Spring storm delivers snow, winds; delays travel

Spring storm closes Wyo. highways, postpones elections in South Dakota, delays Chicago flights

Associated Press -

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) -- A large spring snowstorm delivering heavy snow, high winds and rain was causing travel problems from Wyoming to Chicago on Tuesday.

In Wyoming, some big stretches of Interstates 25 and 80 were closed Tuesday morning before being reopened, but snow and blowing snow conditions were still making driving dangerous along the interstates and smaller highways. No unnecessary travel was advised Tuesday afternoon on about 180 miles of I-25 between Cheyenne and Casper because heavy snow was causing near white-out conditions.

Meanwhile, freezing rain, snow and strong winds, were hitting Kansas and South Dakota, where numerous local elections were postponed. Some schools in Minnesota dismissed students early as travel conditions deteriorated.

Snow in the Denver area has been lighter than expected but around 500 flights have been cancelled atDenver International Airport and deicing was delaying departures.

Flights bound for Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, meanwhile, were being delayed an average of nearly four hours because of dense fog.

Tornadoes were also possible in parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas later in the day.

While April snowstorms aren't unusual in Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain West, the storm comes after a rather tame winter in many areas.

"We haven't really had bad days like today where everybody is stuck and nobody can go anywhere," Sam Blaney, who was working the service counter at the Petro truck stop in Laramie, said.

About two dozen truckers and other motorists took refuge at the truck stop to wait out the storm, Blaney said.

Many areas of Wyoming and western Nebraska received more than a foot of snow. In western Nebraska, road crews reported 8- to 9-foot drifts.

"I'm pretty confident that this particular storm is more widespread and has caused more travel problems and closures than any storm we've had this calendar year certainly," Bruce Burrows, spokesman for the Wyoming Department of Transportation, said.

As the storm moved into Colorado Monday night, two tornadoes were reported near Akron on eastern Colorado's plains though forecasters haven't confirmed the twisters yet. A trailer home rolled over onto its top, a roof blew off a barn and six power poles were toppled, Washington County undersheriff Jon Stivers said.

A motorcycle dealership partially collapsed in Pueblo, Colo., where winds gusted to 64 mph.

In Wyoming's Sweetwater County, wind gusts up to 71 mph damaged a marina at Flaming Gorge Reservoir and broke windows at the Western Wyoming Community College in Rock Springs, according to the National Weather Service.

About 1,200 customers in Rock Springs lost power Monday afternoon after winds broke a cross-arm at the top of a power pole. Some residents in Lamont, a small town north of Rawlins, were without power Tuesday. Repair crews used snowcats to access the downed lines, Rocky Mountain Power Company spokesman Jeff Hymas said.

Cold temperatures that made it feel more like January or February engulfed the entire state with many areas expecting daytime temperatures in the teens and 20s.

The National Weather Service said Cheyenne's high of 12 degrees Tuesday was the coldest on record for April 9. The previous record was 23 degrees set in 1997.

The temperature in Denver was expected to dip below 10 degrees with wind chills possibly below zero Tuesday night and early Wednesday.

The same storm system toppled trees in San Francisco, produced gusts over 80 mph in southern California, fanning wildfires, and kicked up a dusty haze in Phoenix on Monday, closing a stretch of Interstate 40 in northern Arizona.

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Sterlite Industries' copper smelter ignites toxic debate

By Anupama Chandrasekaran

TUTICORIN (Reuters) - Housewife A. Puneeta was washing dishes on a foggy Saturday morning when suddenly her throat began to burn. Coughing hard and struggling to breathe, she rushed into the street to find her neighbours running, haphazardly, in panic.

"First people said there was a gas leak, and then someone said Sterlite seemed to have opened up something, and that's the cause of the throat burning," said Puneeta, 32, who is married to a fisherman in this port town near the southern tip of India.

