Renters strike back as cities cap price hikes by landlords

Katy O'Donnell and Lisa Kashinsky
Fri, November 26, 2021

As the cost of housing soars, one old idea is starting to get traction with voters: rent control.

Voters in Minneapolis and St. Paul this month approved ballot initiatives to enable the Twin Cities to cap rent increases. Santa Ana, Calif., did so in October. And Michelle Wu, Boston’s new mayor, campaigned earlier this year on restoring rent control — an idea that Massachusetts' Republican governor has repeatedly objected to but says he’d be willing to discuss to help tackle housing woes.

Supporters and opponents alike say the recent initiatives are just the beginning, with politicians and voters desperate for ways to deal with spiking rents nationwide. Groups representing landlords are already spending millions of dollars to fight back and preparing for the proposals to pop up in more cities.

“We’re starting to see a shift,” said Malcolm Torrejón Chu, director of programs at the affordable housing and tenant advocacy group Right to the City Alliance. “We’re absolutely anticipating more support, and our member organizations are preparing to re-engage in city- and state-wide efforts to win rent control.”

The revival of rent control policies long derided by economists, including one of President Joe Biden’s top advisers, comes as officials at all levels of government scramble to contain rising prices across a range of goods and services. The historic housing supply crunch in the U.S. has stymied federal and local officials, who have yet to find ways to accelerate enough construction to satisfy demand. Rent caps hold the promise of immediate relief, though critics warn they could backfire by hindering development.

“People are trying to deal with inequality,” said University of Pennsylvania economics professor Joseph Gyourko. “This is just not a good way: It’s going to actually harm supply, and it’s going to harm supply fairly quickly. … The whole idea of making housing more affordable is you increase supply, not reduce it.”

The first rent control laws in the U.S. were adopted at the local level in the 1920s. They gained popularity as the economy recovered from the Great Depression and cities saw an influx of workers during World War II, sending the cost of housing upward. New York, for example, enacted price ceilings and rent freezes as a result. But most cities abandoned the policies during the postwar housing boom the following decade.

Amid surging inflation in the 1970s, a more nuanced version of rent control took off in coastal cities where the housing stock was limited and prices were high — mostly in the Northeast and California.

Today, just six states – California, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and Oregon — plus Washington, D.C., have localities with some form of rent restrictions in place or coming into effect. More than 30 states have banned cities from enacting rent control.

The measures are coming back into vogue as the U.S. economy emerges from nearly two years of Covid-19 restrictions and faces surging housing prices. The national median rent increased by 16.4 percent from January to October, according to Apartment List.

Affordable housing advocates say they’ve also been emboldened by the success of the nationwide eviction bans imposed by the Trump and Biden administrations during the pandemic, before the Supreme Court blocked the policy in August.

“There was a tectonic shift in housing advocacy in a way that I think is really important,” said Lindsay Owens, a former aide to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and executive director of the progressive Groundwork Collaborative. “Many things don’t feel feasible until they are, and rent controls feel feasible now.”

Opponents say rent control discourages development and induces landlords to sell to owner-occupants as a way to earn the market price for their real estate.

Gyourko, who specializes in housing markets and real estate finance at the Wharton business school, said a better way to help struggling tenants make ends meet “is just to give them money."

"Don’t distort the housing market," he said. "Don’t screw up supply and make it more unaffordable in the long run.”

Fifty-three percent of St. Paul voters this month approved what could shape up to be the nation’s most stringent rent-control policy, which city officials have six months to implement. It will cap rent increases at 3 percent annually, regardless of inflation. And unlike most rent-control laws around the country, the St. Paul initiative does not include exemptions for new buildings or for small landlords.

“We wanted to make sure that coverage was universal, whether you live in a home that was built a year ago or 20 years ago,” said Tram Hoang, the campaign manager for Keep St. Paul Home, which pushed for the ballot measure.

An opposing campaign led by the Minnesota Multi Housing Association, which represents developers and apartment managers, spent about $3.6 million through Oct. 12 to fight the proposal, according to a financial disclosure. Keep St. Paul Home spent a little under $200,000 through Oct. 14.

“What our campaign showed is grassroots organizing can beat moneyed opposition,” Hoang said.

The Minnesota Multi Housing Association declined to comment.

The National Apartment Association, which represents landlords, is mobilizing to fight similar ballot measures next year, said Greg Brown, the group’s head of government affairs.

“Because of the supply issue, there’s upward pressure on rents,” he said. “These types of policies, which appear on their face to be a quick and easy solution, are getting more popular.”

Wu has public support for imposing rent restrictions in Boston — 59 percent of respondents in a poll of voters in October said they would support rent control.

But Wu faces an uphill battle because Massachusetts voters banned rent control in 1994. Reversing the ban would require buy-in from the state Legislature, where there doesn't seem to be much appetite, as well as from Republican Gov. Charlie Baker.

While Baker remains skeptical, he said in a recent interview that he'd “leave the door open a little bit” to the idea to help deal with skyrocketing housing costs, which he called “probably the single biggest cost-of-living problem we have in Massachusetts.”

