GLOBAL CLIMATE DEBATE

[BARACK OBAMA] Today we're announcing the expansion of offshore oil and gas exploration.

[McGINNIS] The President announces a plan for oil and gas drilling that could tap reserves up and down the East Coast and elsewhere.  Hello, and welcome to "Clean Skies Sunday," a weekly half-hour look at energy issues facing Washington and America.  I'm Susan McGinnis.  This week, we will outline the President's plan for new drilling in the outer continental shelf.  Will it win him support for a climate change bill?  And, is a nuclear renaissance on the horizon?  The President's blue ribbon panel convenes to talk about the future.  EPA plans action on mercury emissions, among other pollutants, from coal-fired power plants.  And three states compete for water from a shrinking lake in the Southeast.  Shawn Shepard continues his series.  This past week, the President announced a new plan for oil and gas drilling that could tap reserves up and down the East Coast, reversing a decades-long ban on most offshore drilling.  "Clean Skies'" Chief Correspondent Tyler Suiters is here with more, and reaction was strong from both sides.

[SUITERS] Susan, I think it's safe to say that they saw this coming, really.  In his State of the Union address back in January, the President referred to making tough decisions about offshore drilling.  The bigger picture here is that he wants consensus on a climate bill to cut carbon emissions, and this announcement seems to be his latest concession to Republicans on that front.

[OBAMA] I'm open to proposals from my Democratic friends and my Republican friends.  I think that we can break out of the broken politics of the past when it comes to our energy policy.  I know that we can come together to pass comprehensive energy and climate legislation.

[SUITERS] Now, here's a look at the areas offshore the Obama administration decision will open up to energy production.  From Delaware south, through roughly half of Florida's east coast, part of Florida's west coast, but only outside a 125-mile buffer zone and only if a current moratorium is lifted.  Also, the north slope of Alaska.  What is not included may be just as significant here -- the North Atlantic coast from New Jersey upward, the entire Pacific coast, and Bristol Bay, on the southwest coast of Alaska.  Now, this plan is clearly a compromise, but neither side of the debate is satisfied.

[ERIK MILITO, AMERICAN PETROLEUM INSTITUTE] There are areas that we know have tremendous quantities of oil and natural gas that aren't included in this plan, so we're hopeful that we can work with the administration and with Congress, for instance, when it comes to the eastern Gulf of Mexico, because about 15 miles out, you have the Destin Dome area, where you have discoveries of natural gas, and it's close to infrastructure.  That's an area where you can bring oil and natural gas to the American public, so we're hopeful that we can work and maybe get this expanded so we at least have the opportunity to explore and see what's out there.

[ANNA AURILLIO, ENVIRONMENT AMERICA] President Obama's clean cars proposal will save us 11.6 billion gallons of oil a year by 2016, and that's from putting cleaner cars on the road with technology we have today.  We also have plug-in hybrid technology that ultimately could power our cars with the wind and the sun and use little to no oil.  And then obviously we need to continue investing in public transportation so that people have alternatives to driving.  So we have much cleaner solutions.  We can reduce our dependence on oil and we can protect our coasts, so this proposal for increased offshore drilling just takes us in the wrong direction.

[SUITERS] Let's be clear, this drilling isn't starting tomorrow.  The federal government hasn't conducted seismic studies of these offshore areas in several decades.  And as T.  Boone Pickens put it following the announcement, even if the reserve estimates are correct here, we're still 10 years away from actually being able to use them, Susan.

[McGINNIS] So the President gives the thumbs-up.  What happens next?

[SUITERS] The next step comes from the Department of Interior, that says there won't be any extensive lease sales any time before 2012.  But the DoI will offer offshore tracts sooner than that in part of Alaska and also 50 miles off the coast of Virginia, and that has really been the big energy push for Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, pretty much ever since he took office, Susan, back in January.

[McGINNIS] So, Tyler, the headline was certainly offshore drilling this past week, but the President did talk about other forms of energy.

