Marine Pollution Control8631 West Jefferson Avenue
Detroit, MI 48209 USA
313.849.2333 - 24/hour
11324 E Lakewood Blvd., #12 & #13
Holland, MI 49424
800-521-8232 – 24/Hour
GSA Contract #: GS-10F-0268R
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Humans are Nearly Halfway to Wrecking the Planet
Jan 17, 2015 08:20 AM ET
By Patrick J. Kiger
Toxic algae blooms, such as this one in Lake Erie in 2014, are one sign that human’s are exceeding “planetary boundaries” that keep the Earth hospitable to life, according to a new study.
Humans are nearly halfway to damaging the environment so gravely that the Earth will cease to be a “safe operating space” for our species, reports a just-published article in the journal Science.
The paper, which is the work of an international team of 18 scientists headed by Will Steffen of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and Australian National University in Canberra, reports that four of nine “planetary boundaries” have been crossed as the result of human activity, meaning that we’re in big trouble in those areas.
Report: Tests of ballast water treatment systems are flawed
01/15/2015
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — Government-sanctioned tests of equipment designed to cleanse ship ballast water of invasive species are seriously flawed because they don't determine whether the systems will remove microbes that cause gastrointestinal illnesses, scientists said Wednesday.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the Coast Guard have set limits on the number of live organisms ballast water can contain, based on standards proposed by an international agency in 2004. To comply, ship companies must install technology that kills enough creatures to meet the limits.
Laboratory testing of treatment systems has been conducted for 10 years. But a newly published paper in the Marine Pollution Bulletin contends the evaluations have a crucial defect: They don't adequately measure the systems' effectiveness against three disease-carrying microbes that the regulations target. One of them, E. coli, can indicate the presence of fecal sewage.
"This is a real problem," said Andrew Cohen of the Center for Research on Aquatic Bioinvasions in Richmond, California, who wrote the paper with Fred Dobbs of Old Dominion University in Virginia. "We know there are serious pathogens in ballast water. There's good evidence that ballast water has moved them around the world and into U.S. waters."
The Coast Guard declined to comment and EPA had no immediate reaction to the report.
Veolia searches for profit from first-world waste
1/9/2015
PARIS (Reuters) - French environmental services group Veolia plans to rummage through the rubbish for valuable raw materials to help offset stagnation in its water business, Chief Executive Antoine Frerot said.
Frerot ruled out acquisitions in the water business and said that water, waste and energy divisions -- which made up 45, 35 and 20 percent of 2014 revenue respectively -- will move towards one third each as technological breakthroughs in waste recovery and scarcity of commodities boost recycling worldwide.
He expects the global recycling market to grow 10-15 percent per year to 40 billion euros by 2020 from 25 billion today. Veolia's recycling turnover should more than double to about 5 billion euros by 2020.
Frerot sees huge potential in the waste flow from developed countries, where high-tech sorting and recycling technologies increasingly turn household and industrial detritus into a source of new commodities and energy.
Scientists: Great Lakes teeming with tiny plastic fibers
1/12/2015
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — Scientists who have reported that the Great Lakes are awash in tiny bits of plastic are raising new alarms about a little-noticed form of the debris turning up in sampling nets: synthetic fibers from garments, cleaning cloths and other consumer products.
They are known as "microfibers" — exceedingly fine filaments made of petroleum-based materials such as polyester and nylon that are woven together into fabrics.
"When we launder our clothes, some of the little microfibers will break off and go down the drain to the wastewater treatment facility and end up in our bodies of water," Sherri "Sam" Mason, a chemist with the State University of New York at Fredonia, said Friday.
The fibers are so minuscule that people typically don't realize their favorite pullover fleece can shed thousands of them with every washing, as the journal Environmental Science & Technology reported in 2011.
BOEM Adjusts Limit of Liability for Oil Spills from Offshore Facilities
1/9/2018 Increase needed to keep pace with inflation, preserve deterrent effect
As part of the Obama Administration's ongoing efforts to ensure the safe and responsible production of domestic offshore energy resources, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has administratively increased the limit of liability for oil-spill related damages from $75 million to approximately $134 million for offshore oil and gas facilities. This is consistent with recommendations to increase the liability cap from the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and other studies and represents the maximum increase allowable under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990.
“BOEM is taking an important step to better preserve the “polluter pays” principle of the Oil Pollution Act and further promote safe and environmentally responsible operations,” said Acting Director Walter Cruickshank. “This is the first administrative adjustment since the Oil Pollution Act was enacted in 1990 and is needed to keep pace with inflation, which has increased 78 percent since then.”
The administrative adjustment to the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 liability cap for offshore facilities is based on the significant increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) that has occurred since 1990. The liability cap is set by statute and may only be adjusted to address significant increases in the CPI. The increase to $134 million represents the maximum increase that may be implemented absent new legislation.