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EPA asked to regulate fracking’s toxic air emissions
Creston iJAG program wins state competition
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Students in Creston’s iJAG program, from left, include: Samantha Reed, Toni VanScoy, Kimba Shaw, coach Jerry Hartman, Paige O’Neall, Tiffany Scott, Taquisha Williams and Laurie Phelan, state iJAG president.
Creston iJAG competed against 40 programs from across the state of Iowa in job preparedness, customer service, critical thinking and more. ■
ANKENY — Creston’s iJAG (Iowa Jobs for Americas Graduates) program recently won top honors at the Career Development Conference held here May 1. Students in the program include Tiffany Scott, Taquisha Williams, Kimba Shaw, Paige O’Neall, Toni VanScoy and Samantha Reed. This group competed against 40 other programs across the state. They competed in job preparedness, customer service, community service awareness, decision making, critical thinking, employee preparedness, public speaking and banner presentation.
“This is the first time the program has placed first at state,” Hartman said. “I was so proud of this group. I don’t even know if our program had placed in the past, let alone first. We’ve worked with Iowa Workforce Development, which definitely helped them, and we worked hard to learn skills that business owners and human resource officers are wanting from employees.” Scott competed in the critical thinking competition, surviving three rounds of judging to place third overall. Scott was given a situation that commonly occurs in the workplace, then had five
minute to create a threeminute speech that addressed the problem and gave two solutions. “She also had to devise a way to avoid a recurrence of that problem,” Hartman said. Williams competed in decision making — similar to the critical thinking event — except she wrote an essay that identified a problem in the workplace and solutions. “She represented us very well,” Hartman said. Shaw and O’Neall both placed in the top eight in the employee prep competition which simulated applying for a job. They both sent in their résumé and cover letters prior to the event and were both interviewed at the conference. Both placed high enough to earn points toward the final team score.
VanScoy delivered a signature e v e n t speech at the conference, w h i c h Hartman depicted a fun-run through the city of Creston that highlighted area businesses and manufacturing plants, culminating with a carnival atmosphere job fair at McKinley Park. Creston’s iJAG program also earned first place in the paper/fabric banner competition with a banner depicting events that occur in Creston. The banner was presented by Samantha Reed and VanScoy. Ashley Cardenas and Samantha Ott helped design and paint the banner.
(MCT) — Seeking to close what a lawyer called “serious gaps” in regulation, 64 environmental and community groups on Tuesday petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to clamp down on toxic air emissions from oil and gas operations. The 112-page petition, filed by the public interest law firm Earthjustice, asks the EPA to use its authority under the Clean Air Act to develop “robust emission standards” limiting the amounts of benzene, formaldehyde and other harmful chemicals that can be released by wells and associated equipment. “Some of the documented health effects of the many types of (hazardous air pollutants) emitted during oil and gas production include increased risks of cancer, respiratory diseases, and birth defects, among others,” the petition says. Emma Cheuse, an Earthjustice lawyer, said in a telephone interview that “people across the United States need leadership at the national level, need the EPA to act.” Most states experiencing heavy drilling have done a poor job of enforcing the federal clean air law, Cheuse said; the EPA needs to step in “so people won’t have to wait years and years for protection.” The petition addresses an issue highlighted in “Big Oil, Bad Air” a project unveiled by the Center for Public Integrity, InsideClimate News and The Weather Channel in February. The series examined the air pollution impacts of the Eagle Ford Shale boom in South Texas, where nearly 9,000 oil and gas wells have been drilled in the past five years through the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Some residents of the region have reported breathing difficulties, nosebleeds, headaches, nausea and other conditions they blame on emissions from wells, storage tanks, gas processing plants and other facilities. States like Texas regulate air pollution from oil and gas production activities using a patchwork of laws and rules, which, critics say, are often loosely enforced. As of 2011, there were more than 1 million wells in the United States, “and as many as 45,000 new wells are expected to be drilled each year through 2035,” the Earthjustice petition says. —————— © 2014 InsideClimate News Distributed by MCT Information Services
United States lacks paid maternity leave GENEVA (MCT) — The United States is the only Western country — and one of only three in the world — that does not provide some kind of monetary payment to new mothers who’ve taken maternity leave from their jobs, a new U.N. study reports. Two other countries share the U.S. position of providing “no cash benefits during maternity leave,” according to the report, which was released Tuesday by the International Labor Organization: Oman, an absolute monarchy in the Persian Gulf; and Papua New Guinea, a South Pacific nation where the U.S. State Department says violence against women is so common that 60 percent of men in
The U.S. is the only Western country — and one of only three in the world — that does not provide some kind of monetary payment to new mothers who’ve taken maternity leave. ■
a U.N. study acknowledged having committed a rape. The other 182 countries surveyed provide either a Social Security-like government payment to women who’ve recently given birth or adopted a child or require employers to continue at least a percentage of the worker’s pay. In 70 countries, paid leave is also provided for fathers, the report said, including Australia, which introduced 14 days of paid paternity
leave last year, and Norway, which expanded its paternity leave from 12 to 14 weeks. The United States also provides for fewer weeks of maternity leave than what other Western countries mandate, the report said. Under U.S. law, businesses are required to allow a new mother to take as many as 12 weeks of unpaid leave. In New Zealand, the leave is 14 weeks; in Australia, it’s 18 weeks. Switzerland has allowed
women workers to take 18 weeks off since 2005; they’re paid 80 percent of their salaries under a government program similar to Social Security in the United States. Government provides the payments in most the surveyed countries, the International Labor Organization said, with 107 nations making cash benefits available through their national social security plans. In 45 countries, the benefits are paid solely by employers, while in 30 countries employers and social security plans bear the costs. The International Labor Organization, which has promoted better working conditions since it became the U.N.’s first special-
ized agency in 1946, said it prefers leave mandates that do not saddle individual companies with the cost, saying such requirements hurt businesses and potentially lead to bias against hiring women. Germany, Europe’s largest economy, requires that mothers receive 14 weeks leave at full pay through a combination of government and employer payments. In Great Britain, a new mother is allowed to take a full year off, the report said, with payments during the first six weeks totaling 90 percent of her salary. After that, the payments are set at the equivalent Please see MATERNITY, Page 2
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