Watch Plastic Waste Become ‘Lumber’ for Adirondack Chairs

Watch Plastic Waste Become ‘Lumber’ for Adirondack Chairs

As the global demand for lumber continues to skyrocket, it’s time to think hard about using alternatives to wood. So, why not plastic?

In the latest episode of the Popular Mechanics series “MADE HERE,” we tour the factory for Polywood, a company that takes recycled plastic (mostly milk jugs), turns it into “lumber,” and uses it to fashion outdoor furniture.

“Recycled plastic is important because the nature of the materials—can be used infinitely,” says Doug Rassi, the founder and CEO of Polywood. “You can remake them and remake them, and you never ever have to throw these materials away.”

Polywood pulls its materials from U.S. recycling centers and “ocean-bound hotbeds throughout the world,” says Bryce Glock, a retail sales manager with Polywood. Then the work begins.

First, machines process, clean, flake, and pelletize the plastic bales. Next, vacuums move the pellets into storage silos until they’re ready to blend with extra materials before becoming Polywood lumber boards. Before workers can cut the boards, though, they have to color them with dye and form them (in a heater) to match the size needed for specific pieces of furniture.

Then, the boards move through cooling tanks, and finally, a CNC machine cuts them. For the last step, Polywood staffers box up the pieces and prep them for shipping.

Rassi hopes Polywood’s products show plastics can always find new lives, and don’t need to end up in landfills or the sea.

“Plastics [have] this disposable connotation to them,” says Rassi. “It’s very ingrained into our culture, and we’re working very much to change that.”

Study blames climate change for 37% of global heat deaths

Study blames climate change for 37% of global heat deaths

More than one-third of the world’s heat deaths each year are due directly to global warming, according to the latest study to calculate the human cost of climate change.

 

But scientists say that’s only a sliver of climate’s overall toll — even more people die from other extreme weather amplified by global warming such as storms, flooding and drought — and the heat death numbers will grow exponentially with rising temperatures.

Dozens of researchers who looked at heat deaths in 732 cities around the globe from 1991 to 2018 calculated that 37% were caused by higher temperatures from human-caused warming, according to a study Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

That amounts to about 9,700 people a year from just those cities, but it is much more worldwide, the study’s lead author said.

“These are deaths related to heat that actually can be prevented. It is something we directly cause,” said Ana Vicedo-Cabrera, an epidemiologist at the Institute of Social and Preventative Medicine at the University of Bern in Switzerland.

The highest percentages of heat deaths caused by climate change were in cities in South America. Vicedo-Cabrera pointed to southern Europe and southern Asia as other hot spots for climate change-related heat deaths.

Sao Paulo, Brazil, has the most climate-related heat deaths, averaging 239 a year, researchers found.

About 35% of heat deaths in the United States can be blamed on climate change, the study found. That’s a total of more than 1,100 deaths a year in about 200 U.S. cities, topped by 141 in New York. Honolulu had the highest portion of heat deaths attributable to climate change, 82%.

Scientists used decades of mortality data in the 732 cities to plot curves detailing how each city’s death rate changes with temperature and how the heat-death curves vary from city to city. Some cities adapt to heat better than others because of air conditioning, cultural factors and environmental conditions, Vicedo-Cabrera said.

Then researchers took observed temperatures and compared them with 10 computer models simulating a world without climate change. The difference is warming humans caused. By applying that scientifically accepted technique to the individualized heat-death curves for the 732 cities, the scientists calculated extra heat deaths from climate change.

“People continue to ask for proof that climate change is already affecting our health. This attribution study directly answers that question using state-of-the-science epidemiological methods, and the amount of data the authors have amassed for analysis is impressive,” said Dr. Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin.

Patz, who wasn’t part of the study, said it was one of the first to detail climate change-related heat deaths now, rather than in the future.

‘Big risk’: California farmers hit by drought change planting plans

‘Big risk’: California farmers hit by drought change planting plans

Norma Galeana and Christopher Walljasper         June 1, 2021

 

FIREBAUGH, Calif. (Reuters) – Joe Del Bosque is leaving a third of his 2,000-acre farm near Firebaugh, California, unseeded this year due to extreme drought. Yet, he hopes to access enough water to produce a marketable melon crop.

Farmers across California say they expect to receive little water from state and federal agencies that regulate the state’s reservoirs and canals, leading many to leave fields barren, plant more drought-tolerant crops or seek new income sources all-together.

“We’re taking a big risk in planting crops and hoping the water gets here in time,” said Del Bosque, 72.

Agriculture is an important part of California’s economy and the state is a top producer of vegetables, berries, nuts and dairy products. The last major drought from 2012 to 2017 reduced irrigation supplies to farmers, forced strict household conservation measures and stoked deadly wildfires.

California farmers are allocated water from the state based on seniority and need, but farmers say water needs of cities and environmental restrictions reduce agricultural access.

Nearly 40% of California’s 24.6 million acres of farmland are irrigated, with crops like almonds and grapes in some regions needing more water to thrive.

“I’m going to be reducing some of our almond acreage. I may be increasing some of our row crops, like tomatoes,” said Stuart Woolf, who operates 30,000 acres, most of it in Western Fresno County. He may fallow 30% of his land.

Del Bosque, who grows melons, asparagus, sweet corn, almonds and cherries, said his operation could lose more than half a million dollars in income, and put many of his 700 workers out of work. He and other farmers say drought has been exacerbated by California’s lack of investment in water storage infrastructure over the last 40 years.

“Fundamentally, a storage project is paid for by the people who want the water,” said Jeanine Jones, drought manager for California’s Department of Water Resources. “All we can do is deliver what mother nature provides.”