[SUITERS] Right, a few handouts to the green community, I suppose, coming on the heels of that offshore announcement.  One of the policies, the finalization of new fuel economy standards.  Another is the doubling of the number of hybrid cars and trucks in the federal fleet.  Plus, the President delivered his speech in front of an F-18 fighter that should become the first plane ever to break the sound barrier while being powered by a fuel that in this case, Susan, will be half biomass fuel.

[McGINNIS] Fascinating.  Tyler Suiters, thank you.  Well, as the U.S.  nuclear industry gears up to build new reactors, the White House is seeking new ideas for managing the nation's growing stockpile of nuclear waste.  The Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future -- 15 experts in nuclear science, national security, and the electricity industry -- has been given two years to come up with options for resolving a problem that has lingered since the Manhattan Project.  Margaret Ryan reports.

[RYAN] It was a Yogi Berra moment, "déjà vu all over again."  Experts gathered around a conference table to hash out once more how the U.S.  should manage its high-level radioactive waste -- recycle it, bury it, or something else altogether?  It's an issue Congress supposedly settled in 1987.

[LEE HAMILTON, BLUE RIBBON COMMISSION] This is not a new issue.  I said in the opening statement that I can remember debating this back in, I think, the '70s, it may even have been the 1960s.

[RYAN] That rad waste includes both spent fuel from nuclear electricity and material left from the country's Cold War bomb-making spree, all of it sitting at power plants and military reservations around the country.  It was all supposed to end up here in the Nevada desert, next to the bomb test site at Yucca Mountain.  But Nevadans have fought the idea since 1987.  And last year, after DoE spent billions there, the new president agreed with them and stopped the program.  But that decision didn't make the waste go away.  Energy Secretary Steven Chu promised a blue ribbon panel to figure out the nation's options for the waste, and now that panel has started work.

[CHU] In looking towards, how do we deal with the back-end fuel cycle, I ask you to look deeply at all the things that we know now today and will know in the coming decades.  And that would and should inform you of plotting a strategy forward.

[RYAN] The stakes for reviving the nuclear industry couldn't be higher.

[JOHN ROWE, CEO, EXELON] This nation has not yet come up with a credible approach to dealing with spent nuclear fuel.  Like Commissioner Meserve, I know this is not an immediate crisis, but I do feel it is a major impediment to the development of new nuclear sites.

[RYAN] But while Chu wants forward thinking, he was clear on one thing -- don't mention Yucca Mountain.

[CHU] What I don't want the committee to be doing is spending time and saying, you know, looking at past history.  Was Yucca Mountain a good decision or a bad decision?  You know, whether it can be used as a future repository.  Looking to the future, you know, we want to go forward.  And so, again, your recommendations of all future repositories just have to fold in.  You know, interim storage, temporary storage, you know, permanent disposal.  All of those things.  It's a generic; this is not a siting commission.

[RYAN] Panel members talked of writing actionable recommendations, but can they do that without mentioning a single actual site?

[ALLISON MACFARLANE, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY] No matter what kind of management option we consider, whether it is a direct disposal or whether we are considering even a fully closed cycle, we need some kind of geologic repository.  We cannot escape that fact.

[RYAN] Panel Co-chair Brent Scowcroft says the commission has a full plate without Yucca Mountain.

[SCOWCROFT] We will investigate a wide range of issues as we have indicated so far.  This will include fuel cycle technologies, options for safe storage of used nuclear fuel, options for permanent waste disposal -- and I would note the difference between those -- and institutional arrangements for the management of used fuel and nuclear waste.

[RYAN] His co-chair had one caution -- this commission is nobody's rubber stamp.

[HAMILTON] At the end of the day, it's important to recognize that this is an independent commission -- independent of the Department of Energy, independent of the President, and we will draw our own conclusions.

[RYAN] Panel members hope to have their draft report finished in less than 18 months.  Now, while this is going on, DoE is paying more than half a billion dollars in damages to utilities and has more than that on appeal.  That's because DoE, decades ago, signed contracts to take spent fuel from the utilities and defaulted on the contracts when it had no place to put the spent fuel.  And we've just learned that the Bush DoE in its final days in office signed contracts to take spent fuel from 21 more plants now in the planning stages.  I'm Margaret Ryan, Clean Skies News.

