Majority of Canadians support equalization, but think some provinces take 'unfair' advantage

Anja Karadeglija 

©

 Provided by National Post The headquarters of the Canada Revenue Agency in Ottawa.


Two-thirds of Canadians are supportive of equalization, according to a new Postmedia/Leger poll conducted shortly after Albertans voted in favour of scrapping the program. However, a smaller majority also said that some provincial governments are taking unfair advantage of the program

Among the 1,554 Canadians polled, 25 per cent said they strongly supported equalization, a program under which the federal government redistributes tax revenue to ensure all provinces have similar levels of public services. A further 42 per cent said that they somewhat supported it.

In a referendum last month, 61.7 per cent of Albertans voted in favour of removing equalization from the constitution. Albertans are the largest contributors on average to the equalization program and the province has not received equalization payments since the 1960s.

SOUTHERN ALBERTA VOTED WITH THOSE NUMBERS, EDMONTON VOTED IN FAVOUR OF EQUALIZATION

THE TOTAL VOTER TURN OUT WAS LOW 39% SO THE NUMBER BEING QUOTED IS INCORRECT IN THE BIGGER PICTURE

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has made it clear that the referendum was a symbolic move to gain leverage for the province to “push hard to get a fair deal” in federal-provincial fiscal arrangements, as opposed to repealing equalization entirely. “The point of it is to get leverage for constitutional negotiations with the federal government about reform of the entire system of fiscal federalism, which treats Alberta so unfairly,” Kenney said prior to the referendum vote.

Kenney called the results of the vote a “powerful” statement. “We fully expect the prime minister to respect the constitutional amendment process and sit down and negotiate with Alberta in good faith,” he said when the result was released on Oct. 26.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said any such constitutional amendment requires “significant consensus across the country.” He pointed out taking out a section of the constitution would require the agreement of both the federal government and seven provinces representing at least 50 per cent of Canada’s population.

Here's what could replace equalization

Majority of Canadians believe equalization is unfair to Alberta: poll

Trudeau also criticized Kenney for the referendum, noting the last time the equalization formula was updated was under the government of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, where Kenney was a cabinet minister.

The Leger online poll, conducted between Oct. 29 and Nov. 1, shows that both the so-called “have” provinces — which don’t receive money but whose federal tax contributions are used for equalization payments — and so-called “have not” provinces, which receive the payments, support the program.

The Leger poll showed 62 per cent of respondents living in “have” provinces supported equalization, as did 78 per cent of the respondents living in “have not” provinces.

However, it also showed that a majority of respondents in Alberta (52 per cent) think provinces that receive equalization take it “for granted” and are unappreciative. Alberta was the only province where a majority felt that way.

“It doesn’t look like there’s a whole lot of other provinces that are in a real rush to sort of reopen the current formula for equalization,” Leger executive vice-president Andrew Enns said.

However, 54 per cent of Canadians agreed that some provinces are unfairly taking advantage of the program, with 21 per cent strongly agreeing and 33 per cent somewhat agreeing. That sentiment was strongest in Alberta (72 per cent) and also in Atlantic Canada (66 per cent). Even in Quebec, the largest recipient of equalization, more respondents felt some provinces were taking unfair advantage of the program.

Only 17 per cent of Canadians disagreed that some provinces were taking advantage of equalization.

Though 53 per cent of the 174 Alberta respondents were supportive of equalization, 61 per cent said some provinces rely too much on equalization funding and are not doing enough to promote their own economic growth. Just over half of Albertans also said “have not” provinces take equalization for granted, compared to the national average of 35 per cent.

Meanwhile, a slim majority (51 per cent) felt that the federal government and all provinces should be a part of any discussion around changing equalization.

After drinking water crisis, Newark is winning war on lead


1 of 8

Workmen prepare to replace older water pipes with a new copper one in Newark, N.J., Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021. An ambitious program to replace thousands of residential lead water lines in New Jersey's largest city is about to be completed years ahead of schedule. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — On a recent sun-drenched morning, the staccato rhythms of a jackhammer ricocheted off buildings as a work crew dug into a Newark street to remove an aging pipe that carried water — and potentially a poison — to a small apartment building.

The new pipe is copper. The old one was lined with lead, which can be harmful to human health even at minute levels.

The water service line was one of more than 20,000 made with the toxic metal the city began replacing in 2019 amid public outrage over revelations about high lead levels in the tap water in schools and homes across the city.

Less than three years after the work began, the replacement project, initially projected to take up to 10 years, is nearly complete.

City residents who switched to bottled water during the crisis are breathing — and drinking — easier. Newark, once castigated and sued over its sluggish response to the problem, is being held up as a potential national model.

“I’m just happy that it’s happening and that it’s finally getting taken care of so we finally get to drink tap water again,” Newark resident Cesar Velarde said as he watched the crew work. “I have three cases of bottled water right now. I don’t drink faucet water no more because of this.”

The pipe replacement project has been a vindication of sorts for Mayor Ras Baraka, who faced mounting public pressure in 2018 after the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group, sued, claiming New Jersey’s largest city had failed to adequately monitor lead levels and had downplayed the problem to residents.



Deteriorating lead-lined pipes, some a century old, are a problem in many older U.S. cities, a recent example being Benton Harbor, Michigan. But Newark’s replacement project proceeded faster than expected, thanks to an infusion of state and local funds and an amendment to state law to protect homeowners from having to bear the cost.

“I’ll feel better when we’re completely finished, but I’m excited that we’re at the end of this thing. It’ll be a huge milestone for us,” Baraka said last week.

