Forget Covid (and Monkeypox) the Las Vegas Strip Has a Bigger Problem
Daniel Kline – August 25, 2022
Explosive growth has been a huge positive for the Las Vegas Strip but there are some dark clouds ahead.
Growth comes with a cost, especially when that growth was not in the original plans.
Think of it like you would an old town, versus a new one. In high-growth parts of the country, builders have created something called a “master-planned community,” that’s a town or city planned out fully. This means that before builders put up a single house or erect the first shopping center, they build (or at least plan) the infrastructure needed for the community when it’s fully built.
You can’t easily go back and make roads wider or increase the capacity of the sewage treatment plant. It’s much more cost-effective to plan for what might be decades out than to sort of build as you go (which is pretty much how every major American city was built and explains why those cities have expensive problems ranging from housing to transportation, and well water).
Las Vegas, as you likely know, was essentially built in a desert and it’s highly unlikely that its founding fathers foresaw the megaresorts of today. That has led to a city that has some significant infrastructure problems that need to be addressed as Sin City continues to exponentially grow.
A Period of Triumph for Post-Pandemic Las Vegas
While covid hasn’t actually gone anywhere, Las Vegas has managed to put the impact of the pandemic (and a hopefully brief monkeypox scare) behind it. Caesars Entertainment, MGM Resorts International, and Wynn Resorts have all reported Las Vegas Strip results nearing or passing 2019 numbers even while the convention and international traveler business has not yet fully recovered.
It’s a hopeful time for Las Vegas which has led to a construction boom with multiple major casino projects, at least one, probably two NBA-ready arenas being built, and even talk of expanding the boundaries of the Las Vegas Strip itself.
That’s all encouraging news for operators including Caesars, MGM, and Wynn, but Alan Feldman, a distinguished fellow at UNLVs International Gaming Institute, believes there’s one major problem which could put the brakes on Las Vegas growth.
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Las Vegas Needs More Water
Feldman spoke at the NAIOP Southern Nevada (a commercial real estate group) breakfast meeting at the Orleans on Aug. 18. He warned that not having enough water could create major problems for Las Vegas — and certainly any new construction — going forward.
“This is a huge political discussion, but we’re going to need more water,” Feldman said during his presentation at the Orleans, the Las Vegas Sun reported. “I think, at some point, the federal government is going to have to step in and override some of the debate that’s been happening at the state and regional levels.”
Nevada draws water from the Colorado River which has essentially been providing more water than it actually has so the Department of Interior will be cutting Nevada’s allotment by 8%. The river flows into Lake Mead, a key water source for Las Vegas, which has seen its water levels drop.
Feldman believes there is a solution but does not think the city or even the state can handle the problem on their own.
“At some point in America’s future, we’re going to have to deal with desalination, I don’t see any way around that. That’s not something we’d want to see from the states. We’d want the federal government to step in on that,” he said.
Resorts only use about 5% of the region’s water allotment.
The World’s Rivers, Canals and Reservoirs Are Turning to Dust
Brian K Sullivan – August 25, 2022
(Bloomberg) — Rivers across the globe are disappearing.
From the US to Italy to China, waters have receded, leaving nothing but barren banks of silt and oozing, muddied sand. Canals are empty. Reservoirs have turned to dust.
The world is fully in the grip of accelerating climate change, and it has a profound economic impact. Losing waterways means a serious risk to shipping routes, agriculture, energy supplies — even drinking water.
Rivers that have been critical to commerce for centuries are now shriveled, threatening the global movement of chemicals, fuel, food and other commodities.
The Rhine — a pillar of the German, Dutch and Swiss economies — has been virtually impassable at times in recent weeks. The Danube, which winds its way 1,800 miles (roughly 2,900 kilometers) through central Europe to the Black Sea, is gummed up too. Trade on Europe’s rivers and canals contribute about $80 billion to the region’s economy just as a mode of transport.
In China, an extreme summer has taken a toll on Asia’s longest river, the Yangtze. Diminished water levels have hobbled electricity generation at many key hydropower plants. Mega cities including Shanghai are turning off lights to curb power use, and Tesla Inc. has warned of disruptions in the supply chain for its local plant. Toyota Motor Corp. and Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., the world’s top maker of batteries for electric vehicles, have shuttered factories.
Drought plaguing the Colorado River — a source of water for 40 million people between Denver and Los Angeles — has gotten so extreme that a second round of drastic water cuts are hitting Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico. The river and its tributaries irrigate about 4.5 million acres of land, generating about $1.4 trillion a year in agricultural and economic benefits.
The retreating waters of the US Southwest are exposing dead bodies and dinosaur footprints that had been submerged for perhaps millions of years.
Why Are Rivers Shrinking?
The reasons global waterways have dried to a trickle are complex. There’s the impact of the weather-roiling La Nina, prolonged drought in many regions and also simple bad luck. But the biggest driver underpinning the shift is climate change.
“It’s a combination of many factors leading to this particularly extreme event,” said Daniel Swain, a climatologist at the University of California Los Angeles. “But there is clearly a role for climate change, which made multiple underlying, record-breaking, and in some cases, record-shattering heat waves dramatically more likely.”
The Earth’s rising temperatures have meant mountain ranges are getting less snow, leaving less water to flow down to streams in summer during the melt, said Isla Simpson, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
Mountain snow is nature’s reservoir. When snowfalls dwindle, the source of many rivers — from the US to China to Europe to the Middle East— vanishes, said Swain of UCLA.
“The loss of snow and mountain glaciers in the Alps has been extraordinary this summer as well, shocking even seasoned climatologists and glaciologists,” Swain said.
Then there is La Nina, a cooling of the equatorial Pacific Ocean that upsets global weather patterns, bringing heavy rains to some areas and drought to others. The world is in its second straight La Nina, and the odds are rising 2023 will see another one.
“The ongoing and strong La Nina connects the droughts and low river flows in North America, Europe, Middle East and the southern hemisphere,” said Richard Seager, a research professor at Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.
The world’s hotter temperatures also mean that waterways are literally evaporating away.
Or as Seager puts it, the warming atmosphere “is sucking more moisture from the land surface.”
What is tomato flu? Viral infection is spreading among children in India.
