The fight over water in Florida has had some surprising winners
Stephanie Hanes
Burt Eno peers down through the surface of the Rainbow River, examining the sea grasses below. Even though the water has changed over the past mile from cobalt blue to deep green, it is still transparent enough to see the brown algae coating the waving foliage.
He shakes his head.
“It’s covered,” he says of the underwater grass. “It shouldn’t be like this.”
The others on the pontoon boat nod in grim agreement. As volunteers with Rainbow River Conservation, an environmental group focused on protecting this unique waterway, they know how to spot trouble hiding in what looks, at first glance, to be a picture-perfect image of central Florida.
Alongside the kayakers and families on inner tubes – and the anhinga drying its spread wings on a Spanish-moss-draped branch – the conservation volunteers recognize the impact of some of Florida’s biggest environmental challenges: nitrate pollution, water shortages, and over-development. The spring that feeds the Rainbow River, where fresh water from the Floridian aquifer bubbles to the surface in swirls of blue, is releasing fewer gallons of flow each year – a sign of the severe pressures on the state’s underground water system.
But the volunteers see something else happening here as well.
In a state where business interests regularly trump environmental concerns, the Rainbow River is a site where grassroots conservationists have fought against development – and won. Environmentalists here have joined forces with others who care about the unique springs ecosystems, and now the Florida Springs Council sends a lobbyist to Tallahassee. Longtime environmental activists say they are noticing a growing public recognition of the urgency to protect Florida’s water, spurred, perhaps, by a new documentary on state public television about threats to Florida’s aquifer.
“We’re seeing exponential growth in the number of people paying attention,” says Ryan Smart, the director of the Florida Springs Council, a nonprofit coalition formed in 2014 that coordinates advocacy efforts among more than 50 local conservation groups. “I don’t want to say that things are improving on the ground yet – we’re still a long way from that. But we have had successes.”
Some of this new focus has been sparked by recent environmental traumas, says Justin Bloom, founder of the Suncoast Waterkeeper conservation group.
“I do think that there is a growing awareness and concern,” Mr. Bloom says. “Unfortunately, it seems that it is born of crisis.”
Development at the expense of water
Earlier this year, the operators of Piney Point, an abandoned phosphate plant in Manatee County, dumped more than 170 million gallons of radioactive wastewater into Tampa Bay to relieve pressure on the walls of a 77-acre holding pond that officials worried was about to break and flood surrounding neighborhoods. Over the past month, a red tide algae bloom has inundated the bay, killing aquatic life and leaving swaths of St. Petersburg reeking of dead fish. In June, Florida wildlife managers reported that 750 manatees had died so far this year, the most deaths ever recorded in a five-month period. Many of the animals, officials said, starved to death because the sea grass they eat has been dying off.
For Florida conservationists, this spate of environmental disasters is unsurprising, yet still devastating. For a decade, many environmentalists claim, Florida officials have supported developers and other business interests at the expense of the state’s ecosystem – particularly its hydrology.
Although Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has called protecting Florida’s “vital water resources … one of the most pressing issues facing our state,” and has proposed using some $625 million for restoration projects in the Everglades and elsewhere, critics say these are scant efforts in the face of policies that systematically create water and environmental problems.
This is particularly apparent in Florida’s springs and connected waterways, like Rainbow River, says Bob Knight, founder of the Florida Springs Institute, an education and advocacy nonprofit. The state’s springs ecosystems – the glass-clear, 72-degree water and the unique aquatic life that lives in it – are a product of Florida’s geology.
Not terribly long ago, in geologic time, Florida was itself underwater. Today, much of the peninsula is limestone, formed from the remains of ancient sea creatures. As sea levels retreated, scientists say, acidic rain bored holes in the rock, creating a formation regularly described as akin to Swiss cheese. Rainwater seeping into the ground filled up these pockets; as more rain came, some of the water was forced back to the surface and created springs. The springs then fed rivers, which, in turn, watered the state and supported other freshwater ecosystems, such as the Everglades.
When Dr. Knight first saw these springs as a child in the 1950s, he was awed. The sites hadn’t changed much from the descriptions he’d read of them from a century earlier, he says: crystal clear, blue water surrounded by lush forests. All of the springs produced voluminous amounts of fresh water, with hundreds of millions of gallons bubbling up from the aquifer.
Before Disney World opened in 1971, the more than 1,000 springs in north-central Florida were among the top tourist draws in the state. As early as the Civil War, visitors flocked to Silver Springs, taking glass-bottom boats across the aquifer-fed pool; later, movie makers used the springs for scenery in films such as Tarzan.
But once air conditioners became accessible to everyday homeowners, Florida’s population boomed. Between 1960 and 2010, the state’s population grew from about 5 million to 19 million. Now, nearly 1,000 people move to Florida every day, according to state officials. The most recent census data puts Florida as one of the country’s fastest growing states by population – about 15 percent since 2010. Many of the fastest growing cities in the country are located in Florida – including Ocala, in the center of the state, near Rainbow River. And all of these new residents, of course, use water – not only to drink, but for landscaping.
“Florida has been very heavily developed,” Dr. Knight says. “And in the process, millions of wells have been put in the ground. … It’s like putting needles in a balloon or air mattress. The pressure in the aquifer fell.”
When the aquifer is tapped in too many places, he and others explain, the flow of nearby springs decreases. That not only means less water, but less flushing of pollution, such as runoff from lawns and agriculture, and that can result in algae and other contamination. Some springs in the state have dried up completely.
“They do die,” says Mr. Smart, director of the Florida Springs Council. “They can die because the flow stops, or because they become so choked with algae.”
Jayantha Obeysekera, director of the Sea Level Solutions Center at Florida International University, notes that as the aquifer pressure decreases, not only does the spring flow lessen, but there is less resistance in the ground to what is called “saltwater intrusion,” ocean water pushing into the aquifer. Already, numerous wells in coastal areas have been made useless by seawater.
All of this has created water shortages in the state, and residents are regularly reminded to conserve water. But homeowners are not the only ones tapping the aquifer.
Agriculture draws thousands of millions of gallons from Florida’s aquifer every day; so do the mining industry and other industrial sectors. And while the state’s water-permitting process is supposed to protect river flow, environmentalists have long complained that local officials almost always approve water-use permits for developers and other businesses. Last year, for instance, a state water agency gave Mosaic, a large phosphate company, authority to pump 70 million gallons of water a day for the next 20 years out of a region whose residents have been under water restrictions. Earlier this year, community members protested a request by the company Nestlé to pump a million gallons of water each day from Ginnie Springs for its bottled water business. The state water board ended up approving the company’s plans.
The fight at Rainbow River
So when the Rainbow River Conservation volunteers heard that Jim Gissy, a senior executive with Westgate Resorts, had plans to develop a large swath of land he owned on the banks of Rainbow River into an eco-destination, they panicked, knowing that developers tend to get what they want in Florida.
Along with others, Dr. Eno, president of the Rainbow River Conservation Board of Directors, decided to fight. Gretchen Martin, whose home is on the river, knocked on every door in Dunnellon, talking to residents about what the added traffic and pollution from the resort might mean for the water, not to mention the draw on the aquifer.
“We didn’t believe that most people in our community knew what was going to happen,” she says. “And really, 98 percent of people either didn’t know about it or didn’t want it.”
More than a hundred protesters packed a city council meeting – a rare occurrence for a municipality with a population hovering around 2,000 people. The volunteers distributed yard signs and took to social media, working with the Florida Springs Council to spread the word about the development to environmentalists outside the area. Thousands of people signed a Change.org petition opposing Mr. Gissy’s plans.
Late last summer, the developer withdrew his proposal. He has told media outlets that he had been assured by the city council that the potential for jobs would make the project popular, and that he was frustrated by the opposition. But he also told residents that if they didn’t want the resort, he wouldn’t build it.
Instead, he said, he would attempt to sell the land into conservation.
At the next election, in the fall of 2020, Dunnellon voters ousted two of the council members who had supported the development. The mayor, Dale Burns, also lost his reelection campaign.
“That whole episode probably has changed a number of minds,” Dr. Eno says. “People are more aware than they were. I think we changed the tide in some respects.”
He looks out over the water and sighs. “There is a lot more to do,” he says.
Clean needles depend on the blue blood of horseshoe crabs
Vaccine Safety-Horseshoe Crabs
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, right, listens as Foster Jordan of Charles River Labs, left, talks about the properties of horseshoe crab blood, which is a vital component in the contamination testing of injectable medicines – including the coronavirus vaccines – at Charles River Labs on Friday, Aug. 6, 2021, in Charleston, S.C. McMaster says the South Carolina company that bleeds horseshoe crabs for a component crucial to contamination testing of injectable medications is vital to development of a domestic medical supply chain. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster holds a model of a horseshoe crab, whose blood is a vital component in the contamination testing of injectable medicines – including the coronavirus vaccines – at Charles River Labs on Friday, Aug. 6, 2021, in Charleston, S.C. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster watches a video on the bleeding of horseshoe crabs, whose blood is a vital component in the contamination testing of injectable medicines – including the coronavirus vaccines – at Charles River Labs on Friday, Aug. 6, 2021, in Charleston, S.C. McMaster says a South Carolina company that bleeds horseshoe crabs for a component crucial to contamination testing of injectable medications is vital to development of a domestic medical supply chain.(AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, right, holds a bottle containing horseshoe crab blood, which is a vital component in the contamination testing of injectable medicines – including the coronavirus vaccines – with Foster Jordan of Charles River Labs on Friday, Aug. 6, 2021, in Charleston, S.C. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster listens to a presentation on horseshoe crab blood, which is a vital component in the contamination testing of injectable medicines – including the coronavirus vaccines – at Charles River Labs on Friday, Aug. 6, 2021, in Charleston, S.C. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — It’s one of the stranger, lesser-known aspects of U.S. health care — the striking, milky-blue blood of horseshoe crabs is a critical component of tests to ensure injectable medications such as coronavirus vaccines aren’t contaminated.
To obtain it, harvesters bring many thousands of the creatures to laboratories to be bled each year, and then return them to the sea — a practice that has drawn criticism from conservationists because some don’t survive the process.