She was referring to Sterlite Industries (STRL.NS), a unit of London-based Vedanta Resources (VED.L), which operates India's biggest copper smelter a few miles (kilometres) away, and which has been shut by authorities despite the firm denying the smelter was to blame for the emissions in the area on March 23.

Other residents recounted similar stories. Two spoken to separately by Reuters also said the emissions caused leaves on plants and trees to wither and drop in front of their eyes, while another, who is asthmatic, said she struggled to breathe as she walked home from church and had to use her Ventolin inhaler.

The plant employs 4,000 and supports thousands more jobs indirectly. But since opening in 1996 it has split this coastal city between residents who say it is crucial for the local economy and farmers and fishermen who see it as a health hazard.

Similar debates are playing out across India where disputes over safety, the environment and livelihoods overshadow the efforts of Asia's third-largest economy to industrialize. Just 100 km (62 miles) south, in Kudankulam, fishermen are fiercely opposing a new nuclear power plant.

Tuticorin and Kudankulam sit on the Gulf of Munnar, famed for its pearls, coral reefs, and marine life. Environmental activists who say Sterlite is damaging the region's ecology have been fighting for years to close the smelter permanently.

Tamil Nadu's Pollution Control Board closed the smelter until further notice late last month and said a sensor in the smelter's smokestack showed sulphur dioxide levels were more than double the permitted concentration at the time emissions were reported.

Sterlite denied the smelter, which makes half the copper India produces every year, was the source. The smelter's general manager of projects said there were no emissions at the time because the plant was starting up after two days of maintenance, not producing copper, and high readings in the smokestack were likely a result of workers recalibrating the sensors.

On Tuesday, a fast-track environmental court deferred until April 12 a hearing on allowing the plant to reopen, a move that is being closely watched by environmentalists and the global copper market. The plant will remain shut at least until then.

HISTORY OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION

Anti-smelter activist P.A. Dharmaraj does not see eye-to-eye with his neighbour, who is a supporter of the plant. The former farmer says pollution from the smelter two km (1.4 miles) from his house had poisoned crops, driving him out of business.

"As soon as sulphur dioxide started being emitted by the Sterlite plant, the rainfall naturally decreased," he said. "Rain ... will not fall on our lands since then. Our crops also started getting scorched because of the emissions."

Sulphur dioxide emissions can cause acid rain, although the impact on weather patterns is more complex, scientists say. U.S. advocacy group the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide in 2010 said a soil sample taken from outside Dharmaraj's house contained arsenic levels ten times that considered safe in Britain, as well as high quantities of toxins such as cadmium.

In the courtyard of Dharmaraj's house, his neighbour M. Mariammal argued in favour of the plant - where her son, a graduate, works as a supervisor. She does, however, now buy bottled water because of concerns that wells may have been polluted, but said it was a price worth paying.

"I wouldn't have money to buy either water or rice if my son didn't have that job," she said.

Sterlite has a history of environmental pollution after a 2005 government study said the smelter leaked arsenic and heavy metals into the soil and water. The company says it has since complied with recommendations by pollution authorities to improve environmental standards.

The Supreme Court last week fined Sterlite $18.4 million for polluting water, soil, and air around the plant and documented 15 years of abuses. The ruling, part of a long-running case brought by environmental activists, came just days after the suspected gas leak.

The court cited the 2005 government study that found levels of arsenic in ground water near the site were eight times those recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Cadmium, chromium, copper and lead levels also exceeded drinking water standards in some wells.

Despite imposing the fine, the Supreme Court sided with Sterlite and overruled a lower court in Tamil Nadu that had ordered the smelter to shut down. The Supreme Court said the plant was a big source of employment, copper and revenue and the firm had taken steps since last year to stop the pollution.

5,000 ESTIMATED TO BE AFFECTED

A document from Tamil Nadu state's Pollution Control Board obtained by Reuters said Sterlite released two gas plumes early on the morning of March 23, containing as much as 2,941.12 milligrams per cubic metre of sulphur dioxide, almost off the sensor's chart and more than double a government limit for smokestack concentration.

