Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

By clicking “Accept”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information or to customize your cookie preferences.

Accept Deny

GoGreenNation News

Learn more about the issues presented in our films
Show Filters

To avoid a water crisis, Texas may bet big on desalination. Here’s how it works in El Paso.

Desalination can create millions of gallons of fresh water a day. But it is expensive and there are many environmental concerns.

Subscribe to The Y’all — a weekly dispatch about the people, places and policies defining Texas, produced by Texas Tribune journalists living in communities across the state. This article is part of Running Out, an occasional series about Texas’ water crisis. Read more stories about the threats facing Texas’ water supply here. EL PASO — The wind swept through El Paso one day in March, lifting a fine layer of dust that settled onto windshields, clothes and skin. The air was thick with haze from a dust storm. This border city, perched on the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert, receives on average less than 9 inches of rain each year. Water in the city of 679,000 people is a challenge. Inside El Paso’s Kay Bailey Hutchison Desalination Plant, Hector Sepúlveda, the plant’s superintendent, walks through rows of towering steel tubes as a loud hum vibrates through the air. This machinery is essential to providing thousands in the city with clean water. “This is a desert community,” Sepúlveda said. “So the water utilities have to always think ahead and be very resourceful and very smart and find resources to take the water that we do have here and provide for a desert community.” Sepúlveda says the city’s dry climate, compounded by dwindling ground and surface water supplies and climate change has made innovation essential. A key piece of that strategy is desalination — the process of removing salt and other minerals from seawater or salty groundwater so people can drink it. An inversion layer of dust settles over downtown El Paso on March 6, 2025. The city’s little rain and dry climate has led water leaders to diversify where it gets its water from. Credit: Justin Hamel for The Texas Tribune When it opened in 2007, El Paso’s desalination plant was the largest inland desalination facility in the world. It was built through a partnership between El Paso Water and Fort Bliss, one of the nation’s largest military bases, when water shortages threatened the base’s operations. Today, at max capacity the plant can supply up to 27.5 million gallons per day — helping stretch the city’s supply by making use of the region’s abundance of brackish groundwater, salty groundwater with salinity levels higher than freshwater, but lower than seawater. The city wants to expand the plant’s capacity to 33.5 million gallons per day by 2028. El Pasoans used about 105 million gallons per day last year. As Texas faces twin pressures of population growth and prolonged drought, lawmakers are looking to desalination as a way forward. The Texas Legislature took a major step in 2023, creating the New Water Supply for Texas Fund, to support desalination projects — including both brackish and seawater. This legislative session, lawmakers are pushing to accelerate that effort with a bill by state Sen. Charles Perry, a Lubbock Republican, that could dedicate millions for new water projects, including desalination. Senate Bill 7 cleared the upper chamber earlier this month and is now awaiting a House committee’s consideration. “We've developed all the cheap water, and all the low-hanging fruit has been obtained. There is no more of it, and it's depleting what's left. We're going into the second phase of water development through brackish marine, brackish produced water and brackish aquifers,” Perry said on the Senate floor before his colleagues gave the legislation unanimous approval. Latest in the series: Running Out: Texas’ Water Crisis Loading content … Sixty municipal water desalination facilities are already online, according to the Texas Water Development Board, the state agency that helps manage and finance water supply projects. Of those, 43 desalinate brackish groundwater. El Paso’s is the largest. As of December 2024, the agency had designated 31 brackish groundwater sites as production zones, meaning they have moderate to high availability of brackish groundwater to treat. The board’s 2022 state water plan proposes implementing an additional 37 brackish groundwater desalination projects in South Texas cities like McAllen, Mission, San Benito; and West Texas towns like Abilene and Midland. The plan states that if all recommended strategies are used, groundwater desalination could make up about 2.1% of the state’s projected water needs by producing 157,000 acre-feet per year by 2070 — enough to support 942,000 Texans for one year. Still, desalination isn’t without tradeoffs. The technology takes a lot of energy, and construction costs can be steep. There are also several factors to consider that affect the final price tag: How deep the water lies, how salty it is, how far it needs to travel, and how to dispose of the leftover salty waste. The water board estimates treating brackish groundwater can run anywhere from $357 to $782 per acre-foot, while seawater desalination ranges from $800 to $1,400. Lawmakers say water funding at a state-level is critical to help communities shoulder the upfront costs of these alternative water supplies. Hector Sepúlveda, superintendent of the Kay Bailey Desalination Plant in El Paso, lives just minutes away — he jokes it's a convenience since his job is to keep the plant running. Credit: Justin Hamel for The Texas Tribune How brackish groundwater desalination works Sepúlveda, who has spent more than 30 years with El Paso Water, says the process at the desalination plant begins with brackish groundwater drawn from 15 wells near the El Paso International Airport. The salty water is transported to the plant where it is first filtered through strainers to remove sand particles. Then it is transported through cartridge filters. This process is similar to how household water filters work, but far more efficient. The cartridge filters trap fine sediments smaller than a strand of hair, further filtering the water before it reaches the heart of the system: reverse osmosis, often referred to as RO membranes. Sepúlveda, who wears a blue construction hat and highlighter yellow vest, stands amid a room full of long rows of stacked steel tubes, or RO membrane units. Here, brackish groundwater gets turned into fresh, drinkable water. It’s pumped through these tubes — each with 72 vessels — at extremely high pressure, leaving behind salt and bacteria. A sectional view shows the inside of an RO tube that filters out salt at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Desalination Plant in El Paso, Texas on March 4. Credit: Justin Hamel for The Texas Tribune “We’re separating the undesirable stuff from the potable water,” he said, as he opened a faucet and sipped the water. “At the end you end up with safe drinking water. The process is just amazing.” Once cleaned, the water is divided between El Paso Water customers and Fort Bliss. Sepúlveda said they will soon expand the plant to produce 33.5 million gallons per day by adding a sixth row of RO membranes. The brine, or concentrated salty water left over from the process, is pumped 22 miles to deep well injection sites. The desal plant can separate up to 3 million gallons of brine a day. At the site, the concentrate is sent 3,500 feet underground into a fractured rock