Minnesota lakes are loaded with chemicals -- even cocaine

By Emily Sohn
Discovery News

www.startribune.com

From urban and developed to remote and isolated, lakes around Minnesota contain a wide range of chemicals, including DEET, BPA, prescription drugs and even cocaine.

The findings, which came out of the first large-scale, systematic statewide study, suggest that it might be worth taking a wider look at bodies of water around the country for chemicals that have potential consequences for both the environment and human health.

For now, it’s not clear how all of the chemicals are getting into Minnesota’s lakes or exactly what effects they might be having on animals or people.

“It’s not as though people should worry about going to the lake or taking their dogs to the lakes,” said Mark Ferrey, an environmental scientist at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, which published the new report. “We’re talking about how we’re affecting lakes and rivers in ways that we probably don’t understand yet.”

“It’s disquieting,” he added. “We could be affecting fish populations or entire ecosystems in ways that are largely invisible to us.”

Starting about a decade ago, in routine reconnaissance, Ferrey and colleagues began collecting surface waters from rivers and streams around Minnesota. As expected, analyses showed contaminants downstream from wastewater treatment plants and in other highly developed areas. But the researchers were surprised when chemicals also turned up in background samples collected in lakes with mostly untouched shorelines.

For the new study, which was part of a larger national project, sampling crews collected water from 50 Minnesota lakes, which were randomly chosen by a computer program that picked geographic coordinates. Samples were then analyzed in a Vancouver lab for a suite of 125 chemicals.

Forty-seven out of 50 lakes contained at least one chemical on the list, the researchers reported. The bug-repellent DEET was the most widespread, turning up in 76 percent of the lakes sampled. BPA, a plasticizer that has been linked to reproductive and developmental problems, showed up in 43 percent of the lakes.

About a third of the lakes contained cocaine. A similar proportion contained the antidepressant amitriptyline. And the same number contained carbodox, an antibiotic used in pigs, which showed up even in lakes that were not surrounded by agricultural land. Triclosan, a chemical used in antimicrobial soaps, appeared in 14 percent of the lakes.

It’s still a mystery how all of those chemicals are getting into lakes in the first place, but Ferrey suspects that some may be riding on specks of dust in the air. One study in Italy found that cocaine attaches to particles that are about 2.5 microns in size, and more cocaine floats through the air in places where cocaine use is more prevalent.

Concentrations of chemicals were very low, measurable as parts per trillion. But some research suggests that hormone-disrupting chemicals can have effects even at those low levels, Ferrey said. In one study in an experimental lake, dosing the water with an estrogenic contraceptive at five parts per trillion caused populations of fathead minnows and trout to plummet. When researchers stopped adding the chemical to the water, the fish rebounded.

“Even at very low doses,” Ferrey said, “things that are hormones or hormone-like don’t have to be toxic or poisonous to exert strong effects.”

The new findings add important detail to previous work that had documented the presence of a smaller number of compounds in lakes around the country, said research hydrologist Dana Kolpin, head of the emerging contaminants and environment project at the U.S. Geological Survey in Iowa City.

For now, the new study remains a one-time snapshot of what’s out there, he said. Future work will determine if levels change throughout the seasons and whether the findings are cause for concern.

“I want to be middle of the road,” Kolpin said. “I don’t want to say the sky is falling. But these certainly are compounds that wouldn’t be occurring naturally. That means this warrants more research to see if there is something we need to be concerned about.”

Canada says it may take EU to WTO over oil sands dispute

Reuters

www.guardian.co.uk

By Robin Emmott

Canada threatened on Wednesday to take the European Union to the World Trade Organisation over its plans to label Canadian oil sands as dirty, but promised not to delay a bilateral trade pact.

The issue has overshadowed relations as Canada and the EU try to deepen economic ties through a trade deal that could generate $28 billion a year in new business and commerce.

Canadian Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, on a week-long lobbying trip to Europe, accused the EU of breaking international trade rules and discriminating against Canadian exports.

"We are going to take whatever action we need to, and we may well go to the WTO," Oliver told a news conference. "We will defend our interests vigorously."

The WTO has the power to order the EU to change its rules if they are found to be unfair, but the process is lengthy.

Canada's oil sands are the world's third largest crude reserves, but most are in the form of tar sands. Extraction from the clay-like deposits takes more energy than pumping conventional oil and results in higher carbon emissions.

