tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365950602024-03-07T21:31:48.214-05:00Life, The Universe ...News, including science, technology, business and culture.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.comBlogger1716125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-49649834630754177342011-11-05T19:04:00.000-04:002011-11-05T19:05:41.679-04:00<a href="http://www.wayupnorthrealtor.com/werom2.html">http://www.wayupnorthrealtor.com/werom2.html</a>Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-91880692535887653832009-11-23T06:48:00.004-05:002009-11-23T09:53:48.654-05:00Your Chance to Weigh In on Ventilator Rationing for a Severe Flu Pandemic<em><span style="font-size:85%;">by Sheri Fink, ProPublica<br /></span></em><br />On Monday, ordinary Americans get a rare opportunity to weigh in on a life-and-death issue: Who gets access to scarce, life-saving treatments during a disaster?<br /><br />The public has been <a href="http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2009/pdf/E9-27269.pdf" jquery1258984562645="14">invited to participate in a teleconference</a> (PDF) in which advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will discuss ethical guidance they have drawn up for rationing mechanical ventilators in a severe influenza pandemic.<br /><br />The hourlong conference takes place at 3 p.m. EST and anyone can listen to the proceedings by calling (866) 919-3560 and entering passcode 4168828. According to the agenda, the committee is scheduled to vote on the guidance before it opens the meeting to public comments. The document will then go to the full advisory committee to the director of the CDC for approval.<br /><br />The views of the advisory committee to the CDC director are not binding on states, which have ultimate authority over how to handle health emergencies. But the guidance is intended to serve as a "foundation for decision making" for health policymakers "at all levels -- federal, tribal, territorial, state, and local," according to the document.<br /><br />Chances are, few people will phone in to join Monday's meeting. CDC officials have not advertised the session outside of a notice published late in the Federal Register. The <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/docs/Vent_Guidance_.draftoc2008pdf.pdf" jquery1258984562645="15">draft guidance document</a> (PDF) has not been widely released and was provided to ProPublica only after requests to several members of panel.<br /><br />The document, dated Oct. 30, 2009, has some intriguing features. It parts company with several aspects of the guidelines drafted by states like New York and Florida, but it still envisions, at a time of extreme emergency, taking off of ventilators those patients who are not improving, to make way for others who may have better chances of surviving, even if family members do not agree. It says ethical guidance is particularly timely because shortages of mechanical ventilators could arise in the coming months if the H1N1 or "swine flu" virus becomes more widespread or severe.<br /><br />According to a CDC spokesman, the guidelines were "developed independently" by an "independent group of experts on ethical principles" and are not CDC recommendations -- even though CDC employees made up two-thirds of the 18-member group that drafted the document.<br /><br />Fewer than half of the group's members had substantial backgrounds in bioethics. Some helped write the allocation schemes analyzed in the document, putting them in the potentially uncomfortable position of assessing their own work.<br /><br />The document, which makes few specific recommendations, offers what it terms an "ethical framework" for policymakers who are deciding who should receive ventilators:<br /><br /><br /><li>New York, Utah, Florida and other states and groups of medical professionals have drafted pandemic triage guidelines that call for patients with certain pre-existing conditions (such as the elderly or those with advanced cancer, severe heart disease or severe neurological deficits) to be categorically excluded from access to ventilators or hospital admission in a severe pandemic. The panel suggested a different approach: All patients should be given a priority score calculated to reflect a variety of factors, such as the likelihood they would survive if given a ventilator, the number of years they are expected to live, or age. Guidelines should be based on evidence and revised on the basis of research, and no one should be summarily excluded.<br /><li>The panel questioned whether it would be fair for policymakers to require certain people who have a comparatively lower but still reasonable chance of survival to give up ventilators to others with a better chance at survival, in an effort to increase the number of lives saved across a population. The document suggests that the goal of maximizing the "health of the public" in a disaster be weighed against giving all patients "a fair chance at survival."<br /><li>The group advised against factoring an individual's perceived contributions to society into allocation decisions, writing: "In our morally pluralistic society, there has been widespread rejection of the idea that one individual is intrinsically more worthy of saving than another."<br /><li>However, the committee accepted another controversial idea -- that mechanical ventilators could be disconnected from patients "whose prognosis has significantly worsened," regardless of their wishes, and provide those ventilators to "patients with a better prognosis." Patients, it said, "should be notified this will occur, given a chance to say good-byes and complete religious rituals, and provided compassionate palliative care." </li><br />Some doctors have questioned that last concept. The U.S. Supreme Court's acceptance of withdrawing life support hinges on the 14th Amendment's guarantees of a right to liberty. A patient or the patient's legal surrogate has a right to refuse treatment (or in rare cases a doctor can deem a treatment "futile" or not beneficial to the patient). Many of the states' triage plans for pandemics do not envision seeking consent before ventilators are withdrawn. Decisions would be made by clinicians using a clinical scoring system or exclusion criteria.<br /><br />The draft document advises policymakers to include the public in "frank dialogue and genuine deliberation" about the various tradeoffs among the principles. "Most importantly," the report said, "the values and priorities of community members who will be impacted by decisions about allocation of scarce life-saving resources must be considered in the development of triage plans."<br /><br />Thus far, the public has been little engaged. The ethics group spent two years drafting the document, and did not, as part of its deliberations, specifically reach out to the broader community.<br /><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">Write to Sheri Fink at </span></em><a href="mailto:sheri.fink@propublica.org" jquery1258984562645="16"><em><span style="font-size:85%;">sheri.fink@propublica.org</span></em></a><em><span style="font-size:85%;">.</span></em><br /><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.<br /></span></em><br /><strong>Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:</strong><br /><br /><br /><script language="javascript" src="http://thenewsroom.com/mash/swf/voxant_player.js?a=f31821&m=353751&w=300&h=700"></script><br /><br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-63214704666554736292009-11-12T05:08:00.003-05:002009-11-12T15:30:36.909-05:00Help Prepare Your Child For The Future Job MarketIt's probably no surprise the importance of having solid foundations in math and science will be to helping your child be prepared to succeed in tomorrow's employment.<br /><br />A good grasp of math and science will lead tomorrow to opening doors for complex, technical training in IT, health and other specialized technical professions.<br /><br />The bad news is that that kind of mastery doesn't come naturally to all young students. But the good news is that with <a href="http://www.tutorvista.com/math-help">Math help</a>, it doesn't have to. And with an <a href="http://www.tutorvista.com/math-help">Online math tutor</a>, it's easier than ever before to connect your children to the help they need to achieve an overall understanding and the confidence to take that knowledge further and further, until someday they graduate with that certificate or advanced degree that leads to a high degree of professional success.<br /><br />Help them get that great personal job security for tomorrow by trying this math help today by trying some <a href="http://www.tutorvista.com/math-help">Free online math help</a>.<br /><br />This was a sponsored post.<br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-21528860451418052172009-11-10T05:21:00.007-05:002009-11-10T11:33:27.298-05:00In Chicago’s Nursing Homes, a Psychiatrist Delivers High-Risk Meds, Cut-Rate Care<em><span style="font-size:85%;">by Christina Jewett, ProPublica, and Sam Roe, Chicago Tribune</span></em><br /><br />Inside Chicago's Maxwell Manor nursing home, Dr. Michael Reinstein's patients suffered from side effects so severe that they trembled, hallucinated or lost control of their bladders.<br /><br />Staffers told state investigators that so many patients were clamoring to complain to Reinstein about their medications that a security guard was assigned to accompany him on his visits. In addition, staffers said Reinstein had induced patients to take powerful antipsychotic drugs with the promise of passes to leave the home.<br /><br />Though state officials shut that facility in 2000 for inadequate care and wretched conditions, Reinstein, the home's lead psychiatrist, continued to practice. Today he is one of the most prolific providers of psychiatric care in Chicago-area nursing homes and mental health facilities, even as he is trailed by lawsuits and <a href="http://www.propublica.org/projects/reinstein/docs/rein.inv.9.opt.pdf" jquery1257870012389="19">complaints like the ones at Maxwell Manor</a>.<br /><br />Neither state nor federal officials appear to have ever assembled a complete picture of Reinstein’s thriving practice, built in part within Illinois’ poorly regulated system of nursing homes serving the mentally ill. But an investigation by ProPublica and the Tribune found that Reinstein has compiled a worrisome record, providing assembly-line care with a highly risky drug.<br /><br />Searching publicly available documents, reporters discovered that Reinstein, 66, has been accused of overmedicating his mentally ill patients. His unusually heavy reliance on the drug clozapine — a potent psychotropic medication that carries five "black box" warnings — has been linked to at least three deaths.<br /><br />In 2007 he prescribed various medications to 4,141 Medicaid patients, including more prescriptions for clozapine than were written by all the doctors in Texas put together, Medicaid records show.<br /><br />Records also show he is getting reimbursement for seeing an improbably large number of patients. Documents filled out by Reinstein suggest that if each of his patient visits lasts 10 minutes, he would have to work 21 hours a day, seven days a week. Research has found that the typical U.S. psychiatrist sees about 35 patients per week; Reinstein sees 60 each day, he wrote in an audit report in 2007.<br /><br />Illinois provides some powerful incentives for cut-rate, high-volume care in nursing homes for the mentally ill, where Reinstein sees most of his patients.<br /><br />The state Medicaid program pays psychiatrists as little as $22 per patient for some services, a rate drastically less than customary fees. State lawmakers recently failed to act on a bill that would have given psychiatrists the first Medicaid fee increase in years.<br /><br />Working from a strip-mall office in Uptown, Reinstein says he is <a href="http://www.propublica.org/special/map-dr.-michael-reinsteins-affiliations" jquery1257870012389="20">psychiatric medical director at 13 nursing facilities</a>, seeing patients with chronic mental illness whom few doctors will accept.<br /><br />Those include people with schizophrenia, who make up the bulk of his practice. His supporters say they admire the hard working doctor, who makes daily rounds in a car with 140,000 miles on the odometer. And Reinstein maintains that clozapine was not to blame for the patient deaths.<br /><br />In written statements to ProPublica and the Tribune, Reinstein said he does work long hours seven days a week, as do his four partners, who separately also prescribe clozapine. State records overstate his workload, he said, because of a computer system that forces him to submit claims several times. He said he is trying to recruit more doctors to his practice, but it has been difficult because of low pay, high malpractice insurance rates and a perception that the work is dangerous.<br /><br />He also strongly defended his reliance on clozapine, saying the medication is underprescribed and is the most effective in its class for schizophrenic patients. That view is supported by a prominent study that found clozapine helped patients more than similar, newer drugs. Clozapine can control psychotic episodes, reduce suicide risk and help patients live independently outside of institutions, Reinstein said.<br /><br />"The most gratifying part of my day," he wrote, "(is) when patients reach this level and come to the office!!!"<br /><br />See related story: <a href="http://www.propublica.org/feature/dr.-reinstein-one-psychiatrist-many-prescriptions" jquery1257870012389="21">One Psychiatrist, Many Prescriptions</a><br /><br />Autopsy and court records show that three patients under Reinstein’s care died of clozapine intoxication. Alvin Essary died at age 50 inside at the Somerset Place nursing home on the North Side in 1999. Medical records show that when he died his blood contained five times the toxic level of clozapine.<br /><br />The plaintiff’s expert in his family’s <a href="http://www.propublica.org/projects/reinstein/docs/essary.rein.depo.opt.pdf" jquery1257870012389="22">medical malpractice lawsuit</a> contended that Reinstein was grossly negligent to give multiple medications to a man with only one kidney. Reinstein settled the claims against him for $85,000, but Essary’s sister, Shirley Palmer, said she can’t believe he is still practicing.<br /><br />"There’s nothing that’s been done to this doctor who’s caused all these problems," Palmer said. "It makes me mad that this keeps going on."<br /><br />Reinstein has a far different view of his career.<br /><br />"I am grateful for the opportunity to be of service to the patients I treat and have treated for over 37 years," he wrote. "I take pride in the many people I have been able to help and feel badly about those patients who have not seen the benefits of treatment."<br /><br /><strong>Potent pill, multiple warnings<br /></strong><br />Use of any medication carries risks, but clozapine stands out. It ranks just behind the more widely used painkiller oxycodone as the medication suspected in the most patient deaths, according to a study that examined reports to the Food and Drug Administration.