Wu and Baker spoke on the matter Nov. 17, as part of a wide-ranging meeting after she was sworn in as mayor. Baker maintained that "his own personal experience with an old style of rent control wasn't positive," Wu told GBH News Nov. 23, but she said rent control "doesn't have to look like how it's looked in the past."

The Biden administration has stayed mum, even as it has encouraged states and cities to enact eviction bans during the pandemic and to ease restrictive zoning rules to make room for more affordable housing.

White House Council of Economic Advisers Chair Cecilia Rouse was among the 81 percent of economists surveyed by the Chicago Booth Initiative on Global Markets in 2012 who disagreed that rent control ordinances have had a positive impact on affordable housing in the cities that have enacted them.

“While well intended, theoretically they also likely limit expansions in supply and improvements in quality,” Rouse said at the time.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Rouse’s position and whether it has changed.

Rent control advocates dismiss many of the critiques as fear-mongering by industry lobbyists.

“This is fundamentally about housing being a human right and a necessity over a commodity that should be profited off of,” Torrejón Chu said. “We see rent control as a solution that allows for a reasonable regulation of the market.”

USA
Hyundai joins Holtec in plan that could put small reactor at Oyster Creek


Amanda Oglesby, Asbury Park Press
Fri, November 26, 2021, 

LACEY — A subsidiary of South Korean automaker Hyundai and the nuclear company Holtec International have partnered to build a nuclear plant prototype that could be placed in Lacey in the future.

Holtec International, the Camden-based company that is decommissioning the former Oyster Creek nuclear plant, announced the new partnership this week. The companies are working to build Holtec's SMR-160 plant, a "small modular reactor" meant to reduce costs for nuclear power and re-energize nuclear's place in electricity markets.

Holtec expects its SMR-160 prototype to be complete by 2030. The company has also expressed interest in its Lacey property as the site for the prospective reactor. Other communities are also under consideration.

Across the nation, aging and expensive nuclear plants are being closed or bolstered with government subsidies to remain economically viable against competition from cheaper natural gas plants. Nuclear companies hope new designs in small modular reactors will provide an energy-generating alternative that is less expensive than traditional nuclear and carbon-free, a factor they hope will be an advantage over cheap, carbon-emitting natural gas plants.

The nuclear companies are also touting the emerging small modular reactor technology as more reliable than solar and wind power and safer than older, more complex nuclear reactor designs.

Holtec International is seeking federal approval of a new nuclear reactor design, shown here. The company says the design is safer than many earlier reactor designs.

Lacey Mayor Peter Curatolo is pleased that Holtec is eyeing its Oyster Creek property for the prototype's location. Watch the 2017 video for Curatolo speaking about plans for the township after the closing of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant.

"Anytime that there's an expansion and the possibility of increasing employment in our town… I would support that," he said. "I'm very comfortable with the level of security there and the level of federal oversight (of decommissioning) that continues… there at the plant location."
Township concerns

Lacey officials have worried that as the defunct nuclear plant is decommissioned, the township's commercial tax base will shrink, forcing officials to raise taxes on surrounding homeowners to meet the needs of police service, road paving, school taxes and other necessities. A new power plant — albeit a smaller, less expensive one — could fill some of the financial hole when the older plant, and its annual tax bill, is gone.

The U.S. Department of Energy expects SMRs (small modular reactors) like Holtec's design will be part of America's energy future, playing "a key part of the Department's goal to develop safe, clean, and affordable nuclear options." Department officials see benefits in SMRs in that they take up less space than older plants, require less money to build, and can help promote U.S. energy independence.

Related: NRC says Oyster Creek had safety violations, armorer who falsified records

As a result, the Energy Department awarded millions of dollars in grants to nuclear companies to support research and development in new technologies. Among the award recipients was Holtec, which received $6.3 million for its research in new reactor designs. The department also awarded Holtec subsidiary SMR LLC, based in Holtec's Camden plant, $1.6 million toward its small modular reaction testing and safety system performance research.

Under the new partnership with Hyundai Engineering & Construction, the South Korean company will complete portions of the plant design and prepare construction specifications for Holtec's SMR-160 plants. Hyundai Engineering & Construction will also receive the rights to construct the plant. Holtec will serve as the overall architect for the plant and provide the main nuclear components, made at its U.S.-based manufacturing sites, while instruments and the plant's control systems will be created through Holtec's partnership with Mitsubishi Electric Corp.

Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant in Lacey Township is shown early Sunday, September 1, 2019. The flight was done with volunteer pilots from LightHawk on a mission for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to study King Tides

Once complete, the reactor should produce as much as 160 megawatts of electricity. For comparison, the decommissioned nuclear plant at Oyster Creek had a 625-megawatt capacity, or enough electricity to power more than 600,000 homes, according to a 2017 fact sheet by its former owner Exelon Generation.

