Exxon's Brooklyn Oil Spill Timeline

The September issue of Mother Jones magazine contains a a good article and great timeline of the spill.

EPA Releases Study of Exxon Spill in Brooklyn

On September 12, 2007, the EPA released a study of Exxon's Brooklyn oil spill. The report says the spill may be as large as 30 million gallons and also that the surrounding air contains high levels of methane vapors.

New York AG Sues ExxonMobil to Force Cleanup of Brooklyn oil spill

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced yesterday that he has filed suit against the ExxonMobil Corporation and ExxonMobil Refining and Supply Company to force the cleanup of a huge oil spill in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and to restore Newtown Creek. Clean up of the spill was one of the featured issues of my 2006 Green Party campaign for AG. The video Craig Seeman took of my June 24, 2006, press conference on the spill is on Google Video.

Bring the Troops Home Contingent at Wellsville Balloon Rally

I joined Greens and other peace activists marching Saturday, July 14, 2007, in the Wellsville Balloon Rally parade. Thanks to Gudrun Scott for helping to organize our efforts and taking our photo.

NY Green Fest

I am helping to organize NY Green Fest, which will take place Friday-Sunday, August 10-12, 2007, in Ithaca and Cayutaville. For more information, visit http://nygreenfest.blogspot.com

Fri. , Aug. 10, 6:30-9:00 pm at the Community School, 330 E. State St., Ithaca
Sat., Aug. 11, all day at Cayuta Sun, 2962 Swamp Rd., Cayutaville
Sun., Aug. 12, 10:00 am-4:00 pm at Bernie Milton Pavilion, Ithaca Commons, Ithaca

The festival is a benefit for the Green Party of New York and is open to all who are interested in sustainable living and sustainable politics.

NY Green Fest kicks off Friday evening, August 10, with a program on the politics of sustainability at the Community School auditorium, 330 E. State St., Ithaca from 6:30 to 9:00 pm. The speakers are Art Weaver from Renovus Energy in Ithaca who will speak on social change and its connection to renewable energy, Virginia Rasmussen, a founder of the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy from Alfred, who will speak on the politics of sustainability, and Dan Hill, the Cayuga Nation representative to the Haudenosaunee Environmental Task Force, who will speak on sustainability for the long term.

Saturday’s programs take place at Cayuta Sun, an off-the-grid permaculture homestead in Cayutaville, 15 miles southwest of Ithaca. Saturday starts with a bread baking workshop in the earth oven at Cayuta Sun lead by Lois Hilton from Tickletown Trust & Trade in Humphrey, New York. Lois will also participate in Saturday’s panel on building a local food network, along with Matthew Glenn from Muddy Fingers Farm in Hector, editor of Southern Tier Farm to You Local Food Directory and Gwen Quigley from Keuka Cookin’ in Bath.

Michael Burns and Steve Gabriel from the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute will lead an introduction to permaculture workshop. A discussion on grass roots organizing for sustainability will be lead by Gay Nicholson who has led Sustainable Tompkins since 2003, Mike Sellars, the Mayor of Cobleskill and a founder of Sustainable Cobleskill, and Tony and Mary Lipnicki, the founders of a monthly discussion group on sustainability issues in Andover, NY. Two off-grid pioneers, Steve Nicholson from Ithaca and Tony Moretti from Hammondsport will offer advice on living off-the-grid.

Saturday afternoon Barry Miller from Hinsdale, New York will show how to build a small wind turbine. Barry is a mechanical engineer and has spent 20 years in the wind energy business. For nine years he operated a wind farm in Altamont Pass west of San Franciso. Barry recently taught a class at Olean BOCES on how to build your own small wind turbine. Three experienced cable access TV producers will discuss getting media access for alternative viewpoints, Bill Huston from Binghamton, Carl Lawrence from Brooklyn and Deborah Magone from Greece, NY.

Rafter Sass will speak Saturday evening on Liberation Ecology: Refusing to Choose between Social Justice and Sustainability. Rafter lives and works at the Germantown Community Farm, a collectively-run community food security project in the Hudson River Valley.

