Corporate landlords are gobbling up mobile home parks and rapidly driving up rents — here’s why the space is so attractive to them
Vishesh Raisinghani – August 30, 2022
Corporate landlords are gobbling up mobile home parks and rapidly driving up rents — here’s why the space is so attractive to them
The hunt for yield has pushed private equity firms and professional investors into new segments of the real estate market.
In recent years, sophisticated investors have snapped up multi-family units and single-family homes. Now, corporate landlords are targeting the most cost-effective segment of the real estate market: mobile home parks.
The most affordable housing available
Manufactured homes or mobile homes are considered the most affordable non-subsidized housing option in America. That’s because the owners own only the prefabricated unit and not the land under the home. The land is usually leased from the landlord of a trailer park.
The average monthly rent for a mobile home in 2021 was $593. That’s significantly lower than the average one-bedroom condo rental rate of $1,450. The mobile park rental also often includes utilities and insurance.
Rents typically rise 4% to 6% annually and renters have the flexibility to move their housing unit to another park. These factors make the manufactured home highly attractive to low-income households.
As of 2020, nearly 22 million Americans lived in mobile homes. That’s 6.7% of the total population or about one in 15 people across the country. However, the economic inefficiencies that make these manufactured homes affordable also make them attractive to professional investors.
Investing in mobile home parks
Factors such as below-market rents and disrepair make mobile home parks attractive for investors seeking to add value. The typical mobile home park lot costs $10,000, which means 80 lots would be worth $800,000 on average.
Put simply, the entry price for these parks is much lower than multi-family apartments and condo buildings across the country.
Professional investors can also raise rents significantly to improve the valuation of the property. Attracting tenants with higher incomes or improving the park’s amenities and infrastructure are other value-add strategies that make this asset class appealing.
The fact that moving a typical mobile home costs between $3,000 to $10,000 also means that most tenants are unable to afford the move. This gives landlords immense pricing power.
Meanwhile, the yield is much higher. The capitalization rate (the ratio of net operating income to market price) could be as high as 9%, according to real estate partners Dave Reynolds and Frank Rolfe, who together are the fifth-largest owner of mobile home parks in the U.S.
The largest mobile park landlord is real estate veteran Sam Zell. Zell’s Equity LifeStyle Properties (ELS) owns 165,000 units across the country and the asset is a key element of his $5.4 billion fortune.
In recent years, larger investors such as Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and private equity firms such as The Carlyle Group, Brookfield, Blackstone, and Apollo have also added exposure to this asset class.
Even Warren Buffett is involved. His firm’s subsidiary, Clayton Homes, is the largest manufacturer of mobile homes in the U.S., and also operates two of the biggest mobile home lenders, 21st Mortgage Corp. and Vanderbilt Mortgage.
You can invest too
Retail investors looking for exposure to mobile home parks have plenty of options. Acquiring a park is, perhaps, the most straightforward way to access this asset class. However, publicly-listed stocks and real estate investment trusts offer exposure too.
Sam Zell’s Equity LifeStyle Properties is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker ELS. Sun Communities Inc. (SUI) owns 146,000 units across the U.S. and some in Canada, while Legacy Housing Corp. (LEGH) builds, sells, and finances manufactured homes.
Retail and institutional investors could see more upside from this segment as the economic inefficiencies are ironed out.
Dramatic increase in deadly US heat waves now likely inevitable, but experts say there’s still hope
Doyle Rice, USA TODAY – August 30, 2022
A dramatic increase in deadly heat waves is now probably inevitable, a study published Thursday says.
The authors say there’s still hope that global temperature increases resulting from human-caused climate change can be curbed, which would avert even more catastrophic heat in some areas on Earth.
“The frequency of extreme heat waves is likely to increase by 3 to 10 times by the end of the century, depending on where you live in the U.S.,” study lead author Lucas Vargas Zeppetello told USA TODAY.
The authors say their results highlight the need to reduce future greenhouse gas emissions and to protect populations, especially outdoor workers, against dangerous heat.
Heat already kills more Americans each year than any other weather hazard, including hurricanes, tornadoes and floods, according to the National Weather Service.
The findings suggest carbon dioxide emissions from human activity could drive increases in exposure to extreme temperatures in the coming decades, even if global warming is limited to 2 degrees C, in line with the Paris Agreement.
“The record-breaking heat events of recent summers will become much more common in places like North America and Europe,” said Vargas Zeppetello, who did the research as a doctoral student at the University of Washington and is now a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University.
High temperatures pose a threat to public health, with extreme heat contributing to heat cramps, heat exhaustion and chronic illnesses, according to the study.
“This is especially dangerous for hot and humid places like the South and Eastern Seaboard, but we’ve seen the consequences of extreme heat on the West Coast as well, so there really is no place in the U.S. where this will not be an issue,” Vargas Zeppetello said.
People in equatorial regions will suffer even more
The forecast is even more ominous in other parts of the world:
“For many places close to the equator, by 2100 more than half the year will be a challenge to work outside, even if we begin to curb emissions,” Vargas Zeppetello said.
In a worst-case scenario in which emissions remain unchecked until 2100, “extremely dangerous” conditions, in which humans should not be outdoors for any amount of time, could become common in countries closer to the equator – notably in India and sub-Saharan Africa.”
The study looks at the “heat index,” which measures the effect of heat on the human body. A “dangerous” heat index is defined by the Weather Service as 103 degrees. An “extremely dangerous” heat index is 124 degrees, which is considered unsafe to humans for any amount of time.
According to study co-author David Battisti, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, the number of days with dangerous levels of heat in the southeastern and central U.S. will more than double by as soon as 2050.
“It’s extremely frightening to think what would happen if 30 to 40 days a year were exceeding the extremely dangerous threshold,” Vargas Zeppetello said. “These are frightening scenarios that we still have the capacity to prevent. This study shows you the abyss, but it also shows you that we have some agency to prevent these scenarios from happening.”
Forget Covid (and Monkeypox) the Las Vegas Strip Has a Bigger Problem
Daniel Kline – August 25, 2022
Explosive growth has been a huge positive for the Las Vegas Strip but there are some dark clouds ahead.
Growth comes with a cost, especially when that growth was not in the original plans.
Think of it like you would an old town, versus a new one. In high-growth parts of the country, builders have created something called a “master-planned community,” that’s a town or city planned out fully. This means that before builders put up a single house or erect the first shopping center, they build (or at least plan) the infrastructure needed for the community when it’s fully built.
