The Supreme Court declined today to take up the question of whether an environmental inspection of a private property can be viewed as an unconstitutional search and seizure.

It was a close call, with four of the nine justices expressing considerable interest in the issue. Only four votes are needed for the court to hear a case, so they had the power to have forced that outcome if they had wanted to.

Michelle and Robert Huber, a suburban couple in New Jersey, had made the argument that their Fourth Amendment rights were violated after a state official took soil samples without permission.

The state maintained it did not need a warrant to search the property because of authority it was given by the New Jersey Freshwater Wetlands Protection Act.

The inspector had been called to the property in 2002 after complaints from neighbors that the Hubers were disturbing wetlands to the rear of the site.

The Hubers were eventually ordered to pay a $4,500 fine and restore the wetlands.

The Superior Court of New Jersey upheld the award on appeal.

In deciding not to hear the case, Justice Samuel Alito took the step of issuing a written opinion, which three of his conservative colleagues, Chief Justice John Roberts, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, signed onto.

It is "unusual but not unprecedented" for four justices who have the power to require the court to hear a case to issue such a statement, according to John Elwood, an attorney at the Vinson & Elkins law firm.

Alito expressed deep concerns about the New Jersey court's ruling.

He ultimately agreed that the court should not consider the case, but only on the grounds that the lower court ruling was from the Superior Court of New Jersey, an intermediate appellate court. The court rarely takes cases from state courts, and when it does, it is usually from the highest court in that state.

Alito wrote that under Supreme Court precedent, there is a limited exception to Fourth Amendment protections when it comes to the government's ability to inspect regulated businesses.

He and his colleagues appeared concerned that the New Jersey court applied that exception to a search of private property

Alito wrote that the Supreme Court has never said "that a state, by imposing heavy regulations on the use of privately owned property, may escape the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement."

The opinion is sure to alert lawyers keen on asserting the rights of private property owners to look out for similar cases from a state high court or federal appeals court that could attract the court's attention.

Click here to read Justice Alito's opinion.

The United States and Brazil will expand cooperation on biofuels to encompass aviation, leaders from both countries announced over the weekend, even as both criticized trade barriers between the two that limit the flow of Brazil's sugarcane-based ethanol into the U.S. auto fuels market.

"Even as we focus on oil in the near term, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the only long-term solution to the world's dependence on fossil fuels is clean energy technology," President Obama said at a business summit in Brasilia.

"And that's why the United States and Brazil are deepening our cooperation on biofuels, and why we're launching a U.S.-Brazil Green Economy Partnership, because we know that the development of clean energy is one of the best ways to create new jobs and industries in both our nations."

Noting that more than half the vehicles in Brazil run on biofuels and that the nation relies heavily on hydropower, Obama said trade on clean energy products like those and American-made technologies like advanced batteries can help both nations grow.

Under a new agreement that expands on a more general 2007 memorandum of understanding on biofuels, President Obama and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said the two countries will cooperate to speed the development of aviation biofuels in order to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with air transport today.

The countries committed to strengthening private-sector partnerships and research work, establishing common standards and specifications for aviation biofuels and working together in multilateral venues "in order to prevent international barriers to biofuels trade and development."

Among the U.S. agencies involved in the expanded collaboration will be the Federal Aviation Administration and the Departments of Energy, Agriculture and Defense. The U.S.-based Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative will also be involved through dialogue with the Brazilian Alliance for Aviation Biofuels, according to the agreement. Funding is to be provided on a project-by-project basis, it said.

Marcos Jank, president and CEO of UNICA, Brazil's sugarcane industry association, welcomed the partnership while indirectly criticizing the current bilateral trade regime. "This is a natural move for the top two renewable energy producers and users in the world," he said. "Brazil and the United States should be leading by example, working together to advance on all fronts, including breaking down trade barriers that hinder the global expansion of biofuels."

The United States imposes a 54-cent-per-gallon tariff on imported ethanol that primarily affects Brazil's industry. Designed in part to keep U.S. subsidies for corn ethanol from benefiting overseas growers, the tariff exceeds the level of that subsidy by 9 cents per gallon.

Efficiency, nuclear in focus

The two leaders also announced a "strategic energy dialogue" between the countries that would be targeting to expanding Brazilian oil and natural gas production, including deepwater production, and cooperation on energy efficiency to focus in part on helping Brazilian consumers access energy-saving building products.

The two governments agreed to share information on energy efficiency audits for industrial facilities and retrofit financing strategies.

Obama and Rousseff also discussed information-sharing on nuclear energy and security, the White House said.

Marine Sgt. Brian Nelson found himself alone with four hard-won barrels of cottonseed oil one day last fall in a Afghan field in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand province.

The 31-year-old chemical engineer from Falmouth, Mass., was waiting for an Osprey aircraft to take him and his 55-gallon barrels to Camp Leatherneck, the launchpad for some 30,000 coalition forces conducting counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan's rugged southwestern provinces.

Nelson, who has already served two tours in Iraq, spent this past winter tinkering with combinations of cottonseed oil and JP-8, the military's universal fuel, to find a blend that works best in Camp Leatherneck's generators. His work is part of an experimental U.S. effort to maintain gains over the Taliban by developing local biofuels.

Marine Sgt. Brian Nelson (center) and Marines from the I Marine Expeditionary Force begin work on an experimental biofuels project using Afghan cottonseed oil. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Marine Corps.

Originally, Nelson said, military leaders had hoped to produce poppyseed oil as a biofuel and give Afghan farmers an alternative product for their more than 8,000 tons of yearly opium.

As it stands, the illicit opium poppy crop, grown mostly in southern provinces, is a thorn in the side of coalition forces. In 2006 and 2007, shortly after the Taliban returned to the region, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that insurgents and warlords made between $200 million and $400 million off the crop. Meanwhile, opium addiction is a mounting problem among the Afghan population.

But by the time Nelson, who has a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the University of New Hampshire, was recruited for the project, the anti-poppy campaign had shifted course, instead focusing on creating incentives for farmers to grow legal food crops like wheat.

But the biofuels idea did not die.

The Marine Corps alone uses 200,000 gallons of fuel each day in Afghanistan, and fuel convoys are an especially easy target for improvised explosive devices (IEDs) set by insurgents -- a fact that has not escaped the notice of military leaders. All the services are taking steps to cut their fuel dependency and switch to alternative sources, and shortly after Nelson deployed to Afghanistan, the Marine Corps commandant issued some of the most aggressive energy-reduction goals of all the services.

"By tethering our operations to vulnerable supply lines, it degrades our expeditionary capabilities and ultimately puts Marines at risk," wrote Commandant Gen. James Amos in the Marine Corps' new expeditionary energy report, which was released today. "Transforming the way we use energy is essential to rebalance our Corps and prepare it for the future."