The European Commission has proposed labelling oil from tar sands as "highly polluting" to help implement an EU goal to cut the carbon intensity of its transport fuels by 6 percent by 2020.

The Commission denies that it is singling out Canadian oil as its proposal also defines other unconventional sources of oil as carbon-intensive.

Asked whether the trade deal could be signed even if the EU goes ahead with its fuel labelling, Oliver said: "Yes ... These issues are entirely separate."

He said Canada did not intend to use the issue as a bargaining chip.

Talks on a free trade deal began in 2009 and are in the last stage, diplomats say, but have stumbled over a series of issues.

Canada, which is anxious to find new markets for its oil and gas outside the United States, argues that Europe should embrace it as a stable, reliable energy producer.

Yet many in the environment lobby say long-term investment in new heavy crude infrastructure and development would badly undermine attempts to limit climate change.

Twelve climate scientists and energy experts said in a letter to Oliver this week that Canadian policy was delaying the transition to an economy that was less reliant on carbon.

"We are at a critical moment," the group, among them academics from Harvard in the United States, and from British Columbia and Queen's universities in Canada, wrote in the letter, seen by Reuters. "The responsibility for preventing dangerous climate change rests with today's policymakers."

A report on Wednesday indicated the European Commission's tar sands proposal would shift investment towards lower-carbon oil sources and could save up to 19 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year - equivalent to removing 7 million cars from Europe's roads. (Additional reporting by Barbara Lewis; Editing by Kevin Liffey.

Correa vs. Amazon tribes: Oil demand threatens Ecuador's rainforest, tribes fight back [Videos]

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Cuba: Contaminación ambiental en el rio Ariguanabo

Roberto Guerra

’A very fragile situation’: Leaks from Japan’s wrecked nuke plant raise fears

MLordandGod 

worldnews

By Arata Yamamoto and Ian Johnston, NBC News

TOKYO — Like the persistent tapping of a desperate SOS message, the updates keep coming. Day after day, the operators of the wrecked Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant have been detailing their struggles to contain leaks of radioactive water.

The leaks, power outages and other glitches have raised fears that the plant — devastated by a tsunami in March 2011 — could even start to break apart during a cleanup process expected to take years.

The situation has also attracted the attention of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which sent a team of experts to review the decommissioning effort last month. They warned Japan may need longer than the projected 40 years to clean up the site. A full report is expected to be released later this month.

Journalists have been given a rare glimpse inside Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which was crippled in the 9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that hit the country two years ago. NBC News' Arata Yamamoto reports.

The discovery of a greenling fish near a water intake for the power station in February that contained some 7,400 times the recommended safe limit of radioactive cesium only served to heighten concern.

There was also some reassuring news in February, when a report by the World Health Organization said Fukushima had caused “no discernible increase in health risks” outside Japan and “no observable increases in cancer above natural variation” in most of the country.

But for the most affected areas, the report said the lifetime risks of various cancers were expected to increase. For example, baby boys were predicted to have up to a 7 percent greater chance of getting leukemia in their lifetime and for baby girls the lifetime risk of breast cancer could be up to 6 percent higher than normal.

Independent nuclear expert John Large — who has given evidence on the Fukushima disaster to the U.K. parliament and written reports about it for Greenpeace — said there would be hundreds of tons of “intensely radioactive” material in the plant.

He said normally robots could be sent in to remove the fuel relatively easily, but this was difficult because of the damage caused by the tsunami.

Large said the plant was close to the water table, so it was difficult to stop water getting in and out.

“Until you can stop that transfer, you will not contain the radioactivity. That will go on for years and years until they contain it,” he said. "The structures of containment start breaking down. Engineered structures don’t last long when they are put in adverse conditions."

Larged added: "It may have some marked effect on the health of future generations in Japan. What it will create is a Fukushima generation — like in Nagasaki and Hiroshima - where girls particularly will have difficulty marrying because of the stigma of being brought up in a radiation area."

Leaks into the sea would not only affect the marine environment, Large said, as tiny radioactive particles would be washed up on the beach, dried in the sun and then blown over the surrounding countryside by the wind.

Japanese activists are also worried by the ongoing leaks from the plant.

The Associated Press reported that "runoff ... and a steady inflow of groundwater seeping into the basement of their damaged buildings produce about 400 tons of contaminated water daily at the plant." According to the plant's operator, 280,000 tons of contaminated water has been stored in tanks there.

