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Use of pesticides on UK farms to be cut by 10% by 2030 to protect bees

Campaigners welcome long-delayed proposals to reduce pesticide-related harms to pollinatorsThe use of pesticides on UK farms will be reduced by 10% by 2030 under government plans to protect bees and other pollinators.Campaigners welcomed the news, but said they were disappointed that the target applied only to arable farms and not to urban areas and parks. The plan has been a long time coming – it has been delayed since 2018. Continue reading...

The use of pesticides on UK farms will be reduced by 10% by 2030 under government plans to protect bees and other pollinators.Campaigners welcomed the news, but said they were disappointed that the target applied only to arable farms and not to urban areas and parks. The plan has been a long time coming – it has been delayed since 2018.The EU’s target for pesticide reduction is more ambitious; its member states aim to reduce the use and risk of chemical pesticides, as well as the use of more hazardous pesticides, by 50% by 2030.The UK government will be unveiling a new pesticide load indicator to monitor progress towards this target, and encouraging integrated pest management, which is a way to reduce pests on farmland without using pesticides.This can include sowing plants that are more attractive to certain pests next to crops, to divert their attention away, or using carnivorous beetles or other predators to keep down pest numbers. The plan also includes penalties for those who fail to use pesticides responsibly, and the target makes note of how toxic a pesticide is as well as how much of it is used, which campaigners also welcomed.A spokesperson from the Pesticide Collaboration, a grouping of health and environmental organisations, academics, unions and consumer groups, said: “We are thrilled that the UK government has today announced the UK’s first ever pesticide reduction target of 10%. While we had hoped for a higher percentage, the adoption of a target which takes into account both how much of a pesticide is used and how toxic it is a clear signal that reducing pesticide-related harms to the environment is now being taken seriously.“We are also pleased that there are commitments to increasing the uptake of non-chemical alternatives by farmers and urge the government to provide them with the support they need. While there are no commitments to phasing out urban pesticide use, we have been assured by the government that this area of work will be progressed separately.”Paul de Zylva, a nature campaigner at Friends of Earth, said: “The new plan’s failure to address the use of pesticides in urban areas is a major flaw. The government must commit to the phasing out of pesticide and herbicide use in urban parks and streets, which is unnecessary and risks the health of people, pets, wildlife, rivers and soils.”Farmers have welcomed the plan, and asked for government support in creating habitats for the predatory insects that feed on pests.Martin Lines, the CEO of the Nature-Friendly Farming Network said: “I welcome the publication of this long-overdue action plan, especially the inclusion of specific targets for pesticide reduction. However, it remains to be seen whether it can truly can deliver the radical changes we urgently need.“Dramatically reducing the use of chemicals and transitioning to nature-based solutions – such as creating habitats for predatory insects – is absolutely key to building a food and farming system that is resilient for the future while also reversing the decline of nature and biodiversity.”This is the latest step towards reducing pesticide use in the UK, after the government committed recently to ending the use of neonicotinoid pesticide, which is toxic to bees.The environment minister, Emma Hardy, said: “The government is restoring our natural world as part of our commitment to protect the environment while supporting productivity and economic growth.“That is why we have banned bee-killing pesticides in England and today we’re going further to support farmers and growers to adopt sustainable practices.”

Point Reyes' historic dairies ousted after legal battle. Locals say it's conservation gone mad

Environmentalists are celebrating a legal settlement that will close historic family dairies they say are degrading Point Reyes National Seashore. Locals say the settlement shows no understanding of this place and its people.

