Kaine predicts wave of environmental action on horizon

It's so apparent to me that this man has no interest in Virginia. His heart is elsewhere...maybe from whence he came...but it's certainly not in Virginia.

By Scott Harper
The Virginian-Pilot
© May 7, 2009

NORFOLK

About 10 minutes into his speech Wednesday night, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine stripped off his suit jacket, rolled up his white sleeves and jumped squarely from his prepared remarks.

"I'm getting warmed up," he told a crowd of about 300 people inside Old Dominion University's Webb Center. "I always do when I talk about this subject."

That subject is the environment, an issue he has put a focus on this year, his final year in office.

The environmental and energy initiative has its own name - Renew Virginia - and despite a cash crunc h in Richmond and an economic crisis nationwide, the governor said he still has big plans for going green in 2009.

Kaine hinted at some major changes coming to the Chesapeake Bay cleanup, steps that he and other mid-Atlantic governors will announce next week at a summit at Mount Vernon.

That suggestion brought a smile to the face of Will Baker, president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Baker has been pressing Kaine and the Obama administration to make the Bay a national priority and speed up its restoration, which began in 1983 and still is struggling.

The Bay Foundation co-sponsored Wednesday night's lecture as part of its Blue Planet Forum on environmental issues facing Virginia.

Kaine ticked off a list of state programs that soon will receive federal stimulus money - $75 million for energy efficiencies and green buildings; $39 million in incentives for solar, thermal and small wind projects; $5 million for alternative energy research - all dedicated to environmental progress.

He predicted that, as money trickles out of Washington over the next two years, Virginia and other states will experience "one of the greatest unleashings of American ingenuity" on new energy technology since the dawn of the combustion engine.

The governor said he intends to push ahead against two big pollutants affecting the Bay and impairing hundreds of Virginia streams - farm runoff and urb an stormwater.

The state is rewriting its stormwater regulations and hopes to complete this year these "extremely innovative" rules against tainted rainwaters that wash off parking lots, roofs, lawns, streets and gardens and pass oil, fertilizers and chemicals into the Bay.

In response to questions, Kaine said developing an offshore wind farm off Virginia Beach "is a spectacular idea."

Oil and gas drilling in those same waters should be confined to exploration only, "to see what resources are really out there," he said.

He urged expansion of nuclear energy in Virginia and defended his position to support a new, major coal-fired power plant in southwestern Virginia over objections from environmentalists.

The governor also said that if a study shows that uranium mining cannot be done safely in Virginia's wet climate, "maybe we ought to keep the ban in place and move on."

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com

http://hamptonroads.com/2009/05/kaine-predicts-wave-environmental-action-horizon

What Governments Offer to Victims of Nuclear Tests

We're supposed to feel good because the US compensates some victims? How sad. ...SB

March 25, 2009

By The Associated Press

A look at where some leading nuclear powers stand on offering compensation to victims of nuclear tests.

UNITED STATES: The U.S. is the only nation that currently compensates nuclear test victims. Since the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was enacted in 1990, more than $1.38 billion in compensation has been approved. It goes to people who took part in the tests, notably at the Nevada Test Site, and to anyone exposed to the radiation.

FRANCE: The French government offered Tuesday to compensate victims for the first time. A draft bill to be submitted to parliament soon would allow payments to people who suffered health problems related to the tests. The payouts would be available to victims' descendants and would include Algerians, whose country was part of France when the French started nuclear testing in the Sahara in 1960. Victims say the eligibility requirements are too narrow.

BRITAIN: No formal British government compensation program exists. Nearly 1,000 veterans of Christmas Island nuclear tests in the 1950s are seeking to sue the Ministry of Defense for negligence. They say they suffered health problems and were warned of potential dangers only after the experiments.

RUSSIA: Decades afterward, Russia offered compensation to veterans who were part of the 1954 Totsk test, in which a Hiroshima-yield bomb was set off and then soldiers were sent in to test how fighting would proceed in a post-blast environment. Anti-nuclear groups say there has been no blanket government compensation for other tests. There was no compensation to civilians sickened by the Totsk test.

CHINA: China's nuclear program is highly secretive, as are its atomic tests in remote deserts in a Central Asian border province. Anti-nuclear activists say there is no known government program for compensating victims.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jfWju5ZDBvImyeqmzgaCSKxi_TcwD974FG8O0