The sacred folklores of the Yoruba tradition tell the story of the time water left Earth. In the narrative, several deities from the heavenly realm come to Earth to go about the process of creation. Among these deities is Oshun, the Orisha (deities who represent the forces of nature) associated with love, fertility, compassion and sweet water. At some point, one of the deities comments that Oshun…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday vetoed legislation pass by congressional Republicans and corporate Democrats to stop the federal government from protecting public health and the planet, blocking a resolution passed by both chambers last month to gut water protections.
Democratic Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Jacky Rosen (Nev.), and Jon Tester (Mont.) joined former Democrat Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and every Republican in the Senate to pass H.J. Res. 27 last week, following the bill’s passage in the GOP-controlled U.S. House.
The legislation rejected the Environmental Protection Agency’s definition of the “waters of the United States” (WOTUS) that are protected under the Clean Water Act, as “traditional navigable waters, the territorial seas, interstate waters, as well as upstream water resources that significantly affect those waters.”
The regulation, introduced in December, is expected to restore protections for millions of marshes and other waterways after the Trump administration wiped out those regulations, permitting increased industrial pollution in nearly half of all wetlands across the country.
Biden’s veto, said the president will protect Americans’ right to clean water.
\u201cI just vetoed a bill that attempted to block our Administration from protecting our nation’s waterways \u2013 a resource millions of Americans depend on \u2013 from destruction and pollution.\n \nLet me be clear: Every American has a right to clean water.\n \nThis veto protects that right.\u201d— President Biden (@President Biden) 1680809643
Republicans would need a two-thirds majority to override Biden’s veto—a level of support they’re unlikely to get.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday claimed that a presidential veto would allow EPA officials to regulate pollution “way outside the authority that Congress actually provided in the Clean Water Act,” and expressed hope that the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately rule that the government cannot protect navigable waters from industrial pollution.
The veto is the second of Biden’s presidency. Last month he vetoed a resolution that attempted to overturn a rule allowing retirement fund managers to consider the impact of their investments on the climate and planet.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
The Biden administration on Friday took its latest step to hold Norfolk Southern accountable for the disaster continuing to unfold in East Palestine, Ohio and the surrounding area, filing a lawsuit against the rail company for sending toxic chemicals into the environment.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) sued the company under the Clean Air Act, accusing it of “unlawfully polluting the nation’s waterways” and calling on Norfolk Southern “to ensure it pays the full cost of the environmental cleanup.”
“When a Norfolk Southern train derailed last month in East Palestine, Ohio, it released toxins into the air, soil, and water, endangering the health and safety of people in surrounding communities,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland. “With this complaint, the Justice Department and the [Environmental Protection Agency] are acting to pursue justice for the residents of East Palestine and ensure that Norfolk Southern carries the financial burden for the harm it has caused and continues to inflict on the community.”
The lawsuit comes almost two months after a train carrying chemicals including vinyl chloride derailed in East Palestine, spilling chemicals into local waterways and ultimately the Ohio River, which provides drinking water for more than five million people.
“Whatever it takes to make East Palestine whole, Norfolk Southern needs to pay—and it’s not enough to take their word for it.”
Officials began a controlled release of vinyl chloride to prevent an explosion, a process that sent chemicals including hydrogen chloride and phosgene into the environment. Those chemicals have been known to cause symptoms including headaches, vomiting, and rashes. Earlier this month, data showed that local levels of dioxin, a carcinogen, were hundreds of times higher than the threshold for cancer risk, according to federal scientists.
Norfolk Southern has removed nine million gallons of contaminated wastewater from the site and hauled it to storage sites in states including Texas and Michigan. Earlier this week, officials in Baltimore blocked a shipment of wastewater to a treatment plant there, with one city council member noting that “too often cities with high rates of concentrated poverty and environmental degradation are asked to shoulder the burden for corporate malfeasance.”
Government officials say toxic levels of contamination have not been detected in the air or water in East Palestine, but a poll by federal, state, and local authorities earlier this month found that 74% of town residents had experienced headaches following the derailment and controlled release, and 52% had experienced rashes or other skin issues.
On Friday, CNN reported that investigators with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) experienced symptoms including sore throat, headache, coughing, and nausea while they were in East Palestine assessing public health risks.
By filing its lawsuit, said Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the DOJ’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, the Biden administration is “demanding accountability from Norfolk Southern for the harm this event has caused.”
“We will tirelessly pursue justice for the people living in and near East Palestine, who like all Americans deserve clean air, clean water, and a safe community for their children,” said Kim.
In February, the EPA ordered Norfolk Southern to take full responsibility for the cleanup work, issuing a legally binding directive. It also demanded that the company attend all public meetings regarding the disaster, after officials refused to meet with residents following the crash.
Ohio filed a lawsuit against the company earlier this month, demanding that it pay for soil and water monitoring in the coming years as well as paying environmental damage and cleanup costs.
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio)—a key sponsor of multiple recent railway safety bills—applauded the Biden administration for “following Ohio’s lead and holding Norfolk Southern accountable to the full extent of the law.”
\u201cWhatever it takes to make East Palestine whole, Norfolk Southern needs to pay \u2014 and it\u2019s not enough to take their word for it. \n\nGlad to see @TheJusticeDept following Ohio\u2019s lead and holding Norfolk Southern accountable to the full extent of the law.\nhttps://t.co/4x2x0oA1LP\u201d— Sherrod Brown (@Sherrod Brown) 1680274800
The latest lawsuit against Norfolk Southern “should further serve as a wake-up call” to the rail industry, said Robert Guy, Illinois state director for the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers-Transportation Division.
\u201cThis should further serve as a wake-up call to all Class I\u2019s and their love affair with PSR. They must scale back train length, especially those that haul coal, iron-ore and hazardous materials! https://t.co/3SzCfPg7DW\u201d— Robert W Guy III (@Robert W Guy III) 1680270208
Norfolk Southern and other rail companies have long lobbied for lax regulations and pushed workers to abide by a strict scheduling system that rail unions say places profits over safety.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
The CSIRO will develop a world-first ground to space water quality monitoring system with dozens of government, industry and research collaborators under its next science mission. The mission – the latest in a handful of the CSIRO’s large scale scientific and collaborative research initiatives – will use Australian made ground and satellite sensors and big…
The post Locally-made satellite sensors and AI in CSIRO’s water mission appeared first on InnovationAus.com.
This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.
Xcel Energy in late November told Minnesota and federal officials about a leak of 400,000 gallons of water contaminated with radioactive tritium at its Monticello nuclear power plant, but it wasn’t until Thursday that the incident and ongoing cleanup effort were made public.
In a statement, Xcel said Thursday that it “took swift action to contain the leak to the plant site, which poses no health and safety risk to the local community or the environment.”
“Ongoing monitoring from over two dozen on-site monitoring wells confirms that the leaked water is fully contained on-site and has not been detected beyond the facility or in any local drinking water,” the company added.
The Monticello plant, adjacent to the Mississippi River, is roughly 35 miles northwest of Minneapolis.
Asked why it didn’t notify the public sooner, the Minneapolis-based utility giant said: “We understand the importance of quickly informing the communities we serve if a situation poses an immediate threat to health and safety. In this case, there was no such threat.”
But Excel wasn’t the only entity with knowledge of the situation. The company said it alerted the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and state authorities on November 22, the day the leak was confirmed.
According to The Star Tribune: “A high level of tritium in groundwater was reported to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission when first discovered, which published the ‘nonemergency’ report in its public list of nuclear events the next day. The listing said the source of the tritium was being investigated.”
As Minnesota Public Radio explained, “The NRC’s November public notice was not in a news release” and was only visible “online at the bottom of a list of ‘non-emergency’ event notification reports.”
Asked why they waited four months to inform residents, state regulators who are monitoring the cleanup said they were waiting for more information.
“We knew there was a presence of tritium in one monitoring well, however Xcel had not yet identified the source of the leak and its location,” Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) spokesperson Michael Rafferty said Thursday.
The source of the leak—a broken pipe connecting two buildings—was detected on December 19 and quickly patched.
“Now that we have all the information about where the leak occurred, how much was released into groundwater, and that contaminated groundwater had moved beyond the original location, we are sharing this information,” said Rafferty.
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Dan Huff, assistant commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH), said, “If at any time someone’s health is at risk, we would notify folks immediately.” However, he continued, “this is a contained site underneath the Xcel plant and it has not threatened any Minnesotans’ health.”
Echoing Xcel and MDH officials, MPCA said in a statement: “The leak has been stopped and has not reached the Mississippi River or contaminated drinking water sources. There is no evidence at this time to indicate a risk to any drinking water wells in the vicinity of the plant.”
Kirk Koudelka, MPCA assistant commissioner for land and strategic initiatives, declared that “our top priority is protecting residents and the environment.”
“The MPCA is working closely with other state agencies to oversee Xcel Energy’s monitoring data and cleanup activities,” said Koudelka. “We are working to ensure this cleanup is concluded as thoroughly as possible with minimal or no risk to drinking water supplies.”
Since reporting the leak, Xcel has been pumping, storing, and processing contaminated groundwater, which “contains tritium levels below federal thresholds,” according to The Associated Press.
As the news outlet reported:
Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that occurs naturally in the environment and is a common by-product of nuclear plant operations. It emits a weak form of beta radiation that does not travel very far and cannot penetrate human skin, according to the NRC. A person who drank water from a spill would get only a low dose, the NRC says.
The NRC says tritium spills happen from time to time at nuclear plants, but that it has repeatedly determined that they’ve either remained limited to the plant property or involved such low offsite levels that they didn’t affect public health or safety. Xcel reported a small tritium leak at Monticello in 2009.
Xcel said it has recovered about 25% of the spilled tritium so far, that recovery efforts will continue and that it will install a permanent solution this spring.
“Xcel Energy is considering building above-ground storage tanks to store the contaminated water it recovers, and is considering options for the treatment, reuse, or final disposal of the collected tritium and water,” AP noted. “State regulators will review the options the company selects.”
As MPR reported, news of the leak “comes as Xcel is asking federal regulators to extend Monticello’s operating license through 2050—when the plant will be nearly 80 years old.”
The company says that doing so “is critical to meeting a new state law mandating fully carbon-free electricity by 2040,” The Star Tribune reported.
But on social media, commentators pointed out that such pollution “doesn’t happen with solar and wind.”
“Building more nuclear power plants is a bad solution to the climate crisis,” one user from Minnesota tweeted. “A good solution is more wind turbines and solar panels.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Ahead of the first United Nations conference on water in more than four decades, experts from the Global Commission on the Economics of Water released a landmark report Friday to warn the international community that the world is “heading for massive collective failure” in the management of the planet’s water supply and demand that governments treat water as a “global common good.”
Policymakers’ failure to ensure equal access to water, protect freshwater ecosystems, and recognize that communities and countries are interdependent when it comes to the global water cycle has resulted in two billion people lacking a safe drinking supply and “the prospect of a 40% shortfall in freshwater supply by 2030, with severe shortages in water-constrained regions,” according to the report.
The 32-page document, titled Turning the Tide: A Call to Collective Action, “marks the first time the global water system has been scrutinized comprehensively and its value to countries—and the risks to their prosperity if water is neglected—laid out in clear terms.”
In a video released ahead of the report, co-author Johan Rockström, who directs the Postdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, noted that the expected freshwater shortage is partially due to the fact that “we’re changing the very source of freshwater precipitation” as human activities including fossil fuel extraction drive planetary heating.
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“However, water is not just a casualty but also a driver of the climate crisis,” reads the report. “Extreme water events cause an immediate loss of carbon uptake in nature. Droughts lead to fires and massive loss of biomass, carbon, and biodiversity. The loss of wetlands is depleting the planet’s greatest carbon store, while the drop in soil moisture is reducing the terrestrial and forest ecosystem’s ability to sequester carbon.”
“We will fail on climate change if we fail on water,” the report continues.
Humans’ misuse of water, pollution of water, and changes to the hydrological cycle amount to “a triple crisis,” Rockström told The Guardian, which must be solved by recognizing water as a “global commons.”
According to the report, the majority of countries depend on the evaporation of water from neighboring countries for about half of their water supply. This “green” water is held in soils and transpired from forests and other ecosystems.
Countries “are not only interconnected by transboundary blue water flows but also through green water, i.e., atmospheric green water flows of water vapor, flows which… extend far beyond traditional watershed boundaries,” the report states.
The report points to regressive and inefficient use of water subsidies, which “typically favor the well-off and corporations more than the poor,” and $500 billion annually in agriculture subsidies, the majority of which “have been assessed to be price-distorting” and which can fuel excessive water consumption.
“Our economic systems by and large fail to account for the value of water,” reads the report. “This leads to the excessive and unsustainable use of finite freshwater resources and a corresponding lack of access for the poor and vulnerable in many places. We must systematically incorporate the values of water into decision-making, so it can be used far more efficiently in every sector, more equitably in every population and more sustainably, both locally and globally.”
The authors recommended seven steps that policymakers must take to avoid a water shortage by the end of the decade, including:
The Global Commission on the Economics of Water will present its findings at the U.N. Water Conference on March 22.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Ever so rarely, the human species can reach accord and agreement on some topic seemingly contentious and divergent. Such occasions tend to be rarer than hen’s teeth, but the UN High Seas Treaty was one of them. It took over two decades of agonising, stuttering negotiations to draft an agreement and went someway to suggest that the “common heritage of mankind”, a concept pioneered in the 1960s, has retained some force.
