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Costly climate ‘solutions’ look like more pollution in Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’

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Monday, July 29, 2024

It was a muggy morning in late April when a handful of local residents and grassroots organizers huddled in a church parking lot to strategize, before knocking on doors with information about the latest environmental threat facing St Rose, a predominantly Black community in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley”.It was not the first time Kimbrelle Eugene Kyereh had campaigned for better regulation of the choking sprawl of fossil fuel and petrochemical facilities that surround St Rose – and countless other communities up and down the Mississippi River.But this marked the first time residents have grappled with a toxic chemical facility that its operators claim to be a clean energy innovator and that stands to benefit from taxpayer subsidies and unprecedented tax credits supposedly designed to tackle the climate emergency.Kyereh informed neighbors that international investors want to build a “blue” ammonia and “clean” hydrogen plant across the fence line – on the same site as a crude oil storage and export terminal which residents say spews noxious fumes that make it hard to breathe.Ammonia is a toxic substance made by stripping hydrogen from fossil gas and nitrogen from air, and is mostly used for synthetic fertilizer. The St Charles Clean Fuels (SCCF) project claims it will capture and sequester the carbon dioxide (CO2), the planet-warming greenhouse gas generated as a byproduct, making its ammonia cleaner or “blue”.Randy Moses, at home in St Rose, Louisiana, opposes the proposed ammonia plant next to an existing oil facility.In theory, the waste CO2 will be compressed, transported in special pipelines and injected deep into underground rock formations for storage, ostensibly forever, for which the company would qualify for federal tax credits for each ton of carbon stored. The SCCF project says that the ammonia will be sold for fertilizer feedstock or so-called “blue” hydrogen – promoted as a “clean” fuel by the fossil fuel industry, which also earns tax credits for it.“The SCCF low carbon approach is expected to reduce CO2 equivalent emissions by more than 90% compared to traditional ammonia production … Financing and building infrastructure that deploys cleaner solutions like blue ammonia is essential to fighting climate change,” said a spokesperson for the SCCF project, which is majority-owned by a Danish investment company.But industry claims about the climate credentials of “blue” hydrogen and ammonia have been debunked by scientists without fossil fuel ties. The process depends on fossil gas, a major driver of global heating, as a raw material and energy source – which both emits CO2 and leads to substantial upstream emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.“‘Blue’ hydrogen is a marketing scam, pure and simple. The facts do not back up industry hype,” said Robert Howarth, professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University, and co-author of a seminal study discrediting industry claims about hydrogen.“The best any plant has done for net CO2 capture is 25% to 30%, and that’s before the very potent methane [leaks]. The 90% capture rate the industry claims is pure nonsense,” Howarth added.In addition, ammonia production generates air pollutants such as nitrogen oxide, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds – a toxic mix already choking residents in Cancer Alley. CO2, itself an asphyxiant and intoxicant, also poses a threat as leaks can cause injury or death by replacing oxygen in the air – which makes St Rose residents Randy and Dedra Moses fear for the safety of their grandchildren.Out canvassing, some locals were dismayed by prospects of another polluting facility while others hoped it would bring jobs. At one house, a retired teacher with a heart condition was anxious that the air quality could get even worse and signed the petition, promising to attend the forthcoming community meetings. Kyereh did her best to stay positive and moved on to the next house, but the 54-year-old was worried.A house in St Rose next to the IMTT oil storage facility in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley“It feels doomful, like we’re going in the wrong direction. They are claiming to save the planet but at our expense. If the ammonia or CO2 leaks, we will be sitting ducks. We are the sacrifice zone and we feel it,” she said.The St Rose ammonia plant is among at least 141 carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects currently proposed by the oil, gas and petrochemical industries across the US, according to the Oil and Gas Watch tracker. (Additional CCS projects associated with coal and ethanol plants aren’t included.)It’s a scam that will enrich the oil and gas and petrochemical industries furtherEloise Reid of the Louisiana Against False Solutions CoalitionExperts warn that the CCS and the “clean” hydrogen boom amount to a costly climate gamble unleashed by unprecedented federal spending and tax breaks in the Biden administration’s landmark climate and infrastructure legislation – which will almost certainly prolong the use of fossil fuels.The history of CCS has largely been one of “underperformance” and “unmet expectations”, the International Energy Agency said in 2023.Climate scientists agree that the only way to curtail further catastrophic global heating is to radically cut greenhouse gas emissions by transitioning off fossil fuels, yet CCS depends on fossil fuels, emits greenhouse gases and can be used to extract more oil.Three-quarters of the carbon currently captured in the US is used to extract hard-to-reach reserves, known as “enhanced oil recovery”. Data on carbon storage – which must be permanent to be effective – is entirely self-reported by corporations, with no independent oversight in place to check for leaks or verify company claims, according to research by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP).“Every dollar invested in CCS rather than renewable energy is a wasted dollar … It’s a scam,” said Charles Harvey, professor of environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Harvey co-founded the first private CCS startup 15 years ago but has since said that he was wrong – that CCS technology is inefficient and cannot deliver.Kimbrelle Eugene Kyereh canvassing in St Rose, Louisiana.Louisiana is at the center of the decarbonization boom, accounting for more than a third of the proposed projects, which include 11 hydrogen or ammonia plants, three liquified natural gas (LNG) terminals and three gas processing plants, according to Oil and Gas Watch figures.Advocates say the proposed new projects will lead to more air pollution – and more greenhouse gases – in a region with some of the worst air quality and cancer rates in the country, and which is already suffering mounting climate impacts including extreme heat, increasingly intense hurricanes, sea level rise and drought.“It’s a scam that will enrich the oil and gas and petrochemical industries further, prolonging their ability to destroy livelihoods and community health, poison fenceline communities and perpetuate climate change – while environmental justice communities are left to jump through loopholes for funding to minimize the harms,” said Eloise Reid, coordinator of the Louisiana Against False Solutions Coalition.St Rose, Louisiana, community organizer Rose Wilright.Yet the Biden administration – and the Louisiana state government – is betting on CCS and hydrogen to meet its climate goals, despite evidence that the technology is inefficient and unproven as a reliable climate solution.Over the past couple of years, the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries have flooded the state legislature with lobbyists, executives and friendly experts to thwart community and environmental group efforts from properly regulating CCS.Louisiana’s part-time lawmakers, who earn $16,000 a year and have only one staffer each, rely heavily on lobbyists for policymaking, according to Jackson Voss, the climate policy coordinator for the Alliance for Affordable Energy (AAE).Earlier this year, state senator Michael “Big Mike” Fesi proposed legislation to exclude gas pipelines from the “right to know” law, which requires companies to share information about leaks of hazardous materials. Fesi is the owner of a major pipeline construction and maintenance contractor.In 2022, the Louisiana legislature passed a law exempting state employees hired to perform geoscientific work – which is key to safe carbon injection and storage – from requiring board certification. (Florists and hair braiders are legally required to pass a written exam and obtain a state license.) Studies have shown that CCS risks causing earthquakes, and Louisiana has several fault lines, with more than a hundred earthquakes registered since 1990.The view over the St Rose community’s fence line, directly behind the home of Randy and Dedra Moses.A taskforce set up to ostensibly address mounting public concerns about CCS and report back to the state senate by February 2024 was composed of five oil and gas attorneys and an academic with industry ties. Its report has not been published.The vast majority of bills which could have made the proposed build-out safer and more environmentally just have been thrown out, ignored or watered down.“It’s like the fox watching the hen house,” said former oil worker Justin Solet, a member of the United Houma Nation and organizing fellow with Healthy Gulf, an environmental justice organization.In arguably the biggest victory so far for CCS proponents, in December the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) handed over regulatory oversight – or primacy – for CO2 injection wells to the Louisiana department of energy and natural resources (LDENR), an under-resourced agency which has been criticized for failing to enforce existing regulations meant to protect the environment and people from oil and gas wells.In terms of political capture, Louisiana is absolutely a petrostate.Jackson Voss of the Alliance for Affordable EnergyLouisiana is a Republican-dominated state. But the application for primacy, which is being legally challenged by environmental groups, was made by the former Democratic governor, who put CCS at the heart of the state’s climate action plan. John Bel Edwards also led a delegation to the 2021 UN climate summit in Scotland, to promote the state as open for CCS business.St Rose community organizer Randy Moses on the rail track that separates his home from an industrial facility.His Republican successor, Jeff Landry, who was elected in 2023 after a record low turnout, has expanded access to state tax breaks and appointed fossil fuel insiders to key roles. This includes Tyler Gray, an oil and gas attorney and former president of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association (Lmoga), the state’s most prominent industry trade group and a key CCS proponent, to lead the LDENR. As Lmoga president, in 2018 Gray helped draft a law criminalizing protests near oil and gas pipelines and construction sites.