Arizona farmers to bear brunt of cuts from Colorado River

Arizona farmers to bear brunt of cuts from Colorado River

 

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Arizona is prepared to lose about one-fifth of the water the state gets from the Colorado River in what could be the first federally declared shortage in the river that supplies millions of people in the U.S. West and Mexico, state officials said Thursday.

Arizona stands to lose more than any other state in the Colorado River basin that also takes in parts of Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Nevada and California. That’s because Arizona agreed long ago to be the first in line for cuts in exchange for federal funding for a canal system to deliver the water to Arizona’s major metropolitan areas.

The Arizona Department of Water Resources and the Central Arizona Project, which manages the canal system, said the anticipated reductions will be painful, but the state has prepared for decades for a shortage through conservation, water banking, partnerships and other efforts.

“It doesn’t make it any less painful. But at least we know what is coming,” said Ted Cooke, general manager of the Central Arizona Project.

Farmers in central Arizona’s Pinal County, who already have been fallowing land amid the ongoing drought and improving wells to pump groundwater in anticipation of the reductions, will bear the brunt of the cuts. Most farms there are family farms that are among the state’s top producers of livestock, dairy, cotton, barley, wheat and alfalfa.

In Pinal County, up to 40% of farmland that relies on Colorado River water could be fallowed over the next few years, said Stefanie Smallhouse, president of the Arizona Farm Bureau Federation.

“That’s a big blow,” she said. “I can’t think of many other businesses that can take a 40% cut in their income within a few months and still be sustainable. When you farm, it’s not only a business, it’s your livelihood.”

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation projected earlier this month that Lake Mead, which delivers water to Arizona, Nevada, California and Mexico, will fall below 1,075 feet (328 meters) for the first time in June 2021. If the lake remains below that level in August when the bureau issues its official projection for 2022, Arizona and Nevada will lose water.

The two states already voluntarily have given up water under a separate drought contingency plan.

The voluntary and mandatory Tier 1 cuts mean Arizona will lose 18% of its Colorado River supply, or 512,000 acre-feet of water. The amount represents 30% of the water that goes to the Central Arizona Project and 8% of Arizona’s overall water supply.

Some of that water will be replaced through water exchanges, transfers from cities to irrigation districts or through water that was stored in Lake Mead in a sort of shell game. The state, tribes and others also contributed financially to help develop groundwater infrastructure.

“We like to think we find ways to take care of ourselves collectively,” said Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources.

Smallhouse said farmers are thankful for the help coming but believes there’s more flexibility in the system to further ease the reductions. While farmers regularly face criticism for the amount of water they use, Smallhouse said the coronavirus pandemic highlighted the importance of a local supply chain for meat, dairy and crops.

Some water users simply won’t get the water they once had if the Bureau of Reclamation’s projections pan out.

The cutbacks come at a time when temperatures are rising and drought has tightened its grip on the U.S. Southwest, increasingly draining Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the two largest man-made reservoirs in the U.S., to their lowest levels since they were filled.

Lake Mead along the Arizona-Nevada border has dropped by about 16 feet (4.88 meters) feet since this time last year. Lake Powell on the Arizona-Utah border has fallen by 35 feet (10.67 meters) feet, the Bureau of Reclamation said.

The reductions in Arizona won’t hit cities or people’s homes, or affect water delivered through the canal system for Native American tribes. Still, anyone living in the desert should be concerned — but not panic — about water and think ways to live with less, said Rhett Larson, an associate professor at Arizona State University and an expert on water law and policy.

“The fact that you’re not feeling it in your tap doesn’t mean you won’t feel it at the grocery store because Pinal County farmers are growing a lot of the things you eat and use,” he said.

‘It will be beautiful again’: how California’s redwood forest is recovering after last year’s wildfires

‘It will be beautiful again’: how California’s redwood forest is recovering after last year’s wildfires

 

There are spots inside Big Basin Redwoods state park that appear to be frozen in time.

Roughly 10 months after the CZU Complex fire burned 97% of California’s oldest park, some trees still smoke and smolder. An open champagne bottle sits untouched atop a scorched picnic table alongside cooking utensils that are melted and singed together. Contents from a toppled cooler, left agape, have begun to blend into the forest duff. The skeletons of burnt cars and trucks are still parked in front of once-iconic headquarters, now reduced to rubble.

But, amid the wreckage, there are also signs of rebirth. Wildflowers are growing over charred debris. Blackened trees have sprung vibrant green sprouts. Birdsongs and hammering woodpeckers accent the hum of state-run construction crews working to ready the beloved park for a new chapter in its history.

“The biggest loss is the human side. This park is not going to be the same place that I saw as a little girl,” says Joanne Kerbavaz, a senior environmental scientist with California state parks on a tour of the park this week. “But as an ecologist, part of me is thrilled by the opportunity to watch how the redwood forest recovers.”

Big Basin is home to roughly 4,400 acres (1,780 hectares) of old-growth redwood trees, majestic giants that are among the oldest living things on Earth. Their lifespan can stretch beyond 2,000 years and they have adapted to survive and thrive in California’s Mediterranean fire-prone climate.

After being heavily logged in the 1800s, the Sempervirens Fund, a non-profit group, formed to protect the trees in 1900 and two years later Big Basin was created – California’s first state park – so millions of people from around the world could travel to marvel at them.

Just like the redwoods, Big Basin, too, will survive this fire. But when it reopens, it will look different. Along with new structures and facilities, many of the park’s 80 miles (128km) of trails will have to be newly carved into the rewilded landscape with new bridges, steps and railings built to support them.

We have the opportunity to reimagine how to interact with this park,” Kerbavaz says. There are discussions around how to rebuild the park back, to be even more accessible for generations to come. Attitudes have changed over the last 119 years and the park, like others across the US, has exploded in popularity. The climate is also changing, adding new pressures and threats to the ecosystems.