[McGINNIS] And still to come on "Clean Skies Sunday," the EPA takes action on mercury emissions produced by coal-fired power plants.  And water wars.  Alabama, Florida, and Georgia battle it out in a decades-old skirmish over water.  We'll tell you why the fight is coming to a head now.  And, when is a dehumidifier not a dehumidifier?  When it's making drinking water.  We'll explain.

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A lot of what we think of as brilliant or luminous comes from the clear blue sky in our childhood memory.  So bright you'd squint your eyes, and so blue, it took your breath away.  It's the sky we'd re-create with crayons, with puffy clouds and a beaming yellow sun.  It just never occurred to us that one day, kids would pick up the brown or gray to illustrate the haze.  I think we all want the sky in our imagination to be the blue it was born to be, the blue every living thing deserves to see in their sky.  There's an American Indian proverb that says, "we do not inherit the land from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."  Generations of civilization have understood that.  The air our children will breathe, the environment they will inhabit is theirs.  We just cannot accept the status quo, as if we have no comprehension, no conscience.

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[McGINNIS] Welcome back to "Clean Skies Sunday."  We hear a lot about carbon dioxide emissions these days, but the EPA is about to take action against another pollutant -- mercury.  Every year, mercury emissions from U.S.  coal-fired power plants average 47 tons a year.  EPA will be rolling out a plan to cut them starting next year.  "Clean Skies'" Dan Goldstein has more.

[GOLDSTEIN] It's one of the most toxic substances known to man.  Less than a teaspoon of mercury can contaminate a 20-acre lake.  And in recent decades, pregnant women and nursing mothers have been urged not to eat fish because of potential mercury contamination that is blamed for birth defects.  The U.S.  power industry is responsible for about 40% of the mercury emissions from burning coal.  And earlier this month, the Environmental Integrity Project, a group of former EPA lawyers, released a report saying that not only haven't mercury emissions budged in a decade; at the top 25 biggest plants in the U.S., emissions are actually going up.

[ILAN LEVIN, SENIOR ATTORNEY, ENVIRONMENTAL INTEGRITY PROJECT] Despite years of promises, the electric power industry has barely made a dent in its mercury emissions this decade.  And this slow progress is nowhere near the levels that would be achieved if all power plants installed the modern pollution controls that are widely available and are already in use at some power plants today.

[GOLDSTEIN] But environmentalists may have to shoulder some blame, too.  The Bush administration proposed a mercury cap-and-trade program in 2003.  It said the approach could cut emissions to as little as 15 tons by 2018.  But shortly after the Bush rule was finalized, environmental groups sued, saying the plan was too weak.  And in February 2008, this federal courthouse behind me agreed, throwing out the Bush era rule and sending the EPA back to the drawing board.

[JEFFREY HOLMSTEAD, PARTNER, BRACEWELL & GIULIANI] It is a little ironic that someone gets the rule struck down and then complains that mercury emissions are not coming down fast enough.

[GOLDSTEIN] Jeff Holmstead, a former EPA official under the Bush administration, who wrote the mercury rule back in 2003, says environmental groups made a mistake in challenging their plan.  Not only were companies already moving to comply with the upcoming cap-and-trade program, he said, the court's decision in 2008 to have the EPA start all over again just meant no direction from the federal government.

[HOLMSTEAD] To bank against that cap, people start to reduce their emissions right away, so we've lost significant reductions over the years because the same groups that issued this report were involved in challenging and striking down the rule.  So that is a disappointment.

[GOLDSTEIN] Even without a mercury rule from Washington, operators of coal-fired power plants like Southern Company and Luminant -- singled out by the EIP report as some of the worst emitters -- are already investing billions in scrubbing technology to combat pollutants.  Holmstead says while these fixes are aimed at cutting nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions, they'll also reduce mercury emissions, too.