Debates about the sea have rarely lost their sting. The Dutch legal scholar Hugo Grotius, in his 1609 work Mare Liberum (The Free Sea), laboured over such concepts as freedom of navigation and trade (commeandi commercandique libertas), terms that have come to mean as much assertions of power as affirmations of international legal relations.
The thrust of his argument was directed against the Portuguese claim of exclusive access to the East Indies, but along the way, statements abound about the nature of the sea itself, including its resources. While land could be possessed and transformed by human labour and private use, the transient, ever-changing sea could not. It is a view echoed in the work of John Locke, who called the ocean “that great and still remaining Common of Mankind”.
With empires and states tumbling over each other in those historical challenges posed by trade and navigation, thoughts turned to a relevant treaty that would govern the seas. While there was a general acceptance by the end of the 18th century that states had sovereignty over their territorial sea to the limit of three miles, interest in codifying the laws on oceans was sufficient for the UN International Law Commission to begin work on the subject in 1949.
It was a project that occupied the minds, time and resources of nation states and their officials for decades, eventually yielding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Brought into existence in 1982, it came into effect in 1995. UNCLOS served to define maritime zones, including such concepts as the territorial sea, the contiguous zone, the exclusive economic zone, the continental shelf, the high sea, the international seabed area and archipelagic waters.
What was missing from the document was a deeper focus on the high sea itself, lying beyond the “exclusive economic zones” of states (200 nautical miles from shore) and, by virtue of that, a regulatory framework regarding protection and use. Over the years, environmental concerns including climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution became paramount. Then came those areas of exploration, exploitation and plunder: marine genetic resources and deep-sea mining.
The High Seas Treaty, in its agreed form reached by delegates of the Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity and Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, retains the object of protecting 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030. The goal is in line with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) which was adopted at the conclusion of Biodiversity COP15 in December last year. This, it is at least hoped, will partially address what has been laboriously described as a “biodiversity governance gap”, especially as applicable to the high seas. (To date, only 1.2% of the waters in the high seas is the subject of protection.)
The Treaty promises to limit the extent of a number of rapacious activities: fishing, busy shipping lane routes and exploration activities that include that perennially contentious practice of deep-sea mining. As the Jamaica-based International Seabed Authority explained to the BBC, “any future activity in the deep seabed will be subject to strict environmental regulations and oversight to ensure that they are carried out sustainably and responsibly.”
Laura Meller of Greenpeace Nordic glowed with optimism at the outcome. “We praise countries for seeking compromises, putting aside differences and delivering a Treaty that will let us protect the oceans, build our resilience to climate change and safeguard the lives and livelihoods of billions of people.” There were also cheery statements from the UN Secretary General António Guterres about the triumph of multilateralism, and the confident assertion from the Singaporean Conference president Ambassador Rena Lee, that the ship had “reached the shore.”
The text, however, leaves lingering tensions to simmer. The language, by its insistence on the high seas, suggests the principle of “Freedom of the High Seas” having more truck than the “Common Heritage of Humankind”. (The ghost of Grotius lingers.) How the larger powers seek to negotiate this in the context of gains and profits arising out of marine genetic resources, including any mechanism of sharing, will be telling.
The text also lacks a clear definition of fish, fishing and fishing-related activities, very much the outcome of intense lobbying by fishing interests. Given the treaty’s link to other instruments, such as the Agreement on Port State Measures, which defines fish as “all species of living marine resources, whether processed or not”, the risk of excluding living marine resources from the regulatory mechanism is genuine enough.
Then comes the issue of ratification and implementation. Signatures may be penned, and commitments made, but nation states can be famously lethargic in implementing what they promise and stubborn on points of interpretation. Lethargy and disputatiousness will do little to stem the threat to marine species, complex systems of aquatic ecology, and disappearing island states.
The post The Ghost of Hugo Grotius: The UN High Seas Treaty first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Philipsburg, Montana — On a recent day in this 19th-century mining town turned tourist hot spot, students made their way into the Granite High School lobby and past a new filtered water bottle fill station. Water samples taken from the drinking fountain the station replaced had a lead concentration of 10 parts per billion — twice Montana’s legal limit for schools of 5 parts per billion for the…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
(Image: Mississippi Rapid Response Coalition)
This week on CounterSpin: Media are certainly following the story of the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio—giving us a chance to see how floods of reporters can get out there and print a lot of words about a thing…and still not ask the deepest questions and demand the meaningful answers that might move us past outrage and sorrow to actual change. Are there not forces meant to protect people from this sort of harm? Is it awkward for reporters to interrogate the powerful on these questions? Yes! But if they aren’t doing it, why do they have a constitutional amendment dedicated to protecting their right to do it?
There’s a test underway right now in Jackson, Mississippi, where residents who have been harmed many times over are now being told that the appropriate response is to take away their voice. Here’s where a free press would speak up loudly, doggedly—and transparently, about what’s going on.
Makani Themba is a Jackson resident and volunteer with the Mississippi Rapid Response Coalition. She’s also chief strategist at Higher Ground Change Strategies. She’ll bring us up to speed on Jackson.
Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at recent press coverage of Social Security.
The post Makani Themba on Jackson Crisis appeared first on FAIR.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
Thousands of people in East Palestine, Ohio have been assured by the state Environmental Protection Agency and Republican Gov. Mike DeWine that the town’s municipal water has not been contaminated by the train derailment that took place in the town earlier this month, but the only publicly available data comes from testing that was funded by the company behind the crash.
As HuffPost reported late Friday, the Dallas-based consulting firm AECOM contracted with Norfolk Southern, which operated the 150-car train that was carrying the toxic chemical vinyl chloride, to sample water from five wells and from treated municipal water.
DeWine announced on Wednesday that those tests “showed no evidence of contamination,” but as one aquatic ecologist told HuffPost, the lab report indicates several testing errors that violated federal standards and should have disqualified the results.
“Their results that claim there were no contaminants is not a reliable finding,” Sam Bickley of the advocacy coalition Virginia Scientist-Community Interface, told the outlet. “I find this extremely concerning because these results would NOT be used in most scientific applications because the samples were not preserved properly, and this is the same data they are now relying on to say that the drinking water is not contaminated.”
The testing was done on February 10, seven days after the train derailed and authorities began a controlled release of the vinyl chloride, a carcinogen, to avoid an explosion. The burning of vinyl chloride can send hydrogen chloride and phosgene into the environment. The former chemical has been known to cause throat, eye, and skin irritation and the latter can cause vomiting and difficulty breathing.
An environmental testing lab analyzed the samples on February 13 and 15, according to HuffPost, and scientists who examined that analysis found it to be flawed. As the outlet reported:
Five of the six collected samples had pH, or acidity, levels that exceeded the 2 pH limit allowed under the EPA method listed in the analysis for detecting volatile organic compounds, rendering them improperly preserved. One sample also “contained a large air bubble in its vial, while the EPA method requires that sample bottles should not have any trapped air bubbles when sealed,” the report states. David Erickson, a hydrogeologist and the founder of Water & Environmental Technologies, an environmental consulting firm in Montana, called the sampling “sloppy” and “amateur.”
The Biden administration said in a press call Friday that Norfolk Southern has not been solely behind the testing that’s been conducted so far, with a spokesperson telling reporters, “It’s been with the Columbiana County Health Department, collecting samples along with Norfolk Southern and sending those as split samples to two different labs for verification.”
The state EPA, however, did not receive the health department’s results until after DeWine declared the water safe based on AECOM’s flawed testing.
The lab report shows low levels of the chemical dibutyl phthalate, which is not linked to cancer in humans but can cause headaches, nausea, dizziness, irritation of the eyes and throat, and seizures.
Some of the residents who were told days after the derailment that they could safely return to East Palestine have reported symptoms including headaches, nausea, dizziness, and shortness of breath.
Reuters reported Friday that many East Palestine do not trust state and local authorities, and have been purchasing large quantities of bottled water as they determine whether it’s safe to stay in the town.
\u201c’The people in town are afraid’: Deb Blair, a cashier in East Palestine, Ohio, says bottled water has been flying off the shelves after a train derailed and spilled toxic chemicals, causing concern about water safety https://t.co/bvTi7f2mG3\u201d— Reuters (@Reuters) 1676700600
“We’re not getting any truth,” said Ted Murphy, who is now planning to leave the town out of safety concerns just seven months after moving to his current home. “They’re not going to own up to what’s going [into the water] until they are forced to.”
The U.S. EPA has not conducted any sampling of the municipal water. On Thursday, Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro ordered independent testing of water in local communities. East Palestine is just over the Ohio-Pennsylvania border.
The state EPA told HuffPost that water testing is ongoing.
On Friday, U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) announced the panel would launch an investigation into the handling of hazardous materials. Railroad workers have been raising alarm in recent years about their employers’ loosening of safety standards in the interest of maximizing profits, and say the reduced safety measures were to blame for the crash.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Residents of East Palestine, Ohio are voicing alarm and mistrust of officials after a 150-car train carrying hazardous materials — including vinyl chloride — crashed in their small town, prompting emergency evacuations and a “controlled release” of chemicals into the air to prevent a catastrophic explosion. Norfolk Southern, the company that owns the derailed train, has insisted that public health…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s newly released plan for regulating wastewater pollution, including discharges of toxic “forever chemicals,” is far too muted and sluggish, a progressive advocacy group warned Friday.
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) detailed how the EPA’s long-awaited Effluent Guidelines Program Plan 15 postpones sorely needed action to rein in widespread contamination from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). PFAS are a class of hazardous synthetic compounds widely called forever chemicals because they persist in people’s bodies and the environment for years on end.
“We are deeply concerned that the EPA is punting on restrictions for PFAS polluting industries like electronics manufacturers, leather tanners, paint formulators, and plastics molders,” said Melanie Benesh, EWG’s vice president of government affairs. “We are also alarmed that the EPA’s proposed restrictions on some of the most serious PFAS polluters—chemical manufacturers and metal finishers—are also getting delayed, with no timeline for when those limits will be final, if ever.”
According to EWG, the EPA’s new plan “falls short” of its pledge, made in the agency’s 2021 PFAS Strategic Roadmap, to “get upstream” of the forever chemicals problem.
As the watchdog summarized:
The EPA confirmed that by spring 2024—nine months later than previously scheduled—it will release a draft regulation for manufacturers of PFAS or those that create mixtures of PFAS. The agency will do the same for metal finishers and electroplaters by the end of 2024, a delay of six months. The EPA did not announce when final rules will be available for these industries.
The agency will also begin regulating PFAS releases from landfills but did not provide a timeline for a final rule.
For all other industrial categories the EPA considered for PFAS wastewater limitation guidelines, the new plan includes more studies and monitoring, likely delaying restrictions on these sources indefinitely.
“Polluters have gotten a free pass for far too long to contaminate thousands of communities. Now they need aggressive action from the EPA to stop PFAS at the source,” Benesh said. “But the EPA’s plan lacks the urgency those communities rightfully expect.”
“Although it’s a good thing the EPA is committing to address PFAS discharges from landfills—a source of pollution that disproportionately affects vulnerable communities—it’s also frustratingly unclear from EPA’s plan when, if ever, those limits will materialize,” said Benesh.
“Given the glacial pace of change in the EPA’s plan,” she added, “states should not wait for the EPA to act on PFAS.”
“Polluters have gotten a free pass for far too long to contaminate thousands of communities. Now they need aggressive action from the EPA to stop PFAS at the source.”
Scientists have linked long-term PFAS exposure to numerous adverse health outcomes, including cancer, reproductive and developmental harms, immune system damage, and other negative effects.
A peer-reviewed 2020 study estimated that more than 200 million people in the U.S. could have unsafe levels of PFAS in their drinking water. The deadly substances—used in dozens of everyday household products, including ostensibly “green” and “nontoxic” children’s items, as well as firefighting foam—have been detected in the blood of 97% of Americans and in 100% of breast milk samples. Such findings stem from independent analyses because the EPA relies on inadequate testing methods.
Researchers have identified more than 57,000 sites across the U.S. contaminated by PFAS. Solid waste landfills, wastewater treatment plants, electroplaters and metal finishers, petroleum refiners, current or former military facilities, and airports are the most common sources of forever chemical pollution. Industrial discharges of PFAS are a key reason why 83% of U.S. waterways contain forever chemicals, tainting fish nationwide.
Some congressional Democrats are “trying to force the EPA to address PFAS more quickly,” EWG noted.
The Clean Water Standards for PFAS Act, introduced in 2022 by Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), would require the EPA to establish PFAS wastewater limitation guidelines and water standards for PFAS in nine distinct industry categories by the end of 2026.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, signed by President Biden last November, is pouring billions of dollars into an upgrade of the country’s aging water infrastructure. But a new study has found that white communities have been favored in distribution of the funds, something that’s controlled by individual states. The majority of the $55 billion allocated to water infrastructure will be distributed…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
More than 300 environmental and Indigenous rights groups said Wednesday that the Biden administration must take a number of concrete actions to protect the nation’s public lands and waters from fossil fuel industry exploitation and bring U.S. policy into line with climate science—and the president’s own campaign pledges.
In a letter to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, the climate coalition noted that President Joe Biden “made a bold promise to ban new oil and gas leasing on public lands and waters, and within days of taking office issued his Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad.”
