Today, on Blog Action Day, at least fifteen thousand bloggers around the world have united to put one very important issue on our front burner - the environment. I thought I'd use the occasion to discuss the Lehigh Valley's dirty little secret - its air.According to The American Lung Association's 2007 "State of the Air" report, Lehigh and Northampton Counties both get Fs for high ozone days and particle pollution.
This is nothing new. According to an older Scorecard report, Northampton County ranks among the top ten per cent of the dirtiest counties nationwide. Our biggest polluters?
RELIANT ENERGY PORTLAND POWER PLANT, MFS INC. (Bethlehem), PPL (Martins Creek), KEYSTONE CEMENT CO. (Bath), and ESSROC CEMENT CORP. (Nazareth). They released about 5.2 million pounds of pollutants into our air, streams and grounds in the course of just one year.
But when it comes to our air, we do it to ourselves. It's a slow death caused mostly by our own driving. We can't blame it on Big Business. We're killing our own children and elderly.
Yet we continue to sprawl, creating a demand for more roads and shopping centers disguised as quaint little village shops. People will drive forty miles to "promenade" in suburbia. Long range plans call for Route 22, which bisects the Lehigh Valley, to be expanded from four to eight lanes. That will exacerbate the problem, creating a situation called "induced travel."
The American Lung Association recommends some steps we can take to help minimize the problem. These include checking the LV's daily air quality level. You can do this yourself right here. In addition, instead of driving, it's suggested we hop on a bus from time to time. LANTA board member Peter Schweyer may resent the inconvenience of waiting behind a bus along Hamilton Street, but should recognize that most cities actually encourage commuters to use mass transportation.
Why don't we come up for air?
17 comments:
A great website without political overtones regarding the environment and what you can do individually from the folks at National Geographic:
www.thegreenguide.com
Let us not forget the devastating impact of agriculture on our environment. Farmland preservation is counterproductive to those wishing to breath free.
"Farmland preservation is counterproductive to those wishing to breath free." WTF?
Phone your office. Farming is one of the leading causes of carbon emissions.
Hey, lets stop farming! Clean air or no food, tough decision.
So humans have been polluting as long as we have been farming?
Burn all the Farms!
The point is that there are major disagreements, even within the environmentalist community, about how (if at all) to address climate change. Many think farmland preservation is vital, while others blame farms, and especially meat-producing ranches, for carbon emissions. Some rail against logging, while others maintain it is a renewable resource, and cut trees - turned into wood and paper products - still maintain their carbon until/unless these products are burned. It's a complex issue, made more so by competing political interests.
So that explains the little nagging cough I get whenever I pass through the Amish country of Lancaster county!
Thanks for the heads-up, I'll find an alternate route (and probably burn more gas doing so).
I'm not entirely sure how farming worked its way into a post about air pollution. Farming has little to do with ozone or air pollution. It has plenty to do with water pollution, but only because of the chemical fertilizers being used.
Personally, I'm not crazy about we're doing to our own children and grandchildren.
I remember seeing on the news a few months back about how the quality of air in the Lehigh Valley had improved, but was still unacceptable.
It will never change.
In observance of this international Blog Action Day emphasizing the environment - and specifically today's Lehigh Valley Ramblings post, "The Lehigh Valley's Dirty Little Secret - its Air" - the quality of the valley's air would hardly be improved by a proposed development whose plans "cover 56 acres on the eastern end of the 124-acre former Bethlehem Steel land in south Bethlehem" as reported by reporter Nicole Radzievich in October 12, 2007's edition of The Morning Call.
"The plans," she reports, show a casino with 3,000 slot machines, a 12-story hotel with 300 rooms, several retail shops and restaurants, an events center that could host as many as 3,500 concert attendees, and more than 5,100 parking spaces."
"The Sands BethWorks development, one of the most high-profile projects in the city, will have its final public review.
The review "to build a casino at the old Bethlehem Steel plant is scheduled for October 16, 2007, in Bethlehem's Town Hall, 10 E. Church St. at 3 p.m."
"That's when [and where]the city Planning Commission is set to review the land development plans, and it will be the last chance that the public can comment on the project at the south end of the Minsi Trail Bridge."
At issue besides air quality at that review will be soil and ground-water pollution and the remediation, or lack thereof, by Pennsylvania's BAT (Brownfield Action Team, the watered-down (no pun intended)version of the federal CERCLA, or Superfund, statute - and by reclamation and remediation consultant's like Donna Taggart Associate's Chad D. Helmer.
Besides ground water, another environomental issue at the review will be pollution resulting from surface storm-water runoff and the Pennsylvania statute regulating it, Act 167.
This source of pollution would be exacerbated by acres and acres of huge buildings and their parking lots and the roads accessing them, such as Commerce Center Boulevard.
Finally, the pump stations built by the U.S. Corp in 1964 to control runoff from south Mountain and prevent storm water from backing out of sewers along Second and Third streets are inoperable.
They are the only such pump stations in Pennsylvania not in service, as reported by The Morning Call's Harrisburg Bureau chief John L. Micek in the publication's December 10, 2006, edition.
As reported in the October 4, 2007, edition of The Morning Call, "in 2001, when Bethlehem Steel filed for bankruptcy,[it]was ultimately sold [first to billionaire Wilbur Ross and then to billionaire Lakshmi MIttal of India and then portions of it subdivided and sold first to Lehigh Valley Industrial Parks Inc. and then further subdivided and sold to BethWorks Sands Casino LLC of it to Majestic Realty of California], smf oyd ,and its multimillion-dollar pension obligations were turned over to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. a federal agency created in 1974 as a safety net for failed company pensions."
"Richard Sterner of Wind Gap was in Canada on Wednesday when the letter probably reached his mailbox" with the bad news that the PBGC had overpaid his pension and would have to be returned.
"The Steel maintenance man is in Ontario helping run a campground to make a few bucks to keep the bank from taking his home."
i find it ironic to worry about runoff from the casino, considering what came out of the stacks from bethlehem steel. we have gone from a smoke stack district to a rust belt in 35 years. our reduction in emissions is probably 10,000%. i remember back in the 70's the area would negotiate emission unit trades to maintain the existing industry, now we're talking about gas from cows!
Re Farms:
Cows = methane.
Politicians = Another form of bovine exhaust.
It's time to ban the Bull.
But then I'll have to stop blogging.
What an incredible train of thought! We went from air pollution to farms, to casinos, to steel, to pensions.
The only common thread I see is that at each stop, the little people are the ones getting jabbed with the stick!
LV air quality is going to get a serious body blow when I-80 toll refugees begin rolling through our area.
Pedal your bicycles until the cows come home (or at least cease farting), but it'll be of little consequence when the increased traffic arrives.
Thanks to Ed Rendell and all the legislators who approved it.
I've heard rumor that Bob Freeman will introduce legislation to provide free masks and cough drops for all children and elderly who experience respiratory distress.
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