Tag Archives: Environmental concerns

Gaps in wildfire smoke warning community depart folks uncovered

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BILLINGS, Mont. — Enormous gaps between air high quality sensors within the western U.S. have created blind spots within the warning system for wildfire smoke plumes sweeping North America this summer season, amid rising concern over potential well being impacts to thousands and thousands of individuals uncovered to the air pollution.

Authorities applications to alert the general public when smoke air pollution turns into unhealthy depend on about 950 everlasting monitoring stations and dozens of cell models that may be deployed round main fires.

These stations are closely concentrated round main cities on the West Coast and east of the Mississippi River — a patchwork that leaves some folks unable to find out native dangers from smoke, together with in rural areas the place air high quality can shortly degrade when fires ignite close by. The issue persists far past fireplace traces as a result of wildfire smoke travels for 1000’s of miles and loses its tell-tale odor but stays a hazard to public well being.

The monitoring gaps underscore what officers and public well being consultants say is a obvious scarcity of assets for a sort of air pollution rising worse as local weather change brings more and more lengthy and harmful wildfire seasons to the U.S. West, southern Europe and japanese Russia.

Microscopic particles in wildfire smoke could cause respiration points and extra severe issues for folks with power well being circumstances. Lengthy-term results stay below research however some researchers estimate power smoke publicity causes about 20,000 untimely deaths a yr within the U.S.

“It’s a really irritating place to be the place now we have recurring well being emergencies with out ample technique of responding to them,” stated Sarah Coefield, an air high quality specialist for town of Missoula, Montana. “You will be in your workplace simply respiration smoke and pondering you’re OK since you’re inside, however you’re not.”

Missoula, perched alongside the Clark Fork River with about 75,000 folks, is surrounded by mountains and has change into infamous as a smoke lure. All throughout the area are comparable mountain valleys, many with out air pollution screens, and smoke circumstances can fluctuate significantly from one valley to the following.

Montana has 19 everlasting monitoring stations. That is about one for each 7,700 sq. miles (20,000 sq. kilometers) or an space nearly as huge as New Jersey. New Jersey has 30.

Information on air high quality is especially sparse in japanese Montana, the place smoke from a 266-square-mile (690-square-kilometer) fireplace on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation received so dangerous this month that officers closed a well being clinic when air filters couldn’t sustain with the air pollution.

The smoke prompted tribal authorities to protect elders and others who had been in danger by extending an evacuation order for Lame Deer, a city of about 2,000 those who sits beneath fire-scarred Badger Peak and is dwelling to the tribal authorities advanced.

However on the identical day, Lame Deer and surrounding areas had been unnoticed of a air pollution alert from state officers, who stated extraordinarily excessive smoke particle ranges made the air unhealthy throughout massive areas of Montana and suggested folks to keep away from extended exertion to guard their lungs. A air pollution sensor on the reservation had burned within the fireplace, and the closest state Division of Environmental High quality monitor, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) away, confirmed an air high quality studying of “good.”

That left tribal officers to evaluate the air pollution hazard based mostly on how far they may see — a crude fallback for areas with out screens. On a scale of 1 to 20, “I might say the smoke was a 19,” tribal spokesperson Angel Becker stated.

“What makes it troublesome is that Lame Deer is sitting in between a few ravines,” she added. “So once you get socked in (with smoke), it simply sits right here and that’s not good for elders or youngsters which have bronchial asthma or any respiration points.”

Doug Kuenzli, who supervises Montana’s air high quality monitoring program, stated regulators acknowledge the necessity for extra knowledge on smoke however high-grade screens will be prohibitively costly — $10,000 to $28,000 every.

Oregon expanded its community over the previous two years with 5 new screens alongside the state’s picturesque shoreline the place smoke solely not too long ago turned a recurring drawback, stated Tom Roick with the Oregon Division of Environmental High quality.

“We’re seeing extra prevalence of wildfire smoke and elevated depth,” Roick stated. “It is not as a result of now we have extra monitoring; it is getting worse.”

All through the West, public well being officers have struggled to get the message about risks of smoke to at-risk communities, reminiscent of migrant staff who spend a lot of time outside, folks in homes with out air filters and the aged. Kids, too, are extra prone to well being issues.

That is no small subset of society: Folks over 65 and youngsters below 18 make up 40% of the inhabitants, stated Kaitlyn Kelly, a wildfire smoke air pollution specialist with the Washington Division of Well being.

Speedy technological developments imply households should buy their very own monitoring gear for round $250. The gear shouldn’t be as dependable as authorities stations, officers stated, however the knowledge from lots of the privately-owned sensors is now displayed on an interactive smoke publicity map by the U.S. Environmental Safety Company and Forest Service.

Though inaccurate readings have been reported for some consumer-grade sensors, officers stated they may help fill blind spots within the authorities’s community. The quantity in use is quick growing — from about 6,000 non-public sensors final yr to greater than 10,000 presently, based on EPA.

“There’s nonetheless gaps,” stated Kelly. “The low-cost sensors are step one in filling within the gaps the place we do not have (authorities) screens.”

In Missoula, a small non-profit group based to convey consideration to world warming goes past warning folks about smoke. It is offering makeshift air filters and transportable air cleaners to the homebound aged and impoverished households.