The blood, which is blue due to its copper content, is coveted for proteins used to create the LAL test, a process used to screen medical products for bacteria. Synthetic alternatives aren’t widely accepted by the health care industry and haven’t been approved federally, leaving the crabs as the only domestic source of this key ingredient.
Many of these crabs are harvested along the coast of South Carolina, where Gov. Henry McMaster promoted the niche industry as key to the development of a domestic medical supply chain, while also noting that environmental concerns should be explored.
“We don’t want to have to depend on foreign countries for a lot of reasons, including national security, so it’s good to see this company thriving in the United States,” McMaster told The Associated Press. He spoke this month during a visit to Charles River Laboratories at its Charleston facilities, to which AP was granted rare access. “We want to do everything we can to onshore all of these critical operations.”
Horseshoe crabs — aquatic arthropods shaped like helmets with long tails — are more akin to scorpions than crabs, and older than dinosaurs. They’ve been scurrying along the brackish floors of coastal waters for hundreds of millions of years. Their eggs are considered a primary fat source for more than a dozen species of migratory shore birds, according to South Carolina’s Department of Natural Resources.
Their value to avoiding infection emerged after scientists researching their immune response injected bacteria into horseshoe crabs in the 1950s. They ultimately developed the LAL test, and the technique has been used since the 1970s to keep medical materials and supplies free of bacteria.
In South Carolina, that’s done only by Charles River, a Massachusetts-based company that tests 55% of the world’s injectables and medical devices — like IV bags, dialysis solutions and even surgical cleaning wipes, according to company officials.
“We are almost the last line of defense before these drugs leave the manufacturing area and make it to a patient,” senior vice president Foster Jordan told McMaster. “If it touches your blood, it’s been tested by LAL. And, more than likely, it’s been tested by us.”
Charles River employs local fishermen to harvest the crabs by hand, a process governed by wildlife officials that can only happen during a small annual window, when the creatures come ashore to spawn.
Contractors bring them to the company’s bleeding facilities, then return them to the waters from which they came. During a year, Jordan said his harvesters can bring in 100,000 to 150,000 horseshoe crabs, and still can’t satisfy the growing demand.
“We need more, though,” Jordan told McMaster, adding that his company is working with the state to open up more harvesting areas. “The population’s steady. … We need access to more beaches, to get more crabs.”
The practice is not without its critics, some of whom have argued that bleeding the crabs and hauling them back and forth is harmful. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 10% to 15% of harvested crabs die during the process.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature listed the species overall as “vulnerable,” noting decreasing numbers as of a 2016 assessment. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission listed 2019 stock as “good” in the Southeast, but “poor” in areas around New York.
Conservationists sued last year, accusing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of shirking its duty to protect areas including South Carolina’s Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge by allowing horseshoe crab harvesting. They argued that taking out the crabs affects other species in the protected area. A federal judge temporarily halted the harvest, but was reversed following Charles River’s appeal.
The environmental groups asked to withdraw their complaint this month after federal officials imposed a permitting process for any commercial activity in the refuge, including horseshoe harvesting, beginning Aug. 15. Even if such permits are denied, Jordan told McMaster that only 20% of its harvest came from the refuge, with most coming from further down the South Carolina coast.
There is a synthetic alternative to the horseshoe crab blood, but it hasn’t been widely accepted in the U.S., and meanwhile, Charles River’s international competitors are making synthetics and also pressing for U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval, which Jordan said could hamper domestic efforts like his own.
“My mission is to make sure that any competitor that comes into the United States, from China or any of these other producers, has to go through the same regulatory process that we had to go through, to make sure that it’s safe,” Jordan said. “If all these synthetics start coming in from other countries, we’re going to lose the protection that we’ve had for all these years, and the safety, and the control of the drug supply.”
“We want to have as much stuff made here as we can,” McMaster said in response.
As for the environmental concerns, the governor said maintaining a healthy balance between scientific demands and the state’s ecosystems, which bolster a significant portion of South Carolina’s tourism economy, is paramount.
“It’s like a house of cards. You pull out one part, and the rest of it will fall,” McMaster said. “So I think we have to be very careful, and be sure that any company, any business, any activity, whether it’s commercial or otherwise, meets whatever requirements are there to protect the species — birds, horseshoe crabs, any sort of life.”
Heat pumps ‘worse’ than gas boilers for warming up homes, admits Energy Secretary
Edward Malnick
Kwasi Kwarteng – Geoff Pugh
Boris Johnson’s proposed green alternative to gas heating is inferior to traditional boilers, the Business and Energy Secretary has admitted, as he insisted that heat pumps were not “much worse” than the technology they are designed to replace.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Kwasi Kwarteng conceded that, while gas boilers had been “refined over many years … heat pumps are still in their infancy”.
Fears that the new technology provides significantly less heat in homes than traditional boilers were being “exaggerated”, Mr Kwarteng insisted.
He added: “I don’t think actually heat pumps are that much worse than boilers. All I’m saying is that they could be improved if there was more investment.”
Mr Kwarteng says that providing incentives to firms to invest in the UK production of heat pumps and hydrogen will help the Government meet its target of reducing net greenhouse gas emissions to zero, as well as help to “drive economic growth”, create new jobs, and bring down the costs of the technology.
How heat pumps work
Speaking as the Government finalises its heat and buildings strategy, Mr Kwarteng addressed concerns about the costs of the policy by insisting that ministers would not seek to achieve the target by “writing checks” alone.
“We’re not going to get to a hydrogen economy just by the Government writing checks,” he says.
“We’re going to do that by the Government, yes, writing some checks, if I want to put it crudely, but critically, by attracting private investment.”
Mr Kwarteng warns of a “serious cost of living issue”, as he insists that higher taxes are not inevitable to fund the shift to green technologies, adding: “We’ve got to incentivize economic activity. And you don’t incentivize economic activity, you don’t incentivize investment, you don’t incentivize work, by increasing taxes.”
Mr Kwarteng insists that the costs of new technologies will fall “very quickly” as firms begin to invest in alternatives to gas boilers, stating that consumers could “benefit” in as little as five years.
In remarks that could spark a row with renewables firms, he claims that “the point at which we no longer need to keep subsidizing” offshore wind farms, “has almost arrived”.
Mr Johnson has said that he wants 600,000 heat pumps replacing gas boilers every year by 2028. While gas heating can pump 60C water into radiators, the Government’s Climate Change Committee assumes heat pumps will operate at 50C.
Mr Kwarteng admitted that he currently still has a gas boiler, but said he is planning to buy a heat pump.
Different types of green heating solutions will be appropriate for different types of properties, he said.
Mr Johnson has acknowledged that heat pumps are currently unaffordable for many people at “about ten grand a pop”.
Mr Kwarteng said: “I do have … a gas boiler … but I’m in a position where because I earn a certain amount of money, I can afford that transition, and I’m looking to make that transition. But I would be very reluctant to impose things on people who can’t afford to make the transition. We’ve got to make that work for people.”
Our green industrial revolution will grow the economy using free-market conservative principles
Asked if some form of higher tax is inevitable to fund the move to net zero, Mr Kwarteng simply says, “No”.
“Where I am on this is, I think there is a serious cost of living issue,” says the Business and Energy Secretary, in remarks that voice a concern discussed at the highest levels of government.
“Clearly, given where we are in public finances, given all the difficulties that we’ve really soldiered through as a nation, heroically I would say, there’s bound to be concern about taxes and costs.
“The Government has always, in this transition, wanted to protect vulnerable people, which is absolutely right. And the other thing is, this is a gradual process.”
Some reports give the impression “that we were going to send people round to rip out boilers next week. That isn’t going to happen … and it’s going to be a very ordered process.”
As well as harboring concerns about the potential impact of higher taxes on individuals who are already struggling amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr Kwarteng, who has long been seen as a leading Tory free marketeer, believes that they could stifle the economy.
‘I’m always very skeptical about tax rises’
Speaking about the prospect of tax rises more generally, the former City analyst states: “Within government I’m always very skeptical about tax increases.
“Yes I think there’s a desire to balance the budget. I think the Chancellor’s instincts are absolutely right to do that. But I’m always wary of the fact that at the end of the day, we’ve got to incentivize economic activity. And you don’t incentivize economic activity, you don’t incentivize investment, you don’t incentivize work, by increasing taxes. It’s that simple.”
The Business Secretary, 46, says there are “times in our history when we’ve forgotten” Britain’s entrepreneurial spirit and have taken “a much more statist approach. But fundamentally, I think, we are a nation of shopkeepers, we’re a nation of small businesspeople. My job as Business Secretary is to foster that spirit.”
The net-zero target, which was enshrined into law under Theresa May, inevitably involves a degree of statism, and it is opposition to government diktats that drives some of the backbench Tory criticism of the policy.
But Mr Kwarteng, who was appointed in January, insists both that the heavy lifting can be done by the private sector, with early financial support from the Government to kickstart new green industries, and help ensure that the poorest households are not saddled with large bills.
‘Huge economic opportunity’
The policy itself, he says, presents a “huge economic opportunity”. A whiteboard in the Business Secretary’s office lists a recent series of major investments announced by firms at the forefront of Britain’s “green industrial revolution” – topped by Nissan’s £1billion battery “gigafactory” that will enable the firm’s Sunderland car plant to ramp up production of electric vehicles.
“What we’re doing in the UK, is using net zero to drive economic growth, to drive jobs as well. I think this is a great historical opportunity.”
Mr Kwarteng insists net-zero will boost British jobs and kick-start the economy – Geoff Pugh
Mr Kwarteng says the push for net zero represents “a reconfiguration of our industrial base”, as he points out that the areas in which manufacturers putting down roots to make electric cars and parts for wind turbines are “northern, levelling up type places, places of the historic industrial heartland, which have seen limited investment in the last 20 to 30 years.”
The Government’s strategy will include subsidizing new industries, such as the manufacturing of electric heat pumps to replace gas boilers, and the production of hydrogen, in which ministers believe Britain can become a world leader.