New dams face environmental restrictions meant to protect endangered fish and other wildlife, and don’t solve near-term water needs, said Ernest Conant, regional director of the Bureau of Reclamation, California-Great Basin region, the federal agency that overseas dams, canals and water allocations in the Western United States.

“We simply don’t have enough water to supply our agricultural users,” said Conant. “We’re hopeful some water can be moved sooner than October, but there’s no guarantees.”

Water scarcity threatens Del Bosque’s watermelon crop, which is due to be harvested in August. But it also has dire consequences for those planting it.

“If there is no water, there is no work. And for us farm workers, how are we going to support the family?” said 57-year-old Pablo Barrera, who was planting watermelons for Del Bosque.

Woolf said as the state continues to restrict water access, he’s exploring ways to generate income off the land he can no longer irrigate, including installing solar arrays and planting Agave, normally grown in Mexico to make tequila.

“You’ve got to absorb all of your farming costs on the few acres that you’re farming,” he said. “How do we maximize the value of the land that we are not farming?”

(Reporting by Norma Galeana in Firebaugh, California and Christopher Walljasper; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Diane Craft)

Pulling power: the green lure of Sweden’s industrial far north

Pulling power: the green lure of Sweden’s industrial far north

 

* Far north has lowest unemployment rate in Sweden

* Renewable power used from 1950’s onwards to cut costs

* Region to attract $120 bln investment in coming 10 years

STOCKHOLM, May 31 (Reuters) – Long home to polluting industries, the hydro and wind power of Sweden’s far north is set to reduce the country’s carbon footprint as it lures low-emission manufacturers and creates thousands of jobs for those willing to brave the dark and cold.

Known internationally for reindeer and spectacular views of the Northern Lights, the region also has a surplus of cheap, renewable electricity needed by energy-intensive industries under pressure from shareholders and regulators to help curb global warming.

Planned investments, including the production of fossil-free steel and electric vehicle (EV) batteries, will exceed 1,000 billion crowns ($120 billion) in the next decade, Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson estimates.

“Job creation from the green transformation is not something that will happen in the future, it is happening in Sweden now,” she said in a presentation in May.

EVs are a major part of the European Union’s roadmap to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

The bloc aims to have at least 30 million zero-emission vehicles on its roads by 2030 as it tackles the quarter of EU greenhouse gas emissions that come from the transport sector.

The need for the industry to meet legally-binding EU environmental standards, made Sweden’s far north and its green energy an obvious choice for battery maker Northvolt, partly-owned by auto giant Volkswagen.

It is initially investing around 4 billion euros ($4.88 billion) in a gigafactory in Skelleftea, some 800 km (500 miles) due north of the capital Stockholm, to produce batteries with 40 gigawatt-hours of energy storage by 2024 – enough to power between 700,000-800,000 electric vehicles.

“Access to the hydropower infrastructure … in Skelleftea was really essential,” Northvolt CEO Peter Carlsson said, citing local electricity costs of around one third of those in Germany and one fifth of those in China.

The jobs created are an opportunity for the relatively small local population and are also drawing in newcomers.

“Of course, I wish it were a little warmer,” said Senior Director Of Commissioning at Northvolt Christopher Gorelczenko, a U.S. citizen who arrived late last year to set up the gigafactory.

CHEAP AND CLEAN

Sweden invested heavily in hydro power in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, with the aim of containing costs for its industry and being globally competitive. Many of the power plants are in the far north.

Over the last decade, the focus has been wind power, which provides around 20% of Sweden’s electricity.

Carlsson, a former executive at Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc. , estimated the overall carbon footprint for Northvolt’s batteries would be around a quarter of that of an equivalent power pack from China.

Cheap renewable energy was a also major draw for Hybrit, a joint venture between ore miner LKAB, state-owned energy company Vattenfall and steel-maker SSAB, which aims to produce fossil-free steel in Gallivare, above the Arctic Circle.

Rival H2 Green Steel aims to produce five million tons of fossil-free steel by 2030 in Boden, just south of the Arctic zone and not far from Lulea, where Hybrit has a small-scale, pilot fossil-free steel plant.

Facebook’s first data center entirely powered by renewable energy is in Lulea, where it has invested more than 8.7 billion crowns.

SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

“I think it is a bit of window into the future, of what industrial development is going to look even in other countries,” Mikael Nordlander, state-owned utility Vattenfall’s Head of R&D portfolio, Industry Decarbonisation, said.

Norrbotten county – which includes Lulea – and where LKAB’s and Boliden’s giant Kiruna and Aitik mines are located – accounted for around 11% of Sweden’s total greenhouse gas emissions in 2016, the local authority said.

“Previously, it was industry that was dragging down our climate work,” Carina Sammeli, mayor of Lulea, a city of around 80,000, said. “But now it’s industry that is driving the change.”

Sweden emitted 4.26 tons of carbon dioxide per capita in 2017 compared to a global average of 4.8 tons per person, the Our World In Data website shows. Fossil-free steel production alone could reduce Sweden’s emissions by around 10%, Hybrit says.

The boom has created thousands of jobs, both direct and indirect.

“If you are looking for a job, it might be time to look at moving to the North,” Employment Minister Eva Nordmark said in April.

Unemployment in Norbotten and Vasterbotten – the top third of Sweden geographically – was the lowest in the country at 6.7% and 6.4% respectively, in 2020 against a national average of 8.5%, Sweden’s Public Employment Service said, partly because of the transition to green industry.

H2 Green Steel reckons its plant in Boden – around 40 kilometers from Lulea – will create 10,000 new direct and indirect jobs.

Sammeli says Lulea – where daylight can be as short as 3-1/2 hours in winter but where in summer, it does not really get dark – will need an extra 25,000 new residents to fill the demand for labour over the next 20 years.

