Burning more wood is for cavemen

Article published Dec 26, 2010

By Chris Matera

We need to get serious about global warming and clean energy, but wood-burning biomass incinerators are a false solution that will worsen our problems, not help solve them.

While the word “biomass” conjures up pleasant images, the promotion of this old caveman technology as “clean and green” is a colossal “greenwash” by the timber, trash and energy industries attempting to cash in on lucrative public clean energy subsidies.

One can become quite cynical to learn that our green energy subsidies are being directed to cutting forests and burning them in dirty biomass incinerators instead of promoting genuinely clean energy solutions, such as solar, geothermal, appropriately scaled and located wind and hydro, and most importantly conservation and efficiency.

Here is a biomass reality check.

Contrary to industry claims, biomass energy does not reduce carbon dioxide emissions, it increases them. Wood-burning biomass power production emits 50 percent more carbon dioxide per unit of energy than coal. That is not a typo, and is based on numbers from the proponents’ own reports.

Since burning wood is so inefficient, burning living trees is actually worse than burning coal. New electric biomass power plants emit about 3,300 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour, while existing coal plants emit 2,100 pounds per megawatt-hour, existing natural gas plants about 1,300 pounds per megawatt-hour and new natural gas plants about 760 pounds per megawatt-hour.

Not only is wood-burning biomass energy worse than fossil fuels for carbon dioxide emissions, but it also usually emits higher rates of conventional pollutants such as particulates, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide than fossil fuels. The McNeil biomass plant near Burlington, touted by biomass proponents, is the No. 1 air pollution source in the state of Vermont and emits 79 pollutants (see www.planethazard.com). In short, “clean” energy does not come out of a smokestack.

Wood-burning energy production is extremely inefficient; a typical power plant burns at about 23 percent efficiency, so 77 percent of the trees cut go up in smoke and without producing any energy. This means enormous amounts of forest need to be cut to provide tiny amounts of power. This large fuel demand will lead to increased clear-cutting of forests, which even the forestry consultant to the Beaver Wood Pownal and Fair Haven biomass proposals has admitted.

It is very important to realize that the vast majority of the fuel for biomass energy would come from living trees, not waste wood, as pitched to the public. The industry includes trees that it calls “junk” or “low grade” in its definition of “waste” and “residues” simply because they are a species, or have characteristics, that do not provide high commercial market value. However, to the rest of us and to nature, these are still valuable trees that filter the air and water, sequester carbon, maintain the soil, attract tourists, and provide fish and wildlife habitat.

The proposed Fair Haven facility alone would require nearly 600,000 green tons of wood per year for electricity and pellets. This is about 40 percent of the entire public and private annual timber harvest in Vermont and yet would produce only about 1 percent more heat and electricity for Vermont.

Achievable and more economical conservation and efficiency measures could reduce our energy use by 30 percent. “Phantom” loads alone — for example, when our TV is plugged in but not on — account for 5 percent of our electricity use and could easily be avoided by using power strips. While making better use of the energy we already have would have the least impacts, the damage is already done with Hydro-Quebec, so utilizing this available energy source would have minimal new impacts in comparison to increased cutting and burning of our important forests.

There are other large biomass burning proposals in Springfield and the Massachusetts cities of Pittsfield, Greenfield, Russell and Springfield that all have overlapping wood demands that would require cutting forests at more than 300 percent of today’s cutting rates and would seriously threaten our forests.

Tourists and recreationists come from around the world and support a lucrative tourism industry to visit New England’s “Golden Goose,” our forests, in their glory. They will not come to see them cut down, chipped, burned and belched into the atmosphere in industrial burners.

The reason these biomass incinerators are popping up like mushrooms on a rainy Seattle day is because of the enormous public subsidies being directed their way. A typical incinerator like the one proposed in Fair Haven is eligible for a $50 million to $80 million federal cash grant if it can break ground by Friday and about $20 million in annual public subsidies. Imagine all the genuinely clean jobs and energy that could instead be created with that money by installing solar panels and insulating homes. Rather than 25 to 50 or so destructive jobs cutting and burning forests, the $20 million annual subsidy alone could be used to support 400 clean and green jobs at $50,000 a year.

At this time of polluted air, global warming, already stressed forests and bankrupt governments, there is no reasonable argument for forcing taxpayers to subsidize the construction of new dirty, carbon-belching, forest-degrading biomass incinerators for minimal amounts of power that we don’t need, just to further enrich already wealthy out-of-state investors.

These policies will lead to increased clear-cutting, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions while simultaneously draining our public coffers, the exact opposite of what we need to do right now. “Green” taxpayer subsidies and other incentives should be directed only toward genuinely green technologies that produce clean, non-carbon-emitting energy and local jobs.



Chris Matera is a civil engineer and the founder of Massachusetts Forest Watch, a citizen watchdog group.

 

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Biomass Capital Investment to Reach $33.7 Billion by 2015, Says Pike Research

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20101223005133/en/Biomass-Capital-Investment-Reach-33.7-Billion-2015

Environmentalists plan to redirect strategies

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 21, 2010; A03

As 2010 comes to a close, U.S. environmentalists are engaged in their most profound bout of soul-searching in more than a decade. Their top policy priority - imposing a nationwide cap on carbon emissions - has foundered in the face of competing concerns about jobs. Many of their political allies on both the state and federal level have been ousted. And the Obama administration has just signaled it could retreat on a couple of key air-quality rules.

Hence a shift of focus away from the toxic partisanship of Washington back to the grass roots and the shared values that gave the movement its initial momentum more than 40 years ago.

"Certainly I think we have figured out we need to find a way to really listen harder and connect with people all over America, especially in rural America," said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund. "I don't think we've done a particularly good job of that."

The change casts a sudden pall over environmentalists' top-down approach.

"The tragedy is that they spent the last 10 years on this and not anything else," said Clean Air Task Force Executive Director Armond Cohen, whose group has pursued an array of alternative strategies aimed at curbing climate change and air pollution.

Now, instead of spending millions of dollars seeking to win over wavering lawmakers on the Hill, green groups are ramping up their operations outside D.C., focusing on public utilities commissions that sign off on new power plants and state ballot initiatives that could potentially funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to conservation efforts.

The Nature Conservancy, for example, successfully championed a ballot initiative in Iowa this fall that will devote a portion of any future sales tax increase to land and water conservation initiatives. According to its president, Mark Tercek, a series of floods helped focus Iowans' attention on the benefits of preventing soil erosion and other problems.

"The average Iowan is not liberal," Tercek said, noting the initiative could generate $150 million a year for conservation. "They're saying through this, 'We need to invest in ecosystems.' "

The Sierra Club, meanwhile, is bolstering its long-standing campaign to block the construction of power plants across the country, assembling a team of 100 full-time employees to focus on the issue in 45 states.
"This is where the environmental movement will make the most progress in the next five years," said Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune.

350.org founder Bill McKibben, who has been trying to foster a global grass-roots movement, wrote in an e-mail he sees it as the only way to overcome traditional opponents who are far better positioned in Washington: "Since we're never going to compete with Exxon in money," he wrote, "we better find another currency, and to me bodies, spirit, creativity are probably our best bet."

This strategic reassessment also has given hope to those working on lower-profile environmental issues, which were largely sidelined during the climate change debate. Vikki Spruill, president of the Ocean Conservancy, noted that the combination of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the fact that oceans have "less partisan baggage" could enhance the prospects for marine conservation next year.

And some of the philanthropists who have directed much of their spending on federal climate change policy in recent years are looking at funding local or international green efforts.