[HOLMSTEAD] Many, many companies are putting on technology that have the effect of controlling mercury, but they're putting those technologies on primarily because they get reductions in other pollutants that are actually a much more serious issue.

[GOLDSTEIN] That's still not good enough, say other environmental groups.  They're anticipating a stronger rule from EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson later this year, who, in one of her first acts in 2009, decided not to appeal the court decision.  Instead, EPA will issue specific limits for plants, with deadlines for reductions.

[JAMES PEW, ATTORNEY, EARTHJUSTICE] The rule's going to come out in 2011, the cuts will take effect no later than 2014.  So, we actually think that the cuts are coming a lot sooner under the Clean Air Act as written as opposed to the rule that the Bush administration wanted to promulgate instead of implementing the Clean Air Act.

[GOLDSTEIN] That's what worries Jeff Holmstead.

[HOLMSTEAD] It's not going to be cap-and-trade, it will be some sort of plant-by-plant, which causes problems because, you know, there's some plants that are just configured very differently.  So I think it is fair to say that the power generation sector is quite nervous about the likely cost of this rule, but nobody really knows because it won't be proposed until early next year.

[GOLDSTEIN] Despite a drop in coal use last year by power plants, down from 50% on average to less than 45% in 2009, mercury emissions, both this year and last, aren't expected to show similar reductions.  And the EPA says it won't be until November of 2011 before its new rule is finally in place, almost a decade after the agency decided to tackle mercury emissions the first time around.  In Washington, Dan Goldstein, Clean Skies News.

[McGINNIS] EPA declined comment for our story, but said that its new mercury regulations would be comprehensive and include emissions across a variety of industrial sectors.  Still ahead on "Clean Skies Sunday," a battle over water rights in the southeast.  We continue our series over shrinking water resources.  Plus, a conversation with George Sherk, Water Law Professor at the Colorado School of Mines.  And, drinking water from thin air?  That's the claim of a company called Ecoloblue.  We talk with the CEO.

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The vast open sky has inspired poets and storytellers, explorers and astronauts.  Adventurous spirits try to tap its power, knowing they can never tame it.  Its promises have called and cradled fledgling wings, its breezes speak to all wild creatures.  A boundaryless blue, it lifts our imagination.  It demands our respect.  Do you ever gaze into the sky and wonder if it looks the same as when people thousands of years ago looked to the heavens?  Not just wondering if ancient people recognized the sun and stars and clouds for what they are -- we know they didn't -- but wondering if in that same spot where you are standing today, did some primitive nomadic hunter look up at a sky that was bluer and clearer and more brilliant than what you see?  We know mankind's footprint has changed the land in ways that would make it unrecognizable to primitive man.  But what have we done to the untouchable, limitless sky?  Maybe the more important question is, what will the sky look like in only a hundred more years?

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[McGINNIS] Welcome back.  It's an issue some warn could lead to a major rationing of water across the U.S.  It's also highlighted the conflict between state and federal authorities over the use of federally owned reservoirs.  Last week, we brought you a story about a battle over water rights between Georgia, Alabama, and Florida.  So far, Georgia appears to be on the losing end.  This all revolves around Lake Sidney Lanier in Georgia, a primary source of drinking water for metro Atlanta.  Alabama and Florida sued, saying the lake is not congressionally authorized for that purpose.  Well, since then, a judicial order is telling the states to come together to find a solution.  In part two of "Water Wars," Shawn Shepard looks at controversial water storage agreements at play here and environmental problems some say come from Georgia's alleged water mismanagement.

[SALLY BETHEA, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, UCR] This is the first time a federal judge has ordered the three states to come to an agreement.

[SHEPARD] The Army Corps of Engineers manages Buford Dam and Lake Lanier.  The Corps controls flows from the dam to the hydroelectric turbines and into the Chattahoochee River.  That river runs past the city of Atlanta, through south Georgia, and downstream into Florida and Alabama.  Parties contend that the Army Corps of Engineers violated section 301 of the 1958 Water Supply Act.  That act requires the Corps to get Congress's approval for major changes in the way it operates federal dams.  Atlanta Regional Commission Director Chick Krautler says that Georgia tried to follow the rules.

