The Military-Industrial Complex Is Marvel's Newest Sponsor

Update: Marvel says that it "will not be proceeding with this partnership.

By Jordan Pearson

By Matthew Gault
6.10.17

Update: Marvel announced that it "will not be proceeding with this partnership" with Northrop Grumman. It also sent us the following statement:

"The activation with Northrop Grumman at New York Comic Con was meant to focus on aerospace technology and exploration in a positive way. However, as the spirit of that intent has not come across, we will not be proceeding with this partnership including this weekend's event programming. Marvel and Northrop Grumman continue to be committed to elevating, and introducing, STEM to a broad audience."

The original story follows below:

Up until now, Marvel Comics only had one arms manufacturer in its roster of superheroes: Tony Stark, better known as Iron Man. Now, it has two.

On Friday, Marvel announced that the company is "joining forces" with Northrop Grumman, manufacturer of the Global Hawk surveillance drone and the fifth-largest arms manufacturer in the world.

The company has already released a comic book starring a new team of heroes who work for Northrop Grumman, called Northrop Grumman Elite Nexus, or N.G.E.N. You know, like "engine," as in the engine of the B-2 Spirit, a stealth bomber that Northrop manufactured for the US government and dropped bombs over Kosovo and the Middle East.

The comic is titled "Start Your N.G.E.N.S! Part 1," which means that there's at least one more part coming in this series, god help us, if not more. The first instalment sees Northrop Grumman operatives teaming up with the cast of the Avengers, one of Marvel's hottest properties at the moment.

The comic is also marked "all ages," which means that children can and probably will read this. In short, it's a marketing tool aimed at kids to get them to think favorably of the military-industrial complex. Nice.

Neither Northrop Grumman nor Marvel Comics immediately responded to Motherboard's request for comment.

In case this wasn't already all painfully on the nose, the comic also features a backpage ad that places photos of the fictional Stark Industries and the very real Northrop Grumman next to each other with the text, "Dream vs. Reality." The implication being that Stark Industries is the Marvel version of Northrop Grumman, which already has a Marvel version of itself? Ugh, my head hurts.

Fans and commentators have already taken to Twitter to voice their disgust regarding the partnership, an early indication that this will continue to not go well for Marvel. Still, at the very least, they probably made a lot of money.

Philosophical Soup: The glorification of the U.S. military-industrial complex in film

April 14, 2021  by Max Ferrandino


The following article contains spoilers for “Outside the Wire.”

Action movies are undeniably entertaining and captivating, and the genre is typically defined by big, strong military heroes. Take “Outside the Wire,” all of the “Captain America” movies or basically any Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero film for example.

In reality, however, superheroes such as Captain America and Captain Marvel are just figures who are glorifying the United States’ military-industrial complex. And Marvel movies aren’t the only films that do this.

In the recent Netflix movie “Outside the Wire,” Anthony Mackie plays a U.S. robot soldier fighting against Russia in a civil war in Ukraine. Captain Leo, Mackie’s character, is the latest in the line of supersoldiers in films. At the end of the movie, he goes rogue and tries to prevent future wars and the super-soldier program by launching nuclear missiles against the United States.

Ultimately, Thomas Harp, the hero of the movie, stops Leo from launching the missile. Framing Leo as the well-meaning villain only serves to glorify the United States’ endless wars. Netflix tries to make a complex point, yet it falls short once again by letting the U.S. hero win.

“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” is another example. While the action sequences in this film are excellent, it, too, glorifies the military-industrial complex.

“Avengers: Endgame,” another action movie, was the second highest-grossing film ever, raking in only around $46 million less than “Avatar.”

It raises the question: What does the United States love so much about action movies that are steeped in military themes?

I watch action movies simply because I enjoy watching them, not out of any sense of patriotism. However, I think this may be too simple of an explanation. If you think about it more, action movies — perhaps similar to all forms of media — help us escape the mundane nature of our lives.

I do not seek to take my mundane life for granted. I am incredibly lucky to be able to go to college and have a set routine. Places that are currently being destroyed by the U.S. military are not so lucky.

Just last week for my Introduction to International Relations class, I watched a video in which a Syrian mother described how a berry tree was able to protect her and her children from the shrapnel of a Russian bomb that dropped on their village.

The United States, and other countries, has been pulled into a humanitarian crisis in Syria. The lives of those who live in Syria have been affected by near-constant war for the last 10 years. This in turn has become a sort of proxy war between the United States and other countries.

I know the damage our military-industrial complex causes, yet I still unintentionally support it through watching action movies. Can I reconcile my enjoyment for movies such as “Lady Bird” with my enjoyment of “Captain America” and the violence it helps to normalize?

The depiction of U.S. exceptionalism in films have influenced cultural perceptions of enemies in these movies and real-life U.S. adversaries. In most films, these enemies are the Russians or Soviet Union — a remnant of the Cold War — North Koreans or Islamic extremists.

The United States has fought so many different countries around the globe that there is no shortage of enemies for action filmmakers to use. By using a biased narrative and blurring the line between real and fictional wars, the United States gains control of who is perceived as the enemy of the people. This can be dangerous if used to misguide or miseducate the public to garner support for wars.

To sum up, our perception of the United States cannot be separated from how action movies depict the country. One feeds the other.

The military thrives upon the media industry portraying the institution in a positive light. To understand the United States, all you need to do is watch an action movie to get a sense of what the country thinks of itself as: the shining beacon of light in a sea of chaos.

Yet the United States image as a world power has been tainted, which is why it is so necessary for action movies to show a U.S. perception of reality and why it is doubly more crucial for us to recognize and be aware of this propaganda the next time we indulge in the MCU and other films.

Fed up, Argentina’s domestic workers demand a better deal

Argentina’s domestic workers, badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic, are forming and joining unions to demand better pay and conditions.

Domestic worker Angelica Lopez at a labour protest in Buenos Aires, standing in front of a banner bearing the name of the union she co-leads [Courtesy of Anita Pouchard Serra with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting]

By Natalie Alcoba
24 Jun 2021

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Buenos Aires, Argentina — Angelica Lopez takes three buses to work.
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She could take two buses, but her left knee hurts. It has hurt for a long while and she doesn’t have paid sick leave to rely on while she has an operation.

“Whenever I walk, it makes this sound. Tok tok tok.” She grins through the pain, as she approaches the household cleaning job that will keep her on her feet all day.

Lopez counts herself among those to still have work in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic that has been merciless, especially for women in her position.

Her commute tells you a lot about the world in which she lives. It starts down a laneway around the corner from a tyre shop in Bajo Flores, one of the poorest enclaves of the capital city. She lives on the top floor of a two-story building, in a single room with her grown son who is studying. They share a bathroom and kitchen with the other residents.

