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Tag: Climate and environment

  • California extends cap-and-trade program to advance state climate goals

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    SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California will extend a key climate program under a bill state lawmakers passed Saturday, sending the measure to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has championed it as a crucial tool to respond to the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks.

    The Democrat-dominated Legislature voted to reauthorize the state’s cap-and-trade program, which is set to expire after 2030. Then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, signed a law authorizing the program in 2006, and it launched in 2013.

    The program sets a declining limit on total planet-warming emissions in the state from major polluters. Companies must reduce their emissions, buy allowances from the state or other businesses, or fund projects aimed at offsetting their emissions. Money the state receives from the sales funds climate-change mitigation, affordable housing and transportation projects, as well as utility bill credits for Californians.

    Newsom, a Democrat, and legislative leaders, who said months ago they would prioritize reauthorizing the program, almost ran out of time to introduce the proposal before the statehouse wraps for the year.

    “After months of hard work with the Legislature, we have agreed to historic reforms that will save money on your electric bills, stabilize gas supply, and slash toxic air pollution — all while fast-tracking California’s transition to a clean, green job-creating economy,” Newsom said after striking the deal this week.

    The proposal would reauthorize the program through 2045, better align the declining cap on emissions with the state’s climate targets and potentially boost carbon-removal projects. It would also change the name to “cap and invest” to emphasize its funding of climate programs.

    The Legislature approved another bill committing annual funding from the program’s revenues. It includes $1 billion for the state’s long-delayed high-speed rail project, $800 million for an affordable housing program, $250 million for community air protection programs and $1 billion for the Legislature to decide on annually.

    The votes come as officials contend with balancing the state’s ambitious climate goals and the cost of living. California has some of the highest utility and gas prices in the country. Officials face increased pressure to stabilize the cost and supply of fuel amid the planned closures of two oil refineries that make up roughly 18% of the state’s refining capacity, according to energy regulators.

    Proponents of the extension say it will give companies certainty over the program’s future. The state lost out on $3.6 billion in revenues over the past year and a half, largely due to uncertainty, according to a report from Clean and Prosperous California, a group of economists and lawyers supporting the program. Some environmentalists say the Trump administration’s attacks on climate programs, including the state’s first-in-the-nation ban on the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035, added urgency to the reauthorization effort.

    Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas said the extension balanced the state’s ambitious emission-reduction and affordability goals. The Democrat called cap and trade “the cornerstone of our climate strategy.”

    But environmental justice advocates opposing the proposal say it doesn’t go far enough and lacks strong air quality protections for low-income Californians and communities of color more likely to live near major polluters.

    “This really continues to allow big oil to reduce their emissions on paper instead of in real life,” said Asha Sharma, state policy manager at the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability.

    GOP lawmakers criticized the program, saying it would make living in California more expensive.

    “Cap and trade has become cap and tax,” said James Gallagher, the Assembly Republican minority leader. “It’s going to raise everybody’s costs.”

    Cap and trade has increased gas costs by about 26 cents per gallon, according to a February report from the Independent Emissions Market Advisory Committee, a group of experts that analyzes the program. It has played “a very small role” in increasing electricity prices because the state’s grid isn’t very carbon intensive, the report says.

    Lawmakers and lobbyists criticized the governor and legislative leaders for rushing the deal through with little public input.

    Ben Golombek, executive vice president of the California Chamber of Commerce, said at a hearing this week that the Legislature should have taken more time “to do this right.”

    Democratic state Sen. Caroline Menjivar said it shouldn’t be par for the course for lawmakers to jam through bills without the opportunity for amendments.

    “We’re expected to vote on it,” she said of Democrats. “If not, you’re seen to not be part of the team or not want to be a team player.”

    Menjivar ultimately voted to advance the bill out of committee.

    The cap-and-trade bills are part of a sweeping package lawmakers approved aimed at advancing the state’s energy transition and lowering costs for Californians.

    One of the bills would speed up permitting for oil production in Kern County, which proponents have hailed as a necessary response to planned refinery closures and critics have blasted as a threat to air quality.

    Another bill would increase requirements for air monitoring in areas overburdened by pollution and codify a bureau within the Justice Department created in 2018 to protect communities from environmental injustices.

    The Legislature voted to refill a fund that covers the cost of wildfire damage when utility equipment sparks a blaze. The bill would set up public financing to build electric utility projects.

    Lawmakers also passed a measure allowing the state’s grid operator to partner with a regional group to manage power markets in western states. The bill aims to improve grid reliability. It would save ratepayers money because California would sell power to other states when it generates more than it needs and buy cheaper energy from out of state when necessary, the governor’s office said.

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  • California lawmakers to decide on extending key climate program and boosting grid reliability

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    SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The fate of a key California climate program Gov. Gavin Newsom has championed as a crucial tool to respond to the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks is in the hands of state lawmakers.

    The Democrat-dominated Legislature is slated to vote Saturday on whether to extend the state’s cap-and-trade program, which is set to expire after 2030. The program, which launched in 2013, allows major greenhouse gas emitters to buy emission allowances from the state, with fewer available over time. Revenues fund climate change mitigation, affordable housing and transportation projects, as well as utility bill credits for Californians.

    Newsom, a Democrat, and legislative leaders, who said months ago they would prioritize reauthorizing the program, almost ran out of time to introduce the proposal before the statehouse wraps for the year.

    “After months of hard work with the Legislature, we have agreed to historic reforms that will save money on your electric bills, stabilize gas supply, and slash toxic air pollution — all while fast-tracking California’s transition to a clean, green job-creating economy,” Newsom said after striking the deal this week.

    The proposal would reauthorize the program through 2045, better align the declining cap on emissions with the state’s climate targets and potentially boost carbon removal projects. It would also change the name to “cap and invest” to emphasize its funding of climate programs.

    The Legislature will vote on another bill committing annual funding from the program’s revenues. It includes $1 billion for the state’s long-delayed high-speed rail project, $800 million for an affordable housing program, $250 million for community air protection programs and $1 billion for the Legislature to decide on annually.

    The votes come as officials contend with balancing the state’s ambitious climate goals and the cost of living. California has some of the highest utility and gas prices in the country. Officials face increased pressure to stabilize the cost and supply of fuel amid the planned closures of two oil refineries that make up roughly 18% of the state’s refining capacity, according to energy regulators.

    Proponents of the extension say it will give companies certainty over the program’s future. The state lost out on $3.6 billion in revenues over the past year and a half, largely due to uncertainty, according to a report from Clean and Prosperous California, a group of economists and lawyers supporting the program. Some environmentalists say the Trump administration’s attacks on climate programs, including the state’s first-in-the-nation ban on the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035, added urgency to the reauthorization effort.

    Cap and trade is an important cost-effective tool for curbing carbon emissions, said Katelyn Roedner Sutter, the California state director for the Environmental Defense Fund.

    “Supporting this program and making this commitment into the future is extremely important — now more than ever,” she said.

    But environmental justice advocates opposing the proposal say it doesn’t go far enough and lacks strong air quality protections for low-income Californians and communities of color more likely to live near major polluters.

    “This really continues to allow big oil to reduce their emissions on paper instead of in real life,” said Asha Sharma, state policy manager at the Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability.

    Critics have also said it will increase the cost of living.

    “This moving forward, instead of lowering costs, it makes California even more expensive,” Republican state Sen. Tony Strickland said. “They’re raising the price of energy and gas and goods and services.”

    Cap and trade has increased gas costs by about 26 cents per gallon, according to a February report from the Independent Emissions Advisory Committee, a group of experts that analyzes the program. It’s played “a very small role” in increasing electricity prices because the state’s grid isn’t very carbon intensive, the report says.

    Lawmakers and lobbyists criticized the governor and legislative leaders for rushing the deal through with little public input.

    Ben Golombek, executive vice president of the California Chamber of Commerce, said at a hearing this week that the Legislature should have taken more time “to do this right.”

    Democratic state Sen. Caroline Menjivar said it shouldn’t be par for the course for lawmakers to jam through bills without the opportunity for amendments.

    “We’re expected to vote on it,” she said of Democrats. “If not, you’re seen to not be part of the team or not want to be a team player.”

    Menjivar ultimately voted to advance the bill out of committee.

    The cap-and-trade bills are part of a sweeping package aimed at advancing the state’s energy transition and lowering costs for Californians.

    One of the bills would streamline permits for oil production in Kern County, which proponents have hailed as a necessary response to planned refinery closures and critics have blasted as a threat to air quality.

    Another would increase requirements for air monitoring in areas overburdened by pollution and codify a bureau within the Justice Department created in 2018 to protect communities from environmental injustices.

    The state could refill a fund that covers the cost of wildfire damage caused by utility companies and set up public financing to build electric utility projects.

    Lawmakers will also vote on a measure allowing the state’s grid operator to partner with a regional group to manage power markets in western states. The bill aims to improve grid reliability. It would save ratepayers money because California would sell power to other states when it generates more than it needs and buy cheaper energy from out of state when necessary, the governor’s office said.

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  • Across the US, cities combine art, shade and education to help people beat the heat

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    LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE, Calif. — When sculptor Bobby Zokaites moved to Phoenix in the summer of 2011, walking the half mile to classes at Arizona State University in triple-digit heat felt risky. He learned to find shade along his route — resting in a stoplight’s sliver of it, dodging the sizzling sun at each opportunity.

    “It was pretty crazy,” he recalled.

    Those experiences influenced one of Zokaites’ latest projects: He was one of nine artists commissioned this year to bring shade to the region.

    Across the U.S., cities are weaving art, science and community engagement to protect people from extreme heat and communicate its risks. As cities adapt to hotter temperatures, driven by human-caused climate change, and contend with urban heat, shade is playing a critical role. But communicating heat risks and safety can be challenging. That is where art comes in. It can engage, bring hope and even enhance how cool someone feels.

    Shade “can be much more than functional,” said David Hondula, Phoenix’s director of heat response and mitigation. “It can enrich our public spaces.”