A Cob for Kids workshop will run throughout the day on Saturday. Lunch and dinner prepared from local foods will be served on Saturday. Sunrise yoga begins the day. Exhibitors on Saturday include renewable energy suppliers, booksellers, farmers with local produce, local craftspeople, grassroots organizations and non-profit groups.

On Sunday, August 12, Green Fest moves to the Ithaca Commons with a series of speakers and musicians at the Bernie Milton Pavilion in the center of the Commons. Peacesmiths from New York City will perform political songs. Lexie Hain from Motherplants will show how to make a green roof. Ilonka Wloch, the editor of Positive News in Ithaca, Craig Seeman from Third Planet Video in Brooklyn, and Cyril Mychalejko from Upside Down World in Vermont will discuss building new media outlets that address sustainability issues.

Howie Hawkins, SKCM Curry, Tony Gronowicz, and Jason Nabewaniec will discuss how third party electoral activism is essential in fostering social change and challenging the underpinnings of corporate power. Howie was the 2006 Green Party candidate for US Senate from New York and a current candidate for Syracuse Common Council. Tony Gronowicz, the 2005 Green Party candidate for Mayor of New York City, teaches at the City University of New York. His most recent book is Grand Illusion: American Democracy from its Roots to the Present. Jason Nabewaniec from Batavia is a Co-Chair of the Green Party US. Sedinam Kinamo Christin Moyowasifza-Curry from Los Angeles is a Green Party candidate for Vice President of the US.

Sunday’s program concludes with a discussion on campus organizing for sustainability led by Peter LaVenia from the Albany University Campus Greens, and Krista Carlson from the Alfred University Campus Greens.

$35 admission for Friday and Saturday, includes Saturday lunch and dinner, Sunday free. Camping available for an additional charge. Green Fest is a benefit for the Green Party of New York. No fees for those who help during the festival or in advance. For a detailed schedule, directions, registration forms and more information, visit nygreenfest.blogspot.com or call 607-569-2114

My Article in Spring Sierra Atlantic

Cuomo Sues Exxon to Clean Up Nation's Largest Oil Spill--After Brooklyn Endures 50 Years of Delay

Article by Rachel Treichler in Spring 2007 Sierra Atlantic

The waters contaminated by the largest oil spill in the US are not pristine beaches. The waters contaminated by this spill are mostly invisible because they are mostly underground, floating on the aquifer under the homes and businesses, schools and churches of Brooklyn. But the toxic effects of the spill on the health of the people who live and work above it, and the damage it has done to soils in large areas of Brooklyn and to the potability of the Brooklyn aquifer are far from invisible. The millions of gallons of oil floating on the Brooklyn aquifer also present a continuing threat to the New York harbor, should the geological barriers holding the oil on the aquifer be breached.

The people of Brooklyn have suffered more than 50 years of delay and obstruction in cleaning up the spill by Exxon Mobil. Its predecessor corporation, Standard Oil, owned the petroleum storage tanks near Newtown Creek in Greenpoint, Brooklyn that were breached by a gas explosion in 1950. The full size of the spill is not known. If proper studies are done, it may turn out the spill is even larger than the 17,000,000 to 40,000,000 gallons currently estimated and extends under a large area of Brooklyn.

Given the many years of delay, the announcement by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo in February this year that he has filed intent to sue letters against Exxon Mobil and four other companies to force them to clean up the spill and repair environmental damage is extremely welcome news. The lawsuits will seek scientific testing and investigations to determine the full scope of the contamination, increased recovery of underground oil, cleanup of contaminated groundwater and soil, restoration of Newtown Creek, damages for the injuries to the affected natural resources, and unspecified financial penalties. Intent to sue letters are required as a precursor to suit under the Federal Clean Water Act and the Federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The attorney general’s office has announced that when suit is brought, the State will also likely assert legal claims under the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA, also known as Superfund), the federal Oil Pollution Act, the State’s Navigation Law, and the State’s Environmental Conservation Law, and assert claims of public nuisance .

