Scrub Hub: Passing a wind farm, I see some turbines spinning and others motionless. Why?
Karl Schneider, Indianapolis Star – January 23, 2023
Wind farms are becoming more common in Indiana. The state already boasts the fourth largest “farm” in the U.S. and produces nearly 3,500 megawatts of wind energy, with more on the horizon.
The towering windmills reaching up to the sky produce slightly more than 9% of all the electricity used in the state. That’s enough to power more than 1 million homes, according to the American Clean Power Association.
With more projects in the works that will produce another 302 megawatts, and a handful of bills proposed in this session of the General Assembly, wind power is likely to continue to grow across the state. And with the increasing presence of the conspicuous energy generators comes some curiosity.
So, for this edition of Scrub Hub, we took to our trusty submission form and chose a question from Teresa, who asked: Why are the wind turbines not turning right now?
Wind turbines operate in a rural area north of Lafayette, Indiana, on Wednesday, August 4, 2021.
It’s possible for the blades on wind turbines to reach up to speeds of 200 mph, so it may seem odd when some are spinning very quickly while the blades on others nearby are not moving.
We dug around in some state, federal and industry reports and reached out to academic experts in energy technology to determine why some turbines in a wind farm spin while others remain still.
Short Answer: The turbine is down for maintenance
Wind turbines, like all machines, need both scheduled and unscheduled maintenance. In some instances that explains why some are operating but not others.
The basic components of a wind turbine are the visible tower and rotor blades, as well as the gearbox and generator located at the top of the tower.
Scheduled maintenance helps prevent wear and tear from breaking parts and unscheduled maintenance occurs when the turbine experiences any of a number of failures.
Regular preventative maintenance can include periodic equipment inspection, oil and filter changes, calibration and adjustment of various parts, as well as replacing brake pads and seals. General housekeeping and blade cleaning can also temporarily keep a turbine from spinning.
In larger wind farms, several turbines on a circuit can be inoperable and not spinning because they are all down for maintenance, said John Roudebush, program chair of Ivy Tech College’s Energy Technology program.
Long answer: Curtailment, congestion and wind speed
Energy transmission in Indiana is run through the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, commonly known as MISO. The group manages the flow of electricity by balancing demand versus what’s being generated, which means there are times where excess electricity is being produced.
“(Sometimes) we don’t need the power as demand is down or another power plant is selling power to the customers instead,” Roudebush wrote in an email. “Power plants compete on the grid. A coal plant, a natural gas plant, or a wind farm will all bid to sell power during some part of the day and MISO will pick the cheapest bid for the day. Generally, wind is the cheapest but not always.”
John Hall, assistant professor at the University of Buffalo’s Engineering and Applied Sciences, focuses his research on the technical aspects of wind energy. While some wind turbines will operate normally, he said others may be stopped to match production with grid demand.
“Basically, you have the utility company distributing power and buying and selling in real time,” Hall said. “Based on how much they need, wind farms would turn turbines off accordingly.”
The industry calls a wind turbine that is not spinning “parked,” Hall said, and this is done with a braking system that holds the rotor in place. Once energy demand rises, the brake is released and almost immediately the turbine starts delivering electricity to the grid again.
Another obvious answer to why the turbines may not be spinning is that the wind speed is not high enough.
Generally, turbines can generate power with wind speeds as low as 5 mph. If speeds fall below that, there just isn’t enough to turn the sometimes massive blades.
On the other hand, wind that is too fast can cause damages to the turbines, so operators of wind farms will park the rotors until the wind calms down. Turbines generally shut down when wind speeds hit about 55 mph.
“The system is not designed for that, so they shut it down,” Hall said. “That’s OK because we rarely get winds over that speed, and it would not be worthwhile to design for that for the few instances.”
To help improve the efficiency of wind farms, Hall said banking excess power is a huge research area right now.
“There are studies on new battery technology and super capacitors and different ways to get around that issue,” Hall said.
Another solution for storing excess electricity is by making hydrogen, Hall said. Wind farm operators would be able to create hydrogen and store it for use later when the grid demand increases.
While fossil fuel plants may be more responsive to the constantly moving supply and demand for electricity, Hall said the future depends on renewables.
“If folks are concerned about climate and want a better future for the next generation and everything, renewable energy like wind and hydro-electric and tidal power are all really not just sources of energy but vital to perhaps our existence,” Hall said.
Karl Schneider is an IndyStar environment reporter.
IndyStar’s environmental reporting project is made possible through the generous support of the nonprofit Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.
How to solve Arizona’s housing shortage, which has reached crisis levels
Jenn Daniels and Sean Bowie – January 23, 2023
Arizona is short at least 100,000 housing units to keep pace with demand.
As you read this, 300 Americans have just decided to move to our beautiful state. And it keeps happening every day.
Quality of life, low cost of living, climate, low regulatory environment and a simplified tax structure continues to draw people and businesses to Arizona.
Yet keeping up housing supply with this population growth has been challenging. While numbers vary, the Common Sense Institute Arizona estimates a shortage of about 100,000 housing units.
Barriers to development at the local level, bureaucracy within state agencies and preemptive state laws have limited the building of more housing units at a pace that keeps up with our growing population. Often unnecessary, burdensome rules and regulations have delayed project start times and increased costs for developers and homebuilders.
These costs ultimately get passed on to the buyer.
It’ll take steady, deliberate policy to solve this
Simply put, Arizona has a housing crisis – we need more housing, and we need it now. To be clear, there is no fast and easy button that will make the housing shortage go away. The solution is steady, intentional, deliberate policy and collaboration between all levels of government and the private sector.
We are of different political parties, but we have come together to find solutions to the challenges before us. After careful study of the data, dozens of stakeholder interviews and analysis of policy from other states, we have developed a menu of bipartisan solutions as part of a report for the nonpartisan Common Sense Institute Arizona (CSI).
We believe this can be a roadmap for state and local policymakers.
1. Expedite zoning and approval processes
Current processes for obtaining municipal approval to develop a piece of property vary from city to city. The process is burdensome, costly and takes far longer than is practical for builders.
The consistency achieved by establishing a universal, streamlined process for all Arizona cities will enable for a more objective approach. The development of a uniform process at the state level should be collaborative in nature among cities and consider cities of all sizes. Builders and developers would go through the same process regardless of the jurisdiction and get more houses to market more quickly.
In essence, the ideal process to go from empty lot to home for sale would be the same in every municipality. By creating a uniform process, a homebuilder in Surprise would follow the same steps, checklist and timeline as a homebuilder in Chandler or Yuma.
2. Let state Housing department grade cities
Once the state has designed and implemented statutory guidelines around streamlined entitlement, review and permitting processes for residential development, the Department of Housing would review and monitor local processes and grade municipalities using objective standards like how long, expensive and onerous an entitlement and permitting process was.
In reviewing the onerousness of this process, the department would compare the cities performance relative both to other cities and towns in Arizona, and national benchmarks and standards.
Top-performing jurisdictions would have greater opportunity to use the novel tools, and receive some of the new state funding, recommended elsewhere in our report – we believe that when a city knows better, they also want to do better. Having true benchmarks and measurable data that can be tracked and shared openly is the best indicator.
3. Develop statewide zoning definitions
Zoning definitions vary from city to city. Identifying logical and predictable zoning definitions at the state level allows for comparison of zoning between municipalities, transparency in the process, and clarity for developers. Additionally, defining new or innovative types of housing, diversifying the types of housing within a municipality, and providing a cohesive way to update municipal codes will benefit cities, regions and developers.
Housing opportunity zones – which use a percentage of existing tax revenue within a municipality to help fund development – can improve the supply of housing where the market alone is unable to meet demand.
4. Form local ‘Housing Opportunity Zones’
For instance, in Arizona, we utilize a manufacturing Transaction Privilege Tax incentive, wherein we divert state sales-tax dollars to cities to support manufacturing project infrastructure costs, so developers don’t have to front those costs. This played a large role in TSMC’s development of their new $12 billion fabrication plant expanded here in our state.
Likewise, housing opportunity zones would likely be most popular in areas that are ripe for development where there are already significant resources being invested in bringing more housing supply onto the market. Like all policies of this nature, it should have a sunset date and be reviewed by the Legislature.
Developers who construct housing and meet accountability benchmarks could retain a proportion of local sales or property taxes otherwise owed on the project, as a way to compensate for costs associated with building and selling the affordable units. A city or town could also use the monies to reimburse itself for capital costs associated with providing public infrastructure that supports these projects.
5. Help cities fund more affordable housing
The state should encourage cities to create their own affordable housing funding. One way to do this is to create a statewide grant program that incentivizes cities to create dedicated funds that would go towards more affordable housing development.