    At one park in Phoenix, a large awning is held up with panels of dazzling colors. On them are painted whimsical creatures called “alebrijes” from Mexican folk art, and the structure contains a solar-powered misting system. At another park, a canopy decorated with colorful drawings uses reflective paint and an ultraviolet-resistant canvas.

    These are part of Phoenix’s temporary public art pieces created with help from locals. Each was unveiled during a community event featuring information about shade and heat safety, along with free cooling towels and sunscreen.

    “The more you know and the more you can recognize your own body’s response, the better you can take care of yourself,” said Carrie Brown, deputy director for the city’s office of art and culture.

    These art installations are one element of the city’s plan to expand shade. Studies show that shade significantly reduces air and surface temperature and how intensely people feel heat. In a city that has averaged in the last decade more than 115 days annually with day temperatures past 100 F (38 C), cooling shade can be lifesaving.

    Shade can feel even cooler when combined with beauty. One study in Phoenix, co-authored by Hondula, found that people rated aesthetically pleasing bus stops as being cooler than less beautiful ones. In another from Hong Kong, findings suggested that people had a higher heat tolerance when they perceived their environment as quiet and beautiful.

    In Cambridge, Massachusetts, a place accustomed to dreary winters but not heat, a project titled “ Shade is Social Justice ” is helping the city convey heat dangers and safety with creative designs. One installation features hanging flowers that open when temperatures hit 85 F (29 C), signaling to people to cool down with water and shade, said Claudia Zarazua, the city’s art and cultural planning director.

    On a recent afternoon in Phoenix, Arizona State University doctoral student Muhammad Abdullah rolled an advanced mobile weather station called MaRTy 3D+ next to a shade art installation in Cielito Park. He measured temperature, humidity, wind and radiation, then estimated what could be happening to a person’s body in both the shade and in direct sun light.

    He found that moving from sun to shade dropped the mean radiant temperature from about 145 F (63 C) to 88 F (about 31 C). The change did not significantly affect core temperature, but skin temperature decreased immediately. When MaRTy3D+ returned to the sun, skin temperature rose again.

    MaRTy 3D+’s ability to model and measure how different people thermoregulate is unique. It can tell researchers, for instance, the skin and core temperature as well as cardiac strain in someone who is elderly or on a specific medication, said Jennifer Vanos, an associate professor at ASU who studies heat’s impacts on the human body and how to mitigate them. This technology allows them to collect real-time data in sometimes risky situations without impacting humans. They are using their findings to make recommendations to the city.

    Edith de Guzman, a cooperative extension researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, has spent years researching how to increase shade in communities most impacted by heat. With colleagues, she has also quantified that shade can reduce up to 25% of heat-related deaths in LA and up to 66% of heat-related emergency room visits. When the opportunity emerged to curate an art exhibit about shade and who lacks access to it, she and her husband took it.

    “Roots of Cool: A Celebration of Trees and Shade in a Warming World” takes visitors into the past, present and future roles of shade in LA with textiles, paintings, mixed media, interactive maps, suspended multicolored umbrellas and more. Their goal is not just to highlight the issue, but also show the general public that solutions exist, de Guzman said.

    A three-part installation by artist Leslie K. Gray invites visitors to consider the past, current and future experiences of public transportation users in the city. Each features a silhouetted woman waiting at a bus stop with either no shade, a little bit or ample amounts. The bus stop signs include facts about the dangers of heat, the benefits of shade and the disparate access to it.

    The exhibit ends in a room with hundreds of postcards with handwritten messages from visitors to the past, present or future. On the other side are drawings showing how they would bring much-needed shade to a bus stop.

    Behind one card dated Sept. 1, a visitor wrote this message: “Dear people from the past. Take care of others among you. Take care of mother earth or we will be at fault for its destruction and ours. Sincerely — Someone (who’s) watching the effects of our actions occur.”

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    The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.

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  • ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detainees continue to face obstacles to meet with lawyers, court papers allege

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    ORLANDO, Fla. — There still are no protocols for attorneys to get in touch with clients at the immigration detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” and detainees are often transferred just before scheduled lawyer visits, according to new court papers alleging continued unconstitutional obstacles for meeting with legal representatives.

    Thursday’s court papers were filed in response to a transfer from Miami to Fort Myers of the federal lawsuit claiming detainees have been denied private meetings with immigration attorneys while being held at the facility built by the state of Florida in the Everglades wilderness.

    It also comes a week after a federal appellate court panel, in a separate environmental lawsuit, allowed operations to continue at the detention center by putting on hold a lower court’s preliminary injunction ordering the facility to wind down by the end of October. A third federal lawsuit challenging practices at the facility claims immigration is a federal issue and Florida agencies and the private contractors hired by the state have no authority to operate the facility.

    “Detained individuals have a First Amendment right to communicate with their attorneys in confidence,” lawyers said Thursday in the legal rights case.

    U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement continues to omit information about detainees at the facility from its online locator system “so attorneys cannot confirm whether detained clients are held at the facility.” During videoconferences with their lawyers, detainees are placed in cages that aren’t soundproof with staff in earshot, and documents for clients are subject to review by staff, the attorneys said.

    Unlike other detention facilities which don’t require prior appointments, at the Everglades facility, if lawyers want to meet in-person with their clients, they must schedule a meeting three days in advance. That gives the facility the opportunity to transfer out detainees, denying them legal access, they lawyers said.

    Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration in late June raced to build the facility on an isolated airstrip surrounded by wetlands to aid President Donald Trump’s efforts to deport people living in the U.S. illegally. Trump toured the facility in July and suggested it could be a model for future lockups around the nation as his administration pushes to expand the infrastructure needed to increase deportations.

    The center has been plagued by reports of unsanitary conditions and detainees being cut off from the legal system. Other states have since announced plans to open their own immigration detention centers.

    As part of the legal rights lawsuit, the attorneys for the detainees want to make a visit to the facility in mid-October, but the federal and state government defendants said it wasn’t necessary. The detainees’ attorneys also asked for permission to keep their clients anonymous in public court filings and to use pseudonyms instead.

    “At a time of increasingly violent anti-immigrant rhetoric in Florida and across the country, immigrants detained at Alligator Alcatraz are subjected to extreme vitriol, including from officials at the highest levels of government,” they wrote.

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    Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social

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  • How Malawi is taking AI technology to small-scale farmers who don’t have smartphones

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    MULANJE, Malawi — Alex Maere survived the destruction of Cyclone Freddy when it tore through southern Malawi in 2023. His farm didn’t.

    The 59-year-old saw decades of work disappear with the precious soil that the floods stripped from his small-scale farm in the foothills of Mount Mulanje.

    He was used to producing a healthy 850 kilograms (1,870 pounds) of corn each season to support his three daughters and two sons. He salvaged just 8 kilograms (17 pounds) from the wreckage of Freddy.

    “This is not a joke,” he said, remembering how his farm in the village of Sazola became a wasteland of sand and rocks.

    Freddy jolted Maere into action. He decided he needed to change his age-old tactics if he was to survive.

    He is now one of thousands of small-scale farmers in the southern African country using a generative AI chatbot designed by the non-profit Opportunity International for farming advice.

    The Malawi government is backing the project, having seen the agriculture-dependent nation hit recently by a series of cyclones and an El Niño-induced drought. Malawi’s food crisis, which is largely down to the struggles of small-scale farmers, is a central issue for its national elections next week.

    More than 80% of Malawi’s population of 21 million rely on agriculture for their livelihoods and the country has one of the highest poverty rates in the world, according to the World Bank.

    The AI chatbot suggested Maere grow potatoes last year alongside his staple corn and cassava to adjust to his changed soil. He followed the instructions to the letter, he said, and cultivated half a soccer field’s worth of potatoes and made more than $800 in sales, turning around his and his children’s fortunes.

    “I managed to pay for their school fees without worries,” he beamed.

    Artificial intelligence has the potential to uplift agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 33-50 million smallholder farms like Maere’s produce up to 70-80% of the food supply, according to the U.N.’s International Fund for Agricultural Development. Yet productivity in Africa — with the world’s fast-growing population to feed — is lagging behind despite vast tracts of arable land.

    As AI’s use surges across the globe, so it is helping African farmers access new information to identify crop diseases, forecast drought, design fertilizers to boost yields, and even locate an affordable tractor. Private investment in agriculture-related tech in sub-Saharan Africa went from $10 million in 2014 to $600 million in 2022, according to the World Bank.

    But not without challenges.

    Africa has hundreds of languages for AI tools to learn. Even then, few farmers have smartphones and many can’t read. Electricity and internet service are patchy at best in rural areas, and often non-existent.

    “One of the biggest challenges to sustainable AI use in African agriculture is accessibility,” said Daniel Mvalo, a Malawian technology specialist. “Many tools fail to account for language diversity, low literacy and poor digital infrastructure.”

    The AI tool in Malawi tries to do that. The app is called Ulangizi, which means advisor in the country’s Chichewa language. It is WhatsApp-based and works in Chichewa and English. You can type or speak your question, and it replies with an audio or text response, said Richard Chongo, Opportunity International’s country director for Malawi.

    “If you can’t read or write, you can take a picture of your crop disease and ask, ‘What is this?’ And the app will respond,” he said.

    But to work in Malawi, AI still needs a human touch. For Maere’s area, that is the job of 33-year-old Patrick Napanja, a farmer support agent who brings a smartphone with the app for those who have no devices. Chongo calls him the “human in the loop.”

    “I used to struggle to provide answers to some farming challenges, now I use the app,” said Napanja.

    Farmer support agents like Napanja generally have around 150-200 farmers to help and try to visit them in village groups once a week. But sometimes, most of an hour-long meeting is taken up waiting for responses to load because of the area’s poor connectivity, he said. Other times, they have to trudge up nearby hills to get a signal.

    They are the simple but stubborn obstacles millions face taking advantage of technology that others have at their fingertips.

    For African farmers living on the edge of poverty, the impact of bad advice or AI “hallucinations” can be far more devastating than for those using it to organize their emails or put together a work presentation.