‘Offshore wind has been a great British success story’
But Mr Kwarteng insists: “The aim of the game isn’t to see how much government can spend using taxpayers’ money. The aim of the game is to try and use public money sensibly to attract private investment. And just to bear this out in reality … Offshore wind has been a great British success story … 35 per cent almost of global offshore wind capacity is round here, the UK.”
If Mr Kwarteng intends to model the Government’s plans for hydrogen and heat pumps on its approach to offshore wind, consumers may be forgiven for expecting a repeat of the billions of pounds that have been spent subsidizing the industry to date. And with prominent firms insisting that subsidies for offshore wind farms must continue, when will those actually come to an end?
“This is an interesting question,” Mr Kwarteng replies. “My understanding is that the point at which we no longer need to keep subsidizing it has almost arrived.”
Creating an “attractive environment” which will draw investment from green energy firms to the UK is “the real secret to this.”
“Similarly with hydrogen, we’re not going to get to a hydrogen economy just by the government writing checks. We’re going to do that by the Government, yes, writing some checks, if I want to put it crudely, but critically, by attracting private investment. And it doesn’t work without substantial investment from the private sector.”
Consumers will ‘benefit’ in as little as five years
“By investing in this, I think we’re going to be driving costs down.” Consumers will “benefit” in as little as five years, he insists.
Unlike Alok Sharma, his predecessor and the minister in charge of the Cop26 climate conference, who drew some flak for the revelation that he still drives a diesel vehicle, Mr Kwarteng, the MP for Spelthorne, west of London, does not own a car at all. “I didn’t sell it just because you were coming,” he jokes. “I haven’t driven a car in London for 10 years.”
He does, however, admit to having a gas boiler, despite the Government’s drive to persuade people to switch to alternatives such as heat pumps.
“I do have a boiler, which is a gas boiler … but I’m in a position where, because I earn a certain amount of money, I can afford that transition, and I’m looking to make that transition.”
A recent focus group carried out in Redcar, Teesside, by the Onward think tank, identified a mistrust of the Government’s messages on ditching traditional cars and boilers, on the basis that people had previously been urged to buy diesel vehicles and so-called eco-friendly boilers, both of which are now being overtaken.
“I think that’s entirely legitimate,” Mr Kwarteng admits. “I remember the diesel campaign, and we listen to those sorts of things. People have got a point.
“I think the science is much better … I also think that if you look at the opportunity, electric vehicles intuitively are much cleaner than diesel would be. And also, this is where the economic argument fits in, a lot of the people in Redcar … will be directly employed by the companies on my board. And they’re directly invested in Britain being a leader in these technologies in a way that frankly, with diesel cars, we weren’t really at the races there.”
Biden Insiders: Our Afghanistan Exit Is a Part of a Much Bigger Reset
David Rothkopf
Alex Wong/Getty
In world affairs, first impressions can be misleading. Soviet and American generals were photographed toasting the triumph of a great alliance in 1945 but in the blinking of an eye the Cold War was underway and we were great enemies. Crowds pressed against the U.S. embassy gates as Saigon fell and America lost a long, bloody war mere decades before Vietnam embraced a market economy and became a top tourist destination for Americans.
Statues are toppled, regimes collapse, city squares are thronged with tens of thousands of people demanding change, “Mission Accomplished” moments occur, and yet what follows is not what the pundits caught up in the drama and imagery of individual events predict. With time, members of the Biden administration anticipate, we will come to see the events of the past week very differently.
In fact, with perspective, we may well come to see their exit from Afghanistan as part of a major, generational, foreign policy reset. In fact, if events unfold consistent with the president’s vision, this moment will be seen as a watershed in a return to American global leadership after two decades of misguided, erratic, damaging foreign policy in the wake of 9/11.
In other words, we are likely to come to see the events of the past week not only very differently but in the opposite light of that depicted by many commentators who, understandably but at the expense of the long view, were reacting to the horror of what we all saw happen in the streets of Kabul.
What is more, even as the talking heads and the Twitterverse and the editorial writers and the political opportunists were decrying the process by which the decision to leave was made, questioning the judgment of Biden and his team, the departure from Afghanistan, even if it unfolded badly, was actually the product of a laser-like focus on the big picture and the long-term interests of the United States on the part of the president and his top advisers.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the administration’s reasoning to me as follows, “The investment we made in Afghanistan over the course of 20 years was enormous. Two decades, one trillion dollars, 2,300 lives lost, thousands more with visible and invisible wounds. It’s no secret that our strategic competitors would like nothing more than for America to be bogged down in conflict for another two years—or two decades. The only element that rivaled the cost of this conflict was the opportunity cost. The president concluded it was time for us to end this war.”
A senior White House aide put it this way: “The president firmly believes that leaving Afghanistan improves our ability to be a stronger world leader, more engaged with allies, and more effective internationally.” The aide went on to echo Blinken, thus underscoring the centrality of the idea of returning our focus to great power competition for Biden and his team, saying, “As the president has said repeatedly, there is nothing that Russia or China would like to see more than the U.S. tied down in an endless war in Afghanistan. This is especially true as the terrorist threat grows in other places, and the geopolitical challenges elsewhere mount.”
Senior aides to the president repeatedly stressed to me that the actions in Afghanistan are all part of a much broader, carefully considered strategic shift for the United States. It will mean nothing less than finally bringing an end to the post-9/11 era. It will close the books on the recklessness and excesses of the war on terror, an end to the dangerous delusions of American exceptionalism and hubris-infused unilateralism.
The Biden team view is based on the idea that becoming bogged down in a 20-year war with an unclear mission that drained our resources and distracted us from our priorities made us weaker, that entering Iraq without justification made us weaker, that retreat in the wake of the calamities of Bush foreign policy made us weaker, that Trump attacking our alliances and undermining the rule of law at home made us weaker. The gross failure of leadership in managing COVID made us weaker. A president inciting an attempted coup made us much, much weaker.
President Biden, recognizing all this, is seeking to systematically, comprehensively, and irreversibly undo that damage and to strengthen America, preparing us to lead in the decades ahead. As much as it means ending America’s longest war, it also means shifting the trillions spent on fighting to investing in ourselves, our infrastructure, our schools, and our health care system. Build Back Better is not simply a big domestic program in the eyes of the administration. It is, as was the interstate highway system to Dwight Eisenhower, an investment in our security and our competitiveness. Proposed major initiatives in cyber security, power grid resiliency, expanding broadband, and combatting climate change make that crystal clear.
The effort also turns on efforts to undo the damage to our international standing done by unilateralism, contempt for the rule of law, attacks on democracy here at home, and the rise of domestic violent extremists who today pose a greater risk than overseas terror cells. Elements of the effort have included re-entering the Paris Climate Accords and rejoining the WHO, leading the way on vaccine diplomacy, recommitting ourselves to strengthening international institutions and our alliances, seeking to negotiate a re-entry of the U.S. into the Iran nuclear deal, and, perhaps above all else, preparing for the challenges and opportunities of the rest of the 21st Century. A shift in our focus and the deployment of our resources from the Greater Middle East to the Asia-Pacific region is another key part of that.
The critics who have emerged in the past week have often been as misguided and unappreciative of the bigger picture as they have been scathing. One top European foreign policy expert said America had “cut and run”—pretty preposterous after 20 years of engagement, roughly 19 years too many. One right-wing American pundit called the exit from Kabul “the worst presidential dereliction in memory” which, I hope, has his friends and family getting him the counsel of a good neurologist as he clearly is suffering from severe short-term memory loss. One member of Britain’s Parliament suggested the U.S. was returning to “isolationism” which is, again, pretty ludicrous given that our exit comes at the end of the longest war in our history. It seems the honorable gentleman thinks the permanent engagement of colonialism is the desirable opposite of isolationism.
There were certainly mistakes made in planning and executing the U.S. pullout of Afghanistan—although many observers understate the responsibility the Taliban, the Afghan government, and the Afghan military have for the horrific scenes we witnessed. But even at the end of just one week, thanks to the fast action of the president and the U.S. military, the picture is very different. Evacuations are proceeding at a remarkable pace. The military side of the Kabul airfield has stabilized and is orderly. Our embassy team and the diplomats of our allies are safe. The U.S. has demonstrated its commitment to getting American citizens, allies, and as many Afghans who worked with the U.S. as possible out and doing so swiftly.
The events of the past week have been harrowing. They should not be minimized. America should actively work to find places within our borders and worldwide with our friends and allies for every Afghan who seeks refugee status. We are already beginning the work of finding other mechanisms—diplomatic, political, and economic—to foster security and justice to the extent possible within Afghanistan. But the administration also recognizes that many other nations suffer as do the Afghans (the people of Haiti, Myanmar, Ethiopia, and oppressed women in societies worldwide all wish they could get the calls for aiding them that have come this week for the people of Afghanistan) and that the most important thing the U.S. can do to influence good outcomes worldwide is to restore our standing, restore our vitality at home, strengthen the international system, consistently let our values lead us, and start again to lead by example.
We have ignored much of that work during the past 20 years, a period that is likely to go down in history as among the worst ever for U.S. foreign policy. President Biden and his team have had the courage to recognize that to lead again as we once did, to lead to our full potential, we must have the courage to acknowledge and correct errors like the war in Afghanistan. Indeed, they seem to have clearer memories of the long litany of often egregious, sometimes crippling missteps America’s leaders have made during the first years of this century than do their critics. Fortunately for all of us, they also appear to have a much clearer understanding of what must be done if the U.S. is to finally put those errors and misspent years behind us and attend as we urgently must to the challenges and opportunities of the decades ahead.
Climate Change Is Robbing Our Kids Of The Carefree Childhoods We Knew
Elaine Roth
I grew up in the late ’80’s and early ’90’s. When school let out for summer, unless it rained, my brother and sister and I were outside. In the mornings, we rode bikes. In the afternoon, we played hide and seek with our neighbors unless a friend invited us to the town pool. At night, we caught fireflies (I knew them as lightning bugs) with our cousins. (In between, we argued, we complained, and we drove our mom bonkers, which isn’t relevant to my point, but seems important to add for full disclosure.)