The mother of four, and grandmother of seven, takes the same route every day out of her neighbourhood, past the police post and the officer in army fatigues. She skirts a park and murals exalting Jesus, and a grocery store selling ribs at 750 pesos a kilogramme ($7.85), until the stop for the 34 bus. It will take her on a ride, literally and figuratively, past the changing face of Buenos Aires and the chasm that traps its subjects.

The commute ends at the white gates of an exclusive high-rise in the city’s trendy Las Canitas neighbourhood, where Angelica will work for six hours, two days a week. That earns her 10,000 pesos a month, or the equivalent of $105. Her rent costs double that.

“Basically, we’re surviving on luck,” said Lopez, 52, originally from Peru. “Even now, we’re still living in poverty. It’s just not enough.”

That “not enough” has become a galvanising force for a wide and often invisible sector of Argentina’s workforce.

Household workers do a variety of jobs – mostly cleaning tasks, but also caring for children or the elderly. Before the pandemic, the government estimated some 1.4 million women worked in what is known as the domestic sector. The pandemic has almost surely diminished their ranks, and most definitely worsened their working conditions.

A long and strict lockdown prohibited most of them from going out to work. Many lost income, even though they should have received it. Others endured a higher risk of COVID-19 exposure after their employers misclassified them as essential workers in order to dodge shutdown orders.

As COVID-19 restrictions stacked the deck even further against them, these women met each other on the streets of Buenos Aires, fearful of the risks they were taking, but determined to have their voices heard.

Since October, there have been at least seven marches by household workers in Buenos Aires to put pressure on the government to do more to help them.

Household worker Angelica Lopez takes three buses to work [Courtesy of Anita Pouchard Serra with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting]

Collective action

While unions for household workers predated COVID-19, few labourers actually signed up – until now.

“The changes during the pandemic were brutal. Economically, psychologically, morally,” said Lopez, who turned to soup kitchens to survive. “The workers – all of us – lost work. Many of us worked in an informal way, and, to be honest, many of us ended up on the streets, we were evicted… we need a union that is formed by workers, that represents us.”

Household workers represent 8 percent of Argentina’s total workforce and just over 17 percent of all working women. Almost half of these women are the breadwinners in their homes.

Legislation passed in 2013 mandated that all household workers be registered, so their employers would have to pay social insurance, make pension contributions, and give workers paid maternity, sick and bereavement leave. But the vast majority — 77 percent, according to a 2018 study — remain unregistered.

“If you don’t protest, if you don’t make noise, they won’t listen to you. You can’t achieve much by staying silent,” said Estela Avila, 59, who has worked for 40 years cleaning houses and is now the president of a new union called Asociación de Trabajadoras del Hogar y Afines (Association of Household and Related Workers).

It’s not enough, say activists, to scrape by on a meagre salary, which the government sets at 25,000 pesos a month or $262 – less than half of what a family in Argentina needs to survive on without falling below the nation’s official poverty line.

There have been some small victories. This month, a union representing workers and groups representing employers negotiated a 42 percent wage increase over the next year. But the pay bump is not expected to keep up with inflation in the financially volatile country.

But more unions are forming, spearheaded by the women themselves, including one co-led by Lopez under the Partido Obrero (Workers’ Party) of Argentina.

Lopez, who spends a lot of time these days on Zoom and WhatsApp strategising with her fellow union members, has become comfortable standing behind a megaphone at demonstrations.

Natividad Obeso is the founder of AMUMRA, an organisation that helps and supports immigrant women in Argentina [Courtesy of Anita Pouchard Serra with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting]

The most vulnerable

About 9 percent of the household workforce in Argentina are migrants from other countries, a 2018 government study found.

The undocumented are perhaps the most vulnerable workers in the domestic sector. Many, for example, couldn’t access pandemic aid offered by the government. But many see the renewed emphasis on collective action spawned by the pandemic as an opportunity to bring these workers out from the shadows.

“The crisis caused by the pandemic is also an opportunity to make visible the precarious conditions that this labour force lives through,” said Macarena Romero, a political scientist who researches issues related to migration, gender and care work.

“The empowerment that is taking place is not just about a political position. It’s about unmasking the discriminatory, stigmatising and racist xenophobia of many societies, in this case Argentina, that creates the conditions that put these women in vulnerable positions to begin with,” she told Al Jazeera.

Natividad Obeso is the founder of United Migrant and Refugee Women in Argentina – AMUMRA, an organisation dedicated to promoting the rights of migrant women. Originally from Peru, she worked as a cleaning lady in Buenos Aires until the day her employer told her she wasn’t entitled to take a holiday off.

“I removed my uniform that day and put it in the garbage,” she told Al Jazeera.

Obeso helped draft recommendations that shaped the 2013 law. While that represented an important advance for household workers, she says the government has fallen down on enforcement – something she’s working to change.

A major obstacle to holding employers accountable, she says, is that household workers, especially migrants, often lack proof of employment. They may not know their employers’ full names, or even the exact address where they are working.

“So we give them tools – we tell them to take a photo in the bathroom while they’re at work, in the living room, in the bedroom, so that when they stop working, they can show that they were there,” she said.

“We’ve had situations where the superintendent of the building, who is friendly and supports them while they are working, suddenly no longer recognises them once they are fired,” Obeso said. “The things household workers live through is very painful.”

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

The Oil and Gas Industry Produces Radioactive Waste. Lots of It

A new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council confirms Rolling Stone‘s bombshell investigation into the fossil fuel industry’s waste problem

In this May 27, 2016, file photo, a pump jack works near Firestone, CO.
David Zalubowski/AP

By JUSTIN NOBEL

ROLLING STONE

21 July, 2021

Massive amounts of radioactive waste brought to the surface by oil and gas wells have overwhelmed the industry and the state and federal agencies that regulate it, according to a report released today by the prominent environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council. The waste poses “significant health threats,” including the increased risk of cancer to oil and gas workers and their families and also nearby communities.

“We know that the waste has radioactive elements, we know that it can have very high and dangerous levels, we know that some of the waste gets into the environment, and we know that people who live or work near various oil and gas sites are exposed to the waste. What we don’t know are the full extent of the health impacts,” says Amy Mall, an analyst with NRDC who has been researching oilfield waste for 15 years and is a co-author on the report.

The report conveys that radioactive oilfield waste is piling up at landfills across America — and in at least some documented cases leaching radioactivity through treatment plants and into waterways. It is also being spread on farm fields in states like Oklahoma and Texas and on roads across the Midwest and Northeast under the belief that it melts ice and suppresses dust.


