This issue of Environmental Practice (June 2004) focuses on mercury (Hg) pollution and remedial procedures. Six of the seven full-length articles in this special issue were presented at the 6th International Conference on Mercury as a Global Pollutant, which was held in Minamata, Japan, from October 15 to 19, 2001. These articles describe mercury emissions from artisanal gold mines in two important countries (China and Brazil), show a critical review of the use of bioaccumulation factors in stream monitoring, and demonstrate how different procedures can be applied to remove mercury from contaminated soils/sediments.

Recently, Paul Thompson of Michigan State University invited me to participate in a conference on the ethics of intensifying the uses of resources. This problem of “intensification” forced me to think about environmental problems in a new way with parallels to most of the articles in this issue's special section on Natural Resources and Ethical Issues.

In the March 2004 issue of Environmental Practice, this page discussed the intensification of resource use as an ethical issue of considerable importance. Matters of process, time, and justice were particularly significant in terms of whether a particular pattern of resource use was moral or not.

Release of the Report of the 9/11 Commission in July highlights a generally unacknowledged link between environment and the horrible crimes of September 11, 2001. The Commission, created to “…provide the fullest possible account of the events surrounding 9/11 and to identify the lessons learned” (p. xvi), was not explicitly charged to conduct an environmental and natural resource study, and their Report does not frame the problem as an environmental concern. Nevertheless, through oil, the connections among environment, national security, and 9/11 are clear.

The following presentation was given by Rabbi Lawrence Troster on June 25, 2003, at the National Association of Environmental Professionals' (NAEP) 28th Annual Conference, held in San Antonio, Texas.

I have been struggling with this topic for quite a while. It seems like I am always receiving a comment about how poor our education system has become and shouldn't I be able to write a motivating piece on the ethics of education. Because I thought I should be able to do that, it has bothered me that I could not. Today I deduced that I could not write this because there are no ethics of education.

As this issue of Environmental Practice goes to press, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has put mercury from coal-fired plants into front-page news. The battle seems simple on the surface: USEPA seeks to reverse a decision made in December 2000 that Section 112 of the Clean Air Act would govern these emissions.

The Marmion Way Corridor portion of the Metro Gold Line Light Rail Transit Project is unique. It is part of the City of Los Angeles's Historic Preservation Overlay Zone within the residential Highland Park neighborhood. Highland Park is centrally located within a larger northeastern portion of Los Angeles that has a population of 300,000, of whom approximately 40% are living at or below poverty level.

Although I have belonged to the International Association of Impact Assessment (IAIA) since the early i99os, it has been years since I attended an international conference. This year was different. I attended the 24th annual conference of the IAIA, which was held between April 26 and 29, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. One of the members of the Board of Directors told me that nearly 1,000 professionals from almost 100 countries were in attendance at the conference.

The terms “liberal” and “conservative” are abused, scorned, and defamed to the point of uselessness. Liberals are pilloried for big government, high taxes, corrosive relativism, and moral permissiveness. Conservatives are damned as those who opportunistically honor only the strong and powerful while brutalizing the poor, the helpless, and minorities. Two words that once were not ideological have become lost in ideology. It may now be impossible to escape the ideology, but the ideology should be seen as a constraint, not a condition. We are in serious trouble with this loss of credible meaning to our language. We are overdue to recover the actual meanings of Liberal and Conservative. Both have historical origins and classical definitions that might be surprising in light of today's polarization. Not the least, it becomes clear that environmental science is not inherently liberal, as some critics complain; instead, it reflects the best of both Classical Liberalism and Classical conservatism.

The following presentation was given by the Rev. Dr. J. Philip Wogaman on June 25, 2003, at the National Association of Environmental Professionals' (NAEP) 28th Annual Conference, held in San Antonio, Texas.

Over the last couple of years, the toxic metals spotlight in the United States has shifted from lead to mercury. Today it seems that mercury is in everything, from contact lens solution to lab chemicals, medical equipment, fluorescent light bulbs, cars, McDonald's toys, and fish. The latter finding has now taken this industrial chemical closer to home. Are we poisoning our children and ourselves with a powerful neurotoxin by eating fish, breathing air, and perhaps even getting our cavities filled at the dentist's office? Is mercury a truly serious problem?

I propose to examine the metamorphosis of science into policy and our ethical responsibility to avoid or at least manage this phenomenon. In doing so, I apply some metaphors to which I hope none take offense.

“Don't worry, this won't hurt me a bit.” I'll never forget that clever “joke” as my dentist proceeded to drill a hole in my tooth to replace a cavity with “amalgam.” Another tooth, filled with amalgam decades ago, had to be refilled because the amalgam had worn due to eating and other abuse over the years.

Today, as never before, the United States Army faces significant challenges to conducting the realistic training necessary to produce combat-ready forces. Public concern, manifested in environmental laws and regulations concerning pollution, endangered species, competition for resources, and land use has already caused military training to either be constrained—at a cost to training realism—or halted completely.

Many northwesterners can probably cite the latest economic trends: how the Dow is doing, whether consumer confidence is up or down, whether GDP grew last year. But few could tell you about the state of other areas we care deeply about—such as the integrity of nature and human health—because there are few regularly published metrics on environmental and social trends.

Water quality trading is receiving great interest as a potential tool for achieving a watershed's water quality goals at less cost. It appeals to both regulators and watershed stakeholders as a voluntary, businesslike approach attracting a category of sources to the table that regulators have been unable to control using traditional enforcement tools—nonpoint sources. Non-point source pollution is a major source of the water quality problems still needing to be addressed in watersheds throughout the United States. Following the remarkable success of the Acid Rain Program's sulfur dioxide emissions trading system, however, expectations have been raised for all pollution trading systems. To date, water quality trading projects across the US have failed to deliver on those expectations because of the predominance of the “offset” trading model in their program design, which is characterized by significant costs in both time and resources to support trades. In this article, we argue that, although critical differences exist between water quality trading and the “cap and trade” model of the Acid Rain Program, water quality trading programs should consider incorporating certain key design elements that have contributed to the Acid Rain Program's success. We describe Idaho's Lower Boise River water quality trading framework as an example of how this can be done.

In December 2000, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) determined that mercury emitted to the air during coal-fired electric generation posed a public health concern. This finding was coupled with an announcement that the agency intended to establish stringent limits on stack emissions of the pollutant no later than December 2004.

The Evergreen State College served as the site for Models for Forest Protection, a conference co-sponsored by the Graduate Program in Environmental Studies on May 10, 2003. The goal of the conference was to present and evaluate four current models for National Forest protection through a description of the models and presentations of local case studies to illustrate their use and value. Quileute tribal leader Chris E. Morganroth III served as the keynote speaker for the conference. The stories Morganroth tells are “…passed down from the elders to the children of each succeeding generation, speak of the past, of the relationship between the people, other living things, and the land, and of the personal qualities of living things that are valued today.”