Vinette Rupp, a 74-year-old Missoula girl who acquired a conveyable air cleaner, stated she “can nearly style it” when the smoke will get thick on the town. Neighbor Maureen Fogarty, 67, who has lung most cancers and suffers from respiration issues, stated her coughing has eased since she received one of many filters.

“Effectively it is a lifesaver as a result of I can breathe simpler now,” Fogarty stated. “The best way it’s, you recognize, you have to come and go and also you’re bringing within the unhealthy air, and it’s gonna have an effect on you.”

Local weather Good Missoula, which supplied the transportable air cleaner, additionally makes and distributes filters by an area meals financial institution. Costing about $30 apiece — versus $150 or extra for a manufactured unit — the do-it-yourself purifiers are endorsed by public well being officers. They’re crafted from field followers with high-efficiency furnace filters duct-taped to the again to lure air pollution particles as air passes by.

Local weather Good Missoula director Amy Cilimburg stated she and a colleague have constructed roughly 200 of them, paid for largely with donations.

“Our methods for coping with wildfire smoke had been pray for rain, or depart city, or endure — and that appeared insufficient,” Cilimburg stated “It is sort of caught up with us, though scientists have advised us it is coming. I felt like we would have liked to get to work.”

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Observe Matthew Brown on Twitter: @MatthewBrownAP

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AP PHOTOS: Wildfires develop worldwide as local weather sizzles

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August 20, 2021, 3:30 AM

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The summer season season of wildfires is rising extra intense and damaging because the local weather sizzles.

July was the planet’s hottest month in 142 years of file maintaining, in accordance with U.S. climate officers. A number of U.S. states — together with California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington — additionally noticed their hottest ever July.

In August, wildfires continued to rage throughout the western United States and Canada, southern Europe, northern Africa, Russia, Israel and elsewhere.

In Greece, which is struggling its most extreme warmth wave in many years, a giant wildfire this week threatened villages exterior Athens. 1000’s of individuals have been evacuated from houses in a area of the French Riviera threatened by blazing fires. Current wildfires have killed not less than 75 folks in Algeria and 16 in Turkey, native officers stated.

Drought situations and excessive temperatures in northern California have given rise to the Dixie Hearth, which has been ablaze for a month and burned greater than 1,000 sq. miles. Some 1,600 folks in Lake County have been not too long ago ordered to flee approaching flames, and youngsters have been rushed out of an elementary faculty as a close-by subject burned.

Final week a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change referred to as Earth’s quickly warming temperatures a “ code purple for humanity.” The report calls local weather change clearly human-caused and “a longtime reality,” and co-author and local weather scientist Linda Mearns informed the AP that the disrupted international local weather leaves “nowhere to run, nowhere to cover.”

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Local weather-fueled wildfires take toll on tropical Pacific isles

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WAIMEA, Hawaii — A metallic roof sits atop the burned stays of a homestead on the once-lush slopes of Hawaii’s Mauna Kea — a dormant volcano and the state’s tallest peak — charred vehicles and bikes strewn about as wind-whipped sand and ash blast the scorched panorama.

Generations of Kumu Micah Kamohoalii’s household have lived on these lands reserved for Native Hawaiians, and his cousin owns this home destroyed by the state’s largest-ever wildfire.

“I’ve by no means seen a hearth this huge,” Kamohoalii stated. “Waimea has had fires, lots of them earlier than and a few perhaps just a few hundred acres, however not this dimension.”

The hearth has burned greater than 70 sq. miles (181 sq. kilometers) within the two weeks it has been going. But it surely wasn’t the primary time this space has burned, and will not be the final. Like many islands within the Pacific, Hawaii’s dry seasons are getting extra excessive with local weather change.

“Everybody is aware of Waimea to be the pasturelands and to be all of the inexperienced rolling hills. And so after I was younger, all of this was at all times inexperienced,” Kamohoalii stated. “Within the final 10 to 15 years, it has been actually, actually dry.”

Enormous wildfires spotlight the risks of local weather change-related warmth and drought for a lot of communities all through the U.S. West and different hotspots around the globe. However specialists say comparatively small fires on usually moist, tropical islands within the Pacific are additionally on the rise, making a cycle of ecological injury that impacts very important and restricted sources for tens of millions of residents.

From Micronesia to Hawaii, wildfires have been a rising downside for many years. With scarce funding to stop and suppress these fires, island communities have struggled to deal with the issue.

“On tropical islands, fires have a singular set of impacts,” stated Clay Trauernicht, an ecosystems and wildfire researcher on the College of Hawaii. “At first, fires had been very uncommon previous to human arrival on any Pacific island. The vegetation, the native ecosystems, actually advanced within the absence of frequent fires. And so whenever you do get these fires, they have an inclination to form of wreak havoc.”

But it surely’s not simply burnt land that’s affected. Fires on islands hurt environments from the highest of mountains to beneath the ocean’s floor.

“As soon as a hearth happens, what you’re doing is eradicating vegetation,” Trauernicht stated. “And we regularly get heavy rainfall occasions. All of that uncovered soil will get carried downstream and now we have these direct impacts of abrasion, sedimentation on our marine ecosystems. So it actually hammers our coral reefs as properly.”

Pacific island reefs help native meals manufacturing, create limitations to giant storm surges and are a vital a part of tourism that retains many islands working.