You can’t easily go back and make roads wider or increase the capacity of the sewage treatment plant. It’s much more cost-effective to plan for what might be decades out than to sort of build as you go (which is pretty much how every major American city was built and explains why those cities have expensive problems ranging from housing to transportation, and well water).
Las Vegas, as you likely know, was essentially built in a desert and it’s highly unlikely that its founding fathers foresaw the megaresorts of today. That has led to a city that has some significant infrastructure problems that need to be addressed as Sin City continues to exponentially grow.
A Period of Triumph for Post-Pandemic Las Vegas
While covid hasn’t actually gone anywhere, Las Vegas has managed to put the impact of the pandemic (and a hopefully brief monkeypox scare) behind it. Caesars Entertainment, MGM Resorts International, and Wynn Resorts have all reported Las Vegas Strip results nearing or passing 2019 numbers even while the convention and international traveler business has not yet fully recovered.
It’s a hopeful time for Las Vegas which has led to a construction boom with multiple major casino projects, at least one, probably two NBA-ready arenas being built, and even talk of expanding the boundaries of the Las Vegas Strip itself.
That’s all encouraging news for operators including Caesars, MGM, and Wynn, but Alan Feldman, a distinguished fellow at UNLVs International Gaming Institute, believes there’s one major problem which could put the brakes on Las Vegas growth.
Shutterstoc
Las Vegas Needs More Water
Feldman spoke at the NAIOP Southern Nevada (a commercial real estate group) breakfast meeting at the Orleans on Aug. 18. He warned that not having enough water could create major problems for Las Vegas — and certainly any new construction — going forward.
“This is a huge political discussion, but we’re going to need more water,” Feldman said during his presentation at the Orleans, the Las Vegas Sun reported. “I think, at some point, the federal government is going to have to step in and override some of the debate that’s been happening at the state and regional levels.”
Nevada draws water from the Colorado River which has essentially been providing more water than it actually has so the Department of Interior will be cutting Nevada’s allotment by 8%. The river flows into Lake Mead, a key water source for Las Vegas, which has seen its water levels drop.
Feldman believes there is a solution but does not think the city or even the state can handle the problem on their own.
“At some point in America’s future, we’re going to have to deal with desalination, I don’t see any way around that. That’s not something we’d want to see from the states. We’d want the federal government to step in on that,” he said.
Resorts only use about 5% of the region’s water allotment.
A deeper water shortage on Lake Mead is hardly the worst thing we’re facing
Joanna Allhands, Arizona Republic – August 25, 2022
The federal Bureau of Reclamation has declared a deeper level of water shortage for Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir.
But that was not the most consequential thing Reclamation announced – or, more accurately, skirted – on Aug. 16.
It’s also not the gargantuan cut that some media reports make it out to be.
If anything, we got off easy.
What did Reclamation declare?
A Tier 2a shortage is the deepest mandatory cut we have made to date, one that entails 592,000 acre-feet – 21% – of Arizona’s apportionment from Lake Mead. Nevada must cut 25,000 acre-feet (8%) and Mexico 104,000 acre-feet (7%).
These are significant amounts of water.
But considering that Arizona has already left 800,000 acre-feet of water in the lake this year – a combination of mandated cuts and voluntary, compensated conservation efforts – it’s not exactly a “drastic” cut, as one headline suggested.
Nor is it something new or unexpected. We’ve been planning for this for years.
Where were we before?
A sign marks Lake Mead’s 2002 water level — with the current shoreline far in the background — on July 9, 2022, near Boulder City, Nev.
Reclamation declared the first water shortage on Lake Mead last August – a Tier 1 shortage – which was created as part of a 2007 agreement that aimed to cut use when the lake hit certain low levels.
Arizona agreed to take the brunt of the cuts, and in a Tier 1 shortage, Arizona must trim 512,000 acre-feet of use. So, a Tier 2a ratchets that up for us by 80,000 acre-feet.
These amounts of water stem from the 2019 Drought Contingency Plan, which ratcheted up cuts when it became clear the 2007 amounts weren’t enough. California agreed to take cuts for the first time as part of that plan, but not until the lake reaches deeper levels of shortage (a Tier 2b shortage, to be exact, but more on that in a second).
Arizona also passed an internal Drought Contingency Plan in 2019 to help lessen the pain of cuts within the state. Pinal farmers – those with the lowest priority rights – were given a bit of water in 2022, plus some funding to help drill wells and transport that water to fields. That hasn’t produced the amount or quality of water that farmers had hoped, but that’s another blog for another day.
How will a Tier 2a shortage play out?
When the Tier 2a shortage goes live in 2023, Pinal farmers will receive no water from the Central Arizona Project, which delivers water to users from Phoenix to Tucson. They must now fully rely on groundwater to survive.
Then again, Pinal farmers were already in line to lose all of their CAP water in 2023, even if we remained in a Tier 1 shortage.
A Tier 2a shortage also will wipe out the next higher priority pool of CAP water – the so-called Non-Indian Agricultural pool. Most of that water goes to central Arizona cities and tribes.
Then again, they won’t necessarily be up a (suddenly dry) creek because the 2019 in-state plan mitigates 75% of their losses. In the grand scheme of things, it could be a lot worse.
Why did we get off easy?
This chart shows the key water levels in Lake Mead, which is used to determine water deliveries for Arizona, Nevada and California.
Shortage declarations are tied to specific lake levels. But Reclamation decided to fudge that with a concept they call “operational neutrality.”
It stems from an emergency action this spring to help prop up Lake Powell. Reclamation kept 480,000 acre-feet in Lake Powell that should have flowed downstream to Lake Mead, then promised to pretend that water was in Lake Mead when determining shortage levels.
The lake has physically reached the threshold to be in a deeper – and more consequential – Tier 2b shortage, one that would ratchet up Arizona’s cuts to 640,000 acre-feet and would require California to cut for the first time, to the tune of 200,000 acre-feet initially.
That’s important because everyone that relies on Lake Mead would be making mandatory cuts, leaving larger, guaranteed amounts of water in the lake as it is rapidly tanking.
Relying on voluntary savings doesn’t always pan out, as we found this year with the 500-plus plan, a separate emergency action (notice that there are a lot of these?) to prop up Lake Mead. The goal was to pay people to leave 500,000 acre-feet in the lake each year, but users only volunteered a little more than half of that in 2022 – mostly from Arizona.
The benefits of those savings evaporated almost immediately once they hit the lake. Essentially, we spent millions on actions that did almost nothing for lake levels.
So, if anything, a Tier 2a shortage is an underreaction, and at a crucial moment when we need to be doing so much more.
Why is this the least of our worries?
We could make every cut we’ve already laid out, all the way down to a Tier 3 shortage, the deepest for which we’ve planned.