“We haven’t grown much for years and haven’t really needed to build much until recently,” she said. “Now we have big challenges in terms of planning, water and sewage capacity in order to build new residential areas.” ($1 = 0.8198 euros) ($1 = 8.2999 Swedish crowns)

(Reporting by Simon Johnson; Editing by Mark John and Barbara Lewis)

Louisiana coast still hurting from storms, bracing for more

Louisiana coast still hurting from storms, bracing for more

Rebecca Santana                            May 30, 2021

 

CAMERON, La. (AP) — Scores of people in coastal Louisiana are still living in campers on dirt mounds or next to cement slabs where their houses once stood. Unresolved insurance claims and a shortage of supply and labor are stymieing building efforts. And weather forecasters are warning of more possible devastation to come.

Nine months after two back-to-back hurricanes hammered their towns, residents are still struggling to recover — even as they brace for another onslaught of storms in the season that starts Tuesday.

“We’re scared to death for this next season,” said Clarence Dyson, who is staying with his wife and four kids in a 35-foot-long (11-meter-long) camper with bunk beds while the home they had been renting in Cameron Parish undergoes repairs after Hurricane Laura.

The parish — a Louisiana designation similar to a county — is made up of small communities on the southwestern coast where residents have lived for generations, either working in the shrimp industry or more recently at one of the area’s liquefied natural gas plants.

The region features a stunning, peaceful landscape where families go crabbing together, birds perch on swaying strands of marsh grass and wind-gnarled oak trees grow on the long ridges — called cheniers — that rise above the marsh. About 70% of the parish is wetlands or open water.

Last fall, however, the area was battered by hurricanes that carved a path of destruction. On Aug. 27, Category 4 Hurricane Laura rammed into the coast near the town of Cameron with maximum winds of 150 mph (241 kph). Just six weeks later, Hurricane Delta, carrying 97-mph (156-kph) winds, made landfall about 10 miles (16 kilometers) away.

Of the several communities hit, the towns of Cameron, Creole and Grand Chenier, in Cameron Parish, took the worst beating. Laura flattened homes, nearly gutted the First Baptist church, stripped trees of their branches and leaves and toppled power lines.

Nine months later, the parish’s electric lines have been replaced by ramrod straight poles. Oak trees denuded of leaves and branches are started to sprout new growth. Piles of debris have been hauled away. And Booth’s Grocery Store, in business since 1957, is once again selling beer and bait.

But for most of the parish, recovery is still an ongoing process. Cement slabs and mounds of dirt still mark the place where homes used to be. The sounds synonymous with rebuilding — the whine of circular saws cutting lumber or nail guns hammering shingles — are rare.

Building contractors are in short supply; most are already slammed with work in the more densely populated, hurricane-damaged Lake Charles area farther north. Lumber prices have soared due to a trade dispute with Canada and a temporary shutdown in production when the coronavirus pandemic hit a year ago.

Leaders of the First Baptist Church in Cameron have been trying to get a contractor to come out and give them a quote so they can apply for a building permit. Most of the church has been gutted to the studs, with pews currently stacked in the building’s center. This is the fourth hurricane the small congregation has survived as well as one fire, said Cyndi Sellers, a longtime church member who was baptized and married there.

In the meantime, the small congregation holds services in the meeting room of the parish’s governing body. They try to soften the space with plastic sunflowers and a blue cloth across the podium. A cross with a Bible verse attached to it stands on a table.

Sellers says rebuilding will help the congregation.

“They need to be able to worship together on Sunday, to be able to have that family and to have that support — emotional, spiritual support — to get through what they’re going through,” she said. “And they’re going through a lot.”

Sellers has gone through quite a bit herself. As a young child, she took refuge in the Cameron Parish courthouse when Hurricane Audrey hit in 1957, and has seen many other storms in the more than 60 years since. Finally, after Laura, she and her husband had had enough and decided to move inland to a town about two hours away.

“The stress that you go through when there’s a storm in the Gulf, if you don’t live on the coast you can’t really imagine what it’s like,” she said.

Meanwhile, forecasters with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are predicting 13 to 20 named storms — six to 10 of which will become hurricanes and three to five of which will be major hurricanes — for this year’s Atlantic season, which runs from June through November.

The stress of rebuilding and worry about future storms have prompted some to consider moving inland. But many who did just that after Hurricane Rita in 2005 were still unable to escape Laura’s wrath. The 2020 storm was so powerful, it was still a hurricane when it hit Shreveport about 200 miles (322 kilometers) north of the coast.

Clarence Dyson and his wife considered leaving but decided to stay — he is working at an LNG plant being built in Cameron. He also used to catch shrimp, but his boat was destroyed by Laura.

Federal officials just recently made it a little easier for residents to stay on their properties while they rebuild, by allowing the trailers it provides to be placed on lots that lie in the flood plain.

The movable living quarters can be seen everywhere, often parked near the cleared slabs and elevated mounds where houses used to be. Some residents intend to build something more permanent. But not 67-year-old Margaret Little. She plans to stay in a one-bedroom trailer that can be hooked to a truck and hauled away when the next hurricane comes.

Like Sellers, Little lived through Hurricane Audrey. She remembers holding on to a fence for dear life and how her dog had to fight off snakes when the family found refuge in a pump house.

Hurricane Rita took her nice brick house in Grand Chenier. Then Laura wiped out the trailer she’d bought to replace it. By the time Delta came, there was nothing left to take.

Little’s husband loves to crab and shrimp, and they have replanted the fruit trees they lost in Laura. But she draws the line at permanently rebuilding.

“I can’t lose another house. I just can’t,” she said.

Chemicals, pipelines destroying Black communities today. And poor of color are dying.

