EDA News March 2023

New Managing Director

The EDA Board welcomes our new Managing Director, Carl Patten II. With over 17 years’ experience in professional services, Carl specializes in bringing programs and large-scale transformations to life producing living strategies. His passion is helping people and organizations achieve the best outcomes on their strategic journey. Over the next few weeks, Carl will be meeting with the various EDA teams and familiarizing himself with all our projects and processes. At the same time, James Quilligan is moving into his new position as Director of Development and will be helping orient Carl as he settles into his role as Managing Director.

As per our Cooperative Charter, both roles will need to be ratified by our Governing Circle. More information about the timing and the process for these ratifications will be published on Basecamp, our member communication platform.

We look forward to working with Carl and James in their roles as EDA moves into a new and exciting phase of our journey.

Reminder

These two states were unable to reach a compromise on how to allocate water resources during a shortage. After negotiations reached an impasse, six of the seven states submitted a proposal to the Bureau of Reclamation outlining ways to reduce water usage. California, the largest user indicated it will release its own plan.

The Colorado River has been over-allocated for a long time and the consequences of missing the deadline are significant. A severe drought has seen water levels in many reservoirs reaching historic lows. Water shortages in the region will have significant impacts on agriculture, industry, hydroelectricity, and daily life for over 40 million people and 30 tribal nations in seven states.

Missed deadline has legal implications

The Compact is a legally binding agreement, and failure to comply with its terms will probably lead to lawsuits and other legal actions. This would further complicate efforts to manage water resources in the basins. Some states are hiring more water lawyers to deal with the problem, but only one group of people will benefit from litigation—the lawyers. As the drought worsens, legal obligations won’t matter. If there is no water to share, it becomes a moot point.

Despite the missed deadline, there is still hope that the seven states and tribal nations will reach an agreement on the drought contingency plans. Negotiations are ongoing, and there is a sense of urgency among stakeholders to reach a resolution. If they can’t reach an agreement among themselves, then the federal government will step in and make the decisions for them.

The big plastic recycling lie

If you’re a certain age, you might remember that line in the Dustin Hoffman movie, “The Graduate”. Benjamin was given this career advice from a friend of his father: “Plastics…..there’s a great future in plastics. Will you think about it?”

And back then, it was probably good career advice. After the second World War, the plastics industry was booming. People wanted to replace traditional materials with something that was cheaper, versatile, more sanitary, and easier to manufacture into different forms. During the 1950s and 60s, there were very few regulations on how to deal with our refuse. People were not looking at the impact of their wasteful behavior on the environment.

But things changed in 1962, after the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. By the 1960s and 70s plastics were everywhere—in cars, packaging materials, furniture, toys and household goods. The environmental movement started to broaden its scope from air and water pollution to landscapes and human activities. Landfill sites were overflowing with plastic that wasn’t decomposing. The public was becoming very concerned. Our love affair with plastics was cooling off.

Tackling the plastic proliferation problem

By the 1970’s the big push for recycling began. The booming plastics industry had produced many different types of plastic but not all of it could be melted down effectively. The public was demanding a solution to the problem and complaining that the plastics industry was ignoring the environmental issues. The industry became very concerned about their public image. Their future viability and profitability were at stake. The plastics industry was in crisis

Recycling was the obvious solution, but it wasn’t economically feasible. Sorting was very costly, and each time plastic is melted down it degrades. Plastic cannot be reused more than once or twice. Virgin plastic is cheaper to manufacture. Made from oil and gas, newly manufactured products were much higher in quality than recycled material. It was a no-win situation.

Was advertising the solution?

Analysts predict plastic production will triple by 2050

Some manufacturers held out the faint hope that our ability to recycle would improve as time went on, but in the past 30 years, less than 10% of all plastic has ever been recycled. The nation’s largest oil and gas companies have known this all along, even though they’ve spent millions of dollars on feel-good advertising. Very few plastics are recycled. We can’t keep burying it. We can’t afford to recycle it, and other countries don’t want our trash for the same reason—it costs too much to recycle.

Today some of the leading manufacturers are promising that recycling will work, but will the public believe them? Much of the information promoting recycling comes from plastic manufacturers, so they have a vested interest in promoting the use of their products to maintain their image as eco-responsible manufacturers.

What can you do?

Learn more about what the recycling symbols mean. Just because it has the symbol, doesn’t mean it’s recyclable in every community. You’re simply helping your town sort plastics by the type of plastic material it's made of.

But even the smallest choices you make can help. Buy more bulk food and fewer packaged products. Bring your own cloth bags when you go shopping. Replace plastic food storage containers with glass or metal ones. Try to avoid using cling wrap. There are many different options for covering food from reusable latex covers to beeswax wrapping.

Don’t buy bottled water! Take a reusable coffee cup to your local coffee shop. Bring your own take-away containers when you dine in at a restaurant. Avoid using cosmetics that use micro-bead plastics. Avoid buying products that are over-packaged.

And finally, support your local community if they’re trying to ban the use of plastics. Pay attention to what your elected officials are doing about this problem. Tell them how strongly you feel about the issue. Change won’t come from the manufacturers. It will come from people like you and me.

