The Conversation

Climate change threatens drinking water quality across the Great Lakes

Gabriel Filippelli, Chancellor’s Professor of Earth Sciences and Executive Director, Indiana University Environmental Resilience Institute, IUPUI and Joseph D. Ortiz, Professor and Assistant Chair of Geology, Kent State University. January 2, 2022

This story is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative. For more information, go to https://pulitzercenter.org/connected-coastlines-initiative.

“Do Not Drink/Do Not Boil” is not what anyone wants to hear about their city’s tap water. But the combined effects of climate change and degraded water quality could make such warnings more frequent across the Great Lakes region.

A preview occurred on July 31, 2014, when a nasty green slime – properly known as a harmful algal bloom, or HAB – developed in the western basin of Lake Erie. Before long it had overwhelmed the Toledo Water Intake Crib, which provides drinking water to nearly 500,000 people in and around the city.

Tests revealed that the algae was producing microcystin, a sometimes deadly liver toxin and suspected carcinogen. Unlike some other toxins, microcystin can’t be rendered harmless by boiling. So the city issued a “Do Not Drink/Do Not Boil” order that set off a three-day crisis.

Local stores soon ran out of bottled water. Ohio’s governor declared a state of emergency, and the National Guard was called in to provide safe drinking water until the system could be flushed and treatment facilities brought back on line.

The culprit was a combination of high nutrient pollution – nitrogen and phosphorus, which stimulate the growth of algae – from sewage, agriculture and suburban runoff, and high water temperatures linked to climate change. This event showed that even in regions with resources as vast as the Great Lakes, water supplies are vulnerable to these kinds of man-made threats.

As Midwesterners working in the fields of urban environmental health and climate and environmental science, we believe more crises like Toledo’s could lie ahead if the region doesn’t address looming threats to drinking water quality.

Vast and abused

The Great Lakes together hold 20% of the world’s surface freshwater – more than enough to provide drinking water to over 48 million people from Duluth to Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Toronto. But human impacts have severely harmed this precious and vital resource.

In 1970, after a century of urbanization and industrialization around the Great Lakes, water quality was severely degraded. Factories were allowed to dump waste into waterways rather than treating it. Inadequate sewer systems often sent raw sewage into rivers and lakes, fouling the water and causing algal blooms.

Problems like these helped spur two major steps in 1972: passage of the U.S. Clean Water Act, and adoption of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between the United States and Canada. Since then, many industries have been cleaned up or shut down. Sewer systems are being redesigned, albeit slowly and at great cost.

The resulting cuts in nutrient and wastewater pollution have brought a quick decline in HABs – especially in Lake Erie, the Great Lake with the most densely populated shoreline. But new problems have emerged, due partly to shortcomings in those laws and agreements, combined with the growing effects of climate change.https://www.youtube.com/embed/D4Nsp96zV-E?wmode=transparent&start=0

Warmer and wetter

Climate change is profoundly altering many factors that affect life in the Great Lakes region. The most immediate impacts of recent climate change have been on precipitation, lake levels and water temperatures.

Annual precipitation in the region has increased by about 5 inches over the past century. Changes in the past five years alone – the hottest five years in recorded history – have been particularly dramatic, with a series of extreme rainfall events bringing extremely high and rapidly varying water levels to the Great Lakes.

Record high precipitation in 2019 caused flooding, property damage and beachfront losses in a number of coastal communities. Precipitation in 2020 is projected to be equally high, if not higher. Some of this is due to natural variability, but certainly some is due to climate change.

Another clear impact of climate change is a general warming of all five Great Lakes, particularly in the springtime. The temperature increase is modest and varies from year to year and place to place, but is consistent overall with records of warming throughout the region.

More polluted runoff

Some of these climate-related changes have converged with more direct human impacts to influence water quality in the Great Lakes.

Cleanup measures adopted back in the 1970s imposed stringent limits on large point sources of nutrient pollution, like wastewater and factories. But smaller “nonpoint” sources, such as fertilizer and other nutrients washing off farm fields and suburban lawns, were addressed through weaker, voluntary controls. These have since become major pollution sources.

Since the mid-1990s, climate-driven increases in precipitation have carried growing quantities of nutrient runoff into Lake Erie. This rising load has triggered increasingly severe algal blooms, comparable in some ways to the events of the 1970s. Toledo’s 2014 crisis was not an anomaly.

These blooms can make lake water smell and taste bad, and sometimes make it dangerous to drink. They also have long-term impacts on the lakes’ ecosystems. They deplete oxygen, killing fish and spurring chemical processes that prime the waters of Lake Erie for larger future blooms. Low-oxygen water is more corrosive and can damage water pipes, causing poor taste or foul odors, and helps release trace metals that may also cause health problems.

So despite a half-century of advances, in many ways Great Lakes water quality is back to where it was in 1970, but with the added influence of a rapidly changing climate.

Filtering runoff

How can the region change course and build resilience into Great Lakes coastal communities? Thanks to a number of recent studies, including an intensive modeling analysis of future climate change in Indiana, which serves as a proxy for most of the region, we have a pretty good picture of what the future could look like.

As one might guess, warming will continue. Summertime water temperatures are projected to rise by about another 5 degrees Fahrenheit by midcentury, even if nations significantly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. This will cause further declines in water quality and negatively impact coastal ecosystems.