And Lake Mead would still be on a freefall to “dead pool” – the point where lake levels fall so low that water can no longer flow downstream through Hoover Dam to users in Arizona, California and Mexico.
Reclamation’s August 24-month study, which was released at the same time as the Tier 2a shortage declaration, projects the lake will fall below 1,000 feet of elevation in 2024 – more than 20 feet below the minimum protection level that Reclamation had hoped to maintain.
Their modeling shows we need to cut at least 2.5 million acre-feet simply to maintain that minimum protection level on Lake Mead (and a similarly low protection level on Lake Powell, which also is tanking quickly).
And that’s on top of every water-saving action to which we’ve previously agreed.
So, what’s the takeaway?
We could carry out the cuts in a Tier 2a shortage, or a Tier 2b, or the deepest Tier 3, and it still wouldn’t be enough to keep Lake Mead on life support. We must cut way deeper than that in 2023 – and sustain those deep levels until at least 2026 – if we have any chance of saving it and Lake Powell.
And no, there is no plan yet to do so.
The states couldn’t agree by Reclamation’s mid-August deadline, and while Reclamation promised on Aug. 16 to keep working with states on as many voluntary measures as possible, it did not offer any firm deadlines, water amounts or what exactly it might mandate if states still can’t do enough to fill the giant chasm between supply and demand.
That’s the whole reason we’re in this mess. Despite all that we’ve done so far to trim use, we are still consuming far more water than the Colorado River produces.
A Tier 2a shortage, though painful and consequential, is not enough to solve this problem. Yet it’s unclear how or when we’re going to do enough to keep the lakes from dying.
‘There’s simply not enough water’: Colorado River cutbacks ripple across Arizona
Debra Utacia Krol, Arizona Republic – August 23, 2022
A view of the Hoover Dam and the Colorado River.
Up and down the Colorado River last week, the state, local and tribal leaders in charge of water supplies for more than 40 million people waited to see if the federal government would impose deeper cuts to river allocations.
The Bureau of Reclamation had given states and tribes an Aug. 15 deadline to find ways to conserve 2 to 4 million more acre-feet of water to stabilize the drought-stricken river and its two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Without such a plan, the bureau said, it would act.
The deadline passed with no agreement in place.
And on Tuesday, the government presented its 2023 water forecasts and said based on projected water levels at the two reservoirs, it would institute the next level of water reductions already agreed upon by the seven states and 30 federally recognized tribes within the Colorado River basin. The Drought Contingency Plan outlines specific steps Reclamation would take if the river flows continue to decline.
The next round of cuts to the three lower basin states and Mexico means that Arizona will have to do with 21% less water than in previous years. Nevada lost 8% of its delivery and Mexico’s allocation was reduced by 7%. The only lower basin state to be spared cuts is California, which holds senior rights to the river.
The bureau did not impose the deeper cuts as some had anticipated. Instead, Interior Department officials said talks would continue to come up with additional reductions as needed. The agency noted that the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act included $4 billion in money to address drought.
Few people were entirely satisfied with the government’s announcement, but one stakeholder went further than the others in expressing disappointment, introducing a new wrinkle in talks among the river’s water users.
The Gila River Indian Community said it would no longer voluntarily leave part of its Colorado River allocation in Lake Mead, an arrangement that helped Arizona meet the requirements of a regional agreement last year. Instead, tribal officials said in a statement Tuesday, Gila River would return to banking its water.
Tribes, agencies upset
In December 2021, the Gila River Indian Community and the Colorado River Indian Tribes signed onto an agreement to leave a combined 179,000 acre-feet of their river allotment in Lake Mead as a way to prop up the reservoir.
The agreement was part of a larger pact by several states and water districts to conserve 500,000 acre-feet per year in Lake Mead, where water levels were dropping rapidly. The pact was in addition to other conservation measures and was known as the 500+ plan.
The initiative was a pledge by the Interior Department as well as water agencies and tribes in the three Lower Basin states and stretched through 2023. The two tribes’ contributions made Arizona’s contribution to the effort possible.
Hoover Dam (top right) and Lake Mead on May 11, 2021, on the Arizona and Nevada border. A high-water mark or bathtub ring is visible on the shoreline. Lake Mead is down 152 vertical feet.
The Arizona Department of Water Resources committed up to $40 million to the plan over its two-year period, while the Central Arizona Project, the Metropolitan Water District in California and the Southern Nevada Water Authority each ponied up $20 million. The federal government matched those contributions for a $200 million pool to fund fallowing fields and other conservation measures.
But the failure to move forward on a longer term plan to firm up water supplies didn’t sit well with Gila River.
“The Community has been shocked and disappointed to see the complete lack of progress in reaching the kind of cooperative basin-wide plan necessary to save the Colorado River system,” said Gila River Governor Stephen Roe Lewis.
“We are aware that this approach will have a very significant impact on the ability of the State of Arizona to make any meaningful commitment to water reductions in the basin state discussions,” Lewis said, “but we cannot continue to put the interests of all others above our own when no other parties seem committed to the common goal of a cooperative basin-wide agreement.”
“What has been a slow-moving train wreck for twenty years is accelerating and our moment of reckoning is near.” Entsminger wrote. “The unreasonable expectations of water users, including the prices and drought profiteering proposals, only divide common goals and interests.”
Entsminger also outlined several steps the states, tribes and water agencies could take to minimize their use of Colorado River water, including agricultural efficiency enhancement, removing lawns, investing in water reuse, recycling and desalination programs and habitat restoration.
“We appreciate the support of Governor Lewis and the Gila River Indian Community for the recommended actions Nevada has put forth,” Entsminger said in an emailed statement. “Nevada stands ready to work with any partners who seek solutions based upon real world, equitable and sound scientific principles to the monumental challenges facing the Colorado River.”
In Arizona, officials looked for ways to repair the rift.
“The Gila River Indian Community has a been a big part of the positive actions Arizona has taken to protect Lake Mead in recent years,” the Central Arizona Project said in an emailed statement.
The agency praised the tribe for their work to develop the Drought Contingency Plan and in conserving water.
“We are understanding of the Community’s position that others need to be part of the Colorado River solution,” the CAP statement said. “We are hopeful that if a broader plan for taking action comes together that Arizona can support, the Community will choose to participate along with other Arizona water users.”
The Arizona Department of Water Resources declined comment on the statement.
The Colorado River Indian Tribes said it would continue to make water available for conservation through 2023.
“The Colorado River Indian Tribes are also development a multiyear farming and fallowing plan that includes additional conservation measures to be implement during 2023 and for many years thereafter,” said CRIT Chairwoman Amelia Flores.
