Tag: climate desk

1 in 3 Americans Live in Areas With Dangerous Air Pollution

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For Gaddy, who is African American, the report’s findings confirm what she and her neighbors in Newark’s predominantly Black South Ward have experienced for years. Gaddy and her three children were all diagnosed with asthma; her eldest child died of a heart attack in 2021 at the age of 32.

“It’s just the cumulative impacts of pollution is what is harming us,” Gaddy said. “And so, unfortunately, that’s what happens in our city.”

The New York/Newark metropolitan area has 1.8 million adults with asthma and 370,000 children with the disease, according to the report.

Researchers are hopeful that a series of new auto emissions standards that were announced last month by the Biden administration might significantly reduce some forms of particle pollution.

Under the newly proposed standard, by 2032, 56 percent of all new vehicles that are sold should be electric; the proposal also calls for increases in plug-in hybrid vehicles or other partially electric cars and more efficient gasoline-powered cars.

“We’ve seen the Environmental Protection Agency finalize a number of new standards to clean up the air pollution and address climate change, with more on the way,” said Bender.

“We’ve seen the tighter particulate matter standard. We’ve seen strong measures to reduce emissions from future cars and future trucks. We’ve seen measures to reduce methane and volatile organic compounds from the oil and gas industry,” she said. “And we’re calling on the administration to get across the finish line to more items on their to-do list.”

Bender said that the association hopes that the EPA will update the national ozone standard, which has not been revised since 2015.

“Sometimes people don’t realize that poor air can affect them pretty drastically,” said Amit “Bobby” Mahajan, a national spokesperson for the Lung Association. “We know that there are asthma attacks, heart attacks and strokes, but we also see increases in preterm birth, cognitive impairment, and development of lung cancers in individuals who have high exposure to ozone and particle pollution.

“So not only is it important just to provide clean air, but providing clean air minimizes the number of exposures we have to these serious diseases and honestly reduces our risk of having deadly underlying conditions,” said Mahajan, who also serves as the director of interventional pulmonology at Inova Health System in Northern Virginia.

Gaddy said that she’s confident that federal officials will soon act on the recommendations of researchers and other experts to help alleviate the asthma crisis in her city.

“We know that eventually, our communities will be healed and restored to the level that they should be,” added Gaddy. “And that just because of our zip code or the color of our skin, our communities won’t continue to be these sacrifice zones.”

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April 27, 2024
How One Corporation Is Cashing In on America’s Drought

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On its website, Greenstone describes itself as “a water company” and as “a developer and owner of reliable, sustainable water supplies.” Its CEO, Mike Schlehuber, previously worked for Vidler Water Company—another firm that essentially brokers water supply—as well as Summit Global Management, a company that invests in water suppliers and water rights. Greenstone’s managing director and vice-president, Mike Malano—a former realtor based in Phoenix who remains “active in the Arizona development community,” per his company bio—got himself elected to the board of the Cibola valley irrigation and drainage district, a quasi-governmental organization that oversees the distribution of water for agriculture in the region.

Irwin was horrified. She felt that a company with ties to big banks and real estate developers, posing as a farm, had infiltrated her small town and sold off its most precious resource.

The deal won’t have an immediate impact on Cibola’s residents. It doesn’t affect the municipal water supply. But she worries that the transfer will be the first of many. And if more and more farms are fallowed to feed water to cities, what will become of rural towns along the river?

“It’ll be like Owens Valley,” she said, referring to the water grab that inspired the movie Chinatown. In the early 20th century, agents working for the city of Los Angeles, posing as farmers or ranchers, bought up land in the valley and diverted its water to sustain their metropolis, leaving behind a dustbowl.

By allowing the Greenstone deal to go through, “I’m afraid we’ve opened Pandora’s box,” she said.

