Pittsfield Household Hazardous waste collection set for Oct. 15 

"A household hazardous waste collection, organized by the City of Pittsfield in conjunction with the Town of Dalton, will be held on Saturday, October 15, at the City's Highway Facility, 81 Hawthorne Ave. Enter through the rear entrance. A wide range of unwanted household products with labels indicating the need for special handling or disposal will be accepted, as well as rechargeable button cell batteries, other non-alkaline batteries, and mercury-bearing thermostats and thermometers. Online preregistration is required by midnight on October 12. Visit. tinyurl.com/2022HazDaySignup to register and for a complete list of accepted and unaccepted items. As space is limited, participants will select a 30-minute appointment window for drop-off. Patrons are asked to place materials in the trunk of their vehicles. Additionally, for safety purposes, participants should remain in their vehicles and refrain from smoking for the duration of the visit. Additional instructions will be provided to registered participants. Residents without computer access can call 413-499-9330 (Pittsfield) or 413-684-6115, ext. 11, (Dalton) for registration assistance. No drop-ins will be accepted."

Mass DEP Promotes Mattress Recycling in Anticipation of Waste Disposal Ban

Northeast Recycling Council (NERC)

"In July 2022, MassDEP awarded $440,000 in grants to 44 cities and towns, specifically for mattress collection containers. The purpose of this grant is to support municipalities in their compliance with the mattress waste disposal ban, which will become effective on November 1, 2022. Under this regulation, mattresses and box springs will be banned from disposal in landfills or combustion facilities. More than 75% of a mattress’s components are recyclable. Recycling is a preferred management method since mattresses are bulky and costly to dispose of in landfills and incinerators. MassDEP also released a Mattress Recycling Primer that includes detailed guidance for municipalities as they prepare to implement a mattress recycling program and comply with the upcoming waste disposal ban. It includes information on the waste ban and acceptance criteria, options for various collection methods (curbside pickup or aggregation at a drop-off site), how to estimate mattress generation and track inventory, and more. Additional information on mattress recycling, including fact sheets, case studies, and webinar presentations, is available at: https://www.mass.gov/service-details/mattress-recycling. In addition, MassDEP is putting together a Waste Ban Social Media Toolkit to help municipalities shape their messaging about changes to their textile and mattress collection programs. The toolkit, due late September, will provide general context about the bans, tips for talking about the waste bans, and text and images that can be used for social media or printed outreach. Related social media posts have been posted on Recycle Smart MA’s social media channels and the August newsletter, Waste Bans 101: Less Trash for a Cleaner Massachusetts, is available for use by municipalities interested in creating emails and/or press releases." Read More

At Old Coal Mines, the American Chestnut Tries for a Comeback

Elena Shao | The New York Times

"...Billions of chestnuts once dominated Appalachia, with Americans over many generations relying on their hardy trunks for log cabins, floor panels and telephone poles. Families would store the trees’ small, brown nuts in attics to eat during the holiday season. Now, Mr. French and his colleagues at Green Forests Work, a nonprofit group, hope to aid the decades-long effort to revive the American chestnut by bringing the trees back onto Appalachia’s former coal mines. Decades of mining, which have contributed to global warming, also left behind dry, acidic and hardened earth that made it difficult to grow much beyond nonnative herbaceous plants and grasses. As coal continues to decline and many of the remaining mines shut down for good, foresters say that restoring mining sites is an opportunity to prove that something productive can be made of lands that have been degraded by decades of extractive activity, particularly at a moment when trees are increasingly valued for their climate benefits. Forests can capture planet-warming emissions, create safe harbor for endangered wildlife species and make ecosystems more resilient to extreme weather events like flooding. The chestnut is a good fit for this effort, researchers say, because the tree’s historical range overlaps 'almost perfectly' with the terrain covered by former coal mines that stretched across parts of eastern Kentucky and Ohio, West Virginia and western Pennsylvania. Another advantage of restoring mining sites this way is that chestnut trees prefer slightly acidic growth material, and they grow best in sandy and well-drained soil that isn’t too wet, conditions that are mostly consistent with previously mined land, said Carolyn Keiffer, a plant ecologist at Miami University in Ohio. [...] In 1977, the federal government passed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, requiring mining companies to return land to the general shape it had before the mining activity. As a result, mining companies would backfill excavated land, packing rock material tightly against the hillside so it wouldn’t cause landslides, said Scott Eggerud, a forester with the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, the agency that enforces the mining law. To prevent erosion, mining companies would plant aggressive, mostly nonnative grasses that could tolerate the heavily compacted soil.