We didn’t think about heat waves or air quality index. We woke up and as long as it wasn’t raining, we went outside. Often, my mom shooed us out the door with a quick “go outside” the minute we even skated around the word “bored.”
But, that’s changing. The days of saying “go outside” to kids as a safe, easy, available option for combating summer boredom are coming to an end. Due to climate change, kids often can’t just go outside.
Wildfires, floods, extreme heat, hurricanes, poor air quality are all driving kids indoors, and changing the way kids experience childhood forever.
Wildfires Impact Air Quality Forcing Kids Indoors
A couple of weeks ago in mid-July, the sun in New York City turned red. Officials issued an air quality alert. By the late afternoon, the air quality had reached a level that was “nine times above exposure recommendations from the World Health Organization.”
At that level, the EPA recommends children stay indoors. Indoors—as in, not riding bikes or playing at the park or doing the things that define childhood for many of us. (Elderly folks, those with heart or lung conditions, or those with diabetes should also stay inside.)
The cause: wildfires burning on the other side of the continent.
In some parts of the West, not only is the air quality forcing children indoors but recreation areas have been forced to close down due to smoke and ash. Playgrounds have become too hot to play on.
It’s Too Hot To Play Outside
Heat waves aren’t new, but they are starting earlier and ending later. According to the EPA, heat waves seasons last almost two months longer than they did just fifty years ago. Which means parents can’t just send their kids outside for the day anymore and expect the worst thing to happen is a few scraped knees.
In the past, many kids looking to beat the heat could escape to a pool. As climate change continues to upend summer as we once knew it, that might not be the case. Pools might be forced to closed for periods of time. That’s already happened in some places. In Portland, Oregon, some pools were forced to close when temperatures spiked above 110 degrees. The Parks and Recreation agency explained that it was too hot for employees and guests to be outside.
Likewise, pools in Florida were forced to close when hurricane Elsa—the earliest “E” storm on record—came through.
With no pools or beaches, kids looking to beat the heat are once again finding themselves indoors.
Samuel Corum/Getty
Summer Outdoor Camps Are Impacted
Climate change is coming for summer camps, as well. A camp in Washington was forced to delay its start due to the heat dome in the Pacific Northwest that caused record breaking temperatures. Another camp in Colorado has been forced to evacuate twice in the past five years due to wildfires. A high school football camp in Arizona was forced to move inside after a streak of 115-degree days.
Camps in general are experiencing longer heat waves and the need for more indoor, or air conditioned, activities.
“The reality is yes, they are having more high-temperature days, and generally more heat waves, and other impacts, as well,” Donald J. Wuebbles, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois told the New York Times in regard to summer camp. “When we do get rainfall it’s more likely to be a bigger rainfall and when we get a drought it’s more likely to be a bigger drought.”
Fireflies Are Endangered
Childhood will look different even in the evening, when presumably the temperature has cooled down enough to allow kids to emerge from their air-conditioned shelters. Many of us spent summers catching fireflies. But now, fireflies may be heading toward extinction. Granted that’s not because of climate change per se—it’s more a function of urbanization and light pollution— but it’s another way that childhood will be fundamentally changed.
The scary thing is—things are likely only going to get worse. A recent New York Times article posed the question: Is This The End Of Summer As We’ve Known It? The answer is probably yes. A 2019 report found that by mid-century the United States will experience twice as many days with a heat index above 100°F and four times as many days with an index above 105°F.
Time outside is critical for children. Outdoor green space can improve kids’ health—both physical and emotional. After a year of being stuck inside due to COVID, kids need time to be kids more than ever. Unfortunately, climate change is making that difficult or impossible. It’s redefining childhood in a way that’s unspeakably sad. In a way that’s impacting our kids in ways we can see and ways we can’t.
Millions of electric car batteries will retire in the next decade. What happens to them?
XiaoZhi Lim
Photograph: STR/AFP via Getty Images
A tsunami of electric vehicles is expected in rich countries, as car companies and governments pledge to ramp up their numbers – there are predicted be 145m on the roads by 2030. But while electric vehicles can play an important role in reducing emissions, they also contain a potential environmental timebomb: their batteries.
By one estimate, more than 12m tons of lithium-ion batteries are expected to retire between now and 2030.
Not only do these batteries require large amounts of raw materials, including lithium, nickel and cobalt – mining for which has climate, environmental and human rights impacts – they also threaten to leave a mountain of electronic waste as they reach the end of their lives.
As the automotive industry starts to transform, experts say now is the time to plan for what happens to batteries at the end of their lives, to reduce reliance on mining and keep materials in circulation.
A second life
Hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing into recycling startups and research centers to figure out how to disassemble dead batteries and extract valuable metals at scale.
But if we want to do more with the materials that we have, recycling shouldn’t be the first solution, said James Pennington, who leads the World Economic Forum’s circular economy program. “The best thing to do at first is to keep things in use for longer,” he said.
“There is a lot of [battery] capacity left at the end of first use in electric vehicles,” said Jessika Richter, who researches environmental policy at Lund University. These batteries may no longer be able run vehicles but they could have second lives storing excess power generated by solar or windfarms.
Several companies are running trials. The energy company Enel Group is using 90 batteries retired from Nissan Leaf cars in an energy storage facility in Melilla, Spain, which is isolated from the Spanish national grid. In the UK, the energy company Powervault partnered with Renault to outfit home energy storage systems with retired batteries.
An employee installs a lithium-ion battery cell into a testing system at the Powervault office in London.Photograph: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Establishing the flow of lithium-ion batteries from a first life in electric vehicles to a second life in stationary energy storage would have another bonus: displacing toxic lead-acid batteries.
Only about 60% of lead-acid batteries are used in cars, said Richard Fuller, who leads the non-profit Pure Earth, another 20% are used for storing excess solar power, particularly in African countries.
Lead-acid batteries typically last only about two years in warmer climates, said Fuller, as heat causes them to degrade more quickly, meaning they need to be recycled frequently. However, there are few facilities that can safely do this in Africa.
Instead, these batteries are often cracked open and melted down in back yards. The process exposes the recyclers and their surroundings to lead, a potent neurotoxin that has no known safe level and can damage brain development in children.
Lithium-ion batteries could offer a less toxic and longer-lasting alternative for energy storage, Fuller said.
The race to recycle
“When a battery really is at the end of its use, then it’s time to recycle it,” Pennington said.
There is big momentum behind lithium-ion battery recycling. In its impact report, published in August, Tesla announced that it had started building recycling capabilities at its Gigafactory in Nevada to process waste batteries.
Nearby Redwood Materials, founded by the former Tesla chief technology officer JB Straubel, which operates out of Carson City, Nevada, raised more than $700m in July and plans to expand operations. The factory takes in dead batteries, extracts valuable materials such as copper and cobalt, then sends the refined metals back into the battery supply chain.
Yet, as recycling becomes more mainstream, big technical challenges remain.
One of which is the complex designs that recyclers must navigate to get to the valuable components. Lithium-ion batteries are rarely designed with recyclability in mind, said Carlton Cummins, co-founder of Aceleron, a UK battery manufacturing startup. “This is why the recycler struggles. They want to do the job, but they only get introduced to the product when it reaches their door.”
Cummins and co-founder Amrit Chandan have targeted one design flaw: the way components are connected. Most components are welded together, which is good for electrical connection, but bad for recycling, Cummins said.
Aceleron’s batteries join components with fasteners that compress the metal contacts together. These connections can be decompressed and the fasteners removed, allowing for complete disassembly or for the removal and replacement of individual faulty components.
Easier disassembly could also help mitigate safety hazards. Lithium-ion batteries that are not properly handled could pose fire and explosion risks. “If we pick it down to bits, I guarantee you, it’s not going to hurt anyone,” Cummins said.
Changing the system
Success isn’t guaranteed even if the technical challenges are cracked. History shows how hard it can be to create well-functioning recycling industries.
Lead-acid batteries, for example, enjoy high rates of recycling in part due to legal requirements – as much as 99% of lead in automobile batteries is recycled. But they have a toxic cost when they end up at improper recycling facilities. Spent batteries often end up with backyard recyclers because they can pay more for them than formal recyclers, who have to cover higher operating costs.
Lithium-ion batteries may be less toxic but they will still need to end up at operations that can safely recycle them. “Products tend to flow through the path of least resistance, so you want to make the path which goes through formal channels less resistant,” Pennington said.
Legislation could help. While the US has yet to implement federal policies mandating lithium-ion battery recycling, the EU and China already require battery manufacturers to pay for setting up collection and recycling systems. These funds could help subsidize formal recyclers to make them more competitive, Pennington said.
Last December, the EU also proposed sweeping changes to its battery regulations, most of which target lithium-ion batteries. These include target rates of 70% for battery collection, recovery rates of 95% for cobalt, copper, lead and nickel and 70% for lithium, and mandatory minimum levels of recycled content in new batteries by 2030 – to ensure there are markets for recyclers and buffer them from volatile commodity prices or changing battery chemistries.
“They aren’t in final form yet, but the proposals that are out there are ambitious,” Richter said.
Data could also help. The EU and the Global Battery Alliance (GBA), a public-private collaboration, are both working on versions of a digital “passport” – an electronic record for a battery that would contain information about its whole life cycle.
“We are thinking about a QR code or a [radio frequency identification] detection device,” says Torsten Freund, who leads the GBA’s battery passport initiative. It could report a battery’s health and remaining capacity, helping vehicle manufacturers direct it for reuse or to recycling facilities. Data about materials could help recyclers navigate the myriad chemistries of lithium-ion batteries. And once recycling becomes more widespread, the passport could also indicate the amount of recycled content in new batteries.
As the automobile industry starts to transform, now is the time to tackle these problems, said Maya Ben Dror, urban mobility lead at the World Economic Forum. The money pouring into the sector offers an “opportunity to ensure that these investments are going to be in sustainable new ecosystems and not just in a new type of car”, she said.
It’s also worth noting that sustainable transport goes beyond electric cars, said Richter. Walking, biking or taking public transportation should not be overlooked, she said. “It’s important to remember that we can have a sustainable product situated within an unsustainable system.”