There is going to be a very robust planning process,” she adds, acknowledging the range of views about how old-growth forests should be protected and enjoyed into the future. “It is going to be open and inclusive and that means it is going to take a while to make some of the calls.”

Most agree that increasing resilience should be a priority. “The near-complete destruction of the buildings and facilities at Big Basin illustrates just how ill-adapted they were to fire,” the Sempervirens Fund wrote on its website in February. “If you love Big Basin, please consider this: rebuilding Big Basin can pioneer a new model for California’s state parks, just as Big Basin accomplished more than a century ago.”

Before rebuilding begins, thoughthere’s a considerable amount left to be cleared.

Along with toxic debris and crumpled buildings that need to be cleared, hazardous trees are being assessed for removal. The process of identifying which trees are dead or dying is delicate and layered. Five agencies have already weighed in, and perspectives on what should stay and what should be pulled out do not always align.

Several beloved old-growth trees have already been saved by park officials, including the famous Auto Tree, which is the most photographed Redwood in Big Basin. Estimated to be more than 1,500 years old, generations of visitors have climbed into its large opening created by fires in the past. The pictures go back to the park’s beginnings. There are photos of horses and buggies backed in and of ranger trucks in the 1970s.

“There was a mark to cut down the tree,” Kerbavaz says, “but I said, hey, this is one we really don’t want to lose.” So far, it’s showing signs of survival, with small green offshoots at the base and sparse growth in the canopy, and there’s hope that it has enough structural support to stay standing.

The process of deciding what will stay and what will go has been thorough and arduous. First, CalFire came through and cleared a path for crews. CalTrans examined what might become hazardous to the roads. Santa Cruz county officials assessed the areas managed by the municipality, and then PG&E did their analysis. California’s Department of Emergency Services is currently in the park and still finding trees to mark for removal.

Trees are painted with a series of letters and numbers, meant to catalog them and indicate to crews that they should be culled. Some also have flags and ties, showing that park officials, who have overseen the process, do not agree.

“There is a science and an art,” Kerbavaz says of the process. “I come, of course, from the parks’ perspective, which is we really would like to keep as much as we can”.

Along with tree removal, trails will have to be remade. Most of the wooden infrastructure, including steps, bridges and railings were obliterated in the fire. Some of it was put in place to hold erosive hillsides, which have since crumbled. Other hazards have to be assessed before guests can be welcomed back in. There are pits left from where subterranean roots from more flammable trees, such as Douglas Firs, burned into the earth.

Meanwhile, scientists are utilizing the opportunity to use the burn scar to learn about fire behavior, ecological resilience, and climate change. “We are trying to get baseline data so people can return in maybe 5 or 10 years down the line, and see how it grows and changes into the future,” says vegetation ecologist Alexis Lafever.

“There are so many baby redwood seedlings and they are so cute,” she says. In some areas, she’s encountered hundreds of seedlings. They won’t all survive, but, she adds, “things are growing back. The forest will be fine.”

There are also signals that animals are emerging and returning. Salamanders survived by burrowing under the duff, banana slugs took refuge underground, and birds have re-inhabited the burned branches.

“Almost everything that lives here has some strategy for avoiding fire,” Kerbavaz says. “But any kind of disturbance like that, there are some species that are harmed and some species that are favored.”

There are those that thrive after fire. The Knobcone Pine requires temperatures up to 350F (177C) to melt a resin from its cones to sprout seeds. Some woodpeckers prefer dead trees to living ones. But the fire, which burned fast and hot, with flames that licked the canopy 300 feet (91 metres) into the sky and tore through close to 18,000 acres (7,285 hectares) of the park in only 24 hours, did leave devastation in its wake. Current assessments show even with the resiliency of the redwoods, 10% of the trees won’t recover. The damage is also expected to cost nearly $200m.

“Those buildings are gone. That specific experience is gone,” Kerbavaz says. “There’s some of that loss of the big trees that make it such a special forest. But we have opened up places for the next generation of big trees to grow,” she adds. “It will be beautiful again – even if it is not as you remember it”.

Tickproof Your Yard Without Spraying Pesticides

Tickproof Your Yard Without Spraying Pesticides

 

For many of us this past year, our backyards took on a profoundly important role. In the era of social distancing, yards were transformed into outdoor oases, and even now, there are no signs that the trend is slowing down—increasing demand and a national lumber shortage has made it difficult to acquire wood to build a deck.

In order to stay safe in your yard this spring and summer, it’s crucial to avoid exposure to ticks, which can transmit about a dozen common diseases. The past few years have been some of the worst on record for ticks, and not just in the Northeast. At least one variety of disease-transmitting tick has been found in all of the lower 48 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And a lab at Cornell University has identified 26 species of ticks along the East Coast alone—far more than the deer ticks most of us associate with Lyme disease.

With a little bit of work, including cutting your grass more often, you can significantly limit exposure to the insects in your yard.

“Tick control is mostly about wildlife,” says Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann, coordinator of New York State’s Integrated Pest Management Program at Cornell. “If you have an open yard where animals can enter, you’re almost certainly going to have ticks.”

One way to know for sure? Perform what’s called a tick drag. Cut a 5-inch-square swatch of fabric and tie it to an 18-inch-long pole or stick. Holding the pole, drag the fabric along tall grass or weeds, particularly near woodland edges of your lawn. Ticks will typically transfer themselves to the swatch.

If you spot them on the fabric, you’ll need to deal with the problem now to safely enjoy your yard. And even if you don’t find ticks, it could pay to be proactive. Follow these five steps to deal with them effectively.