"We can't just depend on everything to happen in Washington," said Rachel Leon, executive director of the Environmental Grantmakers Association.

But several national green leaders said they cannot afford to abandon Washington, with Republicans indicating they may seek to limit the Environmental Protection Agency's powers under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases. Looking ahead, League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski said, "Sadly, too much of our work in Congress may be focused on protecting EPA's job to hold polluters accountable and protect our health."

It remains unclear how hard President Obama will fight to advance environmental priorities: last week the EPA said it would postpone regulations on smog until July 2011 and on industrial boilers until April 2012, handing two victories to business interests and a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers who warned the stricter rules could exact a severe economic toll.

White House aides who had met with manufacturing and union representatives on the boiler rule urged EPA to take a closer look at its economic impact, helping prompt the delay.

U.N. Foundation president Tim Wirth, who served in both the House and Senate, said he is still working on "fathoming" the administration's environmental agenda. "One of the failures of the administration has been not developing the economic case for what they're trying to do," he said. "They've got to construct a bullet-proof case, and that's not been done."

White House spokesman Clark Stevens said regardless of the political climate, the administration "will continue to take steps to develop science-based, common-sense policies that focus on creating jobs, reducing dependence on foreign oil, and cutting pollution."

Many both inside and outside the environmental movement say it needs to overhaul its traditional policy prescriptions, as well as the way it frames what's at stake.

This fall three think tanks - the Breakthrough Institute, Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute - offered the idea of a "post-partisan power" plan to devote $100 billion a year to pioneering low-carbon energy.

Others suggest these groups would be better off cutting modest deals with Republicans, whether it involves new energy efficiency mandates or subsidies for nuclear power plants.

"It shouldn't be all or nothing," said Keith McCoy, the National Association of Manufacturers' vice president for energy and resources policy .

But Green Strategies president Roger Ballentine, who chaired the White House Task Force on Climate Change under President Clinton, said neither a big spending program nor government mandates are likely to gain traction in the near future.

"Any policy in the past that's based on government largesse is doomed to failure because we are entering an era of financial retrenchment," he said.

Instead Ballentine and others, such as National Wildlife Federation President Larry Schweiger, argue Obama and his allies need to make the moral and scientific case for addressing climate change and other environmental challenges.

"This is a values issue," Schweiger said.

And in the end, Wirth said, it will be younger activists and politicians who need to chart a new course for environmentalists.

"The next generation has got to define the new agenda," he said. "The current generation has got to hold onto what we have."
  

Pine forest study aboard Lejeune to have impact beyond base

December 13, 2010 8:55 AM

HOPE HODGE

 

Camp Lejeune’s 15,000 acres of longleaf pine trees will soon fall under the scrutiny of the USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station.

The base is one of three U.S. military installations selected for a five-year, $2.4 million study commissioned by the Defense Department’s Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, which will examine the way the conifers, known for their dense wood and longevity, store and retain carbon dioxide. Scientists hope the results of the study will help both landowners to better manage their forested land and use trees to offset carbon emissions.
Kurt Johnsen, a plant physiologist based in Durham’s Research Triangle Park and SRS’s principal investigator on the study, said the study would not only benefit defense installations.

“What we want to do is have a fairly complex model that land managers can then use to manage their forests,” he said. “We’ll take this fairly complex information and distill it into tools for the managers.”

The study, he said, will involve site work at Fort Benning, Ga., and Fort Polk., La., as well as Camp Lejeune. Researchers will meet with base environmental personnel at each location this summer to discuss how to proceed with the work. Later, they will isolate certain tree stands to study.

Collaborating on the study are researchers from Auburn University and the University of Florida.
Lisa Samuelson, director of the Center for Longleaf Pine Ecosystems Auburn and this project’s leader, said the military bases provide a uniquely pristine environment to conduct an extensive study of this sort.

“They have very good records, and they’ve been planting long leaf pine for awhile,” she said. “Not only military but the private landowner will be able to use these models when we finish them.”

According to researchers, the three bases were selected to survey as wide a climate variation possible among longleaf habitats in the southern U.S.

Since only three million acres of the once-plentiful pines remain in the south, the roughly 15,000 stable acres of longleafs on each of the bases is also significant.

Camp Lejeune environmental officials said they will support the study while not taking an active role.
“We believe your research will be of benefit to MCB CamLej and will support and facilitate access to research sites on the base,” Lejeune Environmental Management director John Townson wrote in an Oct. 5 letter to Samuelson.

But, Townson wrote, no scheduled military training or natural resources management activities would be disrupted on account of the researchers.

At any rate, it will be several years before work begins in earnest aboard Camp Lejeune. The analysis of the trees — which will include study of root structure, decomposing taproots, and carbon in the soil — will move forward at the rate of one base per year beginning in March. Fort Benning is expected to be the first base studied.
Samuelson said she looked forward to seeing the results, expected to be presented to DoD officials in 2016.

“It’s exciting,” she said. “It hasn’t been done before and it’s a really useful project.”

© Copyright 2010 Freedom Communications. All Rights Reserved.
  

Court to Weigh Private Interests' Intervention in NEPA Disputes

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December 10, 2010

By LAWRENCE HURLEY of Greenwire

A federal appeals court will consider next week whether to abandon a legal rule that makes it difficult for private interests to intervene in environmental disputes in the Western states.

Industry and recreational groups are pushing hard for the change, while environmentalists are largely staying silent.

At issue is the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' "federal defendant rule," which prevents anyone other than the federal government from defending claims under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the main legal mechanism for challenging government actions that affect the environment.

The argument in Wilderness Society v. U.S. Forest Service in Pasadena on Monday will be before an en banc panel of 11 judges, rather than the usual three-judge panel, because the court is considering whether to overturn one of its precedents.

The rule, unique to the 9th Circuit, irks business and recreational interests in particular. They feel their voices are not always heard when environmental groups file suit.

Some federal district courts within the 9th Circuit's jurisdiction have even started to apply it to cases outside of the NEPA context, including Endangered Species Act cases.

Industry groups, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, see the rule as a growing threat.

If the court were to abandon the rule, "it would be devastating to the environmental groups," said Robin Conrad, who heads the group's legal arm. "It's an effort to shut out an opposing point of view."

The chamber has filed a friend-of-the-court brief that has been joined by the American Petroleum Institute, the National Association of Manufacturers and other industry groups, calling for the rule to be axed.

Intriguingly, environmental groups appear somewhat conflicted about the matter. They have stayed neutral on the question of whether the rule should be kept and have downplayed the importance of the case.

Legal observers say that is because while the rule might help them in some cases, in others, it does not.

As a whole, the rule is "disturbing and misplaced," said Richard Frank, director of the California Environmental Law and Policy Center at the University of California, Davis.

The rule effectively stops interested parties from making perfectly valid arguments that could help the court reach better decisions, he added.

What the court decides to do following the arguments Monday is of consequence because the 9th Circuit's jurisdiction includes the nine Western states, and its caseload therefore includes a substantial number of environmental cases in which the federal government is the defendant.

"This is a very important issue, because industry groups are often concerned that the government will not adequately defend the actions it took to comply with NEPA," said Arthur Hellman, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

Elizabeth Howard, a partner at Dunn Carney Allen Higgins & Tongue in Portland, Ore., who represents ranchers and farmers who use public lands and has filed a brief in the case, noted that her clients suffer when they cannot intervene.

"A lot of environmental groups are trying to effectuate change through the legal system, so they spend of lot of time and energy filing lawsuits," she said. "Right now, we are being precluded from intervening."

