Feb 7: EnviroWatch

Enviromental Crimes

1) victim of garbage burning, starts to fight back
Date: 2/4/2003 1:48:12 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: deborahbarrie@hotmail.com

Hi Everybody,
This letter is from an MCS sufferer on my list that has been helping in the data gathering for one of the families that I wrote about earlier. She has just begun on her road to try and protect the air she breathes from the burning of garbageand has done some investigating. Below this email I will post her responses from several sources and anyone in Ontario can follow up if they having burning problems in their neighborhood. Other provinces and States have different stages that you must go through to endeavor to get help.

When I first started my work and informed all the members of government both federal and provincial about what my family and neighbors had gone through, I heard from the Premier of British Columbia who told me to contact his health Minister right away and he would see that the issue was dealt with. Sadly I did not live in that province and my Premier was not interested in assisting.

With the latest studies out on chemical body burden by the CDC, the EWG and a report printed in Public Health Records, we can not afford to be apathetic about the burning of garbage , and the chemical contamination of cca wood and pesticides.
Thank you to Bonita for her hard work and bravery in taking a stand.
Take care and please keep safe.

Deborah

Hi folks,
I just sent this letter to the editor of our local newspaper, The Recorder and times. I want to try this approach first and then if it doesn't help, I will follow up with the fire department and Ministry of the Environment.
Bonita

Standing Up For My Rights!

Rural folks in Elizabethtown, and many other municipalities, have been
burning their garbage for many years. Before we knew better and the laws
were changed, this was standard and acceptable behaviour. It never used to
bother me, but since becoming disabled by Multiple Chemical Sensitivities,
other people's burning is making me very sick and is seriously restricting
my outdoor activities.

Open burning of leaves and brush is allowed with a permit from the fire
department and following specific safety guidelines, but burning trash is
strictly against the law. With the high cost of dumping fees and policies in
place that can make recycling difficult and expensive, many people continue
to break the law by burning their trash.

When items of plastic, rubber, styrofoam, pressure treated wood etc. are
burned, they release many hazardous substances into the air. Many of these
chemicals are carcinogenic as well as causing problems with reproduction and
other health issues.

It is the position of the National Institute of Environmental Health
Sciences (Warner, 2002) that open waste burning is the largest source of
dioxin releases to the environment in the United States. The 1997 US EPA
report, "Evaluation of Emissions from the Open Burning of Household Waste in
Barrels", provided a quantification of pollutant releases (US EPA, 1997).
The authors indicate that burning the residential waste (paper, plastics,
rubber, foam rubber and metal foils) of 1.5 families in barrels can release
an equal amount of dioxins into the environment as a municipal solid waste
incinerator burning 200 tons per day.

Each year, St. Lawrence County waste fires release approximately 904.76 g
total dioxins/furans and 51.9 kg PCBs. In follow-up test burns, the Agency
has confirmed that open waste burning creates and releases dioxins over a
range of values due to the highly complex nature of combustion. Cancer risk
is higher when elevated levels of cancer promoting dioxins and dioxin-like
compounds are present in the body. Dioxins, furans, PCBs and
hexachlorobenzene are also recognized by the International Agency for
Research on Cancer as initiators of human carcinogenesis.

Most of these health effects would not be noticed for many years but with
Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, the effects are immediate and severe. After
being exposed to just a whiff of the smoke, I become nauseous, dizzy,
disoriented and have to stagger into the house to escape.

I can no longer go outside to enjoy gardening or horseback riding without
fear of someone in my neighbourhood burning garbage and causing me to
immediately become very ill. This is a direct attack on my freedom and
ability to enjoy my property, which is a basic right to all Ontarians under
the Environmental Bill of Rights.

Failure to comply with this law could not only result in a hefty fine from
the township fire department, it would also leave the responsible party open
to an investigation by the Ministry of the Environment and to a lawsuit by
the injured party.

I may not be able to stop all the "legal" pollution that affects my health,
but I will not stand by and allow others to make me sick by their illegal
activities. I am asking everyone, nicely at first, to please stop burning
trash, but if that fails, expect some follow-up from the authorities.

Bonita Poulin

I spoke with Mark Murphy who is the Public Education Officer with the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario today and here
is what he had to say.

Bonita

Info on burning from the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario
Jan 4/03

From:
Mark Murphy
Public Education Officer
Environmental Commissioner of Ontario
416-325-3375
800-701-6454
mark.Murphy@eco.on.ca

Recommendations:

1) If a municipal bi-law exists covering this burning issue, then pursue the matter with the Municipality/Local Fire Chief

2) At the same time or if no municipal bi-law exists, contact Vic Huggard of the Ministry of the Environment's Kingston Office
at 613-548-6906 ext 2662 or general Info at 613-549-4000 ext. 2692 to discuss problems and options.
Contact information for other regional offices is listed below.

3) If not satisfied with results, request an investigation citing section 14 of the Environmental Protection Act being allegedly
contravened (release of harmful substances affecting your health & the ability to enjoy your property)

An application must be filed to start an investigation and must be signed by two persons residing in Ontario. (Can be husband
and wife)

Having a letter from doctor and pictures of smoke from burning crossing you property, documentation of previous contact with
ministry and fire department etc. would also be helpful.

For details on the Environmental Bill of Rights go to:
www.eco.on.ca and click on publications and forms, brochures, Environmental Bill of Rights user guide

For an application form to request an Environmental Bill of Rights investigation go to:
www.e-laws.gov.on.ca and click on Environmental Protection Act and specifically section 14.

Other Ministry of the Environment Regional Offices

NORTHERN REGION

Ministry of the Environment
Thunder Bay Regional Office
Suite 331
435 James St. S.
3rd Floor
Thunder Bay ON P7E 6S7
Toll free from area codes 705/807: 1-800-875-7772
Tel: (807) 475-1205
Fax: (807) 475-1754

Ministry of the Environment
Kenora Area Office
808 Robertson St.
P. O. Box 5150
Kenora ON P9N 3X9
Toll free from area code 807: 1-888-367-7622
Tel: (807) 468-2718
Fax: (807) 468-2735

Ministry of the Environment
North Bay Area Office
447 McKeown Ave.
Suite 103
North Bay ON P1B 9S9
Toll free: 1-800-609-5553
Tel: (705) 497-6865
Fax: (705) 497-6866

2) Ohio Plant on Trial in Clean-Air Case
By MARK WILLIAMS
.c The Associated Press

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - An Ohio company on Monday became the first utility to go on trial over government accusations that it broke the law by failing to add pollution controls to one of its plants.

The Justice Department has accused utilities across the Midwest and South of rebuilding 36 power plants without installing the state-of-the-art smog controls required under the Clean Air Act.

The government says pollution from those plants winds up in the Northeast, where it causes acid rain and health problems.

In his opening statement, Justice Department lawyer Jon Mueller said FirstEnergy Corp. of Akron failed to install the controls on its W.H. Sammis plant near Steubenville during work done between 1984 and 1998.

``They should have considered the implications of what they were doing. They didn't and that's why we're here today,'' Mueller said. He said the work extended the life of the plant and allowed it to generate more electricity.

FirstEnergy said the work at the plant was routine maintenance that did not require additional pollution controls.

``The work did not cause or result in an emission increase,'' said Mason Evans, an attorney with FirstEnergy.

Mark Monti, a former Sammis plant engineer, testified that he was involved in a number of projects cited by the Environmental Protection Agency as work that was not routine maintenance. He said some work was designed to expand the operating life of some parts by up to 30 years.

The trial is expected to last about three weeks. If the judge decides FirstEnergy violated clean air rules, a second trial will determine what the company should do to correct the violations.

The Justice Department is going ahead with the Clinton-era lawsuits even though the Bush administration is considering easing clean air rules to allow utilities to avoid having to install expensive new anti-pollution equipment when modernizing plants.

02/03/03 19:30 EST

Feds Decry Fake Environmental Tests
By LARRY MARGASAK
.c The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - Private laboratories are increasingly being caught falsifying test results for water supplies, petroleum products, underground tanks and soil, hampering the government's ability to ensure Americans are protected by environmental laws, investigators say.

The fraud has caused millions of people to fill their cars with substandard gasoline that may have violated clean air standards, or to drink water not properly tested for safety, the officials told The Associated Press.

In addition, officials making decisions at hazardous waste cleanup sites have relied on companies that fraudulently tested air, water and soil samples.

``In recent years, what has come to our attention is that outside (non-government) labs are oftentimes in bed with the people who hired them, and conspired to commit environmental crime,'' said David Uhlmann, chief of the Justice Department's environmental crimes section.

The EPA's watchdog against fraud, Inspector General Nikki Tinsley, has called the rise of lab fraud a disturbing trend.

``If it was my drinking water I'd consider it very serious,'' she said, declining to identify locations affected by the ongoing investigation.

Private laboratories test products that are regulated by anti-pollution laws, and the results allow companies to certify that they're meeting the requirements of environmental protection laws.

In one instance three years ago, investigators discovered fraudulent test results by contract employees at the Environmental Protection Agency's lab in Chicago. The head of the laboratory was transferred and the contractor, Lockheed Martin, was suspended from performing tests.

The Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency have prosecuted dozens of employees and laboratories the past several years for fraudulent testing. Uhlmann, the Justice Department official, said the prosecutions have grown but statistics are not kept on lab fraud cases.

The growing number of cases stretch from New England, where a chemist for municipal water made up test results, to Texas, where the government recently prosecuted the largest tester of underground fuel tanks.

Officials said they aren't certain whether an increasing number of labs are falsifying tests, or whether more are simply being caught through more aggressive investigations and whistle-blowers.

Tinsley said there were numerous reasons for lab misconduct: poor training, ineffective ethics programs, shrinking markets and efforts to cut costs.

In some cases, the labs duped the companies that submitted samples for testing. In other instances, the companies were part of a conspiracy with the labs, officials said.

Sometimes the fraud included ``driveway tests,'' so-named because employees generate them on a computer in their own driveways, without ever visiting the facilities.

Whatever the case, lab fraud hampers an environmental protection system that frequently relies on voluntary compliance by companies backed by test results, officials said.

``If we can't rely upon science with supporting lab results, then we don't know what's out there for the public to eat or drink or use,'' said J.P. Suarez, the EPA's assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance.

``When people may not be getting harmed, they may be getting ripped off, using products that are not what they're paying for. And companies are paying for services they're not getting,'' he said.

Among the recent examples:

Intertek Testing Services, of Richardson, Texas, was fined $9 million for falsifying results at its former laboratory in the Dallas suburb. The tests of air, soil, pesticides, nerve gas agents and other hazards were used to make decisions for severely polluted areas called ``Superfund'' sites, at Department of Defense facilities and other hazardous waste locations.

Terian Koester, owner of Quality Water Analysis Laboratories in Pittsburg, Kan., was sentenced to 18 months in prison for violating the Clean Water Act and mail fraud. He was accused of fraudulent analysis of waste water, drinking water and hazardous waste.

William McCarthy, a senior chemist for the Lawrence, Mass., drinking water filtration plant, pleaded guilty to violating the Safe Drinking Water Act. During the 1990s McCarthy, who supervised quality testing, admitted he fabricated drinking water quality results. The Lawrence filtration plant draws water from the Merrimack River and distributes it to more than 60,000 residents.

Caleb Brett U.S.A. Inc., of Houston, was sentenced to pay a $1 million fine and three years probation for misleading investigators about a scheme to falsify analyses on reformulated gasoline, a blended fuel that significantly reduces pollution in populated areas. The fraud resulted in distribution of 200 million to 300 million gallons of substandard gasoline in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Tanknology-NDE International, of Austin, Texas, was ordered to pay $2.29 million in a criminal fine and restitution for false underground storage tank testing services. The nation's largest underground storage tank testing company admitted the fraud at postal facilities, military bases and a NASA facility, among other sites. The tests were supposed to detect leakage of petroleum products.

Former environmental contractor James Edward Adams of Inman, S.C., was sentenced to 27 months in prison. His company, which provided testing services for underground storage tanks, directed employees to provide false test reports to owners and operators of petroleum tank facilities in South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Virginia and Tennessee, prosecutors said.

01/21/03 17:33 EST

EPA Forces $3.9B in Cleanup Spending
By JOHN HEILPRIN
.c The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Environmental Protection Agency forced polluters to spend $3.9 billion on new controls and cleanups last year - 11 percent less than in 2001 but still the second highest amount in its history, agency officials and congressional overseers said Thursday.

The $4.4 billion spent on new controls and cleanups in 2001 was the highest ever.

The agency conducted 17,668 inspections in the 2002 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 - a 1 percent increase over the previous year but still below the 20,417 inspections in the last year of the Clinton presidency, EPA figures show.

The data, presenting a mixed picture of EPA's enforcement activities last year, were made available to The Associated Press by Democratic members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The numbers were confirmed later by agency officials, who planned to release them next week.

Civil penalties paid by polluters as a result of legal actions by EPA dropped nearly in half, to $55.5 million, and criminal penalties declined by a third, to $62.2 million. But penalties from EPA administrative actions rose 8 percent to $25.7 million.

Monetary commitments the agency won for Superfund cleanups from companies found responsible for polluting the sites fell by nearly two-thirds, to $627 million, compared with $1.7 billion the previous year.

Critics contend the numbers demonstrate the Bush administration is less vigilant in pursuing environmental wrongdoers than former President Clinton's administration.

``The numbers show an extremely disturbing trend towards weaker enforcement over the last two years in almost every category of measurement,'' Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, the House Committee's senior Democrat, said in a letter to EPA Administrator Christie Whitman.

When asked by reporters what EPA's numbers would show, Whitman declined to provide details but said enforcement numbers, while important, should not be the sole criteria for judging the agency's success.

``The way you measure whether or not we're doing our job is: 'Is the air cleaner, water purer, land better protected?''' Whitman said Wednesday. ``We need to keep enforcement, we need to come down hard on people - the bad actors. And that sends a message hopefully to everybody else: Don't mess with us.''

EPA referred 342 enforcement cases involving civil charges to the Justice Department, up 5 percent from the previous year, while issuing fewer complaints and orders itself.

Joe Martyak, an EPA spokesman, said the Superfund commitments can vary widely from year to year, ranging from $607 million in 1997 to the $1.7 billion in fiscal 2001.

``This figure reflects the fluctuation that depends on the size and number of sites in the Superfund pipeline at any given time,'' he said.

Those commitments typically pay for approximately 70 percent of the cleanups. For fiscal 2002, they paid for 71 percent. The other 30 percent is covered by general tax revenues and a special trust fund that is almost exhausted because Congress let the tax that replenishes it expire in 1995.

Martyak said President Bush will ask Congress in his 2004 budget request Monday to increase spending on EPA enforcement by $21 million above the $482 million he sought this year, including hiring 100 additional inspectors.

On the Net:

EPA: http://www.epa.gov/compliance/index.html

01/30/03 17:24 EST

5) Melting Ice, Winds of Change
By Usha Lee McFarling, January 19 2003
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-passage19jan19,0,6223705.story

RESOLUTE BAY, Canada -- For 500 years, explorers nudged their ships through
these Arctic waters, vainly seeking a shortcut to the riches of the East. The
Northwest Passage, a deadly maze of sea ice, narrow straits and misshapen
islands, still holds the traces of those who failed.

There are feeble cairns, skeletons lying face down where explorers fell,
makeshift camps piled high with cannibalized bones and, on one rocky spit, a
trio of wind-scoured tombstones. Whole expeditions, hundreds of men and entire
ships, are missing to this day. The first explorer to survive a crossing, in
1906, spent several winters trapped by ice.

Despite that -- or maybe because of it -- Canadian Mountie Ken Burton wanted
nothing more than to join the pantheon of polar explorers who had threaded their
ships through the passage's narrow ice leads and around its shimmering
blue-green icebergs.

In the summer of 2000, Burton gingerly nosed a 66-foot aluminum patrol boat into
the heart of the Northwest Passage. Ice floes could crumple the boat like paper.
Even the smallest iceberg, a growler, could rip apart its delicate hull.

But there were no bergs. No growlers. No thin cakes of pancake ice. To his
surprise, Burton found no ice at all. A mere 900 miles south of the North Pole,
where previous explorers had faced sheets of punishing pack ice, desperation and
finally death, Burton cruised past emerald lagoons and long sandy beaches. Crew
members stripped and went swimming. Burton whipped through the passage, "not
hurrying," in a mere 21 days.

"We should not, by any measure, have been able to drive an aluminum boat through
the Arctic," said Burton, still astonished and just slightly disappointed. "It
was surreal."

It was also a glimpse of the future. For several summers now, vast stretches of
the Northwest Passage have been free of ice, open to uneventful crossings by the
flimsiest of boats. Climate experts now blandly predict what once was
unimaginable: In 50 years or less, the passage will be free of ice throughout
the summer, a prospect that could transform the region and attract a flotilla of
cruise ships, oil supertankers and even U.S. warships.

"It's something no one would have dreamed up for our lifetime," said Lawson
Brigham, deputy director of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission and former
captain of the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Sea, which made it through the
passage in
1994.

The parting of the ice is the product of natural, long-term atmospheric patterns
that have warmed the Arctic in recent decades and, to a lesser extent, the
gradual heating of the planet by greenhouse gases.

The planet's temperature has risen 1 degree Fahrenheit over the last century. In
the Arctic, temperatures have risen 3 to 4 degrees. In these northern seas, at
the boundary between water and ice, that small difference has changed the
landscape for thousands of miles.

"The image of the Arctic was always one of an ice-locked, forbidden spot," said
James P. Delgado, director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum and author of
"Across the Top of the World: The Quest for the Northwest Passage." "If we as a
species have wrought this change, it's humbling, given its history as such a
terror-filled place."

'Panama Canal North'

The receding ice is throwing open a gateway to the Far North, a region long
defined by its isolation, sparse population and stark, simple beauty. Ship
traffic could carry with it a rush of civilization and commerce.