Newark’s efforts led to the lawsuit being settled last January, and drew praise from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“It’s a pretty significant turnaround from the early days when the city was denying they had a lead problem,” Erik Olson, NRDC senior strategic director for health, said. “We are pointing to it as a model for other cities to follow. They’re doing it much faster than other cities have even tried to do.”

The NRDC estimated recently that there are as many as 12 million lead service lines in the U.S. Nearly half of all states don’t even track the number of lead lines within their borders, they found.

Lead in drinking water has been linked to developmental delays in children and can damage the brain, red blood cells and kidneys.

The challenge of removing lead from drinking water in the U.S. came into sharp focus after the Flint, Michigan, scandal in which city leaders switched water sources in 2014 to save money. That led to criminal charges, though many later were dropped, and a $641 million settlement for the residents of the poor, majority Black city.

The $1 trillion infrastructure plan passed by the House on Friday night and now awaiting President Joe Biden’s signature includes $15 billion to replace lead pipes.

Several hundred lead lines remain to be replaced in Newark, many connected to buildings that were not accessible earlier in the project.

The process can take up to five hours, though many replacements take less time because they involve smaller pipes that can be pulled out and replaced by making a smaller cut in the curbside, said Mark Wleklik, foreperson for Underground Utilities, a company that has done thousands of pipe replacements in Newark.

More than 70% of Newark residents are renters, and many of the buildings are owned by limited-liability corporations based elsewhere that can be hard to track down, said Kareem Adeem, director of the city’s water and sewer department.

“It’s hard to chase an LLC down to Texas or Missouri or Louisiana or California,” Adeem said. “The renters always want the line to be replaced, but they don’t own the property.”

That led the Newark City Council to pass an ordinance allowing tenants to provide access to buildings. An amendment to a state law paved the way for public money to be used for the replacements — which can cost thousands of dollars per home — and Newark was able to borrow $120 million. All those efforts allowed the city of more than 310,000 people to accelerate its line replacements to as many as 120 per day.

The city also created a program that trained about 75 unemployed and underemployed residents to work on the line replacement crews, Adeem said.

Looking back, Baraka described the confrontation with the Natural Resources Defense Council as “tough, tense, with no love lost,” but he admitted learning some lessons.

“We were so busy trying to fight the NRDC, we were having conversations with them and not with the residents,” he said. “We thought they were wrong and wanted to oversee the city, and we already had oversight. So we were trying to fight that as opposed to being on the offensive and saying, ‘We have this problem, let’s go out and fix this.’”

For some, praise for the Newark’s accomplishment needs to be taken in context. Yvette Jordan, a teacher and chairperson of the Newark Education Workers Caucus, which joined the lawsuit brought by the resources council, said it was no coincidence that many of the city’s actions came at a time when Baraka was seeking reelection and Newark was in the running to become home to Amazon’s second headquarters.

“This showed us that the community must rise up and say something,” said Jordan, whose own home showed high levels of lead in its drinking water at one point.

“Without the community screaming and yelling and saying, ‘We need this,’ nothing is going to happen. The state and federal government also have to say, ‘We’re going to do this’ and have the political will to do it. Without that political will, without the stars aligning, I don’t think you would see Newark as this national model.”

___ This story has been corrected to show that the name of the organization that sued Newark is the Natural Resources Defense Council, not the National Resources Defense Council.

Emails show officials sniping amid 2nd Michigan lead crisis


1 of 7

Crews continue work on lead pipe replacement at a home along Ogden Avenue in Benton Harbor, Mich., on Monday, Nov. 8, 2021. City residents continue to use bottled water for drinking and cooking as a number of homes have been found to have elevated lead levels in the water lines. (Don Campbell/The Herald-Palladium via AP)

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — After a Michigan official emailed the head of Benton Harbor’s drinking water system in June 2019 about the impoverished city’s failure to hit targets for treating corroded lead pipes, the local leader snapped back: “I have no time for this.”

Municipal superintendent Mike O’Malley’s email response went to lay out grievances about state demands on his office since the discovery months earlier of elevated lead levels in Benton Harbor’s water. The testy exchange was among many between the water chief and state regulators trying to contain what has become Michigan’s second high-profile lead contamination crisis in less than a decade.

The strained ties were evident in emails released last week by the Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy. They were among an 11,000-page trove of communications and documents sought by legislators investigating the state’s handling of the predicament in Benton Harbor, a majority-Black city of about 9,100 in Michigan’s far southwestern corner.

Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer also ordered measures last week to strengthen water quality statewide, including stepped-up efforts to reduce lead content and remove service lines made with the toxic metal that can damage children’s brains and nervous systems.

But her administration faces complaints of inadequate response from Republican foes and even some allies, including Black activists and environmental groups, as she prepares to seek reelection next year. When campaigning in 2018, Whitmer criticized the performance of GOP predecessor Rick Snyder in the Flint lead emergency.

LEAD PIPING BEING REMOVED

City and state officials “have failed to address this public health crisis with the urgency it requires,” progressive groups said in a Sept. 9 petition to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Last week, the EPA instructed Benton Harbor to improve corrosion control, repair filters at its treatment plant and better notify residents.

Liesl Clark, director of the state environmental agency, described the Benton Harbor situation as “unique and particularly urgent” in a letter to state Sen. Ed McBroom, the Republican chairman of the Senate Oversight Committee, which is investigating the state’s response. But lead-tainted water is a statewide issue, Clark added.

While acknowledging her department could do better in Benton Harbor, Clark said the thousands of newly released documents show it had gone “above and beyond legal requirements.”

