Category Archives: local/regional

Using hot highway de-icer: radioactive AquaSalina®

Business, local/regional, National, , ,

In Ohio a Cleveland Plain Dealer report on state legislation surrounding a 2017 public health report details radiation hazards from a salt-brine road de-icer mix used there. And the risk is more than a little alarming. keepback

Salt-brine is defined by the American Public Works Association as a solution of salt (typically sodium chloride, calcium chloride or magnesium chloride) and water.

It seems AquaSalina, the commercial brine mixture spread all over Ohio, has: […] elevated levels of radioactivity in excess of state limits on the discharge of radioactive materials. The average radioactivity in AquaSalina also exceeded the drinking water limits for Radium 226 and Radium 228 by a factor of 300. Human consumption of any amount of AquaSalina is highly discouraged, the report said. [find Ohio Department of Natural Resources pdf here]

Ohio’s Duck Creek Energy, Inc., maker of the trademarked product, says the de-cier brine and dust control agent  “AquaSalina® is a natural saltwater solution produced from ancient seas dating back to the Silurian age almost 425 million years ago.”

That is likely true — as far as it goes — but the “ancient sea water” is also toxic oil-field brine dredged up from conventional (not shale fracking) oil and gas wells. At the wells the waste water is stored in tanks and residual oil and gas is removed after it floats to the surface. The toxic waste water — err, I mean “ancient sea water” — is trucked to Duck Creek facilities where volatile organics and trace minerals — but not naturally occurring radium — are filtered out. What remains is rebranded (apparently with a straight face) as AquaSalina “natural saltwater” road brine and dust control agent.

Problem is: “Heavy metals and radiologicals accumulate in the soil and become problematic for drinking water,” said Trish Demeter, the Ohio Environmental Council vice president of Policy, Energy. “They don’t just go away. The more you use deicers [and dust control agents] the more these toxins build up over a long period of time.” Not sure if Ohioans should feel complacent, even though the report does say they believe radiation exposure from wintertime use of AquaSalina was “unlikely” to exceed human dosage limits. In the previous winter Ohio road crews used one million gallons of AquaSalina, a fraction of the 10 million total gallons of de-icer mixes used. But then again, it is the only proven radioactive mix splashed on the roads.

 The State of Vermont started experimenting with salt-brine highway deicers (the non-radioactive variety as far as we know) about ten years ago. The VTrans FAQ webpage says that the state currently uses them to “jump start” the melting process and to minimize the amount of salt that bounces into the ditches. The salt we typically use is sodium chloride, the same as on your dinner table at home. Then again, VTrans has not yet (that we know of) released the exact chemical make-up of its brine formula.

Road salt, brine de-icing brews, and mixtures are widely seen as culprits that not only pollute streams but prematurely rust car bodies, corrode brake lines, and erode concrete highway structures. In 2017 a Vermont bill that would have banned the use of sodium chloride, calcium chloride and or magnesium chloride brine mixes was introduced but not passed.

Alternatives to salt-based brines are being tested. Carbohydrate sugars in juices left over from commercial industrial processing beets, cheese, potatoes and pickle brine are effective at lower temperatures. Beet wastewater reportedly smells like stale coffee and may change oxygen levels in waterways. Dumping tons and tons of anything on the highways is bound to be problematic for water runoff and throw habitats out of whack.

While it may be difficult to find out exactly what homemade blend or commercial salt-brine product VTrans may be using, an increase in rusty trucks and cars, eroding bridges, and polluted streams seem to suggest there’s evidence of increased harm to balance a supposed increase in vehicular safety on otherwise slick roads. The assumption appears to be that spraying salt-brine  can’t be as bad as sluicing ancient radioactive sea water all over the roadways … or can it ?