The city of Tempe has been a leader in this regard, creating its Hometown for All program in 2021. Fifty percent of several development permitting fees paid to the city go into the fund and help finance land acquisition and redevelopment within city borders.
Our full report outlines a total of 19 solutions. These aren’t Republican ideas or Democratic ideas. These are Arizona ideas.
It’s important for everyone address this critical issue together. The success of our state depends on remaining an attractive and affordable place for new businesses and new residents. Together, we can ensure Arizona stays that way.
Jenn Daniels, a Republican, is former mayor of Gilbert and Sean Bowie, a Democrat, is a former Arizona state lawmaker. They served as housing fellows at Common Sense Institute Arizona.
Some of our posts include links to retailers. If you buy something from clicking on one, G/O Media may earn a commission. Because editorial staff is independent of commerce, affiliate linking does not influence our editorial content.
Republicans in Congress are threatening once again to force the US to default because they lack the votes to enact their preferred fiscal vision.
Yes, it’s debt ceiling season once again. For those not following along at home, US law imposes an arbitrary limit on the amount of money the government is allowed to borrow. Historically, this was intended to make borrowing easier. Today, it is a tool for brinksmanship, with Republicans threatening to block paying the bills they already voted to incur unless GOP demands for unspecific spending cuts are met.
Right now, the US is at the limit, and the Treasury Department is moving money around to delay a conflict until later in the year. But if the limit is not raised, the US faces a constitutional crisis: How can the president execute the laws set by Congress if those laws are contradictory? (Here’s a flow chart for your consideration.)
The last time a real debt ceiling face-off happened in 2011, the US had its sovereign debt rating downgraded and incurred more than a billion dollars in economic losses. So let’s set aside the hypocrisy and political posturing and ask a simpler question: Is there a debt crisis that would justify holding the economy hostage?
And the answer is no. Markets are not worried about the US paying its debts, and there are no bond vigilantes appearing out of the woodwork.
That’s because the US is an enormously wealthy nation with a growing economy. The US has a lot of debt, about $22 trillion, equal to about an entire year’s economic production. But the US also has a lot of wealth—about $137 trillion (pdf). It’s true that interest rates are rising, but only because the Federal Reserve is pushing them up. Investors are still betting that rates will fall soon, with the interest paid on ten-year Treasury bonds lower than on government debt due in two years. That yield curve inversion reflects expectations that the Fed will cut rates during a potential recession. But even absent a downturn, the Fed isn’t likely to hike more than expected next year thanks to slowing inflation.
Public debt is stabilizing. How do you shrink it?
And what’s the trend for federal public debt? After a huge surge driven by pandemic-driven public spending, borrowing is set to shrink as a share of the economy in the years ahead. These Congressional Budget Office forecasts are from May 2022, and don’t include changes from legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act or updated economic data, but the figures do offer a best guess at what we can expect:
Many policymakers and economists fret that publicly-held debt approaching 100% of annual GDP is too high. The “correct” level of debt is difficult to assess; researchers think too much debt can be a drag on growth, but only if it crowds out private spending or leads to higher interest rates. The global economy, however, is in many ways dependent on a steady supply of US debt. Perhaps the biggest reason to push down current borrowing is to make sure the US has the fiscal capacity to weather the next emergency. One thing that won’t help reduce the debt, however, is a financial crisis caused by debt ceiling brinksmanship.
Despite the Fed’s tightening, growth remains strong and unemployment is low. That’s arguably a good environment to reduce government spending after the enormous surge in pandemic aid. Spending is already falling faster, as a share of the economy, than it did after the 2008 recession.
There are ways to keep driving spending down (pdf), but they require delivering pain to somebody: Eliminating subsidies to everyone, from agribusiness to defense contractors, leads to lobbyists for affected industries pounding down lawmakers’ doors, while cutting benefits to children, the sick or the poor remains broadly unpopular. Tax hikes can be more palatable but can generate political repercussions among influential upper class voters.
The last time anyone tried to hash out a compromise on all of this—the 2011 glory days of the Bowles-Simpson commission—Republicans backed out because of proposed tax increases, and Congress wound up cutting spending 10% across the board. (Republicans reversed many of the cuts when President Donald Trump took office in 2017.)
Debt politics are different in 2023
Absent the specter of the European debt crisis or a Republican party united on fiscal issues, the politics of debt reduction sit differently. Some Republican politicians, like Trump and Senate leader Mitch McConnell, are already warning that the cuts for popular but expensive programs such as Social Security and Medicare implied by a debt default aren’t going to help the party gain power in the next election. Republican member of Congress Nancy Mace told NBC over the weekend spending must be cut but couldn’t name a single target for reductions. Instead of cuts, conservative Democratic Senator Joe Manchin is pushing to lift the limit on taxable Social Security wages.
It’s easy—it’s always easy—to imagine the Biden White House coming together with Republicans in Congress to find a moderate deficit reduction package that raises taxes and cuts some spending. The White House certainly imagines it, since administration spokespeople such as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen have made clear it won’t engage with novel plans to avoid a debt ceiling crisis like minting a platinum coin or various other finance shenanigans. Still, the patience—or complacency—about the debt ceiling might leave Washington in an uncomfortable place come this summer: It remains to be seen if the hardliners among Republicans have the patience for bipartisan legislating. If global investors won’t give them the debt crisis they want, they seem eager to create it.
Western Kansas farmers are pushing to save the Ogallala Aquifer before it’s too late
David Condos – January 22, 2023
David Condos/Kansas News Service
Travis Leonard had seen all the signs.
Plummeting water levels. Clogged sprayer nozzles. Then as drought parched southwest Kansas this fall, the well next to his farmhouse in Haskell County began pumping up a muck of sand instead of clear water.
After more than six decades of irrigating the family’s grain field, he shut the well down for the last time.
“I just took a deep breath,” Leonard said, “knowing this is the last crop that I’m going to have here that has water on it.”
Leonard remembers when the underground water supply seemed endless. When he took over the farm 16 years ago, it had more than a dozen irrigation wells pumping. Today, it’s down to three.
A decade or two from now, he figures, his area won’t have any irrigation wells left.
“We didn’t have any idea when it was going to end, but that day is coming,” Leonard said. “It will happen to everybody eventually.”
Fly over these dry plains and you won’t see many rushing rivers or glimmering lakes. You’ll see circles. Mile after mile of green geometric crop fields spun into the near-desert landscape by wells that tap water hidden beneath the surface and the center pivot irrigation sprayers splayed around them.
But across western Kansas, more and more wells sit abandoned as underground water levels drop and drop some more. Vast swaths of the region have seen more than half of their water disappear since the dawn of irrigation. Wallace County on the Colorado state line has lost roughly 80%.
The subterranean reservoirs of the sprawling Ogallala Aquifer make life possible here — from powering the multibillion-dollar agricultural economy to filling up cups at the kitchen sink.
But after decades of large-scale crop irrigation, that water is running out. And now farmers and state leaders struggle to agree on how to save the future of life in western Kansas without choking the livelihoods of the people who live here.
The good news? There’s still time. After all, an aquifer that’s half-empty is also half-full.
Even with all the depletion, billions and billions of gallons remain stored away in the Ogallala’s craggy layers of saturated rock. And a new effort in west-central Kansas aims to save more of what’s left.
Katie Durham, who leads that groundwater management district, said it’s not too late to preserve the aquifer — and the western Kansas farms, businesses and communities that depend on it — for future generations.
But only if big changes start now.
“This is do or die,” Durham said. “Water is everything out here. … We would not be here without it.”
Now or never
In a wood-paneled room at the Scott County fairgrounds, dozens of farmers gather for the first public hearing to discuss this latest effort in west-central Kansas. It’s called a local enhanced management area, or LEMA, and it’s been nearly a decade in the making.
The plan is to get farmers to cut irrigation by an average of 10% over the next five years in four western Kansas counties — Wallace, Greeley, Scott and Lane. Those counties have been some of the hardest hit by aquifer declines, losing nearly two-thirds of their water since irrigation began.
And the flow of moisture that’s trickling back down to refill the aquifer is a drop in the bucket. Across the four counties, the amount of water pumped up is nearly 10 times the amount that seeps back underground from rain and snow.
Any change is hard, Durham said, and discussions about using less water in a place with so little precipitation are bound to be prickly. But she said the alternative — a depleted aquifer that can’t support any irrigation — would essentially end life in western Kansas as we know it.
Residents and businesses leaving town. Empty storefronts on Main Street.