Many of the issues mentioned in the NRDC report were reported by Rolling Stone in a 20-month investigation published in January 2020 that found a sweeping arc of contamination. “There is little public awareness of this enormous waste stream, the disposal of which could present dangers at every step,” the story stated, “from being transported along America’s highways in unmarked trucks; handled by workers who are often misinformed and under-protected; leaked into waterways; and stored in dumps that are not equipped to contain the toxicity. Brine has even been used in commercial products sold at hardwares stores and is spread on local roads as a de-icer.”

“Radioactive elements are naturally present in many soil and rock formations, as well as the water that flows through them,” the NRDC report explains. Oil and gas production brings those elements to the surface. Wells generate a highly salty toxic liquid called brine at the rate of about a trillion gallons a year in the U.S. It contains heavy metals and can contain significant amounts of the carcinogenic radioactive element radium. The U.S. EPA’s webpage on oilfield waste indicates that radium and lead-210, a radioactive isotope of lead, can also accumulate and concentrate in a sludge at the bottom of storage containers and in the hardened mineral deposits that form on the inside of oilfield piping. Crushed dirt and rock called drilled cuttings, which are produced through fracking, can contain elevated levels of uranium and thorium.

“My first major concern is that workers don’t know they are working with radioactive materials, and there is no protection to ensure that they don’t face dangerous exposures to radiation,” says Bemnet Alemayehu, the report’s other co-author and an NRDC staff scientist with a Ph.D. in radiation health physics. “Those are alpha emitters, and from an internal dose perspective [inhalation or ingestion], this is one area where I am very concerned,” he continued. “If workers’ clothes or skin get dusted or splashed in waste, they may take contamination home to their families.”

The NRDC report, entitled “A Hot Fracking Mess: How Weak Regulation of Oil and Gas Production Leads to Radioactive Waste in Our Water, Air, and Communities,” shows that despite the industry and regulators knowing about the radioactivity issue, the risks have been patently ignored. A 1982 American Petroleum Institute paper obtained by Rolling Stone laid out hazards but warned the industry that regulation “could impose a severe burden.” A 1987 EPA report to Congress detailed numerous harms, but according to one EPA employee cited in the NRDC report, was ignored for “solely political reasons.” To this day there remains no single federal rule governing the radioactivity brought to the surface in oil and gas development, says the NRDC, and state regulators have failed to pick up the pieces and fill in the gaps.

“Our bedrock federal environmental, health, and safety laws have gaping loopholes and exemptions that allow radioactive oil and gas materials to go virtually unregulated,” the NRDC report states. While some states have established rules to address gaps in federal regulations, “no state has adequately protected health and the environment from this dangerous material.”

The report details regulatory gaps in transportation and trucking, worker safety, and in some of the nation’s benchmark environmental laws, such as the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act. One of the most notorious exemptions involves oilfield radioactivity not being covered by the Atomic Energy Act, which was passed in 1946 and is the nation’s chief law for regulating radioactive materials. The mother of all exemptions is the 1980 Bentsen and Bevill Amendments to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which labels oilfield waste as non-hazardous, despite the EPA having found that the wastes contain multiple hazards, including uranium at “levels that exceed 100 times EPA’s health-based standards.”

While some states, like North Dakota or Pennsylvania, have instituted some regulatory measures, it is typically after something particularly egregious occurs, says Mall. For example, the report documents how in North Dakota in the mid-2010s, radioactive oilfield waste was dumped in trash bags at an abandoned gas station. In the early days of Pennsylvania’s fracking boom, shale waste was being disposed of at waste treatment plants that leaked radioactivity into rivers that could be sources of drinking water or used for recreation. But even then, Mall says, the rules are so narrow as to be ineffective. North Dakota mandated new rules for certain waste streams, but waste continues to be illegally dumped, the report found — the problem was just exported to other states. Between 2016 and 2019, some 2 million pounds of radioactive fracking waste from North Dakota ended up at a landfill in Oregon near the Columbia River.

“With both the federal government and state governments declining to adequately regulate the radioactive material in oil and gas waste,” states the NRDC report, “industry is often free to release this waste into surrounding communities, endangering human health and the environment with impunity.”

“I would add that all these gaps and loopholes in the law that allow the industry to operate in a way that is unsafe to workers and communities are basically subsidies or gifts to the industry that allow oil and gas production to appear cheaper than it actually is, so they skew the economics,” says Mall. “There is human harm from these exemptions and there is an economic effect as well.”

The American Petroleum Institute, the nation’s main oil and gas lobby, when notified by Rolling Stone about the NRDC report, and reminded that their own documents express concern about radioactive contamination to workers and the public, conveyed that they believe the issue is under control.

“Health and safety is our industry’s top priority, and we take stringent and significant measures to protect our workers, the environment and the communities where we live and operate,” says spokesperson Jess Szymanski. “Natural gas and oil companies meet or exceed strict federal and state regulations, as well as undergo routine inspections to ensure that all materials are managed, stored, transported, and disposed of safely and responsibly.”

But there is ample evidence this is not the case. The Rolling Stone story published in 2020, which relied on historical industry and government documents, dozens of academic, industry and government experts, and industry workers, found many examples of the waste being stored or transported in ways that put people at risk of exposure. “If we caught some ISIS terrorist cells dumping this into our waterways, they’d be tried for terrorism and the use of a WMD on U.S. citizens,” said Silverio Caggiano, a hazardous materials specialist in Ohio. “However the frac industry is given a pass on all this.” One Ohio truck driver who learned the waste he was hauling was radioactive was unable to get help or clarification from his employer or the government, so he started collecting samples on his own. Through a grassroots network of Ohio activists, he was able to get them tested in a lab at the University of Pittsburgh. The radioactive element radium measured at levels thousands of times above EPA safe drinking water limits and hundreds of times above limits imposed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Though it is still grossly under-studied, in the past few years there has been an increase in academic research focused on the radioactivity issue. The NRDC cites a study published last year by Harvard researchers that analyzed air samples downwind from more than 150,000 unconventional oil and gas wells across the country and found elevated levels of airborne radioactive particles. “As a side effect of the shale boom, academic experts started paying a lot more attention to this issue,” says Mall.

Physicians for Social Responsibility, which together with Concerned Health Professionals of NY publishes a regular compendium that documents all of the scientific and medical research demonstrating risks and harms of fracking, paid special attention to radioactivity in their latest edition, published last December.

Civic engagement has also been increasing around the issue. Medina County, Ohio resident Kathie Jones had long been worried about the radioactive oilfield brine being spread on roads in her community and within the last year was able to get her City Council to halt the practice. “If nothing else, people should think of their children, grandchildren and the harm they are permitting these companies, and the government, to do if they do not speak up and fight back,” Jones tells Rolling Stone. Radium-226, which has been shown by Ohio’s Department of Natural Resources to be present in the brine being spread on roads at levels well above Nuclear Regulatory Commission discharge limits, has a half-life of 1,600 years.