AP PHOTOS: Wildfires grow worldwide as climate sizzles
August 19, 2021
A man watches the flames as a wildfire approaches Kochyli beach near the village of Limni, Greece, on the island of Evia, about 160 kilometers (100 miles) north of Athens, late Friday, Aug. 6, 2021, as wildfires raged through Greece and Turkey. (AP Photo/Thodoris Nikolaou)
Nathan Spangle examines trees scorched by the Dixie Fire in Lassen County, Calif., on Monday, Aug. 16, 2021. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
A helicopter drops water over a wildfire in Koycegiz, Mugla, Turkey, Monday, Aug. 9, 2021. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)
Destiney Barnard holds Raymond William Goetchius while stranded at a gas station near the Dixie Fire on Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021, in Doyle, Calif. Barnard was helping Goetchius and his family evacuate from Susanville when her car broke down. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
Hunter McKee pets Rosy after helping evacuate the horse to the edge of Lake Almanor as the Dixie Fire approaches Chester, Calif, on Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2021. Officials issued evacuation orders for the town earlier in the day as dry and windy conditions led to increased fire activity. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
Embers fly from burning trees as the Caldor Fire grows on Mormom Emigrant Trail east of Sly Park, Calif., on Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021. (AP Photo/Ethan
A man drops water to burning trees during a wildfire in Adames area, northern Athens, Greece, Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2021. Hundreds of residents living near a forest area north of Athens fled their homes. (AP Photo/Michael Varaklas)
The remains of a classic car sits on a property destroyed by the White Rock Lake wildfire in Monte Lake, east of Kamloops, British Columbia, Saturday, Aug. 14, 2021. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press via AP)
Evacuated campers play cards in a gymnasium in Bormes-les-Mimosas, southern France, Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)
People use a ferry to evacuate from Pefki village on Evia island, about 189 kilometers (118 miles) north of Athens, Greece, Sunday, Aug. 8, 2021. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
People stand in front of Kemerkoy Thermal Power Plant with a blaze from a wildfire approaching in the background, in Milas, Mugla, Turkey, Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)
A man throws water from a swimming pool as the fire approaches his house in Ippokratios Politia village, about 35 kilometres (21 miles) north of Athens, Greece, Friday, Aug. 6, 2021. Thousands of people fled wildfires burning out of control in Greece and Turkey. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)
The summer season of wildfires is growing more intense and destructive as the climate sizzles.
July was the planet’s hottest month in 142 years of record keeping, according to U.S. weather officials. Several U.S. states — including California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington — also saw their hottest ever July.
In August, wildfires continued to rage across the western United States and Canada, southern Europe, northern Africa, Russia, Israel and elsewhere.
In Greece, which is suffering its most severe heat wave in decades, a large wildfire this week threatened villages outside Athens. Thousands of people were evacuated from homes in a region of the French Riviera threatened by blazing fires. Recent wildfires have killed at least 75 people in Algeria and 16 in Turkey, local officials said.
Drought conditions and high temperatures in northern California have given rise to the Dixie Fire, which has been ablaze for a month and burned more than 1,000 square miles. Some 1,600 people in Lake County were recently ordered to flee approaching flames, and children were rushed out of an elementary school as a nearby field burned.
Last week a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called Earth’s rapidly warming temperatures a “ code red for humanity.” The report calls climate change clearly human-caused and “an established fact,” and co-author and climate scientist Linda Mearns told the AP that the disrupted global climate leaves “nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.”
Thousands of household wells go dry amid California drought: ‘Without water, you’re nothing’
Priscella Vega
Fourteen years ago, Heriberto Sevilla came across a ranch on the outskirts of Madera set among fields of stalk grass and bright wildflowers. Pepper trees dotted the meadow, and children played in the natural lakes created by heavy rains.
It was the perfect place to raise a big family. So the 51-year-old native of Chilapa, Mexico, bought it and made sure the property included a functioning well.
On spring days, free time was spent lounging in the backyard. Heriberto taught his daughters how to ride horses. They helped him feed the chickens and sheep. Goats kept the area tidy, munching on grass. When fruit in the trees was ripe, he proudly showed his children how to harvest their bounty. And in the winter, his wife Sandra prepared a homemade birria for holiday festivities from their goats.
But then a darkness came over the little Eden the Sevillas had created.
Amid two years of relentless drought, the well’s output slowly tapered off. The family was forced to buy gallons of precious water from the grocery store to take showers, clean dishes and cook. They borrowed water from their neighbor to irrigate their almond and peach trees and feed their goats, sheep, chickens and horses.
Heriberto Sevilla feeds sheep and goats on his ranch in Madera County where he and his family have lived for 14 years. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Heriberto Sevilla and his daughter Arianna, 5, fill a drinking trough for the animals on their ranch with water drawn with permission from a neighbor’s hose. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
“Without water, you’re nothing,” Heriberto said. “Family is the most important thing. Plants are beautiful, and my animals help me relax. But what can we do?”
The Sevillas are just one of thousands households across the San Joaquin Valley whose wells have gone dry amid increasingly hot temperatures and drought. Every year, a new town in this verdant agricultural region seems to be pushed over the brink by water scarcity — like East Porterville, an unincorporated community in Tulare County, in 2014, and, most recently, Teviston, a census-designated place in the same county.
But these issues have plagued rural towns and unincorporated areas here for decades. And in the era of the coronavirus, these inequities have become magnified in an area that already had some of the highest poverty rates in the state.
“Drought is part of our life,” said Susana De Anda, cofounder and executive director of the Community Water Center, a nonprofit environmental justice organization based in the valley. “We need to ensure we invest in drought-resilient infrastructure. … We can’t wait until wells go dry. That’s a disservice.”
Sandra Sevilla washes dishes with water from a tank installed in the backyard of her home in Madera County. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Even those who can afford to pay upfront for new wells must join waiting lists as drilling companies await the back-ordered equipment they need to build and install them. Local officials provide jugs and gallons of water, and local organizations offer aid if resources aren’t already tapped out.
“We’re so inundated,” said Marliez Diaz, water sustainability manager at Self-Help Enterprises, a nonprofit organization that provides emergency services such as water storage tanks and filtration systems across the valley. In 2020, 121 temporary water tanks of 2,500 gallons were installed, 92 new water wells were constructed and 3,033 households received bottled water, according to an annual report.
The drought parched the natural landscape Heriberto once reveled in.
Plants withered, and the spacious backyard is now all dirt. Arianna, their 5-year-old daughter, gets coated with dust when she pretends to cook in her cottage playhouse. A patch of yellowing grass remains, a reminder of better days when Heriberto’s beloved horse grazed near his hammock. He sold his companion months ago to preserve water. He will sell more of his furry friends in the coming weeks.
Sandra Sevilla shows how water from a 2,500-gallon tank, seen in the background, feeds into her home’s plumbing in Madera County. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
“Too many people don’t appreciate water,” Sandra said, “until this happens to you.”
On a recent weekday morning, a thin flow of water trickled from a faucet into a dirty bowl as she washed dishes. Sandra hunched forward to meticulously scrub it with a worn sponge, then poured the soapy water onto another plate.
Every so often, she allowed herself to get a bit more water.
Heriberto lived in the city of Madera when he first arrived in California in 1994. He picked tomatoes, onions and garlic for years until he found his way south in Santa Ana and met Sandra, who became his wife. The two rented a room and survived off of Heriberto’s earnings as a landscaper. But city life wasn’t for them.
This time, he returned with Sandra to an unincorporated area of Madera, where he found the place he’d finally get to call his own.
The first inkling of drought for the Sevillas happened in 2019 when the water pressure from their well dropped. Heriberto thought the pump’s motor might need to be replaced, or that maybe a tube broke. He asked five people familiar with wells for a diagnostic, and they all told him he was running out of water.
“Drought is part of our life. We need to ensure we invest in drought-resilient infrastructure …. We can’t wait until wells go dry. That’s a disservice.”
Susana De Anda, co-founder and executive director of the Community Water Center
Sandra Sevilla removes clothing from the washing machine in her home. She used a hose connected with permission to a neighbor’s water line to fill the washer. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Sandra scaled back on how often she mopped their home’s tile floors. She lugged bags of soiled clothes to stuffy laundromats. If she dried her hands with a paper towel, she smoothed it out and reused it to wipe down the microwave and kitchen counters.
Showers were unpredictable. They’d sometimes have enough water to get wet and soap up, but then have to wait in the tub, covered in bubbles, hoping the water would resume. Most of the time it didn’t.
Her daughters “would get mad,” Sandra said. “The good thing is our neighbor helped us a lot.”
As the situation worsened, Sandra brainstormed a new routine. At dawn, she eked whatever little water drizzled out of the well into 5-gallon plastic buckets. She topped it off with her neighbor’s water. Each family member would shower with their allotted bucket. Whatever was left was used to flush the toilet. Single-use plastic water bottles were reserved for washing hands.
The shift in life harkened back to Sandra’s and Heriberto’s childhoods in Mexico, but it came as an unwelcome shock to their four daughters and son.
Arianna Sevilla, 5, heads to the kitchen table with a fresh quesadilla made by her mother Sandra. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Emilee Sevilla, 21, learned how to scale back her hourlong showers to 15 minutes. She cut down on the products she uses on her hair and face and no longer lets the water run while she prepares to shave her legs, turning on the shower only when she’s actively using it, even now that they’ve received help.
“I’m only 21 and this is what I have to deal with,” she said. “At one point I’m going to have certain struggles when I grow up, and I guess in a way it’s mentally preparing me for the future.”
In October, while her parents were on a trip to Mexico, Emilee stayed behind with her younger brother because of school and work. She was certain there would be no water issues with fewer people in the house.
As she prepared to shower before a work shift, however, only foam oozed out of the shower head. Shutting the well pump off and on didn’t work. She grabbed two water bottles from the refrigerator and washed her face in the bathroom sink.
Over a choppy phone call, she told her parents what happened.
