thinking that the carrying capacity of the earth for humans is about 500 million people. If you get to one billion, then you'd have the beginnings of another exponential rise in population again. Our exponential rise in population started happening around 1780 CE.

The first story posited that there are more congenital diseases limiting fertility, and the second posited a voluntary cultural limiting of population.

I don't know how else to achieve a sustainable steady-state small population.
 

Huntn

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Thinking this morning of Always Going Home, by Ursula LeGuin. It's an ethnographic study of a people yet to be born in the area south and east of a flooded-out San Francisco Bay Area. It's matriarchal (men are treated like women are now) and they live like Native Americans did in the past, close to the land with near to no population growth, but there's a self-aware computer network (TOK) the men can use to communicate with the other communities in the area, and with other places in the world, if they want to. They have no gods, nor religion. Their "origin story" if you can call it that is "they came out of the water". They don't remember any more of their past than that; history is now.

Coupling that story with Ecotopia by Earnest Callenbach, I'm thinking that the carrying capacity of the earth for humans is about 500 million people. If you get to one billion, then you'd have the beginnings of another exponential rise in population again. Our exponential rise in population started happening around 1780 CE.

The first story posited that there are more congenital diseases limiting fertility, and the second posited a voluntary cultural limiting of population.

I don't know how else to achieve a sustainable steady-state small population.
We need limited population and stop thinking that pro-growth is a measure of success, it’s a measure of our future demise. But this is how business psychology also works As in constant growth is success. And don’t forget about the humans should breed like bacteria, anti-abortion, Anti- contraception, raped-your pregnant-tough luck crowd. :oops:
 

lizkat

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Thread title asks if there's any good news left regarding the environment. Well yes, actually. The cleanups mandated by the EPA per the CERLCA (1980 "Superfund" act) do still slog on.

Info on how the Superfund act works and the link to a government site for Superfund project lookups are cited below, along with some current news on a particular cleanup in my own state of New York, which currently has over 80 Superfund-designated sites.

A utility company in NYS is the successor owner of property in Schenectady, NY where a gas company operated from 1851 to 1906. There are assorted pollutants in the ground which require remediation. The project site is listed in the EPA's overall National Priorities List w/ respect to Superfund cleanups. The wheels of EPA-supervised investigation and remediation of environmental threats grind slowly but they are methodical, and this site in Schenectady will finally get the attention it needs. The work at hand will be done by the utility company and overseen by NY's Department of Environmental Conservation.

Cleanup of polluted downtown Schenectady Superfund site to begin

There are currently 1334 sites listed in the Superfund's NPL. Over 300 sites have had work completed since 1980 and have been deleted from the national priority list. Just being listed does not mean that the federal government springs for the cost of a cleanup. Both historical research and site investigation are used to try to identify responsible parties. About 70% of the time, those parties pay for the cleanup or reimburse the EPA. It's common for multiple parties to have been partially responsible, and the rule is that those parties decide amongst themselves how to divide the expense of the cleanup.

National Priorities List of the EPA (searchable by state)

Here is background information from the National Geographic Society about how the Superfund act was set up and implemented, how it distinguishes between and prioritizes remedial work and "removal" projects, the latter of which are usually immediate requirements like an oil spill or other hazmat accident, and how costs of cleanups are allocated.


In looking at work product of the EPA -- for instance by deciding to review details of a cleanup in the National Priorities List-- that's when I personally shudder at the idea of Donald Trump ever coming back to power and trying to make good on his threat to fire government workers who are not political appointees.

The people in the rank and file of the EPA (and for that matter in related state level agencies) don't get a lot of press. Their reports, even with the provided glossaries, are notorious for using more acronyms than Carter ever had little liver pills, but their work product is science-based, thorough, transparent and vital to remediation of threats to our clean air and water.

All Americans want clean air and water for their kids, themselves and their neighborhoods. However, the problem in corporate situations is often like a reverse of "not in my backyard", i.e., the CEOs don't live where the pollution is occurring or will or may occur. So, business interests may not feel a personal stake in quality of a site's environment, and may lobby Congress to tone down regulations against potential or actual pollution.

