One night last November, my friend Mark started explaining how his brother-in-law basically builds robots to mop up mistakes at nuclear weapons plants. Turns out he was onto something.

Matt Cole, in the lab (Photo: Leon Chew/Wired)

After I met Matt Cole I became pretty fascinated with his robotics work and his motivation to design robotics that scooch and roll through radioactive spaces to clean up old nuclear sites or help repair snafus at operating power plants.

Wired Magazine published my short profile of Cole and his work in May 2010. It was my first piece in Wired, and it just touches on the work that Cole and his company, S.A. Technology, do. The larger issue is how technology like this plays into the debate over nuclear energy and new nuke plants, since it eliminates some human risk but doesn’t directly address the problems over how to actually dispose of radioactive waste.

Toxic seeps at Elizabeth Copper Mine Superfund site in Vermont (Photo: USGS)

For a decade and a half, the U.S. government’s toxic-cleanup program, Superfund, has neither been super nor much of a fund. Now, Superfund might finally earn its name again.

The federal program (known among environmental policy wonks as Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, or CERCLA) is supposed to clean up the country’s most toxic and complex waste sites, using money from corporate petroleum, chemical and other industries that produce toxic pollution — and the hazardous sites that land on the Superfund priorities list. But Congress let the corporate polluter fee expire in 1995, which let companies off the hook for cleanup funding and started draining Superfund’s account from $1.5 billion to virtually nil.

Superfund cleanup of asbestos contamination in Libby, Montana (Photo: US EPA)

In 2003, Grist published an essay I wrote about the sorry state of Superfund and the silly funding choices at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (The piece was originally published through High Country News wire service, Writers on the Range.) At the time, the George W. Bush White House had announced plans to spend a quick $30,000 for enviro-friendly mentions on primetime TV, but had no plans to renew industry payments to Superfund.

From my essay:

Through the new campaign, the EPA will place environmental messages on popular shows hoping viewers will mimic their favorite actors.

Picture Will & Grace composting in the back alley of their Manhattan apartment. Or CSI: Crime Scene Investigation detectives properly disposing of their forensic lab byproducts. Malcolm in the Middle might sport a canvas bag with the EPA logo to carry his recyclables from the school cafeteria. …

The campaign allows the EPA to reach the American people where they’re most attentive and vulnerable: on their couches. Jay Leno’s curbside interviews on The Tonight Show prove that more people know the names of the American Idol finalists than the recently resigned EPA administrator (Christie Todd Whitman, for those playing along at home). The EPA’s prime-time push allows Bush to do some cheap greenwashing in people’s living rooms while Superfund dwindles and other environmental-quality laws such as the Clean Air Act are gutted.

This June, the Obama administration announced that the holiday is over (maybe). The White House is behind legislation to reinstate collection for a cleanup trust fund.

Juliet Eilerpin reports for The Washington Post:

The move will spark an intense battle on Capitol Hill, with Democrats and the administration lining up against oil companies and chemical manufacturers. The measure’s proponents say it will ease the burden on taxpayers, who are currently funding the cleanup of “orphaned” sites, where no one has accepted responsibility for the contamination. Opponents suggest that it amounts to an unfair penalty.

“This is really about who should pay for the cleanup,” said Mathy Stanislaus of the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response. “Should it be the taxpayer, who has no responsibility for contaminating the sites, or should it be those individuals who create hazardous substances that contaminate the site?”

The introduction of legislation seems to show that President Obama is paying attention to the pressing environmental issues and that he expects the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to wield some regulatory (and financial) power. But the White House pushing for a law and passing one through Congress are very different things.

Oil Alert

Digital Tool Helps Oil-Spill Responders Protect Alaska’s Coast

A snapshot of Sitka Shore, via Alaska ShoreZone (Photo: NOAA Fisheries)

In January 2009, fierce winds in southeastern Alaska tore loose a 181-foot ferry from a pier. The ferry ran aground on a small island, and the Coast Guard and volunteers headed to the scene to limit damage from a possible fuel spill. Before they arrived, the responders knew which sensitive tidelands and critical fisheries habitats were threatened, thanks to a set of new high-tech digital maps that provide a bird’s-eye view of Alaska’s coast.