The moist season on tropical islands additionally causes fire-adapted grasses to develop tall and thick, constructing gasoline for the following summer season’s wildfires.

“Guinea grass grows six inches a day in optimum situations and a six-foot tall patch of grass can throw 20-foot flame lengths,” stated Michael Walker, Hawaii’s state fireplace safety forester. “So what now we have listed below are actually fast-moving, very popular, very harmful fires.”

Walker stated such non-native grasses which have proliferated in Hawaii are tailored to fireplace, however native species and shrubs should not.

“Whereas (these wildfires) might not evaluate to the scale and length of what of us have within the western United States, we burn a good portion of our lands yearly due to these grass fires, they usually’re altering our pure ecosystems and changing forests to grass,” he stated.

The newest wildfire on Hawaii’s Huge Island burned about 1% of the state’s complete land, and different islands within the Pacific resembling Palau, Saipan and Guam burn much more — as much as 10% in extreme fireplace years.

On common, Guam has practically 700 wildfires a 12 months, Palau about 175 and Saipan about 20, in accordance with knowledge from 2018.

Guam, like many different locations, has lengthy used fireplace as a software. Farmers generally use it to clear fields and hunters have been identified to burn areas whereas poaching.

The U.S. territory’s forestry chief Christine Camacho Fejeran stated fires on the island are largely brought on by arson. “So all of Guam’s wildfires are human-caused points, whether or not it’s an intentional or an escaped yard fireplace or one other (trigger),” she stated.

On common, Fejeran stated, 6,000 to 7,000 acres (2,430 to 2,830 hectares) of the island burns annually, amounting to about 5% of its land.

Whereas no properties have been misplaced to latest wildfires on Guam, Fejeran believes that pattern will come to an finish — until extra is completed to fight the fires.

The island has made some modifications in fireplace laws, administration, schooling and enforcement. Arson has develop into a rechargeable offense, however Fejeran says enforcement stays an impediment within the tight-knit group.

Again in Hawaii, final week’s blaze destroyed three properties, however the fireplace threatened many extra.

Mikiala Model, who has lived for twenty years on a 50-acre homestead, watched as flames got here inside just a few hundred yards (meters) of her home.

As the hearth grew nearer, she noticed firefighters, neighbors and the Nationwide Guard racing into her rural neighborhood to struggle it. She needed to evacuate her beloved dwelling twice in lower than 24 hours.

“After all it was scary,” she stated. “However I had religion that the sturdy, the courageous and the gifted, and together with nature and Akua, which is our identify for the common spirit, would take care.”

Demonstrating the tenacity of many Native Hawaiians in her farming and ranching group, Model stated, “I solely fear about what I’ve management over.”

Down the mountain in Waikoloa Village, a group of about 7,000, Linda Hunt was additionally compelled to evacuate. She works at a horse secure and scrambled to avoid wasting the animals as flames whipped nearer.

“We solely have one and a half roads to get out — you might have the principle highway after which you might have the emergency entry,” Hunt stated of a slender dust highway. “Everyone was making an attempt to evacuate, there was quite a lot of confusion.”

The hearth was finally put out simply wanting the densely populated neighborhood, however had flames reached the properties, it might have been disastrous on the parched panorama.

“When you might have excessive winds like we get right here, it is tough irrespective of how huge your fireplace break is, it may blow proper via,” Hunt stated.

Whereas fires have gotten tougher to struggle due to dry and sizzling situations related to local weather change, specialists say the Pacific islands nonetheless can assist forestall these blazes from inflicting ecological injury and property losses.

“Hearth presents a reasonably fascinating element of form of all these local weather change impacts that we’re coping with within the sense that they’re manageable,” stated Trauernicht, the College of Hawaii wildfire skilled.

Along with schooling and arson prevention, he stated, land use — resembling grazing practices and reforestation that scale back risky grasses — might assist.

“It is inside our management, probably, to cut back the impacts that we’re seeing with fires,” Trauernicht stated. “Each by way of forest loss in addition to the impacts on coral reefs.”

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Related Press author Victoria Milko reported from Jakarta.

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On Twitter comply with Caleb Jones: @CalebAP and Victoria Milko: @TheVMilko

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The Related Press Well being and Science Division receives help from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Division of Science Training. The AP is solely accountable for all content material.

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Recreation in danger as Lake Powell dips to historic low

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PAGE, Ariz. — A thick, white band of newly uncovered rock face stretches excessive above boaters’ heads at Lake Powell, creating a pointy distinction in opposition to the well-known crimson desert terrain as their vessels weave via tight canyons that have been as soon as underwater.

It is a stark reminder of how far the water degree has fallen on the large reservoir on the Utah-Arizona border. Simply final 12 months, it was greater than 50 toes (15 meters) greater. Now, the extent on the well-liked vacation spot for houseboat holidays is at a historic low amid a local weather change-fueled megadrought engulfing the U.S. West.

At Lake Powell, tents are tucked alongside shorelines that haven’t seen water for years. Shiny-colored jet-skis fly throughout the water, passing kayakers, water-skiers and fishermen below a blistering desert solar. Closed boat ramps have pressured some houseboats off the lake, leaving vacationers and companies scrambling. One ramp is up to now above the water, folks have to hold kayaks and stand-up paddleboards down a steep cliff face to succeed in the floor.

