The House version of a transportation bill is in reality just a shell of a bill – think of it as more of a shell game – that merely extends current funding for three months (from June 30 to Sept. 30) with some unnecessary twists. The bill includes approval for the Keystone pipeline from Canada to Texas, provisions to block stronger coal ash regulations and what the Natural Resources Defense Council calls weakening of other environmental protections.

Although it makes sense to build the pipeline, this bill should not be the venue for expedited approval. Questions remain about the route and other details. Settle those first, and pass the pipeline as a separate measure. And what do the pipeline, coal ash regulations and other environmental regulations have to do with transportation funding? Not much. This is just an effort by Some House Republicans to sneak in more of their agenda through a back door.

It should also be noted that those Republicans created this short-term shell bill because they were unable to create their own long-term legislation, which was blasted from both left and right earlier this year. When a bill is being hammered by environmental groups such as the NRDC and by conservative groups such as the Club for Growth and Taxpayers for Common Sense, something is seriously wrong with the measure.

As we said, the Senate bill isn’t ideal. Although it covers two years of funding, it’s still too short-term. And it doesn’t find a long-term solution for the decline in gas tax revenue. Also under it, Wisconsin takes a hit in federal transportation aid, but that seems inevitable under any scenario, and the hit is less than what had been proposed in the earlier House bill.

But the bill still does many good things, not the least of which is keeping the focus on transportation, including better prioritization of projects and more accountability at the federal and state levels. Most important, it provides the funding necessary to repair crumbling roads and bridges – those in both the federal and local systems – and providing necessary improvements to the nation’s highway system.

Crafted by Republican Sen. James Inhofe and Democrat Sen. Barbara Boxer, it consolidates nearly 200 federal transportation programs into about a dozen, and it gives more flexibility to the states to decide transportation policies. At the same time, for the most part, it keeps intact federal highway, transit and other surface transportation projects, which according to a Democrat estimate, provide nearly 2 million jobs.

“These important policy changes will begin to shift the program from its early emphasis on building out the highway system to preserving what we’ve now built, completing missing links, and expanding the rest of the transportation network,” according to Transportation for America, a group that advocates for progressive transportation policy.

The Senate bill provides some key reforms at the same time that it moves forward on projects critical to the nation’s transportation infrastructure and, thus, economy.

It’s the bill Congress should pass, as is.

The Gallup surveys found a median of 75 percent of adults from 140 countries said they were satisfied with their air quality, while a median of 68 percent were satisfied with water quality.

Ninety-five percent in Ireland said they were satisfied with their air quality, followed by New Zealand, Australia, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Singapore, Germany, United Kingdom, India and Tajikistan.

The countries least satisfied with their air quality were Hong Kong, Angola, Malta, Iraq, Haiti, Lebanon, Albania, Russia and Ukraine.

Ratings of water quality were highest across wealthier countries in Europe, the Americas and developed Asia.

Specifically, 97 percent of residents in the United Kingdom were satisfied with water quality, 96 percent in Germany, 96 percent in Sweden, 96 percent in Denmark and 95 percent in Singapore.

Perceived water quality was generally lowest in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and countries that were formerly in the Soviet Union. Seven of the 10 countries where residents are least satisfied are in sub-Saharan Africa, where residents sometimes have to walk miles for water, and waterborne and water-related diseases such as cholera are common, Gallup officials said.

The telephone and face-to-face interviews of 1,000 adults, age 15 and older, were conducted in more than 140 countries in 2011. The surveys’ margin of error ranged from 2 percentage points to 5.1 percentage points.

“America’s Most Endangered Rivers,” the annual report from the nonprofit advocacy group American Rivers, is to be released early Tuesday. It notes what local friends of the Potomac have said for years: that urban development is funneling tons of polluted rainwater to the river, that chemical fertilizer and manure from farms make matters worse, and that wastewater overflowing from sewers, along with pharmaceuticals flushed down toilets, contribute to dead zones in which marine life dies and might cause fish to switch sexes. Some male fish in the river mysteriously have eggs.

Just as troubling, said American Rivers President Bob Irvin, is a range of proposals by House Republicans to strike various provisions from the Clean Water Act as it nears its 40th anniversary in October.

The Senate has blocked many of these efforts, but advocates worry about future attempts. If Congress ends regulations that help clean the Potomac’s head­waters and limit pesticide use by municipalities and farms, “not only will the Potomac River suffer tremendous harm but other streams and rivers as well,” Irvin said.

The report placed the Potomac atop nine other rivers nationwide, including the Green River, the largest feeder to the Colorado River, the Chattahoochee River, which runs by Atlanta, and the Missouri River, which flooded the Midwest last year.

