Looking for some green books for your reading list?

The Green Book Festival in San Francisco has named its award winners for 2012, and at least two books by local authors were named.

"Encyclopedia of Pollution" by Rutgers prof Alexander Gates and north Jerey environmental consultant Robert Blauvelt is a runner-up in the general nonfiction category.

And "Arctic Autumn: A Journey to Season’s Edge," by New Jerey Audubon's Pete Dunne got an honorable mention.

"Encyclopedia" is a two-volume set "designed to address all aspects of pollution and the global impact on the environment in a single source. Containing more than 300 entries and essays interspersed throughout, it uses the most current scientific data to explain the different types of pollutants including properties, production, uses, environmental release and fate, adverse health response to exposure, and environmental regulations on human exposure. It provides the scientific background on the water, soil, and air of environments where the pollutants are released. Coverage also includes pollution regulation, the function of federal regulatory agencies and environmental advocacy groups, and the technology and methods to reduce pollution and to remediate existing pollution problems," according to the publisher's description.

In additiion, "numerous case studies explore the most infamous of pollution events such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Gulf Storm oil well fires, the Chernobyl disaster, Hurricane Katrina, the World Trade Center disaster, and the Love Canal in New York, among many others including those that had great impact on legislation or that were used in popular media such as the films Erin Brockovich and A Civil Action. Biographies are provided of some of the leaders and pioneers of pollution study and activism. Other useful features include a detailed glossary, indexes, a timeline, and tables."

Dunne's "Arctic Autumn" is part of a series that includes "Prairie Spring" and "Bayshore Summer," which is a series of essays on the Delaware Bayshore. In this latest one, he takes readers to Alaska and far north Canada in search of strange birds, retreating ice, caribou, polar bears and -- what would a Pete Dunne book be without this? -- contemplations on nature and our relationship to it. 

Other winners of the festical can be found here.

Now that pollination season has begun in earnest, I've been thinking more and more about bees.

Will we have enough this year -- and in years to come -- for our agricultural crops? Will I have enough in my own garden?

Probably no one would have given this a moment's thought before 2006, when Pennsylvania beekeeper David Hackenberg noticed something amiss. Hackenberg manages bees, trucking them from Florida to Maine to pollinate whatever needs it, according to the season.

That October, he had trucked them to Florida to pollinate orange blossoms. By November, some hives were empty; others had just sickly remains.

That was just the beginning.

Entomologists far and wide -- but Penn State was a nexus -- began to work on the problem, which came to be known as Colony Collapse Disorder.

Increasingly, evidence is pointing to a particular group of pesticides, neonicotinoids.

In a very nice New Yorker piece recently, Elizabeth Kolbert describes three studies that link the substances to the bee declines.

"As it happens, the studies are appearing just as Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s seminal study of the effect of pesticides on wildlife, is about to turn fifty," she writes. "It's hard to avoid the sense that we have all been here before, and that lessons were incompletely learned the first time around.

In another study published in Science Daily in March, researchers looked at corn-planting technology and concluded that the pneumatic drilling machines used to plant corn treated with neonicotinoid was expelling bursts of air containing high amounts of the insecticide. Honeybees that flew through the emission cloud died.

Today, the Pesticide Action Network released a report, Pesticides and Honeybees: State of the Science, that it says documents evidence that pesticides are a key factor in explaining honey bee declines. (Proceed with caution: This is a publication by an advocacy group, not a peer-reviewed journal.)  The group says it has examined studies in the U.S. and Europe and that they "have shown that small amounts of neonicotinoids—both alone and in combination with other pesticides—can cause impaired communication, disorientation, decreased longevity, suppressed immunity and disruption of brood cycles in honeybees."

Companies that make the chemicals have disputed many of the studies, but the Network claims that there's enough evidence to compel regulators to act. Tomorrow, California's Assemble Agriculture Committee will consider a plan to come up with a way to protect bees.

The new and surprising news about the red-tailed hawk nest on a window ledge at the Franklin Institute keeps mounting.

Today, there's the extraordinary development that the female has accepted a new male, who has begun to help her feed the three hatchlings.

The drama began more than a week ago, when the original male didn't show up at the nest one night. As the days passed, avid hawk-watchers -- both people on the street below the ledge who watch the nest and those who tune in via an online web cam -- began to fear the worst. He wasn't coming back.