Andrew Jeong – August 25, 2022
A student wearing facemasks and face-shield attends a class after the reopening of schools closed as a preventive measure to curb the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus, at a government girls primary school in Hyderabad on February 11, 2022. (Photo by NOAH SEELAM / AFP) (Photo by NOAH SEELAM/AFP via Getty Images) (NOAH SEELAM via Getty Images)
A new, highly contagious viral infection that has been dubbed “tomato flu” is spreading among children in India, the country’s Health Ministry said this week.
At least 82 children younger than 5 had been infected by late July in the southern state of Kerala, after the first patient was identified there in May. Infections have now been recorded in three other states – including 26 children between the ages of 1 and 9 in Odisha – the Times of India reported Thursday.
The infection gets its name from the “eruption of red and painful blisters throughout the body that gradually enlarge to the size of a tomato,” according to an article published last week in the British medical journal Lancet. The blisters resemble those seen on young monkeypox patients.- ADVERTISEMENT -https://s.yimg.com/rq/darla/4-10-1/html/r-sf-flx.html
The disease – which appears to spread through close contact and is not considered life-threatening – could be an aftereffect of chikungunya or dengue rather than a viral infection, according to the article.
Tomato flu could also be a new variant of hand, foot and mouth disease, which is common among children younger than 5, the Lancet article said. It added that the new infection is a self-limiting illness – one that tends to resolve spontaneously without treatment – for which no specific drug is available.
Young children appear to be at increased risk because of the use of diapers, their tendency to touch unclean surfaces and their propensity to put things into their mouths.
“Given the similarities to hand, foot, and mouth disease, if the outbreak of tomato flu in children is not controlled and prevented, transmission might lead to serious consequences by spreading in adults as well,” the authors of the Lancet article wrote.
Its primary symptoms include high fever, rashes and intense joint pain – similar to those of chikungunya. Other symptoms include fatigue, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and common influenza-like symptoms, akin to a dengue infection.
Although tomato flu and covid-19 have similar symptoms, the virus that causes the new disease is not related to the coronavirus, the Lancet article said. Tomato flu is diagnosed after tests have ruled out dengue, chikungunya, Zika, chickenpox and herpes.
A deeper water shortage on Lake Mead is hardly the worst thing we’re facing
Joanna Allhands, Arizona Republic – August 25, 2022
The federal Bureau of Reclamation has declared a deeper level of water shortage for Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir.
But that was not the most consequential thing Reclamation announced – or, more accurately, skirted – on Aug. 16.
It’s also not the gargantuan cut that some media reports make it out to be.
If anything, we got off easy.
What did Reclamation declare?
A Tier 2a shortage is the deepest mandatory cut we have made to date, one that entails 592,000 acre-feet – 21% – of Arizona’s apportionment from Lake Mead. Nevada must cut 25,000 acre-feet (8%) and Mexico 104,000 acre-feet (7%).
These are significant amounts of water.
But considering that Arizona has already left 800,000 acre-feet of water in the lake this year – a combination of mandated cuts and voluntary, compensated conservation efforts – it’s not exactly a “drastic” cut, as one headline suggested.
Nor is it something new or unexpected. We’ve been planning for this for years.
Where were we before?
A sign marks Lake Mead’s 2002 water level — with the current shoreline far in the background — on July 9, 2022, near Boulder City, Nev.
Reclamation declared the first water shortage on Lake Mead last August – a Tier 1 shortage – which was created as part of a 2007 agreement that aimed to cut use when the lake hit certain low levels.
Arizona agreed to take the brunt of the cuts, and in a Tier 1 shortage, Arizona must trim 512,000 acre-feet of use. So, a Tier 2a ratchets that up for us by 80,000 acre-feet.
These amounts of water stem from the 2019 Drought Contingency Plan, which ratcheted up cuts when it became clear the 2007 amounts weren’t enough. California agreed to take cuts for the first time as part of that plan, but not until the lake reaches deeper levels of shortage (a Tier 2b shortage, to be exact, but more on that in a second).
Arizona also passed an internal Drought Contingency Plan in 2019 to help lessen the pain of cuts within the state. Pinal farmers – those with the lowest priority rights – were given a bit of water in 2022, plus some funding to help drill wells and transport that water to fields. That hasn’t produced the amount or quality of water that farmers had hoped, but that’s another blog for another day.
How will a Tier 2a shortage play out?
When the Tier 2a shortage goes live in 2023, Pinal farmers will receive no water from the Central Arizona Project, which delivers water to users from Phoenix to Tucson. They must now fully rely on groundwater to survive.
Then again, Pinal farmers were already in line to lose all of their CAP water in 2023, even if we remained in a Tier 1 shortage.
A Tier 2a shortage also will wipe out the next higher priority pool of CAP water – the so-called Non-Indian Agricultural pool. Most of that water goes to central Arizona cities and tribes.
Then again, they won’t necessarily be up a (suddenly dry) creek because the 2019 in-state plan mitigates 75% of their losses. In the grand scheme of things, it could be a lot worse.
Why did we get off easy?
This chart shows the key water levels in Lake Mead, which is used to determine water deliveries for Arizona, Nevada and California.
Shortage declarations are tied to specific lake levels. But Reclamation decided to fudge that with a concept they call “operational neutrality.”
It stems from an emergency action this spring to help prop up Lake Powell. Reclamation kept 480,000 acre-feet in Lake Powell that should have flowed downstream to Lake Mead, then promised to pretend that water was in Lake Mead when determining shortage levels.
The lake has physically reached the threshold to be in a deeper – and more consequential – Tier 2b shortage, one that would ratchet up Arizona’s cuts to 640,000 acre-feet and would require California to cut for the first time, to the tune of 200,000 acre-feet initially.
That’s important because everyone that relies on Lake Mead would be making mandatory cuts, leaving larger, guaranteed amounts of water in the lake as it is rapidly tanking.
Relying on voluntary savings doesn’t always pan out, as we found this year with the 500-plus plan, a separate emergency action (notice that there are a lot of these?) to prop up Lake Mead. The goal was to pay people to leave 500,000 acre-feet in the lake each year, but users only volunteered a little more than half of that in 2022 – mostly from Arizona.
The benefits of those savings evaporated almost immediately once they hit the lake. Essentially, we spent millions on actions that did almost nothing for lake levels.
So, if anything, a Tier 2a shortage is an underreaction, and at a crucial moment when we need to be doing so much more.