The Colorado River, which stretches from the Rocky Mountains into Mexico, has declined by about 20 percent since the turn of the century, amid the most severe drought the West has seen in 1,200 years. In a painfully negotiated deal, Arizona, Nevada, and California agreed to reduce the amount of water they draw from the river by 13 percent through 2026. Experts warned that even deeper cuts would be necessary in the coming decade, but states are currently deadlocked over a longer-term conservation plan.

“With ongoing shortages on the river, driven by climate change, Colorado River water is going to become very valuable,” said Rhett Larson, a professor of water law at Arizona State University. “Anyone who understands this dynamic thinks, ‘Well, if I could buy Colorado River water rights, that’s more valuable than owning oil in this country at this stage.’”

Though the price Queen Creek paid for the water was remarkable—amounting to more than $11,500 per acre-foot—lawyers and water experts in Arizona told the Guardian it would probably sell for even more today.

The process of selling and transferring the water, however, can be bureaucratic and complicated. In most cases, a company like Greenstone would have to first convince fellow landowners in their local irrigation district to allow the sale, and then secure approvals from the state department of water resources and the US Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that manages water in the West.

What Irwin and many of Cibola’s residents didn’t realize was that in their sleepy, riverside town, a select group of farmers and landowners had been working for years to facilitate such deals.

‘His Dream Was to Sell This Water’

Irrigation districts, as the name suggests, are designed to distribute water for irrigation across the US West. These districts were formed in the 19th and 20th centuries as cooperatives, allowing farmers to pool resources to develop water infrastructure. In the Colorado River basin, the districts contract with the Bureau of Reclamation to deliver water flowing through federal infrastructure to farms and ranches.

Farmers tend to be possessive of their precious water, explained Susanna Eden of the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center. Most irrigation districts are set up to keep water for farming—and to keep it within their jurisdictions.

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April 20, 2024
Toronto Wants to Manage Storms and Floods—With a Rain Tax

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This story originally appeared on Canada’s National Observer and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A plan to charge Toronto homeowners and businesses for paved surfaces on their properties is creating a public backlash, a deluge of negative international media attention, and even derisive comments from Donald Trump Jr.

The outcry reached such a crescendo last week, the city canceled public hearings on the tax, which is intended to help offset the hundreds of millions spent managing stormwater and basement flooding.

Dubbed “the rain tax” by critics, including the former US president’s son on X, a SkyNews host also condemned the plan and discouraged people from visiting Canada’s largest city saying: “You thought it couldn’t get any worse … Don’t go to Toronto because they’re going to tax you when it rains.”

The amount of hard surface area would determine the contentious stormwater charge on a property which does not absorb water, such as roofs, driveways, parking lots, or concrete landscaping.

“When we get a big rainstorm, basements flood, roads flood, sewage overflows and runs into the lake or on our rivers,” said Toronto mayor Olivia Chow in an online video post on X. “Stormwater slides off paved surfaces instead of absorbing into the ground. It overwhelms our water infrastructure, causes damage to your home and the environment.”

The new fee would adjust water bills to reduce water consumption rates and add a stormwater charge based on property size and hard surface area.

Online public consultations were to be followed by public meetings. However, after less than a week, the online consultations were paused and public meetings canceled. The city claims the delay is needed so staff can find a way to marry the new fee with the city’s broader climate-resilience strategy.

Chow said she would prefer the city offer residents financial incentives to plant gardens in their backyards or install permeable pavement to help drain the rain.

“I don’t think it’s fair to have a stormwater policy that asks homeowners to pay while letting businesses with massive parking lots off the hook,” said Chow. Many businesses with large paved areas, such as parking lots, pay no water bills and therefore do not contribute to stormwater management.

“That is why I am asking Toronto Water to come back to city council with a plan that supports more green infrastructure, prevents flooding, and keeps your water bills low,” Chow said.

In last year’s city budget, a 10-year plan (2023 to 2032) allocated $4.3 billion for stormwater management, including the $2.11 billion Basement Flooding Protection Program. Last year alone, the city invested $225.3 million in the basement program.

