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Email Us
moenviron@moenviron.org
Call Us
T (314) 727-0600
F (314) 727-1665
Our Address
6267 Delmar Blvd. Ste. 2E
St. Louis, MO 63130
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| Home > MCE Publications: E-Alerts |
E-Alerts
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Recent e-Alerts |
2/7/10 Take Action for Clean Air and Healthy Kids
What a difference a year makes! In November 2008, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) strengthened its National Ambient Air Quality Standard for lead in response to our lawsuit. The updated standard is ten times more protective of public health than the outdated one it replaced. However, in the final rule, the agency watered down monitoring requirements, gutting the new rule's ability to protect the health of children and communities.
We joined with a number of organizations to challenge the weakened monitoring plan. The November 2008 rule required monitoring near facilities that emit one ton per year of lead or more - instead of the half ton per year threshold that had been contemplated in the proposed rule that was up for public comment. Several documents submitted after the close of the public comment period on the proposed rule shed light on the back-door machinations and pressure the Office of Management and Budget used to wrest the one ton per year standard out of the agency.
In January 2009, the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning and Physicians for Social Responsibility submitted a petition to the EPA to reconsider the monitoring provision of its final rule. The petition notes that the EPA's decision to require monitoring at facilities emitting one ton per year or more of lead was not in the proposed rule submitted for public comment and that the one ton per year threshold is twice that supported by technical analysis.
In July, the EPA granted the petition to reconsider, and now a new proposed rule for monitoring at facilities emitting a half ton or more of airborne lead is up for public comment until February 16. Your comments and participation are critically important in ensuring the integrity of the airborne lead standard. We expect industry to lobby as they have in the past to weaken monitoring.
You can help by submitting your comments on line or sending your comments, and getting your organization to submit comments or signing on to ours. Please click here to help demand monitoring sufficient to achieve clean air goals. The health of our children will not be protected unless monitoring is in place to ensure that the new NAAQS is achieved.
Thank you for your support of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, and for clean air and healthy communities.
1/12/10 Conservation Lobby Day
A quick note to remind you that we are gearing up for Conservation Lobby Day on Wednesday, February 3, 2010. As part of an extra effort to increase turnout we are having a phone bank on January 13 and 14 to call activists throughout Missouri in order to encourage them to come to Jefferson City for Conservation Lobby Day.
On Wednesday January 13, we will be calling from the World Community Center at 438 Skinker Blvd North, St. Louis, MO 63130, from 5pm to 8:30pm.
On Thursday, January 14, we will be calling from the Missouri Sierra Club Headquarters at 7164 Manchester Blvd, St. Louis, MO 63143, from 5pm to 8:30pm.
Please join us, and share your experiences with others. Let us know if you are available to participate during any time period on any of those days, or if you know anyone who might be available.
Conservation Lobby Day
Wednesday, February 3, 2010, 9 AM to 3:30 PM
Governor Office Building, Room 450
200 Madison Street
Jefferson City, MO 65101
For more information and to register, please visit the Coalition website.
1/8/10 Double Feature Movie Night Jan. 21
We All Live Downstream on the Big River
On Thursday, January 21 at 7pm, the Missouri Coalition for the Environment presents a showing of the film Big River along with a 50-minute version of King Corn at the Tivoli Theater in the University City Loop. The screening will also include a panel discussion after the films with Coalition Executive Director Kathleen Logan Smith, Coalition Law & Pollcy Coordinator Caroline Ishida and Healthy Youth Partnership Executive Director Maggie Menefee. The panel will discuss the effects of corporate agriculture on our environment and health and ways in which local organizations can work to mitigate these problems.
Following up on their Peabody winning documentary, the King Corn boys are back. For Big River, best friends Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis have returned to Iowa with a new mission: to investigate the environmental impact their acre of corn has sent to the people and places downstream.
In a journey that spans from the heartland to the Gulf of Mexico, Ian and Curt trade their combine for a canoe--and set out to see the big world their little acre of corn has touched. On their trip, flashbacks to the pesticides they sprayed, the fertilizers they injected, and the soil they plowed now lead to new questions, explored by new experts in new places. Half of Iowa's topsoil, they learn, has been washed out to sea. Fertilizer runoff has spawned a hypoxic "dead zone" in the Gulf. And back at their acre, the herbicides they used are blamed for a cancer cluster that reaches all too close to home.
Please join the Coalition for this very special presentation. Tickets are $10 to the general public and $5 for members of the Coalition. Tickets are available online, but MCE members should RSVP by calling 314-727-0600 or emailing bdesmet@moenviron.org.
This will also be the theater premiere of the Coalition's Mid-America Emmy-winning Save Our Streams Public Service Announcement. I hope you will come.
Yours truly,
Kathleen Logan Smith, Executive Director
1/4/10 2010 Brings Deep Discounts for Solar Installations in Missouri
The turn of the decade marks a new chapter for the solar energy industry in Missouri. Proposition C, a Renewable Energy Standard, passed by statewide ballot initiative with 66% of the vote in November 2008. Prop C includes a new solar rebate program which will take effect on January 1. The combination of this new rebate, the current 30% federal tax credit, and the all-time low price of solar panels has cut the cost of a solar installation in half since 2007. With the improved economic benefits, many Missourians are choosing to install solar panels on their homes or businesses.
Henry Rentz installs solar panels on a home outside St. Louis, Missouri.Prop C includes a solar rebate program to be offered to customers of all Missouri's investor-owned utilities including Kansas City Power and Light (KCPL), AmerenUE, and Empire Electric. While Ameren and KCPL have programs beginning on January 1, Empire Electric has not yet indicated they are planning to comply with the law.
The use of solar power is growing rapidly across the county, and Missouri has a strong solar resource to utilize. Wildwood resident Bernadette Hurst has already installed solar on her home just outside of St. Louis. "I installed a solar PV system in 2008 and have cut my electric bills in half. It's exciting that I'm less reliant on coal because of the renewable sources powering my home. And, I'm less impacted by the utility's rapidly increasing electric rates," says Hurst.
States like California lead the country with over 50,000 homes powered by solar electricity. In Missouri, only a few hundred homes and businesses solar electric systems installed. Installations resulting from the Prop C rebate program will create more green jobs at a time when Missouri needs them most.
"We've been enjoying a successful solar business for several years, but are excited for the increase in sales the Prop C rebate program will bring. Missourians understand the incredible benefits of solar power, and will take advantage of the drop in prices," says Henry Rentz a Missouri solar installer and president of the Missouri Solar Energy Industries Association (MOSEIA).
The Missouri solar industry has grown slowly in the past due to a lack of state policy to fuel the transition to clean sources of power. About 85% of Missouri's energy comes from coal compared to a national average of 50%. A heavy reliance on cheap coal has its drawbacks. All of the coal burned in Missouri power plants is imported from out of state and burning coal emits carbon and heavy toxins, causing climate change and impacting public health.
Renew Missouri, a project of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, has worked since 2007 to advance renewable energy and energy efficiency in Missouri. It has also helped unify solar installers through involvement with MOSEIA. Details on the upcoming NABCEP-approved solar training course with national solar expert Bill Brooks in Columbia on January 15 on can be found at www.RenewMO.org.
For E-Alerts before 2010, click here
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