Henry Shillings, a longtime resident who has paid attention to the water discussions in the region, saw Emilee walking in and out of her home. He knew exactly what had happened. His mother had sold her property to Heriberto, and he reckoned that the well had come to the end of its life. He learned their well water flow had dropped to 20 gallons per minute — hardly any pressure compared with his 65 gallons per minute.
Without hesitating, he connected a hose to his well that was long enough to reach the Sevillas’ home. “We’re neighbors,” he said. “That’s what neighbors do. We help each other if we can.”
Two weeks ago, the Sevillas reached a temporary solution with a 2,500-gallon water tank in their backyard.
Heriberto Sevilla stands with his wife Sandra and daughter Arianna next to a 2,500-gallon water tank that was installed by a nonprofit group in the backyard of their home in Madera County after their well failed. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Hours after they received their temporary water tank, Sandra and Heriberto took a moment of rest in their backyard. A cool breeze wafted past them, tickling their tree’s leaves on a sweltering afternoon. They sat in silence and watched Arianna sit inside her cottage playhouse. Duke, their German shepherd, lay at their feet.
The tank meant they’d have one year of guaranteed clean, precious water, a reprieve from buying a new well, which are as expensive as a brand-new Ford Mustang.
Because they understood this gift, their drought routine would not change. Sandra left the two buckets in the tub — Arianna enjoyed her showers that way.
“Thank God we’re going to have this help,” Sandra said as she sipped cold water.
Soon they would start visiting banks in hopes of qualifying for a loan to pay for a new well. But in this fleeting moment, in the face of a drought that is only expected to get worse, life felt normal again.
Lindsey Graham’s Hypocrisies Laid Bare In Scathing ‘Daily Show’ Biography
Ed Mazza
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) once slammed Donals Trump as a “kook” and “unfit for office,” only to change his tune and become of Trump’s staunchest supporters.
Or, as Desi Lydic put it in a new “Dailyshow-ography” segment: “Graham did everything he could to stop the wedding between Donald Trump and America, but if he couldn’t ultimately succeed, then goddammit, he would give up harder than anyone had ever given up before.”
Instead of calling the former president a kook, Graham actively promoted him for the Nobel Peace Prize and declared himself as “all-in” for his onetime nemesis.
“Graham wasn’t off the Trump train,” Lydic said. “He was more like one of those tourist buses that you could get off and then get back on whenever it’s convenient.”
See her full segment on Graham’s “uncontrollable lust for political power,” including a look at his other hypocrisies, below:
Cruz Urias Beltran collapsed because of heat-related illness while working in a cornfield near Grand Island, Neb., in 2018. He is one of at least384 workers who died from environmental heat exposure in the U.S. in the last decade, according to an investigation by Columbia Journalism Investigations and NPR. Walker Pickering for NPR
As the temperature in Grand Island, Neb., soared to 91 degrees that July day in 2018, two dozen farmworkers tunneled for nine hours into a thicket of cornstalks, snapping off tassels while they crossed a sunbaked field that spanned 206 acres — the equivalent of 156 football fields.
When they emerged at the end of the day to board a bus that would transport them to a nearby motel to sleep, one of the workers, Cruz Urias Beltran, didn’t make it back. Searchers found the 52-year-old farmworker’s body 20 hours later amid the corn husks, “as if he’d simply collapsed,” recalled a funeral home employee. An empty water bottle was stuffed in his jeans pocket. An autopsy report confirmed that Beltran died from heatstroke. It was his third day on the job.
Beltran is one of at least 384 workers who died from environmental heat exposure in the U.S. in the last decade, according to an investigation by NPR and Columbia Journalism Investigations, the investigative reporting unit of Columbia Journalism School. The count includes people toiling in essential yet often invisible jobs in 37 states across the country: farm laborers in California, construction and trash-collection workers in Texas and tree trimmers in North Carolina and Virginia. An analysis of federal data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the three-year average of worker heat deaths has doubled since the early 1990s.
A family photo of Cruz Urias Beltran taken during the 1990s. Paty Espinoza
CJI and NPR reviewed hundreds of pages of documents, including workplace inspection reports, death investigation files, depositions, court records and police reports, and interviewed victims’ families, former and current officials from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, workers, employers, workers’ advocates, lawyers and experts.
CJI and NPR also analyzed two federal data sets on worker heat deaths: one from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the other from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Both are divisions within the U.S. Labor Department.
Among the findings:
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), whose primary responsibility is to protect workers from hazards, has failed to adopt a national heat standard to safeguard workers against rapidly rising temperatures, resulting in an enforcement system rife with problems.
For at least a dozen companies, it wasn’t the first time their workers succumbed to heat. One worker collapsed and died after repeatedly complaining about the heat; another died after hauling 20 tons of trash for nearly 10 hours. In some instances, employees died after not having ample water and scheduled shade breaks. Many died within their first week on the job.
OSHA officials often decide not to penalize companies for worker deaths. When they do, they routinely negotiate with business owners and reduce violations and fines.
In some cases, OSHA doesn’t follow up after a worker’s death from heat exposure to ensure that the company is complying with the measures the agency imposed to prevent future fatalities.
Workers of color have borne the brunt: Since 2010, Hispanics have accounted for a third of all heat fatalities, yet they represent a fraction — 17% — of the U.S. workforce. Health and safety experts attribute this unequal toll to Hispanics’ overrepresentation in industries vulnerable to dangerous heat, such as construction and agriculture.
OSHA’s record-keeping on heat fatalities is so poor that there’s no way to know exactly how many workers have died from heat.
Current and former OSHA officials acknowledge that the known death tally is a vast undercount. The agency mostly relies on companies to report worker fatalities after they occur, but not all do so.
CJI and NPR reporters analyzed worker heat deaths recorded by OSHA between 2010 and 2020 and compared each incident day’s high temperature with historical averages over 40 years. Most of the deaths happened on days that were unusually hot for that date. More than two-thirds occurred on days when the temperature reached at least 90 degrees.
Yet no worker should die from heat, said Ronda McCarthy, an occupational health specialist who directs medical services at the health care provider Concentra, in Waco, Texas. McCarthy spent seven years educating her home state’s municipal workers about heat, which reduced cases of worker heat exhaustion and similar conditions there.
“Heat illness should be considered a preventable illness,” she said.
No federal heat standard
OSHA has known about the dangers of heat — and how to prevent deaths — for decades. In 1972, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, studied the effects of heat stress on workers in the U.S. and recommended criteria for an OSHA heat standard. Under the proposal, employers would have had to give employees one break every hour and offer ready access to water. New workers would have received extra breaks so they could acclimate to strenuous activity in the heat.
NIOSH has refined these safety measures — first in 1986 and, again, in 2016 — but OSHA has notacted on them because of other regulatory priorities. This year, for the first time, OSHA is officially considering a heat standard by putting it on its regulatory agenda. James Frederick, OSHA’s acting director, said it’s a “priority” for the Biden administration.
“Occupational exposure to heat remains a very important topic,” Frederick said in an interview with CJI and NPR. “We’re focused on improving our efforts to protect workers moving forward.”
James Frederick, OSHA’s acting director, says heat safety is a “priority” for the Biden administration. Ian Morton/NPR
Absent a heat standard, OSHA must rely on a 50-year-old regulation guaranteeing workers a “hazard-free workplace.” OSHA does require companies to provide adequate water but not other heat-safety measures.
OSHA’s own research shows relying on this general rule hasn’t worked. A 2016 study by agency scientists found that some employers whose workers got sick or died from heat hadn’t met basic water provisions. Most companies never offered rest breaks. Only one out of 84 total employers had a plan for building up its workers’ tolerance for laboring in heat.
In 2011, four labor and public interest organizations, including Public Citizen, a consumer rights advocacy group, petitioned OSHA to issue a heat standard. They asked the agency for an emergency temporary standard because a new rule, the petition stated, “could potentially take many years before it’s finalized and implemented.”
David Michaels, then the assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health, who oversaw OSHA, denied the petition, arguing in a January 2012 letter to petitioners that workers weren’t dying from heat at a rate that would justify a legal standard. Recognizing extreme heat’s threat, he said most workers can “recover fairly quickly when the appropriate measures are taken.”
Instead, Michaels launched a voluntary awareness campaign distributing posters and flyers that instructed employees on how to protect themselves. OSHA incorporated these precautions into a free bilingual phone app featuring government-issued heat alerts and advisories. The agency continued this campaign through 2013. Its principle message remains on OSHA’s website today.
David Michaels (right), then the assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health, who oversaw OSHA, attends a committee hearing in 2010. Astrid Riecken/Getty Images
Michaels touted the campaign as a success at the time. The numbers are less clear. The number of workers who succumbed to heat topped 61 cases during the campaign’s inaugural year, in 2011 — an all-time high. Another 65 workers would die from heat exposure in the ensuing two years, closer to the annual average for the decade, while the campaign remained an agency priority.
Six years after his petition denial letter, and after leaving OSHA’s top post, Michaels changed his approach. In 2018, he joined Public Citizen and 131 additional groups in a second petition asking the agency to enact a heat standard. This time, petitioners cited NIOSH’s updated guidelines and warned that “this warming trend will not only continue but accelerate.”
In a recent interview, Michaels, now a public health professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., said the agencywide consensus was that climate change would worsen the problem. But the rule-making process at OSHA is “so difficult” and the industry opposition so formidable that adopting a heat standard “became a bridge too far,” he said. He has come to believe a standard is essential.
“We know that heat kills,” Michaels said. “And if we don’t have requirements, heat will kill more workers.”
Search and rescue
A standard that included water, rest, shade and acclimatization could have saved Beltran, an experienced farmworker who traveled more than 1,300 miles from San Luis, Ariz., to the heart of America’s Corn Belt to pull tassels off corn plants for Rivera Agri Inc.
The day he went missing in the fields on the outskirts of Grand Island, the temperature — with humidity — felt like 100 degrees. Joseph Rivera, the company’s owner, placed an emergency call to authorities shortly after 5 p.m. Beltran was in the field but didn’t come out with the other workers, he told the 911 operator.
Cruz Urias Beltran went missing in the cornfields near Grand Island, Neb., on a day when the temperature — with humidity — felt like 100 degrees.