Other nearby cities, like Mississauga, Vaughan, and Markham, have had stormwater charges for a long time.

In an email response, the City of Vaughan said its stormwater charge supports numerous programs and initiatives across the city to help protect the environment, property, and water quality. Vaughan’s 2024 stormwater rate is $64.20 annually for a detached single residential unit, an increase from last year’s rate of $58.63, the city said.

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April 13, 2024
Searching for ‘Forever Chemicals’ From an Endless Landfill Fire

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Testing done by ADEM, Butler said, also did not assess water samples taken from sites closest to the dump. And while PFAS compounds are certainly common, he said, experts have concluded that elevated levels in the human body can be a warranted health concern.

At this month’s meeting, many residents agreed with Butler, expressing a lack of confidence that ADEM—or any government officials—are looking out for residents in and around the Moody site.

Courtesy of Lee Hedgepeth/Inside Climate News

Jeff Wickliffe, chair of the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences, told those gathered that he believes more data is needed to fully understand what impacts the site could have had on those living nearby.

Because there are no natural sources of forever chemicals, Wickliffe said, it’s difficult to believe claims that only vegetative material was burned at the site given the levels present in the water. Other waste was likely present, he argued, in order to produce the levels of PFAS compounds present in discharge from the Moody site.

Questions around the source of PFAS in residents’ blood, if present, can be addressed by taking background measurements of individuals who weren’t exposed to the impacts of the fire and resulting pollution, for example, Wickliffe said.

Testing residents’ blood or urine for the presence of such compounds, then, may allow locals to document at least one avenue of potential impacts from the Moody site on their health, he said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), increases in exposure to PFAS compounds can increase cholesterol, decrease birth weight, lower antibody responses to vaccines, and increase risks of pregnancy-induced hypertension, preeclampsia, and kidney and testicular cancer.

The risk of health impacts from PFAS is determined by exposure factors like dose, frequency, and duration, as well as individual factors like sensitivity or disease burden, according to the federal agency.

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April 6, 2024
One Couple's Quest to Ditch Natural Gas

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Two climate journalists decided to decarbonize their home. Here’s what happened.

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March 30, 2024
The US Is About to Drown in a Sea of Kittens

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Scientists, conservationists, and cat advocates all agree that unchecked outdoor cat populations are a problem, but they remain deeply divided on solutions. While some conservationists propose the targeted killing of cats, known as culling, cat populations have been observed to bounce back quickly, and a single female cat and her offspring can produce at least 100 descendants, if not thousands, in just seven years.

Although sterilization protocols such as “trap, neuter, and release” are favored by many cat rescue organizations, Lepczyk said it’s almost impossible to do it effectively, in part because of how freely the animals roam and how quickly they procreate. Without homes or sanctuaries after sterilization, returning cats outside means they may have a low quality of life, spread disease, and continue to harm wildlife. “No matter what technique you use, if you don’t stop the flow of new cats into the landscape, it’s not gonna matter,” said Lepczyk.

Rescue shelters, already under strain from resource and veterinary shortages, are scrambling to confront their new reality. While some release materials to help the community identify when outdoor kittens need intervention, others focus on recruiting for foster volunteer programs, which become essential caring for kittens who need around-the-clock care.

“As the population continues to explode, how do we address all these little lives that need our help?” Dunn said. “We’re giving this everything we have.”

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March 23, 2024
Insurance Rates Are Soaring for US Homeowners in Climate Danger Zones

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The First Street Foundation study points out that insurers could offer discounts to homeowners who take steps to fortify their homes, which would help make disasters less damaging. Moore said Florida once was a leader when it came to measures like building codes, although that has changed in recent years. The state also had lacked a disclosure policy requiring property owners to share a property’s flood history with buyers and renters.

Another bill would compel landlords to inform tenants that they live in a flood zone, and yet another would force home sellers to disclose past flooding and insurance claims to potential buyers. The first measure has not advanced. The second was approved on March 4 by the Florida State House and Senate and heads next to DeSantis for his signature.