In a move that promises less future pollution from industrial chemicals, giant manufacturer 3M, the company famous for Post-It notes and Scotch tape, has announced it will stop making controversial per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) by the end of 2025.

Since their invention in the 1930s, PFAS have multiplied and spread. Thousands of substances in the PFAS class have been created, due to their resistance to water and heat, which makes them useful in everyday products like food packaging and clothing. The chemicals, commonly known as “forever chemicals,” are found in hundreds of household items and used to make coatings and products that can repel water, grease, heat and oil.

More hazardous to human health

But the most recent science suggests that these chemicals are much more hazardous to human health than scientists had initially thought, and probably more dangerous at concentration levels thousands of times lower than previously believed. Research has linked them to some cancers, thyroid disease, decreased fertility, developmental delays, liver damage, high cholesterol, and reduced immune responses.

In fact, in the environment PFAS only stick around and build up. They're nicknamed "forever chemicals" because they don't really break down. Now they're in soil, food, water, clothing, and even the dust inside homes. One recent analysis found that rainfall across the entire planet contains unsafe levels of PFAS. The Environmental Working Group cautioned recently that freshwater fish are so contaminated with PFAS that eating just one might mean ingesting a month’s worth of heavily polluted water.

Finally, stricter regulations

In a statement, 3M said its decision is “based on careful consideration and a thorough evaluation of the evolving external landscape,” acknowledging that regulations are cracking down on the chemicals. For example, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposal earlier this year to label forever chemicals as hazardous substances. California also announced a lawsuit recently to recoup the clean-up costs from PFAS.

At the federal level, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) phased out the use of certain PFAS chemicals in 2016. The FDA and industry leaders agreed in 2020 to phase out some PFAS chemicals from food packaging and other items that come into contact with food. However, FDA monitoring of the environment showed that the chemicals tend to linger.

Some chemical manufacturers have previously stopped producing two of the most commonly used forever chemicals, including PFOS and PFOA. Now an industry giant joins those ranks and will no longer produce forever chemicals.

EDA's State Legislation Team looks for bills that reduce the amount of chemicals leaking into our water and food systems. EDA's Research Team has examined a number of chemical spills in Shelby County, Tennessee. We plan to advocate for the elimination of toxic chemicals from our soils and ecosystems.

In 2014, a local business was poised to use a soil remediation landfill to dispose of radioactive drill cuttings from oil and gas wells. The remediation process was incapable of removing radionuclides from the cuttings. This landfill facility is located centrally within the City of Columbus along the Alum Creek, upstream from several public water sources for lower Central Ohio. It’s also in a densely populated area where dust from the drying cuttings can spread particles of radium to the surrounding residents.

CCBOR’s advocacy efforts

When efforts to stop disposal of the drill cuttings was made public by CCBOR, the facility stated that there was not enough interest from the industry to use their landfill for drill cuttings. Wells being drilled in eastern Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia were deemed to be too far away for drillers to transport the drill cuttings to Columbus.

More recently, CCBOR has been involved with statewide efforts to ensure that the Ohio legislature does not pass a bill that would deregulate oil and gas brines, allowing them to be sold on store shelves as a de-icer. Paradoxically, in 2021 the Ohio Department of Transportation stopped spreading oil & gas brine products on state roads for ice control, because of high levels of radium that were found in the products.

Three attempts were made to get city ordinances or charter amendments placed on the ballot that would ban all oil and gas production activity from within the city limits. More importantly, the law would give residents standing in the courts if their public water supply were to become contaminated from the oil and gas wastes disposed of in surrounding communities. Even when the group got the required number of signatures to place the legislation on the ballot, the city government and county board of elections thwarted each of their attempts. The last attempt was halted when COVID struck.

Along with several universities, the group spent the past year collecting data on water samples in strategic locations within the city’s public watershed to establish a baseline for levels of contaminants. The educational wing of Columbus Community Rights Coalition, CCBOR’s 501(c )(3), is poised to publish their white paper on The Risks to the Greater Columbus Water Supply for Oil & Gas Production. It will first be disseminated to local authorities in surrounding communities who use City of Columbus water, and then to the general public. They will then work to convince the city water department to review their monitoring protocol to strengthen the focus on oil and gas contaminants.

Your voice matters!

How 'sponge cities' are redesigning themselves for extreme rain

When a heavy storm dumped 5 1/2 inches of rain on San Francisco on New Year’s Eve—more than the city usually gets in the entire month of December—the streets started to flood. In one small Japanese restaurant in the Mission District, employees had to crawl out of a window as the kitchen filled up with water. Outside, a parklet with wooden benches for outdoor dining started to float away, held back only because it was chained to the ground.

Lasting conservation led by indigenous heritage

Conservation champion and TED Fellow Adjany Costa is on a mission to empower Indigenous communities. Instead of imposing pre-designed policy and plans on local people, she says, conservation efforts should center on those who know the land best, enabling them to tailor solutions to their unique environmental, social, and economic realities. She presents a roadmap for Indigenous communities to take back ownership of their heritage and reclaim stewardship of their land. "Real community-based conservation ... fosters fierce independence," Costa says.