The Chronicle missed it, cause it wasn’t a guy lost in the woods (although, in a major advance for the media, they cranked up their tizzy for a person of color, not just for a white woman), but the LA Times yesterday covered a Union of Concerned Scientists report on the dangers posed by construction equipment in California.

The effects of air pollution from construction equipment in California are “staggering,” according to a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The environmental group concluded that at least 1,100 premature deaths and half a million work and school absences in 2005 were caused by people breathing emissions from older tractors, bulldozers and other diesel equipment – at an estimated public health cost of $9.1 billion.

“This is the first time the health and economic impacts of construction-related air pollution in California have ever been analyzed,” said Don Anair, author of the report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The report urged state regulators to quickly require owners to retrofit or replace older equipment.

“Construction equipment being used to build our hospitals shouldn’t fill them up…. This is a bill being footed by everyone in California, and particulate pollution is a silent killer,” Anair said, citing asthma attacks, cancer and heart disease.

That’s 1100 deaths in California every year.

crossposted from Left in SF

The problem seems to be that until 1996, there were no standards for emissions by construction equipment, and when they went into effect that year, the standards only covered new equipment. So there’re 250,000 old, dirty machines at work in the state, some of which create as much pollution in an hour as a semi truck would in 1100 miles of driving. So before lunch, these machines have cranked out more pollution than a truck driving all the way across the US.

The machines crank out nitrogen oxides, which are the main component of smog, which is bad enough. Even worse, though, is that they emit a huge amount of particulate matter (PM), better known as soot. The PM, which consists of tiny particles,  gets stuck in your lungs, and in the words of one reviewer of the study, is “like tiny razorblades”. It caused 30,000 asthma attacks in 2005, and caused over 300,000 school absences. In many parts of the state, kids are more likely to carry asthma inhalers than pencils to school.

What about San Francisco? Well, as you might be able to tell from the image, we are in a highest-risk area. Of course, the distribution of the PM and the smog isn’t even, so most likely the places where construction is going on most heavily get hit. So the Mission, South of Market, and other construction hot spots are probably the highest risk.

The major question at hand is what to do about this. Are we doomed to suck tiny razor blades into our lungs until there is no pre-1996 construction equipment left? Politically, it’s a pretty tough battle, but we’d need to push the construction industry (who has quite a bit of clout) to retrofit their equiment, use alternative fuels (like biodiesel), replace the engine on the vehicle, or even the whole thing, and at very least, reduce idling.

It’s not clear to me how we solve this, but it seems horrific that we’re killing over 1100 people a year for construction in California alone. At the very least we ought to be able to push the state to use cleaner equipment. I do think that the scale of construction equipment fuel use should make it possible for someone to start a biodiesel business that sells to construction companies. This came out of left field for me, so I haven’t come up with a solution that seems workable. It’s pretty clear that a thousand people and $9 billion a year constitutes a problem we need to solve fast.

The Air Quality Districts (or at least the Bay Area Air Quality Management District) have funds set up to help construction companies clean up their acts. The funds are pretty insufficient, though. The BAAQMD fund will only fund the cleanup of 1000 machines a year, which is only 4% of the (estimated) 25,000 machines operating in the bay Area.

(as usual this can be found at Ruck Pad and is at dkos)

The Representative from CA-10 has done a lot of talking in the last few months.  She spoke of Kabuki, insinuating that Democrats will be put on a show, but standing, as Sirota says, “for nothing other than than their own party.”  She has spoken of the dangers of “getting the majority and running over the left cliff”.  This was of course before the election, which had the lovely consequence of reinforcing Republican talking points that a Democratic majority would be disastrous.

This week, we learn that she is going to some more talking, this time with President Bush.  The blogosphere is not happy, worried that this is an attempt by Bush to peel off Democrats for his own agenda.  The Democrat, representing a district outside San Francisco that went overwhelmingly for Kerry in 2004 says:

It won’t work, Tauscher says.

“I’m going to tell the president that I really wished that this was a bigger meeting that included other members of the Democratic leadership, including the Progressive, Hispanic and black caucuses,” Tauscher said by phone from the House earlier this afternoon. “This idea that he’s going to pick off the moderates is ridiculous.

“We are fully committed members of the Democratic Party and we are foursquare with Speaker Nancy Pelosi. There is no sunshine between us.”