“The fossil fuel and petrochemical industry has had a grip on our state for a very long time. The support for oil and gas, and now CCS and hydrogen, goes across party lines, with very little opposition despite community concerns,” said Jackson Voss of the AAE. “In terms of political capture, Louisiana is absolutely a petrostate.”The Louisiana governor’s office, the LDENR and Lmoga did not respond to requests for comment.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 promotionSt Rose is an unincorporated town of 6,000 people in St Charles parish – which extends over both banks of the Mississippi River in the 85-mile-long (135km-long) heavy industrial stretch of land known as Cancer Alley.St Rose was founded around 1880 by a group of formerly enslaved families as a free town called Elkinsville, creating a thriving, close-knit agrarian community surrounded by plantations which were later sold off to fossil fuel and petrochemical companies.The SCCF plant would be located on the site of a former sugar plantation now owned by lnternational-Matex Tank Terminals (IMTT), which would store and handle the ammonia. Residents of the area closest to the proposed site have a higher risk of respiratory disease from pollution exposure than 96% of other Louisiana residents, according to recent EPA data. Hurricane Ida ripped through the community in 2021, and some homes are still covered by the temporary roofs installed in the aftermath of the category 4 storm.“As plantations became petrochemical plants, small free towns like Elkinsville became fenceline communities most exposed to the toxic pollution. Now Biden’s signature climate legislation is exacerbating this racial inequality in toxic harm by subsidizing the CCS buildout,” said Michael Levien, a sociologist from Johns Hopkins University researching the social consequences of CCS in Louisiana.“St Rose epitomizes this, but it’s the same pattern up and down the river.”Lake Maurepas, a protected body of water in south-eastern Louisiana. The chemical company Air Products wants to store millions of tons of carbon dioxide under the lakebed.A staggering 90% of the proposed “blue” hydrogen plants nationwide are located in low-income disadvantaged communities, according to the Oil and Gas Watch tracker.The SCCF project said the plant would bring “significant future opportunities” to the local economy, and represents a shift to “clean fuels and clean fertilizer production that benefits both the regional community and cleaner energy supply needs”.IMTT’s CEO, Carlin Conner, said the company has committed to invest over $1.6m in environmental mitigation measures at its St Rose facility, and regularly meets with local residents to address their concerns.According to its proponents, Louisiana’s geological formation and existing industry infrastructure make it ideal for the capture and storage of CO2 – whereas critics argue that this is precisely what makes Louisiana so risky.Historically, Louisiana was one of the largest oil and gas producers in the country, with 180,000 known abandoned wells scattered across the state including more than 28,000 unplugged wells. Two-thirds of abandoned wells are located in rock formation areas where carbon could potentially be stored, according to EIP research.Of most concern are the 13,000 oldest and leakiest wells, located in potential carbon sequestration hotspots. CO2 plumes could migrate directly via the abandoned wells, like methane does, contaminating surface water and displacing oxygen in the air – which can be fatal.Bill Whittington, Lisa Hoover and Mayhew Barnum boating on Lake Maurepas. They belong to the Lake Maurepas Preservation Society, founded in 2023 to fight a proposed CCS project.In a recent field experiment, the Guardian accompanied researchers from Healthy Gulf who detected methane leaking from an orphaned well (abandoned with no known owner) in a lake close to where carbon injection sites have been proposed in a separate project.“Fishermen, not the LDENR [state agency], are managing these wells. Louisiana is not prepared for primacy [oversight]. We need two decades to clean up the existing oil and gas junk infrastructure before we even think about injecting CO2, it’s such a mess,” said Scott Eustice, community science director at Healthy Gulf. “Plugging leaking wells would be far more effective in mitigating climate change than CCS.”Several proposed pipelines and injection sites across Louisiana could affect protected wetlands and other waterways, as well as burial sites and other historical locations for Indigenous and Black enslaved people.Leaky wells aren’t the only threat. CO2 pipelines already pose a major safety concern with higher rates of safety incidents compared with other pipelines, according to Fractracker.The Prop Stop Inn, a old bar only accessible by boat on the Tickfaw River, which flows into Lake Maurepas.The current 5,000-mile (8,000km) network of CO2 pipelines could increase tenfold under the proposed boom, and safety experts fear that the rush to build out new infrastructure to qualify for the Inflation Reduction Act tax subsidies will compromise safety.“Current regulations are insufficient to protect the public and the environment from the potential dangers of hydrogen and carbon dioxide pipelines,” said Erin Sutherland, the Pipeline Safety Trust policy and program director. “Many have been proposed near communities, placing them at risk in the event of failure.”Recent CO2 pipeline leaks in Louisiana and Mississippi have exposed dangerous gaps in the regulatory system, which is undergoing a drawn-out overhaul. The regulator will not be able to apply new design, construction and inspection standards to completed pipelines.“CCS is not going to mitigate the climate crisis; it will lead to further expansion of fossil fuels and more hazardous waste causing further harm to frontline communities and the planet,” said Monique Harden, director of law and public policy at the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice.Lisa Hoover of the Lake Maurepas Preservation Society. Photograph: Rita Harper/The GuardianBack in St Rose, Kimbrelle Eugene Kyereh is cognisant of the role racism has played in creating environmental justice communities in Louisiana, and fears the CCS and hydrogen expansion will lead to more of the same. “We need to get white and middle-class people involved, so it’s not just poor Black people complaining – or we won’t win,” she said.But corporations are vying for a slice of the billions in grants earmarked for new CCS and “clean” hydrogen projects – with billions more up for grabs in tax credits. So no community is safe.About 30 miles (50km) north-east of St Rose in a separate project, the chemical giant Air Products is looking to drill dozens of wells in Lake Maurepas, an iconic protected water body, and inject around 5m tons of carbon dioxide each year about a mile below the lakebed.They’re trying to destroy the lake and ram this project down our throatsBill Whittington, president of the Lake Maurepas Preservation SocietyThe CO2 would come from the vast new “blue” hydrogen energy and ammonia complex that Air Products wants to build in Ascension parish, a sprawling dusty landscape where more Black communities are already overburdened by industrial pollution, including from the world’s largest ammonia plant.Air Products claims it will capture and permanently sequester more than 95% of the waste CO2 generated at the facility. The gas will travel about 35 miles (60km) east in newly constructed pipelines, before being injected into an “ideal geological pore space” – a process that environmentalists fear will threaten Lake Maurepas’s fragile swampy ecosystem. Millions of dollars have been invested in restoring the lake, which after generations of ecological destruction has become a popular destination for tourists and fishers.The project, which was announced in 2021 before Biden’s key climate legislation, claims it will be the world’s largest CCS operation. Lakeside residents say they found out about the proposed wells when a crabber spotted engineers conducting seismic tests, and created the Lake Maurepas Preservation Society. Its members, who are predominantly climate change skeptics and pro-fossil fuel white Republicans, participated in House and Senate committee hearings and galvanized parish council members and state legislators to oppose the project.‘They’re trying to destroy the lake and ram this project down our throats,’ said Bill Whittington, president of the Lake Maurepas Preservation Society and a former oil company worker.Air Products pushed back by hiring 25 lobbyists in 2023, and sued Tangipahoa parish, overturning the local CCS moratorium that would have protected Lake Maurepas. Legislation to protect the lake and strengthen environmental protections at the state level has gone nowhere.St Rose community organizer Rose Wilright outside her house.“The fight against Air Products has demonstrated the political capture on both sides of the aisle in the state legislature,” said Kim Coates, a Republican state legislator and former Tangipahoa parish council member.Air Products said the facility would not be a major source of emissions and that the company will “fully comply” with all air quality permit requirements and other relevant standards. The company has invested in steps to protect and enhance the lake and “blue” hydrogen will help meet carbon reduction goals, a spokesperson said.“A lot of people around here don’t believe in climate change and CO2, but even if you do, CCS will barely make a difference,” said Caleb Atwell, vice-president of the Lake Maurepas Preservation Society. “We did everything to save our lake, we gave it our best shot, but it’s over.”