Conducting further studies may be valuable, but they should not be used as a tactic to delay implementing an all-out clean up of the spill. It was obvious to Exxon Mobil in 1950 when the explosion occurred that millions of gallons of its petroleum products had sunk onto the Brooklyn aquifer, but the company did not clean up or disclose the spill. If the spill had been cleaned up as soon as it occurred, the damage would have been far less extensive.

Even after the spill was discovered leaking into Newtown Creek in 1978 by the US Coast Guard, the company denied liability for years. So far, Exxon Mobil has cleaned up only what is easiest to do, siphoning oil from thick layers of free floating petroleum nearest the original site of the spill. The company’s profits from selling this oil on the market substantially exceed its clean-up expenditures.

It is outrageous for Exxon Mobil, the largest corporation in the world, with profits of $36 billion, to continue delaying an all-out clean up of the spill. Had the spill been cleaned up in a timely fashion, much of the damage caused by the petroleum over the last 57 years would have been avoided. Three generations of people in Brooklyn would not have had to live with toxic petroleum vapors seeping into their homes and businesses and damaging their health. The aquifer might have been restored and available to the city as a source of water. Until 1947 the Brooklyn municipal water system depended on ground water. Pumping stopped in 1947 because the depression in the water table caused by extensive pumping was causing sea water to flow into the aquifer. Once the aquifer replenished itself, as it did by 1978, pumping could have resumed if the petroleum contamination from the spill had not contaminated the water.

The dangerous health effects of benzene and other chemicals identified in the spill are well known. The all-out effort to clean-up the spill needs to begin now. If it does not, criminal charges should be brought. New York needs to show that large corporations are not above the law.

New York Moves Toward Suit Over a 50-Year-Old Oil Spill

The announcement in today's New York Times that newly elected New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has moved to sue Exxon Mobil and four other companies on February 8, 2007, to force them clean up millions of gallons of oil lying under the Greenpoint neighborhood in Brooklyn and to repair environmental damage inflicted on nearby Newtown Creek is very gratifying because I made clean up of the spill one of the featured issues of my campaign for AG. This development shows that our third party campaigns can have significant results, even if we don't win. Click here for the video of my June 24, 2006, press conference on the spill.

More pols join suit against ExxonMobil

Two articles today about New York City politicians getting involved at long last in the Exxon oil spill. Green Party campaigns do have effects!

New York Daily News, January 26, 2007, More pols join suit against ExxonMobil: Rep. Weiner also urges congressional hearings

New York Sun, January 26, 2007, Solons Attack Exxon Mobil Over 1950 Spill

Black Mayonnaise in Greenpoint

Today's Scienceline has a good article about the Exxon oil spill in Brooklyn.

http://scienceline.org/2007/01/24/liebach_env_greenpointe/

Black Mayonnaise

For nearly 30 years, New York State agencies have known about a 17 million gallon oil spill under the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. Now they’re finally starting to do something about it.

By Julie Leibach, posted January 24th, 2007.

The Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center slumbers on the southwest bank of Newtown Creek, a brick behemoth in a dusty concrete bed. The sun casts long shadows behind the building, where weeds clump around the weathered skeleton of a wooden boat.
Along the creek’s edge, two quiet figures navigate the cracked cement ledge, surveying the murky water below where several yards of fishing line cut through the surface. Any minute now…. and then it happens: an almost imperceptible tug on the line triggers a choreographed dance as the two figures painstakingly draw their prize—a blue crab—from the depths below.
Manuel Bodón has been crabbing along the banks of Newtown Creek for ten years; his friend, Edwin Rosa, for five. On this brisk October afternoon, they’ve already caught nearly a dozen. In a few hours, most will meet a boiled demise, when Bodón makes a seafood stew.

“I put all kinds of seasoning in there,” he says. “It’s nice and tasty.”

Never mind that his dinner was just taken from a waterway that once coursed with petroleum. While the surface appears cleaner than it’s been in the past, a mile up from Bodón and Rosa, oil continues to seep into the creek, though far less than just a few years ago. But it’s still a glaring sign of a much bigger problem.

