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Water rates in Northern Ireland suggested to help address wastewater crisis

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Tuesday, December 31, 2024

The introduction of water rates in Northern Ireland could address crumbling wastewater infrastructure and the impact on waterways, it has been suggested.It comes as the Stormont executive works to halt an environmental crisis at Lough Neagh, where noxious blooms of blue-green algae have covered the surface of the water across the past two summers.The lough is the largest freshwater lake by surface area in the UK and Ireland, supplies 40% of Northern Ireland’s drinking water and sustains a major eel-fishing industry.But it is facing a “perfect storm” caused by pollution, nutrients, the climate crisis and invasive species according to Gerry Darby, manager of the Lough Neagh Partnership.He praised the approach and actions taken so far by the agriculture, environment and rural affairs minister, Andrew Muir, but warned of wider problems that need a whole-of-executive approach.In an interview with the PA news agency, Darby said the Lough Neagh action plan, and particularly the setting up of a stakeholder forum led by Muir, was positive and was a first for a minister.He said 10 of the actions have already been implemented, including water inspectors and looking to the private sector for innovation, but it will take decades to start to see improvement.“Is the nutrient level going to come down immediately? No, it’s not. Is the level of phosphorus going to come down? Probably not, but at least you can now begin to look at setting targets,” Darby said.“It’s important to remember it’s not just farmers; there are a lot of nutrients coming in off the waste management processing units within NI Water and septic tanks – we’re all contributing to it and other factors such as topography, there is only one river out of the lough. There is not great flow to flush it out.“There is also climate change as well as invasive species in there. It all came together to create a perfect storm, and at least the minister has engaged with many organisations to try and find solutions.“It will be a long-term solution – nobody has ever suggested that the reduction of nutrients in Lough Neagh is going to happen overnight. It is estimated that it will take somewhere between 10 and 20 years before we’re beginning to see change.”However, Darby said part of the problem is that people assume the blue-green algae is the only problem in the lough, pointing out the absence of a navigation authority as well as the wastewater system that was described by the head of NI Water as being “at breaking point”.He said addressing the wastewater system will require the hard choice between trying to secure more money from the London government, rejigging the strained Stormont budget or considering charging water rates.While non-domestic water charges already apply in Northern Ireland, there has been strong political opposition to introducing domestic water charges.“The other elephant in the room is the money needed for infrastructure for wastewater management. This year the budget of NI Water for capital investment has been cut in half. That is a big, serious issue that politicians need to find an answer to,” Darby said.“There are three choices: you ask Westminster to cough up more, Stormont reprioritises budgets, or else the big, controversial one is that you introduce water rates, which is pretty standard in the rest of the UK.“I couldn’t comment on that personally, but I think it is something that needs to be given serious consideration in the context of the issues also facing Belfast Lough.“The problem, of course, is that it is political dynamite.”

Manager of Lough Neagh Partnership praises actions so far on lake’s algae crisis but warns of wider problemsThe introduction of water rates in Northern Ireland could address crumbling wastewater infrastructure and the impact on waterways, it has been suggested.It comes as the Stormont executive works to halt an environmental crisis at Lough Neagh, where noxious blooms of blue-green algae have covered the surface of the water across the past two summers. Continue reading...

The introduction of water rates in Northern Ireland could address crumbling wastewater infrastructure and the impact on waterways, it has been suggested.

It comes as the Stormont executive works to halt an environmental crisis at Lough Neagh, where noxious blooms of blue-green algae have covered the surface of the water across the past two summers.

The lough is the largest freshwater lake by surface area in the UK and Ireland, supplies 40% of Northern Ireland’s drinking water and sustains a major eel-fishing industry.

But it is facing a “perfect storm” caused by pollution, nutrients, the climate crisis and invasive species according to Gerry Darby, manager of the Lough Neagh Partnership.

He praised the approach and actions taken so far by the agriculture, environment and rural affairs minister, Andrew Muir, but warned of wider problems that need a whole-of-executive approach.

In an interview with the PA news agency, Darby said the Lough Neagh action plan, and particularly the setting up of a stakeholder forum led by Muir, was positive and was a first for a minister.

He said 10 of the actions have already been implemented, including water inspectors and looking to the private sector for innovation, but it will take decades to start to see improvement.

“Is the nutrient level going to come down immediately? No, it’s not. Is the level of phosphorus going to come down? Probably not, but at least you can now begin to look at setting targets,” Darby said.