The analysis also projects an increase in extreme precipitation and runoff, particularly in the winter and spring. These shifts will likely bring still more nutrient runoff, sediment contaminants and sewage overflows into coastal zones, even if surrounding states hold the actual quantities of these nutrients steady. More contaminants, coupled with higher temperatures, can trigger algal blooms that threaten water supplies.

But recent success stories point to strategies for tackling these problems, at least at the local and regional levels.

A number of large infrastructure projects are currently underway to improve stormwater management and municipal sewer systems, so that they can capture and process sewage and associated nutrients before they are transported to the Great Lakes. These initiatives will help control flooding and increase the supply of “gray water,” or used water from bathroom sinks, washing machines, tubs and showers, for uses such as landscaping.

Cities are coupling this “gray infrastructure” with green infrastructure projects, such as green roofs, infiltration gardens and reclaimed wetlands. These systems can filter water to help remove excess nutrients. They also will slow runoff during extreme precipitation events, thus recharging natural reservoirs.

Municipal water managers are also using smart technologies and improved remote sensing methods to create near-real-time warning systems for HABs that might help avert crises. Groups like the Cleveland Water Alliance, an association of industry, government and academic partners, are working to implement smart lake technologies in Lake Erie and other freshwater environments around the globe. Finally, states including Ohio and Indiana are moving to cut total nutrient inputs into the Great Lakes from all sources, and using advanced modeling to pinpoint those sources.

Together these developments could help reduce the size of HABs, and perhaps even reach the roughly 50% reduction in nutrient runoff that government studies suggest is needed to bring them back to their minimum extent in the mid-1990s.

Short of curbing global greenhouse gas emissions, keeping communities that rely so heavily on the Great Lakes livable will require all of these actions and more.

Read more:

• Tons of plastic trash enter the Great Lakes every year – where does it go?
• How your diet contributes to nutrient pollution and dead zones in lakes and bays
• The US drinking water supply is mostly safe, but that’s not good enough

Gabriel Filippelli receives funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation and the American Chemical Society-Petroleum Research Fund

Joseph D. Ortiz receives funding from NASA, the HW Hoover Foundation and the National Geographic Society. He is a participant in the Cleveland Water Alliance, which includes Kent State University. His spouse owns an environmental consulting firm, which is not involved in this project or his research.

Associated Press

Schumer: Senate to vote on filibuster change on voting bill

LISA MASCARO January 3, 2022

WASHINGTON (AP) — Days before the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced the Senate will vote on filibuster rules changes to advance stalled voting legislation that Democrats say is needed to protect democracy.

In a letter Monday to colleagues, Schumer, D-N.Y., said the Senate “must evolve” and will “debate and consider” the rules changes by Jan. 17, on or before Martin Luther King Jr. Day, as the Democrats seek to overcome Republican opposition to their elections law package.

“Let me be clear: January 6th was a symptom of a broader illness — an effort to delegitimize our election process,” Schumer wrote, “and the Senate must advance systemic democracy reforms to repair our republic or else the events of that day will not be an aberration — they will be the new norm.”

The election and voting rights package has been stalled in the evenly-split 50-50 Senate, blocked by a Republican-led filibuster and leaving Democrats unable to mount the 60-vote threshold needed to advance it toward passage.

Democrats have been unable to agree among themselves over potential changes to the Senate rules to reduce the 60-vote hurdle, despite months of private negotiations.

Two holdout Democrats, Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have tried to warn their party off changes to the Senate rules, arguing that if and when Republicans take majority control of the chamber, they could use the lower voting threshold to advance bills Democrats oppose.

President Joe Biden has waded cautiously into the debate — a former senator who largely stands by existing rules but is also under enormous political pressure to break the logjam on the voting legislation.

How the Senate rules would be changed remains under discussion.

Voting rights advocates warn that Republican-led states are passing election legislation and trying to install elections officials loyal to the former president, Donald Trump, in ways that could subvert future elections.

Trump urged his followers last Jan. 6 to “fight like hell” for his presidency, and a mob stormed the Capitol trying to stop Congress from certifying the state election tallies for Biden. It was the worst domestic attack on the seat of government in U.S. history.

Business Insider

Liz Cheney says Trump is unfit for office and ‘clearly can never be anywhere near the Oval Office ever again’

Yelena Dzhanova January 2, 2022

• Republican Rep. Liz Cheney on Sunday said Donald Trump should never be in office again.
• Cheney said his inaction during the January 6 Capitol riot last year was unacceptable.
• She said he had the power to put an end to it but did not despite repeated pleas to do so from his allies.

Rep. Liz Cheney scorched former President Donald Trump on Sunday, saying he has proven that he cannot be “anywhere near the Oval Office ever again.”

In an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Cheney, a Republican representative from Wyoming, said Trump had the power to put an end to the Capitol riot on January 6 but did not despite repeated pleas to do so from his allies and family members.

“I think it’s also important for the American people to understand how dangerous Donald Trump was,” Cheney said in the interview. “We know as he was sitting there in the dining room next to the Oval Office, members of his staff were pleading with him to go on television to tell people to stop. We know Leader McCarthy was pleading with him to do that. We know members of his family. We know his daughter — we have firsthand testimony — that his daughter Ivanka went in at least twice to ask him to please stop this violence.”

Cheney is part of the House select committee charged with investigating the January 6 insurrection.