Chemicals, pipelines destroying Black communities today. And poor of color are dying.

The Rev. William J. Barber II                    May 30, 2021

 

Along the Mississippi River in Louisiana, land where Black people were once enslaved on plantations is now being poisoned by petrochemical plants that have given the place a new name: Cancer Alley. In the fall of 2019, Robert Taylor told a Poor People’s Campaign gathering there about the toll of watching his family and neighbors die. Taylor’s daughter has a rare disease that her doctor told her she had a 1 in 5 million chance of contracting. She has since learned that three other neighbors are dying of the same disease.

Robert Taylor talks about his family struggles with chemical poisoning. His daughter contracted a rare disease, and so did her neighbors.
Robert Taylor talks about his family struggles with chemical poisoning. His daughter contracted a rare disease, and so did her neighbors.

 

Four hundred miles north in Memphis, Tennessee, Black residents invited the Poor People’s Campaign to support their organizing to stop the Byhalia Pipeline. The proposed crude oil pipeline would repeat the systemic racism of the 1970s urban renewal by running the line through Memphis’ African American communities. In this place where Ida B. Wells once challenged the lies used to justify lynching, Black Memphians are again resisting lies that would harm their community.

More than 150 years after slavery was abolished in the United States, descendants of enslaved Americans continue to challenge systemic racism because they experience the ongoing impact of America’s original sin on the very land where it first occurred.

But slavery’s legacy doesn’t stop in those communities.

Neighborhoods of color across the country are hit by industrial waste and air pollution and deprived of green spaces at significantly higher rates than white communities. Poverty, redlining (a practice that segregated housing) and the overwhelming lack of diversity in the environmental space keep the cycle of pollution and community destruction concentrated in Black America.

In fact, whites in America experience 17% less air pollution than they cause. Black people experience 56% more than their consumption causes, according to a 2019 study.

Follow the family lines of the Great Migration to Chicago, Illinois, and Flint, Michigan, and you find African American communities where families can buy unleaded gas but not unleaded water. There, too, welfare-rights unions have joined the Poor People’s Campaign because their members work two and three jobs but still cannot afford a decent home for their families. In recent weeks, our partners on the Southeast side of Chicago won a struggle to keep a processing plant from moving from predominantly white Lincoln Park into their neighborhood.

The Poor People’s Campaign has joined with grassroots movements across the USA to highlight the 140 million Americans who are poor or low-income in the richest nation in the history of the world.

While poverty touches every race, creed and culture, 60% of African Americans are poor or low-income (compared with 33% of white Americans) because the promise of 40 acres and a mule was never fulfilled for the formerly enslaved. Whether you live in St. James Parish, Louisiana, or Flint, Michigan, the nation’s failure to pay reparations continues to echo through the African American community.

Black people have been denied the fruit of our labor through Jim Crow laws, convict leasing and the redlining and urban renewal that have destroyed Black neighborhoods.

Today’s racial wealth gap is clear evidence that reparations are needed.

For generations, an economic system built by white male property owners has consolidated more and more wealth in the hands of a few, leading to income inequality that hurts people of every race.

A tax on that accumulated wealth to repay the descendants of the people who have been systematically abused by this economy would do more than render justice too long denied. It would give Black Americans the opportunity to demonstrate how wealth can be invested in ways that benefit the whole and help us imagine a world where no one needs to live in poverty.

The Rev. William J. Barber II is the president of Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign.

Experts Predict Summer 2021 Will Be a ‘Tick Time Bomb’—Here’s How to Stay Safe

Experts Predict Summer 2021 Will Be a ‘Tick Time Bomb’—Here’s How to Stay Safe

Korin Miller                          May 30, 2021
Photo credit: rbkomar - Getty Images
Photo credit: rbkomar – Getty Images

  • Experts predict summer 2021 will be a “tick time bomb.”
  • Due to a mild winter, most parts of the country are already seeing more ticks this season than last year, as the tiny insects thrive in humidity.
  • Here’s how to protect yourself from tick bites, which can lead to various illnesses including Lyme disease.

Every summer, we hear the same warning: It’s going to be a bad year for ticks. But entomologists (a.k.a. insect experts) say that 2021 could live up to that message. In fact, The Weather Channel even referred to this year as a “tick time bomb.”

Robert Lockwood, associate certified entomologist for Ehrlich Pest Control, says experts are already noticing a thriving tick population in 2021. “Due to the mild winters and climate change, we are already seeing more ticks this season than last year,” he says.

Why does a wet winter matter? Ticks thrive in humidity. As a result, “regions that experienced wetter and warmer winters will have higher tick populations this spring and summer,” says Ben Hottel, Ph.D., technical services manager for Orkin.

The warmer and moister an environment becomes, “the faster the arthropod life cycle is completed,” explains Anna Berry, a board-certified entomologist and technical manager at Terminix. “When it gets very cold, very hot, or very dry, it may take longer to go from one stage of development to the next.” A wet winter and spring, along with warm temperatures, “provides the necessary warmth and humidity for fast development,” she says.

Ticks also need hosts like deer, mice, and birds, to survive, and those hosts also tend to thrive in warm, wet weather, Berry says.

The problem is, these minuscule pests aren’t just hanging out—they’re biting people, says Jean I. Tsao, Ph.D., associate professor in the Departments of Fisheries & Wildlife and Large Animal Clinical Sciences at Michigan State University. She cites data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that show tick bites are already trending higher than past years for this week.

“Although this is not the case for the entire U.S., this is the case for the South Central, Northeast, and Midwest regions,” Tsao says. “In these regions, the American dog tick is very active now; and in the Northeast and Midwest, the blacklegged tick is also active.” Both species are known to carry diseases, including Rocky Mountain spotted fever and Lyme disease, respectively.