Corporations and politicians are pushing carbon capture despite big questions over its value as residents in the southern ‘petrostate’ fear the worstIt was a muggy morning in late April when a handful of local residents and grassroots organizers huddled in a church parking lot to strategize, before knocking on doors with information about the latest environmental threat facing St Rose, a predominantly Black community in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley”.It was not the first time Kimbrelle Eugene Kyereh had campaigned for better regulation of the choking sprawl of fossil fuel and petrochemical facilities that surround St Rose – and countless other communities up and down the Mississippi River. Continue reading...

It was a muggy morning in late April when a handful of local residents and grassroots organizers huddled in a church parking lot to strategize, before knocking on doors with information about the latest environmental threat facing St Rose, a predominantly Black community in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley”.

It was not the first time Kimbrelle Eugene Kyereh had campaigned for better regulation of the choking sprawl of fossil fuel and petrochemical facilities that surround St Rose – and countless other communities up and down the Mississippi River.

But this marked the first time residents have grappled with a toxic chemical facility that its operators claim to be a clean energy innovator and that stands to benefit from taxpayer subsidies and unprecedented tax credits supposedly designed to tackle the climate emergency.

Kyereh informed neighbors that international investors want to build a “blue” ammonia and “clean” hydrogen plant across the fence line – on the same site as a crude oil storage and export terminal which residents say spews noxious fumes that make it hard to breathe.

Ammonia is a toxic substance made by stripping hydrogen from fossil gas and nitrogen from air, and is mostly used for synthetic fertilizer. The St Charles Clean Fuels (SCCF) project claims it will capture and sequester the carbon dioxide (CO2), the planet-warming greenhouse gas generated as a byproduct, making its ammonia cleaner or “blue”.

Randy Moses, at home in St Rose, Louisiana, opposes the proposed ammonia plant next to an existing oil facility.

In theory, the waste CO2 will be compressed, transported in special pipelines and injected deep into underground rock formations for storage, ostensibly forever, for which the company would qualify for federal tax credits for each ton of carbon stored. The SCCF project says that the ammonia will be sold for fertilizer feedstock or so-called “blue” hydrogen – promoted as a “clean” fuel by the fossil fuel industry, which also earns tax credits for it.

“The SCCF low carbon approach is expected to reduce CO2 equivalent emissions by more than 90% compared to traditional ammonia production … Financing and building infrastructure that deploys cleaner solutions like blue ammonia is essential to fighting climate change,” said a spokesperson for the SCCF project, which is majority-owned by a Danish investment company.

But industry claims about the climate credentials of “blue” hydrogen and ammonia have been debunked by scientists without fossil fuel ties. The process depends on fossil gas, a major driver of global heating, as a raw material and energy source – which both emits CO2 and leads to substantial upstream emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

“‘Blue’ hydrogen is a marketing scam, pure and simple. The facts do not back up industry hype,” said Robert Howarth, professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University, and co-author of a seminal study discrediting industry claims about hydrogen.

“The best any plant has done for net CO2 capture is 25% to 30%, and that’s before the very potent methane [leaks]. The 90% capture rate the industry claims is pure nonsense,” Howarth added.

In addition, ammonia production generates air pollutants such as nitrogen oxide, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds – a toxic mix already choking residents in Cancer Alley. CO2, itself an asphyxiant and intoxicant, also poses a threat as leaks can cause injury or death by replacing oxygen in the air – which makes St Rose residents Randy and Dedra Moses fear for the safety of their grandchildren.

Out canvassing, some locals were dismayed by prospects of another polluting facility while others hoped it would bring jobs. At one house, a retired teacher with a heart condition was anxious that the air quality could get even worse and signed the petition, promising to attend the forthcoming community meetings. Kyereh did her best to stay positive and moved on to the next house, but the 54-year-old was worried.

A house in St Rose next to the IMTT oil storage facility in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley

“It feels doomful, like we’re going in the wrong direction. They are claiming to save the planet but at our expense. If the ammonia or CO2 leaks, we will be sitting ducks. We are the sacrifice zone and we feel it,” she said.

The St Rose ammonia plant is among at least 141 carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects currently proposed by the oil, gas and petrochemical industries across the US, according to the Oil and Gas Watch tracker. (Additional CCS projects associated with coal and ethanol plants aren’t included.)

Experts warn that the CCS and the “clean” hydrogen boom amount to a costly climate gamble unleashed by unprecedented federal spending and tax breaks in the Biden administration’s landmark climate and infrastructure legislation – which will almost certainly prolong the use of fossil fuels.

The history of CCS has largely been one of “underperformance” and “unmet expectations”, the International Energy Agency said in 2023.

Climate scientists agree that the only way to curtail further catastrophic global heating is to radically cut greenhouse gas emissions by transitioning off fossil fuels, yet CCS depends on fossil fuels, emits greenhouse gases and can be used to extract more oil.

Three-quarters of the carbon currently captured in the US is used to extract hard-to-reach reserves, known as “enhanced oil recovery”. Data on carbon storage – which must be permanent to be effective – is entirely self-reported by corporations, with no independent oversight in place to check for leaks or verify company claims, according to research by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP).

“Every dollar invested in CCS rather than renewable energy is a wasted dollar … It’s a scam,” said Charles Harvey, professor of environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Harvey co-founded the first private CCS startup 15 years ago but has since said that he was wrong – that CCS technology is inefficient and cannot deliver.

Kimbrelle Eugene Kyereh canvassing in St Rose, Louisiana.

Louisiana is at the center of the decarbonization boom, accounting for more than a third of the proposed projects, which include 11 hydrogen or ammonia plants, three liquified natural gas (LNG) terminals and three gas processing plants, according to Oil and Gas Watch figures.

Advocates say the proposed new projects will lead to more air pollution – and more greenhouse gases – in a region with some of the worst air quality and cancer rates in the country, and which is already suffering mounting climate impacts including extreme heat, increasingly intense hurricanes, sea level rise and drought.

“It’s a scam that will enrich the oil and gas and petrochemical industries further, prolonging their ability to destroy livelihoods and community health, poison fenceline communities and perpetuate climate change – while environmental justice communities are left to jump through loopholes for funding to minimize the harms,” said Eloise Reid, coordinator of the Louisiana Against False Solutions Coalition.