Walker Pickering for NPR
The call set off an elaborate search-and-rescue mission in the central Nebraska city of 51,000. One volunteer flew a Piper Cub airplane low and slow, on the lookout for the orange safety hat atop Beltran’s salt-and-pepper hair. Another manned a helicopter circling the sea of stalks until the chopper ran low on fuel. At sunset, a Nebraska State Patrol plane with thermal-imaging equipment scanned for a sign of Beltran’s body temperature, but since the plants and soil also were emanating heat, he went undetected.
The following morning, as the temperature hovered in the 90s, the Red Cross opened a temporary cooling station with air conditioning for the 100 volunteers who joined the search. Shortly after noon, someone spotted Beltran’s body, facedown in the husks.
Two months after Beltran’s body was shipped to his family’s home in Mexico’s Sonora state, an OSHA inspector visited Rivera Agri as part of the agency’s investigation into the death. OSHA inspection records show the company didn’t deploy the kind of preventive measures that a heat standard would have required. Rivera Agri did not ensure that employees took enough rest breaks in shade, drank sufficient amounts of water and adapted to their grueling work, the records show.
Beltran hugs his son, Jesus Adrian Urias Machado. Beltran was an experienced farmworker and traveled from Arizona to work in Nebraska.
Paty Espinoza
“These actions were left to the employees to manage themselves,” the inspector wrote in a nine-page citation.
OSHA found that the “moderate lifting and bending” and “pushing and pulling” that Beltran had performed in the heat had contributed to his death. It cited Rivera Agri for a violation and proposed fines totaling $11,641. The agency also ordered the company to train employees on the symptoms of heat illness, among other safety measures. Rivera Agri agreed to OSHA’s conditions, and the fines were reduced to $9,500, records show.
Angela Rivera, who runs the farm labor contracting business with her father, Joseph, said the company has worked to fulfill the agreement. Today, it contracts with a farmworker-rights group to educate employees on how to respond to heat emergencies. Near the cornfield, it sets up extra water stations and has canopies for emergency shade.
“We’ve been in this business for a long time,” said Angela Rivera, who calls Beltran’s death “an unfortunate thing.”
“Every year we try to step it up,” she said.
Joseph Rivera said supervisors now monitor the heat on their cellphones and pull detasselers from the cornfields whenever it gets too hot — part of a heat-stress plan the Riveras created after Beltran’s death. They hand out brochures explaining the new policy to every farmworker on their bus.
Not the first death
Beltran was not Rivera Agri’s first heat-related fatality. In July 1997, a 39-year-old detasseler died of heatstroke under similar circumstances. Like Beltran, it was his third day on the job, and the temperature had spiked to 95 degrees. When he collapsed, the crew found him within two hours. But his core body temperature was 108 degrees — hot enough for the brain, liver and kidneys to shut down.
OSHA investigated his death but didn’t impose penalties because then-OSHA Area Director Ben Bare determined there was no applicable standard. The lack of a standard leaves individual OSHA officials to decide whether a general violation applies to each death, creating a pattern of uneven enforcement in worker heat-death cases, records show.
CJI and NPR’s analysis of worker heat deaths shows that, like Rivera Agri, 11 other companies have lost more than one employee. In five of the cases, OSHA investigated the first fatality and issued citations, only for another employee to die from heat. One of those cited was Texas-based Hellas Construction, which builds publicly and privately funded stadiums and other sports infrastructure projects across the country.
In July 2018, the week before Beltran died in a Nebraska cornfield, Karl Simmons signed on as a laborer for Hellas. At 30, with long braided hair and a shoulder tattoo bearing his mother’s name, Simmons arrived at the sprawling Gateway Park in Fort Worth, Texas, ready to install turf.
On his second day on the job, Simmons, who had served in the U.S. Navy, took a lunch break and fielded a call from his wife, Precious. “It’s just hot,” he complained, according to a deposition she gave in a lawsuit filed by the family against Hellas. The five-person crew had already drunk all the water. Simmons returned to preparing the mixture to attach to the turf, shoveling gravel and adhesive chemicals into a mixer.
That afternoon — as the temperature topped 96 degrees — Simmons told his supervisor he felt hot, according to OSHA records. He complained about the heat two more times that day. Each time, he said he felt sick. At one point, he sought shade under a tree while his supervisor drove to a store to get water.
A passerby eventually spotted Simmons sprawled on the ground, facedown, and alerted the crew. His brother-in-law, Michael Spriggins, who worked alongside Simmons as a Hellas laborer, sprinted to his aid. He found Simmons gasping for breath, bleeding from his nose and mouth.
Karl Simmons was installing turf at Gateway Park in Fort Worth, Texas, when he felt ill. Later, he was pronounced dead at a local hospital. Heatstroke, the autopsy report confirmed. JerSean Golatt for NPR
“It was a sight I ain’t going to never forget,” Spriggins said in an interview with CJI and NPR.
He called 911 and then placed a cool towel under Simmons’ neck at the dispatcher’s instructions. Simmons opened his eyes.
“It looked like he’s gonna pull through this,” Spriggins recalled.
Two hours later, Simmons was pronounced dead at a local hospital. Heatstroke, the autopsy report confirmed. He was one of at least 53 workers who have been fatally stricken by heat in Texas since 2010, CJI and NPR’s analysis shows.
The next day, Jason Davidson, Hellas’s chief safety officer, emailed more than 340 company employees, addressing the perils of laboring in extreme heat. It was at least the fourth written warning he sent in the summer of 2018, when 11 additional Hellas employees were diagnosed with heat-related illnesses requiring medical attention.
Dean Wingo, who oversaw the OSHA regional office that includes Texas from 2007 to 2012, said Hellas’ hospitalization numbers suggest a worrying pattern. Serious heat-related illness involves everything from a heat rash to uncontrolled bleeding, according to medical experts. In its most severe form, heatstroke can cause multisystem organ failure that has lasting adverse effects. Wingo said he believes Hellas’ record on workplace heat safety shows “poor” company management.
Dean Wingo, who formerly oversaw the OSHA regional office that includes Texas, says he believes Hellas Construction’s record on workplace heat safety shows “poor” company management. Michael Cirlos III for NPR
Hellas officials declined a dozen interview requests for this story and didn’t respond to a list of 20 written questions from CJI and NPR. In its response to a wrongful-death lawsuit filed in July 2019 by Simmons’ wife, the company denied that its conduct “rose to a level of gross neglect” or that it failed to provide a safe workplace.
But in December 2018, OSHA found that Hellas hadn’t provided Simmons a workplace “free from recognized hazards” and cited the company for two violations, including failing to record Simmons’ death in OSHA logs, records show. OSHA proposed a fine of $14,782 against Hellas for Simmons’ death. The company earned more than $150 million in revenue that year.
As part of a settlement, Hellas agreed to implement “a more robust/detailed training program … to prevent heat exhaustion and heat stress injuries.” OSHA lowered the fine by nearly $2,000, to $12,934. That’s higher than the national average fine of $7,314 for employers in such cases, according to a CJI and NPR analysis.
Hellas executives did not carry out the safety measures, records show. And OSHA never showed up at a work site to see whether the company was following the terms of the settlement agreement.
OSHA’s regional office in Dallas, which investigated Simmons’ death, declined to discuss the case.
OSHA data shows the agency reduced heat-related sanctions nationally by 31%, on average, after settlements. It cut the penalties in more than half of the 246 heat-death cases in which OSHA had proposed them.
Wingo said the only way OSHA can ensure that companies like Hellas keep their promises is to conduct follow-up inspections in person.
“I don’t think it’s excusable,” he said. “When you’ve had a fatality, you go back.”
On July 19, 2019, a year after Simmons’ death, a second Hellas worker succumbed to heat — this time in Hondo, Texas, 42 miles west of San Antonio. At 6 a.m. that day, forecasters were promising a scorcher. The temperature would soar to 99 degrees, 3 degrees hotter than the 40-year average, the CJI and NPR data analysis shows.
Pedro Martinez Sr., 49, had been employed by Hellas for more than a year when he arrived for work at McDowell Middle School with his 22-year-old namesake. The father had gotten the son a summer job. At the time, Pedro Jr., also known as “Bruno,” was between semesters at a college in his home state of Zacatecas, Mexico.
On the third day, the pair did cement work on the school’s athletic field. They pulled out vertical rebar stakes using a device called a JackJaw, pumping a handle to wrench the stakes from the ground. As in the Simmons case, an OSHA inspection would later confirm that the area had little shade. Records show that the younger Martinez toiled for 10 hours before taking a lunch break at 4 p.m.
Nearly two hours later, he was working beside his father when he became overheated and ran off, hit a fence and collapsed. The father rushed his son to a local hospital’s emergency room, where nurses placed ice packs around his body. But his core temperature was already 108 degrees, according to a police report. The official cause of death was heatstroke.
The former construction site where Pedro Martinez Jr. died of heatstroke now serves as a recreational facility adjacent to a middle school in Hondo, Texas. Michael Cirlos III for NPR
In December 2019, OSHA cited Hellas for a willful violation, the most serious category. The citation would have placed Hellas on a public list of “severe violators,” reserved for repeat offenders. The agency proposed a penalty of $132,598 — the maximum amount OSHA could levy at the time.
One month later, Hellas challenged the citation, arguing it should be dismissed because OSHA didn’t prove “the necessary elements of its claims.” The Labor Department settled with Hellas in April 2020, cutting the fine in half and reclassifying the willful violation as five “serious” ones. This kept Hellas off the severe violators list. A revised settlement agreement required the company to create a heat-illness prevention plan, among other things. It’s unclear whether Hellas followed through.
By May of last year, Hellas had paid the fine, and OSHA resolved the case. The agency’s regional office in San Antonio, which investigated Martinez’s death, declined two requests to discuss the case.
A state standard falls short
Besides Texas, the states of California, Florida and Arkansas have each recorded at least 14 worker heat deaths since 2010, according to CJI and NPR’s analysis. Unlike most states, however, California has its own heat standard. Passed in 2005, the standard was later named after a 17-year-old pregnant farmworker, Maria Jimenez, who died from heat exposure while pruning grapes. The standard was the first to uphold the pillars of heat safety: water, rest, shade and acclimatization.
