STREAMLINING OF INTERIOR DEPARTMENT AGENCIES ISNT GOING ACCORDING TO PLAN.

Almost everybody wants to streamline the federal bureaucracy, but virtually nobody thinks that Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazars latest idea is a good one. In October, Salazar announced that the agencys Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement would be merged into its Bureau of Land Management. OSM oversees and enforces regulations affecting coal mines, most of which are privately owned and in the eastern United States. BLM oversees multiple activities on land, mostly in the western United States, owned by the federal government

According to Salazars order, the move is a simple streamlining of the Department of the Interior bureaucracy, intended to "integrate the management, oversight, and accountability of activities associated with mining regulation and abandoned mine reclamation; ensure efficiencies in revenue collection and enforcement responsibilities; and provide independent safety and environmental oversight of these activities."

At a glance, its not a good fit: BLM, with about 10,000 employees, oversees coal mining leases on about 700 million acres of federally owned mineral estate, but the number of mines is small and the bureaus focus has always been on the West. OSM, with only about 500 employees, has had a narrow mission of enforcing rules, typically passed by states, that protect people and the environment from adverse effects of mining, rather than land management. Industry advocates, community groups, environmentalists, and members of Congress, often at odds over mining issues, have all vehemently criticized the proposal.

At a mid - November hearing of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, members of both parties denigrated the proposal as an interference with OSMs independence. Citing the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act that established OSM, chairman Jeff Bingaman said that the acts prohibition against transferring coal development functions to OSM was evidence that Congress intended to keep leasing and regulation separate. "Im not convinced the decision to merge OSM into BLM is legally valid or good public policy," said the committees senior Republican, Lisa Minkowski of Alaska.

Few people, however, have seen OSM as an effective regulator. After the announcement, Joan Mulhern, the senior legislative counsel for the environmental group Earthjustice, said that OSM has been "more of a coal industry lapdog than a watchdog.... nless the agency and its leadership have the political will and resolve to do their job...it doesnt really matter what bureaucratic box you stick them in." A West Virginia University law professor, Patrick McGinley, who is an expert on coal industry regulation and has worked with coalfield citizens groups, said at the hearing that even within DOI, OSM has been seen as a narrowly focused "poor stepchild" and that the agency has long been underfunded.

But industry advocates, who might be expected to favor putting OSM into a far corner of what is often derided as the "Bureau of Logging and Mining," also came out strongly against Salazars move. At the hearing, Katie Sweeney, the general counsel of the National Mining Association, said more money could be saved by scaling back inspections and other oversight and dropping efforts to strengthen the stream - protecting buffer - zone rule.

The DOI deputy secretary, David Hayes, responding to a question at the hearing, said the merger would save about $5 million per year. This amount represents less than half of 1 percent of the combined budgets of BLM and OSM. So its not surprising that some industry watchers are wondering whats really going on.

Aimee Erickson, the executive director of the Citizens Coal Council, told me that a lot of her members are concerned that, intentionally or not, the merger could weaken or even destroy the reclamation act. "Thats the only law that protects coalfield citizens," she says, by allowing them to file suits against coal companies and providing funds for the cleanup of abandoned mines. "It was a long struggle to pass SMCRA," says McGinley. "It took a couple of decades of grassroots action. OSM has been important to coalfield communities and families." Its hard to see a convincing rationale for the move, he says.

The reorganization was supposed to take effect on December 1, but that target was quietly set aside. In late November, DOI spokesman Adam Fetcher released a statement saying the effective date was postponed until February 15 while the secretary seeks more input from the stakeholders.

CHICAGO PROMOTES PEDESTRIAN SAFETY WITH AN EYE - CATCHING CAMPAIGN.

Walkability is a watchword these days in cities everywhere, yet accidents continue to happen even though pedestrians know to look both ways before crossing the streets, and drivers know theyre supposed to yield to pedestrians. Chicago, which is developing a new pedestrian safety plan, has also launched a public campaign to raise awareness. The citys ambitious goal is to eliminate pedestrian fatalities by 2020.

Using a strategy pioneered by anti - smoking advocates, the awareness campaign doesnt sugarcoat the problem. Posters show models, including children, in crash victim postures on the pavement and in hospital beds. One gives a drivers seat view of a windshield shattered by a collision with a pedestrian. The ads have been plastered on bins, benches, and buses all over the city.

Most striking, though, are the "ghost pedestrians," white mannequins representing the 32 people killed in the city by cars in 2010. The mannequins were installed along Wacker Drive in the downtown business district, but the citys transportation chief, Gabe Klein, says theyll be visiting other neighborhoods too.

IS EXTREME WATER RECYCLING THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE?

The record - setting summer of 2011 was unusually hot and dry in many parts of North America. But the magnitude was, as is often the case, bigger in Texas: According to the state climatolo - gist John Nielsen - Gammon, average temperatures in Texas were more than two degrees above the previous record for the period of June to August and close to the warmest statewide temperatures ever recorded in the United States. Last years drought was the most intense one - year dry spell since record keeping began in 1895.

San Antonio manages its water resources to cope with this kind of extreme weather. The city, which relies on the Edwards Aquifer for its water supply, has established the biggest recycled wastewater distribution system in the country. The San Antonio Water System supplies up to 35,000 acre - feet of water per year for nonpotable uses such as irrigation for golf courses and parks and cooling for power plants and factories, through a network of more

than 140 miles of large - diameter distribution pipelines.

Wastewater is run through an advanced secondary treatment process, during which contaminants are removed through physical means as well as methods that work biologically and chemically. Excess chlorine is removed with sulfur dioxide. Its important to remove the chlorine residue, because some of the recycled water is also used to augment the flow of the San Antonio River and Salado Creek.

Before SAWSs recycled water distribution system was established, says Gregg Eckhardt, an environmental scientist for the system, potable water from Edwards Aquifer wells —sometimes millions of gallons per day —was used to augment the flow of the San Antonio River near the popular River Walk downtown during dry spells. "This had been going on for almost 100 years," he says.

The policy was wasteful, and it didnt do enough to maintain a consistently strong flow.

Since the discharges of recycled water began in 2000, the health of local aquatic ecosystems has improved markedly, says Eckhardt "Salado Creek was on the EPAs 303 list of impaired waters, and it was subsequently delisted for a dissolved oxygen impairment that had prevented a stable aquatic ecosystem," he told me. "On the San Antonio River, the River Authority has conducted surveys and found a number of very water - quality - sensitive fish such as log perch and stone rollers that they believe were native to the river, but they had never seen them before in the upper San Antonio. It means these species are moving back into habitats where they once thrived because now there is a stable, high - quality base flow."

SAWSs water recycling program has other sustainable elements. "Our solids are all made into compost, and we are the first U.S. utility to find a way to market the methane gas the treatment process produces," says Eckhardt. The water system also has a comprehensive conservation program, with rebates for water - saving landscapes and irrigation systems and even free water - efficient toilets.