Why is this the least of our worries?
We could make every cut we’ve already laid out, all the way down to a Tier 3 shortage, the deepest for which we’ve planned.
And Lake Mead would still be on a freefall to “dead pool” – the point where lake levels fall so low that water can no longer flow downstream through Hoover Dam to users in Arizona, California and Mexico.
Reclamation’s August 24-month study, which was released at the same time as the Tier 2a shortage declaration, projects the lake will fall below 1,000 feet of elevation in 2024 – more than 20 feet below the minimum protection level that Reclamation had hoped to maintain.
Their modeling shows we need to cut at least 2.5 million acre-feet simply to maintain that minimum protection level on Lake Mead (and a similarly low protection level on Lake Powell, which also is tanking quickly).
And that’s on top of every water-saving action to which we’ve previously agreed.
So, what’s the takeaway?
We could carry out the cuts in a Tier 2a shortage, or a Tier 2b, or the deepest Tier 3, and it still wouldn’t be enough to keep Lake Mead on life support. We must cut way deeper than that in 2023 – and sustain those deep levels until at least 2026 – if we have any chance of saving it and Lake Powell.
And no, there is no plan yet to do so.
The states couldn’t agree by Reclamation’s mid-August deadline, and while Reclamation promised on Aug. 16 to keep working with states on as many voluntary measures as possible, it did not offer any firm deadlines, water amounts or what exactly it might mandate if states still can’t do enough to fill the giant chasm between supply and demand.
That’s the whole reason we’re in this mess. Despite all that we’ve done so far to trim use, we are still consuming far more water than the Colorado River produces.
A Tier 2a shortage, though painful and consequential, is not enough to solve this problem. Yet it’s unclear how or when we’re going to do enough to keep the lakes from dying.
Murkowski’s primary win spurs interest in election reforms, as well as criticism
Jon Ward, Chief National Correspondent – August 23, 2022
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s surprisingly strong showing in Alaska last week has sparked new interest in election reforms used by the state and that could be a model for the rest of the country, as well as scrutiny from those who suspect the changes may favor one party more than another.
Murkowski, a Republican, was targeted for defeat by former President Trump, whom she voted to impeach after the January 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol. But Murkowski received the most votes of any candidate in the nonpartisan primary, with 44% of the vote to just under 40% for the Trump-backed candidate, Kelly Tshibaka. The rest of the vote was split between a handful of other contenders.
Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka with Donald Trump during a rally in Anchorage, Alaska, July 9. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
If Alaska had conducted its primaries the way it has in the past — the way most states still do — Murkowski likely would have lost to Tshibaka. But election reform advocates say it’s a mistake to view the new system as helpful or hostile to either Republicans or Democrats.
“This doesn’t mean Trump-endorsed candidates don’t win. If that’s who a majority of November voters want, that’s who they get. It just means all November voters have a voice rather than just 10% of people who turn out in summer primaries,” said Katherine Gehl, founder of the Institute for Political Innovation, a group that has pushed for the changes.
In other words, Alaska’s new system stops a minority of voters in either party from eliminating a candidate with broad appeal before most voters even cast ballots.
In 2020, Alaska voters approved a system which discarded multiple party primaries and merged them all into one contest. Last week, all voters cast ballots in one single primary, rather than separate primaries for Republicans, Democrats and other minor parties.
The top four vote-getters advanced to the fall election, the final round of voting. Murkowski, with 82% of the vote counted, has received almost 69,000 votes, far more than the 39,545 she received in the 2016 Republican primary and more than the 53,872 votes she received in the 2010 Republican primary.
Murkowski lost that 2010 primary to a more right-wing Republican candidate, Joe Miller, but she ran as a write-in candidate in the fall general election, and pulled off a remarkable and decisive victory.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski at the Capitol on July 21. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The second change Alaskans made in 2020 was to the fall election, known as the general election. The winner of that contest will now be chosen by ranked-choice voting, ensuring that the eventual winner will receive more than 50% support from the voters, rather than winning with less than 50% as other candidates split up the rest of the vote.
Much of the attention on election reforms in the past few years has been on ranked-choice voting. But Murkowski’s survival last week had nothing to do with ranked choice.
Reform advocates increasingly say that it is the combination of nonpartisan primaries with ranked-choice voting that will do the most to depolarize American politics and empower politicians to fix problems, and their emphasis is ever more so on the primary part of the equation.
“We see the combination of nonpartisan primaries and ranked-choice voting as the most powerful election reform,” Nick Troiano, executive director of Unite America, told Yahoo News. Unite America published a report last year showing that 8 out of 10 members of Congress are effectively chosen by about 10% of voters, because of the party primary system.
“Reform is gaining momentum as more Americans are realizing that if they want to fix the people they have to fix the system,” Troiano said.
Sarah Palin at the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this year. (Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
But some Republicans in Alaska have attacked the voting reforms. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who is running for Congress, has been one of the loudest critics. Palin called the new system “crazy” and “cockamamie” even though it might enable her to win the special election for former Rep. Don Young’s open seat, even though she finished second in the first round of voting.
Republicans in the state legislature also told the Anchorage Daily News that there will likely be efforts to repeal parts of the new system in the next legislative session. And right-wing activists have complained that Murkowski worked behind the scenes to help pass the nonpartisan primary and ranked-choice system because it would favor her politically.
But in Nevada, Democrats are opposing the push by reformers to enact the very same system that Republicans are complaining about in Alaska. Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak and both U.S. senators, Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto — both also Democrats — all are against the changes. And Democrats in Nevada led the legal challenge to stop the issue to be decided by voters in the first place, but the state Supreme Court ruled in June that the reforms would be allowed on the ballot this fall.
Nevada voters will have to approve of the nonpartisan primary and ranked-choice system in two separate referendums, this year and again in 2024, for it to become state law.
Gov. Steve Sisolak, D-Nev. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images)
“I’d be worried if we were not attracting political opposition because that would mean the status quo is not threatened by these reforms,” Troiano said.
It makes sense that both political parties find it disconcerting to get rid of party primaries. It is the way that they have chosen a nominee for every political office since the 1970s, when party bosses lost control of the nominating process.
But public discontent with the political status quo is rising. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found that 50% of Americans think the country’s system of government should have “major reforms,” and 8% think it should be “completely replaced.” Another 29% said they think at least “minor changes” are required.