What do ticks look like, again?

Most adult ticks are about the size of an apple seed or pencil eraser, but they can be as small as the size of a poppyseed. They don’t have wings, and are flat and oval until they have a blood meal, Berry says. The color varies depending on the type of tick; it can look grayish-white, brown, black, reddish-brown, or yellowish.

How to protect yourself from ticks

To prevent bites, the CDC recommends applying a tick repellent that contains at least 20% DEET, picaridin, or IR3535 on exposed skin and avoiding wooded and brushy areas with high grass and leaf litter (a.k.a. tick minefields). You can also treat your clothes and gear with a product that contains 0.5% permethrin, a powerful insecticide.

If you go hiking, walk in the center of trails instead of near brush, where ticks are likely to be hanging out. When you come inside after a day outdoors, try to shower within two hours to ensure any lingering critters are washed away. You’ll also want to do a close, full-body tick check with a mirror (or have someone you trust inspect you).

You can throw your clothes directly into the washer, but you’ll want to do so on high heat, the CDC says. If you don’t want to wash your clothes, toss them in your dryer and run the machine on high for 10 minutes to ensure ticks are killed.

You can protect your property from ticks by landscaping, Hottel says. “Keeping your lawn regularly mowed, creating a barrier between overgrown shrubs and your property, and reducing leaf litter will reduce the presence of all tick species,” he says. (Check out our in-depth guide on how to keep ticks away from your home.)

What to do if you spot a tick on your body

If you find a tick on your body, the CDC recommends removing it as soon as possible. Here’s how:

  • Use fine-tipped tweezers to grasp the tick as close to your skin’s surface as possible.
  • Pull upward with steady, even pressure. (Don’t twist or jerk the tick—that can cause the mouthparts to break off and remain in your skin.)
  • Clean the bite area and your hands with rubbing alcohol or soap and water.
  • Dispose of the tick by flushing it down the toilet or putting it in alcohol, placing it in a sealed bag or container, and wrapping it tightly in tape. (Many people prefer to keep the tick, just in case they experience odd symptoms and need the insect for testing.)

It’s unclear what will happen with tick populations through the rest of the summer. Tsao says certain parts of the country are now starting to see a lack in moisture. “If the drought continues, then our tick boom most likely will subside,” she says.

Ticks can rehydrate if the air under leaf litter is moist, but if the humidity drops below 82-25% for an extended period, the ticks start to die. “The greater the frequency of these drying periods,” Tsao says, “the higher the mortality rate of the ticks.”

Until then, stay safe during those outdoor adventures!

Outrage as regulators let pesticides from factory pollute US town for years

Outrage as regulators let pesticides from factory pollute US town for years

Carey Gillam                             May 29, 2021

 

For years, the people of Mead, Nebraska, have worried about the ethanol plant that moved into their small rural community a little over a decade ago. They feared the terrible smells and odd illnesses in the area might be connected to the plant and its use of pesticide-coated seed corn in its biofuel production process.

Those concerns recently turned to outrage and anger after environmental regulators were forced to acknowledge that under their oversight the AltEn LLC ethanol plant has been contaminating the area with an array of pesticides at levels much higher than what is considered safe.

The contamination has been ongoing for years, exacerbated through accidental spills and leaks of the plant’s pesticide-laden waste, which has been stored in poorly maintained lagoons and piled into hills of a putrid lime-green mash called “wet cake”. The company had also distributed the waste to area farmers for spreading across fields as “soil conditioner”.

It was only earlier this year – after media reports exposed the problems – that state officials ordered the plant to close, and began efforts to clean up what many in the community see as a sprawling environmental disaster.

The state attorney general’s office then sued the company for multiple alleged environmental violations, citing “an ongoing threat to the environment”, and late last month Nebraska lawmakers passed a bill restricting the use of pesticide-treated seeds for ethanol production.

Residents of Mead say the crackdown on the plant is welcomed, but, in many respects, is far too late. The lingering impact of the pollution won’t simply end with the new law, nor will many of the industrial agriculture practices that caused it. Instead, the pollution continues to wreak havoc and there are fears that Mead’s trauma may be repeated in other small towns across the state where large-scale industrial agriculture practices continue.

The pollution continues to wreak havoc and there are fears that Mead’s trauma may be repeated in other small towns across the state

“I believe this is an environmental failure of colossal proportions and the blame can be squarely laid at the feet of the governor and his staff who simply closed their eyes to the environmental damage being done,” former Nebraska state senator Al Davis told the Guardian.

Fish die-offs are reported miles downstream from the plant. University researchers have reported the decimation of dozens of honeybee colonies, and state officials have received reports of sick and dying geese and other birds, as well as disoriented dogs and unexplained ailments in people.

Regulators said they have found unsafe pesticide levels in a farm pond, and water used for drinking and for irrigating crops is also feared contaminated, according to records within the Nebraska department of environment and energy (NDEE). Pesticide residues have been detected in soil samples taken from an area park.

Meanwhile, AltEn lagoons are awash in millions of gallons of pesticide-laden wastewater and 84,000m pounds of distillers grains byproduct sit in piles around the plant. State tests on the water and the byproduct show staggeringly high levels of several pesticides associated with a range of health problems for people and wildlife.

Carol Blood, a Nebraska state senator, said the situation in and around Mead, a tiny village of roughly 500 people, is “dire”. She is pushing for an investigation into AltEn’s practices and is planning a series of public meetings across the state to help evaluate the scope of the environmental damage. “Based on the scale of the issue … it is an environmental catastrophe,” Blood said.

Neither the NDEE nor the governor’s office would answer questions about the situation posed by the Guardian.