“However, since then, the Biden administration and Interior’s leadership has fallen short Interior issued new permits to drill at a rate faster than the Trump administration during Biden’s first year in office,” the letter continues. “The Bureau of Land Management and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management pushed forward with new oil and gas lease sales, including a sale in the Gulf of Mexico that was vacated by a federal court for a faulty environmental review. And Interior’s final report on the leasing program failed to take into account climate impacts from extraction on public lands and waters.”
The groups also pointed to the Biden administration’s recent decision to go ahead with a major oil and gas lease sale off Alaska’s coast, ignoring warnings that the auction would imperil marine life, pollute coastal communities, and contribute to the nation’s rising carbon emissions.
“The climate science is clear: Several analyses show that climate pollution from the world’s already-producing fossil fuel fields, if fully developed, will overshoot the targets in the Paris Climate Agreement and push warming past 1.5 degrees Celsius,” the letter states. “Avoiding such warming requires ending new investment in fossil fuel projects and phasing out production to keep as much as 40% of already-developed fields in the ground.”
In a press release, the coalition outlines nine steps the Biden administration can and must take to manage “public lands and waters in a manner consistent with climate science”:
“Indigenous and frontline communities continue to bear the brunt of the climate crisis, and we are calling for the administration to end fossil fuel expansion and implement a just transition,” Lake continued. “There is simply no time to lose and our public lands need to be a part of the solution.”
Recent research estimates that fossil fuel extraction on public lands and waters has accounted for nearly a quarter of all U.S. greenhouse gas pollution since 2005, making the end of such development critical to efforts to bring the country’s emissions into line with its domestic and international commitments.
“More drilling and more fracking is just a recipe for more climate disaster,” Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director for WildEarth Guardians, said in a statement Wednesday. “For our future, President Biden needs to get real, start keeping oil and gas in the ground, and truly drive meaningful action to save our climate.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Scientists are warning Utah officials that the Great Salt Lake is shrinking far faster than experts previously believed, and calling for a major reduction in water consumption across the American West in order to prevent the lake from disappearing in the next five years.
Researchers at Brigham Young University (BYU) led more than 30 scientists from 11 universities and advocacy groups in a report released this week showing that the lake is currently at 37% of its former volume, with its rapid retreat driven by the historic drought that’s continuing across the West.
Amid the climate crisis-fueled megadrought, the continued normal consumption of water in Utah and its neighboring states has led the Great Salt Lake to lose 40 billion gallons of water per year since 2020, reducing its surface level to 10 feet below what is considered the minimum safe level.
“Goodbye, Great Salt Lake,” tweeted the Environmental Defense Fund on Friday.
\u201cGoodbye, Great Salt Lake\ud83d\udc4b Megadrought and mismanagement have cost the lake 73% of its water. Now experts are warning it could dry up in the next 5 years. And \u201cIts disappearance could cause immense damage to Utah\u2019s public health, environment, and economy\u201d\nhttps://t.co/oecZ0qQ8C0\u201d— EDF (@EDF) 1673037904
Scientists previously have warned that increased average temperatures in Utah—where it is now about 4°F warmer than it was in the early 1900s—are to blame for a 9% reduction in the amount of water flowing into the lake from streams.
The authors of the BYU study are calling on Utah officials to authorize water releases from the state’s reservoirs and cut water consumption by at least a third and as much as half to allow 2.5 million acre feet of water to reach the lake and prevent the collapse of its ecosystem as well as human exposure to dangerous sediments.
“This is a crisis,” BYU ecologist Ben Abbott, a lead author of the report, told The Washington Post. “The ecosystem is on life support, [and] we need to have this emergency intervention to make sure it doesn’t disappear.”
The shrinking of the Great Salt Lake has already begun creating a new ecosystem that is toxic for the shrimp and flies that make it their habitat, due to the lack of freshwater flowing in. That has endangered millions of birds that stop at the lake as they migrate each year.
The loss of the lake may also already be exposing about 2.5 million people to sediments containing mercury, arsenic, and other toxins.
“Nanoparticles of dust have potential to cause just as much harm if they come from dry lake bed as from a tailpipe or a smokestack,” Brian Moench, president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, told the Post. Last month, Moench’s group applauded as Republican Gov. Spencer Cox’s administration, under pressure from residents, walked back its position supporting a plan to allow a magnesium company to pump water from the Great Salt Lake.
Abbott called the rapid shrinking of the lake “honestly jaw-dropping.”
“The lake’s ecosystem is not only on the edge of collapse. It is collapsing,” Abbott told CNN. “The lake is mostly lakebed right now.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Clean water advocates on Friday applauded the Biden administration for “resoundingly” rejecting the gutted regulatory framework left by former President Donald Trump as the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule restoring many water protections.
Under the new regulations, the EPA will define “waters of the United States” that are protected under the Clean Water Act as “traditional navigable waters, the territorial seas, interstate waters, as well as upstream water resources that significantly affect those waters.”
“Small streams help provide drinking water to millions of Americans. Wetlands filter out pollutants, provide vital wildlife habitat, and protect our communities from flooding in a climate-changed world.”
The rule does not go as far as former President Barack Obama’s administration went in protecting bodies of water including ephemeral streams and ponds, but they will restore protections for millions of marshes and other waterways that were stripped of safeguards by the Trump administration.
The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), which warned in 2020 that former President Donald Trump’s rule would put “drinking water for millions of Americans at risk of contamination from unregulated pollution,” called the restored regulations “a major step forward.”
\u201cThe lakes, streams, and wetlands this rule protects ensure the health of our ecosystems and communities.\u201d— SELC (@SELC) 1672421839
“As a result of our efforts, Lake Keowee in South Carolina, which provides drinking water for 400,000 people, will remain a pristine body of water,” said Kelly Moser, a senior attorney at SELC. “More than 200 wetland acres adjacent to the Savannah River National Wildlife Refuge in South Carolina will again have protections against development. And that’s just to name a couple of the many Southern waterways that will be cleaner thanks to the restored legal protections.”
The rule was announced two days before the new year in which the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, a case involving a couple in Idaho who sued the EPA after the agency ordered them to stop a construction project because the property where they were building included a federally protected wetland. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case over the summer.
Kevin S. Minoli, a former EPA counsel, told The New York Times that the Biden administration could have “more room to interpret” the court’s expected decision now that it has issued its own rule regarding which waters must be protected by the federal government.
“If the Supreme Court goes first, then the agency can’t finalize a rule that goes beyond it,” Minoli told the Times.
The impending decision ensured that the EPA “could not deliver fully” on the “promise” of the Clean Water Act, said John Rumpler, senior clean water campaigns director for Environment America Research and Policy Center, as “an extreme challenge to the Clean Water Act at the Supreme Court hangs like a sword of Damocles over the agency’s head.”
“The EPA’s new rule makes progress by restoring federal protections to at least some waterways,” he said. “It officially cleans up the Trump administration’s Dirty Water Rule, which wiped out federal protections for thousands of waterways and nearly half of all wetlands across the country.”
“But securing the promise of the Clean Water Act requires us to protect all our streams and remaining wetlands from polluters,” Rumpler added. “Small streams help provide drinking water to millions of Americans. Wetlands filter out pollutants, provide vital wildlife habitat, and protect our communities from flooding in a climate-changed world.”
“We will not rest,” said Rumpler, “until we counter that looming threat and all of America’s waterways get the protection they deserve.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Inflation dominated news headlines and American psyches in 2022. Overall, consumer prices jumped an average 7.1 percent this year, with the cost of just about everything going up, from cars to coffee and gas to groceries. The trend triggered a bitter midterm election campaign, prompted a series of aggressive interest-rate hikes from the Federal Reserve, and fears about an impending recession.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Environmental justice advocates on Friday condemned a move by a district judge in Michigan to drop two misdemeanor charges against former Republican Gov. Rick Snyder in connection with the 2014 Flint water crisis that killed dozens of residents of the predominantly Black city and poisoned thousands more. The Detroit Free Press reports Genesee County Judge F. Kay Behm signed an order remanding…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
A fossil fuel company was convicted of criminal charges in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, more than a decade after an early fracking operation poisoned drinking water for residents of the small town of Dimock and sparked one of the first major controversies to arise from the oil and gas boom. After years of legal wrangling, the company formerly known as Cabot Oil & Gas agreed to plead no contest to 15…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This post was originally published on Human Rights at Home Blog.
For years, Americans have been served an image of an idyllic family farmer who is responsible for the food that makes its way to our homes. Unfortunately, for the majority of the food we eat, that image is not based in reality. The truth is that food production, especially industrial animal agriculture, is causing an ecological crisis in our waterways that further perpetuates the legacy of environmental racism. And it needs to stop.
The overwhelming majority of today’s U.S. food systems are dominated by a handful of international corporations. These profit-driven enterprises often employ industrialized methods, such as concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, where animals are “produced” in incredibly cramped and unsafe facilities.
CAFOs are a formidable threat to the health of our nation’s waterways, representing one of the largest unaddressed sources of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in the United States. Their uncontrolled — and mostly unregulated — discharges into waterways lead to harmful algal blooms, which in turn impair drinking water supplies, fisheries and recreational waters across the country. Look no further than Lake Erie, the Chesapeake Bay, the Mississippi River Basin, North Carolina’s coastal estuaries, and many other inland and coastal waters that are already gravely affected. Aside from the damages done to safe drinking water and human health, it’s also really expensive. Harmful algal blooms alone can negatively impact economies by as much as $4 billion a year.
Just one of these animal factories can produce as much animal waste as a large city with millions of people. According to a 2013 study, it adds up to 1.1 billion tons of animal waste every year. At many of these facilities, the animal waste is stored in unlined lagoons that inevitably pollute groundwater. In many cases, the excess waste is applied to agricultural fields far beyond what is needed to grow food, resulting in pollution of nearby surface waters and groundwater. Some facilities even go so far as to haphazardly spray the excess waste onto fields, creating a hellish experience for the neighboring communities.
Picture homes, schools and parks covered in airborne liquified animal waste. Imagine windows shut tight in the middle of the summer because of the overwhelming odors. Consider the countless lives burdened by respiratory diseases. Think of all the rivers and streams poisoned with pathogens.
It is worth noting that CAFOs are not found everywhere. Instead, they are predominantly located in rural areas, often in communities of color. They are purposefully located here because these frontline communities often lack the political clout to stop them. The CAFOs are constructed quickly, with minimal community input and, once operational, are ostensibly shielded from any kind of transparency, oversight or consequences. For example, in North Carolina, General Statute 106-24.1 shields the state’s agriculture industry by making any information collected or published by the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services classified from the public. But it’s not just North Carolina. There are “ag-gag” laws on the books in several states.
The CAFO crisis is funded by huge corporations, such as Smithfield Foods, and abetted by politicians who choose to look the other way. Like so many of the catastrophes affecting frontline communities and waterways, it’s a nightmare of our government’s own making, which means we also have the power to correct it. We always have a choice, and it’s possible to make the changes we need.
The most effective way to legislatively confront the CAFO crisis would be for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to use the Clean Water Act to prevent uncontrolled discharges of untreated animal waste into our nation’s water by requiring these facilities to obtain permits that contain real limits. The Clean Water Act has had so many successes during its 50 years, just imagine what could happen if we fully implemented and enforced it. Unfortunately, the EPA has thus far failed to respond to pressure, so environmental groups are suing in order to force the regulator to take action on clean water rules governing factory farms.
We can also urge our members of Congress to go further and pass real legislation, such as the Farm System Reform Act, which would help rein in the monopolistic practices of the agriculture industry, invest billions in a more resilient food system, and finally start transitioning us away from CAFOs to more regenerative practices by truly independent farmers and ranchers.
Finally, we can and should encourage the industry to change their ways by pulling our purse strings. As the saying goes, money talks, and these companies must be forced to listen. We don’t always have to purchase food from corporations that are contributing to this CAFO crisis. For those who are able to pay a little bit more at the grocery store, just think of all you can save.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Oct. 17, 2022. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Nigerian emergency officials said Sunday that catastrophic flooding in the West African country has killed more than 600 people and displaced at least 1.3 million in recent weeks as a heavier-than-usual rain season—made more intense by the climate crisis—continues to pummel the impoverished nation.
Sadiya Umar Farouq, Nigeria’s minister of humanitarian affairs, disaster management, and social development, said in a statement that more than 2.5 million people in the country have been impacted by the historic flooding, which has destroyed 82,000 homes and damaged over 100,000 acres of farmland, endangering food supplies.
Disaster officials say the death toll has risen sharply since August amid rapidly intensifying floods, which have been deemed the worst the nation has seen in decades.
Umar Farouq stressed Sunday that “we are not completely out of the woods,” citing warnings from Nigerian meteorological that a number of states “are still at risk of experiencing floods” through the end of November.
“We are calling on the respective state governments, local government councils, and communities to prepare for more flooding by evacuating people living on flood plains to high grounds, provide tents and relief materials, fresh water, as well as medical supplies for a possible outbreak of water-borne diseases,” Umar Farouq said.
The country’s annual rain season began in June, but disaster officials say the death toll has risen sharply since August amid rapidly intensifying floods, which have been deemed the worst the nation has seen in decades. As Reuters reported, the destruction from the flooding accelerated following “water releases from the Lagdo dam in neighboring Cameroon.”
“The heavy rains and resultant flooding currently being experienced in Nigeria are evidence of the extreme climate impacts primarily driven by fossil fuels, making our homes uninhabitable, endangering lives, health, and livelihoods,” Michael Terungwa of the Coal Free Nigeria campaign said in a statement Monday.