The mapping project, Alaska ShoreZone, currently covers 17,000 miles of the state’s roughly 47,000-mile coastline, including areas such as Bristol Bay and Prince William Sound—the site of the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. More than 30 organizations, including The Nature Conservancy, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and state and tribal agencies, have worked together on the program since 2001, sharing $5.5 million in funds and plenty of expertise.

To get the images for ShoreZone, a helicopter buzzes the coast during low tide. A biologist and geologist hang out the open door, shooting photos and video, and recording audio commentaries on the coastline features below. The high-definition images and the narratives are digitized and made publicly available online.

“It’s fantastic to see the whole coastline,” says John Harper, a geomorphologist who has worked on ShoreZone programs in Washington state, British Columbia and now Alaska. “It really provides a different perspective,” he says.

Scientists have used the digital maps to identify important fishery habitats, such as underwater kelp forests and eelgrass beds. ShoreZone has played a critical role in explaining some of the interactions between estuaries—where rivers meet the ocean—and upland areas, says Laura Baker, a marine project manager with the Conservancy in Alaska.

“Our primary goal is to have the first inventory of coastal habitats in southeastern Alaska,” Baker says. By using ShoreZone information, the Conservancy is identifying areas of key conservation significance and fine-tuning strategies for protecting salmon runs, tidelands and coastal forests.

Crews responding to oil spills can use the data to prioritize areas where they need to act quickly. If a Valdez-like spill occurred now, responders could use ShoreZone to develop containment plans to protect sensitive wildlife habitat. Additionally, the program is feeding computer models to help manage commercial fisheries and control invasive species.

Says Baker: “It’s a tool to help us pick which areas to focus on.”

— Joshua Zaffos

The sun shines on solar-panel installers (image via Swords to Ploughshares)

In northern Colorado, community colleges and major universities are reaching out to potential students and tailoring programs to train for a range of green jobs, from smart-grid engineers to hybrid-vehicle manufacturing to solar-panel installation and maintenance. In the April 9, 2010 issue of the Northern Colorado Business Report, my column, “School’s in session for green job seekers,” covers the cresting wave of new programs, including an initiative at Colorado State University meant to attract returning military veterans to green jobs.

Two local community colleges are launching degrees that integrate some existing courses with directed concentrations for green careers.

From the article:

At the Larimer campus of Front Range Community College, a new Clean Energy Technology program is training students in operations and technical skills. Program director Glenn Wilson said an advisory board of local renewable-energy company leaders, who already acknowledge a lag in capable employees, helped develop program curriculum.

“It’s pretty new and unique,” Wilson said.

Students take a broad yet directed array of courses meant to prepare them for a range of responsibilities – tech development, manufacturing, facilities operations, maintenance – within renewable-energy industries.

“We think there’s going to be a lot of change and movement,” Wilson said, referring to the ongoing jockeying between solar, wind and other alt-energy businesses. “We’re teaching to the needs. I haven’t seen anything that offers this flexibility.”

Both local college programs are starting small (in terms of class size), but interest has been high so far, and it will be interesting to see how they grow and where their graduates land.

Wardrobe Malfunction

By Joshua Zaffos

It can hardly be considered a coincidence that West Nile virus swarmed America, and then the insect-repellent garment industry had a breakthrough. Just imagine a group of investors, outdoorsmen, scientists and fashionistas assembled in the late ’90s to outfit the “swat team,” as Colorado health officials have dubbed citizens wary of disease-bearing mosquitoes. In 2001, a limited liability company formed in Greensboro, North Carolina, to manufacture and sell BUZZ OFF Insect Shield apparel.

Asian tiger mosquito, a vector of West Nile virus (photo via US CDC)

Now, L.L. Bean, Orvis and Ex Officio offer shirts, shorts, hats, pants and socks “impregnated” with bug-repelling, patent-pending technology. Fort Collins residents can buy BUZZ OFF clothes at Jax and REI.