"It's not just about transport; it's about the whole development of the Arctic
frontier," said Lynn Rosentrater, a climate-change officer with the World
Wildlife Fund in Norway. "It's going to happen, so we need to plan for it."

The once-deadly route has been re-christened "Panama Canal North" by shippers
eager to shave nearly 5,000 miles off the trip from Europe to Asia. Already, a
parade of strange ships and faces is streaming through the passage. Canadian
transit officials who monitor the route dub the newcomers "UFOs," for
"unaccustomed floating objects."

These have included, in the last few years, a Russian tug that dragged a
five-story floating dry dock through the passage, adventurers skimming through
in sleek sailboats and a boatload of Chinese sailors that arrived unannounced in
the Arctic village of Tuktoyaktuk, disembarked to take photographs and left
abruptly when a local Mountie arrived.

This summer, the Canadian navy sent warships north of the Arctic Circle for the
first time since the end of the Cold War. And U.S. naval officers are
circulating a report called "Naval Operations in an Ice-Free Arctic" that
discusses, among other things, the need for a new class of ice-strengthened
warship to patrol newly opening Arctic waters.

The Northwest Passage winds through land so far north it doesn't appear on most
maps, a rolling tundra cut by wild rivers and deep fiords dotted with icebergs,
walruses and ghostly white beluga whales. It is too far north for trees or
shrubs, too far north for paved roads and, in most places, too far north for
people.

The Inuit-controlled territory Nunavut, which includes much of the passage and
stretches across 750,000 square miles, is home to just 26,745 people. That's
like sprinkling the population of South Pasadena into a few villages in an area
4 1/2 times the size of California.

Nunavut's capital, Iqaluit (pronounced ee-KA-loo-it), is already something of a
boomtown. Chosen as the government seat when the territory was carved from the
Northwest Territories in 1999, the town of 5,000 people includes a lavish
$12-million legislative building.

Just down the street is the Kamotiq Inn, an aging, igloo-shaped restaurant that
serves shavings of raw, frozen caribou meat and cold bottles of Canadian beer.
Farther down, a grocery offers fresh basil, prosciutto and Thai curry paste.

It is a confluence of government dollars and commercial opportunity. Though the
territory of Nunavut is 85% Inuit, outsiders -- government workers, hermits and
fortune-seekers -- are trickling in. French Canadian cabbies dream of retiring
to tropical islands as they drive 18-hour shifts. South Indian hotel magnates
rent snowmobiles to North Pole-bound adventurers as they wait for a boom to hit
remote Inuit villages. And hardy construction workers leave their families
behind in Halifax to come here
and build apartment buildings.

And then there are the Inuit, many of whom feel change is coming too fast. In a
place where most still put food on the family table by hunting musk oxen,
caribou and seal, there is growing fear that these changes in the weather herald
the end of a way of
life that dates to the end of the last Ice Age.

"We are a people who only 50 years ago lived only in igloos," said Sheila
Watt-Cloutier, who lives in Iqaluit and heads the Inuit Circumpolar Conference,
a global organization fighting to preserve Inuit culture. "Now, the land is
changing literally right under
our feet."

With each summer warmer than the last, and with species such as dragonflies and
moose showing up for the first time, many here are bracing for a stranger,
warmer world. Unlikely as it seems in a town where residents still skin and dry
seals in their frontyards, some of those taking a long-range view hail this
remote outpost as the next Singapore.

"If it's handled correctly, you sit on an international strait, take a proactive
stand and profit nicely," said Rob Huebert, the associate director of the Center
for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.

It was the promise of wealth that first drew European explorers to the passage.
John Cabot first sought the shortcut in 1497. English pirate Martin Frobisher
reached the mouth of the passage in 1576 but stopped his quest after finding
what he took to
be gold. It turned out to be worthless ore.

Ill-Fated Expedition

The most famous voyage was Sir John Franklin's expedition of 1845. Laden with
100,000 pounds of meat, a steam engine for heat and a library of 2,400 books,
the two-ship expedition was the pride of the British Admiralty.

The 61-year-old Franklin died shortly after his ships entered the passage,
apparently of a heart attack. His men, addled by lead poisoning from their
canned provisions, were trapped by ice. They attempted to walk to safety,
hauling unnecessary luxuries
such as books and bolts of silk cloth. All 128 men perished. Subsequent
expeditions revealed, to the horror of Victorian England, evidence of
cannibalism.

The passage wasn't traversed until 1906, when legendary polar explorer Roald
Amundsen completed the trip after three years. The feat was not accomplished
again until Canadian Mountie Henry Larsen took a schooner with a hull made of
2-foot-thick Douglas fir through the passage and then back again in the 1940s.

Although common sense mandated that the passage could never be practically used,
the siren call of the shortcut has never been silenced. The first contemporary
test of the passage for commerce was prompted by the modern-day equivalent of
spice: crude oil. In 1969, Humble Oil & Refining Co. sent through a 114,000-ton
supertanker. Double-hulled and ice-strengthened,
the Manhattan became the world's biggest icebreaker.

The 43,000-horsepower monster easily cruised through 15-foot-thick piles of ice
and would reverse, gather steam and try to plow through 40-foot ridges of ice.
But it ground to a halt several times and broke free only with the help of a
Canadian icebreaker. The ship eventually reached Prudhoe Bay with several holes
in its hull.

"When all was said and done, economically, it didn't make sense," Huebert said.

That was before the ice started its retreat.

The Canadian Ice Service reports that Arctic ice has disappeared at a rate of
about 3% each decade since the 1970s. It is getting thinner as well. Ice sheets
that used to be 10 feet thick are now less than 6 feet from top to bottom. Last
month, scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.,
announced that Arctic sea ice had reached a record low
since satellite measurements started 24 years ago.

"In some years now, you can do the Northwest Passage almost in a rowboat," said
the Canadian Ice Service's Lionel Hache.

The passage remains notoriously unpredictable from year to year, and even from
week to week. In August, it was clogged with some of the thickest ice seen this
decade, said J.P. Lehnert, the officer in charge of the Canadian Coast Guard
station in Iqaluit.

Warmth May Worsen Ice

In one of the many strange nuances of the global climate, the appearance of this
thick, multiyear ice may be a result of warming, not cooling. In recent years,
ice bridges that usually last all summer and keep out the harder and colder ice
from the north were not in place, allowing this brawnier ice to travel south.

"Ironically, warm weather can give us worse ice conditions," said Henry
Hengeveld, Environment Canada's senior advisor on climate change.

To those who have been watching the passage, it seems only a matter of time
before all manner of ships, from supertankers to sailboats, start plying these
once-formidable waters.

A few new ships test the waters each year. A hardy breed of tourists has begun
disembarking from massive icebreakers in the few small towns along the passage.
They could soon cruise through on skimpier vessels. A sailboat from New Zealand
recently made the transit.

There are no traffic jams yet. But shipping companies in Europe and Asia are
quietly sniffing out opportunities.

"The incentive is there," Huebert said. "You cut a huge amount of travel time,
and in international shipping, time is money."

The largest supertankers, which don't fit through the Panama Canal and must go
around South America, would save even more time.

The discovery of mineral resources in the far north, such as the diamond strikes
of the Northwest Territories, could spur efforts to export such riches by ship.
Canada's vast stores of fresh water may one day be valuable enough to export to
drier regions.

Experts on the Arctic environment worry that shipping could have deleterious
effects but also say there will be no way to keep the traffic out. Dave Cline, a
consultant in Alaska and expert on northern shipping, fears that ships could
disrupt the polar bears and bowhead whales that live amid the ice and could
jeopardize eider ducks that congregate by the thousands in polynyas,
open water areas within ice sheets.

He's also concerned about smuggling of polar bear hides and walrus tusks and
about the trash that would be left behind by waves of tourists. "It'd be a whole
new world up there," Cline said.

The biggest concern is an oil spill in places more pristine and harder to reach
than Alaska's Prince William Sound, an area only now recovering from the 11
million gallons of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez in 1989.

The person whose phone will ring in the middle of the night if there is such a
spill is Earl Badaloo, Nunavut's director of environmental protection services.
He's worried enough about it that he keeps track of what he calls "the
incidents" -- recent crossings of the passage by ships.

"Five vessels went through in 2000; only two requested permission," he said,
quickly scrolling through a list on the computer in his office in Iqaluit.

Although Canada has stringent shipping rules for its northern waters, compliance
is voluntary.

In 1996, the tourist vessel Hanseatic ran aground on a sandbar in the passage.
The weather was good, those aboard were evacuated safely and very little fuel
leaked into the passage. Many fear the next grounding may not end so happily.

"When you're dealing with land all over the bloody place and tons of icebergs
floating around you, you make one mistake or your boat's a rust bucket, and
you're going to have oil and toxins all over the place," Badaloo said. "It would
be really, really
messy."

The most northerly human settlement on the passage, and in all of Canada, is
Grise Fiord, about 900 miles from the North Pole. The Inuit call the town
Aujuittuq, for "place that never thaws out." Even the Inuit find some places too
cold. These bleak shores were not settled voluntarily.