Recreation groups at forefront

Although the business community has weighed in, the lead on the issue is actually being taken by recreational groups, including the Magic Valley Trail Machine Association, which wanted to intervene when the Wilderness Society and Prairie Falcon Audubon Inc. sought to challenge a U.S. Forest Service decision concerning motorized travel in the Sawtooth National Forest in Idaho.

The environmental groups argue that the Forest Service wanted to allow too much access for motorized vehicles, and asked the courts to restrict that access.

Their opponents had the opposite view: that the Forest Service had already restricted access too much. But U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge of the District of Idaho ruled that the recreational groups could not intervene.

A three-judge panel heard arguments on the issue but did not issue a ruling. Instead, the judges asked for the court to hear the case en banc so that the future of the federal defendant rule could be dealt with.

Law professor Hellman said the rule is of particular importance when actions taken by a prior administration are being challenged when another administration is in power. Now for example, George W. Bush-era decisions are being defended by the Obama administration.

"Private groups that support the earlier administration's approach may fear that the new officials will throw in the towel," Hellman said.

Although it is business and recreational interests that are currently concerned about the rule, in the future, environmental groups could find themselves in the same position when a Republican administration is tasked with defending Obama administration decisions, Hellman added.

The environmental plaintiffs do not want to get into that debate, admitted Megan Anderson O'Reilly, a lawyer at the Western Environmental Law Center who is arguing the case for the plaintiffs.

She agreed that the rule "cuts both ways," indicating that was the main reason environmental groups have not advocated a particular position on the rule.

As for the federal government, it filed a brief saying the case "does not properly present the issue," in part because the recreational groups only want to intervene concerning the possible remedy that the plaintiffs are seeking.

Under 9th Circuit precedent, "that type of participation has been allowed by this court even with the federal defendant rule in place," the government's brief states.

The mere fact that the appeals court has decided to hear the case en banc is significant, according to the University of California, Davis' Frank.

"It may signal that the court as a whole is willing to revisit the rule," he said. "I, for one, think that is most welcome."

Copyright 2010 E&E Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

For more news on energy and the environment, visit www.greenwire.com.
Greenwire is published by Environment & Energy Publishing. Read More »

 

Look Ma! No foresters here either!

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/111385/disappearing-jobs-high-paying-careers-with-no-future

Look Ma! No foresters!

http://education.yahoo.net/articles/jobs_for_haters.htm?kid=1ATWU

Multi-Million-Dollar Timber Fraud Scheme

http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_187786.asp

Watchdog group recommends Rogue forest thinning

October 07, 2010 By Paul Fattig
Mail Tribune

Uncle Sam needs to give priority to thinning more than a quarter million acres of federal forestland in the Rogue Basin.

That recommendation comes not from the timber industry but from "Restoring the Rogue," a 50-page report compiled by the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center in addressing the 3.3 million acres of federal forestlands in the Rogue Basin, which includes the Rogue, Applegate and Illinois river drainages. The environmental watchdog group based in Ashland released the report Wednesday.

"We want this to be a starting point for widespread restoration in the Rogue Basin, which can produce jobs, clean water and healthy forests," said Joseph Vaile, the group's campaign director and primary author of the report.

The report calls for thinning managed tree stands between 40 and 80 years of age on roughly 166,000 acres of federal forestland in the basin. In addition, it recommends the federal government prioritize thinning on some 124,000 acres of high fire-hazard forests on its land in wildland urban interface in Jackson and Josephine counties.

However, it should protect forests that are 150 years or older on 719,235 acres in the basin, the report says.

Copies of the report will be given to decision-makers at the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest and the Medford District of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management as well as others concerned about the long-term management of federal forestlands in the basin, Vaile said.

"They might come up with different ideas," he acknowledged.

Noting that KS Wild works closely with the Southern Oregon Small Diameter Collaborative and the Josephine County Stewardship Group, he hopes the report can be used as a basis for discussions among federal land managers and others involved in federal land issues.

It could also serve as a launching pad for a more comprehensive restoration report on the basin, he noted.

The thinning near communities would increase safety in the event of a wildfire as well as improve forest health, he said. Thinning in the "back country" would benefit forests overgrown because of poor logging practices or fire exclusion over the past century, he added.

A biologist by training, Vaile said he spent the better part of a year putting the report together. He consulted experts in various fields, used the geographic information system and spent a lot of time on the ground, he said.

"We tried to look at where we could get the biggest bang for our buck to restore forests and watersheds in the basin," he said. "Some of the thinnings would pay for themselves, especially if the timber market gets better.

"But the federal government does get money each year to do this kind of work," he added. "We need a strategy for restoring salmon, forest health and clean water."

The report, which contains 21 maps that describe restoration priorities, focuses on public lands in the basin which account for 62 percent of the basin's land base, Vaile said.

To view a copy of the report, check out www.kswild.org/restoretherogue.

Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at pfattig@mailtribune.co

Researchers: bioenergy market depends on state, federal policy

By Carlton Purvis

Until federal or state policy mandates that portions of energy be obtained from renewable resources, the market for bioenergy is likely to stay nonexistent, re-searchers at the S.C. BioEnergy Summit at the Clemson University Pee Dee Research and Education Center said Thursday.

Until federal or state policy mandates that portions of energy be obtained from renewable resources, the market for bioenergy is likely to stay nonexistent, re-searchers at the S.C. BioEnergy Summit at the Clemson University Pee Dee Research and Education Center said Thursday.

The summit brought together researchers from across the region along with representa-tives from energy companies and U.S. agencies to share the latest news and trends in bioenergy.

Many energy companies already are using renewable resources for portions of their en-ergy production, but large-scale use of bioenergy from crops like switchgrass and corn may not happen without a push from lawmakers.

“One of the things we desperately need in our state is clear governmental policies that encourage the use of renewable fuels,” CEO of Agri-Tech Producers LLC Joe James said. “In North Carolina they have a statute that requires the utilities to have a certain percent of energy come from renewable fuels. That has stimulated utilities to do things in North Carolina that South Carolina is currently not doing.“

Agri-Tech is the South Carolina-based company that developed a torrefaction system that converts wood and plant material to a dry, energy-dense fuel similar to coal, but cleaner burning. It is working toward financing the construction of its first plant, which could specialize in switchgrass torrefaction. Switchgrass is native to South Carolina and grows in areas that are often too harsh for planting other kinds of crops.

Many call it the “chicken and the egg” problem. Farmers are interested in growing crops for renewable energy, but they want to make sure there’s a market for it first. The utility companies want to wait to make sure there is enough being produced to provide a reliable source of energy and have concerns about the increased cost of burning fuels like torre-fied switchgrass.

Companies like Agri-Tech are looking for funding to help produce the systems that will help out both sides. A commercial torrefaction system would help farmers convert the material onsite. The material could be transported to the utility companies the same way they receive coal.

“Coal has been the mainstay of our energy here in South Carolina for producing electric-ity and for heating purposes. Biomass is going to have to be very similar to coal in price in order for the utility companies to switch over and use switch grass or wood,” said Dr. Jim Frederick, director of the switchgrass project at the research center. “That’s going to take the federal government to provide legislation saying they have to use biomass be-cause its renewable and can bring down carbon emissions, or its going to take some kind of financial incentive from the federal government so the utilities would voluntarily switch over to using biomass instead of coal.“

In his weekly address Saturday, President Barack Obama said the clean energy industry has the potential to create jobs and a stronger economy.

“We think we could create hundreds, maybe even thousands, of jobs in South Carolina focused on developing renewable fuels and other things that we bring from outside the state,” James said.