1. Keep Your Grass Short

The last few years have been some of the worst on record for ticks, and not just in the Northeast. At least one variety of disease-transmitting tick has been found in all of the lower 48 states, ...<br>

“Black-legged ticks, the type that transmit Lyme disease, don’t like dry, hot environments,” Gangloff-Kaufmann says. The taller the grass, the cooler the environment, because taller blades cast a shadow and create shade. That means that leaving your lawn a little shaggy is a bad idea in tick-rich areas.

Gangloff-Kaufmann says it’s okay to let your grass reach the 4 to 4½ inches that Consumer Reports recommends, then trim it down to about 3 inches with each cut. That strategy promotes healthy growth. If you shear your lawn down to an inch or two, you’ll send the grass into a panic and it will grow too tall, too fast, and suffer from a weak root structure. The trick is to be vigilant about keeping up with mowing and not letting grass grow to a height of 5 or 6 inches.

If you miss a week and the grass gets tall, it’s a good idea to use the bagging attachment with your tractor or lawn mower, because leaving those long lawn clippings behind can create the perfect environment for ticks.

2. Make a Mulch Moat

Many tick varieties, including the Lyme-transmitting black-legged variety, favor the dense cover of woodlands over open lawn. That makes any wooded areas adjacent to your property potential hotbeds for ticks. Adding a 3-foot-wide protective barrier of mulch around the perimeter of your yard does double duty.

First, it creates a physical barrier that’s dry and sometimes hot, something ticks can’t tolerate. Second, it serves as a visual reminder to anyone in your household to be especially careful once they step past the perimeter.

For the border, you want mulch made from broad, dry wood chips or bark, not the damp, shredded variety, which creates exactly the kind of cool, damp conditions ticks love.

3. Trim Tall Grass and Weeds

“Ticks like to climb to the top of tall grass blades and look for questing opportunities—the chance to grab on to animals like deer or humans,” Gangloff-Kaufmann says.

By keeping grass and weeds at bay with a string trimmer, you’ll minimize those chances and make it more difficult for ticks to latch on to you or members of your family, or to travel around your property by hitching a ride on your dog.

4. Eliminate Tick Habitat

CR has long recommended mulching grass clippings when you mow. That’s because these clippings break down and release nitrogen into the soil, feeding your yard and potentially reducing the amount of fertilizer you use by about 20 percent.

And in many instances, it’s okay or even preferable to leave behind fallen leaves to nourish the lawn for the same reason. But if you live in an area with a large tick population, you might benefit from a different approach.

By bagging grass and blowing leaves into piles for collection, you keep your yard clear and cut back on tick-friendly places. You’ll want to recycle leaves and grass clippings through your town if possible, or compost them in a pile far from the house.

Rather than letting them rot in a landfill, you can let your leaves and clippings break down naturally and use the resulting compost to feed and fertilize plants around your yard.

5. Consider a Targeted Approach

Following the four steps above will make your yard less inviting to ticks. But if you want to make a serious dent in the tick population on your property, you’ll need to focus on methods that kill them.

Many people opt for spraying their entire yard with pesticide, an approach that CR’s experts say is ineffective and potentially dangerous.

“Spraying your yard provides a false sense of security,” explains Michael Hansen, PhD, senior scientist at Consumer Reports. “Instead, consider products that treat the fur of mice or deer with small quantities of tick-killing agents.”

Why target mice or deer rather than your yard? “Mice play an important role in the transmission cycle of Lyme disease,” says Laura Goodman, senior research associate in Cornell’s department of population medicine and diagnostic sciences. If you can stop critters from transmitting ticks, you can curb the tick population in and around your yard.

“Tick tubes” are one product we’ve encountered. They’re essentially cardboard tubes stuffed with cotton treated with permethrin, a tick-killing chemical. Mice collect the cotton and take it back to their nests. The permethrin binds to oils on their fur, killing any ticks that try to attach without harming the mice.

The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (PDF) has found that such systems have resulted in statistically meaningful drops in tick levels after several years of use. And at about $4 per tube, they’re cheaper than tick bait boxes.

Bonus: Tickproof Yourself

When working in the yard, wear a long-sleeved shirt, long pants, socks, and closed-toe shoes. Use insect repellent; the best in our tests provide more than 8 hours of tick protection.

“And regardless of the time of year, perform a tick check as soon as you return indoors,” Goodman says.

If you do suffer a bite, Goodman advises properly removing the tick. For more information about ticks in your area, check your state health department’s website. Connecticut, home to the town of Old Lyme, where the disease was first documented, has a particularly comprehensive guide to ticks (PDF).

Consumer Reports is an independent, nonprofit organization that works side by side with consumers to create a fairer, safer, and healthier world. CR does not endorse products or services, and does not accept advertising. Copyright © 2021, Consumer Reports, Inc.

The poison used to eradicate a biblical mouse plague ravaging southeast Australia is having a deadly effect on native wildlife

The poison used to eradicate a biblical mouse plague ravaging southeast Australia is having a deadly effect on native wildlife

The poison used to eradicate a biblical mouse plague ravaging southeast Australia is having a deadly effect on native wildlife. Dead Galah birds in Parkes, New South Wales. Kelly Lacey/Facebook
australia mouse plague
Mice scurrying around stored grain on a farm near Tottenham, Australia, on May 19, 2021. Rick Rycroft/AP 

  • The poison that is being used to cull Australia’s mouse infestation is damaging the native wildlife.
  • Experts say birds in New South Wales have died after ingesting poison intended for mice.
  • The infestation has ravaged large parts of southeast Australia.

The poisonous bait that is being used to eradicate a huge mouse plague ravaging large parts of Australia is having a deadly effect on native wildlife, experts have warned.

Earlier this week, an image of dozens of Galah Cockatoo birds dead in a cemetery in Parkes, New South Wales, went viral after it was shared on Facebook by Kelly Lacey, a volunteer for the NSW Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Service (WIRES).