Houseboat-rental corporations have needed to cancel their bookings via August — considered one of their hottest months — after the Nationwide Park Service, which manages the lake, barred folks from launching the vessels in mid-July.

On the well-liked most important launch level on Wahweap Bay, the underside of the concrete ramp has been prolonged with metal pipes so boats can nonetheless get on the lake, however that resolution will solely final one other week or two, the park service mentioned.

“It’s actually unhappy that they are permitting such a stupendous, stunning place to crumble,” mentioned Bob Reed, who runs touring firm Up Lake Adventures.

Lake Powell is the second-largest reservoir in the US, proper behind Nevada’s Lake Mead, which additionally shops water from the Colorado River. Each are shrinking sooner than anticipated, a dire concern for a seven-state area that depends on the river to provide water to 40 million folks and a $5 billion-a-year agricultural trade.

They’re amongst a number of giant our bodies of water within the U.S. West which have hit report lows this summer season, together with the Nice Salt Lake in Utah. Lake Oroville in California is anticipated to succeed in a historic low by late August, with the state’s greater than 1,500 reservoirs 50% decrease than they need to be this time of 12 months.

In 1983, Lake Powell’s water exceeded its most degree of three,700 toes (1,127 meters) and almost overran Glen Canyon Dam. The lake is dealing with a brand new set of challenges having reached a report low of three,553 toes (1,082 meters) final week.

Authorities officers needed to start releasing water from sources upstream final month to maintain the lake’s degree from dropping so low it could have threatened hydropower equipped by the dam.

It comes as much less snowpack flows into the Colorado River and its tributaries, and sizzling temperatures parch soil and trigger extra river water to evaporate because it streams via the drought-plagued American West. Research have linked the area’s greater than 20-year megadrought to human-caused local weather change.

Fluctuating water ranges have lengthy been a staple of Lake Powell, however Nationwide Park Service officers say the same old forecasts weren’t capable of predict simply how dangerous 2021 could be.

Finger-pointing has began as boaters, native officers and the park service debate what to do now.

“The park service has didn’t plan,” space home-owner Invoice Schneider mentioned. “If it will get to the purpose the place we’re so low you can’t put boats within the water and you’ll’t give you an answer to place boats within the water, why would you come to Lake Powell?”

The 53-year-old purchased a retirement dwelling in close by Web page, Arizona, after finishing 25 years of army service in February. He wished to return to Wahweap Bay the place he spent most of his childhood and teenage years fishing, waterskiing and dealing odd jobs across the lake. However after watching how the lake has been managed, Schneider says he’s beginning to remorse it.

Officers say they’ve options for households and boaters who typically plan years forward to discover the glassy waters that stretch into slender crimson rock canyons and the tourism trade that depends upon them.

As soon as the severity of the drought grew to become clear, federal officers started searching for choices to permit boat entry at low water ranges, mentioned William Shott, superintendent of the Glen Canyon Nationwide Recreation Space, the place Lake Powell is positioned. The park service found an previous ramp on Wahweap Bay that shall be constructed out to assist houseboats and smaller motorboats.

Shott says he hopes the $three million ramp will be accomplished by Labor Day weekend. The undertaking is funded by the park service and lake concessionaire Aramark.

The company and officers from the city of Web page, which depends on lake tourism, plan to open one other previous asphalt ramp to supply entry for smaller boats whereas the bigger one is up to date.

Tom Materna, who has been visiting Lake Powell for 20 years, launched his household’s 65-foot (20-meter) timeshare houseboat simply hours earlier than the principle ramp closed however needed to lower their trip brief as water ranges dropped in mid-July.

“They mentioned no extra launching out of the Wahweap ramp, so we have been glad we made it out,” the Los Angeles resident mentioned. “Then the subsequent day I feel or two days later, they known as us up and instructed us that every one launch and retrieve houseboats needed to be off the lake.”

Web page Mayor Invoice Diak mentioned dropping boat entry to the lake might have devastating monetary penalties for the town of seven,500.

He mentioned native leaders have been “sluggish” to handle dropping water ranges and restricted boat entry however that he is been working nearer with park officers and concessionaires on options.

“We might have been just a little bit extra proactive on planning … however we’re shifting in the appropriate route now working collectively,” Diak mentioned.

He careworn that the impression of local weather change must be addressed, noting that the U.S. West may very well be dealing with way more urgent points than lake entry if the drought continues for an additional 20 years.

One silver lining, Shott says, is the park service can construct boat ramps which are usable even throughout report drought years. Over $eight million in different low-water initiatives are also underway.

“Even when we did have a crystal ball and we noticed that these lake ranges have been going to get this low, we couldn’t have prevented it anyhow,” Shott mentioned. “With that mentioned, we’re profiting from the low water now.”

Troy Sherman, co-owner of a enterprise renting environmentally pleasant anchors to houseboats, mentioned the marina housing Seashore Baggage Anchors shut down shortly after his firm launched in spring 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. It relaunched this 12 months however needed to cancel 95% of its bookings in July when ramps closed to houseboats.

“Till there’s actually entry to a ramp once more to place houseboats in, my enterprise is sort of in a holding sample,” Sherman mentioned. “However we’ll completely persevere; it’s what you must do.”

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Eppolito is a corps member for the Related Press/Report for America Statehouse Information Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit nationwide service program that locations journalists in native newsrooms to report on undercovered points.