POINT REYES STATION, Calif. — With fog-kissed streets featuring a buttery bakery, an eclectic bookstore and markets peddling artisanal cheeses crafted from the milk of lovingly coddled cows, Point Reyes Station is about as picturesque as tourist towns come in California.It is also a place that, at the moment, is roiling with anger. A place where many locals feel they’re waging an uphill battle for the soul of their community.The alleged villains are unexpected, here in one of the cradles of the organic food movement: the National Park Service and a slate of environmental organizations that maintain that the herds of cattle that have grazed on the Point Reyes Peninsula for more than 150 years are polluting watersheds and threatening endangered species, including the majestic tule elk that roam the windswept headlands. Locals in Point Reyes Station say a legal settlement that will force out historic family dairies shows no understanding of the peninsula’s culture and history. In January, the park service and environmental groups including the Nature Conservancy and the Center for Biological Diversity announced a “landmark agreement” to settle the long-simmering conflict. The settlement, resolving a lawsuit filed in 2022, would pay most of the historic dairies and cattle ranches on the seashore to move out. The fences would come down, and the elk would roam free. Contamination from the runoff of dairy operations would cease. There would be new hiking trails. More places to camp. More conservation of coastal California landscapes.“A crucial milestone in safeguarding and revitalizing the Seashore’s extraordinary ecosystem, all while addressing the very real needs of the community,” said Deborah Moskowitz, president of the Resource Renewal Institute, one of the groups that sued. She added that the deal “balances compassion with conservation” while also “ensuring that this priceless national treasure is preserved and cherished for generations to come.”As news of the settlement spread, however, it quickly became clear that many in the community did not agree. In fact, they thought it showed no understanding at all of this place and its people.A rarity for the National Park Service, the Point Reyes National Seashore has, since its founding in 1962, encompassed not just pristine wilderness but also working agricultural land. Those historic dairies have supplied coveted milk products to San Francisco for well more than a century, and today play an outsize role in California’s organic milk production. Why would anyone want to destroy one of the most preeminent areas for organic farming in the country in the name of the environment? What’s more, the closing of the historic dairies means not just that legacy families and their cows will have to leave, but so will many dairy workers and ranchhands who have lived on the peninsula for decades. An entire community, many of them low income and Latino, are poised to lose their jobs and homes in one fell swoop. In the weeks since the settlement was announced, there have been a spate of heated community meetings. At least two lawsuits, one from tenants being displaced and one from a cattle operation, have been filed. “It’s a big blow to the community,” said Dewey Livingston, who lives in Inverness and has written extensively about the history of Point Reyes. He said he believes the environmental harms wrought by the cows have been exaggerated. And moving the cows out, he said, will irreparably harm the local culture. “It will turn what was once a rural area into a community of vacation homes, visitors and wealthy people.”Environmental groups say they are sympathetic to these concerns, but that it is the duty of the National Park Service to protect and preserve the land — and that the land is being degraded. “This degree of water pollution, which threatens aquatic wildlife habitat and public health, shouldn’t be happening anywhere, and definitely not in a national park,” said Jeff Miller, of the Center for Biological Diversity.“If you listen to the rancher narrative, it makes it sound like ranching has always been this environmentally sustainable activity that serves all,” said Erik Molvar, of the Western Watersheds Project, another of the groups that sued. “But what we’re seeing was this herd of elk, locked up, having massive die outs. We had severe water pollution, some of the worst water pollution in California.” A road leads to Historic C Ranch at Point Reyes National Seashore. About 20 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge, the Point Reyes Peninsula rises up, a paradise of ocean, dunes, cliffs and grassland that feels delivered from another time and place. Whales and elephant seals glide through the shimmering water, while bears and mountain lions patrol the misty headlands. There are pine forests, waterfalls, wildflowers and more than 50 species of endangered or threatened plants, along with the colorful flickers and chirps of more than 490 species of birds. And, of course, there are thousands of acres of green and golden hills, their grasslands softly rolling in the coastal breeze.Intensive dairy ranching began here more than 150 years ago, spawned by the Gold Rush population explosion in San Francisco.By the late 1850s, two brothers, Oscar Lovell Shafter and James McMillan Shafter, had established a large operation to produce butter and cheese, and ferried their goods to San Francisco on small schooner ships. By 1867, Marin County was producing more butter than anywhere else in California: 932,429 pounds a year.Bob McClure’s ancestors arrived in 1889. His great-grandfather emigrated from Ireland and worked on the dairies. In 1930, the family acquired a ranch known — as are almost all the ranches on Point Reyes — by a letter.“The I ranch,” McClure said. “I grew up here my whole life.” Like his father and grandfather before him, he watched over his cows as the fog rolled in and out over pastures that stretched from the hills to the sea. It was relentless work. “The cow has this; the cow has that,” McClure explained, “and out of bed you go.” And yet, he loved it. Historic C Ranch is seen from a hillside at Point Reyes National Seashore. As the decades went by, other immigrant families, many of whom started out as dairy workers, purchased land from the remnants of the Shafter dairy empire. The Nunes family came in 1919. The Kehoe family took over the J Ranch in 1922. Eventually, the area became a mecca not just for milk and butter, but also for some of the fanciest cheeses in America: Cowgirl Creamery with its Mt. Tam brie and Devil’s Gulch triple cream; Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Co., with its blue cheese and Toma; Marin French Cheese Co., with its Rouge et Noir camembert.Over the decades, other entities also had eyes on the peninsula. By the late 1920s, developers had swallowed up much of the Eastern Seaboard and were pursuing properties on the Pacific and Gulf coasts. Conservationists pushed to preserve Point Reyes, worried it would be recast as yet another coastal resort, with hotels and arcades marching along the shoreline. In 1935, an assistant director of the National Park Service recommended that the government buy 53,000 acres on Point Reyes, but the purchase price of $2.4 million was considered too steep.The dream persisted, and in 1962, thanks to a boost from President Kennedy, the Point Reyes National Seashore was authorized, with land purchases continuing through the early 1970s. A view of the Point Reyes Lighthouse. Today, the park encompasses about 70,000 acres, and is visited by about 2 million people a year. But woven into its creation was an understanding that the livestock and dairy operations would be allowed to continue.Under an agreement with the Department of the Interior, ranchers conveyed their land to the federal government and in exchange were issued long-term leases to work that land. For many visitors, the cows — quiet herds of Devons, Guernseys and Jerseys happily munching on the flowing grasses — are just one more piece of the picturesque landscape.But behind the scenes, tensions were brewing almost from the beginning. McClure was only 10 years old when the park was created, so he wasn’t aware of the legal intricacies. But he recalls that his family wasn’t wild about the sale.“Nobody really wanted to,” he recalled, but the government “could have eminent-domained it,” so the families took what they could get.Laura Watt, a retired professor of geography at Sonoma State University whose book, “The Paradox of Preservation: Wilderness and Working Landscapes at Point Reyes National Seashore,” chronicles the history, said many of the old ranching families were discomfited by the notion of their home becoming a wilderness playground. A cow eyes a visitor at Historic C Ranch at Point Reyes National Seashore. The families, she noted, were “a freakish embodiment of the classic American dream.” Most had come to the U.S. as immigrants, worked as tenant farmers for the Shafter dairy empire, and eventually managed to buy land and make a go of it, passing their enterprises on to their children.Then along comes the federal government, saying their land should be set aside as a park. “That was part of what rubbed them the wrong way,” Watt said. The ranching families had “worked so hard to be able to get this land and take care of this land” and now suddenly it was “for other people to go and play?”Enter the elk. In the late 1970s, the government moved a dozen or so tule elk to Tomales Point at the northern end of the peninsula. The animals had once roamed the area before being hunted to extinction there; scientists were seeking to reestablish the species.At first, the arrival of the giant mammals was not terribly controversial. The herd was small, and stayed at the top of the peninsula, where a long strip of land juts into the water between Tomales Bay and the Pacific Ocean.Before too long, however, the herd multiplied, eventually outgrowing its range on Tomales Point. Some animals were moved south, where they began to compete with cows for pasture. Even as the elk moved in, many ranching families were beginning to chafe at what they said was government red tape that made it hard to run their operations. “They will force us out with all the paperwork we have to fill out,” one rancher, Kathy Lucchesi, complained to the Los Angeles Times in 2014. “By the time they approve a project it’s too late.”Still, the park service superintendent at the time, Cicely Muldoon, insisted the agency was committed to maintaining the ranches. “The park service has always supported agriculture, and will continue to do so,” she said in 2014.Ranchers and the park service discussed updated leases, which would enable the ranches to make investments and long-term plans.Environmentalists, however, were aghast, especially after word spread that the park service planned to shoot some of the elk to curb the population. In 2016, three groups — the Resource Renewal Institute, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Western Watersheds Project — filed a lawsuit, asking a federal judge to require the park service to prepare a new general plan for the seashore, one that analyzed “the impacts of livestock ranching on the natural and recreational resources.”The suit alleged that the ranching operations were harming coastal waters, and cited examples from the park service’s own studies that found fecal pollution in some areas. The suit alleged a long list of harms. Among them: degradation of salmon habitat; threats to the habitat of the California red-legged frog, Myrtle’s silverspot butterfly and western snowy plover; plus, members of the public reported “unpleasant odors” from the cows and their manure.In 2017, the park service settled the suit by agreeing to draft a new plan, which it did in 2021. That plan offered ranchers new long-term leases. The park service said it would authorize the culling of elk herds, to keep them separate from the cows.In 2022, the same groups that sued in 2016 filed suit again, this time challenging the park’s new management plan.Molvar, of the Western Watersheds Project, said the groups feared an environmental catastrophe. “We had cattle pastures where the native grasslands had been so completely destroyed only the invasive species survived,” he said. Combine harvesters had been spotted mowing over baby deer and baby elk. He said he had seen videos that showed flocks of ravens hovering behind the harvesters so they could “feast on the carnage.” “The national seashore, from an ecological standpoint, was a train wreck,” he said. After the lawsuit was filed, the park service and environmental organizations entered discussions. Eventually, the Nature Conservancy, which was not a party to the suit, agreed to raise money to try to buy out the dairies and ranching operations. The amount has not been officially disclosed, but is widely reported to be about $30 million. The parties involved are barred from discussing financial details because of non-disclosure agreements. Many ranchers reached by The Times said they were heartbroken, but felt they had no choice but to capitulate, because it had become too difficult to continue operations. People stroll through the Cypress Tree Tunnel in Inverness. On Jan. 8, the parties announced the settlement, and said the ranchers, their tenants and workers would have 15 months to move out. Two beef cattle operations would be permitted to stay in the park and seven ranches would remain in the adjoining Golden Gate National Recreation Area.“It’s very hard,” said Margarito Loza Gonzalez, 58 and a father of six, who has worked at one of the ranches for decades and now wonders how he will support his family. He added that it feels as though the people who crafted the settlement “didn’t take [the workers] into account.”The settlement contains some money to help workers and tenants make the transition; it has been reported to be about $2.5 million, but many in West Marin think that is insufficient to replace people’s homes and livelihoods. Jasmine Bravo, 30, a community organizer whose father worked at a dairy and who lives with her family in ranch housing, has been organizing tenants facing displacement. “This huge decision that was going to impact our community was just made without any community input,” she said. “They thought we were going to be complacent and accepting,” she added. But “there are tenants and workers who have been here for generations. We’re just not going to move out of West Marin and start over. Our lives are here.”On March 11, the Marin County Board of Supervisors voted to declare an emergency shelter crisis to make it easier to construct temporary housing for displaced workers. Many residents showed up to applaud it — and also to say it wasn’t nearly enough.Albert Straus, whose legendary Straus Family Creamery sources organic milk from two of the local dairies, said that the organic operations in Marin and Sonoma counties “have become a model for the world,” and that the ousted dairies are family operations that worked in concert with the community and the land. He recently published an op-ed calling on the Trump administration to reverse the decision. “The campaign to displace the ranchers reflects a misguided vision of nature as a pristine playground suitable for postcards and tourists, with little regard for the community or the planet,” Straus wrote. In an interview, he said that the issue feels “very raw, and we’re trying to change that direction to save our community, our farms and our food.” He added: “I never give up.”

New desalination technology being tested in California could lower costs of tapping seawater

A new desalination technology is undergoing testing in Southern California. Water managers hope it will offer an environmentally friendly way of tapping the Pacific Ocean.