In the post, she said: “Seeing them sitting with each other under trees, knowing they were suffering until they have eventually died, has utterly broke me. Found 2 still alive, sadly 1 died on way home. (whatever the poison was it is more potent then I have experienced, and they have bled internally).”

Later during an interview with The Guardian, Lacey said that she found over 100 dead Galahs in the cemetery.

“I received a call from another WIRES member, saying ‘I think you might want to see this, there are dead galahs everywhere,'” she told the newspaper. “My heart sank. When I arrived and began collecting all the dead bodies I was in shock.”

In a statement released earlier this week, the New South Wales Environmental Protection Agency asked the public to “think carefully” about the location and amount of poisonous bait that is being used after an investigation by the organization found that dozens of birds in the state had died after ingesting the poison.

“The safe baiting of mice is an important step in reducing mice numbers and pesticide users must make sure they handle baits safely and are careful to always follow the directions on the label to protect their family, neighbors, domestic animals, wildlife, and the environment from harm,” the statement read.

A mixture of poisonous bait and other deadly traps have been deployed across southeast Australia to deal with the huge rise in mice populations. Experts say that the infestation is the result of wet weather that has provided ample food for the mice, fueling their fast reproductive cycle.

Farmers across the region have felt the brunt of the infestation with reports of mice ravaging crops, destroying farming equipment, and causing electricity blackouts. The state government has called the plague “absolutely unprecedented” and warned that it could cause huge economic damage.

The NSW Farmers Association, an agricultural group in the state, estimated that the plague could cost farmers a total of 1 billion Australian dollars ($771,000) during the winter crop season, which runs from June to August, the AP reported.

Earlier this month, Adam Marshall, the agriculture minister for New South Wales, announced a $50m support package to help farmers that include the wide-scale use of bromadiolone, a poison described as “napalm” for mice.

“It’ll be the equivalent of napalming mice across rural NSW,” Marshall told the ABC. “This chemical, this poison, will eliminate mice that take these baits within 24 hours.”

Hundreds of lakes in U.S., Europe are losing oxygen

Hundreds of lakes in U.S., Europe are losing oxygen

 

Oxygen levels have dropped in hundreds of lakes in the United States and Europe over the last four decades, a new study found.

And the authors said declining oxygen could lead to increased fish kills, algal blooms and methane emissions.

Researchers examined the temperature and dissolved oxygen — the amount of oxygen in the water — in nearly 400 lakes and found that declines were widespread. Their study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, found dissolved oxygen fell 5.5 % in surface waters of these lakes and 18.6% in deep waters.

The authors said their findings suggest that warming temperatures and decreased water clarity from human activity are causing the oxygen decline.

“Oxygen is one of the best indicators of ecosystem health, and changes in this study reflect a pronounced human footprint,” said co-author Craig E. Williamson, a biology professor at Miami University in Ohio.

That footprint includes warming caused by climate change and decreased water clarity caused in part by runoff from sewage, fertilizer, cars and power plants.

Dissolved oxygen losses in Earth’s water systems have been reported before. A 2017 study of oxygen levels in the world’s oceans showed a 2% decline since 1960. But less was known about lakes, which lost two to nine times as much oxygen as oceans, the new study’s authors said.

Prior to this study, other researchers had reported on oxygen declines in individual lakes over a long period of time. But none of have looked at as many lakes around the world, said Samuel B. Fey, a Reed College biology professor who studies lakes and was not involved in this study.

“I think one of the really interesting findings here is that the authors were able to show that there’s this pretty pronounced decline in dissolved oxygen concentrations in both the surface and (deep) parts of the lake,” Fey said.

The deep water drop in oxygen levels is critical for aquatic organisms that are more sensitive to temperature increases, such as cold water fish. During summer months, they depend on cooler temperatures found deeper in the water, but if deep waters are low on oxygen, these organisms can’t survive.

“Those are the conditions that sometimes lead to fish kills in water bodies,” said study co-author Kevin C. Rose, a professor of biology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “It really means that a lot of habitats for cold water fish could become inhospitable.”

Other organisms, Rose said, are more tolerant of warmer temperatures found at the surface level and can get enough oxygen by remaining near the surface, where water meets air.

About a quarter of the lakes examined actually showed increasing oxygen in surface waters, which Rose says is a bad sign because it’s likely attributable to increased algal blooms — sudden growth of blue green algae.

In these lakes, he said, dissolved oxygen was “very low” in deep waters and was unlivable for many species.

And the sediment in such oxygen-starved lakes tends to give off methane, a potent greenhouse gas, research shows.

Lakes examined in the new study were in the U.S. or Europe, except for one in Japan and a few in New Zealand. The authors said there was insufficient data to include other parts of the world.

Rose said lakes outside the study area probably are experiencing drops in dissolved oxygen, too. The reason, he said, is that warmer temperatures from climate change reduce the ability of oxygen to dissolve in water — its solubility.

“We know that most or many places around the planet are warming,” he said. “And so we would expect to see declining solubility.”

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.

Study: California fire killed 10% of world’s giant sequoias

Associated Press

Study: California fire killed 10% of world’s giant sequoias

 

SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) — At least a tenth of the world’s mature giant sequoia trees were destroyed by a single California wildfire that tore through the southern Sierra Nevada last year, according to a draft report prepared by scientists with the National Park Service.

The Visalia Times-Delta newspaper obtained a copy of the report that describes catastrophic destruction from the Castle Fire, which charred 273 square miles (707 square km) of timber in Sequoia National Park.

Researchers used satellite imagery and modeling from previous fires to determine that between 7,500 and 10,000 of the towering species perished in the fire. That equates to 10% to 14% of the world’s mature giant sequoia population, the newspaper said.