Other water agencies and elected officials said they would continue to work with Reclamation to develop a longer-term plan to stabilize the reservoirs and assure at least some water would continue to flow.
Phoenix officials said in an emailed statement that although their water customers would not be affected by the cuts, the lack of action by federal officials was “disappointing.” The city gave up 23% of its river allocation to stabilize Lake Mead and support Pinal County farmers who lost river water when the first round of cuts was announced a year ago, the statement said.
The city is acting to ensure water deliveries and reduce dependence on the Colorado, officials said. A $300 million pipeline will move water to North Phoenix, which currently relies on the Colorado River for water. Phoenix is also restoring ecosystems in the Salt River, which provides 60% of the city’s water, the statement said. And, the city is beefing up infrastructure.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., said she would work with her newly-created water advisory council, state stakeholders and neighboring states to ensure a secure water future.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis (Gila River Indian Community) talk during the Water Advisory Council meeting, Aug. 8, 2022, in the Hoover Dam Spillway House, 75 Hoover Dam Access Road, Boulder City, Nevada.
“Arizona’s future depends on the strength and resiliency of our water supply,” she said via a spokesperson. “As the West continues experiencing historic drought, Arizona has led the way identifying short and long term solutions while shouldering a disproportionate share of this crisis.”
Sinema said that $13 billion had been secured for drought resiliency funding over the past year through several bills including the most recent act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and other legislation.
Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., wrote the Interior Department last week calling for the agency to outline its options to implement mitigation actions to prevent “drastic consequences for Arizona and other Colorado Basin states.” If the reservoirs’ levels continue to drop, those consequences could include the loss of hydropower generation and even to deadpool conditions, where no water would flow out of Lake Mead.
“In 2022 alone, Arizona farmers, cities, and tribes have pledged resources to conserve over 800,000 acre-feet of water — an amount equal to nearly one-third of our state’s full allocation,” Kelly said in the letter. He added that Arizona has offered to put more “wet” water on the table to be conserved than other states.
At least one congressman also called for more action from the federal government.
“The Colorado River is in crisis, and talks among basin states to fairly spread the pain of much-needed cutbacks are going nowhere,” said Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz.. “The federal government must play a stronger role. I’m urging the Administration to take immediate action to avoid catastrophe.”
Stanton said in a letter to President Joe Biden that the cuts announced Aug. 16 were already mandated by the Drought Contingency Plan, while in June, Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton said that unless another 2 to 4 million acre-feet were cut, the government would take action.
“Yesterday’s announcement proved that commitment hollow,” Stanton wrote.
One of the largest single water users on the river said it was ready to collaborate on further solutions. The Imperial Irrigation District in southern California manages an allocation of 3.1 million acre-feet, including pass through water, larger than Arizona’s entire Colorado River allocation of 2.8 million acre-feet.
Since 2003, the utility has conserved more than 7 million acre-feet of water according to an Aug. 16 statement. The district said it would work to conserve water and to help restore the Salton Sea, which has declined rapidly in recent years as the utility slashed agricultural runoff that fed the lake.
A view of the Colorado River as it flows through the Colorado River Indian Tribes’ Ahakhav Tribal Preserve in Parker on Nov. 13, 2021.
At least one water expert said he doesn’t believe the situation will improve in a year.
“The Colorado River is going to continue to decline,” said David Feldman, a professor at the University of California, Irvine and director of Water UCI, an institute that studies water problems facing the nation and the world.
He said many of the problems that have arisen from the plunging levels of Lake Mead and Lake Powell will be ongoing.
“So you have to start from the baseline that is simply not going to be any more surface water available from this point forward, at least not for the foreseeable future,” Feldman said. “The next steps, I believe, should be that each state should figure out a way to get user groups, local governments, water agencies, irrigation districts together in conversations about how they would negotiate targets for prescribed cutbacks based on water availability figures.”
Feldman said he understands Gila River’s stance.
“The drought did not cause the angst of tribal nations towards allocation agreements,” he said, but the drought has exacerbated it. “The tribes have been frustrated. The Navajo Nation, Hopi, others have been concerned for decades now about water allocation agreements on the Colorado and its tributaries.”
He also said the West is still not quite at the point to have a serious conversation about the future of water, “about our children and our children’s children.” Feldman said that if, as many forecasts predict, climate change is permanent and not just cyclical, water officials will need to plan far ahead.
“What are we going to do about the the water and the water needs and how are we going to plan to aggressively conserve?”
Strategies from recycling and reuse to landscaping all need to be on the table, he said, since outdoor irrigation accounts for one-third to one-half of urban water use. But just reducing urban outdoor use won’t be enough to address the shortages to come.
He also disputed some assertions that cities shouldn’t exist in arid lands. “The Mesopotamians did okay,” Feldman said, as well as the Huhugam in the Salt River Valley. Living in the desert, or having a lot of people, doesn’t by itself cause the problem, he said. “It’s how we live in that environment.”
Feldman pointed out that other arid parts of the world have done well, including Israel. “The Israelis have really become very savvy in the sense of not only developing the technologies, but then realizing there’s a market for it,” he said.
“We can live in a water scarce environment without sacrificing our quality of life,” Feldman said. “But we have to take it seriously.”
Debra Krol reports on Indigenous communities at the confluence of climate, culture and commerce in Arizona and the Intermountain West.
Coverage of Indigenous issues at the intersection of climate, culture and commerce is supported by the Catena Foundation.
Trump envoy releases letter from National Archives deemed ‘extraordinarily damning’ for Trump
Peter Weber, Senior editor – August 23, 2022
U.S. National Archives
The National Archives and Records Administration waited until May 12 to give the FBI access to the highly classified documents retrieved from former President Donald Trump in January, despite the Justice Department’s “urgent” requests for the materials, according to a letter from National Archivist Debra Wall released late Monday by conservative journalist John Solomon, one of Trump’s two authorized NARA liaisons.
The May 10 letter to Trump’s lawyers also affirms that the National Archives found more than 700 pages of classified documents, including “special access program materials” — among the most highly classified secrets in government — in the 15 boxes recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago complex. More classified material was taken from Mar-a-Lago by the FBI in June and August.
Much of the letter covers Wall’s rejection of a request by Trump’s lawyers to shield the documents from the FBI on executive privilege grounds. The White House counsel said President Biden “defers to my determination,” Wall wrote, and after discussions with the Office of Legal Counsel, “the question in this case is not a close one.”