formation. Concerns of desalination While brackish groundwater desalination has proven to be a viable solution for inland communities like El Paso, environmentalists are raising concerns about the potential consequences of scaling up the water strategy. Seawater desalination is gaining attention as Gulf Coast cities like Corpus Christi start developing their own seawater desalination facility. For seawater desalination, Shane Walker, professor and director of a water research center at Texas Tech University, says the main concern is removing the excess salt. While most of the salinity comes from dissolved minerals that aren’t harmful, Walker says, high concentrations — think of over-salted French fries — can harm marine life and disrupt coastal ecosystems. Seawater is much saltier than brackish water and salt levels vary widely depending on the source. In seawater desalination, the brine byproduct — which can be twice as salty as seawater — is often discharged back into the ocean. If not properly managed, this can increase salinity in bays and estuaries, threatening species like oysters, crabs and shrimp that are critical to local fisheries and ecosystems. An aerial view of the coastline in Corpus Christi on July 6, 2024. The city is set to build the state’s first-ever seawater desalination plant. Credit: Pete Garcia for The Texas Tribune Myron Hess, an environmental consultant for the nonprofit National Wildlife Federation, said that when plants take in water it could potentially suck in marine creatures with the ocean water. “As you're diverting particularly massive amounts of water, you can be pulling in lots of organisms,” Hess said. For inland facilities like the Kay Bailey Hutchison plant, the environmental concerns are different. They don’t kill marine life, but disposal is still a concern. In El Paso, Art Ruiz, chief plant manager for El Paso Water and the former superintendent of the utility’s desalination plant, calls this disposal “chemistry salts” and says that disposal is handled through deep well injection into an isolated part of the aquifer. Ruiz said El Paso is blessed with a geological formation that has a natural fault that prevents the concentrate from migrating and contaminating the freshwater supply. In regions where this is not feasible, evaporation ponds are used, but they require large amounts of land and careful management to prevent environmental hazards. “Deep well injection is a common method used for larger desalination facilities, but the geology has to be right,” Walker said. “You have to ensure that the injection site is isolated and won’t contaminate freshwater aquifers.” Another concern raised by water experts is how Texas manages brackish groundwater and whether the state is doing enough to protect nearby freshwater sources. Senate Bill 2658 proposes to exempt certain brackish groundwater wells located within state-designated production zones from needing a permit. Experts say the move would bypass a permitting process in the state's water code that was specifically designed to safeguard freshwater aquifers. The central worry is that brackish and fresh groundwater are often hydrologically connected. While brackish groundwater can be an important part of the state's water portfolio, Vanessa Puig-Williams, a water expert with the Environmental Defense Fund, says there’s a real risk that pumping brackish water could unintentionally start drawing in and depleting nearby fresh water if oversight is not required from local groundwater conservation districts. Experts also caution that the production zones identified by the water board weren’t designed to guide site-specific decisions, such as how much a well can safely pump or whether it could affect nearby freshwater supplies. A pump and pipeline removes the waste water concentrate from the Kay Bailey Desalination Plant 22 miles away to be disposed of in a deep injection well. Credit: Justin Hamel for The Texas Tribune Hess, consulting for the National Wildlife Federation, authored a paper on the impacts of desalination, including the price tag. Constructing a facility is costly, as is the energy it takes to run it. El Paso’s desalination facility cost $98.3 million, including the production and injection wells construction, $26 million of which it received in federal funding. The technology to clean the water is energy intensive. Desalinating water in El Paso costs about $500 per acre-foot of water — 46% more than treating surface water from a river. Seawater facilities require even more energy, which adds to the costs in producing or cleaning the water. TWDB estimates those range from $800 to $1,400 per acre-foot. Texas has no operating seawater desalination plants for municipal use, but the state’s environmental agency, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, has authorized permits for two marine desalination facilities and has four pending applications for seawater desalination facilities, three in Corpus Christi and one in Port Isabel. “The first seawater plant in Texas is going to be expensive,” Walker said. “The first time somebody does something, it’s going to cost way more than the other ones that come along behind it, because we're having to figure out all the processes and procedures to do it the first time.” Lessons from El Paso and the path forward Back at the Kay Bailey Hutchison plant in El Paso, Sepúlveda, the plant’s superintendent, walks into a lab opened to students and professors from the University of Texas at El Paso, New Mexico State University, and Rice University to test new technologies to help refine the desalination processes or extend the lifespan of RO membranes. Sepúlveda said water utility employees have learned a lot since 2007 when the plant first opened. RO membranes, used to clean the salty water, cost anywhere from $600 to $800. El Paso uses 360 RO membranes to run its plant. To extend the life from five to 12 years, utility employees figured out a system by checking salinity levels before extracting from a certain well. “When we first bring water in from the brackish wells, we know how salty each well is, so we try to bring in the wells that are less salty to not put the membranes under such stress,” he said. “It almost doubled the life of the membrane.” He added that this technique is also helping plant operators reduce energy consumption. Plant operators have adjusted salinity levels by blending the brackish groundwater with less salty water, which helps prevent pipe corrosion and clogging. Jessiel Acosta tests the water hardness of the raw water feeding into the Kay Bailey Hutchison Desalination Plant in El Paso on March 4. Credit: Justin Hamel for The Texas Tribune Their pipes are also now winterized. After the 2011 freeze, El Paso upgraded insulation and installed heat tape to protect equipment. As Texas moves forward with more desalination projects, Sepúlveda said the lessons from El Paso will be critical as more plants go online. “You always have to be forward-thinking. Always have to be innovative,” he said, as the machines buzzed in the background. “You always have to be on top of the latest technological improvements to be able to extract water from whatever scant resources you have.” Disclosure: Environmental Defense Fund, Rice University, Texas Tech University and University of Texas at El Paso have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here. Tickets are on sale now for the 15th annual Texas Tribune Festival, Texas’ breakout ideas and politics event happening Nov. 13–15 in downtown Austin. Get tickets before May 1 and save big! TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.