“It’s frustrating to hear this mantra that the state did nothing there for three years,” Eric Oswald, director of the department’s Drinking Water and Environmental Health Division, said in an interview Monday. “We had a pretty significant response effort.”

The documents and emails provide a behind-the scenes look at conversations between state and Benton Harbor officials after samples indicated high lead readings three years ago.

On Jan. 14, 2019, shortly after Whitmer look office, a memo from an Oswald aide said the city wasn’t providing promised bottled water or filters to residents with high lead readings. Local officials were sending mixed messages about the situation and rejecting offers of help with additional sampling, the memo said.

The next month, the state issued a permit for the city to pump orthophosphate and polyphosphate into the water to coat the pipes and prevent erosion. Then came a consent order requiring the city to fix problems with the water system and boost rates to fund upgrades.

Further emails and letters showed state officials prodding O’Malley to increase the number of locations for water sampling, while he argued that fewer should be permissible because the city’s population had fallen below 10,000.

“I put off the lead sampling requirement until recently, now I have to go full speed ahead on finding 60 homes. I have 4 right now,” O’Malley wrote in June 2019. “100 letters 4 responses. We are going to go door to door next and hope for the best!”

When state water treatment specialist Ernie Sarkipato offered help, O’Malley replied: “I have already asked you for help and been denied.”

State engineering supervisor Michael Bolf wrote Oswald in December 2019 about Benton Harbor repeatedly missing consent order deadlines.

“We feel caught between a rock in a hard place,” Bolf wrote. Fining the cash-strapped city might worsen relations and achieve little, but with leniency, “the water system remains vulnerable and we are potentially culpable if a problem occurs.”

The state agency notified Benton Harbor in February 2020 its corrosion control treatments weren’t succeeding and ordered adjustments. O’Malley replied the conclusion was premature.

“To Benton Harbor, your order left us quite anxious about what was required and it felt like, you want us to begin running scared,” he said.

Oswald said Monday he was “cautiously optimistic” the corrosion control system was getting better results and was awaiting results of the latest testing.

The state revoked O’Malley’s certification to operate the city water plant in November 2020 for numerous reasons, including refusing to disclose where samples were taken, said Hugh McDiarmid Jr., spokesman for the environment department. Benton Harbor suspended and later fired him, McDiarmid said.

The Associated Press was unable to reach O’Malley for comment. Messages were left Monday with Benton Harbor Mayor Marcus Muhammad and city manager Ellis Mitchell.

Muhammad told a legislative committee in October the city’s water problems were years in the making. Benton Harbor was under state emergency management from 2010 to 2014.

One manager laid off half the water plant’s staff and its plant’s director, yet in 2018 the state environmental agency told him more water staff was needed, he said.

“I was cross-eyed because on one hand you had a state official to deplete the water labor and then another official coming back saying you need to increase it,” Muhammad said.

——

Flesher reported from Traverse City, Michigan.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M WAR PROFITEERING
Metallurgist admits faking steel-test results for Navy subs

SEATTLE (AP) — A metallurgist in Washington state pleaded guilty to fraud Monday after she spent decades faking the results of strength tests on steel that was being used to make U.S. Navy submarines.

Elaine Marie Thomas, 67, of Auburn, Washington, was the director of metallurgy at a foundry in Tacoma that supplied steel castings used by Navy contractors Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding to make submarine hulls.

From 1985 through 2017, Thomas falsified the results of strength and toughness tests for at least 240 productions of steel — about half the steel the foundry produced for the Navy, according to her plea agreement, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Tacoma. The tests were intended to show that the steel would not fail in a collision or in certain “wartime scenarios,” the Justice Department said.

There was no allegation that any submarine hulls failed, but authorities said the Navy had incurred increased costs and maintenance to ensure they remain seaworthy. The government did not disclose which subs were affected.

Thomas faces up to 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine when she is sentenced in February. However, the Justice Department said it would recommend a prison term at the low end of whatever the court determines is the standard sentencing range in her case.

In a statement filed in U.S. District Court on her behalf Monday, her attorney, John Carpenter, said Thomas “took shortcuts.”

“Ms. Thomas never intended to compromise the integrity of any material and is gratified that the government’s testing does not suggest that the structural integrity of any submarine was in fact compromised,” Carpenter wrote. “This offense is unique in that it was neither motivated by greed nor any desire for personal enrichment. She regrets that she failed to follow her moral compass – admitting to false statements is hardly how she envisioned living out her retirement years.”

Thomas’ conduct came to light in 2017, when a metallurgist being groomed to replace her noticed suspicious test results and alerted their company, Kansas City-based Bradken Inc., which acquired the foundry in 2008.

Bradken fired Thomas and initially disclosed its findings to the Navy, but then wrongfully suggested that the discrepancies were not the result of fraud. That hindered the Navy’s investigation into the scope of the problem as well as its efforts to remediate the risks to its sailors, prosecutors said.

In June 2020, the company agreed to pay $10.9 million in a deferred-prosecution agreement.

When confronted with the doctored results, Thomas told investigators, “Yeah, that looks bad,” the Justice Department said. She suggested that in some cases she changed the tests to passing grades because she thought it was “stupid” that the Navy required the tests to be conducted at negative-100 degrees Fahrenheit (negative-73.3 degrees Celsius).

CNBC

Paul McCulley says the infrastructure bill advances both capitalism and social justice

Bravo, President Biden.

America wants a kinder, gentler capitalism; it doesn't want galloping socialism.

You get it: Trickle up must reassert its democratic power against plutocratic trickle down.