Big Pharma drug money & big museums

Business, local/regional, National,

Did you know Vermont went to “war” last September? “We’re going to war with Big Pharma” said Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo along with Attorney General TJ Donovan at a press event to announce that Vermont had joined 23 other states suing the manufacturer of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma. “The basis of our lawsuit is this: Purdue Pharma lied, they misrepresented, they fabricated, they deceived, and they spread falsehoods, and they made billions off of it and they created a path of destruction that the state of Vermont is still reeling from,” Donovan said.

And later Governor Scott announced he wanted to support the effort too, although he accepted and will not return campaign donations from Purdue.drugmoney

The “war” against Purdue Pharma that Vermont joined is being fought on a second front, and the Sackler family — the owners — are beginning to feel heat. Thanks to OxyContin, their wealth rivals that of the Walton (WalMart) and Rockefeller families. The Sacklers are known for their (upscale) philanthropy, and accordingly have donated to and funded dozens of well known museums and universities around the world. Those institutions are now being targeted.

The Guardian.com reports on a recent demonstration: US art photographer and activist Nan Goldin brought the Guggenheim Museum in New York to a standstill on Saturday night as thousands of fake prescriptions were dropped into the atrium to protest against the institution’s acceptance of donations from the family who owns the maker of OxyContin – the prescription painkiller at the root of America’s opioids crisis.

Once addicted herself to OxyContin, Nan Goldin is quoted in January telling Art Forum magazine: “They have washed their blood money through the halls of museums and universities around the world,” she wrote. “We demand that the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma use their fortune to fund addiction treatment and education. There is no time to waste.”

In New York these institutions are recipients of Sackler family foundations:

Seventeen major arts and educational institutions in the UK are major recipients as well as others in France (The Louvre) and Germany.

And even right here in Vermont the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation gave 313 historical Ancient Near Eastern, Chinese, Korean, Byzantine, Islamic, and Pre-Columbian American  art objects to the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center in 2017 according to a press release.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey alleged in a recent 274 page Purdue suit memorandum that: “[…] the Sacklers flooded Massachusetts with sales reps, influenced state legislation, and financially backed medical facilities and universities so they could tout Purdue opioids.” If these charges are any indication of what is to come, that family’s name may not be what famous-image-minded international institutions want over their front entrance or on their donor list.

The Sacklers did what all upper echelon corporados do: privatize profit and socialize cost/consequences. Is there no PR advisor to these robber barons who might recommend they fund an addiction treatment center in every state instead of more art museums for the rich?

Kakewalk of Shame?

local/regional, National, Uncategorized,

Who knew that the good people of  the Commonwealth of Virginia had so much blackface in their all too recent past? 

Before we northerners get to feeling all superior, maybe we ought to check our own closets.  I’ll bet more than a few contain yearbooks and programs from UVM that date back before 1969.

That’s the year in which the Green Mountain State’s most respected University ended its tradition of the “Kakewalk:” an annual event dating  from 1893, in which costumed students in blackface strutted and high-kicked their way through some semblance of a minstrel show.

Even though the offensive nature of the event was remarked upon in print as early as the 1950”s, it took that esteemed institution until the height of the Civil Rights movement (1969) to finally kill it dead.

I would guess that more than a few 70+ year old alumni who performed in the Kakewalk shows will feel an urgent need to burn rubbish this weekend.view

Vermont Justice Fails Our Values; Over-and-Over Again

local/regional, , , , , , , ,

Like many other folks, ’outrage fatigue’ has distracted me from the everyday injustices that are happening right here in Vermont.  That is one of the collateral costs of the Trump circus playing out like a bad soap opera in Washington.

It’s easy to assume that, in our tiny, generally progressive state, overtly threatening racist acts and sexual exploitation are both infrequent and met with swift justice.  Would that it were so.

I am learning that Vermont justice seems ill-equipped to address these threats, even in the twenty-first century.

Case in point is the sorry tale of Kiah Morris, formerly our lone black female legislator, who was successfully felled by a self-entitled white nationalist by the name of Max Misch, who got his fondest wish when, in order to protect her family, Rep. Morris abandoned her reelection bid.