“It’s important to remember it’s not just farmers; there are a lot of nutrients coming in off the waste management processing units within NI Water and septic tanks – we’re all contributing to it and other factors such as topography, there is only one river out of the lough. There is not great flow to flush it out.

“There is also climate change as well as invasive species in there. It all came together to create a perfect storm, and at least the minister has engaged with many organisations to try and find solutions.

“It will be a long-term solution – nobody has ever suggested that the reduction of nutrients in Lough Neagh is going to happen overnight. It is estimated that it will take somewhere between 10 and 20 years before we’re beginning to see change.”

However, Darby said part of the problem is that people assume the blue-green algae is the only problem in the lough, pointing out the absence of a navigation authority as well as the wastewater system that was described by the head of NI Water as being “at breaking point”.

He said addressing the wastewater system will require the hard choice between trying to secure more money from the London government, rejigging the strained Stormont budget or considering charging water rates.

While non-domestic water charges already apply in Northern Ireland, there has been strong political opposition to introducing domestic water charges.

“The other elephant in the room is the money needed for infrastructure for wastewater management. This year the budget of NI Water for capital investment has been cut in half. That is a big, serious issue that politicians need to find an answer to,” Darby said.

“There are three choices: you ask Westminster to cough up more, Stormont reprioritises budgets, or else the big, controversial one is that you introduce water rates, which is pretty standard in the rest of the UK.

“I couldn’t comment on that personally, but I think it is something that needs to be given serious consideration in the context of the issues also facing Belfast Lough.

“The problem, of course, is that it is political dynamite.”

Read the full story here.

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L.A.’s Twin Crises Finally Seem Fixable

The city is gradually revamping America’s most infamous sprawl.