<br /><br />The "black box" warnings -- the FDA's strongest -- on clozapine’s label detail serious potential side effects, from enlargement of the heart to rapid drops in blood pressure to increased seizure risk. Doctors also are required to take regular blood samples to ensure patients’ immune systems aren’t shutting down.<br /><br />The FDA approved the drug for only a sliver of the population: the actively suicidal or the quarter of schizophrenic patients who do not improve on medications with lesser side effects. Yet Reinstein last year said under oath that his practice once had more than 300 patients among 415 in one Chicago nursing home on clozapine.<br /><br />Reinstein said he completes the FDA-mandated blood tests for patients on clozapine but calls them "excessive and severe." Although other psychiatrists said it is crucial to discuss the numerous risks of clozapine with patients, Reinstein said he gives them the product insert — and hopes they read it.<br /><br />His use of clozapine is at the heart of separate lawsuits filed after the deaths of two patients he treated: Odell Spruell and Wendy Cureton.<br /><br />Reinstein took over Spruell’s care in 2007 when the 54-year-old was transferred from a nursing home to a psychiatric ward after hitting other patients and staff, records show. A former steel mill worker, Spruell had been stable on a low dose of clozapine for about two years. Reinstein doubled his dose and returned him to the nursing home.<br /><br />Spruell lived another two weeks under the care of a Reinstein partner. During that time, he grew increasingly lethargic and suffered other symptoms associated with overmedication. His hands shook, he drooled and he began sleeping all the time, said his sister, Irma Spruell.<br /><br />"He was too weak to get up," she said. "He tried to talk, but he couldn’t."<br /><br />Staff members at Spruell’s nursing home also noticed his lethargy. In response, they put him into physical therapy. Five days later, Spruell fell unconscious and could not be revived. An autopsy showed that said he died of clozapine intoxication. A lawsuit is pending in Cook County Circuit Court.<br /><br />Reinstein declined to comment, citing a patient privacy law.<br /><br />Cureton, 27, died four years before Spruell. In 2003, she was moved from a nursing home to the psychiatric ward at Kindred Hospital North on Chicago’s North Side.<br /><br />She had grown increasingly aggressive after two of her family members died in a house fire. Reinstein, her supervising psychiatrist, and two partners repeatedly boosted Cureton’s clozapine dose — two times faster than the recommended pace, according to her medical records and guidelines published by the drug’s maker. Medical staff noted that she remained hostile and unpredictable, at times pounding on the wall or laughing at it.<br /><br />On the 10th day in the psychiatric ward, Cureton had trouble breathing and was taken to the emergency room. The drug’s label explicitly warns of that adverse reaction and says doctors should not mix clozapine and certain sedatives, as the team under Reinstein’s supervision had done, medical records show.<br /><br />Reinstein saw her after she returned from the emergency room and boosted her dose of another antipsychotic, her medical records show. Within days, Cureton collapsed next to her bed and could not be revived.<br /><br />A medical malpractice suit is pending in Cook County Circuit Court. In a pretrial deposition, Reinstein defended boosting the dose of the clozapine, saying Cureton was obese and had tolerated a high amount in the past. He also said the autopsy finding that she died of clozapine intoxication was unreliable because research shows that clozapine levels spike after death.<br /><br />The physician who performed the autopsy did not dispute that. But he said Cureton’s sudden collapse before death and the condition of her heart and lungs afterward led him to conclude that she died of clozapine intoxication.<br /><br /><strong>‘He wouldn’t talk to them’</strong><br /><br />Reinstein has his supporters in the medical community. Nurse Bernadette Wright lavished him with praise, saying, "The man is a genius."<br /><br />"He knows his patients," said Wright, head of nursing at Sacred Heart Home in Chicago, where Reinstein is psychiatric medical director. "He knows them by name and by face. When you tell him about a patient, he knows their history."<br /><br />Reinstein "would never" give risky drugs without properly monitoring patients, she said.<br />But one nurse who worked with Reinstein said she worried that he was too busy to give his patients the time they needed.<br /><br />Former Riveredge Hospital nurse Eileen "Cookie" Kempe said in an interview that when Reinstein visited, he went into a room and furiously wrote on stacks of medical records as his patients lined up in the hall. "He wouldn’t talk to them," said Kempe, who worked with Reinstein for a year until 2004. "I never saw him go in a patient room, ever. They got no therapeutic interaction with a doctor."<br /><br />Riveredge is where Reinstein treated a 27-year-old pregnant patient, Tameka Williams, in 2007 after she had an acute schizophrenic episode. She never signed a required form agreeing to take clozapine; nor was her immediate family consulted, according to records and interviews.<br /><br />Even though it has not been proved safe for use during pregnancy, Reinstein prescribed clozapine, Williams' medical records show. At some point, Williams had developed a blood clot -- a condition particularly threatening for a patient on clozapine. She died days after being admitted when the clot lodged in her heart. A lawsuit against Reinstein is pending in Cook County Circuit Court.<br /><br />State regulators inspecting Westwood Manor, a Chicago nursing home, noted in 2003 that several of Reinstein’s patients were not properly monitored. Some showed apparent clozapine side effects. One trembled when he walked. Another kept a cigarette butt in her mouth to prevent her tongue from jutting out.<br /><br />In a written response to the inspection, Reinstein cited a "lack of clinical sophistication on the part of the evaluator(s) … on medication effectiveness." He also said in a written response to reporters that tongue jutting and trembling "are not usual" side effects of clozapine.<br /><br />Reinstein's troubles were perhaps most dramatic at Maxwell Manor, a South Side nursing home. The Illinois State Police and the U.S. Postal Service began investigating Reinstein in 2000 amid accusations of billing fraud, according to documents obtained through public records requests.<br /><br />Included in those <a href="http://www.propublica.org/projects/reinstein/docs/rein.inv.9.opt.pdf" jquery1257870012389="23">documents</a> is the account of a Maxwell Manor psychiatric supervisor who said Reinstein heavily promoted Clozaril, the original brand name for clozapine. Deborah Grier told state police investigators that Reinstein had handed out glossy fliers to staff and prescribed the drug to nearly all of his patients.<br /><br />Grier, who has since died, said Reinstein persuaded some patients to take the drug by offering passes to leave the home.<br /><br />She said patients often complained of hallucinations from the drug and that she "had many conversations with Reinstein about how many patients … had bad reactions." But she said he "very seldom" reduced doses or switched drugs, investigators wrote.<br /><br />Another Maxwell Manor worker, Engoyama Fela, <a href="http://www.propublica.org/projects/reinstein/docs/rein.inv.9.opt.pdf" jquery1257870012389="24">told investigators</a> that Reinstein "would not spend more than one minute" with a patient during his rounds, according to a summary of the interview. "Many patients became agitated and rebellious because they knew they needed care and they wanted to talk to Reinstein but were not allowed to," he said.<br /><br />Fela said Maxwell Manor security staffers were assigned to guard Reinstein when he came to update their medical records.<br /><br />Reinstein, in a written response to reporters, denied the workers’ allegations, saying he spends an appropriate amount of time treating patients in consultation with other medical staff. He agreed that security was present at Maxwell Manor but not specifically to protect him. "This facility had many violent and disruptive patients," he said.<br /><br />Several years after regulators shut the home, the U.S. Justice Department, in a separate civil fraud case, alleged that residents had been routinely abused and medicated as punishment.<br /><br />Reinstein, who said he saw a majority of the patients at the facility, was not a defendant in the federal civil case. Criminal prosecutors investigating possible billing fraud by Reinstein did not file charges against him.<br /><br />Barry Miller, the prosecutor overseeing the criminal inquiry, declined to comment. Case records say the matter was referred to Medicare to recover any overpayments. Agency officials declined to comment. Reinstein said he was not sanctioned by Medicare and did not have to reimburse the agency.<br /><br />Retired state investigator Ray Lewis was unhappy to see the criminal case closed. In a recent interview, he said that if there were one Medicaid fraud case he could revisit, Reinstein’s would be it. "I’d investigate it for free," Lewis said.<br /><br />The agency responsible for investigating physician conduct, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, does not reveal to the public the number of complaints filed against doctors, only findings where there was formal disciplinary action. In 1997, the agency cited Reinstein for improperly admitting a patient for psychiatric care and ordered him to complete 50 hours of education.<br /><br />Since then, the agency has received at least one other complaint about Reinstein.<br /><br />In 2003, Chicago psychiatrist Dr. Mark Amdur, of the Thresholds mental health organization, became so concerned about Reinstein’s work at area nursing homes that he asked his staff to find out how many patients came under Reinstein’s care. The number — 2,300 — surprised him.<br /><br />"I believe that the apparent concentration of care under a single practitioner should be a matter of concern ...," Amdur wrote state regulators.<br /><br />When asked what happened to his complaint, the Illinois Department of Public Health said it could not be found, and the professional regulation agency could produce no evidence of follow-up.<br /><br />Amdur said he never got a response. "There ought to be some outside review for the benefit of the people residing in these nursing homes," he said.<br /><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;"><a href="http://www.propublica.org/">ProPublica</a> is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.</span></em><br /><br /><strong>Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:</strong><br /><br /><script language="javascript" src="http://thenewsroom.com/mash/swf/voxant_player.js?a=f31821&m=353751&w=300&h=700"></script><br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-78633492358268074502009-11-06T18:48:00.003-05:002009-11-06T19:01:30.592-05:00Pennsylvania Tells Drilling Company to Clean Up Its Act<em><span style="font-size:85%;">by Sabrina Shankman, ProPublica</span></em><br /><br />After a <a href="http://www.propublica.org/feature/water-problems-from-drilling-are-more-frequent-than-officials-said-731" jquery1257551207467="14">year of chemical spills</a>, water well contamination and an explosion caused by leaking underground methane, Cabot Oil and Gas Corp. has been fined $120,000 and ordered to abide by a set of stricter-than-usual probationary regulations if it wants to continue its vast <a href="http://www.propublica.org/series/buried-secrets-gas-drillings-environmental-threat" jquery1257551207467="15">natural gas drilling</a> operation in Pennsylvania.<br /><br />The judgment is the latest chapter in a <a href="http://www.propublica.org/feature/officials-in-three-states-pin-water-woes-on-gas-drilling-426" jquery1257551207467="16">saga of drilling controversy</a> and environmental contamination as a result of drilling for natural gas in northeastern Pennsylvania that <a href="http://www.propublica.org/series/buried-secrets-gas-drillings-environmental-threat" jquery1257551207467="17">we’ve been following since January</a>, and is part of our ongoing investigation into the environmental consequences of <a href="http://www.propublica.org/feature/buried-secrets-is-natural-gas-drilling-endangering-us-water-supplies-1113" jquery1257551207467="18">gas drilling across the country. </a><br /><br />The charges and conditions against Cabot were outlined by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection in a <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/natural_gas/final_cabot_co-a.pdf" jquery1257551207467="19">23-page document</a> that lists each of Cabot’s offenses – from failure to properly cement wells to failure to maintain and submit proper records – and asks the company to acknowledge and address the findings. The fine is the largest issued by the Pennsylvania agency to a gas company.<br /><br />Cabot signed the order Wednesday agreeing to the state’s conditions, but seemed to stop short of taking full responsibility. “The department made several findings, and we agreed with the basic facts as they were laid out,” said a Cabot spokesman, Ken Komoroski. “But Cabot did not agree to the legal conclusions of violations of laws and regulations.”<br /><br />The DEP began investigating Cabot early this year, after residents in Dimock, Pa., started reporting <a href="http://www.propublica.org/feature/officials-in-three-states-pin-water-woes-on-gas-drilling-426" jquery1257551207467="20">methane bubbling out of their faucets</a> – a sign that natural gas had contaminated their water supplies. Investigators found that some of Cabot’s well casings, which seal well pipes from water supplies, were faulty and had allowed natural gas to migrate into the groundwater.<br /><br />The groundwater incidents were the first of <a href="http://www.propublica.org/feature/frack-fluid-spill-in-dimock-contaminates-stream-killing-fish-921" jquery1257551207467="21">several spills and accidents</a> that followed. In at least two cases the company spilled diesel or drilling fluids that reached water supplies. And in September, the DEP ordered Cabot to stop its hydraulic fracturing operations in Susquehanna County after it allowed three hydraulic fracturing fluid spills in nine days. The ban was lifted on Oct. 16, after the company revised its pollution prevention and control plan.<br /><br />Now the company has until March 31 to comply with parts of the DEP’s order and submit a plan outlining how it will permanently replace the water supplies for more than a dozen affected homes near the town of Dimock.