“It would be devastating,” Durham said. “You would see the exact thing that we’re trying to prevent.”
The LEMA plan would customize each farmer’s water limits on a case-by-case basis. Those who have been pumping the most would need to cut irrigation by up to 25%. Others who have been voluntarily conserving the most water already might not need to make any changes.
Data from the Kansas Geological Survey shows that the four counties would need to reduce pumping by one-third to stop the aquifer’s depletion over the next decade. In drought conditions like we’re seeing now, they would need to cut pumping by half.
So trimming irrigation by 10% isn’t going to solve the problem permanently. But, Durham said, it’s a start. If this plan can double the aquifer’s lifespan, that could mean it’s still around for the grandchildren of the people who make those changes today.
“This is a huge and significant step,” Durham said, “toward changing what this part of western Kansas could look like in 50 years.”
If the state approves the plan after its second public hearing in early February, it would likely go into effect from the beginning of this year through 2027. Farmers would be able to use their five-year water allotment as they wish, meaning they could pump extra during a dry year as long as they irrigate less in a subsequent year to even things out.
The key to this LEMA program is putting water conservation decisions in the hands of a local board, rather than the state. But that doesn’t mean it’s all kumbaya.
Water has long been a point of contention in dry western Kansas. That’s because water means money. Even as wells run out, pumping the aquifer continues to prop up the regional economy — from corn and wheat growers to irrigation equipment dealers to cattle feedlots.
The groundwater district proposing the new LEMA is the smallest in western Kansas, but it still covers more than one million acres and nearly 2,000 wells. With that many voices in the discussion, it can be a challenge to get everyone on board.
Many irrigators remain wary of any program that might force them to use less water.
Lane County farmer Camron Shay came to the hearing with his own concerns about how the limits could be fair for everyone across a region that has so much diversity in how much water has been used, how much water is needed to nurture a crop and how much water is left.
“It can’t just be done by a bunch of activists,” Shay said, “who come in and don’t know what they’re talking about and strong arm it and do radical things.”
But the locally driven approach of the LEMA may help ease those fears. That was the point of the public hearing and the series of community meetings that came before. After getting some of his questions answered, Shay said, he walked away feeling better about the plan.
“We all know that we have a groundwater problem,” he said. “I don’t know if there’s a good solution for it, but these guys look like they’re at least trying.”
Proof of concept
Fortunately, farmers in the four counties don’t have to look far to find examples of how these irrigation limits work in the real world.
The state’s first LEMA began in a small portion of northwest Kansas a decade ago. The plan was to reduce irrigation by 20%. When the results came in, farmers ended up cutting pumping by nearly one-third. And some of those farmers actually saw profits go upas they spent less to pump water and buy seed and fertilizer.
That initial LEMA was deemed so successful that a similar plan to cover parts of 10 northwest Kansas counties went into effect five years ago — although that expansion faced a lawsuit from dozens of irrigators who said it infringed on their water rights — and was recently renewed for another five years.
And right next to where the new limits are proposed, Wichita County started its own LEMA two years ago to cut irrigation by 25%.
That’s where Brian Bauck sat in a combine harvesting his last cornfield of the year.
Most of his fields are now non-irrigated, or dryland, and the sections that see a center pivot get less water than they did decades ago. So the past year of drought has left its mark.
As he makes one last pass with his combine, its wide green header has to skim the ground to reach the rows of short corn plants out the front window. It scoops up its fair share of dry tumbleweeds that have blown in with the punishing winds, too.
But thanks to new drought-tolerant seed varieties and farming practices that conserve soil and moisture, he had crops to harvest on just about every acre this season.
“It feels great,” Bauck said. “Anytime you can get something, even though it may not be what you wanted, tells you that you’re probably doing a few things right.”
So far, Wichita County’s irrigation restrictions appear to be making a dent in depletion. Countywide aquifer declines averaged 0.54 feet per year from 2010 to 2017, according to Kansas Geological Survey data. But from 2018 to 2021, the county lost an average of 0.09 feet per year. As the programs produce more real-world data, it might reassure crop growers in neighboring areas that irrigation reductions are worth a shot.
Farmers are naturally independent thinkers, Bauck said, so it’s always a challenge when somebody comes in and tries to tell them how to do their jobs. He used to be skeptical about irrigation cuts too.
And changing farmers’ mindsets about water use isn’t a simple task because their livelihoods are at stake. In a dry year like this, turning the sprayer on could make the difference between growing some crops or none at all.
But, he said, the golden kernels filling his grain tank prove that farming with less irrigation can work in western Kansas, even in a historically dry season.
It shows that a future with less water may not be painless, but it is possible. And in western Kansas, he said, it’s a matter of survival.
“Regardless of whether somebody likes it or not,” Bauck said, “we’ve got to do something in order to extend the life of this aquifer, or it’s not gonna be there.”
Gallons and dollars
Another reason for urgency? Climate change. As the H2O buffet dwindles down, Kansas heats up.
With dry western weather shifting eastward, more of the state will likely face a future with worse droughts and less precipitation — a process called aridification.
Vaishali Sharda, assistant professor of biological and agricultural engineering at Kansas State University, studies how a drier, hotter future threatens the state’s farms. Aridification paired with a declining aquifer, she said, sets up a potential time bomb for western Kansas agriculture.
“There is no guessing,” Sharda said. “If we continue irrigating at the pace at which we have done in the past, the Ogallala won’t be able to sustain it.”
Even if irrigators could save a relatively small percentage of the water they’ve been using, the impact could be enormous — simply because of how many gallons we’re talking about.
In the four counties with the proposed LEMA, for instance, 94% of all water used goes to irrigate crops.
Statewide, roughly three-fourths of all water used in Kansas comes from the High Plains aquifer, and nearly all of that goes to irrigation. Over the course of a year, that averages out to 2.5 billion gallons of groundwater used to water crops each day.
But finding consensus on new rules to curb aquifer use is an uphill climb when using that water is the foundation that virtually everything else in western Kansas is built on.
Take southwest Kansas. It has — and uses — the biggest chunk of the state’s aquifer. And its agriculture relies more on irrigation than anywhere else in Kansas. Cattle feedlots, meatpacking plants and dairy farms all depend on the corn feed that’s grown here.
District director Mark Rude expects conversations about irrigation limits — maybe even a new LEMA — to start back up in his district over the next few years. And the district recently began sending its irrigators detailed reports about their water use and comparing it to their neighbors in an attempt to get farmers to change their mindsets.
But even with more information about depletion and conservation than ever, he still believes his members aren’t ready for widespread irrigation cuts. Strict rules to save the aquifer don’t make sense, he said, if they come at the expense of the economy.
“To get growth,” Rude said, “you’ve got to have water.”
He’s exploring a plan to bring in water from the Missouri River — potentially flowing across the state in an aqueduct hundreds of miles long — to replace what’s lost in the Ogallala.
While the district hasn’t figured out how to make that plan’s $18 billion price tag financially feasible, he said, it might be the only way to keep the region’s industries — from corn to cattle to ethanol — booming for future decades.
Converting western Kansas to dryland farming may be sustainable, he said, but it would mean a smaller economy with fewer jobs and fewer people in a region where most counties already struggle with population decline.
The real question, he said, is what kind of economic future does western Kansas want to sustain?
“It’s important that we not forget that what we’re trying to preserve here is not only the community as a whole,” Rude said, “but the business strategy, the overall viability of that community.”
But whether or not a groundwater district or state entity decides to impose irrigation limits, farmers across western Kansas are already adjusting to the realities of a life with less water — because they have to.
Many have adopted smarter irrigation technology, such as soil moisture sensors and systems that customize irrigation rates across a field. Some have switched to crops that require less water than corn, such as cotton.
Others have stopped irrigating entirely on a majority of their acres. That’s the case for Leonard, the farmer with the dry well whose land lies within the southwest Kansas groundwater district.
The thought of leaving irrigation behind, he said, doesn’t have to be scary. In a way, it’s coming full circle.
When his great-grandfather started the Leonard farm, there wasn’t an irrigation well or center pivot in sight. And by the time he retires, Leonard expects his entire farm will return to its dryland roots.
“Life will go on,” Leonard said. “We’re still running a farm here. And it looks a little bit different than it used to but we’re still doing what we love.”
David Condos covers western Kansas for High Plains Public Radio and the Kansas News Service.
The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy.
How an Investor Lost $625,000 and His Faith in George Santos
Grace Ashford, Alexandra Berzon and Michael Gold – January 20, 2023
As Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) was running for office, he also sought investors for a company that was accused of running a Ponzi scheme. (Tom Brenner/The New York Times)
A month after the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit in 2021 accusing a Florida-based company of operating a Ponzi scheme, one of the firm’s account managers assured an anxious client that his money was safe.