“The executive branch here is seeking access to records belonging to, and in the custody of, the federal government itself,” Wall wrote, “not only in order to investigate whether those records were handled in an unlawful manner but also, as the National Security Division explained, to ‘conduct an assessment of the potential damage resulting from the apparent manner in which these materials were stored and transported and take any necessary remedial steps.'”
The letter released by Trump’s team is “extraordinarily damning for Trump” and his team, Politico‘s Kyle Cheney marveled on Twitter. “Trump allies pointed to this letter as some kind of evidence of Biden White House meddling,” but “what it shows is officials expressing extreme alarm about national security damage based on records being held by Trump.”
The NARA letter is “damning” to Trump “on any number of levels,” including its “lack of any reference to a claim by Trump’s representatives that he had declassified any of the classified materials,” adds University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck. “It’s also telling that, even though this letter really hurts the Trump version of events, it wasn’t released by the Biden Administration or NARA. It was released by Trump’s own team — both a self-inflicted wound and further proof of how the government has been playing by the rules.”
Economic Aid, Once Plentiful, Falls Off at a Painful Moment
Jim Tankersley – August 23, 2022
With the cost of living outpacing her pay, Tamela Clover has begun relying on a food pantry in Portland, Oregon. (Ivan McClellan/The New York Times)
PORTLAND, Ore. — For the better part of last year, the pandemic eased its grip on Oregon’s economy. Awash in federal assistance, including direct checks to individuals and parents, many of the state’s most vulnerable found it easier to afford food, housing and other daily staples.
Most of that aid, which was designed to be a temporary bridge, has run out at a particularly bad moment. Oregon, like states across the nation, has seen its economy improve, but prices for everything from eggs to gas to rent have spiked. Demand is growing at food banks such as William Temple House in Northwest Portland, where the line for necessities like bread, vegetables and toilet paper stretched two dozen people deep on a recent day.
“I’m very worried, like I was in the first month of the pandemic, that we will run out of food,” said Susannah Morgan, who runs the Oregon Food Bank, which helps supply William Temple House and 1,400 other meal assistance sites.
In March 2021, President Joe Biden signed into law a $1.9 trillion aid package aimed at helping people stay afloat when the economy was still reeling from the coronavirus. In addition to direct checks, the package included rental assistance and other measures meant to prevent evictions. It ensured free school lunches and offered expanded food assistance through several programs.
Those programs helped the U.S. economy recover far more quickly than many economists had expected, but they have run their course as prices soar at the fastest pace in 40 years. The Federal Reserve, in an attempt to tame inflation, is rapidly raising borrowing costs, slowing the economy’s growth and stoking fears of a recession. While the labor market remains remarkably strong, the Fed’s interest rate increases risk slamming the brakes on the economy and pushing millions of people out of work, which would hurt lower-wage workers and risk adding to evictions and food insecurity.
Several factors have driven prices higher in the last year, including a shift in spending toward goods such as couches and cars and away from services. Supply chain snarls, a buying frenzy in the housing market and an oil price spike surrounding the Russian invasion of Ukraine have also contributed. While gas prices have fallen in recent months, rent continues to rise, and food and other staples remain elevated.
Another factor fueling inflation, at least in small part, is the stimulus spending that helped speed the economy’s recovery and keep people out of poverty. More money in people’s bank accounts translated into more consumer spending.
While the extent to which the rescue package fed inflation remains a matter of disagreement, almost no one, in Washington or on the front lines of helping vulnerable people across the country, expects another round of federal aid even if the economy tips into a recession. Lawmakers have grown increasingly concerned that more stimulus could exacerbate rising prices.
In the meantime, the progress that the Biden administration hailed in fighting poverty last year has faded. The national child poverty rate and the food hardship rate for families with children, which dipped in 2021, have both rebounded to their highest levels since December 2020, according to researchers at Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy. Two in five Americans surveyed by the Census Bureau at the end of July said they had difficulty paying a usual household expense in the previous week, the highest rate in two years of the survey.
What is happening at the William Temple House is emblematic of the economic situation. Demand for food is swelling again, and officials here blame rising prices and lost federal aid. The people seeking help come from a wide variety of backgrounds: parents, retirees struggling to stretch Social Security benefits, immigrants who speak Mandarin, college graduates with jobs.
Waiting in line on a recent Wednesday, Susan B. Smith said federal aid had helped her family endure the pandemic over the last year. Direct payments, along with three months’ worth of rental assistance, “got us through a lot last winter,” she said. “Every little bit of help, we appreciate it. We just want to make it through, not starve.”
Now, most of that assistance is gone, and food and housing cost more, a reality that has forced Smith and one of her daughters, Tamela Clover, to seek help at the food pantry. Clover, a college graduate who works part time for a social services agency, said her salary had not kept pace with her cost of living: “Everything’s so expensive.”
Biden frequently acknowledges the high inflation is hurting people and has taken several steps to try to mitigate rising costs. He and his aides insist that while the pain is real, last year’s stimulus package has made the country and its most vulnerable people better positioned for any economic troubles ahead.
Administration officials point to a stronger job market, a lower eviction rate and healthier household finances than the nation has typically experienced at this point in a recovery from a recession, which the economy briefly entered early in the pandemic. They say the $350 billion that Congress gave to state, local and tribal governments should help fuel some assistance programs even after federal aid runs out.
The law “reduced significantly the degree of hardship, both over the last year and a half and going forward,” said Gene Sperling, a senior adviser to Biden who has overseen fulfillment of the law.
Last week, Biden signed into law a vast economic package that his administration says will help reduce inflation. It includes tax credits to stoke low-carbon energy, expanded premium supports for Americans who buy health insurance through the federal government and curbs on prescription drug prices for seniors.
But the president was forced to drop his push to extend many of the temporary programs that Democrats approved last year to directly fight hunger and poverty. That included additional food from the Agriculture Department, rental assistance from the Treasury, and supplemental income in the form of direct payments and an expanded child tax credit. An extension of the child credit was included in a bill carrying a much larger portion of Biden’s agenda that the House passed in November, but it did not survive in the Senate. An earlier Biden proposal had also contained $150 billion in affordable-housing programs, which were also jettisoned.
The swift decline into pandemic recession plunged millions of Americans into dire financial straits. In 2020, the Oregon Food Bank served 1.7 million people, Morgan said. That number dipped in 2021 to about 1.2 million.
Now it is rising again, toward what Morgan estimates could be 1.5 million. That would be the food bank’s second-largest caseload for a single year, behind only 2020.
“There’s a very direct correlation between federal assistance, state assistance and a decrease in numbers,” said Kevin Ryan, director of social services at William Temple House, who welcomed Smith, Clover and others to a shaded sitting area where they waited for their trip into the food pantry to begin.