AltEn attorney Stephen Mossman also declined to comment and AltEn’s general manager, Scott Tingelhoff, did not reply to requests to discuss the situation.

Seed companies

The pesticides creating the problems in and around Mead came from some of the world’s largest agricultural companies, who make and sell seeds coated in different types of chemicals as a tool for protecting growing crops from damaging insects and disease.

AltEn advertised itself as a “green recycling” location where agricultural companies could dispose of unwanted supplies of these pesticide-treated seeds. Bayer AG, which owns Monsanto, along with Syngenta, Corteva, and other large companies, were among those dumping seeds coated with an array of insecticides and fungicides at AltEn, according to AltEn marketing materials.

The pesticides creating the problems in and around Mead came from some of the world’s largest agricultural companies

The companies could rid themselves of pesticide-coated corn, wheat and sorghum seed free of charge at AltEn, and pay a fee to dispose of soybean and other types of treated seeds, under the AltEn program.

The companies are now actively involved in the clean-up. Emails between state regulators and Bayer’s senior remediation manager, Mark Bowers, show Bayer overseeing a range of actions on the AltEn site. Among other actions, Bayer is trying to lease farmland in the area to house storage tanks for AltEn waste, and is working on a plan to spread the plant’s wastewater over area fields after the water is treated to reduce pesticide levels.

In a statement, Bayer said it was addressing “priorities in the management of wastewater and wet cake along with the development of a remediation plan stewarded by the State of Nebraska”.

Syngenta said it was working with the other seed companies on “voluntary response activities”, and is “committed to proper stewardship for the safe use of treated seeds”.

Corteva confirmed it was part of the team working to “address environmental conditions at the AltEn site”.

None of the companies would answer questions about how much of the pesticide-laced seed they deposited at AltEn over the years. A source close to the companies said they believed AltEn would handle the seeds responsibly and they were not culpable in the contamination.

A history of trouble

The ethanol plant was first introduced to Mead in 2007 as part of a “closed-loop” system developed by a company called E3 Biofuels. A 30,000-head cattle operation was set up adjacent to the ethanol facility. Operators said they would process manure from the animals into methane gas to help power the plant and use manure to fertilize corn fields. Wet distillers’ grains made as a byproduct could be fed back to the cattle, a common industry practice.

But after just a few months, the plant closed and E3 filed for bankruptcy in late 2007. AltEn later restarted the plant, telling regulators in 2013 the plant would be using grain, “mainly corn”, as its primary raw material.

Nebraska regulators discovered in 2015, however, that AltEn was using pesticide-coated seeds, one of only two ethanol plants in the United States known to do so. Records show by 2018 the regulators knew the byproducts contained “measurable” pesticide residues and by 2019 they knew the pesticides were present in “elevated concentrations”.

There are more Meads out there

Jane Kleeb

According to correspondence between the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the NDEE, tests run on AltEn’s wet cake and wastewater showed “very high levels of pesticide residues”, including neonicotinoids, which are known neurotoxins. The fact that the material had been applied to area fields meant the pesticides could leach into groundwater and be taken up into plant tissues, contaminating nectar and pollen and threatening wildlife, the EPA warned.

The NDEE ordered AltEn to stop distributing the waste for land application in 2019 because of the pesticide levels. But the agency did not stop the company from taking in more pesticide-coated seed.

Over the years, AltEn racked up multiple violations of environmental regulations, NDEE records show. But it was not until February of this year that NDEE ordered the plant to close until the contamination was cleaned up.

Only days after the shutdown, a pipe attached to a 4m-gallon digester tank broke, washing toxins into waterways and spreading them at least 4.5 miles away, according to regulators. In May, another leak was discovered in a pipe adjacent to a wastewater lagoon.

Monitoring health

While regulators sample water and soil, many area residents worry that the beef cattle operation adjacent to the AltEn plant has also been contaminated. They wonder how much the animals there may have been exposed to pesticide concentrates through their feed and water, and if people who consumed meat from those animals may have long-term health consequences.

“People want answers and action,” said Jane Kleeb, who chairs the Nebraska Democratic party and is pushing for resources, such as medical testing and water filtration, for the people in and around Mead.

Researchers from the University of Nebraska and Creighton University are now launching a 10-year study of the impacts on human and environmental health.

The situation is but the latest example of how industrial agricultural practices can create hazards dangerous to human and environmental health, according to Blood, who grew up on a farm in Hastings, Nebraska, and suspects cancers developed by many Hastings residents were linked to chemicals in the soil and water. The area was designated a federal superfund site because of the contamination.

“There is a lot of stuff like this that goes on in a lot of these small towns,” she said. “There are more Meads out there.”

Another tick-borne illness may be a growing problem

Another tick-borne illness may be a growing problem

Abby Alten Schwartz                          May 29, 2021

 

Jeff Naticchia wasn’t feeling well when he set off to work one Friday in late July 2017. The sales supervisor at Comcast was planning to work a half-day before a long-planned family weekend in Upstate New York. Instead, he called his wife, Crissy, from work and said to meet him at the emergency room. Something was wrong.

When Crissy arrived, she was shocked at what she saw: Her husband’s skin was yellowed, he seemed agitated and he couldn’t urinate.

Jeff was turning 51 and had been dieting and exercising to stay in shape, taking long walks in the state park that backed up to their home in Bucks County, Pa. He had always been healthy, although earlier that month, he started getting fevers and night sweats and had gone to a local urgent care clinic. He was given a urine test, diagnosed with a kidney infection and prescribed antibiotics. Briefly, he seemed to improve.

But now, doctors in the ER examined Jeff, ordered tests and, with no immediate answers, admitted him to the hospital.