The client, a wealthy investor named Andrew Intrater, had been lured by annual returns of 16% and had invested $625,000 in a fund offered by the company, Harbor City Capital — in part because he trusted and admired the account manager, an aspiring politician named George Santos.
Admiration aside, Intrater wanted to know about his investment and a promised letter of credit that secured it. Santos said that it was already on the way.
“All issued and sent over,” Santos assured him in a text message sent in May 2021.
The letter of credit did not exist, the SEC would later tell a court. The $100 million that Santos told Intrater that he had personally raised for Harbor City did not exist either, the commission said. Nor, seemingly, did the close to $4 million that Santos claimed he and his family had invested in Harbor City.
Santos’ representations form the basis of a sworn declaration that Intrater gave the SEC in May 2022, as part of its Harbor City investigation. Intrater’s interactions with the SEC are the first indication that the commission might be interested in Santos.
Intrater told the SEC that the representations influenced his decision to invest in Santos’ business and political endeavors — an allegation that could leave Santos vulnerable to criminal charges.
“I admired him and fundamentally I thought he’s a hardworking guy — he’s young and he has the ability to win,” Intrater said in a recent interview.
In late December, after Santos’ years of lies were exposed, Intrater reconsidered his appraisal. He shared with The New York Times text messages that he exchanged with Santos, as well as documents and the declaration that he had given to the SEC — all outlining the ways in which he said Santos had misled him.
“I don’t want Republicans having a bum representing Republicans, and I don’t want to have a guy that committed crimes walking free,” he said.
The SEC has not indicated publicly that it is looking into Santos and declined to answer questions about potential inquiries into the congressman or communications between Intrater and the agency. But the SEC reached out to Intrater in March 2022 to seek information on Santos’ dealings on behalf of Harbor City, according to Intrater and his lawyer.
Although Santos claimed to have raised $100 million for Harbor City, SEC documents say the firm had only raised a total of $17 million. And while Santos said that he and his family had invested millions of dollars because of Harbor City, financial disclosures filed during his 2020 run for Congress show that he earned just $55,000 that year, and had no assets.
If Santos had lured investors through the use of false statements, he could face charges of securities fraud, legal experts said.
It is not clear how the SEC is handling Intrater’s sworn declaration; it does not appear to have been filed in court. The SEC lawsuit against Harbor City and its chief executive, J.P. Maroney, was put on hold in October 2022 at the request of Maroney because of a related criminal investigation into him, court documents show. Maroney has denied wrongdoing.
Some of Santos’ interactions with Intrater have been outlined in news accounts, including in Mother Jones, The Daily Beast and The Washington Post.
But documents, as well as interviews and text messages reviewed by the Times, offer new evidence of the lengths Santos went to in an effort to obscure the problems at Harbor City, and how the relationship soured between the politician and one of his biggest supporters.
Intrater is a private equity investor perhaps best known for his financial ties to Viktor Vekselberg, his cousin. Vekselberg is a Russian oligarch whose U.S. assets were frozen in 2018 by the Treasury Department because of his ties to the Kremlin.
Under a license from the Treasury Department, Intrater says, he has continued to manage Vekselberg-connected assets but is in the process of winding them down. He says that he has not distributed or received funds or had business dealings with Vekselberg or related companies since the sanctions.
Intrater is also known for his relationship with Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s onetime personal lawyer; Intrater’s firm, Columbus Nova, signed Cohen to a $1 million consulting contract when the businessman was looking for new investment opportunities in 2018.
Santos met Intrater a few years later; Intrater recalled that Santos called him seeking his financial support in the 2020 congressional race. After Santos lost, the two remained friendly, building a relationship over text messages and lunches at Osteria Delbianco, an Italian restaurant in midtown Manhattan. They bonded over a shared “old school” worldview and having families that fled the Holocaust, Intrater said. (Santos’ family did not actually flee the Holocaust, records show.)
Santos, as The Daily Beast reported, joined Harbor City in 2020, the same year he first ran for the House, and helped establish the firm’s presence in New York as its regional director. Santos had met Maroney, Harbor City’s CEO, when Santos was helping to organize conferences for LinkBridge Investors, Maroney said, and the two stayed in touch.
Maroney liked Santos, whom he described as “a consummate networker.” He hired him to bring in investments from the ultrawealthy.
According to court documents filed by the SEC, Harbor City told investors that it had discovered a way to make guaranteed money by investing in digital marketing and advertising.
But Harbor City was not doing any such investing, and only a small part of the $17 million it raised was used for legitimate business expenses, the government claims. The company, according to civil charges filed by the SEC, was instead engaged in a Ponzi scheme, using investments from new clients to make payments to older investors, while Maroney siphoned money from business accounts to buy a Mercedes and a waterfront house and pay down more than $1 million in credit card bills.
Intrater was a lucrative client. He decided to invest the $625,000 in a Harbor City fund, using a holding company, FEA Innovations. He and Maroney signed a subscription agreement, which was reviewed by the Times, on Jan. 15, 2021.
Intrater became one of Santos’ more generous patrons. In addition to his investments in Harbor City funds, first reported by The Washington Post, he donated more than $200,000 to Santos’ election campaign, associated political committees and a New York political action committee that he would later learn was controlled by Santos’ sister. He liked the political stances of Santos, a Republican, and his rags-to-riches story, he said.
In retrospect, he should have recognized warning signs, he said.
Though Intrater and his lawyers repeatedly requested the letter of credit, it never materialized. And while he received the first interest payment as scheduled in March 2021, the April payment was mysteriously clawed back. He did not receive any future payments from the company, he said.
With the April payment and the bank letter still missing, Intrater followed up with Santos on May 28, 2021. Intrater said he was unaware at the time that the SEC had by then made public its fraud complaint against Maroney and Harbor City.
But all was well, Santos assured Intrater, casually mentioning that he had been let go a few weeks earlier. Santos, who was running for Congress a second time, told Intrater that his political activities were deemed to be a conflict for Harbor City and he was leaving to focus on his real estate and small projects. (Santos has since admitted that he does not own any property.)
Maroney said in an interview that he had no problems with Santos’ political career and that he supported his ambitions, even agreeing to hold a fundraiser for Trump’s reelection bid at his home.
In fact, Maroney and another former Harbor City employee said Santos had been with the firm until the end. Maroney recalled in an interview last month that Santos “was definitely one of the ones that got the notice that everything we had had been frozen.”
Yet months after Harbor City’s accounts were frozen in April, Santos was still telling Intrater that things were fine, maintaining that the $100 million fund he had mentioned was separate from the one described in the SEC case, according to text messages he sent Intrater.
“Hey Andy, I put in calls to everyone I know still working at HC,” he wrote Intrater. “Should hear back today I hope.”
A few days later, Santos was fretting about his own financial exposure, which he had told Intrater was huge. “I’m having a nervous breakdown,” he texted.
As late as January 2022 he swore to Intrater that his family had invested “almost 4M,” and said that he had employed a lawyer, Joe Murray, to help him try to claw back any remaining funds.
The court-appointed lawyer overseeing Harbor City’s assets, Katherine Donlon, would not formally say whether Santos and his family had invested in Harbor City. But she said that she did not recognize their names as investors, in response to a request emailed by the Times.
Murray declined to answer questions from the Times about Santos’ representations to Intrater and on behalf of Harbor City, saying only, “It would be inappropriate to comment on an ongoing investigation.” Santos, who was not named in the SEC suit, has publicly said he had no knowledge of wrongdoing at Harbor City, an assertion that Maroney backed up.
Intrater said that at the time, he felt for the younger man, who he believed was also a victim.
“Take long walks to clear your head in order to deal with the stress,” he coached Santos via text, urging him to avoid stress eating and alcohol.
The two stayed in touch, even as Intrater came to write off his investment. When Santos appealed to him again for political donations in his second run for Congress, Intrater came through, donating tens of thousands of dollars to Santos’ associated PACs.
And he remained receptive to business opportunities presented by Santos, who helped to set up at least two other potential deals. Neither came together.
Neither Intrater nor his lawyer have heard much from the SEC since filing the declaration, they said, with the commission only replying in November 2022 to say that the civil case had been stayed.
By then, Santos had been elected to represent New York’s 3rd Congressional District. A few days later, Intrater had lunch with the congressman-elect and offered his congratulations.
Things changed in December after Santos’ deception became public. In the weeks since, Intrater said he has reached out to the Department of Justice offering information on Santos. The agency declined to comment.