Critics of the report, some of them river stewards, said they appreciate American Rivers’ attempt to call attention to the river’s problems and looming congressional fights over regulation. But they said there’s no scientific basis to say one large American river is more endangered than another.

Last year, the Susquehanna River topped the list of 10 most endangered rivers because of controversial drilling in Pennsylvania that uses hydraulic fracturing, employing high-pressure water blasts and chemicals to fracture shale rock and release natural gas.

The Mississippi River is beset by polluted runoff from industrial agriculture, and the Chattahoochee, also on the endangered list, easily has issues equal to the Potomac’s, advocates say.

Owing to its location, the Potomac is sometimes called “the nation’s river.” Five million people rely on it for drinking water.

Since the 1960s, measurements by the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin have shown its water quality improving. ICPRB spokesman Curtis Dalpra noted that the largemouth bass fishery has rebounded in some sections of the river and that sewage treatment plants are using sophisticated processes to remove nutrients or are slated for upgrades.

The American Rivers report acknowledges the improvements but lashes out at Congress, labeling attacks on the Clean Water Act “relentless” and calling on lawmakers to shelve legislation that would roll back clean water regulations.

American Rivers is not alone in its concern.

Hedrick Belin, president of the Potomac Conservancy, said the river cannot improve if the federal government backs off its role in regulating pollution. “This is the nation’s capital,” Belin said. “We should be able to have a river where it’s not illegal to go swimming,” as it is in the District, and “where it’s not recommended to not eat the fish you catch.”

Ed Merrifield, the Potomac Riverkeeper, said the Potomac is not as dirty as it was before the Clean Water Act became law, but it is hardly clean. Its water quality received a D in a report card last year by EcoCheck, a University of Maryland and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration partnership.

The D.C. Water and Sewer Authority has invested heavily to stop sewage overflows, but they continue, and the sewage plant sends out skimmers periodically to remove trash on the river surface, and the river water is unhealthful, Merrifield said.

“For years, we’ve been reading about the intersex in the fish, up to 80 percent in the places they’ve tested for it,” Merrifield said. “Yet there hasn’t been much of any action on this in Congress, and it’s very sad because all our drinking water comes from here. The best and safest drinking water comes from healthy rivers and streams.”

A stargazer stands in awe as comet Lovejoy skims across the night sky over Australia last December. Officially known as C/2011 W3, the comet was predicted to dive into the sun and be destroyed. Instead the icy body survived its solar encounter and went on to offer Southern Hemisphere sky-watchers rare views of its bright tail in the predawn skies.

This fish-eye picture of Lovejoy won first place in the Third International Earth and Sky Photo Contest’s “Beauty of the Night Sky” category, organizers announced last week. Founded by the World at Night (TWAN) and the Dark Skies Awareness project, the annual contest invites photographers to submit their best shots of landscape astrophotography-pictures that showcase both Earth and the sky-as well as images that capture the battle against light pollution.

Pictures were judged in two categories: “Beauty of the Night Sky” and “Against the Lights.”

To capture this above image, photographer Jia Hao chased Lovejoy to a remote countryside outside Perth. With few housing options due to the holiday season, “I managed to survive for two days, alone, sleeping in a rental car and eating only bread,” Hao told National Geographic News in an email.

“With all the money and efforts thrown into the chase, the comet didn’t let me down,” he added. “Alongside with the southern Milky Way, so bright it cast a shadow on the ground … the view brought me to tears.”

That’s exciting news, but many in the astronomy world are worried that scientists are accumulating more data then we can examine and are turning to new methods such as recruiting civilian stargazers and encouraging the public to take part in helping understand the universe. How can we keep up with ever-improving technology and what discovery potential can we expect from these new telescopes, especially the Hubble’s predecessor, the James Webb?

Conti will join The Daily Circuit Wednesday to discuss the future of space research.

“Until 25 years ago, we were pretty good at building telescopes, but over the last 30 years we’ve become 100 times more efficient, but we’re not necessarily more efficient at analysis,” Conti said. “Not only do you have to take care of the collection of data, but you have to understand how these amounts of data will change research.”

In order to analyze the data collected about space, interested members of the public will be very important, he said.

“We did a test to see if people were interested in producing images from the telescopes on their own and the public always has a huge interest,” Conti said. “It’s shifting in that people want to not just look at pictures but now they want to know what they mean and they want to try to contribute to science.”

Massimo Stiavelli, the James Web Space Telescope mission head and a project scientist at the Space Telescope Institute, will also join the discussion.

DeKruif, who represents Northfield, said one of his environmental concerns was the annual flooding that occurs on the Minnesota River from Mankato to the Twin Cities.

“In the spring of the year, nearly every year, we have a real problem with flooding in that area,” DeKruif said. He cited tornado damage around St. Peter, which felled trees. “Local folks wanted to go in and cut up those trees, and were told by the DNR, no they can’t because that’s habitat. I worked together with the LeSueur County Emergency Management Director Ann Traxler to pass legislation to allow cutting dead trees and cleaning up debris to help eliminate the logjam problems we have.”

It was similar debris that washed downstream and created a dangerous situation that ultimately took the life of MnDOT employee and Cleveland resident Michael Struck last March. Struck was swept away and drowned when the backhoe he was operating fell into floodwaters at Seven Mile Creek.

“This is a common-sense change that may prevent similar tragedies,” DeKruif said.

David Altshuler, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School: “When it comes to obesity, for the vast majority of people, there’s no one gene that makes a difference. There’s many, many genes, dozens, perhaps hundreds … each of which has a small effect on the obesity in the population, but which add up to a susceptibility when exposed to this environment we live in, for getting more overweight or not.

“There’s no doubt that genetics, the DNA that we inherit from our parents, affects how much we weigh. There’s also no doubt that the environment we live in affects how much we weigh. There’s no nature vs. nurture. There’s nature and nurture.

“When it comes to smoking or drinking, people generally have to go cold turkey. But fundamentally we have to eat. You know, people can’t stop eating. This calls for a somewhat lonely journey of self-control. We underestimate how hard it is to change your behavior, not once, not for a week or a month till you’re cured, but to change it every day for the rest of your life.”

Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: “If you go with the flow in America today, you will end up overweight or obese, as two thirds of Americans do. The weight of the nation is not healthy. And to get it healthy, we’re all going to have to do our part.

“We are seeing changes. They’re not gonna be overnight, they’re not quick, but they’re happening. And they are going to help control the weight of the nation.

“Fifty years ago, tobacco was ubiquitous. And I think in 50 years we’ll see the ubiquity of unhealthy foods today in a similar light.”

Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University: “There’s this relentless and powerful marketing of foods. You’re basically taught that you can eat everywhere, you can eat every hour of the day and that there’s something gloriously wonderful about eating foods that are high in sugar, fat and salt.

“They (food companies) have so many billions of dollars at stake in their profits that they’ll do everything they can to fight the changes that are really necessary to help address the world’s obesity problem.

“You might despair at this and say, ‘Well, what can we do about it because these companies are so powerful?’ That’s what was said about the tobacco companies 30 and 40 years ago and look what happened to them. … So if the tobacco industry can be taken on successfully by the public health world, then I don’t see any reason why the food industry can’t be the same.”

Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health: “If we don’t now take this as a really serious, urgent national priority, we are all of us individually and as a nation gonna pay a really serious price.”

At last month’s regular Borough Council meeting, Borough Administrator Ted Ehrenburg said he has started the process of investigating the practicality of locating a recycling center in the back parking lot area of the Senior Center, which is behind the municipal building off of Hamburg Turnpike in the vicinity of Second Street.

Besides determining the costs to establish a recycling center, Ehrenburg said he has also responded to some concerns mentioned by council members and has researched whether there is any documentation that would prohibit the recycling center from being located in the parking area of the borough’s Senior Center. Ehrenburg said he pulled the Planning Board file on the Senior Center and examined the resolution that granted site plan approval for the project and did not uncover any restrictions that would bar the borough from using the lot.

“I didn’t find any impediments to start the project,” he said of the Planning Board file.

Ehrenburg said he also has contacted the state Department of Environmental Protection about the matter because a stream bounds the property.

He said he is seeking prices associated with the startup of the recycling center, which would be outfitted with two 30-yard containers, a compactor, and fencing.

According to Ehrenburg, he spoke to a representative of a similarly sized Passaic County municipality that runs a recycling center and was told its center generates between $6,000 and $7,000 per month.

Mayor Jonathan Dunleavy pointed out that the town Ehrenburg was referring to only supplies recycling services for its residents, while Bloomingdale is looking to offer recycling services to other towns.

By opening up its center to other towns, Bloomingdale should generate even more income. Dunleavy said the borough could pay the startup costs for the recycling center through revenue generated via permit fees charged to Avalon Bay for its apartment project, which is expected to start construction this year on Union Avenue.

Last week, Ehrenburg said he has received some interest from neighboring communities that do not have the resources or space for a recycling center.

“This project is good for the ‘going green’ concept, plus it keeps down our tonnage that we pay tipping fees for, brings in revenue, and will help to keep the borough neat and clean,” said Ehrenburg.