The next day, Jeff was weaker, sweating, unable to sleep. His breathing was labored. The whites of his eyes had yellowed, and his bilirubin was climbing, a sign that red blood cells were breaking down at an unusual rate or of liver trouble. The doctors moved Jeff to the intensive care unit, and placed him in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator. On Sunday, he was transferred to a hospital specializing in liver care.

Jeff’s symptoms resembled malaria. Could he have caught something in Costa Rica three months earlier? No, that timing didn’t make sense. Jeff was put on kidney dialysis. His team periodically woke him, and he would squeeze his wife’s hand.

Finally, on Tuesday, some potentially good news. An infectious-disease doctor at the hospital told Crissy, “We think we have a diagnosis.”

Jeff probably had babesiosis, a tick-borne infection that attacks red blood cells and appears to be growing in prevalence. Were there a lot of ticks or deer in her yard? Yes, she said, and later recalled that Jeff had pulled a tick off himself that summer, no bigger than a poppy seed. The doctor ordered an antibiotic and blood transfusion. Jeff’s condition was serious, he told her, but he was cautiously optimistic.

Babesiosis is most often caused by the tiny parasites Babesia microti and transmitted to humans in warmer months by deer ticks – the same ones that spread Lyme disease. It is rarely passed through blood transfusion.

Most U.S. cases occur in the Northeast and Upper Midwest, but babesiosis does appear elsewhere, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Peter Krause, a senior research scientist at Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine, said that babesiosis is “increasing in frequency and geographic range.”

A recently published 12-year study of babesiosis among U.S. Medicare beneficiaries reported “substantially increasing babesiosis diagnosis trends” particularly in endemic states and “expansion of babesiosis infections in other states.”

In 2011, when the CDC began collecting data on babesiosis, 1,126 cases were reported. Today, over 2,000 cases of babesiosis are reported in the United States each year, although Krause said he believes the actual number is many times higher. He explained: Lyme is underreported by more than tenfold, both diseases are spread by the same tick, and babesiosis is harder to diagnose. While 30,000 cases of Lyme are reported each year, the CDC estimates the actual number to be closer to 476,000.

“Most diseases are underreported because the system relies on physicians sending in reports of cases and physicians are busy,” Krause said. Babesiosis may also go unreported due to asymptomatic and misdiagnosed infections, and reporting not being mandated in all states.

Most people infected with babesiosis are asymptomatic or have mild to moderate flu-like symptoms such as fatigue, chills, sweats, headache, body aches, nausea and loss of appetite, which can appear days or even months later. (There is no telltale rash as with Lyme disease.)

If diagnosed quickly, the disease can be easily treated with a combination of atovaquone and azithromycin for seven to 10 days. If a person’s immune system is impaired, babesiosis can be deadly and the medication will be given longer. Among those most at risk are the elderly; individuals with cancer, AIDS or other serious immuno-compromised conditions; people being treated with chemotherapy, high-dose steroids or rituximab, an antibody therapy often used against cancer or autoimmune diseases; or those without a spleen. Jeff’s spleen was removed in childhood after a bike accident.

If Jeff had been diagnosed early, when he first complained of night fevers, it might have been different for him. But at 4 a.m. on Thursday morning, the hospital called Crissy to tell her his blood pressure was dropping precipitously and she needed to come right away. She left immediately, without waking their children. Jeff died a few hours later.

Krause said “the rate of death among babesiosis patients who are immuno-compromised is as high as 20 percent.”

Where babesiosis is not endemic, urgent care and ER providers may not immediately think of the disease when someone comes in, since the symptoms can point to many things and none of them are specific to babesiosis. It requires a specific type of blood test to identify the parasite in red blood cells.

“It has to step up to the level of an infectious-disease specialist being brought in before it might get diagnosed, whereas in an area where it’s more prevalent, some of the front-line people, the emergency room doctors or urgent care doctors, might be a little more attuned to it,” said infectious-disease specialist Sorana Segal-Maurer, director of the Dr. James J. Rahal Jr. Division of Infectious Diseases at NewYork-Presbyterian Queens hospital.

Gary Wormser, chief of infectious diseases at New York Medical College and director and founder of the Lyme Disease Diagnostic Center, said deer ticks may transmit several diseases, including Lyme, babesiosis and anaplasmosis, which has symptoms and risk factors similar to babesiosis but is generally treated with a different medicine, doxycycline. With Lyme disease and babesiosis, he said, “the ticks have to be on you for a fairly long time before they transmit those particular infections.”

Chances of avoiding infection are likely if the tick is removed within 24 to 36 hours. After possible exposure to deer ticks, Wormser advised showering within two hours, running clothes in a hot dryer for at least 10 minutes and doing a total body check for ticks on the skin within 24 hours.

If you find a tick, the CDC recommends removing it with fine-tipped tweezers, grasping the tick close to the skin and pulling upward with steady pressure.

Since Jeff’s death, Crissy and her kids have worked to raise awareness of babesiosis, hoping to prevent other families from experiencing the heartbreak of losing a loved one.

Crissy said it is important to get out in nature – especially now with the pandemic having forced so many restrictions. But for those who live in areas where ticks are common, she said it is important to check your body for ticks when you come home.

Headwinds: Offshore wind will take time to carry factory jobs to U.S.

Headwinds: Offshore wind will take time to carry factory jobs to U.S.

Isla Binnie, Susanna Twidale and Nichola Groom    May 27, 2021

 

(Reuters) – When U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration approved the country’s first major offshore wind farm this month, it billed the move as the start of a new clean energy industry that by the end of the decade will create over 75,000 U.S. jobs.

Industry executives and analysts do not contest that claim, but they make a clarification: For the first several years at least, most of the manufacturing jobs stemming from the U.S. offshore wind industry will be in Europe.