Hisayo Takada, energy campaigner with Greenpeace Japan, complained no real progress had been made.

“It’s still a very fragile situation and measures implemented by the government and [power company] TEPCO are only temporary solutions,” she said. "The issue with the contaminated water is very serious and we're very concerned. And we're very angry because it’s been two years and they've been saying that everything's safe."

Greenpeace has been testing food sold in supermarkets, and to date has not found “radiation levels higher than government guidelines,” Takada said.

But she said the “land and sea will never return to the way it was before the accident.”

One man who knows this all too well is cattle farmer Masami Yoshizawa. He lives in the Namie area, which was once inside a 12-mile, mandatory evacuation zone but is now among the places where people have been allowed to return.

He tends his herd of 350 cows as “a living symbol of protest.”

Nearly a year after a tsunami and 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit Japan, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel travels to the evacuation zone surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The plant suffered a triple meltdown in the wake of the earthquake, turning the neighborhoods in the 12 mile radius of the plant into ghost towns. Engel journeyed near the mangled plant which remains very much a hotspot.  Radiation levels were so high, the NBC News team on the ground had to wear face masks and full body suits. Even as NBC News drove half a mile from the reactor, radiation monitors were screaming in alarm.

“As long as they're alive, I will keep them to show to the world -- these cows that have been exposed to radiation, cows that are no longer marketable, and that I’m being told to have slaughtered,” said Yoshizawa, 59.

“For us farmers, it’s impossible for us to return to work in Namie. Our community will disappear. It’s going to become like Chernobyl … Only the elderly who say they don't care about the radiation will return. Children will never return,” he said.

The nuclear industry in the U.S. argues its safety standards are higher than at Fukushima.

Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, said it was “incredibly unlikely” that a similar accident could happen in the U.S.

Significant safety improvements were made in the U.S. after Fukushima, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the last major nuclear incident in America at Three Mile Island in 1979, he said.

“Our layers of defense extend beyond what the Japanese had in place,” he said. “We’re now well into our fifth or sixth layer of back-up defenses to ensure there would not be – regardless of the cause – a serious accident that would jeopardize public safety.”

A survey for the institute in February found that 68 percent of Americans supported nuclear energy. 

“[Support] did drop for about six to eight months after the Fukushima accident … it hasn’t quite reached the pre-Fukushima historic highs, but we have rebounded to a considerable extent,” Kerekes said.

Part of this support comes from those who see nuclear energy as key in the fight against climate change.

Kerekes pointed to a report by climatologist James Hansen — until recently head of NASA’s Goddard Institute — that said nuclear power had stopped the release of massive amounts of greenhouse gases and saved 1.8 million deaths related to air pollution.

“Every technology has pros and cons. We feel when you look at the benefits of nuclear energy, it’s very effective, round-the-clock electric supply,” Kerekes said.

“As we look to help try to drive our economy and provide jobs that people need, there’s a strong role for nuclear energy going forward. We believe that’s widely recognized on a bipartisan basis.”

It remains to be seen whether this support will be eroded by the drip, drip of leaks from Fukushima.

America's engine of the future to get 'Made in China' label

mazautolv 

Fox News

Thanks to generous support from a foreign backer, there is renewed hope for an American attempt to revolutionize, modernize and sanitize the automobile engine.

The catch?  The finished product will be stamped “Made in China.”

EcoMotors, a startup engineering company based in Allen Park, Mich., plans to produce up to 150,000 of its opposed-piston, opposed-cylinder (OPOC) two-stroke engines annually in a factory funded by Zhongding Power. The facility will be located in China’s Anhui Province, west of Shanghai.

EcoMotors CEO Don Runkle told FoxNews.com that Zhongding has committed to building a plant for the engines with the hope of supplying generator companies and builders of medium-duty trucks.

“We have talked to a number of automobile manufacturers in the United States, as well as in China,” Runkle said.  He added that EcoMotors has “a letter of intent with Generac,” an American manufacturer of generators that currently buys engines from John Deere and Iveco.

Although Chinese-built generators and motorcycles are becoming more common in the United States, engines produced there have rarely seen duty in American automobiles. The first was when General Motors dropped a Chinese-made 3.4-liter V-6 into its 2005 Chevrolet Equinox and Pontiac Torrent crossovers.