    Mvalo, the tech specialist, warned that inaccurate AI advice like a chatbot misidentifying crop diseases could lead to action that ruins the crop as well as a struggling farmer’s livelihood.

    “Trust in AI is fragile,” he said. “If it fails even once, many farmers may never try it again.”

    The Malawian government has invested in Ulangizi and it is programmed to align with the agriculture ministry’s own official farming advice, making it more relevant for Malawians, said Webster Jassi, the agriculture extension methodologies officer at the ministry.

    But he said Malawi faces challenges in getting the tool to enough communities to make an extensive difference. Those communities don’t just need smartphones, but also to be able to afford internet access.

    For Malawi, the potential may be in combining AI with traditional collaboration among communities.

    “Farmers who have access to the app are helping fellow farmers,” Jassi said, and that is improving productivity.

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    For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse

    The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Study links frequent, severe heat waves to pollution from major fossil fuel producers

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    Fifty-five heat waves over the past quarter-century would not have happened without human-caused climate change, according to a study published Wednesday.

    Planet-warming emissions from 180 major cement, oil and gas producers contributed significantly to all of the heat events considered in the study, which was published in the journal Nature and examined a set of 213 heat waves from 2000 to 2023. The polluters examined in the study include publicly traded and state-owned companies, as well several countries where fossil fuel production data was available at the national level.

    Collectively, these producers are responsible for 57% of all the carbon dioxide that was emitted from 1850 to 2023, the study found.

    “It just shows that it’s not that many actors … who are responsible for a very strong fraction of all emissions,” said Sonia Seneviratne, a climate professor at the Swiss university ETH Zurich who was one of the study’s contributors.

    The set of heat waves in the study came from the EM-DAT International Disaster Database, which the researchers described as the most widely used global disaster repository. The Nature study examined all of the heat waves in the database from 2000 to 2023 except for a few that weren’t suitable for their analysis.

    Global warming made all 213 of the heat waves examined more likely, the study found. Out of those, 55 were 10,000 times more likely to have happened than they would have been before industrialization began accelerating in the 1800s. The calculation is equivalent to saying those 55 heat waves “would have been virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change, the authors wrote.

    “Many of these heat waves had very strong consequences,” said Seneviratne. She said the series of heat waves that struck Europe in 2022 that was linked to tens of thousands of deaths sticks out in her mind as one of the events with particularly grave consequences.

    Climate scientists can use complex computer programs and historic weather data to calculate the connection between extreme weather events and the planet-warming pollutants humans emit. Climate change attribution studies often focus on how climate change influenced a specific weather event, but the scientists say this new Nature study is unique because it focused on the extent to which cement and fossil fuel producers have contributed to heat waves.

    “They are drawing on a pretty well-established field of attribution science now, which has existed for about 20 years,” said Chris Callahan, a climate scientist at Indiana University who was not involved in the study. Callahan has used similar attribution methodologies in his research and said the new study is appropriate and high-quality.

    Scientists say the new study could be taken into consideration in legal cases. Globally, dozens of lawsuits have been filed against fossil fuel companies by climate activists, American state governments and others seeking to hold the companies accountable for their role in climate change.

    For example, Vermont and New York have passed laws that aim to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for their emissions and the damage caused.

    “For a while, it was argued that any individual contributor to climate change was making too small or too diffuse a contribution to ever be linked to any particular impact. And this emerging science, both this paper and others, is showing that that’s not true,” said Callahan.

    Justin Mankin, a Dartmouth College climate scientist who wasn’t involved in the study, said the findings provide insight into the origins of the heat waves and how potential hazards from them could be minimized in the future.

    “As we contend with these losses, the assessment of who or what’s responsible is going to become really important,” Mankin said. “I think there are some really appropriate questions, like who pays to recoup our losses, given that we’re all being damaged by it.”

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    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Georgia judge to toss landmark racketeering charges against ‘Cop City’ protesters

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    ATLANTA — A Georgia judge on Tuesday said he will toss the racketeering charges against all 61 defendants accused of a yearslong conspiracy to halt the construction of a police and firefighter training facility that critics pejoratively call “Cop City.”

    Fulton County Judge Kevin Farmer said he does not believe Republican Attorney General Chris Carr had the authority to secure the 2023 indictments under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, or RICO. Experts believe it was the largest criminal racketeering case ever filed against protesters in U.S. history.

    Farmer said during a hearing that Carr needed Gov. Brian Kemp ‘s permission to pursue the case instead of the local district attorney. Prosecutors earlier conceded to the judge that they did not obtain any such order.

    “It would have been real easy to just ask the governor, ‘Let me do this, give me a letter,’” Farmer said. “The steps just weren’t followed.”

    Five of the 61 defendants were also indicted on charges of domestic terrorism and first-degree arson. Farmer said Carr also didn’t have the authority to pursue the arson charge, though he believes the domestic terrorism charge can stand.

    Farmer said he plans to file a formal order soon and is not sure whether he would quash the entire indictment or let the domestic terrorism charge stand, though he said he expects the prosecution to appeal regardless.

    Deputy Attorney General John Fowler told Farmer that he believes the judge’s decision is “wholly incorrect.”

    The long-brewing controversy over the training center erupted in January 2023 after state troopers who were part of a sweep of the South River Forest that killed an activist who authorities said had fired at them. Numerous protests ensued, with masked vandals sometimes attacking police vehicles and construction equipment to stall the project and intimidate contractors into backing out.

    The defendants faced a wide variety of allegations — everything from throwing Molotov cocktails at police officers, to supplying food to protesters who were camped in the woods and passing out fliers against a state trooper who had fatally shot the protester known as “Tortuguita.” Each defendant faced up to 20 years in prison on the RICO charge.

    Carr, who is running for governor, had pursued the case, with Kemp hailing it as an important step to combat “out-of-state radicals that threaten the safety of our citizens and law enforcement.”

    But critics had decried the indictment as a politically motivated, heavy-handed attempt to quash the movement.

    Emerging in the wake of the 2020 racial justice protests, the “Stop Cop City” movement gained nationwide recognition as it united anarchists, environmental activists and anti-police protesters against the sprawling training center, which was being built in a wooded area that was ultimately razed in DeKalb County.

    Activists argued that uprooting acres of trees for the facility would exacerbate environmental damage in a flood-prone, majority-Black area while serving as an expensive staging ground for militarized officers to be trained in quelling social movements.

    The training center, a priority of Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, opened earlier this year, despite years of protests and millions in cost overruns, some of which was due to the damage protesters caused, and police officials’ needs to bolster 24/7 security around the facility.

    But over the past two years, the case had been bogged down in procedural issues, with none of the defendants going to trial. Farmer and the case’s previous judge, Fulton County Judge Kimberly Esmond Adams, had earlier been critical of prosecutors’ approach to the case, with Adams saying the prosecution had committed “gross negligence” by allowing privileged attorney-client emails to be included among a giant cache of evidence that was shared between investigators and dozens of defense attorneys.

    Prosecutors had repeatedly apologized for the delays and missteps, but lamented the difficulty of handling such a sprawling case, though Farmer pointed out that it was prosecutors who decided to bring this “61-person elephant” to court in the first place.

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  • Hurricane Kiko weakens into tropical storm but could create dangerous surf in Hawaii

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    HONOLULU — Hurricane Kiko has weakened into a tropical storm but still could create life-threatening surf and rip currents in Hawaii, forecasters said.

    The storm was forecast to pass to the north of the Hawaiian Islands on Tuesday and Wednesday as it continues to weaken. The threat of direct impacts on the islands has decreased, though people in Hawaii are asked to monitor the storm’s progress in case circumstances change.

    With maximum sustained winds around 60 mph (97 kph), Kiko was centered roughly 245 miles (394 kilometers) northeast of Hilo, Hawaii, and about 375 miles (604 kilometers) east of Honolulu.

    The storm was traveling west-northwest at 14 mph (23 kph).

    Waves were forecast to peak early Tuesday through Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center said.

    There were no coastal watches or warnings in effect, the center said.

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  • As world gets hotter, Americans are turning to more sugar, study finds

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    WASHINGTON — Global warming in the United States is amping up the country’s sweet tooth, a new study found.

    When the temperature rises, Americans — especially those with less money and education — drink lots more sugary beverages and a bit more frozen desserts. That amounts to more than 100 million pounds of added sugar (358 million kilograms) consumed in the nation a year, compared to 15 years earlier, according to a team of researchers in the U.S. and United Kingdom.

    When temperatures go between 54 and 86 degrees (12 and 30 degrees Celsius), the amount of sugar the average American consumes goes up by about 0.4 grams per degree Fahrenheit (0.7 grams per degree Celsius) per day, based on researchers tracking of weather conditions and consumers’ purchases. At 54 degrees, the amount of added sugar for the average American is a little more than 2 grams. At 86 degrees, it’s more than 15 grams.

    Beyond that, appetites lessen and added sugar falls off, according to the study in Monday’s Nature Climate Change.

    “Climate change is shaping what you eat and how you eat and that might have a bad effect on your health,” said study co-author Duo Chan, a climate scientist at the University of Southampton.

    “People tend to take in more sweetened beverages as the temperature is getting higher and higher,” Chan said. “Obviously under a warming climate that would cause you to drink more or take in more sugar. And that is going to be a severe problem when it comes to health.”

    The daily difference from higher temperatures doesn’t amount to even a single candy bar for the average person. But it adds up over time and has a big effect, said University of California San Francisco endocrinology professor Dr. Robert Lustig, a specialist in pediatrics and obesity who wasn’t part of the study.

    Lustig wrote in an email that among poorer Americans, just one added can of sugary soft drink per day increases diabetes risk by 29% — and temperature-related thirst plays a big part in America’s obesity epidemic.

    The United States’ average annual temperature has gone up about 2.2 degrees (1.2 degrees Celsius) since 1895, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

    To chart the impact on sugar consumption, researchers compared it to the American Heart Association recommendations: limiting daily intake to 36 grams for men and 25 grams for women.