“Any man who would not do so, any man who would provoke a violent assault on the Capitol to stop the county of electoral votes, any man who would watch television as police officers were being beaten, as his supporters were invading the Capitol of the United States, is clearly unfit for future office, clearly can never be anywhere near the Oval Office ever again,” Cheney continued.

Rioters were emboldened by Trump’s calls to protest the results of the 2020 election, despite Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. While members of Congress were meeting inside the Capitol to certify the results and verify Biden’s presidency, Trump supporters attempted a coup and stormed the Capitol.

The January 6 Select Committee, made up of a group of Republican and Democratic representatives, has been issuing subpoenas to collect documentation and testimony in its investigation of the Capitol riot.

So far, at least 727 people have been charged in relation to the riot.

Daily Beast

The Heartbreaking Note Left With Abandoned Infant in Alaska: ‘My Mom Is So Sad to Do This’

Tracy Connor January 2, 2022

Downtown Fairbanks

A newborn boy was found abandoned in a cardboard box in freezing weather in Alaska on New Year’s Eve—with a heartbreaking note saying the parents did not have food or money.

The temperature was just 1 degree when a Fairbanks woman spotted the blanket-filled box near her home. Alaska police said the child was taken to the hospital and “was found to be in good health.”

The note left with the infant—headlined “Please help me!!!”—indicated he was born 12 weeks premature, though authorities did not confirm that.

‘My parents and grandparents don’t have food or money to raise me,” the handwritten note said. “They NEVER wanted to do this to me.

“My mom is so sad to do this,” it continued. “Please take me and find me a LOVING FAMILY. My parents are begging whoever finds me. My name is Teshawn.”

The note was posted in video by a Facebook user with the handle Roxy Lane. She also posted video of herself pulling back the blankets to show a baby nestled beneath.

“I’ve been processing my feelings all day and running through all the different scenarios and reasons, with my bf and family, as to why something like this could have happened,” Lane wrote.

She suggested that the parents might be too young to realize that Alaska has a safe haven law that allows unwanted babies to be dropped with police, firefighters, or paramedics until they are 21 days old.

“I hope the mother gets the help she might need. I doubt they could have afforded to take her to the hospital and she may be in need of medical attention. Please, someone knows this new mom, check on her! She might be in a desperate situation, feeling abandoned herself,” Lane wrote.

She used the discovery of Teshawn to call for unity in the Fairbanks community.

“Clearly, someone in our community felt so lost and hopeless that they made probably the hardest choice of their lives to leave that innocent life on the side of the road with nothing but some blankets and a name,” she wrote.

“But she named him! There’s some love there, even if she made a terrible decision. I know we’re all struggling, I see it. I see you. I love you all and I’m here. Today I saved a baby and I’ll probably think about Teshawn for the rest of my life.”

In a message to The Daily Beast, Lane said she released the video only “in the hopes that everyone involved got the help they might need and that whatever justice needed to be served would be served.”

“I only hope for more awareness in the community, and maybe some compassion for a difficult situation for everyone involved,” she said, declining an interview.

The Alaska Daily News said Fairbanks Memorial Hospital reported that “the baby is doing well and very healthy.”

Pressure Grows on Biden to Shut Down Trump-Era Medicare Privatization Scheme

A petition calling on the president to end the Medicare Direct Contracting pilot program has now garnered more than 10,000 signatures.

Jake Johnson December 30, 2021

Doctors attend a protest at the headquarters of the Health and Human Services Department on November 30, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Physicians for a National Health Program)

Calls are mounting for President Joe Biden to terminate an under-the-radar Trump-era pilot program that—if allowed to run its course—could result in the complete privatization of traditional Medicare by the end of the decade.

“The Biden administration is moving the DCE program forward, threatening the future of Medicare as we know it.”

A petition recently launched by Physicians for a National Program (PNHP) has garnered more than 10,000 signatures as doctors and other advocates work to raise public awareness of the Medicare Direct Contracting program, which the Trump administration rolled out during its final months in power.

“Under this model,” the petition warns, “the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) could move more than 30 million traditional Medicare beneficiaries into mostly commercial, for-profit plans called Direct Contracting Entities (DCE) without the enrollees’ understanding or consent.”

“In ways similar to commercial Medicare Advantage plans, DCEs have the potential to interfere with care decisions and waste taxpayer money when compared with the efficiency of traditional Medicare,” the appeal continues. “The Biden administration is moving the DCE program forward, threatening the future of Medicare as we know it. We, the undersigned, demand that CMS immediately stop the DCE program to keep Medicare public and nonprofit for future generations.”

Late last month, as Common Dreams reported, a group of physicians from across the U.S. traveled to the headquarters of the Health and Human Services Department in Washington, D.C. to demand that HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra halt the pilot program in its tracks.

The doctors were ultimately blocked from delivering a petition signed by around 1,500 physicians calling for an end to the privatization scheme, which inserts profit-seeking companies between traditional Medicare and healthcare providers.

“Just like corporate middlemen stand between patients and the healthcare they need, security staff stood between PNHP doctors and the policymakers who want to privatize Medicare,” PNHP tweeted during the demonstration at the nation’s capital.Play

While the doctor-led protest was followed by a brief uptick in reporting on the obscure initiative, Biden’s HHS has yet to act and few members of Congress have publicly spoken out against the Direct Contracting program despite the massive implications for the future of Medicare and its tens of millions of beneficiaries.