Troiano shared the results of a recent poll conducted by Frank Luntz for Unite America that showed 65% support for a nonpartisan primary, and only 13% opposition.
And as the number of unaffiliated voters rises in some states, it may be that letting go of the party primary is the best way for Republicans and Democrats to reduce the chance of a viable third-party establishing itself, or of multiple parties bursting through. These election reforms would enable both parties to grow beyond their most extreme and hardline voters and to send representatives to Congress, state legislatures and even the presidency. The reforms would bolster pragmatic politicians who are looking to please the majority of voters by solving problems rather than a small slice of the electorate that only wants them to fight the other side.
“Eventually, one of two things will happen: Either more states will adopt Alaska’s system, or the frustrated middle will become large enough to push both sides out,” wrote Henry Olsen, a conservative columnist for the Washington Post. “That latter response is what’s happening in many European countries as traditional parties are swept aside in favor of new, outsider ones.”
‘There’s simply not enough water’: Colorado River cutbacks ripple across Arizona
Debra Utacia Krol, Arizona Republic – August 23, 2022
A view of the Hoover Dam and the Colorado River.
Up and down the Colorado River last week, the state, local and tribal leaders in charge of water supplies for more than 40 million people waited to see if the federal government would impose deeper cuts to river allocations.
The Bureau of Reclamation had given states and tribes an Aug. 15 deadline to find ways to conserve 2 to 4 million more acre-feet of water to stabilize the drought-stricken river and its two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Without such a plan, the bureau said, it would act.
The deadline passed with no agreement in place.
And on Tuesday, the government presented its 2023 water forecasts and said based on projected water levels at the two reservoirs, it would institute the next level of water reductions already agreed upon by the seven states and 30 federally recognized tribes within the Colorado River basin. The Drought Contingency Plan outlines specific steps Reclamation would take if the river flows continue to decline.
The next round of cuts to the three lower basin states and Mexico means that Arizona will have to do with 21% less water than in previous years. Nevada lost 8% of its delivery and Mexico’s allocation was reduced by 7%. The only lower basin state to be spared cuts is California, which holds senior rights to the river.
The bureau did not impose the deeper cuts as some had anticipated. Instead, Interior Department officials said talks would continue to come up with additional reductions as needed. The agency noted that the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act included $4 billion in money to address drought.
Few people were entirely satisfied with the government’s announcement, but one stakeholder went further than the others in expressing disappointment, introducing a new wrinkle in talks among the river’s water users.
The Gila River Indian Community said it would no longer voluntarily leave part of its Colorado River allocation in Lake Mead, an arrangement that helped Arizona meet the requirements of a regional agreement last year. Instead, tribal officials said in a statement Tuesday, Gila River would return to banking its water.
Tribes, agencies upset
In December 2021, the Gila River Indian Community and the Colorado River Indian Tribes signed onto an agreement to leave a combined 179,000 acre-feet of their river allotment in Lake Mead as a way to prop up the reservoir.
The agreement was part of a larger pact by several states and water districts to conserve 500,000 acre-feet per year in Lake Mead, where water levels were dropping rapidly. The pact was in addition to other conservation measures and was known as the 500+ plan.
The initiative was a pledge by the Interior Department as well as water agencies and tribes in the three Lower Basin states and stretched through 2023. The two tribes’ contributions made Arizona’s contribution to the effort possible.
Hoover Dam (top right) and Lake Mead on May 11, 2021, on the Arizona and Nevada border. A high-water mark or bathtub ring is visible on the shoreline. Lake Mead is down 152 vertical feet.
The Arizona Department of Water Resources committed up to $40 million to the plan over its two-year period, while the Central Arizona Project, the Metropolitan Water District in California and the Southern Nevada Water Authority each ponied up $20 million. The federal government matched those contributions for a $200 million pool to fund fallowing fields and other conservation measures.
But the failure to move forward on a longer term plan to firm up water supplies didn’t sit well with Gila River.
“The Community has been shocked and disappointed to see the complete lack of progress in reaching the kind of cooperative basin-wide plan necessary to save the Colorado River system,” said Gila River Governor Stephen Roe Lewis.
“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, “but 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.”
“What has been a slow-moving train wreck for twenty years is accelerating and our moment of reckoning is near.” Entsminger wrote. “The unreasonable expectations of water users, including the prices and drought profiteering proposals, only divide common goals and interests.”
Entsminger also outlined several steps the states, tribes and water agencies could take to minimize their use of Colorado River water, including agricultural efficiency enhancement, removing lawns, investing in water reuse, recycling and desalination programs and habitat restoration.
“We appreciate the support of Governor Lewis and the Gila River Indian Community for the recommended actions Nevada has put forth,” Entsminger said in an emailed statement. “Nevada stands ready to work with any partners who seek solutions based upon real world, equitable and sound scientific principles to the monumental challenges facing the Colorado River.”
In Arizona, officials looked for ways to repair the rift.
“The Gila River Indian Community has a been a big part of the positive actions Arizona has taken to protect Lake Mead in recent years,” the Central Arizona Project said in an emailed statement.
The agency praised the tribe for their work to develop the Drought Contingency Plan and in conserving water.
“We are understanding of the Community’s position that others need to be part of the Colorado River solution,” the CAP statement said. “We are hopeful that if a broader plan for taking action comes together that Arizona can support, the Community will choose to participate along with other Arizona water users.”
The Arizona Department of Water Resources declined comment on the statement.
The Colorado River Indian Tribes said it would continue to make water available for conservation through 2023.
“The Colorado River Indian Tribes are also development a multiyear farming and fallowing plan that includes additional conservation measures to be implement during 2023 and for many years thereafter,” said CRIT Chairwoman Amelia Flores.
Other water agencies and elected officials said they would continue to work with Reclamation to develop a longer-term plan to stabilize the reservoirs and assure at least some water would continue to flow.
Phoenix officials said in an emailed statement that although their water customers would not be affected by the cuts, the lack of action by federal officials was “disappointing.” The city gave up 23% of its river allocation to stabilize Lake Mead and support Pinal County farmers who lost river water when the first round of cuts was announced a year ago, the statement said.