Los Angeles has seen better days. Traffic is terrible, homelessness remains near record highs, and housing costs are among the worst in the country. Several years ago, these factors contributed to an alarming first: L.A.’s population started shrinking.This is no pandemic hangover. With a few exceptions, the local economy has come roaring back. Many of its major industries proved resistant to remote work—you still can’t film a movie over Zoom—and perfect year-round weather continually drew digital nomads. The quick rebound has had the paradoxical effect of kicking L.A.’s pre-pandemic problems into overdrive, by clogging freeways, eating up limited housing supply, and forcing out residents who couldn’t afford to stay.The city’s traffic and housing crises date back a century, when Los Angeles first became dependent on the automobile and exclusionary zoning. Ever since, municipalities across the country—from Las Vegas to Miami, and nearly every suburb in between—have followed L.A.’s example, prioritizing cars over public transit and segregating housing by income. Predictably, Los Angeles’s problems have become urban America’s problems.In recent years, a critical mass of state policy makers, housing reformers, and urban planners understood that L.A.’s problems are reversible, and started to lay out an alternative path for the future. The city has made massive investments in transit and—partly because of pressure from statewide pro-housing laws—experienced a surge of permitting for new homes. Even though rampant NIMBYism remains a barrier, the breadth of the city’s progress is becoming clearer: Los Angeles is gradually revamping America’s most infamous sprawl.L.A.’s quest to reinvent itself holds national implications. Savvy urban planners and policy makers are watching to see how Los Angeles addresses the issues that are intensifying in many of their own cities. They know that a congested, unaffordable future awaits if they don’t intervene.It’s often said that Los Angeles was planned around the car. But it was actually built around what was once the largest transit system in the world. In the early 20th century, the Pacific Electric Railway stitched together hundreds of historic town centers from Riverside to Venice. The rest of L.A. was subdivided into one of the largest street grids in history, marshaling growth along a coherent, interconnected pattern.Only in the 1930s did the city begin to redesign itself for driving. Freeways started carving up the grid, spewing pollution across Los Angeles. The railway closed. Walking and biking became unpleasant and unsafe. This transformation spawned today’s L.A., where car crashes kill more people than violent crime, and the average driver spends 62 hours a year sitting in traffic. It ended up being a model for suburbs across the country; the average American now spends an hour a day driving.The state of housing is equally bleak. By some measures, Los Angeles has arguably the worst housing-affordability crisis in the country. If a middle-class family ever wants to own a home, they’d better go somewhere else. The median home price in L.A. is over 10 times the median household income—more than double a healthy ratio.The many Angelenos who are locked out of homeownership are stuck paying some of America’s steepest rents. Most residents spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing; a quarter of residents spend at least half. To curb costs, many renters double or triple up, resulting in the country’s highest overcrowding rate. About 75,000 residents of Los Angeles County go without housing altogether.The housing shortage is by design: Beginning in the 1960s, policy makers tightened zoning regulations, slashing the city’s capacity by 60 percent. As a matter of law, Los Angeles could not grow. Today, building apartments is still illegal in about three-quarters of residential areas, where most land is effectively reserved for McMansions. The situation is even worse in the suburbs, where zoning allows virtually no new housing at all. The crisis has even spread to once-affordable places like Phoenix, as local growth butts up against restrictive zoning in more and more cities.Until recently, nearly every development in L.A.-adjacent cities such as Pasadena or Culver City entailed a costly environmental review and endless public hearings, both easily hijacked by NIMBYs. Impact fees increase the cost of a new housing unit by tens of thousands of dollars. For a long time, the number of permits issued across Greater Los Angeles looked more like it does in diminished cities like Detroit than in prosperous peers like Seattle.The city’s recent population decline might make you think that nobody wants to live there. But, really, Los Angeles hasn’t let anybody in.After decades of dysfunction, L.A.’s twin crises are starting to look fixable.Take transit: Los Angeles is currently building one of North America’s most ambitious rail expansions, which will rival the top systems in the country. Thanks in part to Measure M, a half-cent sales-tax increase that voters approved in 2016, the city is scheduled to open rail service to Los Angeles International Airport by the end of the decade, as well as new trains extending from West Los Angeles to East Los Angeles. In 2023, L.A. Metro completed the Regional Connector, which linked two light-rail lines, allowing for transfer-free rides across the metropolis.All this new rail will soon be supplemented by an expanded network of bus, bicycle, and pedestrian infrastructure. In March, a coalition led by the group Streets for All passed Measure HLA, which will add over 200 miles of bus lanes and protected bicycle lanes, and many hundreds of redesigned, pedestrian-friendly streets in the coming decades. If officials can unlock new revenue through congestion pricing—which will nudge some Angelenos out of their cars—the city might finally be able to tame traffic.The housing situation is turning around too, if in fits and starts. Recent experience shows that simply easing overly restrictive rules could unlock a lot of new home building. In 2022, Los Angeles issued more permits than it had in any of the previous 36 years. Although the average home price continues to hover around a million dollars, rents have fallen by about 5 percent compared with late 2023.A range of interventions have made this possible. Since 2017, Los Angeles has permitted nearly 35,000 accessory dwelling units—homes that were largely illegal prior to state intervention in 2017. Thanks to a newly strengthened state “fair share” law, cities across L.A. County will be required to permit thousands of new homes in coming years; Santa Monica, for example, will have to allow some 1,500 new homes over the next few years, more than the city has permitted in decades. A 2022 law green-lighting the construction of affordable housing in commercial zones has prompted Costco to agree to add 800 apartments above a planned storefront in South Los Angeles. Other state laws have eliminated parking mandates, streamlined permitting, and expedited townhouse subdivisions.Still, fixing the crisis will require much more work. By one state estimate, Greater L.A. must permit 168,000 homes each year to end the housing shortage. Even in the historically productive year of 2022, the region permitted fewer than 60,000. And in a major setback, the city council voted in December to preserve single-family zoning, which bans new apartments in nearly three-quarters of Los Angeles. (Never mind that a city-commissioned report admits that the decision will entrench segregation.)But reform continues bubbling up locally thanks to a growing YIMBY movement. Ten years ago, the idea of rolling back apartment prohibitions in Los Angeles was unthinkable; now it seems inevitable. The Transit-Oriented Communities program, part of a ballot measure that Angelenos adopted in 2016, has facilitated the construction of tens of thousands of new apartments near transit. When Mayor Karen Bass took office in 2022, she issued Executive Directive 1, speeding up permitting processes. Combined with a generous state incentive program for projects that agree to keep rents low, the initiative has attracted applications for more than 20,000 new homes and counting. At almost any public hearing, expect to bump into an Abundant Housing LA volunteer eager to share the good news.A century ago, Los Angeles pioneered an urban model that much of America made the mistake of replicating. Now, after many decades of strict zoning and car-centric growth, Los Angeles is figuring out what comes next. The city is starting to treat its dependence on automobiles by reintroducing bus lanes, bike lanes, and rail lines. Neighborhoods that had been locked up for a half century by zoning are finally growing again. Hundreds of urban areas across the country desperately require similar interventions.If history is a guide, L.A.’s ambitions might once again reshape the American city—this time for the better.