The marines' targets are especially notable because they include energy usage cuts for the tip-of-the-spear operations Marines are known for, such as those happening out of Camp Leatherneck. By 2025, the Marines aim to use half the amount of fuel they do today.

So Marine Corps leadership was eagerly scouting out ideas for alternative fuels when they learned that a newly reopened cotton gin in Helmand province was producing an excess of cottonseed oil. The Afghans were using some of the extra oil for animal feed, but the Marines realized it could also make a good biofuel.

Creating fuel out of any vegetable oil is easy, and cottonseed oil is especially appealing because it is very stable, according to Alice Pilgeram, a Montana State University researcher who works with U.S. farmers to produce biofuels.

"It's unbelievably simple. It's so simple, it's not even funny," Pilgeram said. "And the best biodiesel you're going to be able to produce is one from your region because it's already adapted to the region."

'Everything out here is extremely difficult'

But nothing is simple in Afghanistan, so the Marine Corps Expeditionary Energy Office told Nelson to test the idea with a pilot project.

And Nelson quickly found that just getting enough oil for his experiments could be a herculean challenge.

After connecting with one of the cotton gin's employees and working through an interpreter to explain what he wanted -- Nelson says the words "filter" and "generator" do not translate easily -- he set off to retrieve his barrels.

It was a multi-leg trip that sent Nelson from the American base to a British camp closer to Lashkar Gah, the Helmand provincial capital that is home to the gin. Then, in full flak gear and accompanied by a security unit, Nelson ventured to a village halfway between the camp and the city to meet his contact.

When the gin employee arrived in a battered little truck, he and Nelson ducked into a shop.

"You're trying to pay him without the locals seeing, so that they don't know you have money and they don't know he has money once he leaves," Nelson said.

There is only one way to do it: "Very carefully."

The four barrels were loaded into Nelson's vehicle, and he rode nervously back to the British base.

"We left with a little pickup truck ... and the shocks were completely compressed," he recalled, laughing. "Every bump along the road, we're wondering if these barrels are going to go flying out the back."

Then, from the British base, Nelson awaited his Osprey flight back to Camp Leatherneck.

"It's kind of a neat experience ... it's just you and these four barrels of oil, and seeing this aircraft come out of the sky and pick up this cottonseed oil," he said.

"It's more difficult than anything you could ever imagine -- to make all those steps along the way happen."

High-level attention

Nelson just burned the last of those initial 220 gallons of cottonseed oil after running experiments through the winter, and he says that the fuel holds promise.

"As long as the temperature stays pretty warm, we have some great results," he said. "It burns just a little bit slower than JP-8, the generators require just a little bit more maintenance, but it was easy to clean out the filters and it burns just a little bit cleaner without putting so much nitrous oxide in the air."

Chilly temperatures posed a problem in his experiments, though. In the same way that cooking oil or butter gets more viscous at colder temperatures, so, too, does cottonseed oil.

On cold nights -- and during the winter in Afghanistan, there are lots of cold nights -- Nelson found the thicker oil clogged the generators. But he came up with some ways around it. For example, he developed a technique to use heat from the generator to warm the oil, or simply keep oil inside until it was ready to be used.

The bigger challenge is the logistics that would be required to scale up the project.

The military uses an enormous amount of fuel, and as the Department of the Navy, which includes the Marine Corps, angles to get to 50 percent alternative energy by the end of the decade, taking biofuels to scale is a high hurdle, even in the United States (Climatewire, Jan. 25).

The legwork it took for Nelson to get just a small amount of the fuel suggests Afghan cottonseed oil won't be making a dent in U.S. forces' fossil fuel consumption anytime soon. But that does not mean top Defense leaders don't see promise in the project.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who has made energy security his touchstone, touted the nascent effort in written testimony to Congress earlier this month.

The pilot project is "simultaneously demonstrating to Afghan farmers that there are alternatives to opium, and demonstrating to Afghan leaders that they can power their own economy from within Afghanistan," he wrote.

Although Nelson's work so far has been on U.S. military equipment, the potential to teach the process to Afghan farmers is what really gets him excited.

"This is something that would create almost a closed-circuit system for them," Nelson said. "At some point in the future when we pull out, we want to make sure that their economy doesn't fall out from underneath them so we don't have to come right back in. Little by little, we're trying to teach them these lessons and showing them how to use their own resources to their benefit."

Building momentum

Pilgeram, the Montana biofuels researcher, said that small-scale, on-farm production is where biofuel economics work best.

"A farmer in Montana can maybe sell his oil to a biodiesel producer for $1.50 a gallon," she explained. "On the other hand, if that farmer can convert that oil into his own fuel, it's actually worth $3.50 a gallon because he doesn't have to buy diesel.

"Everywhere, the economics end up making a lot more sense."

With his cottonseed oil gone and the finishing touches on his project report just about complete, Nelson is getting ready to return home. By the time the report makes it onto the desks of military decisionmakers, he will likely be back in the United States.

But Nelson has already signed on for another tour in Afghanistan, which he expects will begin in the fall.

"I jumped at the opportunity," the Marine said. "Now we can start building momentum with it. The hardest part, in my opinion, is over."

Eleventh story in an occasional series on the greening of New York City. Click here to view the series.

NEW YORK -- Floating garbage and oil slicks run the 2-mile length of Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal.

From an industrial area on its southern reaches to residential areas in the north, the canal has long been an eyesore and a nuisance for its neighbors who fear that just sniffing its fumes can make them sick.

Farther north, on the Brooklyn-Queens borough line, Newtown Creek is also in lousy shape. Fouled by chemicals and wastewater, the creek -- a branch of the East River -- was a booming port during World War II and is still home to refineries, cement factories and scrap-metal processing plants.

The lower reaches of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn are plagued with collapsed bulkheads and numerous illegal pipes spilling pollution directly into the water. EPA has a better vision, but one that will take 10 years or more to realize. Photo by Nathanial Gronewold.

After being all but ignored by local and state agencies for decades, the Gowanus Canal and Newtown Creek are now poised to become two of the nation's most expensive and politically charged cleanup projects. Scrubbing more than 150 years of industrial pollution in the Gowanus could cost up to $500 million, with Newtown Creek -- which is more industrialized and a mile-and-a-half longer than the Gowanus -- expected to cost still more.

"It's very interesting that we got these two big urban waterway projects going on almost at the same time," said Judith Enck, the administrator of U.S. EPA's Region 2 office in New York.

"Interesting," indeed. Enck's vision for the cleanup, she said, is to transform the canals "from what once was a real example of urban decay" to "an example of urban revitalization and sustainability." But many of the 200 or so people who attended a public meeting on the Superfund cleanups at a public school near the Gowanus last month expressed concerns about immediate health threats from contaminated water, soil and air.