[KRAUTLER] We asked the Corps to do the studies necessary to seek congressional authorization.
[SHEPARD] When Lake Lanier was created, it submerged the water pumping station that the city of Gainesville had built on the Chattahoochee River.  So in 1953, the Corps reimbursed the city in part by allowing it to withdraw 8 million gallons a day from the lake.  Shortly after, Gwinnett County asked the Corps for permission to withdraw drinking water.  Then, 1956, Congress gave the Corps permission to let Gwinnett County use roughly 3.6 billion gallons a year.  This authorization, however, was only to be for a period of 50 years.  The city of Atlanta draws its drinking water from the Chattahoochee River.  The Corps regulated release is only to ensure that enough flow was maintained for an increased water supply for Atlanta and to increase hydroelectric production at power plants downstream.

[KRAUTLER] The fact that the Corps has allowed us to take more water out of Lake Lanier as we've needed it was a clear indication from us that they had the authority to allow us to do that.

[SHEPARD] As metro Atlanta's withdrawals grew, the Corps had to reallocate storage in the lake for water supply.  To accommodate the city of Atlanta's water needs, the Corps increased dam outflows on the weekends, which are considered non-peak power periods.  That, along with the water storage contracts, led to a flurry of lawsuits from Alabama, Florida, and a consortium of cities that buy Buford Dam's hydro power.

[KRAUTLER] The state of Alabama, in one of its court filings, said very clearly that the Corps needed to update the operating manual.

[SHEPARD] But the question before the court was straightforward.  Did the Army Corps of Engineers overstep its authority in letting Atlanta withdraw water from Lake Lanier?  Environmental law expert Craig Pendergrast says yes.

[PENDERGRAST] But did the Corps of Engineers overstep its bounds in terms of providing water to a riparian user under common law?  I don't know if that's the case.

[SHEPARD] Riparian rights basically say that if a person owns property adjacent to a stream or river, then he or she has a right to reasonable use of the water that runs by it.
[PENDERGRAST] And "reasonably" means you need to be good stewards of that water.  You need to not have excessive demands on it.

[KRAUTLER] The water that's in the river is Georgia water that begins in a river in north Georgia.   
[GIL ROGERS, SENIOR ATTORNEY, SELC] Just because a river starts in one state does not give that state carte blanche to take as much water as they want.

[SHEPARD] Alabama says that its Farley nuclear plant is not getting the sufficient amount of water needed for properly cooling the waste heat discharge.  And in a September 2009 interview, Florida Environmental Protection Department Secretary Michael Sole said that the low inflows are making fish less available and disrupting the salinity of the estuary in the Apalachicola Bay.

[BETHEA] There are environmental and water quality issues here in Georgia, in our river system on the Chattahoochee, and also the Flint, because metro Atlanta is withdrawing huge amounts of water out of these rivers and not returning all that water.

[KRAUTLER] That's really an inaccurate argument.

[SHEPARD] Chick Krautler says those claims overlook the fact that Atlanta returns to the river 60% to 65% of the water it takes out.

[KRAUTLER] We put water back that's actually cleaner than what we take out, and we put a very high percentage of the water back.  Under the Corps' regulations, they're not allowed to recognize return flows.

[SHEPARD] And Krautler contends the problem is far bigger than Atlanta.

[KRAUTLER] If Atlanta didn't exist today, the flow at the Florida line would be increased by 2%.  The amount of water that's in Lake Lanier is only 5% or 6% of all the water that's in the basin.

[SHEPARD] But officials in the state of Florida say that has no bearing on the argument.  A statement from Secretary Sole's office reads, "This case is not about water supply, last year, today or tomorrow.  This case is about the long term impact of the Corps operations during times of drought."

[ROGERS] I would think that the communities in Alabama that are on these shared river systems would say that they have every much of a right to grow now and in the future and make use of the water that's coming down.

[SHEPARD] In Atlanta, Shawn Shepard, Clean Skies News.