During the Cold War, the Canadian government decided to relocate a few Inuit
families from the relative warmth and good hunting grounds of northern Quebec to
the country's northern reaches: the bleak, rocky shores of Ellesmere and
Resolute Bay on Cornwallis Islands, where there is little to hunt and even less
to gather.

So many American military personnel had flooded into the Arctic to monitor
Russian threats by air and sea from stations at Eureka and Alert that the
Canadians feared losing control of their northern flank. The Inuit were human
flagpoles, dispatched north to establish Canadian sovereignty.

Since then, the Canadians have considered the frozen archipelago of ocean, ice
and islands to be their land and the Northwest Passage to be their internal
waterway. "It's ours," said Col. Kevin McLeod, commander of the Canadian
Northern Forces.

Any waterway that connects two oceans is considered international waters, but
with the passage impenetrable, no countries had pressed Canada on the issue.
With an open passage, all that has the potential to change. "Our sovereignty,"
said passage expert Huebert, "is on thinning ice."

Since an open passage would link two oceans, U.S. State Department officials
argue it should be treated as international waters, open to all who wish to
pass.

"It's one of those issues on which we've agreed to disagree," said a spokesman
at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa.

With the waters open to new traffic, Canadians are taking a renewed interest in
their Arctic backyard.

"I never imagined I'd be this far north, but these are our waters and we should
know what's going on in them," said Canadian Naval Lt. Cmdr. Chris Ross as his
warship, the Goose Bay, stood anchored in Frobisher Bay outside Iqaluit, the
first warship to pass this far north in 14 years.

Fears of Lawlessness

A prominent concern is illegal fishing. As ice recedes, rogue vessels have been
moving into the area, lured by the rich Arctic seas, which are almost wholly
unregulated.

"They're just scooping the shrimp up. They're scooping the turbot up," said Lt.
Cmdr. Scott Healey, a Canadian navy officer who spent 10 years aboard coastal
patrol vessels out of Halifax and watched the once-rich North Atlantic fishery
collapse.

International waters elsewhere have been plagued with modern piracy and frontier
lawlessness.

"You become a magnet for smuggling humans, diamonds, guns, drugs," Huebert said.
"We're blind if we think that just because we're Canadian it's not going to
happen."

How best to patrol the passage remains a question. It all depends on how quickly
the ice melts and how brave interlopers are. "I don't want to scream, 'The sky
is falling and we have to build a nuclear-powered icebreaker in the next 18
months,' "McLeod said. "But we don't want to get behind the eight ball."

U.S. Navy officials are worried about falling behind as well. Their report an
ice-free Arctic cites the potential need for an entirely new class of Navy ships
-- icebreakers -- and a new focus on a harsh part of the globe the military has
been able to ignore since the Soviet Union broke up.

"There's no logistics base up there. There's no place to get resupplied. There's
bad weather. The charts are woefully bad," said Dennis Conlon, an oceanographer
with the Office of Naval Research, which commissioned the report. "It's your
basic nightmare in terms of running an operation."

If the ships come, so will the infrastructure: hotels, bars and even stoplights.

The vision is almost unimaginable to the Inuit, who are still reeling from the
first wave of change: the trickle of explorers, whalers and soldiers who
penetrated this frozen realm and altered it forever.

"We didn't know what a cold was -- or what measles were -- until the whalers
came. And we had no problems with alcohol until 1940," said Dinos Tikivik, 39, a
corrections officer and member of the Canadian Rangers, an Inuit and Indian
reserve force that patrols Canada's most remote regions.

Today's Inuit face an epidemic of broken families, alcoholism, poor education
and the highest suicide rates in Canada. Many, like Peter Irniq, 55, an Inuk who
was born in an igloo in Repulse Bay but now lives in an elegant house in Iqaluit
and serves as the territory's commissioner, blames many of the problems on the
relentless encroachment of the modern world. Watt-Cloutier, the Inuit leader,
fears that the destiny of her people is in the hands of strangers who see
opportunity where the Inuit simply see home. With each new ship that pulls in
and with each new patch of clear water, the isolation that has protected them
for 5,000
years is melting away.

"They say it would be easier if we move over and modernize," she said. "Easier
for whom?"

Pollutions

7) People carry many environmental pollutants
http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=POLLUTIONINPEOPLE-01-30-03&cat=AN
By JOAN LOWY
Scripps Howard News Service
January 30, 2003

A study released Thursday confirms what many scientists have long suspected - that ordinary people carry in their bodies dozens of environmental pollutants, including a wide variety of industrial compounds, metals and pesticides.

While most of the substances were found in minute amounts, the study raises questions about what the cumulative effects may be of a mixture of substances known to individually have toxic effects at higher doses.

The study tested the blood and urine of nine people for 210 pollutants and found traces of 167 of those pollutants in one or more of the participants. The average number of pollutants found in the nine people was 91. None of those tested work with chemicals on the job.

The study was conducted by the Environmental Working Group, an environmental advocacy group in Washington; Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, and Commonweal, a health and environmental research institute in Bolinas, Calif.

Since World War II, the petrochemical industry has introduced more than 75,000 new chemicals, although only about 12,000 are produced in high volume.

"We've never been confronted with this chemical mixture in our bodies in all of evolutionary history until now," said Richard Wiles of the Environmental Working Group. "But we know from animal studies that they can be harmful and we know that the effects that they are likely to cause are increasing in the population."

Those effects include increases since the 1970s in autism, attention-deficit disorder, early puberty, birth defects in male reproductive organs, and certain cancers, including childhood leukemia and breast, testicular, prostate, thyroid and childhood brain cancer, Wiles said.

Jay Vroom, president of CropLife America, a trade association for the pesticide industry, said the study's sponsors are trying to scare the American public.

There needs to be more research, but "there is no reason to panic," Vroom said. "Almost all the products associated with these residues have benefits to society."

A statement by the American Chemistry Council, a trade association for the chemical industry, said: "For the vast majority of environmental chemicals, there is no reliable evidence to suggest that trace amounts in human tissue present a risk to human health."

In the study, the number of pollutants found ranged from a low of 77 in Monique Harden, a 34-year-old attorney from New Orleans, to a high of 106 in David Balz, a 48-year-old research associate with Commonweal who has traveled widely and spends a lot of time in the outdoors.

Among the substances found in the participants were:

- Phthalates, which are plasticizers used in a wide range of cosmetics, shampoos and other personal care products. They are suspected of causing birth defects in male reproductive organs. Some phthalates were recently banned in Europe.
- Four metals - lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium - that can cause lowered intelligence, developmental delays, behavioral disorders and cancer. Sources of exposure include lead paint, canned tuna, arsenic-treated lumber, contaminated drinking water, pigments and bakeware.
- Organophosphate metabolites, which are breakdown products of commonly used insecticides. Some organophosphates, which are toxic to the nervous system, have been banned for indoor uses, although agricultural use is still permitted.
- Volatile and semi-volatile organic chemicals, including industrial solvents and gasoline ingredients like xylene and ethyl benzene. Most are toxic to the nervous system and some are carcinogens.
- Furans, which are byproducts of plastics production, industrial bleaching and incineration. They persist for decades in the environment and can be dangerous to the developing nervous and hormonal systems of fetuses and young children.

"This is just a little sliver of the picture," Wiles said. "We know we could now test for 200 more chemicals than we tested for and we would probably find at least 100 of those in everybody.''

A similar study by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is scheduled for release Friday. That study tested hundreds of people for 116 substances.

On the Net:
Environmental Working Group - www.ewg.org
American Chemistry Council - www.americanchemistry.com

(Joan Lowy is a reporter for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail LowyJ@shns.com

8) Farmers unknowingly poison Cambodia's farmlands, eco-systems with banned pesticides
By Denis D. Gray, Associated Press, 2/1/2003

KHNACHAS, Cambodia (AP) Barefoot and without a protective mask or gloves, Seuon
Siap pads through her cauliflower patch, dousing it with a deadly cocktail of
pesticides.

Her daughter sits among the sprayed, reeking leaves, and two cows munch grass
along the edges of the patch. The 50-year-old farmer isn't sure exactly how her
mix of three pesticides works because she can't read the foreign language
instructions on the containers.

Her village, like so many in Cambodia, seems a throwback to a bygone age:
oxcarts rolling along vividly green rice fields and sugar palms shading clusters
of wooden farmhouses on stilts.

But Cambodia's idyllic rural landscape is far from untouched by modern life.
Pesticides such as mevinphos, dichlorvos and methyl-parathion made by European,
American and Asian companies have penetrated into the remotest regions.

Many of these products are banned in their countries of origin and are
identified as extremely hazardous by the U.N. World Health Organization but they
are being smuggled wholesale into Cambodia.

Activists contend that multinational corporations and smaller operators have
made Cambodia and other poor countries a dumping ground for dangerous pest
killers, a charge denied by manufacturers.

The pesticide business has boomed in Cambodia in recent years. The Cambodian
Center for Study and Development in Agriculture, known as CEDAC, recently
catalogued at least 418 pesticide products on the market, 142 of which are
legally banned or restricted in the country. Among these, fake and adulterated
products abound.

CEDAC, a non-governmental group, estimates sales could be as high as $20
million a year about double the national government's budget for agriculture.