Trump's picks to head up both the EPA and Department of the Interior should have been plenty warning against Americans ever contemplating having him back in the White House. They were examples more akin to putting a fox in the hen house than appointment of regulators and stewards of our environment and national resources.
 

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My kids are in their mid to early 20s, and all of them have told me that they are leaning towards not having children. Can't say as I blame them. The news today is so bleak on the environment and I got to say, it just hurts that there is a good chance that my children will have a tough go at it in 2 to 3 decades.

Venice has been on my bucket list for years, and now I have put it on the forefront to visit before it becomes just too compromised to live in (probably less than 10 years). I have read reports that the Acqua Alta which is common during full moons between Nov to April, are becoming more frequent outside of the normal lunar cycle.
 

lizkat

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Discovered in passing today: apparently a number of municipalities in the USA that decide they need new correctional facilities are opting to purchase (cheaply, one presumes) sites with toxic environmental issues, rehab them (thoroughly, one may hope?) and then build new jails or prisons on them.

It could certainly cross my mind to ask officials of municipalities engaged in buying up toxic dumps and rehabbing them for prisons whether they'd build a house for their family there, assuming the exact same remediation work was done. One could wonder about how assiduous would be oversight of that work if managed by people who thought to site a jail in such a place anyway.

One could also prefer to explore use of that money to help avoid having to incarcerate people.

Anyway: Cuyahoga County (Ohio) is debating whether and where to site a new jail -- which is thought would cost up to $750 million-- to replace one in downtown Cleveland, and today narrowly decided against buying a site that would require remediation of a toxic soil environment before construction could begin, and then ongoing measures to assure that toxic vapors could not seep up from below.


In fact it has not been determined yet if the old jail will be renovated or a new one built -- but for some reason, the meeting at hand was about possible choices of land for the latter option.

The Cuyahoga County Executive Steering Committee helping guide decisions for a new jail rejected the county’s plans to buy a contaminated site on Tuesday.

The determination failed with a 5-to-6 vote – and one abstention -- that pitted the county’s top government officials against its court leaders.

"We could probably find a way to build a prison on Chernobyl, but the question is, is that the right thing to do?” [County Procsecutor] O’Malley asked, dismissing the environmental consultant’s assurances that other jails and residential facilities across the country are using the same methods to mitigate toxins on their sites.

The vote focused more on the appropriateness of the proposed site, rather than the question of whether to renovate or build a new jail...

John Garvey, the county’s environmental consultant, defended that it would be “acceptable” to house people at the property, if the county maintains a clean soil cap and installs a vapor mitigation system to prevent exposure to dangerous levels of benzene and methane. He denied that the conditions at the county’s site could be compared to the structural issues that he said caused the methane intrusion that forced a Garfield Heights shopping center to close in 2008.

[Common Pleas Administrative Judge] Sheehan wasn’t satisfied and also continued to question concentrations of benzene reported to be roughly five times the legal health standard.

“It seems that this is a toxic tort site, with these numbers, do you agree?” Sheehan asked.

“No,” Garvey said, noting that the site is not currently under any litigation.

“Not yet,” Sheehan replied.

Experts later clarified that the high numbers relate to benzene concentrations in the soil, not in the air. The vapor mitigation system will pull them from underneath the building to prevent them from entering indoors, and release them into the outside air, at which point the concentration levels in the air “should not be a concern,” Garvey said.

He also assumed that any HVAC system installed at the site would filter out other pollutants that may be in the air from surrounding industrial operations nearby.

The steering committee’s vote was met with cheers from members of the public who have been protesting the Transport Road site since it was identified.

Most of them oppose building a new jail altogether, feeling the money could be better spent on housing, public transportation, addiction treatment, and other basic needs that could help prevent people from being locked up to begin with. They also fear the current $750 million estimate for a new jail will saddle the county with debt so long that their grandchildren and great grandchildren will be paying it off.
 
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