John Ryan

Stories

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  The Sanka Party Brews Activism Inside A Mental Hospital

  The Tea Party has become a fixture in American politics. But the Sanka Party? Not so much. Other than an interest in hot beverages, the two activist

  Mar 07, 2013 at 6:37 pm
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  Shell's Arctic Vessels: To Asia For Major Repairs, Anacortes Area For Tests

  UPDATE: Shell plans to use three tugs to tow the damaged Kulluk oil rig to Dutch Harbor in Alaska's Aleutian Islands, where it will await a longer trip to

  Feb 13, 2013 at 5:06 pm
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  Obama Picks ‘Climate Expert’ CEO Of REI To Head Interior Department

  President Barack Obama has nominated Sally Jewell, the head of Kent, Wash.-based retail chain Recreational Equipment Inc., to lead the Interior Department

  Feb 06, 2013 at 7:56 pm
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  Construction Debris: Where Seattle's Old Buildings Go To Die

  Close to half of the garbage generated in America doesn’t come from individual homes or businesses. It comes from construction sites.The construction industry has been down in the dumps for several years, but on the University of Washington campus, it’s booming. As part of a $475 million surge in construction, new dormitories have been cropping up left and right at UW. That means old buildings have been coming down.For more than half a century, UW's Lander Hall stood nine stories tall and covered most of a city block. Tearing down the old dorm last year took weeks.  Day after day, excavator machines with huge hydraulic jaws stretched toward the sky and chewed into the dorm. Floor by floor, chunks of concrete, rebar and wood plummeted toward the ground.One operator was seriously injured last summer when a 20-ton slab of concrete fell on the cab of his excavator.Convoys of trucks carted all that very heavy debris away. In the end, Lander Hall was reduced to 7,600 tons of concrete and 850 tons of iron.Where Does All That Waste Go?About 40 percent of America’s waste comes from construction sites. In Washington state, construction and demolition debris peaked in 2006 before the construction sector imploded. As the state's economy climbs out of its doldrums, construction waste is again approaching record levels.Seattle’s old buildings often end up in a mountainous landscape on the city’s outskirts. But it’s not in the Washington Cascades.Dickie Allen walks through the shade of a sort of manmade canyon in south Seattle near the border with Tukwila. He points to a mountain made mostly of concrete slabs with odd bits of rebar sticking out."This is everything that’s been dumped," he says. "It’s a large pile -- it’s probably eight, 10 stories."A second mountain, made of concrete rubble, towers behind him.“We have the boys pick all the steel, all the garbage," Allen says. "We try to separate as much clean wood as we can.”Allen works for Contractors Concrete Recycling. It’s where old buildings go to die and to get something of a second life.Allen shouts to be heard over a concrete-crushing machine about the size of a mobile home. Concrete slabs go in; a stream of inch-wide pieces of rubble comes out on a conveyor belt. Later that rubble will be used as fill beneath new buildings or road projects.Every year in Washington state about 6 million tons of old buildings get torn down, according to the Washington Department of Ecology. About two-thirds of the tonnage gets recycled or used somehow. The rest ends up in a landfill.Allen says he’s been working in demolition since the mid-'90s, when he helped tear down the old Seattle City Light building on Lake Union.“Ever since then, just been ripping and tearing, you know? Tearing down buildings,” Allen says. “I’ve seen a lot of change in Seattle -- helped change it, too.”He says when he started in demolition, little debris was recycled, mostly just the scrap metal.“Now, they’re doing wood and everything,” he says.Recycling Numbers Overstate The CaseKing County now keeps 83 percent of its demolition debris out of the landfill, either by recycling it or burning it for fuel. Trains haul the rest to landfills in eastern Washington and eastern Oregon.Most people would agree that recycling is a good thing, but it doesn’t necessarily make a big dent in the building sector’s appetite for raw materials and energy.A lot of the debris gets recycled into low-value products like rubble. That means new construction keeps needing new, high-value materials like concrete and lumber.  Recycling rates reported by the construction industry and government agencies tend to overstate how much debris is saved from landfills. Old buildings typically contain hazardous materials like asbestos insulation or items covered in lead paint. That hazardous waste is hauled away to specialized landfills before demolition begins. It isn’t even counted in recycling statistics.Sometimes old buildings' debris can wind up in a landfill and developers get to say they kept it out of a landfill.The only active landfill remaining in King County is the Cedar Hills Regional Landfill in Maple Valley. It doesn’t take a lot of construction debris, but it does take truckload after truckload of household waste.Cedar Hills landfill ingests some 3,000 tons a day. It covers more than 400 acres.“If you look to the north, you see hills all around us," says landfill manager Dean Voelker. "Well, these hills are all garbage.”Even at a landfill covering hundreds of acres, space is a concern. Bulldozers with six-foot high wheels covered in rows of metal spikes run back and forth over the newly dumped garbage. They crunch the garbage down so it takes up less space.The Landfill Cover-upCedar Hills doesn’t smell nearly as bad as you might guess. Most of its trash is covered up.“Instead of having exposed garbage all over the landfill," Voelker says, "the federal requirements ask us to put six inches of daily cover over the refuse every single day.”That six-inch cover suppresses fires, keeps odors down and keeps animal scavengers -- at Cedar Hills, that means gulls, starlings, rats and even bears -- away.Many landfills cover up their fresh, stinky garbage with demolition debris, after it's been sorted and processed at a recycling plant.For now, it’s considered a “green building” practice to send demolition debris into a landfill that way. King County counts the use of debris for a landfill's daily cover as one way to divert debris from landfills. County officials say they're looking to change that."It's not going in as waste, but with a purpose," says Kinley Deller with King County's solid waste division. "But it's still ending up in a landfill."The nation’s most popular green building program, known as LEED, also gives its seal of approval to layering demolition debris into a landfill. LEED certification, from the US Green Building Council, can add thousands of dollars to a property's market value since many potential buyers value environmental protection. The building council is considering dropping the practice of landfill covering from its list of approved green practices.  Covering Up Without WasteTo keep the Cedar Hills landfill from filling up too quickly, Dean Voelker says they stopped adding a six-inch thick cover to the landfill every day.Instead, at the end of each day, landfill workers spread out 40-foot-wide tarps with a machine called a Tarpomatic. They roll the tarps back up in the morning.King County’s only landfill has 11 years left before it’s full and the garbage will have to go somewhere else.The University of Washington requires its major construction projects to recycle or divert at least 75 percent of their waste from the landfill. That's enough to help the projects earn LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.Even with 100 percent recycling, demolition turns an old building into something much less valuable. UW officials say they considered renovating the half-century-old Lander Hall. But they found it would be cheaper to build a 21st-century Lander Hall from scratch. 