For over 50 years, the Greenpoint section of northern Brooklyn has been sitting atop a staggering 17 million gallons of spilled oil—almost 50 percent more oil than was spilled in the 1989 wreck of the Exxon Valdez supertanker in Alaska—and almost nothing has been done to clean it up.

But now, the oily tide seems to be turning. Over the last few years, the spill—which likely originated from several tanks that leaked over the course of nearly a century—has been drawing closer scrutiny, particularly from environmental watch dog groups, law firms, and concerned citizens who all want the cleanup to begin in earnest. And just this past summer, the state Attorney General’s office agreed to investigate the spill. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced a thorough study of the site as well.

While uncertainties and mistrust remain, state agencies that once seemed only passively concerned—and sometimes, even protective of the oil companies responsible—are now striving for a more comprehensive clean-up of the oil that has been plaguing not just the creek, but also a middle class neighborhood whose best interests haven’t always seemed to be a priority.

“This is really a ‘tale of two cities.’ One is the community of Greenpoint…[the other is] the story of Newtown Creek, which is a story marked by the largest environmental disaster in the history of New York City, followed by a generation of cover up by the companies that did it, followed by nearly a generation of delay in taking responsibility for what needs to be done,” said Congressman Anthony Weiner, during an October press conference announcing the EPA study. “We’re finally at a point where we can take some action.”

A walk through Greenpoint reveals a town with a split personality. Blocks of row houses interlace commercial streets dotted with Dunkin’ Donuts, T-Mobiles, and ubiquitous Polish bakeries and pharmacies. And glaring at it all is the sooty face of industry: warehouses, factories, and the Newtown Creek Sewage Treatment Plant rising like an alien spaceship, its giant silver “digester eggs”—which break down sludge—shining in the sun.

Greenpoint has been an industrial center for over 140 years. Petroleum refining began in about 1866, and by 1892 most of those refineries—there were more than 50 on the banks of Newtown Creek—had been consolidated into John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust. After the break-up of the trust in 1911, some of the refineries fell under the ownership of the Standard Oil Company of New York (later Mobil Oil Corporation) and became known as the Brooklyn Refinery.

In 1966, the Brooklyn Refinery shut down and was demolished. Mobil Oil sold some of its lots to companies like Amoco (now British Petroleum, which currently owns a bulk fuel storage unit on a ten-acre plot) and used the remaining lots for petroleum bulk storage until 1993, when they closed. Most of the tanks and buildings of the former Brooklyn Terminal have since been torn down.

The Paragon Oil Company—a subsidiary of Texaco (now Chevron Corporation)—also owned property along the creek and operated a storage facility for a decade until 1968, when Peerless Importers, a liquor distributor, purchased the land to build a warehouse.

Those early refineries were careless in their operations, and it’s likely that they started spilling almost as soon as they began operating. Unhampered by environmental laws, few refineries had containment systems to catch spills, so what was released could seep into whatever was around to soak it up.

“It was a very messy industry,” says Basil Seggos, chief investigator of Riverkeeper, an environmental watchdog organization.

The biggest spill of all wasn’t revealed until 12 years after the Brooklyn Refinery shut down. During a helicopter patrol over Newtown Creek in early September of 1978, the Coast Guard noticed an oil slick on the surface of the water near Meeker Avenue, by the Peerless Importers site.

An investigation by Coast Guard-hired contractors Geraghty & Miller, Inc. found that the seep was part of a much larger spill—17 million gallons of oil that had saturated the soil underneath nearly 55 acres in Greenpoint.

The Coast Guard stopped the seep by installing recovery sumps—or basins—to collect the oil, but until 1989, little was done to address what lay beneath the surface. That was the year Exxon Mobil accepted responsibility for the oil under the ground.

In 1990, the company agreed to begin cleaning up the spill, which existed not only under its own former property, but also under Peerless Importers’ land and an adjacent residential area as well. But those agreements, which were supervised by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, were fairly simple and “just really [required] them to take free product out of the ground,” says Bob Hernan, an environmental lawyer with the state Attorney General’s office who is studying the spill.