Cambodia isn't alone. WHO says developing countries spend $3 billion a year on
pesticides, about a third of which don't meet internationally accepted
standards. It also reports 3 million acute pesticide poisonings each year and
220,000 deaths, 99 percent of them in developing countries.

Long-term effects of exposure to pesticides, by handlers and consumers, are
believed to include damage to brain nerves, infertility, genetic mutations and
cancer.

''Cambodia is one of the worst cases. They're quite vulnerable to the pesticide
option without knowing what the hell they are doing,'' says Michael Shanahan of
the London-based Environmental Justice Foundation.

A generation of agricultural workers who could have guided farmers in proper
pesticide use was wiped out during the Khmer Rouge terror of the mid-1970s, and
the government remains weak, poor and plagued by corruption.

At the main market of Siem Reap, a major northwestern hub 140 miles from the
capital, Phnom Penh, pesticide dealer Vo Leak points to her five best-selling
products.

All are on WHO's most dangerous list, four are banned in Cambodia and all have
been smuggled from either Thailand or Vietnam. Almost none of her wares have
instructions in Cambodian.

''I don't know whether they're illegal or not, but they must be legal because
they're imported,'' she says, adding that no government inspector has ever
visited her stall.

A few miles away at Khnachas, farmer Hun Hoeun believes her unborn baby died
from pesticides she sprayed during her pregnancy and she regularly suffers the
symptoms of pesticide poisoning, including vomiting, dizziness and headaches.

''We don't want to use pesticides,'' says the mother of nine children. ''But we
(have) no alternatives. We are farmers. We have no other jobs.''

Alternatives like integrated pest management and organic farming reach only a
small fraction of Cambodia's farmers, who grow mainly for the Cambodian market
or their own consumption.

In Hun Hoeun's village, some 80 percent of the more than 200 families apply
pest killers, mostly on vegetables, and it is the women who do the spraying
while men work in the rice fields or in the towns.

Hun Hoeun says the women learn about pesticides by trial and error and from the
sellers. CEDAC's interviews with 77 traders in the Khnachas region found that
only eight could read the product labels in foreign languages and just one had
received training in pesticide use.

Farmers concoct their own chemical brews, sometimes mixing a dozen or more
pesticides with hopes of maximizing potency and eradicating pests that have
become resistant to repeated spraying of one formula.

Few farmers use boots, gloves and masks because of the cost and heat, and most
don't change their clothes after spraying, says the U.N. Food and Agriculture
Organization. Pesticide containers sit around fields and houses, often near
cooking areas and within reach of children.

Researchers say that beside harming farmers and consumers, the pesticide deluge
is beginning to degrade such ecosystems as the Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia's
largest lake and a crucial source of protein for Cambodians. The lake harbors
some 500 fish species and a rich bird life.

At Sro Maul Thom village, farmers say they abandoned mung bean cultivation
because of the cost and health hazards of pesticides.

But pest eradicators, which wash into the lake, continue to be used. Soth Dam,
a 43-year-old farmer, says he sprays Folidol on his watermelons.

He describes it as ''only medium dangerous.'' In fact, Folidol, a brand name
for methyl-parathion, is classified as extremely hazardous and has been banned
in Cambodia since 1998.

Produced by Bayer, Folidol remains one of the most popular pesticides, and is a
major target of consumer activists.

Bayer and the Peruvian government face a class action suit arising from the
1999 deaths of 24 school children in a remote Andean village who inadvertently
drank milk mixed with Folidol. The government later banned the product, which
was labeled in Spanish, a language the illiterate or Quechua-speaking peasants
couldn't read.

Russ Dilts, a former FAO official, accuses Bayer of dumping dangerous products
that are difficult to sell elsewhere.

Bayer denies the allegation.

''We are aware that the product is there, and it is a matter of concern. This
would not be a product we would register in Cambodia. First of all, it's banned,
and we know people are not aware of how to use it,'' said Rolf Dieckmann, who
heads Bayer's Southeast Asian operations.

He said Bayer could not control the smuggling of its products into Cambodia and
added that the company would be seen as promoting the pesticides if Cambodian
language instructions were put on its cans. ''We don't dump products in
underdeveloped countries,'' he said.

Dieckmann said methyl-parathion said, is still legally used in Thailand as well
as 30 other countries, including the United States and Australia, and is useful
in certain carefully controlled situations.

But in Cambodia, a combination of ignorance among farmers and poor law
enforcement spells grave trouble, said Ngin Chhay, an Agriculture Ministry
official.

''It is not fair to just blame everything on the small traders for importing
the chemicals because they, too, seem to know little about them,'' he said.
''Major producers must understand the danger they are causing.''

On the Net:

Environmental Justice Foundation: http://www.ejfoundation.org

Bayer Group: http://www.bayer.com/en/index.php

Pesticide Action Network UK: http://www.pan-uk.org/default.htm

9) Polluted site threatens water supply
Greg C. Bruno
Sun staff writer
greg.bruno@gvillesun.com
February 04. 2003 6:30AM
http://gainesvillesun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Site=GS&Date=20030204&Category=LOCAL&ArtNo=302040018&Ref=AR&Profile=1007

oxic wood-treating chemicals from Cabot-Koppers in northwest Gainesville, a federally designated hazardous waste site, have leached within 35 feet of the Floridan Aquifer and could threaten the city's underground drinking water supply, some environmental experts say.

According to data released by Beazer East - a Pittsburgh-based company that briefly owned the Superfund site and is now responsible for its cleanup - trace levels of benzene, naphthalene and other wood-preserving chemicals have migrated 110 feet below the surface near the Winn-Dixie shopping center at Main Street and NW 23rd Avenue.

Prolonged exposure to such chemicals can result in damage to bone marrow, anemia and leukemia. Both benzene and naphthalene have been found in hundreds of waste sites across the country, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Michael Slenska, an environmental manager with Beazer East, said additional tests are being planned for the site, including wells that will be drilled in coming weeks to assess any impacts on the city's underground water source.

But while both Beazer East and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials insist chemicals have remained out of the deep aquifer system, some county and local groundwater experts say contamination of the Floridan Aquifer may be a foregone conclusion, putting the city's Murphree Wellfield, Gainesville's main water supply two miles to the north, at risk.

"Everything they've detected is headed towards the Floridan Aquifer," said Stephen Boyes, a Gainesville hydrogeologist and long-time observer of the Koppers cleanup. "There is nowhere for it to come out of the ground."

For years, industrial plants on the western part of the 170-acre Cabot-Koppers site treated wood utility poles with tar and rot-resistent chemicals, including creosote, pentachlorophenol and chromated copper arsenate. A plant owned by Koppers still treats utility poles with an arsenic-containing compound on the site.

In 1983, the site was placed on the National Priorities List and designated a Superfund Site the following year. Cleanup began in the early 1990s.

Since remediation began, county and city officials have worried that Gainesville's drinking water supply could be put at risk if contamination spread or remediation failed.

Proposed solutions

As recently as last year, cleanup plans included an EPA proposal that would have essentially entombed much of the pollution onsite, removing 3 feet of topsoil and building vertical clay-like walls underground to contain the chemicals' flow.

Critics of that plan said it would ignore toxic sludge in the nearby Springstead Creek, and relied too heavily on a clay layer 30 feet below the surface, a barrier scientists said would not allow pollutants through.

If the clay layer had holes in it, pollutants could filter through and eventually migrate into the groundwater 145 feet below that quenches the city's thirst, skeptics said at the time.

Now, it seems, the critics may have been right.

A report released by Beazer East in September found that chemicals have migrated deeper than originally anticipated and may be working their way through the clay layers once thought impenetrable.

While it is unclear how contamination could have migrated through the clay layers, some soil scientists suggest that poor initial site analysis may have played a role. Much of the underlying sediment, known as the Hawthorne Group, consists of sandy pockets, not continuous layers of thick marine clay, as once thought.

Maher Budeir, the EPA's remedial project manager for the cleanup, said federal and local officials have agreed to sink 10 to 12 additional sampling wells around the site and into the Floridan Aquifer, testing for pollution and for potential contamination of the groundwater.

"We are committed to finding the most complete remedy for the site," Budeir said. "We will not agree on going forward with the remedy if it has any current or future impact on the drinking water supply."

Despite the federal government's commitment, however, some worry that Beazer East may not have the financial reserves to conduct a thorough remediation. Under federal law, contamination identified by the Superfund program traced to a responsible party must be cleaned and paid for by the party in question. In Gainesville, the EPA is offering Beazer oversight, but no funding.

Previous scares

But the Koppers site isn't the only Superfund problem now tasked to Beazer. At least seven other former Koppers sites, from Oroville, Calif., to Westborough, Mass., have been placed on the federal Superfund list, cleanups that will cost Beazer tens of millions of dollars.

In Gainesville alone, conservative estimates now place cleanup costs at $50 million to $100 million.

No contamination has been detected at the Murphree Wellfield, which supplies 24 million gallons a day to 135,000 area residents, said David Richardson, a Gainesville Regional Utilities senior engineer. Monitoring wells at the Koppers site have detected pollution in the intermediate aquifers, but not in the Floridan Aquifer, he said.