“People don’t know that it’s happening,” Dr. Ed Weisbart, chair of PNHP’s Missouri chapter, told Common Dreams in an interview last month. “Most people in Congress don’t know that it’s happening. We’ve started having some of these conversations with congressional staff… but it’s not on their radar either.”

One notable exception is Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Earlier this month, Jayapal penned an op-ed with PNHP president Dr. Susan Rogers urging Biden to stop the Direct Contracting program “while we have the chance.”

According to PNHP, Jayapal is collecting signatures from fellow lawmakers’ for a letter pressuring Biden to shut down the pilot, which sparked legal concerns and general revulsion among career CMS staff when it was launched toward the end of former President Donald Trump’s White House tenure.

“This shit is so fucking gross,” one staffer wrote in a group text viewed by The Intercept.

In their op-ed for The Hill earlier this month, Jayapal and Rogers warned that the Direct Contracting program “could radically transform Medicare within a few years, without input from seniors or even a vote by Congress.”

“After our experience with commercial Medicare Advantage plans,” they added, “we already know that inserting a profit-seeking middleman into Medicare ends up costing taxpayers more, with fewer choices and worse outcomes for seniors.”

OPB – Science & Environment

Oregonian Chuck Sams has big plans for national parks

By Monica Samayoa (OPB) and Bradley W. Parks (OPB) December 30, 2021

Sams, the first Native American director of the National Park Service, wants to make good on major investments in the park system.

Charles F. “Chuck” Sams III shook Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s hand moments after she officially made Sams the next director of the National Park Service on the sunbathed steps of the Lincoln Memorial in mid-December.

It was a historic moment: the United States’ first Native American cabinet member, Haaland, who is a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, swearing in Sams, enrolled Cayuse and Walla Walla with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, as the first Native American to lead one of the nation’s foremost public lands agencies.

The significance was not lost on Sams, who spoke recently with OPB.

“I’m so happy and I’m so grateful to President Biden for nominating me to be the 19th director of the National Park Service,” Sams said, “and to continue on in my stewardship responsibilities as an American Indian.”

Sams is the first permanent director of the park service since 2017. He enters the office as the country has made a pair of enormous investments in the park system to clear a hefty maintenance backlog and bolster national parks, monuments and memorials for a growing crush of visitors.

Related: What the Great American Outdoors Act could do for Oregon

Among his top priorities as director, Sams said, is to put money directed to the park service from the Great American Outdoors Act and the recently passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to good use.

“We’re just very excited to be able to take the investments from the American people and put those on the ground so that we can ensure that parks are here for the next seven generations,” Sams said.

OPB environment reporter Monica Samayoa spoke with Sams about his plans for the park service, overcrowding on public lands and his first-ever trip to a national park.

---

Monica Samayoa: So your confirmation has been a cause of celebration because you are the first Native American to lead the park service. What does that mean to you?

Chuck Sams: I couldn’t ask for a better opportunity to serve the United States than in national parks. National parks are America’s treasure, America’s gem. Since the founding of the parks in 1916 there has been a dedicated staff who have done that stewardship and continue to do that stewardship. And it really aligns with my values as an American Indian and my values as an American citizen.

Samayoa: I want to talk about your relationship with national parks growing up as a Native American and as an Oregonian.

Sams: My parents regularly took us on summer vacation to Arizona where my mother’s people are from. My mother is Cocopah from southwest Arizona near the town of Somerton, and, of course, I grew up here in Eastern Oregon on the Umatilla Indian Reservation. … I can look back at age 4 or 5 and remember probably the first national park I was able to go to was Grand Canyon. Since then I’ve been to well over 125 parks across the United States and U.S. territories. And so I’ve had a wonderful relationship of being able to walk into the footsteps of my fellow Americans, whether that was the Seminole Indians in Florida and the Everglades, or whether that was Union or Confederate soldiers on a number of battlefields between Maine and Florida itself — in addition to walking in my ancestors’ own homelands here in Oregon, down in the John Day Fossil Beds or at Crater Lake.

Samayoa: You shared with us that your first experience at a national park was the Grand Canyon. Can you tell us what that feeling was when you first stepped foot in that national park?

Sams: Just looking at that huge canyon and recognizing the grandeur and the beauty and how small we are, what a great, immense responsibility we have as American Indians to be stewards of our resources. My own creation story — whether that is here among the Umatilla, Walla Walla and Cayuse or the Cocopah people — tells us that we are supposed to protect these lands and these resources for the next seven generations. And so seeing that and being able to travel to a number of national parks, it invigorates me and excites me to join such a dedicated staff who do that stewardship.

Samayoa: Can we talk a little bit more about your priorities now that you are the director of the National Park Service?

Sams: I’m very appreciative of the House and Senate passing the Great American Outdoors Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law. Both of those bring resources to the table that allow us to [take on] a number of issues and infrastructure build-up. National parks have over 5,000 miles of roads and over [1,400] bridges. Many of those have a backlog of issues that need to be addressed so that they can get up to standard. This funding allows us to do that. … I want to be able to prove to the American people that those investments are going to be made soundly as we are able to put that money on the ground across all 50 states and U.S. territories. In addition, I want to help prepare for the growing workforce. As you probably know, the National Park Service [staffing] is down by 20% and yet we’ve seen a 20% increase in people coming into national parks — well over 300 million visitors a year. And so I want to look out and make sure that we are making investments into the next generation of stewards and making sure that workforce is diverse and reflects Americans across the spectrum.