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In South Korea, Nations Meet in Final Round to Address Global Plastic Crisis

Negotiators are gathering in South Korea in what’s billed as a final push to address the global crisis of plastic pollution

Negotiators gathered in Busan, South Korea, on Monday in a final push to create a treaty to address the global crisis of plastic pollution.It's the fifth time the world's nations convene to craft a legally binding plastic pollution accord. In addition to the national delegations, representatives from the plastics industry, scientists and environmentalists have come to shape how the world tackles the surging problem. “Don’t kick the can, or the plastic bottle, down the road," U.N. Environment Programme Executive Director Inger Andersen said in a message aimed at negotiators. This “is an issue about the intergenerational justice of those generations that will come after us and be living with all this garbage. We can solve this and we must get it done in Busan,” she said in an interview.The previous four global meetings have revealed sharp differences in goals and interests. This week's talks go through Saturday. Led by Norway and Rwanda, 66 countries plus the European Union say they want to address the total amount of plastic on Earth by controlling design, production, consumption and where plastic ends up. The delegation from the hard-hit island nation of Micronesia helped lead an effort to call more attention to "unsustainable” plastic production, called the Bridge to Busan. Island nations are grappling with vast amounts of other countries’ plastic waste washing up on their shores.“We think it’s the heart of the treaty, to go upstream and to get to the problem at its source,” said Dennis Clare, legal advisor and plastics negotiator for Micronesia. “There’s a tagline, ‘You can’t recycle your way out of this problem.’” Some plastic-producing and oil and gas countries, including Saudi Arabia, disagree. They vigorously oppose any limits on plastic manufacturing. Most plastic is made from fossil fuels. Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest exporter of primary polypropylene, a common type of plastic, accounting for an estimated 17% of exports last year, according to the Plastics Industry Association. China, the United States and Germany led the global plastics trade by exports and imports in 2023, the association said.The plastics industry has been advocating for a treaty focused on redesigning plastic products, recycling and reuse, sometimes referred to as “circularity.” Chris Jahn, International Council of Chemical Associations secretariat, said negotiators should focus on ending plastic waste in the environment, not plastic production, to get a deal. Many countries won’t join a treaty if it includes production caps, he said.To continue to progress and grow as a global economy, there are going to be more plastics, Jahn added.“So we should strive then to keep those plastics in the economy and out of the environment,” Jahn said.The United States delegation at first said countries should develop their own plans to act, a position viewed as favoring industry. It changed its position this summer, saying the U.S. is open to considering global targets for reductions in plastic production.Environmental groups accused the U.S. of backtracking as negotiations approached.Center for Coalfield Justice executive director Sarah Martik said the United States is standing on the sidelines rather than leading, putting “their thumb on the scale throughout the entirety of the negotiations.” She hopes this does not derail other countries’ ambition. Democratic U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, of Oregon, said it's a mistake for the United States to settle for the lowest common denominator proposals, just to get some kind of agreement. Luis Vayas Valdivieso, the committee chair from Ecuador, recently proposed text for sections where he thinks the delegations could agree. The production and use of plastics globally is set to reach 736 million tons by 2040, up 70% from 2020, without policy changes, according to the intergovernmental Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Research published in Science this month found it is still possible to nearly end plastic pollution. The policies that make the most difference are: mandating new products be made with 40% post-consumer recycled plastic; limiting new plastic production to 2020 levels; investing significantly in plastic waste management, such as landfills and waste collection services and implementing a small fee on plastic packaging. The treaty is the only way to solve plastic pollution at this scale, said Douglas McCauley, professor at UC Santa Barbara and UC Berkeley. McCauley co-led the research.Margaret Spring, chief conservation and science officer for Monterey Bay Aquarium, said plastic pollution used to be considered largely a waste problem. Now it is widely viewed as an existential crisis that must be addressed, said Spring, who represents the International Science Council at the negotiations.“I’ve never seen people’s understanding of this issue move as fast, given how complex the topic is,” she said. “It gives me hope that we can actually start moving the dial.”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 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. 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ICE Unveils Biogas Plan to Combat Costa Rica’s Growing Waste Management Crisis

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Why won’t PJM let batteries and clean power bolster a stressed-out grid?