Richardson said past scares at city wellfield sites have prepared GRU for early detection of potential contamination to its aquifer.

Last year, for example, officials successfully completed cleanup of thousands of gallons of toxic solvents near the community of Fairbanks, a mile north of Gainesville. Pollutants were left there by the Florida Department of Transportation during the 1960s and 1970s that had threatened the Murphree.

And in 1965, plumes of foamy "detergents" and fecal coliforms contaminated two of the city's seven downtown wells. That discovery eventually forced the relocation of Gainesville's wellfield, from SE 3rd Street and Depot Avenue to its current location north of NE 53rd Avenue.

Still, despite careful monitoring by those charged with protecting Gainesville's water, critics of the Koppers cleanup say progress has been slow and action inadequate.

"I don't think anyone can say conclusively that under this site, the Floridan Aquifer is clean," said Chris Bird, director of the county's Environmental Protection Department.

"This is bigger than Alachua County can handle," he added. "It's too big. It's too complicated. It's too much of a mess."

Greg Bruno can be reached at 374-5026 or brunog@ gvillesun.com.

10) TOXIC CHEMTRAILS CAUGHT ON RADAR
http://www.world-action.co.uk/radar.html

Chemtrails update:
SPRAY TANKERS TRACKED BY RADAR,
LAB TESTS RAISE CONCERNS
By William Thomas - Jan. 28, 2003
http://www.island.net/~lbnews

Last fall, a long-time landscaper working under contract for the City of
Edmonton began noticing that carefully tended flowers and trees were showing
signs of severe nutrient deficiencies.

City specifications call for electrical conductivity (EC) readings no higher
than "1" in local soils. When soil samples showed damaging EC readings 4.6
to 7-times higher than this maximum permissible level, Dave Dickie suspected
that elevated levels of electricity-conducting metals in the soils could be
leading to the plants' "chlorosis" condition.

A life-long plane spotter, Dickie also wondered if there could be a
connection to events unfolding on ATC radar scopes during his regular visits
to the Edmonton municipal airport's Air Traffic Control center.

Last Father's Day, Dickie and an excited group of 12 year-olds watched two
KC-135s, tagged "Petro 011" and "Petro 012", flying at 34,000 and 36,000
feet south and north of Edmonton.

According to the controllers watching the scopes, both U.S. Air Force KC-135
air-refueling tankers had flown south out of Alaska. But the big Boeings
were not refueling other aircraft. Instead, as Dickie, the kids and the
controllers watched, the four-engine jets began making patterns over
Edmonton - "circuits" the controllers called it.

The Stratotankers were working alone in "commanded airspace" from which all
other aircraft were excluded. And they were leaving chemtrails.

TELLTALE SIGNATURES

"The signature is significant" commented one radar operator, referring to
trails clearly visible on his scope extending for miles behind the KC-135s.
In contrast, a commercial JAL flight on the same display left no visible
trail.

Going outside, Dickie and several controllers scanned clear blue skies over
the northern Canadian city. Visibility was outstanding. They easily located
a KC-135 leaving a lingering, broad white plume. They could also clearly see
the JAL airliner at a similar flight level. It left no contrail at all.

On other occasions, Dickie has watched KC-135s on Edmonton radar leaving
lingering trails as low as 18,000 feet.

"We see these guys up here a lot," radar techs told Dickie, explaining that
the USAF tanker flights originate in Alaska and continue on into the
States - after gridding the Edmonton area with emanations clearly visible on
radar.

"You should have seen it when they had the big summit up in Calgary," the
Canadian controllers exclaimed. "It was exciting to watch them." The G7
maneuvers suggested that barium might have been sprayed to enhance radio and
radar surveillance over what protesters condemned as a "globalization"
conference aimed at worldwide corporate domination.

That was speculation. But back in Edmonton, there was no doubt that
particulates were being sprayed by the tankers. Pointing to "birdie feet" on
their scopes, the radar technicians showed Dickie particles appearing "as
concentrations of dots" in the radar-tracked plumes.

Zooming in and out on each plane with the click of cursor, Dickie said that
he and the controllers "could see different contrails." Some were short, and
quickly vanished from the scopes. Other trails were thick, long and
lingering - not acting like contrails at all.

Especially exciting for Dickie and the kids was watching head-on passes
between KC-135s and commercial airliners. Flying directly at each other with
a closing rate of nearly 1,000 mph, the huge jets appeared about to collide.
But the unconcerned controllers explained to Dickie that the aircraft must
adhere to a minimum 1,000 foot vertical separation rule - recently reduced
from twice that safety margin. No one explained what might happen, if the
"top" plane suffered a sudden decompression and was forced to dive to lower
altitude.

BARIUM AND ALUMINUM CONFIRMED

Assuming that unusual metal content in the soil could be causing the high
electrical conductivity readings, Dickie collected samples of a fresh
snowfall for the city, and took them to Edmonton's NorWest Labs for
analysis.

This reporter has obtained copies of lab tests conducted on snow samples
collected by the city of Edmonton, Alberta between Nov. 8 - 12, 2002. The
tests show unaccountably elevated levels of aluminum and barium. Norwest
Labs lab report #336566, dated Nov. 14. 2002 found:

Aluminum levels: 0.148 milligrams/litre
Barium levels: 0.006 milligrams/litre

Acting like the electrolyte in a car battery, barium chemtrails developed at
Ohio's Wright Patterson Air Force Base are routinely sprayed into the
atmosphere to "duct" or bend military radio and radar waves
over-the-horizon, instead of continuing straight beyond the Earth's
curvature into space. "Wright Pat" is also closely connected to HAARP
experiments employing tightly focused, extremely high-energy radio frequency
beams to alter the weather, disrupt communications and "X-ray" bunkers deep
underground thousands of miles away the transmitter array in Gakon, Alaska.

Aluminum stunts plant growth by sucking nutrients from the soil.

Dave Dickie told me, "Our most recent snowfall was tested for aluminum and
barium and we were not surprised with the results. You've said it all along
and this just substantiates some of your claims."

But the soil expert cautioned that because the chemistry of unrefined
aluminum oxide often found in the environment depends on soil acidity and
the presence of other minerals, it is difficult to estimate "natural"
background concentrations. Even so, NorWest Lab techs told Dickie that the
elevated levels of aluminum and barium they were finding are not usually
found in Alberta precipitation.

Concerned city officials ordered more tests made on precipitation falling
within a 40 mile radius of Edmonton. A second series of lab tests has now
confirmed high levels of barium and aluminum in snow Dickie thinks fell
through chemtrails. So far, he says, there is no other explanation for the
high-levels of each chemical compound in city soils.

Dickie says it's so simple to test for aluminum and barium, labs typically
charge $10 to $15 for this analysis. He is adding quartz to the list of
possible fallout components after tiny quartz particles dominated lab tests
of rain falling through heavy chemtrails over Espanola, Ontario in the
summer of 1999. Levels of aluminum analyzed in the Ontario samples were up
to seven-times higher than provincial permissible safety limits.

U.S. CONTROLLERS CONCERNED OVER CHEMTRAILS

South of the border, U.S. Air Traffic Controllers were also concerned over
tanker-spread emissions. Just after Christmas 2001, the Air Traffic Control
manager for the northeastern seaboard became increasingly concerned that his
young son's illness - and episodes of Sudden Onset Acute Asthma suffered by
his formerly allergy-free wife - could be linked with the increased aerial
activity he was seeing on his scopes.

On March 12, 2001, this source - who came to be called "Deep Sky" by this
reporter and ABC-affiliated radio reporter S.T. Brendt - told Brendt that he
and other controllers were being told to re-route commercial air traffic
beneath formations of air force tankers. Insisting that flight safety was
not affected, he admitted during a follow-up interview at WMWV radio station
that the KC-135s were spraying something that reflected radar pulses as a
"haze" that degraded ATC radars.

Brendt contacted the FAA official after counting more than 30 big jets
within 45 minutes spreading persistent plumes over rural Maine. Also alerted
by Brendt, assistant WMWV news director Richard Dean and his staff counted
370 chemical trails criss-crossing his nearby location. But Deep Sky told
Brendt that of the nine commercial jets on his radars at the time, only one
or two would have been visible from her location..

Speaking on condition of strict anonymity, the ATC manager later expressed
concern over the classified operations conducted by much larger military
formations of KC-135 tankers between 37,000 and 40,000 feet.

Many video-documented plume patterns grid skies away from charted airline
routes on days when high altitude temperatures and humidity do not permit
normal contrail formation. Studies by Ralph Steadham of FAA-identified
traffic over Houston found that while commercial condensation trails
comprising momentarily flash-frozen water vapor typically disappear within
22 seconds or less, much broader, sunlight-reflecting jet trails left by
military jets flying at the same time in the same airspace often lingered
for four to eight hours.

CANADIANS LODGE CHEMTRAILS COMPLAINTS

The previous December, 2000 Canadian aviation authority Terry Stewart
investigating a Victoria caller's complaint of intensive "chemtrail"
activity over the British Columbia capitol left a taped message saying, "It'
s a military exercise, U.S. and Canadian air force exercise that's going on.
They wouldn't give me any specifics on it…very odd."