Related: How wilderness permits change the wilderness experience

Samayoa: You just mentioned there’s a 20% increase of people just flocking to national parks, especially over the past year. How are you going to balance overcrowding problems and still encourage all Americans to visit public parks without “loving them to death”?

Sams: First, I want to applaud what has been done in the past couple years with the national park staff, who have come up with innovative ways, whether that is timed entry or figuring out how to use new technology to bus people in and shuttle them in and around the parks. But what may work at Acadia is not necessarily what’s gonna work at Yosemite. What works down in the Everglades may not necessarily work at Zion or Denali. And so we really have to work very closely with the local communities to help address these issues, especially the gateway communities and how we can ensure that folks still have equal and open access to the parks and yet that we are not loving them to death. I mean it’s a good problem to have, don’t get me wrong, but we have to find that balance so that we can ensure that what we’re stewarding will be here for the next seven generations ahead.

Samayoa: You also mentioned encouraging other communities that are not as engaged with parks. How will you work with those communities?

Sams: I want to sit down and talk with them so that we can see what those realities are and see where we can help and make sure that those resources are available so that they aren’t excluded from being able to get into those national parks. National parks fees are localized. The majority of that funding where parks do charge a fee goes right back into helping maintain that park. But we also want to make sure that we don’t price anyone out in America to be able to get into their national parks. And so those are conversations that we’re definitely going to be having across the United States.

Related: Racism in the great outdoors: Oregon’s natural spaces feel off limits to Black people

Samayoa: So I want to switch into talking about climate change and how it’s altering our national parks. I’m curious how this is informing the way you plan to serve as a steward for these treasured places.

Sams: I think that we can look at our national parks as still some of the strongest anchors on being able to do climate adaptation and fight climate change. That being said, of course, they’re also some of the first places that we see that are being affected — whether that is Denali and the road closures up there due to landslides because of permafrost actually becoming defrosted, whether that is the drought that we’re experiencing at Lake Mead and how the water affects recreation and water needs and uses throughout the West. This administration, the Biden-Harris administration, is committed to fighting and figuring out how we can do climate adaptation. National Park Service staff regularly steward those resources so well that I think that we can be the model for a number of federal agencies and federal land managers to help in figuring out best practices, best management and also the things that we didn’t do well so that we can go out and see how climate adaptation can affect and build a stronger and more resilient United States.

Samayoa: Is there anything else you’d like to share with us on what we can expect from you and the National Park Service within the next year?

Sams: As an Oregonian, I’m very proud to be able to serve at a national level to help and inspire my fellow Oregonians to be out there and be the strong stewards, and to inspire Indian Country that they have a steward here in this chair and that we will continue to fulfill our responsibilities of making sure that the landscape is not only protected, preserved, but also enhanced in the way that will be here for future folks to be able to enjoy and recreate in.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Interview by Monica Samayoa. Additional reporting and writing by Bradley W. Parks.

Business Insider

Capitol Police officer says it’s a ‘disgrace’ that Pence is dismissing January 6: ‘We did everything possible to prevent him from being hanged and killed in front of his daughter and his wife’

Bryan Metzger – December 30, 2021

• Capitol Police Sergeant Aquilino Gonell said Pence’s minimization of January 6 was a “disgrace.”
• “We did everything possible to prevent him from being hanged,” he said.
• Pence recently said that “one tragic day in January” was being used to demean Trump supporters.

Capitol Police Sergeant Aquilino Gonell in an interview with NPR called former Vice President Mike Pence’s recent minimization of the January 6 Capitol attack a “disgrace” and “pathetic.”

Gonell, who helped defend the US Capitol against a mob of supporters of then-President Donald Trump as a joint session of Congress met to count the country’s electoral votes, spoke about the troubles he’d dealt with in the year since the attack. That includes ongoing therapy for his mental health, injuries that prevent him from raising his left arm, and emotional trauma.

Gonell, an Army veteran who served in Iraq, criticized the recent remarks by the former vice president, whom he helped defend that day.

Speaking recently with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Pence referred to the assault on the Capitol as “one tragic day in January,” a description that the former vice president has used more than once.

“I’m not going to allow the Democrats or the national media to use one tragic day in January to demean the intentions of 74 million people who stood with us in our cause,” Pence said. “And I’m not going to allow the Democrats to use one tragic day in January to distract attention from their failed agenda and the failed policies of the Biden administration. We’re going to focus on the future.”

That’s despite the fact that several rioters were heard chanting “hang Mike Pence” as they stormed the Capitol. Trump later defended those calls in a March interview with ABC’s Jonathan Karl, saying they were “common sense.” He added: “Well, the people were very angry.”

When he was asked about Pence’s comments about January 6, Gonell criticized the former vice president.

“That one day in January almost cost my life,” Gonell told NPR. “And we did everything possible to prevent him from being hanged and killed in front of his daughter and his wife. And now he’s telling us that that one day in January doesn’t mean anything. It’s pathetic. It’s a disgrace.”

Gonell added: “He swore an oath to the country, not to Donald Trump.”