PJM, the largest electric grid operator in the U.S., has a major problem — old, dirty power plants are closing down faster than new clean energy resources can replace them. This mounting grid crisis is already driving up electricity costs for the 65 million people living in PJM’s territory, which stretches from the mid-Atlantic coast to the Great Lakes. By the end of the decade, the situation could become so dire that it threatens the reliability of PJM’s grid. The blame falls in large part on PJM’s worst-in-the-nation grid-interconnection backlog. New energy projects looking to come online in its region face yearslong wait times before they’re even considered. To make matters worse, energy companies and climate advocates say PJM is dragging its feet on one straightforward way to work around this logjam. Existing wind and solar farms and fossil-fired power plants often have more grid capacity than they actually need during many hours of the day or seasons of the year. 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Let’s connect this,’” David Mindham, EDPR’s director of regulatory and market affairs, said during a September webinar. “And they say no.” Getting more round-the-clock use out of the grid Mindham’s comments came during a presentation of a report from Gabel Associates, commissioned by the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) and other clean energy industry groups, detailing the potential for using this technique to help PJM meet its growing shortage of electricity generation. The focus of the presentation was on surplus interconnection service, the technical term for what is a fairly simple concept: Let energy projects use the grid interconnection capacity they already possess to its fullest potential. Many energy projects don’t use their maximum capacity all 8,760 hours of the year. So-called “peaker” plants — fossil-gas-fired power plants that are turned on only during times of high electricity demand — may run just 250 to 1,500 hours per year, for example. And wind and solar farms generate their full capacity only when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. That leaves plenty of hours when these projects aren’t using their maximum allowed grid capacity — their “interconnection service,” in FERC parlance. Surplus interconnection service can fill in those gaps. Mike Borgatti, Gabel Associates’ senior vice president of wholesale power and markets services and co-author of the report, offered the example of a 100-megawatt solar farm that could add batteries to store power during the day and send to the grid after the sun goes down. “At the end of the day, you would end up with 100 megawatts of energy that could be supplied by any combination of solar and storage,” he said. “It could be 100 percent storage at some points in time; it could be 100 percent solar at others. It could be, say, 50 megawatts of solar and 50 megawatts of storage. As long as whatever combination of outputs never exceeds 100 megawatts, we’re good to go.” FERC made clear in 2018’s Order 845 and in last year’s Order 2023 that grid operators must enable surplus interconnection service, Borgatti added. And PJM needs to “accelerate new entry from high-capacity-value resources, and we need to do it very quickly.” PJM has about 180 gigawatts of total generation capacity. Of that, 43 to 58 gigawatts are expected to shut down by 2030, according to a March report from its independent market monitor. Meanwhile, electricity demand is forecast to rise at a rapid rate, with an estimated 40 gigawatts of new load expected by 2030. Despite these pressures, new power plant construction has stalled. About 160 gigawatts’ worth of projects that are trying to connect to the grid — almost all of them wind, solar, or batteries — are stuck in the interconnection queue. Borgatti estimated that without changes, only about 6.3 gigawatts of “stuff we need” can be built by 2030. That’s not enough to make up for PJM’s growing electricity demand and shrinking power plant fleet. The upshot, he said, is that PJM faces an impending “resource adequacy shortfall” — a gap between forecasted energy supply and peak demand — of nearly 4 gigawatts by 2029, he said. The underlying barrier is that PJM hasn’t expanded its transmission grid quickly enough to accommodate more energy resources, Borgatti said. That’s a problem bedeviling grid operators across the country, and one FERC has ordered them to solve. But building new transmission lines still takes years to up to a decade. In the face of this grid-capacity challenge, SIS projects are a neat workaround, Borgatti said. Because they make use of previously approved grid capacity, they can undergo an expedited study process that circumvents the standard interconnection queue. That accelerated timeline takes only 270 days, meaning that these projects could go from proposal to construction “within less than a year, theoretically.” What’s more, batteries added to solar and wind farms can store power when the grid doesn’t need it and discharge it when it’s in short supply — something that’s already happening regularly in California and Texas. Batteries can also help meet fast-rising demand from corporate energy buyers like data center developers for clean energy that matches up with their power usage on an hour-by-hour basis, EDPR’s Mindham said.

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Water rates in Northern Ireland suggested to help address wastewater crisis

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Water rates in Northern Ireland suggested to help address wastewater crisis

Related News

L.A.’s Twin Crises Finally Seem Fixable

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Join us to forgea sustainable future

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

Join us to forge
a sustainable future