Nor were the agreements strictly enforced—at least, so it seemed to Greenport residents. In fact, there were times during community meetings when oil representatives wouldn’t even let the state agency representatives talk, according to Christine Holowacz, a member of the Greenpoint Waterpark Association for Parks and Planning. “It was a terrible blow for the community to come into a meeting where you thought you had the agencies that were supposed to protect [you],” says Holowacz.

But over the past few years, high-profile lawsuits and public outcry have spotlighted the spill, and the agencies seem to be doing a turnaround. They’re considering new technologies such as vacuum enhanced recovery—which sucks up oil that’s hard to reach—and they’re also beginning to address an issue that community members charge the state has long ignored: the relationship between the plume and residents’ health.

Humans Living Far Beyond Planet's Means

by Ben Blanchard, Tuesday, October 24, 2006 by Reuters

BEIJING - Humans are stripping nature at an unprecedented rate and will need two planets' worth of natural resources every year by 2050 on current trends, the World Wildlife Fund said on Tuesday. Populations of many species, from fish to mammals, had fallen by about a third from 1970 to 2003 largely because of human threats such as pollution, clearing of forests and overfishing, the group also said in a two-yearly report.

"For more than 20 years we have exceeded the earth's ability to support a consumptive lifestyle that is unsustainable and we cannot afford to continue down this path," WWF Director-General James Leape said, launching the WWF's 2006 Living Planet Report. "If everyone around the world lived as those in America, we would need five planets to support us," Leape, an American, said in Beijing.

The report said humans' "ecological footprint" -- the demand people place on the natural world -- was 25 percent greater than the planet's annual ability to provide everything from food to energy and recycle all human waste in 2003. In the previous report, the 2001 overshoot was 21 percent.

"On current projections humanity, will be using two planets' worth of natural resources by 2050 -- if those resources have not run out by then," the latest report said. "People are turning resources into waste faster than nature can turn waste back into resources."

"Humanity's footprint has more than tripled between 1961 and 2003," the report said. Consumption has outpaced a surge in the world's population, to 6.5 billion from 3 billion in 1960. U.N. projections show a surge to 9 billion people around 2050. It said that the footprint from use of fossil fuels, whose heat-trapping emissions are widely blamed for pushing up world temperatures, was the fastest-growing cause of strain.

Leape said China, home to a fifth of the world's population and whose economy is booming, was making the right move in pledging to reduce its energy consumption by 20 percent over the next five years. "Much will depend on the decisions made by China, India and other rapidly developing countries," he added.

The WWF report also said that an index tracking 1,300 vetebrate species -- birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals -- showed that populations had fallen for most by about 30 percent because of factors including a loss of habitats to farms.

Metroland Article about AG Candidates and My Exclusion from Debates

Chet Hardin's October 19 article about the AG race in the Albany-area weekly, Metroland, discusses my exclusion from the AG debates.

Commercial During Debate Exposes Left Out Candidates

University of Connecticut Daily Campus
By Steven Durel Posted: 10/19/06

Viewers that watched last night's gubernatorial debate between Republican Governor Jodi Rell and Democratic challenger John DeStefano on television, might have been a little surprised to see the event accompanied by an unlikely television ad from Clifford Thornton, the Green Party nominee for governor. Many voters had not previously heard of Thornton, nor the Concerned Citizens Party nominee Joe Zdonczyk, probably in part because these men were both shut out from debating Rell and DeStefano in this year's live televised procedures.

The purpose of last night's advertisement was to send a message to viewers at home - money and power have corrupted the electoral process.

The Green Party's commercial opened with a graphic reading, "Only 2 podiums?? Cliff Thornton excluded from debates."

The ad then showed a crowd of Green party supporters protesting outside New London's Garde Arts Center during the first debate on Oct. 9. The camera moves around the group as two voiceovers can be heard.

"We want to have freedom of speech," the first voice said.

"I'm here to protest the fact that Cliff Thornton is being left out of the debates," another said.

The viewer then sees Thornton's campaign manager, Tim McKee, who said, "We want to talk about issues that these candidates are not going to talk about."