St Rose, Louisiana, community organizer Rose Wilright.

Yet the Biden administration – and the Louisiana state government – is betting on CCS and hydrogen to meet its climate goals, despite evidence that the technology is inefficient and unproven as a reliable climate solution.

Over the past couple of years, the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries have flooded the state legislature with lobbyists, executives and friendly experts to thwart community and environmental group efforts from properly regulating CCS.

Louisiana’s part-time lawmakers, who earn $16,000 a year and have only one staffer each, rely heavily on lobbyists for policymaking, according to Jackson Voss, the climate policy coordinator for the Alliance for Affordable Energy (AAE).

Earlier this year, state senator Michael “Big Mike” Fesi proposed legislation to exclude gas pipelines from the “right to know” law, which requires companies to share information about leaks of hazardous materials. Fesi is the owner of a major pipeline construction and maintenance contractor.

In 2022, the Louisiana legislature passed a law exempting state employees hired to perform geoscientific work – which is key to safe carbon injection and storage – from requiring board certification. (Florists and hair braiders are legally required to pass a written exam and obtain a state license.) Studies have shown that CCS risks causing earthquakes, and Louisiana has several fault lines, with more than a hundred earthquakes registered since 1990.

The view over the St Rose community’s fence line, directly behind the home of Randy and Dedra Moses.

A taskforce set up to ostensibly address mounting public concerns about CCS and report back to the state senate by February 2024 was composed of five oil and gas attorneys and an academic with industry ties. Its report has not been published.

The vast majority of bills which could have made the proposed build-out safer and more environmentally just have been thrown out, ignored or watered down.

“It’s like the fox watching the hen house,” said former oil worker Justin Solet, a member of the United Houma Nation and organizing fellow with Healthy Gulf, an environmental justice organization.

In arguably the biggest victory so far for CCS proponents, in December the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) handed over regulatory oversight – or primacy – for CO2 injection wells to the Louisiana department of energy and natural resources (LDENR), an under-resourced agency which has been criticized for failing to enforce existing regulations meant to protect the environment and people from oil and gas wells.

Louisiana is a Republican-dominated state. But the application for primacy, which is being legally challenged by environmental groups, was made by the former Democratic governor, who put CCS at the heart of the state’s climate action plan. John Bel Edwards also led a delegation to the 2021 UN climate summit in Scotland, to promote the state as open for CCS business.

St Rose community organizer Randy Moses on the rail track that separates his home from an industrial facility.

His Republican successor, Jeff Landry, who was elected in 2023 after a record low turnout, has expanded access to state tax breaks and appointed fossil fuel insiders to key roles. This includes Tyler Gray, an oil and gas attorney and former president of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association (Lmoga), the state’s most prominent industry trade group and a key CCS proponent, to lead the LDENR. As Lmoga president, in 2018 Gray helped draft a law criminalizing protests near oil and gas pipelines and construction sites.

“The fossil fuel and petrochemical industry has had a grip on our state for a very long time. The support for oil and gas, and now CCS and hydrogen, goes across party lines, with very little opposition despite community concerns,” said Jackson Voss of the AAE. “In terms of political capture, Louisiana is absolutely a petrostate.”

The Louisiana governor’s office, the LDENR and Lmoga did not respond to requests for comment.

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St Rose is an unincorporated town of 6,000 people in St Charles parish – which extends over both banks of the Mississippi River in the 85-mile-long (135km-long) heavy industrial stretch of land known as Cancer Alley.

St Rose was founded around 1880 by a group of formerly enslaved families as a free town called Elkinsville, creating a thriving, close-knit agrarian community surrounded by plantations which were later sold off to fossil fuel and petrochemical companies.

The SCCF plant would be located on the site of a former sugar plantation now owned by lnternational-Matex Tank Terminals (IMTT), which would store and handle the ammonia. Residents of the area closest to the proposed site have a higher risk of respiratory disease from pollution exposure than 96% of other Louisiana residents, according to recent EPA data. Hurricane Ida ripped through the community in 2021, and some homes are still covered by the temporary roofs installed in the aftermath of the category 4 storm.

“As plantations became petrochemical plants, small free towns like Elkinsville became fenceline communities most exposed to the toxic pollution. Now Biden’s signature climate legislation is exacerbating this racial inequality in toxic harm by subsidizing the CCS buildout,” said Michael Levien, a sociologist from Johns Hopkins University researching the social consequences of CCS in Louisiana.

“St Rose epitomizes this, but it’s the same pattern up and down the river.”

Lake Maurepas, a protected body of water in south-eastern Louisiana. The chemical company Air Products wants to store millions of tons of carbon dioxide under the lakebed.

A staggering 90% of the proposed “blue” hydrogen plants nationwide are located in low-income disadvantaged communities, according to the Oil and Gas Watch tracker.

The SCCF project said the plant would bring “significant future opportunities” to the local economy, and represents a shift to “clean fuels and clean fertilizer production that benefits both the regional community and cleaner energy supply needs”.

IMTT’s CEO, Carlin Conner, said the company has committed to invest over $1.6m in environmental mitigation measures at its St Rose facility, and regularly meets with local residents to address their concerns.

According to its proponents, Louisiana’s geological formation and existing industry infrastructure make it ideal for the capture and storage of CO2 – whereas critics argue that this is precisely what makes Louisiana so risky.

Historically, Louisiana was one of the largest oil and gas producers in the country, with 180,000 known abandoned wells scattered across the state including more than 28,000 unplugged wells. Two-thirds of abandoned wells are located in rock formation areas where carbon could potentially be stored, according to EIP research.

Of most concern are the 13,000 oldest and leakiest wells, located in potential carbon sequestration hotspots. CO2 plumes could migrate directly via the abandoned wells, like methane does, contaminating surface water and displacing oxygen in the air – which can be fatal.

Bill Whittington, Lisa Hoover and Mayhew Barnum boating on Lake Maurepas. They belong to the Lake Maurepas Preservation Society, founded in 2023 to fight a proposed CCS project.

In a recent field experiment, the Guardian accompanied researchers from Healthy Gulf who detected methane leaking from an orphaned well (abandoned with no known owner) in a lake close to where carbon injection sites have been proposed in a separate project.

“Fishermen, not the LDENR [state agency], are managing these wells. Louisiana is not prepared for primacy [oversight]. We need two decades to clean up the existing oil and gas junk infrastructure before we even think about injecting CO2, it’s such a mess,” said Scott Eustice, community science director at Healthy Gulf. “Plugging leaking wells would be far more effective in mitigating climate change than CCS.”

Several proposed pipelines and injection sites across Louisiana could affect protected wetlands and other waterways, as well as burial sites and other historical locations for Indigenous and Black enslaved people.

Leaky wells aren’t the only threat. CO2 pipelines already pose a major safety concern with higher rates of safety incidents compared with other pipelines, according to Fractracker.

The Prop Stop Inn, a old bar only accessible by boat on the Tickfaw River, which flows into Lake Maurepas.

The current 5,000-mile (8,000km) network of CO2 pipelines could increase tenfold under the proposed boom, and safety experts fear that the rush to build out new infrastructure to qualify for the Inflation Reduction Act tax subsidies will compromise safety.

“Current regulations are insufficient to protect the public and the environment from the potential dangers of hydrogen and carbon dioxide pipelines,” said Erin Sutherland, the Pipeline Safety Trust policy and program director. “Many have been proposed near communities, placing them at risk in the event of failure.”

Recent CO2 pipeline leaks in Louisiana and Mississippi have exposed dangerous gaps in the regulatory system, which is undergoing a drawn-out overhaul. The regulator will not be able to apply new design, construction and inspection standards to completed pipelines.