Sounds like AG TJ Donovan, who recently ran a strong campaign for Attorney General, caved like a cheap suit when Ms. Morris appealed to him for relief from Misch’s harassment.

Who buys his argument that Misch’s threatening behavior is nothing more than ‘free speech’, protected under Article one of the Bill of Rights?  I don’t.  

There is real harm in Misch’s menacing words and presence, not just to Ms. Morris and her family, but to her constituents who, it could be argued, were unjustly deprived of Ms. Morris’ future representation by a single bigot and not the electorate as a whole.  That sounds like election tampering to me.

I don’t believe that Mr. Misch should be allowed to succeed by hiding behind a key provision of our Bill of Rights, which was, after all, intended to protect the individual from abuse; not to open them up to intimidation.

AG Donovan has a lot to answer for if he fails to make a better case than this.

And while we are at it, what about the shabby job done by the Franklin County States Attorney’s office in prosecuting accused serial sexual abuser and former state senator Norm McAllister?

No thunderous “Me too” challenge here!  Instead, having outlived one of his accusers and gotten the benefit of another accuser’s unjust shame, his attorneys only had to answer for accusations from the third woman, who was a crushingly poor victim of marital abuse, low on self-esteem and easily intimidated under questioning.  The attorney for the state only managed to get the least of the counts against McAllister to stick.

After pleading guilty to the one charge of procuring and receiving a laughably light sentence, considering the predatory nature of his still-alleged history; McAllister, all-lawyered up, has now managed to get a mistrial called on even that procurement charge and is scheduled for a new trial in March.  None of McAllister’s other history of accusations from other women will be allowed to be heard at the new trial.  The poor woman who must now repeat her grueling trial experience, was first encouraged by the state’s attorney to pursue her complaint against McAllister under the belief that she would not have to stand alone.  Having witnessed her humiliating testimony first hand, it is difficult for me to believe that she will be willing to go through that again.

My guess is that the whole thing will be dismissed, a quiet footnote in the evening paper.

In other words, McAllister will, like Misch, get off scott-free.

Vermont justice, it would seem, is not just blind, but sclerotic and decidedly white-male.

Complaint Filed Against Vermont Guard

local/regional, National, , , , ,

What’s up with basing the military’s newest and most controversial fighter jet, the F-35  under operational control by a National Guard force that is, itself,  under scrutiny for corrupt behaviors?

Vermont Digger was recently taken to the woodshed for daring to investigate the Vermont National Guard with regard to systemic issues of sexual harassment, discrimination, corruption and substance abuse; but they are a prestigious regional news source and we are just a lowly blog site with no pretensions of influence; so we have have little to fear, and, arguably, an obligation to speak truth to power.

If anyone has paid attention to our postings, they will know that a number of GMD scribes have taken issue with the F-35 siting at Burlington airport.

Our questions were mainly about the safety of the densely populated urban area left at least statistically vulnerable to a disasterous crash by a minimally tested, nuclear-equipped war plane. More subtle issues of public safety, like health impacts from audio disturbance and unknown stress for aerial wildlife also concerned us. Then there was the extremely puzzling choice of Burlington over much more suitable (and willing) locations.

It appears that nothing will stop the fledgling war-dragons from descending on Burlington Airport now.  What the Guard wants, the Guard gets, and on this there simply is no political will for pushback.

With the recent scandal investigated in a series of articles by Digger’s Jasper Craven, there is even more reason to question the wisdom of the F-35 siting.  How is it prudent to hand over control of such a sensitive weapons system to a unit that has failed so recently and so conspicuously in the areas of discipline, honor and simple common sense?

Being a civilian, the conventional wisdom is that I am too ignorant even to raise questions; and I probably haven’t gotten the technical picture even half-right, from that point of view.  But if there is even a kernel of validity in the concerns that have been raised over the past few years about the siting and the process, we civilians have a right to be very worried by disciplinary failures in the Guard.