Thornton himself finally appeared on the screen.

"In many respects, being Green is like being black because you're being excluded left and right on many issues," Thornton said. "I'm Cliff Thornton and I approve this message."

At the end of the commercial there is another graphic reading, "CT 4 CT Let all voices be heard. Let Cliff in the debates," while the crowd can be heard chanting, "This is not democracy!"

According to Thornton's field manager, Ken Krayeske, the commercial cost $400 to produce and $3,300 to air.

Krayeske noted that, running by that same average of $110 per second, the major party candidates each got almost $396,000 of free airtime during the two debates. He questioned why the small parties with no money are forced to pay for short spots on television while the rich ones are given sustained periods at no cost.

"They have their boots firmly entrenched on our windpipes," Krayeske said.

Neither Rell nor DeStefano seemed to walk away from the first debate as a clear winner.

According to polls done by UConn's Center for Survey Research and Analysis for the Hartford Courant, before the debate 56 percent of voters said that they would vote for Rell and 28 percent for DeStefano.

Afterwards, however, Rell's support fell to 50 percent while DeStefano's showing stayed the same. At the same time, the portion of those polled who chose "no choice" rose from 15 percent to 21 percent.

Both major party nominees blame each other for the exclusion of minor party candidates. While the DeStefano campaign demanded that third parties be absent from two of the debates, suggesting that they would only be a distraction, Gov. Rell had simultaneously refused to meet more than twice for what Rell spokesman Richard Harris called "an extended series of debates."

Still, Thornton himself blames both parties equally for his banishment.

"They're both complicit in this," Thornton said, adding, "Why are they so afraid of us?"

Ultimately, the third-party candidate hypothesizes that it is probably because of his overall progressive message that he is being shut out. He suggests that Canadian-style healthcare, free college tuition and an end to the War on Drugs are concepts that have all been deemed far too radical by local ruling elites.

Despite the risk that the Connecticut Green Party is taking by devoting all of its funds and effort into making an impact in this one election, Thornton nevertheless remains confident that they are doing the right thing.

"The most important thing is getting the ideas out to the people," Thornton said.
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© Copyright 2006 The Daily Campus

Let more candidates join the debates

October 17, 2006

To the Editors of the New York Times:

In your Oct. 16 editorial "Great Candidates? That’s Debatable," you say that you would like to see more debates. We also need more candidates in the debates. I was approved by the League of Women Voters for inclusion in three attorney general debates planned by the League, but two of those debates took place without me. WABC refused to include me in its attorney general debate this past Sunday, Oct. 15, and WXXI in Rochester refused to include me in its attorney general debate today, Tuesday, Oct. 17. Because of these refusals, the League withdrew its sponsorship of the two debates in a press release issued last Friday, October 13. WCNY in Syracuse has canceled a debate it previously agreed to host tomorrow, Oct. 18, between Jeanine Pirro and myself.

Excluding third party candidates from candidate debates is counter to the wishes of many voters. History shows that debate participation by third-party candidates raises debate viewership and voter turnout. The 1992 presidential debates, which included third party candidate Ross Perot, were watched by record-breaking TV audiences, averaging 90 million viewers, with a larger audience for each successive debate. Presidential voter turnout went up in 1992, reversing a 20-year downward trend. In 1996, with Perot excluded, the presidential debates averaged only 41 million viewers -- and voter turnout nosedived. In 1998, participation by third-party candidate Jesse Ventura in the gubernatorial debates in Minnesota generated massive voter turnout.

Many voters are frustrated by the closed nature of our current electoral system. A poll last spring by Princeton Survey Research Associates found that 73% of Americans agree it would be a good idea for this country to have more choices than just Republican and Democratic candidates in the 2008 presidential elections. Polls also show that many Americans do not identify as Republicans or Democrats. In a survey conducted of 15,000 voters during April 2006, Rasmussen Reports found that just 32.7% of Americans identified themselves as Republicans, 36.3% identified as Democrats and 30.9% identified themselves as unaffiliated with either major party. Policies that exclude all candidates from candidate debates except Republicans and Democrats are not reflective of voter opinions and desires.