The city is acting to ensure water deliveries and reduce dependence on the Colorado, officials said. A $300 million pipeline will move water to North Phoenix, which currently relies on the Colorado River for water. Phoenix is also restoring ecosystems in the Salt River, which provides 60% of the city’s water, the statement said. And, the city is beefing up infrastructure.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., said she would work with her newly-created water advisory council, state stakeholders and neighboring states to ensure a secure water future.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis (Gila River Indian Community) talk during the Water Advisory Council meeting, Aug. 8, 2022, in the Hoover Dam Spillway House, 75 Hoover Dam Access Road, Boulder City, Nevada.
“Arizona’s future depends on the strength and resiliency of our water supply,” she said via a spokesperson. “As the West continues experiencing historic drought, Arizona has led the way identifying short and long term solutions while shouldering a disproportionate share of this crisis.”
Sinema said that $13 billion had been secured for drought resiliency funding over the past year through several bills including the most recent act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and other legislation.
Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., wrote the Interior Department last week calling for the agency to outline its options to implement mitigation actions to prevent “drastic consequences for Arizona and other Colorado Basin states.” If the reservoirs’ levels continue to drop, those consequences could include the loss of hydropower generation and even to deadpool conditions, where no water would flow out of Lake Mead.
“In 2022 alone, Arizona farmers, cities, and tribes have pledged resources to conserve over 800,000 acre-feet of water — an amount equal to nearly one-third of our state’s full allocation,” Kelly said in the letter. He added that Arizona has offered to put more “wet” water on the table to be conserved than other states.
At least one congressman also called for more action from the federal government.
“The Colorado River is in crisis, and talks among basin states to fairly spread the pain of much-needed cutbacks are going nowhere,” said Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz.. “The federal government must play a stronger role. I’m urging the Administration to take immediate action to avoid catastrophe.”
Stanton said in a letter to President Joe Biden that the cuts announced Aug. 16 were already mandated by the Drought Contingency Plan, while in June, Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton said that unless another 2 to 4 million acre-feet were cut, the government would take action.
“Yesterday’s announcement proved that commitment hollow,” Stanton wrote.
One of the largest single water users on the river said it was ready to collaborate on further solutions. The Imperial Irrigation District in southern California manages an allocation of 3.1 million acre-feet, including pass through water, larger than Arizona’s entire Colorado River allocation of 2.8 million acre-feet.
Since 2003, the utility has conserved more than 7 million acre-feet of water according to an Aug. 16 statement. The district said it would work to conserve water and to help restore the Salton Sea, which has declined rapidly in recent years as the utility slashed agricultural runoff that fed the lake.
A view of the Colorado River as it flows through the Colorado River Indian Tribes’ Ahakhav Tribal Preserve in Parker on Nov. 13, 2021.
At least one water expert said he doesn’t believe the situation will improve in a year.
“The Colorado River is going to continue to decline,” said David Feldman, a professor at the University of California, Irvine and director of Water UCI, an institute that studies water problems facing the nation and the world.
He said many of the problems that have arisen from the plunging levels of Lake Mead and Lake Powell will be ongoing.
“So you have to start from the baseline that is simply not going to be any more surface water available from this point forward, at least not for the foreseeable future,” Feldman said. “The next steps, I believe, should be that each state should figure out a way to get user groups, local governments, water agencies, irrigation districts together in conversations about how they would negotiate targets for prescribed cutbacks based on water availability figures.”
Feldman said he understands Gila River’s stance.
“The drought did not cause the angst of tribal nations towards allocation agreements,” he said, but the drought has exacerbated it. “The tribes have been frustrated. The Navajo Nation, Hopi, others have been concerned for decades now about water allocation agreements on the Colorado and its tributaries.”
He also said the West is still not quite at the point to have a serious conversation about the future of water, “about our children and our children’s children.” Feldman said that if, as many forecasts predict, climate change is permanent and not just cyclical, water officials will need to plan far ahead.
“What are we going to do about the the water and the water needs and how are we going to plan to aggressively conserve?”
Strategies from recycling and reuse to landscaping all need to be on the table, he said, since outdoor irrigation accounts for one-third to one-half of urban water use. But just reducing urban outdoor use won’t be enough to address the shortages to come.
He also disputed some assertions that cities shouldn’t exist in arid lands. “The Mesopotamians did okay,” Feldman said, as well as the Huhugam in the Salt River Valley. Living in the desert, or having a lot of people, doesn’t by itself cause the problem, he said. “It’s how we live in that environment.”
Feldman pointed out that other arid parts of the world have done well, including Israel. “The Israelis have really become very savvy in the sense of not only developing the technologies, but then realizing there’s a market for it,” he said.
“We can live in a water scarce environment without sacrificing our quality of life,” Feldman said. “But we have to take it seriously.”
Debra Krol reports on Indigenous communities at the confluence of climate, culture and commerce in Arizona and the Intermountain West.
Coverage of Indigenous issues at the intersection of climate, culture and commerce is supported by the Catena Foundation.
Trump envoy releases letter from National Archives deemed ‘extraordinarily damning’ for Trump
Peter Weber, Senior editor – August 23, 2022
U.S. National Archives
The National Archives and Records Administration waited until May 12 to give the FBI access to the highly classified documents retrieved from former President Donald Trump in January, despite the Justice Department’s “urgent” requests for the materials, according to a letter from National Archivist Debra Wall released late Monday by conservative journalist John Solomon, one of Trump’s two authorized NARA liaisons.
The May 10 letter to Trump’s lawyers also affirms that the National Archives found more than 700 pages of classified documents, including “special access program materials” — among the most highly classified secrets in government — in the 15 boxes recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago complex. More classified material was taken from Mar-a-Lago by the FBI in June and August.
Much of the letter covers Wall’s rejection of a request by Trump’s lawyers to shield the documents from the FBI on executive privilege grounds. The White House counsel said President Biden “defers to my determination,” Wall wrote, and after discussions with the Office of Legal Counsel, “the question in this case is not a close one.”
“The executive branch here is seeking access to records belonging to, and in the custody of, the federal government itself,” Wall wrote, “not only in order to investigate whether those records were handled in an unlawful manner but also, as the National Security Division explained, to ‘conduct an assessment of the potential damage resulting from the apparent manner in which these materials were stored and transported and take any necessary remedial steps.'”