“We’ve got to stop putting more and more people in harm’s way, especially in Florida where we could see a foot or two and a half feet of sea level rise in the next 30 years, over the term of a 30-year mortgage. Maybe we should tell people that before they buy a house. Maybe we don’t issue that permit to build the house there in the first place. There’s a revolutionary idea for the state to consider,” Moore said.

“As long as the state of Florida is determined to keep people in the dark about the risks, they are reaping the seeds they have sown,” he said. “All you have to do is look at the development boom in some of the riskiest areas of the state.”

Escalating risk may lead some homeowners to abandon certain areas. A separate study from the First Street Foundation combines Census Bureau and flood risk data to identify what the study describes as “climate abandonment areas,” where population declines between 2000 and 2020 can be linked with vulnerability.

The areas are scattered nationwide but concentrated along most of coastal Florida, the Mid-Atlantic region between New Jersey and Washington, DC, and the Gulf Coast of Texas, especially in Houston. The areas can be found even in some of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas, like Miami. In Miami-Dade County, properties lost as much as $3.99 per square foot in home value due to flood risk between 2005 and 2017, according to the study.

Such migrations likely would not be consistent and would be tied with socioeconomic means. Buyout programs are small compared with the widespread risk, Porter said.

Moore said providing relocation assistance has proven challenging in various places across the country. It can take time for the assistance to reach the person, and it can be difficult to help the person get to where he or she wants to go, he said.

“Most of our energies are about buying them out so they can go somewhere else. But where else they go, it also presents some challenges as well, especially in fast-growing areas where property values are growing,” he said. “That may not be enough to help them relocate to a safer place.”

“There’s just no easy solutions to this, and solutions are exponentially harder in a state that’s determined to continue development in high-risk areas,” Moore said. “There are no solutions that are going to work long-term when that’s the dynamic at play.”

Added Friedlander: “We don’t see the [insurance] market getting worse. But unfortunately what does that mean for the average consumer? It does not mean the bill is going down today or tomorrow. We’re talking about a stabilizing market. We’re hoping in 2024 we will see more moderate rate increases than we’ve seen before, but we can’t predict.”

A Rare Spot of Nature

For Infinger, his family’s property along the Little Wekiva represents a rare spot of nature tucked away within the urban web of highways and subdivisions outside of Orlando.

He speaks with wonder rather than worry as he recalled a time when he and his wife watched a bear through a window of the family home, as the animal made a snack of acorns. Of observing coyotes come and go through the yard. He grew up with some of his neighbors. This feels like home.

That may change, though. The family has the money to pay the escalating insurance rates, said Infinger, 41, who works in construction. But as their kids get older, he and his wife are making plans to move farther outside of Orlando, closer to his parents. He fears his beloved Little Wekiva will flood the low-lying family home again in the future.

“We already know it’s going to flood,” he said. “It’s just a matter of time.”

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March 16, 2024
Solar-Powered Farming Is Quickly Depleting the World’s Groundwater Supply

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That is certainly the case in Yemen, on the south flank of the Arabian Peninsula, where the desert sands have a new look these days. Satellite images show around 100,000 solar panels glinting in the sun, surrounded by green fields. Hooked to water pumps, the panels provide free energy for farmers to pump out ancient underground water. They are irrigating crops of khat, a shrub whose narcotic leaves are the country’s stimulant of choice, chewed through the day by millions of men.

For these farmers, the solar irrigation revolution in Yemen is born of necessity. Most crops will only grow if irrigated, and the country’s long civil war has crashed the country’s electricity grid and made supplies of diesel fuel for pumps expensive and unreliable. So, they are turning en masse to solar power to keep the khat coming.

The panels have proved an instant hit, says Middle East development researcher Helen Lackner of SOAS University of London. Everybody wants one. But in the hydrological free-for-all, the region’s underground water, a legacy of wetter times, is running out.

