Day: June 21, 2019

Champaign-Urbana, Events, Green infrastructure

Erosion Control & Green Infrastructure Conference — July 12, 2019 — Champaign, IL

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Friday July 12, 2019
iHotel & Conference Center, 1900 South First Street, Champaign, IL 61820
Register by June 28 (no registration fee, free breakfast and lunch)

Conference agenda

8:00 am Registration and Breakfast Reception

8:30 am to 8:45 am Welcome and Opening Remarks (Christine Davis, IEPA)

8:45 am to 9:30 am Holly Hirchert, IEPA: Changes to the General NPDES Permit for Storm
Water Discharges from Construction Site Activities (ILR10)

9:45 am to 10:45 am: Professor Kalita & Professor Bhattarai, University of Illinois:
Erosion Control Research & Training Center – An Overview

10:45 am to 11:00: am Break

11:00 am to 12:00: John Warren, HANES: Stabilization Even When The Weather Does
Not Cooperate

12:00 pm to 1:00 pm: Lunch & Slide Show

1:00 pm to 1:45 pm: Eliana Brown & Lisa Merrifield, Illinois Extension: Green Stormwater Infrastructure: Practices, Economics and Resources

1:45 pm to 2:30 pm: Heidi Leuszler, Parkland College: The National Green Infrastructure
Certification Program

Tours
2:30 pm to 2:45 pm: Load bus and travel

3:00 pm to 4:00 pm: Sediment and erosion control demonstrations – Erosion Control
Research & Training Center 3603 E. Race St. Urbana, IL

 

PFAS

State planning testing of major Connecticut rivers, lakes for hazardous PFAS chemicals

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Read the full story from the Hartford Courant.

Connecticut officials are planning to test major rivers and lakes across the state this summer for the presence of hazardous levels of the potentially toxic compound known as PFAS, which was involved in a recent Farmington River spill.

Climate change, Illinois, Regulation

After Trump offers hand to coal, Ill. moves to close plants

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Read the full story in E&E News. See also the editorial in yesterday’s Sun-Times, Illinois must green up as Trump continues to trash the environment.

Illinois’ largest coal plant operator will have to meet more stringent air pollution limits and shut down about a third of its coal fleet under a rulemaking advanced yesterday by the state’s Pollution Control Board.

The board’s action sends the rulemaking to a 12-member legislative committee, which will have 90 days to review it. The committee can allow the rulemaking to stand, seek changes or prohibit it from taking effect.

The board order is the latest step in a yearslong saga over the fate of Vistra Energy Corp.’s coal fleet in southern Illinois, one of the largest in the Midwest with more than 5,000 megawatts. It also comes a day after the Trump administration finalized the Affordable Clean Energy rule, which sought to protect aging coal plants from tougher federal regulations.

Climate change, Regulation

EPA tosses lifeline to U.S. coal with rollback of Obama’s Clean Power Plan

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Read the full story at The Energy Mix.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has unveiled long-anticipated plans to complete its rollback of President Barack Obama’s signature Clean Power Plan, the latest in Donald Trump’s failing campaign to resuscitate his country’s dying coal industry.

Plastics, Renewable energy

Scientists Want to Make Fuel and Plastic Out of Bacteria

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Read the full story in Hakai Magazine.

Tiny but mighty, octillions of cyanobacteria in the ocean create diesel-like hydrocarbons in huge amounts. A team of researchers wants to know why.

Workplace issues in STEM

A proposed new law could help reduce sexual harassment in the sciences

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Read the full story in Pacific Standard.

The Combating Sexual Harassment in Science Act would compel America’s science agencies to hold taxpayer-funded labs accountable for harassment.

Circular economy, Pollution prevention

Before it can be circular, it has to be safe

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Read the full story at GreenBiz.

Could this be a tipping point for the supply chain transparency movement? As more organizations consider how to recirculate the products they make — or procure on behalf of their own internal consumption — the need to know what’s in them is becoming more acute.

Packaging

Haagen Dazs, Procter & Gamble to offer reusable containers in Pa., N.J.

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Read the full story at WHYY.

TerraCycle has an ambitious goal: get rid of all waste.

Founder Tom Szaky has made some progress. His Trenton company recycled diapers, and made Head and Shoulders shampoo bottles from plastic waste collected from beaches.

But then he realized, “Recycling and making things from recycled material, while critically important, is not going to solve the problem of waste.”

The U.S. produces millions of tons of waste in the form of juice cartons, plastic bottles, and other containers every year, according to the latest data available from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Szaky thought: What if we don’t throw away all those bottles and cartons to begin with?

He worked with major brands such as Procter & Gamble, Nestle, and PepsiCo on a different solution — reusable containers that you can bring back to the store.

The platform, called Loop, is coming to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York in May. Shoppers in those states can sign up online, then go to some grocery stores to buy ice cream, shampoo, laundry detergent, and other products in reusable containers.

Climate change, Sustainable communities

With More Storms and Rising Seas, Which U.S. Cities Should Be Saved First?

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Read the full story in the New York Times.

As disaster costs keep rising nationwide, a troubling new debate has become urgent: If there’s not enough money to protect every coastal community from the effects of human-caused global warming, how should we decide which ones to save first?

After three years of brutal flooding and hurricanes in the United States, there is growing consensus among policymakers and scientists that coastal areas will require significant spending to ride out future storms and rising sea levels — not in decades, but now and in the very near future. There is also a growing realization that some communities, even sizable ones, will be left behind.

Communicating science

Hyped-up science erodes trust. Here’s how researchers can fight back.

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Read the full story at Vox.

Frequently, stories about scientific research declare an exciting new treatment works but fail to mention the intervention was performed on mice. Or stories that breathlessly report what the latest study finds on the health benefits (or risks) of coffee, without assessing the weight of the available evidence.

The truth is, a lot of these misconceptions, start as the one around McAuliffe’s study did: with the university press release. But here, there is hope: Even though a lot of hyped-up science may start from university press releases, new research finds that press releases may be a powerful tool to inoculate reporters against hyped-up claims.

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