Pursuit of a more perfect union between the equity imperative of democracy and the profit imperative of capitalism should not, and need not, always be a partisan spitting contest.

America welcomes bipartisan sensibility — robust, but civil, debate in the public square, that gets good things done.

The bill you will soon sign does exactly that: gets good things done.

Public investment is the living infrastructure of America's dual embrace of democracy and capitalism.

Former President Barack Obama was right when he scolded capitalists for their false pride in believing that they, alone, built this great nation.

Yes, the pursuit of private profit is the wonder working power of economic efficiency, pushing the frontier of prosperity, through a process of creative destruction of private capital.

But that capitalist engine can hum justly only when harnessed to a platform of public investment, funded by the collective taxing and borrowing power of the democratic citizenry.

We, collectively, can build a better America, where the invisible hand of capitalism pays heed to the visible will of a democratic people.

This is not socialism; this is shared enlightenment, a joint venture between between the pursuit of private profit and democratic social justice.

Paul McCulley is the former managing director of bond giant PIMCO and currently senior fellow at Cornell Law School and an adjunct professor at Georgetown McDonough School of Business.

KILL A WORKER GO TO JAIL THAT'S THE LAW
Four fines issued after unprotected worker falls to his death from B.C. bridge

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — Two companies and two supervisors have been fined in provincial court in Fort St. John, B.C., after a worker fell to his death from a bridge under construction in March 2019.

A release from WorkSafeBC, the provincial worker safety agency, says when the man fell off a bridge under construction in northeastern B.C., he had no fall-protection equipment and there were no guardrails to prevent his fall.

WorkSafe says Brian Baker, Randolph Kosick, Yoho Resources and Great Northern Bridgeworks previously pleaded guilty to charges under the Workers Compensation Act and the Occupational Health and Safety Regulation.

Court documents show Yoho Resources, the main contractor, and Great Northern Bridgeworks, the victim's employer, have each been fined $70,000, plus a 15 per cent victim fine surcharge.

Bridge foreman Randolph Kosick has been fined $8,500, Yoho's site supervisor Brian Baker is fined $7,500, plus victim fine surcharges, and they and company representatives must attend court-ordered health and safety courses.

Al Johnson, head of prevention services for WorkSafe, says the guilty pleas and sentences show there are "serious enforcement consequences" when employers don't live up to their obligations to keep workers safe.

The WorkSafe release did not identify the victim.

WorkSafe investigates occupational health and safety matters and says its probes may become prosecution investigations when "actions taken to ensure worker safety fall significantly below the standard of due diligence."

"Every worker has the right to go home healthy and safe at the end of the day,” Johnson says in the statement.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2021.

The Canadian Press

1. Kill a worker. Go to jail.

   https://fightfortheliving.ca

   At the Cargill and JBS meat processing plants, one worker has died and hundreds more have already been infected with COVID-19. We’re calling on Jason Kenney and the provincial government to commit to enforcing the law: Investigate workplace COVID-19 outbreaks. …

Criminal liability for workplace deaths and injuries ...

https://justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/other-autre/westray/p1.html

2019-08-19 · Commonly referred to as the Westray Law, former Bill C-45, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (criminal liability of organizations), came into force on March 31, 2004. It modernized the criminal law’s approach for establishing the criminal liability of corporations for workplace deaths and injuries.

Westray Bill (Bill C-45) - Overview : OSH Answers

https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/legisl/billc45.html

2021-10-23 · The Westray bill or Bill C-45 was federal legislation that amended the Canadian Criminal Code and became law on March 31, 2004. The Bill (introduced in 2003) established new legal duties for workplace health and safety, and imposed serious penalties for violations that result in injuries or death. The Bill provided new rules for attributing criminal liability to organizations, including corporations, …

Remember Westray. Enforce the law.

https://www.rememberwestray.ca

On May 9, 1992, an explosion at the Westray Mine in Pictou County, Nova Scotia killed 26 miners working underground. It was one of the deadliest mining disasters in Canadian history and led to new Criminal Code provisions – known as the Westray Law 

Coal dust: Mine managers in federal fraud trial in Kentucky


FILE - This April 14, 2009, file photo, shows the new Parkway underground mine in Central City, Ky. A group of former coal company officials will go on trial in Kentucky next week for allegedly skirting federal rules meant to reduce deadly dust in underground mines. The four men on trial, who worked for now-bankrupt Armstrong Coal, ordered workers at two Kentucky mines, including the Parkway mine, to rig dust-monitoring equipment to pass air quality tests, federal prosecutors said. (AP Photo/Daniel R. Patmore, File)


LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Four former coal mine officials are being tried on criminal fraud charges in Kentucky for allegedly skirting federal rules meant to reduce deadly dust in underground mines.

The men worked as managers or supervisors for now-bankrupt Armstrong Coal. Federal prosecutors said they ordered workers at two Kentucky mines to rig dust-monitoring equipment to pass air quality tests.

Attorneys for the former coal company officials said they are innocent of the charges. Jury selection was scheduled to begin Monday morning in U.S. District Court in Louisville.

“It’s a tragedy a man who has spent his life in the mines is forced to defend himself now from this government overreach,” attorney Marc S. Murphy said of his client, Charley Barber, a former superintendent at Armstrong’s Parkway mine.

Murphy said in an email message Barber is “quite ill” and is on a waiting list for a heart transplant.

The defendants in the case also include Glendal “Buddy” Hardison, a former high-ranking Armstrong official who ran all of the company’s western Kentucky mines.