Water
Crisis
Conservation

How Does Climate Change Affect Our Brains? Trump’s NIH Just Cut Funding to Study It.

On March 10, around 9:20 pm, Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou, an environmental health professor at Columbia University, got the email she’d been dreading: The Trump administration cut funding for a new center she had been tasked with co-leading called “Climate and Health: Action and Research for Transformational Change.” CHART focused on researching the effects of climate change […]

On March 10, around 9:20 pm, Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou, an environmental health professor at Columbia University, got the email she’d been dreading: The Trump administration cut funding for a new center she had been tasked with co-leading called “Climate and Health: Action and Research for Transformational Change.” CHART focused on researching the effects of climate change on cognitive function, including how it might impact Alzheimer’s disease, a relatively understudied area. Within a week, her three-year, $4.2 million grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH) was terminated. “It wasn’t exactly a surprise,” Kioumourtzoglou says. As Mother Jones first reported in February, the Department of Health and Human Services planned to shutter NIH’s Climate Change and Health Initiative, the program which funded Kioumourtzoglou’s center. Then, on March 7, a few days before the email, the Trump administration announced it would cut $400 million in grants and contracts for Columbia in response to its alleged failure to crack down on antisemitism on campus. Critics saw the move as political manipulation and an attack on academic freedom. (On Wednesday, Science reported that the government plans to put all of Columbia’s NIH grants on hold.) Had CHART kept its funding, Kioumourtzoglou and her colleagues planned to conduct a nationwide analysis of more than 70 million Medicare records to study climate events and Alzheimer’s disease. They also planned a small-scale study of a few thousand people in New York City to examine the impact of these events on our brains at a molecular level. Kioumourtzoglou also hoped to bring on urban planners, computer scientists, engineers, sociologists, and others not traditionally part of climate or health research, for an all-hands-on-deck approach. “I think this could have revolutionized how we think about climate and health research,” Kioumourtzoglou says. The risk the cuts pose to science, of course, extends beyond just one program. CHART alone is one of about 20 similar university-based centers around the country tasked with better understanding the impact of climate change—heat waves, cyclones, wildfires, floods, and more—on health. “If the others are cut as well,” Kioumourtzoglou says, “then the catastrophe is immense.” Last week, I talked to Kioumourtzoglou about what the loss of CHART means for her colleagues, for understudied questions about climate and health, and ultimately, for all of our well-being. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. Why did you want to study the link between climate change and cognitive function? Where did the idea come from? These [climate] events, especially the very big ones, stress us out, simply put. Stress is associated with oxidative stress in the body, and that, in turn, with neurodegeneration. There’s a study linking wildfire smoke and dementia. So there has been some limited evidence that there might be something there, but we don’t exactly understand those pathways. What happens when we’re exposed to multiple of these threats simultaneously? Wildfires commonly occur with heat waves and drought. What happens if we put all of these things together? And what’s the response [to these events] in the body? When you got the email saying that your funding would be cut, what did you think? Were you expecting it? It wasn’t exactly a surprise. That said, I don’t think anyone believed or expected that they would do this. I think the idea was, Okay, even if they cut it, they would at least let us finish the year. The contract is for the year. The School of Public Health is what is called a “soft money” institute. That means faculty need to raise about 75 percent of our salaries. So there are 20 co-investigators on this grant, with various levels of percent effort covered. That means it has a direct impact on our salaries. That is probably the least of the problems. Climate change, whether some people choose to ignore it or not, is making these extreme weather events much more intense and much more frequent. We saw it even this year with [Hurricane] Helene and the Los Angeles wildfires. These events are here. They are recurring. They are extreme, and are becoming more extreme. And they impact every aspect of life. At the same time, Americans are aging. So, understanding the impacts of climate change on our aging population is very important. First, we need to understand it, and then we need to start working on strategies for prevention, mitigation, adaptation—anything we can do to potentially extend our health span. Do you have any idea how the 20 co-investigators on this grant are going to make their salaries up? Are there other grants they can apply for at this point? Yes and no. This was not the only grant that got cut. So there are people who have lost, across multiple grants, up to 30, 50, 70 percent of their salaries. So far, we’ve had two paychecks. I’ve at least received a full paycheck. But I don’t know how long this can keep going. In theory, we can keep applying for grants. That’s the idea, right? That’s the job. But with the general impact on climate and health research, if that’s your expertise, then sure, you can keep applying. But NIH, clearly, is not going to fund this work for the foreseeable future. There are foundation grants that we can apply for. But now, competition for those has skyrocketed. So it does not look great. One concern I’ve heard from researchers is that, in applying for grants, using a term like “climate change” will mean proposals will not be funded. So, the hope was to write around it, using words like “extreme heat.” Is that something that can even be done with your field of research? One potential solution would be to rephrase certain terms. [But] ultimately, this will impact how we protect the most vulnerable populations, if I cannot even say “vulnerable population,” if I cannot say “race,” I cannot say “women,” in my grants anymore. “Say you’re an oncologist, and a patient comes in with liver cancer, and you cannot say the words ‘liver’ or ‘cancer.'” It would be similar to, say you’re an oncologist, and a patient comes in with liver cancer, and you cannot say the words “liver” or “cancer.” A theme I’ve been hearing in my reporting is that the Trump administration’s cuts will disproportionately impact early-career, younger researchers and postdocs. Is that the case here? Our postdocs are, thankfully, unionized, so they are okay until June 30. We had three master’s students working as part-time research assistants on this grant that I had to lay off. There’s no money to cover them. Tuition is expensive, and this was their income source. I interviewed someone who’s finishing her PhD now in a different institution. She was an amazing researcher. I was going to hire her under this grant, and now I cannot. Many people with grant cancellations across universities cannot hire new postdocs. The impact of this on the future of research is going to be—it’s unquantifiable at this point, right? Many institutions will not admit PhD students this year. Our students at Columbia are unionized, so they have guaranteed funding. But even before unionization, our department guaranteed funding for five years. If we cannot guarantee funding, we cannot have incoming students. If we don’t have incoming students, we are not training researchers to do public health research. The long-term implications of these cancellations are huge. We covered lots of ground. Is there anything else you’d want people to know? We are all at a loss here for understanding why these cuts are happening. [Columbia’s] Alzheimer’s research center was terminated. Cancer centers were terminated. Our training grants were terminated. This will impact all of our health. “This will impact all of our health.” And it doesn’t sound—Yeah, sure, some very fancy elitist school lost some money. They have billions in an endowment. It’s not a big deal. But it is a much, much larger deal than we all understand. And maybe the government is flexing, and funds will be reinstated, and things will go back to normal. Maybe. But if that doesn’t happen, and it might not happen, unless people start calling their representatives and their senators, because this will affect their health and the health of their loved ones. We’re not doing this for our salaries. We are all in this because we want to help understand and prevent disease. So it’s truly devastating.

Climate
Health
Science

A Byproduct of Manure Runoff Is Polluting Drinking Water in Thousands of US Communities, According to a New Report

Tens of millions of Americans have likely consumed drinking water containing cancer-causing chemicals that form when livestock manure and other organic substances end up in public water sources, according to a new analysis. Thousands of industrial-scale farms across the country spray manure from livestock onto farm or other lands, which then runs off into waterways. […]

The analysis, from the Environmental Working Group, takes a first-of-its-kind look at trihalomethanes, a contaminant linked to cancers and stillbirth.By Georgina GustinTens of millions of Americans have likely consumed drinking water containing cancer-causing chemicals that form when livestock manure and other organic substances end up in public water sources, according to a new analysis.

Water
Chemicals

Engineered bacteria emit signals that can be spotted from a distance

These bacteria, which could be designed to detect pollution or nutrients, could act as sensors to help farmers monitor their crops.

