On June 4 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a draft assessment on how fracking impacts America’s drinking water. Contrary to industry claims, the EPA admits there have been incidents of water contamination and water being withdrawn from areas where there was little water available. The authors stated the number of incidents was small, but also admitted they had limited information from which to draw that conclusion. I reached out for expert opinions from two experts. Neither was impressed by the EPA’s report on how fracking impact’s America’s water supply.
Alexandra Morton’s struggle against fish farms has made her a folk heroine in British Columbia. Two years ago, she approached the legal firm ecojustice with a report that aquaculture company Marine Harvest Inc. had transferred Atlantic salmon infected with piscine reovirus (PRV) into net pens located along the Fraser River salmon migration route. On May 6, 2015, they won what Morton calls a victory for wild salmon.
During the course of an interview with Gwen Barlee, of the Wilderness Committee, I asked if bees are an indicator species.
This transformed what started out as a conversation about the Canadian Standing Senate Committee’s findings on bees and bee health into a wider discussion. If bees are an indicator species, then the massive bee die-offs are another indication of what we are doing to our planet.
Sacred places are the oldest form of protected areas on the planet. In my interview with filmmaker, Christopher McLeod we talked about the importance of sacred places to indigenous cultures and the message his documentary series Standing on Sacred Ground has for EuroAmerican culture, the California drought and the Alberta oilsands.
Modern grid operators have a more complex task than their counterparts did a generation ago. There was very little intermittent energy twenty or thirty years ago and little need for sophisticated instrumentation. Now the infrastructure is aging and operators need to deal with intermittent energy sources like solar and wind, energy storage, plug-in electric vehicles, interconnects and increasing demand. They need better information, so they can react to changes fast. National Grid UK selected National Instrument’s CompactRIO platform to increase their capability of seeing harmonic problems on the grid by 400%.