From the 1980s to the early 2000s, an estimated one million acres of previously forested area in the Appalachia were reclaimed this way as 'legacy' mined lands. [...] When Green Forests Work arrived on the Brannon property in 2013, they focused on undoing some of the damage done to the land, bringing in bulldozers with giant ripping shanks that dig three to four feet deep into the soil, loosening up the dirt and pulling up rocks. By springtime, the group had planted upward of 20,000 seedlings, a mix of 20 different native tree species including the American chestnut, the Virginia pine and a variety of oaks. They also planted 625 chestnuts in a one-acre space they called a progeny test to evaluate the health of hybridized chestnut trees — fifteen-sixteenths American chestnut and one-sixteenth Chinese chestnut — that were crossbred by scientists at The American Chestnut Foundation, a nonprofit group formed in the 1980s." Read More

Research shows neighborhoods near new plant face high rates of health issues

Caroline Enos | The Salem News

"A new peaker plant in Peabody would be built in an area with higher rates of health disparities, new research confirms. As of now, the project would be completed without any prior health and environmental impact reports done by the state, something Peabody’s Board of Health and local activists are hoping to change. The 55-megawatt “peaker” plant would be powered by oil and natural gas and only run during peak times of energy use for at most 1,250 hours annually. Construction on the $85 million project is expected to be completed by summer 2023. The new peaker would be more efficient and produce fewer emissions than the Peabody Municipal Light Plant’s decades-old 20-megawatt generator currently in use at the same site, according to the Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company, the owner and operator of the new plant. MMWEC hopes the old generator will be decommissioned by 2026. Still, the new peaker would use fossil fuels that emit carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and other harmful particles into the air, the Board of Health said in a joint letter to the state last year. This was emphasized again during a presentation of new research at the board’s meeting Thursday night. [...] Kathryn Rodgers, a Ph.D. student in environmental health at the Boston University School of Public Health, conducted this research during an internship with the Massachusetts Climate Action Network this summer. These concerns had been raised last year as well by doctors and other advocates opposed to the peaker plant. 'Populations living closer to the proposed power plant face significantly more health burdens than the rest of the state,' Rodgers said of her findings. Rodgers analyzed data from the state, the U.S. Census and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Her analysis focused on areas within 1.2 miles of the plant. She found that this buffer zone at least partially encompassed eight environmental justice neighborhoods, meaning that most residents have a median household income of 65% or less of the statewide median income, or that minorities make up 40% of that area’s population. Two hospitals, four schools and four long-term care facilities are also located within 1.2 miles of the plant. On average, cancer, chronic kidney disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, coronary heart disease and stroke among adults are significantly higher in this area compared to the rest of the state, according to her findings. This did not change when the data took into account residents who smoke, do not have health insurance or are a part of one of these environmental justice areas." Read More

Senate Votes to Ratify the Kigali Amendment, Joining 137 Nations in an Effort to Curb Global Warming

Phil McKenna | Inside Climate News

"With rare, bipartisan support including a phalanx of Republican lawmakers, the U.S. Senate voted 69-27 Wednesday in favor of ratifying a key international climate agreement that will significantly curb global warming and, climate advocates say, could serve as a springboard for further emissions reductions. The Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol is a binding agreement to reduce production and use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), chemicals used in refrigeration and air conditioning that are also potent, short-lived greenhouse gases. President Joe Biden is expected to soon sign the agreement, something he has called for since his inauguration. The United States would join 137 other countries in an agreement that is projected to prevent substantial additional warming by the end of the century. [...] A 2018 report by the U.S. air conditioning and refrigeration industry found that by 2027, the Kigali amendment would increase U.S. manufacturing jobs by 33,000, increase U.S. exports by $5 billion, and reduce imports by nearly $7 billion. The United States began phasing down the production and use of HFCs after Congress passed the American Innovation and Manufacturing (AIM) Act, legislation that was signed by then President Donald Trump in 2020. Subsequent regulations released by the EPA in 2021 are compliant with the Kigali Amendment, which requires the U.S. and other developed countries to reduce production and use of HFCs by 85 percent by 2036. Officially ratifying the Kigali Amendment further solidifies the United States commitment to reducing HFC emissions and protects U.S. industry. Failure to ratify would close segments of the chemical and manufacturing industries to U.S. producers after 2023 because the Montreal Protocol 'prohibits trade with countries not party to [it] or its amendments' according to the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute and the Alliance for Responsible Atmospheric Policy, industry groups that support ratification." Read More

This 100% solar community endured Hurricane 

Ian with no loss of power and minimal damage

Rachel Rameriez | CNN

"...Babcock Ranch calls itself 'America’s first solar-powered town.' Its nearby solar array — made up of 700,000 individual panels — generates more electricity than the 2,000-home neighborhood uses, in a state where most electricity is generated by burning natural gas, a planet-warming fossil fuel. The streets in this meticulously planned neighborhood were designed to flood so houses don’t. Native landscaping along roads helps control storm water. Power and internet lines are buried to avoid wind damage. This is all in addition to being built to Florida’s robust building codes. Some residents, like Grande, installed more solar panels on their roofs and added battery systems as an extra layer of protection from power outages. Many drive electric vehicles, taking full advantage of solar energy in the Sunshine State. Climate resiliency was built into the fabric of the town with stronger storms in mind. So when Hurricane Ian came barreling toward southwest Florida this week, it was a true test for the community. The storm obliterated the nearby Fort Myers and Naples areas with record-breaking surge and winds over 100 mph. It knocked out power to more than 2.6 million customers in the state, including 90% of Charlotte County. But the lights stayed on in Babcock Ranch. The storm uprooted trees and tore shingles from roofs, but other than that Grande said there is no major damage. Its residents say Babcock Ranch is proof that an eco-conscious and solar-powered town can withstand the wrath of a near-Category 5 storm." Read More