“I cannot overemphasize how mind-blowing this is for all of us. These trees have lived for thousands of years. They’ve survived dozens of wildfires already,” said Christy Brigham, chief of resources management and science at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.

The consequences of losing large numbers of giant sequoias could be felt for decades, forest managers said. Redwood and sequoia forests are among the world’s most efficient at removing and storing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The groves also provide critical habitat for native wildlife and help protect the watershed that supplies farms and communities on the San Joaquin Valley floor.

Brigham, the study’s lead author, cautioned that the numbers are preliminary and the research paper has yet to be peer reviewed. Beginning next week, teams of scientists will hike to the groves that experienced the most fire damage for the first time since the ashes settled.

“I have a vain hope that once we get out on the ground the situation won’t be as bad, but that’s hope — that’s not science,” she said.

The newspaper said the extent of the damage to one of the world’s most treasured trees is noteworthy because the sequoias themselves are incredibly well adapted to fire. The old-growth trees — some of which are more than 2,000 years old and 250 feet (76 meters) tall — require fire to burst their pine cones and reproduce.

“One-hundred years of fire suppression, combined with climate change-driven hotter droughts, have changed how fires burn in the southern Sierra and that change has been very bad for sequoia,” Brigham said.

Sequoia and Kings Canyon have conducted controlled burns since the 1960s, about a thousand acres a year on average. Brigham estimates that the park will need to burn around 30 times that number to get the forest back to a healthy state.

The Castle Fire erupted on Aug. 19 in the Golden Trout Wilderness amid a flurry of lightning strikes. The Shotgun Fire, a much smaller blaze burning nearby, was discovered shortly afterward, and the two were renamed the Sequoia Complex.

The headline of this story has been corrected to say the fire destroyed 10% of all giant sequoias, not 10% of all redwoods.

A 20-Foot Sea Wall? Miami Faces the Hard Choices of Climate Change.

A 20-Foot Sea Wall? Miami Faces the Hard Choices of Climate Change.

A high rise apartment building in the Brickell neighborhood of Miami on May 19, 2021. (Zack Wittman/The New York Times)
A high rise apartment building in the Brickell neighborhood of Miami on May 19, 2021. (Zack Wittman/The New York Times)

 

MIAMI — Three years ago, not long after Hurricane Irma left parts of Miami underwater, the federal government embarked on a study to find a way to protect the vulnerable South Florida coast from deadly and destructive storm surge.

Already, no one likes the answer.

Build a wall, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed in its first draft of the study, now under review. Six miles of it, in fact, mostly inland, running parallel to the coast through neighborhoods — except for a 1-mile stretch right on Biscayne Bay, past the gleaming sky-rises of Brickell, the city’s financial district.

The dramatic, $6 billion proposal remains tentative and at least five years off. But the startling suggestion of a massive sea wall up to 20 feet high cutting across beautiful Biscayne Bay was enough to jolt some Miamians to attention. The hard choices that will be necessary to deal with the city’s many environmental challenges are here, and few people want to face them.

“You need to have a conversation about, culturally, what are our priorities?” said Benjamin Kirtman, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Miami. “Where do we want to invest? Where does it make sense?

“Those are what I refer to as generational questions,” he added. “And there is a tremendous amount of reluctance to enter into that discussion.”

In Miami, the U.S. metropolitan area that is perhaps most exposed to sea-level rise, the problem is not climate change denialism. Not when hurricane season, which begins this week, returns each year with more intense and frequent storms. Not when finding flood insurance has become increasingly difficult and unaffordable. Not when the nights stay so hot that leaving the house with a sweater to fend off the evening chill has become a thing of the past.

The trouble is that the magnitude of the interconnected obstacles the region faces can feel overwhelming, and none of the possible solutions is cheap, easy or pretty.

For its study, the Corps focused on storm surge — the rising seas that often inundate the coastline during storms — made worse lately by stronger hurricanes and higher sea levels. But that is only one concern.

South Florida, flat and low-lying, sits on porous limestone, which allows the ocean to swell up through the ground. Even when there is no storm, rising seas contribute to more significant tidal flooding, where streets fill with water even on sunny days. The expanding saltwater threatens to spoil the underground aquifer that supplies the region’s drinking water and crack old sewer pipes and aging septic tanks. It leaves less space for the earth to absorb liquid, so floodwaters linger longer, their runoff polluting the bay and killing fish.

And that is just sea-level rise. Temperatures have gotten so sweltering over recent summers that Miami-Dade County has named a new interim “chief heat officer.”

“What you realize is, each of these problems, which are totally intersecting, are handled by different parts of the government,” said Amy Clement, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Miami and the chair of the city of Miami’s climate resilience committee. “It’s divided up in ways that make things really, really difficult to move forward. And the bottom line is, it’s way more money than any local government has to spend.”

The state could help, to a point. Republican lawmakers, who have controlled the Florida Legislature for more than 20 years, acknowledged in late 2019 that they had ignored climate change for so long that the state had “lost a decade.” They have begun to take steps to fund solutions, directing more than $200 million in tax dollars, collected on real estate transactions, to sea-level rise and sewer projects. Legislators also designated $500 million in federal stimulus money for the fund.

The price tag for all that needs to be done, however, is in the billions. The estimate for Miami-Dade County alone to phase out some 120,000 septic tanks is about $4 billion, and that does not include the thousands of dollars that each homeowner would also have to pay.

Enter the Corps, whose engineering projects, if funded by Congress, are covered 65% by the federal government and 35% by a local government sponsor.

No one wants to turn away a penny from Washington, but the proposal for a massive sea wall along one of Miami’s most scenic stretches has produced a rare moment of agreement between environmentalists and real estate developers, who fear harm to the bay’s delicate ecology and lower property values.