A voter survey by Rasmussen Reports reported in August 2006, found that voters in New York are more likely than voters in any other state to express a concern about voter suppression. Thirty-four percent (34%) of the New York voters surveyed hold this view. This result is not surprising to those of us working to build viable third parties in New York and encountering the many barriers raised against us.

Let more candidates join the debates, the voters want to hear us.

Rachel Treichler
Green Party candidate for Attorney General
http://www.voterachel.org

LWV Withdraws Sponsorship from Candidate Debates

http://lwvny.org/press_news/ Withdrawl_Sponsorship_Debates101306.pdf
October 13, 2006

"The voters of New York State deserve better," stated Marcia Merrins, President of the League of Women Voters of New York State (League), in announcing the League's withdrawal of sponsorship from a debate between candidates for the office of Attorney General to be hosted and broadcast by WXXI in Rochester on October 17, 2006. Similarly, the League withdrew sponsorship from two debates to be hosted by WABC in New York City. The first is an Attorney General debate scheduled for October 15. The second is a debate between candidates for the United States Senate scheduled for October 22. All withdrawals were necessitated by League policy, which requires an invitation be extended to each candidate whom the League has determined to be a bona fide contestant. In the case of the US Senate race, the League Board of Directors determined incumbent Senator Hillary Clinton, Republican nominee John Spencer, and Green Party nominee Howie Hawkins to be bona fide contestants. Similarly, the League determined Democratic nominee Andrew Cuomo, Republican nominee Jeanine Pirro, and Green Party nominee Rachael Treichler to be bona fide contestants in the Attorney General's race.

Merrins explained that the League adopted its policy for candidate inclusion in League-sponsored debates prior to commencement of the electoral season to keep debates free from the vagaries of the political process. Merrins noted that the League is committed to maximization of public debate by all candidates for public office. Once a candidate has complied with the League's criteria for inclusion in a debate, the League cannot sponsor a debate from which that candidate is excluded. To act otherwise would violate the League's fundamental belief in the public's right to know.

Green Candidates Cleared for LWV Debates

I was called by the League of Women Voters last week and told that Howie and I had been cleared by the League to participate in the candidate debates they are sponsoring, and that Jeanine Pirro had agreed to debate me in a debate sponsored by WCNY to be taped in Syracuse this Wed., Oct. 18. I was also told that the League was withdrawing its sponsorship of two AG debates because their media partners refused to include me: WABC on Oct. 15 in New York City, and WXXI on Oct. 17 in Rochester. I was asked to wait to release this information until I received a copy of the League's press release. I received the League's press release, issued last Friday, today. I have filed a complaint with the Monroe County Fair Elections Practices Committee to protest WXXI's actions in excluding me from the Rochester debate scheduled for tomorrow.

This morning I called Kris Hansen, the executive director of the state league and she told me that she had just received word that WCNY had withdrawn its sponsorship of the debate on Oct. 18, and that there would be no debate sponsored by WCNY.

Green Party Candidates Do Well in New Zogby Poll

The Green Party's candidates for governor, attorney general and US senate did very well in the new poll released yesterday by Zogby, http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1180 . The poll of likely New York voters, conducted Oct. 5-9, included 761 respondents and is part of a joint project between Zogby International and the League of Women Voters of New York State.The poll shows the Green Party gubernatorial candidate Malachy McCourt at 5% among all voters and at 14% among independent voters. The numbers for attorney general candidate Rachel Treichler and US senate candidate Howie Hawkins among all voters were not released. Among independent voters Treichler received 17% and Hawkins received 21%.

Be A Pollwatcher for Democracy

My campaign is working with Pollworkers for Democracy to provide pollwatching opportunities in New York State to voters who are registered Green, independent or in another third party. In NYS, only registered Democrats or Republicans approved by their local party chairs can be hired as poll workers.

I encourage all registered voters to sign up with Pollworkers for Democracy as either pollworkers or pollwatchers. After you have signed up on the website, you will be contacted with pollwatching opportunities in your county, including opportunities to be a pollwatcher for my campaign.