“CCS is not going to mitigate the climate crisis; it will lead to further expansion of fossil fuels and more hazardous waste causing further harm to frontline communities and the planet,” said Monique Harden, director of law and public policy at the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice.

Lisa Hoover of the Lake Maurepas Preservation Society. Photograph: Rita Harper/The Guardian

Back in St Rose, Kimbrelle Eugene Kyereh is cognisant of the role racism has played in creating environmental justice communities in Louisiana, and fears the CCS and hydrogen expansion will lead to more of the same. “We need to get white and middle-class people involved, so it’s not just poor Black people complaining – or we won’t win,” she said.

But corporations are vying for a slice of the billions in grants earmarked for new CCS and “clean” hydrogen projects – with billions more up for grabs in tax credits. So no community is safe.

About 30 miles (50km) north-east of St Rose in a separate project, the chemical giant Air Products is looking to drill dozens of wells in Lake Maurepas, an iconic protected water body, and inject around 5m tons of carbon dioxide each year about a mile below the lakebed.

The CO2 would come from the vast new “blue” hydrogen energy and ammonia complex that Air Products wants to build in Ascension parish, a sprawling dusty landscape where more Black communities are already overburdened by industrial pollution, including from the world’s largest ammonia plant.

Air Products claims it will capture and permanently sequester more than 95% of the waste CO2 generated at the facility. The gas will travel about 35 miles (60km) east in newly constructed pipelines, before being injected into an “ideal geological pore space” – a process that environmentalists fear will threaten Lake Maurepas’s fragile swampy ecosystem. Millions of dollars have been invested in restoring the lake, which after generations of ecological destruction has become a popular destination for tourists and fishers.

The project, which was announced in 2021 before Biden’s key climate legislation, claims it will be the world’s largest CCS operation. Lakeside residents say they found out about the proposed wells when a crabber spotted engineers conducting seismic tests, and created the Lake Maurepas Preservation Society. Its members, who are predominantly climate change skeptics and pro-fossil fuel white Republicans, participated in House and Senate committee hearings and galvanized parish council members and state legislators to oppose the project.

‘They’re trying to destroy the lake and ram this project down our throats,’ said Bill Whittington, president of the Lake Maurepas Preservation Society and a former oil company worker.

Air Products pushed back by hiring 25 lobbyists in 2023, and sued Tangipahoa parish, overturning the local CCS moratorium that would have protected Lake Maurepas. Legislation to protect the lake and strengthen environmental protections at the state level has gone nowhere.

St Rose community organizer Rose Wilright outside her house.

“The fight against Air Products has demonstrated the political capture on both sides of the aisle in the state legislature,” said Kim Coates, a Republican state legislator and former Tangipahoa parish council member.

Air Products said the facility would not be a major source of emissions and that the company will “fully comply” with all air quality permit requirements and other relevant standards. The company has invested in steps to protect and enhance the lake and “blue” hydrogen will help meet carbon reduction goals, a spokesperson said.

“A lot of people around here don’t believe in climate change and CO2, but even if you do, CCS will barely make a difference,” said Caleb Atwell, vice-president of the Lake Maurepas Preservation Society. “We did everything to save our lake, we gave it our best shot, but it’s over.”

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

The greater Pittsburgh region is among the 25 worst metro areas in the country for air quality: Report

PITTSBURGH — The greater Pittsburgh metropolitan area is among the 25 regions in the country with the worst air pollution, according to a new report from the American Lung Association.The nonprofit public health organization’s annual “State of the Air” report uses a report card-style grading system to compare air quality in regions across the U.S. This year’s report found that 46% of Americans — 156.1 million people — are living in places that get failing grades for unhealthy levels of ozone or particulate pollution. Overall, air pollution measured by the report was worse than in previous years, with more Americans living in places with unhealthy air than in the previous 10 years the report has been published.The 13-county region spanning Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania; Weirton, West Virginia; and Steubenville, Ohio received “fail” grades for both daily and annual average particulate matter exposure for the years 2021–2023.The region ranked 16th worst for 24-hour particle pollution out of 225 metropolitan areas and 12th worst for annual particle pollution out of 208 metropolitan areas. Particulate matter pollution, which comes from things like industrial emissions, vehicle exhaust, wildfires, and wood burning, causes higher rates of asthma, decreased lung function in children, and increased hospital admissions and premature death due to heart attacks and respiratory illness. Long-term exposure to particulate matter pollution also raises the risk of lung cancer, and research suggests that in the Pittsburgh region, air pollution linked to particulate matter and other harmful substances contributes significantly to cancer rates. According to the report, the Pittsburgh metro area is home to around 50,022 children with pediatric asthma, 227,806 adults with asthma, 173,588 people with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), 250,600 people with cardiovascular disease, 1,468 people with lung cancer, and around 25,746 pregnant people, all of whom are especially vulnerable to the harmful impacts of particulate matter pollution exposure."The findings help community members understand the ongoing risks to the health of people in our region," said Matt Mehalik, executive director of the Breathe Project and the Breathe Collaborative, a coalition of more than 30 groups in southwestern Pennsylvania that advocate for cleaner air. "These findings emphasize the need to transition away from fossil fuels — in industry, transportation and residential uses — if we are to improve our health and address climate change." Allegheny County has received a failing grade for particulate matter pollution from the American Lung Association every year since the "State of the Air" report was first issued in 2004. The region is home to numerous polluting industries, with an estimated 80% of toxic air pollutants in Allegheny County (which encompasses Pittsburgh) coming from ten industrial sites, according to an analysis by the nonprofit environmental advocacy group PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center. The Ohio River near Pittsburgh Credit: Kristina Marusic for EHN In the 2024 State of the Air report, which looked at 2020-2022, Pittsburgh was for the first time ever not among the 25 cities most polluted by particulate matte, and showed some improvements in air quality, some of which may have resulted from pollution reductions spurred by the COVID-19 shut-down in 2020.The region earned a grade D for ozone smog this year, but its ranking improved from last year — it went from the 50th worst metro area for ozone smog in 2024’s report to the 90th worst in this year’s. Ozone pollution also comes from sources like vehicle exhaust and industrial emissions, and occurs when certain chemicals mix with sunlight. Exposure to ozone pollution is linked to respiratory issues, worsened asthma symptoms, and long-term lung damage.Each year the State of the Air Report makes recommendations for improving air quality. This year those recommendations include defending funding for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), because sweeping staff cuts and reduction of federal funding under the Trump administration are impairing the agency’s ability to enforce clean air regulations. For example, the report notes that EPA recently lowered annual limits for fine particulate matter pollution from 12 micrograms per cubic meter to 9 micrograms per cubic meter, and that states, including Pennsylvania, have submitted their recommendations for which areas should be cleaned up. Next, the agency must review those recommendations and add its own analyses to make final decisions by February 6, 2026 about which areas need additional pollution controls. If it fails to do so due to lack of funding or staffing, the report suggests, air quality might suffer.“The bottom line is this,” the report states. “EPA staff, working in communities across the country, are doing crucial work to keep your air clean. Staff cuts are already impacting people’s health across the country. Further cuts mean more dirty air.”