This sounds like a godsend for Coloradans and all Americans. West Nile virus landed in the U.S. in 1999 and arrived in Colorado two summers ago. That year, 2,947 people in Colorado reported West Nile symptoms and 63 died. In Larimer and Weld counties, 948 citizens were diagnosed with the virus and fifteen of them died. Last Wednesday, the counties confirmed the first two cases of West Nile for the year statewide.

Mosquitoes spread West Nile by biting infected birds and picking up the disease. Then, one little vampire flies off, sinks her proboscis into a fleshy elbow, penetrates a blood vessel and leaves behind the virus. Symptoms include fever and body aches, but can progress to convulsions, encephalitis or meningitis—which both involve inflammation of parts of the brain—and even death.

The stats and symptoms escalate that buzzing by your ear from annoying to perilous. Sweat, induced by the heat and fear, increases your chance of infection since mosquitoes are attracted by scent. The burning sting on the back of your neck becomes exacerbated by an itchy paranoia over imminent brain swelling.

Why wouldn’t a person run out and buy BUZZ OFF clothing? A wardrobe that wards off mosquitoes bearing West Nile virus and ticks with Lyme Disease could save humanity. “How does it work?” you wonder, as you stand in line at the register of your favorite outdoor clothing store. According to the tags, “BUZZ OFF Insect Shield builds into your clothes a manmade version of a centuries-old insect repellent made from chrysanthemums.”

That kinda sounds like the campy ’70s commercial when the Asian laundry man credits an “ancient Chinese secret” for getting clothes clean, but it turns out to be the detergent additive Calgon.

Chrysanthemums do produce a natural chemical called pyrethrin. You can make it at home by crushing the dried flowers. But BUZZ OFF uses a synthetic pyrethroid called permethrin, which was engineered to be much more toxic than flower power.

Permethrin is a neurotoxin that’s applied as an industrial crop pesticide—and has been sprayed over Fort Collins in previous summers. The United States Environmental Protection Agency recognizes the chemical as a possible cancer-causing agent, which is why BUZZ OFF is the first line of clothing ever registered with the government agency. Studies reviewed by the World Health Organization show an increase in lung and liver tumors in mice exposed to permethrin. Further, some experts believe permethrin is an endocrine disruptor, meaning it can monkey around with the hormones that cue our growth and development.

An alarming example could be the 30,000 cases of Gulf War Syndrome among soldiers who fought in Iraq the first time around. The illness causes chronic muscle and joint pain, memory loss and general neurological damage. Research from Duke University suggests that Gulf War Syndrome may be linked to the use of permethrin-impregnated clothing in combination with anti-nerve gas drugs and DEET, the most popular toxic bug spray.

“Ancient Chinese secret, huh?”

None of these health risks is on the labels for BUZZ OFF. The tags sewn on the neurotoxin-laden clothing don’t even mention permethrin. The manufacturers do, however, tell consumers to wash BUZZ OFF clothing separate from the rest of the laundry and that its repellent powers wear off after 25 washings. Field data already prove that permethrin from agricultural use builds up in rivers where it’s lethal to the fish and critters that live in the waters.

Government health departments concede that West Nile virus is rare, and most infected people won’t even know they have it. Officials say the peak in transmission occurs the second year after the virus shows up, meaning Colorado and most of the country has already seen the worst of it. Last year, there were fewer than 300 cases and only four deaths in the entire state. Our counties had just 25 cases; everyone survived.

There are plenty of truly natural insect repellents, including citronella, lemongrass and tea tree oil. Public health and consumer groups are pushing for the clothing tags on BUZZ OFF to fully disclose the dangers of permethrin. But as with so many other toxic chemicals, this is probably another experiment where we’ll learn the results the hard way.

And that’s enough to sting us with a really painful dose of paranoia.
Staff reporter Joshua Zaffos uses a combo of lemongrass and B.O. to ward off the skeeters.

