ReportWire

Tag: Water environment

  • Worker admits dumping raw waste into Jackson water system

    Worker admits dumping raw waste into Jackson water system

    [ad_1]

    JACKSON, Miss — An employee of a Mississippi wastewater hauling company pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday for his part in illegally discharging industrial waste into the capital city’s sewer system.

    William Roberts, an employee of Partridge-Sibley Industrial Services, admitted to supervising the improper disposal of industrial waste at a commercial entity in Jackson. As a result of Roberts’s negligence, the waste was trucked and hauled to a facility that was not a legal discharge point designated to receive the waste, federal prosecutors said.

    “The defendant’s negligent conduct contributed to the discharge of millions of gallons of untreated industrial waste into the Jackson water system,” said Chuck Carfagno, a special agent for the Environmental Protection Agency’s criminal investigations division.

    Jackson’s water and sewer system has been beset by troubles dating back years. The water system was recently engulfed in a crisis that forced people in the city of 150,000 to go days without running water in late August and early September.

    In addition to the EPA and local law enforcement officials, the case was also investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

    An attorney for Roberts did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He will be sentenced on December 14, 2022.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • California wells run dry as drought depletes groundwater

    California wells run dry as drought depletes groundwater

    [ad_1]

    FAIRMEAD, Calif. — As California’s drought deepens, Elaine Moore’s family is running out of an increasingly precious resource: water.

    The Central Valley almond growers had two wells go dry this summer. Two of her adult children are now getting water from a new well the family drilled after the old one went dry last year. She’s even supplying water to a neighbor whose well dried up.

    “It’s been so dry this last year. We didn’t get much rain. We didn’t get much snowpack,” Moore said, standing next to a dry well on her property in Chowchilla, California. “Everybody’s very careful with what water they’re using. In fact, my granddaughter is emptying the kids’ little pool to flush the toilets.”

    Amid a megadrought plaguing the American West, more rural communities are losing access to groundwater as heavy pumping depletes underground aquifers that aren’t being replenished by rain and snow.

    More than 1,200 wells have run dry this year statewide, a nearly 50% increase over the same period last year, according to the California Department of Water Resources. By contrast, fewer than 100 dry wells were reported annually in 2018, 2019 and 2020.

    The groundwater crisis is most severe in the San Joaquin Valley, California’s agricultural heartland, which exports fruits, vegetables and nuts around the world.

    Shrinking groundwater supplies reflect the severity of California’s drought, which is now entering its fourth year. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, more than 94% of the state is in severe, extreme or exceptional drought.

    California just experienced its three driest years on record, and state water officials said Monday they’re preparing for another dry year because the weather phenomenon known as La Nina is expected to occur for the third consecutive year.

    Farmers are getting little surface water from the state’s depleted reservoirs, so they’re pumping more groundwater to irrigate their crops. That’s causing water tables to drop across California. State data shows that 64% of wells are at below-normal water levels.

    Water shortages are already reducing the region’s agricultural production as farmers are forced to fallow fields and let orchards wither. An estimated 531,00 acres (215,000 hectares) of farmland went unplanted this year because of a lack of irrigation water, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

    As climate change brings hotter temperatures and more severe droughts, cities and states around the world are facing water shortages as lakes and rivers dry up. Many communities are pumping more groundwater and depleting aquifers at an alarming pace.

    “This is a key challenge not just for California, but for communities across the West moving forward in adapting to climate change,” said Andrew Ayres, a water researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California.

    Madera County, north of Fresno, has been hit particularly hard because it relies heavily on groundwater. The county has reported about 430 dry wells so far this year.

    In recent years, the county has seen the rapid expansion of thirsty almond and pistachio orchards that are typically irrigated by agricultural wells that run deeper than domestic wells.

    “The bigger straw is going to suck the water from right beneath the little straw,” said Madeline Harris, a policy manager with the advocacy group Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability. She stood next to a municipal well that’s run dry in Fairmead, a town of 1,200 surrounded by nut orchards.

    “Municipal wells like this one are being put at risk and are going dry because of the groundwater overdraft problems from agriculture,” Harris said. “There are families who don’t have access to running water right now because they have dry domestic wells.”