Many raised questions about air quality around the Gowanus, despite studies showing the air here is no dirtier than anywhere else in the city. Most were very upset to hear that sewage will continue to spill into the canal long after the cleanup, the unfortunate result of the city's inadequate sewers, but officials said much of this will be mitigated by opening a pipeline designed to flush the canal with water from the East River.

The canal's neighbors were further dismayed to learn that contaminants dredged from the bottoms will probably be shipped off to hazardous waste dumps. Many said EPA was simply transferring a problem elsewhere.

The meeting was cordial, but Walter Mugdan, EPA Region 2's director of environmental planning, joked that the "love fest" would end as soon as they start negotiating the final cleanup plan.

"It is critical that while we exercise haste we also exercise care," Mugdan said. "We have to constantly be balancing the need and desire to move quickly but the equal need and desire to make sure that we're doing things carefully and right and that we're taking into account all the various different views that are out there."

EPA is promising to tread carefully, involving the community throughout the cleanup.

Brooklyn has organized a large community advisory group (CAG), with more than 60 members, around the Gowanus to keep in touch with federal, state and city authorities.

"I believe it's probably the largest CAG in the country for a Superfund site, and this is Brooklyn so I think that makes a lot of sense," said Jeff Edelstein, an environmental engineer picked by the CAG to be its liaison with the federal government. "There is more community involvement here than perhaps anywhere else."

Enck and her team are already warning that the communities surrounding the sites must be patient -- the Gowanus cleanup won't be finished until 2020 at the earliest, even though EPA says it is ahead of schedule there. But they are also taking pains to ensure New Yorkers that they are ready to hold their hands through every step of the way, consulting with the neighborhoods as much and as often as possible.

"I'm a big believer in public participation," Enck told the gathering late last month. "There's sort of this old pattern of decide and defend, what I call a DAD approach, and I'd much rather engage with the public and businesses and elected officials and local governments and get your input early before final decisions are made."

Who'll pay?

The companies that EPA believes are at fault for the pollution -- the agency has identified about two dozen potential responsible parties (PRP) so far -- are treading carefully.

Several companies failed to respond publicly to questions about their potential liabilities, and none have speculated about how much they might have to spend on the cleanup.

Officials most familiar with the history of both waterways say that National Grid, a major Northeast electric and gas utility, faces the greatest liability.

EPA's Mugdan cautioned that being identified as a responsible party does not necessarily mean that the company had directly polluted the waterways. Rather, National Grid's acquisition of coal gasification plants alongside the creek and canal leaves it legally liable, he said.

National Grid representatives said the company is conducting additional testing as part of a separate agreement with EPA. But spokeswoman Karen Young was unable to say how much money the company might owe for the cleanup related to its three former coal-to-gas plants along the canal and two along the creek.

"Any talk of total costs or final cleanup at either site is premature," Young said. "We continue to work cooperatively with the agencies that are involved at both sites."

The five coal-to-gas plants -- which provided the city's primary fuel for heating and cooking fuel before gas pipelines became mainstream -- left massive quantities of coal tar and are believed to be the source of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a carcinogenic byproduct of coal combustion found at both sites. The creek and canal are also polluted with heavy metals, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and occasionally untreated sewage when heavy rain overwhelms the city's wastewater treatment network.

EPA is mainly in charge of dredging the polluted soil lying at the bottom of the waterways. To take care of the surrounding lots, National Grid says it is working with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).

Other companies that could be held liable for the expensive cleanup operations are scrambling to get ahead of the EPA-led cleanup effort.

Kristen Hellmer, a communications adviser for Exxon Mobil Corp., says the company and four others -- oil giants Chevron Corp. and BP PLC and mining company Phelps Dodge Corp. -- have formed the "Newtown Creek group" to work with EPA to finalize plans for the remedial investigation and feasibility study, slated to begin this spring.

BP spokesman Tom Mueller said investigations in the 1970s and '80s determined that BP refinery operations were not at fault for contamination in the creek, but the company has agreed voluntarily to install recovery and remediation equipment on its property.

"BP has expanded and updated this system over time and recently installed four additional recovery wells on its property," Mueller said. "To date, we have recovered more than 3.5 million gallons of free petroleum product from beneath the BP terminal property."

EPA encourages this process. Mugdan said the agency prefers that companies work together on cleanups under Superfund rules, without a court order. Nonetheless, he said, EPA is prepared to wield its legal power to compel companies to participate in Superfund cleanups.

Companies, of course, are all aware of federal legal muscle and are cautious about discussing the cleanup.

"The facilities that the EPA asked about were closed between 1922 and 1950," said Victoria Streitfeld, spokeswoman for Honeywell Inc., another potential responsible party. "We have very limited information on the operation of these facilities."

Moving slowly

EPA's feasibility study for the Gowanus Canal won't be finished until the end of the year, after which will follow a public comment period that should last at least 90 days.

A final record of decision on what will be done should be ready by the end of 2012 with designing the cleanup plan taking another three years.

Factor in actual cleanup work, estimated to take five to seven years, and New York may not see a cleaner, less odorous Gowanus Canal until 2022.

The Newtown Creek cleanup will take even longer. A more formal investigation won't start until April or May.

Optimists at EPA do not see a slow cleanup as a problem.

The agency's regional chief, Enck, encouraged families living near Gowanus to think of it as an educational opportunity for their children. Elementary students could begin learning about the Superfund process now and see it completed by their graduation from high school.

"Bring them out there, show them the waterway today, and then show them in 10 years," Enck said. "I think it's a teachable moment in terms of an environmental recovery."

As the death toll from Japan's earthquake and tsunami swells ever closer to 10,000, engineers continue to hit roadblocks in their race to bring the hobbled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant under control.

Today, engineers discovered that crucial machinery at one reactor will need to be repaired, a process that will take two to three days, according to government officials.

Another team of workers laboring on a separate reactor was evacuated in the afternoon after gray smoke rose from reactor No. 3, said Tetsuro Fukuyama, deputy chief cabinet secretary. They heard no explosion, though, and the smoke ended by 6 p.m., according to news reports by NHK.

In a separate incident, NHK said that the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency reported white smoke was coming from the reactor No. 2 building.

Neither of those incidents appears to have produced significantly higher levels of radiation.

Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department said it would offer potassium iodide to its staff members and dependents in Japan as a precaution against possible radiation exposure. However, its online travel warning advised against taking the compound "at this time."

Hundreds of employees from the Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns the Fukushima power station, worked through the weekend to connect a mile-long high-voltage transmission line to reactor No. 2, hoping to restart a cooling system that would help bring down the temperature in the reactor and spent fuel pool.