  Jan 10, 2013 at 5:45 pm

• Interior Dept., Coast Guard To Probe Shell’s Arctic Drilling Mishaps

  The Obama administration launched a sweeping inquiry into Shell Oil’s Arctic drilling program on Tuesday. The probe, to be completed within 60 days, will look at the company’s mishaps in Alaska and in Puget Sound.

  Jan 09, 2013 at 12:00 am
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  Shell’s Beached Kulluk Oil Rig Towed To Safe Harbor

  A shipwrecked oil rig that was bound for Seattle has been floated off the rocks and towed to a safe harbor in the Gulf of Alaska. A fleet of nine ships accompanied Shell Oil’s Kulluk drill rig on the 45-mile tow. Shortly before noon Pacific Time, the rig reached its anchorage in sheltered Kiliuda Bay on Kodiak Island.  The escort fleet for the Kulluk included a Coast Guard cutter and three tugs from Seattle. Crews on the escort boats reported seeing no spilled oil with their infrared devices.Shell had attempted to tow the rig with just one tug from Alaska down to Seattle in December. But one of the Gulf of Alaska’s frequent winter storms caused the rig to break free. The Kulluk ran aground late on New Year’s Eve.Shell and government officials plan to inspect the rig to see if it can still be towed to Washington state. Shell had planned to use the Kulluk to drill for oil in the Arctic this summer after some maintenance work in a Seattle shipyard.The effort to salvage the rig has involved more than 700 people.Last week, 45 Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives' Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition called on the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Coast Guard to conduct a joint investigation into the grounding and into the failure of Shell's Arctic oil-spill containment system during a test in Puget Sound.  An Interior official on board Shell's Arctic Challenger near Anacortes, Wash., during that test reported that a 20-foot spill-containment dome was "crushed like a beer can." 