Eventually, they learned from a guy who posted on the hawks' Facebook page that he saw a red-tailed hawk get hit by a truck on the Schuylkill Expressway.  Could it be the missing hawk?

Later still, they learned from a state game commission wildlife conservation officer, Jerry Czech, that he had picked up the dead hawk later that day. Case pretty much closed.

The Institute staff began collecting food -- dead mice and such -- for the young birds and leaving it on a nearby ledge. It was a long shot, but it turned out that the mother hawk went for it. She brought the food back and began feeding it to her young.

Still, watchers worried: Could she handle this single-parent role? Could she get enough food to her young and still protect them from the cold and the rain and who knows what else might threaten them.

Even if she did, the events seemed to spell the end for the webcam, which has attracted a worldwide following. If she got a new mate next year, they likely would nest someplace else.

Then, just today, another amazing development: A new male was seen by the nest, and the female was letting him approach.

Here's the report from the Franklin:

Astonishingly, our female has found a new mate and has welcomed him to the nest! This is a truly remarkable development. This morning, she allowed him to come to the nest and he has begun to help her hunt, bringing food offerings! Needless to say, the mood in the hawkaholic community has changed dramatically today as we see her moving on and welcoming support to help raise these three hatchlings. It’s a joyous outcome. The male’s willingness to join her also suggests that the future for our nest may indeed be bright!

Plymouth Meeting resident and hawk afficionado Della Micah has been recording even more details on her wonderful blog, which is here.  She includes superb photos by Kay Meng of Glenolden.

The hawks also have a Facebook page.

The New Jersey Environmental Federation has issued an environmental report card for the NJ Guv, and Christie gets a D.

"We're grading the Governor because it's time for him to begin living up to his promises and get serious about protecting our water, air, and health," the group said.

The federation looked at 39 issues and gave the governor "poor" or "failing" marks on 28 of them.

It said too many environmental professionals at the Department of Environmental Protection have been replaced with industry reps. Christie got praise for opposing new coal-fired power plants, but criticism for approving new power lines that would import dirty power, the group said. The governer has failed at coming up with effective ways to rescue Barnegat Bay, is weakening stream buffer protections with exemptions and supports weak natural gas drilling rules in the basin, the group said.

Normally, other enviro groups would pile on.

But this time, the Sierra Club is dissing the Federation, noting that the federation, unlike other environmental groups, originallly endorsed Christie.

"When NJEF endorsed Christie they took a leap of faith right of the cliff," Sierra's director, Jeff Tittel, said at the time.

Now, he says, “We are glad the Federation has finally been willing to publically criticize the Governor with the release of their score card today.  However it’s long overdue, in fact two years overdue."

“What grade should the Federation give themselves in standing up to Christie and standing up to protect the environment?" he said.

"From the Governor’s first day in office with Executive Order (EO) 1, Christie started to dismantle environmental protections. ... The Sierra Club identified 50 environmental attacks in Christie’s first 100 days. Where was the Federation?"

“Even now giving the Governor a D when he is trying to dismantle every core environmental program in the state shows the Federation still has not figured it out. Are they marking the Governor on a curve?" Tittel said.

Tittel noted that other environmental groups have been silent as well.

The full rant, as well as a list of reasons the Sierra Club thinks the governor deserves an F, is here.

Back atcha, Delaware is saying to Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Mike Krancer.

On Tuesday, Krancer said at a meeting in Wayne County that Delaware "smells like the tail of a dog" because of its opposition to natural gas drilling regulations proposed for the Delaware River Basin.  A commission that oversees the basin has instituted a moratorium until rules can be adopted.

A spokesman for Delaware Gov. Jack Markell has responded. 

"I'm not sure the governor gives a frack about his comments," Brian Selander  told the Wilmington News-Journal. "Pennsylvania's chief environmental officer spewing noxious rhetoric into Delaware does little to inspire confidence that his office has the inclination or competence to ensure this drilling is done in a manner that protects Delaware's water resources."

Meanwhile, there remains no clarification about Krancer's other comment -- that Delaware is shaped  like a dog with a tail.

As natural gas drilling activity continues to escalate in Pennsylvania -- as of April 27, the state had issued 10,675 Marcellus permits and 5,314 wells had been drilled -- the question remains as to what impact this industrial activity will have on the state's wildlife.

Plenty of concerns have been raised.