    The team then compared wind, precipitation and humidity records to the detailed purchase records of 40,000 to 60,000 American households from 2004 to 2019, not using any data after the pandemic hit. Then they looked at the nutritional information of the items bought. That allowed them to eliminate other factors to make a causal link and come up with a calculation for how much extra sugar is consumed per person per degree, said lead author Pan He, an environmental scientist at Cardiff University.

    Researcher He said she started thinking about the study when she noticed that people in the U.S. tend to grab sugary soda when they are thirsty: “From a perspective of nutrition science or environmental science, that could be a problem,” she said.

    The researchers found that men consumed more sugary soft drinks, and that the amount of added sugar consumed during hot weather was several times higher for low- and very low-income families than for the wealthiest, the study found.

    People who work outside drank more sugary drinks than those who work inside, and the same went for families where the head of the household was less educated. White people have the highest added sugar effect, while Asians showed no significant change in added sugar in the heat.

    Lustig said sugary drinks are marketed and priced in a way to attract the poor, and in many disadvantaged communities the water tastes funny because of chemicals in them. Poor people are also less likely to have air conditioning and are more likely to work outside and need more hydration, Lustig and He said.

    “It should concern us that the rate of the impact is larger in households where people make less money or are less educated,” said Dr. Courtney Howard, vice chair of the Global Climate and Health Alliance. “These groups tend to have lower baseline health status, so this is an area where climate-related changes appear to magnify existing health inequalities.”

    Howard, an emergency room physician, was not part of the study.

    The amount of sugar consumed is likely to soar in the future with more warming, Chan said.

    But University of Washington health and climate scientist Kristie Ebi, who wasn’t part of the research, said as temperatures increase with human-caused climate change “there will be other issues of more importance than a small increase in sugary beverages.”

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Warming seas threaten key phytoplankton species that fuels the food web, study finds

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    SEATTLE — For decades, scientists believed Prochlorococcus, the smallest and most abundant phytoplankton on Earth, would thrive in a warmer world. But new research suggests the microscopic bacterium, which forms the foundation of the marine food web and helps regulate the planet’s climate, will decline sharply as seas heat up.

    A study published Monday in the journal Nature Microbiology found Prochlorococcus populations could shrink by as much as half in tropical oceans over the next 75 years if surface waters exceed about 82 degrees Fahrenheit (27.8 Celsius). Many tropical and subtropical sea surface temperatures are already trending above average and are projected to regularly surpass 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 Celsius) over that same period.

    “These are keystone species — very important ones,” said François Ribalet, a research associate professor at the University of Washington’s School of Oceanography and the study’s lead author. “And when a keystone species decreases in abundance, it always has consequences on ecology and biodiversity. The food web is going to change.”

    Prochlorococcus inhabit up to 75% of Earth’s sunlit surface waters and produce about one-fifth of the planet’s oxygen through photosynthesis. More crucially, Ribalet said, they convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into food at the base of the marine ecosystem.

    “In the tropical ocean, nearly half of the food is produced by Prochlorococcus,” he said. “Hundreds of species rely on these guys.”

    Though other forms of phytoplankton may move in and help compensate for the loss of oxygen and food, Ribalet cautioned they are not perfect substitutes. “Evolution has made this very specific interaction,” he said. “Obviously, this is going to have an impact on this very unique system that has been established.”

    The findings challenge decades of assumptions that Prochlorococcus would thrive as waters warmed. Those predictions, however, were based on limited data from lab cultures. For this study, Ribalet and his team tested water samples while traversing the Pacific over the course of a decade.

    Over 100 research cruises — the equivalent of six trips around the globe — they counted some 800 billion individual cells taken from samples at every kilometer. In his lab at the University of Washington, Ribalet demonstrated the SeaFlow, a box filled with tubes, wires and a piercing blue laser. The custom-built device continuously pulls in seawater, which allowed the team to count the microbes in real time. “We have counted more Prochlorococcus than there are stars in the Milky Way,” Ribalet said.

    Paul Berube, a research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies Prochlorococcus but was not involved in the work, said the breadth of data is “groundbreaking.” And he said the results fit with what is known about the microbe’s streamlined genome, which makes it less adaptable to rapid environmental changes.

    “They’re at the very base of the food web, and they feed everything else — the fish eat the things that eat the phytoplankton and we eat the fish,” he said. “When changes are being made to the planet that influence these particular organisms that are essentially feeding us, that’s going to have big consequences.”

    To test whether Prochlorococcus might evolve to withstand hotter conditions, Ribalet’s team modeled a hypothetical heat-tolerant strain but found that even those would “not be enough to fully resist the warmest temperature if greenhouse emissions keep rising,” Ribalet said.

    He stressed that the study’s projections are conservative and don’t account for the impacts of plastic pollution or other ecological stressors. “We actually tried to put forth the best-case scenario,” Ribalet said. “In reality, things may be worse.”

    Steven Biller, an associate professor at Wellesley College, said the projected declines are “scary but plausible.” He noted Prochlorococcus form part of the “invisible forests” of the ocean — tiny organisms most people never think about, but are essential to human survival.

    “Half of all photosynthesis is happening in the oceans and Prochlorococcus is a really important part of that,” Biller said. “The magnitude of the potential impact is kind of striking.”

    Biller, Berube and Ribalet said that while other microbes may compensate somewhat, the broader risks to biodiversity and fisheries are real.

    “We know what drives global warming. There is no debate among the scientific community,” Ribalet said. “We need to curb greenhouse gas emissions.”

    He hopes the findings bring more attention to tropical oceans, which could serve as natural laboratories for warming adaptations and as early warning signals for ecological collapse.

    “For the first time, I want to be wrong. I would love to be wrong,” he said. “But these are data-driven results.”

    ___

    Follow Annika Hammerschlag on Instagram @ahammergram.

    ___

    The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

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  • In LA port, bobbing blue floats are turning wave power into clean energy

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    LOS ANGELES — On a recent sunny morning in a channel at the Port of Los Angeles, seven blue steel structures that look like small boats are lowered into the ocean one by one. Attached to an unused wharf on a site that once housed oil tanks, they gently bob up and down with the waves to generate renewable power. Nearby, a sea lion peeks from the water and pelicans and sea gulls soar overhead.

    This is the nation’s first onshore wave energy site, and on Tuesday, Eco Wave Power will officially unveil the pilot installation and begin operating. The pilot will generate just a small amount of electricity that can be used locally, but the larger goal is to prove the technology works well enough to expand along 8 miles of breakwater at the port — enough to power up to 60,000 homes.

    Co-founder and CEO Inna Braverman said that much power could be a “game changer in terms of clean energy production” for the port and the communities around it. America’s shipping ports have long struggled with dirty air that harms the health of people living nearby.

    “We’re starting here in LA, but we hope, aspire and believe that we will be in the United States and in other locations around the world,” she said, standing outside a blue shipping container serving as the project’s power station.

    Wave energy is an emerging industry that’s largely still focused on research, demonstration and pilot projects. But the potential is big.

    Waves off the coasts of the United States generate enough power to meet roughly one-third of America’s energy needs, according to Department of Energy estimates. Even if only a portion is harnessed, wave energy technologies could help meet the growing demand for electricity being driven in large part by the artificial intelligence race. Wave energy could also complement wind and solar to stabilize the electric grid.

    Eco Wave Power installed its technology at the port’s AltaSea ocean institute, a nonprofit that is working in part to advance ocean-based solutions to climate change. Half this pilot project was funded by the oil and gas company Shell.

    “It’s the first U.S. project on breakwater, so it opens up the possibility to do that on multiple other ports in the U.S.,” said Rémi Gruet, CEO of the trade association Ocean Energy Europe. “It’s a moment where wave power is starting to turn from innovation projects to actual pilot projects that go toward industrialization and commercialization.”

    A key advantage for wave energy is it produces electricity at different times than wind and solar, Gruet said. For example, when the wind stops blowing, wind turbines will stop generating electricity. But waves will carry on for hours and electricity can still be generated that way, he said.

    But the cost needs to come down with the help of subsidies, like it has for solar and wind, Gruet added.

    The first commercial wave power plant in Europe started operating in 2011 from a breakwater at Mutriku harbor in Spain. An offshore wave energy system came online off the coast of Hawaii in 2016.

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill in 2023 to promote wave energy development in the state. Eco Wave Power currently has a two-year license to operate the pilot station at the Port of Los Angeles.

    As the small blue floats bob up and down, each pushes a cylinder that sends a biodegradable hydraulic fluid through a system of pipes into storage tanks. Pressure in the tanks builds up. That pressure turns a motor, which turns a generator, producing clean electricity.

    “The world has waves, 70% percent of the world is covered by ocean,” Terry Tamminen, president and CEO of AltaSea and former secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, said at the site of the project.

    “And we can harness all of that clean energy now, thanks to things like Eco Wave,” he said.

    Braverman said there are dozens of sites along the U.S. coastline, identified through a study paid for by Shell, where her company could harness wave energy to add clean electricity to the grid. She said the technology is easy to adopt because unlike other renewables, this system doesn’t require any land acquisition, it involves repurposing existing structures rather than altering coastlines and it can generate electricity around the clock.

    The Eco Wave pilot did require licensing from the Army Corps of Engineers and from the port, but that came in a relatively quick two years, Braverman said.

    Eco Wave Power is also working on projects abroad, including Taiwan, India and Portugal, and operating a grid-connected project in Israel. In New Jersey, where legislation is advancing to promote ocean energy development in the state, the company is looking for a site to install a pilot project, with help from elected officials.

    Andrea Copping, an expert in marine renewable energy development, thinks Eco Wave Power’s technology can be scaled up successfully. These small marine energy projects are not yet economically competitive with solar or wind, but there are places where they may be a better fit or a solution in cooperation with other energy sources, such as remote coastal communities and islands where diesel deliveries can be very expensive, she said.

    “We consider every successful deployment an important milestone in creating this industry,” said Copping, a distinguished faculty fellow in the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs at the University of Washington.

    ___

    McDermott reported from Providence, R.I.