“In South Carolina we could have literally a half-dozen of these plants all across the state — the Pee Dee certainly being one of those areas,” he said.

Agri-Tech plans to look at old lumber yards and processing plants that have been closed down and areas with access to rail spurs because customers are likely to be utility com-panies that are used to having coal delivered to them by train.

Frederick said a mandate would certainly help move things along. He hopes to have a torrefaction system at the Pee Dee Research and Education Center by sometime next year.

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SCNOW © Copyright 2009 Media General Communications Holdings, LLC. A Media General company.

 
  

Torrefaction Next Step in Bio Energy

http://www.opinion250.com/blog/view/17736/1/torrefaction+next+step+in+bio+energy?

  

Look Ma! No Foresters!

The 10 American Industries That May Never Recover

by Douglas A. McIntyre
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
http://247wallst.com/

It has become clear that jobs in some industries may never come back, or if they do it will take years or decades for a recovery.
24/7 Wall St. examined the Bureau of Labor Statistics' "Employment Situation Summary," and a number of sources that show layoffs by company and sector. The weakness in these sectors will make it harder for the private industry, even aided by the government, to bring down total unemployment from 9.6% and replace the 8.3 million jobs lost during the recession. The losses in these industries have to be offset by growth in others before there can be any net increase in American employment.
Some of the industries are obvious. Detroit will never employ the number of people it did five years ago. Domestic car sales hit 16 million in 2005 and 2006. That number will be closer to 11.5 million in 2010. More cars and light vehicles are made overseas now, in places like Mexico, to keep labor costs down.
Home construction is another industry that will almost certainly not recover. Home inventories are still extremely high, and home prices have fallen to the levels where they were in 2004. Prices in some markets, which include Las Vegas, Florida and parts of California, have dropped 60% to 70%. New construction in those markets will not begin again in the foreseeable future.
Here is the list of the 10 job categories that will not recover, based on 24/7 Wall St. research:
1. State and Local Government Jobs. The level of unemployment in this sector continues to rise. Budget imbalances in a number of states have already caused mass layoffs as tax receipts have dropped sharply. A recent report by the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers found that 22 states furloughed employees and 25 laid off workers during fiscal year 2009-10. As an example, California slashed its workforce by tens of thousands -- some were laid off permanently and some are out of work and may be recalled. Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, who is running for governor of California, said she will cut the state workforce by another 40,000 and sharply cut pensions for new workers. Forty-six states face budget shortfalls that will total $112 billion for the fiscal year ending next June, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Municipalities face similar difficulties as property taxes plummet.
2. Construction. Nationwide construction unemployment was 17% in August, up from 16.5% in the same month last year. Over the course of the summer, government statistics have shown sharp drops in the construction of new homes and apartments. Building permits are also down. Most large housing markets have more than 12 months of unsold inventory on hand. There is also a "shadow inventory" of unsold homes -- those that have gone into foreclosure but have not been put on the market by banks. Foreclosures and defaults are expected to rise another 3 million to 3.5 million this year.
3. Installation, Maintenance and Repair. A set of industries related to housing and commercial construction and maintenance will also not generate new jobs. This is the employment sector the government calls "installation, maintenance and repair." Jobs in this sector are dependent on real estate. While many of the workers in these industries, such as plumbers and electricians, are relatively well paid and many work on homes and commercial buildings, some are mechanics who work on industrial equipment, aircraft and plants. These industries will be more crowded as people with training in related work leave the armed forces with the drawdown in troops in Iraq, which will put downward pressure on wages.
4. Automotive Manufacturing. General Motors has cut over 100,000 people since the beginning of the recession in December 2007. Ford has cut over 20,000 and Chrysler 15,000. This does not include foreign car companies with workers in the U.S. By some estimates, every car company worker layoff leads to three more layoffs in related industries that supply the car and light truck manufacturing business. That includes hundreds of car dealerships that have been closed in the last two years.
5. Pharmaceuticals. This industry has bled workers for three years, and that trend is likely to continue. The largest companies in the sector, such as Pfizer and Merck, have a number of blockbuster drugs that have lost their patent protection in the last decade. They have other pharmaceuticals that will lose that protection in the next decade. Sales of most of these drugs will move to generic companies that will sell them for far less, and erode critical revenue sources for the huge pharma firms. Most companies in the industry admit that they cannot replace the drugs that go off patent fast enough to keep their revenue high. The other reason employment in the sector will stay down and may drop further is that big drug companies are merging to save costs, and most of those costs are people. Pfizer has cut 30,000 people since the start of the recession. Merck has cut 25,000, and these companies and their peers expect that they will have to bring down costs even more.
6. Big Telecom. AT&T, Sprint-Nextel and Verizon have passed their peak employment levels. Employment in the sector will not recover and could shrink for two reasons: (1) The landline business is falling rapidly as home phone users move to VoIP, and (2) Increased adoption of cell phones. The cellular subscription business has been damaged by price wars meant to gain market share in the wireless industry -- one that has stagnated due to a 90% market penetration in the U.S. Sprint made substantial cuts as it posted three years of losses. The most recent was 2,500 people in November last year. In 2008, AT&T said it would lay off 12,000 people. Verizon recently said it would fire 13,000 employees from its land line business.
7. Newspapers. The layoffs in newspapers began in the 1980s as presses became more automated and tens of thousands of pressmen lost jobs. More recently, the changing habits of news consumption have increased Internet readers and hurt print, which has caused more job losses in press rooms. Reporters and editors have lost work as print subscribers have stopped paying for what they can get online for free. One recent study claims that the newspaper industry employee base fell from 767,000 jobs in 1998 to 619,000 jobs in 2008. The U.S. Department of Labor has forecast another 120,000 newspaper layoffs over the next 10 years.
8. Airlines. The number of pilots, flight attendants and ground crew workers is shrinking as consolidation and the recession have hurt the industry badly. Mergers in the last two years, between Delta and Northwest and United's merger with Continental, have decreased the number of large carriers in the U.S. by half. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics reported that the number of airline employees in the U.S. has fallen by 25% since 2001. And the latest merger firings have not yet been announced. Jobs for pilots and flight engineers fell by 30.4% in the third quarter of 2009 to 96,000 from 138,000 jobs in 2008, according to the BLS.
9. Realtors. The National Association of Realtors reports that there were 1,370,758 realtors in October 2006 -- the peak of the market. By the end of 2007, the figure was below 1.2 million. The number is below 1.1 million today and has continued on a downward trend. Home prices have dropped so far and so few homes are sold, that the ability to make money in the business disappears by the day.
10. Bank Tellers. Long before the recession, personal banking had begun to become automated. Over the last decade, banks have provided increasing access to banking accounts online, through call centers and at ATM kiosks. This technologically driven shift has been and will continue to be the chief cause of bank teller layoffs. According the the FDIC, since 2008, at the beginning of the recession, there have been 283 banks closed. Compared to the period 2000 to 2007, when only 27 banks closed, that's nearly 10 times as many bank closings in less than half the time. And as of Aug. 20, state and federal regulators had closed118 banks this year, making it on pace to exceed the 140 banks closed in 2009. Although nearly all of these banks have been acquired by other financial institutions, bank branch closings still occur -- employees and locations are consolidated. The single largest employee group at bank branches are bank tellers, and they will bear the brunt of the continued cost-cutting.

5 No-Nos When Working at Home

By Liza Porteus Viana

Thursday, September 02, 2010 

FOXBusiness

Working at home may seem like a dream to many, but in reality it takes strong dedication and often restraint from being drawn into the many potential distractions that come with it.