Bacteria can be engineered to sense a variety of molecules, such as pollutants or soil nutrients. In most cases, however, these signals can only be detected by looking at the cells under a microscope, making them impractical for large-scale use.Using a new method that triggers cells to produce molecules that generate unique combinations of color, MIT engineers have shown that they can read out these bacterial signals from as far as 90 meters away. Their work could lead to the development of bacterial sensors for agricultural and other applications, which could be monitored by drones or satellites.“It’s a new way of getting information out of the cell. If you’re standing next to it, you can’t see anything by eye, but from hundreds of meters away, using specific cameras, you can get the information when it turns on,” says Christopher Voigt, head of MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering and the senior author of the new study.In a paper appearing today in Nature Biotechnology, the researchers showed that they could engineer two different types of bacteria to produce molecules that give off distinctive wavelengths of light across the visible and infrared spectra of light, which can be imaged with hyperspectral cameras. These reporting molecules were linked to genetic circuits that detect nearby bacteria, but this approach could also be combined with any existing sensor, such as those for arsenic or other contaminants, the researchers say.“The nice thing about this technology is that you can plug and play whichever sensor you want,” says Yonatan Chemla, an MIT postdoc who is one of the lead authors of the paper. “There is no reason that any sensor would not be compatible with this technology.”Itai Levin PhD ’24 is also a lead author of the paper. Other authors include former undergraduate students Yueyang Fan ’23 and Anna Johnson ’22, and Connor Coley, an associate professor of chemical engineering at MIT.Hyperspectral imagingThere are many ways to engineer bacterial cells so that they can sense a particular chemical. Most of these work by connecting detection of a molecule to an output such as green fluorescent protein (GFP). These work well for lab studies, but such sensors can’t be measured from long distances.For long-distance sensing, the MIT team came up with the idea to engineer cells to produce hyperspectral reporter molecules, which can be detected using hyperspectral cameras. These cameras, which were first invented in the 1970s, can determine how much of each color wavelength is present in any given pixel. Instead of showing up as simply red or green, each pixel contains information on hundreds different wavelengths of light.Currently, hyperspectral cameras are used for applications such as detecting the presence of radiation. In the areas around Chernobyl, these cameras have been used to measure slight color changes that radioactive metals produce in the chlorophyll of plant cells. Hyperspectral cameras are also used to look for signs of malnutrition or pathogen invasion in plants.That work inspired the MIT team to explore whether they could engineer bacterial cells to produce hyperspectral reporters when they detect a target molecule.For a hyperspectral reporter to be most useful, it should have a spectral signature with peaks in multiple wavelengths of light, making it easier to detect. The researchers performed quantum calculations to predict the hyperspectral signatures of about 20,000 naturally occurring cell molecules, allowing them to identify those with the most unique patterns of light emission. Another key feature is the number of enzymes that would need to be engineered into a cell to get it to produce the reporter — a trait that will vary for different types of cells.“The ideal molecule is one that’s really different from everything else, making it detectable, and requires the fewest number of enzymes to produce it in the cell,” Voigt says.In this study, the researchers identified two different molecules that were best suited for two types of bacteria. For a soil bacterium called Pseudomonas putida, they used a reporter called biliverdin — a pigment that results from the breakdown of heme. For an aquatic bacterium called Rubrivivax gelatinosus, they used a type of bacteriochlorophyll. For each bacterium, the researchers engineered the enzymes necessary to produce the reporter into the host cell, then linked them to genetically engineered sensor circuits.“You could add one of these reporters to a bacterium or any cell that has a genetically encoded sensor in its genome. So, it might respond to metals or radiation or toxins in the soil, or nutrients in the soil, or whatever it is you want it to respond to. Then the output of that would be the production of this molecule that can then be sensed from far away,” Voigt says.Long-distance sensingIn this study, the researchers linked the hyperspectral reporters to circuits designed for quorum sensing, which allow cells to detect other nearby bacteria. They have also shown, in work done after this paper, that these reporting molecules can be linked to sensors for chemicals including arsenic.When testing their sensors, the researchers deployed them in boxes so they would remain contained. The boxes were placed in fields, deserts, or on the roofs of buildings, and the cells produced signals that could be detected using hyperspectral cameras mounted on drones. The cameras take about 20 to 30 seconds to scan the field of view, and computer algorithms then analyze the signals to reveal whether the hyperspectral reporters are present.In this paper, the researchers reported imaging from a maximum distance of 90 meters, but they are now working on extending those distances.They envision that these sensors could be deployed for agricultural purposes such as sensing nitrogen or nutrient levels in soil. For those applications, the sensors could also be designed to work in plant cells. Detecting landmines is another potential application for this type of sensing.Before being deployed, the sensors would need to undergo regulatory approval by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as well as the U.S. Department of Agriculture if used for agriculture. Voigt and Chemla have been working with both agencies, the scientific community, and other stakeholders to determine what kinds of questions need to be answered before these technologies could be approved.“We’ve been very busy in the past three years working to understand what are the regulatory landscapes and what are the safety concerns, what are the risks, what are the benefits of this kind of technology?” Chemla says.The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense; the Army Research Office, a directorate of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory (the funding supported engineering of environmental strains and optimization of genetically-encoded sensors and hyperspectral reporter biosynthetic pathways); and the Ministry of Defense of Israel.

Agriculture
Chemicals
Nature

Ohio bills aim to sideline local critics of carbon capture projects

Ohio legislators are considering bills that would bar local governments from having a say in permitting projects that capture carbon dioxide emissions and inject them underground. The legislation could even force some landowners to let their property be used for carbon dioxide storage. The framework proposed in the…

Ohio legislators are considering bills that would bar local governments from having a say in permitting projects that capture carbon dioxide emissions and inject them underground. The legislation could even force some landowners to let their property be used for carbon dioxide storage. The framework proposed in the twin bills being considered by the state House and Senate starkly contrasts with Ohio’s approach to wind and solar farms, most of which can be blocked by counties. Instead, carbon capture and storage projects would follow a process similar to what’s used for oil and gas drilling, in which property owners must allow development on or below their land if enough neighbors support it. At least one large energy company, Tenaska, is already talking to Ohio landowners about obtaining rights to drill wells and store carbon dioxide from industrial and energy operations deep underground. An executive with the firm said the legislation would provide ​“clarity” for its planned carbon storage hub serving Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. “This project will provide manufacturers, industrial facilities, and other businesses in this region with a solution to address growing environmental regulations and climate goals,” said Ali Kairys, senior director of project development for Tenaska. The company is in discussions with various carbon-emitting businesses, including steel refineries, ethanol plants, and power plants. The Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub could also be a potential customer, Kairys said. In Ohio, Tenaska is eyeing Harrison, Jefferson, and Carroll counties as prime places to store CO2 underground. The three counties are among the state’s top oil and gas producers and have a history of coal mining. Tenaska initially hopes to store captured carbon dioxide in the Knox formation, which ranges from 8,500 feet to 12,000 feet below the Earth’s surface, Kairys said. Second-stage storage would use another formation roughly 5,500 to 8,000 feet underground. Other carbon sequestration projects could be on the horizon. The Great Plains Institute has identified roughly three dozen industrial facilities across the state as candidates for carbon capture projects. And even though the Trump administration is relaxing the environmental regulations that may motivate such efforts, 45Q tax credits expanded by the Inflation Reduction Act incentivize companies nationwide to develop storage projects. Ohio’s House Bill 170 and Senate Bill 136 would give the state Department of Natural Resources ​“sole and exclusive authority to regulate carbon sequestration,” a power the agency also has over oil and gas production via existing law. The Ohio Supreme Court has interpreted the oil and gas law’s language to block local government regulation of drilling, even through general zoning rules that apply to other businesses. If passed, the bills would similarly deprive counties and townships of any say over sequestration, said Bev Reed, an organizer for the Buckeye Environmental Network. ​“It’s … another really tragic thing that the Legislature is forcing on us.” The bills would also authorize a ​“consolidation” process that operators can undertake to force landowners to allow carbon dioxide storage in their property’s subsurface ​“pore space” if owners of 70% of the remaining area for an injection project have signed on. The process is similar to that for unitization, which lets oil and gas companies drill through dissenting landowners’ properties. The chief of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ oil and gas management division would be required to grant consolidation if it was ​“reasonably necessary to facilitate the underground storage of carbon dioxide.” A landowner could only object on the grounds that the facility’s design threatens ​“a commercially valuable mineral,” such as oil, gas, or coal. “You don’t get to object and say this is dangerous, this is ill-conceived or for any other reason,” said Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, a professor at Cleveland State University College of Law. ​“Reasonably necessary is a very low standard” for forcing property owners to give up the use of their pore space, she added. Asked to respond to advocacy groups’ complaints that the process is unfair, Tenaska’s Kairys focused instead on landowners’ potential for income.