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Guidelines proposed by California insurance coverage commissioner supply

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LOS ANGELES — After a number of years of insurers dropping owners’ insurance policies in areas hard-hit by wildfires, the California insurance coverage commissioner is pushing for laws that may offset rising premiums with reductions for mitigating wildfire dangers.

On Oct. 19, the Division of Insurance coverage will host an investigatory listening to the place owners, trade specialists and insurance coverage suppliers, amongst others, can provide their enter into laws Commissioner Ricardo Lara plans to provoke that may in all probability speed up premium will increase for some owners whereas giving them an opportunity to learn the way their property’s danger is calculated and alternatives to scale back it, Lara’s workplace mentioned.

“The truth is local weather change goes to proceed to disrupt communities by way of excessive warmth and climate and have an effect on our insurance coverage markets,” Lara mentioned. “Utilizing my authority as a regulator to have a look at these key areas is basically going to be vital.”

For a number of years now, the housing market in California’s increasing wildland-urban interface, the realm the place suburbia blends with the wildlands, has been rocked by wind-driven fires which have worn out housing inventory and years of insurers’ income together with it. In response, insurers have been dropping insurance policies in these at-risk areas by the hundreds, pushing individuals into the secondary market, and dramatically elevating the premiums for a lot of others, arguing that the tandem strikes are supposed to restrict their monetary dangers.

However on the identical time, client advocates say, insurers have been slow-rolling the speed will increase throughout the remainder of their portfolio, conserving the will increase total under 7% yearly so it does not open them up for a public inspection, enabled beneath Proposition 103, permitted in 1988.

Lara’s workplace mentioned it might push for insurers to hunt charge will increase extra reflective of the dangers the businesses’ actuaries spell out, which suggests in all probability larger than 7%, however it might additionally require insurers present extra info to owners on what they’ll do to scale back these dangers.

“Time and time once more we heard from customers, ‘How do I enchantment my rating? How do I do know what I have to do to decrease that rating?’ And proper now there’s nothing,” Lara mentioned.

To melt the rate-increase impression, Lara mentioned his workplace would require that insurers present and clarify the reasoning behind a house owner’s explicit hearth danger rating. Hundreds of house owners in the previous couple of years have obtained notices when their insurance policies ended telling them they had been instantly uninsurable due to hearth dangers, or conversely, that it might value prohibitively extra to stay lined and there was nothing they might do to vary it.

“We’re saying, ‘Let’s promote transparency and acknowledge that home-hardening, that is science-based, works,” Lara mentioned.

To that finish, insurers have been working with the Insurance coverage Institute for Enterprise & House Security to stipulate an ordinary method to dwelling hardening on a person and communitywide scale, which wildfire specialists say is vital to limiting the lack of life and property. Lara mentioned he’ll work with these teams to find out what sorts of methods owners can take to scale back their dangers and get a reduction. A failed Meeting invoice that Lara endorsed earlier this 12 months would have required insurers to cowl properties whose homeowners diminished their dangers.

Traditionally, Californians have a spotty observe report of mitigating their wildfire dangers on a big scale, and with few exceptions, native governments have executed a poor job of implementing the requirements that exist already. Each customers and native governments could have a job in seeing the proposed laws bear fruit after statewide mitigation requirements are set.

“We’re incentivizing the buyer and incentivizing the area people to deliver down the chance and conserving the insurance coverage market vibrant the place they’re competing for individuals’s companies,” Lara mentioned.

One insurance coverage group, the American Property Casualty Insurance coverage Affiliation, which represents about 60% of the property casualty insurance coverage market, welcomed the upcoming listening to as a chance to revisit the rate-making course of total. Insurers have complained that California’s legal guidelines do not enable them to cost within the rising dangers linked to local weather change as a result of they’ll set charges primarily based solely on previous losses.

“APCIA applauds the commissioner’s curiosity in bettering the regulatory system to encourage extra insurers to put in writing insurance coverage in high-risk wildfire areas and provides client extra decisions,” the group mentioned in a press release. “Clearly, California is dealing with dramatically completely different situations with 5 of the state’s largest fires occurring simply this 12 months. Local weather change is altering situations in California and we count on this to be the ‘new regular.’ “

(c)2020 Los Angeles Instances

Distributed by Tribune Content material Company, LLC.

PHOTOS (for assist with photographs, contact 312-222-4194): CALIF-WILDFIRES-BOBCAT

Copyright 2020 Tribune Content material Company.

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EU high official proposes new 2030 goal to cut back emissions

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The European Fee president is proposing to cut back Europe’s complete greenhouse emissions by 55% by 2030, a lot larger than the present objective of 40%

September 16, 2020, 8:54 AM

2 min learn

BRUSSELS — The European Union’s high official on Wednesday proposed a extra formidable goal for reducing greenhouse emissions in Europe, setting a discount objective of 55% by 2030, considerably larger than the present goal of 40%.

Talking within the European Parliament, EU Fee President Ursula Von der Leyen stated the brand new goal will probably be “an excessive amount of for some and never sufficient for others,” however ought to assist the 27-nation bloc obtain local weather neutrality by 2050.

“Our financial system and business can handle this, they usually need it, too,” Von der Leyen stated as she set out her priorities for the yr forward in her first State of the Union deal with to EU lawmakers.