“When that goes away, the numbers go back up.”
When Biden’s team drafted the rescue plan in the early days of his administration, it was trying to give vulnerable Americans, particularly those thrown out of work or at risk of losing their homes, enough assistance to carry them through until the economy returned to some version of normal.
The economic recovery has been faster than was forecast before Democrats approved the $1.9 trillion package, with unemployment hovering near a 50-year low and growth surging last year. “It gave millions of working families a shot they otherwise might not have,” said Brian Deese, director of Biden’s National Economic Council.
But the normalcy has yet to arrive. Inflation has climbed higher, and endured longer, than administration officials thought possible.
Higher prices are making it harder for many Americans to afford food and housing. Adjusted for inflation, average wages have declined since Biden took office. Economic data suggest that many households, including a wide swath of vulnerable Americans, have lost buying power as prices have soared.
Rising mortgage rates, the result of Fed interest rates meant to combat price spikes, have pushed home buying even further out of reach for millions of Americans. The Oregon Office of Economic Analysis estimates that only 23% of Portland residents can now afford to buy a median-priced home in the city, down from 35% in December.
Poverty researchers say the coming months could be worse.
“There’s strong reason to believe that food insufficiency will continue to remain at high levels and perhaps worsen,” said Zachary Parolin, a poverty researcher at Bocconi University in Milan and a senior fellow at Columbia’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy.
Administration officials say the best policies they can pursue for people like Smith are ones that fight inflation, such as actions to untangle supply chains that have pushed up the prices of goods like furniture. The bill Biden signed this month will eventually reduce prescription and electricity costs for many Americans, and it could help lower overall inflation by a small amount in the long term, independent studies suggest.
Smith, 55, is not expecting another round of assistance checks from the federal government and is instead relying on Social Security benefits, along with government and charitable assistance. She cares for three grandchildren, including one with a severe medical condition, and cannot work outside the home because child care would be too costly.
When her turn arrived at William Temple House, Smith carefully pulled her shopping baskets down a small flight of stairs to what resembled a miniature grocery store. “My kids are hungry,” she told Ryan, and she proceeded to stock three red crates with items she knew they would like: potatoes, celery, bacon, Froot Loops, Ritz crackers, bags of potato chips.
“I always try to get my kids snack foods here,” Smith said. “I can’t afford snacks.”
Climate change has doubled the chance of a California megaflood: Study
Ben Adler, Senior Editor– August 16, 2022
California is already known for being vulnerable to natural disasters such as earthquakes, wildfires and even tsunamis, but a new study in the journal Science Advances finds that it is at increased risk of another: a disastrous megaflood that could cause more than $1 trillion in losses and turn low-lying areas into a “vast inland sea.”
The Golden State is currently enduring the worst 20-year drought in at least 1,200 years — an event made more likely due to climate change, as warmer air causes more evaporation. But, the study’s authors note, “Despite the recent prevalence of severe drought, California faces a broadly underappreciated risk of severe floods.”
Just as increased evaporation causes more frequent and severe droughts, it also causes more extreme rainfall when a storm arrives. The paper finds that climate change has doubled the chances of a dramatic flood in California during the next 40 years, and that the risk will continue to increase if average global temperatures keep rising.
Low water levels at Grant Lake, which is fed by now nearly snowless mountains in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, expose an expanded shoreline on Aug. 11 near Lee Vining, Calif. (David McNew/Getty Images)
The researchers used new high-resolution weather modeling and existing climate models to find how often a long series of storms fueled by atmospheric rivers that have occurred about once a century in recent history would occur, now that global average temperatures have risen 1.1 degree Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the Industrial Revolution. What they found was that warmer temperatures have doubled the risk of those conditions, so that what was once a 1-in-100-year flood would now occur every 50 years, on average.
“Climate change has probably already doubled the risk of an extremely severe storm sequence in California, like the one in the study,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who co-authored the study with Xingying Huang, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told NPR. “But each additional degree of warming is going to further increase that risk.”
An atmospheric river is a long, narrow band of heavy moisture. Historically, winter atmospheric rivers have led to large snowfalls in the Sierra Nevada mountains. In a warmer climate, however, atmospheric rivers will be stronger because they hold more moisture. With warmer temperatures, more of the precipitation will fall as rain, causing flooding, instead of snow, which melts gradually.
In recent history, the only example of such a flood is the Great Flood of 1862. In December 1861, nearly 15 feet of snow fell in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, and subsequent atmospheric rivers dumped rain for 43 days after that, with the water pooling in valleys. This meant that in the winter of 1862, parts of California were submerged in up to 30 feet of water for weeks, according to CNN. The state capital in Sacramento, “was under 10 feet of debris-filled water for months.”
A lithograph showing K Street in the city of Sacramento, Calif., during the Great Flood of 1862. (A. Rosenfield/WikiCommons)
Buildings were destroyed, including one out of every eight homes, and 4,000 people died. The state lost one-quarter of its economy that year.
No flood that large has happened since then, but river sediment deposits show that in the pre-climate change era, such floods usually happened every 100 to 200 years.
“We find that climate change has already increased the risk of a [1862-like] megaflood scenario in California, but that future climate warming will likely bring about even sharper risk increases,” the study’s authors write.
“It’s a question of when rather than if [the megaflood] occurs,” Swain told CNN.
But the effects would be far worse, now that California has grown to 39 million residents, with an economy that, if it were a country, would be the world’s fifth-largest.
According to the researchers’ modeling, Stockton, Fresno and Los Angeles would be under water and damages could be upward of $1 trillion, potentially the most expensive disaster in world history. Interstate highways in California, such as I-5 and I-80, would probably be shut down for weeks.
A man kayaks down a flooded street in the town of Guerneville, Calif., on Feb. 28, 2019, thanks to floodwaters from the Russian River nearby. (Josh Edelson/AP)
“Every major population center in California would get hit at once — probably parts of Nevada and other adjacent states, too,” Swain said in a UCLA press release.
The increased risk of extreme rainfall due to climate change is not limited to California or the West Coast. The United States recently experienced three extreme rainfalls of the kind that were supposed to only occur once in every 1,000 years: southern Illinois received 12 inches of rain in 12 hours, the St. Louis area 6 to 10 inches of rain in just seven hours, and parts of eastern Kentucky were drenched by 14 inches of rain in two days.
The California Department of Water Resources supported the study with data and funding, as part of an effort to understand and prepare for extreme weather risks exacerbated by climate change. Further research — which will include partnering with state and federal emergency management agencies — will try to determine where the flooding would be worst and how it could be mitigated.