“We were like, ruh-roh,” said Ken Russell, the Miami city commissioner whose district includes Brickell. “The $40 billion in assets you’re trying to protect will be diminished if you build a wall around downtown, because you’re going to affect market values and quality of life.”

Other parts of the Corps’ draft plan, which includes surge barriers at the mouth of the Miami River and several other waterways, are more appealing: fortifying sewer plants and fire and police stations to withstand a crush of seawater. Elevating or flood-proofing thousands of businesses and homes. Planting some mangroves, which can provide a first line of defense against flooding and erosion. Miami-Dade County wants all of those portions to take priority; a final draft of the plan is due this fall.

Sticking points remain. Among the homes proposed to be elevated on the taxpayer dime are multimillion-dollar waterfront mansions — a result of the Corps’ mandate to efficiently protect as much life and property as possible, which critics say inevitably leads to more protection for the wealthy, whose properties are worth more.

And then there are the walls. The inland walls — some fairly small, but others up to 13 feet high — would divide neighborhoods, leaving homes on the seaward side with less protection. The sea wall along Biscayne Bay, which could rise to 20 feet and look as formidable as the sound barriers along Interstate 95, would reverse decades of policies intended to avoid dredging and filling the bay.

To some critics, the plan harks back to more than a century of dredging and pumping the Florida Everglades, which made way for intensive farming and sprawling development but disregarded the serious damage to the environment that the state is still wrestling with.

“It is my sense that most Floridians would live with the risk of water to preserve their lifestyle,” said Cynthia Barnett, a Gainesville, Florida-based environmental journalist who has published books about rain and the fate of the oceans. “This idea of working with water rather than always fighting against it is really the lesson of Florida history. If Florida history has taught us one thing, it’s that hardscaping this water that defines us will bring hardships to future generations.”

When local governments have asked the public how they would like to tackle climate change, residents by far prefer what is known as green infrastructure: layered coastal protection from a mix of dunes, sea grasses, coral reefs and mangroves, said Zelalem Adefris, vice president for policy and advocacy at Catalyst Miami, which works with low-income communities in the county.

“The Army Corps’ plan just looks so different,” she said. “It seemed to be really incongruous with the conversations that are being had locally.”

Officials with the Corps, though, say — gently — that they see no way around what they call structural elements. The storm surge threat to Miami-Dade County is just too grave.

“It’s going to be a part of the solution,” said Niklas Hallberg, the study’s project manager.

He said the Corps is committed to working with the community in the next phase of design for the project so “maybe it doesn’t look like so much of a wall.”

That sounds like inching toward the vision that emerged from engineering consultants hired by Swire Properties, a big local developer, after the Corps’ draft plan alarmed Miami’s Downtown Development Authority. The consultants suggested building a berm of earth and rock that could be further elevated over time. (A landscape architectural firm brought in by the Downtown Development Authority developed renderings of the Corps’ plan showing dirty brown water in the bay and, yes, “Berlin” graffitied on the wall.)

On a recent afternoon along the stretch of Brickell Bay Drive where a wall might go, Rachel Silverstein, executive director of Miami Waterkeeper, an environmental research and activist group, stood next to high-rises built right up to the water, which she called “the fundamental problem with Miami” because they leave the storm surge with nowhere to go.

(Silverstein is in the camp of people who favor more natural structural elements to combat storm surge, such as bolstering coral reefs that would also provide an ecological benefit to the bay.)

She pointed over the shimmering blue-green bay.

“Instead of seeing this beautiful water, you would see a gross wall,” she said.

In front of her, a manatee came up for air.

Drought saps California reservoirs as hot, dry summer looms

Drought saps California reservoirs as hot, dry summer looms

 

OROVILLE, Calif. (AP) — Each year Lake Oroville helps water a quarter of the nation’s crops, sustain endangered salmon beneath its massive earthen dam and anchor the tourism economy of a Northern California county that must rebuild seemingly every year after unrelenting wildfires.

But the mighty lake — a linchpin in a system of aqueducts and reservoirs in the arid U.S. West that makes California possible — is shrinking with surprising speed amid a severe drought, with state officials predicting it will reach a record low later this summer.

While droughts are common in California, this year’s is much hotter and drier than others, evaporating water more quickly from the reservoirs and the sparse Sierra Nevada snowpack that feeds them. The state’s more than 1,500 reservoirs are 50% lower than they should be this time of year, according to Jay Lund, co-director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California-Davis.

Over Memorial Day weekend, dozens of houseboats sat on cinderblocks at Lake Oroville because there wasn’t enough water to hold them. Blackened trees lined the reservoir’s steep, parched banks.

At nearby Folsom Lake, normally bustling boat docks rested on dry land, their buoys warning phantom boats to slow down. Campers occupied dusty riverbanks farther north at Shasta Lake.

But the impacts of dwindling reservoirs go beyond luxury yachts and weekend anglers. Salmon need cold water from the bottom of the reservoirs to spawn. The San Francisco Bay needs fresh water from the reservoirs to keep out the salt water that harms freshwater fish. Farmers need the water to irrigate their crops. Businesses need reservoirs full so people will come play in them and spend money.

And everyone needs the water to run hydroelectric power plants that supply much of the state’s energy.

If Lake Oroville falls below 640 feet (195 meters) — which it could do by late August — state officials would shut down a major power plant for just the second time ever because of low water levels, straining the electrical grid during the hottest part of the summer.

In Northern California’s Butte County, low water prompts another emotion: fear. The county suffered the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century in 2018 when 85 people died. Last year, another 16 people died in a wildfire.

Walking along the Bidwell Canyon trail last week, 63-year-old Lisa Larson was supposed to have a good view of the lake. Instead, she saw withered grass and trees.