Californians could be drinking water tapped from the Pacific Ocean off Malibu several years from now — that is, if a company’s new desalination technology proves viable. OceanWell Co. plans to anchor about two dozen 40-foot-long devices, called pods, to the seafloor several miles offshore and use them to take in saltwater and pump purified fresh water to shore in a pipeline. The company calls the concept a water farm and is testing a prototype of its pod at a reservoir in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains. The pilot study, supported by Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, is being closely watched by managers of several large water agencies in Southern California. They hope that if the new technology proves economical, it could supply more water for cities and suburbs that are vulnerable to shortages during droughts, while avoiding the environmental drawbacks of large coastal desalination plants.“It can potentially provide us Californians with a reliable water supply that doesn’t create toxic brine that impacts marine life, nor does it have intakes that suck the life out of the ocean,” said Mark Gold, director of water scarcity solutions for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “If this technology is proven to be viable, scalable and cost-effective, it would greatly enhance our climate resilience.” OceanWell’s Mark Golay, left, and Ian Prichard, deputy general manager of Calleguas Municipal Water District, walk toward a prototype of the desalination pod being tested in Las Virgenes Reservoir. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) During a recent demonstration at Las Virgenes Reservoir, Tim Quinn, the company’s water policy strategist, watched as the 12-foot-long cylindrical prototype was lowered underwater on a cable. “We pull fresh water only up out of the ocean, and the salt stays down there in low concentrations, where it’s not an environmental problem,” Quinn said.The testing at Las Virgenes Reservoir will help the company’s engineers check how the system works in filtering out plankton and discharging it back into the water. When the pod was nearly 50 feet underwater, Mark Golay, the company’s director of engineering projects, turned on the pumps and water flowed from a spigot.The next step, expected later this year, will involve conducting trials in the ocean by lowering a pod from an anchored boat into the depths about 5 miles offshore.“We hope to be building water farms under the ocean in 2028,” Quinn said.Quinn previously worked for California water agencies for four decades, and he joined Menlo Park-based OceanWell two years ago believing the new technology holds promise to ease the state’s conflicts over water.“Ocean desal has never played a prominent role in California’s water future,” he said, “and this technology allows us to look to the ocean as a place where we can get significant sources of supply with minimal, if any, environmental conflict.”Managers of seven Southern California water agencies are holding monthly meetings on the project and studying what investments in new infrastructure — such as pipelines and pump stations — would be needed to transport the water the company plans to sell from the shore to their systems. Leaders of Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, who are spearheading the effort, are holding an event at the reservoir Friday to showcase how the technology is being tested. The pilot study is being supported by more than $700,000 in grants from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The company still will need to secure additional permits from the federal government and the state. And it has yet to estimate how much energy the process will require, which will be a major factor in determining the cost.But water managers and other experts agree that the concept offers several advantages over building a traditional desalination plant on the coast.Significantly less electricity is likely to be needed to run the system’s onshore pumps because the pods will be placed at a depth of about 1,300 feet, where the undersea pressure will help drive seawater through reverse-osmosis membranes to produce fresh water.While the intakes of coastal desalination plants typically suck in and kill plankton and fish larvae, the pods have a patented intake system that the company says returns tiny sea creatures to the surrounding water unharmed. And while a plant on the coast typically discharges ultra salty brine waste that can harm the ecosystem, the undersea pods release brine that is less concentrated and allow it to dissipate without taking such an environmental toll. Golay lowers a prototype into Las Virgenes Reservoir for testing. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) If the technology proves viable on a large scale, Gold said, it would help make Southern California less reliant on diminishing imported supplies from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and the Colorado River.Research has shown that human-caused climate change is driving worsening droughts in the western United States. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration has projected that as rising temperatures diminish the snowpack and intensify droughts, the average amount of water available from the reservoirs and aqueducts of the State Water Project could shrink between 13% and 23% over the next 20 years.Southern California’s water agencies are moving ahead with plans to build new facilities that will transform wastewater into clean drinking water, and have also been investing in projects to capture more stormwater.In addition to the economic viability, other questions need to be answered through research, Gold said, including how well the system will hold up filtering tiny sea life, how much maintenance will be needed, and whether the pods and hoses could present any risk of entangling whales.OceanWell’s executives and engineers say their system is designed to protect marine life and eliminate the environmental negatives of other technologies. A conceptual illustration shows a so-called water farm that OceanWell plans to install off the California coast, with 40-foot-long pods anchored to the seafloor about 1,300 feet deep. (OceanWell) Robert Bergstrom, OceanWell’s chief executive, has been working on desalination projects since 1996, and previously built and operated plants in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Bahamas and other Caribbean islands for the company Seven Seas Water, which he founded.When Bergstrom retired, he moved to California and eventually decided to go back to work to develop technology to help solve California’s water problems.“I had a big idea,” Bergstrom said. “I knew this was going to be just a huge lift to get this done, a moonshot.”OceanWell, founded in 2019, now has 10 employees. Its lead investor is Charlie McGarraugh, a former partner of the investment banking company Goldman Sachs. One of its major investors is Japan-based Kubota Corp. Building on Bergstrom’s concept, Chief Technology Officer Michael Porter and the engineering team have worked on the design. They built the first prototype in Porter’s kitchen in San Diego County, and did initial tests in a lab.“It was inspired by the environmental community in California pointing out problems that needed to be solved,” Bergstrom said.Desalination plants are operating in parts of California, including the nation’s largest facility, in Carlsbad, and a small-scale plant on Santa Catalina Island. But proposals for new coastal desalination plants have generated strong opposition. In 2022, the California Coastal Commission rejected a plan for a large desalination plant in Huntington Beach. Opponents argued the water wasn’t needed in the area and raised concerns about high costs and harm to the environment.The problem of traditional shallow intakes drawing in large amounts of algae, fish larvae and plankton goes away in the deep sea, Bergstrom said, because the perpetual darkness 1,300 feet underwater supports vastly less sea life.“We have much cleaner water to deal with,” Bergstrom said. “It’s pretty much a barren desert where we’ve chosen to locate, and as a result, we just don’t have that much stuff to filter out.”A specific site for the first water farm has not yet been selected, but the company plans to install it nearly 5 miles offshore, with a pipeline and a copper power cable connecting it to land.Putting the system deep underwater will probably reduce energy costs by about 40%, Bergstrom said, because unlike a coastal plant that must pump larger quantities of seawater, it will pressurize and pump a smaller quantity of fresh water to shore.Bergstrom and his colleagues tout their invention as a totally different approach. They say it’s not really desalinating seawater in the traditional sense, but rather harvesting fresh water from devices that function like wells in the ocean.After their first water farm, they envision building more along the coast. Bergstrom believes they will help solve water scarcity challenges in California and beyond.Various sites off California would be well-suited to develop water farms, from San Diego to Monterey, Bergstrom said, as would many water-scarce countries with deep offshore waters, such as Chile, Spain and North African nations.“I believe it’ll reshape the world more than just California water,” Quinn said, “because I think the globe is looking for something that is this environmentally friendly.”Under the company’s plans, the first water farm would initially have 20 to 25 pods, and would be expanded with additional pods to deliver about 60 million gallons of water per day, enough for about 250,000 households.Las Virgenes and six other water agencies — including L.A. Department of Water and Power, the city of Burbank and Calleguas Municipal Water District — are working together on a study of how water could be delivered directly from the project, and at what cost, as well as how inland agencies could benefit indirectly by exchanging supplies with those on the coast.“We’re very heavily dependent on imported water, and we need to diversify,” said David Pedersen, Las Virgenes’ general manager. “We need to develop new local water that’s drought resilient, and that can help us as we adapt to climate change.”His district, which depends almost entirely on imported supplies from the State Water Project, serves more than 75,000 people in Agoura Hills, Calabasas, Hidden Hills, Westlake Village and surrounding areas. Mike McNutt, public affairs and communications manager for Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, tastes water that flows from a spigot after passing through a prototype desalination system at Las Virgenes Reservoir. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) During the drought from 2020 to 2022, the district was under severe water restrictions and customers reduced usage nearly 40%. Pedersen hopes the district will be able to tap the ocean for water by around 2030. At Calleguas Municipal Water District, which delivers water for about 650,000 people in Ventura County, deputy general manager Ian Prichard said one of the big questions is how much energy the system will use.“If the technology works and they can bring it to market, and we can afford to bring the water into our service area, then that would be great,” Prichard said. “The big test is, can they produce water at a rate that we want to pay?”

Farmers and small business owners were promised financial help for energy upgrades. They’re still waiting for the money.

Rural residents are left holding the bills for everything from solar panels to grain dryers.