The last time the men spoke, Intrater says, was after he saw Santos being grilled on Fox News, about a week after the Times ran its initial investigation.
“I said, ‘Dude, I saw your interview,’” Intrater said. “‘You look like you’re absolutely lying about everything.’”
Once again, Santos sought to reassure him. But Intrater was no longer interested in explanations.
He told Santos that he was convinced he was a liar and then cursed at him, he said. “I hung up the phone,” he added. “That was it.”
It Would Be Nice If Republicans Would Actually Read A Bill
Bruce Maiman – January 19, 2023
From left to right: House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) talks to reporters during a news conference with Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.), Rep. Michael Cloud (R-La.) and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) on Jan. 10 in Washington, D.C.
While President Joe Biden’s document drama puts him in a tricky political situation, let’s not lose sight of the Republican Party’s “to be continued” style of incompetent governance.
Looking back at their first two weeks running the House of Representatives, you have to conclude one of two things: Either Republicans are stupid, or they think their constituents are.
Voters sent a clear message in the midterms: We’re tired of “crazy.” We want bipartisanship, not extremism.
Moreover, supporters of abortion rights, angered by the Supreme Court’s unraveling of Roe v. Wade, turned out in droves and delivered several key elections for Democrats, according to CNN exit polling. Republicans surely would have liked to win some of those districts, no?
Week two: Republicans passed a pair of anti-abortion bills and, in a real insult to everyone’s intelligence, voted to repeal tens of billions of dollars in IRS funding via the so-called Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act. Consider this tweet from Rep. Ashley Hinson (R), of Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District:
A screenshot of a tweet from Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa).
A screenshot of a tweet from Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa).
Look, you can have your opinion on abortion, and maybe you like the extremists, but can someone please read a bill? Or at least listen to some “Schoolhouse Rock”?
You have to love how these hoopleheads clamored for a rule requiring bills to be released at least 72 hours before a floor vote so lawmakers would have ample time to read them. At the same time, they had seven months to read the Inflation Reduction Act, but evidently couldn’t pencil that in. Passed in August, the act explains — justifies, really — its nearly $80 billion in IRS funding.
Incidentally, Democrats implemented that 72-hour rule in 2019 when Republicans rammed through a tax bill just hours after introducing a final version.
Hinson is probably just repeating what Republican leaders are saying now. Or what any Republican with a pulse was shrieking lastsummer. Or the howls of the campaign ads and political mailers you might have seen ahead of the November midterms: Eighty-seven thousand new IRS agents to audit small businesses and hard-working Americans!
Even seasoned Republicans like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who you’d think would know to read a bill, have been in full scaremongering mode, all deploying the same talking points.
Here’s the reality: The IRS is understaffed, overwhelmed and digitally dated. Thirty years ago, the IRS had 117,000 employees. Today, it has 78,000. It faces an expected wave of 50,000 retirements this decade. Its budget has been slashed by nearly 20% since 2010.
These circumstances have created a massive backlog. For example, according to the Treasury Department, nearly 200 million taxpayers called the IRS for assistance in the first half of 2021. There were 15,000 employees available to assist them. That’s one person for every 13,000 calls.
Funding from the Inflation Reduction Act aims to address these shortfalls by hiring 87,000 new IRS employees ― over the next 10 years, not all at once. And most of the hires will be to replace all those retirees.
So, dear Republican voter, did your favorite lawmaker explain any of that to you? No? Why not?
Will all the money go toward hiring IRS agents to audit taxpayers? Nope.
· $45.6 billion will go toward hiring more enforcement agents, shoring up legal support and investing in “investigative technology.”
· $25.3 billion will cover routine costs, like rent, facilities, printing and postage.
· $3 billion will go to customer services, such as prefiling assistance and education, and the possibility of creating a free direct e-file program.
· $5 billion will go toward modernizing the IRS’s business systems and customer service technology. Some agency computers still use programming language that dates back to the 1960s.
So, Republican voter: Why didn’t your favorite lawmakers explain that? Maybe they didn’t read the bill ― or reports from the Government Accountability Office, the Treasury Department, the Congressional Research Service or the Congressional Budget Office, or even a letter from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to the IRS commissioner, affirming these commitments ― which means they didn’t do their job. Maybe they’re just repeating someone else’s talking points. Maybe they’re stupid enough to believe those talking points ― or maybe they think you are. Maybe they think you’re too lazy to do your own research to learn what’s in the legislation.
Feel better?
Audits have declined most dramatically for the wealthy. For example: In 2012, the percentage of companies with at least $20 billion in assets subjected to audit was 93%. By 2020, it was just 38%.
The resulting tax gap — what people owe versus what they pay — is estimated to be more than $600 billion. Much of this is due to drastic cuts in the IRS’s budget, courtesy of Tea Party fanatics a decade ago.
Since then, the number of IRS auditors has fallen by more than 40% even as the tax code has gotten more complex. The agency’s auditors are no match for the battery of pricey accountants and tax attorneys who help the affluent avoid or evade their tax obligations.
Sidebar: In the past decade, the tax code has been amended or revised more than 4,000 times. Keep in mind that the agency doesn’t make those changes; Congress does. So while Congress was making tax law more complex, it gelded the agency tasked with tending to its directives.
The poster boy for this is former President Donald Trump. We still don’t know why the IRS didn’tenforce its own policy of mandatory audits of the sitting president.
If you hate paying taxes, you should really hate the people who don’t pay their fair share. If the uber-wealthy don’t pay all the taxes they legally owe, guess who makes up the difference through higher tax rates? You and me. As Leona Helmsley supposedly said, “Only the little people pay taxes.”
Taxes are monies we pay for services we say we want. Less tax revenue means more borrowing to pay for those services, which increases the deficit.
In fact, the Congressional Budget Office notes that without the new funding, the deficit would actually grow by about $114 billion over the next decade. In other words, the repeal would cost more than the actual funding. How’s that for stupid?
Sorry, but I don’t like being robbed by tax cheats. I want lots of IRS agents to keep them from picking my pocket. There is another consequence to all this neutering: The worse IRS customer service gets, the more cheating the wealthy can get away with, causing the rest of us to become more resentful toward and fearful of the agency.
The idea of the “overbearing IRS” is just another shibboleth Republicans use to rile up their base for the benefit of the GOP’s fat cats while securing votes for reelection. No honest, conscientious American has anything to fear from the IRS. Indeed, polls have repeatedly shown that most Americans regard paying taxes as a civicduty.
Remember: This month, a New York judge fined the Trump Organization $1.6 million (the max allowed by law) after convictions on 17 counts of tax fraud. Meanwhile, Trump’s longtime chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg drew five months in prison for his involvement in the tax scams. These are the people who hate and fear the IRS.
How can Republicans continually whine about the deficit when they’re trying to undercut the means to collect the money that would help reduce it?
They whine about waste, but they waste time and tax dollars on votes for bills they know won’t go anywhere in the Senate, let alone survive a presidential veto. Where do they think the funding for their pork projects comes from? Magic?
Maybe you think taxes should be higher or lower, or that we should have a more simplified tax code. But so long as we have taxes (and unless you want anarchy, we need taxes), we’ll need an agency to manage and administer those monies, and to ensure that citizens and businesses are playing by the rules. And that agency must be properly staffed and funded.
House Republicans claim they want the IRS to function better. If they want a smaller, more efficient and effective government, they should be the first ones to leave ― especially the ones running interference and engaging in performance politics solely to score cheap points.
Unless, of course, we learn that the IRS funded Hunter Biden’s laptop. Ah, it’s all coming together now!
Skipped Showers, Paper Plates: An Arizona Suburb’s Water Is Cut Off
Jack Healy – January 16, 2023
A water hauler sets up hoses to fill the tank at a home that is listed for sale in the Rio Verde Foothills outside of Scottsdale, Arizona, on Sunday, Jan. 8, 2023. (Erin Schaff/The New York Times)
RIO VERDE, Ariz. — Joe McCue thought he had found a desert paradise when he bought one of the new stucco houses sprouting in the granite foothills of Rio Verde, Arizona. There were good schools, mountain views and cactus-spangled hiking trails out the back door.
Then the water got cut off.
Earlier this month, the community’s longtime water supplier, the neighboring city of Scottsdale, turned off the tap for Rio Verde Foothills, blaming a grinding drought that is threatening the future of the West. Scottsdale said it had to focus on conserving water for its own residents, and could no longer sell water to roughly 500 to 700 homes — or around 1,000 people. That meant the unincorporated swath of $500,000 stucco houses, mansions and horse ranches outside Scottsdale’s borders would have to fend for itself and buy water from other suppliers — if homeowners could find them, and afford to pay much higher prices.