PITTSBURGH — The greater Pittsburgh metropolitan area is among the 25 regions in the country with the worst air pollution, according to a new report from the American Lung Association.The nonprofit public health organization’s annual “State of the Air” report uses a report card-style grading system to compare air quality in regions across the U.S. This year’s report found that 46% of Americans — 156.1 million people — are living in places that get failing grades for unhealthy levels of ozone or particulate pollution. Overall, air pollution measured by the report was worse than in previous years, with more Americans living in places with unhealthy air than in the previous 10 years the report has been published.The 13-county region spanning Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania; Weirton, West Virginia; and Steubenville, Ohio received “fail” grades for both daily and annual average particulate matter exposure for the years 2021–2023.The region ranked 16th worst for 24-hour particle pollution out of 225 metropolitan areas and 12th worst for annual particle pollution out of 208 metropolitan areas. Particulate matter pollution, which comes from things like industrial emissions, vehicle exhaust, wildfires, and wood burning, causes higher rates of asthma, decreased lung function in children, and increased hospital admissions and premature death due to heart attacks and respiratory illness. Long-term exposure to particulate matter pollution also raises the risk of lung cancer, and research suggests that in the Pittsburgh region, air pollution linked to particulate matter and other harmful substances contributes significantly to cancer rates. According to the report, the Pittsburgh metro area is home to around 50,022 children with pediatric asthma, 227,806 adults with asthma, 173,588 people with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), 250,600 people with cardiovascular disease, 1,468 people with lung cancer, and around 25,746 pregnant people, all of whom are especially vulnerable to the harmful impacts of particulate matter pollution exposure."The findings help community members understand the ongoing risks to the health of people in our region," said Matt Mehalik, executive director of the Breathe Project and the Breathe Collaborative, a coalition of more than 30 groups in southwestern Pennsylvania that advocate for cleaner air. "These findings emphasize the need to transition away from fossil fuels — in industry, transportation and residential uses — if we are to improve our health and address climate change." Allegheny County has received a failing grade for particulate matter pollution from the American Lung Association every year since the "State of the Air" report was first issued in 2004. The region is home to numerous polluting industries, with an estimated 80% of toxic air pollutants in Allegheny County (which encompasses Pittsburgh) coming from ten industrial sites, according to an analysis by the nonprofit environmental advocacy group PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center. The Ohio River near Pittsburgh Credit: Kristina Marusic for EHN In the 2024 State of the Air report, which looked at 2020-2022, Pittsburgh was for the first time ever not among the 25 cities most polluted by particulate matte, and showed some improvements in air quality, some of which may have resulted from pollution reductions spurred by the COVID-19 shut-down in 2020.The region earned a grade D for ozone smog this year, but its ranking improved from last year — it went from the 50th worst metro area for ozone smog in 2024’s report to the 90th worst in this year’s. Ozone pollution also comes from sources like vehicle exhaust and industrial emissions, and occurs when certain chemicals mix with sunlight. Exposure to ozone pollution is linked to respiratory issues, worsened asthma symptoms, and long-term lung damage.Each year the State of the Air Report makes recommendations for improving air quality. This year those recommendations include defending funding for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), because sweeping staff cuts and reduction of federal funding under the Trump administration are impairing the agency’s ability to enforce clean air regulations. For example, the report notes that EPA recently lowered annual limits for fine particulate matter pollution from 12 micrograms per cubic meter to 9 micrograms per cubic meter, and that states, including Pennsylvania, have submitted their recommendations for which areas should be cleaned up. Next, the agency must review those recommendations and add its own analyses to make final decisions by February 6, 2026 about which areas need additional pollution controls. If it fails to do so due to lack of funding or staffing, the report suggests, air quality might suffer.“The bottom line is this,” the report states. “EPA staff, working in communities across the country, are doing crucial work to keep your air clean. Staff cuts are already impacting people’s health across the country. Further cuts mean more dirty air.”

New, 'Living' Building Material Made From Fungi and Bacteria Could Pave the Way to Self-Healing Structures

Researchers are developing the biomaterial as a more environmentally friendly alternative to concrete, but any wide-scale use is still far away

New, ‘Living’ Building Material Made From Fungi and Bacteria Could Pave the Way to Self-Healing Structures Researchers are developing the biomaterial as a more environmentally friendly alternative to concrete, but any wide-scale use is still far away Microscopic images of the bacteria and mycelium scaffolds. The circles indicate the likely presence of S. pasteurii bacteria. Viles, Ethan et al., Cell Reports Physical Science 2025 Concrete is a crucial construction material. Unfortunately, however, producing it requires large amounts of energy—often powered by fossil fuels—and includes chemical reactions that release carbon dioxide. This intensive process is responsible for up to 8 percent of humanity’s carbon dioxide emissions. As such, finding more sustainable building materials is vital to lessening our global carbon footprint. And to help achieve this goal, scientists are studying methods that might replace concrete with biologically derived materials, or biomaterials for short. Now, researchers have developed a building material made of mycelium—the tubular, branching filaments found in most fungi—and bacteria cells. As detailed in a study published last week in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science, the living bacteria survived in the structure for an extended amount of time, laying the groundwork for more environmentally friendly and self-healing construction material down the line. The researchers grew mycelium from the fungus Neurospora crassa, commonly known as red bread mold, into a dense, scaffold-like structure. Then, they added Sporosarcina pasteurii bacteria. “We like these organisms for several reasons,” Chelsea Heveran, a co-author of the study and an expert in engineered living materials at Montana State University, tells the Debrief’s Ryan Whalen. “First, they do not pose very much threat to human health. S. pasteurii is a common soil microorganism and has been used for years in biomineralization research, including in field-scale commercial applications. N. crassa is a model organism in fungal research.” They also liked that both organisms are capable of biomineralization—the process that forms bones and coral by creating hardened calcium carbonate. To set off biomineralization, the team placed the scaffold in a growing medium with urea and calcium. The bacteria formed calcium carbonate quickly and effectively, making the material stronger. Importantly, the bacteria S. pasteurii was alive, or viable, for at least a month. Live organisms in building material could offer unique properties—such as the ability to self-repair or self-clean—but only as long as they’re alive. This study didn’t test those traits specifically, according to a statement, but the longer lifetime of this material “lays the groundwork for these functionalities.” “We are excited about our results,” Heveran tells New Scientist’s James Woodford. “When viability is sufficiently high, we could start really imparting lasting biological characteristics to the material that we care about, such as self-healing, sensing or environmental remediation.” This month-long lifespan marks a significant improvement over previous structures. In fact, a major challenge in the development of living biomaterials is their short viability—other similar materials made with living organisms have remained viable for just days or weeks. Plus, they don’t usually form the complex internal structures necessary in construction projects, according to the statement. In the new study, however, “we learned that fungal scaffolds are quite useful for controlling the internal architecture of the material,” Heveran explains in the statement. “We created internal geometries that looked like cortical bone, but moving forward, we could potentially construct other geometries, too.” Ultimately, the researchers developed a tough structure that could provide the basis for future sustainable building alternatives. As reported by New Atlas’ Abhimanyu Ghoshal, however, scientists still have other challenges to tackle on the path to replacing concrete—for instance, scaling the material’s production, making it usable for different types of construction projects and overcoming the higher costs associated with living biomaterials. These materials, so far, “do not have high enough strength to replace concrete in all applications,” Heveran says in the statement. “But we and others are working to improve their properties so they can see greater usage.” To that end, Aysu Kuru, a building engineer at the University of Sydney in Australia who did not participate in the study, tells New Scientist that “proposing mycelium as a scaffolding medium for living materials is a simple but powerful strategy.” Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

New electronic “skin” could enable lightweight night-vision glasses

MIT engineers developed ultrathin electronic films that sense heat and other signals, and could reduce the bulk of conventional goggles and scopes.