A February 11 article in The Telluride Watch covers some local environmentalists’ concerns about the plans of the milling company, Energy Fuels Resources Corp., which has applied for a permit, and the potential impacts to the Dolores River and its flows should the project receive approval.

Mills process uranium once it is removed from the ground in order to make it usable for nuclear power plants, but the operation involves using lots of water and leaving behind tailings that can contaminate air and water. Western towns, including Cañon City, Colorado and Moab, Utah, are both still cleaning up from older mills and dealing with the toxic results; a 2006 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory fact sheet details the cleanups and regulations surrounding mill tailings.

I wrote a feature article (“CWCB’s Instream Flow Program matures”) about the Dolores and the ongoing process to protect streamflows within the river for biological, recreational and agricultural needs in the Fall 2009 issue of Headwaters Magazine, put out by the nonprofit Colorado Foundation for Water Education. The story covers the progress of the state board in charge of protecting these instream flows in rivers across the state, using the Dolores as a key example of Colorado’s evolution in considering river health.

Federal regulators will review the uranium mill application, but a decision is likely a ways off and highly dependent on other factors, namely the development of the domestic nuclear power industry. And regardless of regulators’ decision, it will undoubtedly face legal challenges.

Bivalve Blues

Report Reveals Global Risks for Oyster Reefs

Exposed oyster reef in the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia (NOAA)

Baymen harvest an average of roughly 99,000 tons of oysters each year from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. But that kind of bounty is now uncommon: Around the world, 85 percent of shellfish reefs have been lost to overfishing and habitat destruction, according to a new Nature Conservancy report, Shellfish Reefs at Risk.

“Shellfish reefs are the single most impacted marine habitat globally,” says Mike Beck, a Conservancy marine scientist and lead author of the report. Beck and his team of scientists compiled status reports from more than 144 estuaries and found that reefs were in significant decline worldwide.

While records show that even the ancient Romans exploited shellfish reefs, the pressure on oysters, mussels and clams today is unprecedented. Overharvesting has led to the functional extinction of many oyster reefs throughout Europe, North America and other continents. In fact, most of the oysters we eat now come from aquaculture.

Global condition of oyster reefs (via The Nature Conservancy report)

Other major threats include disease and parasite outbreaks; the introduction of non-native species; pollution from the filling and dredging of coastal areas; and runoff from urban development, industry and agriculture.

Most countries tend to manage oyster reefs as harvesting fields and not much more, Beck says. We underappreciate and undervalue the “ecosystem services” that shellfish reefs provide, he says, such as filtering and purifying water, controlling erosion and supporting scores of other marine species.

While providing a global assessment of the threats facing shellfish, the report also outlines steps to help protect and restore threatened reefs. The scientists recommend that governments protect some of the best remaining reefs in places like the Gulf of Mexico and Georges Bay in Australia.

Beck also calls for new and existing funding to focus on the long-term restoring of reefs, not just on oyster harvesting; many restoration projects now allow harvesting only a year or two after oysters have been replanted. “We should allow reefs to rebuild themselves. And then we should allow harvesting of just the interest, not the principal,” says Beck. “We need to see the reefs return, not just the oysters.”

-Joshua Zaffos

Howard Zinn

Among the many recorded moments of American history impacted by Howard Zinn, who died at age 87 in late January, one of the most significant is the Ludlow Massacre, a 1914 labor skirmish between Colorado’s militia and the families of striking coal miners.

Calling Ludlow a skirmish is putting it gently: In April 1914, the Colorado National Guard, called in by the mining companies, opened fire on women and children at the Ludlow tent camp, killing fourteen, and then set fire to the settlement. The incident ignited seven months of gunfights and bombings around southern Colorado’s coal fields, but the history of Ludlow remained in the shadows, partly because neither embittered families nor mining executives much wanted to remember the massacre, albeit for different reasons.