"The recording was about 3,000. The sensor can record only up to 3,000," Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board Chairman D. Karthikeyan said.

The pollution board does not have an air measuring station in the area of town affected, 5 km (3 miles) downwind from the smelter, but it said reported symptoms suggested levels there could have hit 13,000 micrograms per cubic metre - massively exceeding a national ambient air quality limit of 80 micrograms per cubic metre for sulphur dioxide.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency warns against exposure of more than 1,430 micrograms for three hours a year.

Sterlite's general manager of projects, D. Dhanavel, said the high sulphur dioxide readings could have been due to workers adjusting the sensors on the smokestack after the maintenance.

"Whenever we start the factory, we calibrate all the instruments," said Dhanavel. "Now we have to check if it was a calibration error or some other issue."

That explanation did not satisfy pollution authorities. After giving Sterlite five days to explain, the pollution board ordered the plant to close until further notice.

"The reply of the unit is unsatisfactory and untenable," the board said in its order to close the plant, seen by Reuters.

No serious health problems have been reported so far, but the office of Tuticorin's district collector, the town's most senior government official, estimates up to 5,000 people were affected by the emissions.

The future of the plant - which is seeking approval to double its capacity to 800,000 tonnes per year - now hinges on the decision of the National Green Tribunal.

Pollution Control Board lawyer Abdul Saleem said the company would have to appeal again to the Supreme Court if the tribunal rules against it.

West Coast fisheries to see ecosystem approach

Pacific Council to adopt ecosystem approach to managing West Coast fisheries

Associated Press -

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) -- Federal fisheries managers for the West Coast are poised for a major change in the way they make sure that plenty of fish remain in the sea.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council is meeting in Portland this week. On Tuesday, it's expected to adopt a new ecosystem management approach to managing the catch off Oregon, Washington and California.

That means that when making decisions on sport and commercial fishing seasons, quotas and fishing methods, the council will take into account factors such as habitat, and the impacts on other marine species that may depend on another species for food or be a source of food for others.

The Fisheries Ecosystem Plan is nonbinding, but conservation groups are enthusiastic, especially about a key provision to consider future protections for forage fish that aren't already targeted by a fishery. Forage fish are the little fish that the big fish depend on for food. Forage fish that would otherwise be eaten by larger fish, such as tuna and salmon, are caught for bait, food for farm-raised fish, and fertilizer.

"It's the beginning of a paradigm shift in fisheries management," said Paul Shively, a campaign manager for Pew Charitable Trusts. "We've always managed our oceans on a species-by-species level. By developing an ecosystem plan we begin to look at how everything is connected in the ocean."

The old-style management has been an official failure since in 2000, when federal fisheries managers had to declare a fishery disaster for Pacific groundfish after a decade of declining catches in the West Coast's biggest fishery, which include popular species such as rockfish and lingcod. The government adopted strict fishing restrictions, bought out half the groundfish fleet, limited the areas bottom-dragging trawlers could fish, adopted habitat protections, and took steps to limit the numbers of unwanted fish dumped overboard dead — known as bycatch. Since then, species have been rebounding.

The National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration has been interested in taking a more ecosystem approach since 2006, when the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the foundation law of fisheries management, was renewed, said former NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco.

"Taking an ecosystem approach to fisheries management is widely viewed as an enlightened approach to fishery management, because it recognizes that the target species of interest exists within a broader ecosystem," said Lubchenco, now a visiting professor at Stanford University.

But change comes slowly to fisheries management. Each council operates independently, and the Pacific Council began working up the current ecosystem management plan in 2009, when it appointed two advisory panels representing a range of interests, including the fishing industry.

Council member Gway Kirchner, a marine program manager for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the ecosystem management program was expected to pass, because the fishing industry helped draft it.

She added that the forage fish protections are on an independent course likely to result in regulations protecting species that are not already exploited, the way sardines and anchovies are.