    Residents with dry wells can get help from a state program that provides bottled water as well as storage tanks regularly filled by water delivery trucks. The state also provides money to replace dry wells, but there’s a long wait to get a new one.

    Not everyone is getting assistance.

    Thomas Chairez said his Fairmead property, which he rents to a family of eight, used to get water from his neighbor’s well. But when it went dry two years ago, his tenants lost access to running water.

    Chairez is trying to get the county to provide a storage tank and water delivery service. For now, his tenants have to fill up 5-gallon (19-liter) buckets at a friend’s home and transport water by car each day. They use the water to cook and take showers. They have portable toilets in the backyard.

    “They’re surviving,” Chairez said. “In Mexico, I used to do that. I used to carry two buckets myself from far away. So we got to survive somehow. This is an emergency.”

    Well drillers are in high demand as water pumps stop working across the San Joaquin Valley.

    Ethan Bowles and his colleagues were recently drilling a new well at a ranch house in the Madera Ranchos neighborhood, where many wells have gone dry this year.

    “It’s been almost nonstop phone calls just due to the water table dropping constantly,” said Bowles, who works for Chowchilla-based Drew and Hefner Well Drilling. “Most residents have had their wells for many years and all of a sudden the water stops flowing.”

    His company must now drill down 500 and 600 feet (152 to 183 meters) to get clients a steady supply of groundwater. That’s a couple hundred feet deeper than older wells.

    “The wells just have to go deeper,” Bowles said. “You have to hit a different aquifer and get them a different part of that water table so they can actually have fresh water for their house.”

    In March, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order to slow a frenzy of well-drilling over the past few years. The temporary measure prohibits local agencies from issuing permits for new wells that could harm nearby wells or structures.

    California’s groundwater troubles come as local agencies seek to comply with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed in 2014 to prevent groundwater overpumping during the last drought. The law requires regional agencies to manage their aquifers sustainably by 2042.

    Water experts believe the law will lead to more sustainable groundwater supplies over the next two decades, but the road will be bumpy. The Public Policy Institute of California estimates that about 500,000 acres (202,000 hectares) of agricultural land, about 10% of the current total, will have to come out of production over the next two decades.

    “These communities are going to be impacted from drinking water supplies and loss of jobs,” said Isaya Kisekka, a groundwater expert at the University of California, Davis. “There’s a lot of migration of farmworkers as this land gets fallowed.”

    Farmers and residents in the Valley are hoping for help from above. “Hopefully we get a lot of rain,” Chairez said. “There’s a big need: water. We need water, water, water.”

    ———

    Follow Terry Chea on Twitter: @terrychea

    ———

    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

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • California braces for dry winter as Western drought drags on

    California braces for dry winter as Western drought drags on

    [ad_1]

    SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The past three years have been California’s driest on record, a streak unlikely to break this winter, state officials said Monday.

    The official water year concluded Friday, marking an end to a period that saw both record rainfall in October and the driest January-to-March period in at least a century. Scientists say such weather whiplash is likely to become more common as the planet warms. It will take more than a few winter storms to help the state dig out of drought.

    “This is our new climate reality, and we must adapt,” Karla Nemeth, director of the state Department of Water Resources, said in a statement.

    Her comments came ahead of expected remarks Monday by state water officials about what to expect in the months ahead. The water year runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30, so that the rainiest winter months are recorded together.

    Snow that falls in California’s mountains typically provides one-third of the state’s annual water supply, but last year snow levels were far below average by the end of the winter. The Colorado River, another major source of water for Southern California, is also beset by drought, threatening its ability to supply farmers and cities around the U.S. West.

    Precipitation was 76% of average for the year that just ended, and the state’s reservoirs are at 69% of their historical levels, state officials said.

    Most of the state is in severe or extreme drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The worst conditions are throughout the Central Valley, the state’s agricultural heartland where many of the nation’s fruits, vegetables and nuts are grown.

    Another dry year would mean little to no water deliveries from state supplies to farmers and cities in central and Southern California. State and local officials, meanwhile, continue to urge California’s 39 million residents to save water wherever possible by ripping out grass lawns or letting them go brown, taking shorter showers and generally being more conscious about water use.