They connected the transmission line yesterday, but today discovered that they still did not have enough power to fully run the systems, officials from the Japanese nuclear safety agency said.

Engineers are also hoping to today finish repairing the ventilation system in the control room used to monitor the No. 1 and No. 2 units. When the repairs are done, they will begin cleansing the air so that workers can eventually return and begin using the equipment inside to monitor the conditions at the two reactors.

Firefighters from Tokyo sprayed water on Reactor No. 3 overnight, and firetrucks from the Japan Self-Defense Forces and the American Army spent two hours dousing reactor No. 4 this morning.

But nuclear safety agency officials said some of the water used in the operations had reached the ocean nearby, and officials are now testing radiation levels in the water.

Separately, high levels of radioactive elements were detected in the water supply of Iitate village, about 30 miles from the plant, and residents were ordered not to drink the tap water, said Takashi Hashiguchi, a Health Ministry official.

That order came a day after the government barred all shipments of milk from Fukushima prefecture and shipments of spinach from Ibaraki prefectureafter finding above-normal levels of radioactive elements.

Peter Cordingley, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, said that the discovery of radiation in food was a more serious problem than the organization had initially expected.

Cordingley said there was no evidence that contaminated food had reached export markets, but "it's a lot more serious than anybody thought in the early days when we thought that this kind of problem can be limited to 20 to 30 kilometers," he told Reuters (Belson/Tabuchi/Onishi, New York Times, March 21). -- AS

Federal nuclear regulators issued a hopeful report today on Japan's nuclear crisis and outlined plans for a two-tiered review of the safety of 104 U.S. reactors.

Containment Units 1, 2 and 3 at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which was rocked by a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11, appear to be stabilizing, as are spent fuel pools at the complex, said Bill Borchardt, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's executive director of operations.

The earthquake affected 10 reactors, and the ensuing tsunami caused a loss of emergency power to six units at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. In the wake of explosions and fires at the power plant, NRC is now struggling to ascertain if Units 1, 2 and 3 have experienced core damage, Borchardt said.

"Today, all three units appear to be in a stable condition with seawater injection being used to keep the reactors cool," Borchardt told commissioners today. "Containment integrity for all three units is also currently maintained."

Although gray smoke was seen rising from the nuclear complex this morning, Borchardt said there were no indications of increased temperature or radioactivity at the plant (see related story).

Tokyo Electric Power Co. has extended power to a site near the crippled plant, and Japanese officials are in the process of laying temporary cables to pumps and valves in Units 1 and 2 and will do the same for Units 3 and 4 during the next couple of days, he said.

"The fact that off-site power is close to being available for use at plant equipment is perhaps the first optimistic sign that things could be turning around," Borchardt said.

NRC has sent at least 11 experts to Japan to gather information and consult with Japanese officials.

U.S. reactor review

NRC could vote as early as today on plans to conduct a 90-day review of information coming out of Japan and how those findings relate to oversight of the fleet of U.S. reactors.

The short-term review will provide a snapshot of U.S. reactor safety and could evaluate how nuclear plants would deal with emergencies.

NRC reports will be made after 30 and 60 days and have limited stakeholder involvement, Borchardt said.

The plan will also address the implementation of a separate long-term review of technical issues and potential changes to NRC's oversight program and rulemakings, Borchardt said.

The commission has not stated a start date of that lengthier review because it would be launched after more conclusive information is obtained on the Japan disaster. That study, he said, will include "substantial stakeholder involvement."

Simultaneously, NRC has launched a plant-by-plant review that President Obama called for last week (E&ENews PM, March 17).

The commission is reviewing its 35-year regulatory framework in light of the Japan crisis.

Borchardt said the agency is confident in the safety of the U.S. fleet. NRC has fine-tuned its regulations in response to past emergencies, including the partial meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island power plant and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The agency has issued a notice to the industry that the commission will be following up to ensure that emergency responses at U.S. reactors "haven't fallen into disuse because they haven't been used," Borchardt said.

U.S. coal companies say they are set to prosper as the world steps back from nuclear power amid the ongoing reactor crisis in Japan.

With Germany issuing a three-month ban on seven aging nuclear power stations, the country is importing additional coal from the Appalachian mountains to make up the difference. Other countries across Europe are looking to the United States to supplement their normal imports, since normal suppliers like South Africa, Russia and Colombia are shipping coal to Asia to meet a growing demand there.

That has already bumped prices up. Coal is being sold to Europe for $132 a metric ton, up from $123 before the disaster, while prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange are already topping $75 a ton, up from $71 before the crisis.

"The market looks pretty good for Europe for the longer term," said Dan Zajdel, vice president of investor relations for coal shipper Consol Energy Inc. "It could be very profitable for us to ship over there."

The increased demand comes as foreign consumption of U.S. coal was already rising. Flooding in Australia severely crippled that country's coal export business and a global resurgence in manufacturing has meant more coal is needed. With nuclear on the decline, coal and natural gas are the only viable alternatives.

It is thought that Japan will have to import an additional 5 million to 10 million tons of thermal coal this year, up from its normal intake of 120 million (Matt Whittaker, Wall Street Journal [subscription required], March 20). -- JP

The crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, one of the oldest in Japan, had a record of accidents and radiation exposure even before being damaged by this month's earthquake and tsunami.

Between 2005 and 2009, Fukushima Daiichi had 15 accidents, more than any other large Japanese nuclear plant, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Operation. The accidents were mostly minor, but some involved important safety equipment, including emergency diesel generators.

Data shows that the plant's workers were also exposed to more radiation than at other nuclear plants in the country. Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns the plant, said the plant was operated safely and that the higher accident rate is due to the plant's old age. Fukushima Daiichi's reactors date to the 1970s.

According to nuclear engineers, a large contribution to the crisis at the plant was the practice of removing fresh fuel from a reactor and storing it for weeks in a spent-fuel pool during maintenance. In the United States, reactors generally do not store fresh fuel in pools during repair work and instead put it in a thick pressure vessel. Only the oldest fuel rods, which are less radioactive, are typically stored in pools for years while they are cooled by water.

But in Japan, at the time the earthquake struck, Unit 4 had been offline for repairs, and its fresh, highly radioactive fuel rods were stored in a spent-fuel pool.

"We were carrying out checks on the inside of the reactor" and workers "had to remove the nuclear fuel from the reactor," said Takeshi Makigami, head of TEPCO's nuclear-equipment-management section.

When the tsunami hit and knocked out emergency generators, the rods in the pools of Unit 4 overheated, causing a fire and destroying the roof above the pool.

"The Japanese argue it's safer to move all the fuel to the pool, but the practice of full-core discharge caused a problem, in this case," said Andy Kadak, a former professor of nuclear engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

TEPCO officials initially hesitated in using seawater to cool the reactors because it could destroy the plant. But yesterday, disaster response teams, including the Hyper Rescue Squad from Tokyo, restored electrical power and prepared to restart cooling systems.