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist, BPR, a public radio station serving western North Carolina, WABE, Atlanta’s NPR station, WBEZ, a public radio station serving the Chicago metropolitan region, and Interlochen Public Radio in Northern Michigan. The Trump administration’s freeze on funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate law from the Biden era, has left farmers and rural businesses across the country on the hook for costly energy efficiency upgrades and renewable energy installations. The grants are part of the Rural Energy for America Program, or REAP, originally created in the 2008 farm bill and supercharged by funding from the IRA. It provides farmers and other businesses in rural areas with relatively small grants and loans to help lower their energy bills by investing, say,  in more energy-efficient farming equipment or installing small solar arrays.  By November 2024, the IRA had awarded more than $1 billion for nearly 7,000 REAP projects, which help rural businesses in low-income communities reduce the up-front costs of clean energy and save thousands on utility costs each year.  But now, that funding is in limbo. Under the current freeze, some farmers have already spent tens of thousands of dollars on projects and are waiting for the promised reimbursement. Others have had to delay work they were counting on to support their businesses, unsure when their funding will come through — or if it will. REAP is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Secretary Brooke Rollins said the agency is “coming to the tail end of the review process” of evaluating grants awarded under the Biden administration. “If our farmers and ranchers especially have already spent money under a commitment that was made, the goal is to make sure they are made whole,” Rollins told reporters in Atlanta last week. But it’s not clear when the funds might be released, or whether all the farmers and business owners awaiting their money will receive it.  For Joshua Snedden, a REAP grant was the key to making his 10-acre farm in Monee, Illinois, more affordable and environmentally sustainable. But months after installing a pricey solar array, he’s still waiting on a reimbursement from the federal government — and the delay is threatening his bottom line.  “I’m holding out hope,” said Snedden, a first-generation farmer in northeast Illinois. “I’m trying to do everything within my power to make sure the funding is released.” In December, his five-year old operation, Fox at the Fork, began sourcing its power from a new 18.48 kilowatt solar array which cost Snedden $86,364. The system currently offsets all the farm’s electricity use and then some. REAP offers grants for up to half of a project like this, and loan guarantees for up to 75 percent of the cost. For Snedden, a $19,784 REAP reimbursement grant made this solar array possible. But the reimbursement, critical to Snedden’s cash flow, was frozen by Trump as part of a broader review of the USDA’s Biden-era commitments. Joshua Snedden is a first-generation farmer who said he will continue whether or not he gets the federal funding for solar. Courtesy of Joshua Snedden Snedden grows the produce he takes to market — everything from tomatoes to garlic to potatoes — on about an acre of his farm. He also plans to transform the rest of his land into a perennial crop system, which would include fruit trees like pears, plums, and apples planted alongside native flowers and grasses to support wildlife.  A solar array was always part of his plans, “but seemed like a pie in the sky” kind of project, he said, adding he thought it might take him a decade to afford such an investment. The REAP program has been a lifeline for Illinois communities struggling with aging infrastructure and growing energy costs, according to Amanda Pankau with the Prairie Rivers Network, an organization advocating for environmental protection and climate change mitigation across Illinois.  “By lowering their electricity costs, rural small businesses and agricultural producers can put that money back into their business,” said Pankau.  That’s exactly what Snedden envisioned from his investment in the solar power system. The new solar array wouldn’t just make his farm more resilient to climate change, but also more financially viable, “because we could shift expenses from paying for energy to paying for more impactful inputs for the farm,” he said.  He anticipates that by switching to solar, Fox at the Fork will save close to $3,200 dollars a year on electric bills.  Now, Snedden is waiting for the USDA to hold up their end of the deal.  “The financial strain hurts,” said Snedden. “But I’m still planning to move forward growing crops and fighting for these funds.” Jon and Brittany Klimstra are both scientists who are originally from western North Carolina. They returned to the area to start a farm and an orchard and are waiting for solar funds they were promised. Courtesy of Jon Klimstra At the start of the year, Jon and Brittany Klimstra were nearly ready to install a solar array on their Polk County, North Carolina farm after being awarded a REAP grant in 2024. As two former scientists who had moved back to western North Carolina 10 years ago to grow apples and be close to their families, it felt like a chance to both save money and live their values. “We’ve certainly been interested in wanting to do something like this, whether it be for our personal home or for our farm buildings for a while,” said Jon. “It just was cost prohibitive up to this point without some type of funding.” That funding came when they were awarded $12,590 from REAP for the installation. But, after the Trump administration’s funding freeze, the money never came.  “We were several site visits in, several engineering conversations. We’ve had electricians, the solar company,” said Brittany . “It’s been a very involved process.” Since the grant is reimbursement-based, the Klimstras have already paid out-of-pocket for some costs related to the project. Plus, the farm had been banking on saving $1,300 in utilities expenses per year. In a given month, their electricity bill is $300-$400. Apples from the orchard run by Jon and Brittany Klimstra. They were ready to install a solar array when the federal funding was frozen. Courtesy of Jon Klimstra Across Appalachia, historically high energy costs have made the difference between survival and failure for many local businesses, said Heather Ransom, who works with Solar Holler, a solar company that serves parts of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio. “We have seen incredible rate increases across the region in electricity over the past 10, even 20 years,” she said. Through Solar Holler, REAP grants also passed into the hands of rural library systems and schools; the company installed 10,000 solar panels throughout the Wayne County, West Virginia school system. About $6 million worth of projects supported by Solar Holler are currently on hold. In other parts of the region, community development financial institutions like the Mountain Association in eastern Kentucky combatted food deserts through helping local grocery stores apply for REAP. Solar Holler also works in coal-producing parts of the region, where climate change discussions have been fraught with the realities of declining jobs and revenue from the coal industry. The program helped make the case for communities to veer away from coal and gas-fired energy.  “What REAP has helped us do is show people that it’s not just a decision that’s driven by environmental motives or whatever, it actually makes good business sense to go solar,” Ransom said. In her experience, saving money appeals to people of all political persuasions. “At the end of the day, we’ve installed just as much solar on red roofs as we do blue roofs, as we do rainbow roofs or whatever.” Jim Lively has a local food market just minutes from the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in northern Michigan. He’s waiting for the federal money he was promised so he can put solar on the roof and offset the costs of opening up a campsite for RVs in this field. Izzy Ross / Grist The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in northern Michigan draws over 1.5 million visitors every year. Jim Lively hopes some of those people will camp RVs at a nearby site he’s planning to open next to his family’s local food market. He wants to use solar panels to help power the campsite and offset electric bills for the market, where local farmers bring produce directly to the store.  Lively helped promote REAP during his time at an environmental nonprofit, where he’d worked for over two decades. So the program was on his mind when it came time to replace the market’s big, south-facing roof. “We put on a metal roof, and worked with a contractor who was also familiar with the REAP program, and we said, ‘Let’s make sure we’re setting this up for solar,’” he said. “So it was kind of a no-brainer for us.” They were told they had been approved for a REAP grant of $39,696 last summer — half of the project’s total cost — but didn’t feel the need to rush the solar installation. Then, at the end of January, Lively was notified that the funding had been paused.  The interior of the Lively NeighborFood Market, where owner Jim Lively likes to feature local produce. He was hoping to install a solar roof this year, but the funding has been stalled. Izzy Ross / Grist The property runs on electricity, rather than natural gas, and Lively wants to keep it that way. But those electric bills have been expensive — about $2,000 a month last summer, he said. When they get the RV site up and running, he expects those bills to approach $3,000. Selling local food means operating within tight margins. Lively said saving on energy would help, but they won’t be able to move ahead with the rooftop solar unless the REAP funding is guaranteed. Continuing to power the property with electricity rather than fossil fuels is a kind of personal commitment for Lively. “Boy, solar is also the right thing to do,” he said. “And it’s going to be difficult to do that without that funding.”  The grants aren’t only for solar arrays and other renewable energy systems. Many are for energy efficiency improvements to help farmers save on utility bills, and in some cases cut emissions. In Georgia, for instance, one farm was awarded just under $233,000 for a more efficient grain dryer, an upgrade projected to save the farm more than $16,000 per year. Several farms were awarded funding to convert diesel-powered irrigation pumps to electric. The USDA did not directly answer Grist’s emailed questions about the specific timeline for REAP funds, the amount of money under review, or the future of the program. Instead, an emailed statement criticized the Biden administration’s “misuse of hundreds of billions” of IRA and bipartisan infrastructure law (BIL) funds  “all at the expense of the American taxpayer.”  “USDA has a solemn responsibility to be good stewards of the American people’s hard-earned taxpayer dollars and to ensure that every dollar spent goes to serve the people, not the bureaucracy. As part of this effort, Secretary Rollins is carefully reviewing this funding and will provide updates as soon as they are made available,” the email said. Read Next Trump is freezing climate funds. Can he do that? Jake Bittle Two federal judges have already ordered the Trump administration to release the impounded IRA and BIL funds. Earthjustice, a national environmental law organization, filed a lawsuit last week challenging the freeze of USDA funds on behalf of farmers and nonprofits.  “The administration is causing harm that can’t be fixed, and fairness requires that the funds continue to flow,” said Jill Tauber, vice president of litigation for climate and energy at Earthjustice. Rollins released the first tranche of funding February 20 and announced the release of additional program funds earlier this month. That did not include the REAP funding. The USDA announced Wednesday it would expedite funding for farmers under a different program in honor of National Agriculture Day, but as of March 20 had not made an announcement about REAP. Rahul Bali of WABE contributed reporting to this story. ​​ Editor’s note: Earthjustice is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Farmers and small business owners were promised financial help for energy upgrades. They’re still waiting for the money. on Mar 21, 2025.

New national forest to see 20m trees planted

The government says the new Western Forest project will help the UK meet its tree-planting targets.

New national forest to see 20m trees planted Malcolm Prior and Jenny KumahBBC News rural affairs teamGetty ImagesThe new Western Forest area will include a mix of 20m newly-planted trees and restored woodlandTwenty million trees will be planted and 2,500 hectares of new woodland created in the west of England as part of a "national forest" drive, the government has announced.The Western Forest will be made up of new and existing woodlands across Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Somerset, the Cotswolds and the Mendips as well as in urban areas such as Bristol, Swindon and Gloucester.It will be the first of three new national forests promised by the government to help meet a legally-binding target of achieving 16.5% woodland cover in England by 2050.However, with only 10% cover achieved so far, environmental groups have warned much more needs to be done to meet tree-planting targets.Malcolm Prior/BBCAlex Stone, chief executive of the Forest of Avon Trust, said the Western Forest will create up to 30% tree cover in some areasThe most recent research shows the total area of woodland across the whole of the UK is currently estimated to be 3.28m hectares.That represents 13% of the total land area of the UK but in England just 10% is woodland.Across the UK, the aim is for 30,000 hectares of woodland to be planted every year.The latest annual figures show about 21,000 hectares were planted, with the vast majority in Scotland and just 5,500 hectares in England.Andy Egan, head of conservation policy at the Woodland Trust, said there had been "significant progress" on tree planting but that there was still "much more to do" to meet the UK's targets.He said maintaining government funding was essential."Successful tree planting and ongoing management needs long-term grant support," he said."A tough public spending environment could risk undoing much of the good work."Malcolm Prior/BBCIt is hoped at least 2,500 hectares of new woodland will be created as part of the new national forestAlex Stone, chief executive of the Forest of Avon Trust, which leads the partnership behind the Western Forest project, said there were some areas in the region that currently had only 7% of land covered by trees."This is about bringing those areas up so we have trees where we really need them," she said."What we are aiming to do with the Western Forest is get to 20% of canopy cover by 2050 and, in five priority areas, we are looking at getting above 30%."The scheme will particularly target urban areas, including Bristol, Swindon and Gloucester.Create jobsThe government said it would be putting £7.5m of public money into the forest over the next five years.It said the project would not only help the UK's drive to net zero but would also promote economic growth and create jobs in the region.Mary Creagh, minister for nature, said she hoped the Western Forest would also "make a huge difference" to water quality, flood resilience and to wildlife as well as bringing nature "closer to people" in the region.But she conceded there was much more to do in order to hit England's national tree-planting target."I am absolutely confident that we can get to where we need to get to," she said."Projects like this give me hope and confidence that, with everybody pulling together, working with the public sector and the private sector, we can do it."She added that, despite ongoing budget cuts, the next two national forests would be delivered by the end of this parliament, with other sources of funding explored.The Western Forest is the first new national forest to be designated in England in 30 years, following the creation of the original National Forest across Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire, where 9.8m trees have been planted.