In 2010, the Nature Conservancy issued a report predicting that energy development overall in the next two decades -- from wind turbines to natural gas drilling pads -- could alter up to 40 percent of the state's most ecologically valuable large forest blocks, endangering habitats of species from songbirds to trout.

But reports about what is actually happening are scarce.

This week, the Wildlife Conservation Society highlighted a report that appeared in the March issue of the journal Biological Conservation. It documented "that intense development of the two largest natural gas fields in the continental U.S. are driving away some wildlife from their traditional wintering grounds," the WCS reported.

Over a period of five years, researchers tracked 125 female pronghorns via GPS collars in Wyoming's gas fields.  They found that the animals are being driven "to the periphery of areas historically classified as crucial winter ranges." They also found that the best-quality habitat for the pronghorns had declined by 82 percent.

Fifty percent of North America's pronghorn live in Wyoming.

"In our study we have detected behavioral shifts for pronghorn in response to natural gas field development and infrastructure on federal BLM lands," said Jon Beckmann of WCS's North America Program and lead author. "By detecting behavioral changes, it is possible to identify threshold levels of gas field infrastructure development before any significant population declines. Maintaining the integrity of crucial wintering areas is particularly important in harsh winters to avoid diminishing pronghorn numbers."

WCS has developed recommendations to protect pronghorn on BLM lands, according to a press release from the society. They include collecting baseline data on population sizes and distribution prior to energy development. This could be used to identify crucial habitat and restrict or redirect  development  in those areas.

Authors include Jon Beckmann and Rene Seidler of WCS; Kim Murray of Institute for Systems Biology; and Joel Berger of the University of Montana and WCS.

The industry has attempted to lessen impacts. Responding to the Nature Conservancy report in 2010, Kathryn Klaber of the Marcellus Shale Coalition said that some of the recommended mitigation measures are already being used by an industry that has made "major leaps" in lessening its impact. For instance, drilling companies already put more wells on a single well pad, as the report recommends. And they are sharing access roads rather than building separate ones because it also makes economic sense.

UPDATE:  A coalition spokesman has taken issue with this post. "While I'm sure many southeastern Pennsylvanians are uniquely concerned about the Wyoming pronghorn, why not tell your readers what natural gas producers are actually doing in PA as it relates to conservation?" he wrote in an email.

That wasn't my point, of course. The point was that data-driven studies of what actually happens in the world of wildlife are rare, and this was one of them.

But he nevertheless wishes to note -- and I'm happy to do it -- that on April 26, the industry released the first in a series of "recommended practices" for natural gas developers. It focused on site planning, development and restoration -- all of which obviously could impact wildlife, for better or worse.

Among the recommendations, the 34-page document "encourages" operators to seek input from sportsmen’s organizations, hunting and fishing clubs and the like "to learn about unique local conditions that could affect fish, game and plant species. Operators should consider opportunities to adjust their site planning to be responsive to local conditions and seasonal issues related to breeding and spawning seasons of fish, game and wildlife in general."

Another one: "Operators should be willing to modify plans to account for reasonable requests for such items as access road retention, pond retention, wildlife habitat improvements, vegetative screening, site drainage improvements and swales, and the creation of habitat features like brush piles, vernal ponds, and nesting or cover areas."

Geisinger Health System is planning to mine its database of hundreds of thousands of medical records to assess whether natural gas development in Pennsylvania has health effects, Bloomberg Business News is reporting.

Gov.  Corbett's Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission had recommended that the state Health Department create a health registry to follow residents who live within a mile of gas drilling and production sites. But funding for it never materialized.

Geisinger is a non-profit group of hospitals in Eastern Pennsylvania, based in Danville.

“There’s all these concerns about what the health risks are but we’re really limited to anecdotal data,” said David Carey, the director of Geisinger’s Weis Center for Research, in an interview with Bloomberg. The database can contribute “real hard, rigorous scientific data” to the debate, he said.

Concerns include the potential for water and air pollution, as well as inhalation of sand dust, according to academics and government officials who spoke at a workshop sponsored by the Institute of Medicine  this week, Bloomberg reported.

The Institute. advisers to the government on health care, is examining whether the fracking process of extracting natural gas from shale rock poses health risks, the wire service said.

Ouch!  Is the contentious world of natural gas drilling taking a nasty turn?

Speaking at a meeting of the Wayne County Builders Association Tuesday afternoon, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Krancer apparently had strong words for the state of Delaware.