This is a rather long-winded way to segue into a complaint filed on January 4, 2019 by South Burlington attorney James Marc Leas with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).  I will allow excerpts from Mr. Leas’ press release to take it from here, and will add the full text of Mr. Leas’ press release, the full complaint and links to Jasper Craven’s articles in the comments section below.

“The heavy drinking culture and severe alcohol-impairment is inseparable from the intermingling of the military jets with a densely populated civilian neighborhood,” said Leas. “Pilots cannot be expected to blast children with thousands of F-16 afterburner takeoffs each year, impairing their learning and permanently damaging their hearing, as described by the US Air Force in its 2013 Environmental Impact Statement, without negative impact on themselves,” he said. “What was revealed by VTDigger are state agency commanders and pilots awash in alcohol and operating dangerous equipment amidst the densely populated Chamberlin School neighborhood of South Burlington. A recipe for imperiling health, safety, learning, hearing, and honor.”

…Far from putting a stop to the misuse of alcohol, VTDigger reports that under the redesign of facilities for the F-35, commanders are doubling the size of the “Afterburner Club” room for alcohol abuse. Commanders and pilots appear to understand that as they increase harm to civilians, more space for alcohol abuse is needed.

Nor is the corruption limited to Guard commanders and pilots. The abuse originated in political and military leaders who pushed for routine use of the F-16 afterburner in 2008, “just in time to vastly boost ‘baseline’ noise levels to facilitate selection of the Vermont Air Guard for the F-35 in the scoping process that began in 2009,” said Leas.

The complaint notes that the culture of falsifying records mentioned in the VTDigger series is intimately related to the F-35 basing. The fourth in the VTDigger series of articles disclosed a “longstanding policy” in which Guard commanders did “a very deliberate cooking of the books.” In the VPR interview, Jasper Craven explained to VPR’s Mitch Wertlieb, “Senior officers of the Vermont Guard are also alleged to have cooked the books around their personnel numbers ‘to project an operational readiness, a sort of strength to the National Bureau, in order show that the Guard deserves continued support and the F-35.’”

…said Leas, “None of the VTDigger articles suggested wrongdoing by the enlisted women and men of the Guard–the bad apples are all at the top of the tree: the commanders, the pilots, the congressional delegation, the Burlington mayor, and the governor himself. All the bad apples must be removed and composted. The enlisted women and men in our Vermont National Guard, and the public, deserve a leadership and a culture devoted strictly to serving the people of Vermont, free of alcohol abuse, where sexual abuse, retaliation, and falsifying records has no part, and where impairing learning of children and damaging hearing are not permitted.”

 

Will Vermont brake for THC saliva testing?

Business, local/regional, , ,

All indications are the Vermont legislature is on the road toward a vote on a bill that will legalize a retail, taxable, regulated marijuana market. Governor Scott qualifies his support for such a bill, stipulating there must be a reliable roadside test — such as a saliva THC blood level test — to determine driver impairment before considering signing one into law.

Governor Scott’s own marijuana commission in 2018 recommended saliva THC testing even while pointing out it wouldn’t be especially effective […] there is no formula that can be broadly applied to equate THC levels with individual intoxication. Heavy and light users will vary significantly in the detectable amounts of THC and the effects of similar amounts of THC will vary widely among individuals. [added emphasis.] They did not support establishing a per se limit of detectable THC.

And while state law enforcement officials may be, err… salivating at the prospect of getting the green light to collect DNA samples from drivers, the Vermont ACLU has expressed its concern that tests could be misused. Even when a warrant is required, widespread gathering and storage of DNA samples present serious constitutional privacy questions.

An article on NYTimes.com should burst the balloons of Scott and others who have been fulminating against legalized marijuana on unscientific grounds.  The tests we use for measuring the presence of THC, though, do not measure the level of impairment. They measure whether someone has used marijuana recently. If we legalize the drug, and more people use it, more people will register its recent use even when they are not impaired. So it should be expected that more people involved in car crashes will test positive even if no one is driving while high.