The letter released by Trump’s team is “extraordinarily damning for Trump” and his team, Politico‘s Kyle Cheney marveled on Twitter. “Trump allies pointed to this letter as some kind of evidence of Biden White House meddling,” but “what it shows is officials expressing extreme alarm about national security damage based on records being held by Trump.”
The NARA letter is “damning” to Trump “on any number of levels,” including its “lack of any reference to a claim by Trump’s representatives that he had declassified any of the classified materials,” adds University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck. “It’s also telling that, even though this letter really hurts the Trump version of events, it wasn’t released by the Biden Administration or NARA. It was released by Trump’s own team — both a self-inflicted wound and further proof of how the government has been playing by the rules.”
Economic Aid, Once Plentiful, Falls Off at a Painful Moment
Jim Tankersley – August 23, 2022
With the cost of living outpacing her pay, Tamela Clover has begun relying on a food pantry in Portland, Oregon. (Ivan McClellan/The New York Times)
PORTLAND, Ore. — For the better part of last year, the pandemic eased its grip on Oregon’s economy. Awash in federal assistance, including direct checks to individuals and parents, many of the state’s most vulnerable found it easier to afford food, housing and other daily staples.
Most of that aid, which was designed to be a temporary bridge, has run out at a particularly bad moment. Oregon, like states across the nation, has seen its economy improve, but prices for everything from eggs to gas to rent have spiked. Demand is growing at food banks such as William Temple House in Northwest Portland, where the line for necessities like bread, vegetables and toilet paper stretched two dozen people deep on a recent day.
“I’m very worried, like I was in the first month of the pandemic, that we will run out of food,” said Susannah Morgan, who runs the Oregon Food Bank, which helps supply William Temple House and 1,400 other meal assistance sites.
In March 2021, President Joe Biden signed into law a $1.9 trillion aid package aimed at helping people stay afloat when the economy was still reeling from the coronavirus. In addition to direct checks, the package included rental assistance and other measures meant to prevent evictions. It ensured free school lunches and offered expanded food assistance through several programs.
Those programs helped the U.S. economy recover far more quickly than many economists had expected, but they have run their course as prices soar at the fastest pace in 40 years. The Federal Reserve, in an attempt to tame inflation, is rapidly raising borrowing costs, slowing the economy’s growth and stoking fears of a recession. While the labor market remains remarkably strong, the Fed’s interest rate increases risk slamming the brakes on the economy and pushing millions of people out of work, which would hurt lower-wage workers and risk adding to evictions and food insecurity.
Several factors have driven prices higher in the last year, including a shift in spending toward goods such as couches and cars and away from services. Supply chain snarls, a buying frenzy in the housing market and an oil price spike surrounding the Russian invasion of Ukraine have also contributed. While gas prices have fallen in recent months, rent continues to rise, and food and other staples remain elevated.
Another factor fueling inflation, at least in small part, is the stimulus spending that helped speed the economy’s recovery and keep people out of poverty. More money in people’s bank accounts translated into more consumer spending.
While the extent to which the rescue package fed inflation remains a matter of disagreement, almost no one, in Washington or on the front lines of helping vulnerable people across the country, expects another round of federal aid even if the economy tips into a recession. Lawmakers have grown increasingly concerned that more stimulus could exacerbate rising prices.
In the meantime, the progress that the Biden administration hailed in fighting poverty last year has faded. The national child poverty rate and the food hardship rate for families with children, which dipped in 2021, have both rebounded to their highest levels since December 2020, according to researchers at Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy. Two in five Americans surveyed by the Census Bureau at the end of July said they had difficulty paying a usual household expense in the previous week, the highest rate in two years of the survey.
What is happening at the William Temple House is emblematic of the economic situation. Demand for food is swelling again, and officials here blame rising prices and lost federal aid. The people seeking help come from a wide variety of backgrounds: parents, retirees struggling to stretch Social Security benefits, immigrants who speak Mandarin, college graduates with jobs.
Waiting in line on a recent Wednesday, Susan B. Smith said federal aid had helped her family endure the pandemic over the last year. Direct payments, along with three months’ worth of rental assistance, “got us through a lot last winter,” she said. “Every little bit of help, we appreciate it. We just want to make it through, not starve.”
Now, most of that assistance is gone, and food and housing cost more, a reality that has forced Smith and one of her daughters, Tamela Clover, to seek help at the food pantry. Clover, a college graduate who works part time for a social services agency, said her salary had not kept pace with her cost of living: “Everything’s so expensive.”
Biden frequently acknowledges the high inflation is hurting people and has taken several steps to try to mitigate rising costs. He and his aides insist that while the pain is real, last year’s stimulus package has made the country and its most vulnerable people better positioned for any economic troubles ahead.
Administration officials point to a stronger job market, a lower eviction rate and healthier household finances than the nation has typically experienced at this point in a recovery from a recession, which the economy briefly entered early in the pandemic. They say the $350 billion that Congress gave to state, local and tribal governments should help fuel some assistance programs even after federal aid runs out.
The law “reduced significantly the degree of hardship, both over the last year and a half and going forward,” said Gene Sperling, a senior adviser to Biden who has overseen fulfillment of the law.
Last week, Biden signed into law a vast economic package that his administration says will help reduce inflation. It includes tax credits to stoke low-carbon energy, expanded premium supports for Americans who buy health insurance through the federal government and curbs on prescription drug prices for seniors.
But the president was forced to drop his push to extend many of the temporary programs that Democrats approved last year to directly fight hunger and poverty. That included additional food from the Agriculture Department, rental assistance from the Treasury, and supplemental income in the form of direct payments and an expanded child tax credit. An extension of the child credit was included in a bill carrying a much larger portion of Biden’s agenda that the House passed in November, but it did not survive in the Senate. An earlier Biden proposal had also contained $150 billion in affordable-housing programs, which were also jettisoned.
The swift decline into pandemic recession plunged millions of Americans into dire financial straits. In 2020, the Oregon Food Bank served 1.7 million people, Morgan said. That number dipped in 2021 to about 1.2 million.
Now it is rising again, toward what Morgan estimates could be 1.5 million. That would be the food bank’s second-largest caseload for a single year, behind only 2020.
“There’s a very direct correlation between federal assistance, state assistance and a decrease in numbers,” said Kevin Ryan, director of social services at William Temple House, who welcomed Smith, Clover and others to a shaded sitting area where they waited for their trip into the food pantry to begin.