CO2
Government
Climate

Quad biking: five eco-friendly adventure spots in South Africa

Discover the best eco-friendly quad biking spots in South Africa, from the valleys of Franschhoek to urban Soweto. The post Quad biking: five eco-friendly adventure spots in South Africa appeared first on SA People.

South Africa’s diverse landscapes offer the perfect backdrop for a thrilling quad biking adventure, whether you’re cruising through valleys, game farms, or even iconic urban landmarks. As the push for local tourism gains momentum, South African Tourism recently spotlighted quad biking as one of the most fun and adventurous ways to explore the country. Here’s a look at where to go and how to enjoy the ride while being kind to the environment. Discover top spots for quad biking in South Africa Tradouw Valley, Western CapeFor an off-the-beaten-track experience, head to the Little Karoo’s Tradouw Valley, nestled between Montagu and Barrydale. Here, Tradouw Quads has carefully hand-built trails, limiting mechanical impact on the environment and preserving the natural charm of the area. Hartbeespoort, GautengOnly a short drive from Johannesburg, Segwati Safari Quad Bike Trails lets you cruise across a 650-hectare game farm on electric quad bikes. The trails offer panoramic views of the Witwatersberg and Magaliesberg Mountains and a unique wildlife experience with minimal environmental disruption. Soweto, GautengFor something completely different, head to urban Soweto, where Soweto Outdoor Adventures combines thrill-seeking with township tourism. Riders zip past famous local landmarks like Vilakazi Street and the Orlando Towers, providing a cultural twist to this quad biking tour. Franschhoek, Western CapeIf you’re looking to mix wine country with outdoor adventure, Wine Valley Adventures in Franschhoek offers eco-conscious quad biking trails. Their approach prioritises sustainability, ensuring trails harmonise with the region’s lush beauty. Greater Addo, Eastern CapeIn the scenic Greater Addo area, riders can explore the Valley Bushveld, Sundays River, and citrus farms. Crisscross Adventures stands out for its transition to electric quads, making it one of the more environmentally considerate quad biking options in South Africa. The eco impact of quad biking – and how to reduce it While this activity offers incredible views and adventure, it does raise environmental concerns. Much of the criticism is aimed at off-road riding, which can damage delicate ecosystems and disturb wildlife. Plus, petrol-powered bikes emit carbon dioxide and create noise pollution. Keeping your adventure eco-friendly Responsible quad biking starts with choosing the right operator. Always book with a company that sticks to designated routes and uses electric quads where possible. Ride only during daylight hours to avoid disturbing nocturnal animals, and never veer off established paths. These simple steps can help preserve the very landscapes that make quad biking in South Africa so unforgettable. Whether you’re cruising mountain trails or city murals, this is a thrilling, eco-conscious way to explore South Africa. The post Quad biking: five eco-friendly adventure spots in South Africa appeared first on SA People.

Animals
CO2
Mountains

Texas oil company fined $18 million for unapproved work along California coast

The California Coastal Commission has ordered Sable Offshore Corp. to cease and desist in its bid to revive oil drilling off the coast of Santa Barbara.

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — In an action cheered by state environmentalists, the California Coastal Commission has voted to fine a Texas-based oil firm $18 million for failing to obtain necessary permits and reviews in its controversial push to revive oil production off the Gaviota Coast.Following hours of public comment Thursday, the 12-person commission found that Sable Offshore Corp. has, for months, violated the California Coastal Act by repairing and upgrading oil pipelines near Santa Barbara without commission approval. In addition to the $18 million fine, commissioners ordered the company to halt all pipeline development and restore lands where environmental damage has occurred. “The Coastal Act is the law, the law... put in place by a vote of the people,” Commissioner Meaghan Harmon said. “Sable’s refusal, in a very real sense, is a subversion of the will of the people of the state of California.”The decision marks a significant escalation in the showdown between coastal authorities and Sable officials, who claim the commission has overstepped its authority. The action also comes at a time when the Trump administration is actively encouraging oil and gas production in stark contrast to California’s clean-energy and climate-focused goals. Sable insists that it has already obtained necessary work approval from the County of Santa Barbara, and that commission approval was only necessary when the pipeline infrastructure was first proposed decades ago.It wasn’t immediately clear how the Houston-based company would respond to the commission’s action. “Sable is considering all options regarding its compliance with these orders,” read a prepared statement from Steve Rusch, Sable’s vice president of environmental and governmental affairs. “We respectfully have the right to disagree with the Commission’s decision and to seek independent clarification.”Ultimately, the matter may be end up in court. In February, Sable sued the Coastal Commission claiming it lacks the authority to oversee its work. On Thursday, Rusch called the commission’s demands part of an “arbitrary permitting process,” and said the company had worked with Coastal Commission staff for months in attempt to address their concerns. Still, Rusch said his company is “dedicated to restarting project operations in a safe and efficient manner.”Commissioners voted unanimously to issue the cease and desist order — which would stop work until Sable obtained commission approval — as well as the order to restore damaged lands. However, the commission voted 10-2 in favor of the fine — the largest it has ever levied. The hearing drew hundreds of people, including Sable employees and supporters and scores of environmental activists, many wearing “Don’t Enable Sable” T-shirts.“We’re at a critical crossroads,” said Maureen Ellenberger, chair of the Sierra Club’s Santa Barbara and Ventura chapter. “In the 1970s, Californians fought to protect our coastal zone — 50 years later we’re still fighting. The California coast shouldn’t be for sale.”At one point, a stream of 20 Santa Barbara Middle School students testified back-to-back, a few barely reaching the microphone. “None of us should be here right now — we should all be at school, but we are here because we care,” said 14-year-old Ethan Maday, a ninth grader who helped organize his classmates’ trip to the commission hearing. Santa Barbara has long been an environmentally-conscious community, due in part to a history of major oil spills in the area. The largest spill, which occurred in 1969, released an estimated 3 million gallons of oil and inspired multiple environmental protection laws.Sable hopes to reactivate the so-called Santa Ynez Unit, a collection of three offshore oil platforms in federal waters. The Hondo, Harmony and Heritage platforms are all connected to the Las Flores pipeline system and associated processing facility.It was that network of oil lines that suffered a massive spill in 2015, when the Santa Ynez unit was owned by another company. That spill occurred when a corroded pipeline ruptured and released an estimated 140,000 gallons of crude near Refugio State Beach. Sable’s current work is intended to repair and upgrade those lines. At Thursday’s hearing, Sable supporters insisted the upgrades would make the pipeline network more reliable than ever.Mai Lindsey, a contractor who works on Sable’s leak detection system, said she found it “unfair” how the commission was asserting itself in their work.“Are you in your lane for enforcing this?” Lindsey asked. She said people need to understand that focusing on prior spills is no longer relevant, given how technology in her industry has drastically changed: “We learn and we improve,” she said.Steve Balkcom, a contractor for Sable who lives in Orange County, said he’s worked on pipelines for four decades and he has no doubt that this one will be among the safest. He chalked the controversy up to a “not in my backyard” attitude. “I know the pipeline can be safe,” Balkcom said.Sable has argued that it can could proceed with its corrosion repair work under the pipeline’s original permits from the 1980s. The company contends such permits are still relevant because its work is only repairing and maintaining an existing pipeline, not constructing new infrastructure.The Coastal Commission rejected that idea Thursday. Showing several photos of Sable’s ongoing pipeline work, Lisa Haage, the commission’s chief of enforcement, called Sable’s work “extensive in both its scale and the resources impacted.” Commission staff have also argued the current work is far from identical from original permits, noting that recent requirements from the State Fire Marshal mandate new standards to respond to corrosive tendencies on the pipeline.“Not only did they do work in sensitive habitats and without sufficient environmental protections and during times that sensitive species were at risk, but they also refused to comply with orders issued to them to address those issues,” Haage said at the hearing. In a statement of defense, however, Sable said this project will “meet more stringent environmental and safety requirements than any other pipeline in the state.” The Houston-based company estimates that when the Santa Ynez Unit is fully online, it could produce an estimated 28,000 barrels of oil a day, according to an investor presentation, while also generating $5 million a year in new taxes for the county and an additional 300 jobs. Sable anticipates restarting offshore oil production in the second quarter this year, but the company acknowledges that some regulatory and oversight hurdles remain.Most notably, its restart plan must still be approved by the state fire marshal, though several other parts are under review by other state agencies, including state parks and the State Water Resources Control Board. Commissioners on Thursday were grateful for the community input, including from Sable employees, who Harmon called “hard working people” not responsible or at fault for the Coastal Act violations. “Coastal development permits make work safe,” Harmon said. “They make work safer not just for our environment... they make work safer for the people who are doing the job.”She urged Sable to work cooperatively with the commission. “We can have good, well-paying jobs and we can protect and preserve our coast,” Harmon said. But some environmentalists said Thursday’s findings should further call into question Sable’s larger project. “How can we trust this company to operate responsibly, safely, or in compliance with any regulations or laws?” Alex Katz, the executive director of the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center, said in a statement. “California can’t afford another disaster on our coast.”

