John Cronin

The Improving Hudson?

Copyright 2009, John Cronin

I was recently contacted by a reporter writing a story about "How the Hudson has improved." 

"What is your premise?" I asked.

"That the Hudson was once called an open sewer and now it is an environmental success story."

I know well the terms "open sewer" and "environmental success story" when applied to the Hudson River.  I spent years helping to make them popular.  Many years.  So many years that by 2009 those phrases have become worn and dated.   The Hudson may no longer be an open sewer,  but neither is it the river most of us thought it would be. 

I have been involved in Hudson River issues since I was 23.  I am 59.  In good conscience I can no longer boast of the river's comeback to a 30 year-old, or a 20 year-old, or my 14 year-old son.  After all, what has happened in their lifetime?

There is no evidence of which I am aware that the Hudson has improved in the last decade.  Indeed, there is every reason to believe that the river is in decline, despite official and unofficial attempts to manage its restoration and protection.  Major fish species, such as American shad, Atlantic sturgeon, and smelt, have been in trouble for over a decade.  Twenty years ago, they were not.  The Hudson's once proud commercial fishery is just about over.  There is more human population and therefore more pollutants being discharged into the river, directly and indirectly.  Invasive species are more prevalent. 

Of Lunar and Human Impacts

If we can crash a machine on the moon . . .

Copyright 2009, John Cronin

Occasionally, the juxtaposition of two disparate events renders both in high relief.  Such is the case with today's announcement by NASA that it set off explosions on the moon's surface in search of water, and the story of drought and human devastation coming out of Africa.

Relief agencies estimate that up to 23 million people in the Horn of Africa now face a mortal threat from thirst and starvation.

This morning, NASA  intentionally crash-landed its LCROSS Centaur rocket and Sheperding Spacecraft on the lunar surface, sending up six-mile dust clouds that are being analyzed for the presence of water.  NASA describes LCROSS as a "fast-track, low-cost" mission of $79 million.  

Let's stipulate that an unflattering numerical comparison is not the real point here.  But what of human imagination?  What of great endeavors? 

On any given day, 1.2 billion people on the planet are without drinking water, due to drought, pollution, pestilence, water diversions, crumbling infrastucture, and inequitable privatization.  Is solving this crisis not as great a human endeavor as a moonshot?  A super-collider? 

The Water It Takes 2: Alternative Energy

A Very Inconvenient Truth

Copyright 2009, John Cronin

Producing energy without causing negative impacts to water has been a thorny environmental issue for decades.  In the 1970s, fish killed by the cooling water intakes of power plants, and heated water from the plants' discharge pipes were icons of American environmental degradation. 

The effects of cooling water use by conventional and nuclear plants are not due to the consumption of water but the cycling of water through the plants and its heated return to the originating water body.  But the impacts of this very large water flow though a power plant's machinery can be devastating.  In a paper for the Harvard Environmental Law Review in 1992, Karl Rabago made a conservative estimate that the number of fish that die in these "once-through" cooling systems nationally is a half-trillion per year, based on government and industry data.

Recent stories on the growing controversy over the proposed use of water by alternative energy developers, reminds us that the laws of physics and thermodynamics don't take a rest just because harnessing the sun is a good idea. 

The Water It Takes . . .

 

Image: IBM Smarter Planet

What Is A Smarter City?

Copyright 2009, John Cronin

At its Smarter Cities Forum, held today and tomorrow here in New York City, IBM is presenting a 21st century, real-time vision of the nation's, and the planet's, urban centers. 

This afternoon, IBM CEO Sam Palmisano hosted conversations with  Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg, and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg before a standing room audience at the Rose Theater at Lincoln Center.  They described a future where everything, moving and immovable, will be instrumented.  Sensors will deliver information in real-time about the operations of urban systems, behavior of the local environment, where people and traffic are located, and where energy is needed.

Electronic health records will provide up-to-the-minute information available to the patient anywhere, and in any medical office, anytime she or he wants them. 

Education programs will emphasize STEM skills (science, technology, engineering, math) and develop an urban workforce to innovate the next generation of smarter cities.

Cities themselves will be living laboratories of instrumentation, increasing efficiency and providing information about every aspect and condition of their services, radically improving  the management, and reducing the costs, of the urban infrastructure. 

To get the ball rolling in NYC, IBM's Palmisano announced a new urban analytics center in Manhattan that will be home to 550 IBM experts.  IBM's most recent Smarter City Forum took place in Berlin last June.  Its next will be in Shanghai in 2010.

During his remarks, Mayor Bloomberg announced an iPhone app for the city's 311 online information system.

Imagine No Pollution

The Future, and the Failed Clean Water Act

Copyright 2009, John Cronin

The Clean Water Act has failed.  It is time for a new law.

There is a mistaken, popular belief that the central purpose of the 1972 Clean Water Act is to bring to justice the bad guys who are polluting the nation’s waters.