Almost overnight, the Rio Verde Foothills turned into a worst-case scenario of a hotter, drier climate, showing what happens when unregulated growth collides with shrinking water supplies.
For residents who put their savings into newly built homes that promised desert sunsets, peace and quiet (but relegated the water situation to the fine print), the turmoil is also deeply personal. The water disruption has unraveled their routines and put their financial futures in doubt.
“Is it just a campground now?” McCue, 36, asked one recent morning, after he and his father installed gutters and rain barrels for a new drinking-water filtration system.
“We’re really hoping we don’t go dry by summer,” he said. “Then we’ll be in a really bad spot.”
In a scramble to conserve, people are flushing their toilets with rainwater and lugging laundry to friends’ homes. They are eating off paper plates, skipping showers and fretting about whether they have staked their fates on what could become a desiccated ghost suburb.
Some say they know how it might look to outsiders. Yes, they bought homes in the Sonoran desert. But they ask, are they such outliers? Arizona does not want for emerald-green fairways, irrigated lawns or water parks.
“I’m surrounded by plush golf courses, one of the largest fountains in the world,” said Tony Johnson, 45, referring to the 500-foot water feature in the neighboring town of Fountain Hills.
Johnson’s family built a house in Rio Verde two years ago, and landscaped the yard with rocks, not thirsty greenery. “We’re not putting in a pool, we’re not putting in grass,” he said. “We’re not trying to bring the Midwest here.”
The heavy rain and snow battering California and other parts of the Mountain West over the past two weeks is helping to refill some reservoirs and soak dried-out soil. But water experts say that one streak of wet weather will not undo a 20-year drought that has practically emptied Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir, and has strained the overburdened Colorado River, which supplies about 35% of Arizona’s water. The rest comes from the state’s own rivers or from aquifers in the ground.
Last week, Arizona learned that its water shortages could be even worse than many residents realized. As one of her first actions after taking office, Gov. Katie Hobbs unsealed a report showing that the fast-growing West Valley of Phoenix does not have enough groundwater to support tens of thousands of homes planned for the area; their development is now in question.
Water experts say Rio Verde Foothills’ situation is unusually dire, but it offers a glimpse of the bitter fights and hard choices facing 40 million people across the West who rely on the Colorado River for the means to take showers, irrigate crops, or run data centers and fracking rigs.
“It’s a cautionary tale for homebuyers,” said Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. “We can’t just protect every single person who buys a parcel and builds a home. There isn’t enough money or water.”
Porter said a number of other unincorporated areas in Arizona rely on water service from larger nearby cities like Prescott or Flagstaff. They could find themselves in Rio Verde’s straits if the drought persists and the cities start taking drastic conservation measures.
There are no sewers or water mains serving the Rio Verde Foothills, so for decades, homes there that did not have their own wells got water delivered by tanker trucks. (The homes that do have wells are not directly affected by the cutoff.)
The trucks would fill up with Scottsdale water at a pipe 15 minutes’ drive from the Rio Verde Foothills, and then deliver water directly to people’s front doors. Or rather, to 5,000-gallon storage tanks buried in their yards — enough water to last an average family about a month. When the tanks ran low, homeowners would call or send an electronic signal to the water haulers for another delivery.
It was a tenuous arrangement in the middle of the desert, but homeowners said the water always arrived, and had come to feel almost as reliable as a utility hookup.
Now, though, the water trucks can’t refill close by in Scottsdale, and are having to crisscross the Phoenix metro area in search of supplies, filling up in cities a two-hour round trip from Rio Verde. That has meant more driving, more waiting and more money. An average family’s water bill has jumped to $660 a month from $220, and it is unclear how long the water trucks will be able to keep drawing tens of thousands of gallons from those backup sources.
Heavier water users like Cody Reim, who moved into a starter house in Rio Verde two years ago, are being hit even harder. He said his water bills could now exceed $1,000 a month — more than his mortgage payment. Reim and his wife have four young children, which in normal times meant a lot of dishwashing, countless toilet flushes and dozens of laundry cycles to clean soiled cloth diapers.
Reim, who works for his family’s sheet-metal business, is planning to become his own water hauler, lashing large containers to his pickup and setting out to fill them up. He guesses that fetching water will take him 10 hours every week, but he said he would do anything to stay in Rio Verde. He loves the dark skies and the baying coyotes at night, and how his children can run up and down a dirt road that with views of the Four Peaks Wilderness.
“Even if this place went negative and I’d have to pay somebody to take it, I’d still be here,” he said of his house. “There’s no other option.”
Cities across the Southwest have spent years trying to cut down on water consumption, recharge aquifers and find new ways to reuse water to cope with the drought.
Experts say that most Arizona residents do not have to worry about losing their drinking water any time soon, though deeper cuts loom for agricultural users, who use about 70% of Arizona’s water supply. Phoenix and surrounding cities have imposed few water restrictions on residents.
Rio Verde Foothills once felt like a remote community far from the urban centers of Scottsdale or Phoenix, residents said, a quilt of ranches and self-built houses scattered among mesquite and palo verde trees.
But over the past few years, there has been a frenzy of home construction in the area, fueled by cheap land prices and developers who took advantage of a loophole in Arizona’s groundwater laws to construct homes without any fixed water supply.
To prevent unsustainable development in a desert state, Arizona passed a law in 1980 requiring subdivisions with six or more lots to show proof that they have a 100-year water supply.
But developers in Rio Verde Foothills have been sidestepping the rule by carving larger parcels into sections with four or five houses each, creating the impression of a miniature suburbia, but one that did not need to legally prove it had water.
“It’s a slipped-through-the-cracks community,” said Porter, with the Kyl Center for Water Policy.
Thomas Galvin, a county supervisor who represents the area, says there’s not much the county can do if builders split their parcels into five lots or less to get around the water supply requirement. “Our hands are tied,” he said.
People in Rio Verde Foothills are bitterly divided over how to resolve their water woes.
When some proposed forming their own self-funded water provider, other residents revolted, saying the idea would foist an expensive, freedom-stealing new arm of government on them. The idea collapsed. Other solutions, like allowing a larger water utility to serve the area, could be years off.
On Thursday, a group of residents sued Scottsdale in an effort to get the water turned back on. They argued the city violated an Arizona law that restricts cities from cutting off utility services to customers outside their borders. Scottsdale did not respond to the lawsuit.
Rose Carroll, 66, who is a plaintiff in the suit, said she would support any idea that would keep her from having to kill her donkeys.
She moved to Rio Verde Foothills two years ago, and runs a small ranch for two dozen rescued donkeys who had been abandoned, left in kill pens or doused with acid. The donkeys spend their days in a corral on her seven-acre property, eating hay and drinking a total of 300 gallons of water every day.
Carroll collected rainwater after a recent winter storm, enough for a few weeks’ worth of toilet flushes. The new cost to get water delivered to the ranch could reach an unaffordable $1,800 a month, she said, so she is putting some of the donkeys up for adoption and said she might have to euthanize others if she does not have enough water to keep them alive.
She said she got a call a few days ago, asking her to take in two more abandoned donkeys, but had to say no.
Health Experts Break Down the Science That Has Politicians Debating a Gas Oven Ban
Zee Krstic – January 16, 2023
Can Gas Ovens Really Make You Sick?Valerii Vtoryhin – Getty Images
New research published in 2022 has linked gas stove pollution to negative health effects, prompting federal regulators to consider potential legislation.
Health experts say that gas stoves may pose an elevated risk to respiratory health due to a byproduct of burning methane gas in kitchens, known as nitrogen dioxide.
A leading environmental pollutant, nitrogen dioxide has been linked to increased asthma and lung disease for decades — but scientists are now looking at how gas stoves may contribute to the issue.
Our experts in the Good Housekeeping Institute share ways you can reduce any potential health risks associated with gas ovens without purchasing a new stove.
Recent headlines about the potential for an outright ban of gas ovens and stoves in the U.S. may have you concerned that federal regulators are coming for your oven.
But despite sparking a political debate among lawmakers on Capitol Hill, White House officials said Wednesday that new legislation concerning gas stoves and ovens won’t be officially considered any time soon, CNN reports. In short, open gas flames in home kitchens won’t be banned outright — and that it’s unlikely any potential future regulations would affect someone who already owns a gas stove top.
But concern remains over new research regarding the potential drawbacks of using gas burners at home, with some experts arguing that it’s just the latest study to back up years of evidence suggesting gas stoves may worsen respiratory health over time — and potentially trigger asthma.