Without naming anyone, the officer also criticized members of Congress that voted against certifying the 2020 presidential-election results, as well as those who downplayed the attack.

“We risked our lives to give them enough time to get to safety. And allegedly, some of them were in communication with some of the rioters and with some of the coordinators or in the know of what would happen,” Gonell told NPR. “And it makes you question their motives and their loyalty for the country, as we were battling the mob in a brutal battle where I could have lost my life and my dear fellow officers, as well.”

He added: “They’re telling us, ‘Oh, it wasn’t that bad.’ It was that bad when they were running for their lives. It was that bad when we were struggling to hold them off so they could have a chance to escape to safety.”

Gonell testified in July before the House select committee investigating the January 6 riot, describing the “horrific and devastating” violence he experienced at the west entrance to the Capitol, which he called a “medieval battleground.”

“To be honest, I did not recognize my fellow citizens that day, or the United States they claimed to represent,” Gonell said at the time.

Los Angeles Times

Record-breaking Sierra snow buries towns, closes highways

Hayley Smith, Melody Gutierrez December 28, 2021

“Snowbound” was not a term Stephen Kulieke thought he would hear at the end of California’s driest year in a century, but that’s precisely the position the Sierra City resident found himself in this week.

“It’s snowmaggedon,” said Kulieke, 71, whose mountain cabin was buried under at least 4 feet of powder Monday amid record-breaking snowfall in the Sierra Nevada. “It’s just beyond belief how much snow there is.”

Officials at the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab at Donner Pass said the area’s snowfall totals have surpassed the previous December record of 179 inches set in 1970. By Tuesday morning, the lab had received a whopping 202.1 inches of snow, making it the third-snowiest month on record.

The snow comes as a much-needed surprise for the bone-dry West, where only months ago, officials put residents under a state of drought emergency amid increasingly dry conditions. During the long, hot summer, rivers and reservoirs dried up, and once-green fields sat fallow and turned to dust.

But December roared in like a lion, with back-to-back storms dumping up to 15 feet of snow across the Sierra Nevada and other mountain areas of California, prompting road closures and snarling holiday travel. Though experts wouldn’t go so far as to call it a drought-buster, they said every bit helps.

“It’s a great start,” said Mike Anderson, state climatologist at the California Department of Water Resources. “It alleviates the worst of the conditions that had accumulated, but it doesn’t cure everything. We really need this to continue into the new year.”

Andrew Schwartz, the station manager and lead scientist at the Berkeley snow lab, agreed, noting that “cautious optimism is the name of the game right now.”

According to Schwartz, the month’s earlier storms were driven by a high-pressure system sitting off the coast of California. Another high-pressure system off Alaska has been “slinging moisture” at the state this week.

The result is that snowfall at the lab since Oct. 1 — the start of California’s water year — is at 258% of average, he said. Almost all of it came in December.

Though welcome, the snowfall has also proven dangerous.

Conditions have hampered search and rescue efforts for a missing 43-year-old ski shop worker in Truckee, Rory Angelotta, who was last seen heading out to ski on Christmas morning. There have been rockfalls, road closures and multicar pileups as the latest storm barreled through the state from north to south.

Highway 50 near South Lake Tahoe was backed up and “at capacity” Tuesday, officials with the California Department of Transportation said. Residents were urged to stay home or face delays of up to 10 hours.

Other highways were completely blocked, including Interstate 80, which was closed much of the day Tuesday from Colfax to the Nevada state line until some eastbound lanes reopened in the afternoon.

In South Lake Tahoe, officials activated the city’s emergency operations center and warned drivers against unnecessary travel. They warned that basic services — gas, tow trucks and lodgings — were strained or overwhelmed. “With the highways also at capacity, there are significant delays in travel time.”

Drivers risk running out of fuel or depleting their batteries and becoming stranded, according to the statement.

“Emergency vehicles, snowplows and their staff are challenged with getting through the traffic, so assistance may be delayed,” officials said.

Electric vehicle drivers are encouraged to look up charging stations closest to them, officials said.

“Because of road conditions and limited ability to get supplies, all resources within the city are currently limited and will likely remain so until conditions improve,” officials said.

At Marval’s Sierra Market in Colfax, store manager Jeremey Rogers and supervisor Barrett Deveraux watched drivers navigate the unplowed parking lot.

“This is pretty gnarly,” Deveraux said of the storm, which toppled trees and threatened to dump more snow later in the day.

A steady stream of shoppers flooded the store, leaving with bread, water and beer. Several locals said spotty cell service was preventing them from making calls. The market was out of propane and low on bread, but Rogers said he expected to have enough diesel to run the generator until more supplies arrived.

“I slept here at the store last night,” said Rogers, who lives in Alta Sierra, northwest of Colfax, where his home was also without power. “I might have died on my way home.”

Those hitting the highways encountered blockades amid hazardous conditions, with some expressing concern that mapping software was sending drivers onto dangerous, poorly maintained mountain roads in efforts to avoid closures.

On Tuesday, weary travelers and locals pulled into a Valero gas station south of Colfax off I-80’s Applegate exit in hopes of snacks and fuel. But with no power, the pumps were off and the station closed.

“We haven’t had power since yesterday morning,” said Zach Stein, 33, who lives in nearby Weimar. “There are downed trees and power lines.”

Erin Morgan and her husband, Jaime Labeiga, were trying to get to a rental house in Truckee with Labeiga’s sister and her boyfriend, who had never seen snow before.