Kent Wicker, an attorney for Hardison, said he “is one of the finest gentlemen I have ever had the honor to represent.” Wicker said Hardison “is not guilty of this charge or any other. We are looking forward to trial.”

In all, nine Armstrong managers and supervisors were indicted, but five settled their cases before the trial. Hardison, Barber, the Parkway mine’s former safety director Brian Keith Casebier and Dwight Fulkerson, a section foreman, are charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States.

The workplace issues came to light when some Armstrong miners contacted a lawyer nearly a decade ago. One of the men set to testify, Mike Wilson, said he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face down in the mine. The indictment said the safety violations occurred at two Armstrong mines in western Kentucky between 2013 and 2015.

NCAA rewrites constitution, sets stage for transformation

By RALPH D. RUSSO

FILE - The NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis is shown in this Thursday, March 12, 2020. The NCAA on Monday, Nov. 8, 2021, set the stage for a dramatic restructuring of college sports that will give each of its three divisions the power to govern itself. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)

The NCAA is setting the stage for a dramatic restructuring of college sports that will give each of its three divisions the power to govern itself.

Approval of a new, streamlined constitution is expected in January with minimal consternation or conflict.

The next phase of the NCAA’s transformation figures to be more difficult: A reshaping of Division I that will tackle revenue distribution, how rules are made and enforced, access to the most-high profile and lucrative NCAA events —- such as the men’s basketball tournament — and just how big the tent should be at the top of college sports.

“So those are the things that we’re really going to have to get to the granular spot, and some of those are going to be very difficult conversations to have,” said West Virginia athletic director Shane Lyons, who is the chairman of the Division I Council and a member of the committee that trimmed the bedrock constitution of the 115-year-old organization.

The NCAA released on Monday a draft of an 18 1/2-page constitution, cut down from 43 pages over the last three months at the direction of President Mark Emmert.

The cutting of NCAA red tape comes in a year that has brought a tempest of change to college sports. Athletes have more financial freedom than ever before. Conference realignment has swept through the most powerful leagues while also shuffling lineups deep into Division I. Meanwhile, the expansion of the College Football Playoff promises to bring yet another revenue windfall to those at the top of the NCAA food chain.

Changing the constitution is the first step in determining the NCAA’s ultimate role in the changing landscape.

“This constitution is not for today and tomorrow,” Lyons said. “It’s for 10 years from now, 20 years from now. What’s, potentially, the association going to look like?”

The rewritten constitution focuses more on the NCAA’s broad goals of athlete welfare and athletics as part of an academic experience instead of governing procedures and operations, both of which have come under increasing criticism.

The proposal specifically notes that athletes shoudl be allowed to compensated for the use of their name, image and likeness — something in place only since July — but stands fast on barring schools from paying athletes to play.

The document still needs to go to membership for feedback after next week’s constitutional convention, and it could be amended before it is put before the full membership for a vote in January.

Emmert called the constitutional convention in August, not long after the Supreme Court hammered the NCAA in a ruling that left the association vulnerable to further legal challenges and in need of deregulation.

It quickly became apparent a new constitution was merely the first part of transforming the NCAA in a way that de-emphasizes the Indianapolis-based association and gives more power to schools and conferences.

“Once we got into this, we really found out that many of the issues were at the Division I level,” Shane Lyons said.

The goal is to have changes in place in less than a year. Southeastern Conference Commissioner Greg Sankey and Ohio University athletic director Julie Cromer will lead the Division I Transformation Committee, which has already begun exploring ways to restructure. Lyons is also a member.

“There’s a huge gap in Division I with schools roughly with $175 million budgets and schools with $4 million budgets,” Lyons said. “A lot of times we’ve tried to legislate from an equality standpoint. Is there possibly a new division? Is there a Division Four? Do some schools break away and make a Division Four, and what is the membership requirement?”

The Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, an organization of former and current college administrators, backs a restructuring of Division I that would include moving major college football out from under the NCAA umbrella.

The Bowl Subdivision of Division I is 130 schools that have access to the College Football Playoff, which brings in nearly $500 million annually that is controlled by conferences, not the NCAA. The Knight Commission recently proposed a revenue sharing model that it believes would curb the athletics arms race at the top of Division I and better support educational goals.

Knight Commissioner CEO Amy Perko said the newly proposed NCAA constitution is a good start toward reform.

“There’s a lot still clearly to be defined about Division I and how the governance will work and how the revenue distribution will work,” Perko said “The encouraging part is that the constitution does require the commitment to all of those core principles that define the educational model.”

The new constitution also calls for shrinking the NCAA’s highest governing body, the Board of Governors, from 21 members to nine and include for the first time a recently graduated athlete. The board’s duties would be narrowed to only matters that impact the entire association at the highest levels such as budgets, strategic planning and evaluation of the NCAA president.

The proposed constitution also locks in the current revenue distribution percentage to Division II (4.37%) and Division III (3.18%), which should help it garner support the majority of the NCAA”s member schools. The NCAA has 1,100 member schools, 351 that compete in Division I, and some 500,000 athletes overall.

___

Follow Ralph D. Russo at https://twitter.com/ralphDrussoAP and listen at http://www.appodcasts.com

___

More AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/college-football and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25 Sign up for the AP’s college football newsletter: https://apnews.com/cfbtop25

Air-scrubbing machines gain momentum, but long way to go

CATHY BUSSEWITZyesterday


1 of 5

In this undated image provided by Climeworks AG shows a geothermal power plant near Reykjavik, Iceland. The Iceland plant, called Orca, is the largest such facility in the world, capturing about 4,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. (Arni Saeberg/Climeworks AG via AP)


NEW YORK (AP) — On a field ringed by rolling green hills in Iceland, fans attached to metal structures that look like an industrial-sized Lego project are spinning. Their mission is to scrub the atmosphere by sucking carbon dioxide from the air and storing it safely underground.