MIT engineers have developed a technique to grow and peel ultrathin “skins” of electronic material. The method could pave the way for new classes of electronic devices, such as ultrathin wearable sensors, flexible transistors and computing elements, and highly sensitive and compact imaging devices. As a demonstration, the team fabricated a thin membrane of pyroelectric material — a class of heat-sensing material that produces an electric current in response to changes in temperature. The thinner the pyroelectric material, the better it is at sensing subtle thermal variations.With their new method, the team fabricated the thinnest pyroelectric membrane yet, measuring 10 nanometers thick, and demonstrated that the film is highly sensitive to heat and radiation across the far-infrared spectrum.The newly developed film could enable lighter, more portable, and highly accurate far-infrared (IR) sensing devices, with potential applications for night-vision eyewear and autonomous driving in foggy conditions. Current state-of-the-art far-IR sensors require bulky cooling elements. In contrast, the new pyroelectric thin film requires no cooling and is sensitive to much smaller changes in temperature. The researchers are exploring ways to incorporate the film into lighter, higher-precision night-vision glasses.“This film considerably reduces weight and cost, making it lightweight, portable, and easier to integrate,” Xinyuan Zhang, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE). “For example, it could be directly worn on glasses.”The heat-sensing film could also have applications in environmental and biological sensing, as well as imaging of astrophysical phenomena that emit far-infrared radiation.What’s more, the new lift-off technique is generalizable beyond pyroelectric materials. The researchers plan to apply the method to make other ultrathin, high-performance semiconducting films.Their results are reported today in a paper appearing in the journal Nature. The study’s MIT co-authors are first author Xinyuan Zhang, Sangho Lee, Min-Kyu Song, Haihui Lan, Jun Min Suh, Jung-El Ryu, Yanjie Shao, Xudong Zheng, Ne Myo Han, and Jeehwan Kim, associate professor of mechanical engineering and of materials science and engineering, along with researchers at the University Wisconsin at Madison led by Professor Chang-Beom Eom and authors from multiple other institutions.Chemical peelKim’s group at MIT is finding new ways to make smaller, thinner, and more flexible electronics. They envision that such ultrathin computing “skins” can be incorporated into everything from smart contact lenses and wearable sensing fabrics to stretchy solar cells and bendable displays. To realize such devices, Kim and his colleagues have been experimenting with methods to grow, peel, and stack semiconducting elements, to fabricate ultrathin, multifunctional electronic thin-film membranes.One method that Kim has pioneered is “remote epitaxy” — a technique where semiconducting materials are grown on a single-crystalline substrate, with an ultrathin layer of graphene in between. The substrate’s crystal structure serves as a scaffold along which the new material can grow. The graphene acts as a nonstick layer, similar to Teflon, making it easy for researchers to peel off the new film and transfer it onto flexible and stacked electronic devices. After peeling off the new film, the underlying substrate can be reused to make additional thin films.Kim has applied remote epitaxy to fabricate thin films with various characteristics. In trying different combinations of semiconducting elements, the researchers happened to notice that a certain pyroelectric material, called PMN-PT, did not require an intermediate layer assist in order to separate from its substrate. Just by growing PMN-PT directly on a single-crystalline substrate, the researchers could then remove the grown film, with no rips or tears to its delicate lattice.“It worked surprisingly well,” Zhang says. “We found the peeled film is atomically smooth.”Lattice lift-offIn their new study, the MIT and UW Madison researchers took a closer look at the process and discovered that the key to the material’s easy-peel property was lead. As part of its chemical structure, the team, along with colleagues at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, discovered that the pyroelectric film contains an orderly arrangement of lead atoms that have a large “electron affinity,” meaning that lead attracts electrons and prevents the charge carriers from traveling and connecting to another materials such as an underlying substrate. The lead acts as tiny nonstick units, allowing the material as a whole to peel away, perfectly intact.The team ran with the realization and fabricated multiple ultrathin films of PMN-PT, each about 10 nanometers thin. They peeled off pyroelectric films and transfered them onto a small chip to form an array of 100 ultrathin heat-sensing pixels, each about 60 square microns (about .006 square centimeters). They exposed the films to ever-slighter changes in temperature and found the pixels were highly sensitive to small changes across the far-infrared spectrum.The sensitivity of the pyroelectric array is comparable to that of state-of-the-art night-vision devices. These devices are currently based on photodetector materials, in which a change in temperature induces the material’s electrons to jump in energy and briefly cross an energy “band gap,” before settling back into their ground state. This electron jump serves as an electrical signal of the temperature change. However, this signal can be affected by noise in the environment, and to prevent such effects, photodetectors have to also include cooling devices that bring the instruments down to liquid nitrogen temperatures.Current night-vision goggles and scopes are heavy and bulky. With the group’s new pyroelectric-based approach, NVDs could have the same sensitivity without the cooling weight.The researchers also found that the films were sensitive beyond the range of current night-vision devices and could respond to wavelengths across the entire infrared spectrum. This suggests that the films could be incorporated into small, lightweight, and portable devices for various applications that require different infrared regions. For instance, when integrated into autonomous vehicle platforms, the films could enable cars to “see” pedestrians and vehicles in complete darkness or in foggy and rainy conditions. The film could also be used in gas sensors for real-time and on-site environmental monitoring, helping detect pollutants. In electronics, they could monitor heat changes in semiconductor chips to catch early signs of malfunctioning elements.The team says the new lift-off method can be generalized to materials that may not themselves contain lead. In those cases, the researchers suspect that they can infuse Teflon-like lead atoms into the underlying substrate to induce a similar peel-off effect. For now, the team is actively working toward incorporating the pyroelectric films into a functional night-vision system.“We envision that our ultrathin films could be made into high-performance night-vision goggles, considering its broad-spectrum infrared sensitivity at room-temperature, which allows for a lightweight design without a cooling system,” Zhang says. “To turn this into a night-vision system, a functional device array should be integrated with readout circuitry. Furthermore, testing in varied environmental conditions is essential for practical applications.”This work was supported by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

President of Eugene wood treatment plant gets 90-day prison term for lying to DEQ inspectors

"There has to be some accountability," U.S. District Judge Michael J. McShane said.