World's Glaciers Are Losing Record Ice as Global Temperatures Climb, U.N. Says

By Alexander Villegas(Reuters) - Glaciers around the globe are disappearing faster than ever, with the last three-year period seeing the largest...

(Reuters) - Glaciers around the globe are disappearing faster than ever, with the last three-year period seeing the largest glacial mass loss on record, according to a UNESCO report released on Friday. The 9,000 gigatons of ice lost from glaciers since 1975 are roughly equivalent to "an ice block the size of Germany with the thickness of 25 meters," Michael Zemp, director of the Switzerland-based World Glacier Monitoring Service, said during a press conference announcing the report at the UN headquarters in Geneva.The dramatic ice loss, from the Arctic to the Alps, from South America to the Tibetan Plateau, is expected to accelerate as climate change, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, pushes global temperatures higher. This would likely exacerbate economic, environmental and social problems across the world as sea levels rise and these key water sources dwindle.  The report coincides with a UNESCO summit in Paris marking the first World Day for Glaciers, urging global action to protect glaciers around the world.Zemp said that five of the last six years registered the largest losses, with glaciers losing 450 gigatons of mass in 2024 alone.The accelerated loss has made mountain glaciers one of the largest contributors to sea level rise, putting millions at risk of devastating floods and damaging water routes that billions of people depend on for hydroelectric energy and agriculture.Stefan Uhlenbrook, the director of water and cryosphere at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), said that about 275,000 glaciers remain globally which, along with the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, comprise about 70% of the world's freshwater."We need to advance our scientific knowledge, we need to advance through better observing systems, through better forecasts and better early warning systems for the planet and the people," Uhlenbrook said.About 1.1 billion people live in mountain communities, which suffer the most immediate impacts of glacier loss, due to the increasing risks with natural hazards and unreliable water sources. The remote locations and difficult terrains also make cheap fixes difficult to come by.Rising temperatures are expected to worsen droughts in areas that rely on snowpack for freshwater, while increasing both the severity and frequency of hazards like avalanches, landslides, flash floods and glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs).One Peruvian farmer living downstream of a retreating glacier has taken the issue to court, suing German energy giant RWE for a portion of the glacial lake's flood defenses proportionate to its historic global emissions."The changes we see in the field are literally heartbreaking," glaciologist Heidi Sevestre, secretariat at the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, told Reuters outside the UNESCO headquarters in Paris on Wednesday.    "Things in certain regions are happening actually much faster than we anticipated," Sevestre added, noting a recent trip to the Rwenzori Mountains, located in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in East Africa, where glaciers are now expected to disappear by 2030.Sevestre has worked with the region's indigenous Bakonzo communities who believe a deity called Kitasamba lives in the glaciers."Can you imagine the deep spiritual connection, this strong attachment they have towards the glaciers and what it might mean for them that their glaciers are disappearing?" Sevestre said.Glacial melt in East Africa has led to increased local conflicts over water, according to the new UNESCO report, and while the impact on a global scale is minimal, the trickle of melting glaciers around the world is having a compounding impact.    Between 2000 and 2023, melting mountain glaciers have caused 18 millimeters of global sea level rise, about 1 mm per year. Every millimeter can expose up to 300,000 people to annual flooding, according to the World Glacier Monitoring Service. "Billions of people are connected to glaciers, whether they know it or not, and that will require billions of people to protect them," Sevestre said.(Reporting by Alexander Villegas; Editing by Gloria Dickie and Aurora Ellis)Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

$30,500 reward offered for information on gray wolf killed near Sisters

Environmental groups and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are seeking help from the public in investigating the killing this month of a gray wolf near Sisters.

Environmental groups and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are seeking help from the public in investigating the killing this month of a gray wolf near Sisters.State and federal officials responded to the wolf death on March 10. The adult male was the head of the Metolius pack, officials said. They did not specify how the wolf had died.Wolf poaching has been on the rise in recent years as the animals have rebounded in the state and preyed on livestock, with poisoning the weapon of choice. Gray wolves are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act in the western two-thirds of Oregon.The wolf and his mate were first identified in 2021 in the Metolius wildlife unit of Jefferson and Deschutes counties. After the pair had four pups in 2024, the wolf family was designated as an official pack. Three of those pups and their mother are still alive, officials said. The killing of the pack’s breeding male may consign the pups to death by starvation or could lead the pack to dissolve, said Amaroq Weiss, a senior wolf advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, a national conservation group based in Tucson that has offered a reward in the case. “These beautiful animals don’t deserve to die this way, and whoever killed this wolf should face the full force of the law,” Weiss said. The conservation group and the Sisters-based nonprofit Wolf Welcome Committee have offered a combined reward of $10,500, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is offering another $10,000, and the Oregon Wildlife Coalition has a standing reward of $10,000 for any wolf illegally killed in Oregon. The rewards add to the $130,000 already being offered for tips leading to an arrest or citation in a series of wolf killing cases over the past two years across Oregon. The number of illegal wolf killings has picked up sharply in recent years, with at least 36 wolves killed over the past five years: five in 2024, 12 in 2023, seven in 2022, eight in 2021 and four in 2020. Investigators admit the generous rewards almost never lead to prosecutions for the killings in Oregon or elsewhere across the U.S.. There has never been a cash award given for a wolf-related poaching case in Oregon, officials said.Conservation groups say offering the rewards deter poachers and send a signal that wolves’ lives have value and that their killing is a societal problem. Anyone with information about the wolf killing near Sisters can contact U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at 503-682-6131 or Oregon State Police at 800-452-7888, or email tip@osp.oregon.gov. Callers can remain anonymous.— Gosia Wozniacka covers environmental justice, climate change, the clean energy transition and other environmental issues. Reach her at gwozniacka@oregonian.com or 971-421-3154.Our journalism needs your support. Subscribe today to OregonLive.com.

Portland City Council demands mayor investigate violations of Zenith Energy franchise agreement

The Portland City Council passed a resolution demanding Mayor Keith Wilson investigate potential violations of Zenith Energy’s franchise agreement.