“This is a signal that it is time for the world to move away from fossil fuels, as rapid and deep emission cuts are needed to avoid catastrophic climate impacts,” Terungwa continued. “As our country plans to implement an energy transition plan, we urge the government to prioritize clean renewable energy and not false solutions such as fossil gas that will lead us down a perilous path.”
Landry Ninteretse, regional director of 350Africa.org, noted that the Nigerian government’s updated death toll and damage estimates were released less than a month before the COP27 climate talks in Egypt.
Ninteretse said that in light of the disastrous flooding, COP27 “must define a concrete operationalization plan to implement the Global Goal on Adaptation adopted last year in order to meaningfully support countries like Nigeria in their efforts to strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability to climate impacts.”
“We expect that developed nations will scale up funding for mitigation and adaptation as well as prioritize compensation for climate-induced loss and damage suffered by the nations most affected by the climate crisis,” Ninteretse added.
“We expect that developed nations will scale up funding for mitigation and adaptation as well as prioritize compensation for climate-induced loss and damage suffered by the nations most affected by the climate crisis,” Ninteretse added.
As emergency relief efforts ramp up in Nigeria, Central Africa has also faced devastating flooding in recent months, with the World Food Program calling the “climate-related disaster” one of “the deadliest the region has seen in years.”
“In response, WFP is on the ground providing a three-month emergency assistance package targeting 427,000 flood-hit women, men, and children in critically affected countries including the Central African Republic, Chad, the Gambia, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, and Sierra Leone,” the UN organization said in a statement Monday.
East Africa, meanwhile, has been ravaged over the past few months by the opposite of heavy rainfall: prolonged, deadly drought, another form of extreme weather made worse by the climate emergency.
Last week, Oxfam International warned that “one person is likely to die of hunger every 36 seconds between now and the end of the year in drought-stricken East Africa as the worst-hit areas hurtle towards famine.”
“After four seasons of failed rains, people are losing their struggle to survive—their livestock has died, crops have failed, and food prices have been pushed ever higher by the war in Ukraine,” said Parvin Ngala, regional director of Oxfam Horn East and Central Africa. “The alarm has been sounding for months, but donors are yet to wake up to the terrible reality… Failure to act will turn a crisis into a full-scale catastrophe.”
“People are suffering because of changes to the climate that they did nothing to cause,” Ngala added. “Rich nations which have done most to contribute to the climate crisis have a moral responsibility to protect people from the damage they have caused.”
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
The adage that “crime is socially constructed” is often dismissed as college-dorm-room puffery, a statement that sounds provocative but is naively detached from “the reality” of crime and its impact on communities and the politicians who ostensibly serve them. The media, for its part, has a significant role to play here regarding both the social construction of crime and the manufacturing of consent around the notion that crime is not socially constructed. One recent example of how little our large media institutions covered a major story of mass violence—much less demanded “action” in response to it— is a useful object lesson in how this double standard works.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that lead levels in school drinking fountains should not exceed the threshold of 1 part per billion. “By this measure,” The Guardian reports, “71% of Chicago tests reviewed by the Guardian would not pass.”
One week ago, The Guardian published a blockbuster report, complete with new scientific analysis, showing just how widespread lead contamination is in the water system of the third-largest city in the US: Chicago. Building on years’ worth of reporting by Michael Hawthorne and Cecilia Reyes of The Chicago Tribune, Erin McCormick, Aliya Uteuova, and Taylor Moore of The Guardian carried out a new, independent analysis of Chicago’s drinking water and found that “One in 20 tap water tests performed for thousands of Chicago residents found lead, a neurotoxic metal, at or above US government limits… And one-third had more lead than is permitted in bottled water.” This means, according to the journalists, that “out of the 24,000 tests, approximately 1,000 homes had lead exceeding federal standards.” The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that lead levels in school drinking fountains should not exceed the threshold of 1 part per billion. “By this measure,” The Guardian reports, “71% of Chicago tests reviewed by the Guardian would not pass.”
The findings also confirm what community activists have been arguing for years: Lead toxins are far more common in poor communities and are disproportionately harming Black and Brown children. As the authors of The Guardian report note:
… nine of the top 10 zip codes with the largest percentages of high test results were neighborhoods with majorities of Black and Hispanic residents, and there were dozens of homes with shockingly high lead levels. One home, in the majority-Black neighborhood of South Chicago, had lead levels of 1,100 parts per billion (ppb) – 73 times the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) limit of 15ppb.
The stakes here couldn’t be higher. The negative effects of lead in water are manifest and well documented: At the levels uncovered in The Guardian report, lead in water can cause “premature birth, reduced birth weight, seizures, hearing loss, behavioral problems, brain damage, learning disabilities, and a lower IQ level in children.”
So was this report met with widespread outrage about the criminal assault on millions of Chicagoans? No. The report got one follow-up story on NPR and a couple local outlets but received no mention in any mainstream news: CNN, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News—none of these outlets mentioned the new report about Chicago’s clean water crisis. They ignored the story altogether.
It’s not just Chicago, and it’s not just Flint. Lead contamination is a widespread problem in dozens of cities that has been linked to increased disease, brain damage, and harmful mental effects. In other words: It’s a form of mass, routine violence leveled against the poor.
Chicago officials and Illinois state officials, to say nothing of the federal government, have known about this issue for years and have done next to nothing to fix the problem. As The Guardian reports, at the current rate the city is replacing the pipes that are poisoning its residents, Chicago is on pace to finish the task in over 1,000 years. As Heather Cherone of WTTW mentioned earlier this year, after a splashy promise by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to replace the 400,000 lead pipes two years ago, as of April 2022, only 74 have been replaced, or 0.0185%. (That number hasn’t improved much since the spring. As The Guardian report notes, “as of this month [September], only 180 of the city’s almost half-million lead lines have been replaced.”)
It’s not just Chicago, and it’s not just Flint. Lead contamination is a widespread problem in dozens of cities that has been linked to increased disease, brain damage, and harmful mental effects. In other words: It’s a form of mass, routine violence leveled against the poor. According to one 2019 study by The Global Alliance on Health and Pollution, the United States sees an estimated 196,930 premature pollution-related deaths annually, including 28,260 from lead-related poisoning. One 2018 Lancet study found that lead exposure may be linked to 412,000 premature US deaths yearly, 10 times greater than previous estimates. Can one honestly say they’ve seen a single story on this horrific fact in any of our local or nightly news broadcasts?
Compare this mode of violence and the media’s coverage of it (or lack thereof) to the breathless coverage a single shoplifting incident in San Francisco received last summer—an incident that was written about in over 300 separate articles in the month the video went viral. The theft of less than $1,000 worth of goods was mentioned on CNN (multiple times!), The New York Times, NBC Nightly News, and dozens of other mainstream outlets. A few hundred dollars’ worth of goods being stolen from Walgreens—and the broader Media Concern about a shoplifting “crime wave” since 2021—has captured the public imagination for months on end, and is currently playing a significant role for more than a few candidates running for political office. We get thousands of related “news” stories, committee hearings, roundtables, and frequent congressional mentions of the issue.
Chicago officials and Illinois state officials, to say nothing of the federal government, have known about this issue for years and have done next to nothing to fix the problem. As The Guardian reports, at the current rate the city is replacing the pipes that are poisoning its residents, Chicago is on pace to finish the task in over 1,000 years.
On the other side, however, as mentioned above, there’s only been a handful of scattered reports on the poisoning of millions of Chicagoans, even though the problem has been well known to community activists, environmental activists, and residents for years. While similar instances of mass poisoning and/or governmental abandonment of people in Flint, Michigan, or Jackson, Mississippi, managed to capture national headlines—albeit briefly, and only as a result of relentless online and offline social activism and the circulation of gut-wrenching images of bottles of water needing to be shipped in for years on end—those instances are the exception. Moreover, these crimes against poor and predominantly non-white populations tend to get framed merely as an unfortunate byproduct of living in poverty—an accepted injustice with no author and no party from whom to demand accountability. In the sanctioned arena of public discourse, it would seem, the mass lead poisoning of Chicago’s poor is simply seen as a Law of Nature we cannot do anything about. And then, eventually, media focus on this violence fades from our TVs, newspapers, and websites.
This is how crime is socially constructed. Despite the fact that most wealthy neighborhoods managed to swap out their lead pipes decades ago, poor neighborhoods are deliberately underserved and neglected, and the incalculable injury and death that invariably results is simply factored into the cost of maintaining the status quo. The brain damage, kidney problems, and death leveled at poor Americans who play Russian roulette every time they open their faucet is not given priority, nor is it treated as a horrible crime our leaders need to urgently address or plan for. Such a state of affairs means that Chicago Mayor Lightfoot could just ignore media inquiries about the new report’s findings and quickly pivot to hosting business forums—and the world keeps turning. Everyone forgets and moves on. Because our media––and thus, the public—don’t have the tools to understand that preventable mass injury, death, and environmental harm is not a Fact of Life, something we cannot do anything about. It is a political choice, and it’s one our leaders make every day because those it’s slowly killing have little to no political voice.
Imagine, if you will, that the Chicago City Council passed a law stipulating there could be no new casinos or sportsbooks in Chicago until all the lead pipes were replaced. It would get done in 18 months. The massive developer and gambling lobbies would personally start digging the holes. There is, as of now, no lobby for the poor, no political incentive to frame lead poisoning as a crime, and no media grammar to frame it in this way. So there’s just nightly stories on purse snatchings and shootings—which are, of course, news—but, in and of themselves, provide a wildly incomplete portrait of how violence is visited upon people.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
The water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, is the latest in an arc of environmental catastrophes affecting predominantly Black communities from Flint, Michigan, to New Orleans. Often, these disasters are preceded by decades if not centuries of segregation and government neglect. Once a water crisis begins, it rapidly spirals into a comprehensive disaster with ripple effects on a community’s economy, education, and more. As of Sept. 15, Gov. Tate Reeves of Mississippi has declared Jackson’s water safe to drink, but a long battle to properly resource the city’s recovery remains ahead. Vangela Wade of Mississippi Center for Justice joins The Marc Steiner Show to discuss the struggle on the ground, and Jackson’s place in a larger pattern of environmental catastrophes linked to systemic racism.
Vangela Wade is the president and CEO of Mississippi Center for Justice, a public interest law firm advancing racial and economic justice through an approach that combines legal services with policy advocacy, community education and media outreach.
Studio/Post-Production: Dwayne Gladden
Marc Steiner: Hello, I’m Marc Steiner. Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. Good to have you all with us. I never really thought about the arc of racism and water until covering this disaster in Jackson, Mississippi. This devastating arc between the water infrastructure disaster in Jackson, Mississippi, water poisoning in Flint, Michigan, and the avoidable disaster in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and how deeply connected they are. The waters that sickened, drowned, and left communities devastated, but let loose by the racist neglect that permeates political power in this country.
So once again, we return to Jackson, Mississippi. We’re joined by Vangela M. Wade, who’s president and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm committed to advancing racial and economic justice, a group that’s taking on the struggle legally to the powers that be, which are in many ways living legacy of the embodiment of segregation that preceded it, and working with communities to fight racism and for an equitable society. In one of the most, I hate to say, backwards states in the country, Mississippi. And it’s interesting that this is about the same time that Katrina exploded, that we saw what happened in Jackson. And Vangela M. Wade, welcome. Good to have you with us.
Vangela Wade: Thank you, Marc. And I will say, certainly Mississippi has its many…
Marc Steiner: It does.
Vangela Wade: …Shortcomings. We’re at the bottom of the worst list of social indicators and at the top of the worst list of social indicators, such as health education, economics, criminal justice. But there are people here who are fighting the fight, people here who have made strides and significant changes. So we are fighting to move past some of the stigma that Mississippi has perpetuated for years. So we have some backwards leadership in certain areas, but we certainly have very progressive… We have communities that are very progressive, and we have people who are leading organizations similar to Mississippi Center for Justice that are just as progressive and who are making sustainable change in the city.
Marc Steiner: Very well said. And I agree. I suppose sometimes, it gets, as it must to you and many others, it just gets to you sometimes about how crazy it is, I mean, when you have this governor who’s saying, well, it’s Jackson’s fault. They didn’t put the money into this place. And then you have, as you wrote about, people who are taking the money that was meant to help people being stolen by the wealthy and squandered. I mean, those situations are just maddening. They’re insane.
Vangela Wade: You’re exactly right. What we try to do is try to keep our eye, we try to keep our eyes in the focus forward, because we do realize that, for instance, with regards to the resources that are allocated from state leadership, in many instances, when it comes to not only Jackson, but other majority Black municipalities, that those municipalities, those communities, aren’t always getting their equitable share of the resources. Particularly the resources that are even given, whether it’s through tenant funds, or whether it’s through the recent various relief funds. And so those are particular areas that we are going to continue to keep our eyes on in the event that we may need to determine if there’s some action that should be taken, as we did with Katrina.
We had to go to bat for Black people on the Mississippi Gulf Coast who were not given their equitable share or, heck, [crosstalk] share, following Katrina, to make repairs to their homes, as compared to those homes that were on the beach. They were owned by majority white citizens. The Black citizens were left out, not only left out of their homes by Katrina and that devastation, but also by the state government, until the Mississippi Center for Justice went in to fight that battle. So we are here for the people of this state, for our stakeholders. And when we see an injustice, we will do our best to make a change.