The Clean Water Act was written to create a global market place based on American innovation that would end pollution in our lifetime, and “restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the nation’s waters.” 

But a list of the Clean Water Act's failed policies reads like an indictment of the law itself.

The first policy goal on the first page of the Clean Water Act is the elimination of the discharge of pollutants by 1985.

The law also sets a goal of making the nation’s waters fit for sports and recreation, and for fish and wildlife by July 1983.

It calls for management plans to end pollution from runoff, protect watersheds, and enhance water resources, in keeping with the 1983 and 1985 goals.

It requires the cessation of toxic discharges in toxic amounts.

It establishes a sweeping domestic and foreign policy on water designed to protect life and health here and abroad.

Indeed, the enormity of the Clean Water Act’s failure can be measured in lives.  The law directs the Secretary of State to assist other nations in eradicating their water problems to “at least the same extent as the United States does under its laws.”  But since the Clean Water Act was enacted, an estimated 70 - 100 million people, mostly children in the developing world, have died from diseases related to water pollution.  The Pacific Institute estimates that between 36 million and 70 million will die by 2020.

The Pale Blue Dot

The narration for the above video is taken from the book Pale Blue Dot by the late Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. It is Dr. Sagan's voice. I chose the images.  The featured photo is by Stephen Codrington.

The Planetary Society explains that the book's title "was inspired by an image taken, at Sagan's suggestion, by Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990. As the spacecraft left our planetary neighborhood for the fringes of the solar system, engineers turned it around for one last look at its home planet. Voyager 1 was about 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away, and approximately 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane, when it captured this portrait of our world. Caught in the center of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size."

See this post for more on Dr. Sagan, Ann Druyan and the Voyager mission.

What Do PCBs Look Like?

A Dredging Photo Album

Copyright 2009, John Cronin

Many people have asked what General Electric's PCB dredging operation looks like.  Click the image below to link to an album of photos I took on June 15, a rainy Hudson River day punctuated by roving thunder and lightning.  The river around Fort Edward has been transformed into a mini-Mississippi of barges, workboats, tugs, laborers and engineers.  Local eateries stay open for the night crews, and there is the makings of a dredging tourism business.  It is fascinating to observe the activity and the breadth of the full operation.  And it is a beautiful part of New York State.  I recommend the trip.  While you're there, patronize local business.

For updates on the progress of the cleanup, visit EPA's Hudson River superfund website or visit GE's special dredging website.

Taking Questions on PCBs - Pt. 3

From June 17 - 19  I was the guest blogger on The New York Times' "Taking Questions" feature of its City Room blog.  The topic was "General Electric's project to remove PCBs from the Hudson River."   The Times asked that I respond to 5 reader-submitted questions daily.   Part 3 of the selected questions and my answers follows,  just as it appeared on the The New York Times site:

Because so many inquiries about swimming have been posted, I feel obligated to clarify and expand on the quick summary I presented in a previous post:

— John Cronin

Kristen Skopeck, the Hudson River community involvement coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency, tells me that swimming also tops the list of questions she receives at her Hudson River field office at 421 Lower Main Street in Hudson Falls, N.Y. This is a measure of the public attention accorded the dredging project, as well as the widespread eagerness to enjoy the river.

The New York State Department of Health, lead agency for swimming and health issues, expects that during the dredging, PCB levels in the Hudson River will remain below the E.P.A.’s drinking water standard of 500 parts per trillion. It has issued no dredging-related health warnings for the river.

Taking Questions on PCBs - Pt. 1

From June 17 - 19  I was the guest blogger on The New York Times' "Taking Questions" feature of its City Room blog.  The topic was "General Electric's project to remove PCBs from the Hudson River."   The Times asked that I respond to 5 reader-submitted questions daily.   Part 1 of the selected questions and my answers follows,  just as it appeared on the The New York Times site:

It seems I’ve known about this PCB problem forever, but I don’t really know the details. I recall that you were quite involved at the beginning of this process, so I’m hoping you will be able to answer my questions: when did the PCB contamination start, how was it discovered, and what have been the steps leading up to this final cleanup?

— Posted by Morna Crites-Moore

The best primer on PCBs and the Hudson can be gleaned from visiting the dedicated PCB web pages of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the General Electric Company. These are not necessarily dueling sites, though they may disagree on some points. You can put together a good regulatory time line as well as the current status of the cleanup from the information they present.

The PCB controversy has a long history. The issue first came to public attention in August 1975 in an article in The New York Times in which Richard Severo reported that the New York State environmental conservation commissioner, Ogden R. Reid, and the health commissioner, Dr. Robert P. Whalen, had issued a public warning to avoid eating striped bass from the Hudson River because of PCB contamination. Mr. Reid cited two General Electric plants in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls as a likely cause.