Zinn first heard about Ludlow through a Woody Guthrie song, which inspired him to learn more about the labor wars in Colorado. Here is Zinn, in his own words, talking about Guthrie’s influence and Ludlow:

Zinn later included his own telling of Ludlow in his seminal work, A People’s History of the United States (Disclosure: I’ve never read the complete tome, but have read his section on the coal labor struggle).

Before Zinn’s scholarship, the labor struggles surrounding Ludlow were “taboo,” according to Thomas G. Andrews, a history professor at University of Colorado, Denver. Andrews wrote an environmental history of the Colorado coalfield wars, Killing for Coal, America’s Deadliest Labor War, which I reviewed for Earth Magazine in July 2009.

Andrews spoke to Denver Post columnist Susan Greene for her January 31 column, remembering Zinn and Ludlow. In the column, Greene offers her take on Zinn and the positive consequences for history students in Colorado and everywhere:

…Zinn’s many writings about Ludlow brought broader awareness. In several essays since the 1970s, he made it known how deep the corruption of wealth and power ran.

“The mining camps were feudal kingdoms run by the coal corporations, which made the laws; curfews were imposed, suspicious strangers were not allowed to visit the homes, the company store must be patronized, the company doctor used. The laws were enforced by company-appointed marshals. The teachers and preachers were picked by the company. By 1914, Colorado Fuel and Iron owned twenty-seven mining camps, and all the land, the houses, the saloons, the schools, the churches, the stores,” he wrote.

…

Zinn put Ludlow on the map. Not just as a place, in all its gruesome details, but as a concept. He popularized the struggle so that the name of the railroad town has become synonymous with corruption — “the firm connection between entrenched wealth and political power, manifested in the decisions of government, and in the machinery of law and justice.”

Ludlow’s uncomfortable history now is taught widely in college courses and K-12 classes. Textbooks cover it. Students take field trips to the shadowed ground that’s finally a national historic landmark.

To hear more from Andrews about his research and background with the Colorado coal wars and Ludlow, check out this video:

Good Spirits Bar and Grill

– Joshua Zaffos

The Deceased: Good Spirits Bar and Grill (a/k/a The Great Escape Pub and Eatery), Paonia CO
Born: August 2002
Died: March 2003
Cause of death: Teetotalitarianism

Good Spirits Bar, c. 2003

“Any town with more churches than bars, that town’s got a problem. That town is asking for trouble.”
- Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang

When I first arrived along the North Fork of the Gunnison River, I remember reading one of the tourist rags promoting the North Fork valley. Amid the popular trail suggestions and bed-and-breakfast listings, the paper also included notes from town meetings for the small communities of Paonia, Crawford and Hotchkiss. That month in Paonia, a proprietor went before the town trustees proposing to re-open a bar along Grand Avenue, the town’s main street.

Previously known as the Great Escape, the bar had built a reputation for a roughshod roadhouse atmosphere that led to its eventual demise. At the town meeting, trustee Dave Weber remarked to the new owner: “Let me tell you a story. I was walking down the street one day and I saw blood on the sidewalk. I followed it and it led right to the door of the Great Escape. I hope you are planning on doing a better job.” Weber and the council then approved a liquor license for the new establishment, Good Spirits.

Blood on the sidewalks is a legitimate concern for any town council. But, at the same time, no local government should deny its citizens a place where they can unwind after a hard day of coal mining, farming, assembling Chaco sandals or housesitting.

For those inclined to commit righteous deeds after a day’s work, Paonia offers its 1,500 residents at least 14 churches where folks can meditate, worship or reflect. On the other hand, Good Spirits was one of only two legitimate bars serving liquor and fifty-cent pool to the public seven days a week. And it was the only bar with windows – an exercise in optimism. A few restaurants also serve alcohol, but Good Spirits had a monopoly on the weekday whiskey-drinking crowd (barely a crowd) that was interested in looking out on the bustle (rarely a bustle) of Grand Avenue in Paonia.