The Portland City Council passed a resolution demanding Mayor Keith Wilson investigate potential violations of Zenith Energy’s franchise agreement. The 11-1 vote Wednesday comes on the heels of city staff approving a controversial land-use credential for Zenith – a key step for the company to continue offloading and storing crude oil and renewable fuel at the Northwest Portland fuels hub.The resolution also urges City Auditor Simone Rede to investigate the city administrative staff’s handling of Zenith’s land-use applications and demands top bureau leaders to place all prior communications between the city and Zenith into the public record, among other directives. Wilson told councilors he will follow their will to set up an investigation. Rede said her office is still evaluating the idea.“The Ombudsman, which is in the Office of the Auditor, will assess Council’s request against established criteria for investigation, and whether it raises issues that could be more appropriately addressed through a lobbying investigation, a complaint to the City’s fraud hotline, or another entity,” Rede said via email. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality had asked Zenith to obtain the new land-use compatibility statement from the city after it uncovered Zenith had installed a valve and pipes at a dock owned by another company and had used the dock for three years without telling state regulators. The agency also fined Zenith $372,600 for the unauthorized dock use. The February approval of the land-use document paves the way for Zenith to apply for a new state air quality permit to extend its Portland operations. Environmental activists and some residents have opposed Zenith’s presence in Portland for years and have pressured the new City Council to look into the company’s violations and the city’s handling of Zenith, including lack of public transparency and public input. City staff have maintained Zenith’s approval, like myriad other land-use decisions, should be purely administrative. The Houston-based Zenith is one of 11 companies with fuel terminals at the Critical Energy Infrastructure Hub on the Willamette River. It’s the only company at the hub that has become a target of concerns over earthquakes, fuel spills and fires, likely because it’s the only state-regulated facility that still stores crude oil. Zenith also stores renewable diesel, biodiesel and sustainable aviation fuel and has pledged to fully transition to renewable fuels by 2027.The city originally denied Zenith’s land-use credential in 2021. But a year later, after a lengthy legal battle, the city reversed course and gave Zenith its approval, touting the company’s pledge to fully transition to renewable fuel by 2027. Zenith critics then pushed state regulators to scrutinize the company, which led the Department of Environmental Quality to crack down on the rogue dock use.Councilors passed the resolution after first striking a provision that would require the mayor to use independent outside counsel as part of his investigation. A second amendment also removed a lengthy letter from advocates attached to the resolution that listed and categorized multiple comments made by bureau officials at a January city work session on Zenith as misleading, false or “a conscious lie.” Councilor Steve Novick, who cast the only no vote, said he supports the mayor’s investigation but voted against the amended resolution because he felt it unfairly condemned city employees. “I can’t possibly vote for this resolution… without effectively saying that I think city employees are knaves and liars. And, having looked at some of the allegations against them, I think in most cases it’s shaggy dog stories, rather than malfeasance,” Novick said before voting.Several other council members, including council President Elana Pirtle-Guiney, said they were concerned the investigations would turn into “a witch hunt” but ultimately voted to support the resolution.Angelita Morillo, one of four councilors who submitted the resolution, said that wasn’t the intent, but added that it’s critical to ensure powerful administrative leaders are ethical and competent.“They are the gatekeepers of information. They can make sure elected officials receive or not receive pieces of information before we make a vote on certain policies,” Morillo said. “And so we need to have the utmost trust in them … and need to know they are accountable to the public and to us.”Pirtle-Guiney called the investigations an opportunity for oversight and accountability.“At the end, we can restore trust with all communities across the city and then we can get to work looking at the future of our land-use system and ensuring one that allows us to make sustainable choices,” she said. Councilor Olivia Clark, who voted for the resolution, said the council must start thinking about how Zenith fits in with Portland’s future climate goals. City staff have described Zenith’s transition to renewable fuels as an integral part in the city reaching its greenhouse gas emission-reduction mandates.“Zenith is supposed to be a part of the solution to the transition away from fossil fuels,” Clark said. “So this means we’re living with an uncomfortable trade-off. We must invest in strategies to lower our use of fossil fuels … and at the same time do everything we can to mitigate the threats posed by both oil trains and the CEI fuel tanks in our midst.” Neither Zenith officials nor advocates spoke at the meeting because the council didn’t allow public comments. “Zenith has worked closely and transparently with city and state regulators to ensure our operations are fully understood and properly permitted,” Grady Reamer, the company’s chief commercial officer, said in a statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive. Reamer added that Zenith’s terminal “plays a critical role in making renewable fuel available across the region” and said the company would continue to work with city and state officials to ensure compliance with all relevant safety and environmental standards.In the end, Councilor Eric Zimmerman acknowledged the resolution does nothing to stop Zenith. Though activists have challenged the city’s newly issued land-use approval in court, the DEQ said it had already evaluated it and determined it’s sufficient to resume the state air quality permitting process. State regulators said they plan to launch the public comment period in the near future. — Gosia Wozniacka covers environmental justice, climate change, the clean energy transition and other environmental issues. Reach her at gwozniacka@oregonian.com or 971-421-3154.Our journalism needs your support. Subscribe today to OregonLive.com.