In 2010, when Zhongding agreed to invest up to $18 million toward engineering costs for the OPOC engine, Runkle announced that “this initiative will create a range of high-skill R&D jobs here in southeast Michigan, further underscoring the region's critical role as the incubator of tomorrow’s high-efficiency powertrain solutions.”

The OPOC two-stroke engine is a markedly different concept than the four-stroke engines fitted to most modern automobiles. While two-strokes are generally lighter, have fewer moving parts and a higher power density than comparable four-strokes, they are often not as durable and burn a lot of oil, resulting in worse emissions. EcoMotors claims to have overcome these hurdles with its new technology.

The EcoMotors-designed power plant does without valves and cylinder heads, and places two pistons facing one another in each cylinder like boxers' gloves, with the pistons in turn connected to identical counterparts in an adjacent cylinder. The expansion stroke on one side creates a compression stroke in the other.

“Our innovation is an unusual engine architecture,” Runkle said.

The company says the motors can be configured to run on a variety of fuels, including gasoline and diesel, and will be cheaper to build while delivering between 20 and 50 percent better fuel economy than conventional internal combustion engines, depending on their application.

Production of the OPOC is set to begin in 2014.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2013/04/24/america-new-engine-future-to-be-made-in-china/#ixzz2RPLVRI4O

Eco-friendly funerals: Six feet greener

EconomistMagazine

Our Environmental Catastrophe: Geoengineering and Weather Warfare

seeker401

The environmental movement has developed a single-minded obsession with the supposed effects of carbon dioxide on the global climate. Rather than CO2 gas, however, the technologies that are now being proposed to mitigate this supposed problem might be the real cause of our coming environmental calamity.

http://tv.globalresearch.ca/2013/02/our-environmental-catastrophe-geoengineering-and-weather-warfare

Pollution highlights the price China is paying for rapid development

foxnews

Skyscrapers are obscure by heavy haze in Beijing Sunday, Jan. 13, 2013. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

By David Piper

Beijing has developed into an impressive modern city over the past two decades. But a tourist visiting the Chinese capital over the past four days would have difficulty seeing many of its ancient and modern landmarks because of the horrendous pollution hanging over the city.

China's capital has been notorious for its smog over the past few years, as have most northern Chinese cities.

In Beijing, the smog unexpectedly appears and is likely to be when there is no wind to blow away the pollution, as is the case at the moment.

At first you believe, charitably, it’s just morning mist.  But it doesn't disappear and just lingers all day.

More than 20 years ago, when I first visited, Beijing, like many Chinese cities, was a very different place.

There was only the odd skyscraper and factory. Most people used bicycles to get around rather than the car.

The smog seems to have just enveloped the city, making it dangerous for people to even go outdoors.

With the current levels of pollution, it might be healthier to sit in your car for hours in a traffic jam and let the air filters do their work rather than breathe in the polluted air as you cycle around Beijing. 

The smog seems to have just enveloped the city, making it dangerous for people to even go outdoors.

The Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center is recommending that children and the elderly stay indoors.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/01/14/pollution-highlights-price-china-is-paying-for-rapid-development/?intcmp=trending#ixzz2Hxpx3aV9

Aguas contaminadas en más de 250 ríos y afluentes de Cuba

martinoticias/ Lizandra Díaz Blanco

La contaminación de más de doscientos cincuenta ríos y  afluentes, provoca en buena medida la alta incidencia de enfermedades de transmisión digestivas en la mayoría de las ciudades del país.

Cuarenta y dos personas fallecieron en Cuba en el 2012, por esta realidad que afecta a millones de ciudadanos, según datos aportados por diputados del gobierno, autoridades de Salud Pública, del Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología y Medio Ambiente y el Instituto de Recursos Hidráulicos en la última sesión de la Asamblea Nacional, en diciembre pasado.

Mas en Marti noticias >>

Cuba: Marabu weed for fresh power

bbc.co.uk/

A British company has just signed the first foreign investment deal in Cuba in a long time - a project to build a renewable energy power plant, to run a sugar mill and power a wide area of housing and businesses.

The plant will be powered by the marabu weed - which is currently strangling Cuban agriculture after taking over huge swathes of idle farmland.

Havana Energy says the project has the double benefit of clearing that land for use again and creating energy for the surrounding area, as well as being more environmentally friendly than diesel.

The firm is also planning to export the weed to Europe, as their research has revealed its excellent properties as activated carbon.