During my nights inside the re-opened bar, I never saw a single brawl or any other raucous incident that sent someone home bleeding. But Good Spirits never could get out of the dark and smoky shadow of its predecessor. One reason for the uninterrupted association was that the bar never actually removed the sign from its façade that read, “Great Escape.” Instead, the owner chose to just airbrush its new moniker on a window. Most people still referred to the bar as the Great Escape, or more commonly as the Great Mistake.

Great Escape façade, c. 2003

The lack of a crowd didn’t much matter to the regulars, including myself: Our attraction to Good Spirits (née Great Escape) was directly related to everyone else’s aversion to the place.

My sentimentality and nostalgia towards Good Spirits stems from the fact that we both arrived in the North Fork valley at the same time – and discovered ourselves together. The bar was a mistress I’d visit irregularly, but when I showed up I gave her my devotion. In return, Good Spirits offered me comfort and spontaneity – the defining characteristics of small-town romance. On any given evening, I could either drink without speaking to a soul and just listen to the jukebox or hold a conversation with a caffeinated workman lecturing me on fiber optics while watching a couple dry-humping next to us on the bar rail.

On Monday nights during football season, the bar would show the game and cater to hunters who had just returned from their weekend in the West Elk Wilderness. Fellas from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Oklahoma and Texas usually demonstrated signs of chronic wasting disease of the mouth, rambling loudly to themselves and drinking Budweisers and watermelon pucker shots.

Karaoke night at the bar was Thursday and run by the North Fork madam of sing-along, Holli Karaoke. One of the regulars would sing throughout the evening, always accompanied by his dog yelping and howling along to the chorus of “Mustang Sally” or “Proud Mary.” I was the one who usually waited till the end of the night and then liked to sing Stealers Wheel or Eddie Rabbitt.

Weekends guaranteed less consistent, but equally entertaining distractions. One Saturday night, Good Spirits actually had a tattoo parlor set up in a front corner of the bar. Less than twenty people were in the establishment at any point that night, but the tattoo artist was busy the whole time (and didn’t send anyone home bleeding). The unnerving whining of his needle steadily detracted from Willie Nelson’s rendition of “Pancho and Lefty,” which played over and over on the jukebox.

Unfortunately, a small band of Tuesday night whiskey warriors and Thursday night karaoke superheroes weren’t enough to keep the bar afloat. Good Spirits shut down this March under the guise of “renovation” – but the bartender told me a week later that the doors were closed permanently.

And now our town must wait for a new bar to take over the location, and we’ll keep our fingers crossed it doesn’t fall into the hands of a local bible study group or a sinister boutique owner from Aspen. An establishment open daily – and nightly – serving liquor and natural light can do more to satisfy the all-season sanity of a small town than any church or kitschy fashion salon.

“Between Two Ferns” with Zach Galifianakis
Nice to see a fellow Greek getting ahead with his very own talk show
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The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
In the spirit of Garcia Márquez…probably one of my favorite fiction reads in a long time
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Errol Morris on the New York Times Opinionator blog
His series on photojournalism are provocative, and a reminder that we are always framing history
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Pasta with Fried Peppers and Bread Crumbs (via Saveur)
Fry the peppers to a crisp and ye shall be rewarded
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Blues for Cannibals by Charles Bowden
So far, Bowden at his crankiest, which is saying something
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Residente o Visitante and Los De Atrás Vienen Conmigo – Calle 13
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The Biz of Baseball
A blog tracking the financial churnings of baseball
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“Party Down” Season 1
“Are we having fun yet?”
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The Sun
Writing best appreciated while drinking morning coffee or an evening cocktail in a melancholy yet pensive mood
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Louis C.K.: Chewed Up
Ever since his appearance on Conan when he riffed on how “we live in an amazing, amazing world, and it’s wasted on the crappiest generation of, just, spoiled idiots,” I’ve been a big fan and this video didn’t disappoint
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11:11 – Rodrigo y Gabriela
I’m not sure if I like their music more for the flamenco or heavy metal influences
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Lady Bug
Lesser known, old-school arcade game – maybe my best worst habit