Over the weekend, "the most important thing we were able to do was to fill the spent-fuel pools at No. 3 and No. 4," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, an official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (Smith/Casselman/Obe, Wall Street Journal, March 21). -- AP

Tokyo Electric Power Co. failed to carry out scheduled inspections at Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant less than two weeks before the earthquake and tsunami struck, the power company told safety regulators.

The company said in a Feb. 28 report submitted to the Japanese nuclear safety agency that it did not inspect 33 pieces of equipment, including a motor and a backup power generator for Unit 1 at the plant. The report is also available on the company's website.

The backup power systems were crippled after the natural disaster, contributing to concerns of a nuclear meltdown.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which has been criticized for close industry ties, gave the power company until the beginning of June to submit a corrective plan and said in its response that it did not believe there was an urgent safety risk.

Hidehiko Nishiyama, the agency's deputy director general, said today that he could not say whether the lack of inspections played any role in the ongoing crisis at Fukushima Daiichi. He also said he was unaware of correspondence between the agency and Tokyo Electric (Kevin Krolicki, Reuters, March 21). -- AP

Contaminated spinach and milk has been detected at farms up to 90 miles from Japan's ravaged nuclear plants.

Fukushima prefecture has asked all dairy farms within 18 miles of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to halt milk shipments. Spinach shipments from the entire prefecture have been stopped as well. The milk with elevated radiation levels was found on farms about 19 miles away from the plants, and contaminated spinach was found one prefecture to the south, in Ibaraki prefecture.

Iodine-131 in the tested milk was up to five times the level deemed safe by the government, and the spinach contained levels more than seven times the safety threshold. The spinach also contained elevated levels of cesium-137.

Iodine-131 and cesium-137 are two of the more dangerous elements believed to have been released from the plants in Fukushima. Each element has the potential to cause cancer in humans.

Japanese officials have reassured the public about food safety.

Yukio Edano, the chief Cabinet secretary, said spinach and milk were the only foods found to have abnormally high radiation levels. If consumed for a year, the level of radioactivity in the spinach would equal the radiation received in one CT scan. The level detected in milk would amount to just a fraction of that.

"These levels do not pose an immediate threat to your health," Edano said. "Please stay calm."

Experts say these reassurances are probably accurate, but because people are so afraid of radiation, they are likely to altogether avoid foods that have been identified as contaminated.

It "seems unnecessary to eat these" foods, said David Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University. "I wouldn't."

Experts advised people consuming milk and produce, particularly children and pregnant women, to take potassium iodide to saturate the thyroid gland with nonradioactive iodine, preventing it from absorbing the radioactive form (Belson/Tabuchi, New York Times, March 19). -- PK

As safety calculations about nuclear power shift in the wake of Japan's nuclear disaster, plans to store 2.2 million pounds of spent fuel from a dismantled nuclear power plant in concrete and steel bunkers not far from Lake Michigan have some citizens from a small town near the Illinois-Wisconsin border worried.

Chicago-based Exelon Corp. shuttered its Zion nuclear power plant 14 years ago. That is when the plant's last red-hot fuel rod was lifted from the core's reactor and submerged in a pool of water. After giving the rods time to cool, the waste was supposed to be transported and entombed deep within Nevada's Yucca Mountain.

But the Department of Energy scrapped that plan last year, leaving nuclear reactors around the country to store the dangerous spent fuel on site.

In the wake of Japan's disaster, experts are saying that nuclear safety is generally designed for most-likely scenarios rather than worst-case scenarios, and local residents are wondering if the most unlikely events could happen and whether they would be protected.

David Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Project of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that the buildings housing the pools are "very inviting targets for terrorists."

"No one has come up with a solution to safely store this waste for 10,000 years into the future," Lochbaum said.

The company managing the Zion site's waste plans to turn the 240-acre site into an uncontaminated field of grass by 2020. Unless the federal government comes up with an alternative storage plan, 10 to 15 acres of land on the site will host 61 concrete and steel casks, each weighing 125 tons, to store the spent fuel.

The casks are designed to withstand tornadoes and earthquakes and are next to impossible to steal, said Patrick Daly, general manager of EnergySolutions, which is dismantling Zion. Even if a cask cracked, hazardous levels of radiation would not get beyond the area around the cask, he said.

Still, local residents are not convinced.

Roger Whitmore, owner of a Zion automotive store and former president of the Zion Chamber of Commerce, said, "If we had a big earthquake or seiche," referring to a large wave from Lake Michigan, "what's [the waste] going to do, sweep into the lake?"

That is unlikely, according to Michael Chrzastowski, senior coastal geologist at the Illinois State Geological Survey. He is more worried about shore erosion. At an area about 2 miles north of the Zion plant, erosion washes away the shoreline by as much as 10 feet a year.

"Shore erosion needs to be continually monitored along the state park shore and near the power plant," he said (Wernau/Black, Chicago Tribune, March 19). -- AS

The nuclear crisis in Japan hits home for people living near Three Mile Island, home of the worst nuclear incident in the United States.

"What's happening in Japan has brought back a lot of memories," said Robert Reid, the mayor of Middletown, Pa. "But we're much better prepared now than we were in 1979."

Ever since the country's worst nuclear crisis 32 years ago this week, Three Mile Island has stood as a touchstone for anti-nuclear activists and an example for regulators of the growing safety restrictions. The crisis there started with a venting of steam, then escalated to a partial meltdown. But it was caused by a simple mechanical problem and the containment vessel was never breached. Still, the incident was ongoing until 1993, when the last of the flooded water evaporated.

Already, there are signs that Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant could be facing a worse situation. On Friday, Japan's nuclear agency raised the severity of the crisis to Level 5, the same level the United States used to classify Three Mile Island. Victor Gilinsky, commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission during the Three Mile Island crisis, said he feared there would be much more extensive damage inside Japan's reactors, where he said it was likely there was already a meltdown.

The nearby residents say their site may hold more lessons for what Japan faces in the cleanup process. The Three Mile Island response and recovery cost $1 billion and required the creation of robots to enter the plant.

Middletown has about 10,000 residents today, although many who left during the crisis never returned. Those who stayed have grown used to the plant's regular tests of its emergency systems, and the constant danger of the plant. Deb Fulmer, who evacuated with her 4-week-old baby in 1979, said she is much more comfortable now than she was before the accident.

"The fear comes from not having a plan when something happens, for what to do, where to go, what the sirens mean," Fulmer said. "Now we know" (Morello/Mufson, Washington Post, March 19). -- JP

A leading House Republican is blasting President Obama for his comments this weekend expressing support for increased offshore drilling in Brazil.

Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, today lashed out at comments Obama made during a two-day visit to Brazil in support of the South American nation's burgeoning offshore drilling industry.

"By some estimates, the oil you recently discovered off the shores of Brazil could amount to twice the reserves we have in the United States," Obama said Saturday during an address to the CEO Business Summit in Brasilia. "We want to work with you. We want to help with technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely, and when you're ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers."

He added, "At a time when we've been reminded how easily instability in other parts of the world can affect the price of oil, the United States could not be happier with the potential for a new, stable source of energy."

But Hastings, who is among a large bloc of Republicans that wants to see more domestic drilling, is not pleased with the president's comments.

"Rather than creating American energy and American jobs, President Obama is in Brazil advocating for deepening the United States' reliance on foreign energy," Hastings said in a statement. "The President has clearly learned nothing from recent world events. He appears to believe the answer is to shift our foreign energy dependence from one part of the world to another."

Republicans and drilling advocates have been pressing the Obama administration to step up its permitting and review of offshore drilling projects in the Gulf of Mexico that have been virtually stalled since last spring's Deepwater Horizon blowout and oil spill.

"The real answer is to produce more American energy," Hastings added. "The 'potential for a new, stable source of energy' can be found with our own resources here at home. Resources that the Obama administration is purposely choosing to keep under lock-and-key."

Hastings is not alone in his critique of the administration's support of the Brazilian drilling industry.

Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, last week used the president's trip to Brazil to question a $2 billion loan from the Export-Import Bank of the United States to Petrobras, Brazil's state-owned oil company.

Vitter last week followed up on a 2009 letter he sent to Obama about the loan to help Brazil expand its offshore exploration and production capabilities by sending a second letter to the president of the bank.

"Louisianans are frustrated with the ongoing de facto moratorium, and I would appreciate a full accounting for the return on investment the American taxpayer has received -- and is anticipated to receive -- on the $2 billion loan to this Brazilian petroleum company," Vitter said in a statement.

"I want to understand why permitting domestically is nearly stalled, and if there is at least a return on this investment over the last year and a half for supporting production offshore Brazil."

The administration says the loan will help sustain 507,000 U.S. jobs. The federal credit agency does not receive any taxpayer funding.

Although it has already passed a bill that would strip U.S. EPA of its ability to restrict greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources, a subpanel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold another hearing on the economic implications of the agency's regulations Thursday in Houston.

The Energy and Power Subcommittee will meet at the South Texas College of Law for a field hearing titled "EPA's Greenhouse Gas and Clean Air Act Regulations: A Focus on Texas' Economy, Energy Prices and Jobs."

The panel did not release a witnesses list by publication time.

The hearing was prompted by Energy and Commerce Chairman Emeritus Joe Barton (R-Texas), who is also a member of a new task force of Texas lawmakers and regulators that will be launched today in Austin and is aimed at "protecting Texas from the job-destroying over-regulation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency."

"The group plans on discussing what has been going on legally and legislatively in Washington and Austin," said a press release on the task force distributed by Barton's office.

Texas state officials have clashed with EPA on more than just the state's rejection of greenhouse gas regulations for stationary sources, like power plants.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and EPA have also been scrapping for months over "flexible permitting," a 16-year-old system used by Texas to craft permits for some of the state's largest industrial facilities. Rather than placing an emissions limit on each source of pollution -- at larger plants, there can be thousands of them -- the permits set an overall cap and let companies decide how to get there.

EPA argues that the permits stifle public comment, make it hard for EPA officials to verify emissions reductions and allow more pollution than standard federal New Source Review permits allow. Texas has challenged the agency's rejection of the program in court, claiming that it yields the same emissions reductions and helps businesses meet federal requirements at a lower cost.

Texas is also the only state to refuse to participate in EPA's greenhouse gas emissions rules, which were phased in Jan. 2. The state has criticized the Obama administration for imposing its own rules in Texas, a step that EPA has said is necessary to make sure that the state's businesses are able to get valid permits. The full Energy and Commerce Committee and its Energy and Power subpanel have both approved a bill that would bar EPA from implementing these rules, and it is expected to win quick passage in the House. The Senate appears less likely to approve a similar bill.

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty is expected to open an exploratory committee for the 2012 presidential race today, making him the first in a handful of top-tier Republican aspirants to take the first official step toward a challenge to President Obama.

Pawlenty's move, first reported by the Associated Press, allows him to begin taking contributions and hiring staffers for a GOP primary run, with the first debate among the party's presidential hopefuls less than two months away. The Facebook page of the 50-year-old two-term governor posted a notice this morning inviting supporters to hear a "special message" later today that will outline his plan, the AP reported.

Pawlenty joins two other potential Obama opponents, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.) and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), in condemning Obama administration emissions limits after previously aligning with the concept of curbs on greenhouse gases.

In 2007 Pawlenty signed state-level legislation that set emissions-reduction targets, but within two years had distanced himself from the effort. By early 2010, he was joining 19 other governors -- including Mississippi's Haley Barbour, another Republican mulling a presidential bid -- in imploring Congress to stop EPA from implementing its emissions regulations (E&E Daily, March 11, 2010).

"There's no question the climate is changing," Pawlenty told NBC's "Meet the Press" in February 2010 when asked about his past avowals that global warming was occurring. "But the more interesting question is how much of that is man-made versus natural causes? ... [W]e should all be in favor of reducing pollution. But we need to do that in ways that don't burden the economy."

Romney and Gingrich have similarly shifted away from previous pro-environmentalist rhetoric in recent years. The former Massachusetts governor opted not to enlist his state in a regional compact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions after initially engaging in talks on the issue, though he described climate change in 2010 as a real phenomenon in which "human activity is a contributing factor."

Gingrich, for his part, is proposing to eliminate EPA and replace it with a more economic-centered "Environmental Solutions Agency," though he has previously warmed to the notion of a carbon-neutral planet (E&E Daily, March 15).

Federal regulators plan to discuss the safety of two controversial nuclear power plants in meetings this week.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is holding the meetings ahead of a safety review of the country's 104 nuclear reactors ordered last week by President Obama in the wake of a massive March 11 earthquake and tsunami that crippled reactors in northeast Japan on March 11 (E&ENews PM, March 17).

At issue for NRC this week: Entergy Corp.'s Indian Point Power Plant, which is on the Hudson River about 25 miles north of New York City, and Progress Energy Inc.'s H.B. Robinson Nuclear Plant, near Hartsville, S.C.

"After watching the events in Japan and having previously opposed the Indian Point plant, this past Tuesday, I requested the White House schedule a meeting between my staff and senior members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission," New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said in his March 19 online statement. Cuomo said the meeting is scheduled for tomorrow.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) last week called for NRC to take into account seismic activity in the region before relicensing the 40-year-old Indian River plant (E&ENews PM, March 18).