Despite denials from a Canadian commander at Comox Air Base that the
American tanker flights were taking place, Stewart later admitted to the
Vancouver Courier that his information came directly from the Comox base. He
was later stopped and interrogated by U.S. authorities while crossing the
border on a routine visit.

Before ever hearing of "chemtrails", Canadians were the first to formerly
complain to their federal government over what they identified as chemical
spraying. In November 1999, an Opposition Defence Critic presented a
petition to Parliament signed by 550 residents of Espanola, Ontario. The
largely native community demanded an explanation and an end to aerial
spraying by photo-identified USAF tankers, which they claimed was sickening
children and adults over a 55 square mile area.

Laboratory tests of rainwater falling through the sky plumes being paid in X
's and grid patterns over Espanola found levels of aluminum seven-times
higher than federal health safety limits. The U.S. Air Force denied flying
over Espanola. The Canadian Forces, which do not operate large squadrons of
aerial tankers, eventually responded, saying, "It's not us."

DEEP SKIES II

But in late December 2002, just three months after the traumatic events of
Sept. 11 left air force tankers gridding skies emptied of commercial
aircraft, an increasingly worried "Deep Sky" began calling his colleagues at
FAA flight centers across the United States to ask them if they were seeing
what he was seeing on his own radar scopes.

They were.

Controllers at Chicago's O'Hare (still the busiest airport in America), all
three New York City area airports, LA's LAX, San Francisco, Jacksonville,
Cleveland, San Diego, Dulles, Washington DC and the nation's biggest airport
in Atlanta all reported tracking unusual formations of particle-emitting Air
Force tankers on their scopes. So were controllers at smaller municipal
airports.

Every controller contacted by Deep Sky said they were being told to divert
commercial traffic below formations of tankers flying strange patterns they
were told were "routine".

But instead of enhancing radar coverage, initial explanations from their
superiors warned controllers that unspecified "experiments with radar"
could degrade their own displays. The controllers confirmed to Deep Sky that
they had never seen so much "clutter" or artificial "cloudiness" obscuring
their radars.

By then, a growing number of informally networked Air Traffic Controllers
were aware of the "chemtrails" controversy. Some cited the short-lived House
Resolution 2977 sponsored by Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich, which
sought to ban space warfare and other exotic weapons, including "chemtrails"
.

But concerned controllers across America told S.T. Brendt that whatever was
going on, flight safety was a consideration. Even more worrisome was the
fallout they were seeing on their scopes. They knew from their professional
studies in meteorology, that "this stuff falls to the ground." And they
wondered about what they termed, potential health hazards

As federal employees, the FAA radar operators were afraid to come forward
with their concerns. But at least one controller working in America's
heartland visited a local hospital after heavy tanker activity - to find the
emergency room jammed with acute respiratory cases.

"They want to know what the heck is in there," Brendt reported. "One of them
said - al or barium - that's not something you want to be breathing." [Al
is the chemical abbreviation for aluminum.]

Corroborating Deep Sky's allegations, controllers across the USA confirmed
that the word "climate" is still being mentioned by their superiors in
explaining the ongoing aerial experiments. At the time of Brendt's follow-up
interviews, at least six Air Traffic Controllers were told that the air
force tankers were engaged in "climate experiments".

In 1998, H-Bomb inventor Edward Teller urged the spraying of 10 million
tons of sunlight-reflecting aluminum oxide in the atmosphere to deflect a
small percentage of incoming sunlight and avert catastrophic global warming.
A patent issued to the Hughes aerospace giant calls for mixing 10 micron
particulates of aluminum oxide and other sunlight-scattering into jet fuel
for dispersal at cruising altitudes.

After studies in the U.S. and U.K. showed that random concentrations of air
pollution can cause lethal lung and heart problems, the United States EPA
now classifies 10 micron air pollutants as an "Extreme Health Hazard". (A
human hair is 100 microns in diameter.)

As reports continue to come in of renewed heavy chemtrail activity across
the USA and Canada's western provinces, lab testing continues in Edmonton,
where an ongoing investigation seeks to correlate chemtrail "spray days"
with fresh snow and soil samples.

http://www.world-action.co.uk/radar.html

# # #

William Thomas is the author of Chemtrails Confirmed.
This account of his four-year investigation into
chemtrails was last updated in Jan. 2003.
Please post freely.
For commercial reproduction, please contact
William Thomas: willthomas@telus.net
http://www.island.net/~lbnews

'STOP CHEMTRAILS':
http://www.world-action.co.uk/chemtrails3.html

BARIUM = WE AND IRAQ ARE "THE ENEMY":
http://www.world-action.co.uk/enemy.html

CHEMTRAILS & MIND-CONFUSION:
http://www.world-action.co.uk/gwen.html

CHEMTRAIL EVIDENCE:
http://www.world-action.co.uk/evidence.html

Government Conspiracy

11) Alaskan Wilderness Eyed for Oil
Interior Department Weighs Expanded Drilling at National Petroleum Reserve
By Eric Pianin, Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 18, 2003; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8587-2003Jan17.html

As much as 9 million acres of wilderness on Alaska's North Slope would be open
to oil exploration and production in a move aimed at boosting sagging production
in that region and reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil, the Bush
administration said yesterday.

The proposal, detailed by the Interior Department and the Bureau of Land
Management in a draft environmental impact report, marks the most dramatic
effort to tap new sources of energy since the administration sought last year to
open the coastal plain of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil
and gas drilling. The Senate blocked that effort after it was approved by the
House. President Bush and Republican Senate leaders have vowed to try again to
win passage this year.

At stake in the government's latest effort is an environmentally sensitive area
of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska farther to the west. That area is four
times the size of ANWR's coastal plain and contains roughly the same amount of
oil -- albeit in
areas that make it more difficult and costly to extract and transport.

About 20 percent of the area has been leased to major petroleum companies, and
the Interior Department said it is considering several options to develop a much
larger section. Because the sprawling area is not protected by the same tough
environmental
standards as ANWR, the Interior Department can decide how to dispose of it
without congressional approval.

Edward Bovy, a spokesman for the Bureau of Land Management in Alaska, said the
petroleum industry has begun to shift its attention to the National Petroleum
Reserve-Alaska after years of declining production in Prudhoe Bay. At its peak
during the
late 1970s and early 1980s, Prudhoe Bay produced 2 million barrels of oil daily,
but now it averages about half that amount. "Considering that the other
producing fields are declining, this offers new potential for new sources of
oil," Bovy said.

Ed Porter of the American Petroleum Institute agreed that the proposals for
opening the doors to more exploration in the National Petroleum Reserve could
help "stem the decline" of Alaskan oil production. But environmentalists warned
that the government was putting at risk the nation's largest remaining block of
unprotected public land that is rich in caribou, migratory birds and unusual
vegetation. Environmentalists said a major push to open that area to production
would lead to construction of a spider web of roads, drilling pads, pipelines
and processing facilities, adding to the oil fields at Prudhoe Bay that sprawl
across 1,000 square miles.

"The administration shouldn't be rushing to open up huge swaths of the Arctic
without protecting the most outstanding natural wonders for future generations,"
said Deirdre McDonnell of Earthjustice Juneau, an environmental legal defense
group. "The ecological integrity of America's Western Arctic is at grave risk
from poorly planned and damaging development," added Eleanor Huffines of the
Wilderness Society.

The administration's decision to consider another major avenue to oil production
in Alaska comes a day after the government released a new survey that concluded
that a large majority of oil and natural gas reserves on Western federal land
can be tapped with minimal leasing restrictions. Vice President Cheney's energy
task force report, issued in April 2001, recommended that Interior consider
additional "environmentally responsible oil and gas development" in the National
Petroleum Reserve-Alaska that is based on "sound science and the best available
technology."

The 22.5 million-acre area, west of Prudhoe Bay and south of the Beaufort Sea,
was set aside as an oil and gas reserve by President Warren G. Harding in 1923.
The government did not start leasing northeastern portions of the reserve until
1999, during the Clinton administration, when ConocoPhillips, BP, EnCana and
others began to move in. Discovery of oil in the Alpine Fields sparked industry
interest in the remainder of the reserve. Alaskan officials, including Sen. Ted
Stevens (R) and Frank H. Murkowski (R), then a senator and now governor, as well
as Indian tribes in the area, urged federal officials to consider options for
expanding oil exploration and production.

The Interior Department and the BLM issued a proposed management plan and
environmental impact statement that contains options for disposing of the 8.8
million acres, ranging from doing nothing to opening part or all of it to energy
exploration. The administration will decide how to proceed after 60 days of
public comment and additional review.

12) Bush Proposal May Cut Tax on SUV's for Business
January 21, 2003
By DANNY HAKIM

DETROIT, Jan. 20 - The Bush administration's economic plan would increase by 50 percent or more the deductions that small-business owners can take right away on the biggest sport utility vehicles and pickups.