They knew they were unlikely to make it when they left the Bay Area, but as they drove past Auburn and continued east on I-80, their hopes began to rise.

“We were driving and there was no snow, no snow, and then bam,” Morgan said.

With cars being turned around, the four pulled over at the gas station for a snowball fight and to take pictures with a deserted snowman.

“Clearly, we weren’t the only ones with this idea,” Morgan said. “I guess we will just head back after this.”

The record snow is still only a start for California, which has to make up for a massive moisture deficit before it can chip away at the drought, Schwartz said. Though snowfall for Tuesday was high at the snow lab, it still was only about 68% of what the state expects each year.

“It’s definitely amazing that we’ve been able to break this record, but ultimately, we can’t really depend on it to do anything to the drought just yet,” Schwartz said.

Earlier this year, researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that climate change was contributing to dwindling snowpack across the state and that winters of low snow, or even no snow, could become a regular occurrence in California in as little as 35 years.

Anderson, the state climatologist, said the recent snow is tied to shifting weather patterns, but it doesn’t necessarily alter the long-term climate outlook.

“The good news is December came through the way we needed it to in terms of delivering rainfall and developing snowpack,” he said. “It also fits into that narrative that as the world warms, there’s more extremes, more variability. So when you do get these events — boy, they really come in.”

Whether the current deep snowpack will last until the spring and summer — when the state’s water regulators typically lean on it as a critical source of supplies — depends on several factors, including temperatures, wind and sun, he said. But there’s no denying that it made a difference.

“If December ends up being our whole winter, if that’s the case, then thank goodness it was such a big one,” Anderson said, noting that statewide reservoirs made some gains this month.

The latest outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also points to drought improvements for large parts of the Central Valley, he said, although drought conditions are likely to persist in much of Southern California.

For residents like Jared Abelson, an avid skier with a home in the Tahoe Donner neighborhood of Truckee, the waist-high snow was cause for celebration.

“This is probably one of the best things that could happen to the state after the drought,” said Abelson, 39. “Most of our water comes from Sierra snowmelt, so we need this. Especially after the dry November. I live for this stuff.”

Abelson said he made it to a grocery store in Truckee on Sunday, which was running on a generator and had been nearly picked clean of supplies. He was able to secure enough provisions to hunker down at the house with his family of eight, including his wife, children and in-laws.

But temperatures quickly dropped into the teens and single digits as a storm hit Sunday night, and electricity in the area was intermittent, he said. Everyone gathered around a small fireplace that had already been running for four days straight.

“We hung blankets in front of the windows, put towels around the door jambs and put other blankets on the floors just trying to keep the heat in,” Abelson said.

Still, he was glad for what the snow means for California, and said the family was passing the time playing with the kids, ages 4 and 8 months, and snowshoeing and shoveling.

His excitement will likely be met with even more snow: The National Weather Service on Tuesday said another storm was rolling in this week. Winter weather watches and storm advisories will be in effect in the Sierra and other mountain areas intermittently through week’s end, officials said.

Some, like Kulieke in Sierra City, are glad for the moisture. A columnist for the weekly Mountain Messenger newspaper, he said he spent 10 straight weeks this year writing about wildfires, including the Dixie fire, which burned nearly 1 million acres not far from where his cabin now sits beneath a mountain of snow.

“What’s the old expression? Look out what you ask for — you might get it,” he joked.

The small community where he and his husband, Jeff, spend much of their time has been impassable for days, and electricity has been intermittent. He was using a generator to power his cellphone and refrigerator, and a fireplace to keep the house warm.

His husband has already trounced him in Scrabble several times, he said, so he was passing the hours in his study working on his next column for the paper, which will be a reflection on the events of 2021.

“It’s daunting how both nature and a pandemic can bring us to a standstill,” he said as he watched the steady snow falling outside his window. “We’re going into a new year in a way that we didn’t anticipate, and it has challenges and also opportunity. And that’s a good metaphor for our lives generally right now.”

Times staff writers Mark Z. Barabak, Stuart Leavenworth and Gregory Yee contributed to this report. Gutierrez reported from Colfax, Calif., and Smith from Los Angeles.

USA Today

Lake Tahoe shatters 50-year December snowfall record with more than 16 feet of snow

Amy Alonzo December 28, 2021

LAKE TAHOE, Nev. —With four days left to go in the month, Lake Tahoe has already broken the record for December snowfall set 50 years ago.

On Monday, December snow totals at the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab reached 193.7 inches, blowing a 1970 record of 179 inches out of the water.

The lab, located at Donner Pass, has received roughly 39 inches of snow in the past 24 hours and could break the 200-inch mark today.

The lab was built in 1946 by the U.S. Weather Bureau and Army Corps of Engineers and maintains one of the longest-running manual snow depth records in the world, dating back to 1879.

“This has been a very beneficial storm for the Sierra region,” said Dan McEvoy, regional climatologist for the Western Regional Climate Center.

The Lake Tahoe Basin is sitting around 200 percent of average for snow water equivalent – the amount of water that will be released from the snowpack when it melts – for this time of year.

And the Basin is sitting at 60 percent of its peak average snow water equivalent, which occurs around late March or early April, McEvoy said. The median peak average is 27 inches, and today 16.1 inches of snow water equivalent was measured, he said.