Just a few years ago, this technology, known as “direct air capture,” was seen by many as an unrealistic fantasy. But the technology has evolved to where people consider it a serious tool in fighting climate change.

The Iceland plant, called Orca, is the largest such facility in the world, capturing about 4,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. But compared to what the planet needs, the amount is tiny. Experts say 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide must be removed annually by mid-century.

“Effectively, in 30 years’ time, we need a worldwide enterprise that is twice as big as the oil and gas industry, and that works in reverse,” said Julio Friedmann, senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.

Leading scientific agencies including the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say that even if the world manages to stop producing harmful emissions, that still won’t be enough to avert a climate catastrophe. They say we need to suck massive amounts of carbon dioxide out of the air and put it back underground — yielding what some call “negative emissions.”

“We have already failed on climate to the extent to which direct air capture is one of the many things we must do,” Friedmann said. “We have already emitted so many greenhouse gases at such an incredible volume and rate that CO2 removal at enormous scales is required, as well as reduction of emissions.”

As dire warnings have accelerated, technology to vacuum carbon dioxide from the air has advanced. Currently, a handful of companies operate such plants on a commercial scale, including Climeworks, which built the Orca plant in Iceland, and Carbon Engineering, which built a different type of direct air capture plant in British Columbia. And now that the technology has been proven, both companies have ambitions for major expansion.

DIRECT AIR CAPTURE AT WORK

At Climeworks’ Orca plant near Reykjavik, fans suck air into big, black collection boxes where the carbon dioxide accumulates on a filter. Then it’s heated with geothermal energy and is combined with water and pumped deep underground into basalt rock formations. Within a few years, Climeworks says, the carbon dioxide turns into stone.

It takes energy to build and run Climeworks’ plants. Throughout the life cycle of the Orca plant, including construction, 10 tons of carbon dioxide are emitted for every 100 tons of carbon dioxide removed from the air. Carbon Engineering’s plants can run on renewable energy or natural gas, and when natural gas is used, the carbon dioxide generated during combustion is captured.

Carbon dioxide can also be injected into geological reservoirs such as depleted oil and gas fields. Carbon Engineering is taking that approach in partnership with Occidental Petroleum to build what’s expected to be the world’s largest direct air capture facility in the Southwest’s Permian Basin — the most productive U.S. oil field.

Direct air capture plants globally are removing about 9,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the air annually, according to the International Energy Agency.

Climeworks built its first direct air capture plant in 2017 in Hinwil, Switzerland, which captured 900 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually that was sold to companies for use in fizzy beverages and fertilizer. The company built another plant, called Artic Fox, in Iceland that same year; it captured up to 50 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually that was injected underground.

“Today we are on a level that we can say it’s on an industrial scale, but it’s not on a level where we need to be to make a difference in stopping climate change,” said Daniel Egger, chief commercial officer at Climeworks.

BIG PLANS, CHALLENGES

Their plans call for scaling up to remove several million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually by 2030. And Eggers said that would mean increasing capacity by a factor of 10 almost every three years.

It’s a lofty, and expensive, goal.

Estimates vary, but it currently costs about $500 to $600 per ton to remove carbon dioxide using direct air capture, said Colin McCormick, chief innovation officer at Carbon Direct, which invests in carbon removal projects and advises businesses on buying such services.

As with any new technology, costs can decrease over time. Within the next decade, experts say, the cost of direct air capture could fall to about $200 per ton or lower.

For years, companies bought carbon offsets by doing things like investing in reforestation projects. But recent studies have shown many offsets don’t deliver the promised environmental benefits. So McCormick said companies are looking for more verifiable carbon removal services and are investing in direct air capture, considered the “gold standard.”

“This is really exploding. We really didn’t see hardly any of this until a couple of years ago,” he said, referring to companies investing in the technology. “Two years ago Microsoft, Stripe and Shopify were really the leaders on this who first went out and said, ‘We want to procure carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere.’”

Companies are setting targets of net zero carbon emissions for their operations but can only reduce emissions so far. That’s where purchasing carbon removal services such as direct air capture comes in.

Individuals can buy atmosphere-scrubbing services too: Climeworks offers subscriptions starting at $8 a month to people who want to offset emissions.

In the U.S., direct air capture facilities can get a tax credit of $50 a ton, but there are efforts in Congress to increase that to up to $180 a ton, which if passed, could stimulate development.

The Department of Energy announced Friday a goal to reduce the cost of carbon removal and storage to $100 per metric ton, saying it would collaborate with communities, industry and academia to spur technological innovation.

Oil companies such as Occidental and Exxon have been practicing a different form of carbon capture for decades. For the most part, they are taking carbon dioxide emissions from production facilities and injecting it underground to shake loose more oil and gas from between rocks.

Some question the environmental benefits of using captured CO2 to produce more fossil fuels that are eventually burned, producing greenhouse gases. But Occidental says part of the goal is to make products such as aviation fuel with a smaller carbon footprint — since while producing the fuel, they’re also removing carbon dioxide from the air and storing it underground.

Capturing carbon dioxide from oil and gas operations or industrial facilities such as steel plants or coal-burning power plants is technically easier and less costly than drawing it from the air, because plant emissions have much more highly concentrated CO2.