[McGINNIS] Joining us now from Denver is George Sherk, Managing Director for the Colorado Energy Research Institute at the Colorado School of Mines.  George, thanks for being here.

[SHERK] Thank you for inviting me.

[McGINNIS] So, this 20-year battle over water.  You say you've grown up with this case.  Give us the big picture.  You say this could have been resolved 15 years ago.

[SHERK] I think it could have.  I became involved in this case in 1994, when I was invited to join the faculty at Georgia State University as a visiting professor.  At the time, there was a lot of initiative to assemble a team of experts at Georgia State to assist the state in resolving the conflict between Georgia, Alabama, and Florida.  That conflict involves legal issues.  We had legal expertise onboard.  It involves scientific and technical issues, and at the time, I think we had a core group of experts that could have resolved the conflict if we had had the political leeway to actually address the problem.

[McGINNIS] Because when you go back into history, you see the heart of the problem was that, you were saying, when Georgia was first structured into counties, that Atlanta, essentially, outgrew its water resources?

[SHERK] Atlanta most definitely outgrew its water resources.  The key event was probably some 60 years ago, when the Atlanta political leadership -- particularly Mayor Hartsfield -- decided that Atlanta did not want to pay for the construction of Buford Dam, now Lake Lanier, so water supply was not made an authorized project purpose.

[McGINNIS] This brings into conflict, in the bigger picture, real estate development interests, agricultural interests, interest of environmentalists.  How do you go about balancing all of these?  Will it take an act of Congress to resolve the Atlanta conflict?  Or do you see this coming elsewhere?

[SHERK] It might take an act of God.  I'm not sure if Congress can do it.  And the reason for that is the politics.  The farther you bore into the problem, the more intricate the political issues become.  I'll give you one very quick example.  If you decide to use Lake Lanier as water supply for Atlanta, you would probably have to give up the use of the facility to generate hydropower.  Hydropower is used for peaking power.  That's the most valuable and the most expensive source of power.  If you have to replace that peaking power with other generation, you're probably going to have to use natural gas-fired facilities.  The last time I looked, the cost differential was about an order of magnitude, so it's about 10 times more expensive to generate peaking power from natural gas than from hydropower.  If I'm a senior citizen or I'm living on a fixed income, I have to ask why I should have my electricity rates go up so that real estate development in Georgia can continue to expand, apparently without limit.  When we get into those kinds of political questions, it becomes very, very complex.  I think that was one of the real failings of the political leadership in all three states, but from my experience, particularly in Georgia, was failing to understand the complexity of the problem, thinking that it was a simple issue that could be resolved if the three governors got together and had lunch or went for a walk on the beach or something.

[McGINNIS] Right.  After the new deadline, we might be seeing new governors by then.  Certainly a complex issue and one we will likely be seeing elsewhere in the country.  George Sherk, Colorado School of Mines, thanks so much for joining us.

[SHERK] Thanks for having me.

[McGINNIS] Meanwhile, a Miami company claims it can produce drinking water out of thin air.  Ecoloblue has designed what it calls an atmospheric water generator.  Here what you see is a small-scale version.  The idea is not far from the dehumidifier you likely have in your home.  The company says large-scale versions could provide drinking water to people around the world.  The company's CEO tells us the generators can now run on solar energy, but their future power source may be hydrogen.

[HENRI-JAMES TIELEMAN, CEO, ECOLOBLUE] The hydrogen-powered machine is actually run and functions with water.  So we have a plumbing system that would get the water from the water generator into the hydrogen-powered machine and into getting energy for generating the water generator.

[McGINNIS] Tieleman also discussed Ecoloblue's partnership with China and difficulties some U.S.  companies are having there.  The full interview is available on our Web site at CleanSkies.com.  and that does it for us for this edition of "Clean Skies Sunday."  I'm Susan McGinnis.  Enjoy the rest of your weekend.  We'll see you right here next Sunday morning, and until then, we'll see you at CleanSkies.com.  You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.  Have a great day.   

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