Marc Steiner: And it does seem… Just for a moment, as you were speaking, I was thinking about how, while this was going on, we were recording on our side here in Baltimore, Maryland. And just two weeks ago, we had the same scare on the West side of town, the majority Black community, where there was E. coli in the water. Or what’s happening in Newark, or Flint, or across the country. I think people need to be able to connect these dots and say… Understand what is really happening here, to the poorest and Blackest communities in America when it comes to our water infrastructure and poisoning of our children and families. It’s a very serious problem.
Vangela Wade: You’re exactly right. It’s a rippling effect. It’s not just an infrastructure issue. It becomes a healthcare issue. And ultimately it becomes an education issue. It’s an economic issue. So what may start out as the municipalities or the local communities not receiving their equitable share of resources from the state, it ends up impacting the citizens in a way that will take decades to overcome. And when you’re looking at situations such as the city of Jackson’s current water crisis that is not that current, it’s something that’s been ongoing for more than 50 years now. And it’s just come to, as we say in the South, it’s just come to a head at this point. And of course, all eyes are focused on Jackson. But as you mentioned, there was Flint, Baltimore. There are other areas that have similar infrastructure issues, similar issues where the citizens in those municipalities are being poisoned by water.
We’re certainly concerned about the amount of lead that’s in the water here in Jackson, but that could be said for small towns in the Mississippi Delta as well. Again, those areas being primarily African American. And so while we don’t want to say that everything is related to race and discrimination, sometimes it’s just there. It’s there, and it’s the obvious connection. But what we are looking at now is… I guess the immediate issue, of course, is the water crisis in Jackson. What we should all start to focus on is what will it take to correct this situation, or to make this situation better for the people, the people who are depending on not only the local leadership, but the state leadership to actually lead. And we are finding that that’s not happening.
So we also then have to start and we have to look at the long-term impact and long-term solutions. Quite frankly, we don’t have a lot of hope at this point in the same people doing the same thing and seemingly as though they’re expecting a different outcome. So with everybody, with all the media’s eyes and attention and the cameras and the microphones in Jackson at this point, we are hoping that the attention will be a lasting attention so that the people who are most responsible for leading will do just that and will bring some change to the citizens of Jackson.
Marc Steiner: I’m going to come back to the political issues that you face in Mississippi in this struggle here around water and more in this particular moment. But I’m just curious, at this moment of our taping, what I’ve read is that the water pressure is back on, but the water is still not fit to drink. Am I right?
Vangela Wade: That’s what I am understanding as well. And certainly we have received substantial outpouring of help all around the city from people coming near and far and bringing water. Certainly, that’s wonderful, and we’re so humbled by that. But we’ve got to look forward and know that, eventually – Well, hope that eventually the leadership will do what it takes to make the repairs, to bring the water quality to where it is something that’s not basically the same as a third-world country. We have to worry about our children and the water that they’re drinking and how that’s going to impact their health, as well as our elderly citizens who are impacted by this water crisis as well. So there is a rippling effect, and we are hoping that change will come very soon.
Marc Steiner: So I was thinking about what the governor, Governor Reeves said, he said he told city leaders that they needed to do a better job collecting their water bill payments before they start going and asking everyone else to pony up more money. And at the same time, it’s the same governor who vetoed what was a bi-partisan legislation that would’ve provided relief to poor residents, saying he doesn’t agree with the idea of it, calling it free money. So when you’re up against that kind of political mindset, that kind of human mindset, societal mindset, what do you do? How are you confronting that? How are you addressing that? How are you dealing with that? I mean, that’s got to be difficult, to say the least.
Vangela Wade: Yeah. You’re exactly right. It’s not something that’s new for us, that type of rhetoric. It’s unfortunate. And I think it’s more of a political approach to real problems, and it’s a way to deflect the state’s lack of oversight or lack of engagement in the capital city. So when comments such as those are made, you can’t do anything about what a person will say. But then what we are hoping is that people will exercise their right to vote, privilege to vote, and make a change at the ballot box, to change the people who are in charge of making the decisions about allocating resources and who receives those resources and how those resources are allocated.
That’s where we need to spend our time, where our focus is not worrying about the political rhetoric, but focusing on voting. And if people would go out to… If they would vote, regardless of who they’re voting for – I’ve recently been reminded that we must always be nonpartisan – But regardless of who they’re voting for, they need to exercise that vote, looking at the resources that are coming in and out of their communities and if they’re receiving their equitable share of those resources. Whether it’s the governor or whomever it may be, if they want to spend their time and focus on ridiculous statements and comments such as that, then so be it. But the people should be heard, and they should be heard at the ballots.
Marc Steiner: So a couple questions here. One, I’m curious more about the Mississippi Center for Justice. You seem like you’re like a number of legal agencies I’ve been associated with a bit in the past all rolled into one, in terms of the work that you do. Talk about what you are doing as an organization to address what’s happening at this moment.
Vangela Wade: Well, as you mentioned early on, the Mississippi Center for Justice is a nonprofit, public-interest law firm. We’re the only nonprofit public-interest law firm homegrown in the state. And our focus is not only on advocacy, but also direct services, impact litigation, as well as policy. And this particular, what we call a… I guess this is a quasi-man-made, natural disaster. Certainly the floods was the impetus to this current focus on the water crisis, but governments, the state, the city’s failure to collaborate, failure to allocate resources, was what I would say was the man-made disaster.
So at this point, we are doing what other organizations are doing. We’re focusing on immediate need, providing in coalition resources for the community. We are also looking at some mid-level or mid-term type of solutions. And also, without saying a lot or giving away strategy or plans, we are also looking at some of the long-term issues to determine if there’s additional actions that we need to take. So it’s all on the table.
Marc Steiner: All on the table. I was thinking about what [inaudible] was saying. Would take billions to fix the immediate problem, even more to fix the long-term issues. They’ve just passed this $1.2 trillion bill in Congress around infrastructure. The question is how that helps Jackson. I mean, if the money’s going through this state of Mississippi, there’s no telling what Jackson will get or not get, how little it might get. And why can’t Jackson get the money directly from the federal government? What kind of efforts are being made to control the funding coming in so you can actually put people to work, change the infrastructure and get that done? Because if you listen to the governor of that state, the money coming in, as we used to say, I bet you a dollar to a donut, that money is not going to Jackson. So tell me about that, what’s happening with that, and whatever role you’re playing in that?
Vangela Wade: Well, I will just say with regards to that, certainly we’re not around those tables. That’s way above my pay grade with regards to how the system of allocation from the federal government through the state and down to the city of Jackson. But what I will say is that to me, in my opinion, rolling the money, the funds out directly through the state and hoping that a state such as Mississippi, with the systemic issues and history of discrimination in play, seems a little ridiculous. And it’s similar to when you have Block money that comes through the federal government to states through basically Block Grants, which is what happened with the tenant funds. And then the state and the governor are able to decide how that money is to be distributed, and whether or not it actually gets to those that it was intended for is a different issue.
So at this point, again, we are focusing on the immediate assistance that we can provide, and then looking at the issues and the impact on the community to determine if there are other actions that we need to be focused on. Similar to what we focused on during Katrina, when we did realize that funds were not being distributed as they should, for the folks who needed it most, and eventually that resulted in litigation. So not saying that that is what we are specifically doing right now. I am saying that it is all on the table as it becomes appropriate.
Marc Steiner: But you are a legal organization. So if litigation’s necessary, you’re there.
Vangela Wade: We could be there.
Marc Steiner: I was thinking about what you just said as well. And if you could give people a sense of what it is like for the people in Jackson at this moment, just in terms of surviving around water and water issues. And we know that there’s this whole arc in America where communities of color are always in the most dangerous disastrous position when it comes to situations like this. So talk about what it is like day-to-day for you, for other people in Jackson at this moment?
Vangela Wade: Well, with regards to many people in Jackson who are experiencing this current and trying to live through this current crisis with not having water running through their faucets for cooking, or to drink a glass of water with medicine, or to take a bath or shower without worrying about dangerous bacteria or whatever else is in the water, it’s not easy, as you pointed out. It’s not easy, sometimes, being at the bottom of the barrel with regards to resources. So the citizens in Jackson are doing what I’ve seen them do best over the last 20 years that I’ve lived in this area. They’re fighting through. They’re fighting through the issues, they’re fighting through the challenges, because they’ve got to go to work, they’ve got to raise their children, they’ve got to take care of the elderly. We’ve got to educate. Life continues, notwithstanding the challenge of the current water crisis.
So I’d say that, and then I, really with realizing the fight that the people in Jackson are pushing through, I say that, and I am imploring those in leadership, from the governor, lieutenant governor, speaker, those in the legislature, be they Black or white, and the local, the mayor, the city council, whomever it is that these people who were voted in, who were given the responsibility to lead, I am asking that they do just that. That they lead and make those decisions in the best interest of the people, not in the best interest of a political party, and not in the best interest of continuing systemic discrimination or injustice to hold up an ideology.
The people in Jackson are pushing forward. They’re receiving all of the wonderful help with regards to the water and other resources that are allowing them to go through their daily lives. And we are hoping that the water system will be repaired over time, and the water will become drinkable, and they will be able to push at least that challenge behind them and move forward with their lives.
Marc Steiner: I mean, yeah, because for those of us who just turn on the faucet and drink the water, to think about what it would be like to have to boil your water, find water, get bottled water, take care of your children, make sure they don’t get sick. It’s like we’re creating the worst conditions you would imagine in a developing nation as opposed to being in the United States of America.
Vangela Wade: Exactly. And when you think about that, and you think about that in terms of, certainly, people who are elderly or people who are living with illnesses or disabilities, and they’re not able to get out and about to go stand in the long lines to get a case of water to take home to use for bathing, for eating, for drinking, that makes it even just more ridiculous that we are in this country in 2022, and this is the issue that is taking the headlines.
Marc Steiner: What would it take to get President Biden and the federal government to give the money directly to Jackson, Mississippi, to redevelop this infrastructure, put people to work and change… Because the infrastructure is crumbling across the entire nation. Lead pipes… It’s crumbling, and Jackson, I’ve talked to folks there, and they say literally the pipes are crumbling in people’s hands, literally crumbling. So what would it take to get the money directly into the hands of Jackson, Mississippi, to do the work themselves without having to go through the capital down the street?
Vangela Wade: Yeah, well, again, that one is above my pay grade, and I’m sure that the mayor of Jackson, and the city council, they’re probably wondering, trying to answer that same question. Why can’t the monies be sent directly to the place, to those who need it, those who are going to be responsible for implementing? That’s the system as it is. We just hope that once the money is sent through the state that there is an equitable distribution from the state through to the city to make these repairs. Now that there’s money coming in from not only… Certainly not from FEMA, but the federal government. Of course there was the infrastructure monies that were already being delivered, and we are hopeful that money will be used in a way that will address the city’s problem.
When we look at this issue, we need to make sure that we are seeing the people that are being impacted. It’s not a city, but it’s the community. It’s the community that’s suffering as a result of the failures, the failure from the state level, and possibly the failures at the city level, because this goes back years. The people who are harmed the most are those that have entrusted, regardless of whether the money’s coming from the federal straight to the city or through the state, the people who are being harmed the most are people who put their trust in the leader, the current leadership at all these various levels.
Marc Steiner: So I’m curious as we conclude, so in your center, you were in the middle of a lot of the work to make sure things were right in rehabilitating things after Katrina. So what is your role now? What are you doing in Jackson? What steps are you all taking to address and deal with this? Whether it’s on an organizing level in the community or legally in terms of fighting it in the courts?
Vangela Wade: Right. We are working in collaboration, in coalition with other social justice organizations and community organizations to help provide resources, and we are also working with groups to look at more intermediate and long-term solutions. So that’s where we are now. And these things, what I’ve seen over the last few weeks, this is what I call a… It’s evergreen. Things are changing on the ground, it’s changing within the community, the resources that are coming in are changing each day. But one thing is for sure: The water crisis is real, the water is undrinkable, and we’ve got to continue to keep the people in mind, to keep them as our focus, to look at what we need to do as a community, as social justice organizations, as governmental agencies, to rectify this situation for the citizens of Jackson. And so as this continues to unfold, Mississippi Center for Justice will continue to engage with the community, and we will continue to have discussions from within as to how we should address these issues moving forward.
Marc Steiner: Well, I really do appreciate you taking the time, and I also appreciate the work that you’re doing at the Mississippi Center for Justice and the fight you’re making for a more equitable society. And I will stay in touch because you’re in the midst of a real battle for people’s lives. Not just for a better society, for, actually, people’s lives. And so I want to thank you so much, Vangela Wade, for joining us today. It’s been a pleasure to talk with you, and good luck.
Vangela Wade: Thank you, Marc, for having me.
Marc Steiner: We’ll stay in touch.
Vangela Wade: Thank you.
Marc Steiner: And I hope all of you out there have enjoyed this conversation. And once again I want to thank you all for joining us. And please let me know what you’ve thought about what you heard today and what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com. I’ll get right back to you. And if you have an extra minute, stay there. Go to therealnews.com/support, become a monthly donor and become part of the future with us. So for Stephen Frank, Dwayne Gladden, and Kayla Rivara, and the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Jackson, Mississippi, remains gripped in an ongoing water crisis. The task of distributing water to local residents has been largely taken up by community organizations like Cooperation Jackson and Operation Good. Organizer, writer, and educator Kali Akuno joins The Marc Steiner Show to explain how the current crisis is a reflection of capitalism’s failures and decades of institutional racism. Though Jackson today is more than 80% Black, this is a recent demographic development created by white flight and capital flight from the city. The state’s prolonged neglect of Jackson’s infrastructure is a consequence of an entrenched far-right politics in Mississippi’s public institutions. And what’s happening currently in Jackson is a sign of things to come around the country. To fight back, Akuno emphasizes the need to build mass movements and grassroots networks capable of exercising real political power.
