Newsweek-Tech & Science

Plague: Fleas in Arizona Test Positive for Easily Spread and Fatal Disease

By Jessica Firger     August 14, 2017

Fleas in two Arizona counties are carrying bubonic plague, an infectious disease that took the lives of millions of people in the Middle Ages, according to news reports. So far there have been no reported illness and deaths.

Health officials in Navajo and Coconino counties in Arizona recently issued a warning to the general public after fleas in the northern part of the state tested positive for Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes the bubonic plague. Humans can contract the plague in a number of ways. In addition to flea bites, people can pick up the bacteria by handling the fluids or tissue of a rodent or another animal that has the illness. The plague can also be transmitted through bodily fluids such as respiratory droplets.

“Navajo County Health Department is urging the public to take precautions to reduce their risk of exposure to this serious disease, which can be present in fleas, rodents, rabbits and predators that feed upon these animals,” the public health warning states, ABC news reported. “The disease can be transmitted to humans and other animals by the bite of an infected flea or by direct contact with an infected animal.”

The plague is primarily found on the West Coast of the U.S., especially the southwestern U.S. when cool summers follow wet winters. At the end of June, three people in New Mexico tested positive for the plague as well, according to NPR.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America and senior associate at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security says the area of the country is vulnerable to the transmission of the plague bacterium.

“Western parts of the United States have had ongoing plague transmission in rodents for over a century,” he says.

Although incidents of plague are minimal these days the risk still exists so people should be vigilant “when dealing with rodents and clear areas of their property that may be attractive to rodents,” says Adalja. He adds that it’s also important for health care providers to be aware of cases and learn to spot symptoms of illness, and to be aware of diagnostic testing and treatment protocols for the illness.

The infectious bacteria that causes plague is rare in the U.S. today. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease and Prevention, an average of seven human cases are diagnosed each year. In 2015, four people in the U.S died from the illness. Worldwide there are roughly 300 cases of the plague each year, according to the World Health Organization.

Symptoms of the plague include sudden onset of fever, headache, chills, and weakness and one or more swollen, tender and painful lymph nodes (called buboes). This form is usually the result of an infected flea bite. The bacteria multiply in the lymph node closest to where the bacteria entered the human body. The disease can be treated effectively with a course of antibiotics, but left untreated the plague can spread to other parts of the body. Without appropriate medical care the illness can be deadly; up to 60 percent of people infected with the pathogen die from it.

Express

Return of Black Death: Risk of epidemic as three stricken with bubonic plague from fleas

PLAGUE fighters are killing off fleas carrying the Black Death after three people were stricken with world’s most feared disease.

By Stuart Winter    August 15, 2017

Health officials are targeting rodent burrows to thwart the risk of an epidemic just weeks after an outbreak put the three victims in hospital.

Urgent action to wipe out flea infestations in prairie dog burrows in two parts of Arizona has been ordered after scientists confirmed the insects were carrying the same plague that wiped out a quarter of humanity in the 1300s.

Besides tackling the infestations, public health officials in Arizona are putting out warnings to reduce the risk of people contracting plague by preventing pets from running loose as well as avoiding rodent burrows.

GETTY    Scientists confirmed that fleas are carrying the plague

Whooping cough, scarlet fever & scurvy: The returning Victorian diseases

Confirmation that fleas were carrying the bacteria that causes plague, Yersinia pestis, came this week after positive tests at two sites near Flagstaff.

Symptoms of plague in humans generally appear within two to six days following exposure

Coconino County Public Health Services District

In June, three people needed hospital treatment after contracting plague 400 miles east in Santa Fee County, New Mexico.

Health officials carried out extensive checks around the homes of the victims, who included a 52-year-old and a 62-year-old woman, to “ensure the safety of the immediately family and neighbors”.

New Mexico witnessed four plague cases in 2016 in Bernalillo, Mora and Rio Arriba counties but with no fatalities. In 2015, one person died when four plague cases were reported in Bernalillo and Santa Fe counties.

GETTY    Health officials are targeting rodent burrows to thwart the risk of an epidemic

Getty Stock Images   The disease can be transmitted to humans and other animals by the bite of an infected flea

For a pandemic that killed as many as 200 million people across Europe and Asia in the 14th Century, bubonic plague still resists total eradication globally, throwing up thousands of cases every year.

The western states of the USA witness annual reports, largely because its native rodent species, such as ground squirrels and prairie dogs, act as vectors in the same way as the black rats that spread the medieval plague across most of the known world.

Arizona’s Coconino County Public Health Services District, confirming the latest positive results, said the disease is “endemic” in the area and urged the public to “take precautions to reduce their risk of exposure to this serious disease, which can be present in fleas, rodents, rabbits and predators that feed upon these animals”.

Its public warning added: “The disease can be transmitted to humans and other animals by the bite of an infected flea or by direct contact with an infected animal.