“It makes me feel like our planet is literally drying up,” she said. “It makes me feel a little unsettled because the drier it gets, the more fires we are going to have.”

Droughts are a part of life in California, where a Mediterranean-style climate means the summers are always dry and the winters are not always wet. The state’s reservoirs act as a savings account, storing water in the wet years to help the state survive during the dry ones.

Last year was the third driest on record in terms of precipitation. Temperatures hit triple digits in much of California over the Memorial Day weekend, earlier than expected. State officials were surprised earlier this year when about 500,000 acre feet (61,674 hectare meters) of water they were expecting to flow into reservoirs never showed up. One acre-foot is enough water to supply up to two households for one year.

“In the previous drought, it took (the reservoirs) three years to get this low as they are in the second year of this drought,” Lund said.

The lake’s record low is 646 feet (197 meters), but the Department of Water Resources projects it will dip below that sometime in August or September. If that happens, the state will have to close the boat ramps for the first time ever because of low water levels, according to Aaron Wright, public safety chief for the Northern Buttes District of California State Parks. The only boat access to the lake would be an old dirt road that was built during the dam’s construction in the late 1960s.

“We have a reservoir up there that’s going to be not usable. And so now what?” said Eric Smith, an Oroville City Council member and president of its chamber of commerce.

The water level is so low at Lake Mendocino, along the Russian River in Northern California, that state officials last week reduced the amount of water heading to 930 farmers, businesses and other junior water-rights holders.

“Unless we immediately reduce diversions, there is a real risk of Lake Mendocino emptying by the end of this year,” said Erik Ekdahl, deputy director for the State Water Board’s Division of Water Rights.

Low water levels across California will severely limit how much power the state can generate from hydroelectric power plants. When Lake Oroville is full, the Edward Hyatt Power Plant and others nearby can generate up to 900 megawatts of power, according to Behzad Soltanzadeh, chief of utility operations for the Department of Water Resources. One megawatt is enough to power between 800 and 1,000 homes.

That has some local officials worrying about power outages, especially after the state ran out of energy last summer during an extreme heat wave that prompted California’s first rotating blackouts in 20 years. But energy officials say they are better prepared this summer, having obtained an additional 3,500 megawatts of capacity ahead of the scorching summer months.

The low levels are challenging for tourism officials. Bruce Spangler, president of the board of directors for Explore Butte County, grew up in Oroville and has fond memories of fishing with his grandfather and learning to launch and drive a boat before he could drive a car. But this summer, his organization has to be careful about how it markets the lake while managing visitors’ expectations, he said.

“We have to be sure we don’t promise something that can’t be,” he said.

Low lake levels haven’t stopped tourists from coming yet. With coronavirus restrictions lifting across the state, Wright — the state parks official for Northern California — said attendance at most parks in his area is double what it normally is this time of year.

“People are trying to recreate and use facilities even more so (because) they know they are going to lose them here in a few months,” he said.

Associated Press writer Brian Melley in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

The Everglades are dying. An alliance between Biden and Republicans could save them

The Everglades are dying. An alliance between Biden and Republicans could save them

<span>Photograph: Jupiterimages/Getty Images</span>
Photograph: Jupiter images/Getty Images

 

For years environmental groups warned the Florida Everglades, a vast 1.5m-acre (607,000-hectare) subtropical preserve, may be doomed to extinction. Agricultural pollution, saltwater intrusion and rampant real estate development had turned the waterways toxic and the state’s environmental landmark was left to slowly choke to death. Perhaps until now.

A sweeping Everglades restoration effort decades in the making is finally seeing renewed optimism thanks to a cast of unlikely champions: Florida state Republicans. In April, Ron DeSantis, the governor, signed an agreement with the US Army Corps of Engineers to build a massive $3.4bn reservoir west of Palm Beach, which would help restore the flow of freshwater to the Everglades. Other state-funded projects to revitalize the region’s delicate ecosystem are already months ahead of schedule, DeSantis said.

And now, the Everglades have a new ally in the White House. Last week Joe Biden included $350m in his 2022 budget proposal to apply toward environmental restoration efforts in south Florida, a $100m increase from the previous year. But will it be enough? Florida’s congressional delegation, led by Republican Senator Marco Rubio, had previously requested more than double that amount in federal assistance, while local advocates argued the price tag should be closer to $3bn over four years.

There’s also a possibility that Congress could add more federal dollars to Biden’s proposal, especially now that five members of Florida’s congressional delegation sit on appropriations committees, said Chauncey Goss, board chairman of the South Florida water management district, which oversees the state’s Everglades infrastructure projects.

“The $725m would be better, but I am not going to laugh at the $350m,” Goss said. “It’s not exactly what we wanted, but it is really up to Congress.”

Still, Biden’s proposed funding is substantial, Goss added, and will allow the army corps to begin work on the federal portion of the reservoir project, such as building new canals from Lake Okeechobee. “This will definitely keep the ball moving down the field,” he said.

An alligator floats in an algae bloom in Lake Okeechobee on 26 April.
An alligator floats in an algae bloom in Lake Okeechobee on 26 April. Photograph: Joe Cavaretta/AP

 

Efforts to restore the Everglades’ unique ecosystem hinge on Lake Okeechobee, Florida’s largest body of freshwater located near Palm Beach county. The lake has been used as a dumping ground for farmland pollutants for several decades, allowing high concentrations of phosphorus and nitrates from fertilizers to leach into the soil. During heavy rains and storms, runoff water from the tainted soil flows into dozens of intersecting canals that end up in Lake Okeechobee. To avoid the lake from overflowing and bursting its levee during storm events, the tainted water is often released into rivers that flow to the ocean and the Everglades.