Kali Akuno is a co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, and an organizer with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM). Formerly, he served as the coordinator of special projects and external funding for the late Mayor Chokwe Lumumba in Jackson, Mississippi. Akuno is the author of “Let Your Motto be Resistance,” and co-author of “Operation Ghetto Storm” and “Every 36 Hours: Report on the Extrajudicial Killing of 120 Black People.”
Post-Production: Dwayne Gladden
The transcript of this podcast will be made available as soon as possible.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Sept. 13, 2022. It is shared here under a Creative Commons license.
Indigenous water defenders and their allies on Tuesday celebrated a Minnesota court ruling protecting a Line 3 protest camp from illegal government repression.
“This is a piece in the long game and we aren’t afraid.”
Tara Houska, Indigenous activist and Giniw Collective founder
Hubbard County District Judge Jana Austad issued a ruling shielding the Indigenous-led Giniw Collective’s Camp Namewag—where opponents organize resistance to Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands pipeline—from local law enforcement’s unlawful blockades and harassment.
The ruling follows months of litigation on behalf of Indigenous water protectors, whose legal team last year secured a temporary restraining order issued by Austad against Hubbard County, Sheriff Cory Aukes, and the local land commissioner for illegally blocking access to Camp Namewag.
“Today David beat Goliath in a legal victory for people protecting the climate from rapacious corporate destruction,” Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, director of the Center for Protest Law & Litigation at the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, said in a statement.
VICTORY! Court Rules MN Sheriff’s Blockade of #Line3 Water Protector Camp Was Illegal and Bars Ongoing Efforts to Obstruct Access @zhaabowekwe @GiniwCollective @WinonaLaduke @EarthRightsIntl https://t.co/nmNVHMkwwb pic.twitter.com/pL15xAGyRV
— Center for Protest Law & Litigation(@ProtestLaw) September 13, 2022
“The outrageous blockade and repression of an Indigenous-led water protector camp were fueled by massive sums of money flowing from the Enbridge corporation to the sheriff’s department as it acted against water protectors challenging Enbridge’s destruction of Native lands,” she added.
Indigenous activist and Giniw Collective founder Tara Houska, who is a plaintiff in the case, said that “15 months ago, I was woken up at 6:00 am and walked down my driveway to a grinning sheriff holding a notice to vacate my yearslong home.”
“That day turned into 50 squad cars on a dirt road and a riot line blocking my driveway,” she recalled. “Twelve people—guests from all over who came to protect the rivers and wild rice from Line 3 tar sands—were arrested and thrown into the dirt.”
Remember when Hubbard County blocked our camp’s driveway and started ticketing people while relentlessly surveilling and harassing us? The court ruled what they did was illegal.
— giniw collective (@GiniwCollective) September 13, 2022
Miigwech @ProtestLaw for the long haul#StopLine3 #FuckEnbridge #SurveillanceState pic.twitter.com/HIRVAV6GWo
Houska continued:
Today’s ruling is a testament to the lengths Hubbard County was willing to go to criminalize and harass Native women, land defenders, and anyone associated with us—spending unknown amounts of taxpayer dollars and countless hours trying to convince the court that the driveway to Namewag camp wasn’t a driveway. It’s also a testament to steadfast commitment to resisting oppression. This is a piece in the long game and we aren’t afraid. We haven’t forgotten the harms to us and the harms to the Earth. Onward.
Winona LaDuke, co-founder and executive director of Honor the Earth and a former Green Party vice presidential candidate, stated that “we are grateful to Judge Austad for recognizing how Hubbard County exceeded its authority and violated our rights.”
“Today’s ruling shows that Hubbard County cannot repress Native people for the benefit of Enbridge by circumventing the law,” she added. “This is also an important victory for all people of the North reinforcing that a repressive police force should not be able to stop you from accessing your land upon which you hunt or live.”
EarthRights general counsel Marco Simons asserted that “the court’s ruling is a major rebuke to police efforts to unlawfully target water protectors and to interfere with their activities protesting the Line 3 pipeline.”
“Blocking access to the Namewag camp exemplifies a pattern of unlawful and discriminatory police conduct incentivized by an Enbridge-funded account from which the police can seek reimbursement for Line 3-related activities,” he continued.
“Police forces should protect the public interest, not private companies,” Simons added. “Cases like this highlight the dangers of allowing the police to act as a private security arm for pipeline companies.”
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Jackson, Mississippi, remains gripped in an ongoing water crisis. The task of distributing water to local residents has been largely taken up by community organizations like Cooperation Jackson and Operation Good. Organizer, writer, and educator Kali Akuno joins The Marc Steiner Show to explain how the current crisis is a reflection of capitalism’s failures and decades of institutional racism. Though Jackson today is more than 80% Black, this is a recent demographic development created by white flight and capital flight from the city. The state’s prolonged neglect of Jackson’s infrastructure is a consequence of an entrenched far-right politics in Mississippi’s public institutions. And what’s happening currently in Jackson is a sign of things to come around the country. To fight back, Akuno emphasizes the need to build mass movements and grassroots networks capable of exercising real political power.
Kali Akuno is a co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, and an organizer with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM). Formerly, he served as the coordinator of special projects and external funding for the late Mayor Chokwe Lumumba in Jackson, Mississippi. Akuno is the author of “Let Your Motto be Resistance,” and co-author of “Operation Ghetto Storm” and “Every 36 Hours: Report on the Extrajudicial Killing of 120 Black People.”
Post-Production: Stephen Frank
The transcript of this podcast will be made available as soon as possible.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Residents of Jackson, Mississippi, are in the throes of a seemingly unending water crisis and a near collapse of the city’s public water system.
Jackson’s current crisis came to a head after the city experienced heavy rains in late August, increasing the raw water entering the OB Curtis Water Treatment plant, the city’s primary water treatment plant. This, in turn, slowed the treatment supply and caused a drop in water pressure, leaving over 150,000 residents without access to water. (When water pressure drops, there’s a high probability that untreated groundwater can enter the water system through damaged or cracked pipes, thus forcing residents to have to boil water to kill potentially harmful bacteria.)
The crisis that we have going on in Jackson—this has been happening since I was a little kid… Every year the water be messed up and the potholes be messed up. You all have all this money, what you all spending it on?
Derrell Johnson, Operation Good member
As of Monday, city officials said the OB Curtis Water Treatment plant had restored water pressure to 87 PSI. However, a boil-water notice remains in effect—a frequent occurrence in the city of Jackson, where boil-water notices can last for a few days, while others can last for weeks.
The problems plaguing the city of Jackson today are grave and systemic: old and leaky pipes, malfunctions at treatment plants, all connected to a shrinking tax base (and shrinking funds for public infrastructure) resulting from white flight, which began after schools were integrated in the 1970s, and economic disinvestment. The state’s Republican legislature has also failed to provide the majority-Democrat city with adequate funding for repairs. Without a complete overhaul of the water system, residents will be living in a perpetual water crisis.
Jackson, Mississippi, is a majority-Black city (82%) where residents have either been without water or have been under a boil-water advisory since July 30, after the Mississippi State Department of Health detected levels of turbidity or cloudiness in the water that violated state health regulations. Even before the pressure dropped at the OB Curtis Water Treatment Plant, Jackson’s system—and its citizenry—was already under distress. In February, 2020, a winter storm ravaged the city’s already-failing infrastructure and burst pipes bursts left many residents without water for a month.
Investigative sampling, which helps determine the quality of water, began on Tuesday. The city will take 120 water samples from across Jackson to determine if the boil-water notice can be lifted. It will take two consecutive days of clear samples before the state Department of Health lifts the boil-water notice.
This is, indeed, a crisis, and the lives of Jackson’s residents have been upended. Residents in South Jackson are still waiting in lines in the sweltering heat for bottled water they can use to drink, cook, and brush their teeth.
Residents in South Jackson, a majority-Black and working-class neighborhood, have been lining up at 2827 Oak Forest Drive, a tennis park where staff members of the violence prevention organization Operation Good have organized drives to donate water since the crisis started. They have also been dropping off supplies to elderly people in the community who don’t possess the resources to purchase bottled water. Both Operation Good on the South side, and Cooperation Jackson on the West side have been working overtime to meet the needs of their beleaguered neighbors.
Operation Good is a local community organization dedicated to lending a hand in anyway they can. they’ve already started collecting and distributing water cases to households in the area but they’ll need help to continue. to donate, their cash app is $operationgoodms
pic.twitter.com/hoIViPBsb4
— Maze
(@MaisieBrownJxn) August 30, 2022
On Labor Day, I visited Jackson with water contributions from my community in New Orleans to deliver to Operation Good. While loading cases of water, I spoke to Operation Good members and a resident from South Jackson about the ongoing neglect that led to this travesty today, and about the fact that, until it receives billions of dollars’ worth of infrastructure repairs and system upgrades, a majority-Black American capital city will be continually left without water.
I asked residents and volunteers, “If you had an opportunity to speak to Gov. Reeves about the water crisis, what would you say? And what can ordinary people do to help?” Here’s what they said.
The crisis that we have going on in Jackson—this has been happening since I was a little kid… Every year the water be messed up and the potholes be messed up. You all have all this money, what you all spending it on? This is Jackson. This is the capital of Mississippi. Why won’t you all take the time out and fix the city? We have people that want to travel, visit different states, and come to Mississippi. Why won’t you all just make the city look good? Man, people probably won’t come…
What would I say to our governor? He’s y’all governor, not my governor.
This water crisis should have been fixed. The situation with this water has been going on for years and years. You have been funded many a time by the federal government to fix the water situation. Instead of y’all fixing it, you want to patch the water situation and pocket the rest of the money—or whatever you want to do with it. You’re not taking care of the good citizens of Jackson.
That’s why I’ve been here working with Operation Good; we’ve been providing for our citizens. On the South, North, West, East—every side of Jackson—Operation Good are there helping communities. We do community cleanups, we pass out water, we have extravagant events to feed whole communities. Everything.
Our government—they don’t care about us, not the lower class. You have to be up there with them people in that rich class in order for them to take care of you.
Jason White, Operation Good member
Our government—they don’t care about us, not the lower class. You have to be up there with them people in that rich class in order for them to take care of you. Where do you see this water problem happening? In Jackson. Meanwhile, in Brandon—that’s one of the surrounding cities—now they saying they have water problems because their water system is connected to ours. But actually they been on the news saying their water system is not connected to ours. So why y’all trying to fund them? Why y’all sending water over to Brandon and these different areas when the people right here in Jackson need it? You tell me, Governor.
If I could speak with Governor Reeves in reference to the water crisis, I would actually tell him to come reside in one of the South Jackson locations, put his family in one of these neighborhoods, in one of these homes, let them have to live in this situation to see how it actually feels. It’s no fun, and you don’t really feel it until your family has to deal with it firsthand. We can get on TV and talk about the problem, we can get in front of the cameras and talk about what we’re going to do, but unless you’re out here living in it you don’t fully understand.
It’s frustrating for the citizens of Jackson—South Jackson, North Jackson, East Jackson, West Jackson—to have to do this. We have elderly people who can’t afford to buy water. You can’t boil water to take baths; it’s a high risk. I have a six-year-old grandson who received third-degree burns three years ago during a boil water alert. His mom was boiling water to try to bathe and cook, he bumped into her in the kitchen while she was transferring the boiled water from the stove to the sink, and he received burns. It’s not safe. Kids don’t understand what’s going on when they see their parents coming through with big pots of water that they’ve boiled just to wash a dish, or big pots of water just so they can take a bath adequately.
If I could speak with Governor Reeves in reference to the water crisis, I would actually tell him to come reside in one of the South Jackson locations, put his family in one of these neighborhoods, in one of these homes, let them have to live in this situation to see how it actually feels. It’s no fun, and you don’t really feel it until your family has to deal with it firsthand.
KK Finch, Operation Good member
When it comes to us out here passing out the water, I’m doing it because it’s the right thing to do. My community needs it. If I could give everybody what they need I promise I would, but I don’t have the finances. But just being able to see the looks and smiles on these people’s faces when you hand them these cases of water that they need—they’re very appreciative, and it makes me feel good as a person. It makes our organization feel good. It makes the youth in our organization feel good to give back to their community.
At one point in time, I was a problem in this community. I was a young kid. I was a hard-head little girl, running fast, but now I want to be part of the solution in the community. First step: trying to help with the water crisis. We help with the youth, we help with trying to clean up South Jackson. Whatever our community needs, Operation Good is trying to meet them there.
They say that you should go to the store and buy water. But majority of the time most of the stores are out of water, and the stores that do have water—they’ve jacked their prices up three times.
Patsy Marie Nard, South Jackson resident
You can’t cook ‘cause you don’t have any water. You can’t utilize the water ‘cause there’s toxins in it. They say that you should go to the store and buy water. But majority of the time most of the stores are out of water, and the stores that do have water—they’ve jacked their prices up three times. I mean, I’m on a set income. I get a social security check every month—that’s once a month. I can’t afford to buy water and pay bills. I didn’t expect for this to happen. I know God… He’s the head of everything, and everything happens for a reason. But Governor Reeves… they say they gave him everything they can give him, but he hasn’t got up and done anything.