In 2015, after the United Farm Workers sued California’s state version of OSHA, the agency tightened its standard. Cal/OSHA lowered the heat safety limit from 85 to 80 degrees and required companies to prepare for extreme heat threats on days hotter than 95 degrees. It also allocated more money and staff to enforcement.
Today, California’s rule is widely viewed as the gold standard. The Labor Department should emulate it, said John Newquist, who served as assistant administrator in OSHA Region 5 in the Upper Midwest from 2005 to 2012.
“It’s easy with California already adopting this thing for years,” he said. “If you follow these guidelines, that works.”
But OSHA data on worker heat deaths suggests the state’s standard can fall short. The rule has led to a rise in heat-related enforcement actions by the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, known as Cal/OSHA, every year but 2010, 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic affected such activities across the board. In 2019, for instance, the agency conducted more than 4,000 heat inspections and cited workplaces in nearly half of them. Still, the CJI and NPR analysis shows that California’s yearly tally of worker heat deaths has remained steady over the past decade.
Some critics say the agency has yet to curb worker heat illnesses and deaths because of lax and uneven enforcement.
Garrett Brown, a Cal/OSHA inspector from 1994 to 2014, has investigated dozens of heat deaths and worked as a special advisor for a former Cal/OSHA secretary and as a part-time inspector until this year. He believes the agency can’t “do what it needs to do” to protect the state’s workers because of its chronic understaffing. Brown has documented staffing levels for years, charting the data on his blog, Inside Cal/OSHA. The figures reveal a tiny workforce — about 190 inspectors for 1 million employers responsible for 18 million workers. That’s one inspector for roughly every 5,200 companies.
Brown said mismanagement and the state’s inability to fill inspector positions have exacerbated the problem. As of July 31, at least 25% of nearly 250 Cal/OSHA inspector positions remained vacant. And that can make for dire consequences on the ground.
A firefighter’s death
In California, where fires have been raging, the victims of heat-related deaths are sometimes firefighters.
In April 2015, just two months before California’s standard was tightened, Raymond Araujo, one of 4,000 inmates who then served as firefighters for the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection — known as Cal Fire — was on a 2-mile hike in Banning, Calif., about 30 miles from Palm Springs. Winding through steep, often shadeless hills, the trail was part of the department’s required cardiovascular training. On that day, the temperature climbed to 81 degrees, 10 degrees hotter than the 40-year average.
A fire station warning sign in Fallbrook, Calif. A Cal/OSHA inspection report named heat as a contributing factor in Raymond Araujo’s death while he was training as a firefighter for Cal Fire. But his death was ultimately deemed an accident. Ariana Drehsler for NPR
As the 12-member group neared the end of the exercise, Araujo stumbled and fell to his knees. His supervisor told his colleagues to help Araujo stand up and remove his fire gear so he could finish the hike. He walked another 30 feet and eventually collapsed.
The fire captain called for medical assistance, and a helicopter transported Araujo back to a nearby base camp, where he was pronounced dead, the records show.
While the Cal/OSHA inspection report named heat as a contributing factor in Araujo’s death, the cause was “hypertensive cardiovascular disease,” according to the autopsy report. As a result, Cal/OSHA deemed his death an accident.
Brown, the former Cal/OSHA inspector, reviewed the agency’s report and said it was impossible for him to know why officials declined to investigate. He said the incident resembled many cases he had investigated — where workers suffered heart attacks because of the heat. Were he leading the charge, Brown said, he would have wanted to talk to eyewitnesses because the incident had all the hallmarks of a heat illness violation.
“One way to invalidate a fatality report is to decide that it’s natural causes,” he said, explaining that Cal/OSHA managers can look for ways to lessen understaffed inspectors’ workloads.
Cal/OSHA declined CJI and NPR’s requests to interview key officials for this story. But an agency spokesman defended Cal/OSHA’s handling of Araujo’s death, noting that the agency followed the Cal/OSHA medical unit’s assessment in determining a cause of death.
Asked about the effectiveness of the heat standard, the agency said it regularly looks to enhance enforcement activities.
“We continue to evaluate the effectiveness of our programs and consult with various subject matter experts to determine what changes, if any, are necessary to improve health and safety,” spokesman Frank Polizzi said in an email.
“It pays not to comply”
Just before 8 a.m. on July 28, 2019, Cal Fire firefighter Yaroslav “Yaro” Katkov set out with a fellow employee and a fire captain on a hike similar to the one that Araujo had made. The 28-year-old Ukrainian immigrant, who lived in Murrieta, Calif., a bedroom community near San Diego, had served as a reserve firefighter before being hired by Cal Fire in a seasonal role a year earlier.
Cal Fire firefighter Yaroslav “Yaro” Katkov was on a routine training exercise when he stumbled and felt exhausted shortly before he collapsed. Ashley Vallario
On a standard training exercise, Katkov was asked to complete a 1.45-mile loop at Cal Fire’s rural Station 16 in Fallbrook, a remote mountainous area halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. As they traversed the loop, the captain and the co-worker noticed Katkov lagging behind the required 30-minute deadline to finish the hike. The two stopped on several occasions to allow Katkov to catch up, delaying their end time by 10 minutes. The temperature would climb to 88 degrees that day — 5 degrees hotter than the 40-year average.
The captain, Joe Ekblad, recognized that Katkov hadn’t given his body enough of a rest yet but ordered the firefighters to repeat the exercise, according to the Cal/OSHA records. On the way up the steepest incline of the loop, Katkov stumbled and told his supervisor he felt exhausted — two telltale signs of heat stress. He collapsed on the hilltop, was airlifted to a hospital nearly two hours later and died of heat illness the next day.
“He loved the idea of being like a wildland firefighter,” said Ashley Vallario, Katkov’s fiancée. “It made him happy.”
This time, Cal/OSHA investigated Katkov’s death, interviewing eyewitnesses. The inspector detailed extensive failures by the captain, which led to his demotion. The agency found that Cal Fire had failed to stop the hike and seek emergency medical treatment even after Katkov had exhibited heat-related symptoms. Regulators levied a fine of $80,000 — almost five times the average Cal/OSHA fine of $17,000 in these cases.
Neither Cal Fire nor Ekblad responded to requests for comment.
Yaro Katkov was assigned to Cal Fire/San Diego County Fire’s De Luz Station 16 in Fallbrook. He died of heat illness after a training exercise in the area.
Ariana Drehsler for NPR
Such a large penalty shows what a fully enforceable heat standard can do, some experts say. But Cal/OSHA records suggest the regulators’ stick has not come soon enough. Since 2012, at least four other firefighters have died during Cal Fire training hikes. All the firefighters but Katkov were inmates. No other case yielded sanctions.
Cal Fire’s training processes, meanwhile, continue to put firefighters at risk. In 2020, almost a year after Katkov’s death, another department firefighter was sickened by heat during a hike. That firefighter was rushed to the hospital and survived.
Ellen Widess, head of Cal/OSHA from 2011 to 2013, said she sees an unsettling pattern: Employers can brush off the cost of an agency fine. In many cases, she said, penalties have no effect.
“We’ve seen that the costs of [non]compliance are so cheap,” Widess said. “It pays not to comply.”
“It’s going to be like this every year”
In the three years since Public Citizen renewed its petition for an OSHA heat standard, political pressure for such action has grown. In March, Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., authored legislation that would require OSHA to create a national heat standard based on NIOSH criteria and mandate employer training “to prevent and respond” to heat illnesses. The bill, co-sponsored by at least 57 House Democrats, is pending in committee. It marks the second attempt by federal lawmakers to establish a rule since 2019.
OSHA, meanwhile, said it will take the first step toward issuing a rule this fall. In October, the agency plans to publish a request for information from employers, occupational health specialists, climate scientists and workers on the viability of a standard. Frederick, OSHA’s acting director, said the input could help the agency develop a regulation that applies to any industry in the United States.
“Heat hazards exist in many, many industries,” he said. “We know that we have work to do with almost every industry to understand … what the effect of heat hazards in their workplace is and how best they are putting in practices and controls to mitigate those hazards.”
Already, former OSHA officials are anticipating industry pushback, particularly from construction groups.
The cornfield where Cruz Urias Beltran’s body was found near Grand Island, Neb. Walker Pickering for NPR
“Every time OSHA proposes a standard, [the] industry accuses OSHA of killing jobs and destroying whatever industry is going to be regulated,” said Jordan Barab, a former deputy assistant labor secretary who helped shepherd two chemical-exposure standards through protracted rule-making processes. “That would probably follow with a heat standard.”
Some states have decided not to wait. In June, as an unprecedented heat wave blanketed the Pacific Northwest, Sebastian Francisco Perez moved irrigation pipes at a nursery in Willamette Valley, Oregon. Perez was found dead at the end of his shift. Preliminary information suggests the incident was heat related, but Oregon Occupational Safety and Health (Oregon OSHA) has yet to make a determination, according to Aaron Corvin, a spokesman for Oregon OSHA. Ten days later, the state enacted an emergency heat standard.
Back in Grand Island, Neb., where the average high temperature has increased 2 degrees since the 1990s, the intensifying heat is not lost on Joseph Rivera. As a younger man in the fields, he remembers there were hot and humid days. But now the heat is so extreme, he said, “you get these hot days that just come up over you.”
“With climate change, you hit 112 in Nebraska the other day,” Rivera said, explaining why he’s amenable to a federal heat standard. “It’s going to be like this every year.”
Christina Stella, a reporter with Nebraska Public Media; Jacob Margolis, a reporter with KPCC in Los Angeles; Allison Mollenkamp, an intern on NPR’s investigative team; and The Texas Newsroom contributed to this story. Julia Shipley, Brian Edwards and David Nickerson reported this story as fellows for Columbia Journalism Investigations, an investigative reporting unit at the Columbia Journalism School in New York. Cascade Tuholske, a climate impact scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, contributed to the data analysis. Public Health Watch, an independent investigative nonprofit, helped edit this story.
This story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