“Sometimes they smell like the tail of a dog,” the Wayne Independent reported. “And it (the state) is shaped like a dog with a tail. This is the tail wagging the dog.”

The Delaware Riverkeeper Network, an environmental organization, has demanded that Gov. Corbett issue an apology for the remark.

Putting aside speculation about what the tail of a dog smells like -- is this the tail of a wet dog, or the tail of a dog after it has ....? -- some background is in order here:

This has to do with natural gas drilling. A moratorium has been in effect throughout the Delaware River Basin, which includes several counties in northeastern Pennsylvania that are presumed to be gas-rich. The moratorium would have ended if the Delaware River Basin Commission, a state/federal agency charged with overseeing water quality and quantity issues, enacted rules to govern natural gas activities.

Members of the commission include Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York and a federal representative. It's an interesting group. Pennsylvania supports drilling, basically. New Jersey is not believed to have much in the way of natural gas under its soils, and its legislature is opposed to allowing natural gas drilling, but Gov. Christie supports it. New York has held off on allowing drilling until its rules are developed. And Delaware, also with no natural gas reserves to benefit from financially, nonetheless has a lot of Delaware River frontage that could be affected by a spill or broad degradation upstream.

So the commission hardly speaks with one voice in this matter.

Rules were proposed and debated. The commission received some 70,000 comments. The rules were revised. But then, the commission did not vote to adopt them. Many blamed Delaware's governor, which at more or less the final moment said he would vote against the proposed rules.

But smelling like a dog's tail?

The Riverkeeper Network called Krancer's remark a “disgraceful and embarrassing attack” on Delaware.  

“There can be no justification for this kind of filthy and denigrating language targeted at the public officials and the citizens of an entire state, particularly when the efforts being spurned are those that are protecting the health and safety of citizens throughout the region,” said Maya van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper.

According to a report on StateImpact, Collin O'Mara, the head of Delaware's Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, said that other states share Delaware's concerns about drilling. “All other states dis­agree with Penn­syl­va­nia,” he told StateImpact. “They all agree that we should have a sci­ence based, rig­or­ous reg­u­la­tory regime because the con­se­quences of fail­ing to do it well could be dev­as­tat­ing for years to come.”

Krancer wasn't singling out Delaware. He also took a shot at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has miffed state officials by stepping into the controversy about whether water supplies in Dimock, Pa., are contaminated.

According to the Independent's report, Krancer referred to the federal agency workers in their “ivory towers,” and said that the DEP has “more in field experience.”

Stay tuned.

Once again -- for the fifth year in a row -- the University of Pennsylvania has emerged at the top of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's list of green power champions at colleges and universities.

Penn beat 72 other schools across the country by purchasing more than 200 million kilowatt hours of green power -- power from renewable sources -- during the current academic year.

Penn is a big place with a lot of research and a lot of power needs, so this amount turned out to be 48 percent of the school's overall power usage.

Other schools that purchased less green power -- but that made it 100 percent of their usage - include Drexel, Carnegie Mellon, Allegheny, Oregon State, Dickinson, Catholic University, American University,  Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Santa Clara University, Southwestern and more.

Pennsylvania overall is looking mighty fine. Pennsylvania has more colleges and universities participating in the challenge than any other state. OF the 73 schools, 17 are in Pennsylvania.

EPA officials said Penn's power purchase is equivalent to avoiding the greenhouse gas emissions of about 27,000 passenger vehicles each year.

“By purchasing green power from renewable sources, these 17 Pennsylvania institutions are spurring the development of the nation’s green power market and reducing harmful air pollution,” said EPA’s mid-Atlantic Regional Administrator Shawn M. Garvin in a press release. “Their commitment to renewable energy, especially at the University of Pennsylvania, is contributing to the growth in green jobs and a green economy.”

The other 16 Green Power Partners in Pennsylvania are: Duquesne University in Pittsburgh; Dickinson College in Carlisle; Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster; Haverford College in Bryn Mawr; Swarthmore College in Swarthmore; Gettysburg College in Gettysburg; Philadelphia University in Philadelphia; Drexel University in Philadelphia; Juniata College in Huntingdon; Eastern University in St. Davids; Allegheny College in Meadville; Bucknell University in Lewisburg; Mercyhurst College in Erie; Chatham University and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh; and Marywood University in Scranton.