A federal judge Tuesday sentenced the president of Eugene’s J.H. Baxter & Co. wood treatment plant to 90 days in prison for lying about the company’s illegal handling of hazardous waste at the site.U.S. District Judge Michael J. McShane called Georgia Baxter-Krause, 62, an “absent president” who took little responsibility for what occurred.“The fact that you lied when confronted suggests you knew the practice was not ‘above board,’” McShane said. “There has to be some accountability.”He also ordered Baxter-Krause and the company to pay $1.5 million in criminal fines. The plant is now a potential cleanup site under the federal Superfund program.J.H. Baxter & Co. Inc. pleaded guilty to illegally treating hazardous waste and Baxter-Krause pleaded guilty to two counts of making false statements in violation of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act governing hazardous waste management.The company so far has paid $850,000 of its $1 million share of the fine, and Baxter-Krause has paid $250,000 of her $500,000 share, their attorney David Angeli said.Much of the debate at the sentencing focused on whether Baxter-Krause should go to prison for lying to investigators.According to court documents, J.H. Baxter used hazardous chemicals to treat and preserve wood. Water from the process was considered hazardous waste. The company operated a legal wastewater treatment unit, but for years when there was “too much water on site,” the company essentially would “boil” off the wastewater, allowing discharge into the air through open vents, according to court records.Photograph sent to Georgia Baxter-Krause on July 8, 2019, depicting the inside of a J.H. Baxter container after weeks of boiling hazardous waste, according to federal prosecutors.U.S. Attorney's OfficeAngeli argued that the violations at the Eugene plant were “less egregious” than other criminal environmental damage cases and that “everyone” on the premises thought the hazardous waste handling was OK. He sought probation for Baxter-Krause.“Every person said she never directed or managed this activity,” Angeli said. “She was rarely even in Eugene.”But Assistant U.S. Attorney William McLaren said Baxter-Krause blatantly lied when inspectors from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality requested information about the company’s practice of boiling off the wastewater.Baxter-Krause provided false information when questioned about the extent of the illegal activity and failed to disclose that the company kept detailed logs that tracked it, according to prosecutors.The plant illegally boiled about 600,000 gallons of wastewater on 136 days from January to October 2019, McLaren said.The government didn’t seek the maximum fine for the environmental violations, which would have been $7 million for each day a violation was found, he said. A separate civil class-action suit is pending against the company filed by people living near the West Eugene plant. They allege gross negligence that allowed “carcinogenic and poisonous chemicals’’ to be regularly released into the air and groundwater. Baxter-Krause told an investigator that the company didn’t keep records on the boiling dates and claimed it occurred only occasionally during the rainy season, records said.“Those were not minimal or immaterial slip-ups,” McLaren said. What the company was doing was “known for years on end” and it was occurring every month, he said.“Despite alerts about equipment failure and the need for capital upgrades, the evidence reflects those warnings went unheeded by J.H. Baxter’s leadership for years,” McLaren said. “And by early 2019, this illegal boiling became the company’s sole method for treating their hazardous wastewater.”Baxter-Krause, who took over the company in 2001 after her father’s death, apologized to the community around the plant and to her friends and family. She now lives in Bend but had lived in California throughout her tenure as company president and visited the Eugene facility about three times a year, according to her lawyers.“I should have been honest,” she said. “To the West Eugene community who was impacted by my careless actions, I apologize. Not a day goes by that I don’t feel remorse. I am ashamed of what I have done. I feel I have truly let you down.”She acknowledged that as president, “the buck stops with me. I should have been more proactive in fully understanding the facility’s permits, the day-to-day operations and ensuring full compliance with environmental laws.”J.H. Baxter treated wood products at the plant from 1943 to 2022. Chemicals used to treat wood, such as creosote and pentachlorophenol, also known as “penta” or PCP, have contaminated the soil and groundwater and are an ongoing concern for surrounding neighborhoods, according to the government.The chemicals remain in tanks at the site and the environmental contamination has not been addressed, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.The company has spent more than $2 million since the plant’s closure to secure the facility and work on complying with environmental regulations, but it has been unable to sell the property because of the historical contamination, according to court records.The judge said it will be up to the Federal Bureau of Prisons where to send Baxter-Krause to serve the sentence. The defense said it would request that she be placed in a community corrections setting.Baxter-Krause was ordered to surrender on July 17. She wondered aloud in the courtroom after her sentencing how she would maintain the compliance reports.Her lawyers explained that the Environmental Protection Agency is on site daily working to fully shut the property down.The EPA is still working to determine how to handle and remove chemicals from the site. It collected soil, sediment, and water samples in May 2023 from both the facility and the surrounding areas. These samples will determine the environmental and potential public health impacts of chemicals that have migrated from the site and from air pollution from its operations.-- Maxine Bernstein covers federal court and criminal justice. Reach her at 503-221-8212, mbernstein@oregonian.com, follow her on X @maxoregonian, on Bluesky @maxbernstein.bsky.social or on LinkedIn.

Your Clothes Are Shedding Bits of Plastic. Here’s What People Are Doing About It This Earth Day

Plastic is everywhere — and yet some people may be surprised at how much they actually wear

Bottles and bags, food wrappers and straws. Piping, packaging, toys and trays. Plastic is everywhere — and yet some people may be surprised at how much they actually wear.A typical closet is loaded with plastic, woven into polyester activewear, acrylic sweaters, nylon swimsuits and stretchy socks — and it’s shedding into the environment nonstop.Even natural fabrics shed fibers and have chemicals that can leach into the environment. But polyester is the most widely used fiber on Earth, and along with other synthetic fibers accounts for about two-thirds of production worldwide. Tuesday is Earth Day, when people worldwide contemplate ways to reduce their impact on the planet.“Everyone who wears and launders clothing is part of this problem but everyone who wears and launders clothing can be part of the solutions,” said Rachael Z. Miller, founder of Vermont-based Rozalia Project for a Clean Ocean.Simple changes like washing clothes less and using cold water instead of hot can help reduce the shedding of fibers. More challenging is that textiles need to be produced and used in a more sustainable way, said Elisa Tonda at the UN Environment Programme. For example, designing clothes that shed fewer microfibers and are high-quality to last longer, said Tonda, who leads the resources and markets branch. What to do? Start by changing habits The easiest solution is to wash clothes less often, making for less of the friction that breaks fibers apart, said Anja Brandon, director of plastics policy at Ocean Conservancy.“They get tumbled and tossed around with a bunch of soaps, really designed to shake things up to get out dirt and stains,” Brandon said. Miller uses a stain stick to spot-clean. Both say that when clothes are washed, they shed less when put in cold water in full loads to reduce friction, on a shorter cycle, then hung to dry.Inspired by the way coral filters the ocean, Miller invented the Cora Ball, a laundry ball that can be tossed into the washer to cut down on clothes banging into each other. It also catches microfibers. (A portion of the proceeds goes to the Rozalia Project.) Another option is to put synthetic fabrics in a washing bag that captures fibers.Miller said people don't need to rush to throw out clothing that's more likely to shed. She owns fleece jackets herself. Instead, she suggested such clothing can be worn indoors only or outside with a layer on top, and it's worth thinking twice about acquiring more garments like that.“I try not to guilt or panic people because a lot of this information is very new,” Miller said. “And so we might as well just say, ‘OK, I got it. How can I be strategic about what I’ve got?’” A push to require filters Filters can be added to washers to capture microfibers. Samsung Electronics collaborated with Patagonia and the global conservation organization Ocean Wise to launch one in 2023. It's now sold in more than 20 countries for front-load washers. Bosch recently launched a microfiber filter in Europe for washers.France was first to adopt a law to mandate that new washing machines sold in the country have a microfiber filter, though implementation has been delayed.In the U.S., efforts to mandate filters in states have failed. California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill in 2023, saying he was concerned about the cost to consumers and he wants to incentivize, not mandate, technologies to remove microfibers in wastewater. In Oregon, state Sen. Deb Patterson proposed a bill this year requiring microfiber filters on new washers sold in that state after she came across the technology in Canada. Patterson said the bill doesn't have enough support yet but she'll keep trying. The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers opposes the proposals, saying it's concerned about consumer costs and filter effectiveness.Some big brands are testing their fabrics to help researchers understand fiber fragmentation, including Adidas, Nike, Patagonia and Under Armour.They're among more than 90 brands, retailers and manufacturers to partner with The Microfibre Consortium in the United Kingdom, founded in 2018 to do research and offer solutions to transform textile production — including reducing fiber breakup.Nearly 1,500 fabrics have been tested. None are the same, making it a tough problem to solve, consortium CEO Kelly Sheridan said. Patagonia has been a leader in trying to stop the spread of synthetic fiber waste into air and water, saying it's up to garment brands to prevent it at the source since cleaning up microplastics in the environment is not yet possible. It paid for its own research starting a decade ago on the implication of its clothes. The company worked with suppliers to choose fabrics and dyes and to finish their clothing in ways that reduce shedding. They collaborated on new filtration technologies for washers, textile mills and municipal systems.One of their best-known styles is something called the “better sweater" that shifts from virgin polyester to recycled polyester to cut shedding by about 40%, said Matt Dwyer, vice president of global product footprint. And at textile mills, there's a prewash at the factory that can capture that first big shed, he added.Dwyer is optimistic about progress.“There’s a whole lot of smart people, not just understanding the problem and the scope of the problem, but also looking for solutions all the way through the manufacturing cycle and use phase,” he said. “Compared to 10 years ago, it’s a whole new world.”The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

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