Here are five things NOT to do when trying to be a productive home-office worker.

No. 1: Cleanliness is Next to Productiveness
Do NOT keep your office and desk space a mess – it’s a major distraction and the clutter will just provide an excuse for you to clean instead of work.

No. 2: Don’t Do “Home Work”
Do NOT get distracted by household chores, personal errands, etc. It can be so easy to get dragged into washing the dishes in the sink, doing the laundry or cleaning up the kids’ toys instead of returning work phone calls, but give those chores a certain time of day to get done. Don’t let it cut into your valuable work time.

No. 3: It’s Not Social-Networking Hour
As valuable as Facebook and Twitter may be to building your brand, do NOT fritter away your work time hunting down old flames, a former nemesis or others on such sites. That goes for getting caught up on personal e-mails, as well.

“You need every minute of your office hours and you have no time to waste on distractions and disruptions,” said Heather Allard, founder of TheMogulMom.com who started three businesses out of her home since 2001.

Added Leslie Truex, author of The Work-At-Home Success Bible and founder of Workathomesuccess.com: “Shuffling papers, reading e-mail and posting on Facebook have a part in running a business, but if not managed will waste time and money.”

No. 4: Location, Location, Location
Do NOT place your office in the middle of your house. While some may say working from the kitchen table works for them, most work-from-home experts agree that a separate room with a door is necessary if you plan to be productive.

No. 5: Make Plans to Make Time
Do NOT work without a plan – that includes routines and schedules just as importantly as a business plan. Plans also help avoid having the personal life bleed into the work one, and vice versa. A daily plan should include when to go out for lunch or throw the laundry in.

“Extra time to ‘work’ doesn't magically appear. People who work-at-home need to make time for work and for play,” Truex said.

  

Ninth Circuit Holds NPDES Permit Required for Logging Roads

8/18/2010

On August 17, 2010 the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System ("NPDES") permit is required for stormwater runoff from logging roads. In NEDC v. Brown, No. 07-35266, three judges decided a case involving two long-existing public roads that enter the Tillamook State Forest and are used for logging, among other things. NEDC asserted that the defendants should be required to obtain an NPDES permit for stormwater runoff from the roads because the sediment in the stormwater is a pollutant under the federal Clean Water Act ("CWA").

The CWA requires an NPDES permit for the discharge of any pollutant to any navigable water from any point source. The CWA distinguishes between point source discharges of pollutants and non-point source pollution. Non-point source pollution, which is not defined in the CWA, includes any source of water pollution not characterized as a point source discharge. Since 1973, rules promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") have distinguished between point source and non-point source pollution. Included in these rules is the so-called Silvicultural Rule found at 40 C.F.R. § 122.27(b)(1), which has remained stantially in its current form since 1976. The Silvicultural Rule specifically defines timber "harvesting operations, surface drainage, or road construction and maintenance from which there is natural runoff" to be "non point source silvicultural activities" excluded from NPDES permitting requirements.

NEDC argued that the ditches and culvert system associated with the forest roads constitute point sources that discharge into forest streams and rivers. The U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon held that the discharges of which NEDC complained were exempt from permitting under the Silvicultural Rule. The Ninth Circuit disagreed, holding that stormwater runoff that is collected and channeled in a system of ditches and culverts before being discharged into streams and rivers constitutes a point source, and that EPA lacks authority to promulgate a rule to the contrary.

The defendants had also argued that no permit is required for forest road stormwater runoff pursuant to EPA's rules promulgated under section 402(p) of the CWA. Section 402(p) requires EPA to promulgate stormwater runoff permitting requirements in two phases. In phase I, EPA promulgated rules for permitting stormwater runoff discharges from industrial activities and certain municipal systems. EPA's rule defines "industrial activity" and specifically excludes activities described in the Silvicultural Rule. 40 C.F.R. § 122.26(b)(14). The Ninth Circuit rejected this EPA definition of industrial activity and found that logging is an industrial activity as that term is used in section 402(p). EPA's rules apply the stormwater permitting requirements to "immediate access roads and rail lines used or traveled by carriers of raw materials, manufactured products, waste material, or by-products used or created by the facility." 40 C.F.R. § 122.26(b)(14)(ii). For guidance on the meaning of "immediate access roads" the Ninth Circuit looked to EPA's preamble for this rule, which indicates that immediate access roads means "roads which are exclusively or primarily dedicated for use by the industrial facility." 55 Fed. Reg. 47,990, 48,009 (Nov. 16, 1990). The court then concluded that logging roads fall within this description because, but for logging, the roads would not have been built (note that the district court never made such a factual finding or even heard evidence relevant to such a finding). On this basis, the Ninth Circuit held that logging sites are industrial facilities and that logging roads are immediate access roads subject to the NPDES permitting rules under section 402(p) of the CWA and that "EPA is not free to create exemptions from permitting requirements for such activity."

The court's decision has potentially sweeping implications. First, combined with the Ninth Circuit's opinion in League of Wilderness Defenders/Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project v. Forsgren, 309 F.3d 1181, 1184 (9th Cir. 2002), this opinion appears to leave the Silvicultural Rule with little potency. Second, if broadly read, this opinion would require NPDES permits for every road in the country that is served by ditches or culverts that eventually discharge to natural surface waters and that is not already regulated by the CWA.

The court's opinion also leaves many critical questions unanswered. Even if the opinion were limited to logging roads, what constitutes a logging road? Contrary to the court's assumptions of fact, many forest roads, including the roads at issue in this case, are not dedicated to logging. Who is responsible for obtaining the necessary permits? The defendants in this case sued the Oregon State Forester and the individual members of the Oregon Board of Forestry in their capacity as administrators of the state's forest roads, but they also sued four timber companies that had purchased timber from the state from areas served by the roads. The court did not address whether the permit obligation rests with the owner of the roads or every entity that transports logs on the roads, or even those using the roads to access the forest for recreation. Clearly this opinion requires EPA and the states to adopt rules to provide for permitting discharges from logging roads, but the court does not provide any guidance on how discharges from existing roads should be managed in the interim before permits can be issued. Unlike some activities subject to CWA permit requirements, discharges from existing roads cannot be stopped while waiting for a permit. The court also ignores the extraordinary work that may be necessary to bring existing roads into compliance with such permits. So once again, the Ninth Circuit has turned our understanding of the CWA upside down, and left EPA and the public to sort it out again.

If you have any questions about the issues of this update, please contact:

Greg Corbin at (503) 294-9632 or gdcorbin@stoel.com
Louis Ferreira at (503) 294-9412 or laferreira@stoel.com
Mark Morford at (503) 294-9259 or jmmorford@stoel.com
Per Ramfjord at (503) 294-9257 or paramfjord@stoel.com

Related materials:
U.S. Court of Appeals 2010 Opinion
Northwest Environmental Defense Center Opening Brief
Natural Resources Defense Council Amicus Curiae Brief
U.S. Amicus Curiae Brief
Northwest Environmental Defense Center Reply Brief
Oregon Forest Industries Council Response Brief
State's Response Brief

Biomass Credit Update: A Look at BCAP’s Past and Future Impact

http://www.palletenterprise.com/articledatabase/view.asp?articleID=3200

From outer space, a new dilemma for old-growth forests

By LES BLUMENTHAL - McClatchy Newspapers

Published Mon, Aug 30, 2010 08:09 AM

WASHINGTON A new study using laser pulses shot from satellites has found that the world's tallest forests are those along the Pacific Northwest coast.