The goal is to treat overflowing dirty water from Lake Okeechobee so that by the time it reaches the Everglades, the water is mostly free of the nutrients that cause toxic algae blooms. Construction is under way to create a network of marshes spanning 6,500 acres made up of non-native plants that act as a natural filtration system to suck up fertilizer nutrients from contaminated water, which will flow from the planned 10,500-acre reservoir that will store excess water that builds up in Lake Okeechobee during rainy months of the year.

John Kominoski, a biological sciences professor at the Florida International University Institute of Environment, says the reservoir project will probably play a critical role in alleviating overflows in Lake Okeechobee during Florida’s wet season, which will be used to replenish the Everglades.

“This reservoir is very important for Everglades restoration,” he added. “It will enable the clean-up of more of the dirty water and hold more of the water longer as opposed to dumping it out to sea.”

Still, environmental advocates remain split about whether the Everglades restoration projects are enough. Some worry the reservoir and the marshes will not have a meaningful impact in reversing decades of pollution and water diversion. Others are concerned the restoration could be upended by recent attempts to bring industrial and commercial activities closer to the ecosystem. Eve Samples, executive director of the advocacy group Friends of the Everglades, said the 17,000-acre footprint for the reservoir and the adjoining wetlands are not large enough to achieve the amount of water flow to keep the River of Grass healthy.

“When the project was first envisioned 20 years ago, it was in the neighborhood of 60,000 acres,” Samples said. “In 2017, when we had the toxic algae blooms on the east and west sides of the state, the project got accelerated. But by the time the bill was approved, the reservoir and the wetlands portion were shrunken down to 17,000 acres.”

One key reason the reservoir was scaled back was due to politics. The state legislature barred the South Florida water management district from using eminent domain to acquire sugar cane fields and farms. To compensate for the lost acreage, state and federal environmental agencies made the reservoir 23ft (7 meters) deep with 37ft (11 meters) high retention walls.

“This project is a shadow of its former self,” Samples said. “It doesn’t look like anything in nature.”

A mangrove tunnel in Everglades national park in Florida.
A mangrove tunnel in Everglades national park in Florida. Photograph: Francisco Blanco/Alamy Stock Photo/Alamy Stock Photo

 

Another key worry is the compounding threat brought by climate change, Kominoski says. Weather changes in recent years have severely impacted the transition from Florida’s dry season to the wet season, which typically begins in late April and lasts until mid-November. “Last year, the wet season didn’t start until late May,” he said. “We are losing about a month of our wet season window.”

As a result, mangroves and other plant life that help filter pollutants are drying out and dying. “We need water flowing so the wetlands don’t dry out,” he said.

Jason Totoiu, senior attorney with the Center of Biological Diversity’s south-east division, agreed, noting the restoration projects like the $3.4bn reservoir and marshes can significantly increase the flow of freshwater to the Everglades as long as farm pollutants are effectively filtered out. Increasingly hotter summers are threatening large swaths of the Everglades, Totoiu said. “We are seeing an increasing amount of saltwater that can dramatically alter natural habitats,” he said. “Rising sea levels could be a tipping point there.”

The reservoir project and other Everglades infrastructure proposals are about more than just revitalizing Florida’s most important ecosystem, added Julie Wraithmell, executive director of Audubon Florida. “It is also about protecting our vibrant tourism economy, the drinking water for all residents and visitors and against sea level rise,” she said. “With so many projects lined up, it makes sense to strike while the iron is hot.”

Fighting to save the Everglades has been a daunting endeavor for many decades, but Republican and Democratic elected officials on the local, state and federal levels are now putting in the work, Wraithmell added.

“Whether you are far left or far right, everyone has a vested interest in dealing with the effects of climate change,” she said. “There is great reason for optimism.”

Worst Drought in Decades Escalates Threats Across U.S. West

Worst Drought in Decades Escalates Threats Across U.S. West

 

(Bloomberg) — Almost three-fourths of the western U.S. is gripped by drought so severe that it’s off the charts of anything recorded in the 20-year history of the U.S. Drought Monitor. Mountains across the West have seen little precipitation, robbing reservoirs of dearly needed snowmelt and rain, said Brad Rippey, a meteorologist and Drought Monitor author with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The parched conditions mean the wildfire threat is high and farmers are struggling to irrigate crops. Meanwhile, dropping water levels in Lake Oroville, one of California’s largest reservoirs, forced authorities to remove more than 100 houseboats, according to the Weather Channel. “Water supply is the big story for the West, and we are getting in trouble with all the interests that try to compete for a slice of that water,” Rippey said by telephone. “There is not a lot to go around this year.”

Unlike the eastern U.S., in the West most water comes in winter months in the form of rain that gushes into reservoirs or snow that piles up on mountainsides. Last year, drought cost the nation $4.5 billion, according to the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Information. This year, what little snow that fell soon melted away and seeped into dusty ground rather than rivers, streams and reservoirs.

For a photo essay of California’s worsening drought, click here. “We have never seen a drought at the scale and the intensity that we see right now, and it is possible that this may be the baseline for the future,” Elizabeth Klein, senior counselor for the Department of Interior told a Congressional hearing last week. “California is currently experiencing its third-driest year on record; the second two driest years on record, and the driest year since 1977.”

Through the end of April, 1.7 million acre-feet of water melted off California’s mountains, down from the normal rate of 8 million, Rippey said. In the last two years, there has only been 4 million. “This is, by far, the worst recharge year in modern history,” Rippey said. In addition to the drought figures, officials are concerned about the Colorado River, which powers hydroelectric plants and provides drinking and irrigation water across much of the Southwest and parts of Mexico. So much water is taken out of the Colorado, in fact, that it rarely ever makes it to its historical delta in the Gulf of California. Based on paleohydrology, scientists say the Colorado is experiencing one of its driest periods in 1,200 years, Klein said.