“Symptoms of plague in humans generally appear within two to six days following exposure and include fever, chills, headache, weakness, muscle pain, and swollen lymph glands – called ‘buboes’ – in the groin, armpits or limbs.

GETTY     Scientists confirmed that fleas had the disease after positive tests at two sites near Flagstaff

“The disease can become septicemic – spreading throughout the bloodstream – as well as pneumonic – affecting the lungs – but is curable with proper antibiotic therapy if diagnosed and treated early.”

During the recent New Mexico outbreak, doctors warned how pets could play a worrying role in spreading the disease.

“Pets that are allowed to roam and hunt can bring infected fleas from dead rodents back into the home, putting you and your children at risk,” said Dr Paul Ettestad, a public health veterinarian for the Department of Health.

“Keeping your pets at home or on a leash and using an appropriate flea control product is important to protect you and your family.”

The Los Angeles Times

From spectacular vistas to the pits: A decades-long public land battle continues in the California desert

The Eagle Mountain iron mine closed more than 30 years ago, and it still haunts the park that borders it on three sides.

By Bettina Boxall, Contact Reporter, Reporting From Desert Center, California   August 7, 2017

Just beyond the southeast corner of Joshua Tree National Park, rows of boarded-up houses, gouged mountainsides and concrete ruins are an ugly reminder of the never-ending battle over the West’s public lands.

This scarred piece of California desert is what’s left of one of the country’s largest open-pit mining operations and the little company town that Kaiser Steel Corp. built after World War II. More than three decades after the Eagle Mountain iron mine closed, it still haunts the park that borders it on three sides.

Plans to turn the site into a huge landfill and dump as much as 20,000 tons a day of Southland garbage into the gaping mine pits died in 2013 after years of court battles. Now, a private company wants to use the pits for a $2-billion hydropower project.

The plant, proponents say, would help boost renewable energy use in Southern California and lower greenhouse gas emissions. But park officials fear the hydropower project could draw down local groundwater levels and harm wildlife.

The Eagle Mountain tract, shaped like a handgun aimed at the park’s interior, offers a lesson in what can happen when federal monument protections are stripped from public lands — as President Trump’s administration is considering doing at a number of national monuments in the West.

“It’s been a sordid history,” said Mark Butler, a former Joshua Tree superintendent who is retired from the National Park Service.

It’s been a sordid history.

— Mark Butler, former Joshua Tree National Park superintendent Steve Lowe, president of Eagle Crest Energy Co., stands amid the ruins of the ore loading area. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established Joshua Tree National Monument on roughly 825,000 acres of federal and railroad holdings northeast of Palm Springs, capping a hard-fought campaign to conserve a singular desert landscape of Joshua trees, massive boulders and spectacular vistas.

But the monument’s ban on new mining claims infuriated gold and silver prospectors who’d long mined the area. In the 1940s, Kaiser Steel bought old patented claims to iron deposits in the Eagle Mountains and started digging them up.

In 1950, Congress shrank the monument by more than a third, chopping a chunk off the northern boundary and the Eagle Mountain area. The way was cleared for Kaiser to blast millions of tons of iron ore out of the mountainsides over the next three decades and ship it by rail to the roaring blast furnaces of the company’s Fontana steel plant.

The 1994 California Desert Protection Act that upgraded Joshua Tree to a national park added much of the Eagle Mountains to the park. But the law omitted the abandoned mine and surrounding federal land.

The reservoirs would be part of what Steve Lowe calls “an elegant solution” to a problem California is confronting.

On a recent day, the town remnants baked in 120-degree heat beneath a mountain of mine tailings. The hulking ruins of the ore loading area looked like a bombed-out village in Afghanistan. Rock benches traced the excavation of four huge pits.

Jeff Harvey and Steve Lowe of Eagle Crest Energy Co. climbed to the top of a metal tower that Kaiser foremen had used to direct mine traffic.

The 360-degree view swept from park peaks to the north, over the moonscape of the mine to the haze-veiled Chuckwalla Valley in the distance.

“This would be full of water,” said Harvey, looking at one of two pits that Eagle Crest wants to convert to reservoirs.

Separated by about 1,400 feet of elevation, the reservoirs would be part of what Lowe calls “an elegant solution” to a problem California is confronting as it boosts renewable energy production.

The sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow according to peak electricity demand. Utilities need some way of storing wind and solar power — or shifting the production time.

One way is with battery systems. Another is through pumped water — the method that Eagle Crest proposes to use in an area that averages less than 4 inches of rain a year.

When the solar panels and wind turbines that are sprouting from the desert floor churn out more power than the electrical grid needs, Eagle Crest would use some of that excess to pump water through an underground tunnel system to the 191-acre upper reservoir.

Later in the day, when energy demand climbs, the water would be released back into the tunnel system, powering turbines and generating electricity at it flowed downhill to the 163-acre lower reservoir.