Havana Energy Chief Executive Andrew Macdonald showed the BBC's Sarah Rainsford around the sugar mill.

Radioactive Fish Near Fukushima Suggest Ongoing Contamination

Scientific American/ David Biello

RADIOACTIVE FISH: Some source of radioactive contamination is causing bottom-dwelling fish, like the greenling pictured here, to absorb high levels of radionuclides. Image: Flickr.com / Brian Gratwicke

The fish off Fukushima remain radioactive more than a year after the earthquake and subsequent tsunami triggered three meltdowns at the Daiichi nuclear power plant. In fact, bottom-dwelling greenling fish caught in August 2012 bore the highest levels of radioactive particles seen to date—25,000 Becquerels per kilogram. (A becquerel is a unit of the rate of radioactive decay—or radiation emitted by a substance.) That is 250 times higher than current Japanese safety standards, a key reason fishing off Fukushima remains prohibited.
The findings suggest that contaminated water is still leaking from the stricken power plant, the sea bottom itself is now laced with radionuclides, or both. Concentrations in the ocean water itself remain below any human health concern but they do pass into fish that swim through those waters.
"When fish 'drink' they take [cesium] and other salts up from the water they are swimming in, that accumulates in the muscle tissue," explains marine chemist Ken Buessler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who compiled the analysis of publicly released Japanese fisheries data and published it in Science on October 26. But the fish also shed that cesium if they swim in uncontaminated waters, as has been seen in tuna that migrated from near Japan to near San Diego, suggesting that levels in fish should decrease over time. For this reason, most of the fish caught off Japan's northeastern coast are not radioactive. But roughly 40 percent of bottom-dwelling fish, such as flatfish or halibut, caught off the coast adjacent to Fukushima bear radionuclides above the Japanese food safety standard of 100 becquerels per kilogram.*
According to a response to questions from Scientific American that was prepared by staff at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, ingesting fish at that level "would only produce a dose that is a small fraction of the dose that people receive from natural levels." For example, as Buessler notes, fish caught off Japan in June 2011 boasted levels of potassium-40—a naturally occurring radionuclide—10 times higher than those of radioactive cesium from Fukushima. More >>

Shell to Test Capturing of Carbon in Canada

New York Times (blog)/ By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

AP/ An oil sands mining operation near Fort McMurray, Alberta.

HOUSTON — In a bid to make oil sands production less polluting, Royal Dutch Shell announced on Wednesday that it would go forward with the first carbon capture and storage project ever tried in the fields of western Canada.

The announcement of the Quest project after years of study comes just months before Washington will reconsider whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline to increase imports of heavy oil from the oil sands. Environmentalists have fought the project, arguing that refining and burning oil from the oil sands emit far more carbon than conventional oil.

The project, which is scheduled to begin operations by 2015, is intended to capture and permanently store underground more than a million tons of carbon dioxide a year, which Shell estimated was equivalent to taking 175,000 cars off the road. Carbon capture projects have lost favor in recent years because of concerns about their heavy costs, which have typically been subsidized by governments.

The Shell project, with an estimated cost of about 1.35 billion Canadian dollars ($1.36 billion), will be heavily subsidized by the Canadian federal government and the provincial government of Alberta, which together are putting in 865 million Canadian dollars (about $874 million) over more than a decade.

Shell said it was hoping to reduce the carbon emissions from a treatment plant in Scotford, outside Edmonton, that processes extra-heavy oil called bitumen so it can be shipped to refineries in the United States.

“We recognize that our growth requires that it be accompanied by improved environmental management,” said John Abbott, Shell’s executive vice president for heavy oil, at a news conference in Calgary, Alberta. “Quest is a very big part of that.”

Mr. Abbott said that Quest would reduce the emissions from the Scotford plant by 35 percent and demonstrate the technical viability of carbon capture and storage techniques. He added that it would help lead to wider application “through the energy industry and other sectors in the years to come.”

Canada is already the top source of imported oil for the United States and currently produces more than 1.7 million barrels a day of synthetic crude from oil sands. The country’s leaders hope to more than double oil sands production by 2025. To accomplish that, they need the Keystone XL pipeline — which would run to Gulf Coast refineries — to export more oil to the United States, or they must build an alternative pipelines to Canada’s western coast to export the crude to Asia. More >>

Tackling climate change: Carbon capture and storage

EconomistMagazine

Shell

Frack contamination [hydraulic fracturing for natural gas extraction]

Robotic 'fish' take to seas to catch pollution sooner

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

More >>

Are Mysterious Illnesses Linked to Fukushima?