    ___

    The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. AP’s climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Scientists tap ‘secret’ fresh water under ocean, raising hopes for a thirsty world

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    ABOARD LIFTBOAT ROBERT, North Atlantic — Deep in Earth’s past, an icy landscape became a seascape as the ice melted and the oceans rose off what is now the northeastern United States. Nearly 50 years ago, a U.S. government ship searching for minerals and hydrocarbons in the area drilled into the seafloor to see what it could find.

    It found, of all things, drops to drink under the briny deeps — fresh water.

    This summer, a first-of-its-kind global research expedition followed up on that surprise. Drilling for fresh water under the salt water off Cape Cod, Expedition 501 extracted thousands of samples from what is now thought to be a massive, hidden aquifer stretching from New Jersey as far north as Maine.

    It’s just one of many depositories of “secret fresh water” known to exist in shallow salt waters around the world that might some day be tapped to slake the planet’s intensifying thirst, said Brandon Dugan, the expedition’s co-chief scientist.

    “We need to look for every possibility we have to find more water for society,” Dugan, a geophysicist and hydrologist at the Colorado School of Mines, told Associated Press journalists who recently spent 12 hours on the drilling platform. The research teams looked in “one of the last places you would probably look for fresh water on Earth.”

    They found it, and will be analyzing nearly 50,000 liters (13,209 gallons) of it back in their labs around the world in the coming months. They’re out to solve the mystery of its origins — whether the water is from glaciers, connected groundwater systems on land or some combination.

    The potential is enormous. So are the hurdles of getting the water out and puzzling over who owns it, who uses it and how to extract it without undue harm to nature. It’s bound to take years to bring that water ashore for public use in a big way, if it’s even feasible.

    Why try? In just five years, the U.N. says, the global demand for fresh water will exceed supplies by 40%. Rising sea levels from the warming climate are souring coastal freshwater sources while data centers that power AI and cloud computing are consuming water at an insatiable rate.

    The fabled Ancient Mariner’s lament, “Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink,” looms as a warning to landlubbers as well as to sailors on salty seas.

    In Virginia alone, a quarter of all power produced in the state goes to data centers, a share expected to nearly double in five years. By some estimates, each midsize data center consumes as much water as 1,000 households. Each of the Great Lakes states has experienced groundwater shortages.

    Cape Town, South Africa, came perilously close to running out of fresh water for its nearly 5 million people in 2018 during an epic, three-year drought. South Africa is thought to have a coastal undersea freshwater bonanza, too, and there is at least anecdotal evidence that every continent may have the same.

    Canada’s Prince Edward Island, Hawaii and Jakarta, Indonesia, are among places where stressed freshwater supplies coexist with prospective aquifers under the ocean.

    Enter Expedition 501, a $25 million scientific collaboration of more than a dozen countries backed by the U.S. government’s National Science Foundation and the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling (U.S. money for it was secured before budget cuts sought by the Trump administration).

    Scientists went into the project believing the undersea aquifer they were sampling might be sufficient to meet the needs of a metropolis the size of New York City for 800 years. They found fresh or nearly fresh water at both higher and lower depths below the seafloor than they anticipated, suggesting a larger supply even than that.

    Their work at sea unfolded over three months from Liftboat Robert, an oceangoing vessel that, once on site, lowers three enormous pillars to the seafloor and squats above the waves. Normally it services offshore petroleum sites and wind farms. This drill-baby-drill mission was different.

    “It’s known that this phenomena exists both here and elsewhere around the world,” Expedition 501 project manager Jez Everest, a scientist who came from the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, Scotland, said of undersea water. “But it’s a subject that’s never been directly investigated by any research project in the past.”

    By that, he means no one globally had drilled systematically into the seabed on a mission to find freshwater. Expedition 501 was quite literally groundbreaking — it penetrated Earth below the sea by as many as 1,289 feet or nearly 400 meters.

    But it followed a 2015 research project that mapped contours of an aquifer remotely, using electromagnetic technology, and roughly estimated salinity of the water underneath.

    That mission, by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, reported evidence of a “massive offshore aquifer system” in this area, possibly rivalling the size of America’s largest — the Ogallala aquifer, which supplies water to parts of eight Great Plains states.

    Two developments in 1976 had stirred interest in searching for undersea freshwater.

    In the middle of Nantucket island, the U.S. Geological Survey drilled a test well to see how far down the groundwater went. It extracted fresh water from such great depths that it made scientists wonder if the water came from the sea, not the sky.

    The same year, that federal agency mounted a 60-day expedition aboard the drilling vessel Glomar Conception along a vast stretch of the Continental Shelf from Georgia to Georges Bank off New England. It drilled cores in search of the sub-seabed’s resources, like methane.

    It found an eye-opening amount of fresh or freshened water in borehole after borehole.

    That set the stage for the water-seekers to do their work a half-century later.

    Soon after Robert arrived at the first of three drilling sites May 19, samples drawn from below the seabed registered salinity of just 4 parts per thousand. That’s far below the oceans’ average salt content of 35 parts per thousand but still too briny to meet the U.S. freshwater standard of under 1 part per thousand.

    “Four parts per thousand was a eureka moment,” Dugan said, because the finding suggested that the water must have been connected to a terrestrial system in the past, or still is.

    As the weeks wore on and Robert moved from site to site 20 to 30 miles (30 to 50 kilometers) off the coast, the process of drilling into the waterlogged subsea sediment yielded a collection of samples down to 1 part per thousand salt content. Some were even lower.

    Bingo. That’s what you find in many bodies of fresh water on land. That’s water you can drink, in theory. No one did.

    In months of analysis ahead, the scientists will investigate a range of properties of the water, including what microbes were living in the depths, what they used for nutrients and energy sources and what byproducts they might generate; in other words, whether the water is safe to consume or otherwise use.

    “This is a new environment that has never been studied before,” said Jocelyne DiRuggiero, a Johns Hopkins University biologist in Baltimore who studies the microbial ecology of extreme environments and is not involved in the expedition.

    “The water may contain minerals detrimental to human health since it percolated through layers of sediments,” she said. “However, a similar process forms the terrestrial aquifers that we use for freshwater, and those typically have very high quality.”

    By sequencing DNA extracted from their samples, she said, the researchers can determine which microorganisms are there and “learn how they potentially make a living.”

    Techniques will also be used to determine whether it came from glacial ice melt thousands of years ago or is still coming via labyrinthian geologic formations from land.

    Researchers will date the water back in the lab, and that will be key in determining whether it is a renewable resource that could be used responsibly. Primordial water is trapped and finite; newer water suggests the aquifer is still connected to a terrestrial source and being refreshed, however slowly.

    “Younger means it was a raindrop 100 years ago, 200 years ago,” Dugan said. “If young, it’s recharging.”

    Those questions are for basic science. For society, all sorts of complex questions arise if the basic science affirms the conditions necessary for exploiting the water. Who will manage it? Can it be taken without an unacceptable risk of contaminating the supply from the ocean above? Will it be cheaper or environmentally friendlier than today’s energy-hungry desalination plants?

    Dugan said if governments decide to get the water, local communities could turn to the aquifers in time of need, such as drought, or when extreme storms flood coastal freshwater reserves and ruin them. The notion of actually using this old buried water is so new that it has not been on the radar of many policymakers or conservationists.

    “It’s a lesson in how long it can take sometimes to make these things happen and the perseverance that’s needed to get there,” said Woods Hole geophysicist Rob Evans, whose 2015 expedition helped point the way for 501. “There’s a ton of excitement that finally they’ve got samples.”

    Still, he sees some red flags. One is that tapping undersea aquifers could draw water away from onshore reserves. Another is that undersea groundwater that seeps out to the seafloor may supply nutrients vital to the ecosystem, and that could be upset.

    “If we were to go out and start pumping these waters, there would almost certainly be unforeseen consequences,” he said. “There’s a lot of balance we would need to consider before we started diving in and drilling and exploiting these kinds of things.”

    For most in the project, getting to and from Liftboat Robert meant a voyage of seven hours or more from Fall River, Massachusetts, on a supply boat that made round trips every 10 days or so to replenish stocks and rotate people.

    On the platform, around the clock, the racket of metal bore pipes and machinery, the drilling grime and the speckled mud mingled with the quieter, cleaner work of scientists in trailers converted to pristine labs and processing posts.

    There, samples were treated according to the varying needs of the expedition’s geologists, geochemists, hydrologists, microbiologists, sedimentologists and more.

    Passing through clear plastic tubes, muck was sliced into disks like hockey pucks. Machines squeezed water out. Some samples were kept sealed to enable study of ancient gases dissolved in the water. Other samples were frozen, filtered or left as is, depending on the purpose.

    After six months of lab analysis, all the science teams of Expedition 501 will meet again — this time in Germany for a month of collaborative research that is expected to produce initial findings that point to the age and origin of the water.

    On July 31, Liftboat Robert cranked up its legs from this place of hidden water to end a mission that lent credence to another passage from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s classic poem about life, death and mysteries at sea.

    In a prelude to the poem, in some editions, Coleridge wrote: “I readily believe that there are more invisible than visible Natures in the universe.”

    ___

    Woodward reported from Seekonk, Massachusetts.

    ___

    The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

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  • Scientists tap ‘secret’ fresh water under the ocean, raising hopes for a thirsty world

    [ad_1]

    ABOARD LIFTBOAT ROBERT, North Atlantic — Deep in Earth’s past, an icy landscape became a seascape as the ice melted and the oceans rose off what is now the northeastern United States. Nearly 50 years ago, a U.S. government ship searching for minerals and hydrocarbons in the area drilled into the seafloor to see what it could find.

    It found, of all things, drops to drink under the briny deeps — fresh water.

    This summer, a first-of-its-kind global research expedition followed up on that surprise. Drilling for fresh water under the salt water off Cape Cod, Expedition 501 extracted thousands of samples from what is now thought to be a massive, hidden aquifer stretching from New Jersey as far north as Maine.

    It’s just one of many depositories of “secret fresh water” known to exist in shallow salt waters around the world that might some day be tapped to slake the planet’s intensifying thirst, said Brandon Dugan, the expedition’s co-chief scientist.