<br /><br />The most important requirements have to do with well construction. Cabot will have to submit well casing and cementing plans to the DEP, which will have to approve the well before Cabot can proceed with drilling or any hydraulic fracturing. The company will also have to submit a plan that specifically lays out how it will prove the integrity of the casing and cementing on existing wells and fix any that are defective. If the defective casing isn’t fixed by the March deadline, Cabot will be ordered to plug its defective wells.<br /><br />“They’ve got to go back and fix all of those wells,” said DEP spokeswoman Teresa Candori.<br />Finally, the company will be required to tell the DEP <a href="http://www.propublica.org/feature/water-problems-from-drilling-are-more-frequent-than-officials-said-731" jquery1257551207467="22">who has contacted the company with concerns about the quantity or quality of their water supplies.</a><br /><br />“It does add some additional requirements beyond the regulations but these are measures and procedures that Cabot agrees are appropriate for the area,” Cabot spokesman Komoroski said.<br />Cabot has been drilling in the Marcellus Shale of Pennsylvania since 2006. It drilled one well in 2006, and one in 2007, before ramping up in 2008 and drilling 20. The company will drill between 40 and 60 wells in 2009, and has plans to drill between 50 and 70 more in 2010.<br /><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. </span></em><br /><br /><strong>Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:</strong><br /><br /><script language="javascript" src="http://thenewsroom.com/mash/swf/voxant_player.js?a=f31821&m=353751&w=300&h=700"></script><br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-80321053101959383292009-11-04T19:14:00.002-05:002009-11-06T19:17:23.361-05:00Public Gets More Time to Comment on New York’s Gas Drilling Plans<em><span style="font-size:85%;">by Sabrina Shankman, ProPublica</span></em><br /><br />Responding to calls from politicians, environmentalists and concerned residents, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation announced Wednesday that it has extended the public comment period for an <a href="http://www.dec.ny.gov/energy/47554.html" jquery1257552808621="16">environmental review</a> of natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale.<br /><br />The comment period, which began Sept. 30 with the <a href="http://www.propublica.org/feature/new-york-state-paves-way-for-gas-drilling-with-release-of-review-930" jquery1257552808621="17">release of the draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement</a>, now extends through Dec. 31. It was previously slated to end Nov. 30. Since the release of the technical, 800-plus page document, there have been complaints that the original 60-day comment period was insufficient for people to read and understand its findings.<br /><br />"This is the biggest environmental issue of the decade in New York," Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said in a statement. "It’s good to see that the public’s demand for more time has been heard."<br /><br />The DEC has also moved up the start time for the second public hearing on the environmental review, which will be held Nov. 10 at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. Doors for the hearing will now open at 5:30 p.m. for individual questions and speaker sign-up. The DEC staff will also be on hand to answer questions about the draft. The public comment period will begin at 6:30 p.m. (More info on the public hearings <a href="http://www.dec.ny.gov/energy/58705.html" jquery1257552808621="18">here</a>.)<br /><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.<br /></span></em><br /><strong>Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:</strong><br /><br /><script language="javascript" src="http://thenewsroom.com/mash/swf/voxant_player.js?a=f31821&m=353751&w=300&h=700"></script><br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-47199608160825651042009-10-24T22:53:00.003-04:002009-10-24T23:00:14.765-04:00Preparing for a Pandemic, State Health Departments Struggle With Rationing Decisions<em><span style="font-size:85%;">by Sheri Fink, ProPublica</span></em><br /><br />New York state health officials recently laid out this wrenching scenario for a small group of medical professionals from New York-Presbyterian Hospital:<br /><br />A 32-year-old man with cystic fibrosis is rushed to the hospital with appendicitis in the midst of a worsening pandemic caused by the H1N1 flu virus, which has mutated into a more deadly form. The man is awaiting a lung transplant and brought with him the mechanical ventilator that helps him breathe.<br /><br />New York’s governor has declared a state of emergency and hospitals are following the state’s pandemic ventilator allocation plan -- actual guidelines drafted in 2007 that are now being revisited. The plan aims to direct ventilators to those with the best chances of survival in a severe, 1918-like flu pandemic where tens of thousands develop life-threatening pneumonia.<br /><br />Because the man’s end-stage lung disease caused by his cystic fibrosis is among a list of medical conditions associated with high mortality, the guidelines would bar the man from using a ventilator in a hospital, even though he is, unlike many with his illness, stable, in good condition, and not close to death. If the hospital admits him, the guidelines call for the machine that keeps him alive to be given to someone else.<br /><br />Would doctors and nurses follow such rules? Should they?<br /><br />In recent years, officials in a host of states and localities, as well as the federal Veterans Health Administration, have been quietly addressing one of medicine’s most troubling questions: Who should get a chance to survive when the number of severely ill people far exceeds the resources needed to treat them all?<br /><br />The draft plans vary. In some states, patients with Do Not Resuscitate orders, the elderly, those requiring dialysis, or those with severe neurological impairment would be refused ventilators, or admission to hospitals. <a href="http://www.uha-utah.org/Disaster%20Prep%20Materials/PANDEMIC%20FLU%20Triage%20Guidelines_081109.pdf" jquery1256439198020="6">Utah divides epidemics into phases</a>. Initially, hospitals would apply triage rules to residents of mental institutions, nursing homes, prisons and facilities for the “handicapped.” If an epidemic worsened, the rules would apply to the general population.<br /><br />Federal officials say the possibility that America’s already crowded intensive care units would be overwhelmed in the coming weeks by flu patients is small but they remain vigilant.<br /><br />The triage plans have attracted little publicity. New York, for example, released <a href="http://www.health.state.ny.us/diseases/communicable/influenza/pandemic/ventilators/" jquery1256439198020="7">its draft guidelines</a> in 2007, offered a 45-day comment period, and has made no changes since. The Health Department made <a href="http://documents.propublica.org/public-comment-on-draft-plan-for-ventilator-allocation-in-new-york-during-flu-pandemic#p=1" jquery1256439198020="8">90 pages of public comments</a> public this week only after receiving a request under the state’s public records laws.<br /><br />Mary Buckley-Davis, a respiratory therapist with 30 years experience, wrote to officials in 2007 that “there will be rioting in the streets” if hospitals begin disconnecting ventilators. “There won’t be enough public relations spin or appropriate media coverage in the world” to calm the family of a patient “terminally weaned” from a ventilator, she said.<br /><br />State and federal officials defend formal rationing as the last in a series of steps that would be taken to stretch scarce resources and provide the best outcome for the public. They say it is better to plan for such decisions than leave them to besieged health workers battling a crisis.<br /><br />“You change your perspective from thinking about the individual patient to thinking about the community of patients,” said Rear Adm. Ann Knebel of the Department of Health and Human Services.<br /><br />But some health professionals question whether the draft guidelines are fair, effective, ethical, and even remotely feasible.<br /><br />Most existing triage plans were designed for handling mass casualties. They sort injured victims into priority categories based on the urgency of their medical needs and their potential for survival given available resources. Much of the controversy over the state plans focuses on two additional features.<br /><br />These are “exclusion criteria,” which bar certain categories of patients from standard hospital treatments in a severe health disaster, and “minimum qualifications for survival,” which limit the resources used for each patient. Once that limit is reached, patients who are not improving would be removed from essential treatment in favor of those with better chances.<br /><br />A version of these concepts was outlined in a post-9/11 medical journal article that suggested ways to handle victims of a large-scale bioterrorist event. The author, Dr. Frederick Burkle Jr., said he based his ideas in part on his experiences as a triage officer in Vietnam and the gulf war and on a cold war-era British plan for coping with a nuclear strike. Dr. Burkle said that during the gulf war he once instructed surgeons to halt an operation and work on another patient who was more likely to survive. Surgeons later returned to the first patient.<br /><br />Dr. Burkle’s ideas were key aspects of <a href="http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/175/11/1377#R16-15" jquery1256439198020="9">guidelines Ontario authorities drew</a> up after SARS to plan for avian flu and other pandemics. This approach and one by <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16400088" jquery1256439198020="10">a team of Minnesota doctors</a> were modified by groups developing similar guidelines in the United States.<br /><br />There were important distinctions. Dr. Burkle’s original paper did not anticipate withdrawing care from patients and stressed the need to reassess the level of supplies “sometimes on a daily or hourly basis” in a fluid effort to provide the best possible care.<br /><br />Some states’ triage guidelines are rigid, with a single set of criteria intended to apply throughout the severe phase of a pandemic. That disturbs Dr. Burkle. “I have said to my wife, I think I developed a monster here,” he said.<br /><br />Recent research highlights the problem of a one-size-fits-all approach to triage. Many state pandemic plans call for hospitals to remove patients from ventilators if they are not improving after two to five days. Studies show that people severely ill with H1N1 flu generally need a week to two weeks on ventilators to recover.<br /><br />There is also controversy over what values and ethical principles should guide triage decisions, how to engage the public, and whether withdrawing life support in the hospital and withholding it at the hospital door are distinct.<br /><br />Normally, removing viable patients from life support against their or their families’ will would be considered murder. The New York-Presbyterian Hospital employees who participated in the recent exercise said they would not comply unless given legal protection.<br /><br />They also never figured out what to do with that hypothetical patient who had his own ventilator, said Dr. Kenneth Prager, a pulmonologist and ethicist. “The issue of removing patients from ventilators,” he said, “was so overwhelming that it precluded discussion of further case scenarios.”<br /><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;"><a href="http://www.propublica.org/">ProPublica</a> is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.</span></em><br /><br /><strong>Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:</strong><br /><br /><script language="javascript" src="http://thenewsroom.com/mash/swf/voxant_player.js?a=f31821&m=353751&w=300&h=700"></script><br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-45459893153565650802009-10-23T11:56:00.004-04:002009-10-23T12:00:23.737-04:00New York Drilling Study a Step Forward<em><span style="font-size:85%;">by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica</span></em><br /><br />New York's recently released <a href="ftp://ftp.dec.state.ny.us/dmn/download/OGdSGEISFull.pdf" jquery1256313285897="15">review of the environmental risks</a> (PDF) posed by natural gas production in the Marcellus Shale offers the clearest picture yet of the chemicals used in the drilling process called hydraulic fracturing.<br /><br />The document makes public the names of 260 chemicals, more than eight times as many as Pennsylvania state regulators have compiled. The list is the most complete released by any state or federal agency and could help answer concerns about hydraulic fracturing in Congress and in states where gas drilling has increased in recent years.<br /><br />The review also takes another dramatic step by proposing that in certain situations companies that drill in New York be required to report the concentrations of the chemicals they use to state regulators, thereby creating a suite of information that environmental scientists say is essential to investigating water pollution from drilling. New York would be the first state to make such a demand.<br /><br />The industry has been reluctant to release information about the chemicals it uses, because it considers them a proprietary trade secret. While New York has made the names of the chemicals public, it seems likely that the data about their concentration will be shared only with state officials.<br /><br />The 800-page environmental impact assessment also proposes a slew of safeguards for well construction, waste disposal and water protection. If those rules are finalized after the ongoing public review period, New York's environmental protections for gas drilling would be among the strongest in the nation.<br /><br />"In a number of areas these regulations are more stringent than in other states," said Kate Sinding, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "As commendable as that is, and wanting to give the department credit where credit is due, the bar set in most other states is so abysmally low, it still begs the question of whether stronger is strong enough."<br />Environmental scientists have long sought complete information about the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, saying they need it to thoroughly investigate water pollution.<br /><br />Contamination can occur when the chemicals are pumped underground, held in waste pits or trucked to water treatment plants before being discharged back into rivers and drinking water supplies.<br /><br />Colorado passed regulations last year requiring companies to disclose the names of chemicals, but they apply only to chemicals held in 50-gallons drums or larger. Now the industry is suing Colorado to repeal the group of regulations that includes that clause. In Pennsylvania, environment officials told ProPublica that their list of chemical products used for drilling there was complete, but it names just 39 products and 31 unique chemicals. Congress has been debating a bill to require disclosure, but the industry is fighting the legislation with millions of dollars in lobbying efforts.