‘Unrelenting’: Record cold and massive snow plague the West as Southern US basks in holiday heat wave

December’s storms came in “forming a right-side-up snowpack,” he said. Earlier storms were wetter with higher elevation snow, but then temperatures and snow levels dropped.

“That’s good for both water content and avalanche concerns,” McEvoy said.

It will also help keep the snowpack for area ski resorts in good shape, even if the region runs into a dry spell.

“It’s been a pretty impressive December,” McEvoy said.

But, he cautioned, it’s possible for drought conditions to resume.  

“If I had to emphasize one point, it’s that the drought’s not over. We need the storms to continue through the winter.”

Reach Amy Alonzo at aalonzo@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Reno Gazette Journal: Lake Tahoe blows past 50-year December snowfall record set in 1970

Los Angeles Times

Op-Ed: After 2021 tumult, here’s what it will take to protect American democracy

Nils Gilman December 27, 2021

For those of us who care about protecting democracy, 2021 has at times resembled the sort of nightmare where you see a friend standing on a train track but your screams about the looming danger can’t be heard. The runaway train of illiberalism continues to bear down on American democracy, and the need to act could not be more urgent.

In truth, this nation avoided the worst that many anticipated might happen during and after the 2020 presidential election. Notwithstanding the “Big Lie” promoted by former President Trump and his cronies, the election, in fact, went off properly, and the candidates who received the most votes were allowed to assume their offices.

However, what the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 showed, and which subsequent congressional investigations have made even clearer, is that Trump and his minions were very much willing to try to steal the election. They considered a variety of specific plans, with some going so far as to wargame strategies for overturning his electoral loss.

Yet the main reason that Trump and his team were unable to pull off their schemes was because the election wasn’t all that close. Of the 59 presidential elections since 1792, there have been 13 that were narrower in the electoral college and 17 that were closer in terms of the popular vote.

Despite Trump’s failure, the right-wing anti-democratic forces are still at it. Over the last year, Republicans in state legislatures crafted various measures to make it easier to pull off what they tried to do in the 2020 election. The GOP’s anti-democratic strategy has several dimensions.

First, gerrymander so aggressively that they can win majorities of seats with minorities of votes. The template here is the Wisconsin State Assembly, where the GOP has so successfully gerrymandered the state that in 2018, they received only 47% of the Assembly votes but picked up 64% of the Assembly seats. As congressional redistricting unfolds after the 2020 census – which (by design) undercounted Democratic-leaning residents — similar efforts are underway in every state controlled by Republicans.

Second, make it harder for those same Democratic constituencies to vote. For example, by striking them from electoral rolls, or limiting the number of polling stations in heavily Democratic areas, including in communities of color, or by making it illegal to provide various forms of voting assistance. In just the first half of 2021, 18 states enacted more than 30 laws that restrict access to the vote.

Third, if all else fails and Democrats somehow still manage to get more votes, nullify the votes themselves. Trump demanded this of Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania lawmakers and election officials after his losses in those states in 2020. The elections officials, who upheld normal electoral practices, have in many cases been replaced by ones making few bones about their desire to ensure GOP victories occur no matter what.

Fourth, purge any Republicans critical of anti-democratic political strategies. In one swing state after another, Trump supporters are working to replace impartial election administrators with partisan hacks who, in some cases, have explicitly said they will try to enforce results on the basis of the Big Lie. Of the 10 Republicans in Congress who voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection, all appear headed for the exits, either voluntarily or by primary challenges from Trump loyalists.

All of this adds up to a Republican Party that has made a complete turn toward what in other countries, such as Viktor Orban’s Hungary or Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, is known as “illiberal democracy.” Illiberal democracies are ones where elections take place, but they are rigged in the sense that not everyone has equal access to the ballot; or the ballots themselves do not get counted in impartial ways. In such nations, the purpose of elections is not to ensure that elected representatives reflect the will of the people, but rather to legitimate and consolidate the power of one party or leader.

Despite ample evidence of how this has happened in other countries, and of the explicitly stated intentions of Trumpist Republicans in the U.S., Americans continue to stand on the railroad tracks, their backs turned to the impending danger. The primary imperative, then, is for all citizens to take seriously the danger of election nullification, achieved through various means.

Taking that threat seriously means passing federal voting rights and election security bills to ensure that every citizen is empowered to vote, that every vote is properly counted and that the candidates with the most votes assume office. Unfortunately, Democrats have failed to get these bills to President Biden’s desk. They need to do so immediately, if necessary, by carrying out filibuster reform.

Perhaps even more important is the critical political work at the state and local level, where the clearest threats to our democratic system appear at present. For ordinary citizens, this means getting directly involved with local politics, because showing up to vote every four years is hardly enough.

This can include volunteering to serve as a poll worker; getting involved in the campaigns of pro-democracy candidates for governor and secretaries of state; and running for one of the thousands of local electoral administration positions across the country. Ideally, we will move toward nonpartisan professionals overseeing elections, while citizens insist that elected representatives commit to respecting ballot outcomes.

A liberal democracy in the end depends not on laws, but on the political virtues and commitments of its citizens. Those who would tear down our democratic traditions are a minority in this country, but a focused one. To defend against this deepening threat, Americans, regardless of party, will have to respond with greater fervor and dedication.

Nils Gilman is vice president of programs at the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles.