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Gavin Newsom delayed his own ‘nation-leading’ plastic policy. Why?

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Thursday, March 20, 2025

Three years ago, California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed off on the country’s strongest plastic reduction policy. The legislation, known as SB 54, gave the state recycling agency until 2025 to write rules to dramatically slash sales of single-use plastic. At the time, Newsom called the law “nation-leading,” and said he was “holding polluters responsible and cutting plastics at the source.” California’s recycling agency, CalRecycle, has been crafting rules around the law’s implementation since 2022, negotiating the specifics with industry groups and environmental advocates and incorporating public feedback. Earlier this month, however, the governor’s office unexpectedly rejected CalRecycle’s proposed rules. He told the agency to go back to the drawing board, leaving California no closer to addressing its plastic waste management problem. “It’s kind of like we just got slapped with a wet fish,” said Shira Lane, founder and CEO of a zero-waste organization in Sacramento called Atrium 916. Lane said she’d participated in two years of long, complicated meetings with CalRecycle officials to provide input on the regulations, and that it was unclear why the governor had now decided to reject them. His office’s statements on the issue pointed only vaguely to concerns about fairness and “minimizing costs for small businesses and working families.” Newsom’s one-eighty arrived as plastics industry groups — many of which claim publicly to support the legislation — ramped up complaints behind closed doors about the potential impact of the law. In the absence of a clear explanation from the governor, many environmental groups suspect that he responded to industry pressure. “A lot of people were hurt,” Lane said, describing the good-faith effort they had put into shaping the rules only for them to be rejected for unclear reasons. When it passed in 2022, SB 54 was hailed as the United States’ “most comprehensive policy for reducing sources of plastic waste,” and a “huge win” in the fight against ocean plastic pollution. It gave companies until 2032 to reduce their in-state sales of single-use plastic packaging and foodware, both by weight and by the number of items, by 25 percent. It also required them to achieve significantly higher recycling rates for plastic products, finance a $500 million annual fund to clean up existing pollution, and make all of their single-use packaging and foodware — even if it wasn’t made of plastic — recyclable or compostable by 2032.  CalRecycle was in charge of writing more specific rules to enforce the law, like delineating which products it applied to. Another body, known in industry parlance as a “producer responsibility organization,” would coordinate companies’ cooperation, requiring plastic producers to become paying members, managing the $500 million fund, and making sure the industry was complying with the law. An existing organization called Circular Action Alliance, composed of plastics industry representatives, was designated as the producer responsibility organization for SB 54. SB 54 had gained ground in the California legislature thanks to the threat of a more aggressive ballot initiative, which would have given plastic producers less control over the implementation of plastic reduction targets, placed a 1-cent-per-item tax on plastic producers and distributors, and banned polystyrene food packaging outright.  A trash can overflowing with plastic and other waste. Getty Images Supporters of the referendum, which had received the requisite 623,212 signatures to be included on the ballot, mostly included grassroots environmental groups. The initiative’s three sponsors agreed to withdraw it in exchange for the passage of SB 54, which was seen as preferable by business and industry groups. The American Chemistry Council, for instance — a plastics and petrochemical trade group — said in 2022 that SB 54 was “not the optimal legislation to drive California toward a circular economy,” but that it was a better outcome than the withdrawn ballot initiative. The group pledged to “work constructively with lawmakers and CalRecycle to support appropriate implementation of SB 54.” The California Chamber of Commerce similarly said that the policy would ensure “long-term policy certainty around recycling and packaging.” The Plastics Industry Association declined to endorse SB 54 but said it was better than the ballot initiative. Still, industry groups appeared to hold out hope in 2022 that unidentified changes would be made to the legislation. The American Chemistry Council vowed to “support subsequent legislation to make the necessary improvements to help ensure the intent of SB 54 is carried out effectively.” The California Chamber of Commerce’s president noted that the bill “allows the Legislature to make changes to the proposal in the future,” and the president of the California Business Roundtable said in a CalMatters op-ed that lawmakers should “come back to the conversation prepared to make changes that can open doors for a more circular economy.” After the passage of the law, CalRecycles held several information sessions and workshops about its forthcoming rules, with opportunities for participation from the public and plastic producers. The agency began the formal rulemaking process for SB 54 on March 8, 2024 and held two comment periods, during which industry groups provided feedback, over the course of that year. CalRecycles finished drafting the regulations in the fall, and in September began notifying industry groups that they would soon be going into effect. The rules were set to be adopted one year from the start of rulemaking, on March 8, 2025. Ben Allen, a Democratic senator who represents parts of Los Angeles and who sponsored SB 54, learned that industry groups objected to the rules less than a week before the March 8 deadline. He sat down with Circular Action Alliance and came up with what he called a “roadmap” to address their concerns: If industry groups would not object to CalRecycle’s regulations moving forward on schedule, then he and other lawmakers would pass legislation to make minor changes to the law itself and to empower CalRecycle to make slight adjustments to the rules it had spent so long working on. The proposed changes, laid out in a letter shared with Grist, included exemptions for biosciences packaging, less frequent reporting from packaging companies, and a more lenient timeline for plastic producers to become members of the producer responsibility organization. Allen said he had nearly reached a compromise by the time the governor’s office made its announcement. “People were not expecting the governor to pull back the drafted regulations,” Allen said. “That was a surprising development.” Newsom’s office declined to say whether it had held meetings with business or industry groups, and emphasized that the rulemaking delay would not change “the timeline” for SB 54, presumably referring to the statutory deadlines for plastic companies to reduce the amount of packaging they sell and meet certain recycling rates. When asked to elaborate on its cost concerns, a spokesperson for the governor pointed Grist to a regulatory impact assessment published by CalRecycle last October, which estimated SB 54-related compliance costs for California businesses and individuals. California state Senator Ben Allen, right, confers with Senator Mike McGuire in 2023. AP Photo / Rich Pedroncelli For businesses that sell more than $1 million of products covered by SB 54 each year, the annual costs would average about $791,000, the report found. The typical small businesses would see increased expenses of just $309. Households could end up paying a mean of $329 a year by 2032, though the report said this number would likely be mitigated by increases in personal income, as well as health and environmental benefits totaling more than $40 billion over 10 years. Allen objected to Newsom’s characterization of the bill’s toll on entrepreneurs and families. The whole point of the bill, he said, was to address an “untenable” rise in the cost of waste collection and pollution management in California, as cities are being forced to manage ever-increasing amounts of plastic garbage. “We knew that there might be some modest increases in consumer costs, but they would be more than made up for in ratepayer benefits on the back end,” he added.  Of the six business and industry groups that Grist reached out to, only Circular Action Alliance elaborated on its specific concerns over CalRecycle’s proposed rules for SB 54. A spokesperson said these had involved “clarifying producer obligations, compiling data to build the program plan, and fixing timing and sequencing issues.” The group said it had “actively engaged with interested parties” including the governor’s office, CalRecycle, and Allen “to address any feasibility concerns and ensure the successful implementation of the legislation.” “We look forward to continued engagement with all parties to move SB 54 forward,” the spokesperson said. Two groups — the American Chemistry Council and California Chamber of Commerce — sent Grist statements affirming their support for SB 54. The California Business Roundtable, the California Retailers Association, and the Plastics Industry Association did not respond to Grist’s requests for comment, though Plastics Industry Association President and CEO Matt Seaholm released a statement calling for policymakers “to craft practical, effective regulations that drive economic growth, foster innovation, and enhance circularity.” In the absence of clearer information about Newsom’s intentions, environmental advocates are concerned that business and industry groups are trying to claw back parts of the statute, despite their nominal support for it in 2022. “The more they can delay the implementation, the more they can make a case for the deadlines being unreasonable,” said Jennifer Savage, associate director of California policy for the nonprofit Surfrider. Plastic makers and business groups are already seizing on the SB 54 kerfuffle to argue that similar legislation shouldn’t be pursued in other jurisdictions. Last weekend, more than 100 companies and groups signed a letter obtained by Politico opposing a proposed New York bill on the grounds that it would “go beyond the California statute in key areas, … indicating that the impacts of New York’s proposal would be even more severe.” Allen said the governor’s office wants to move “expeditiously” to complete CalRecycle’s revisions by this summer. That includes initiating another 45-day public comment period, incorporating any changes, and submitting final documents to the state’s Office of Administrative Law to make sure they are clear and legal.  Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for the nonprofit Californians Against Waste, said his organization will be ready to participate however possible, whether by engaging in a public workshop or by submitting written comments on a draft of the new rules. He also hinted that the ballot initiative that environmentalists withdrew when SB 54 was passed may still be on the table. “We remain committed to reevaluating all possible avenues,” Cohen said, “including reviving the initiative to let voters decide on this.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Gavin Newsom delayed his own ‘nation-leading’ plastic policy. Why? on Mar 20, 2025.

Industry groups expressed concerns about California’s landmark plastic pollution law in the weeks before regulators were supposed to begin enforcing it.

Three years ago, California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed off on the country’s strongest plastic reduction policy. The legislation, known as SB 54, gave the state recycling agency until 2025 to write rules to dramatically slash sales of single-use plastic. At the time, Newsom called the law “nation-leading,” and said he was “holding polluters responsible and cutting plastics at the source.”

California’s recycling agency, CalRecycle, has been crafting rules around the law’s implementation since 2022, negotiating the specifics with industry groups and environmental advocates and incorporating public feedback. Earlier this month, however, the governor’s office unexpectedly rejected CalRecycle’s proposed rules. He told the agency to go back to the drawing board, leaving California no closer to addressing its plastic waste management problem.

“It’s kind of like we just got slapped with a wet fish,” said Shira Lane, founder and CEO of a zero-waste organization in Sacramento called Atrium 916. Lane said she’d participated in two years of long, complicated meetings with CalRecycle officials to provide input on the regulations, and that it was unclear why the governor had now decided to reject them. His office’s statements on the issue pointed only vaguely to concerns about fairness and “minimizing costs for small businesses and working families.”

Newsom’s one-eighty arrived as plastics industry groups — many of which claim publicly to support the legislation — ramped up complaints behind closed doors about the potential impact of the law. In the absence of a clear explanation from the governor, many environmental groups suspect that he responded to industry pressure. “A lot of people were hurt,” Lane said, describing the good-faith effort they had put into shaping the rules only for them to be rejected for unclear reasons.

When it passed in 2022, SB 54 was hailed as the United States’ “most comprehensive policy for reducing sources of plastic waste,” and a “huge win” in the fight against ocean plastic pollution. It gave companies until 2032 to reduce their in-state sales of single-use plastic packaging and foodware, both by weight and by the number of items, by 25 percent. It also required them to achieve significantly higher recycling rates for plastic products, finance a $500 million annual fund to clean up existing pollution, and make all of their single-use packaging and foodware — even if it wasn’t made of plastic — recyclable or compostable by 2032. 

CalRecycle was in charge of writing more specific rules to enforce the law, like delineating which products it applied to. Another body, known in industry parlance as a “producer responsibility organization,” would coordinate companies’ cooperation, requiring plastic producers to become paying members, managing the $500 million fund, and making sure the industry was complying with the law. An existing organization called Circular Action Alliance, composed of plastics industry representatives, was designated as the producer responsibility organization for SB 54.

SB 54 had gained ground in the California legislature thanks to the threat of a more aggressive ballot initiative, which would have given plastic producers less control over the implementation of plastic reduction targets, placed a 1-cent-per-item tax on plastic producers and distributors, and banned polystyrene food packaging outright. 

Trash overflowing
A trash can overflowing with plastic and other waste.
Getty Images

Supporters of the referendum, which had received the requisite 623,212 signatures to be included on the ballot, mostly included grassroots environmental groups. The initiative’s three sponsors agreed to withdraw it in exchange for the passage of SB 54, which was seen as preferable by business and industry groups. The American Chemistry Council, for instance — a plastics and petrochemical trade group — said in 2022 that SB 54 was “not the optimal legislation to drive California toward a circular economy,” but that it was a better outcome than the withdrawn ballot initiative. The group pledged to “work constructively with lawmakers and CalRecycle to support appropriate implementation of SB 54.”

The California Chamber of Commerce similarly said that the policy would ensure “long-term policy certainty around recycling and packaging.” The Plastics Industry Association declined to endorse SB 54 but said it was better than the ballot initiative.

Still, industry groups appeared to hold out hope in 2022 that unidentified changes would be made to the legislation. The American Chemistry Council vowed to “support subsequent legislation to make the necessary improvements to help ensure the intent of SB 54 is carried out effectively.” The California Chamber of Commerce’s president noted that the bill “allows the Legislature to make changes to the proposal in the future,” and the president of the California Business Roundtable said in a CalMatters op-ed that lawmakers should “come back to the conversation prepared to make changes that can open doors for a more circular economy.”

After the passage of the law, CalRecycles held several information sessions and workshops about its forthcoming rules, with opportunities for participation from the public and plastic producers. The agency began the formal rulemaking process for SB 54 on March 8, 2024 and held two comment periods, during which industry groups provided feedback, over the course of that year. CalRecycles finished drafting the regulations in the fall, and in September began notifying industry groups that they would soon be going into effect. The rules were set to be adopted one year from the start of rulemaking, on March 8, 2025.

Ben Allen, a Democratic senator who represents parts of Los Angeles and who sponsored SB 54, learned that industry groups objected to the rules less than a week before the March 8 deadline. He sat down with Circular Action Alliance and came up with what he called a “roadmap” to address their concerns: If industry groups would not object to CalRecycle’s regulations moving forward on schedule, then he and other lawmakers would pass legislation to make minor changes to the law itself and to empower CalRecycle to make slight adjustments to the rules it had spent so long working on.

The proposed changes, laid out in a letter shared with Grist, included exemptions for biosciences packaging, less frequent reporting from packaging companies, and a more lenient timeline for plastic producers to become members of the producer responsibility organization. Allen said he had nearly reached a compromise by the time the governor’s office made its announcement. “People were not expecting the governor to pull back the drafted regulations,” Allen said. “That was a surprising development.”

Newsom’s office declined to say whether it had held meetings with business or industry groups, and emphasized that the rulemaking delay would not change “the timeline” for SB 54, presumably referring to the statutory deadlines for plastic companies to reduce the amount of packaging they sell and meet certain recycling rates. When asked to elaborate on its cost concerns, a spokesperson for the governor pointed Grist to a regulatory impact assessment published by CalRecycle last October, which estimated SB 54-related compliance costs for California businesses and individuals.

Senator Allen (right) hands papers to a colleague (left)
California state Senator Ben Allen, right, confers with Senator Mike McGuire in 2023.
AP Photo / Rich Pedroncelli

For businesses that sell more than $1 million of products covered by SB 54 each year, the annual costs would average about $791,000, the report found. The typical small businesses would see increased expenses of just $309. Households could end up paying a mean of $329 a year by 2032, though the report said this number would likely be mitigated by increases in personal income, as well as health and environmental benefits totaling more than $40 billion over 10 years.

Allen objected to Newsom’s characterization of the bill’s toll on entrepreneurs and families. The whole point of the bill, he said, was to address an “untenable” rise in the cost of waste collection and pollution management in California, as cities are being forced to manage ever-increasing amounts of plastic garbage.

“We knew that there might be some modest increases in consumer costs, but they would be more than made up for in ratepayer benefits on the back end,” he added. 

Of the six business and industry groups that Grist reached out to, only Circular Action Alliance elaborated on its specific concerns over CalRecycle’s proposed rules for SB 54. A spokesperson said these had involved “clarifying producer obligations, compiling data to build the program plan, and fixing timing and sequencing issues.” The group said it had “actively engaged with interested parties” including the governor’s office, CalRecycle, and Allen “to address any feasibility concerns and ensure the successful implementation of the legislation.”

“We look forward to continued engagement with all parties to move SB 54 forward,” the spokesperson said.

Two groups — the American Chemistry Council and California Chamber of Commerce — sent Grist statements affirming their support for SB 54. The California Business Roundtable, the California Retailers Association, and the Plastics Industry Association did not respond to Grist’s requests for comment, though Plastics Industry Association President and CEO Matt Seaholm released a statement calling for policymakers “to craft practical, effective regulations that drive economic growth, foster innovation, and enhance circularity.”

In the absence of clearer information about Newsom’s intentions, environmental advocates are concerned that business and industry groups are trying to claw back parts of the statute, despite their nominal support for it in 2022.

“The more they can delay the implementation, the more they can make a case for the deadlines being unreasonable,” said Jennifer Savage, associate director of California policy for the nonprofit Surfrider.

Plastic makers and business groups are already seizing on the SB 54 kerfuffle to argue that similar legislation shouldn’t be pursued in other jurisdictions. Last weekend, more than 100 companies and groups signed a letter obtained by Politico opposing a proposed New York bill on the grounds that it would “go beyond the California statute in key areas, … indicating that the impacts of New York’s proposal would be even more severe.”

Allen said the governor’s office wants to move “expeditiously” to complete CalRecycle’s revisions by this summer. That includes initiating another 45-day public comment period, incorporating any changes, and submitting final documents to the state’s Office of Administrative Law to make sure they are clear and legal. 

Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for the nonprofit Californians Against Waste, said his organization will be ready to participate however possible, whether by engaging in a public workshop or by submitting written comments on a draft of the new rules. He also hinted that the ballot initiative that environmentalists withdrew when SB 54 was passed may still be on the table.

“We remain committed to reevaluating all possible avenues,” Cohen said, “including reviving the initiative to let voters decide on this.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Gavin Newsom delayed his own ‘nation-leading’ plastic policy. Why? on Mar 20, 2025.

Read the full story here.
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Algae blooms can be a problem for marine life and people but it’s not yet clear if warmer oceans and nutrient runoff are causing more of themConfronting images of dead seadragons, fish and octopuses washed up on South Australian beaches – and disturbing reports of “more than 100” surfers and beachgoers experiencing flu-like symptoms after swimming or merely breathing in sea spray – attracted international concern last week.Speculation about the likely cause ranged from pollution and algae to unusual bacterial infections or viruses. We can reveal the culprit was a tiny – but harmful – type of planktonic algae called Karenia mikimotoi. Continue reading...

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But similar harmful algal blooms and fish kills due to K. mikimotoi have happened in the past, such as the 2014 bloom in Coffin Bay, South Australia. And this latest one won’t be the last.Harmful algal bloomsSingle-celled, microbial algae occur naturally in seawater all over the world.They are also called phytoplankton because they float in the water column and photosynthesise like plants. “Phyto” comes from the Greek word for plant and “plankton” comes from the Greek word for wanderer, which relates to their floating movement with ocean currents and tides.Like plants on land, the microalgae or phytoplankton in the ocean capture sunlight and produce up to half the oxygen in our atmosphere. There are more than 100,000 different species of microalgae. Every litre of seawater will normally contain a mixed group of these different microalgae species.But under certain conditions, just a single species of microalgae can accumulate in one area and dominate over the others. 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E.P.A. Investigations of Severe Pollution Look Increasingly at Risk

The agency will no longer shut down “any stage of energy production,” absent an imminent threat, a new memo says, and will curtail efforts to cut pollution in poorer areas.

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.E.P.A. Investigations of Severe Pollution Look Increasingly at RiskThe agency will no longer shut down “any stage of energy production,” absent an imminent threat, a new memo says, and will curtail efforts to cut pollution in poorer areas.The Shell chemical plant and oil refinery in Norco, La., subject to a federal pollution investigation.Credit...Bryan Tarnowski for The New York TimesMarch 22, 2025, 5:02 a.m. ETA refinery in New Mexico that the federal government has accused of some of the worst air pollution in the country.A chemical plant in Louisiana being investigated for leaking gas from storage tanks.Idaho ranchers accused of polluting wetlands.Under President Biden, the Environmental Protection Agency took a tough approach on environmental enforcement by investigating companies for pollution, hazardous waste and other violations. The Trump administration, on the other hand, has said it wants to shift the E.P.A.’s mission from protecting the air, water and land to one that seeks to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.”As a result, the future of long-running investigations like these suddenly looks precarious. A new E.P.A. memo lays out the latest changes.E.P.A. enforcement actions will no longer “shut down any stage of energy production,” the March 12 memo says, unless there’s an imminent health threat. It also curtails a drive started by President Biden to address the disproportionately high levels of pollution facing poor communities nationwide. “No consideration,” the memo says, “may be given to whether those affected by potential violations constitute minority or low-income populations.”Those changes, said Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, would “allow the agency to better focus on its core mission and powering the Great American Comeback.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

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‘Herculean effort’: These port communities have waited decades for clean air. Why a new plan may fall short

The ports of LA and Long Beach are the biggest sources of air pollution in the LA basin. Air quality officials have drafted new rules to help electrify the ports. But community groups representing 400,000 residents say they don't go far enough or fast enough to clean up their dirty air.

In summary The ports of LA and Long Beach are the biggest sources of air pollution in the LA basin. Air quality officials have drafted new rules to help electrify the ports. But community groups representing 400,000 residents say they don’t go far enough or fast enough to clean up their dirty air. When Maria Reyes migrated from Mexico and settled in West Long Beach in the late 1980s, she thought it would be the perfect neighborhood to raise her growing family.  As her three children grew up and started being more active in school, they started developing strange symptoms — nose bleeds, difficulty breathing and headaches, one after the other.  Reyes didn’t realize it when she moved there, but her neighborhood has some of the worst air pollution in Southern California. 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The rule would aim to ensure that the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports can achieve the clean-air goals they set for themselves back in 2017: converting 100% of their diesel cargo-handling equipment — such as tractors and giant, 60-foot cranes that move containers — to zero emissions by 2030. They also aim for all drayage trucks, which haul the ports’ containers of cargo to warehouses, to run on electricity or hydrogen by 2035. Complicating the cleanup of the two ports is that their tenants, not the harbors’ management, will have to buy and use the new cargo equipment. The ports will install the charging networks and redesign terminals. The total cost is unknown, but the Port of Long Beach alone estimated that the changes would cost the port and its tenants upwards of $1 billion.  Environmental advocates say the air district’s rule needs to be broader, with enforceable targets to clean up other sources of port pollution, such as harbor craft, and that the deadlines for zero-emission trucks and cargo equipment must be accelerated. “We’ve been urging the South Coast air district for years, many years, to adopt a strong, indirect source review rule for the sea ports,” said Bill McGavern, a policy director for the environmental group Coalition for Clean Air. “The response from the district has been disappointing (and) we see that the ports drag their feet and delay action.”  The air quality agency is seeking public input and the board will likely vote on the rule this summer.  The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which are the nation’s busiest seaports, are massive operations that are critical to the U.S. economy. They handle millions of tons of cargo a year worth hundreds of billions of dollars — 40% of the nation’s imports and exports of goods, from produce to electronics to pharmaceuticals.  The neighboring ports also are the region’s largest single sources of air pollution: Every day, their equipment, trucks, rail yards and ships emit 23 tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides, half a ton of fine particles and nearly a ton of sulfur into the air, according to 2023 data from the South Coast district. That amounts to 8,472 tons of nitrogen and 183 tons of fine particles a year. Fine particles are known to trigger asthma and heart attacks, while nitrogen oxides bake in the sun with other pollutants to form a gas in smog that also causes respiratory problems.  The two ports are responsible for about a fifth of the Los Angeles region’s nitrogen oxides, so massive reductions are needed — not just voluntary efforts — if the region’s residents are ever to breathe air deemed healthy to breathe, according to South Coast air quality district officials. Cleaning up the ports is especially important as cargo volumes are projected to double by 2040, which would release even more tons of fine particles and other dangerous pollutants into the air. And now that California officials, facing opposition from the Trump administration, had to abandon two rules that mandated zero-emission trucks and locomotives statewide, cleaning cup the ports will be even more challenging.  The Los Angeles basin has the nation’s worst air quality, so regulators are struggling to find new ways to meet state and federal health standards for smog and fine particles. A line of diesel semi-trucks to and from the Port of Los Angeles backs up along Drumm Avenue in Wilmington, creating a congestion point in the neighborhood. Photo by Alisha Jucevic for CalMatters First: Diesel trucks carrying port cargo exit Yusen Terminals at the Port of Los Angeles. Last: A hydrogen-powered gantry crane loads a shipping container onto a truck at the port. Photos by Joel Angel Juarez for CalMatters Nitrogen oxides, which are  emitted by vehicles and industrial plants, must be cut 80% by 2037 in the four-county Los Angeles basin, according to Sarah Rees, the district’s deputy executive officer of planning and rule development. Even if the ports achieve their goals of 100% zero-emission cargo equipment and drayage trucks, that would only reduce 14% of their smog-forming emissions, air quality officials said.  “Getting to this (clean fuel) infrastructure problem is something that’s absolutely essential, because it is so critical to having widespread deployment of zero emission technology across the board,” Rees said.  Cleaning up the LA basin’s air “requires that we take all feasible measures,” she said. “Significantly more emission reductions will need to be achieved from the largest source of emissions in our region,” added Nahal Mogharabi, the district’s spokesperson. “We want to be able to maintain the strong economy and the strong workforce that we have here in Southern California…To do that, we have to make sure that we’re not disproportionately burdening the communities closest to us.” Renee Moilanen, the Port of Long Beach.  The two ports already have taken substantial steps to reduce air pollution. Since 2005, diesel particulates from the port have dropped by about 91% and smog-forming gases by about 72% — even as cargo volume increased more than 15%, port officials said. In Long Beach, port officials say phasing out diesel fuels and reducing emissions as quickly as possible remains their biggest priority.   “We want to be able to maintain the strong economy and the strong workforce that we have here in Southern California, which is very much tied to the goods movement industry. To do that, we have to make sure that we’re not disproportionately burdening the communities closest to us,” said Renee Moilanen, director of environmental planning for the Port of Long Beach, which handles cargo valued at $300 billion a year, mostly from East Asia. ‘Why is this happening in my community?’ Beatriz Reyes, Maria Reyes’ oldest daughter, remembers attending William Logan Stephens Junior High in West Long Beach and running laps in a field next to a rail yard. The churning and grinding sounds of trains echoed in the field as the children breathed in the fumes.   Many of her classmates had asthma symptoms, like her. She thought it was just a part of growing up. It wasn’t until her 20s, after she got sick with bronchitis, that she got her first inhaler. The mother and daughter started learning about the pollution in their air.   “You think it’s normal, that it happens in all the communities, but once you leave your community to a nicer area, you just automatically feel better breathing that air,” Beatriz Reyes said. “And I’m like, OK, this is environmental racism. Why is this happening in my community?” Reyes is one of nearly 400,000 people who live in the portside communities of San Pedro, Wilmington, Carson and West Long Beach.    A neighborhood in San Pedro is in the shadow of the Port of Los Angeles. The massive, 7,500-acre seaport is the largest and busiest container port in the United States. Photo by Alisha Jucevic for CalMatters Life expectancy in West Long Beach is eight years shorter than wealthier neighborhoods farther away from the ports, according to data from the city’s Department of Health and Human Services. There could be many explanations, such as socioeconomic factors, but community advocates fear that pollution is contributing to the shorter lifespans.  On her way home to San Pedro after visiting family in Wilmington, Maria Montes often sits in heavy traffic, sandwiched between big diesel trucks spewing smelly diesel exhaust that seeps into her car.  “All day they’re coming in and out,” she said. “I see long lines of them one after the other from San Pedro to the other side of Wilmington.”  Maria Montes visits San Pedro Plaza Park in Wilmington, near the Port of Los Angeles. Montes, who has asthma, has lived for 30 years in San Pedro, which the air is polluted from the port and the diesel trucks hauling its cargo. Photo by Alisha Jucevic for CalMatters Montes has been struggling with asthma for 15 years. Her son, now an adult, also had asthma as a child. A family member in Wilmington has cancer that she fears might have been linked to pollution. The garden in her yard won’t grow because the dirt is contaminated, she said.  Taking a deep breath, especially in Wilmington, can feel different than it feels in other parts of Los Angeles, she said. “You can’t breathe the same. You feel a heaviness. You feel a little bit like you’re drowning.” Pollution from the port extends far beyond portside neighborhoods. On their way to their final destinations, trucks and trains carrying port cargo emit diesel exhaust in South Los Angeles and inland communities of San Bernardino and Riverside counties. “You think it’s normal, that it happens in all the communities, but once you leave your community to a nicer area, you just automatically feel better breathing that air. And I’m like, okay, this is environmental racism.”Beatriz Reyes, resident of west long beach Because the state air board withdrew its zero-emission truck and train rules, “we now expect significantly more emissions from trucks and locomotives in years to come,” Mogharabi said . Trucks and locomotives will emit 15 to 20 tons more smog forming nitrogen oxides per day by 2030 than if the state rules were enforced.  “It’s all the more reason why we really need our local air regulators… to take more seriously what we need to do locally to address the public health crisis that port pollution causes,” said Fernando Gaytan, an attorney with the environmental group Earthjustice.   Typically the air quality district regulates “stationary” sources of pollution, such as power plants and refineries. But it also has some authority to regulate vehicles and other mobile sources if they support high-polluting industries, such as ports and warehouses, through “indirect source” rules. It’s a way to hold industries accountable for playing a role in generating that pollution.  The air district has so far implemented one such indirect source rule for freight hubs. Large warehouses, for instance, must reduce pollutants related to their operations, such as choosing to do business with companies that have zero-emission trucks.   Advocates fear the air district’s new port proposal won’t reduce emissions until hydrogen and electric charging stations are built and used, which could take many years, and isn’t guaranteed.  “It really is unfortunate the direction that the port (rule) has gone,” said Chris Chavez, deputy policy director for the Coalition for Clean air. “Despite this massive, massive compromise by South Coast AQMD to basically give up on trying to get emission reductions, you still have the ports goods movement industry standing in the way and pushing away any kind of action.” Port officials say too much of the onus to make the transition is on them. Instead, they are seeking an “enforceable agreement” that will allow them more flexibility to collaborate with terminal operators and utility companies. A vehicle hauls a Wan Hai shipping container at Yusen Terminals at the Port of Los Angeles near San Pedro. Photo by Joel Angel Juarez for CalMatters Port companies view the rule as problematic because it gives the air district too much control over their businesses, said Thomas Jelenić, vice president of the Pacific Maritime Shipping Association. “The entire port complex could be eliminated tomorrow and we would not be much closer to achieving our (air pollution) attainment goals,”he said. “So this is not an issue that rests on the port. This is an issue that rests upon the entire region.” The ports have two years to present their plan to the air quality agency, and, if they can demonstrate that circumstances out of their control affect the timeline for electric and hydrogen equipment and trucks, they can request changes.  Rees said the air quality agency views the port rule as “incremental” and air regulators will continue to look for ways to reduce port emissions.  “We know it’s going to take some time, and we know that’s an unsatisfying answer to a lot of the communities, but we know also how hard it is. Without this, we’re never going to get to zero-emission technology,” Rees said.  Obstacles to electrifying the ports The two ports are growing rapidly as imports and exports increase. Last year was the busiest year ever at the Long Beach port, which moved 9.6 million container units. The port of Los Angeles had its second busiest year in its 117-year history, moving 10.3 million container units, which is almost a 20% increase in cargo volume compared to 2023. Over the last 20 years, the longshore workforce has increased 74%. Most of the nearly 4,000 pieces of cargo-handling equipment at the ports is run by diesel. That includes equipment like top handler vehicles that stack containers coming off ships, large gantry cranes that place containers onto trucks for delivery to customers, and yard tractors, which move containers within the terminal.   Yusen Terminals is testing the nation’s first-ever hydrogen fuel cell rubber tire gantry crane, the massive device that moves ship containers around the port, said Matthew Hamilton, the terminal operator’s director of sustainability. The company also owns seven electric-powered top handler vehicles. First: Yusen Terminals has seven zero-emission top handler vehicles and is testing the nation’s first-ever hydrogen fuel cell rubber tire gantry crane, shown here at the Port of Los Angeles. The crane moves containers of cargo around the port. Last: Electric top handlers are parked at a charging station. Photos by Joel Angel Juarez for CalMatters Yusen Terminals’ hydrogen-powered crane moves shipping containers at Yusen Terminals at the Port of Los Angeles, near San Pedro. Photo by Joel Angel Juarez for CalMatters The ports act largely as a landlord, with no authority to mandate truck fleet owners, terminal operators and rail yard companies to clean up their equipment. However, they can offer incentives for certain activities. The ports’ Clean Truck Program collects a $10 fee for each container unit that ships carry into the port.  The Long Beach port has disbursed $60 million in incentives to truck owners who buy zero-emission trucks.  A major challenge for the ports in transitioning to electric equipment is having sufficient power to fuel it.  Yusen Terminals, for instance, only has enough power to charge 25% to 50% of its fleet of top handlers and other vehicles. It could take up to eight years for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to supply the port terminals with enough power to charge all of its cargo-handling equipment, Hamilton said.   Long Beach port officials estimate they’ll need six to 12 times more power to fully electrify 1,500 pieces of equipment with a charger for each one. “It’s going to take a pretty Herculean effort to achieve (the LA port’s zero-emission goals), but we’re working very aggressively to achieve that. We still believe we can.”Matthew Hamilton, Yusen Terminals at the port of la Electrifying equipment will also essentially require the ports to redesign terminals and change how they operate. Zero-emission cargo-handling equipment currently available can’t last an eight-hour shift without recharging, Moilanen said.  “It’s going to take a pretty Herculean effort to achieve (the port’s zero-emission goals), but we’re working very aggressively to achieve that. We still believe we can,” said Hamilton of Yusen Terminals. The port rule, he added, “may just be adding additional requirements and slowing us down and kind of sapping our resources for buying more equipment and working on these infrastructure projects.”  Cleaning up heavy-duty trucks is another massive challenge. Some fleet owners are already investing in new electric and hydrogen trucks to service the ports. But these drayage companies, often small or owner operated, are struggling to make the same revenue they did with cheaper diesels and facing technological challenges using the cleaner vehicles, such as long charging times and insufficient range. In recent months, the ports have received hundreds of millions of dollars in state and federal grants to improve zero-emission infrastructure that will help them with their growth and emission reduction goals. The Los Angeles port received a $412 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency  to electrify 400 pieces of diesel cargo-handling equipment, and it’s investing another $500 million in a project to upgrade the electrical grid.  “This is how we serve our planet, by collaborating as a port community and contributing to a global effort to build a cleaner world. We’re pushing the boundaries of what’s possible because that’s the only way to secure lasting progress,” said Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Eugene Seroka at a state of the port event in January. The Port of Los Angeles is visible in the background from Wilmington Waterfront Park in Wilmington, on Feb. 12, 2025. Photo by Alisha Jucevic for CalMatters The ports have had their joint Clean Air Action Plan since 2005, after environmental and community groups pushed them to strategize how to clean up emissions. The plan was updated in 2017 to add the goals of 100% zero-emission cargo-handling equipment by 2030 and trucks by 2035.  Some of the ports’ creative, voluntary incentives for terminal operators, ships and trucks have turned into state regulations. For instance, their programs mean that many ships have the cleanest engines, reduce speeds when nearing the port and plug in to electrical systems to avoid idling diesel engines. Now the state requires all container ships that arrive in California ports to plug in at berth.  The high cost of pollution in port communities As a child in school in the 1990s, Roberto Reyes, who is Maria Reyes’ son, couldn’t play many sports without heavy nosebleeds. Doctors couldn’t say for sure what caused them. Elizabeth, her youngest, would run throughout the neighborhood, past street intersections busy with diesel truck traffic as part of her track team training. Some days, she’d come home vomiting, with nosebleeds or bad headaches. “This time I knew that it was the pollution,” Reyes said. Thirty years later, Reyes now is a staunch community advocate with the Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma. She still regrets choosing to live in a neighborhood so close to the ports. “I feel guilty about the place I chose for my children to be born,” she said. “It’s a very cruel thing. I know I shouldn’t feel guilty, but when you have all this pollution around you, you think, ‘well what do I do now?’ ” 

Pollution
Business
Health

Europe Should Focus on Sustainable Chip Production as Sector Emissions Rise, Study Says

By Nathan VifflinAMSTERDAM (Reuters) - With pollution linked to the manufacture of cutting-edge computer chips needed for AI rising rapidly, the...

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - With pollution linked to the manufacture of cutting-edge computer chips needed for AI rising rapidly, the European Union should focus on developing its existing lower-emission semiconductor production, think-tank interface said on Monday.In a review of pollution trends in the chemical-intensive semiconductor sector published on Monday, interface found the industry's energy use had risen 125% globally over the past eight years both as output rose and as cutting-edge chip production caused more emissions per chip."Mature" or "legacy" chips, such as those used in cars, electric grids and industrial applications, are generally less polluting."Where we could increase our competitiveness is by strengthening EU companies that are already market-leading and manufacturing chips needed for the green transition," Julia Hess, who led the research, told Reuters in an e-mail.European chipmakers such as STMicroelectronics, Infineon and NXP are among the world's top firms at manufacturing those kinds of chips.The EU is considering additional measures to support its semiconductor industry following the 2023 Chips Act, which helped spark investments in new production but failed to meet its primary goal of bringing cutting-edge manufacturing to Europe.Hess said it was not clear if Europe should continue pursuing cutting-edge production."If the EU wants to double down on cutting-edge chip production, this will significantly affect the climate and environment (given these chips have much higher emissions and energy consumption) per wafer," she said.If it does, arguments in favour include Europe's better access to water and renewable energy, she said. Most cutting-edge chips are made in humid subtropical climates in Asia, which adds significant energy costs to manufacturing. Hess said having chips produced with better environmental standards will turn out to be a long-term competitive advantage.(Reporting by Nathan Vifflin and Toby Sterling in Amsterdam; Editing by Jan Harvey)Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

Pollution
Chemicals
Energy

Texans grapple with rising toxic pollution as oil, gas production booms

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. It is part three in a four-part series. Read part one here and part two here. ODESSA, Texas — For retired pastor Columbus Cooper, life can be divided into two periods: the time when he could still drink water out of his tap, and the time after. When...

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. It is part three in a four-part series. Read part one here and part two here. ODESSA, Texas — For retired pastor Columbus Cooper, life can be divided into two periods: the time when he could still drink water out of his tap, and the time after. When Cooper and his wife bought their home in West Odessa in the heart of the Permian Basin, the U.S.'s most productive oil field, they knew they were surrounded by tank batteries holding spent fuel or fracking fluid and injection wells injecting that waste fluid back into the earth.  But as lifelong Odessans, they weren’t worried — until their water started tasting funny and the stench crept in. Until, six years ago, two people died in a pumphouse down the street. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) later confirmed what many already suspected: The very infrastructure that had fueled the region’s economic boom was exposing the people who lived there to dangerous toxins. Without access to city water, West Odessa residents — like rural Texans across oil country — largely depend on water from wells drilled into the aquifer below. Frequently those wells are as little as a few hundred yards from oil and gas wells or other infrastructure linked with toxic pollution — which are just one explosion or spill away from ruining them. Now, Cooper laughs when he thinks about their decision to move to the neighborhood. “I assumed they would be regulated,” Cooper told The Hill, pointing to a tank battery venting invisible, noxious gas. “I assumed somebody would be making sure we were safe.” The oil and gas industry has long been a cornerstone of the Texas economy, and has brought a flood of new jobs and money to the Permian Basin in recent years as production has climbed to new highs. In 2024 alone, the industry paid a record $27 billion in state taxes and royalties and employed nearly half a million people, many earning more than $124,000 a year. The industry and Texas lawmakers argue that beyond the economy, the state's fossil fuel production is important for American energy independence — and the environment. The Permian is the regional wellhead of a vast outpouring of oil and — particularly — gas that both the U.S. government and Western oil industry tout as a means of redirecting global markets away from more-polluting energy sources like coal and foreign producers they say produce dirtier products. Every country is concerned about three things in descending order: national security, energy security and the health of its land and water, ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance said in March at CERAWeek by S&P Global. “Natural gas,” he said, “delivers on all fronts.” But for many Texans on the doorstep of the state’s staggering fossil fuel expansion of the past decade, the boom has come at a cost. Millions of Texans now live within striking distance of oil infrastructure — exposed to airborne chemicals, groundwater contamination and, in extreme cases, sudden, violent failures of aging wells, all of which creates public concern. “You don’t want to live close to any of this development — particularly if you’re surrounded by wells,” Gunnar Schade, a Texas A&M atmospheric chemist, told The Hill.  Fracking, the increasing use of which has driven the past decade's oil and gas boom, has been central to much of the mounting pollution concern. Environmentalists and researchers have warned that the technique, in which cocktails of chemicals are pumped underground to shatter rock and release oil and gas, can contaminate groundwater — accusations the industry has fought for years.  A 2016 EPA study has been cited by both environmentalists and the industry as support for their positions on the issue. The report found that while direct fracking-related water contamination — penetrating from subterranean oil wells to water wells — was possible, it was rare.  Industry groups like the Texas Oil and Gas Association point to the steps operators take to wall off wells from surrounding groundwater behind “layers of steel casing and cement, as well as thousands of feet of rock.” And the Independent Petroleum Association of America points to “no fewer than two dozen scientific reviews,” including the EPA study, that “have concluded that fracking does not pose a major threat to groundwater.” But much of that discourse has centered on the direct impact of the fracking process, which leaves out a great deal of oil and gas operations. The EPA study also identified multiple other ways that the fuels' extraction threatens water supplies — like spills or deliberate dumping. In the Permian, for example, The Hill observed numerous pumpjacks and storage tanks dripping "produced water," or wastewater resulting from the fracking process, on the soil, sometimes in close proximity to farms. This water can resurface tainted with salt, heavy metals, benzene, toxic "forever chemicals" and even radioactive isotopes. The EPA has also pointed to risks that come from the disposal of such wastewater in underground injection wells.  And in Texas, all of these risks have escalated as the amount of water being used to frack ever-deeper wells has risen — leading to new challenges in disposing of the resulting wastewater. Each year, Texas oil and gas wells generate more than 12 billion barrels of wastewater — 4 billion of them in the Permian alone, more than all other U.S. oil fields combined. Texas is one of the only states moving forward with plans to allow this produced water to be disposed of in aboveground creeks and rivers. For example, in south Texas’s Eagle Ford Shale, researchers found 700 million gallons per year of produced water was being dumped legally into rivers and creeks that cattle drank.  Much of the rest goes back into the Earth. Permian drilling companies inject about 6 billion barrels per year into disposal wells, a process meant to keep it away from drinking water. But the subsurface that those wells cut into is riven with underground cracks and fissures and pocked with as many as hundreds of thousands of "zombie wells," oil and gas wells that were improperly sealed or left open to deteriorate. Many have rusted-out casings, making them potential pathways between underground water sources and the wastewater being forced into disposal wells. For decades, geologists have warned that underground injection wells could interact with these abandoned legacy wells and contaminate the underground water sources they are connected to. Deep injection wells also lubricate faults in the earth, sometimes causing earthquakes bad enough to crack home walls and foundations. One quake last July was strong enough to break municipal water pipes.  After a decade of local outcry about fracking earthquakes, companies began injecting more shallowly. But this gave rise to another issue: Fracking fluid began bursting from the state’s old, failing or forgotten wells.  The tendency of fracking fluid to come back to the surface has turned cleanup into a game of "whack-a-mole,” as Kirk Edwards, a local oil and gas executive and former chair of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association, put it. Zombie wells are “a black eye for the industry,” Edwards told The Hill. He warned that oil producers had perhaps a year to solve the issue before they would face local revolt. The area needed, he said, “a Manhattan Project for water” to treat and reuse fracking fluid.  Economics are a large contributor to the problem, Edwards argued. “It’s cheap for an oil company to pay a trucker to dispose of it,” he said, referring to fracking fluid. He defended producers for the instances when fracking fluid they’ve injected underground reappears in unexpected places: Those injections, he noted, are legal. “Nobody knows the Earth can’t hold that water until you have a breakthrough. You can’t blame [an operator for a] business plan that has been working for 25 years.” Some efforts have been made to clean up this pollution. The 2022 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law included $4.7 billion in funding to cap the 100,000-plus “zombie wells” across America, of which Texas has received more than $100 million so far. In 2023, Texas lawmakers approved another $10 million. State Rep. Brooks Landgraf (R), who represents part of the Permian, is seeking $100 million this session to seal area wells. But the future of all this funding is uncertain. The second Trump administration has repeatedly sought to block Biden-era federal grants related to the environment. None of the monies approved by Texas in 2023 have been distributed yet. And in that same session, a previous version of Landgraf’s bill passed the state House but died in the Senate. Meanwhile, the backlog of orphaned wells — abandoned sites with no financially solvent owner to take responsibility — has grown.  And another — potentially greater — danger arising from the expanding oil and gas infrastructure also looms. For sparsely populated regions like the Permian, said Schade, the Texas A&M atmospheric chemist, the risk of water pollution pales in comparison to the risk of air pollution — something he told The Hill that state regulators have “diligently” refused to measure.  Some industry leaders acknowledge their role in air pollution — particularly in regard to the issue of methane that is vented or burned off (“flared”) from wells to relieve pressure. In 2022, the chief executive of Diamondback Energy voiced his support for Biden-era emission-reduction rules that split the oil and gas industry: The rules, he argued, would gain the industry “credit from the general public that we are doing ... right [by the] environment in producing the barrels.” But others argued that the federal oversight was unnecessary, saying the industry is successfully policing itself. The Texas oil and natural gas industry already has been “actively implementing measures to identify and lower emissions,” Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil and Gas Association, told The Center Square. The oil and gas produced in Texas, he added, is “the cleanest in the world.” Independent studies indicate that airborne chemicals from oil and gas extraction threaten the communities that live around wells and infrastructure. Studies by Schade’s lab have found that the fracking boom has “dramatically increased” the human-caused release of dangerous hydrocarbons — in particular benzene, which is higher in the Permian even than other shale regions like the Eagle Ford. In high enough doses, benzene can break the body’s ability to create red blood cells, raising the risk of developing conditions akin to leukemia. Schade noted that increased fracking has also led to higher levels of nitrogen oxide (NOx), which harms the throat and nose and can worsen asthma. When combined with toxic hydrocarbons, NOx can create the chemical ozone, which can spread far from individual wells and increases the risk of death for those exposed over the long term. People living in the oil patch, Schade said, faced “simultaneous exposure to air, water, noise and light pollution” that was hard for outsiders to fathom.  Only those “actually living in the areas of production, or spending at least a significant time there,” he added, “should be consulted to get an idea what it's like.” Sometimes, those conditions are lethal for residents. In October 2019, a woman named Natalee Dean loaded her two children into the car and went out looking for her husband, Jacob — a contractor with a small local oil company called Aghorn Energy. Jacob had been called out to the site hours before to investigate a malfunctioning pump and stopped answering his cellphone, according to criminal charges later filed against the company by the federal government. Frightened, Natalee loaded the kids into the car and drove to the Aghorn pumphouse. Jacob’s truck was parked outside, empty. Federal investigators later concluded that she found Jacob inside the pumphouse, dead or dying of hydrogen sulfide poisoning — before she died as well. Her last words, according to state records citing family members who were on the phone with her, were “oh, my god,” E&E News reported. Passers-by found her children, safe, in the car the next morning. Cooper, the retired pastor, lived nearby. He and his wife had spent years complaining about the facility to the EPA after reeking water spread out of the facility and onto the road long before the deaths. Around the same time, he and his wife began to notice a growing change in the water from the well they, like most in West Odessa, depended on. It was “discolored,” smelled bad, and left behind stains and residue on their drinking glasses, Cooper said. Then there was the smell, which filled their home at all hours. He described it as “mainly like sewage, rotten eggs, a real pungent smell of ammonia. It burns your eyes and takes your breath away.” Years after the Deans’ deaths, under the Biden administration, the EPA and Justice Department charged Aghorn and its vice president with violating the Clean Air Act and Safe Drinking Water Act by lying about the quality of its pumps — allegedly leading to the deaths of Jacob and Natalee Dean. The Justice Department and the company agreed to settle the case earlier this month. The Hill has reached out to Aghorn for comment. That federal case, for which Cooper was an official witness, also offered an explanation for the changes he and his wife had observed in the water from the family wells. When the EPA told him that Aghorn had been dumping spent fracking fluid “into the soil — there was absolutely no way we were going to be doing anything" with that water, he said. Now he and his wife drink, cook and wash their dishes with bottled or filtered water they buy. Over the last year, Cooper told The Hill, the prices of that water have nearly doubled, from $0.20 per gallon to $0.35, so they make do with about 100 gallons per month — significantly below the United Nations threshold for water poverty, or insufficient access to clean water. Rancher Schuyler Wight is frustrated with the companies. “The industry keeps making excuses instead of stepping up and fixing the problem,” he said. The rights to drill on the land, which Wight’s family sold generations before, are now leased by an oil company, which pumps liquified carbon dioxide underground to force oil and gas back to the surface.  But the wells are old, he said, and if they are not quickly capped when no longer producing, they can develop cracks in the casing that keeps chemicals out of water.  “Mix [carbon dioxide] and water, you get carbonic acid,” Wight said. Carbonic acid corrodes metal and raises the threat of leaks. He pointed to liquid dripping from a valve. Instead of feeding life, as leaks of fresh water would, past spills had salted the soil so nothing would grow, he said. With 240 old wells on his property, Wight has many such leaks. One of his parcels borders Lake Boehmer, a 60-acre spill bubbling from an abandoned oil-turned-water well: powder blue, dead tree stumps poking from its center. The air on the parcel reeked of hydrogen sulfide. Wight's biggest fear, he said, is a world shifting away from oil that leaves no money for cleanup. “If they don’t fix it now, while they’ve got money, then what happens when they don’t?” Lake Boehmer aside, one of the main problems with oil and gas pollution is that, like germs and viruses, “it’s largely invisible," said Sharon Wilson, director of Oilfield Witness, a watchdog group aiming to change that. In a field east of Midland-Odessa, Wilson stopped her car where an unlit flare — meant to burn off excess oil and gas — poked up from the ground. To the naked eye, it was a quiet scene: farmer’s fields, windmills spinning in the distance. But through her camera’s viewfinder, which can see the infrared radiation thrown off by the gases, a black, oily plume of unburned methane vented into the atmosphere, heating the planet and likely carrying a long list of toxins. At a nearby tank battery, where workers deposit oil or fracking fluid, invisible smoke streamed into the air. Those fumes worry many Texas residents, who have fought to keep them away from homes. Anne Epstein, a Lubbock physician, was part of a successful effort to ban oil wells less than 600 feet from peoples’ homes — before the state passed legislation stripping cities of the authority to regulate fracking.  “To see the effects of oil toxins, look at places in the body that are rapidly growing and developing — or small bodies that are rapidly growing and developing,” Epstein said. When it comes to such pollution, she said, “fetuses, babies, children” are especially vulnerable because they breathe faster, exposing themselves to more airborne toxins. Millions may be at risk. A 2022 study found that 17 million people in the U.S. live within half a mile of an oil or gas well — 4 million of them children. At that range, a 2019 Colorado study found a slight uptick in cancer risk and other dangers, significant enough for that state to require new wells be at least that far from homes.  But in Texas, the required distance is just a fraction of that. In February, the city of Arlington, with a population of nearly 400,000, permitted the drilling of 10 new wells less than a quarter mile, or half the Colorado limit, from a day care.  Even the higher limit may not be enough to ensure safety: Schade said that if the winds blow wrong and wells are dense enough, toxins can travel far further than any current setback requirement.&nbsp For Wilson, Oilfield Witness's campaign is personal. In the early 2000s, she was living in Wise County on the outskirts of Dallas-Fort Worth, when the water from her well — which she and her son relied on — turned dark and foul-smelling. After a lifetime believing that if something went wrong, someone would come help, “what I learned when my water turned black is that if it's oil and gas, nobody is coming, and that was a huge paradigm shift for me,” Wilson said. “Because then I realized that, yeah, that America is not like that thing that I believed when I grew up.” She later learned that she had been an unwilling participant in the dawn of a boom. Her home was just miles from where wildcatter George Mitchell was carrying out early fracking experiments. Concerns about the process’s impact on groundwater had surfaced even before fracking’s popularization: In 1996, a local jury found Mitchell guilty of hundreds of millions in punitive damages for wrecking local water supplies.&nbsp At the time, Mitchell denied the allegations. “I have never believed, nor do I believe now, that Mitchell Energy Corp. is the cause of the problems that the plaintiffs are complaining about,” he told the Wise County Messenger in a statement.&nbsp The following year, a local jury overturned&nbspthe verdict on appeal — saving the company from bankruptcy&nbspand clearing the way for the shale revolution. In 1998, two years after the judgment, Mitchell combined horizontal drilling and fracking into what is generally regarded&nbspas the first-ever fracked well. In 2005, Congress further enabled fracking to take off by exempting the technique from the Clean Water Act. But in his last interview before his death in 2013, Mitchell had changed his tune. He&nbsptold Forbes&nbspthat the industry needed more regulation. “They should have very strict controls. The Department of Energy should do it." Why? Because, he said, fracking and horizontal drilling could be done safely — but independent drillers “are wild” and “tough to control.” If allowed to operate freely, he said, they risked ruining the industry.&nbsp In the street in front of his house, Cooper — the homeowner with the tainted water — met Wilson studying a flare through her camera. She invited him to look. “Oh, wow,” he said, watching as a corona of thick black smoke, invisible to the naked eye, surrounded the thin flame. What, she asked him, would he want his elected officials to know if they stood here too? He didn’t hesitate. “I’d want someone to assure that I have clean water, clean air, to know that our investment in our homes is going to be protected,” he said. He wanted, he said, “somewhere safe to live — where they would be willing to live themselves.” Gabriela Meza of KMID contributed reporting.

Pollution
Water
Chemicals

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SeaMonster II

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Stalking Chernobyl: Exploration After Apocalypse

A documentary that examines the underground culture of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Three decades after the world's most infamous nuclear disaster, illegal hiking adventurers (known as “stalkers”), extreme sports aficionados, artists, and tour companies have begun to explore anew the mysterious, ghostly landscape, where trees and forest animals have reclaimed land abandoned by villagers. Even as survivors continue to reckon with a dishonest government’s attempts to cover up the extent of the disaster, and as humanity faces new nuclear incidents in place like Fukushima, the Chernobyl site has turned into a bizarre tourist attraction, drawing seekers with a taste for the post-apocalyptic. (a Cultures Of Resistance film)

Crisis
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The Story of Plastic

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A River Reborn

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Water
Pollution
Documentary

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