Activism
Climate
Energy

PR campaign may have fuelled food study backlash, leaked document shows

Eat-Lancet report recommended shift to more plant-based, climate-friendly diet but was extensively attacked onlineA leaked document shows that vested interests may have been behind a “mud-slinging” PR campaign to discredit a landmark environment study, according to an investigation.The Eat-Lancet Commission study, published in 2019, set out to answer the question: how can we feed the world’s growing population without causing catastrophic climate breakdown? Continue reading...

A leaked document shows that vested interests may have been behind a “mud-slinging” PR campaign to discredit a landmark environment study, according to an investigation.The Eat-Lancet Commission study, published in 2019, set out to answer the question: how can we feed the world’s growing population without causing catastrophic climate breakdown?The report recommended that if global red meat eating was cut by 50%, the “planetary health diet” would provide nutritious food to all while tackling the harms caused by animal agriculture, which accounts for over 14% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. It suggested individuals – particularly in wealthy countries – should increase their consumption of nuts, pulses and other plant-based foods while cutting meat and sugar from their diets.It may have seemed like a fairly straightforward proposal but the backlash was ferocious, with researchers receiving personal threats and insults. Thousands of negative posts were shared on Twitter (now X), and more than 500 articles were published criticising the report.A leaked document seen by the climate website DeSmog reveals that helping to fuel this backlash was a PR firm, Red Flag, which represented the Animal Agriculture Alliance, a meat and dairy industry coalition set up to protect the sector against “emerging threats”, and which has staff from Cargill and Smithfield Foods – two of the world’s five largest meat companies – on its board.DeSmog has seen a document from the PR firm which states: “In the two weeks following publication of the Eat-Lancet report, this campaign’s messages have continued to demonstrate remarkable success. Key stories returned time and again in traditional and social media to reach major online influencers, particularly highlighting the radical nature of the Eat-Lancet diet and hypocrisy criticisms levelled at the Eat founders.”As part of the campaign’s impact, in the weeks following publication, the document states that nearly half of the 1,315 articles about the Eat-Lancet report included Red Flag’s “campaign messages and quotes” and adds that 103 articles mentioned alleged hypocrisy of the group’s founders – “sparking a Twitter conversation that received over 1 million more views” than the top tweets posted by Eat about the report.Red Flag’s document includes, as highlights of the campaign, an article in the UK’s Spectator magazine about plans “to change your diet by force”, and a number of social media posts claiming the report was “dangerous” and told “poor people to eat dirt”. The PR firm’s precise role in seeding or amplifying these posts, if any, is unknown.“Targeted briefings and stakeholder activation ensured” that some framed the Eat-Lancet report, plus a subsequent report, “as radical and out of touch”. Briefings included an “advance press engagement” with the Institute of Economic Affairs, a UK libertarian thinktank, with hostile articles about the Eat-Lancet study quoting the group, which dismissed the report as an elitist attack on normal people.The Eat forum’s campaign accompanying the 2019 report stressed that the recommended diet could be healthy, varied and flavoursome. Photograph: Molly Katzen/EAT ForumIn the year following Eat-Lancet’s publication, scientists involved in it were targeted online. In some cases, the backlash led to them withdrawing from press appearances to discuss the research and undermined their academic careers. There is no suggestion that Red Flag was involved in or responsible for these threats.One author, Dr Marco Springmann, said he faced serious burnout after the “media storm” that went on for a year after publication. A senior researcher at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford and a professorial research fellow at the Institute for Global Health at University College London, he was repeatedly accused of bias for eating a plant-based diet.“Usually I lead on two to three studies a year, but in the year following Eat-Lancet, I wasn’t able to even lead on one,” Springmann said.Dr Line Gordon, another author of the study, said she was “overwhelmed” with “really nasty” comments in the immediate aftermath of its publication, and the backlash was “exhausting”.“I was excited about the research we had done and how important it was and how much work we had put into it,” she said. “However, when we launched, I remember waking up in the morning and I’ve never been attacked in so many ways.”And Dr Gunhild Stordalen, the chief executive of the environmental advocacy group Eat which, alongside the Wellcome Trust, funded the research, was one of those personally targeted, along with her husband, Petter Stordalen, a Norwegian property mogul who was pictured on Instagram eating a large burger. Other articles cited the couple’s high-carbon lifestyle, including owning a private jet.A study of social media posts in the months after the report’s publication, published in the Lancet journal, found opponents of the research had dominated discussions and used “misinformation, conspiracy theories, and personal attacks” to discredit the work.skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotion“Red Flag turned Eat-Lancet into a culture-war issue,” Jennifer Jacquet, a professor of environmental science and policy at the University of Miami and an expert on lobbying, told DeSmog. “Instead of having nuanced conversations about the data, Red Flag takes us back to mud slinging. This document is a portrait of what we’re up against – as people who care about the truth, about climate change, and about the future.”Experts told DeSmog that the online backlash was one of the earliest examples of a culture war around dietary change that had become well-recognised in more recent years.Victor Galaz, an associate professor at the Stockholm Resilience Center, Stockholm University, which was involved in shaping the Eat-Lancet report, studied the online response at the time. “Everyone was shocked by the volume and tone of the tweets: the aggressiveness and degree of lying, to put it very bluntly,” he said. “Climate change science has faced this kind of backlash for a while. But in this domain – diets and meat – that was new to people. Everyone was shocked.”The researchers behind the report were clear that they welcomed legitimate critiques of its contents – it was not without criticisms in the academic world – but online articles and social media posts often overblew or did not engage with these nuanced debates.“We are not perfect. It’s good to hear constructive criticism, that’s part of academic discourse,” said Springmann. “But if it gets into an ideological shouting match, we don’t get anywhere. I don’t do research to fight.”While there is no suggestion that Red Flag was involved in personal attacks against the Eat-Lancet authors, Jacquet told DeSmog that the PR firm’s campaign had likely helped to make the report so divisive.“The industry doesn’t make investments like this whimsically,” she said. “They know that this affects the tenor of the conversation. It’s a really illustrative example of how PR firms operate in the 21st century.”Yet in spite of the online backlash the Eat-Lancet report has been one of the most influential studies of recent decades. It is among the papers most often cited by governments and in policy briefs across all topics, used in more than 600 such documents since its launch.With the second Eat-Lancet report due out this year, Springmann, who joined the second research group despite having reservations, told DeSmog he hoped the new research could spark a more constructive conversation.“It’s a big opportunity to put the debate back on a better track,” he said.