The evidence presented by researchers estimated that nearly 13% of childhood asthma cases in the U.S. may be traced back to exposure to chemical byproducts of burning gas. This purported link was prefaced by a similar report released by the American Medical Association in late 2022 that formally recognized “the association between the use of gas stoves, indoor nitrogen dioxide levels and asthma.”
These recent developments — as well as additional data from the 1990s to as recent as 2014 — prompted the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to announce it would consider new forms of regulation on gas stoves.
Lawmakers are currently debating whether or not regulation should be implemented that could require gas stoves to be sold with a hood that vents to the outdoors among other proposals, per Bloomberg, but others in the healthcare field are seizing the moment to educate American families about ways to improve their kitchen hygiene.
If you’re among the more than 40 million American households currently using gas ovens in their kitchens, according to the U.S. Energy Information Association, there are several ways you can improve indoor air quality that doesn’t include quitting your stove altogether.
Many risks can be reduced by better ventilation in your kitchen, explains Nicole Papantoniou, the Good Housekeeping Institute‘s Kitchen Appliances & Innovation Lab Director. That all starts with the hooded vent above your oven, which should be turned on well before you begin cooking — and regularly cleaned to avoid poor circulation.
Read on for more tips and to learn about the potential risks associated with gas ovens, plus what you can do right now to reduce them while cooking at home.
Why are experts worried about gas stove tops?
Believe it or not, there are many ways in which health experts say cooking at home may lead to poor air quality issues, which can impact your health over time. But a gas burner may indirectly pose more of a threat than an electric stove top, due to the byproducts that are released into the air as methane gas burns while you cook; namely, nitrogen dioxide, which has been linked to respiratory issues as well as cardiovascular risks, explains Huawei Dong, M.D., pulmonology and critical care medicine professor at the University of California, Irvine’s School of Medicine and pulmonologist at UCI Health.
“When we breathe that in, it causes irritation and local inflammation into the bronchial tubes and the airways,” Dr. Dong says, which you may not even notice if you’ve never experienced prior respiratory issues like asthma. “One of the key things that happens in asthma patients, whether you’re a child or an adult, is that the airways become inflamed and they become narrower, causing things like wheezing and shortness of breath.”
It’s important to note that nitrogen dioxide is produced whenever fossil fuels are burned, which means the overwhelming majority of this particular pollutant comes from vehicles and nearby power plants, adds Dr. Dong. And while there are established guidelines released by officials at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that dictate appropriate levels of nitrogen dioxide, especially as it relates to vehicle emissions and other factors, there aren’t guidelines for indoor settings just yet.
In fact, researchers have established that gas stove tops produce considerable nitrogen dioxide when they’re in use. A Stanford University study published in early 2022 suggests that the amount of nitrogen dioxide emitted from gas stoves and ovens exceeded EPA standards within minutes. But since there isn’t any regulation for indoor appliances just yet, this is where CPSC officials want to step in.
How can gas stove tops impact your health?
Gas ovens aren’t likely to be the sole reason that you develop a respiratory issue, including asthma — Dr. Dong tells Good Housekeeping that most asthma cases, including those in children, are considered “multifactorial” by doctors who treat them.
After all, genetics often play a heavy hand in how likely it is for someone to develop asthma or other breathing difficulties. But available research on nitrogen dioxide and other commonplace air pollutants indicates that there is a link between poor respiratory health and increased exposure, and the December 2022 report only further suggests that impactful exposure may be occurring indoors more frequently than we realize.
“Some of the risk for asthma certainly may come down to what we’re exposed to in the home, as well as where we live and the outdoor environments we spend time in due to air pollution,” she says. “We’ve known that for decades in seeing the development of worse asthma and lung disease — but, most of that effect is cumulative over time.”
Translation: Sitting beside an open gas burner in your kitchen for a few minutes won’t significantly increase your asthma risk, even for children and their developing lungs and immune systems. What healthcare experts are more concerned about is the exposure effect over the course of months and years — and how gas ovens may exacerbate breathing issues for someone who is already asthmatic or seriously hampered by their respiratory health. This is when Dr. Dong says more immediate, short-term symptoms are noticeable (and the need for prevention is key).
Despite the recent research, the need for more evidence on how nitrogen dioxide triggers respiratory issues indoors is needed, as there is some conflicting research on the childhood asthma link that CPSC officials referred to earlier this year. A 2013 Lancet Respiratory Medicine study that touts data collected from 500,000 children globally indicates that researchers couldn’t determine “an association” between gas stoves and self-reported asthma diagnosis or symptoms.
In the end, future regulation on gas stoves may simply focus on the sale and manufacturing of gas ovens; back in October, a peer-reviewed study published in Environmental Science and Technology illustrated that some gas stoves may leak methane gas and benzene, another pollutant, even when not in use. New manufacturing regulations may prevent this from happening, as well as encourage the use of properly installed vents that effectively remove airborne pollutants from kitchens entirely.
Are gas stoves unsafe?
CPSC officials have clarified that a ban on gas stoves and ovens isn’t on the table currently — and you shouldn’t feel the need to rip out your gas stove ASAP over air quality concerns, as both Good Housekeeping Institute pros and healthcare officials agree that there are many ways to reduce any inherent respiratory risks.
Raj Dasgupta, M.D., a pulmonary critical care specialist at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, tells Good Housekeeping that nitrogen dioxide build-up can largely be dissipated through the use of an exhaust hood, or range hood, in addition to odors, smoke and grease. Additionally, opening windows for fresh air can better assist range hoods that don’t vent directly to the outdoors.
Of course, not every kitchen has a hooded vent over a gas stove top, which is the best way to ensure air pollutants don’t hang around your kitchen. If your space is only equipped with a vented fan, opening windows and providing fresh air supply is even more important, Dr. Dasgupta says.
You may also want to consider investing in an air purifier. “There aren’t a lot of downsides to having an air purifier in your home, aside from the financial investment — they help remove various contaminants from the air in your kitchen, namely smoke and odors,” he adds, as well as dust, pollen and pet dander, all of which may contribute to asthmatic risk and on-set symptoms over time as well.
Regular maintenance of your gas oven and stovetop is also crucial to ensure that air pollution remains as minimal as possible while you cook. Our experts in the Good Housekeeping Institute‘s Kitchen Appliances & Innovation Lab recommend doing the following:
Turn vents or fans on before you start cooking. It takes time for high-speed fan settings to kick in, and smoke and other pollutants in the air simply hang suspended if air flow isn’t strong enough. Putting your vent or fan on before you begin cooking ensures this won’t happen
Keep your gas burner clean. Grease, splatter and other kitchen residue can easily build up over the gas burners on your stove top, which may delay or prevent the complete ignition of a burner, which could contribute to potential gas leakage over time, according to Papantoniou. Keeping your burners clean can help prevent this from happening.
Replace fan filters and have vents serviced regularly. You can do this with the help of your oven’s manufacturer. Replacing filters regularly ensures grease and other airborne pollutants are captured effectively, leaving less work for any air purifiers you have elsewhere in your home. And if it’s possible, work with a professional
If you’re able, consider investing in a vent hood that has an optimized capture efficiency range — even if that means replacing an outdated model, advises Dan DiClerico, the Good Housekeeping Institute‘s home improvement and outdoor director. “It should be within the 70 to 80% range, and is usually included as a spec on many newer models, though manufacturers aren’t required to list it,” he adds.
The bottom line:
It’s unclear when and if federal consumer safety regulators will introduce new rules for oven and stove manufacturers. Americans should rest easy knowing that there won’t be any changes required for those who currently use gas ranges in their home — though, research is clear that these types of ovens likely pose an additional health risk compared to electric models.
Focusing on improving the ventilation in your kitchen is key if you’re worried that cooking is adding to poor air quality at home. Simply working to open as many windows or doors as you can while cooking can offset poor air quality, and is essential for anyone who is already facing established respiratory issues. And taking the time to have any hooded range vent or kitchen fan regularly serviced by HVAC professionals may reduce the risk of suspended smoke, odor and other pollutants above your stove top.
Additionally, air purifiers can work to combat pollutants in your kitchen as well as other airborne factors in your home contributing to respiratory irritation. Experts say dust, pollen, pet dander and odors are often targeted by air purifiers, but the best air purifiers also work to reduce volatile nitrogen dioxide released into kitchens over time.
Why nurses say they are striking and quitting in droves
Lauren Kaori Gurley, The Washington Post – January 15, 2023
This flu season, Benny Matthew – a nurse at the Montefiore Medical Center emergency room in the Bronx – has often been responsible for 15 to 20 patients at a time.