Still, most companies are not capturing carbon dioxide that leaves their facilities.

Worldwide, industrial facilities capturing carbon dioxide from their operations had a combined capacity to capture 40 million tons annually, triple the amount in 2010, according to the International Energy Agency.

But that’s less than 1% of the total emissions that could be captured from industrial facilities globally, said Sean McCoy, assistant professor in the department of chemical and petroleum engineering at the University of Calgary.

If governments created policies to penalize carbon dioxide emissions, that would drive more carbon removal projects and push companies to switch to lower-carbon fuels, McCoy said.

“Direct air capture is something you get people to pay for because they want it,” he said. “Nobody who operates a power plant wants (carbon capture and storage). You’re going to have to hit them with sticks.”

___

Associated Press reporter Jamey Keaten contributed from Geneva.

___

Follow Cathy Bussewitz on Twitter: @cbussewitz

Iceland Sets up World's Largest Air-Scrubbing Machines, but Environmental Impact Is Unclear

Erin Brady 
NEWSWEEK


A new facility by direct air capture company Climeworks in Iceland is now the most significant plant of its kind in the world. However, questions are being raised about its effectiveness

.

© Photo by Halldoor Kolbeins/AFP via Getty Images Climeworks factory with it's fans in front of the collector, drawing in ambient air and release it, as largely purified CO2 through ventilators at the back is seen at the Hellisheidi power plant near Reykjavik on October 11, 2021. -

 Climeworks factory is in ICELAND containers similar to those used in maritime transport are stacked up in pairs, 10 metres (33 feet) high. Fans in front of the collector draw in ambient air and release it, largely purified of CO2, through ventilators at the back.

Orca, a new geothermal power plant near Reykjavik, Iceland, will capture around 4,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. In the process known as direct air capture, carbon dioxide is sucked from the atmosphere and stored underground, emitting cleaner air as a result. Within a few years, Climeworks estimated that the carbon dioxide will harden and turn into stone.

According to the International Energy Agency, direct air capture plants globally remove around 9,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year.

However, critics said the addition of Orca still might not be enough. According to the Associated Press, experts said that 10 billion tons of CO2 would have to be removed from the air annually for the effects of climate change to begin reversing.

"We have already failed on climate to the extent to which direct air capture is one of the many things we must do," said Julio Friedmann, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. "We have already emitted so many greenhouse gases at such an incredible volume and rate that CO2 removal at enormous scales is required, as well as reduction of emissions."

Climeworks is currently aiming to remove several million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air by 2030.

For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below:

"Effectively, in 30 years' time, we need a worldwide enterprise that is twice as big as the oil and gas industry, and that works in reverse," said Friedmann.

Leading scientific agencies including the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that even if the world manages to stop producing harmful emissions, that still won't be enough to avert a climate catastrophe. They said we need to suck massive amounts of carbon dioxide out of the air and put it back underground—yielding what some call "negative emissions."

As dire warnings have accelerated, technology to vacuum carbon dioxide from the air has advanced. Currently, a handful of companies operate such plants on a commercial scale, including Climeworks, which built the Orca plant in Iceland, and Carbon Engineering, which built a different type of direct air capture plant in British Columbia. And now that the technology has been proven, both companies have ambitions for major expansion.

Climeworks built its first direct air capture plant in 2017 in Hinwil, Switzerland, which captured 900 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually that was sold to companies for use in fizzy beverages and fertilizer. The company built another plant, called Arctic Fox, in Iceland that same year; it captured up to 50 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually that was injected underground.

Estimates vary, but it currently costs about $500 to $600 per ton to remove carbon dioxide using direct air capture, said Colin McCormick, chief innovation officer at Carbon Direct, which invests in carbon removal projects and advises businesses on buying such services.

"This is really exploding. We really didn't see hardly any of this until a couple of years ago," he said, referring to companies investing in the technology. "Two years ago Microsoft, Stripe and Shopify were really the leaders on this who first went out and said, 'We want to procure carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere.'"

Oil companies such as Occidental and Exxon have been practicing a different form of carbon capture for decades. For the most part, they are taking carbon dioxide emissions from production facilities and injecting it underground to shake loose more oil and gas from between rocks.

Some question the environmental benefits of using captured CO2 to produce more fossil fuels that are eventually burned, producing greenhouse gases. But Occidental said part of the goal is to make products such as aviation fuel with a smaller carbon footprint—since while producing the fuel, they're also removing carbon dioxide from the air and storing it underground.

Worldwide, industrial facilities capturing carbon dioxide from their operations had a combined capacity to capture 40 million tons annually, triple the amount in 2010, according to the International Energy Agency.

© Arni Saeberg/Climeworks AG via AP In this undated image provided by Climeworks AG shows a geothermal power plant near Reykjavik, Iceland. The Iceland plant, called Orca, is the largest such facility in the world, capturing about 4,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. Arni Saeberg/Climeworks AG via AP

Related Articles
Methane Vs CO2: Which Is the Most Potent Greenhouse Gas As White House Unveils New Pledge

5 Alarming Studies That Show Why the COP26 Climate Summit Is Important

Ancient Earth Hit by Rain Storms 100s of Miles Wide Due to Extreme Heat

China, Russia, India, Worlds Top 3 Methane Emitters, Won't Pledge to Cut Emissions

Greenhouse Gas Levels Hit Record High in 2020, Despite Decreased Gas Usage

Poland tells doctors: Ailing women have abortion rights


Protestors gather outside Poland's Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw, Poland, on Saturday, Nov. 6, 2021, to protest against the restrictive abortion laws after a woman died of complications during her pregnancy. The protesters held portraits of the woman, 30-year-old Iza, who died in hospital from septic shock. Her family and a lawyer say her doctors did not terminate the pregnancy despite the fact that her fetus lacked enough amniotic fluid to survive. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland’s Health Ministry issued instructions Sunday to doctors confirming that it is legal to terminate a pregnancy when the woman’s health or life is in danger, a directive that comes amid apparent confusion over a new restriction to the country’s abortion law.