Professor Emeritus Lee Grodzins, pioneer in nuclear physics, dies at 98

An MIT faculty member for 40 years, Grodzins performed groundbreaking studies of the weak interaction, led in detection technology, and co-founded the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Nuclear physicist and MIT Professor Emeritus Lee Grodzins died on March 6 at his home in the Maplewood Senior Living Community at Weston, Massachusetts. He was 98.   Grodzins was a pioneer in nuclear physics research. He was perhaps best known for the highly influential experiment determining the helicity of the neutrino, which led to a key understanding of what's known as the weak interaction. He was also the founder of Niton Corp. and the nonprofit Cornerstones of Science, and was a co-founder of the Union of Concerned Scientists.He retired in 1999 after serving as an MIT physics faculty member for 40 years. As a member of the Laboratory for Nuclear Science (LNS), he initiated the relativistic heavy-ion physics program. He published over 170 scientific papers and held 64 U.S. patents.“Lee was a very good experimental physicist, especially with his hands making gadgets,” says Heavy Ion Group and Francis L. Friedman Professor Emeritus Wit Busza PhD ’64. “His enthusiasm for physics spilled into his enthusiasm for how physics was taught in our department.”Industrious son of immigrantsGrodzins was born July 10, 1926, in Lowell, Massachusetts, the middle child of Eastern European Jewish immigrants David and Taube Grodzins. He grew up in Manchester, New Hampshire. His two sisters were Ethel Grodzins Romm, journalist, author, and businesswoman who later ran his company, Niton Corp.; and Anne Lipow, who became a librarian and library science expert.His father, who ran a gas station and a used-tire business, died when Lee was 15. To help support his family, Lee sold newspapers, a business he grew into the second-largest newspaper distributor in Manchester.At 17, Grodzins attended the University of New Hampshire, graduating in less than three years with a degree in mechanical engineering.  However, he decided to be a physicist after disagreeing with a textbook that used the word “never.”“I was pretty good in math and was undecided about my future,” Grodzins said in a 1958 New York Daily News article. “It wasn’t until my senior year that I unexpectedly realized I wanted to be a physicist. I was reading a physics text one day when suddenly this sentence hit me: ‘We will never be able to see the atom.’ I said to myself that that was as stupid a statement as I’d ever read. What did he mean ‘never!’ I got so annoyed that I started devouring other writers to see what they had to say and all at once I found myself in the midst of modern physics.”He wrote his senior thesis on “Atomic Theory.”After graduating in 1946, he approached potential employers by saying, “I have a degree in mechanical engineering, but I don’t want to be one. I’d like to be a physicist, and I’ll take anything in that line at whatever you will pay me.”He accepted an offer from General Electric’s Research Laboratory in Schenectady, New York, where he worked in fundamental nuclear research building cosmic ray detectors, while also pursuing his master’s degree at Union College. “I had a ball,” he recalled. “I stayed in the lab 12 hours a day. They had to kick me out at night.”BrookhavenAfter earning his PhD from Purdue University in 1954, he spent a year as a lecturer there, before becoming a researcher at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) with Maurice Goldhaber’s nuclear physics group, probing the properties of the nuclei of atoms.In 1957, he, with Goldhaber and Andy Sunyar, used a simple table-top experiment to measure the helicity of the neutrino. Helicity characterizes the alignment of a particle’s intrinsic spin vector with that particle’s direction of motion. The research provided new support for the idea that the principle of conservation of parity — which had been accepted for 30 years as a basic law of nature before being disproven the year before, leading to the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics — was not as inviolable as the scientists thought it was, and did not apply to the behavior of some subatomic particles.The experiment took about 10 days to complete, followed by a month of checks and rechecks. They submitted a letter on “Helicity of Neutrinos” to Physical Review on Dec. 11, 1957, and a week later, Goldhaber told a Stanford University audience that the neutrino is left-handed, meaning that the weak interaction was probably one force. This work proved crucial to our understanding of the weak interaction, the force that governs nuclear beta decay.“It was a real upheaval in our understanding of physics,” says Grodzins’ onetime postdoc and longtime colleague Stephen Steadman. The breakthrough was commemorated in 2008, with a conference at BNL on “Neutrino Helicity at 50.” Steadman also recalls Grodzins’ story about one night at Brookhaven, where he was working on an experiment that involved a radioactive source inside a chamber. Lee noticed that a vacuum pump wasn’t working, so he tinkered with it a while before heading home. Later that night, he gets a call from the lab. “They said, ‘Don't go anywhere!’” recalls Steadman. It turns out the radiation source in the lab had exploded, and the pump filled the lab with radiation. “They were actually able to trace his radioactive footprints from the lab to his home,” says Steadman. “He kind of shrugged it off.”The MIT years       Grodzins joined the faculty of MIT in 1959, where he taught physics for four decades. He inherited Robley Evans’ Radiation Laboratory, which used radioactive sources to study properties of nuclei, and led the Relativistic Heavy Ion Group, which was affiliated with the LNS.In 1972, he launched a program at BNL using the then-new Tandem Van de Graaff accelerator to study interactions of heavy ions with nuclei. “As the BNL tandem was getting commissioned, we started a program, together with Doug Cline at the University of Rochester, tandem to investigate Coulomb-nuclear interference,” says Steadman, a senior research scientist at LNS. “The experimental results were decisive but somewhat controversial at the time. We clearly detected the interference effect.” The experimental work was published in Physical Review Letters.Grodzins’ team looked for super-heavy elements using the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Super-Hilac, investigated heavy-ion fission and other heavy-ion reactions, and explored heavy-ion transfer reactions. The latter research showed with precise detail the underlying statistical behavior of the transfer of nucleons between the heavy-ion projectile and target, using a theoretical statistical model of Surprisal Analysis developed by Rafi Levine and his graduate student. Recalls Steadman, “these results were both outstanding in their precision and initially controversial in interpretation.”In 1985, he carried out the first computer axial tomographic experiment using synchrotron radiation, and in 1987, his group was involved in the first run of Experiment 802, a collaborative experiment with about 50 scientists from around the world that studied relativistic heavy ion collisions at Brookhaven. The MIT responsibility was to build the drift chambers and design the bending magnet for the experiment.“He made significant contributions to the initial design and construction phases, where his broad expertise and knowledge of small area companies with unique capabilities was invaluable,” says George Stephens, physics senior lecturer and senior research scientist at MIT.Professor emeritus of physics Rainer Weiss ’55, PhD ’62 recalls working on a Mossbauer experiment to establish if photons changed frequency as they traveled through bright regions. “It was an idea held by some to explain the ‘apparent’ red shift with distance in our universe,” says Weiss. “We became great friends in the process, and of course, amateur cosmologists.”“Lee was great for developing good ideas,” Steadman says. “He would get started on one idea, but then get distracted with another great idea. So, it was essential that the team would carry these experiments to their conclusion: they would get the papers published.”MIT mentorBefore retiring in 1999, Lee supervised 21 doctoral dissertations and was an early proponent of women graduate students in physics. He also oversaw the undergraduate thesis of Sidney Altman, who decades later won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. For many years, he helped teach the Junior Lab required of all undergraduate physics majors. He got his favorite student evaluation, however, for a different course, billed as offering a “superficial overview” of nuclear physics. The comment read: “This physics course was not superficial enough for me.”“He really liked to work with students,” says Steadman. “They could always go into his office anytime. He was a very supportive mentor.”“He was a wonderful mentor, avuncular and supportive of all of us,” agrees Karl van Bibber ’72, PhD ’76, now at the University of California at Berkeley. He recalls handing his first paper to Grodzins for comments. “I was sitting at my desk expecting a pat on the head. Quite to the contrary, he scowled, threw the manuscript on my desk and scolded, ‘Don't even pick up a pencil again until you've read a Hemingway novel!’ … The next version of the paper had an average sentence length of about six words; we submitted it, and it was immediately accepted by Physical Review Letters.”Van Bibber has since taught the “Grodzins Method” in his graduate seminars on professional orientation for scientists and engineers, including passing around a few anthologies of Hemingway short stories. “I gave a copy of one of the dog-eared anthologies to Lee at his 90th birthday lecture, which elicited tears of laughter.”Early in George Stephans’ MIT career as a research scientist, he worked with Grodzins’ newly formed Relativistic Heavy Ion Group. “Despite his wide range of interests, he paid close attention to what was going on and was always very supportive of us, especially the students. He was a very encouraging and helpful mentor to me, as well as being always pleasant and engaging to work with. He actively pushed to get me promoted to principal research scientist relatively early, in recognition of my contributions.”“He always seemed to know a lot about everything, but never acted condescending,” says Stephans. “He seemed happiest when he was deeply engaged digging into the nitty-gritty details of whatever unique and unusual work one of these companies was doing for us.”Al Lazzarini ’74, PhD ’78 recalls Grodzins’ investigations using proton-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) as a sensitive tool to measure trace elemental amounts. “Lee was a superb physicist,” says Lazzarini. “He gave an enthralling seminar on an investigation he had carried out on a lock of Napoleon’s hair, looking for evidence of arsenic poisoning.”Robert Ledoux ’78, PhD ’81, a former professor of physics at MIT who is now program director of the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency with the Department of Energy, worked with Grodzins as both a student and colleague. “He was a ‘nuclear physicist’s physicist’ — a superb experimentalist who truly loved building and performing experiments in many areas of nuclear physics. His passion for discovery was matched only by his generosity in sharing knowledge.”The research funding crisis starting in 1969 led Grodzins to become concerned that his graduate students would not find careers in the field. He helped form the Economic Concerns Committee of the American Physical Society, for which he produced a major report on the “Manpower Crisis in Physics” (1971), and presented his results before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and at the Karlsruhe National Lab in Germany.   Grodzins played a significant role in bringing the first Chinese graduate students to MIT in the 1970s and 1980s.One of the students he welcomed was Huan Huang PhD ’90. “I am forever grateful to him for changing my trajectory,” says Huang, now at the University of California at Los Angeles. “His unwavering support and ‘go do it’ attitude inspired us to explore physics at the beginning of a new research field of high energy heavy ion collisions in the 1980s. I have been trying to be a ‘nice professor’ like Lee all my academic career.”Even after he left MIT, Grodzins remained available for his former students. “Many tell me how much my lifestyle has influenced them, which is gratifying,” Huang says. “They’ve been a central part of my life. My biography would be grossly incomplete without them.”Niton Corp. and post-MIT workGrodzins liked what he called “tabletop experiments,” like the one used in his 1957 neutrino experiment, which involved a few people building a device that could fit on a tabletop. “He didn’t enjoy working in large collaborations, which nuclear physics embraced.” says Steadman. “I think that’s why he ultimately left MIT.”In the 1980s, he launched what amounted to a new career in detection technology. In 1987, after developing a scanning proton-induced X-ray microspectrometer for use measuring elemental concentrations in air, he founded the Niton Corp., which developed, manufactured, and marketed test kits and instruments to measure radon gas in buildings, lead-based paint detection, and other nondestructive testing applications. (“Niton” is an obsolete term for radon.)“At the time, there was a big scare about radon in New England, and he thought he could develop a radon detector that was inexpensive and easy to use,” says Steadman. “His radon detector became a big business.”He later developed devices to detect explosives, drugs, and other contraband in luggage and cargo containers. Handheld devices used X-ray fluorescence to determine the composition of metal alloys and to detect other materials. The handheld XL Spectrum Analyzer could detect buried and surface lead on painted surfaces, to protect children living in older homes. Three Niton X-ray fluorescence analyzers earned R&D 100 awards.“Lee was very technically gifted,” says Steadman.In 1999, Grodzins retired from MIT and devoted his energies to industry, including directing the R&D group at Niton.His sister Ethel Grodzins Romm was the president and CEO of Niton, followed by his son Hal. Many of Niton’s employees were MIT graduates. In 2005, he and his family sold Niton to Thermo Fisher Scientific, where Lee remained as a principal scientist until 2010.In the 1990s, he was vice president of American Science and Engineering, and between the ages of 70 and 90, he was awarded three patents a year. “Curiosity and creativity don’t stop after a certain age,” Grodzins said to UNH Today. “You decide you know certain things, and you don’t want to change that thinking. But thinking outside the box really means thinking outside your box.”“I miss his enthusiasm,” says Steadman. “I saw him about a couple of years ago and he was still on the move, always ready to launch a new effort, and he was always trying to pull you into those efforts.”A better worldIn the 1950s, Grodzins and other Brookhaven scientists joined the American delegation at the Second United Nations International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva.Early on, he joined several Manhattan Project alums at MIT in their concern about the consequences of nuclear bombs. In Vietnam-era 1969, Grodzins co-founded the Union of Concerned Scientists, which calls for scientific research to be directed away from military technologies and toward solving pressing environmental and social problems. He served as its chair in 1970 and 1972. He also chaired committees for the American Physical Society and the National Research Council.As vice president for advanced products at American Science and Engineering, which made homeland security equipment, he became a consultant on airport security, especially following the 9/11 attacks. As an expert witness, he testified at the celebrated trial to determine whether Pan Am was negligent for the bombing of Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and he took part in a weapons inspection trip on the Black Sea. He also was frequently called as an expert witness on patent cases.In 1999, Grodzins founded the nonprofit Cornerstones in Science, a public library initiative to improve public engagement with science. Based originally at the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick, Maine, Cornerstones now partners with libraries in Maine, Arizona, Texas, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and California. Among their initiatives was one that has helped supply telescopes to libraries and astronomy clubs around the country.“He had a strong sense of wanting to do good for mankind,” says Steadman.AwardsGrodzins authored more than 170 technical papers and holds more than 60 U.S. patents. His numerous accolades included being named a Guggenheim Fellow in 1964 and 1971, and a senior von Humboldt fellow in 1980. He was a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and received an honorary doctor of science degree from Purdue University in 1998.In 2021, the Denver X-Ray Conference gave Grodzins the Birks Award in X-Florescence Spectrometry, for having introduced “a handheld XRF unit which expanded analysis to in-field applications such as environmental studies, archeological exploration, mining, and more.”Personal lifeOne evening in 1955, shortly after starting his work at Brookhaven, Grodzins decided to take a walk and explore the BNL campus. He found just one building that had lights on and was open, so he went in. Inside, a group was rehearsing a play. He was immediately smitten with one of the actors, Lulu Anderson, a young biologist. “I joined the acting company, and a year-and-a-half later, Lulu and I were married,” Grodzins had recalled. They were happily married for 62 years, until Lulu’s death in 2019.They raised two sons, Dean, now of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Hal Grodzins, who lives in Maitland, Florida. Lee and Lulu owned a succession of beloved huskies, most of them named after physicists.After living in Arlington, Massachusetts, the Grodzins family moved to Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1972 and bought a second home a few years later in Brunswick, Maine. Starting around 1990, Lee and Lulu spent every weekend, year-round, in Brunswick. In both places, they were avid supporters of their local libraries, museums, theaters, symphonies, botanical gardens, public radio, and TV stations.Grodzins took his family along to conferences, fellowships, and other invitations. They all lived in Denmark for two sabbaticals, in 1964-65 and 1971-72, while Lee worked at the Neils Bohr Institute. They also traveled together to China for a month in 1975, and for two months in 1980. As part of the latter trip, they were among the first American visitors to Tibet since the 1940s. Lee and Lulu also traveled the world, from Antarctica to the Galapagos Islands to Greece.His homes had basement workshops well-stocked with tools. His sons enjoyed a playroom he built for them in their Arlington home. He also once constructed his own high-fidelity record player, patched his old Volvo with fiberglass, changed his own oil, and put on the winter tires and chains himself. He was an early adopter of the home computer.“His work in science and technology was part of a general love of gadgets and of fixing and making things,” his son, Dean, wrote in a Facebook post.Lee is survived by Dean, his wife, Nora Nykiel Grodzins, and their daughter, Lily; and by Hal and his wife Cathy Salmons. A remembrance and celebration for Lee Grodzins is planned for this summer. Donations in his name may be made to Cornerstones of Science.