Pumped storage is not new. There are seven of the operations scattered around California at reservoirs and lakes. Eagle Mountain would be the biggest in the state, capable of producing 1,300 megawatts of electricity — enough to supply nearly 1 million homes.

Like all pumped hydropower systems, it would actually consume more energy pushing water uphill than it generates with the downhill flow.

Unlike the other California operations, Eagle Crest would use groundwater — piped from three new wells drilled on private land in the Chuckwalla Valley to the south.

Over the project’s four-decade life, the company says, it would withdraw a total of about 100,000 acre-feet from the Chuckwalla aquifer. That is enough to supply 200,000 homes for a year.

It is also enough to worry park officials.

They don’t think groundwater feeds their springs. But the Pinto Basin aquifer on Joshua Tree’s east side supplies the Chuckwalla with underflow. Draw down the Chuckwalla, they fear, and groundwater levels in the park could drop.

“The aquifers that underlie the park are ancient,” Joshua Tree Superintendent David Smith said. “Once you start depleting those reservoirs, no one knows what’s actually going to happen. How will that affect the park.… I don’t want to take that risk.”

He cited a 2012 research paper by federal scientists who concluded that groundwater recharge rates in the Chuckwalla Basin may be much lower than previously estimated, suggesting the aquifer is already in overdraft.

A view of the lower portion of the Eagle Mountain mine site and abandoned company town. A large solar farm is in the distance. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Eagle Crest, which bought the 10,000-acre Eagle Mountain site two years ago for $25 million, disputes the paper. Even if it is accurate, Harvey says, company wells would deplete the Chuckwalla aquifer by less than 1%.

Groundwater isn’t the park’s only worry. The hydropower project would disturb an area that has been largely quiet for decades, allowing bighorn sheep and other wildlife to return.

Butler warns that plopping two artificial lakes on such arid land would attract ravens and other predators that could prey on threatened desert tortoises and other park wildlife.

“You’re going to be essentially changing the ecology of that region,” said Butler, who was Joshua Tree’s superintendent from 2011 to 2014.

Despite the park service objections, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granted Eagle Crest a hydropower license in 2014.

In April, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced it was preparing to approve a right of way on federal land outside of the park for 12 miles of Eagle Crest transmission lines and a 15-mile, buried water pipeline from the wells.

Both agencies essentially concluded that the hydropower project would not cause significant environmental harm and would not deplete the aquifer over the long term.

“It’s a FERC-licensed project, so it is pretty much the law of the land right now,” Smith said with an air of resignation.

He grew up in San Diego County, the son of desert rats who headed for Joshua Tree and Anza-Borrego Desert State Park on the weekends. He learned how to climb on Joshua Tree’s boulders. He got his first permanent park service job there.

“I love Joshua Tree. It’s part of who I am as a person,” said Smith, who succeeded Butler as superintendent.

He manages a park that is surging in popularity — Smith expects 3 million visitors this year — and is beset by outside pressures.

Development is on its doorstep. The nitrogen in Southland smog fertilizes invasive grasses that spread across the park, carrying ecologically destructive wildfires with them. Global warming threatens the park’s signature Joshua trees.

“Once you start depleting those reservoirs, no one knows what’s actually going to happen…. I don’t want to take that risk.”

— David Smith, superintendent at Joshua Tree National Park

Weed-filled streets and boarded-up houses are all that is left of the company town. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Yes, he acknowledges, the Eagle Crest project could help reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change. “My concern is that the solution does not cause problems in the park,” he said.

Lowe, Eagle Crest’s president, ticks off the ways in which the abandoned mine is “a great site” for his project.

It is close to existing electrical transmission corridors and solar farms — a new one glints just down Kaiser Road. And, he says, it’s “repurposing a brownfield site that is never going to wind up the way it was.”

Lowe and his late father, Art, founded the company in 1991 and started pursuing the hydropower project despite the competing landfill proposal.

Initially, they eyed the wind turbines popping up in the desert. Now, with the growth of solar and California’s push for renewable energy, Lowe figures his time has come.

“The grid needs this,” said Lowe, who runs the company out of Santa Monica.

Two years ago Eagle Crest signed up a development partner, NextEra Energy, a large energy producer with several solar farms in the California desert, including Desert Sunlight, the 4,000-acre operation down the road.

But Lowe has yet to line up utility customers for the hydropower. And conservation groups have filed protests of the pending right-of-way approval in a move that foreshadows another court fight.

The long battle over Eagle Mountain, it seems, is not yet over.

“Since those boundaries were changed, there’s been almost 70 years of fighting over this landscape,” said David Lamfrom, California desert director for one of the groups, the National Parks Conservation Assn.

“So when people are thinking about the real implications of rolling back national monuments — they are severe.”

“I’ve spent a decade of my career trying to correct past wrongs as they relate to Joshua Tree National Park,” he added.