EU leaders agreed final yr to make the bloc’s financial system carbon impartial by the center of the century.

Von der Leyen added that she needs 37% of the €750 billion coronavirus restoration fund adopted by EU nations this summer time to be spent on environmental aims, and that 30% of the fund ought to be raised by “inexperienced” bonds, whose proceeds are supposed to have a optimistic affect on the setting.

The EU additionally plans to dedicate 1 / 4 of its price range to tackling local weather change and to work to shift 1 trillion euros ($1.1 trillion) in funding towards making the EU’s financial system extra environmentally pleasant over the following 10 years.

Based on the EU, its greenhouse gasoline emissions already decreased by 23% between 1990 and 2018, with the financial system rising by 61% in that interval.

World leaders agreed 5 years in the past in Paris to maintain world warming beneath 3.6 levels Fahrenheit, ideally not more than 2.7 F by the tip of the century. Scientists say nations will miss each of these targets by a large margin except drastic steps are taken to start reducing greenhouse gasoline emissions.

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Students push universities to stop investing in fossil fuels

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NEW HAVEN, Conn. —
Students alarmed by climate change are stepping up pressure on universities to pull investments from fossil fuel industries, an effort that is gaining traction at prestigious schools like Georgetown, Harvard and Yale.

The push that is underway at hundreds of schools began nearly a decade ago, and student activists increasingly have learned from one another’s tactics and moved to act amid worsening predictions about the effects of climate change on the planet.

Georgetown University’s board of directors announced this month that it will end private investments in coal, oil and gas companies within the next decade, and some faculty at Harvard have called for a similar shift. There were sit-ins and demonstrations last week at dozens of schools, including Gonzaga University, the University of Wisconsin, University of Pittsburgh and Cornell University.

Several dozen schools have stopped investing at least partially in fossil fuels, but there is debate over how much the move slows the effects of climate change or affects the bottom line of companies like Chevron and Exxon Mobil.

Many schools have defended their investments, citing a duty to preserve and grow the income they receive from donations, while touting efforts to use investments as leverage to engage energy companies, find solutions for climate change through research and make campuses carbon neutral by not causing any net increases in heat-trapping carbon dioxide.

For student activists, it’s about taking a moral and political stand.

At Yale University, which has a $30.3 billion endowment, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Senate on Thursday will discuss the university’s ethical obligations regarding fossil fuel investments. It became a big issue partly due to a widely covered student protest that disrupted a November football game between Harvard and Yale.

“Yale has to take it seriously. We forced them to take it seriously. The faculty discussions are evidence of that,” said Ben Levin, a student leader with the Yale Endowment Justice Coalition. “They’re also evidence of the fact that the faculty are incredibly concerned because they don’t want to be working for a university that’s on the wrong side of the most pressing issue of our time.”

Yale says it has supported shareholder resolutions calling for companies to reveal what they’re doing to address climate change and asked endowment managers not to invest in companies that fail to take steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but student activists want a clean break.

The campus actions are part of a broader push for insurers, pension funds and governments worldwide to end fossil fuel investments.

Environmentalist and author Bill McKibben, a leader of the movement to stop such investments, said students have played a huge role.

“They’ve kept it up through two generations of undergraduates. Administrators hoped they’d graduate and that would be the end of the pressure, but instead it keeps building,” said McKibben, a scholar in residence at Middlebury College, which announced last year it would divest its $1.1 billion endowment from fossil fuels.

Student government leaders from the Big Ten Conference called last month for their 14 schools to begin divesting from fossil fuels, passing a resolution that cited the conclusion of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that greenhouse gas emissions are driving climate change.

A challenge for institutions is the prevalence of investments in index funds, which makes it difficult to separate out the roughly 4 percent of energy stocks in such funds, said John Jurewitz, a lecturer in economics at Pomona College. Colleges pulling their investments also wouldn’t likely hurt oil companies, which have their own internal cash flows, he said.

“It’s mainly a political statement about what the university is willing to invest in,” Jurewitz said. “It may be a worthwhile statement if you believe it will help get the ball rolling toward getting some realistic, meaningful policy like a carbon tax or cap and trade, something that will put a price on the carbon in some practical way.”

The Independent Petroleum Association of America has pushed back with its own campaign, arguing divestment would cost university endowments millions a year with little impact on carbon emissions.

At Harvard, which has a $40.9 billion endowment, President Lawrence Bacow said he would take a faculty motion to the Harvard Corporation, the university’s executive board. In the past, administrators have outlined steps Harvard is taking to address climate change while arguing that ending fossil fuel investments wouldn’t have a big effect and that it makes little sense to sever ties with energy companies that heat and light the campus.

Connor Chung, a first-year student and organizer for Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard, said the group hopes the university will reconsider.

“At the end of the day, our goal is environmental justice,” he said. “Divestment is our tactic for getting there, but it’s not going to work unless we have a broader movement around the country and around the world of students demanding that their institutions end their complicity in the climate crisis.”

A group of Harvard students also want to stop investments in prisons and companies that contract with them. They sued Wednesday, arguing the school is violating state law by investing in an industry they describe as “present-day slavery.” Harvard officials didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the lawsuit.

At George Washington University, sophomore Izy Carney said a student campaign has taken inspiration from the activism of students elsewhere, including in the University of California system, which announced a plan to end fossil fuel investments in 2019.

After hearing from student activists, George Washington’s board of trustees announced a task force this month on managing environmental responsibility. But it did not mention divestment as a possibility.

Carney, a member of Sunrise GW, a student group dedicated to fighting climate change, said they would keep up the pressure.

“Right now, it sounds like profits is what our university is after,” Carney said. “We just want to make sure our school is doing everything it can to make sure it is not contributing to the climate crisis.”

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Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston contributed to this report.

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Trump calls for slashing funding for toxic Superfund cleanup

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President Donald Trump is calling for slashing funding for the country’s Superfund hazardous waste clean-ups

By

ELLEN KNICKMEYER Associated Press Writer

February 10, 2020, 5:34 PM

2 min read

WASHINGTON —
President Donald Trump called Monday for slashing funding for the Superfund hazardous waste program, even as the backlog of clean-ups has grown around the country for lack of money.

The $113 million in Superfund clean-up cuts are part of Trump’s proposal for a $2.4 billion, or 26%, cut in overall funding for the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s in line with the president’s vow as a candidate to cut all but “little tidbits” of the environmental agency in a push to cut regulations he sees as unnecessarily burdensome to business.

Monday marked the fourth year where Trump has called for cuts nearing one-third of the environmental agency’s budget. Republicans and Democrats in Congress annually have overridden his proposal, keeping funding for the agency’s environmental and public health oversight roughly even.

Other major cuts for the EPA in Trump’s latest proposal include eliminating $66 million in funding for the Energy Star program — a popular program that lets consumers compare the energy efficiency of appliances — and for voluntary climate programs.

“These programs are not essential to EPA’s core mission and can be implemented by the private sector,” the budget says.

Trump and his EPA administrators have stressed Superfund clean-ups as one of their top environmental priorities.

However, as The Associated Press reported in January, the Trump administration has built up the biggest backlog of unfunded toxic Superfund clean-up projects in at least 15 years, nearly triple the number that were stalled for lack of money in the Obama era, agency figures show.

The four-decade-old Superfund program is meant to tackle some of the most heavily contaminated sites in the U.S., which threaten the residents, wildlife and habitat around the sites with dangerous industry pollutants.

Trump’s proposal says the cut reflects that his administration is running the Superfund program more efficiently, and “challenges the agency to optimize the use of settlement funds for the cleanup actions” at those Superfund sites where a responsible company has been found to pay for the work.

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BP oil spill cash rebuilds eroded Louisiana pelican island

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A Louisiana island that provides critical nesting habitat for pelicans and other seabirds is being restored to nearly its former size after decades of erosion and a crippling 2010 oil spill

By

JANET McCONNAUGHEY Associated Press

February 3, 2020, 5:56 PM

4 min read

NEW ORLEANS —
A Louisiana island that provides a crucial nesting ground for pelicans and other seabirds is being restored to nearly its former size after decades of coastal erosion and the devastating blow of an offshore oil spill 10 years ago.

About 6,500 brown pelicans and 3,000 smaller seabirds cram their nests every summer onto Queen Bess Island, which shrank from 45 acres (18 hectares) in 1956 to about 5 acres (2 hectares) by 2010, when the Deepwater Horizon spill fouled its beaches with oily gunk.

Though barely a blip of an island off the Gulf of Mexico in Barataria Bay, Queen Bess plays an outsize role as one of Louisiana’s largest rookeries for brown pelicans, supplying prime real estate for up to a fifth of the state’s nests. It’s also where the pelican, the Louisiana state bird, was reintroduced in the 1960s after pesticides had killed off the entire population.

Loss of coastal wetlands and other problems have crowded the big birds into far fewer colonies than they had two decades ago, according to Todd Baker, the biologist supervising restoration work for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. The number of colonies has fallen 54 percent since 2010, he said.

The $18 million to restore Queen Bess Island and funds for future monitoring and upkeep flow from a $20 billion settlement that the federal government and the five Gulf Coast states reached with energy giant BP PLC for environmental damage from the 2010 spill.

The offshore explosion and fire that year on BP’s leased drilling rig killed 11 people. The well spewed more than 100 million gallons (378 million liters) of oil into the water over 87 days.

When the oil reached the island about 45 miles (72 kilometers) south of New Orleans, brown pelicans and other birds could be seen struggling, their wings weighed down by the black muck. About 1,000 died.

“This is the first time we’ve done any really large-scale restoration specifically for birds. And I can’t wait to see the results” as birds arrive, Baker said.

Under the restoration project, contractors for Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority have dredged up Mississippi River sand and pumped it inside two rock outlines. Those outlines were nearly all that remained of failed attempts in the 1990s to rebuild the island using silt dredged nearby. This time around they’re using barges to bring in the more stable sand. The authority also has built a line of rock breakwaters 75 to 95 feet (23 to 29 meters) from shore to slow erosion and provide calm water for young birds.

Once a mere strip of land, the island now covers 37 acres (15 hectares), providing much-needed space for the increasingly cramped birds. Most of the island is being restored as a pelican habitat, with 7 acres (2.8 hectares) for skimmers, terns and other birds that nest on rocks.

In recent years, Baker said, nests have been so jammed “you can’t hardly step on land without touching a nest.”