    “We need to look for every possibility we have to find more water for society,” Dugan, a geophysicist and hydrologist at the Colorado School of Mines, told Associated Press journalists who recently spent 12 hours on the drilling platform. The research teams looked in “one of the last places you would probably look for fresh water on Earth.”

    They found it, and will be analyzing nearly 50,000 liters (13,209 gallons) of it back in their labs around the world in the coming months. They’re out to solve the mystery of its origins — whether the water is from glaciers, connected groundwater systems on land or some combination.

    The potential is enormous. So are the hurdles of getting the water out and puzzling over who owns it, who uses it and how to extract it without undue harm to nature. It’s bound to take years to bring that water ashore for public use in a big way, if it’s even feasible.

    Why try? In just five years, the U.N. says, the global demand for fresh water will exceed supplies by 40%. Rising sea levels from the warming climate are souring coastal freshwater sources while data centers that power AI and cloud computing are consuming water at an insatiable rate.

    The fabled Ancient Mariner’s lament, “Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink,” looms as a warning to landlubbers as well as to sailors on salty seas.

    In Virginia alone, a quarter of all power produced in the state goes to data centers, a share expected to nearly double in five years. By some estimates, each midsize data center consumes as much water as 1,000 households. Each of the Great Lakes states has experienced groundwater shortages.

    Cape Town, South Africa, came perilously close to running out of fresh water for its nearly 5 million people in 2018 during an epic, three-year drought. South Africa is thought to have a coastal undersea freshwater bonanza, too, and there is at least anecdotal evidence that every continent may have the same.

    Canada’s Prince Edward Island, Hawaii and Jakarta, Indonesia, are among places where stressed freshwater supplies coexist with prospective aquifers under the ocean.

    Enter Expedition 501, a $25 million scientific collaboration of more than a dozen countries backed by the U.S. government’s National Science Foundation and the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling (U.S. money for it was secured before budget cuts sought by the Trump administration).

    Scientists went into the project believing the undersea aquifer they were sampling might be sufficient to meet the needs of a metropolis the size of New York City for 800 years. They found fresh or nearly fresh water at both higher and lower depths below the seafloor than they anticipated, suggesting a larger supply even than that.

    Their work at sea unfolded over three months from Liftboat Robert, an oceangoing vessel that, once on site, lowers three enormous pillars to the seafloor and squats above the waves. Normally it services offshore petroleum sites and wind farms. This drill-baby-drill mission was different.

    “It’s known that this phenomena exists both here and elsewhere around the world,” Expedition 501 project manager Jez Everest, a scientist who came from the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, Scotland, said of undersea water. “But it’s a subject that’s never been directly investigated by any research project in the past.”

    By that, he means no one globally had drilled systematically into the seabed on a mission to find freshwater. Expedition 501 was quite literally groundbreaking — it penetrated Earth below the sea by as many as 1,289 feet or nearly 400 meters.

    But it followed a 2015 research project that mapped contours of an aquifer remotely, using electromagnetic technology, and roughly estimated salinity of the water underneath.

    That mission, by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, reported evidence of a “massive offshore aquifer system” in this area, possibly rivalling the size of America’s largest — the Ogallala aquifer, which supplies water to parts of eight Great Plains states.

    Two developments in 1976 had stirred interest in searching for undersea freshwater.

    In the middle of Nantucket island, the U.S. Geological Survey drilled a test well to see how far down the groundwater went. It extracted fresh water from such great depths that it made scientists wonder if the water came from the sea, not the sky.

    The same year, that federal agency mounted a 60-day expedition aboard the drilling vessel Glomar Conception along a vast stretch of the Continental Shelf from Georgia to Georges Bank off New England. It drilled cores in search of the sub-seabed’s resources, like methane.

    It found an eye-opening amount of fresh or freshened water in borehole after borehole.

    That set the stage for the water-seekers to do their work a half-century later.

    Soon after Robert arrived at the first of three drilling sites May 19, samples drawn from below the seabed registered salinity of just 4 parts per thousand. That’s far below the oceans’ average salt content of 35 parts per thousand but still too briny to meet the U.S. freshwater standard of under 1 part per thousand.

    “Four parts per thousand was a eureka moment,” Dugan said, because the finding suggested that the water must have been connected to a terrestrial system in the past, or still is.

    As the weeks wore on and Robert moved from site to site 20 to 30 miles (30 to 50 kilometers) off the coast, the process of drilling into the waterlogged subsea sediment yielded a collection of samples down to 1 part per thousand salt content. Some were even lower.

    Bingo. That’s what you find in many bodies of fresh water on land. That’s water you can drink, in theory. No one did.

    In months of analysis ahead, the scientists will investigate a range of properties of the water, including what microbes were living in the depths, what they used for nutrients and energy sources and what byproducts they might generate; in other words, whether the water is safe to consume or otherwise use.

    “This is a new environment that has never been studied before,” said Jocelyne DiRuggiero, a Johns Hopkins University biologist in Baltimore who studies the microbial ecology of extreme environments and is not involved in the expedition.

    “The water may contain minerals detrimental to human health since it percolated through layers of sediments,” she said. “However, a similar process forms the terrestrial aquifers that we use for freshwater, and those typically have very high quality.”

    By sequencing DNA extracted from their samples, she said, the researchers can determine which microorganisms are there and “learn how they potentially make a living.”

    Techniques will also be used to determine whether it came from glacial ice melt thousands of years ago or is still coming via labyrinthian geologic formations from land.

    Researchers will date the water back in the lab, and that will be key in determining whether it is a renewable resource that could be used responsibly. Primordial water is trapped and finite; newer water suggests the aquifer is still connected to a terrestrial source and being refreshed, however slowly.

    “Younger means it was a raindrop 100 years ago, 200 years ago,” Dugan said. “If young, it’s recharging.”

    Those questions are for basic science. For society, all sorts of complex questions arise if the basic science affirms the conditions necessary for exploiting the water. Who will manage it? Can it be taken without an unacceptable risk of contaminating the supply from the ocean above? Will it be cheaper or environmentally friendlier than today’s energy-hungry desalination plants?

    Dugan said if governments decide to get the water, local communities could turn to the aquifers in time of need, such as drought, or when extreme storms flood coastal freshwater reserves and ruin them. The notion of actually using this old buried water is so new that it has not been on the radar of many policymakers or conservationists.

    “It’s a lesson in how long it can take sometimes to make these things happen and the perseverance that’s needed to get there,” said Woods Hole geophysicist Rob Evans, whose 2015 expedition helped point the way for 501. “There’s a ton of excitement that finally they’ve got samples.”

    Still, he sees some red flags. One is that tapping undersea aquifers could draw water away from onshore reserves. Another is that undersea groundwater that seeps out to the seafloor may supply nutrients vital to the ecosystem, and that could be upset.

    “If we were to go out and start pumping these waters, there would almost certainly be unforeseen consequences,” he said. “There’s a lot of balance we would need to consider before we started diving in and drilling and exploiting these kinds of things.”

    For most in the project, getting to and from Liftboat Robert meant a voyage of seven hours or more from Fall River, Massachusetts, on a supply boat that made round trips every 10 days or so to replenish stocks and rotate people.

    On the platform, around the clock, the racket of metal bore pipes and machinery, the drilling grime and the speckled mud mingled with the quieter, cleaner work of scientists in trailers converted to pristine labs and processing posts.

    There, samples were treated according to the varying needs of the expedition’s geologists, geochemists, hydrologists, microbiologists, sedimentologists and more.

    Passing through clear plastic tubes, muck was sliced into disks like hockey pucks. Machines squeezed water out. Some samples were kept sealed to enable study of ancient gases dissolved in the water. Other samples were frozen, filtered or left as is, depending on the purpose.

    After six months of lab analysis, all the science teams of Expedition 501 will meet again — this time in Germany for a month of collaborative research that is expected to produce initial findings that point to the age and origin of the water.

    On July 31, Liftboat Robert cranked up its legs from this place of hidden water to end a mission that lent credence to another passage from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s classic poem about life, death and mysteries at sea.

    In a prelude to the poem, in some editions, Coleridge wrote: “I readily believe that there are more invisible than visible Natures in the universe.”

    ___

    Woodward reported from Seekonk, Massachusetts.

    ___

    The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

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  • India’s solar industry aiming to compete with China

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    JAIPUR, India — On the edge of Jaipur, an Indian city known for its colorful bazaars and palaces, a bustling industrial complex is the epicenter of the country’s push to compete with China in making components for solar technology.

    India, the world’s most populous nation, is jockeying for market share against the global leader in solar in part by selling to its own citizens, which helps the country with its other goal: meeting growing domestic demand for electricity.

    In the government-subsidized zone that provides tax breaks, solar manufacturer ReNew’s sprawling factory makes enough modules to produce 4 gigawatts of power each year — equivalent to the energy needed for approximately 2.5 million Indian homes. The 2-year-old facility that employs nearly 1,000 people serves as a symbol of the solar industry’s momentum. India’s capacity to build key solar components more than doubled in the fiscal year ending in March.

    “When I got this opportunity, I was really happy that I was directly contributing to the clean energy transition,” said Monisha, an engineer at ReNew who goes by one name. She said the work has helped her become independent and assist her family with their finances.

    The country still faces a steep climb in its efforts to develop solar manufacturing that could one day rival China, which makes more than 80% of all solar components in the world and supplies key materials to Indian manufacturers.

    India’s solar industry must also contend with a tougher sell to its biggest foreign customer, the United States. President Donald Trump’s tariffs of 50% on Indian goods took effect last month, while Trump’s administration and Republican lawmakers have taken other steps to hinder U.S. adoption of solar and other clean energy.

    Still, India’s clean energy appetite is helping its solar manufacturers deal with the external pressures. Energy analysts said India’s domestic demand for solar power will likely reduce disruption from tariffs imposed by the U.S., where about a third of the solar panels produced by India were sold in a recent fiscal year. Proceeds from selling in the lucrative U.S. market have helped Indian solar manufacturers update their supply chains in recent years so they were less dependent on imported Chinese parts and materials.