The solar-powered farms are pumping so hard that they have triggered “a significant drop in groundwater since 2018 … in spite of above average rainfall,” according to an analysis by Leonie Nimmo, a researcher who was until recently at the UK-based Conflict and Environment Observatory. The spread of solar power in Yemen “has become an essential and life-saving source of power,” both to irrigate food crops and provide income from selling khat, he says, but it is also “rapidly exhausting the country’s scarce groundwater reserves.”

In the central Sana’a Basin, Yemen’s agricultural heartland, more than 30 percent of farmers use solar pumps. In a report with Musaed Aklan, a water researcher at the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, Lackner predicts a “complete shift” to solar by 2028. But the basin may be down to its last few years of extractable water. Farmers who once found water at depths of 100 feet or less are now pumping from 1,300 feet or more.

Some 1,500 miles to the northeast, in in the desert province of Helmand in Afghanistan, more than 60,000 opium farmers have in the past few years given up on malfunctioning state irrigation canals and switched to tapping underground water using solar water pumps. As a consequence, water tables have been falling typically by 10 feet per year, according to David Mansfield, an expert on the country’s opium industry from the London School of Economics.

An abrupt ban on opium production imposed by Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers in 2022 may offer a partial reprieve. But the wheat that the farmers are growing as a replacement is also a thirsty crop. So, water bankruptcy in Helmand may only be delayed.

“Very little is known about the aquifer [in Helmand], its recharge or when and if it might run dry,” according to Mansfield. But if their pumps run dry, many of the million-plus people in the desert province could be left destitute, as this vital desert resource—the legacy of rainfall in wetter times—disappears for good.

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March 9, 2024
The US Buried Nuclear Waste Abroad. Climate Change Could Unearth It

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This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Ariana Tibon was in college at the University of Hawaii in 2017 when she saw the photo online: a black-and-white picture of a man holding a baby. The caption said: “Nelson Anjain getting his baby monitored on March 2, 1954, by an AEC RadSafe team member on Rongelap two days after ʻBravo.’”

Tibon had never seen the man before. But she recognized the name as her great-grandfather’s. At the time, he was living on Rongelap in the Marshall Islands when the US conducted Castle Bravo, the largest of 67 nuclear weapon tests there during the Cold War. The tests displaced and sickened Indigenous people, poisoned fish, upended traditional food practices, and caused cancers and other negative health repercussions that continue to reverberate today.

A federal report by the Government Accountability Office published last month examines what’s left of that nuclear contamination, not only in the Pacific but also in Greenland and Spain. The authors conclude that climate change could disturb nuclear waste left in Greenland and the Marshall Islands. “Rising sea levels could spread contamination in RMI, and conflicting risk assessments cause residents to distrust radiological information from the US Department of Energy,” the report says.

In Greenland, chemical pollution and radioactive liquid are frozen in ice sheets, left over from a nuclear power plant on a US military research base where scientists studied the potential to install nuclear missiles. The report didn’t specify how or where nuclear contamination could migrate in the Pacific or Greenland, or what if any health risks that might pose to people living nearby. However, the authors did note that in Greenland, frozen waste could be exposed by 2100.

“The possibility to influence the environment is there, which could further affect the food chain and further affect the people living in the area as well,” said Hjalmar Dahl, president of Inuit Circumpolar Council Greenland. The country is about 90 percent Inuit. “I think it is important that the Greenland and US governments have to communicate on this worrying issue and prepare what to do about it.”

The authors of the GAO study wrote that Greenland and Denmark haven’t proposed any cleanup plans, but also cited studies that say much of the nuclear waste has already decayed and will be diluted by melting ice. However, those studies do note that chemical waste such as polychlorinated biphenyls, man-made chemicals better known as PCBs that are carcinogenic, “may be the most consequential waste at Camp Century.”

The report summarizes disagreements between Marshall Islands officials and the US Department of Energy regarding the risks posed by US nuclear waste. The GAO recommends that the agency adopt a communications strategy for conveying information about the potential for pollution to the Marshallese people.