“Modeling extreme weather behavior is crucial to helping all communities understand flood risk even during periods of drought like the one we’re experiencing right now,” Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources, said in a statement.
Arizona loses one-fifth of its Colorado River allocation under new federal drought plan
Debra Utacia Krol, Arizona Republic – August 16, 2022
The federal government will impose deeper cuts on the drought-stricken Colorado River, officials said on Tuesday, reducing water deliveries to Arizona by one-fifth starting in January.
The Bureau of Reclamation announced what it called “urgent action” as water levels in the river’s two largest reservoirs continue to drop. Under the steps outlined Tuesday, Arizona will lose 592,000 acre-feet of its river allocation in 2023, which represents 21% of its usual delivery. That’s an increase of 80,000 acre-feet from the 2022 cuts.
The additional cuts will come from the non-Indian agricultural water allocations, which includes farmers and some tribes, said Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke.
Nevada will give up 25,000 acre-feet, about 8% of its allocation, and Mexico’s share will be cut by 104,000 acre-feet, or 7% of its allocation. California will not lose any of its share under the blueprint released Tuesday.
These moves are meant to protect two major dams from structural damage and the ability to generate electric power.
Currently, Lake Mead holds just over 25% capacity and Lake Powell just less than 25%.
“Prolonged drought is one of the most profound issues facing the U.S. today,” said Tommy Beaudreau, assistant Interior secretary.
The Bureau of Reclamation also said it would take immediate action to address the continuing shortfalls in the system. Some of those include reducing Glen Canyon Dam releases to below 7 million acre-feet per year to protect critical infrastructure; investing in conservation and voluntary agreements; and looking closely at Lake Mead operations to prevent the reservoir from falling to critically low levels.
Federal officials said the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden on Tuesday, allocates $4 billion to the Bureau of Reclamation for drought relief and $12.5 million for emergency drought funding for tribes.
The measure also allocates $550 million for water programs in disadvantaged communities. That’s in addition to $8.3 billion the bureau received to address drought and build water systems under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act.
Interior Department officials said they would continue dialogue with the 30 federally recognized tribes in the basin and with Mexico as well as with the seven basin states to jointly deal with the long-term shortages.
Arizona: Proposed cuts are ‘unacceptable’
This chart shows the key water levels in Lake Mead, which is used to determine water deliveries for Arizona, Nevada and California.
Arizona’s water managers suggested the plan was not enough and put too much of the burden on the Central Arizona Project, despite calls from the federal government to reduce water consumption across the river basin.
“It is unacceptable for Arizona to continue to carry a disproportionate burden of reductions for the benefit of others who have not contributed,” read a statement by Buschatzke and Ted Cooke, general manager of the CAP.
They said a proposal put forth by Arizona was rejected.
Federal officials acknowledged the urgency of the situation.
“Our reservoirs are declining rapidly,” said Tanya Trujillo, assistant secretary of the Interior Department for water and science.
She said all users have the responsibility to ensure the water is used responsibly. Trujillo said if new funding is authorized without prompt actions now, the Colorado River and the 40 million people who depend on it will face an uncertain future.
Arizona already has taken significant cuts to its annual take from the river, but it hasn’t been enough to keep Lake Mead from dropping further.
Under a set of guidelines negotiated between the states and the Bureau of Reclamation, the Central Arizona Project reduced its pumping by 512,000 acre-feet this year after the bureau officially declared a shortage base on reservoir projections released a year ago.
A bathtub ring of light minerals shows the high water line of Lake Mead near water intakes on the Arizona side of Hoover Dam at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area on June 26, 2022, near Boulder City, Nevada. The reservoir is now below 30% of capacity, Its level has dropped 170 feet since reaching a high-water mark in 1983.
That would be enough to supply about 1.5 million Arizona households if it went exclusively to municipal uses.
The next tier, triggered when Lake Mead is projected to drop below elevation 1,050 feet above sea level, requires another 80,000 acre-feet from Arizona under guidelines adopted in 2007.
With a previously enacted Drought Contingency Plan and an additional emergency commitment that Arizona made with California and Nevada last winter, the state’s total reductions in 2022 total about 800,000 acre-feet, or more than a quarter of the state’s Colorado River allocation, according to CAP.
When disappointing runoff from Rocky Mountain snowpack started flowing toward reservoirs this spring and early summer, the Bureau of Reclamation said it would require more, at least 2 million and maybe 4 million acre-feet from all users in the watershed. That set off a scramble among Arizona and its neighbors to find more water.
Sharon Megdal, director of the University of Arizona’s Water Resources Research Center, said the numbers don’t work if all of the states aren’t involved.
“Even if CAP and the cities were totally cut off, that wouldn’t add up to 4 million acre-feet,” she said. Cutting water use should be discussed and agreed to by all sectors and states, including the Upper Basin. “Nobody will come out of this unscathed.”
Residential water users are likely to escape the effects because most cities deliver water from a mix of sources. Phoenix implemented its drought management plan June 6 when it issued a Stage 1 water alert, asking residents to voluntarily conserve water use. Although the Colorado River provides about 40% of the city’s water, residential water users are unlikely to experience any cuts at this time.
But one major water stakeholder said Tuesday it had reassessed its position. The Gila River Indian Community cited a lack of progress among the states in its decision to stop contributing water to help shore up Lake Mead’s water levels.
Gila River Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis said Tuesday the tribe would go another direction.
“The community has been shocked and disappointed to see the complete lack of progress in reaching the kind of cooperative basin-wide plan necessary to save the Colorado River system,” Lewis said. The tribe reevaluated its strategy and will instead return to storing water underground.
The Colorado River Indian Tribes contributed more than 200,000 acre-feet and fallowed farmland. The tribe said its actions raised Lake Mead’s level by 3 feet. The 4,270-member tribe plans to up its contribution in 2023 and to develop more ways to use less water, according to a statement.
“We recognize that the decades-long drought has reduced the water availability for all of us in the basin,” said CRIT Chairwoman Amelia Flores. “Our ancestors lived through droughts and floods before the settlers arrived and built the dams on the Colorado River. We are a resilient people at CRIT and bring this attitude to the way we live and to our efforts to protect the life of the river that is our namesake.”
Planners want more certainty
The Imperial Irrigation District, which holds 2.6 million acre-feet of Colorado River rights, issued a statement seeking more details from federal officials in conservation and reservoir operations at Lake Mead.
The Colorado River is the Imperial Valley’s only water source, according to the district. Its 116,000 acres of irrigated lands produce much of the nation’s vegetables during the winter months. One of the district’s big concerns is keeping the nearby Salton Sea from declining further while protecting their farms.