Using a synthetic control approach, Mr. Hansen and colleagues showed that marijuana-related fatality rates did not increase more after [two states passed] legalization than what you would expect from trends and other states.

In Vermont the THC saliva test may function best only to measure how hard Phil Scott is tapping the brakes on an issue he seems reluctant to support or thinks is moving too fast.

philsbadbrake

Poll: Vermonters still approve of Senators Sanders and Leahy and Phil Scott back in top ten Govs…again

local/regional, National, ,

Both of Vermont’s senators are at the top of a recent Morning Consult approval rankings list showing the top and bottom ten  approval rating for senators in the last quarter of 2018.

Bernie Sanders (I) tops the list for the 11th quarter in a row with 64 percent approval of Vermont voters and Senator Leahy (D) at close second with 62 percent.The top ten Senators includes four Democrats and two Independents that caucus with Senate Democrats.toptensens1

Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell moved up one place to the 49th least popular. Morning Consult notes: The fourth quarter marks McConnell’s best showing since the second quarter of 2017 as he prepares for an expected re-election campaign in 2020. McConnell lost his last-place least-popular senator “honor” to newly retired Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona.

Morning Consult has good news for second-term Vermont Governor too. Phil Scott (R), had experienced a significant drop in approval last quarter subsequent to signing into law a bill that restricts gun ownership. But his winning re-election has put him back in the top ten most popular governors  — in fact he’s back in the top five at 59 percent approval.

Vermont driverless cars: Can they get here from there?

local/regional, National, , , , ,

The Vermont Agency of Transportation is doing some early planning for  driverless cars. And the agency’s director of planning and research says he’d like to see how the experimental vehicles test on road conditions here.

Fifty-two companies, including Apple, Waymo, Tesla, Ford, Honda, BMW, Nissan, Intel and Uber, are currently working on them. To test them out companies in California are issued permits by the motor vehicle department for testing on tracks and on state roads. For the earliest road excursions, they were required to have a safety driver, but current permits for streets and highways with speed limits of up to 65 miles per hour at any time of day, as well as during inclement weather, are now issued that don’t require a human being in the driver’s seat.

However in several areas where driverless car testing is taking place people are not reacting well. In both California and Arizona people are hassling and even attacking automated test vehicles.

Out of the six self-driving car collisions last year in California, two happened when people-driven cars intentionally rammed them. And in San Francisco a pedestrian crossed a street to shout at and then body slammed a test car at a traffic stop.

Attacks on test cars in Arizona, where a driverless Uber vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian in March are notably more aggressive. In that state tires have been slashed, shots fired at vehicles and general harassment is occurring.

Some people have pelted Waymo [owned by Alphabet, the parent of Google] vans with rocks, according to police reports. Others have repeatedly tried to run the vehicles off the road. One woman screamed at one of the vans, telling it to get out of her suburban neighborhood. A man pulled up alongside a Waymo vehicle and threatened the employee riding inside with a piece of PVC pipe.

One man who was issued a warning by police for driving head-on at a test vehicle said: “They said they need real-world examples, but I don’t want to be their real-world mistake,” said Mr. O’Polka, who runs his own company providing information technology to small businesses. “They didn’t ask us if we wanted to be part of their beta test,” added his wife, who helps run the business.

Driverless cars may soon be coming to Vermont where the Agency of Transportation is doing some early planning for allowing testing of driverless cars here. Recently on VPR and in Vtdigger.com the agency’s director of planning and research, Joe Segale, said: “One of the reasons I’m interested in seeing these vehicles tested in Vermont is to see how they can handle driving on our back roads,”

He said he believes self-driving cars could have many benefits in a rural state like Vermont. For instance, Segale said, artificial intelligence technology could keep drivers safe in snowy or icy weather conditions, and create more efficient and affordable modes of transportation.

vtstrongdriverless

That last bit: “artificial intelligence technology could keep drivers safe in snowy or icy weather conditions” may be the toughest one as every Vermont driver knows. And notably the state transportation agency winter guidelines and radio PSAs for Vermont currently warns drivers to turnoff cruise control on snow and ice covered roads because of how rapidly conditions change.