    There are signs that the state and its residents are better learning to deal with ongoing dry periods, said Jeff Mount, a senior fellow with the Water Policy Center at the Public Policy Institute of California. With limited water supplies, farmers in the northern part of the state have fallowed rice fields, while major water agencies in the south have started to look for ways to expand water supply through recycling and other means.

    Still, drought fatigue may be setting in. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom called on residents last year to voluntarily reduce their water use by 15%. The state still hasn’t met that target and water use went up in the spring compared to prior years. But use has started to tick down after state water officials put new restrictions on outdoor watering.

    “We’re not fighting anymore about whether things are changing — we’re having reasonable fights about how to adapt to it,” Mount said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • US defense chief in Hawaii amid distrust after fuel spill

    US defense chief in Hawaii amid distrust after fuel spill

    [ad_1]

    HONOLULU — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Hawaii this week amid lingering community frustration and distrust after jet fuel from a military storage facility last year spilled into Pearl Harbor’s drinking water, poisoned thousands of military families and threatened the purity of Honolulu’s water supply.

    Austin traveled to the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility in the hills above Pearl Harbor on Friday and met the commander of the joint task force in charge of draining its tanks so it can be shut down.

    He also met with several families affected by the fuel spill and Hawaii state officials, the military said in a news release. The meetings were closed to the media, and Austin didn’t hold a news conference afterward.

    Outside Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam, several dozen protesters held signs saying “Navy Lies” and “Shut Down Red Hill.” People driving by — including many exiting the base — honked in support.

    Samantha McCoy, whose husband is in the Air Force, said her family suffered migraines, rashes, skin sores and gastrointestinal problems that only subsided when they moved out of military housing last month.

    She called on Austin to make more medical care available to families.

    “It took four months of daily migraines to even get a referral to a neurologist. And that’s really unacceptable,” she said at the protest.

    Cheri Burness, who lives in Navy housing, won’t drink the tap water in the house she shares with her sailor husband and their two teenage children because she doesn’t believe that it’s safe 10 months after the spill.

    Her family has spent $3,000 of their own money to install filters on all the faucets in the house so they can bathe, brush their teeth and wash their dishes. She spends $70 to $100 a month to have water delivered to their home for drinking. They also use bottled water.

    She recalled how Navy leaders initially told Pearl Harbor water users their water was safe to drink after the November spill. The Navy only told people to stop drinking their tap water after the state Department of Health stepped in.

    The Navy later flushed clean water through its pipes to cleanse them. In March, the state Department of Health said the tap water in all residential areas served by the Navy’s water system was safe to drink.

    But Burness said she never got to see the reports for her house after it was tested. She was only told her water was good.

    “I don’t trust them because cause they did nothing to show me that it ever was fine,” Burness said in a telephone interview.

    A Navy investigation released in July showed a cascading series of errors, complacency and a lack of professionalism led to the fuel spill, which contaminated tap water used by 93,000 people on the Navy’s water system.

    Nearly 6,000 sought medical attention for nausea, headaches and rashes. Some continue to complain of health problems.

    The military put families up in hotels for several months, but stopped paying once the health department cleared people to resume drinking their tap water.

    Kristina Baehr, an attorney with Texas-based Just Well Law, sued the federal government last month on behalf of four families but said she will be adding more individuals from among the 700 clients she represents. Burness and McCoy are among her clients.

    “They didn’t warn them to stop drinking it, and 6,000 people went to the emergency room,” she said. “Then, many of these people have only gotten sicker over time.”

    Baehr said her clients were not among those chosen to speak to Austin. If they had such an opportunity, she said they would tell him to have officials stop saying no one is medically affected by the spill and that there are no long-term effects.

    They would also encourage him to provide appropriate medical care to families, safe housing because families claim the homes were not properly remediated, and compassionate reassignment to other bases to all those who ask.

    “A lot of people are still stuck in the houses that made them sick,” she said. “So it’s very simple, let people out of the houses that made them sick and fix the houses so that they’re safe for the next people.”

    The spill upset a broad cross-spectrum of Hawaii, from liberals to conservatives and veterans to environmentalists. Many Native Hawaiians have been angered given the centrality of water in Hawaii’s Indigenous traditions. It has also increased deep-seated distrust of the U.S. military among many Native Hawaiians that dates to the U.S. military-backed overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893.