If Governor Reeves could just get up and start serving us in Jackson, Mississippi… How would he feel if he didn’t have water? He can probably afford it, but a lot of people like myself cannot afford water. I mean, that’s something that you need in order to survive. I need water. I’m disabled and I have a whole lot of illnesses. I am so sick. I have to take a whole lot of medicines, I have to go see a doctor, I have to do everything. But if Governor Reeves, making all that money, could please just get up off his tail and try to put some of that money toward other people. A lot of people need that money. I’m not “out” no money because I don’t get none. And when I get it I don’t mind sharing and giving to others. Because you never know when you might be in distress, like right now.
What if it was one of Governor Reeves’s siblings, or his parents or something, in the same predicament as we are? He wouldn’t want to feel like that, to wake up the next day and one of his parents or siblings or closest friend is deceased because they were dehydrated, because their sodium level is low and they had some seizure or heart attack or brain tumor due to lack of water. You have to have water to live.
I got other people in the household. I got my son, my granddaughter, me, my boyfriend. My daughter comes over ‘cause she doesn’t have any water. Then you turn the water on and it’s just drip, drip, drip. How you going to take a bath with some little drip of water?
Patsy Marie Nard, South Jackson resident
I got other people in the household. I got my son, my granddaughter, me, my boyfriend. My daughter comes over ‘cause she doesn’t have any water. Then you turn the water on and it’s just drip, drip, drip. How you going to take a bath with some little drip of water? And you can’t use your bottled water cause you have to have something to drink. So then you have to go places with a smell… I don’t like to get out the car, to be honest with you, because I haven’t been able to really take care of my hygiene like I would normally do. I just was thinking, “Maybe it’s the last days or something.” I don’t really know what’s ahead for me.
And so, I just thank God every day that I’m living and there are people in this world that do care, just like you. You care. This lady and her husband over there—look how much they care. A lot of people just don’t care. A lot of people just be asleep. Open your eyes up and wake up! Because, instead of giving people some water, people out here making money jacking the prices up. I go to the store and the man charged me $2.19 for a bottle of water—and then, with tax, it was $2.39. I said, “Man, you crazy.” I know I needed it. I said, “That’s wrong, though. How you going to charge somebody for the water?” Money is the root of all evil. Money going to be here when you ain’t… I just hope people open their eyes up and think. God gave you a brain; use it.
If I had the chance to speak to Governor Reeves, I would ask him what’s been the delay since he’s been in office? He’s been made aware of these problems. We try not to do the blame game because this affects the whole city of Jackson, but we would ask him, “Hey, what’s the hold up? Forget the mayor. Forget the city council. Forget the people you have problems with. Some of these citizens are the ones that voted for you. Whatever little beef or misunderstandings you have with other politicians—put that on the back burner, man. Take care of your constituents first. These people voted for you, man.” A lot of people think, like, “Oh, didn’t none of the Black people vote for Tate Reeves.” But a lot of people in our community voted for him over the other choice… He had a lot of support from Jackson, Mississippi, whether he believes it or not. I was out here at the polls taking elders to vote. So, we supported Tate Reeves, but it’s like he forgot.
Governor Reeves wants to build a golf course over here. What about water? We got this and that, we allocate money for everything, but it’s hard for these kids to get water. These people need water. We have a lot of elders and we have a lot of babies, man. If you don’t have elders to teach and babies to follow those teachings, it’s the end of society. We got to take care of them babies and our elders.
A lot of people think, like, “Oh, didn’t none of the Black people vote for Tate Reeves.” But a lot of people in our community voted for him over the other choice… He had a lot of support from Jackson, Mississippi, whether he believes it or not. I was out here at the polls taking elders to vote. So, we supported Tate Reeves, but it’s like he forgot.
Tim Finch, Operation Good member
We know it’s not 100% Governor Reeves’s fault, but he’s in that seat now, so, hey, we all got to bear the burden of our forefathers, right? He got to bear what they left there on his plate. They left that there for him. It wasn’t something he started. It’s been going on since the ’80s, since Mayor Kane Ditto—first mayor to publicly say, “Hey, we got a problem with our water system in Jackson.” How many governors and mayors we’ve had since then?
We all can blame who we want to blame, but it’s a Mississippi failure. It’s not a Jackson failure, it’s not a mayor failure, it’s not a governor failure. It’s a Mississippi failure as a whole. This is our state capital. If I was governor, I’d be embarrassed. I’m the governor and I’m sitting here at the capitol building and these people around me ain’t got no water? All these other cities and states got to donate? Mississippi and Jackson are doing things, but they ain’t moving like the people out of town. Ain’t no excuses. I ain’t heard nobody out of town say, “Ain’t no water” yet. But the state and all of them are saying, “Ain’t no water. It’s hard to find.” How is it hard to find when we got people from New York, everywhere, sending truckloads of water?
If the water is a crisis, a whole bunch of stuff falls under that water crisis. Because they tell you, “Don’t open your mouth and don’t open your eyes if you take a shower in the water.” As an adult, I’m like, “Eh, maybe I shouldn’t even take a shower if I got to do all this,” because you may take a shower every day in the water no problem, but everybody’s body is different. What if I take a shower and I wake up the next morning and my throat is swollen up? We never know what the poisons in the water going to do to everybody individually.
As far as what everyday people can do to help, the first thing I would ask everybody to do is say a prayer for each of us. Say a prayer for your neighbor, because that’s what it’s going to take. It don’t matter how much money the government allocates and dumps. If God ain’t overseeing that money, it still ain’t going to do what it need to do. I ask everybody to just say a prayer and do what you can do. Don’t be a part of the problem. Let’s forget whose fault it is. Let’s forget. Let’s be the ones that fix it. White, Black, Mexican, Asian, Puerto Rican—it doesn’t matter. Let’s fix the problem for the citizens of Jackson. Anything you could do—if you go in the store and buy a bottle of water for your neighbor, one bottle of water, case of water, it doesn’t matter. Anything you could do to help, to be a part of the solution instead of the problem, that’s what we ask from the citizens.
And for the citizens of Jackson, stay calm. We know it’s frustrating. We live here. I’ve stayed in this same South Jackson neighborhood, one of the poorest neighborhoods (if not the poorest part) of Jackson. And me and our team, Operation Good and our youth participants—we were out here seven days last week, Monday through Sunday. Not one time did we say to the citizens that come through that there wasn’t no water. We have people just going in their personal pickups to buy pallets of water from Target or Home Depot.
I ask everybody to just say a prayer and do what you can do. Don’t be a part of the problem. Let’s forget whose fault it is. Let’s forget. Let’s be the ones that fix it. White, Black, Mexican, Asian, Puerto Rican—it doesn’t matter. Let’s fix the problem for the citizens of Jackson.
Tim Finch, Operation Good member
If people could do this out their own pockets, how the government officials going to say, “Oh, it is hard to find water right now because so many people buying it”? I ain’t buying that. With politicians, man, no matter what color they are, it’s all a game. At the end of the day, they lie to us to get in there, and then when they get in there they might pass one little bill and say, “Okay, we gonna do a one cent tax cut for the citizens, but that’s it.” What about all the other stuff to save the city?
Let me ask you this: How many state capitals in America you know don’t have a shopping mall or a movie theater? Jackson, Mississippi, the only one in these United States. We are the largest city in the state of Mississippi, the state seat, and we don’t have none of these things. You’ve seen it. The roads look a mess. It’s like we on a backwoods road in the country where they drive tractors all the time.
Once again, I would reiterate to all citizens—whether you’re in Jackson, New Orleans, Chicago, wherever—let’s not say, “It’s his fault, or his fault.” Let’s say, “Hey, what happened? What can we do to fix it? To help?” Let that be our motto during this water crisis in Jackson. “What can we as individuals do to help?” Because we have to understand what we do as individuals reflects upon all of us. Let us have self discipline amongst ourselves and help the community; don’t worry about whose fault it is. If we do what we got to do in God’s name, we ain’t got to worry about whose fault it is, because he’s going to fix it. He knows what needs to be done, who needs to be moved. He is going to take care of that part. We just do the good part and let God do the rest.
Us passing out water to the community is helping them while their water pressure is low, because a lot of people ain’t able to move around to get their water or able to do what they need to do because they’re elderly. Us passing out water to the community is good because they ain’t going to have no water to cook if we weren’t out here seven days a week, passing out water to the community so they can eat what they want to eat by using bottles of water. They can’t use no water from the sink because there’s no pressure in the faucet.
I think that’s a good deed for us to do what we doing instead of us just being at home. We could have just been sitting at home chilling, but we took out time, out of our kind hearts, to come out here, pass out water seven days a week, every day, nonstop.
What ordinary people can do to help is donate, come out here, help us pass it out. Or spread the word around the community and say, “We have water up here if you need any water for your shower.” Stuff like that.
It don’t matter what political party a city is or what color or race people are in the city; it’s still a part of the state. I think it takes everybody working together to make sure people won’t have to go through a water crisis like we going through. If we all in this together, then we should all work together.
Geno Wolmac
This problem been going on, so I can’t just say it end with Governor Reeves or start with him. As far as all who play a role in a state government and our city government, this is something that everybody been knowing was an issue. I don’t think that the adequate infrastructure money is allocated to the city of Jackson because of how it is here: It is a predominantly Black city. All of the tax base has been eroded. The investment in Jackson hasn’t been there. Encouragement of investment in Jackson hasn’t even been taking place on the state level or on the city level. Therefore, when you erode the tax base, you are going to erode the infrastructure here.
In the future, we should invest in our capital city the same way other states invest in the metro area. It don’t matter what political party a city is or what color or race people are in the city; it’s still a part of the state. I think it takes everybody working together to make sure people won’t have to go through a water crisis like we going through. If we all in this together, then we should all work together.
There are work-arounds the U.S. can use to fund affordable housing, drought responses, and other urgently-needed infrastructure that was left out of the two recent spending bills.
Congress has passed two major infrastructure bills in the last year, but imminent needs remain. The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law chiefly focused on conventional highway programs, and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) mainly centered on energy security and combating climate change. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), over $2 trillion in much-needed infrastructure is still unfunded, including projects to address drought, affordable housing, high-speed rail, and power transmission lines. By 2039, per the ASCE, continued underinvestment at current rates will cost $10 trillion in cumulative lost GDP, more than 3 million jobs in that year, and $2.24 trillion in exports over the next 20 years.
Particularly urgent today is infrastructure to counteract the record-breaking drought in the U.S. Southwest, where 50% of the nation’s food supply is grown. Subsidies for such things as the purchase of electric vehicles, featured in the IRA, will pad the coffers of the industries lobbying for them but will not get water to our parched farmlands any time soon. More direct action is needed. But as noted by Todd Tucker in a Roosevelt Institute article, “Today, a gridlocked and austerity-minded Congress balks at appropriating sufficient money to ensure emergency readiness. … [T]he US system of government’s numerous veto points make emergency response harder than under parliamentary or authoritarian systems.”
There are, however, other ways to finance these essential projects. “A work-around,” says Tucker, “is so-called off-balance sheet money creation.” That was the approach taken in the 1930s, when commercial banks were bankrupt and the country faced its worst-ever economic depression; yet the government succeeded in building infrastructure as never before.
Off-budget Funding: The Model of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation
For funding its national infrastructure campaign in the Great Depression, Congress called on the publicly-owned Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). It was not actually a bank; it got its liquidity by issuing bonds. Notes Tucker, “The RFC was allowed to borrow money from the Treasury and the capital markets, and then invest in relief and mobilization efforts that would eventually generate a return for taxpayers, all while skating past austerity hawks determined to cut or freeze government spending.”
According to James Butkiewicz, professor of economics at the University of Delaware:
The RFC was an executive agency with the ability to obtain funding through the Treasury outside of the normal legislative process. Thus, the RFC could be used to finance a variety of favored projects and programs without obtaining legislative approval. RFC lending did not count toward budgetary expenditures, so the expansion of the role and influence of the government through the RFC was not reflected in the federal budget.
The RFC lent to federal government agencies including the Commodity Credit Corporation (which lent to farmers), the Electric Home and Farm Authority, the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), the Public Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). It also made direct loans to local governments and businesses and funded eight RFC wartime subsidiaries in the 1940s that were essential to the war effort.
The infrastructure projects of one agency alone, the Works Progress Administration, included 1,000 miles of new and rebuilt airport runways, 651,000 miles of highway, 124,000 bridges, 8,000 parks, and 18,000 playgrounds and athletic fields; and some 84,000 miles of drainage pipes, 69,000 highway light standards, and 125,000 public buildings (built, rebuilt, or expanded), including 41,300 schools. For local governments that had hit their borrowing limits on their taxpayer-funded general obligation bonds, a workaround was devised: they could borrow by issuing “revenue bonds,” which were backed not by taxes but by the revenue that would be generated by the infrastructure funded by the loans.
A bill currently before Congress, HR 3339, proposes to duplicate the feats of the RFC without increasing the federal budget deficit or taxes, by forming a National Infrastructure Bank (NIB).
China’s State “Policy Banks”
China is dealing with the global economic downturn by embarking on a stimulus program involving large national infrastructure projects, including massive water infrastructure. For funding, the government is drawing on three state-owned “policy banks” structured like the RFC.