The document addressed to obstetricians comes in reaction to the hospital death of a 30-year-old mother whose 22-week pregnancy had medical problems. The woman died in September but her death became widely known this month. Doctors at the hospital in Pszczyna, in southern Poland, held off terminating her pregnancy despite the fact that her fetus lacked enough amniotic fluid to survive, her family and a lawyer say.

The doctors have been suspended and prosecutors are investigating.

Angered Poles held massive nationwide protests over the weekend, blaming the woman’s death on Poland’s restrictive abortion law. Women’s rights activists say it has chilling effect on doctors in this predominantly Roman Catholic nation.

The protests continued for the second day Sunday, the largest one in Krakow, in the south. Thousands of protesters lit mobile phone lights and held a minute of silence in memory of the woman. They then walked to the headquarters of Krakow church authorities, chanting against Poland’s new abortion restriction.

The ministry stressed it is in line with the law to terminate a pregnancy when the woman’s health is in danger, even more so in case of threat to her life. It included guidance in case of premature loss of the amniotic fluid.

“It should be clearly stressed that doctors must not be afraid to take evident decisions. stemming from their experience and the available medical knowledge,” the ministry said.

Until a year ago, women in Poland could have abortions in three cases: if the pregnancy resulted from a crime like rape, if the woman’s health or life was at risk, or in the case of irreparable defects of the fetus. That last possibility was eliminated a year ago, when the Constitutional Tribunal ruled it went against Poland’s law.

Cambodian activist decries delayed release of autistic son

By SOPHENG CHEANG and DAVID RISIN

Prum Chantha, mother of imprisoned 16-year-old Kak Sovannchhay, stands in front of the Prey Sar prison outside Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Monday, Nov. 8, 2021. Kak Sovannchhay, who is autistic, was not released as anticipated Monday. The boy, who is autistic, was convicted last week of incitement to commit a felony and public insult for comments he had made in a Telegram chat group defending his father, a senior political opposition member who is himself in custody facing charges for criticizing the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — A Cambodian activist wept in frustration Monday after learning her autistic teenage son, imprisoned for comments critical of the government he made on social media, would not be released as anticipated in a case that has drawn global attention.

Prum Chantha told disappointed supporters who had gathered with her early in the day outside Prey Sar prison on the outskirts of Phnom Penh that authorities said her son’s time served had been miscounted, and that he would instead be released Wednesday.

“My son would have been feeling so excited when hearing he would be freed today and knowing that I was here with the others to welcome him, but now they’re keeping him in jail for two more days,” she said.

“Why would the court keep him in jail?”

Her son, 16-year-old Kak Sovannchhay, was convicted last week of incitement to commit a felony and public insult for comments he had made in a Telegram chat group in June defending his father, a senior political opposition member who is himself in custody facing charges, and for sharing Facebook posts criticizing Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Kak Sovannchhay was sentenced to eight months in prison but he had been in custody since June. Under Cambodian sentencing guidelines including credit for time served, he was scheduled for release this week and the family had been told it would take place Monday.

 

Kak Sovannchhay, 16, is seen in this photo from 2021, provided by his mother. Kak Sovannchhay, who is autistic, was convicted Monday, Nov. 1, 2021, of incitement to commit a felony and public insult by a Phnom Penh municipal court and was sentenced to eight months in prison for social media posts critical of the government. (Prum Chantha/Photo via AP)

Former Cambodia National Rescue Party CNRP activist members sit waiting for the release of Kak Sovannchhay, 16 years old, in front of the main prison of Prey Sar on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Monday, Nov. 8, 2021. Kak Sovannchhay, who is autistic, was not released as anticipated Monday. The boy, who is autistic, was convicted last week of incitement to commit a felony and public insult for comments he had made in a Telegram chat group defending his father, a senior political opposition member who is himself in custody facing charges for criticizing the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

In a statement after his conviction, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court said that his age had been a factor in reducing his jail time, and said that it had received no medical confirmation of his autism during the trial.

Observers said, however, that during the trial, the court refused two requests to evaluate the boy’s disability and support needs.

Many criticized the verdict, including U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia W. Patrick Murphy who said in a Twitter post that the case seemed to be “politically motivated.”

“How does jailing the teenage son of an opposition figure demonstrate respect for human rights?” Murphy wrote.

Prum Chantha is a member of the group Friday Wives, which holds protests to demand the release of their husbands who have been jailed for expressing their views critical of Hun Sen’s government. Her husband, Kak Komphear, has been in detention since May 2020.

She said Monday that she had no intention of backing down, despite her son’s prosecution.

“The authorities wanted to intimidate us and wanted us to stop opposing them,” she said.

The posts the teen made came in response to others calling his father a traitor, she said.

Prime Minister Hun Sen has been in power for 36 years and has often been accused of heading an authoritarian regime and using the judicial system to help stifle opposition.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, urged Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne to bring up the case and others with Cambodian officials before she concludes her two-day trip to the country later Monday.

“Penalizing a boy with mental disabilities because of the activities of his father shows just how far the human rights situation in Cambodia has deteriorated,” he said in a written statement.