Entergy is asking NRC to renew licenses for Indian Point's Unit 2 and Unit 3 for an another 20 years. Current licenses expire in 2013 and 2015, respectively.

NRC is holding a separate meeting in South Carolina on Thursday to discuss the Robinson nuclear plant. The agency says the single-unit 710-megawatt pressurized-water reactor operated safely last year, but the NRC staff is increasing its oversight and inspection there because the facility exceeded the threshold for unplanned shutdowns in the third quarter.

Inspections also generated three findings of "low to moderate safety significance," including Progress Energy's failure to correct a problem with an emergency diesel generator and failure to adequately design and start operator training associated with reactor coolant pump seals.

"The NRC evaluates nuclear power plants in a systematic and detailed way each year," NRC Region II Administrator Victor McCree said in a notice posted on the agency's website. "These reviews and the additional inspections and oversight at Robinson will ensure that the plant is operated in a way that protects people near the plant and the environment."

The nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists released a review of U.S. power plant safety concerns Thursday that pointed to fires and equipment malfunctions at the Robinson and Indian Point plants (ClimateWire, March 18).

The report highlights 14 significant safety-related events at the plants that it said occurred because reactor owners and regulators "tolerated known safety problems."

Chile and the United States signed an accord Friday intended to help Chile develop a nuclear energy program.

While fears of radiation contamination abound following the nuclear crisis in Japan, Chile will attempt to fill expected energy gaps with nuclear. The South American country currently imports much of its energy.

Still, Chile's mining and energy minister, Laurence Golborne, said he will carefully study the crisis in Japan before committing to nuclear.

"We may decide we don't want this type of energy, and we will have to analyze other sources of energy," he said.

The nuclear contract had been expected to be a highlight of President Obama's one-day visit to Chile. American and Chilean officials said its importance had not been downgraded, despite the incident in Japan.

Chile is concerned that its outdated power grid will not be able to keep pace with its rapidly growing economy. The country expects it will need to double its energy supplies over the next 12 years if demand for electricity continues to grow at 6 percent per year, said Jorge Zanelli, a physicist who studied nuclear energy for the previous Chilean government. If nuclear is not part of the equation, more than 60 percent of the energy increase would have to be fulfilled using fossil fuels.

Nuclear critics say Japan's situation should serve as a warning to Chile.

"Japan's nightmare this past week has been very timely for the Chilean government and society to understand what the real risks and vulnerability involved for seismic countries wishing to develop nuclear power," said Sara Larraín, executive director of Chile Sustentable, an environmental group (Alexei Barrionuevo, New York Times, March 18). -- PK

A food safety group has filed suit against federal regulators over the U.S. Department of Agriculture's recent approval of genetically modified alfalfa, extending an already long legal battle over the modified crops.

The Center for Food Safety said the department's decision was based on faulty information and that the modified alfalfa will contaminate conventional or organic plants, hurting the organic industry. The plaintiffs in the suit include dairy farmers who say the modified plants could harm the forage for their cows.

"Approving the unrestricted planting of [genetically engineered] alfalfa is a blatant case of the USDA serving one form of agriculture at the expense of others," said plaintiff Ed Maltby, executive director of the Northeast Alliance of Organic Dairy Producers.

The Monsanto-produced alfalfa is designed to withstand the herbicide Roundup, which can kill weeds around the crop. In a statement Friday, the company said it was "reviewing allegations" and affirmed that its modified alfalfa is "as safe as conventional alfalfa."

USDA had initially approved the plant in 2005, but the decision was challenged by the Center for Food Safety. A judge banned future planting, launching a series of appeals that ended last year when the Supreme Court lifted the ban on the condition that the department complete an environmental impact statement.

The statement was completed in December, and last month federal officials agreed to deregulate the plant (Georgina Gustin, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 19). -- JP

More than a dozen Republican senators want to end defined benefit pensions for federal employees, leaving in place only the Thrift Savings Plan and Social Security.

Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) introduced a bill last week to cut the benefit. It has since drawn 11 additional co-sponsors, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and several other members of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The bill would not affect current federal employees. Instead, the pension would be cut from the Federal Employee Retirement System starting with 2013 hires. It would also apply to members of Congress.

"Right now, federal government workers receive far more generous retirement benefits than private sector employees. The cost to taxpayers of these benefits is unsustainable and we simply cannot afford it," Burr said in a statement. "We cannot ask taxpayers to continue to foot the bill for public employee benefits that are far more generous than their own."

The bill comes little more than a week after a House Oversight and Governmental Reform subcommittee held a hearing on whether federal employees are overpaid. Andrew Biggs, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, testified that government workers enjoy much better benefits than their private-sector counterparts. Chief among those benefits is the defined benefit pension, which guarantees a certain payout upon retirement.

After the hearing, Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) -- chairman of the Federal Workforce, U.S. Postal Service and Labor Policy Subcommittee -- said he might introduce legislation to address what he considers an overgenerous pay system. He mentioned a less extreme possibility than Burr's solution: Basing retirement on employee's top five years of federal pay, rather than the current three.

Union leaders say federal employees are compensated fairly -- especially considering the Bureau of Labor Statistics' finding that public-sector employees earn as much as 24 percent less than their private-sector counterparts. Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry has also called government compensation "competitive."

But in a press release, Burr said the defined benefit pension goes far above what is offered in the private sector, where employers often only offer matching contributions to a 401(k) plan. The Federal Employment Retirement Plan, he said, is underfunded by almost $1 billion.

The current plan, Coburn added, "only serves to foster political careerism."

"When American families across the country are being asked to sacrifice in order to meet their basic needs, federal employees and members of Congress should not be the exception," Coburn said in the release. "Defined benefit pension plans are going belly-up across the nation because politicians and employers continue to make promises they cannot keep."

Click here to read Burr's bill.

A group of New Jersey residents has reached a preliminary $8.3 million settlement with DuPont Chamber Works over claims that a chemical from the plant tainted drinking water.

The initial settlement, approved in a U.S. District Court, concerns a report that Salem County drinking water had an unhealthy level of perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, that was used in a local DuPont facility for compounds on nonstick surfaces.

"Pending approval, the settlement funds will be used to provide each household in the class with an option to elect a water filter system or the cash equivalent," said Dan Turner, a spokesman for DuPont. The company has said the lawsuit is without merit.

Turner said DuPont does not produce PFOA at the plant but that the chemical does occur at trace levels as a byproduct in other goods made there. The company has tested for the chemical in the 2-mile radius of Chamber Works.