The plan would mean small businesses could immediately deduct the entire price of S.U.V.'s like the Hummer H2, the Lincoln Navigator and the Toyota Land Cruiser, even if the vehicles were loaded with every available option. Or a business owner, taking full advantage, could buy a BMW X5 sport utility vehicle for a few hundred dollars more than a Pontiac Bonneville sedan, after the immediate tax deductions were factored in.

Tax experts and environmentalists say the plan would provide incentives for businesses to choose the biggest gas-guzzling trucks because it takes several years to depreciate the cost of passenger cars and smaller sport utility vehicles. The ramifications of the Bush plan on S.U.V. buyers were reported today in The Detroit News.

The potential lift for sales of big S.U.V.'s comes amid rising tension in the Middle East and increasing criticism of S.U.V.'s from environmentalists and regulators.

But a top budget official said today that the administration might be open to changes in the tax code that would bring cars more in line with big trucks.

"We have an open mind about whether the deduction for cars needs to be refined," said Dr. John Graham, the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget.

The tax code now caps deductions for most automobiles. But the largest vehicles - those that weigh more than 6,000 pounds fully loaded - are exempt because the relevant portion of the code was written in the 1980's, before the rise of the sport utility vehicle, and was intended to exempt big pickups needed on work sites. Now the tax incentives also give business owners not involved in hauling - doctors, real estate agents, accountants - more incentive to buy the biggest S.U.V.'s instead of smaller ones, or cars.

The proposal "makes a glitch in the tax code much worse and it benefits rich businessmen who want to buy massive S.U.V.'s," said Aileen Roder, program director for Taxpayers for Common Sense. "In essence we're buying these vehicles for these businesses."

But the administration says that greater business deductions will be a potent economic stimulant.

"Many small businesses have genuine needs for large vans, pickups and S.U.V.'s, whether it be for a farm, sales or industrial application," Dr. Graham said. "An updated tax deduction for small businesses is certainly needed."

Consider the Hummer H1 as an example of the new deduction. It is one of the largest and most expensive S.U.V.'s, with a base sticker price of $102,581, including destination charge. Under the Bush plan, small-business owners could use all of an annual $75,000 capital equipment deduction toward the purchase; the current equipment deduction allowance is just $25,000.

That is in addition to thousands of dollars in other deductions. Under existing rules, a business could deduct 30 percent from the base price left after the capital equipment deduction, a benefit put in place as part of a post-Sept. 11 stimulus package. In the case of the H1, that would be a further deduction of $8,274.

Finally, 20 percent could be deducted from what is left, part of the business deductions available for automobiles. For the H1, that would be $3,861 more in deductions.

The total would be more than $87,000 in deductions, or about $33,500 in savings in federal taxes alone for buyers in the highest bracket. Under current rules, just less than $60,000 could be deducted.

Deals for cars and small sport utility vehicles are much less appealing. Currently, a business can deduct no more than $7,660 for a car in its first year of service, $4,900 in the second year and less in the succeeding years. The Toyota Prius, which uses a fuel-efficient blend of gasoline and electric power, is eligible for an additional $2,000 clean vehicle deduction. That means a business owner could deduct under half of the $20,500 sticker price of the Prius in the first year of purchase, for about $3,700 worth of federal tax savings for those in the highest tax bracket.

David Friedman, an engineer and analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group, said the increased deduction for big vehicles was "yet another loophole that the government is keeping open that is increasing our oil dependence."

"Before, it was large enough to drive a small S.U.V. through," he added. "Now it's large enough to drive a Hummer through."

Without altering the treatment of cars in the tax code, the Bush plan could run counter to the administration's recent decision to force automakers to improve the fuel economy of S.U.V.'s, pickups and minivans by 7 percent by middecade.

That is probably why the administration is open minded when it comes to reviewing the tax treatment of different kinds of vehicles.

Dr. Graham reiterated today that the administration was also considering further fuel economy measures. S.U.V.'s and pickups that weigh more than 8,500 pounds fully loaded have been exempt from federal fuel regulations. But the administration "is currently investigating whether those rules should be extended to larger light trucks" weighing as much as 10,000 pounds, he said.

SustainUS
URL: http://www.sustainus.org
A guide for youth organizing for sustainable development. Key sections to visit are The Basics, which describes our mission and the importance of sustainability, and Get Involved, which lays out a detailed campaign plan for you to use on your campus.

Youth for Environmental Sanity (YES!)
URL: http://www.yesworld.org
One of the leading youth-run environmental organizations in the world. YES! conducts a national speaking and workshop tour, as well as three-week-long summer Action Camps in seven countries.

Student Environmental Action Coalition
URL: http://www.seac.org
The largest student environmental organization in the world. SEAC's goal is to put students in contact with the resources to best fit their needs.

Center for Environmental Citizenship
URL: http://www.envirocitizen.org
Dedicated to educating, training, and organizing a diverse, national network of young leaders to protect the environment.

The Sierra Student Coalition
URL: http://www.ssc.org
The student-run arm of the Sierra Club. The SSC exists to empower younger people to take effective action for our planet.

Earth Force
URL: http://www.earthforce.org
A national, nonprofit organization that is youth-driven and nonpartisan. Their vision is to build the most effective program to help young people, ages 10-14, improve the environment through developing citizenship skills and addressing real environmental issues in their communities and nationally.

Environmental Working Group
URL: http://www.ewg.org
Find out what's not right in your neighborhood.

EarthYouth.net
URL: http://earthyouth.takingitglobal.org
A network of young people taking action for a more sustainable planet. This site is also the one-stop portal for youth at the World Summit on Sustainable Development and has been developed collaboratively by several youth organisations. You will be able to work together on projects that make a difference, read stories that inspire, and contribute news, views, and vision here.

Red Road
URL: http://www.redroad.org
Preserving and protecting indigenous cultures and species through education and activism; also, Earth Connections program teaches "at risk" youth about ecology.

Bay Area Action & Peninsula Conservation Center Foundation
URL: http://www.baaction.org
The Schools Group Project is made up of a group of high school aged students from various peninsula schools. They meet weekly to discuss issues and plan action. A highlight is the annual youth environmental conference "for youth by youth". They have also campaigned on different local/global, environmental/human rights issues over the past 10 years.

Indigenous Environmental Network
URL: http://www.ienearth.org
This site is run by a group of indigenous grassroots groups across the country that came together to help solve the myriad environmental problems that the United States has created on Native American lands, from clearcutting forests to nuclear and toxic waste disposal. They have a great links to different enviromental issues, URL: http://www.ienearth.org/ien_links.html

Native Forest Council
URL: http://www.forestcouncil.org

Green Peace
URL: http://www.greenpeace.org
Greenpeace is a non-profit organisation, with a presence in 40 countries across Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific. As a global organisation, Greenpeace focuses on the the most crucial worldwide threats to our planet's biodiversity and environment.

Rainforest Action Network
URL: http://www.ran.org
works to protect the Earth's rainforests and support the rights of their inhabitants through education, grassroots organizing, and non-violent direct action. RAN has a remarkable site with lots of information, interactivity, and beautiful design work.

Advocacy Project
URL: http://www.advocacynet.org
A "virtual organization" committed to human rights projects with a special interest in information technology.

Digital Freedom Network
URL: http://dfn.org
The Digital Freedom Network (DFN) develops and promotes the use of Internet technology for human rights activism around the world. DFN designs online campaigns, makes technical information more readily available to activists, and provides an online voice to those attacked for expressing themselves.

EarthScan
URL: http://www.earthscan.co.uk
EarthScan is a UK- based but worldwide distributor of publications on sustainable development and the environment. Their goal is to increase understanding of these issues and influence policy change. NGOs may receive a 15% discount on materials.

Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center
URL: http://www.kswild.org
Defending the globally outstanding natural environment of the Klamath-Siskiyou region.

Umpqua Watersheds
URL: http://www.umpqua-watersheds.org
Roseburg, Oregon based environmental group monitoring and protecting the Umpqua River Basin.

McKenzie River Gathering
URL: http://www.mrgfoundation.org/html/index.php
The foundation's mission is to help build the progressive movement in Oregon by funding projects that promote institutional change and challenge the vast inequities that create and perpetuate economic, environmental and social injustice.

Cascade Resource Advocacy Group
URL: http://www.crag.org
CRAG is a non-profit public interest law firm working to promote sustainable co-existence with our shared natural resources.

Fund for Wild Nature
URL: http://www.fundwildnature.org
Funding cutting-edge environmental action since 1982.

Wild Northwest Photography
URL: http://www.wildnorthwest.org
Nature and conservation photography of the Pacific Northwest, with a focus on the old-growth forests and wilderness of Oregon. Provides a variety of services for conservation groups in the Northwest.

Gifford Pinchot Task Force
URL: http://www.gptaskforce.org
Conservation group monitoring timber sales in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and organizing grassroots campaigns to defend wild areas in Southwest Washington.

Find your US representative
URL: http://www.house.gov/writerep
Find out who's the congresscritter in your neck of the woods and write them a letter.

US Forest Service National Headquarters
URL: http://www.fs.fed.us

Enviromental Crimes	Global Warming	Health
Pollutions	Government Conspiracy	Useful Web Links