Though the findings shouldn't shock anyone who grew up in the region, they offer another indication of how important these ancient trees eventually could become.

The temperate forests of Douglas fir, Western hemlock, redwoods and sequoias that stretch from northern California into British Columbia easily reach an average height of more than 131 feet. That's taller than the boreal forests of northern Canada and Eurasia, tropical rainforests and the broadleaf forests common in much of the United States and Europe. The only forests that come close are in Southeast Asia, along the southern rim of the Himalayas and in Indonesia, Malaysia and Laos.

As scientists try to unravel the mystery of missing carbon, increasing attention is focused on these forests.
From 15 percent to 30 percent of the 7 billion tons of carbon that are released globally every year is unaccounted for, government scientists say. About 3 billion tons remain in the atmosphere, and the oceans absorb 2 billion tons. Vegetation, including the forests, probably absorbs the remaining 1 billion to 2 billion tons, but no one knows for sure how much and where.

Scientists suspect that the forests with the biggest trees store the most carbon, and the Northwest forests are probably among the largest carbon sinks in the world. However, they also say that while slower-growing older trees store more carbon, younger trees also absorb more carbon as they grow rapidly.

That sets up a debate about how forests should be managed, particularly whether older trees should be cut to make way for younger ones or whether they should be protected to store the carbon they contain.

"It's a hot topic," said Elaine Oneil, a research scientist at the University of Washington's School of Forest Resources and the executive director of a consortium that's been studying the issue. "We can't afford a one-size-fits-all solution. We can't lock it all up, and it's not feasible to cut it all for 2-by-4s."

Ongoing studies using the satellites and lasers may provide valuable information on how fast the forests are growing and how much carbon they store.

"All of the remote sensing is providing us with the ability to monitor changes in the environment in a way you might not see on the ground," said Michael Lefsky, an assistant professor in the department of forest, rangeland and watershed stewardship at Colorado State University. "We are expecting under global warming that the productivity of the forests will change."


Lefsky used data from a laser technology called LIDAR that's capable of "capturing vertical slices" of surface features on Earth from satellites. It's the same technology that geologists are using to map earthquake faults in western Washington state.

With the help of computers, Lefsky put together a global forest height map based on data from 250 million laser pulses collected during a seven-year period.

LIDAR measures the height of forest canopies by shooting laser pulses and measuring how much longer it takes for them to bounce back from the surface than from the top of the forest canopy. The pulses can penetrate through the canopy to the ground.

"It's like an echo," said Lefsky, whose findings were published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Overall, LIDAR offered direct measurements of only 2.4 percent of the Earth's forested surfaces.

"This is really just a first draft and it will certainly be refined in the future," he said.

Lefsky, who previously had done forest research at Oregon State University, said he wasn't surprised that the temperate conifer forests of the Northwest coast had the tallest canopies. While the Northwest forests include the world's tallest trees - redwoods and sequoias - they represent only a small fraction of the region's timberlands, he said, but there are thousands of acres of other tall trees.

In contrast to the Northwest stands, the boreal forests of mostly spruce, fir, pine and larch have canopies that are typically less than 66 feet tall. Relatively undisturbed tropical rain forests have canopies of 82 feet, and the broadleaf forests of oak, beech and birch in much of the U.S. and Europe have roughly the same canopy height.

Trees absorb carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and convert it using water into sugar and oxygen. Much of the sugar becomes cellulose, the key ingredient in wood. From 45 percent to 50 percent of a tree's wood is carbon-based.

The trees and soil in national forests in Washington state, Oregon and southeast Alaska store 10.8 billion tons of carbon, according to a Wilderness Society analysis of U.S. Forest Service data earlier this year.
The analysis also found that of the 120 national forests, the 10 with the highest carbon density were in Washington, Oregon and southeast Alaska.

Oneil's group, the Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials, suggests that rather than leaving all the tall trees in place, where they could be susceptible to bugs and fires, they be cut and used for wood products such as building materials.

The carbon in those wood products would be stored permanently and their use would reduce the need to manufacture cement and steel, a process that produces greenhouse gases. In addition, the leftovers from milling the logs, such as chips and sawdust, can be used for everything from bark mulch to biofuel for power plants.

Carbon absorption by trees in the Northwest slows when they reach 30 to 70 years of age, Oneil said. By no means, Oneil said, is her group arguing that all the old-growth forests in the Northwest be cut. The stands have other important uses, such as providing habitat for wildlife and recreational opportunities, she said. However, she suggested that the forests, particularly on private lands, could be managed to absorb even more carbon.

"If you don't pick the carrots, you can't plant the next crop," she said.

Environmentalists said cutting the tall forests wasn't the answer, because that could release up to 60 percent of the carbon that was stored in trees and the soil.

"We need to preserve the old growth for existing (carbon) storage," said Mike Anderson, a senior resource analyst with The Wilderness Society in Seattle. Anderson didn't rule out using private lands to increase carbon storage.
  

Activist ‘Green’ Lawyers Billing U.S. Millions in Fraudulent Attorney Fees

Posted By Richard Pollock On March 4, 2010 @ 9:52 am
Pajamas Media ~ pajamasmedia.com

Without any oversight, accounting, or transparency, environmental activist groups have surreptitiously received at least $37 million from the federal government for questionable “attorney fees.” The lawsuits they received compensation for had nothing to do with environmental protection or improvement.

The activist groups have generated huge revenue streams via the obscure Equal Access to Justice Act. Congressional sources claim the groups are billing for “cookie cutter” lawsuits — they file the same petitions to multiple agencies on procedural grounds, and under the Act, they file for attorney fees even if they do not win the case. Since 1995, the federal government has neither tracked nor accounted for any of these attorney fee payments.

Nine national environmental activist groups alone have filed more than 3,300 suits, every single one seeking attorney fees. The groups have also charged as much as $650 per hour (a federal statutory cap usually limits attorney fees to $125 per hour).

In well over half of the cases, there was no court judgment in the environmental groups’ favor. In all cases, whether there was any possible environmental benefit from the litigation is highly questionable. Most cases were simply based upon an alleged failure to comply with a deadline or to follow a procedure.

A whistleblower who was employed for 30 years by the U.S. Forest Service told Pajamas Media:

Some organizations have built a business doing this and attacking the agencies on process, and then getting “reimbursed.”

This week a bipartisan group of congressional members introduced legislation to end the secrecy of the payments and force the government to open up the records to show exactly how much has been paid to the groups and the questionable attorney fees. The legislation was sponsored by Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming),  Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-SD), and Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah).

Congressional sources have said the disclosure was necessary to determine the extent of fraud and abuse. The $37 million ^[1] is considered only a fraction of what has been paid out to the activist groups.

“For too long, taxpayers have unwittingly served as the financiers of the environmental litigation industry,” Rep. Bishop, who also is the chairman of the Congressional Western Caucus, said.

Rep. Herseth Sandlin remarked: “Simply put, this legislation is about ensuring good and open government.”

“It’s time to shine some light [on the program],” explained Rep. Lummis, who said the groups have created an industry that “supports their ‘stop everything’ agenda.”

The $37 million figure is considered low. It includes less than a dozen groups and only accounts for cases in 19 states and the District of Columbia. There are hundreds of eco-activist groups in the United States.

According to the whistleblower who served in the U.S. Forest Service, environmental activist groups typically file identical lawsuits to multiple agencies on procedural grounds, such as a missed deadline.

The identity of the huge revenue stream was established by the Western Legacy Alliance ^[2] (“WLA”), along with Wyoming-based attorney Karen Budd-Falen. Western Legacy Alliance was founded in 2008 by ranchers and resource providers who raise beef and lamb on public lands of the West. What they found was astounding.