For now the legislature, the AOT and the state police are working on issues such as registration, testing permits and of course, autonomous vehicle insurance liability. Who pays: manufacturer, owner, or operator? I’d be willing to bet this proves to be almost as problematic as getting self-driving technology to work safely on our back roads.

The RGA bought Phil Scott’s TV campaign ads but who bought him flowers?

local/regional, National,

Today WCAX’s Neal Goswami re-tweeted Governor Scott’s message to Vermonters about the upcoming Montpelier tree lighting — and he suggests the flowering poinsettia “looks like it was from Arizona.”RGAsflowering gov

Scott’s message was likely sent from Arizona where the Vermont re-elected governor flew to attend the post-election gathering of the Republican Governors Association (RGA). Although the RGA invested less in the Scott campaign this year — it contributed almost $3 million in 2016 for his first successful race for governor — the GOP organization still spent a bundle. According to Seven Days, the conservative-funded super PAC spent $826,366 on Scott’s re-election advertising — more than any other single group, the bulk of it on pro-Scott television ads.

So while it isn’t clear if those really are flowering Arizona poinsettias, Governor Scott is posing next to, we do know who is behind the RGA and what they bought: almost all of  Scott’s blooming television campaign advertising.

Here’s Seven Days list from the IRS of the conservative donors to the RGA bundle spent on Phil Scott’s 2018 campaign ads:RGA$

No agendas here to worry about, amiright? You know the Koch Brothers,CEO prison corp. and buddies are  just kicking in a few hundred thousand here and there to keep Phil Scott’s poinsettias blooming. No strings attached, obviously.

Waging minimum parity

local/regional, National, ,

Nationally one thing became clear in last Tuesday’s election: when a minimum wage hike is on the ballot, even red state voters can pass it — often overwhelmingly.

In Missouri and Arkansas an increase to the minimum wage was on the ballot, and although aggressively opposed by state GOP leaders and big money business groups, it passed overwhelmingly in both red states. Voters passed measures that will raise those states’ minimum wages almost immediately, and thereafter increase it at regular intervals — over years it’ll be edging up substantially. In Arkansas the minimum wage measure passed with 68 percent in voting in favor.builtonwages

If red state voters can accomplish such a feat for low-wage earners can blue Vermont do more?

Regionally pressure to raise the minimum wage is increasing. New York is phasing in a $15.00 minimum, and Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island have proposals in their legislatures to reach a $15.00 minimum. It isn’t too far-fetched that even traditionally low-minimum-wage New Hampshire might experience some pressure, now that the last election gave both houses in the state legislature a Democratic blue majority. And at NH’s current $7.50 per hour minimum, who can afford to work there if they can earn significantly more in a nearby state?

Vermont’s current minimum wage is $10.50, goes up to $10.80 in January 2019, and to $12.16 by 2024. Now Vermont doesn’t have ballot measures but a plan to increase the planned minimum was passed during the 2018 legislative session.

The 2018 legislative bill would have hiked our minimum to $15 per hour by 2024. It is estimated by the Economic Policy Institute that to meet basic housing, food, and transportation needs, a single full-time worker in rural Vermont needs to earn at least $15.00 per hour. However our GOP Governor Scott vetoed the increase which (along with a vetoed paid family-leave bill) would have made life in the state more affordable for actual working class families.

Maybe the new bluer so-called “super” majority of Democrats and Progressives in the Vermont legislature will decide to give Republican Scott a second chance at doing the minimum: making the lives of low-wage earners more affordable.