Offshore wind project developers plan to ship massive blades, towers and other components for at least the initial wave of U.S. projects from factories in France, Spain and elsewhere before potentially opening up manufacturing plants on U.S. shores, according to Reuters interviews with executives from three of the world’s leading wind turbine makers.

That is because suppliers need to see a deep pipeline of approved U.S. projects, along with a clear set of regulatory incentives like federal and state tax breaks, before committing to siting and building new American factories, they say – a process that could take years.

“For the first projects, it’s probably necessary” to ship across the Atlantic, said Martin Gerhardt, head of offshore wind product management at Siemens Gamesa, the global offshore wind market leader in a comment typical of the group.

That underscores an uncomfortable truth for the Biden administration as it seeks to show political opponents that a transition away from fossil fuels to fight climate change can be good for the economy: many of the clean energy jobs he aims to create to offset losses in drilling and mining may not materialize until well after his time in the White House ends.

The administration has unveiled a goal to install 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind power capacity in U.S. waters by 2030 – roughly the amount that already exists in Europe’s two-decade old industry – a plan that it estimates will create 77,000 U.S.-based jobs while combating global climate change.

More than 2,000 turbines will be needed to meet the 30-GW target, according to Shashi Barla, an analyst at consultancy Wood Mackenzie. But U.S.-based factories probably will not materialize until 2024 or 2025, he said.

After that, Barla said he expects the U.S. supply chain to develop rapidly and to make around 70% of major components for the industry by 2030.

A White House official did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A Factory in Every State

This month, Washington took a big step toward its goal of launching the offshore wind industry by approving the Vineyard Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts, jointly owned by Avangrid Inc and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners.

That project, the first major offshore wind farm to get federal approval in the United States after more than a decade of stops and starts, is expected to produce enough electricity to power 400,000 homes in New England by 2023.

Vineyard Wind alone will create 3,600 U.S. jobs, according to company officials, though most of the project’s components will be manufactured in Europe due to the lack of an existing domestic supply chain.

U.S. company General Electric’s renewable division, GE Renewable Energy, will supply Vineyard Wind with 62 turbines. The major parts for those turbines, which are twice the height of the Statue of Liberty, including rotor blades and gear boxes, will be made in its factories in France.

Iberdrola, Avangrid’s Spanish parent company, says the contract to make the turbine foundations, meanwhile, will create around 400 jobs at the Windar Renovables factory in Spain.

Several other U.S. offshore wind project proposals have also been preparing orders from companies like GE and Siemens Gamesa, but they are awaiting federal regulatory approval before moving forward.

The manufacturers told Reuters they need those orders to become solid and reliable before contemplating investments in a U.S.-based supply chain for offshore wind.

Opening a factory is costly and time-consuming: they require permits and large amounts of space near the coast, said Christy Guthman, GE Renewables commercial leader of U.S. offshore.

“We definitely want to maximize our local content wherever possible, but we need to have that sustained volume year over year to look at potential investments in the U.S,” Guthman said.

Developers also need to navigate complex state-level demands on the industry, as governors compete to ensure that any future factories supplying the offshore wind industry are built within their borders.

New Jersey, for example, has asked bidders on its offshore wind supply contracts to specify how they will help the state become an industry hub, while a recent New York solicitation said investments that create sustainable in-state jobs would be given preference.

“We cannot have a factory in every state, that is not economic,” Siemens Gamesa Chief Executive Andreas Nauen said in an interview.

Nauen’s company is still deliberating over whether to open a specialized facility on the East Coast to service a proposed project for Dominion Energy in Virginia, having been named preferred supplier back in January 2020.

Siemens Gamesa, GE and Vestas already produce parts for smaller, onshore turbines in the United States, but locations including landlocked Kansas, Iowa, North Dakota and Colorado put them too far from the windy coasts to be of much use for larger offshore pieces.

Orsted and Equinor, meanwhile, have said they plan to open manufacturing for some parts to service U.S. offshore projects they have proposed, though many major parts would likely still be derived from established plants in Europe.

Political Turbulence

Suppliers have reason to be cautious. Clean energy expansion in the United States relies heavily on political will – which can shift from administration to administration.

Federal incentives for renewable energy projects have expired or experienced eleventh-hour extensions in Congress multiple times over the last decade. Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, meanwhile, had cancelled Vineyard Wind’s permit application during his term, throwing the entire industry into doubt until Biden revived the process.

That turbulence resounded in the supply chain. Vineyard Wind initially chose Vestas as its turbine supplier in 2018, but that contract expired as federal permitting dragged on.

The Biden White House has said it is aware that suppliers need airtight commitments to make investments in local manufacturing, and points out the administration has pledged $3 billion in public financing for offshore wind and transmission developers and component suppliers. It will also fund $230 million of port infrastructure projects to help encourage the industry.

The U.S. International Trade Commission, meanwhile, has imposed tariffs on imported wind towers from certain countries including Spain. While the move came at the request of two domestic producers of towers for the U.S. onshore wind industry, the tariffs would apply to offshore towers as well, increasing the economic incentive to open U.S. factories.

“We know that we need to create greater certainty for offshore wind projects,” U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Amanda Lefton said on a call with reporters on May 11.

Lefton has also acknowledged that competing state demands could be an obstacle for the industry.

“There’s been this healthy competition among states for who is the most aggressive,” Lefton said in an interview with Reuters. “But we stand to gain a lot more now by… rowing in the same direction on establishing the supply chain here.”

(Reporting by Isla Binnie in Madrid, Nichola Groom in Los Angeles, Susanna Twidale in London; editing by Richard Valdmanis and Marguerita Choy)