By TheAlexJonesChannel Hundreds of Alaska Airlines flight attendants have filed a formal complaint about uniforms they suspect might be causing their skin to rash and develop lesions, and their hair to fall out. But based on the timing of the symptoms and their relation to similar symptoms in local marine life and polar bear populations, it appears as though radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster may also be a potential culprit.

World's First Air-Powered Car: Zero Emissions

Popular Mechanics June 1, 2007 3:05 AM

This six-seater tax is powered entirely by a tank filled with compressed air.

India's largest automaker is set to start producing the world's first commercial air-powered vehicle. The Air Car, developed by ex-Formula One engineer Guy Nègre for Luxembourg-based MDI, uses compressed air, as opposed to the gas-and-oxygen explosions of internal-combustion models, to push its engine's pistons. Some 6000 zero-emissions Air Cars are scheduled to hit Indian streets in August of 2008.

Barring any last-minute design changes on the way to production, the Air Car should be surprisingly practical. The $12,700 CityCAT, one of a handful of planned Air Car models, can hit 68 mph and has a range of 125 miles. It will take only a few minutes for the CityCAT to refuel at gas stations equipped with custom air compressor units; MDI says it should cost around $2 to fill the car's carbon-fiber tanks with 340 liters of air at 4350 psi. Drivers also will be able to plug into the electrical grid and use the car's built-in compressor to refill the tanks in about 4 hours.

Of course, the Air Car will likely never hit American shores, especially considering its all-glue construction. But that doesn't mean the major automakers can write it off as a bizarre Indian experiment — MDI has signed deals to bring its design to 12 more countries, including Germany, Israel and South Africa.

Read more: Here >> and  Here >>
Also  Here >>

NASA: greenhouse gasses may encourage hostile alien invasion

You mean there may be alien forces more hostile than the Teabaggers? The Guardian:

It may not rank as the most compelling reason to curb greenhouse gases, but reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim.

Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth's atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilisation growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain.

This highly speculative scenario is one of several described by scientists at Nasa and Pennsylvania State University that, while considered unlikely, they say could play out were humans and alien life to make contact at some point in the future.

Read more >

Has Cuba become a Toxic waste dump for Lexington Institute benefactor, Sherritt International?/ Humberto Fontova

From   Babalú Blog

By Humberto Fontova, on July 25, 2011, at 1:39 am

Sherrit CEO Ian Delaney chumming it up with business chum

From Lincoln Diaz Balart:

"The Canadian Mining company Sherrit International has long been extracting Nickel from Cuba's Holguin province and transporting it to Canada for processing. I have information that the chemical by-products--the toxic waste--is then returned to Cuba and dumped on her land and waters in exchange for dollars. The Canadians thus save huge sums of money in circumventing Canada's environmental laws for the processing of toxic waste. I'm unaware of any other government (except Cuba's) that engages in such environmental prostitution. The damage done to Cuba, her people, and her future generations is incalcuable. I'm sure that the Canadians complicit in this crime as partners with the Cuban dictatorship will have to answer--not only morally--but also legally, when Cuba re-establishes the rule of law."

Entire disclosure (in Spanish) here by Lincoln Diaz-Balart.

Needless to add, some outfits gleefully and repeatedly issued Cuban visas view the matter differently:

"Some experts (emphasis by intransigent poster) say Fidel Castro's environmental policies may be among his greatest achievements."
"I think the Cuban government can take a substantial amount of credit for landscape, flora, and fauna preservation," said Jennifer Gebelein, a professor at (you are not going to believe where she professes!) Florida International University in Miami who studies environmental issues in Cuba. "
Above expertise from National Geographic.

And regarding this post's title mentioning The Lexington Institute.

(Sherritt) has given money to a former CIA and State Department employee, Phil Peters, to advance its interests. The money to Peters goes through contributions to the Lexington Institute, where Peters is a Vice-President. Because the Lexington Institute is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit, there is no public record of Sherritt’s funding. This has allowed Peters to advise and direct the Working Group in ways beneficial to Sherritt while presenting himself to the Group as an objective think-tank scholar with a specialization in Cuba."