    While Indian solar manufacturers can sell at higher prices abroad, ambitious domestic clean energy targets and domestic demand will help them find buyers within India if sales in the U.S. slow, analysts said.

    “This is a huge industry that can absorb these modules and cells that are being produced. We are not necessarily as export dependent as other countries are,” said Charith Konda, an energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

    India’s domestic solar market has already helped Hyderabad-based Vega Solar shift its customer base for off-grid solar modules for RVs, electric fences and other uses to customers in India in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic, said Vinay Keesara, a company director.

    “Before the pandemic, 90% of my business was exports and 10% used to be domestic supply, now this has just flipped the other way around,” he said.

    One of the most carbon-polluting countries, India is making huge efforts to harness the power of the sun and other clean energy sources. The cost of solar power — now half that of new coal-powered plants — and India’s many sunny days are reasons that experts said installed solar power increased 30 times in the last decade.

    Before the U.S. tariffs were announced, researchers with IEEFA and Gurugram, India-based JMK Research wrote that India’s demand for solar modules during the next two years could exceed what its manufacturers are selling within the country because so many are being exported. India has also been importing solar modules from China.

    Konda said it was too early to determine how the U.S. tariffs will affect Indian solar manufacturers, but that the impact won’t be felt for at least another year because solar component orders are placed well in advance. And uncertainty remains over the fate of all of Trump’s tariffs. Despite a U.S. court ruling against Trump’s tariffs, they remain in place until at least October while his administration files appeals.

    India has nearly 170 gigawatts of renewable energy projects in the pipeline — most of which are solar — and are expected to be completed in the next few years. The country also has an ambitious clean energy target of 500 gigawatts by 2030.

    Government policies restricting imports of solar components, incentives for solar manufacturers and mandates for solar power producers to purchase material from government-approved sources gave Indian companies the right signals to ramp up solar manufacturing, said Sanjay Verghese, ReNew’s group president for solar manufacturing and solar projects.

    “We are in a good phase right now,” he said. “We are highly dependent on policy support, but we expect that momentum to be maintained.”

    India still depends on imports of raw materials as well as finished solar components from China but is making progress on reducing its reliance. Government data showed India imported $1.3 billion worth of solar cells and modules from China in the first quarter of the year, down by more than one-third from the same period a year earlier. Cells are individual units that convert sunlight into energy, while modules are made up of multiple cells.

    Neshwin Rodrigues, an analyst at climate energy think tank Ember, predicted that by 2030, India might be in a position of needing to import only the raw material polysilicon while producing other solar panel ingredients in the country.

    According to India’s renewable energy ministry, the country’s solar module manufacturing capacity more than doubled to 74 gigawatts over the fiscal year ending March 2025. Solar cell manufacturing tripled in the same period, from 9 gigawatts to 25 gigawatts.

    India still needs Chinese raw materials because it lacks infrastructure to mine and process them, but government initiatives to produce critical minerals are slowly addressing the problem, experts said.

    Shubhang Parekh of the National Solar Energy Federation of India said the supply chains needed to process the raw materials are still a work in progress, but he’s confident the challenges can be overcome.

    “The next few years will be critical in determining how far we can go,” Parekh said.

    ___

    Follow Sibi Arasu on X at @sibi123

    ___

    Arasu reported from Bengaluru, India.

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Republicans seek to lift drilling, mining restrictions in Western states

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    BILLINGS, Mont. — Republican lawmakers in Congress are clearing the way for President Donald Trump’s plans to expand mining and drilling on public lands by moving to eliminate energy development limits in several Western states.

    House Republicans on Wednesday night voted largely along party lines to repeal land management plans adopted in the closing days of former President Joe Biden’s administration that restricted development in large areas of Alaska, Montana and North Dakota.


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    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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    By MATTHEW BROWN – Associated Press

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  • June Cleaver the loggerhead turtle is released into the ocean off Florida after rehab

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    Marine biologists on Florida’s Space Coast have released June Cleaver, a 230-pound loggerhead turtle, back into the ocean

    MELBOURNE, Fla. — She may not wear a pearl necklace like her namesake from the TV show, “Leave it Beaver,” but June Cleaver, the 230-pound loggerhead turtle, nevertheless was happy as a clam to be going home.

    Marine biologists on Florida’s Space Coast on Wednesday released June Cleaver back into the ocean before 300 beachgoers following a two-month rehabilitation at the Brevard Zoo’s Sea Turtle Healing Center in Melbourne, Florida.

    The turtle was first observed having difficulty laying eggs in Melbourne Beach in June. The Sea Turtle Preservation Society transported her to the Healing Center, and caretakers discovered that she had been hit by a boat. They gave her several CT scans to make sure that the injury to her top shell wasn’t critical, according to the center.

    The scans showed that her wound wasn’t fatal but she needed rehabilitation. While at the center, she laid 113 eggs in a pool. Biologists buried the eggs in the beach where they are incubating, according to the center.

    The center said June Cleaver had “diva” tastes in food, preferring squid over the crabs which typically are favored by loggerheads.

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  • Drones blast AC/DC, Scarlett Johansson to scare off wolves

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    For millennia humans have tried to scare wolves away from their livestock. Most of them didn’t have drones.

    But a team of biologists working near the California-Oregon border do, and they’re using them to blast AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” movie clips and live human voices at the apex predators to shoo them away from cattle in an ongoing experiment.


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    By CEDAR ATTANASIO – Associated Press

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  • Drones blasting AC/DC, Scarlett Johannson help biologists protect cattle from wolves

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    For millennia humans have tried to scare wolves away from their livestock. Most of them didn’t have drones.

    But a team of biologists working near the California-Oregon border do, and they’re using them to blast AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” movie clips and live human voices at the apex predators to shoo them away from cattle in an ongoing experiment.

    “I am not putting up with this anymore!” actor Scarlett Johansson yells in one clip, from the 2019 film “ Marriage Story.”

    “With what? I can’t talk to people?” co-star Adam Driver shouts back.

    Gray wolves were hunted nearly to extinction throughout the U.S. West by the first half of the 20th century. Since their reintroduction in Idaho and at Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s, they’ve proliferated to the point that a population in the Northern Rockies has been removed from the endangered species list.

    There are now hundreds of wolves in Washington and Oregon, dozens more in northern California, and thousands roaming near the Great Lakes.

    The recovering population has meant increasing conflict with ranchers — and increasingly creative efforts by the latter to protect livestock. They’ve turned to electrified fencing, wolf alarms, guard dogs, horseback patrols, trapping and relocating, and now drones. In some areas where nonlethal efforts have failed, officials routinely approve killing wolves, including last week in Washington state.

    Gray wolves killed some 800 domesticated animals across 10 states in 2022, a previous Associated Press review of data from state and federal agencies found.

    Scientists with the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service developed the techniques for hazing wolves by drone while monitoring them using thermal imaging cameras at night, when the predators are most active. A preliminary study released in 2022 demonstrated that adding human voices through a loudspeaker rigged onto a drone can freak them out.

    The team documented successful interruptions of wolf hunts. When Dustin Ranglack, the USDA’s lead researcher on the project, saw one for the first time, he smiled from ear to ear.

    “If we could reduce those negative impacts of wolves, that is going to be more likely to lead to a situation where we have coexistence,” Ranglack said.

    The preloaded clips include recordings of music, gunshots, fireworks and voices. A drone pilot starts by playing three clips chosen at random, such as the “Marriage Story” scene or “Thunderstruck,” with its screams and hair-raising electric guitar licks.

    If those don’t work, the operator can improvise by yelling through a microphone or playing a different clip that’s not among the randomized presets. One favorite is the heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch ‘s cover of “Blue on Black,” which might blast the lyric “You turned and you ran” as the wolves flee.

    USDA drone pilots have continued cattle protection patrols this summer while researching wolf responses at ranches with high conflict levels along the Oregon-California border. Patrols extended south to the Sierra Valley in August for the first time, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

    It’s unclear whether the wolves might become accustomed to the drones. Herders and wolf hunters in Europe have long deterred them with long lines hung with flapping cloth, but the wolves can eventually learn that the flags are not a threat.

    Environmental advocates are optimistic about drones, though, because they allow for scaring wolves in different ways, in different places.

    “Wolves are frightened of novel things,” said Amaroq Weiss, a wolf advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity. “I know that in the human imagination, people think of wolves as big, scary critters that are scared of nothing.”

    There are also drawbacks to the technology. A drone with night vision and a loudspeaker costs around $20,000, requires professional training and doesn’t work well in wooded areas, making it impractical for many ranchers.

    Ranchers in Northern California who have hosted USDA drone patrols agree that they have reduced livestock deaths so far.

    “I’m very appreciative of what they did. But I don’t think it’s a long-term solution,” said Mary Rickert, the owner of a cattle ranch north of Mount Shasta. “What I’m afraid of is that after some period of time, that all of a sudden they go, ‘Wow, this isn’t going to hurt me. It just makes a lot of noise.’”

    Ranchers are compensated if they can prove that a wolf killed their livestock. But there are uncompensated costs of having stressed-out cows, such as lower birth rates and tougher meat.

    Rickert said if the drones don’t work over the long term, she might have to close the business, which she’s been involved in since at least the 1980s. She wants permission to shoot wolves if they’re attacking her animals or if they come onto her property after a certain number of attacks.

    If the technology proves effective and costs come down, someday ranchers might merely have to ask the wolves to go away.

    Oregon-based Paul Wolf — yes, Wolf — is the USDA’s southwest district supervisor and the main Five Finger Death Punch fan among the drone pilots. He recalled an early encounter during which a wolf at first merely seemed curious at the sight of a drone, until the pilot talked to it through the speaker.

    “He said, ‘Hey wolf — get out of here,’” Wolf said. “The wolf immediately lets go of the cattle and runs away.”

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  • Swimmers face fecal contamination at beaches along US coastline

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    OGUNQUIT, Maine — Thousands of Americans will head to beaches for one last summer splash this Labor Day weekend, but taking a dip might be out of the question: Many of the beaches will caution against swimming because of unsafe levels of fecal contamination.

