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The Fiscal Year 2010 annual report to the Congress and the President on implementation of the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) and Executive Order 13272 commemorates 30 years of RFA implementation. In FY 2010, Advocacy involvement in agency rulemakings helped secure nearly $15 billion in first-year cost savings and nearly $5.5 billion in recurring annual savings for small entities.

Advocacy’s efforts and achievements are outlined in its Report on the Regulatory Flexibility Act, Fiscal Year 2010, found at http://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/10regflx.pdf.   A Research Summary can be found at http://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/rs379.pdf.

One of the maintenance department’s most significant efforts to foster sustainability at the more than 300 buildings it services is a testing program for HVAC motors controlled by variable frequency drives (VFDs). Many of the buildings have their own maintenance managers. Whenever such a manager requests testing on a motor in his/her building, technicians from maintenance headquarters use portable oscilloscopes and voltage measuring probes to determine whether or not shaft voltages are present — voltages which cause electrical discharges through the motor’s bearings.

If harmful discharge levels are detected, the maintenance department may recommend the installation of a bearing-protection device that bleeds off the damaging currents. In this case, the university chose an AEGIS SGR Bearing Protection Ring. The shaft grounding ring redirects VFD-induced shaft voltages by providing a very-low-impedance path from shaft to frame, bypassing the motor bearings entirely. Conductive microfibers line the entire inner circumference of the ring in two rows, surrounding the motor shaft. A protective channel in the ring allows the fibers to flex without breaking and keeps out debris.

Read the complete article at Sustainable Facility

WASHINGTON – As part of its commitment to implement sensible protections of drinking water for communities across the country, and as required by the Safe Drinking Water Act,  the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing 30 currently unregulated contaminants for monitoring in water systems, and submitting this proposal for public comment. The comment period will allow the public and other stakeholders to provide input on the selection of new contaminants for monitoring, and will help determine the best path forward as the EPA seeks to collect data that will inform future decisions about how best to protect drinking water.

“Ensuring clean and safe drinking water for all Americans is a top priority for EPA,” said Nancy Stoner, acting assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Water.  “In keeping with the Safe Drinking Water Act, we are submitting for public comment and input our proposed next round of currently unregulated contaminants for monitoring.  Learning more about the prevalence of these contaminants will allow EPA to better protect people’s health.”

Under the authority of the Safe Drinking Water Act, EPA currently regulates more than 90 contaminants in drinking water. To keep drinking water standards up-to-date with emerging science, the Safe Drinking Water Act requires that EPA identify up to 30 unregulated contaminants for monitoring every five years. This current proposal is the third Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Regulation and includes requirements to monitor for two viruses and 28 chemical contaminants that could be present in drinking water and do not currently have health-based standards.

EPA is requesting public comment on the proposed list of 30 contaminants until May 2, 2011. Following the public comment period, EPA will consider this important input before the list is scheduled to be finalized in 2012, with sampling to be conducted from 2013 to 2015. Sampling will take place at all systems serving more than 10,000 people and at a representative sampling of systems serving less than 10,000 people.

More information about the proposed list of contaminants:
http://water.epa.gov/lawsregs/rulesregs/sdwa/ucmr/ucmr3/index.cfm.

By Rob Watson

The truth will set you free, but it’s going to cost you. The new wave of smart meters is going to bring openness and transparency to our resource consumption and we’re not going to like what we see.

We are shocked, shocked when we go to the doctor and the scale is 5 to 10 pounds heavier than the one we have at home — the one that is 10 years old, the one we weigh ourselves with on the carpet; the one where the little red line is somewhat to the left of the zero … good Old Faithful.

No longer will we have the luxury of human error to estimate our utility consumption, now we have machine error which is usually — with occasional notable exceptions — resides in the tenth’s column, not in the tens column.

It’s clear that generally we manage better what we measure better. But the devil is often in the details, as we can see from studies of consumer behavior.

For example, New York City law requires restaurants to post calories on their fast food menus. In the two years since the legislation was enacted, the results so far are mixed. The New York City Department of Health shows that on average 100 fewer calories per visit are being consumed, which means that given our propensity for Big Mac attacks, approximately 26,000 fewer calories per year for a typical fast food consumer. This translates into about 7½ pounds of weight. Not surprisingly, parents ordering for children are influenced by the information, while teenagers absolutely are not (no big surprise there, either).

Nature of the information also is very important. It is much less effective to simply show people how much they are consuming, since mostly they have no idea how they are consuming the energy or water. Many of the entries into the energy metering and analytics field, for example the Smarter Buildings software product just released by IBM or SeriousEnergy from Serious Materials, have complex analytics engines that help users benchmark whether their energy consumption is higher or lower than expected. Other tools, such as SCIwatch from Scientific Conservation, use …Read More

The natural gas drilling process known as hydrofracking poses far more danger to the environment and health than previously understood, the New York Times has reported.

The paper said its analysis of more than 30,000 pages of federal, state and company records relating to more than 200 gas wells shows that radioactive wastewater from the process is sometimes discharged into rivers that supply drinking water to millions of people in Pennsylvania and Maryland.

At least 12 sewage treatment plants in three states have discharged waste that was only partly treated into rivers, lakes and streams, the Times said. It said the wastewater is sometimes hauled to sewage plants that are not designed to treat it.

Hydrofracking, also called hydraulic fracturing, uses water, particles and chemicals injected underground at high pressure to break up shale and release natural gas.

The process releases naturally occurring carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements such as radium, the New York Times said, and the hydrofracking fluid itself can also contain carcinogenic materials.

The Times’ criticism of fracking follows closely on the heels of publicity for the documentary Gasland, which was nominated for Sunday’s Academy Awards. It lost to corporate malfeasance exposé Inside Job. But the natural gas industry has been on the defensive against Gasland, with America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA) launching a consumer-facing website called The Truth About Gasland.

Read the complete article at Environmental Leader

Why do we burn so much coal for power generation?  Supposedly because it’s cheap. However, the true price of coal is far, far more than what it’s bought and sold for per tonne. The real cost to the USA’s economy through the human health and environmental damage it wreaks has been calculated – and it is mind-boggling.

Greenpeace recently hosted a preview of a soon to be published study by Dr. Paul Epstein, Director of Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global Environment.

The study looks beyond the already very thorny issues such as subsidies and examines human health and environmental impacts of coal throughout its entire life cycle; based on peer-reviewed studies already published.

The result: the impact of coal in the USA costs a third to over half a trillion dollars annually. Not billion, trillion.  Each year!

Breaking that down, based on the 500 billion dollar mark, that amounts to a debt of $1,515 per man, woman and child in the USA, every year in relation to the impacts fossil fuel has on the nation’s bottom line.

Read the complete story at Green Living Tips

Fix a Leak! Being handy around the house doesn’t have to be difficult. Leaky toilet flappers, faucets, and other valves waste millions of gallons of water but are easy to fix.
March 14-20 is “Fix a Leak” week.
http://www.epa.gov/watersense/water_efficiency/fix_a_leak.html

Go Greenscaping! Despite a very snowy winter, March is when we typically begin to think of yards and lawns and being outdoors again. Start with ideas and useful tips for greenscaping – environmentally friendly practices to improve the health and appearance of your lawn and garden.
http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/rrr/greenscapes/owners.htm