<br /><br />New York obtained the names of the chemicals by surveying drilling companies, their contractors and the manufacturers of the chemicals. The Department of Environmental Conservation identified 152 trademarked products and obtained the complete list of their ingredients; it gathered a partial list of ingredients for an additional 45 products.<br /><br />The review, which was released last month, leaves some environmental concerns unanswered. It offers few specific measures to protect New York City's watershed -- the unfiltered source of drinking water for nearly half the state's population. It says that wastewater will be treated by facilities in New York and Pennsylvania, but does not confirm whether those plants have the capacity to receive Marcellus Shale wastewater or the technology to make that water safe.<br /><br />Critics also complain it does little to describe how several thousand new wells would cumulatively affect air and water quality, leaving the analysis to a per-well basis.<br /><br />"The DEC's shocking refusal to assess cumulative impacts undermines the validity of the entire study and if implemented will lead to devastating, unanticipated outcomes," said Roger Downs, a conservation associate at the Sierra Club's Atlantic Chapter, which has called for a ban on drilling in New York despite the Sierra Club's general support for gas development in the United States.<br /><br />The review does, however, deal directly with some of most critical problems that have led to contamination in other drilling states.<br /><br />It suggests strict limits on the kind of open waste pits that have led to hundreds of cases of water contamination in other states; guarantees additional scientific review before drilling can happen near water supplies; and requires government inspectors to be more regularly involved at several stages of the drilling and fracturing processes. An environmental review, sometimes including public hearings, would be required each time a gas well is proposed within 150 feet of a private water well, stream or pond or within 300 feet of a reservoir. An additional environmental review would also be required before gas wells could be hydraulically fractured within 1,000 feet of water supply infrastructure, or within 2,000 feet of the surface. Private water wells within 1,000 feet of a gas well would be tested before drilling begins, to create a baseline for measuring any future pollution.<br /><br />The review recommends requiring that chemical-laden wastewater from hydraulic fracturing be enclosed in steel tanks rather than pits at well sites, a practice that has been proven to reduce the risk of spills and prevent evaporation of chemicals into the air. Some waste could still be kept in open pits, but new rules would require that those pits be emptied after seven days, and that state inspectors check the pits and their liners before they can be used again.<br /><br />The review also suggests strengthening structural requirements to prevent leaks from inside gas well pipes, and establishing an explicit chain of custody record to make sure drilling wastewater is delivered to treatment facilities that are capable of accepting it.<br /><br />Yancey Roy, a spokesman for the DEC, declined to answer questions about the document.<br /><br />Instead he cited passages in the environmental review. New York's industry group, the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York State, did not return calls for comment. Two prominent new natural gas industry associations -- America's Natural Gas Alliance and Energy In Depth -- also declined to comment on New York's rulemaking process.<br /><br />The draft review, called the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement, updates the state's 1992 drilling study. It was ordered by Gov. David Paterson last summer after an <a href="http://www.propublica.org/feature/new-yorks-gas-rush-poses-environmental-threat-722" jquery1256313285897="16">investigation by ProPublica</a> found that the state was not familiar with the chemical makeup of fracturing fluids and was unprepared to manage a boom of modern drilling in the Marcellus Shale.<br /><br />The state has allowed for a 60-day comment period before the recommendations will be finalized and is holding four hearings <a href="http://www.dec.ny.gov/energy/58705.html" jquery1256313285897="17">across New York</a> beginning later this month. Several state, city and federal lawmakers, including U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., have said the comment period is too short and called for an extension from the Nov. 30 deadline. Comments can be <a href="http://www.dec.ny.gov/cfmx/extapps/SGEISComments/" jquery1256313285897="18">submitted online</a> or sent by <a href="mailto:dmnsgeis@gw.dec.state.ny.us" jquery1256313285897="19">e-mail</a>.<br /><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.<br /></span></em><br /><strong>Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:</strong><br /><br /><script language="javascript" src="http://thenewsroom.com/mash/swf/voxant_player.js?a=f31821&m=353751&w=300&h=700"></script><br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-78232289650218979942009-10-11T11:01:00.004-04:002009-10-23T11:46:50.083-04:00Reform of California Nursing Board’s Discipline System Shows Early Progress<em><span style="font-size:85%;">by Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber, ProPublica</span></em><br /><br />After moving swiftly to replace the leadership of the Board of Registered Nursing, California officials are revamping practices that had allowed errant nurses to work for years after complaints were filed against them.<br /><br />For the first time, the board is prioritizing complaints, moving first to investigate nurses who pose the greatest threat to the public.<br /><br />In addition, top officials will this month get subpoena power to gather documents about nurses accused of wrongdoing. Before, some cases sat for months until outside investigators issued such orders.<br /><br />The moves come after The Los Angeles Times and ProPublica disclosed in July that the board took more than three years on average to investigate and discipline even its most troubled nurses. Some were able to move from hospital to hospital despite accusations of assault, criminal activity or on-the-job drug use.<br /><br />Within days, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger replaced the majority of the board’s members and the board's longtime executive officer resigned.<br /><br />Three months later, statistics show early progress on the governor's pledge to reform the system. In the first quarter of the fiscal year that started in July, the board filed formal accusations seeking disciplinary action against 159 nurses, compared with 68 during the same period a year earlier, officials said.<br /><br />Also in the first quarter, the board obtained emergency orders to suspend the licenses of six nurses, compared with none in the same period last year. The Times and ProPublica had found that California used such orders to stop dangerous nurses far less often than several other states.<br /><br />"One of the reasons we got ourselves into the position that we were in is that we were satisfied with the status quo," said Brian Stiger, director of the state Department of Consumer Affairs, which oversees the nursing board and other professional licensing agencies. "That has changed. We are no longer doing business the way that we used to."<br /><br />State officials say they hope within two years to reduce by more than half the time it takes to discipline nurses, bringing the average to less than 17 months.<br /><br />That goal would require many substantive changes to take place, changes that await action by the Legislature, permission from the governor or votes of the nursing board.<br /><br />For example, the board says it needs dozens more staff members in order to clear its case backlog and speed the handling of incoming complaints, but the governor has yet to formally request those workers. The Legislature has yet to fully consider a bill that would, among other things, suspend the licenses of certain jailed health professionals, revoke those of sex offenders and authorize a new computer system to better track complaints. And the new board has yet to propose a requirement for hospitals to report nurses they have fired for misconduct.<br /><br />Beyond that, the nursing board is still subject to budget cuts and state-mandated furloughs even though it is wholly funded by the fees paid by its licensees.<br /><br />"The governor kind of engaged in this charade," said Bonnie Castillo, government relations director for the California Nurses Assn., the state's largest nurses' union. "You've put all of this in motion and yet you're expecting greater oversight and enforcement with less people-hours and less public accountability."<br /><br />Stiger said officials need to prioritize their workloads. In part, that involves changing the practices of the board and other state agencies that help investigate and prosecute its cases.<br /><br />To keep cases from stalling at the investigative stage, the consumer affairs department has given the board permission to hire several non-sworn investigators to handle less complex cases and those that won't result in criminal prosecution. Previously, the board had to rely solely on a pool of sworn consumer affairs investigators who were stretched thin serving a variety of boards.<br /><br />The nursing board also is taking over some responsibilities previously handled by the attorney general's office, such as preparing default decisions when nurses don't respond to accusations against them.<br /><br />The state attorney general's office said it will quickly schedule hearing dates for nurses who are contesting their discipline. In the past, state attorneys would wait until settlement talks broke down to schedule a hearing, then wait months for the first available date.<br /><br />Beyond that, officials are addressing other roadblocks that were "unusual and extreme," Stiger said.<br /><br />It used to take two weeks, for instance, for the consumer affairs department to photocopy a nurse's case file so it could be sent to expert witnesses or others. Proposed disciplinary actions were allowed to stack up for a month or two before being sent out to board members for a vote. And just one staffer was responsible for receiving and logging nearly all new complaints to the board -- more than 5,700 last year.<br /><br />Now it takes two days to copy a case file. Proposed actions are immediately sent out to board members for a vote. And a team of eight is helping to processincoming complaints and wade through the backlog, officials said.<br /><br />Ann Boynton, the nursing board's new president, said she was pleased with the progress but acknowledged, "It is not something that we're going to be able to do overnight."<br /><br />Boynton said she has been "close to appalled sometimes" seeing the amount of time it has taken the board to act on problems. "It reinforces to me, every time I see that, the need to ensure that that never happens again," she said.<br /><br />More has been done to speed up the pace of discipline than at any other time in more than a decade.<br /><br />"It's remarkable what a little sunshine will do to stodgy agencies that are stuck in the past," said Julianne D'Angelo Fellmeth, administrative director of the Center for Public Interest Law at the University of San Diego.<br /><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;"><a href="http://www.propublica.org/">ProPublica</a> is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. </span></em><br /><br /><strong>Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:</strong><br /><br /><br /><script language="javascript" src="http://thenewsroom.com/mash/swf/voxant_player.js?a=f31821&m=353751&w=300&h=700"></script><br /><br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-73372613492856344772009-10-08T20:50:00.002-04:002009-10-08T20:56:01.201-04:00Gas Drilling Vs. Drinking Water: New York City Consultant’s Report Sets Stage for Fight With Albany<em><span style="font-size:85%;">by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica</span></em><br /><br />A <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/docs/rapid_impact_assessment_091609.pdf" jquery1255049354037="16">preliminary report</a> from a consultant hired by New York City warns that "nearly every activity" associated with natural gas drilling could potentially harm the city’s drinking water supply and that while the risk can be reduced with strict regulations, "<a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/docs/rapid_impact_assessment_091609.pdf" jquery1255049354037="17">the likelihood of water quality impairment … cannot be eliminated</a>."<br /><br />That assessment contrasts sharply with the picture <a href="http://www.propublica.org/feature/new-york-state-paves-way-for-gas-drilling-with-release-of-review-930/" jquery1255049354037="18">presented by an environmental review released by state officials last week</a>. Aside from clauses that ban some waste pits and promise additional consideration for drilling within 1,000 feet of the city’s reservoirs and water infrastructure in upstate New York, the environmental review does little to respond to New York City’s <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/docs/dep_natural_gas_commissioner_grannis_letter_092509.pdf" jquery1255049354037="19">long-standing concerns</a> that the watershed deserves special environmental consideration and instead paves the way for drilling to proceed throughout the watershed.<br /><br />The issue appears to be emerging as a point of controversy in New York City’s mayoral election.<br />City comptroller and mayoral candidate William Thompson criticized the state’s environmental review in a news release and said Mayor Michael Bloomberg should be more outspoken. "I am also concerned that the City and the Water Board have been extremely lax in responding to this threat," he said.<br /><br />Marc LaVorgna, a spokesman for Bloomberg’s office, said the mayor will withhold judgment until he sees the final version of the report the city commissioned from Hazen and Sawyer, a New York City-based environmental engineering firm. The full report isn’t expected to be delivered until December, after the public comment period for the state environmental review has ended.<br /><br />LaVorgna emphasized that the Bloomberg administration has invested heavily in the city’s water system and would not rule out a protracted fight to protect it.<br /><br />"This is not a fringe issue for this administration," LaVorgna said. "This is a mayor that adamantly orders tap water every night he dines out."<br /><br />In one of his few statements on the subject, Bloomberg, who has generally supported the idea of energy development, <a href="http://www.wnyc.org/news/articles/141921" jquery1255049354037="20">told WNYC radio Thursday</a> that "if this has the danger of polluting, we will fight it."<br /><br />The clashing reports seem poised to reignite long-standing tensions between upstate New York and New York City, which depends almost entirely on water delivered from rural, upstate areas.<br /><br />"The stakes are very high based on the conclusions of this report," Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said in an interview with ProPublica. The report, he said, "suggests that city elected officials have a role to play here and a responsibility to step up and say, ‘What does frack drilling mean to New York City residents?’"<br /><br />Last week Stringer announced he was launching a Kill the Drill campaign.<br /><br />New York is one of four major cities in the United States with a special permit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allowing its drinking water to go unfiltered. That pristine water comes from a network of upstate reservoirs and rivers spread across 1,600 square miles in five upstate counties. Those reservoirs – which all lie west of the Hudson River – supply 90 percent of the drinking water for 9 million downstate residents, nearly half the state’s population. If the EPA were to rescind the city’s special permit, New York City would have to build a treatment facility that could cost between $10 billion and $30 billion, according to various estimates.<br /><br />Hazen and Sawyer’s <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/docs/rapid_impact_assessment_091609.pdf" jquery1255049354037="21">early findings</a> were summarized at a city meeting last week and posted on the city Department of Environmental Protection’s Web site Tuesday evening, after repeated requests for the document by ProPublica over the past several days.<br /><br />The <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/docs/rapid_impact_assessment_091609.pdf" jquery1255049354037="22">report</a>, and an accompanying summary PowerPoint presentation, lay out several areas of concern. The consultants found that drilling "introduces hazardous chemicals into the watershed" and that "the well bore, which acts as a conduit between geologic formations, can allow previously isolated contaminants to flow into shallow groundwater or surface water."<br /><br />The research also warned of "enormous volumes" of wastewater and said there are no treatment plants in the region designed to treat these wastes. It said the disturbance from hydraulic fracturing could cause seismic shifts or otherwise damage the tunnels or aqueducts that bring the water to the city. Hydraulic fracturing shoots millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals underground with such force that it breaks rock and releases pockets of gas.<br /><br />So far, New York City’s top officials have preferred a behind-the-scenes approach as the public debate over the state’s natural gas drilling policy unfurls in Albany. City DEP officials have protested to the state Department of Environmental Conservation in private letters, but have said little publicly. <br /><br />In a letter obtained by ProPublica in July 2008, then <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/docs/emily_lloyd_letter_080718.pdf" jquery1255049354037="23">New York City DEP commissioner Emily Lloyd asked the DEC commissioner</a> to disclose the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing and to consider a partial ban on drilling near the reservoirs that supply New York City’s water.<br /><br />Shortly afterward, and following an investigation by ProPublica,<a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/governor-signs-drilling-bill-but-orders-environmental-update-723" jquery1255049354037="24"> Gov. David Paterson ordered the environmental review</a> that was released Sept. 30. Called the Draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement, <a href="http://www.propublica.org/feature/new-york-state-paves-way-for-gas-drilling-with-release-of-review-930" jquery1255049354037="25">it supplements gas and oil drilling rules established in 1992</a>.<br /><br />New York City officials have since sent several additional letters to the state DEC voicing their ongoing concerns.<br /><br />A spokesman for the state DEC did not return repeated calls for comment.<br /><br />The state supplemental draft report discloses many of the drilling chemicals, as Lloyd had requested, and it also strengthens several other environmental protections. But it did not recommend a full or partial ban on drilling in the watershed.<br /><br />The supplementary impact statement is now subject to a 60-day public comment period, after which final guidelines will be issued. But Stringer and others are pressing the state for a 30-day extension, which would allow the findings from the Hazen and Sawyer report to be included. <br /><br />Read the "Rapid <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/docs/rapid_impact_assessment_091609.pdf" jquery1255049354037="26">Impact Assessment Report</a>" by consulting firm Hazen and Sawyer.<br /><br />Read our full coverage of <a href="http://www.propublica.org/series/buried-secrets-gas-drillings-environmental-threat" jquery1255049354037="27">natural gas drilling</a>.<br /><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">ProPublica reporters Joaquin Sapien and Saprina Shankman contributed to this story.</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></em><br /><strong>Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:</strong><br /><br /><script language="javascript" src="http://thenewsroom.com/mash/swf/voxant_player.js?a=f31821&m=353751&w=300&h=700"></script><br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-43460616077832634072009-10-04T16:31:00.002-04:002009-10-04T16:42:14.374-04:00Add Security To Your Job HuntAre you one of the millions today seeking a new job?<br /><br />Are you spending your time emailing out dozens -- if not hundreds -- of resumes from all of the different job-search websites?<br /><br />If you answer "yes," the question becomes, "Is your resume secure?"<br /><br />A secure resume? Had you not even thought about securing your resume?<br /><br />It's true, and in today's day and age it's sad to say that you need to protect the content integrity of your resume, so that no one can alter it without your knowledge.<br /><br />This is a reason you need <a href="http://www.pdfconverted.com/">pdf creator</a> software. Your resume distributed in MS Word format is vulnerable to possible violation. But if you convert your resume from <a href="http://www.pdfconverted.com/">word to pdf</a>, your resume is secure so that you know that no matter how often it is passed from one reviewer to another.<br /><br />Click on the links in this post to gain access to <a href="http://www.pdfconverted.com/">pdf software</a>.<br /><br />This was a sponsored post.<br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-42717308977649999862009-10-04T16:17:00.004-04:002009-10-04T16:29:59.420-04:00With Natural Gas Drilling Boom, Pennsylvania Faces an Onslaught of Wastewater<em><span style="font-size:85%;">by Joaquin Sapien, ProPublica</span></em><br /><br />Workers at a steel mill and a power plant were the first to notice something strange about the Monongahela River last summer. The water that U.S. Steel and Allegheny Energy used to power their plants contained so much salty sediment that it was <a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08322/928571-113.stm" jquery1254687490872="17">corroding their machinery</a>. Nearby residents saw something odd, too. Dishwashers were malfunctioning, and plates were coming out with spots that couldn’t easily be rinsed off.<br /><br />Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection soon <a href="http://www.ahs2.dep.state.pa.us/newsreleases/default.asp?ID=5337&varQueryType=Detail" jquery1254687490872="18">identified the likely cause</a> and came up with a quick fix. The Monongahela, a drinking water source for 350,000 people, had apparently been contaminated by chemically tainted wastewater from the state’s growing natural gas industry. So the DEP reduced the amount of drilling wastewater that was being discharged into the river and unlocked dams upstream to dilute the contamination.<br />But questions raised by the incident on the Monongahela haven’t gone away.<br /><br />In August, contamination levels in the river <a href="http://www.ahs2.dep.state.pa.us/newsreleases/default.asp?ID=5619&varQueryType=Detail" jquery1254687490872="19">spiked</a> again, and the DEP still doesn’t know exactly why. And this month the DEP began investigating whether drilling wastewater contributed to the death of 10,000 fish on a 33-mile stretch of Dunkard Creek, which winds through West Virginia and feeds into the Monongahela. A spate of other <a href="http://www.propublica.org/feature/water-problems-from-drilling-are-more-frequent-than-officials-said-731" jquery1254687490872="20">water contamination problems</a> have also been linked to gas drilling in Pennsylvania, including methane leaks that have affected drinking water in at least seven counties.<br /><br /><strong>2011: 19 million gallons, per day</strong><br /><br />Pennsylvania is at the forefront of the nation’s gas drilling boom, with at least 4,000 new oil and gas wells drilled here last year alone, more than in any other state except Texas. This rapid expansion has forced state regulators to confront a problem that has been overlooked as gas drilling accelerates nationwide: How will the industry dispose of the enormous amount of wastewater it produces?<br /><br />Oil and gas wells disgorge about 9 million gallons of wastewater a day in Pennsylvania, according to industry estimates used by the DEP. By 2011 that figure is expected to rise to at least 19 million gallons, enough to fill almost 29 Olympic-sized swimming pools every day. That’s more than all the state’s waterways, combined, can safely absorb, DEP officials say.<br /><br />"I don’t know that even our [water] program people had any idea about the volumes of water that would be used," said Dana Aunkst, who heads the DEP’s water program.<br /><br />Much of the wastewater is the byproduct of a drilling process called <a href="http://www.propublica.org/special/hydraulic-fracturing-national" jquery1254687490872="21">hydraulic fracturing</a>, or fracking, which pumps at least a million gallons of water per well deep into the earth to break layers of rock and release gas. When the water is sucked back out, it <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/monongahela/POTWMailingLtrEnclosures.pdf" jquery1254687490872="22">contains natural toxins</a> dredged up during drilling, including cadmium and benzene, which both carry cancer risks. It can also contain small amounts of chemicals added to enhance drilling.<br /><br />But DEP officials say one of the most worrisome contaminants in the wastewater is a gritty substance called Total Dissolved Solids, or TDS, a mixture of salt and other minerals that lie deep underground. Drilling wastewater contains so much TDS that it can be <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/monongahela/MarcellusShaleWaterManagementChallenges%2011.08.pdf" jquery1254687490872="23">five times as salty</a> as sea water.<br /><br />Large quantities of TDS can clog machinery and affect the color, taste and odor of drinking water – precisely the problems reported along the Monongahela. While TDS isn’t considered particularly <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/monongahela/10.24.08PADEPPressReleaseonTDSTests.pdf" jquery1254687490872="24">harmful to people</a>, it can damage freshwater streams, which is what happened when TDS levels spiked in Dunkard Creek this month. West Virginia’s DEP is investigating whether TDS-laden wastewater from a coal mine near the creek could be to blame. It is also investigating reports that wastewater from natural gas wells may have been illegally dumped into the stream.<br /><br />Gas drilling companies currently dispose of their wastewater in Pennsylvania’s municipal sewage plants, which then discharge it into rivers and streams. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/monongahela/10.24.08PADEPPressReleaseonTDSTests.pdf" jquery1254687490872="25">warns against</a> this form of treatment, because the plants aren’t equipped to remove TDS or any of the chemicals the water may contain. Of even more concern, TDS can disrupt the plants’ treatment of ordinary sewage, including human waste.<br /><br /><strong>A lack of capacity</strong><br /><br />When U.S. Steel and Allegheny Energy complained about the Monongahela’s water in 2008, the DEP <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/monongahela/Mon_River_Project.pdf" jquery1254687490872="26">found</a> almost twice as much TDS as the <a href="http://www.depweb.state.pa.us/news/cwp/view.asp?a=1278&q=542356" jquery1254687490872="27">agency considers safe</a>. DEP officials blamed some of the problem on the river’s low flow last summer and on abandoned mines that have leaked TDS into the river for decades. What apparently tipped the balance, however, was the drilling wastewater that nine sewage plants were discharging into the river.<br /><br />Steve Rhodes, president of the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Association, an industry trade group, argues that most of the TDS came from abandoned mines, not from drilling wastewater. A <a href="http://www.pamarcellus.com/Mon%20River%20High%20TDS%20Study%20Report%20%28Final%29.pdf" jquery1254687490872="28">study</a> prepared for a different trade group came to the same conclusion.<br /><br />Rhodes also says Pennsylvania’s waterways "are not anywhere near" their capacity to handle TDS and that the DEP’s estimate of how much wastewater the industry produces is "completely exaggerated."<br /><br />DEP chief John Hanger is confident his agency can control the wastewater problem. In April drilling companies began temporarily trucking their wastewater to other states or to sewage treatment plants in other parts of Pennsylvania: the idea is to dilute it by spreading it among more rivers. Hanger said a more permanent solution will begin on Jan. 1, 2011, when he has promised that <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/monongahela/high_tds_wastewater_strategy_041109.pdf" jquery1254687490872="29">new regulations</a> will be in place requiring that the wastewater be treated by plants capable of removing TDS.<br /><br />But an examination of public records, visits to sewage treatment plants, and extensive interviews with state officials by ProPublica reveal flaws in the DEP’s plans.<br /><br />Currently, no plant in Pennsylvania has the technology to remove TDS, and it’s unlikely that new plants capable of doing so can be built by 2011. The company whose bid is furthest along in the permitting process says its plant won’t be ready until at least 2013. And at its peak that plant would be able to treat only <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/monongahela/TerraAqua%20Draft%20Permit%20-%20FACT%20SHEETS.pdf" jquery1254687490872="30">400,000 gallons of wastewater a day</a>. The DEP would need 50 plants that size to process all the wastewater expected by 2011.<br /><br />In the meantime, the DEP is allowing municipal sewage plants to continue taking drilling wastewater, even though none of them can remove TDS. "That’s not what these municipal plants are designed to handle – the DEP is inviting legal problems as well as environmental problems," said Bruce Baizel, a senior attorney for the Oil and Gas Accountability Project, a Colorado-based nonprofit that focuses on the environmental impact of natural gas drilling.<br /><br />As the DEP’s responsibilities continue to grow, its operating budget could be slashed: The state legislature’s latest draft of Pennsylvania’s 2010 budget calls for a 25 percent cut in DEP funding.<br /><br /><strong>Caught off guard</strong><br /><br />Hanger says Pennsylvania’s extensive experience with oil drilling – the first oil well in the country was drilled here in 1859—has prepared it to quickly deal with gas drilling problems.<br /><br />But ProPublica found that the DEP was caught off guard by the amount of wastewater the industry would produce when drilling began in the Marcellus Shale, a deeply buried layer of rock that some analysts say holds enough gas to meet the nation’s natural gas needs for <a href="http://www.pamarcellus.com/news.php" jquery1254687490872="31">more than 20 years</a>.<br /><br />When energy prices spiked in 2008, drillers flocked to Pennsylvania, bringing sorely needed revenue and jobs. A recent Pennsylvania State University <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/monongahela/EconomicImpactsMarcellus.pdf" jquery1254687490872="32">study</a> touted the benefits drilling brought last year: 29,000 jobs and $240 million in state and local taxes.<br /><br />Even the industry’s wastewater promised profits.<br /><br />"Cha-ching!" is how Francis Geletko, financial director for the sewage plant in Clairton, described his first thought when he learned that drillers would pay five cents a gallon to get their wastewater processed at his plant. The 1960s-era facility is in such desperate need of modernization that workers still use shovels to remove solid waste from its traps and filters.<br /><br />Many of the state’s plants are similarly outdated: A recent <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/monongahela/DEP%20Report%20on%20PA%20Water%20System%20Failures.pdf" jquery1254687490872="33">report</a> commissioned by Gov. Ed Rendell concluded that Pennsylvania needs to spend $100 billion over the next 20 years to maintain its aging sewage plants and pipelines.<br /><br />Plant operators say the DEP didn’t initially offer them much guidance about processing the water, a complaint the DEP doesn’t dispute.<br /><br />Ed Golanka, who manages a sewage plant in Charleroi, said that when he checked with the DEP nobody told him that state and federal laws required his plant to get an amendment to its permit before accepting industrial wastewater. The amendment would require expensive modifications that Charleroi couldn’t afford, he said.<br /><br />"At the time it was a new subject for all of us," Golanka said. "There was a limited amount of conversation [with the DEP] until the issue with TDS last summer."<br /><br />Aunkst, the DEP’s director of water standards, said he didn’t know the plants along the Monongahela were accepting the water until the spring of 2008, when people complained about long lines of trucks idling at sewage treatment plants. But the agency was so short-staffed that it didn’t respond to the complaints immediately. Aunkst said many DEP regulators had left for more lucrative jobs with drilling companies.<br /><br />"As the industry was ramping up, we were ramping down," he said. "In order for us to really catch these people we have to almost have an inspector coincidentally there on the day that these trucks pull up, because we have so many facilities and so few staff."<br /><br />The DEP is supposed to inspect the plants once a year, but ProPublica found that most inspections are triggered by pollution violations or equipment failures.<br /><br />A review of <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/monongahela/pasewageinspections.pdf" jquery1254687490872="34">inspection records</a> at the DEP’s Pittsburgh office showed that only three of the nine plants along the Monongahela were inspected in the year before Allegheny Energy and U.S. Steel complained. One plant hadn’t been inspected in five years. DEP officials warned that those records may not have been complete, because inspection reports aren’t filed electronically and pages from the files may have been sitting on an employee’s desk during the two days when ProPublica was there in March.<br /><br />Inspections occur even less frequently at sites where wells are drilled. According to minutes taken at an October 2008 meeting of DEP officials, the agency has so few inspectors that they visit gas wells only once every 10 years.<br /><br />After Aunkst heard about the trucks, he wrote a <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/monongahela/POTWMailingLtrEnclosures.pdf" jquery1254687490872="35">letter</a> to all the state’s sewage plants, reminding them that they couldn’t take the wastewater without a special permit.<br /><br />But before he sent it, TDS levels in the Monongahela skyrocketed, causing U.S. Steel and Allegheny Energy to complain. The chain of events made Aunkst remember two other peculiar incidents: Two creeks had been sucked dry, and DEP inspectors suspected that drilling companies had withdrawn the water to fracture nearby wells.<br /><br />"We were trying to scramble, to put it bluntly, to get our act together to figure out how we were going to address these withdrawals as well as the disposal issues," Aunkst said.<br /><br />The DEP did two things to quickly lower the Monongahela’s TDS level. It <a href="http://www.statejournal.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=50459" jquery1254687490872="36">unlocked</a> dams upriver to flush out some of the TDS. And it <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/monongahela/Signed%20Charleroi%20STP%20Order.pdf" jquery1254687490872="37">ordered</a> nearby sewage treatment plants to reduce the amount of drilling wastewater they accepted to just 1 percent of the total amount of water that flowed through their plants each day.<br /><br />The cut shocked the industry. Trucking water to distant sites is far more expensive than treating it locally, and some drillers threatened to take their rigs to other states if they couldn’t dispose of their water in Pennsylvania.<br /><br />"Basically, it shuts us down," Lou D’Amico, executive director of the Independent Oil and Gas Association of Pennsylvania, told a <a href="http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/business/s_598785.html" jquery1254687490872="38">local newspaper</a>. "We can’t generate fluids we can’t dispose of."<br /><br />The DEP issued a <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/monongahela/10.22.08PADEPPressReleaseonTDSInvestigation.pdf" jquery1254687490872="39">news release</a> assuring the public that the TDS was "not considered a major human health risk… But under the circumstances, if consumers have concerns, DEP recommends consumers use bottled water for drinking and preparing food until the exceedance is eliminated."<br /><br />Some sewage plant operators were so alarmed that they stopped taking any wastewater at all.<br />But by January, the uproar had subsided. TDS levels in the Monongahela were <a href="http://www.ahs2.dep.state.pa.us/newsreleases/default.asp?ID=5404&varQueryType=Detail" jquery1254687490872="40">back to normal</a> and plant operators began accepting the wastewater again, although in smaller quantities.<br /><br />"We didn’t want to be the ones to stop the economy from growing in this area, and we felt that we were helping the country become energy independent," said Joe Rost, chief engineer at a sewage plant in McKeesport, 14 miles south of Pittsburgh.<br /><br /><strong>Setting goals</strong><br /><br />Federal guidelines specifically recommend against sending drilling wastewater to ordinary sewage plants, as Pennsylvania is doing now, because it might damage the plants and taint drinking water supplies. But the EPA approved Pennsylvania’s plan, because the DEP promised to have more aggressive regulations in place by 2011.<br /><br />"Every time you set an aggressive goal generally you have a transition period to get there," said Jon Capacasa, the EPA’s top mid-Atlantic water pollution enforcer.<br /><br />To keep the water safe until then, the DEP has promised to add more TDS monitors along the Monongahela, although they haven’t been installed yet. And before the DEP allows a sewage plant to accept drilling wastewater, the agency will assess the current TDS level in the stream where the water will be discharged, to make sure it can handle the additional load.<br /><br />The DEP also has promised to tighten TDS discharge standards by 2011, so that all drilling wastewater will be treated in plants capable of removing TDS. The agency has streamlined the permitting process for companies that want to build the new plants. But when ProPublica interviewed spokesmen for eight of the 17 plants that have been proposed, all of them said it will be impossible to begin operating by the 2011 deadline.<br /><br />A spokesman for Larson Design Group, whose <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/monongahela/TerraAqua%20Draft%20Permit%20-%20FACT%20SHEETS.pdf" jquery1254687490872="41">application</a> is furthest along in the process, expects that after it gets its permit it will need at least 40 months to build the plant and begin operating.<br /><br /><strong>Temporary lull</strong><br /><br />Drilling has slowed in Pennsylvania this year, because natural gas prices have dipped to about a third of what they were at the peak of the boom last summer. But the lull will almost certainly be temporary. The DEP expects to issue permits for approximately 700 wells in the Marcellus Shale in 2009, up from 450 in 2008.<br /><br />"Companies are willing to get these permits now because they know that competition is going to heat up," said Raoul LeBlanc, a senior financial consultant at PFC Energy, which provides financial and political advice to energy companies and governments. "When prices rise they will want to be the first to drill more wells."<br /><br />Congress is preparing for the expansion, too. A group of Democratic legislators have <a href="http://www.propublica.org/feature/frac-act-congress-introduces-bills-to-control-drilling-609" jquery1254687490872="42">introduced a bill</a> that would allow the federal government to regulate the hydraulic fracturing drilling process under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The bill prompted an immediate backlash from the oil and gas industry, which says state agencies like the DEP are doing a good job of regulating drilling.<br /><br />Even if the bill is passed, however, it won’t directly address Pennsylvania’s most pressing drilling-related problem: protecting the state’s water supply against the coming onslaught of wastewater.<br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.<br /></span></em><br /><strong>Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:</strong><br /><br /><script language="javascript" src="http://thenewsroom.com/mash/swf/voxant_player.js?a=f31821&m=353751&w=300&h=700"></script><br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-35098214188161646852009-10-03T13:31:00.002-04:002009-10-03T13:35:44.626-04:00Picower’s Madoff Take Now Estimated to Be $7.2 Billion<em><span style="font-size:85%;">by Jake Bernstein, ProPublica<br /></span></em><br />As a man who cherishes his privacy, the attention Jeffry Picower received on Thursday must have made him wince. On the same day that Forbes revealed he had earned a coveted spot in the magazine’s list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, a <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/docs/Picower_memo_defendent_PARTIAL_MOTION.pdf" jquery1254591062642="13">new court filing added $2.1 billion to the $5.1 billion</a> he is alleged to have earned from his participation in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.<br /><br />Forbes, which <a href="http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/54/rich-list-09_Jeffry-Picower_4HM6.html" jquery1254591062642="14">listed</a> Picower at No. 371, placed his net worth at $1 billion, although the magazine acknowledged that the former lawyer and accountant is "likely worth billions more." Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee charged with recovering cash from Madoff’s scheme, wants to claw back Picower’s Ponzi profits. Picard contends that Picower is one of a select group that benefited from the Ponzi scheme and knew or should have known that they were participating in a fraud.<br /><br />The trustee’s <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/docs/Picower_memo_defendent_PARTIAL_MOTION.pdf" jquery1254591062642="15">latest filing states</a> categorically what ProPublica first reported in June ― <a href="http://www.propublica.org/feature/madoff-client-jeffry-picower-netted-5-billion" jquery1254591062642="16">Picower made more money than anyone else from the Madoff Ponzi</a>. Picower was "the biggest beneficiary of Madoff’s scheme, having withdrawn either directly or through the entities he controlled more than $7.2 billion of other investors’ money," the filing said.<br /><br />If Forbes had included all of Picower’s alleged Ponzi profits in this year’s total, it would have had to bump him up to the 32nd richest American. Instead, the media-shy investor is making his first appearance on the Forbes list. One reason for this may be that calculating Picower’s net worth has proven extremely difficult. In 2002, Forbes itself put Picower’s wealth at a little more than $300 million. That same year, according to court filings, Picower’s quarterly withdrawals from Madoff alone totaled $895 million.<br /><br />The trustee’s latest judicial move is a response to a July 31 filing by Picower which urged the court to dismiss the Trustee’s complaint. (See, our "<a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/picower-charges-of-complicity-with-madoff-baseless-731" jquery1254591062642="17">Picower: Charges of Complicity with Madoff 'Baseless</a>."") In that filing, Picower argued that he himself was a victim of Madoff’s crime. He asserted that it would have been illogical for Madoff to have "compensated" Picower with such exorbitant sums because that would have undermined the scheme. Picower also noted that he still had half a billion dollars invested with Madoff when the now-convicted fraudster first confessed.<br /><br />Although the trustee’s brief is heavy on legal citations, it nonetheless marshals plenty of outrage at Picower’s arguments. "Given that Picower withdrew more of other investors’ money than any other customer" of Madoff, "Picower’s repeated references to himself as a 'victim' ring hollow," the brief states. "Picower’s premise that making billions of dollars from a Ponzi scheme is a badge of innocence is dubious at best."<br /><br />The trustee notes that Picower’s <a href="http://www.propublica.org/projects/picower/chart.html" jquery1254591062642="18">largest withdrawals were quarterly,</a> allowing Madoff to plan ahead for them. The trustee also adds a new detail to the story. As early as 2003, Madoff was having trouble paying Picower the full amount the investor was demanding every quarter.<br /><br />Madoff’s "failure to pay Picower sums that purportedly were in his accounts or otherwise available to him is further evidence that Picower knew or should have known of Madoff’s fraud," states the brief. "This evidence becomes more compelling given Picower’s apparent lack of complaint about his inability to access billions of dollars reported" on Madoff's account statements.<br /><br />Picard summarizes his objection to the motion to dismiss with a flourish: "Picower’s motion is a concoction of irrelevant counter-facts, arguments that ignore both the allegations in the Complaint and the relevant legal standards, and factual challenges that are not properly before the Court on a motion to dismiss."<br /><br />Not surprisingly, a statement from Picower's lawyer William Zabel takes issue with Picard’s latest brief: "Trustee continues to make false and outrageous claims about Mr. Picower based on a misreading of the purported 'facts.' When the true facts are known, the Court will see that Mr.<br />Picower was deceived by Bernard L. Madoff like the SEC and thousands of other investors, as many as half of whom took out more money than they put in."<br /><br />In the statement, Zabel also leaves open the possibility that a settlement can be reached.<br /><br />"The Picowers in good faith have initiated discussions with the Trustee to reach a settlement in order to avoid years of extensive litigation," Zabel said.<br /><br />A hearing on the motion to dismiss before Judge Burton R. Lifland of U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York has been scheduled for Oct. 27.<br /><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;"><a href="http://www.propublica.org/">ProPublica</a> is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.</span></em><br /><br /><strong>Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:</strong><br /><br /><script language="javascript" src="http://thenewsroom.com/mash/swf/voxant_player.js?a=f31821&m=353751&w=300&h=700"></script><br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-38033939635178213852009-09-30T05:11:00.003-04:002009-09-30T10:24:58.554-04:00Slow PC? Try This ScanMy laptop runs <em>very</em> slowly. I've tried all manner of different scans and diagnostics, on the hard disk and other components -- with very little improvement.<br /><br />I've been kind of at a loss, and have really just learned to live with it -- until now.<br /><br />I've now learned about a <a href="http://www.regwork.com/">free registry cleaner</a> that starts with a quick scan to see if the problem could be that I need a <a href="http://www.regwork.com/">clean registry</a> on my computer. I know what you're asking yourself now, "What is my registry?"<br /><br />Most of us have never heard of it, but the <a href="http://www.regwork.com/">windows registry</a> is part of the operating system that sits deep in Windows and basically is a database of all of the options and settings on your computer. Apparently, like your hard disk and other components, your registry needs occasion tidying up.<br /><br />Want to know more? Click on these links here to learn more and start your scan.<br /><br />This was a sponsored post.<br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-23879212017655873232009-09-25T05:06:00.003-04:002009-09-30T10:10:13.200-04:00Pennsylvania Orders Cabot Oil and Gas to Stop Fracturing in Troubled County<em><span style="font-size:85%;">by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica<br /></span></em><br />After <a href="http://www.propublica.org/feature/frack-fluid-spill-in-dimock-contaminates-stream-killing-fish-921" jquery1254319554640="14">three chemical spills</a> in the past nine days, and following <a href="http://www.propublica.org/feature/water-problems-from-drilling-are-more-frequent-than-officials-said-731" jquery1254319554640="15">a history of environmental problems over the last year</a>, Pennsylvania officials have ordered Cabot Oil and Gas, one of the most active natural gas companies in the state, to stop its hydraulic fracturing operations in Susquehanna County pending an intensive review.<br /><br />"The department took this action because of our <a href="http://www.propublica.org/feature/dep-issues-citation-to-pennsylvania-driller-as-a-third-spill-occurs-923" jquery1254319554640="16">concern about Cabot's current fracking process</a> and to ensure that the environment in Susquehanna County is properly protected," DEP north central regional Director Robert Yowell said in a news release distributed this morning.<br /><br />The stop-work order, which was accompanied by new citations issued for the third spill, will interrupt development of seven new wells that Cabot is currently drilling, and intending to fracture, in Susquehanna County. The citations were similar to those levied earlier in the week, including a failure to contain fracturing fluids.<br /><br />The state's order gives Cabot two weeks to re-submit an "accurate" Pollution Prevention and Contingency Plan and Control and Disposal Plan for its well pad sites in the county. It gives the company three weeks to complete an engineering study of the equipment and practices used for hydraulic fracturing.<br /><br />“There were unique elements of the location that experienced the three incidents and it was not necessary to force a shutdown of all fracturing activities,” said Cabot spokesman Ken Komoroski, explaining that fluids were piped farther than usual at the well site in question. “However, Cabot understands the department has an important job to do.”<br /><br />In interviews earlier this week, Komoroski underscored that the spills had happened under the watch of two of its contractors: Halliburton, one of the world’s largest drilling service companies, and Baker Tanks, a tank transport company.<br /><br />In recognition of those circumstances, Pennsylvania will require Cabot to post its new pollution prevention plan at each well site and make it available to all its contractors, something that is not normally required in the state.<br /><br />You can read the <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/natural_gas/dep_cabot_order_090925.pdf" jquery1254319554640="17">full press release here</a> (PDF).<br /><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.</span></em><br /><br /><strong>Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:</strong><br /><br /><br /><script language="javascript" src="http://thenewsroom.com/mash/swf/voxant_player.js?a=f31821&m=353751&w=300&h=700"></script><br /><br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-20681952339669175682009-09-21T21:28:00.004-04:002009-09-29T10:25:26.576-04:00As The Cold Sets In, Keep Nature IndoorsThis time of year, the air becomes cooler, the leaves turn and nature begins a long wintry slumber.<br /><br />But if you're like me, you'll miss all the green and color of abundant plant life of summer. <a href="http://www.planterixchange.com/">Planters</a> are a perfect solution to bring all that flora inside to appreciate even as the temperate dips outside.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.planterixchange.com/">Indoor Planters</a> and and <a href="http://www.planterixchange.com/">Decorative Planters</a> not only keep your plants alive, but you can find a type of <a href="http://www.planterixchange.com/">planter</a> that also add to your current decor -- and even bring their own flair to your home.<br /><br />Click on these links to browse planters available online, that can be delivered right to your home for your planting. That saves wear and tear on your back.<br /><br />This was a sponsored post.<br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-85403836036403221972009-09-21T21:22:00.004-04:002009-09-21T21:27:55.318-04:00Hummer Owners Claim Moral High Ground To Excuse OverconsumptionHummer drivers believe they are defending America's frontier lifestyle against anti-American critics, according to a new study in the <em>Journal of Consumer Research</em>.<br /><br />Authors Marius K. Luedicke (University of Innsbruck, Austria), Craig J. Thompson (University of Wisconsin–Madison), and Markus Giesler (York University, Toronto) researched attitudes toward owning and driving Hummers, which have become symbols to many of American greed and wastefulness.<br /><br />The researchers first investigated anti-consumption sentiments expressed by people who oppose chains like Starbucks and believe they are making a moral choice by shunning consumerism. To these critics, Hummers represent the ills of contemporary society. As one extreme example, on <a href="http://www.fuh2.com/">www.fuh2.com</a>, people have posted thousands of photographs of middle fingers directed at Hummer vehicles.<br /><br />They investigated various Internet expressions of anti-Hummer sentiment, but they were equally interested in the ways Hummer owners framed themselves as "moral protagonists" in the ongoing debate over consumer values. They conducted in-depth interviews with twenty U.S.-born and raised Hummer owners and found among these consumers an equally strong current of moralism.<br /><br />"As we studied American Hummer owners and their ideological beliefs, we found that they consider Hummer driving a highly moral consumption choice," write the authors. "For Hummer owners it is possible to claim the moral high ground."<br /><br />The authors explain that Hummer owners employ the ideology of American foundational myths, such as the "rugged individual," and the "boundless frontier" to construct themselves as moral protagonists. They often believe they represent a bastion again anti-American discourses evoked by their critics.<br /><br />"Our analysis of the underlying American identity discourses revealed that being under siege by (moral) critics is an historically established feature of being an American," write the authors. "The moralistic critique of their consumption choices readily inspired Hummer owners to adopt the role of the moral protagonist who defends American national ideals."<br /><br /><strong>Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:</strong><br /><br /><br /><script language="javascript" src="http://thenewsroom.com/mash/swf/voxant_player.js?a=f31821&m=353751&w=300&h=700"></script><br /><br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-11447831969217879512009-09-20T10:35:00.002-04:002009-09-20T10:46:20.297-04:00An Exceptional Honeymoon In A Difficult EconomyAre you struggling to put together an entire wedding experience for you and your loved one during this trying economic time?<br /><br />Certainly weddings -- and honeymoons -- can become quite expensive, and this ongoing deep recession may not be the best time to go out and splurge. Maybe your job, or your mate's, may not be entirely secure, or you just want to save for all the things that will come in your new life together after the wedding and honeymoon are only a pleasant memory.<br /><br />Regardless, there are services and resorts that cater to trying to save you money, such as when looking into <a href="http://www.karismahotels.com/mainsite/honeymoon.html">cancun honeymoons</a>.<br /><br />Karisma Resorts (available through this link) specializes not only in the "inclusive" resort concept you may be familiar with, but what it calls "gourmet inclusive," which is to be a step above the average inclusive resort.<br /><br />In all, Karisma offers stays at five resorts. Visit their website to plan your honeymoon at the one that suits you and your new spouse.<br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-47511003542326617302009-09-20T10:31:00.003-04:002009-09-20T10:34:48.131-04:00Using Magnetism To Turn Drugs On, OffMany medical conditions, such as chronic pain, cancer and diabetes, require medications that cannot be taken orally, but must be dosed intermittently, on an as-needed basis, over a long period of time. A few delivery techniques have been developed, using an implanted heat source, an implanted electronic chip or other stimuli as an "on-off" switch to release the drugs into the body. But thus far, none of these methods can reliably do all that's needed: repeatedly turn dosing on and off, deliver consistent doses and adjust doses according to the patient's need.<br /><br />Researchers led by Daniel Kohane, MD, of Children's Hospital Boston, funded by the National Institutes of Health, have devised a solution that combines magnetism with nanotechnology.<br /><br />The team created a small implantable device, less than one-half inch in diameter, that encapsulates the drug in a specially engineered membrane, embedded with nanoparticles (approximately 1/100,000 the width of a human hair) composed of magnetite, a mineral with natural magnetic properties. When a magnetic field is switched on outside the body, near the device, the nanoparticles heat up, causing the gels in the membrane to warm and temporarily collapse. This opens up pores that allow the drug to pass through and into the body. When the magnetic force is turned off, the membranes cool and the gels re-expand, closing the pores back up and halting drug delivery. No implanted electronics are required.<br /><br />The device, which Kohane's team is continuing to develop for clinical use, is described in the journal <em>Nano Letters</em>.<br /><br />"A device of this kind would allow patients or their physicians to determine exactly when drugs are delivered, and in what quantities," says Kohane, who directs the Laboratory for Biomaterials and Drug Delivery in the Department of Anesthesiology at Children's.<br /><br />In animal experiments, the membranes remained functional over multiple cycles. The size of the dose was controllable by the duration of the "on" pulse, and the rate of release remained steady, even 45 days after implantation.<br /><br />Testing indicated that drug delivery could be turned on with only a 1 to 2 minute time lag before drug release, and turned off with a 5 to 10 minute time lag. The membranes remained mechanically stable under tensile and compression testing, indicating their durability, showed no toxicity to cells, and were not rejected by the animals' immune systems. They are activated by temperatures higher than normal body temperatures, so would not be affected by the heat of a patient's fever or inflammation.<br /><br />"This novel approach to drug delivery using engineered 'smart' nanoparticles appears to overcome a number of limitations facing current methods of delivering medicines," says Alison Cole, who oversees anesthesia grants at the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). "While some distance away from use in humans, this technology has the potential to provide precise, repeated, long-term, on-demand delivery of drugs for a number of medical applications, including the management of pain."<br /><br /><strong>Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:</strong><br /><br /><script language="javascript" src="http://thenewsroom.com/mash/swf/voxant_player.js?a=f31821&m=353751&w=300&h=700"></script><br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-38266412587273729622009-09-20T10:12:00.004-04:002009-09-20T10:30:29.163-04:00Professor Discovers New Way To Calculate Body's 'Maximum Weight Limit'Most of us are familiar with the term, Body Mass Index, or BMI, as an index to determine healthy body weight. But, calculating BMI involves a complex formula: weight in pounds is multiplied by 703, and then divided by height in inches squared. Charts or online calculators are then used to show a "healthy weight range" given an individual's height that corresponds to the "healthy range BMI." For example, a BMI chart indicates that a healthy range BMI of 19 to 24 translates to a "healthy weight range" of 120 to 150 pounds for a 5-foot, 6-inch individual.<br /><br />If this sounds way too complicated to you, you're not alone. George Fernandez, a professor of applied statistics and director of the Center for Research Design and Analysis at the University of Nevada, Reno, set out to give people a simpler way of calculating their healthy weight, and one that wouldn't require charts or online calculators. In addition, he doesn't think the "range" approach sticks in individuals' minds.<br /><br />"We need a "Maximum Weight Limit, or MWL," he says, "one number that we know we can't go over, just like a speed limit."<br /><br />So, using SAS software and statistical procedures, he discovered a much simpler way of calculating a Maximum Weight Limit, which closely corresponds to weight recommendations listed on BMI charts. But, you don't need to calculate or know your BMI, nor do you need a chart or online calculator to figure out your Maximum Weight Limit.<br /><br />"It's a very simple calculation that most of us can do in our heads," he says.<br /><br />For men and women, there is a baseline height and weight. For men, the baseline is 5-feet, 9-inches tall and a Maximum Weight Limit of 175 pounds, meaning that a 5-foot, 9-inch tall man should weigh no more than 175 pounds. For women, the baseline is 5-feet tall and a Maximum Weight Limit of 125 pounds.<br /><br />"These are nice round numbers that people can easily remember: 5-feet, 9-inches tall, 175 pounds for man; and 5-feet tall, 125 pounds for a woman," says Fernandez.<br /><br />From that starting point, you simply calculate how much taller or shorter you are, in inches. Then, if you are man, you add or subtract 5 pounds for every inch you are taller or shorter than 5 feet, 9 inches. So, if you are 5-feet, 11-inches tall, you are 2 inches taller than the baseline of 5 feet, 9 inches. You add 5 pounds for each of those 2 inches, 10 pounds, to the baseline Maximum Weight Limit of 175. So, your Maximum Weight Limit is 185 (175 pounds plus 10 pounds). Women add or subtract 4.5 pounds for each inch they differ from the baseline height of 5-feet tall.<br /><br />These Maximum Weight Limits correspond very closely to BMIs of 25.5 for men and 24.5 for women. A BMI of 18.5 to 25 BMI is diagnosed as the "healthy range." Fernandez used a slightly lower BMI base for women and a slightly higher one for men because, on average, women have less muscle mass than men. Although some have debated using BMI as a means for calculating healthy weight because it does not take into account factors such as muscle mass, for example, it has been shown to work as a basis for calculating a healthy weight for more than 90 percent of the population and is the most universally used index in weight management programs.<br /><br />"Now people can calculate their own Maximum Weight Limit, based on the BMI index, but without any calculators or charts," Fernandez says. "And, all they have to remember is that one number, 185 pounds for example, which is easier for most people than retaining a weight range, such as 155 to 185 pounds."<br /><br />Fernandez also says that this simple formula could be very useful in medically underserved areas of the world, and for individuals without access to technology and charts.<br /><br /><strong>Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:</strong><br /><br /><br /><script language="javascript" src="http://thenewsroom.com/mash/swf/voxant_player.js?a=f31821&m=353751&w=300&h=700"></script><br /><br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-73465078164958002642009-09-19T08:46:00.003-04:002009-09-19T09:01:01.221-04:00Sports Equipment For Back To SchoolAutumn means back to school, and the start of a whole new afterschool sports season for the kids.<br /><br />That means we parents probably need to purchase new <a href="http://www.shopwiki.com/wiki/Sports+for+Kids">sporting equipment for kids</a>, just like all the other back-to-school supplies we've been buying.<br /><br />ShopWiki, though, could make it easier on you. It advertises itself as similar to Google for online shopping, so that it searches all the best deals on the Internet, not just the stores that pay for placement on the site. That means it's a source for a variety of sports gear, which includes what ShopWiki terms <a href="http://www.shopwiki.com/wiki/Individual+Sports">individual sports</a> which covers such diverse activities as dance and <a href="http://www.shopwiki.com/wiki/Inline+Skates">inline skating</a>.<br /><br />The other thing I find really useful about ShopWiki is not only does it offer products, but it provides information on the different categories through its online buying guide.<br /><br />And, of course, buying over the Web provides the convenience of anytime shopping, and having all of that gear delivered straight to your door.<br /><br />This was a sponsored post.<br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-69185942958869475542009-09-19T06:07:00.002-04:002009-09-19T06:07:00.425-04:002009: A Year to Look at Death<em><span style="font-size:85%;">By Scott Nance<br /></span></em><br />Maybe it's just me, but it seems like a lot more people are dying these days. Or, at least, that a lot more famous people are dying.<br /><br />The news has become an endless parade of celebrity mortality, to the point where one death competes with another, a new demise overshadowing the last one. Ed McMahon passes away, then Farrah Fawcett dies days later (not to mention Michael Jackson's shocking demise just hours later on the same day).<br /><br />And then celebrity pitchman Billy Mays dies just days after that.<br /><br />There's been no let-up since, either, with Walter Cronkite, Sen. Ted Kennedy, and actor Patrick Swayze just a few of the other names recently boarding the express train away from this mortal coil.<br /><br />Indeed, Swayze's end this week came just before news that Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary had also passed on.<br /><br />It's to the point some days that newspaper and website editors find they're having multiple big-name obituaries jockeying for lead-story position.<br /><br />They say these things come in threes, but this year that rule seems to have been expanded exponentially. It's enough to leave you wondering if Heaven will have to open a new wing.<br /><br />Of course, all the dead have their own circumstances that brought them to their fate. Some, like Fawcett and Swayze, succumbed to illness. Others, like Jackson and Mays, died suddenly and unexpectedly. Still others, like Cronkite, who were major historical figures of the mid 20th century, simply passed on as that era becomes ever more distant from here in the 21st.<br /><br />While there is nothing mystical in the surprising regularity with which we are brought face-to-face with death these days, there is a real opportunity for those of us left behind.<br /><br />We may never be famous, our deaths may or may not even end up in a newspaper, but it is certain that sooner or later, each of us will die.<br /><br />While we all know that on an intellectual level, in our culture we spend our lives not just ignoring that fact but actually keeping it hidden and distant. We all want to die peacefully when we are old, but we usually give it no more thought than that. But the sooner we face it as reality – and make peace with it – the better our lives will be.<br /><br />But why, as a society, are we so afraid of death? Why, as author Eckhart Tolle has said, is death so hidden in our culture that it is illegal for most people to even see a dead body (outside a funeral home)?<br /><br />To be sure, I'm not saying anyone should want to cut their lives short, or that we should rush our own deaths in any way. To the contrary, you may find that coming to true terms with your own mortality may actually make the days you spend on this earth that much sweeter.<br /><br />I'm also not attempting to proselytize for any particular faith or form of spirituality – or even that you necessarily become a religious person if you are not. What I am saying is that we should all drop the stories of personal procrastination we all tell ourselves to avoid even thinking about our own demises.<br /><br />Death may not come for 50 years – or it may come tomorrow (Michael Jackson and Billy Mays certainly were not expecting theirs either.) You just don't know.<br /><br />Whenever it should come for you, come to a point within yourself where you are not terrified of it, or bitter about it. And remember that when your time comes – whenever that may be – you aren't the only one to die. Think of all those who went before you just this year.<br /><br /><strong>Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:</strong><br /><br /><script language="javascript" src="http://thenewsroom.com/mash/swf/voxant_player.js?a=f31821&m=353751&w=300&h=700"></script><br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-49258969554756987952009-09-18T07:53:00.002-04:002009-09-18T17:11:51.282-04:00Website For Gold InvestorsThe down economy has revived a lot of interest in those who want to <a href="http://www.goldcoinsgain.com/">purchase gold</a> as an investment. Of course, there are many places online now for investors where they can purchase <a href="http://www.goldcoinsgain.com/">gold coins</a> and purchase <a href="http://www.goldcoinsgain.com/">gold bullion</a>.<br /><br />What makes the website available through the links presented here interesting is that it is set up kind of as a "gold investment" portal site, of sorts.<br /><br />For instance, you can check the status of the price of gold, as well silver and other precious metals. Also, you can see links at a glance for where gold has been in the news recently.<br /><br />And, of course, the site offers investors the opportunity to <a href="http://www.goldcoinsgain.com/">purchase gold coin</a> and <a href="http://www.goldcoinsgain.com/">purchase bullion</a>.<br /><br />Taken all together, the site works to provide information and service -- kind of a one stop site for the gold investor.<br /><br />This was a sponsored post.<br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-28542575777892222152009-09-18T05:13:00.001-04:002009-09-18T16:17:24.429-04:00President Obama Honors IBM Supercomputer With National Medal of Technology and InnovationPresident Obama recognized IBM and its Blue Gene family of supercomputers with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the country's most prestigious award given to leading innovators for technological achievement.<br /><br />Obama will personally bestow the award at a special White House ceremony Oct. 7. IBM, which earned the National Medal of Technology and Innovation on eight other occasions, is the only company recognized with the award this year, the company says.<br /><br />Blue Gene's speed and expandability have enabled business and science to address a wide range of complex problems and make more informed decisions -- not just in the life sciences, but also in astronomy, climate, simulations, modeling and many other areas, IBM says. Blue Gene systems have helped map the human genome, investigated medical therapies, safeguarded nuclear arsenals, simulated radioactive decay, replicated brain power, flown airplanes, pinpointed tumors, predicted climate trends, and identified fossil fuels -- all without the time and money that would have been required to physically complete these tasks, the company adds.<br /><br />The system also reflects breakthroughs in energy efficiency. With the creation of Blue Gene, IBM dramatically shrank the physical size and energy needs of a computing system whose processing speed would have required a dedicated power plant capable of generating power to thousands of homes, IBM says.<br /><br />The influence of the Blue Gene supercomputer's energy-efficient design and computing model can be seen today across the Information Technology industry. Today, 18 of the top 20 most energy efficient supercomputers in the world are built on IBM high performance computing technology, according to the latest Supercomputing 'Green500 List' announced by <a href="http://www.green500.org/" target="_new">Green500.org</a> in July, the firm says.<br /><br /><strong>Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:</strong><br /><br /><script language="javascript" src="http://thenewsroom.com/mash/swf/voxant_player.js?a=f31821&m=353751&w=300&h=700"></script><br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36595060.post-69364867476890651402009-09-16T23:00:00.002-04:002009-09-20T12:07:52.110-04:00So Many Courses, So Little Time<a href="http://www.myrtlebeachgolf.net/">Myrtle Beach Golf</a> clearly is one of the top reasons to visit the resort town, with a large number of world-class courses to choose from.<br /><br />You could look into arrangements at each of the different courses, or you could take advantage of a unique website that helps pull together <a href="http://www.myrtlebeachgolf.net/">Myrtle Beach Golf Vacations</a> and <a href="http://www.myrtlebeachgolf.net/">Myrtle Beach Golf Packages</a>. (You even can read golf news.)<br /><br />The site lets you look over different Myrtle Beach courses (including maps), as well as accommodations. The site even helps you cap off your days on the links by presenting you ideas on nightlife, restaurants and other attractions.<br /><br />Whether you are planning to <a href="http://www.myrtlebeachgolf.net/">Golf Myrtle Beach</a> for the first time, or want some help to arrange a return trip, this website should save you time and help you get more out of your away time.<br /><br />Bookmark <em><a href="http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/">http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/</a></em> and drop back in sometime.Scott Nancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08137918088654268294noreply@blogger.com0