    Dani Espiritu, who was also at Friday’s protest, said the military was taking risks with Native Hawaiian lives, land and culture.

    “All of our cultural practices are tied to aina,” she said, using the Hawaiian word for land. “And so as you poison aina and jeopardize the health and well-being of communities, you are also jeopardizing every traditional practice that are tied to those places.”

    The military plans to drain fuel from the tanks by July 2024 to comply with a Hawaii Department of Health order to shut down the facility.

    Honolulu’s water utility and the Sierra Club of Hawaii have expressed concerns about the threat Red Hill poses to Oahu’s water supply ever since 2014, when fuel leaked from one of the storage tanks. But the Navy reassured the public that their water was safe and that it was operating the storage facility properly.

    ——

    Associated Press writer Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Alaska, contributed to this report.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Baltic Sea pipeline leak damages marine life and climate

    Baltic Sea pipeline leak damages marine life and climate

    [ad_1]

    WASHINGTON — Methane escaping from the damaged Nord Stream pipelines that run between Russia and Europe is likely to result in the biggest known gas leak to take place over a short period of time and highlights the problem of large methane escapes elsewhere around the world, scientists say.

    There is still uncertainty in estimating total damage, but researchers say vast plumes of this potent greenhouse gas will have significant detrimental impacts on the climate.

    Immediate harm to marine life and fisheries in the Baltic Sea and to human health will also result because benzene and other trace chemicals are typically present in natural gas, researchers say.

    “This will probably be the biggest gas leak ever, in terms of its rate,” said Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson.

    The velocity of the gas erupting from four documented leaks in the pipelines — which the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has attributed to sabotage — is part of what makes the impacts severe.

    When methane leaks naturally leaks from vents on the ocean floor, the quantities are usually small and the gas is mostly absorbed by seawater. “But this is not a normal situation for gas release,” said Jackson. “We’re not talking about methane bubbling up to the surface like seltzer water, but a plume of rushing gas,” he said.

    Jackson and other scientists estimate that between 50% and nearly 100% of total methane emitted from the pipeline will reach the atmosphere.

    The Danish government issued a worst case scenario that assumed all the gas reached the air, and German officials Thursday issued a somewhat lower one.

    In the meantime, it’s nearly impossible for anyone to approach the highly flammable plume to attempt to curb the release of gas, which energy experts estimate may continue until Sunday.

    “Methane is very flammable — if you go in there, you’d have a good chance of it being a funeral pyre,” said Ira Leifer, an atmospheric scientist. If the gas-air mix was within a certain range, an airplane could easily ignite travelling into the plume, for example.

    Methane isn’t the only risk. “Natural gas isn’t refined to be super clean — there are trace elements of other compounds, like benzene,” a carcinogen, said Leifer.

    “The amount of these trace elements cumulatively entering the environment is significant right now — this will cause issues for fisheries and marine ecosystems and people who potentially eat those fish,” he said.

    David Archer, a professor in the geophysical sciences department at University of Chicago who focuses on the global carbon cycle, said that escape of methane in the Baltic Sea is part of the much larger worldwide problem of methane emissions.

    The gas is a major contributor to climate change, responsible for a significant share of the climate disruption people are already experiencing. That is because it is 82.5 times more potent than carbon dioxide at absorbing the sun’s heat and warming the Earth, over the short term.

    Climate scientist have found that methane emissions from the oil and gas industry are far worse than what companies are reporting, despite claims by major companies that they’ve reduced their emissions.

    Scientists measuring methane from satellites in space have found that emissions from oil and gas operations are usually at least twice as high as what the companies reported, said Thomas Lauvaux, climate scientist at University of Reims in France.

    Many of those so-called leaks are not accidental. Companies release the gas during routine maintenance. Lauvaux and other scientists observed more than 1,500 major methane leaks globally, and potentially tens of thousands of smaller leaks, using satellites, he said.

    —

    AP reporters Patrick Whittle contributed from Portland, Maine, Seth Borenstein from Washington, DC., and Cathy Bussewitz from New York.

    ——

    Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

    [ad_2]

    Source link