Yet Ohio as a whole is still pushing to expand the practice. Ohio House Bill 282, presently in committee, would classify “treated” brine with radium levels up to 4,000 times EPA’s safe drinking water limits as a commodity so it could be sold legally for de-icing purposes.

In New York, however, environmental groups and concerned residents won a major victory last summer when the state legislature passed a bill to close the loophole that exempts oil and gas waste from hazardous-waste regulations. On August 3rd, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the bill into law. Still, “strong action is needed at the federal level to deal with this threat in an appropriately comprehensive way,” Mitch Jones, policy director with Food & Water Watch, one of the main groups that promoted the bill, tells Rolling Stone. “After all, toxic air and water pollution doesn’t recognize state lines.”

And perhaps no state legislator has been following the oilfield radioactivity issue more closely than state Rep. Sara Innamorato in Pennsylvania, who has introduced a pair of bills to close the oil and gas industry’s hazardous waste loophole in her state. “We are actually meeting with a number of organizations from across Pennsylvania as I type this,” Innamorato says. “Since Pennsylvania is the second largest extractor of shale gas in America, we produce an enormous amount of waste. These bills are common sense and place the onus on fracking companies to prove that their waste is not harmful to human health and the environment and be subjected to the same regulations as other industries that handle hazardous waste, instead of using Pennsylvania’s families who live near these municipal waste sites and other disposal wells as experimental test subjects.”

Meanwhile, U.S. Congressman from California Ro Khanna, chairman of the House’s Committee on Oversight and Reform’s Subcommittee on the Environment, held a hearing on Earth Day this past April that took aim at various oil and gas industry loopholes and discussed how fossil fuel subsidies are preventing action on the climate crisis. It featured comments from Ohio resident Jill Antares Hunkler, who was forced to flee a house she built by hand to escape toxic emissions from adjacent fracked gas wells and compressor stations. She calls herself a “fracking refugee.”

“Under the current regulatory framework, there is very limited accountability for the oil and gas companies who engage in fracking,” Khanna tells Rolling Stone. “There is also little ability for the federal government to effectively protect workers and major supplies of drinking water.”

The NRDC report recommends that Congress close the loopholes that put the industry’s workers and the public at risk from radioactive oilfield waste, and that states should institute “state-of-the-art, protective regulations” for the radioactive material generated by the oil and gas industry, as well as a much more robust set of standards to protect industry workers, including training, proper PPE, and monitoring of emissions and levels.

Rolling Stone asked the EPA whether they believed oilfield waste is putting oil and gas industry workers and the public at risk, why the agency had not done more to collect data on the topic, and if the agency believes the oil and gas industry enjoys an inappropriate exemption with the Bentsen and Bevill Amendments. “EPA takes its mission to protect public health and the environment seriously, and is committed to holding violators accountable for pollution in American communities, especially in overburdened communities,” replied Tim Carroll, deputy press secretary. “EPA looks forward to reviewing the NRDC report and will respond accordingly.”

“The challenge here is that the lack of regulation means that we don’t have all the data that we should, and then the lack of data is used as an excuse for why we don’t have regulations,” says Mall. “Without the information the public doesn’t know how best to protect themselves.”

She adds, “I think it would be wonderful for EPA to do a study, but we have enough information now to know that we need stronger rules. We don’t need to wait for more studies to strengthen the rules.”

Tar sands companies aim for ‘net zero’ by 2050 – with no plan to extract less oil

The alliance of Canadian oil producers makes no mention of winding down oil production, which modelling shows is necessary to achieve global climate goals

Syncrude Oil Operations near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada (Photo: Jiri Rezac/Greenpeace)

By Chloé Farand
CLIMATE CHANGE NEWS

Published on 10/06/2021

Canadian tar sands producers have committed to achieve net zero emissions in their operations by 2050 to “help Canada meet its climate goal” while continuing to extract and produce oil for the next 30 years.

Five major oil companies, Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus Energy, Imperial, MEG Energy and Suncor Energy, which extract some of the world’s most carbon-intensive oil, announced they had formed the Oil Sands Pathways to Net Zero alliance on Wednesday.

The companies, which together operate about 90% of Canada’s tar sands, said they will work with the Canadian government and the provincial government of Alberta to roll out technologies that will enable them to cut emissions from their extraction and production process.

Prime minister Justin Trudeau has committed to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. In 2018, the oil and gas sector was the largest source of Canada’s emissions, accounting for 26% of its total, according to government data.

Tar sands companies said the alliance aims to “develop an actionable approach” to cut emissions while “preserving the more than $3 trillion in oil sands contribution” to Canada’s economy to 2050.

But they made no mention of phasing out production. The “net zero” strategy does not extend to emissions from consumers burning the oil, which are many times larger than those from the extraction process.

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In fact, planned oil production in Canada would lead to a 17% expansion between 2019 and 2030, according to recent analysis by Stockholm Environment Institute.

This goes against modelling by the International Energy Agency (IEA), which found that new investments in expanding oil and gas production must stop by the end of the year for the sector to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

“This kind of greenwash is worse than meaningless – it’s dangerous,” Alex Doukas, senior consultant at the Denmark-based KR Foundation, said of the alliance. “It fails to cover emissions associated with the tar sands products themselves. Nobody should cheer this nonsense.”

Laurie van der Burg, campaigner at Oil Change International, told Climate Home News: “These plans lack the one and only action that is most vital to cutting emissions: cutting dirty oil and gas production.

“If the Canadian tar sands net-zero alliance cared about climate action it would have committed to cut production by 2030.”

Van der Burg added that tar sands producers risked facing litigation over the plans, citing a court ruling against oil giant Shell, which established that real emissions reductions were necessary for oil and gas companies to meet their obligations under the Paris Agreement.

According to the UN Environment Programme, global oil production must fall by 4% every year between now and 2030 to maintain a chance of staying below 1.5C of warming.

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Because it is thick and viscous, oil from tar sands takes a lot of energy to extract and refine, making its production three to four times more greenhouse gas intensive than conventional crude oil.

To meet the goal, the alliance plans to create a corridor to link oil sands facilities from Fort McMurray to the Cold Lake regions and channel CO2 to a carbon sequestration hub.

Energy efficiency measures, electrification of operations, producing hydrogen and carbon capture and storage technology would be deployed requiring “significant investment” from both the industry and government, the companies said.

The alliance said “internationally recognised forecasts” indicate fossil fuel will continue to be part of the energy mix to 2050 to justify the initiative – contrary to the latest IEA net zero report.

“Every credible energy forecast indicates that oil will be a major contributor to the energy mix in the decades ahead and even beyond 2050,” said Sonya Savage, Alberta’s minister of energy, claiming this would lead to the production of “net zero barrels of oil”.


Under the IEA’s first comprehensive 1.5C scenario, the agency projects a drop in oil demand of 75% between 2020 and 2050, with fossil fuels supplying slightly over one-fifth of total energy by 2050.

Tzeporah Berman, chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, described the alliance as “absurd”. In a tweet, she said measures to reduce emission intensity and develop carbon capture and storage were “clearly not enough” to help the world meet its climate goal.

One of the main checks on tar sands producers’ bullishness is organised opposition to infrastructure projects to connect Alberta to key export markets.

On Wednesday, TC Energy abandoned plans for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have transported 830,000 barrels of oil a day to refineries along the US’ Gulf Coast. The decision comes after Joe Biden revoked permits for the pipeline expansion in January.

It was hailed a victory by climate campaigners and indigenous communities who fought the project for a decade.

“Keystone XL is now the most famous fossil fuel project killed by the climate movement, but it won’t be the last,” said Jamie Henn, co-founder of 350.org. “Now it’s time to go a step further and say no to all new fossil fuel projects everywhere.”

On Thursday, the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative published research warning that ending the expansion of the fossil fuel sector was not enough to keep the 1.5C within reach, and an exit strategy from existing production is required.

The study, from the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology in Sydney, found that carbon emissions from existing fossil fuel projects would lead to 66% more emissions in 2030 than is compatible with a 1.5C trajectory.

Professor Sven Teske, who led the research, said: “National governments must establish binding limits for the extraction volumes for coal, oil and gas,” adding that new investments risked becoming stranded because of the falling prices of renewable energy.

Ocean fire raises questions about US support for Mexico’s oil and gas industry

US export credit agency Exim bank has provided $16.14 billion in loans and guarantees to Pemex since 1998, with recent funds going to the site of the fire


A Pemex petrol station in Mexico (Photo: Flickr/Wonderlane)

By Isabelle Gerretsen

CLIMATE CHANGE NEWS
Published on 14/07/2021

Campaigners have called on the US to review its longstanding support for Mexico’s state-owned oil and gas company after a gas leak from one of its pipelines set the ocean on fire in the Gulf of Mexico.

Pemex made headlines earlier this month after the leak triggered a huge blaze near one of its platforms, as the world watched aghast.

For 76 years, the company has received billions of dollars in support from the US’ export credit agency, the Export–Import Bank (Exim), despite warnings of safety and environmental concerns.

Since 1998, Exim has propped up the fossil fuel company with $16.14 billion in loans and guarantees, according to analysis by the Friends of the Earth of the bank’s annual reports, seen by Climate Home News.

Most recently, in September 2020, Exim approved $400 million worth of support to the company.

The funding would “facilitate the purchase of US oil and gas equipment and services provided to approximately 21 oil and gas field projects,” the Exim press release reads.

According to documents submitted by Pemex to Exim, one of the projects was Ku Maloob Zaap, the oil field located 90km off the coast of Campeche in the Gulf of Mexico, which was the site of the gas fire.


Ocean fire exposes weak regulation of Mexico’s oil and gas sector

Campaigners are demanding an investigation into the environmental and climate damage caused by the fire.

But with little faith in the Mexican authorities, analysts told Climate Home they were looking to regional allies such as the US to exert pressure to hold Pemex accountable.

Following last week’s incident, campaigners are escalating calls on Exim to end its support to Pemex.

“I don’t understand how they would be willing to lend any money to Pemex. The hypocrisy of US administrations, who make all these statements about climate, and then allow this company to be its biggest borrower. It’s outrageous,” Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, told Climate Home News.

The company was Exim’s biggest client until at least 2017, when the bank stopped disclosing its top borrowers in its annual reports.

Between 1998 and 2015, Pemex received Exim money annually, with loans and guarantees averaging $850 million every year, according to the analysis. From 2003 to 2016, the bank had more loans outstanding to Pemex than to any other client, it shows.

In September 2020, after Exim authorised the latest loan to Pemex, Friends of the Earth wrote a letter to the bank’s chairman Kimberly Reed , criticising the decision.

The campaign group opposed the loan “due to the hundreds of worker deaths at Pemex facilities from accidents and Covid-19, the harmful environmental impacts of Pemex projects, allegations of corruption against Pemex leadership, and the failure to provide a meaningful assessment of the environmental and social impacts of the Pemex projects”.

At that time, Pemex had recorded more Covid-19 deaths than any other company in the world, according to analysis by Bloomberg.

More than 190 workers and contractors died and over 570 were injured in fires, explosions and offshore rig collapses at Pemex sites between 2009 and 2016.

The gas fire last week was not an anomaly, Kate DeAngelis, international finance manager at Friends of the Earth, told Climate Home.

“Pemex has a long history of environmental destruction and poor safety record as evidenced by the hundreds of workers who have been killed from explosions, fires and other accidents at Pemex sites,” she said.

Much of Pemex’s production is heavy sour crude oil, which is particularly polluting, according to DeAngelis. “Pemex has no plans to reduce its harmful environmental impacts,” she added.

North American heatwave broke records – and the climate models

A 2020 report by the Mercatus Center, a US-based think-tank, outlines significant environmental, safety and corruption concerns surrounding Pemex and questions Exim’s continued support for the heavily indebted fossil fuel company.

“Working with Pemex has posed a reputational risk to the Exim Bank for decades,” the report reads. “The Exim Bank’s willingness to continue lending to Pemex may come down to Pemex being too big to fail.”

At the end of 2020, Pemex said its financial debt stood at $113.2 billion, despite several capital injections from the government. In April, the company said it expected to maintain debt of $105 billion between 2021 and 2025.

Considering its long-standing relationship with Pemex, “Exim could have used that leverage to require strong environmental and worker safeguards, but it appears that Exim has never even attempted to do that,” said DeAngelis.

Exim did not respond to Climate Home News’ request for comment.

David Suzuki: The climate is changing rapidly, but the oil industry isn’t


by David Suzuki on July 22nd, 2021 


The September 2019 Global Week for Future international climate strikes drew crowds to protest outside the Ontario parliament buildings in Toronto's Queen's Park.WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/VALA HOLMES

It’s easy to think we’re beyond denial over the climate crisis, now that even oil industry executives are talking about taking it seriously. But, as with many politicians, what industry leaders say publicly often belies what they’re doing behind the scenes.

An investigation by Greenpeace project Unearthed has drawn the curtain back on this duplicity. Investigators posing as recruitment consultants contacted two senior Exxon lobbyists who revealed the company’s ongoing campaign against efforts to address the climate emergency.

During a May Zoom call, Keith McCoy, a government affairs director in Exxon’s Washington, D.C., office, admitted the company’s public support for carbon pricing was little more than a talking point.

“Nobody is going to propose a tax on all Americans, and the cynical side of me says, yeah, we kind of know that but it gives us a talking point that we can say, 'Well what is ExxonMobil for? Well, we’re for a carbon tax,' ” he said.

Dan Easley, who left Exxon in January after working as chief White House lobbyist during the previous U.S. administration, talked about the company’s wins under Trump, including a corporate tax-rate cut, which was “probably worth billions to Exxon”.

Under our current system, money is more valued than life. We share a planet, fuelled by the sun, that provides everything we need to live and live well. But we invented a system based on profit and endless growth, one that encourages rapid exploitation of nature, avaricious accumulation, and rampant consumerism.

Early 20th century industrialists figured that if everyone drove around in inefficient gas-guzzling behemoths sold as “freedom”. it would be a win-win, providing endless profits for the auto and oil industries. And we were off! No worries that fossil fuels—concentrated stores of solar energy that took millions of years to form—are finite and should be used wisely. Who cares that burning them extravagantly creates pollution and drives climate disruption, putting our health and all life in peril?

There’s money to be made, the bulk of it concentrated in the offshore accounts of a few.

This summer, “heat domes” spread across western North America, coinciding with record low tides to wipe out billions of hardy intertidal plants and animals such as clams and mussels. June heat records broke worldwide, from northern Europe to India, Pakistan, and Libya.

Devastating European floods shocked even the climate scientists who have been predicting them. Parts of Tokyo were drenched by the heaviest rainfall since measurements began.

Last year, another global heat record was broken. If June’s record-breaking temperatures are any indication, this year will be among the top 10 hottest, with even hotter years looming.

What the hell are we doing?

Why are we letting industry get away with disrupting the climate past the point of survivability? Why are we letting governments subsidize and promote oil, gas, and coal with tax and royalty breaks, pipeline purchases, and nonsensical “war rooms” and inquiries? Why do we put up with major media outlets and industry continuing to spread dangerous climate misinformation when the science couldn’t be clearer? Why do we listen to deniers at all?

The only necessary conversations about the climate crisis now are about solutions. Because industry and governments have been yammering about a gradual transition for decades while doing as little as possible to transition at all, we’ve missed the opportunity for “gradual”.

Rapid change doesn’t mean total disruption or upheaval, if we do it right. In fact, many measures necessary to resolve the climate and biodiversity crises—shifting to renewable energy, electrifying almost everything, increasing energy efficiency, protecting carbon sinks like forests, wetlands, and grasslands—would also increase equality and fairness, reduce pollution, improve public health, create good jobs, and even prevent pandemics.

It’s all interconnected. That means what we do as individuals matters. But, as much as personal measures like conserving energy and switching from cars to active or public transport are important, what’s really needed is public pressure. Get involved with others in your community, join climate strikes and actions, write to or call your political representatives, and talk to people you know to help build momentum.

People who derive their wealth and privilege from continued, wasteful exploitation of fossil fuels are not going to change overnight. Now we have to.

David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and cofounder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with contributions from foundation senior writer and editor Ian Hanington. Learn more at davidsuzuki.org.

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Will Newfoundland offshore oil industry reboot with rising oil prices?

Recovery will come slowly as companies recoup 2020 losses

Barb Dean-Simmons · Journalist · Posted: July 9, 2021, 

The research/survey ship Ramform Atlas in Bay Bulls in June, 2021. — Contributed


The Norse Spirit left Whiffen Head near Arnold’s Cove just before noon on July 5, heading to the Hibernia platform 325 kilometres east of Newfoundland.

The 279-metre-long crude oil tanker, with a carrying capacity of 960,000 barrels of oil, loaded up with sweet crude pumped from the Hibernia field to transport it back to the Newfoundland Transshipment Limited.

That terminal was built in 1998 to store the crude from the offshore oil fields—Hibernia, Terra Nova, White Rose and Hebron. It can handle over 300 million barrels of oil in its six storage tanks.

Norse Spirit is one of three shuttle tankers that sail regularly between Whiffen Head and the offshore oil fields to collect the crude.

The trips have not been as frequent since 2020, the result of historically low oil prices due to the pandemic and resulting economic downturn. Last year oil prices dropped to below $20 a barrel.

INewfoundland and Labrador, the West White Rose extension project stalled, shutting down construction on a gravity-based platform at Argentia.

The West White Rose concrete gravity structure in December 2019 with all four of its lower quadrants in place. — Husky Energy

The floating production, storage and offloading vessel Terra Nova has been at anchor at Bull Arm since last summer.

Plans for a refit were delayed while a task force of government and industry assessed how best to spend the $320 million provided by Ottawa last fall to aid the offshore oil industry.

Now there are signs of a turnaround.

This week the value of Brent Crude surged to a six-year high of $76 a barrel.

The Terra Nova FPSO — Contributed

After 18 months of lockdowns and public health orders in the battle with COVID, people are on move again, eager to travel and get back to work. That means a higher demand for oil to gas up automobiles, fuel up airplanes and fire up manufacturing and service businesses as pre-COVID work and personal routines are restored.
But it may take some time before the oil companies reboot production and dust off long-term plans around exploration and development.

Paul Barnes is Director for Atlantic Canada and the Arctic for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP).

Paul Barnes, Atlantic Canada and Arctic director with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. — Contributed

He told SaltWire that it will take a while to recover from 2020, a year oil and gas companies operating in Newfoundland and Labrador ran up a lot of debt.

“It’s been a tough year,” he said. “With the cash flow from the current oil prices, they’re using that cash to pay down the large amount of debt they have accumulated and to pay dividends to their shareholders.

“So, for most of 2021, that’s what we’re witnessing with the industry generally.”

The industry is on a path to recovery, said Barnes, but it will be a slow process.

“It’s slow because we’re just starting the recovery (from COVID) and the thought was there would be a higher demand for oil than it currently is.”

That’s because in recovery from COVID worldwide has been slower than hoped; some countries are still dealing with the third wave of the pandemic.

This map outlines Equinor's offshore assets in Newfoundland and Labrador. — EQUINOR - File photo

Then there’s price uncertainty because the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is considering an increase in production.

Still, Barnes said even if OPEC decides to increase production, causing a price drop, a price of around $50 to $70 a barrel is still profitable for producers.

The key for the oil industry, he said, is price stability. Wild fluctuations make it hard to plan.

“When there is a lot of volatility investment decisions are somewhat slower to be made, just because of the nervousness around the volatility,” said Barnes.

While some projects are still on hold, there was some exploration in the offshore this year.

The research ship Ramform Atlas sailed out of Bay Bulls a few weeks back to do work for the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).

The research vessel Ramform Atlas was doing exploratory work in the Newfoundland offshore in June. - Contributed

Exxon also recently announced they’ll be doing some drilling work next year, said Barnes.

There are also two seismic ships doing some geophysical work in the Newfoundland offshore this year, acquiring data for companies to determine future exploration.

One of the largest recent discoveries in the offshore is the Bay du Nord field. Norwegian-based Equinor holds the lease on that reserve. Originally estimated to hold about 400 million barrels of recoverable oil, the Bay du Nord field is now estimated to contain one billion barrels of oil.

Earlier this year Equinor closed its office in Calgary and shifted its Canadian headquarters to St. John’s.

The company announced a $6.8 billion plan in 2018 to develop Bay du Nord but deferred the project last year thanks to COVID and the crash in oil prices.

Barnes said he expects the company could make an announcement on Bay du Nord by early 2022.

Eyes are also on Argentia and what might happen with the construction of the platform for West White Rose

.

An aerial view of the Port of Argentia. - Contributed

Cenovus told SaltWire the West White Rose project remains deferred for 2021 while the company continues to evaluate its options.

Another project on the pending list is an extension to Hibernia, said Barnes.

“That’s hopefully something that will be announced later this year as well,” he said.

The only word to describe 2020, said Barnes, is “disaster.”

Now he sees reasons to be optimistic for the Newfoundland and Labrador oil industry.

“It’s starting to recover.”

Barb Dean-Simmons is a business reporter for the SaltWire Network.
barb.dean-simmons@thepacket.ca

Are we being kept safe from ‘forever chemicals’ injected into fracking sites?

A bombshell exposé revealed that oil and gas firms are injecting PFAS chemicals into fracking sites, threatening groundwater

‘If the toxic chemistry of fracking remains obscured by regulatory design, the health effects are becoming gruesomely obvious.’ Photograph: Charlie Riedel/AP

David Bond
Wed 21 Jul 2021 

Not willing to rest their laurels on the theft of the future, the fossil fuel industry is now salting the earth with forever chemicals.

In a bombshell exposé from Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) and the New York Times last week it was revealed that per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) were readily used at fracking sites across the US.

PFAS never break down, a disconcerting fact that has led many to call them “forever chemicals”. Such durability comes with surprising mobility as these chemicals have proven preternaturally gifted at gliding through geological and geographic borders with ease. Oh, and they are toxic.

None of these worrisome properties proved sufficient to dissuade the fossil fuel industry from injecting PFAS into at least 1,200 fracking wells in the United States, including in states where wastewater from oil and gas operations is routinely sprayed on roads and farms.

This revelation comes days after Unearthed released a video of fossil fuel executives bragging about just how easy it has been to sabotage legislation aimed at addressing climate change and petrochemical pollution, including PFAS.

“They’re called forever chemicals,” one ExxonMobil executive said, “which basically means these chemicals never, never deteriorate.”

While most scientists agree that such toxic immortality warrants sensible restrictions on PFAS use, ExxonMobil disagrees. According to the videos, company executives launched a stealth campaign to undercut the scientific consensus and surging momentum to regulate PFAS. ExxonMobil’s preferred strategy of obstruction? Commission another government study.

In the meantime, 130 oil and gas companies (including ExxonMobil) have been dumping forever chemicals into fracking sites in at least six different states.

The use of PFAS in fracking “brings together two planetary emergencies”, said Barbara Gottlieb of PSR: contamination and climate. As climate change tips so much of the United States into a parched drought with inescapable heatwaves, what water remains is increasingly poisoned by PFAS.

“We already know that over 200 million people have PFAS in their drinking water. Add to that the additional number of people surrounded by fracking sites in their literal back yards, and you have the majority of the population affected by a dangerous class of PFAS chemicals,” Phil Brown, who directs a research center on PFAS contamination, told me.

At one Encana/Athlon fracking site in Glasscock county, Texas, it is estimated that drilling operators injected 324 pounds of PFAS in a single well. As Dusty Horwitt, the lead author of the PSR report explained, a minuscule amount of PFAS can render a titanic amount of water undrinkable. “One measuring cup of PFOA could contaminate almost 8bn gallons of water.”

As other sectors distance themselves from forever chemicals and the ungodly problems they pose, the fossil fuel industry is doubling down on PFAS in willful defiance of settled science. Business as usual, in other words. And those tasked with protecting our health may be doing more than turning a blind eye to such madness.

In the past few years, the Environmental Protection Agency issued urgent warnings about the diabolical threat PFAS pose to drinking water and public health. And yet, this week’s news revealed that the very same EPA was greenlighting requests by oil companies to dump PFAS into the environment at fracking sites across the United States.

By the EPA’s own account, fracking wells are far from a closed system (a fact viewers of the flammable tap water scene in Gasland will be familiar with). A 2016 report from the EPA on the “Hydraulic Fracturing Water Cycle” provided extensive documentation of alarming instances where fracking fluids leaked into groundwater. More than 8 million Americans get their drinking water from underground sources within one mile of a fracking well.

Beyond cracks in the bedrock or well-casing that allow drilling fluids to migrate into groundwater, there are more banal pathways of exposure. In 17 states (including New York), wastewater from oil and gas drilling is permitted to be sprayed on roads to keep dust down or melt ice, a reckless practice that elicits strong protests from scientists and communities.

Some states even allow drilling wastewater to be reused in agriculture, a practice many western farmers have come to rely on as drought coincides with groundwater depletion. Even as some states propose minimal processing of oil and gas wastewater before their application on roads and farms, no one is testing for PFAS.

However they enter the environment, once released PFAS never go away. And trace amounts of these chemicals have proven adept at poisoning drinking water, food systems and human health. PFAS chemicals are strongly linked to immune dysfunction, reproductive harm and a host of cancers at previously unimaginable levels of exposure: parts per trillion.

According to documents released this week, the EPA was fully aware of the ludicrous risks of introducing PFAS to fracking when it authorized their use. Agency scientists voiced strong concerns that PFAS would probably contaminate the land around fracking sites through leaks, post-drilling uses and even flaring as PFAS chemicals cannot be destroyed by fire.

Senior leadership at Obama’s EPA overrode these concerns and the precautions scientists recommended, like PFAS monitoring around fracking sites. At EPA headquarters in DC, safeguarding the reckless profits of oil and gas companies took precedence over safeguarding the health of vulnerable citizens. As has been well documented, poor neighborhoods and communities of color bear an outsized environmental burden from fracking.

If the toxic chemistry of fracking remains obscured by regulatory design, the health effects are becoming gruesomely obvious

“I am angered but not surprised to learn of EPA-approved use of PFAS in fracking,” Sara Wylie told me. Wylie, who works with communities protesting against fracking and has documented their struggles in her book Fractivism, continued: “This use of recognized toxics follows a familiar pattern: Safe Drinking and Clean Water Act exemptions already enable the use of hazardous chemicals in fracking that are regulated in other industries.”

In other words, one of the nastiest toxins ever dreamed up is escaping all efforts to restrict its use by participating in fracking and the ozone-sized hole in environmental regulations the Halliburton loophole gifted the fossil fuel industry.