  Jan 07, 2013 at 4:40 pm
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  Shell's Seattle-Bound Oil Rig Evacuated, Lost, Recovered In Gulf Of Alaska

  UPDATE: The Kulluk ran aground late Monday night, with 150,000 gallons of diesel and oil on board.A floating oil rig that was abandoned on Saturday in heavy seas in the Gulf of Alaska is being towed away from land — a second time.The Kulluk, a Shell Oil drilling rig, was being towed from Alaska to a Seattle shipyard when the engines on its tugboat failed. The two vessels began to drift toward Kodiak Island on Friday.At Shell's request, the Coast Guard sent helicopters on Friday to evacuate the crew of the Kulluk. It’s named after the word for “thunder” in the Inuvialuktun language of Canada’s Northwest Territories. No reports of thunder, but gale-force winds and high waves foiled the first attempt to rescue the Kulluk's crew. All 18 crew members were evacuated to Kodiak on Saturday.On Sunday, the crew-less Kulluk broke free from tugboats attempting to pull it to safety. Early Monday morning, Shell managed to hook up the Kulluk again. As of Monday afternoon, the 266-foot wide drill rig is being towed very slowly — 1 or 2 miles an hour — through a powerful winter storm.“Seas have ranged from 20 to 25 feet and winds up to 70 knots,” said Shell-Alaska spokesman Curtis Smith, “Very severe. Very challenging.”Smith said Shell and the Coast Guard are exploring how to secure the vessel until the storm passes.The Aiviq ("walrus"), the tugboat whose engines failed, was brand new. The Kulluk is 30 years old. Before heading to the Arctic Ocean last summer, it spent nearly a year in a Seattle shipyard. Shell spent $292 million modifying it for Arctic duty.Another vessel in Shell’s Arctic fleet, the Arctic Challenger, is still under construction in Bellingham, Wash. That oil-spill barge’s construction delays and equipment failures stymied Shell's plans to drill for oil off Alaska’s north coast this year.  The Coast Guard originally required the Arctic Challenger to be built to withstand 25-foot waves. Shell then asked to meet a lower standard of handling just 20-foot waves. The Coast Guard said yes.That 20-foot safety standard is the same one applied to mobile drilling units like the Kulluk in the Arctic.If the National Weather Service forecast is correct, the Kulluk will face 30-foot waves and 55-knot winds tonight in the Gulf of Alaska off Kodiak Island.         

  Jan 02, 2013 at 7:58 am
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  Oil Rig Adrift In Alaska

  An oil rig that was on its way to a Seattle shipyard from Alaska went adrift in the Gulf of Alaska on Sunday. John Ryan told Ross Reynolds about it on The Conversation.

  Dec 31, 2012 at 3:13 pm
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  Mayor McGinn Calls On Seattle To Divest From Fossil Fuels

  Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn wants the city to get its money out of fossil fuels. He has called on the city’s two main retirement funds to divest millions of dollars invested in oil and gas companies.Climate change activists have been urging colleges and institutional investors nationwide to abandon the fossil fuel sector. McGinn is the first elected official to heed their call.  On Dec. 21, McGinn ordered the city’s finance director not to invest in any coal, oil or gas companies. As mayor, Mike McGinn has control over $1.4 billion of the city’s cash balances. None of those short-term balances are currently invested in fossil fuel stocks.But the city’s two main retirement funds, worth another $2.6 billion, have major investments in the energy sector. McGinn doesn’t control the retirement funds. But he asked the boards that manage those funds to divest from fossil fuels and to offer city employees climate-friendly investment choices.Burning of fossil fuels is the main driver of global warming.The city hasn’t tallied its investments in the fossil fuel sector yet. But they include at least $17 million in ExxonMobil and Chevron stock, according to McGinn."We should make a statement by the use of our investments about the importance of not continuing to pump global warming pollution into the air,” McGinn said.Tupper Hull with the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) says oil companies are in the forefront of developing climate-friendly energy sources. “Our association absolutely agrees that climate change is a major issue we need to address," Hull said. WSPA represents oil companies, including ExxonMobil and Chevron, in Washington and five other states.“To think that we can convert an energy economy overnight, or in the short term, is not just not well-informed but frankly is dangerous," Hull said. "Dangerous to the economy, dangerous to a tremendous amount of jobs and economic activity.”Continued growth in fossil fuel use has the world headed toward what climate scientists call “dangerous interference” with the Earth’s climate system.As with almost any choice involving the stock market, it's hard to predict whether divesting from fossil fuel companies would hurt the bottom line of the city or its retirees. So far in 2012, ExxonMobil and Chevron stocks have underperformed both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 by wide margins.Mayor McGinn wants Seattle to gradually back away from its fossil fuel investments over the next five years. He said the city has a long tradition of leadership on climate change and that having a climate-friendly investment portfolio is a natural next step.

  Dec 27, 2012 at 6:36 pm
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  No End In Sight For Sea-Tac Airport’s X-Ray Scanners

  The Transportation Security Administration has been quietly replacing passenger-screening machines at some of the nation’s largest airports. The TSA has been moving them to smaller airports and replacing them with security scanners that don’t use X-rays.Seattle-Tacoma International Airport has been left out of the movement away from the controversial scanners.TSA officials say the agency is replacing the X-ray machines known as backscatter scanners to help reduce the long lines at busy airports. The newer machines, known as millimeter-wave scanners, are smaller. Airports can squeeze more of them in and screen more passengers at once.Sea-Tac Airport has 14 of the big backscatter scanners at its security checkpoints.  TSA says it has no plans to replace those scanners. The new machines have all gone to bigger airports, including those in Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Los Angeles, Orlando and both LaGuardia and JFK in New York City.Seattle Port Commissioner John Creighton is calling on TSA to replace Sea-Tac’s body scanners as well. The commission oversees Sea-Tac Airport. Creighton says he’ll ask his five-member commission and the state’s Congressional delegation to pressure the TSA in January.“If we had technology that had no question about it, that everyone was comfortable with, we could have much more efficient security lines at the airport,” Creighton says.The newer millimeter-wave machines don’t have the same privacy or radiation concerns that the X-ray machines do. They use radio waves, not X-rays, and they only generate a vague, gender-neutral human image, a bit like a gingerbread man. Any indications of possible weapons or explosives are highlighted on the vaguely human image.TSA says the radiation dose a passenger gets inside one of their X-ray scanners is about the same as a passenger gets by flying in an airplane for just two minutes. A TSA video playing on an endless loop tries to assure passengers shuffling through security at Sea-Tac that they don’t need to worry about their privacy or safety.All images are immediately deleted and cannot be printed, stored or transmitted. In addition,  a privacy filter is applied to blur all images to the protect the passenger’s identity. The use of imaging technology presents no health or safety concerns for any passenger, including children and pregnant women.TSA screens nearly 2 million passengers a day nationwide. As ProPublica has reported, some scientists say even tiny doses of X-rays could cause a small number of cancer cases, given such widespread use of the scanners. The European Union prohibited the X-ray scanners last year.TSA announced on Dec. 18 that it is hiring the National Academy of Sciences to conduct an independent study of the health effects of the backscatter X-ray machines.

  Dec 27, 2012 at 11:07 am