Examining court records in 19 states and in the District of Columbia, the total amount paid to less than a dozen environmental groups exceeded $37 million. “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” says Budd-Falen. “We believe when the curtain is raised we’ll be talking about radical environmental groups bilking the taxpayer for hundreds of millions of dollars, all allegedly for ‘reimbursement for attorney fees.’  And what is even more maddening is that these groups are claiming that they are protecting the environment with all this litigation when not one dime of this money goes to projects that impact anything on-the-ground related to the environment.  It just goes to more litigation to get more attorney fees to file more litigation.”

The whistleblower, speaking anonymously, told Pajamas Media the payments to the activists groups were “quite astronomical.”  The former government agent was a line officer in a high-ranking position. That whistleblower added that the filings by the radical groups often were “canned” petitions that contained little research. In this way, environmental groups could pepper government agencies with a flood of lawsuits without much work.

“They will send a myriad of lawsuits across the bow to try to stop a number of projects or programs and then they hopefully will score with one or two,” he said. He saw a lot of the activist lawsuit filings because he had been attached both to the Forest Service’s Washington headquarters and to its field offices. “Then they will send in bills that are quite frankly, quite astronomical compared to the actual work they had to do to file an actual lawsuit.  Many of the lawsuits are filed under a lot of canned material, yet the hours and rates that they charge were quite high.”

Here is a sampling of the number of assembly line “lawsuits” filed between 2000 and 2009 that have been painstakingly identified by the Western Legacy Alliance and Budd-Falen. Activist group Western Watersheds Project ^[3] filed 91 lawsuits in the federal district courts; Forest Guardians (now known as WildEarth Guardians ^[4]) filed 180 lawsuits; the Center for Biological Diversity ^[5] (CBD) filed at 409 suits; the Wilderness Society ^[6] filed 149 lawsuits; the National Wildlife Federation ^[7] filed 427 lawsuits; and the Sierra Club ^[8] filed 983 lawsuits.  These numbers do not include administrative appeals or notices of intent to sue.

Even local or regional environmental groups have figured out ways to turn on the taxpayer spigot. WLA found the Idaho Conservation League ^[9] filed 72 lawsuits and the Oregon Natural Desert Association ^[10] filed 50. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance filed 88 lawsuits. At last count, just eight local groups in nine Western states have filed nearly 1,600 lawsuits against the federal government.

On the national level, over the last decade nine national environmental groups have filed 3,300 cases against the federal government. As is usual, the vast majority of the cases deal with the alleged procedural failings of federal agencies, not with substance or science.

Said the Forest Service officer: “A lot of times they will sue on process, and not on substance. And substance means what difference does it mean for the resource, or what’s going in on the ground? A lot of times, it will be a process lawsuit and a lot of times the agency either missed something. … The bottom line is many, many times, when you look at the results on the ground, it [the environmental group winning the litigation] would have made very little difference.”

Karen Budd-Falen said ^[11] that the cases amounted to a ripoff of taxpayers and rewarded radical groups with millions of dollars.  “Although those of us involved in protecting property rights and land use in the West were aware that radical groups were getting exorbitant fees simply be filing litigation against the government, we had no idea of the magnitude of the problem.”

Budd-Falen highlighted one case that typifies the gravy train that has flowed to environmental groups. In 2009, the Earthjustice Legal Foundation represented the Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, and the Vermont Natural Resources Council in a case dealing with the process used by the Forest Service to adopt some regulations. The Earthjustice Legal Foundation filed for attorney fees for that single case that took only one year and three months to complete.

The same suit was filed by the Western Environmental Law Center on behalf of other environmental groups. The seven total attorneys who worked on the case billed the federal government $479,242. They charged between $300 to $650 per hour, far above the statuary federal cap of $125. The case was resolved at the district court level and the federal government did not appeal.

The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) also files a significant amount of litigation and receives lucrative attorney fees. In Washington State Federal District Court alone, CBD received attorney fees totaling $941,000 for only six cases. In the District of Columbia, it received more than $1 million in fees.

Fourteen groups identified as recipients of the Act’s funding are: the Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, Colorado Environmental Coalition, Forest Guardians, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Western Watersheds Project, Defenders of Wildlife, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, WildEarth, Oregon Natural Desert Association, Oregon Wild, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, and Wyoming Outdoor Council.

One of the fourteen groups, the Center for Biological Diversity, called the two Republicans and one Democrat “rabid right-wingers” and said that the charges of abuse was “patently false and patently ridiculous,” according to Bill Snape, senior council for CBD ^[12].

Another study from Virginia Tech University discovered similar findings as a result of a comprehensive Freedom of Information Act request to five federal agencies. The Virginia Tech study also revealed that two of the agencies could provide absolutely no data on the Act’s payments.

Environmental organizations are among the most financially prosperous non-profits in the country.  The Sierra Club alone in 2007 reported its total worth as $56.6 million. According to 2007 Internal Revenue Service records, the top ten environmental presidents receive as much as a half million dollars a year in annual compensation. Fred Krupp, the president of the Environmental Defense Fund, Inc reported $492,000 in executive compensation in 2007. The top ten highest grossing environmental executives all received at least $308,000 in compensation ^[13].

Environmental activist groups also have been among the most influential in throwing around political money ^[14]. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, between 2000 and this year activist environmental political action committees have given $3.4 million in campaign contributions to candidates for federal office. About 87% of the money went to Democrats.

_____________________________________________________

Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com

URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/breaking-activist-green-lawyers-billing-u-s-millions-in-fraudulent-attorney-fees/

URLs in this post:

[1] $37 million: http://pajamasmedia.comwww.westernlegacyalliance.org/images/pdf/master_attorneys_fees_list_12-14-09

[2] the Western Legacy Alliance: http://pajamasmedia.comwww.westernlegacyalliance.org/eajaabuse

[3] Western Watersheds Project: http://www.westernwatersheds.org/

[4] WildEarth Guardians: http://www.wildearthguardians.org/

[5] Center for Biological Diversity: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/

[6] Wilderness Society: http://wilderness.org/

[7] National Wildlife Federation: http://www.nwf.org/

[8] Sierra Club: http://www.sierraclub.org/

[9] Idaho Conservation League: http://www.idahoconservation.org/

[10] Oregon Natural Desert Association: http://onda.org/

[11] said: http://www.buddfalen.com

[12] Bill Snape, senior council for CBD: http://www.eenews.net/EEDaily/2010/03/03

[13] at least $308,000 in compensation: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Saving-the-planet-is-a-profitable-enterprise-60299737.html

[14] political money: http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/industry.php?txt=Q11&cycle=2010

   

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Vilsack Highlights Report Showing Threats to Private Forested Lands

USDA News Release

Release No. 0401.10
Contact: Office of Communications (202) 720-4623

Forest Service study supports "All Lands" approach outlined by Vilsack last year


WASHINGTON, August 11, 2010 – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today held a national conference call to highlight a USDA Forest Service report entitled Private Forests, Public Benefits, showing that privately held forests in the U.S. are under substantial stress from development and fragmentation and that increased housing density in forests will exacerbate other threats to forests from wildfire, insects, pathogens and pollution. These threats to the important goods and services provided by privately owned forests, which make up 56 percent of all forested lands, emphasize the importance of the collaborative, cross-boundary approach to conserving and restoring our forests as laid out by Secretary Vilsack in a major address last year.