Controversy erupts over claims Microsoft invented a new state of matter

This discovery could change the computing world entirely. But many are skeptical of their claims

The matter making up the world around us has long-since been organized into three neat categories: solids, liquids and gases. But last month, Microsoft announced that it had allegedly discovered another state of matter originally theorized to exist in 1937.  This new state of matter called the Majorana zero mode is made up of quasiparticles, which act as their own particle and antiparticle. The idea is that the Majorana zero mode could be used to build a quantum computer, which could help scientists answer complex questions that standard computers are not capable of solving, with implications for medicine, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. In late February, Sen. Ted Cruz presented Microsoft’s new computer chip at a congressional hearing, saying, “Technologies like this new chip I hold in the palm of my hand, the Majorana 1 quantum chip, are unlocking a new era of computing that will transform industries from health care to energy, solving problems that today's computers simply cannot.” However, Microsoft’s announcement, claiming a “breakthrough in quantum computing,” was met with skepticism from some physicists in the field. Proving that this form of quantum computing can work requires first demonstrating the existence of Majorana quasiparticles, measuring what the Majorana particles are doing, and creating something called a topological qubit used to store quantum information. But some say that not all of the data necessary to prove this has been included in the research paper published in Nature, on which this announcement is based. And due to a fraught history of similar claims from the company being disputed and ultimately rescinded, some are extra wary of the results. Although the paper describes the structure and architecture that could potentially be used to build a topological quantum computer, it’s not clear if all of these ingredients can be put together to actually construct the system, said Dr. Jelena Klinovaj, a theoretical physicist at the University of Basel who studies topology of quantum.  "Discourse and skepticism are all part of the scientific process." “In this Microsoft paper, they cannot show that they can really operate it,” Klinovaj told Salon in a video call. “They did not show in a peer-reviewed publication that it is really a topological state because some objects could have exactly the same properties in experiments.” Despite Microsoft’s announcement, one of the peer-review files accompanying the Nature paper also states, “The editorial team wishes to point out that the results in this manuscript do not represent evidence for the presence of Majorana zero modes in the reported devices.” Dr. Chetan Nayak, Microsoft Station Q Director, said in an email that prior work published in Nature “confirms the existence of [Majorana zero modes] and demonstrates the basic operation needed for a topological qubit.” “Since then, we have fabricated and tested topological qubits, building on this prior work and further confirming the existence of [Majorana zero modes],” Nayak wrote. A Microsoft spokesperson said in an email that the company has made significant progress since the paper was submitted and has been able to demonstrate “the basic native operations in a measurement-based topological qubit.” Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon's weekly newsletter Lab Notes. “Discourse and skepticism are all part of the scientific process,” they wrote. “That is why we are dedicated to the continued open publication of our research, so that everyone can build on what others have discovered and learned.” It’s not the first time there has been controversy in this research field. In 2018, a study partially funded by Microsoft but conducted by an independent university reported that they had detected the presence of Majorana zero-modes. Later, it was retracted by Nature, the journal that published it after a report from independent experts put the findings under more intense scrutiny. In the report, four physicists not involved in the research concluded that it did not appear that the authors had intentionally misrepresented the data, but instead seemed to be “caught up in the excitement of the moment.” Establishing the existence of these particles is extremely complex in part because disorder in the device can create signals that mimic these quasiparticles when they are not actually there.  "Me and many other experts do not think they have demonstrated even the basic science behind it." Modern computers in use today are encoded in bits, which can either be in a zero state (no current flowing through them), or a one state (current flowing.) These bits work together to send information and signals that communicate with the computer, powering everything from cell phones to video games. Companies like Google, IBM and Amazon have invested in designing another form of quantum computer that uses chips built with “qubits,” or quantum bits. Qubits can exist in both zero and one states at the same time due to a phenomenon called superposition.  However, qubits are subject to external noise from the environment that can affect their performance, said Dr. Paolo Molignini, a researcher in theoretical quantum physics at Stockholm University. “Because qubits are in a superposition of zero and one, they are very prone to errors and they are very prone to what is called decoherence, which means there could be noise, thermal fluctuations or many things that can collapse the state of the qubits,” Molignini told Salon in a video call. “Then you basically lose all of the information that you were encoding.” It’s necessary to correct errors that creep in with this noise, and in order to do so, you need to add many more qubits to the system. Within the last six months, Amazon announced it had built a computer chip that used five qubits, and Google announced that it had built one with 105 qubits. In December, Google said its quantum computer could perform a calculation that a standard computer could complete in 10 septillion years — a period far longer than the age of the universe — in just under five minutes.  However, a general-purpose computer would require billions of qubits, so these approaches are still a far cry from having practical applications, said Dr. Patrick Lee, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who co-authored the report leading to the 2018 Nature paper's retraction. Microsoft is taking a different approach to quantum computing by trying to develop  a topological qubit, which has the ability to store information in multiple places at once. Topological qubits exist within the Majorana zero states and are appealing because they can theoretically offer greater protection against environmental noise that destroys information within a quantum system. Think of it like an arrow, where the arrowhead holds a portion of the information and the arrow tail holds the rest, Lee said. Distributing information across space like this is called topological protection. “If you are able to put them far apart from each other, then you have a chance of maintaining the identity of the arrow even if it is subject to noise,” Lee told Salon in a phone interview. “The idea is that if the noise affects the head, it doesn’t kill the arrow and if it affects only the tail it doesn’t kill your arrow. It has to affect both sides simultaneously to kill your arrow, and that is very unlikely if you are able to put them apart.” In a Microsoft press release announcing the Majorana 1, the company says the chip could calculate catalysts that break down plastic pollutants and “lead to self-healing materials that repair cracks in bridges or airplane parts, shattered phone screens or scratched car doors.” “Enzymes, a kind of biological catalyst, could be harnessed more effectively in healthcare and agriculture, thanks to accurate calculations about their behavior that only quantum computing can provide,” it states. “This could lead to breakthroughs helping to eradicate global hunger: boosting soil fertility to increase yields or promoting sustainable growth of foods in harsh climates.” Yet Dr. Sergey Frolov, an associate professor of physics at the University of Pittsburgh whose analysis of the 2018 study data led to its subsequent investigation and retraction, argues that the paper does not demonstrate the existence of a topological qubit which is critical in establishing the quantum computing system they say they are creating. “The long story short is that me and many other experts do not think they have demonstrated even the basic science behind it, let alone the leap into technology of scaling up, production, etc.,” Frolov told Salon in a phone interview.  Nevertheless, Lee believes that even if the data doesn’t entirely prove that topological qubits exist in the Majorana zero-state, it still represents a scientific advancement. But he noted that several important issues need to be solved before it has practical implications. For one, the coherence time of these particles — or how long they can exist without being affected by environmental noise — is still very short, he explained. “They make a measurement, come back, and the qubit has changed, so you have lost your coherence,” Lee said. “With this very short time, you cannot do anything with it.” It could be that some form of engineering is necessary to incrementally improve the coherence of the qubits to solve this problem, Lee said. Or, it could require other major scientific breakthroughs that change the way we think about them, he said.  Nayak said the company plans to present these findings at the American Physical Society’s Global Physics Summit later this month. But it’s yet to be seen if all of the pieces necessary to make this form of quantum computer will come together into something with practical implications. “As far as the press announcement that they have a topological qubit, I would say most scientists would dispute that,” Lee said. “They are far from having a working qubit.” In the meantime, some are concerned that the back and forth on the topic within the field could cast a shadow on future developments in topological quantum computing. “I just wish they were a bit more careful with their claims because I fear that if they don’t measure up to what they are saying, there might be a backlash at some point where people say, ‘You promised us all these fancy things and where are they now?’” Molignini said. “That might damage the entire quantum community, not just themselves.” Read more about technology

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