Email: walshde@northjersey.com

The event is sponsored by the Pueblo City-County Health Department.

Collections will be accepted from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Colorado State Fairgrounds. Items only will be taken from individuals, not from businesses, government agencies or large facilities.
Paint and stains, poisons, chemicals, cleaners, toxic and medical wastes, yard debris, furniture and household trash will not be accepted. Call the Recycle Hotline 583-4924 for information on how to dispose of those things.

Used passenger tires can be dropped off for $1 each. Appliances containing Freon, such as refrigerators, freezers and air conditioners, can be dropped off for a fee of $5 each. Larger electronic items such as TVs, computer monitors and printers will be accepted for a fee starting at $5.

The area can be reached via Gate 3 on Mesa Avenue.

As Uganda developed her environment management endeavours into a fullyfledged sector in the mid-1980s, with the Government introducing an entire environment ministry and setting up an institutional framework that trickled down to the common man, one part of the process that proved challenging was creating awareness of the concerns across stakeholders. Yet sensitisation of the different stakeholders was a necessity if at all the endeavours were to succeed. A journalist who entered the information trade about that time soon provided a solution to the challenge.

The late Sir Ndyakira Amooti decided to dedicate his efforts in journalism almost exclusively to environmental issues, creating awareness about Uganda’s environmental issues, among all stakeholders through his media coverage of the various aspects of the cause.

He in the process became Uganda’s first Environment journalist, globally-celebrated and he garnered numerous awards for his work. He had contributed immensely to the success of the country’s environmental cause by the time he died in
1999.

Reporting on and analysing environmental issues When he joined Uganda media in the mid-1980s, there was no journalist concentrating on reporting on environmental issues in the country.

So when he occasionally reported on and wrote about them (while working like a freelance writer for newspapers as The Topic, The Uganda Times and The People he became the first journalist to report extensively on environment issues and was the only environment journalist in the country for most of the time he practised. In 1987 he joined the New Vision, and there he dedicated himself almost exclusively to covering the country’s environmental issues.

It was at the New Vision that he most worked to raise the public’s environmental consciousness and tackle public ignorance about the need to protect the country’s natural resources.

Since the paper became the country’s leading English daily with a large readership shortly after he joined, his campaign reached far and wide.

Through a combination of feature stories and exposés, he uncovered many cases of wrongdoing and thereby spurred the Government to take action. Among the many causes he wrote about, were the endangered mountain gorillas, the forests of Bwindi, illegal mining, wrongful draining of swamps and poaching. When Uganda suddenly became a major transit point for wildlife smugglers, Ndyakira alerted the world about the problem.

In September 1994, he helped two Americans undercover wildlife agents mount a sting operation at Entebbe Airport. Putting himself at risk, Ndyakira exposed the smuggling of endangered chimpanzees and African great grey parrots (both endangered species protected by the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species [CITES) by airport personnel, game officers and businessmen.

Ugandans became concerned about wildlife trafficking and as a result, authorities began arresting many smugglers. While reporting on the upland forests of Bwindi, home to a group of rare mountain gorillas, one of the world’s most endangered species, Ndyakira exposed illegal mining, poaching and tree-cutting. Ndyakira’s exposé led the Parliament to change Bwindi from a forest reserve to a national park.

In 1997, he teamed with Prof. John Okedi and Dr.Aryamanya Mugisha (then NEMA executive director and deputy executive director) to fight off a plan to spray Lake Victoria without an environmental impact assessment. Shortly before his death he averted the Government action to degazette a unique forest for use by industry. Many times he did his activism to protect the environment at the risk of his own safety and in defiance of wealthy offenders who tried to bribe him into silence.

Awards:

Amooti’s dedicated and consistent activism for the environment fetched him recognition and awards from across the world.

In 1995 he was awarded the Global 500 Roll of Honour of the United Nations Environment Programme, awarded to outstanding environmentalists. The same year he was knighted by Netherlands’ Prince Benhard, becoming ‘Sir’ as he was made a Knight of the Order of the Golden Ark. That same year he received a letter of commendation from the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Phillip.

In 1996, he was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize, the largest and most prominent prize for a grassroots ordinary individual working for the good of the environment. At the World Wetlands Day in 2008, he was honoured with a memorial lecture.

Creating Awareness among Children:

Ndyakira went as far as working to inculcate environmental awareness among children. He wrote a series of environmental books meant for young people to help them understand the need for environmental appreciation and protection right from an early age. He published the children’s book What a Country Without Animals.

In 1998, and later published the books What a Country Without Birds, What a Country Without Grasslands and What a Country Without Wetlands. The books are about environmental issues, written for children from nine to 12 years.