The Chinese government is one of those systems referred to by Todd Tucker as not being hampered by “a gridlocked and austerity-minded Congress.” It can just issue a five-year plan and hit the ground running. In May 2022, it began construction on 3,876 large projects with a total investment of nearly 2.4 trillion yuan (about $350 billion).
Funding is coming chiefly from China’s “policy banks” set up in 1994 to provide targeted loans in areas where profit-driven banks might be reluctant to lend. They are the China Development Bank, the Export-Import Bank of China and the Agricultural Development Bank of China. As noted in a June 30 article in the Washington Post, China could also draw on its “Big Four” banks – Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., China Construction Bank Corp., Agricultural Bank of China Ltd., and Bank of China Ltd. – but “they are essentially profit-driven commercial banks that can be quite picky when it comes to selecting borrowers and projects. The policy lenders, however, operate on a non-profit basis and are often recruited to pour cheap funds into projects that are less attractive financially but matter to the longer-term development of the economy.”
Like the RFC, the policy banks mainly get their funds by issuing bonds. They can also get “Pledged Supplementary Lending” directly from the Chinese central bank, which presumably creates the money on its books, as all central banks are empowered to do.
Dealing with China’s Water Crisis
According to the Xinhua News Agency, on July 7 construction began on a project linking China’s two mega water infrastructures – the Three Gorges Project and the South-to-North Water Diversion Project – transferring water from the water-abundant south to the arid northern region of the country. The goal is a national water grid, increasing the quantity of water available for use nationally by about 20% and increasing China’s irrigated area by about 10%.
The South-to-North Water Diversion Project is already well underway. The middle route, the most prominent one due to its role in feeding water to the nation’s capital, begins at the Danjiangkou Reservoir in the Hanjiang River in central China’s Hubei and runs northeastward to Beijing and Tianjin. It was completed and began supplying water in December 2014. The eastern route began supplying water in November 2013, transferring water from Jiangsu to areas including East China’s Shandong Province. The new project will channel water from the Three Gorges Reservoir area to the Hanjiang River, a tributary of the Yangtze River. It is scheduled to be completed in nine years.
Solving Our Water Crisis
The total estimated investment for China’s national water grid is about 2.99 trillion yuan (U.S. $470 billion). This is comparable to the $400 billion the National Infrastructure Bank Coalition proposes to allocate through HR 3339 to address the serious drought in the U.S. Southwest.
As in China, one alternative being considered by the NIB team is to divert water from areas that have it in excess. One proposal is a pipeline to ship Mississippi River floodwaters to the parched Colorado River via a Wyoming tributary. Another option is to pump water from the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest to California via a subterranean pipeline on the floor of the Pacific Ocean – not upstream water used by Washington and Oregon residents, but water from the ocean outflow where the river feeds into the Pacific and its freshwater becomes unusable saltwater.
Those are doable alternatives, but political and regulatory obstacles remain. Ideally, sources of water would be found that are new not just to the Southwest but to the surface of the planet. This is another proposal being explored by the NIB team – to tap “deep seated water” or “primary water,” the plentiful water supplies below normal groundwater tables.
Studies have found evidence of several oceans’ worth of water locked up in rock as far down as 1,000 kilometers below the Earth’s surface. (See The Smithsonian Magazine, “How the Earth’s Mantle Sends Water Up Toward the Surface,” June 2022.) This water is not part of the hydrologic cycle (clouds to rain to ground to clouds again), as shown on testing by its lack of environmental contaminants. From the time when atomic testing began in the Pacific, hydrologic water has contained traces of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen used as a fuel in thermonuclear bombs. Primary water shoots up tritium-free —clean, fresh and usually drinkable without filtration.
There are many verified cases of mountaintop wells that have gushed water for decades in arid lands. This water is now being located and tapped by enterprising hydrogeologists using technological innovations like those used in other extractive industries, but without their destructive impact on the environment. For more on primary water and the promising vistas it opens up, see my earlier articles here and here.
Funding Through the National Infrastructure Bank
Critically needed water and other infrastructure projects can be funded without tapping the federal budget, with funds generated through a national infrastructure bank. Unlike the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the publicly-owned bank proposed in HR 3339 is designed to be a true depository bank, which can leverage its funds as all depository banks are allowed to do: with a 10% capital requirement, it can leverage $1 in capital into $10 in loans.
For capitalization, the NIB will follow the model of Alexander Hamilton’s First U.S. Bank: shares in the bank will be swapped for existing U.S. bonds. The shares will earn a 2% dividend and are non-voting. Control of the bank and its operations will remain with the public, an independent board of directors, and a panel of carefully selected non-partisan experts, precluding manipulation for political ends.
The NIB is projected to lend $5 trillion over 10 years, or roughly $500 billion per year. That means each year the NIB will have to add $50 billion in new capitalization in the form of debt for equity swaps. The incentive for investors is the extra 2% yield the NIB provides on its preferred stock, plus a government guarantee. The U.S. Postal Service, the fourth largest holder of U.S. Treasuries globally, is one possible investor. Others are pension funds and builder associations with investment portfolios, all of which need a certain number of triple-A-rated investments. NIB bonds will have a better rate of return than Treasuries, while achieving the laudable purpose of filling the critical infrastructure gap.
To clear checks from the newly-created loan deposits, the NIB will bring in cash from incoming customer deposits, loan repayments, NIB-issued bonds, and/or borrowing from the Federal Reserve. How much cash it will need and its timing depends on how many infrastructure companies maintain their deposit accounts with the NIB.
The $5 trillion the NIB lends over 10 years will add $5 trillion to the total money supply; but the “productive” loans it will be making are the sort that do not add to price inflation. In fact, they can reduce it – by raising GDP growth, increasing the supply side of the supply-versus-demand inflation equation.
America achieved its greatest-ever infrastructure campaign in the midst of the Great Depression. We can do that again today, and we can do it with the same machinery: off-budget financing through a government-owned national financial institution.
• This article was first posted on ScheerPost.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Could somebody please get an extension ladder to help Senator Schumer down from the ceiling? He’s stuck in the rafters in a high-pitched note of self-congratulation whilst spraining his elbow as he awkwardly and repeatedly tries to pat his own back, screaming over and over again “the greatest climate legislation of all time!”
Compared to what?
Still, one signal that something really good must be in the nonsensically titled Inflation Reduction Act is the fact that no Republican senators voted for it. Nowadays, the extreme right has the entire Republican edifice on its hands and knees, almost in a fetal position in a deadly chokehold, and they’re not about to risk voting for anything that smacks of help for ordinary Americans. Plus, as for climate-type legislation, they detest mention of global warming. It gives ‘em the willies.
Nevertheless, in spite of 100% Republican opposition, the bill is likely to pass and become law. It does a lot of really good things to help climate change/global warming. There is no doubt about this.
The real question is whether it’s enough soon enough. And, similar to all commitments by nations of the world to mitigate climate change, will it really happen? Climate change mitigation plans have a very spotty, almost zero, record of achievement.
The bill directs about $370 billion (that’s a lot) over 10 years toward promoting clean energy and climate resilience, with about two-thirds of the money coming in the form of tax credits for producing electricity from clean energy sources, investing in renewable energy technologies and addressing climate change through carbon sequestration, renewable fuel production, and clean energy manufacturing.
According to Evergreen Action, a left-of-center advocacy founded by former staffers to Gov. Jay Inslee’s presidential campaign, which advocated zero emissions by 2035 when some other candidates didn’t even know what zero emissions really meant:
The bill is an opportunity for a major breakthrough in America’s fight against climate change. This bill has the potential to be the single largest investment in clean energy in American history. Making major investments in clean energy is one of the best ways Congress can lower inflation and shield Americans from the volatility of fossil fuel markets. 1
The bill includes $60 billion to boost domestic clean energy manufacturing, including $30 billion in production tax credits for solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and critical mineral processing. It also offers lower- and middle-income motorists a $7,500 tax credit for clean vehicles, while states and electric utilities would see $30 billion in grants and loans to expand clean energy. The bill also includes $60 billion for environmental justice communities and a fee on methane emissions that will rise to $1,500 a ton by 2026.
The Nature Conservancy released the following statement on August 7th:
The Senate’s approval of the Inflation Reduction Act gives us hope, and more optimism than we’ve had in years, that the U.S. Congress recognizes the urgency of the global climate crisis and is prepared to lead a meaningful response.
Almost all environmental advocacy groups favor the legislation. Indeed, it would be ridiculous to naysay the only true broad-reaching climate legislation in American history.
But, is it enough soon enough? Which may have been on the minds of legislators in Washington, D.C., assuming the nation’s intelligence agencies sent them classified notes about the most frightening climate behavior in human history; i.e., the world is drying up!
And, maybe they read the recent NASA/National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration report that the planet is trapping heat at a rate that’s twice as fast as only 15 years ago.
Carbon emissions have turned the planet into a heat machine. Compelling evidence of this tragedy is found throughout the world, as follows. It demands a much bigger Inflation Reduction Act but on a worldwide coordinated basis:
According to SPEI Global Drought Monitor, severe drought is now found throughout the planet.
A recent University of Cambridge study claims that since 2015 European drought has accelerated and intensified. In fact, the continent is experiencing the most intense drought in 250 years.
Italy’s Po River Valley, as of July 2022, has cut water for 125 towns. Drinking water is delivered via trucks to Piedmont and Lombardy, as local reservoirs no longer exist. They’re gone! Italy’s drought alert is now spreading to the central part of the country to the rivers Arno, Aniene, and Tiber where water levels are “drastically down.”
The Rhine River, Europe’s most important waterway for commerce and industry and tourism, is close to shutting down. Key shipping lanes are down to 19 inches water depth. This is happening two months before the normal seasonal lows. Transports already reduced from 6000-ton loads to 800 tons but may be forced to halt completely, depending, and making coal shipment to Germany and inclusive of all commercial goods, a horrendous challenge for upcoming winter months.
In France more than 100 towns are without drinking water and now receive water deliveries by truck. The government has established a water crisis team. Trees and bushes are prematurely shedding leaves. France’s nuclear power plants, at a time when half of its 56 reactors are offline due to maintenance and serious corrosion issues, are now threatened due to river water temperatures used to cool the reactors. Restrictions kick in 26°C. Some plants are experiencing 28°C and 30°C river water temps.
In Spain, water restrictions have been imposed on Barcelona, Malaga, Huelva, and Pontevedra. Catalonia has severe restrictions on individual liters per day. The price of olive oil is likely to spike by at least 25% as heat hits crops.
In Portugal, 99% of the country is experiencing severe drought. It’s the driest in 1,200 years. Lawn watering prohibited.
According to NASA, the worst drought in 900 years is hitting the entire Middle East. A Carnegie Endowment study as of 2022 claims water scarcity is threatening violent conflicts throughout MENA, the acronym for the Middle East and North Africa. 80-90 million people in the region will experience water insecurity within three years. The European Commission Joint Research Center, in a recent study, claims there’s a 75%-90% chance of water wars.
Santiago’s population of 6.5 M is on a severe water-rationing program with rotating 24-hour cutoffs for homes in the city. On the suburban outskirts of Santiago, water is delivered by truck to 400,000 families or 1.5M people. They are allotted 50 liters (13.2 gallons) water per day per person. Additionally, in the northern regions of Chile, precipitation is down 90%.
In Argentina, the drought is so bad that the famous Iberia wetland is at its worst levels in 80 years as fires raged earlier this year in one of the world’s largest wetlands.
In SE Asia, the Mekong River, the principal river for the entire region, is in 4-year drought, the worst in 60 years. Cambodian water for crop irrigation is down to 20% of normal.
China has informed Guangzhou (pop 15M) and Shenzhen (pop 12.5M), the country’s tech hub, to cut per capita water use from January to October of 2022. The Pearl River Basin, which serves as the water source for China’s most populous urban centers, as mentioned, has been hit with severe drought, plus the looming drinking water crisis is compounded by drought-induced saltwater intrusion.
In Japan, Matsuyama (pop 515K) and Shikokuchuo (Pop 84K) are rationing water to citizens. Some areas of the country are experiencing crippling water shortages. The country is also experiencing power shortages and intends to go to more coal.
In Africa, Ethiopia and Kenya are faced with brutal drought. Three million livestock have died under the fierce influence of heat. In the Horn of Africa, 20M people are at risk of starvation and failure of water supplies.
America’s two largest water reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell are within a few tens of feet of dead pool status defined as water no longer running downstream beyond Hoover dam and Glen Canyon dam respectively. Lake Mead dead pool is 895 feet elevation; it’s currently 1,041 feet. Lake Powell’s dead pool is 3,370 feet elevation. It is current 3,536 feet. The US Bureau of Reclamation recently informed the seven Colorado River Basin states to cut water usage on an emergency basis.
Is the Senate’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 big enough, soon enough? Probably not.
Congress really needs to go back to Biden’s initial $3.5T Build Back Better Plan. In that regard, The Economist, July 21, 2022 ran this article: “American Climate Policy is in Tatters—Manchin Single-handedly scuttled Biden’s BBB Plans for $3.5 trillion”.
The entire planet is reeling from global warming. America’s modest couple hundred billion climate plan is a drop in the world’s bucket. The whole world needs to mimic Biden’s original BBB plan, or it’s lights out. The evidence of that is compelling, unless, of course, facts don’t count any longer.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