Having a flood of informed citizens take part in running and watching elections locally will help us recover a more transparent and accountable democracy.

Pollworkers for Democracy will provide guidelines for observing the polling process, questionnaires to assist watchers in collecting key information, and a web page watchers can use to enter the data that they collect. The data gathered by watchers will be pooled so that voters can learn more about how elections are administered in various parts of New York State and in the other states of the US.

We New Yorkers are lucky that electronic voting machines are not yet widely installed in the state. But each county will have electronic voting machines in at least one polling site for disabled and other voters to use. It is particularly important to watch how these machines function. The data we collect will help counties decide what type of voting machines to purchase, and may encourage them to follow my recommendation and adopt handcounted paper ballots.

As a candidate for statewide office, I am entitled to appoint up to three pollwatchers in each polling place. Because of my concern about how the votes for the Green Party's candidates will be counted this election, I am eager to appoint enough pollwatchers to monitor as many polling places for as much of election day as possible.

It is important that the Green Party's votes are counted accurately on November 7. If Malachy McCourt, our GPNY gubernatorial candidate receives 50,000 or more votes, the Green Party will gain ballot status for the next four years. In 1998, the last time the Green Party gained ballot status, the preliminary vote count for the Green Party was only about 48,000 votes, but after Greens recounted voting machines in New York City and elsewhere around the state, that total rose to about 52,000 votes—more than enough to qualify the Green Party for ballot status.

AG Debate in Hempstead on Oct. 16

At least two attorney general candidates, Libertarian candidate Chris Garvey and I, have accepted an invitation from the Five Towns Forum to participate in an attorney general debate at Bestsellers Bookstore in Hempstead, Long Island at 7:00 pm. The bookstore is located at 43A Main Street in Hempstead. It is 35 min. on the LIRR from Penn Station to Hempstead. For more information, call Booksellers Bookstore at 516-564-1180.

True Environmental Justice Requires Nontoxic Methods of Production

I spoke to the press yesterday at the Environmental Justice for All Tour at Union High School in Endicott, New York. In Endicott, we learned about the work of local activists to get toxic spills of TCE and other chemicals at the IBM facility in Endicott cleaned up. 440 buildings in the village of Endicott have vapor intrusion remediation technologies installed to reduce exposure to volatile chemicals in the soil underneath the village.

I talked about the need for better and more just enforcement of our environmental laws to ensure better and faster clean ups of groundwater and soil contamination from chemical spills across the state, but said that won't be enough to stop the damaging health effects of using toxic chemicals to produce everyday products. What we have to do, is use nontoxic methods of industrial production so that no one is exposed to the damaging effects of toxic chemicals.

The environmental justice movement highlights a fundamental contradiction in our society. The products we use everyday--cars, home appliances, computers, almost every item we use, even clothes--are produced by processes that release toxic chemicals into our soil, our air and our water. When these products are disposed of, their waste is toxic, and the toxic chemicals in the waste leach into our soil, our air and our water. We want a clean environment, but we can't have a clean environment as long as these products continue to be produced and we continue to use them.

We absolutely need stop locating industrial production facilities and waste disposal facilities almost exclusively in minority and low-income neighborhoods, but a more just distribution of the toxic chemicals isn't the solution. How is it fair, how is it justice for anyone to be exposed to these toxic chemicals?

We have learned enough about the damaging health effects of these chemicals that we have to stop using them. We have to develop new means of production that are completely nontoxic. People are working on this and companies are showing that it can be done. The Interface Carpet Company, this country's largest carpet manufacturer, produces no toxic emissions and its products degrade in a completely nontoxic manner. People call this ecological design. It can be done and we need to do it now.

For more information about ecological design and the next industrial revolution, visit http://www.mbdc.com/c2c_home.htm. For more information about the Environmental Justice for All tour, visit http://www.ej4all.org/.

NY Green Party Candidates included in Zogby Poll

Malachy McCourt, Howie Hawkins and Rachel Treichler are included in the online Zogby poll on the upcoming statewide elections in New York. You can sign up here to participate in Zogby's online polls.