Approval of the settlement would free DuPont from an admission of wrongdoing (Phil Dunn, Salem County Today's Sunbeam, March 20). -- JP

The 100-mile stretch of goop found floating in the Gulf of Mexico over the weekend was likely caused by river sediment, the U.S. Coast Guard announced yesterday.

The Coast Guard began receiving reports Saturday that a dark substance was spotted south of Grand Isle, La. After testing samples, the Coast Guard found trace amounts of petroleum hydrocarbons, oil and grease at levels within the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality's regulations.

The Mississippi River likely carried the sediment down to the Gulf, and dredging apparently churned the water and caused the dark substance to appear, the Coast Guard said.

Also yesterday, the Coast Guard was investigating an oily substance on the shore of Louisiana. That material was not likely caused by last April's Deepwater Horizon spill, the Coast Guard said (MSNBC, March 21). -- AP

The strategy of flooding farmland did not keep migrating ducks out of coastal marshes contaminated by oil from last year's spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but it did give the birds needed habitat during a drought, a Louisiana waterfowl expert said.

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture hatched the idea in the hope that ducks, geese and other birds would flock to the wetlands rather than to oily marshes. Fish and Wildlife spent $3 million in BP PLC money on the program in Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi, while USDA spent $20 million in the five Gulf states and Arkansas, Georgia and Missouri.

Through the program, BP funded the flooding of 50,000 acres of farmland in Louisiana. In Texas, 28,800 acres were flooded, and 71,000 acres were flooded in Mississippi.

As for keeping birds out of coastal marshes, "it was a miserable failure. And it really had no chance of keeping substantial numbers of ducks from southeast Louisiana," said Larry Reynolds, waterfowl expert at the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

"Whatever damage occurred to the habitat, from the oil, it did not keep birds from using that habitat, at least on a large scale," Reynolds said.

But the ponds did give migrating birds habitat during droughts last year. The program will be available for at least two more years because many farmers have three-year contracts.

"There still was the value to the birds overall," said Tom Kelsch, director of conservation for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. "So even though we didn't need to rely on it as truly alternative habitat, to replace or compensate for oiled marshes, it was nonetheless providing really valuable habitat and food for shorebirds and should have lasting impacts hopefully" (AP/New Orleans Times-Picayune, March 19). -- AP

Recreational fishermen caught a lot fewer red snapper than they were allowed to in 2010, thanks in part to the season-shortening oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Roy Crabtree, the National Marine Fisheries Service official in charge of Gulf fisheries, said the 2010 recreational harvest was about a million pounds short of the 3.4-million-pound quota.

Some regulators say the time has come to re-evaluate management of the fishery. The biggest change could be the way the Gulf's red snapper harvest is split between commercial and recreational fishermen. Currently, commercial fishermen have been allowed to catch 51 percent of the annual harvest, while the recreational side is allocated 49 percent of the catch.

The allocations will be up for discussion at the April meeting of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council.

Federal fisheries law requires harvests to be allocated according to socioeconomic benefit. Recreational fishing groups say that means they should be allowed to catch a larger portion of the Gulf red snapper harvest.

"Those allocations are 20 years old. It is something we've needed to look at for a long time, but we've been so preoccupied with the overfishing problem," said Bob Shipp, a member of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council and head of the marine sciences department at the University of South Alabama.

"If the council looks at the socioeconomic impacts, then they can change the allocations," he said.

But Crabtree, whose agency must approve allocations made by the Gulf Council, said the argument goes beyond economics and that an equitable split might not mean an equal split.

"You can't make decisions based solely on economics," he said. "It goes more to what would produce the most benefit for the nation. There is value in people getting enjoyment out of going fishing. The allocations have to be fair and equitable. They have to promote conservation ... it's a tricky thing. I suspect there will be a lot of intense discussions" (Ben Raines, Mobile Press-Register, March 21). -- PK

Bayer CropScience will not resume production of methyl isocyanate at its plant in Institute, W.Va., the company said Friday, ending nearby residents' 25-year war against the company's production of the chemical.

The company had been temporarily blocked from restarting its MIC production unit, and a court hearing was scheduled for today in which a U.S. District Court judge would consider granting a longer-term injunction to 16 residents who sued to stop Bayer from restarting its MIC production at the Bayer plant.

"I am heartened with Bayer's decision and believe that we are safer as a result," said Maya Nye, a leader of the local group People Concerned About MIC and one of the residents who filed the suit.

Company officials said the court-ordered delay was a factor but that their decision was mostly based on the desire not to restart the MIC unit while the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration was inspecting the facility. OSHA launched an investigation on March 2, at least partially in response to a recommendation made in January by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board as part of its final report on an August 2008 explosion that killed two Bayer workers. That incident was not in the MIC production unit, but CSB investigators warned that it came dangerously close to a MIC storage tank that could have created a disaster on the scale of one that killed thousands of people in 1984 in Bhopal, India.

Bayer had announced in January that it would stop making, using and storing MIC at the plant by mid-2012 as part of an agreement with U.S. EPA to cease sales of the pesticide Temik over food safety concerns. However, the company had planned to continue making the chemical for another 18 months until the EPA deal took effect (Ken Ward Jr., Charleston [W.Va.] Gazette, March 18). -- AS

The International Intercollegiate Mining Competition is a different kind of college sports tourney that might even lead to a job.

The 33rd annual tournament took place over the weekend and included eight events, each inspired by a bygone era of prospecting. Participants pan for gold, saw timber and drill with a 6-foot-long hydraulic drill bit.

But the competition is more than who can drill the deepest or saw the fastest -- it's also about technical skill.

"It's like any athletic event: Technique and form are key," said Danny Taylor, chairman of the mining engineering department at the University of Nevada, Reno, the host of this year's games. "Your best golfers are not the guys who hit the hardest; they're the ones who hit the ball hard with the right form. It's the same thing with shoveling dirt or swinging that 4-pound hammer."

An engineering-heavy group of men and women from as far as Australia come each year to show off their skills.

"We practice all year for one competition," said Kris Strickland, a senior at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and one of this weekend's competitors. "We're idiots."

Hiring managers flock to the events, as well.

"I've absolutely hired people I've met here," said Richard Perry, a geologist who judged the surveying event. "I'm looking for people who know how to work as a team."

Students also see the competition as a networking opportunity.

"As much as this is a competition, these are the people we're going to be working with," said Catherine Walker, a senior from the Missouri University of Science and Technology. Walker has a job promised to her when she graduates (Jesse McKinley, New York Times, March 20). -- PK

Are the United States' energy efficient lighting standards an example of government overreach? During today's OnPoint, Kateri Callahan, president of the Alliance to Save Energy, weighs in on the debate brewing on Capitol Hill over the use of incandescent light bulbs. She also discusses the prospects for efficiency measures in a Clean Energy Standard or other energy package.

Click here for today's OnPoint.