August 10 - Pollution from Colorado's 32,000 Abandoned Mines and How it Affects Rivers and Streams; Trump Triumphs in Polls After the Contentious First Debate; Japan Restarts Nuclear Power

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the plume of toxic pollution that has turned the Animus River a mustard yellow, as toxic sludge makes its way downstream from the mining town of Silverton, Colorado into New Mexico. We first speak with Jeanne Bassett, a Senior Associate for Environment Colorado to get an understanding of how much pollution is contained in the 23,000 abandoned mines in Colorado that continually leak toxins in what is known as acid mine drainage. Then we will get an assessment of the damage done downstream to the fish and wildlife from Ty Churchwell, a back country coordinator with the environmental group Trout Unlimited. He joins us to discuss how the “River of Lost Souls” as it is known in Spanish was brought back to life after being polluted by mining activity but is now threatened again. 

Part 2

Then we examine the just-released Reuters/Ipsos poll following Thursday’s Republican presidential primary debate that has Donald Trump with a commanding lead of 24%, with Jeb Bush trailing in second with 12%, down from 17% before the debate. A leading voice on white identity and race in modern America, Ian Haney Lopez, a Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley and author of “Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class” joins us. We will discuss how Trump, in spite of efforts by Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch to ambush him in the Fox News debate, has taken dog whistle politics to a new level and is being rewarded by Republican primary voters as the punditry tries to write him off.

Part 3

Then finally we look into the restart of the Sendai nuclear plant in Japan, the first to go back on line since the Fukushima disasters in March of 2011. David Lochbaum, one of the nation’s top independent experts on nuclear power who worked for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and is now the Director of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, joins us to discuss why, after getting by without nuclear energy for the last 4 years, Japan is bringing back nuclear power.