    Beaches from Crystal River, Florida, to Ogunquit, Maine, have been under advisories warning about water quality this week because of elevated levels of bacteria associated with fecal waste. The advisories typically discourage beachgoers from going in the water because the bacteria can cause gastrointestinal illness, rashes and nausea.

    There have been closures this week at some of the country’s most popular beach destinations, including Keyes Memorial Beach in the Cape Cod village of Hyannis in Barnstable, Massachusetts; Benjamin’s Beach on Long Island in Bay Shore, New York; and a portion of the Imperial Beach shoreline near San Diego. Even on the pristine, white sand beaches of Hawaii, the Hawaii State Department of Health is warning of a high bacteria count at Kahaluu Beach Park on the Big Island.

    It’s a longstanding and widespread problem. Nearly two-thirds of beaches tested nationwide in 2024 experienced at least one day in which indicators of fecal contamination reached potentially unsafe levels, conservation group Environment America said in a report issued this summer.

    The group reviewed beaches on the coasts and Great Lakes and found that 84% of Gulf Coast beaches exceeded the standard at least once. The number was 79% for West Coast beaches, 54% for East Coast beaches and 71% for Great Lakes beaches.

    The report also said more than 450 beaches were potentially unsafe for swimming on at least 25 percent of the days tested. A key reason is outdated water and sewer systems that allows contamination from sewage to reach the places where people swim, said John Rumpler, clean water director and senior attorney with Environment America.

    “These beaches are a treasure for families across New England and across the country. They are a shared resource,” said Rumpler, who is based in Boston. “We need to make the investment to make sure that literally our own human waste doesn’t wind up in the places where we are swimming.”

    Other factors have also played a role in contaminating beaches, including increasingly severe weather that overwhelms sewage systems, and suburban sprawl that paves over natural areas and reduces the ecosystem’s ability to absorb stormwater, Rumpler said.

    But many people plan to jump in the ocean anyway. Despite a two-day warning of elevated fecal indicator bacteria last month at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, beachgoer Yaromyr Oryshkevych was not concerned.

    “I really don’t expect to be in any kind of danger of fecal contamination,” said Oryshkevych, a retired dentist. He said he didn’t think Rehoboth was close enough to notable pollution to be concerned, and he expected the ocean’s natural currents to take care of any problems with contamination in the area.

    Dana West, a federal worker visiting Rehoboth Beach, recalled an instance earlier this year where a dozen members of his vacationing party experienced gastrointestinal issues. The symptoms occurred after they went on a snorkeling excursion, an activity that increases the likelihood of swallowing seawater, off the coast of Isla Mujeres, Mexico.

    It was an unpleasant experience, but he doesn’t expect a repeat this weekend in Delaware.

    “But generally, I have no concerns about the level of fecal and bacterial matter,” said West while admiring Rehoboth’s shore. ”I assume the local authorities will tell us if there are higher levels than normal.”

    Despite West’s confidence, some beaches in the area of Rehoboth, including nearby Rehoboth Bay and Dewey Beach bayside, were indeed under water advisories this week. Such advisories are not always posted on public signs.

    Environment America assessed beach safety in its report by examining whether fecal bacteria levels exceeded standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that trigger an alert to avoid the water. Fecal bacteria at those levels can cause illness in 32 out of every 1,000 swimmers.

    In North Carolina, five beaches were under advisories in late August because of elevated levels of fecal bacteria. The beaches are open, but swimmers are advised that going in the water could be risky, said Erin Bryan-Millush, environmental program supervisor with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

    Hurricane Erin caused extensive erosion and storm surge in some coastal areas, according to the Department of Environmental Quality. Heavy rain events this summer also exacerbated the contamination problem in some areas, Bryan-Millush said.

    “Those storm drains carry everything,” Bryan-Millush said. “It could be really bad for someone who is immune compromised.”

    ___

    Lau reported from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

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  • Western states seek to end long-running water dispute over dwindling Rio Grande

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    ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A simmering feud over management of one of North America’s longest rivers reached a boiling point when the U.S. Supreme Court sent western states and the federal government back to the negotiating table last year.

    Now the battle over waters of the Rio Grande could be nearing resolution as New Mexico, Texas and Colorado announced fresh settlement proposals Friday designed to rein in groundwater pumping along the river in New Mexico and ensure enough river water reliably makes it to Texas.

    New Mexico officials say the agreements allow water conservation decisions to be made locally while avoiding a doomsday scenario of billion-dollar payouts on water shortfalls.

    Farmers in southern New Mexico increasingly have turned to groundwater as hotter and drier conditions reduced river flows and storage. That pumping is what prompted Texas to sue, claiming the practice was cutting into water deliveries.

    It will be up to the special master overseeing the case to make a recommendation to the Supreme Court.

    If endorsed by the court, the combined settlements promise to restore order to an elaborate system of storing and sharing water between two vast, adjacent irrigation districts in southern New Mexico and western Texas.

    Still, tough decisions await New Mexico under its new obligations.

    In 1939, when New Mexico was a young, sparsely populated state, it ratified a compact with Texas and Colorado for sharing the waters of the Rio Grande. The agreement defined credits and debits and set parameters for when water could be stored upstream.

    From the San Luis Valley in Colorado to below Elephant Butte Reservoir in New Mexico, the compact called for gages to monitor the river, ensuring downstream obligations were met.

    Meeting the nearly century-old metrics has become harder as snowpacks shrink in the mountains that feed the Rio Grande. Thirsty soil soaks up more snowmelt and runoff before it reaches tributaries, warmer temperatures fuel evaporation, and summer rainy seasons that once boosted flows and recharged reservoirs are more erratic.

    The equation is further complicated by growing populations. The Rio Grande provides drinking water for about 6 million people and helps to irrigate millions of acres of cropland in the U.S. and in Mexico.

    While the Colorado River gets all the headlines, experts say the situation along the Rio Grande is just as dire.

    The proposed settlements would provide a detailed accounting system for sharing water with Texas.

    New Mexico could rely on credits and debits from year to year to navigate through drought and wet periods, though it could be responsible for additional water-sharing obligations if deliveries are deferred too long.

    The international group Sustainable Waters is wrapping up an extensive study on how the river’s water is being used.

    Brian Richter, the group’s president, said that over the last couple of decades, New Mexico has lost more than 70% of its reservoir storage along the river while groundwater has been extracted faster than it can be replenished. Add to that New Mexico has fallen behind in its water deliveries to Texas.

    Richter called it a triple whammy.

    “We’re definitely in a precarious situation and it’s going to become more challenging going forward,” he said. “So I think it’s going to require sort of a major reenvisioning of what we want New Mexico’s water future to look like.”

    The parties in the case say the proposed agreements will facilitate investments and innovation in water conservation.

    “The whole settlement package really provides for the long-term vitality, economic vitality, for the communities in both New Mexico and Texas,” said Hannah Riseley-White, director of the Interstate Stream Commission.

    New Mexico would have two years to adopt a plan to manage and share water along its southernmost stretch of the Rio Grande. The state can still pump some groundwater while monitoring aquifer levels.

    “The burden is on New Mexico,” said Stuart Somach, lead attorney for Texas in the Rio Grande dispute.

    In Albuquerque, it looks grim.

    It’s common to have stretches of the Rio Grande go dry farther south, but not in New Mexico’s largest city. Prior to 2022, it had been four decades since Albuquerque had seen the muddy waters reduced to isolated puddles and lengthy sandbars.

    Aside from a changing climate, water managers say the inability to store water in upstream reservoirs due to compact obligations exacerbates the problem.

    Many of the intricacies of managing the Rio Grande are as invisible to residents as the water itself.

    Sisters Zoe and Phoebe Hughes set out to take photos during a recent evening, anticipating at least a sliver of water like usual. Instead they found deep sand and patchwork of cracked, curled beds of clay.

    “It’s so dystopian. It’s sad,” Phoebe Hughes said, adding that the river isn’t so grand now.

    Looking for a silver lining, the two collected pieces of riverbed clay, hoping they could fashion it into something. Other curious visitors played in the sand and walked dogs.

    Downstream, Elephant Butte stands at less than 4% of capacity. The reservoir is an irrigation lifeline for farmers, fuels a hydropower station and serves as a popular recreation spot.

    The settlements call for reducing groundwater depletions to a rate of 18,200 acre-feet per year. While that’s about one-sixth of the drinking water supplied to New York City each day, for the arid West, it’s a monumental amount.

    New Mexico officials expect to achieve most of those reductions from buying water rights from willing sellers, meaning more than 14 square miles (36 square kilometers) of farmland would be retired.

    Many details — and the price tag — have yet to be worked out, the general counsel for the New Mexico state engineer’s office told state lawmakers this month. The Legislature in 2023 set aside $65 million toward the settlements and related infrastructure projects, and the state is tapping additional federal dollars. But it will still need more funds, experts say.

    Riseley-White said it will take a combination of efforts, including long-term fallowing programs, water conservation and more efficient irrigation infrastructure.

    “There isn’t one answer. It’s going to be necessarily an all-of-the-above approach,” she said, acknowledging that there will be less water in the future.

    Attorney Sam Barncastle, who worked for years on behalf of irrigators, worries small farming operations and backyard gardeners could ultimately be pushed out.

    “Farmland does not come back once it’s gone,” she said.

    The overall idea is to avoid abruptly curtailing water for users, but farmers in southern New Mexico have concerns about how much water will be available and who will be able to use it.

    New Mexico is the nation’s No. 2 pecan producer, and the sprawling orchards would die without consistent water. The state also is home to world-renowned chilies — a signature crop tightly woven into New Mexico’s cultural identity.

    Ben Etcheverry, a board member of the New Mexico Chile Association, said farmers have transitioned to drip irrigation to save water and energy but are continually told they have to do more with even less water and pay higher rates.

    “It just becomes a game of whack-a-mole while we try to do better,” he said. “Every time we do better, it seems they turn it into a punishment.”

    ___

    Lee reported from Santa Fe.

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