The electric vehicle boom could bring lithium mines back to North Carolina

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In the Piedmont region of North Carolina, about 50 miles east of the Blue Ridge mountains, a thin, 25 mile-long belt of ore stretches north from the southern state line. The strip, called the Carolina Tin-Spodumene Belt, contains the country’s largest hard rock deposit of lithium.  

Back in the 1950s, lithium gained importance as a component of nuclear bombs and pharmaceuticals, and the area around Kings Mountain, near Charlotte, saw a major boom in mining. For about 30 years, the region supplied almost all the lithium in the world. Then in the 1980s, production moved to lower-cost operations overseas. Today, less than 1 percent of global lithium is mined in the United States, all from one mine in Nevada; the vast majority comes from Chile, Australia, and China.

But as nations seek to cut emissions and transition to clean energy sources, demand for the metal is increasing, and the U.S. is looking to ramp up production within its borders. Last summer, President Joe Biden signed an executive order calling for electric vehicles, which depend on lithium-based batteries, to make up 50 percent of all new vehicle sales by 2030. The Inflation Reduction Act, recently signed into law, aims to incentivize a domestic battery supply chain, providing tax breaks for mines and credits for electric cars and grid storage applications when a percentage of the battery is produced or recycled in the U.S.

A lithium-ion battery for the electric Volkswagon ID.3 is stored in a factory warehouse.
Jan Woitas / picture alliance via Getty Images

Now, mining companies are once again eyeing North Carolina as they seek to capitalize on the booming market for electric vehicles and renewable energy storage. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that three known spodumene deposits in the region – around Kings Mountain, Bessemer City, and Cherryville – contain a combined 426,600 metric tons of lithium. That amount, which includes reserves that could be economically extracted at present as well as other estimated resources, would be enough to supply batteries for over 50 million electric vehicles. 

Piedmont Lithium Inc., a 2016 Australian startup, acquired thousands of acres in Gaston County and signed a deal to supply lithium to Tesla in 2020. It ultimately relocated its headquarters to North Carolina last year. Albemarle, a specialty chemical manufacturing company and one of the largest lithium producers in the world, has invested about $100 million in a possible project in neighboring Cleveland County.

The Albemarle property in Kings Mountain, NC already contains a research and development center, a lithium processing facility and a shuttered open pit mine.
Courtesy of Albemarle

“Over the last 18 months we’ve seen a 700-percent increase in lithium pricing, which is a genuinely insane price increase,” said Daisy Jennings-Gray, a senior price analyst from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, which researches battery and electric vehicle supply chains.

But lithium mines around the world and across the country face controversy for their environmental and social impacts. And just as interest in this North Carolina region, with its deep reserves, long mining history, and growing presence of battery and electric car plants has risen, so too has local opposition. The Piedmont region is emerging at the latest battleground in the debate over whether clean technology is truly clean for everyone, with residents and policymakers in different communities divided.

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Piedmont Lithium’s land sits in the northwest corner of Gaston County, near Cherryville, on the outskirts of Charlotte. Surrounded by large swaths of forest and working farmlands, the community is popular among transplants from New York and California, “but it’s also multi-generational farms, homegrown people who have lived here all their lives,” said Chad Brown, a member of the Gaston County Board of Commissioners.

A former lithium mine in Kings Mountain that closed in the 1980s is now being considered by Albemarle as the site of a new, expanded operation. Courtesy of Albemarle

The company started buying land in Gaston County in 2016, ultimately acquiring or gaining mineral rights to over 3,000 acres. In 2018, it told investors that it expected to obtain the necessary permits the following year to build an $988 million extractive hub and processing facility. The vision included four 500-foot deep mines and a chemical plant that could convert the mineral spodumene into 22,700 metric tons of lithium hydroxide annually. 

By September 2020, Piedmont Lithium had signed a deal to supply Tesla a third of the mine’s annual output, enough to power at least 350,000 Teslas a year, for up to 10 years. It hadn’t even applied for state permits and a county zoning variance yet. It took another year before the community heard the detailed proposal for the mine, at Piedmont Lithium’s first public meeting before the Gaston County Commissioners last summer. 

“It was the worst rollout of an economic development plan ever,” Brown said. “They went to every stakeholder before they came to us.”

Lights shine from the Albemarle lithium processing plant in Kings Mountain Courtesy of Albemarle.

An outpouring of public pushback has effectively stalled the project. Residents say their questions about loud blasting, increased truck traffic, vibrations, dust, and air quality have not been adequately addressed by the mine. The county board of commissioners put a temporary moratorium on mining to update their local codes last year; they also hired an independent hydrologist. Digging a large open pit in the ground lowers the water table, plus the spodumene refining process is both water- and carbon-intensive. It produces chemical waste at multiple intervals with potential for spills and surface and groundwater contamination; residents worry their wells and rivers could be poisoned or run dry.

“They said the operation will be completely safe,” said Lisa Stroup, who lives two miles south of the proposed Piedmont Lithium site and worked at a lithium hydroxide plant in nearby Bessemer City. “Having worked with lithium, I can tell you there is nothing safe about it,” she noted of the highly caustic and erosive metal.

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A sign signals opposition to a proposed mine in Gaston County, North Carolina. Many residents have taken a stand against Piedmont Lithium’s proposal to develop a lithium mine in the area. Right, felled logs rest on land owned by Piedmont Lithium. Photos courtesy of Stop Piedmont Lithium

Stroup lives one mile north from an old Hallman-Beam lithium mine that was eventually purchased by the company Martin Marietta and mined for gravel. “Back when they were actively mining quarry rock, this place was a dust bowl,” said Stroup. Historically and today, Gaston County contains arsenic levels above EPA standards in several public drinking wells, a phenomenon associated with hardrock mining. 

“Anytime someone gets sick around here everyone says, ‘I’m pretty sure it’s something in the air or in the water from the mine,” she said.

In the ongoing permitting process, the state has expressed concerns about Piedmont Lithium’s chemical disposal plans; the company recently requested a 180-day extension to complete its Leaching Environmental Assessment Framework, a system for evaluating the release of potentially harmful substances for a variety of solid materials, including mine waste. If it does acquire state permits, it still needs to apply for zoning changes from the county board of commissioners, several members of which have already spoken out against the project.

Lithium deliveries from Piedmont to Tesla were supposed to start as early as this summer, but the company is now targeting 2026. Meanwhile, Piedmont Lithium is being sued by its shareholders for failing to disclose information about permits and local opposition that caused stock prices to fall. At this point, the company has only done exploratory drilling at the site and recently invested in mines in Ghana and Quebec to source lithium while the North Carolina project is delayed.

“I don’t feel like we’ve won yet at all,” said Stroup. She and other local residents are still waiting for the outcome of the state mining review. “We’re not against alternative fuel sources or modes of transportation, but we feel there have to be better answers.”

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In adjacent Cleveland County, lithium mining is being received more favorably. Scott Niesler, the mayor of Kings Mountain, supports Albemarle’s plan to reopen and expand a shuttered lithium mine right outside of town.

“Mining has been part of the fabric of the community since the 1920s,” said Scott. “And Albemarle is a strong, established company that would be a good corporate citizen.” 

One of the biggest lithium players on the market, Albemarle produces about a third of the world’s lithium, mostly from mines in Australia and South America. It also runs the country’s only fully operational lithium mine in Silver Peak, Nevada, where the metal is mined from brine rather than spodumene. 

Headquartered in Charlotte, Albemarle already has a presence in Kings Mountain, where it runs a research facility and operates one of the area’s two plants that produce lithium hydroxide, a compound valued for its ability to hold a charge for long periods of time, making it the best for high-energy-density batteries. Approximately half the material for the plant comes from the company’s Nevada mine, and the rest comes from Chile.

A lithium mine supervisor inspects an evaporation pond of lithium-rich brine in the Atacama Desert on August 24, 2022 in Salar de Atacama, Chile. Albemarle Corporation, based in Charlotte, N.C. is expanding mining operations at their Salar Plant to meet the rising global demand for lithium carbonate, a main component in the manufacture of batteries, increasingly for electric vehicles.
John Moore / Getty Images)

In 2015, Albemarle bought a water-filled pit from Rockwood Lithium. The mine had been operational from the late 1930s to the 1980s and Albemarle is looking to reopen the site, expanding and deepening the pit. “There’s already a hole there,” said Niesler, pointing out that the area is already zoned for industrial use.

Albemarle has been doing environmental impact studies and acquiring more acreage through deals with landowners, but “we have not made a final investment decision thus far,” said Alexander Thompson, Vice President of Lithium Resources for the company. “Our pathway to production is subject to community engagement.”

The company had its first formal community meeting in March and has promised to host quarterly town halls. It’s also planning to open an office in town where people can stop by to ask questions.

Still, engagement can only go so far when so much remains unknown about the environmental impacts of lithium mining in the area; Albemarle readily admits the studies will take years, and a mine wouldn’t open until 2027. At the first town hall, which overflowed from the city council chamber into the hallway, questions arose about dust, traffic, water, and hazardous waste.

Albemarle Corporation spokesman Marcelo Valdebenito holds a bottle of processed lithium carbonate at a lithium mine on August 24, 2022 in Salar de Atacama, Chile.
John Moore / Getty Images

While lithium extraction methods have improved over time, and Albemarle has mentioned wastewater recycling and land reclamation, “there is really no benign way of getting minerals out of the earth,” said Timothy Johnson, an expert on energy, natural resources, and the environment at Duke University. 

The project scope is not yet defined, but Thompson said that 70-100 households would be directly affected by operations on the land the company already owns, and they have already been contacted. 

Henry Hartleb, who moved to the area from Illinois in 2012 and is now retired, lives 75 feet off the old mine site. He recently agreed to an offer of $290,000 for his one-acre property and mill house. But he worries that the offers are too low for his neighbors to buy something comparable in the area.

“I don’t see it having much economic benefit to the community,” said Hartleb. Still, he thinks the project will go through. “People here are older, 75 percent are from the area. It’s poorer than Gaston County too, and it’s a mining community. There’s already a company continually mining for gravel at a quarry right next to the mine.”

Clay Bruggeman, whose home abuts properties purchased by the mine, has yet to make a decision to sell. “We have a nice life here, but if the city and the mine want this to happen it’s probably going to,” he said. “I have to think about what’s best for me and my family.” 

In addition to the mine, Albemarle has announced plans to create a “mega-flex” lithium conversion facility in the U.S. Southeast that would process up to 100,000 tons of lithium per year. According to Thompson, the Kings Mountain mine would provide half the raw material for the new plant. “This has the potential to be a multi-decade operation,” he said.

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North Carolina’s vast mineral reserves are just one of the reasons the state is being eyed as the next lithium hot spot. The region, a longtime hub for car manufacturing, is now poised to become a hub for EVs. Both Toyota and VinFast, a Vietnamese car maker, have announced plans for battery plants in North Carolina. Ford and Volkswagen are setting up EV assembly plants in Tennessee and battery manufacturers, including Korean SK Innovation in Georgia, are setting up shop across the Southeast. 

At the moment, while the U.S. is the second biggest lithium user in the world, domestic battery plants import almost all materials from abroad. That’s all part of why Albemarle and Piedmont Lithium want to source lithium locally in the area.

But the region also exemplifies an uncomfortable truth in the energy transition. Studies emphasize the need for a rapid transition to carbon-free transportation if the U.S. hopes to have any chance of meeting clean energy goals. But clean energy is only clean when you consider the variable of atmospheric carbon; mining still has local polluting impacts. 

Often, mines get developed in places where residents have less political clout and resources to push back. In the U.S., 79 percent of lithium sits within 35 miles of Indigenous lands. Lithium America’s proposed lithium clay mine at Thacker Pass, sacred land to the Northern Paiute and Western Shoshone, faced vehement opposition from tribes, ranchers, and environmental groups before receiving its permits in February. Around California’s Salton Sea, where trials to commercially develop lithium from geothermal brines are ongoing, several tribes have raised concerns about impacts to their ancestral lands and exclusion from the decision-making process.

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In other parts of the world, local pushback to lithium mining has stalled projects in Serbia and Australia. In Chile, where lithium mining from brines has sucked Indigenous lands dry, a left-wing government is attempting to regulate the industry. Environmental justice groups and others concerned about the impacts of mining have often called for more transformative transportation planning that reduces the need for cars altogether (This would also be necessary to meet emission reduction targets). They have also called for developing recycling capacity as an alternative source of metals.

“It takes seven to 10 years to build a new mine, and even companies that have done it for years face new problems when they try to ramp up lithium production,” said Jennings-Gray of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. As the U.S. scales up lithium mining, the current lack of any cathode capacity in the country means the metal is shipped overseas, a barrier for a fully domestic EV supply chain. “[North Carolina] is an interesting one to keep an eye on and could certainly produce some significant domestic volumes,” said Jennings-Gray. “But no matter what, it’s going to be a slow climb.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The electric vehicle boom could bring lithium mines back to North Carolina on Aug 31, 2022.

The best-case scenario for Greenland ice melt just got worse

I'd like to take this time to remind you that climate change is real. The actions of big governments continue to pollute and poison the environment. Whenever feasible, we should all plant more trees and preserve our existing ones. That's why Tree Services in Pensacola strives to do both while also improving your home's landscaping. Read more about how they're making changes at https://treeservicespensacola.com

Greenland’s melting ice sheet will raise global sea levels by at least 10.6 inches, twice as much as previous estimates, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. That’s even if everyone stopped burning fossil fuels today.

Researchers used a new method to calculate Greenland’s minimum ice melt, looking at so-called “zombie ice” that is doomed to disappear as glaciers receive less snow. The snow line in Greenland has been creeping higher as the world warms, exposing the ice on the island’s edges. Without that snow as a buffer, researchers say, this “dead ice” will inevitably thaw into the ocean, pushing up sea levels around the planet. They calculated that 110 trillion tons of ice are destined to melt, or 3.3 percent of the Greenland ice sheet.

Though the study didn’t provide an exact timeline, researchers expect that this will take place by the end of the century, or by 2150 at the latest, with consequences for coastal areas around the world.

The new research used real-world data rather than the computer models that are typically used to calculate how much — and how quickly — Greenland’s ice sheet will melt. That might explain why the projections were so much higher than previously forecast. A report last year from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a panel of the world’s top scientists, projected a two- to five-inch rise by 2100, depending on how much more carbon gets pumped into the atmosphere. The new research suggests that extreme temperatures could eventually trigger as much as 30 inches of sea-level rise.

Some glaciologists contend that previous models, though they’re complex, lack the level of detail to reflect the real-world changes that are taking place. The world has already heated up by an average of 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures, and the Arctic is warming four times faster than the global average.

“Every study has bigger numbers than the last,” William Colgan, a study co-author at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, told the Washington Post. “It’s always faster than forecast.” 

This isn’t the first time that researchers have had to revise their projections based on the real-world consequences of climate change. In 2020, wildfires burned 10 million acres in the Western United States, closer to what scientists had projected for 30 years in the future. In June last year, a heat wave that broiled parts of the Pacific Northwest in 120-degree temperatures was more in line with what researchers pictured might happen later this century. 

It’s not so much that climate change has been progressing faster than scientists predicted, but that scientists have sometimes underestimated the dire effects of the warming that’s already here, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Grist last year.

Despite accusations of “alarmism,” the projections that come out of the peer review process usually tend to err on the side of caution. One paper from 2012 found that researchers had misjudged the risks of the potential disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet. So perhaps it’s not all that surprising that the danger posed by the Greenland ice sheet, too, might have been underestimated until now.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The best-case scenario for Greenland ice melt just got worse on Aug 30, 2022.

Jackson’s water crisis was triggered by floods and compounded by racism

I'd like to take this time to remind you that climate change is real. The actions of big governments continue to pollute and poison the environment. Whenever feasible, we should all plant more trees and preserve our existing ones. That's why Tree Services in Pensacola strives to do both while also improving your home's landscaping. Read more about how they're making changes at https://treeservicespensacola.com

Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves has declared a state of emergency in Jackson, with 180,000 people in the area facing low or no water pressure, and water unsafe for drinking. “Do not drink the water,” Governor Reeves said in an emergency briefing. “Be smart, protect yourself, protect your family, preserve water, look out for your fellow man and look out for your neighbors.”

The city and state have already begun distributing bottled water to residents, but the crisis could also disrupt other essential services. “Until it is fixed, we do not have reliable running water at scale,” Reeves said in the briefing. “The city cannot produce enough water to fight fires, to flush toilets and to meet other critical needs.” This week, Jackson has temperatures over 90 degrees and city schools have switched to virtual classes because of the situation. 

Heavy rains and flooding from the Pearl River have caused serious complications with one of two treatment plants that provides water for Jackson. With the plant not functioning as normal, raw reservoir water is being pushed into pipes that feed Jackson’s water supply, leading to the governor’s warning. According to a statement from Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, who also declared a state of emergency, the shortage is likely to last “the next couple of days.” 

Flooding comes amid an increase in devastating climate change-driven floods in Kentucky, Missouri, and other communities across the country. The Pearl River floods are also impacting communities beyond Jackson, including the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, which issued a boil water advisory on Monday. 

The city of Jackson has been dealing with a substandard water system for years. In March 2020, the EPA found the system had the potential for bacteria like E. Coli in the water, issued an emergency order to address the system’s deficiencies, and has been working with the state and city since then to improve the system. After a storm froze pipes across the city in 2021, many residents lost access to clean water for weeks. Last October, lawyers representing hundreds of Jackson children sued the city over water system failures and mismanagement that led to “hundreds, if not thousands” of children to be poisoned by lead across the city. Since July, Jackson has been under a boil water advisory because tests revealed potentially contaminated water. 

Local advocates say that the city’s water problems are rooted in a history of racism and neglect. The city suffers from old infrastructure that was designed to support a larger population. After the civil rights movement led to the integration of schools and other public facilities in the 1960s, white people fled the city by the thousands. According to the Jackson Free Press, nearly 20,000 white people left the city between 2000 and 2010. When white people left, the city lost both tax revenue and institutional support. Today, the city is roughly 80 percent Black. Similar circumstances have led to water crises in Flint, Detroit, and other cities. 

That history has also contributed to tensions between the city and state governments. Lumumba, who is Black, has clashed with Reeves, who is white, and other state officials over funding and management of Jackson’s water system. In the wake of the 2021 freeze crisis, weeks passed before any coordinated effort between the state and city to fix the situation took place. Lieutenant Governor Delbert Hosemann has previously blamed water issues on Black leadership in Jackson. Lumumba, who has said the issue has always been state funding, was not invited to Reeves’ briefing on Monday. 

“We will do everything in our power to restore water pressure and get water flowing back to the people of Jackson,” Reeves said. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Jackson’s water crisis was triggered by floods and compounded by racism on Aug 30, 2022.

Why drought looks different depending on your region

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The Samascott Family has been growing apples on their self-named orchard in Kinderhook, New York, since the 1940s. Like many farms in Upstate New York, Samascott Orchards has had to make big adjustments over the decades to try to remain profitable. One of those changes was shifting from planting larger apple trees to smaller ones, which can yield more apples per acre of farmland. While this strategy makes good economic sense most years, it can create challenges for growers during dry summers like this one. 

“We used to have much bigger apple trees; they could sometimes go months without much rain at all,” said owner Gary Samascott. “Now with these new smaller trees with much more root systems and much higher yield per acre, you can go maybe three weeks without water.”

At first glance, Upstate New York might not look like it has a problem with precipitation. After all, when Americans think of the term “drought,” chances are they think of the Western U.S. — dead lawns, disappearing reservoirs, and shrinking snowpack. But low rainfall is also an issue for other parts of the country, including the Northeast, that many people don’t necessarily associate with dryness.

US Drought Monitor

This summer, rainfall has been relatively absent from many parts of the Northeast. New England has been particularly affected: For the first time in seven years, all of Massachusetts is currently experiencing some level of drought – a “flash” development based on conditions over the last few weeks. All of New York City is also experiencing drought conditions, with some areas considered to be in severe drought, as rainfall totals remain well below typical levels for the summer months. 

“Different parts of the country have different ‘normal’ amounts of rainfall,” said Nick Bassill, Director of Research and Development at the Center for Excellence in Weather and Climate Analytics at State University of New York at Albany. “If you’re down like 10 inches on the year in Las Vegas that is almost all the rainfall that you would get, versus here in Albany normally we get 50 inches of rain.”

Grist / Chad Small / Clayton Aldern

The sheer difference in normal rainfall from region to region exposes one of the key differences between dryness and drought. What shifts an area from a period of pronounced dryness into a period of drought is not dependent solely on one metric, like rainfall. Besides the lack of precipitation, drought is determined based on relative severity, duration, and even the accompanying temperature. These factors are viewed together to create tools like the U.S. Drought Monitor, which can alert both average citizens and emergency managers as to when an area is considered dry versus experiencing full-blown drought. 

One thing to remember, Bassill said, is that dryness can exist on a hyperlocal scale. “In the summertime, most of our rain comes from pop up thunderstorm type rain events, where it rains really hard for like 20 minutes or whatever, and then it’s done,” he said. Some of these events are so small they may affect one borough and not the next. “That can make the difference between being on the dry or drought side versus ‘oh, actually, we’re fine where we are.’”

Products like the U.S. Drought Monitor can help cities forecast the effects of either dryness or drought on agriculture and water resources. Weeks of dryness can have long-lasting impacts on crops, even after a heavy summer rain. The ground can become so parched that it soaks up all the rain right away, making it harder for plants to absorb enough water. A heavy coating of snow, however, can melt progressively, releasing water at just the right rate to moisten the soil and hydrate plants.

Even outside of official drought zones, growers are among the first to feel the consequences of abnormal precipitation. Limited or delayed rainfall can shift when blooming seasons take place for certain fruit trees. This can present serious problems for farmers like Samascott who are trying to manage their growing and harvesting seasons. Additionally, if growing seasons for common fruits like strawberries or apples (usually late May or early June) are dry, farmers may need to spend money on irrigation technologies, like drip irrigation, to make sure that water reaches the roots of these plants. 

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Back on Samascott Orchards, Gary Samascott says his family’s apple trees benefit from having drip irrigation built into the watering network to protect from periods of low rainfall. He noted that without drip irrigation – something not found on every farm – extended periods of little rain “could outright kill the trees.”

Beyond fruit bearing trees, a relatively short-term lack of water can threaten ornamental trees in suburban and urban environments. Bassill explains that trees that survive periods of dryness can become physically weaker, causing downstream infrastructure problems. The trees are “a little bit more susceptible to being blown over, and having tree limbs blown off,” he said. “That kind of stuff causes lots of power outages.”

Bassill recalls the remnants of Hurricane Isaias, which in 2020 knocked down thousands of trees throughout New York. The weeks preceding the storm’s remnants reaching New York experienced significant dryness – as little as 20 percent of average rainfall in parts of the state. Researchers believe that drought conditions preceding the storm weakened tree root systems throughout the New York City tri-state area, exacerbating storm damage. 

Though much of the country is currently experiencing parched conditions, it’s unlikely the Northeast will ever see the same kind of long-term drought ravaging the West. Most climate change studies agree that the Northeast will likely get rainier in general. But if the region experiences dryness this severe in the future, the big rain that’s likely to follow may bring more challenges than relief.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why drought looks different depending on your region on Aug 30, 2022.

The ‘climate dystopia’ displacing millions of Pakistanis

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After weeks of relentless rains, a new cycle of flash floods devastated parts of Pakistan over the weekend, raising the country’s monsoon death toll to 1,136 since June, according to the country’s National Disaster Management Authority. Nearly 1 million homes have been damaged or destroyed and over 33 million Pakistanis affected, with displaced families sleeping on roads, in lean-tos and tents, and in makeshift shelters in schools and mosques. 

“This is very far from a normal monsoon – it is climate dystopia at our doorstep,” Sherry Rehman, a Pakistan senator and the country’s climate change minister, told AFP on Monday. 

The monsoon season began earlier than normal this year, in mid-June, and the country has experienced its heaviest rain on record since the 1960s. The southern province of Sindh received 784 percent more rainfall this month than the August average and southwestern Baluchistan received 500 percent more, according to the Pakistan Meteorological Department as reported in the New Delhi Times. The department warns that rains could continue into next month.

Aid from Turkey and the United Arab Emirates arrived in Islamabad on Monday for areas that have been hit by what Rehman called “the monster monsoon of the decade.” But distributing supplies will be difficult: Thousands of miles of roads and more than 150 bridges have been destroyed throughout the country. Civilian rescuers and government soldiers are still struggling to evacuate thousands of people marooned in inaccessible areas. 

All four provinces of Pakistan have suffered the effects of the floods. Large swathes of the southern Balochistan and Sindh provinces are currently underwater; 75 percent of Balochistan, the country’s least developed province which accounts for half the land area of Pakistan, has been affected.

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In the mountainous north, where the Himalayas, the Karakoram and the Hindu Kush ranges meet, glacial lake outburst floods have rushed through valleys, sweeping away bridges and homes. Pakistan is home to over 7,000 glaciers, the highest number in the world outside the polar region; as these melt with global temperature increases, they exacerbate the impact of heavy rain. In the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, weekend fooding from the Swat River displaced tens of thousands who now await aid at relief camps in government buildings. 

By the time the rain recedes, said Rehman, a third of Pakistan could be underwater. The government has declared a national emergency and called for international aid. On Tuesday, the United Nations will launch an international appeal for $160 million in donations. 

The disaster comes amid a financial crisis in Pakistan, with the nation facing historic inflation, depreciating currency, and a massive account deficit. On Monday, the International Monetary Fund, or IMF, board approved $1.17 million in bailout funds so that the country can avoid default. The IMF and Pakistan signed a bailout accord in 2019 but the payments from the IMF had been delayed over concerns about Pakistan’s compliance with the deal terms under the government of former Prime Minister Imran Khan. The new government instituted painful economic austerity measures in order to access the funding.

Khan, ousted in April after a constitutional vote of no confidence, has been holding rallies to demand new elections. NPR reported that in remote areas of Pakistan, there’s a sense that the political crisis in Islamabad has drawn attention away from the devastating impacts of the rains until now. On Monday, Finance Minister Miftah Ismail suggested that Pakistan could reopen some trade with India to import vegetables; trade has been blocked since 2019 when New Delhi moved to integrate part of the disputed Kashmir region. Last week, the U.N. said in a statement that it had allocated $3 million for flood response in Pakistan, focusing on the most vulnerable.

Pakistan emits less than 1 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases but consistently ranks among the top 10 most vulnerable countries in Germanwatch’s Global Climate Risk Index. In comments on Sunday, Minister of Foreign Affairs Bilawal Bhutto Zardari pointed out how Pakistan bears the brunt of climate change while high-emitting countries fail to reduce their emissions sufficiently. “Pakistan contributes negligible amounts to the overall carbon footprint,” he said, “but we are devastated by climate disasters such as these time and time again, and we have to adapt within our limited resources.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The ‘climate dystopia’ displacing millions of Pakistanis on Aug 30, 2022.

How Kentuckians want to hold coal companies accountable for deadly flooding

I'd like to take this time to remind you that climate change is real. The actions of big governments continue to pollute and poison the environment. Whenever feasible, we should all plant more trees and preserve our existing ones. That's why Tree Services in Pensacola strives to do both while also improving your home's landscaping. Read more about how they're making changes at https://treeservicespensacola.com/tree-trimming-pensacola/

Nearly 60 Kentucky residents have filed a lawsuit against neighboring coal companies, alleging negligent practices that contributed to recent historic flooding. 

The lawsuit, filed in Breathitt County Circuit Court last week, seeks damages for personal property such as homes and vehicles ruined by the early August flooding that killed 39 people and left hundreds of Kentuckians without a place to live. Many residents of Lost Creek, an unincorporated town in eastern Kentucky, are now without their homes and living in tents. They are also seeking compensation for emotional damages from Blackhawk Mining and Pine Branch Mining.

Blackhawk Mining, founded in 2010, currently operates eight coal facilities in eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia, including the Pine Branch complex, a subsidiary of open pit mines roughly seven miles from Lost Creek. The company has grown in recent years despite its former bankruptcy and a global coal investment downturn where large financial institutions have pulled out of coal operations. The Pine Branch coal mine is uphill from Caney Creek, a tributary of the North Fork Kentucky River, and neighbors the River Caney community of which Lost Creek is a part.

Coal mining has deep roots in eastern Kentucky and may have directly caused some of its worst floods ever. Past research suggests that flood-prone communities in eastern Kentucky overlap with heavily mined landscapes changed by mountaintop removal—a process where mountains are blasted with explosives and rain-absorbing vegetation is killed to access coal seams beneath. The lawsuit alleges that Blackhawk and Pine Branch operations were “ticking time bombs ready to explode with any type of heavy rainfall.”

“They won’t have water for six months. All the power lines are down,” Ned Pillersdorf, the attorney representing Lost Creek residents, told Grist. “Most of the people, if not everybody, are displaced.” Pillersdorf has experience suing coal companies in the wake of devastating floods and represented West Virginia coal miners fighting for paychecks after coal giant Blackjewel’s bankruptcy.

The lawsuit alleges that Blackhawk and Pine Branch did not properly maintain their silt retention ponds, which caused contaminated waters to flood the homes of Lost Creek residents. These ponds amass debris, sediments, and water stemming from coal mining. Silt pond flooding is not new to coal communities and has caused the evacuation of neighboring residents for decades, and has contaminated nearby waterways.

The lawsuit alleges that “debris, sediment, and other matter, including fish, escaped from the silt ponds and came onto the property of many of the plaintiffs,” and the neighboring coal companies violated state law by not properly maintaining these ponds. 

Blackhawk Mining said in a company statement that they do not agree with the claims made in the lawsuit. Recent flooding has not stopped the coal company from blasting mountains, however, and the lawsuit alleges that the company posted notices that blasting will continue in the coming months even though communities are still recovering from the flooding. A report from NBC News also found that Pine Branch has circulated notices detailing that operations will continue from now until next July. 

“Our people were deeply impacted by the flooding, including loss of loved ones, homes and belongings. We have been supporting the community with relief efforts from the beginning and our sympathies are with those affected,” said the statement. “The flood was a natural disaster without precedent.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How Kentuckians want to hold coal companies accountable for deadly flooding on Aug 29, 2022.

Friday night fish frys define Wisconsin. What happens when climate change adjusts the menu?

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On any given Friday night in Wisconsin, you’re probably eating fish.

A weekly offering of fried fish stands out as a cultural institution in a state known for its beer, football, and cheese. The Wisconsin fish fry— a regional dish consisting of battered and fried fish, generally served with fries or potato pancakes, cabbage or coleslaw, rye bread or a dinner roll, and topped off with a lemon slice —has been a hearty Friday night staple of local bars, village halls, and supper clubs.

This dish is more than just a line on a menu, it’s how people have defined their Friday nights for decades.

A perch basket at Highland Howie’s Pub and Grill in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Chef Suvan Keomanyvong said the restaurant has used Lake Michigan perch in the past, but has had to source farm-raised perch from Europe in recent years due to the lake’s declining population.
Grist / John McCracken

Now, fish frys will have to adapt to a changing climate. From the Hatch green chiles in New Mexico to gumbo in Louisiana, climate change is altering regional food traditions across the country. 

Wisconsin lakes are warming and becoming more hospitable to invasive species and extreme weather conditions thanks to a global rise in temperature, challenging the future of this statewide ritual. Commonly fried fish species like perch, lake trout, and whitefish have declined, causing Wisconsin restaurants to look beyond their own lakes for certain fish, or abandon some altogether. 

Two Great Lakes — Michigan and Superior — touch Wisconsin’s shores and have experienced a steady rise in temperature since 1995. Even the deepest depths of the lake system are starting to warm up and the average maximum ice cover on the Great Lakes has dropped over 20 percent in the last 50 years. 

The fish fry is predicated on Wisconsin “geography, religion, and history,” said Terese Allen, an expert on the state’s culinary history and a co-author of Flavor of Wisconsin: An Informal History of Food and Eating in the Badger State.

Cooking fish for large groups predates settlers, with evidence of Indigenous fishing practices dating back thousands of years in the Great Lakes. Allen said when Indigenous communities and colonizers intermingled in a region “surrounded by and intertwined with waterways,” the settlers found preparing fish in mass to be a useful skill. Many immigrants who settled the state were also Catholic and wouldn’t eat meat on Fridays, a factor in the dish’s growth and popularity.

Fish frys boomed during Prohibition, Allen said, as taverns would sell fried fish for cheap to get customers in the door during a time when bars struggled to survive. By the 1960s, in a post-Prohibition era and the end of the Friday meat ban for Catholics, Wisconsinites across the state were hooked.

Presidential hopeful George McGovern shakes hands with a cook at a hall where a fish fry was being held in Milwaukee on March 31, 1972.
Paul Shane / AP Photo

As a definition for the uninitiated, Allen said a fish fry is simply an “end-of-the-work-week rite, in restaurants plain and simple to fancy, that brings people together to celebrate everyday life. It’s not a holiday, but it is a regular special occasion.”

It used to be that the fish for those occasions came from the state’s shorelines. Unfortunately, years of overharvesting and strained ecosystems led to a rapid decline in fish populations in these lakes. By the turn of the 20th century, a growing interest in commercial fishing across all Great Lakes (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior) led to the near-death of Atlantic salmon, lake trout, and ciscoes, with whitefish on a rapid decline. In 1954, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission was formed to protect and manage fish populations, protect the lakes from overharvesting, manage water quality, and fight another persistent problem — invasive species. 

Two invasive species have caused lasting effects on Wisconsin fish; sea lampreys and zebra mussels. Sea lampreys are a parasitic fish famed for their rows of sharp teeth and funnel-shaped mouths, also known as the vampire fish, and have been called North America’s first invasive species. Sea lamprey nearly decimated all Great Lakes fish life, dropping the average catch weight from 15 million pounds down to a dismal 300,000 by the 1960s, according to the fishery commission. Baby vampire fish are killed using a set of chemicals known as lampricides, but climate change has made it harder to terminate these bloodsuckers. A study found that rising lake temperatures make lamprey larvae more resistant to chemicals meant to kill them.

A worker displays a sea lamprey attached to the side of a recently caught fish. Lampreys are an invasive species found across Lake Michigan and Superior becoming more resilient in warming lake temperatures. Courtesy of Red Cliff Fisheries Department / Ian Harding

Yellow perch used to be caught, doused in batter, and fried by the bushel in the Great Lakes region until zebra mussels invaded. Zebra mussels are natives of Russian and Ukrainian freshwater systems and by the 1980s, found their way to Wisconsin’s lakes and bays. Spawning perch and zebra mussels both feed on and fight over phytoplankton and zooplankton. 

This feud has left yellow perch populations in freefall from a few decades ago, with Lake Michigan perch on a continued decline, according to the Wisconsin DNR. Zebra mussels, much like a lamprey, will thrive in a warmer climate, according to a 2020 Hydrobiologia study, especially in northern higher North American latitudes, such as Wisconsin lakes. The infestation of zebra mussels has reached over 250 lakes in Wisconsin and once they set up shop, the invasive species is hard to get rid of.

Besides invasive species, extreme weather events on lakes, such as turbulent windstorms, are already harming Lake Michigan fish. The loss of ice cover has caused lakes to thaw faster and expose still developing fish to the elements. “If you have loss of ice cover, then you’re going to potentially have more wind events that could cause turbulence [and] could potentially bury eggs,” said Abby Lynch, a fish biologist and researcher with the United States Geological Survey’s Climate Adaptation Science Center.

Lynch’s research focuses on how climate change is impacting inland fish across the globe. Given the complexity of a given lake’s ecosystem, she said factors such as increased precipitation and periods of drought will also change how fish survive. Lake temperatures, she added, are a major concern when looking at the future of fish populations.

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Climate change has also affected how whitefish, another popular fish fry option, are spawning. Whitefish spawn in the fall, egg in the winter, and hatch in the spring, leaving them vulnerable to seasons experiencing warming temperatures. As these changes to the lake systems happen, one of the most immediate impacts is where certain fish are staying or moving. 

Lynch said anglers, fisheries, and shoreline communities are already seeing that when a lake changes, the species available at a specific location will change with time. Once certain species move out of a lake, the regional identity and industry associated with that fish will be forced to acclimate. 

“Fish might be able to move and their populations may end up in a reasonable place, but there’s still a lot of political and social implications for those shifts that are not simple to deal with,” Lynch said. 

Wisconsin perch reigned supreme at fish fries for decades. As the population shifts, stalwart fishers look for ways to get perch on plates. 

Grist Reporter John McCracken holds a yellow perch caught at the Fox River, a tributary of Green Bay, in De Pere, Wisconsin.
Grist / John McCracken

Doug Sackett, a retired firefighter and EMT from Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, started farming yellow perch at his Cedar Hill Farm pheasant hunting retreat eight years ago. Halfway between Madison and Milwaukee, his property now has three half-acre 15-foot-deep perch ponds with around 60,000 fish. He said he’s seen how limits on commercially harvested perch and other species harvest has caused restaurants and suppliers to look for other options.

“They’ve been cutting back on how many fish they are able to harvest which puts a big hurt on the Friday night fish fry industry,” Sackett said. 

As taverns look to fill in the gaps left by declining populations, Sackett said he’s seen buyers supplement local freshwater fish for imported zander, a freshwater fish that resembles perch and is found in Finland and other European countries, as well as ocean perch, imported from fisheries in the Pacific Ocean. 

Justin Kohlhagen, operating manager of VFW Memorial Post 9156 in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, stays tried and true to local fish as much as he can. The VFW, found just around the corner from a semi-pro baseball field and across the street from a Lutheran cemetery, has hosted a booming Friday night fish fry for the last nine years under his watch. Born and raised in Sheboygan, a city nicknamed the Malibu of the Midwest and known for freshwater recreation, Kohlhagen spent his childhood fishing perch with his family along Lake Michigan shores.

“You used to go off South Pier by the power plant and we could go out perch fishing,” Kohlhagen said. “You can’t do that anymore in Sheboygan, there’s no perch around here.”

Now Kohlhagen sources his perch from Lake Erie, a point of pride for the VFW. “It’s not zander and all that crap,” he said. “It’s actual fish.” 

This commitment to Great Lakes perch has caused prices to rise in recent years, with a perch plate costing $22.50 a plate and Kohlhagen paying over $17 a pound for Great Lakes perch, but he said his Sheboygan customers want and expect fresh fish. Kohlhagen said the VFW operates at the same scale as restaurants or supper clubs and they turn over “tons” of tables each Friday night. “We’re the busiest fish fry in Sheboygan County. I can promise you that,” he said.

At the northern tip of the state, a fish success story has spawned from decades of conservation and management efforts. Lake Superior communities Bayfield, Red Cliff, and the Apostle Islands have seen a growth in fish species commonly used for fish frys. 

Fish twist in a net over Lake Superior. Lake Superior fish populations have been booming in recent years, but the lake and its inhabitants still face challenges such as invasive species and being one of the fastest warming lakes in the world. Courtesy of Red Cliff Fisheries Department / Ian Harding

“Whitefish populations, right now, in the Apostle Islands region of Lake Superior are doing fantastic,” said Ian Harding, a fish biologist for the Red Cliff Fisheries Department. The agency is operated by the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, one of Wisconsin’s eleven federally recognized Indigenous tribes. 

Harding said whitefish populations declined in Lakes Michigan and Superior in the early 20th century like other species, but since the 1970s-80s fight for treaty and fishing rights, Superior whitefish have boomed with help from Red Cliff and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources conservation methods.

He said Lake Superior also sets itself apart due to the “great luck” of its chemical makeup, which has far less calcium buildup than Lake Michigan, a crucial component to the growth of zebra mussels. This invasive species has been spotted in Superior, but nowhere close to the levels seen in other lakes. In addition to its chemical makeup, Lake Superior has far less shoreline development than Lake Michigan, which is home to larger cities like Green Bay or Milwaukee. The lack of development along Superior has played a role in the health of the lake, and thus its fish, and is something he wants to protect. 

“When projects pop up in the Lake Superior basin, or they want to develop Lake Superior shoreline, use water resources, or anything like that, generally in our position, we’re opposed,” Harding said.

The Red Cliff tribe operates its own fishing company that sells whitefish wholesale to restaurants across the state and beyond due to its booming harvest. Harding said Lake Superior whitefish and ciscoes, or lake herring, are among the most popular catches that make their way to plates in the state. Still, Lake Superior fish populations aren’t without problems. The lake is one of the fastest warming lakes in the world, and slowly but surely, warming waters have created growing toxic algae blooms. 

“We should really take notes and learn from what’s happened to Lake Michigan and Huron so we can take steps so that doesn’t happen here in Lake Superior,” Harding said. “We’re really fortunate to have what we have right now and things generally have been going pretty well, but there’s warning signs out there.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Friday night fish frys define Wisconsin. What happens when climate change adjusts the menu? on Aug 26, 2022.

It’s official: California is phasing out gas-powered cars by 2035

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California is moving full steam ahead with its plan to ban the sale of new gas-guzzling cars. On Thursday, the California Air Resources Board, the state’s chief air pollution regulator, voted overwhelmingly in favor of phasing out all sales of new fossil fuel cars in the state by 2035. 

“This is a historic moment for California, for our partner states, and for the world as we set forth this path towards a zero-emission future,” Liane Randolph, chair of the air board, said in the meeting preceding the vote. The new rule will “ensure that consumers can successfully replace their traditional combustion vehicles with new or used [zero-emission vehicles] and plug-in hybrids that meet their transportation needs,” she added. 

Currently, about 12 percent of all new cars sold in the state are electric vehicles. The rule requires that automakers increase that figure progressively, nearly tripling it to 35 percent by 2026 and scaling up to 100 percent by 2035. The new rule is a result of a 2020 executive order from Governor Gavin Newsom, which set a goal of 100 percent zero-emission car and truck sales within 15 years. (The requirement does not apply to used car sales.)  

The announcement comes on the heels of the U.S. Congress passing a historic measure to invest nearly $370 billion in clean energy and other climate-related measures earlier this month. The new law, ​​when combined with existing policies and economic trends, is expected to reduce U.S. carbon emissions by about 40 percent by 2030, compared to 2005 levels. The Biden administration has set a more ambitious target of cutting carbon pollution by half by 2030 and reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. California’s new rule is expected to spur electric vehicle adoption and help the country meet these goals. 

The Golden State is hugely influential in the auto world. If the state were a country, it would be the tenth largest auto market on the planet. Fourteen states — mostly in the Northeast — and the District of Columbia have copied California’s low-emission vehicle mandates in the past. If the air board’s rule to ban new gas car sales receives Environmental Protection Agency approval, other states are likely to adopt similar measures. 

California’s authority to set more stringent vehicle emission standards than the U.S. government has been the subject of lawsuits and political ping pong in the past. In 2019, the Trump administration revoked the state’s ability to set its own air quality standards. The Biden administration has since reinstated that authority. Automakers like Toyota and General Motors also initially challenged California’s right to set its own emissions standards, but they have more recently backed down.

At the public meeting, Steve Douglas, vice president of the car industry group Alliance of Automotive Innovation, said that the industry “is fully committed to electrification” but raised multiple questions about whether consumers — particularly those in low-income communities — will be able to afford zero-emission vehicles and conveniently charge them, as well as whether the battery supply chain is sufficient to produce the number of electric vehicles needed in such a short time.

“To ensure the success of this regulation depends on a lot more than this regulation,” he said.

A representative with Kia Corporation also said the company supports the rule, but she pointed out that complying with it will be “challenging” in part due to higher material costs, supply chain stress, and inadequate charging infrastructure. “Automakers could have significant difficulties meeting the soft target given elements outside of the control of industry,” she added. 

Environmental justice groups also raised concerns about the effect of the rule on low-income communities. The rule includes incentives for automakers to sell electric vehicles at a discount in disadvantaged communities, but advocates argued that it doesn’t go far enough to make electric vehicles affordable for Californians. With the average cost of an electric vehicle hovering around $66,000, they said that Californians of color may be left behind.

“This rule had an opportunity to be transformative, but unfortunately it only does the bare minimum,” said Román Partida-López, an attorney with the Greenlining Institute, an environmental justice nonprofit based in Oakland. The equity provisions in the rule are “limited, voluntary, and do not provide any certainty that automakers will participate,” he added. 

Notwithstanding the substantial upfront costs of electric vehicles, the California Air Resources Board estimates that the rule will save car owners more than $90 billion in operational costs between 2026 and 2040. Most of the savings are at the pump: The analysis assumes gas prices will hover around $4 per gallon, but the savings are even greater if prices remain at current levels or soar higher. 

There are significant environmental and public health benefits, too. Taking additional gas cars off the road would eliminate the equivalent of almost 400 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions between 2026 and 2040, according to the agency. That’s roughly the effect of shutting down more than 100 coal plants for a year. Pollutants such as nitrous oxides and particulate matter, which lead to the formation of smog and cause respiratory disorders, are projected to decline by 70,000 tons and 4,550 tons over the 15-year period, respectively. The agency estimates that the decrease in pollution will lead to almost 1,300 fewer cardiopulmonary deaths and about 650 fewer emergency room visits for asthma. 

“This rule is critical to cutting harmful pollution and will save thousands of lives and reduce asthma emergency room visits and other health emergencies throughout the state,” said Mariela Ruacho, the clean air advocacy manager at the American Lung Association in California, in an email to Grist. Ruacho said that her group’s research showed the transition to zero-emission vehicles will save thousands of lives, with Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area seeing some of the biggest benefits. “This policy to accelerate zero-emissions is needed for California to meet our health-protective air quality and climate standards.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline It’s official: California is phasing out gas-powered cars by 2035 on Aug 25, 2022.

How Colorado River Basin tribes are managing water amid historic drought

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This story is published in collaboration with High Country News. 

Amid historic drought in the Colorado River Basin, the Gila River Indian Community is taking a drastic step to protect their own water resources. In a statement last week, Governor Stephen Roe Lewis announced the tribe—located just south of Phoenix—would stop voluntarily contributing water to an important state reservoir. “We cannot continue to put the interests of all others above our own when no other parties seem committed to the common goal of a cooperative basin-wide agreement,” the statement reads. 

Since 2021, Lake Mead, a crucial water supply for the region, has been boosted by voluntary water contributions from the Gila River Indian Community and the Colorado River Indian Tribes. The Colorado River is a crucial source of water in the West, supplying water to 40 million people across seven states and Mexico. For years, tribes and communities in those states have received river water based on a complex allocation system, but last week, the federal government announced historic water cuts that will force Arizona, the most impacted state, to reduce water withdrawals from the Lake Mead reservoir by 21 percent next year. Lake Mead’s levels are currently at a historic low of about 27 percent capacity. 

By contributing their water to Lake Mead at affordable rates, the Gila River Indian Community was essentially subsidizing Arizona’s water supply while sacrificing an opportunity to sell that water at higher rates or put it to use on the reservation for agriculture or other industry. Now, facing cuts and other communities not willing to make sacrifices for the collective good, Gila River is putting its foot down. According to the statement, the lack of progress toward a sustainable water management plan left the tribe with no choice but to store the water independently rather than supporting the state water supply. “We are aware that this approach will have a very significant impact on the ability of the State of Arizona to make any meaningful commitment to water reductions in the basin state discussions,” Lewis said in the statement.  

Meanwhile, the Colorado River Indian Tribes, which has also been contributing some of its water to help keep Lake Mead’s levels up, has opted to continue storing water in the reservoir. In a press release, chairwoman Amelia Flores reiterated her tribe’s commitment to an ongoing fallow and farming plan for their water allotments in response to the cuts. In other words, Colorado River Indian Tribes is sticking to a plan that forfeits the opportunity to maximize their agricultural and water revenues.  “We recognize that the decades-long drought has reduced the water availability for all of us in the Basin,” Flores said. “We continue to conserve water and develop ways to use less water as we adjust to higher temperatures, more wind and less precipitation.”

These two decisions illustrate the difficult choices facing the thirty federally recognized tribes in the Colorado River Basin. Because tribes are sovereign governments, their water rights are determined with the federal government, rather than via the state, like cities and towns. Water rights allow tribes to maintain agricultural self-sufficiency, restore and steward the land, and support their communities. But to actually use their water, tribes face a unique set of challenges including inadequate infrastructure that limits some from accessing their water allocations. And for tribes still fighting to have their rights recognized, the ongoing shortage may make their battle even harder. As the region prepares for the cuts, tribes are working to ensure they have a voice during ongoing water management negotiations. 

A sign shows where Lake Mead water levels were in 2002
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

A 1908 Supreme Court decision established that tribes have the right to draw from the rivers that pass through their reservations in order to enable their self-sufficiency. But in its ongoing colonization of the West, the federal government filled the needs of white settlers before those of Indigenous nations. Through the Bureau of Reclamation, founded in 1902, hundreds of dams and reservoirs were constructed to divert millions of gallons of water from the Colorado River and other waterways to serve the growing settler populations of the West. Between 1980 and 2000, the basin was thriving, with water levels at its reservoirs nearly at full capacity. But even after two decades of drought, the unprecedented 27 percent reservoir capacity took officials by surprise. The Lower Colorado River Basin, one of the Bureau’s 6 water regions, consists of the Mountain and Southwest states as well as much of Southern California and is where tensions between individual states and tribes around water conservation policies are coming to a head. 

Twenty-two tribes in the basin have secured recognized water rights and allocations, which they reclaimed through a mix of legislation, settlement, and court decisions. These allocations total around 3.2 million acre-feet per year, which represents roughly a quarter of the river’s annual supply. Arizona’s total allocation is less than 3 million acre-feet per year. The Department of the Interior tasked Basin States and Tribes to come up with a voluntary water conservation plan to add 2 to 4 million more acre-feet of water to stabilize the Colorado River and its two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell. 

But according to a July 22 letter to Tanya Trujillo, Assistant Secretary for Water and Science at the Department of the Interior, leaders from fourteen tribes in the Colorado River Basin argued that they were not being adequately consulted by either states or the Department of the Interior on a viable conservation plan. 

The letter cites the federal government’s legal obligations to tribes, notably an executive order issued by President Clinton in 2000 that requires federal departments and agencies to consult with tribal governments when planning policies that impact their communities. “We should not have to remind you – but we will again – that as our trustee, you must protect our rights, our assets, and people in addition to any action you take on behalf of the system,” the letter said.

Nora McDowell is the former chairwoman of the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe and member of the Water and Tribes Initiative. She says that tribes have been forced to follow state and federal decisions about water use, even though tribes have successfully managed the river since time immemorial. She believes it is time for tribes to have a greater voice in conservation plans. “We always have been marginalized or not even consulted,” McDowell said of the ongoing conservation planning. “But the difference here is that we have the rights to that water.”

But twelve tribes are still fighting to get all of their water rights recognized. And as competition for water grows even fiercer, these tribes are left in an even more precarious position.

“The problems have existed for a long time on the river and the current situation is just exacerbating them and making it that much more fraught to try to negotiate water settlements,” Jay Weiner, water counsel for the Tonto Apache Tribe, which currently is in settlement negotiations, said. “There are political incentives for non-Indian water users essentially to try to put obstacles in the way of tribal development because otherwise that water is coming out of someone’s bucket.”

At least six cities in Arizona have declared water shortages because of the drought. And with water at dangerously low levels in both Lake Mead and Lake Powell, tribal water—whether in the form of voluntary contributions like the Colorado River Indian Tribes continues to make, or in the form of undeveloped tribal water rights—will play an important role in the region’s water supply. Because all water users have to cut back in response to the drought, tribes attempting to reclaim their water rights face negotiators reluctant to part with any water at all. Weiner, who also serves as water counsel for the Quechan Indian Tribe, says that the ongoing shortage has only further complicated ongoing settlements, “because as a practical matter right now, water rights users in the basin rely on those unquantified or undeveloped tribal water rights.”

A woman siphons water into a bucket on the Navajo Nation.
RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Meanwhile, even tribes with recognized water rights face an uphill battle to fully take advantage of their water allocations. Some tribes simply lack the necessary piping infrastructure for either farming or drinking water, are too geographically spread out, or have had their water resources contaminated by extractive industry. 

On May 27, 18 years of negotiations came to a close when Congress passed a bill granting the Navajo Nation 81,500 acre-feet of water annually from Colorado River Basin sources within Utah. Yet it is estimated that between 30 percent and 40 percent of households on the Navajo Nation, spanning territory in Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, do not have running water. It is unclear how much these new water cutbacks will impact development of critical infrastructure for the Navajo, which will take years.  

Nora McDowell of the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe believes it will take a collective effort to ensure a sustainable future for the Colorado River and water access in the region. That effort will require major changes to water management and tribes’ role in it. “It’s a critical time right now and people need to wake up and see what we’re dealing with,” she said. “We can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing for the last 100 years.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How Colorado River Basin tribes are managing water amid historic drought on Aug 25, 2022.

Wildfire smoke is choking Indigenous communities

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On July 29, 2021, Li Boyd woke up to the smell of smoke. It was her birthday — she was turning 38 — and she had rented a boat to take her parents and aunts out on the lake near her home in central Minnesota, about 90 minutes north of the Twin Cities. But that morning, when she looked outside her window and found a thick, yellow-gray haze, she figured it was best to avoid going outside. Her older family members all had respiratory issues, and as the day went on and the smoke grew thicker, she worried about how it would affect them. They celebrated in her house, sealing the windows as tightly as they could.

Boyd is a member of the federally recognized Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. That day, her government sent out alerts through Facebook, email, and text message, warning citizens to stay indoors and close their windows. Youth programs were canceled, and public employees were told to go home. The smoke was “so intense,” Boyd said, that her aunt called the police in a panic to report that something was on fire. 

It was Canada, they told her; wildfires burning in nearby Alberta had sent a column of smoke south into Minnesota, where it reached Mille Lacs and settled on the reservation like a blanket. Air quality in the United States is measured on a point scale called the air quality index, or AQI, where a score under 50 is considered “good” while one over 150 is “unhealthy.” That day, a private sensor on the Mille Lacs Reservation registered an AQI-equivalent reading of 667.2 — the highest ever recorded in the state of Minnesota. 

A NASA-generated image from July 21, 2021, shows high concentrations of wildfire smoke over wide swaths of the US including Minnesota.
Grist / Joshua Stevens / NASA Earth Observatory

Smoke had drifted over the reservation before, but that day was a wake-up call. “I didn’t need the news to tell me that that was a record event or that it was extraordinary,” Boyd recalled nearly a year later, sitting in a lawn chair in her front yard on a clear day in May. “We could tell because literally anybody you talked to was like, ‘What is happening?’”

That summer, as fires burned pest- and drought-stricken forests to the north and west, air pollution levels on the Mille Lacs Reservation were above normal nearly every day in July and August. The state issued 29 air quality alerts, triggered by an AQI of over 100, for the Mille Lacs area; in previous years, the tribe could expect to see around four. For Boyd, it became clear that climate change was here — and that it would affect the tribe in ways it hadn’t anticipated.

Li Boyd moved back to her family’s property on the Mille Lacs Reservation as an adult. One thing she missed: the sight of the lake. “It’s difficult for me to imagine living somewhere where I don’t turn the corner out of my driveway and see that,” she said. Grist / Diana Kruzman

Across the country, wildfires are becoming more frequent and intense as climate change dries out forests. Scientists and public health advocates are also increasingly recognizing the danger posed not just by the flames themselves, but the smoke that they generate. Smoke from megafires in the West has blocked out the sun as far as Washington, D.C.; asthma cases and deaths from wildfire smoke now affect more people in the Eastern U.S. than in the West. 

But these impacts are not distributed equally. Communities of color and low-income residents in urban areas already shoulder disproportionate air pollution burdens from sources like truck traffic and industrial waste sites. But Indigenous communities, which tend to be located in rural areas closest to blazes and often have difficulties accessing air filters and upgrading homes to keep out the smallest particles, can be more vulnerable to the impacts of intensifying pollution from wildfires than other groups. 

Last year, researchers at the University of California examined the impact of wildfires on communities around the state over the past 20 years. Their study found that areas with a higher percentage of Indigenous residents experienced more frequent and severe fires. In the most highly affected areas, the Indigenous population was about three times higher than the average census tract. Even the topography of reservations like Mille Lacs can concentrate dangerous levels of wildfire haze, threatening tribes’ rights to hunt, fish, and use their land guaranteed under treaties with the U.S. government.

A Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) image of Canadian wildfire smoke wafting over Minnesota, as seen from the NOAA-20 spacecraft on July 11, 2021.
Joshua Stevens / NASA Earth Observatory

A Columbia University study published in March found that air pollution in Native American communities is worse than in non-Native areas, despite nationwide improvements in air quality over the last 20 years. These health disparities aren’t just from exposure to wildfire smoke, but experts say it is a significant factor. In 2018, one study found that American Indian and Alaska Native people were 20 percent more likely to have asthma compared to non-Hispanic whites.   

Tribes are now calling out a lack of federal funding for programs to monitor air pollution, as well as for upgrading homes and infrastructure to deal with the worsening smoke. Money supplied by the Environmental Protection Agency’s air grants program has remained stagnant for the last 20 years, even as more Indigenous nations have begun applying for it, said Chris Lee, co-director of Northern Arizona University’s Tribal Air Monitoring Support Center, which trains Indigenous environmental professionals. 

“Because of that disparity in the funding, tribes are really doing what they can with the minimal support that they have,” Lee said. “It’s a really tough situation.” 

In response, some have begun waging a campaign of citizen science, installing low-cost air sensors that deliver data in real time and can help residents prepare for particularly dangerous air days. With more and better data, tribal air quality specialists say, they can start preparing their communities to face increasingly hazardous air. 

The Mille Lacs Band is about a third of the way toward its goal of installing 23 PurpleAir sensors around the tribe’s lands, thanks to funding from a local school district.
Grist / Diana Kruzman

“We really need to start thinking ahead and understand and anticipate these issues that we’re seeing,” Lee said. When it comes to wildfire smoke’s escalating danger to tribal communities, he added, the question “is not going to be ‘if,’ it’s going to be ‘when.’”

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The Mille Lacs Reservation sits on 61,000 acres along the southern shore of Mille Lacs Lake, nestled among the thick forests and swampy bogs north of Minneapolis. When the boundaries of the reservation were established in 1855 under a treaty with the federal government, the tribe fought to remain near the lake, an essential source for staple foods like wild rice and walleye, a freshwater fish. 

Living by Mille Lacs Lake, though, turned out to have unexpected consequences. At 207 square miles, the body of water is large enough to form its own microclimate; in the summers, it cools the surrounding environment enough to trap air under a warmer layer, an effect known as a temperature inversion. Nitrous oxide pollution, the main component of ozone, drifts northward from Minneapolis and settles on Mille Lacs; so does smoky air coming in from Canada or the Western U.S. That’s what happened on July 29 of last year, said Charlie Lippert, an air quality specialist for the Mille Lacs Band, and it helps explain why AQI readings were so much higher in Mille Lacs than in Minneapolis or even neighboring communities like Brainerd. 

Charlie Lippert, who has worked for the Mille Lacs Band since 2002, says the tribe would normally receive about four air quality alerts every summer. Last year, it received 29.  Grist / Diana Kruzman

Nearby nations, including the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, that also surround Minnesota’s famed lakes experience similar problems. Air quality sensors on the reservation near Duluth registered such high numbers during last summer’s wildfires that the state’s real-time monitoring system assumed the data was an error, said Brandy Toft, an air quality specialist for the tribe. “We kind of took offense … like, no, we can cut the air with a knife,” Toft said. 

This isn’t an issue unique to the Midwest, either. Tribes around the U.S. have been dealing with increasingly smoky air in recent years, particularly in the West. In northern California, the Karuk Tribe has experienced AQI readings of nearly 1,600, driven by the same intense fires that set air quality records in Portland, Oregon, and colored the skies orange over San Francisco. In response, the Karuk and nearby Blue Lake Rancheria have established “clean air shelters” and distributed household air filters to their members. 

More tribes have also begun drawing attention to the ways geography affects their susceptibility to particulate matter pollution. When New Mexico’s largest wildfire tore through the northern part of the state in April and May of this year, a thick cloud of smoke settled on the Tewa Basin, a low-lying area surrounded by mountains that concentrate pollutants. The basin, home to federally recognized tribes like the Santa Clara and San Ildefonso Pueblos, has no EPA-approved air monitors, making it difficult to assess the severity of the smoke, even as the fires threatened historic villages in the area. 

Smoke billows from the 2022 Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak fire in New Mexico. William Fullerton / Getty Images

In northeastern Oregon, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation have seen bigger and bigger smoke events over the past decade, said Caleb Minthorn, a technician for the tribe’s Office of Air Quality. Part of the reason is the reservation’s location at the base of the Blue Mountains, where smoke tends to settle. As a result, during particularly hazardous air quality days people might try to escape to the higher-elevation parts of the reservation, he said, though even those parts can still get smoky during the worst wildfires.

“You really can’t get away from all of it all the time,” Minthorn said. “But that’s the world we live in now — do your best and get to somewhere where it’s easier to breathe.”

Structural deficiencies in infrastructure and residential buildings can compound these effects. Many Leech Lake residents don’t have access to air conditioning, Toft said, so they tend to keep their windows open, even when the air is smoky or hazy. “They can’t shelter in place in 90 degree weather and close up their house,” Toft said. 

These disparities are tied in with the largely rural nature of reservations; air quality monitoring and mitigation resources tend to be clustered in cities, which then use this data to send out air quality alerts for nearby tribal communities, Toft added. But that kind of modeling can overlook more hazardous conditions in these areas and put residents at risk, giving them a false sense of security. “Modeling is only as good as the data you put in,” Toft said.

When the boundaries of the Mille Lacs Reservation were established in 1855 under a treaty with the federal government, the tribe fought to remain near the lake, an essential source for staple foods like wild rice and walleye, a freshwater fish.
Grist / Diana Kruzman

Some residents also don’t realize that their health conditions may be aggravated by smoke, Minthorn said. As a result, it can be difficult to track the impacts of wildfire smoke on the health of tribal citizens since they don’t report them as such, and to educate the public on the need to stay inside during smoke events. 

“Young people are resilient, and they can shake off things like that,” Minthorn said. “But not children with asthma, and not elders with COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease], or any kind of pre-existing medical conditions. Those people tend to find themselves in the emergency room pretty fast.”

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Boyd was born in the Twin Cities, but spent summers in her family’s home on the Mille Lacs Reservation; as an adult, she decided to move back permanently, missing the sight of the lake. “It’s difficult for me to imagine living somewhere where I don’t turn the corner out of my driveway and see that,” Boyd said. But over the years, she began noticing days where she would get inexplicable headaches; other times, she felt deeply fatigued. She couldn’t tell whether these were symptoms of fibromyalgia, a health condition that causes pain in various parts of the body, something environmental, or both. She wondered whether something in the air could be causing her chronic condition to flare up. 

For a long time, it was impossible to know. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, or MPCA, maintains a network of air monitors around the state that test primarily for ozone and particulate matter pollution, or PM. But the nearest PM monitor to the Mille Lacs reservation is about 40 miles away in Brainerd, which provides a general sense of larger trends like wildfire smoke plumes, but can’t capture the specific conditions that develop on the shores of Mille Lacs Lake. 

A U.S. Forest Service image shows smoke and a pyrocumulus cloud rise above Highway 1 near Murphy City, Minnesota, on August 23, 2021. The cloud was visible for miles in all directions and settled on nearby areas such as the Mille Lacs Reservation. U.S. Forest Service via AP

That gap in data is a widespread problem for tribal communities, Toft said; air quality alerts based on faraway monitors can underestimate the severity of the smoke, putting community members in danger. The Leech Lake Band has pushed the state for years to install more air monitoring equipment, which is prohibitively expensive and requires a laboratory to interpret. “We were saying, ‘We need monitors, we need to show you that we are in a data gap and you’re not getting the accurate data,’” Toft said. “And it really showed with this wildfire smoke.” 

To address this gap, multiple tribes have begun installing low-cost, portable sensors on public buildings and private homes. These sensors, produced by companies such as PurpleAir, have seen an explosion of interest in recent years from researchers and communities aiming to learn more about the air around them; in some cases, they have uncovered air quality violations or hazardous conditions that haven’t been picked up by the EPA. 

The agency has embraced the technology, too, funding a sensor loan program used by tribes including the Nez Perce in Idaho and the Yakima in Washington. The EPA also worked with the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, Catawba Indian Nation in South Carolina, and the Seminole Tribe of Florida to host shelters where the air sensors could collect data alongside the federal regulatory-grade monitors, helping improve their accuracy. 

The Mille Lacs Band is about a third of the way toward its goal of installing 23 PurpleAir sensors around the tribe’s lands thanks to funding from a local school district, aiming to place one sensor every 30 miles, Lippert said. Last year, he purchased a sensor for Boyd and helped her install it under an eave on the side of her house; all it needs to work is electricity and a Wi-Fi connection. 

A PurpleAir sensor hangs outside Li Boyd’s home. Unlike expensive regulatory-grade monitors, the PurpleAir sensor only needs electricity and a Wi-Fi connection.
Grist / Diana Kruzman

The benefits are twofold: With a better handle on the conditions in their community, tribal governments can know when to issue air alerts and protect their most vulnerable citizens without waiting for air quality information from the state. And residents can view data from the sensors closest to them on a real-time map, helping them make personal decisions based on the air quality and their particular health conditions. 

“You try not to let it dictate anything, but there are times when you’re like, it’s gonna be a better day today for me to keep my windows closed,” Boyd said. “If you still have to do what you have to do, at least you don’t have to wonder. That’s the biggest part, is just knowing.” 

Just having more data alone, though, won’t be enough, Boyd emphasized. The tribe needs funding to equip homes with medical-grade air filters, the only ones that are able to keep out the fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, that makes wildfire smoke so dangerous. Some tribes and Indigenous advocacy organizations are already distributing these devices, called HEPA filters, to their communities; others are coming up with low-cost substitutes. In New Mexico, a mutual aid group called the Pueblo Action Alliance has developed a guide for constructing DIY filtration systems to deal with smoke from the recent fires. Known as a Corsi-Rosenthal Box, the system consists of four cheap filters taped together into a cube and reinforced with cardboard, which uses a box fan to circulate and purify air quickly. 

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Another organization, the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women, worked with Pueblo Action Alliance to distribute 20 of those boxes to homes in the state’s northern pueblos, a dry and mountainous area where the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire has been burning since April. They targeted families with children and elderly people, who are the most vulnerable to the effects of smoke, according to the group’s membership coordinator, Rufina Abeita. The coalition has also given out 25 air purifiers to domestic violence shelters located in pueblos around the state, Abeita said. 

This kind of assistance is essential because many of these communities don’t have access to stores like Home Depot where they can purchase air filters, Abeita said, or can’t afford to pay the $75 it costs to assemble one of the DIY systems. 

“It’s protecting our future generations … protecting our lungs, protecting our bodies from the smoke, the toxins,” Abeita said. “These tools are here to help us have stronger communities and healthy families.” 

An air monitor hangs outside Chris Lee’s house on the Mille Lacs Reservation.

Filters, though, are just a “band-aid,” Boyd said. In the long run, addressing smoke will require major investments in tribal infrastructure, upgrading houses to make them more airtight and improving public facilities, from laboratories to community centers. Tackling the root causes of climate change will be crucial to preventing wildfires from growing even stronger. 

And for many tribes, a necessary first step will be understanding the problem of wildfire smoke in the first place, said Minthorn of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Of the 574 federally recognized tribes, only 85 have air quality monitoring programs. 

“There’s a lot of communication and a lot of work yet to be done on where we stand as Indian country in terms of air quality,” Minthorn said. “Because not all of us are at the table yet.”

Reporting for this story was made possible by an award from the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Wildfire smoke is choking Indigenous communities on Aug 24, 2022.