"Americans rely on their forests for a wide range of social, environmental and economic benefits, including clean water, wood products, habitat for wildlife, and outdoor recreation," said Vilsack. "The Private Forests, Public Benefits report shows that now, more than ever, we need to take an 'all lands' approach to managing our nation's forests, whether they are national forests or under the stewardship of state or private entities."

Private Forests, Public Benefits is one of a series of reports prepared by the "Forests on the Edge" project. This report uses geographic information systems to identify watersheds where private forests contribute the greatest amount of goods and services in terms of clean water, timber, and wildlife habitat; and where these goods and services are most at risk from increased housing density as well as insect pests and disease, wildfire, and air pollution.

Some of the report's key findings include:

* Housing density will increase on more than 57 million acres of America's private forests between 2000 and 2030.
* Up to 75 percent of the private forests in many regions are predicted to experience a substantial increase in housing density.
* Private forests that play a critical role in supplying our nation with clean water resources, and the timber we need to build homes and communities across the country will be threatened.
* A number of species including the already-endangered Florida panther and the grizzly bear are also expected to be put at risk because of loss of forested land.

The study also identifies areas where other threats to forests – like fire, pollution and disease – will be made much worse as a result of forest loss. For instance, as houses encroach on forests, the risks to human life and property from fire increase as do the costs of fire management and suppression.

The Forests on the Edge project seeks to increase public awareness of the importance of conserving America's private forests; create tools for strategic planning; and provide Congress and Forest Service partners with better information on the values of and challenges facing our nation's open space. To obtain maps or a copy of Private Forests, Public Benefits go to: http://www.fs.fed.us/openspace/fote/index.html.

The mission of the USDA Forest Service is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the Nation's forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations. The Agency manages 193 million acres of public land, provides assistance to State and private landowners, and maintains the largest forestry research organization in the world.

#

Ag secretary lends ear to landowners

By Shira Schoenberg
08/10/2010
Concord
http://www.concordmonitor.com

Forestry workers cite industry issues

Joseph Cartwright owns 430 acres in Alstead. He has cut timber and sold firewood, but he said he can't make a living off his land.

"Before you cut a tree, you give 35 percent to government agencies," Cartwright said, citing a litany of federal and state taxes. "If you can correct that so you make money owning land, the conservation problem will solve itself."

Cartwright was one of nearly 300 people - including advocates, landowners and foresters - who attended a listening session with U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen yesterday at the Grappone Conference Center in Concord.

Since June, senior administration officials have held 18 listening sessions around the country as part of President Obama's "America's Great Outdoors" initiative. The goal of the initiative is to develop a federal plan for conserving land, both through government and private groups, and for encouraging Americans to spend time outdoors. The New Hampshire session was the only one that has focused on preserving private working forests.

State officials said New Hampshire is the second most forested state in the country, after Maine, with 84 percent of state land covered by forests. "Our working forest is part of the fabric of the state," Shaheen said.

In recent years, the state has had a checkered history of supporting conservation through the Land and Community Heritage Investment Program, or LCHIP. A recent bill filling the state budget hole took $1.5 million from LCHIP to balance the budget - bringing the total amount of money that the state has diverted from the fund to $4.5 million, according to the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.

Nonetheless, Gov. John Lynch said yesterday that the state has done a good job of both protecting forests and moving toward renewable energy sources, such as timber and other biomass.

"We have a proud tradition of ensuring we have a balance between protecting our forests and ensuring conservation, and appropriately using them for our economy," Lynch said.


Vital resources

On a federal level, Shaheen and Vilsack both said they recognize the importance of an outdoor recreation industry that brings New Hampshire an estimated $4 billion a year in retail sales revenue.

Vilsack said forests are vital as a source of clean water and as a home to wildlife, and are also an asset in fighting climate change. Forests provide opportunities for hunting, fishing and hiking, and give jobs to people in rural communities.

"Forests are worth as much as $730 billion to the nation's economy," Vilsack said. "Conserving forests is not something we should choose to do, it's something we must do."

Vilsack said the U.S. Department of Agriculture is putting new emphasis on conserving lands across ownership boundaries, including federal and state lands in addition to the 56 percent of the country's forests that are on private property. But he said private lands also face significant dangers of development - including many in New Hampshire.

"There's an implication for water quality, at-risk species, timber production and forest health," Vilsack said. "Urban development exacerbates each threat."

During a panel discussion, eight conservation activists, businesspeople and landowners, highlighted the difficulties of preserving land.

New Hampshire State Forester Brad Simpkins said the state and municipalities need to do a better job of making sure that land-use regulations and tax structures make it easier, not harder, to conserve land. The process of conserving land should also be made smoother.

"We need to ensure we don't inadvertently create barriers for people to keep forests as forests," Simpkins said.

Dave Tellman, a Whitefield landowner and past president of the New Hampshire Timber Landowners Association, said there needs to be government funding for conservation easements. In the North Country, Tellman said, there are farmers with large pieces of property that have been in their families for generations. But in order to get a conservation easement, they would need to pay a large amount of money to survey their land and get a clearer title.

"People want to donate, but developers are standing outside the door," Tellman said. "If it looks like you will have to spend money to donate, you aren't going to donate."

In some cases, the biggest problem for landowners is finding markets for their products. Tellman said that in the 1990s, when all the state's mills were running, pulp sold for $6 to $9 a ton. Over the last two years, there has been no pulp market and fuel chips are going for $3 a ton. Last week, Tellman said he signed a contract for $1 a ton.

"There's not a lot of point in harvesting at $1 a ton," Tellman said. "The resources are out there, but unless landowners are compensated fairly for the resources, they may stay in the woods."

Tom and Laurel Martin, a retired couple who own a 111-acre tree farm in Salisbury, told the Monitor they logged their land a couple of years ago, and the loggers had trouble selling the wood. At one point, they had to stop logging because the mill would not take a certain type of wood.

The Martins, who allow hunting on their property and have public trails, have had other problems as well. Sometimes, ATV drivers leave muddy ruts on their property. Once, a person in a pickup truck knocked over 30 feet of corn on property the Martins rent to a corn farmer.

"I put a sign up saying 'no vehicles,' " Tom Martin said. "I didn't say please."


Clean energy

Peter Stein of Lyme Timber Co. said during the panel discussion that some of the marketing problems could be solved through creating new markets - for example, finding ways to pay landowners for woody biomass. Walter Graff, vice president of the Appalachian Mountain Club, said the government could also do more with giving private landowners incentives to allow public access to their property. Jamey French, president of Northland Forest Products, suggested that more needs to be done to encourage banks to finance the forestry industry and encourage children to go into forestry.

Vilsack said he agrees that there are numerous ways government can get involved with forest preservation - through tax policy, funding for conservation programs and assistance in managing lands. Vilsack said the traditional markets for wood and paper must be maintained but mixed with new jobs in green buildings, energy products and carbon sequestration, which is a way of removing carbon from the atmosphere. This past June, state foresters throughout the country completed a project mapping out their natural resources.

"As budgets tighten, these assessments will give valuable information to focus dollars so they have maximum impact and effect," Vilsack said.

In the current economic climate, when members of Congress are facing increasing criticism about government spending and the growing national debt, it may be difficult for environmental programs to obtain additional funding.

Shaheen said that is why Congress must pass a clean energy bill that will create incentives for using biomass and will also create opportunities for wind, hydro and other sources of clean, alternative energy.

Vilsack said the question for him is how to use existing resources wisely. He said he can make a strong case that investing in clean water, air, energy production and job growth is worthwhile.

"We'll focus on the broad payback, the return on the investment," Vilsack said.