“When that goes away, the numbers go back up.”
When Biden’s team drafted the rescue plan in the early days of his administration, it was trying to give vulnerable Americans, particularly those thrown out of work or at risk of losing their homes, enough assistance to carry them through until the economy returned to some version of normal.
The economic recovery has been faster than was forecast before Democrats approved the $1.9 trillion package, with unemployment hovering near a 50-year low and growth surging last year. “It gave millions of working families a shot they otherwise might not have,” said Brian Deese, director of Biden’s National Economic Council.
But the normalcy has yet to arrive. Inflation has climbed higher, and endured longer, than administration officials thought possible.
Higher prices are making it harder for many Americans to afford food and housing. Adjusted for inflation, average wages have declined since Biden took office. Economic data suggest that many households, including a wide swath of vulnerable Americans, have lost buying power as prices have soared.
Rising mortgage rates, the result of Fed interest rates meant to combat price spikes, have pushed home buying even further out of reach for millions of Americans. The Oregon Office of Economic Analysis estimates that only 23% of Portland residents can now afford to buy a median-priced home in the city, down from 35% in December.
Poverty researchers say the coming months could be worse.
“There’s strong reason to believe that food insufficiency will continue to remain at high levels and perhaps worsen,” said Zachary Parolin, a poverty researcher at Bocconi University in Milan and a senior fellow at Columbia’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy.
Administration officials say the best policies they can pursue for people like Smith are ones that fight inflation, such as actions to untangle supply chains that have pushed up the prices of goods like furniture. The bill Biden signed this month will eventually reduce prescription and electricity costs for many Americans, and it could help lower overall inflation by a small amount in the long term, independent studies suggest.
Smith, 55, is not expecting another round of assistance checks from the federal government and is instead relying on Social Security benefits, along with government and charitable assistance. She cares for three grandchildren, including one with a severe medical condition, and cannot work outside the home because child care would be too costly.
When her turn arrived at William Temple House, Smith carefully pulled her shopping baskets down a small flight of stairs to what resembled a miniature grocery store. “My kids are hungry,” she told Ryan, and she proceeded to stock three red crates with items she knew they would like: potatoes, celery, bacon, Froot Loops, Ritz crackers, bags of potato chips.
“I always try to get my kids snack foods here,” Smith said. “I can’t afford snacks.”
Europe facing its worst drought in 500 years – study
Philip Blenkinsop – August 23, 2022
FILE PHOTO: Rocky beach emerges from Lake Garda following severe drought
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Europe is facing its worst drought in at least 500 years, with two-thirds of the continent in a state of alert or warning, reducing inland shipping, electricity production and the yields of certain crops, a European Union agency said on Tuesday.
The August report of the European Drought Observatory (EDO), overseen by the European Commission, said 47% of Europe is under warning conditions, with clear deficit of soil moisture, and 17% in a state of alert, in which vegetation is affected.
“The severe drought affecting many regions of Europe since the beginning of the year has been further expanding and worsening as of early August,” the report said, adding that the western Europe-Mediterranean region was likely to experience warmer and drier than normal conditions until November.- ADVERTISEMENT -https://s.yimg.com/rq/darla/4-10-1/html/r-sf-flx.html
Much of Europe has faced weeks of baking temperatures this summer, which worsened the drought, caused wildfires, set off health warnings, and prompted calls for more action to tackle climate change.
The current drought appeared to be the worst in at least 500 years, assuming final data at the end of the season confirmed the preliminary assessment, the Commission said in a statement.
Summer crops have suffered, with 2022 yields for grain maize set to be 16% below the average of the previous five years and soybean and sunflowers yields set to fall by 15% and 12% respectively.
Hydropower generation has been hit, with further impact on other power producers due to a shortage of water to feed cooling systems.
Low water levels have hampered inland shipping, such as along the Rhine, with reduced shipping loads affecting coal and oil transport.
The EDO said mid-August rainfall may have alleviated conditions, but in some cases it had come with thunderstorms that caused further damage.
The observatory’s drought indicator is derived from measurements of precipitation, soil moisture and the fraction of solar radiation absorbed by plants for photosynthesis.
(This story has been refiled to fix typographical error in headline)
(Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; Editing by Benoit Van Overstraeten and Tomasz Janowski)
Polio in US, UK and Israel reveals rare risk of oral vaccine
Maria Cheng – August 21, 2022
An Afghan health worker uses an oral polio vaccine on a child as part of a campaign to eliminate polio, on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, April 18, 2017. For years, global health officials have used billions of drops of an oral vaccine in a remarkably effective campaign aimed at wiping out polio in its last remaining strongholds — typically, poor, politically unstable corners of the world. Now, in a surprising twist in the decades-long effort to eradicate the virus, authorities in Jerusalem, New York and London have discovered evidence that polio is spreading there. The source of the virus? The oral vaccine itself. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul, File)An auto rickshaw with a poster advertising an oral polio campaign, drives through a market in Peshawar, Pakistan in this 2020 photo. In a surprising twist in the decades-long effort to eradicate the virus, authorities in Jerusalem, New York and London have discovered evidence that polio is spreading there. The source of the virus? The oral vaccine itself. For years, global health officials have used an oral vaccine in an attempt to wipe out polio from its last remaining strongholds in countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. (AP Photo/Muhammad Sajjad, File)An Afghan polio victim makes her way in a wheelchair in the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) physical rehabilitation center in Kabul, Afghanistan, May 16, 2022. In a surprising twist in the decades-long effort to eradicate the virus, authorities in Jerusalem, New York and London have discovered evidence that polio is spreading there. The source of the virus? The oral vaccine itself. For years, global health officials have used an oral vaccine in an attempt to wipe out polio from its last remaining strongholds in countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi, File) A bloodied polio vaccine cooler is left on the ground after women working to administer the anti-polio vaccine were killed by gunmen in the city of Jalalabad east of Kabul, Afghanistan, March 30, 2021. Aidan O’Leary, director of the World Health Organization’s polio department, described the recent discovery of polio spreading in London and New York as “a major surprise,” saying that officials have been focused on eradicating the disease in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where health workers have been killed for immunizing children and where conflict has made access to some areas impossible. (AP Photo, File)A police officer escorts health workers arriving to administer polio vaccine in a slum area of Peshawar, Pakistan, Jan. 24, 2022. Aidan O’Leary, director of the World Health Organization’s polio department, described the recent discovery of polio spreading in London and New York as “a major surprise,” saying that officials have been focused on eradicating the disease in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where health workers have been killed for immunizing children and where conflict has made access to some areas impossible. (AP Photo/Muhammad Sajjad, File)Then U.S. President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton watch as nurse Dorothy Sellers administers an oral polio vaccine to 20-month-old Danielle Bailey at an Arlington County health clinic in Arlington, Va., Feb. 13, 1993. The oral vaccine is credited with dramatically reducing the number of children paralyzed by polio. For years, global health officials have used an oral vaccine in an attempt to wipe out polio from its last remaining strongholds in countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. In recent weeks, scientists have found evidence of polio spread within Israel, the U.S. and Britain and genetic analyses show the viruses are not only connected, but that the cases were triggered by viruses linked to the oral vaccine. (AP Photo/Greg Gibson, File)A health worker gives an oral polio vaccine to a girl on a street in Lahore, Pakistan, June 27, 2022. For years, global health officials have used billions of drops of an oral vaccine in a remarkably effective campaign aimed at wiping out polio in its last remaining strongholds — typically, poor, politically unstable corners of the world. Now, in a surprising twist in the decades-long effort to eradicate the virus, authorities in Jerusalem, New York and London have discovered evidence that polio is spreading there. The source of the virus? The oral vaccine itself. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary, File)
LONDON (AP) — For years, global health officials have used billions of drops of an oral vaccine in a remarkably effective campaign aimed at wiping out polio in its last remaining strongholds — typically, poor, politically unstable corners of the world.