“By adopting this plan, we’re providing a means for Imperial Valley growers to be able to continue their work to meet the nation’s food supply needs, within IID’s available water supply, while supporting the river,” said James C. Hanks, the district’s board president.
The two major Arizona water agencies argued that other states must do their part in preserving the river.
“We can’t do this alone without California,” said Buschatzke. He said the Upper Basin plan is in its early stages with few details.
The seven basin states and tribes are negotiating new water management guidelines to replace the current guidelines, which expire at the end of 2025.
Cooke, the CAP general manager, said any discussion among basin states to take further reductions should take into account current reductions.
“We’re taking an almost 600,000 acre-feet cut, Nevada is losing 25,000 acre-feet and Mexico is taking a 100,000 acre-feet cut, but California is taking none,” he said. “We’re willing to do our part, but we can’t continue to be the ones who do the most.”
The two state officials said they want to see more long-term planning. They want planners looking at 2024 and beyond. Cooke said he hopes the 2023 plan in progress can have more durable elements so they don’t have to start at zero in subsequent years.
Buschatzke gave Reclamation a grade of “incomplete” in its plans. Then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton had to give the states a nudge, a “kick in the pants,” to complete a plan in the mid-2000s, he said.
Nevada: Take concrete steps
U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., agreed with state water officials.
“As the West continues experiencing historic drought, Arizona has led the way identifying short and long term solutions while shouldering a disproportionate share of this crisis,” she said.
Sinema created a water advisory council earlier this month to discuss how to expend the $4 billion earmarked for drought and water programs.
U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said in a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law also contained funding to support voluntary reductions.
Megdal, of the UA, said that the new funding is welcome; however, she said, nothing she learned about the new measures means the pressure is off. “We all need to work together.”
The Southern Nevada Water Authority, which oversees water for metropolitan Las Vegas, echoed the comments made by Arizona officials.
“The Colorado River cannot provide enough water for the current level of use,” said John Entsminger, the authority’s general manager. “The magnitude of the problem is so large that every single water user in every single sector must contribute solutions to this problem regardless of the priority system.”
Entsminger suggested several actions, including eliminating wasteful and antiquated water use, and eliminating lawns. In June 2021, Nevada passed legislation that prohibits non-functional grass irrigated by Colorado River water. That covers about one-third of southern Nevada lawns.
U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., also expressed disappointment that the Interior Department had fallen short in its announcement.
“The federal government has failed to offer a plan that requires all states to make the cuts necessary to save the Colorado from system collapse,” Stanton said. “Today’s announcement merely kicks the can down the road and risks turning this crisis into catastrophe.”
Kelly also called for decisive action to develop long-term solutions to mitigating drought on the Colorado River, saying this “must be an urgent priority for the Department.”
One water activist called out a “vague” plan and asked what steps the bureau would take next if the seven basin states can’t or don’t reduce water usage.
“If you were hoping for security and knowing exactly what’s going to happen, Reclamation’s ‘plan’ doesn’t change much of anything,” said Gary Wockner, director of the environmental group Save the Colorado.
The group also proposed a possible solution to the issue, one that environmentalists have discussed for years: “We encourage Reclamation to focus quickly on how to drain Lake Powell and bypass Glen Canyon Dam because it is the weight that is driving this crisis and dragging the whole system down.”
Republic reporter Brandon Loomis contributed to this article.
Debra Krol reports on Indigenous communities at the confluence of climate, culture and commerce in Arizona and the Intermountain West.
Coverage of Indigenous issues at the intersection of climate, culture and commerce is supported by the Catena Foundation.
Why the Eastern Kentucky flood was no natural disaster. Let’s call it what it is
Charles Calhoun – August 16, 2022
It’s been two weeks since the historic and deadly flooding event in central Appalachia left 39 people dead and countless homes, businesses and lives destroyed. Naturally, narratives around this disaster have run amuck with some going so far as to name the very people dealing with it as the harbingers of their own destruction. And while this contributor will address that narrative below, there is another narrative that needs clarifying: The flood of July 28, 2022 was not a natural disaster.To imply this flood, along with so many other weather-borne catastrophes plaguing our world, is a natural disaster is to say three things: We don’t know why it happened, we don’t know how it happened and we don’t know how to prevent the next one. But we do know the answers to these questions. We’ve known them for some time. A combination of unfettered capitalism, environmental degradation through extraction economies and government indifference or plain inaction have borne a land in these hills ripe for weather related disasters and left behind communities with little to no defenses against them.
This disaster was man made. Strip mining and mountaintop removal reengineered the land and left communities and towns towards the valley floor exposed to record levels of storm runoff. Then the coal companies left and government officials let them offload their bonds tied to abandoned strip mining operations and their promise to clean up their mess. Logging companies also helped, clear cutting hillsides of trees capable of absorbing large amounts of moisture and holding the ground in place and leaving behind fields of kudzu, an invasive plant ill-suited for the job of mountain integrity. Throw in increased greenhouse gas emissions from the global industrialization of the 20th century and you have all the ingredients needed for continued and more frequent catastrophes.
This disaster is not the fault of those experiencing it. I consider myself an acquaintance of liberals and progressives and strive to abide no hate in the communities I live and work in. But to see folks of the same bent implying the assumed votes of the affected region in 2016 and 2020 and earlier are the reason why this man-made disaster has left them devastated is childish, infuriating and embarrassing.
To these same critical thinkers, I would ask: Will you say the same when the next disaster affects your democratic bulwark (i.e. Chicago, LA, Austin)? Did we not decry Sodom and Gomorrah references from conservatives after Hurricane Katrina? This is dangerously dualistic, incredibly callous and easily exploitable. We can’t be voices addressing climate change and in the same breath fall prey to such unscientific claims.
The science is clear
Finally, the next disaster is coming. The science is clear on this. The warmer our world becomes due to greenhouse gas buildup and environmental degradation, the more moisture will be absorbed into storms and the more volatile they will be, bringing prolonged rains and stronger winds. But when our government let the capitalists destroy these lands for profit and then let them off the hook for repairing them before they left, all while refusing any considerable legislation on addressing climate change, they left these communities vulnerable.
Without serious investments into repairing the land, rebuilding and refortifying infrastructure and providing those affected with free sturdy homes to replace the ones they lost, these man-made disasters will compound one after the other and the most vulnerable amongst us will suffer the consequences.
Charles Calhoun is a member of the Appalachian diaspora living in Columbia, SC but working remotely for an NPO in SEKY. He was present on the day of the floods.