If the toxic chemistry of fracking remains obscured by regulatory design, the health effects are becoming gruesomely obvious. Dozens of epidemiological studies have now confirmed what frontline communities knew all along: a host of health issues crop up when fracking comes to town, including: migraines, asthma, hospitalizations, birth defects, infant mortality and cancer. And that’s before PFAS was known to be in the mix.

“Living near frack sites is not good for your health,” summarized Linda Birnbaum, a former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, at the PSR press conference.

The unholy union of PFAS and fracking should shatter any notion that those pursuing toxic profits can be gently persuaded of the prerogative of public health and human survival. As the PSR report and Unearthed video so aptly demonstrate, the fossil fuel industry is not bothered in the least by the rampant destruction rising in the wake of their operations.

It’s well past time for our elected leaders to cut through this nonsense and hold those who profited from PFAS pollution accountable. Along with passing strong prohibitions on PFAS, Congress should also require oil and gas companies to conduct extensive groundwater testing at every fracking site suspected of using PFAS chemicals.


David Bond is associate director, Center for the Advancement of Public Action (CAPA) at Bennington College. He leads the Understanding PFOA project and is writing a book on PFAS contamination

‘People Are Dying,’ US House Passes PFAS Action Bill

July 22, 2021
Eric Lloyd

Members of Congress from both parties are celebrating a major step forward in the fight against PFAS.

Wednesday the United States House passed the PFAS Action Act, sponsored by two Michigan representatives, it has been the Mitten State pushing hardest for action from the federal government

.

“No one should be drinking polluted water,” said Brad Jensen, executive director of Huron Pines, “This is a complex issue but that point is really simple.”

PFAS and other hazardous chemicals have been an issue for decades but just recently they are being discovered. Little is being done to clean them up because basically nobody has had to.

“In defending its inaction, the Air Force loves to point out that PFOA and PFOS, two of the main contaminants in our community, are not regulated under federal law,” said Tony Spaniola of Need Our Water.


That’s where the PFAS Action Act comes in. It creates federal drinking water standards, offers grants to pay for clean-up and designates these chemicals as officially hazardous.

“It has quickly been evident that this affects people around the state and around the country,” said Rep. Bill Huizenga.

This is how the bill is moving now, support from not just Michigan’s delegation.

“We have more PFAS contamination sites than any other state but that’s just because we’ve been looking for it,” said Rep. Dan Kildee, “So obviously as people discover more, we get more members of Congress wanting to join us.”

“We are going to see more and more sites, I would think,” said Jensen, “The cleanup and the tools to deal with that, it’s a difficult, expensive problem. That’s why they call them forever chemicals.”

Water moves, including polluted water. Contamination sites in one area spread to others and lawmakers say this bill shows urgency in stopping that spread.

“We need to,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell, “It’s just time. People are dying because the government is not acting.”


Reps. Kind, Gallagher introduce a bipartisan bill to help families test their private wells for 'forever chemicals

'
Laura Schulte
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel



In a rare moment of bipartisan agreement, two Wisconsin lawmakers introduced federal legislation aimed at testing private wells for contaminants such as "forever chemicals."

Republican U.S Rep Mike Gallagher and Democrat Ron Kind, alongside representatives from Michigan and New York, introduced the "Test Your Well Water Act" on Tuesday.

The legislation would create an online tool, managed by the Environmental Protection Agency, to help Americans with private wells find resources to test their water and analyze the results. The legislation would also provide funding for the tests, so the cost doesn't fall to those in need of testing.

The bill would also instruct the EPA to provide information on treatment options for wells, as well as information on financial assistance that is available to homeowners to support a treatment system, according to the bill.

The bill is aimed at helping people determine if their wells have been affected by PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. The compounds, which spread easily through water and do not break down or degrade in the environment, have been found in wells across Wisconsin, including Milwaukee, Eau Claire, Madison and La Crosse.


"People deserve to know whether or not their water is contaminated by chemicals like PFAS,” Gallagher said in a news release. “This bill creates an easy-to-use tool that not only allows individuals to test their drinking water, but also allows local officials to develop a better understanding of where contamination may be.”

Nearly 42 million Americans get their drinking water from private wells or sources that aren't regulated by federal and state governments, according to the release. If passed, the bill would allow EPA to modernize access to resources to help people ensure the water they use for drinking and cooking is safe.


MORE:Town facing devastating 'forever chemical' contamination hopes to see aid from federal stimulus package

Kind, whose home is on French Island, a community outside La Crosse fighting large PFAS contamination, said he knows firsthand how costly it can get to test your own well because he and his family had to do it.

"A lot of families can't afford it," he said. "And unless you test, you're not going to know the levels in your well. We need to test to see how bad it is."
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It wasn't surprising to get support on both sides of the aisle for the bill, Kind said, because clean, safe water is so important.

"There is nothing more scary than a family thinking they're drinking contaminated water," he said. "That's why this is a nonpartisan issue. It's fundamental that people have access to safe water."

PFAS are a relatively new family of man-made chemicals used for their water- and stain-resistant qualities in products like clothing, carpet, nonstick cookware, food packaging and firefighting foam. The family includes 5,000 compounds, which are persistent, remaining in the body over time.

More:What are PFAS? Here's what you need to know about the emerging contaminant group known as 'forever chemicals'

PFAS have been linked to types of kidney and testicular cancers, lower birth weights, harm to immune and reproductive systems and altered hormone regulation and thyroid hormones.

In addition to being found in drinking wells across the state and in humans who consume that water, the contaminants have also made their way into animals, resulting in warnings from the state Department of Natural Resources to not consume the livers of deer from the area or fish harvested in certain water bodies in Marinette and Peshtigo, near a Tyco Fire Products facility that is the source of another contamination.

The federal government does not regulate PFAS, though Congress has taken up the PFAS Action Act, which would set drinking water standards and classify the contaminants as dangerous.

Wisconsin has attempted to regulate PFAS, but standards have not yet been approved by the state Legislature. The DNR is now working to develop standards for groundwater, drinking water and surface water for PFOA and PFOS — two of the most well-known and well-researched of the family of chemicals — as well as several other compounds. That process is expected to stretch on for at least another year.

Other laws regrading the chemicals have been attempted, too. The latest bill, which would provide grants to individuals or communities to test wells, provide an alternate water source or attempt to remediate spills, would bar the recipient from ever pursuing legal action against the company or organization responsible for the contamination.

Pushback was swift after the bill was introduced by state Rep. Elijah Behnke, R-Oconto, who represents one of the worst contaminations in the state in the Marinette and Peshtigo area.

Laura Schulte can be reached at leschulte@jrn.com and on Twitter at @SchulteLaura.