Now, in a surprising twist in the decades-long effort to eradicate the virus, authorities in Jerusalem, New York and London have discovered evidence that polio is spreading there.
The original source of the virus? The oral vaccine itself.
Scientists have long known about this extremely rare phenomenon. That is why some countries have switched to other polio vaccines. But these incidental infections from the oral formula are becoming more glaring as the world inches closer to eradication of the disease and the number of polio cases caused by the wild, or naturally circulating, virus plummets.
Since 2017, there have been 396 cases of polio caused by the wild virus, versus more than 2,600 linked to the oral vaccine, according to figures from the World Health Organization and its partners.
“We are basically replacing the wild virus with the virus in the vaccine, which is now leading to new outbreaks,” said Scott Barrett, a Columbia University professor who has studied polio eradication. “I would assume that countries like the U.K. and the U.S. will be able to stop transmission quite quickly, but we also thought that about monkeypox.”
The latest incidents represent the first time in several years that vaccine-connected polio virus has turned up in rich countries.
Earlier this year, officials in Israel detected polio in an unvaccinated 3-year-old, who suffered paralysis. Several other children, nearly all of them unvaccinated, were found to have the virus but no symptoms.
In June, British authorities reported finding evidence in sewage that the virus was spreading, though no infections in people were identified. Last week, the government said all children in London ages 1 to 9 would be offered a booster shot.
In the U.S., an unvaccinated young adult suffered paralysis in his legs after being infected with polio, New York officials revealed last month. The virus has also shown up in New York sewers, suggesting it is spreading. But officials said they are not planning a booster campaign because they believe the state’s high vaccination rate should offer enough protection.
Genetic analyses showed that the viruses in the three countries were all “vaccine-derived,” meaning that they were mutated versions of a virus that originated in the oral vaccine.
The oral vaccine at issue has been used since 1988 because it is cheap, easy to administer — two drops are put directly into children’s mouths — and better at protecting entire populations where polio is spreading. It contains a weakened form of the live virus.
But it can also cause polio in about two to four children per 2 million doses. (Four doses are required to be fully immunized.) In extremely rare cases, the weakened virus can also sometimes mutate into a more dangerous form and spark outbreaks, especially in places with poor sanitation and low vaccination levels.
These outbreaks typically begin when people who are vaccinated shed live virus from the vaccine in their feces. From there, the virus can spread within the community and, over time, turn into a form that can paralyze people and start new epidemics.
Many countries that eliminated polio switched to injectable vaccines containing a killed virus decades ago to avoid such risks; the Nordic countries and the Netherlands never used the oral vaccine. The ultimate goal is to move the entire world to the shots once wild polio is eradicated, but some scientists argue that the switch should happen sooner.
“We probably could never have gotten on top of polio in the developing world without the (oral polio vaccine), but this is the price we’re now paying,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “The only way we are going to eliminate polio is to eliminate the use of the oral vaccine.”
Aidan O’Leary, director of WHO’s polio department, described the discovery of polio spreading in London and New York as “a major surprise,” saying that officials have been focused on eradicating the disease in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where health workers have been killed for immunizing children and where conflict has made access to some areas impossible.
Still, O’Leary said he is confident Israel, Britain and the U.S. will shut down their newly identified outbreaks quickly.
The oral vaccine is credited with dramatically reducing the number of children paralyzed by polio. When the global eradication effort began in 1988, there were about 350,000 cases of wild polio a year. So far this year, there have been 19 cases of wild polio, all in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Mozambique.
In 2020, the number of polio cases linked to the vaccine hit a peak of more than 1,100 spread out across dozens of countries. It has since declined to around 200 this year so far.
Last year, WHO and partners also began using a newer oral polio vaccine, which contains a live but weakened virus that scientists believe is less likely to mutate into a dangerous form. But supplies are limited.
To stop polio in Britain, the U.S. and Israel, what is needed is more vaccination, experts say. That is something Columbia University’s Barrett worries could be challenging in the COVID-19 era.
“What’s different now is a reduction in trust of authorities and the political polarization in countries like the U.S. and the U.K.,” Barrett said. “The presumption that we can quickly get vaccination numbers up quickly may be more challenging now.”
Oyewale Tomori, a virologist who helped direct Nigeria’s effort to eliminate polio, said that in the past, he and colleagues balked at describing outbreaks as “vaccine-derived,” wary it would make people fearful of the vaccine.
“All we can do is explain how the vaccine works and hope that people understand that immunization is the best protection, but it’s complicated,” Tomori said. “In hindsight, maybe it would have been better not to use this vaccine, but at that time, nobody knew it would turn out like this.”
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