Climate
Food
Animals

Oil company fined record $18 million for defying state orders to stop work on pipeline

The pipeline caused a major oil spill a decade ago, fouling the ocean off Santa Barbara County. The new owners say they don’t need new permits for repairs. The fine is the Coastal Commission's largest.

In summary The pipeline caused a major oil spill a decade ago, fouling the ocean off Santa Barbara County. The new owners say they don’t need new permits for repairs. The fine is the Coastal Commission’s largest. The California Coastal Commission today fined an oil company a record $18 million for repeatedly defying orders to stop work on a corroded pipeline in Santa Barbara County that caused a major oil spill nearly a decade ago. The vote sets the stage for a potentially high-stakes test of the state’s power to police oil development along the coast. The onshore pipeline in Gaviota gushed more than 100,000 gallons of crude oil onto coastal land and ocean waters, shutting down fisheries, closing beaches and harming marine life and coastal habitats in 2015. Sable Offshore Corp., a Houston-based company, purchased the pipeline from the previous owners, Exxon Mobil, last year, and is seeking to restart the Santa Ynez offshore oil operation. The Coastal Commission said Sable has done something no alleged violator has ever done before: ignoring the agency’s multiple cease-and-desist orders and continuing its work. “Our orders were valid and legally issued, and Sable’s refusal to comply is a refusal to follow the law,” said Commissioner Meagan Harmon, who also is a member of the Santa Barbara City Council. “Their refusal, in a very real sense, is a subversion of the will of the people of the state of California.” “I’ve never taken how special this area is for granted. As a kid, I was traumatized by the ’69 oil spill, and in 2015, I had to watch my own kids go through the same trauma.”Carol Millar, Santa Barbara County resident The company argued it can proceed using the pipeline’s original county permit issued in the 1980s. In February, Sable sued the Coastal Commission saying the state is unlawfully halting the company’s repair and maintenance work. At a 5-hour public hearing in Santa Barbara today, more than 100 speakers lined up, many of them urging the commission to penalize Sable and stop its work. Some invoked memories of the 2015 Refugio OIl Spill as well as the massive 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill caused by a blowout on a Union Oil drilling rig. Public outrage over that spill helped shape the environmental movement, led to the first Earth Day and contributed to the enactment of many national environmental laws. “I’ve never taken how special this area is for granted,” said Santa Barbara County resident Carol Millar. “As a kid, I was traumatized by the ‘69 oil spill, and in 2015, I had to watch my own kids go through the same trauma.” Steve Rusch, Sable’s vice president of environmental and governmental affairs, said the commission was overreaching because of the spill caused by the previous owners. “We are proud of our good-paying, skilled jobs that our project has brought to the region,” he told commissioners. “It’s not about the 2015 Refugio oil spill. It’s not about the restart of the pipeline …it’s not about the future of oil production or fossil fuel in California.” “We are proud of our good-paying, skilled jobs that our project has brought to the region. It’s not about the 2015 Refugio oil spill.”Steve Rusch, Sable Offshore corp. In repairing the former, corroded pipelines, the company is seeking to restart production of the Santa Ynez oil operation, which includes three offshore rigs, according to an investor presentation by the company. Operations stopped after the 2015 spill.   Sable had been excavating around the former pipelines and placing cement bags on the seafloor below its oil and water pipelines. The Coastal Commission’s fine levied against Sable is the highest ever levied against a company, according to a commission spokesperson. The commission voted to lower the $18 million fine to potentially just under $15 million if Sable complies with the state’s orders and applies for a coastal development permit. Beginning last year, commission staff charged the company with multiple violations of coastal laws, including unpermitted construction and excavation along a 14-mile oil pipeline on the Gaviota Coast, including areas offshore. The enforcement division of the commission said Sable undertook major work at multiple locations without securing the required coastal development permits. The company dug large pits, cleared vegetation, graded roads, placed concrete offshore among other work, according to a presentation by the staff today. In its presentation, commission staff said these actions went beyond routine maintenance and amounted to a full rebuild of the pipeline. Coastal Commission officials emphasized that the work posed serious risks to the environment, including wetlands and other sensitive habitats, potentially harming protected species, including western pond turtles and steelhead.  “The timing of the implemented development is particularly problematic, as much of this development has been during bird nesting season, as well as red-legged frog breeding season and Southern Steelhead migratory spawning season,” said Stephanie Cook, an attorney with the commission. “This work has a high potential to adversely impact these habitat areas.” The staff said it spent months trying to get Sable to cooperate but the company provided incomplete or misleading information. “The timing…is particularly problematic, as much of this development has been during bird nesting season, as well as red-legged frog breeding season and Southern Steelhead migratory spawning season.”Stephanie Cook, Coastal Commission Attorney Rusch, in a statement issued after the hearing, said the company is conducting routine pipeline repair and maintenance, and said the actions were allowed under old permits issued by Santa Barbara County. The work is taking place in areas already affected by previous construction and use, and the company says the state cannot override the county’s interpretation of its permits.  “Sable is dedicated to restarting project operations in a safe and efficient manner,” Rusch said in the statement. “No California business should be forced to go through a protracted and arbitrary permitting process when it already has valid permits for the work it performed.” However, the validity of the county permit for the pipeline is in dispute. The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors in a February vote did not approve transferring the county permit to Sable, the new owner. The vote was 2-2, with one member abstaining because the pipeline runs through her property. County officials are still trying to decide their next step. One concern of county officials is whether Sable has the financial ability and adequate insurance to handle a major oil spill.  The pipeline dispute comes as the Trump administration moves to boost domestic oil and gas production while sidelining efforts to develop wind and solar.  Several workers who said they were affiliated with the company spoke out in support along with others who said the company would boost the local economy.  Evelyn Lynn, director of operations at Aspen Helicopters in Oxnard, said she supported Sable’s efforts because it would give her company a boost.“If they’re not allowed to start their efforts again, this will have huge collateral damage to all of our local businesses, and also to our company in particular, and all of our local people who live here,” Lynn said. “All of our employees are required to live in California. They are all local, and they are all affected.” The Coastal Commission’s permits are not the only step the company has to take to operate the pipeline. Multiple state agencies regulate pipelines, including the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Office of Oil Spill and Prevention Response and the Office of the State Fire Marshal. Environmental groups have called for a full environmental review of the pipeline under the California Environmental Quality Act.  National environmental organizations such as the Center for Biological Diversity have weighed in, along with local advocates, to support the Coastal Commission. A group born out of the original Santa Barbara oil spill — the Environmental Defense Center — opposes the project and efforts to restart drilling. The Surfrider Foundation also launched a “Don’t Enable Sable” campaign, and several beachgoers spoke out against the project. Who should pay billions for climate disasters? California and others target Big Oil — will that work? March 3, 2025March 3, 2025 Legislature delays oil well monitoring by more than 3 years, restores funding August 31, 2024August 31, 2024