He said the crowding has made the island’s woody plants look like apartment houses, with nest above nest above nest: perhaps a laughing gull on the ground, an egret or roseate spoonbill in middle branches and a brown pelican nest at the top.

“It was cool to look at but not necessarily good for those birds,” Baker said.

In an assist to the birds, The Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission designated the island a wildlife refuge in November. The commission is taking comments on rules that, among other things, forbid people from stepping on the island or fishing inside the breakwaters for eight months of the year.

Restoration work should be completed by a Feb. 15 deadline, Baker said. He added that remaining work includes creating ramps on which young birds that still can’t fly can walk in and out of the water.

Contractors also will plant about 24,000 woody plants for species such as night herons and egrets, as well as pelicans, to build their nests. Those are essentially 3-foot-high (1-meter-high) sticks, Baker said. He noted that while pelicans prefer nesting on scrub-shrubs, they can also build nests on grass or even bare ground. The ground-nesting terns, skimmers and gulls will probably use the expanses of bare sand between the plants as well as the rocky area created for them, he said.

Most important for Baker: Will pelicans return to the island where they built nests or were hatched? Five hundred were banded last year to help him and other conservationists answer that question.

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Lawsuit: EPA has dragged feet on oil spill dispersant rules

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Environmental groups and women from Alaska and Louisiana are suing the Environmental Protection Agency, asking a federal court to make the agency set new rules for use of oil spill dispersants

By

JANET McCONNAUGHEY and DAN JOLING Associated Press

January 30, 2020, 7:45 PM

5 min read

NEW ORLEANS —
Environmental groups and women from Alaska and Louisiana are asking a federal court to make the Environmental Protection Agency set new rules for use of oil spill dispersants, citing worries about the chemicals’ health and environmental effects.

“We want our foods to come to us. What’s going to happen to them if they come through these areas where dispersants are used?” said Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, who lives in a village on the Arctic Ocean, in a telephone interview. She’s a plaintiff in the lawsuit filed Thursday afternoon in federal court in Washington, D.C.

An EPA spokeswoman in Washington, Maggie Sauerhage, said she was checking on the lawsuit.

Ahtuangaruak said people in her indigenous community depend on oily fish and fatty marine mammals for the energy they need to survive in an area where temperatures are often far below zero degrees Fahrenheit (-18 Celsius).

Ahtuangaruak said she began investigating dispersants after working as a health aide in Utqiagvik, formerly Barrow, following the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. The hospital treated some people who had applied dispersant and blamed it for symptoms ranging from respiratory and skin disorders to fatigue and foggy thinking, she said.

The EPA’s current rules were last updated in 1994, five years after the tanker ran onto rocks in Prince William Sound. The agency made its proposed revisions public in January 2015 and received 81,000 comments, but has done little since then, according to the lawsuit.

“The EPA’s outdated response plan is increasingly dangerous as the Trump administration guts other rules aimed at preventing offshore oil spills,” Kristen Monsell, oceans program legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity said in a news release. “Deepwater Horizon was a wake-up call that current response methods only increase the destruction oil spills cause. The EPA’s delay in revising its rules, last updated in 1994, is increasing the harm to wildlife and public health.”

The center is a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

The introduction to the proposed rules says they are based on information learned from spills including the BP oil spill of 2010. It says they take into consideration “not only the efficacy but also the toxicity, long-term environmental impacts, endangered species protection, and human health concerns raised during responses to oil discharges, including the Deepwater Horizon blowout.”

That spill spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days, starting in April 2010. Estimates of the amount varied widely; a judge set a figure of nearly 134 million gallons (507 million liters) for the purpose of levying penalties.

The Environmental Law Clinic at the University of California Berkeley is asking the court to rule that EPA violated federal law by dragging its heels, and to set a schedule for updating the rules. The clinic notified EPA in March and again in September that its clients would sue if rules were not completed within 60 days.

In addition, EPA has not provided any documents in response to a December 2018 freedom of information request for documents showing any progress since 2015, the suit states.

The current rules allow “open-ended” use of chemical dispersants in offshore oil spills, the lawsuit says. “However, overwhelming scientific evidence indicates that dispersants likely do more environmental harm than good, and generally exacerbate a spill’s ecological impact,” it alleges.

Terry C. Hazen, a professor at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and a coauthor of “The Use of Dispersants in Marine Oil Spill Response” — a 364-page report published last year by the National Academy of Sciences — laughed when he heard that sentence.

“I guess everybody’s entitled to their opinion, especially if it’s in a lawsuit,” he said.

He said scientists who worked on the report generally considered that the dispersant used at the Deepwater Horizon wellhead and on the surface wasn’t harmful overall and “may have improved things.”

The Berkeley university law clinic represents Ahtuangaruak (ah-TOON-gah-rook), who lives in the Inupiat village of Nuiqsut (noo-IK-sut), Alaska; Kindra Arnesen of Buras (BYOO-ruhs), Louisiana; and several environmental groups. Those include Alaska Community Action on Toxics; Cook Inletkeeper, also from Alaska; and Earth Island Institute’s ALERT project, which is based in Berkeley. They have more recently been joined by the Center for Biological Diversity, a Tucson-based environmental nonprofit represented by one of its own lawyers.

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Joling reported from Anchorage, Alaska.

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