By 3 p.m. most days, the emergency room is often exploding with patients, Matthew said. Hospital gurneys stand inches apart. When beds run out, patients squeeze into tightly packed chairs. When the chairs run out, patients must stand. Wait times to see a doctor can be up to six hours. At the same time, the hospital is advertising more than 700 nursing positions.
“We go home feeling like failures,” Matthew said. “There are times when you can’t sleep because you’re thinking: ‘Did I do anything wrong today?'”
Matthew is one of more than 7,000 union nurses who went on strike in New York City last week, protesting staffing levels, which led to two of the city’s largest nonprofit hospital systems to agree to strengthen staffing ratios at some hospitals. On Thursday, hundreds of health-care workers from around the country protested understaffing at HCA Healthcare, the nation’s largest hospital system. That included one worker from El Paso who recently admitted herself into her own emergency room for dehydration and exhaustion after working four 12-hour days in a row, her union said.
These tensions have continued to play out over the past month, as nurses have also protested, gone on strike or threatened strikes in California, Oregon, Michigan and Minnesota.
Understaffing concerns have been at the heart of labor disputes in myriad industries in recent months, including an averted national rail strike threat, but perhaps nowhere have these tensions been more pronounced than in health care and nursing. Nurses led a quarter of the top 20 major work stoppages tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2022.
While understaffing has plagued some hospitals and medical centers nationwide for years, the pandemic added new layers of stress, as nurses worked through consecutive coronavirus outbreaks that killed and disabled thousands of health-care workers. The upswing of flu and respiratory diseases in the past several months has only worsened the situation.
With no end in sight, legions of nurses have left the field, retired early or switched jobs. Some 100,000 nurses left the industry between 2020 and 2021, according to an industry trade-journal estimate. Although there were 4.4 million registered nurses with active licenses as of 2021, according to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, only 3 million people were employed as nurses, according to the Department of Labor.
Those who have remained have faced increasingly heavy workloads. They also gained more leverage in the tight labor market, leading nurses to organize new unions and even walk away from jobs to join the ranks of traveling nurses who parachute in from out of town to fill staffing gaps and tend to be paid more.
“The issue is that we are understaffed, not only in my facility, but really across the nation,” said Cathy Kennedy, president of the California Nurses Association, which represents 100,000 nurses in the state. “We are seeing an upsurge of nurses that are saying, ‘We’ve had enough. We want to organize. We really want our hospital to hear what we have to say.'”
The New York-based hospital company Montefiore did not respond to a request for comment about staffing levels. But the company touted the agreement reached by negotiators and the hospital late Wednesday that ended the strike, with some big concessions for nurses. The agreement includes a 19.1 percent raise over three years, 170 new nursing positions and emergency-room staffing ratios based on the severity of patient needs.
Harlow Sumerford, a spokesperson for HCA Healthcare, said Thursday’s protest was “an expected tactic as we are set to begin our regular cycle of bargaining with the labor union in the next few weeks.” He noted that the hospital system staffs its “teams appropriately and in compliance with state regulations.”
In the years leading into the pandemic, there were roughly enough new nurses entering the pipeline to replace the ones that retired, according to a 2022 McKinsey & Co report titled “Assessing the lingering impact of COVID-19 on the nursing workforce.” But covid changed everything. “Over the past two years, McKinsey found that nurses consistently, and increasingly, report planning to leave the workforce at higher rates compared with the past decade,” the report found, a trend that continued even as covid cases fell.
From coast to coast, mounting nursing shortages have triggered a widespread set of issues for nurses and patients, according to conversations with nine nurses. Nurses say there have been significant declines in patient care, including delayed cancer treatments and critical checkups for expecting mothers. Medications are administered late or missed altogether. The shortage has also taken a toll on nurses’ mental and physical health, as they are forced to skip meal and rest breaks and get little recovery time between shifts.
Organized strikes, and even the threat of strikes, have succeeded in pushing some hospitals to agree to address some staffing concerns. This winter nurses have won guarantees of investment in new hires, a bigger role in shaping nurse-to-patient ratios, and strong wage gains that could help with retention.
In Kalamazoo, Mich., 300 nurses – as part of the Michigan Nurses Association – won a 20 percent raise in the first year of their contract, after threatening to strike at Ascension Borgess hospital over staffing levels in December. Night nurse Lori Batzloff said the pay increase should help retain nurses. But she is concerned about her hospital’s ability to weather another covid outbreak.
Last September, in Minnesota, 15,000 nurses went on strike for three days over understaffing concerns, in the largest-ever private nurses’ strike. When hospitals still refused to concede to their demands, the nurses threatened to walk out a second time, for three weeks in December. With days to go before the strike deadline, more than a dozen hospitals, for the first time, agreed to give nurses a say in staffing levels, averting the strike.
“I think the hospitals looked around and understood that they couldn’t withstand, frankly, a 15,000-member three-week strike in Minnesota,” said Chris Rubesch, vice president of the Minnesota nurses union. “That would be crippling.”
A Twin Cities Hospital group spokesman said in a press statement when the deal was struck that the new agreement shows that hospitals and labor can work together to “develop staffing language the meets the unique needs” of hospitals, nurses and patients.
For other health-care workers who typically earn less than nurses – such as health-care technicians, dietitians and nursing assistants – the impacts of understaffing are just as bad.
“There is no morale left,” said Gregorio Oropeza, an admitting representative who registers patients at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Marina del Rey, Calif. Oropeza has colleagues who have had to drop out of the workforce after suffering severe symptoms from covid. “Everyone is there because they need a paycheck. They’re terrified of getting sick, but it is a job and they have to uphold a household.”
Oropeza and 400 of his colleagues went on a five-day strike with SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West in December over understaffing and pay concerns, but union contract negotiations have continue to stall.
Marni Usheroff, a spokesperson for Cedars-Sinai Marina del Rey, said the hospital recognizes that its employees are its “most important asset” and that during contract negotiations, the hospital has shown its “commitment to maintain staffing levels that provide important support for our health care workers.”
During the coronavirus pandemic, nurses have been organizing and winning union elections, even as unionization rates in the United States have declined.
“I remember in the middle of the pandemic, predicting that once the dust settles, there could be an explosion of new organizing and strikes to accomplish safe staffing levels,” said Sal Rosselli, president of the National Union of Healthcare Workers, which represents 15,000 health-care employees in California. “And that’s what’s happening now.”
While some nurses are organizing, many have dropped out of the field entirely or plan to leave the industry. A 2022 survey by the staffing agency ShiftMed found that two-thirds of nurses say they are inclined to leave the profession within the next two years.
Some nurses have quit their full-time jobs to take on highly lucrative contract work, traveling to other parts of the country and temporarily filling in at short-staffed hospitals. The option has become popular among younger nurses, in particular many who are looking to pay off student loans. Demand for travel nurses is roughly double what it was at the start of the pandemic, although it has tempered since the height of outbreak, according to April Hansen, an executive at Aya Healthcare, the country’s largest travel-nurse agency.
Nurses unions say hospitals are to blame for nursing shortage problems, noting that health-care companies made a deliberate choice not to devote resources to hiring more nurses. Many hospitals profited during the pandemic, receiving millions in covid-related aid, rewarding investors with generous stock buybacks and paying executives seven-figure salaries. In the Bronx, the CEO of Montefiore, Philip Ozuah, took home $7.4 million in 2020.
“I feel that hospital administrators are hypocrites,” said Zulma Gutierrez, 42, an intensive care unit nurse at Montefiore who went on strike this week. “They’re going home making millions and we’re going home with guilt.”
But a growing and aging population, combined with the continued waves of covid, mean demand for nurses will continue to soar in the coming years. By 2025, the United States is projected to be between 200,000 and 450,000 nurses short, according to the McKinsey report.
Swedish miner finds Europe’s largest deposit of rare earth metals
January 13, 2023
Location: Kiruna, Sweden
LKAB says it has identified more than 1 million tons of rare earth oxides
in the Kiruna area in the far north of Sweden
[Ebba Busch, Swedish Minister for Energy, Business and Industry]
“This is really an important day for Sweden and for the whole of the European Union. It is a significant happening which can play a key role in securing a green transition within the EU.”
Rare earth minerals are essential to many high-tech manufacturing processes
and are used in electric vehicles, wind turbines and portable electronics
Rare earth elements are currently not mined in Europe
leaving the region depending on imports from elsewhere, such as China
“We can reduce carbon footprints and strengthen our competitiveness at the same time. Obviously this is the million dollar question: is it possible to combine economic growth while at the same time reaching high set climate goals? And I say, the answer is yes. ‘’