The difference is that you are going to this meeting and Speaker-elect Pelosi is not.  The Democratic leaders already had their post-election make nice meeting.  Are you really telling me that in the 20 minute meeting you are having with the president that you will start off criticizing him?  Aren’t you worried that George Will is going to accuse you of disrespecting the President?

More from Tauscher:

When the White House called the New Dems last week to request the meeting, they were skeptical.

“We wanted to know, ‘Why now?’ ” Tauscher said. “After all, our phones have been working for six years.”

But when the President of the United States calls, Tauscher says, members of Congress pick up the phone.

“We are public servants that believe in the U.S. Constitution and the importance of dialogue between the branches of government,” she said. “We have had significant complaints about the fact that this White House has not engaged with us for a very long time. But we respect the office and when the president calls, members of Congress want to cooperate.”

Ok, this seriously made me laugh.  You know exactly why, everyone knows why.  Bush has not abruptly changed his tune.  He wants to find a way around the majority and he has the best shot at it by talking to you.

Lest you worry that this is a one time shot, Tauscher makes it very clear that she is looking for this to turn into a regular thing.

“It’s barely more than a photo opportunity, a fresh-start kind of meeting,” Tauscher said. “We’ve made it clear that this is nice and thanks, but we’re not going to take it too seriously unless there is some regularity to the offer and our colleagues are included.”

There you have it folks.  Tauscher wants to take this meeting seriously.  She wants it to be a regular occurrence.  Rather than having the President go directly to the Democratic leadership, she finds value in this sub group meeting with Bush.  The only value is to split our caucus.

Tauscher needs to go.

Josh Richman writing in the Contra Costa Times picked up on the blogosphere outrage at Ellen Tauscher undermining Speaker Pelosi by negotiating directly with bush.

“If he’d agree to meet with them every day it would be fantastic,” guest blogger mcjoan wrote on the popular Emeryville-based liberal blog DailyKos.com, launching a thread several hundred comments long.

“But the leadership has to be able to lead, and this move by Bush is an end-run around the leadership,” she wrote. “It’s an effort by the administration to peel away a block of Democrats that have, to the party’s detriment, shown their willingness to buck party leadership. It’s about respecting party leadership, staying unified within the caucus, and maintaining the strength that will be necessary to get good legislation passed. A unified caucus will be able to accomplish more. This move fractures the caucus.”

Mr. Richman deserves credit for noticing the online angst Tauscher’s move has generated, with Democratic bloggers disgusted to see Pelosi’s leadership publicly undermined before she is even sworn in as Speaker.

Yesterday, Calitics had three front page posts on Ellen Tauscher (1, 2, 3), which shouldn’t surprise anyone who has followed online bloggers’ disgust with Tauscher’s actions before and after the election.

In fact, every time Tauscher undermines the Democratic Party, it provides fuel for progressive bloggers, as Chris Bowers explained:

Here is why I will continue to fgiht: because as long as Ellen Tauscher and her ilk are running the Democratic Party, the conservative movement will continue to rise. Ellen Tauscher can’t beat the conservative movement. She and her friends showed us this time and time again from 1978-2004 just how utterly ineffective they are at doing anything except ushering in a new era of Republican dominance. As long as they are in leadership positions of the Democratic Party, the only avenue available to stop the conservative movement on the electoral front, this country that I love so dearly will continue on a long, downward spiral. Both defeating Republicans and wiping their Democratic enablers out of power is the only way to save my country.

Ellen Tauscher, just so you know, when you have a surprisingly strong and well funded primary challenger with tons of volunteers and lots of support in the progressive media come out of seemingly nowhere in 2008, just look over the cliff to see where that challenger is coming from. At the bottom, you will see me standing there, with hundreds and thousand of my friends and colleagues. We will be in the process of forming a human ladder for your challenger to use to climb up the cliff. When s/he reaches the top, don’t be surprised if more than a few of us come along, and suddenly you find yourself outnumbered, even as you stand next to your twenty-seven new friends. And then we will see who gets run over the cliff next.

With Tauscher showing no signs of having learned for the election results and bloggers clearly tracking her moves, the 2008 primary election in CA-10 has the potential to be more than failure to extend employment, it is shaping up like a movement.