Nathan Anderson, a director at the Government Accountability Office, said that the United States’ responsibilities in the Marshall Islands “are defined by specific federal statutes and international agreements.” He noted that the government of the Marshall Islands previously agreed to settle claims related to damages from US nuclear testing.

“It is the long-standing position of the US government that, pursuant to that agreement, the Republic of the Marshall Islands bears full responsibility for its lands, including those used for the nuclear testing program.”

To Tibon, who is back home in the Marshall Islands and is currently chair of the National Nuclear Commission, the fact that the report’s only recommendation is a new communications strategy is mystifying. She’s not sure how that would help the Marshallese people.

“What we need now is action and implementation on environmental remediation. We don’t need a communication strategy,” she said. “If they know that it’s contaminated, why wasn’t the recommendation for next steps on environmental remediation, or what’s possible to return these lands to safe and habitable conditions for these communities?”

The Biden administration recently agreed to fund a new museum to commemorate those affected by nuclear testing as well as climate change initiatives in the Marshall Islands, but the initiatives have repeatedly failed to garner support from Congress, even though they’re part of an ongoing treaty with the Marshall Islands and a broader national security effort to shore up goodwill in the Pacific to counter China.

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March 2, 2024
Frequent Heavy Rain Has Made California a Mudslide Hotspot

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This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Picture the minute hand at about 8 past the hour. That’s the slope of Viet’s backyard in southern Los Angeles County. It’s a bit too aggressive for a slip-and-slide. In fact, Viet doesn’t even let his 7-year-old daughter play on the family’s small back patio.

“I don’t need her falling down that hill,” he said.

When Viet and his wife bought their house-on-a-hill five years ago, it was a win, their piece of “the Hollywood Riviera,” as real estate agents like to call the area. (A self-employed marketer in his forties, Viet asked that his last name not be used to protect his family’s privacy.)

Viet’s street runs horizontally across a huge incline that begins the Palos Verdes Peninsula, a marvel of steep cliffs and Mediterranean-style homes at the south hook of Santa Monica Bay. If you squint, it could be the terraced hills of Tuscany or, indeed, a stretch of the Côte d’Azur. The address was a solid investment and housing insurance not a problem, even though parts of the peninsula have been known to shape-shift, cracking roads and knocking houses off foundations. But not every day. The family enjoyed some easy SoCal years on their perch with its great views and gentle, dry climate.

“Whenever it rained, we’d be happy: ‘We’re not in a severe drought anymore, yay!’” Viet said. “But after this, every time it rains, I get scared.”

“This” was the atmospheric river storms that hit LA with a one-two punch (the first, a jab, the second, a wallop) in the first week of February. The usual winter rainy season in California has been amped up this year by a parade of such storms. This week again, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and LA counties are in the midst of high-volume, road-cracking, flash-flooding, climate-amplified downpours juiced by warmer Pacific Ocean temperatures. The storms are causing an unusual amount of high-profile damage, setting everyone on edge, especially Viet.

After the initial rain burst on February 1, he noticed that the top of his backyard slope, swathed in a hand-high succulent called “ice plant,” looked odd. A patch of mushy soil seemed to be shrugging off its ground cover. He asked a gardener to try and fix it. That was a Friday. Then the monster rain cells moved in on Sunday, February 3.

“All night, all I could hear was pounding on the roof, the wind blowing sideways,” he said. “It was unsettling, so when I woke up at 7:30, the first thing I did was try to go look at the rain drains and make sure everything was doing fine.”

Viet circled his home in sneakers because he’d never had cause to buy rain boots.

“I walked around to the backyard, looked down, and I was like, ‘Ohhhhh myyyyyy goooood.’”

A 40-foot-wide river of mud, rock, and roots was in full flow down his hill, already jamming up a city road 70 feet below where Viet stood, somehow safe, on the precipice.

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February 24, 2024