Business
Climate
Government

Trump’s EPA plans to stop collecting greenhouse gas emissions data from most polluters

Climate experts expressed shock and dismay at the move, likening it to turning off a patient's life support monitor

The Environmental Protection Agency is planning to eliminate long-standing requirements for polluters to collect and report their emissions of the heat-trapping gases that cause climate change. The move, ordered by a Trump appointee, would affect thousands of industrial facilities across the country, including oil refineries, power plants and coal mines as well as those that make petrochemicals, cement, glass, iron and steel, according to documents reviewed by ProPublica. The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Programdocuments the amount of carbon dioxide, methane and other climate-warming gases emitted by individual facilities. The data, which is publicly available, guides policy decisions and constitutes a significant portion of the information the government submits to the international body that tallies global greenhouse gas pollution. Losing the data will make it harder to know how much climate-warming gas an economic sector or factory is emitting and to track those emissions over time. This granularity allows for accountability, experts say; the government can’t curb the country’s emissions without knowing where they are coming from. “This would reduce the detail and accuracy of U.S. reporting of greenhouse gas emissions, when most countries are trying to improve their reporting,” said Michael Gillenwater, executive director of the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute. “This would also make it harder for climate policy to happen down the road.” The program has been collecting emissions data since at least 2010. Roughly 8,000 facilities a year now report their emissions to the program. EPA officials have asked program staff to draft a rule that will drastically reduce data collection. Under the new rule, its reporting requirements would only apply to about 2,300 facilities in certain sectors of the oil and gas industry. Climate experts expressed shock and dismay about the apparent decision to stop collecting most information on our country’s greenhouse gas emissions. “It would be a bit like unplugging the equipment that monitors the vital signs of a patient that is critically ill,” said Edward Maibach, a professor at George Mason University. “How in the world can we possibly manage this incredible threat to America’s well-being and humanity’s well-being if we’re not actually monitoring what we’re doing to exacerbate the problem?” The EPA did not address questions from ProPublica about the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program. Instead, the agency provided an emailed statement affirming the Trump administration’s commitment to “clean air, land, and water for EVERY American.” The agency announced last month that it was “reconsidering” the greenhouse gas reporting program. In a little-noticed press release issued on March 12, when the EPA sent out 24 bulletins as it celebrated the “most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin described the reporting program as “burdensome.” Zeldin also claimed that the program “costs American businesses and manufacturing millions of dollars, hurting small businesses and the ability to achieve the American Dream.” The loss of that data could have a devastating effect on the world’s ability to rein in the disastrous effects of the warming climate. Project 2025, the far-right blueprint for Trump’s presidency, suggested severely scaling back the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program and also described it as imposing burdens on small businesses. In contrast, climate experts say the EPA reporting program, which tallies between 85% and 90% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., is in many ways a boon to businesses. “A lot of companies rely on the data and use it in their annual sustainability reports,” said Edwin LaMair, an attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund. Companies also use the data to demonstrate environmental progress to shareholders and to meet international reporting requirements. “If the program stops, all that valuable data will stop being generated,” LaMair said. The loss of that data could have a devastating effect on the world’s ability to rein in the disastrous effects of the warming climate, according to Andrew Light, who served as assistant secretary of energy for international affairs in the Biden administration. Light noted that addressing the dangerous and costly extreme weather events requires international collaboration — and that our failure to collect data could give other countries an excuse to abandon their own reporting. “We will not get to the kinds of temperature stabilization needed to protect Americans against the worst climate impacts unless we get the cooperation of developing countries,” Light said. “If the United States won’t even measure and report our own emissions, how in the world can we expect China, India, Indonesia and other major growing developing countries to do the same?” In its first months, the Trump administration has shown waning support for the reporting program. The EPA left the portal through which companies share data closed for several weeks and, in March, pushed back the emissions reporting deadline. Then last Friday, a meeting held with several program staff members raised further questions about the fate of future data collection, according to sources who were briefed on the meeting and asked not to be named for fear of retribution. At the meeting, political appointee Abigale Tardif, who is principal deputy assistant administrator of the EPA’s office of air and radiation, instructed staff to draft a rule that would eliminate reporting requirements for 40 of the 41 sectors that are now required to submit data to the program. Tardif did not respond to inquiries from ProPublica about this story. Political appointee Aaron Szabo, who was present at the meeting and is awaiting confirmation as assistant administrator to the office, declined to answer questions, directing a reporter to EPA communications staff. Before joining the EPA, Tardif and Szabo worked as lobbyists. Szabo represented the American Chemistry Council and Duke Energy among other companies and trade groups and Tardif worked for Marathon Petroleum and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers Association. Some climate advocates noted that industry stands to benefit from the elimination of greenhouse gas reporting requirements. “T​he bottom line is this is a giveaway to emitters, just letting them off the hook entirely,” said Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director with the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Cleetus derided the choice to stop documenting emissions as ostrich-like. “Not tracking the data doesn’t make the climate crisis any less real,” she said. “This is just putting our heads in the sand.” ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. Read more about the environment

Climate
Business
CO2

No Results today.

Our news is updated constantly with the latest environmental stories from around the world. Reset or change your filters to find the most active current topics.

Join us to forge
a sustainable future

Our team is always growing.
Become a partner, volunteer, sponsor, or intern today.
Let us know how you would like to get involved!

CONTACT US

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Subscribers receive a free day pass for streaming Cinema Verde.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.