Miles away in the Atlantic Ocean, wind farm companies are preparing to build thousands of wind turbines, which New Jersey officials hope will provide another 7,500 megawatts of electricity by 2035.
Some residents critical

Some Lacey residents, such as frequent Holtec critic Paul Dressler, worry the Oyster Creek site is not a good location for a future nuclear plant, even a small one. Dressler said he is in favor of the new small modular reactors, but not for Lacey.

Dressler said rising sea levels threaten any future construction at the Oyster Creek site and any nuclear accident would risk contaminating the Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer below, he said. The aquifer, which runs under the Pine Barrens, supplies the drinking water to most of the southern half of New Jersey.

Janet Tauro, New Jersey chairwoman for the environmental advocacy group Clean Water Action, shares similar concerns. The combination of high population density along the Jersey Shore and environmentally sensitive areas around Oyster Creek, such as the Pine Barrens and coastal ecosystem, make Lacey a bad choice to try a new nuclear technology, she said.

Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plants in Lacey Township is shown early Sunday, September 1, 2019.

"Ocean County shouldn't be a test case, with over 600,000 full-time residents, that swells to more than 2 million in the summer," Tauro said. "You have a fragile environment. You have Barnegat Bay. You have the Atlantic Ocean… and it's densely populated."

At the existing plant, all the nuclear spent fuel from a half-century of power generation has been moved into steel and concrete casks for long-term storage. Demolition of the buildings at the site is ongoing and the reactor vessel components will be cut up for disposal early next year, said Holtec spokesman Joe Delmar.

Holtec expects to have decommissioning of the former nuclear facility completed by 2025.

More: Holtec employee splashed with radioactive water in Oyster Creek cask accident

Amanda Oglesby is an Ocean County native who covers Brick, Barnegat and Lacey townships as well as the environment. She has worked for the Press for more than a decade. Reach her at @OglesbyAPP, aoglesby@gannettnj.com or 732-557-5701.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Hyundai joins Oyster Creek-owner Holtec on nuclear reactor project

Letters to the Editor: Nuclear energy may not emit carbon, but it isn't 'clean'



Fri, November 26, 2021

The Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in San Luis Obispo County is scheduled for decommissioning in 2025. (Joe Johnston / San Luis Obispo Tribune)

RE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2021/11/op-ed-california-needs-to-keep-diablo.html

To the editor: Steven Chu and Ernest Moniz are both professors who served as U.S. Energy secretary. They have more science credentials than most mortals. I am none of those things.

Yet, I was concerned when I read in their piece advocating for the continued use of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant past the planned 2025 decommissioning that they referred to the electricity it produces as "clean."

I recognize that they did so in order to differentiate nuclear from energy sources that emit carbon dioxide. However, the lack of carbon emissions notwithstanding, can nuclear energy truly be called clean?

There is the not-so-small matter of spent nuclear fuel. Where does it go? Where will it go? It's currently in a cooling pool on-site. Owner Pacific Gas and Electric has requested permission to develop a dry cask storage system on-site; it did not estimate how long the spent fuel would be stored there.

Spent fuel is radioactive for a very long time. Whichever way you store it, if anything compromises the containment, the danger is released.

Carbon emissions or none, it is misleading to refer to nuclear energy as clean, especially when it comes to its impact on the environment.

Elise Power, Garden Grove

..

To the editor: I was energized by the piece on the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant. It reminded me of the sad situation at our local San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

First, we have a major carbon-free power generation facility that is being decommissioned. Second, we have, residing on the bluffs immediately above an important beach, large quantities of nuclear fuel considered to be waste but that could be recycled multiple times for reuse for further nuclear power generation.

France, which produces more than 70% of its energy in nuclear power plants, uses a technology developed decades ago in the U.S. to recycle its nuclear fuels.

But here we are in the U.S., stumbling along trying to figure out how to reach our decarbonization goals. Where is our imagination? Our vaunted innovation? Go figure.

Dennis Lees, Encinitas

..

To the editor: Currently the state of California is gambling that the "Big One" does not happen before the 2025 shutdown of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, which is located a mile from a fault. Think back to Japan's nuclear disaster caused by a major earthquake.

These authors do not live downwind of this potential disaster. There are other measures to meet our climate goals.

Vickie Guagliardo, La Crescenta

..

To the editor: The authors list the benefits of nuclear power. But a fair and honest discussion of nuclear power should also discuss and acknowledge the challenges and downsides as well.

We must not forget Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, and the tragic lessons we learned.

William Uselman, Corona del Mar

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Harvard Admissions Data Shows That America Loves Affirmative Action—for Whites

Ruben Navarrette Jr.
Fri, November 26, 2021

Darren McCollester/Newsmakers/Getty

America’s elite colleges and universities really don’t want the public to take a peek behind the curtain and get a better understanding of who gets admitted and why. And it’s not for the reasons you might think.

The urban legend endures that any Latino or African American who applies to one of these ultra-selective schools can write their own ticket. But the truth is, the people who get the lion’s share of those tickets, who issue the tickets, and who, in fact, run the ticket booth are white.

The real pigs at the trough are white people who have connections, make donations, or otherwise encourage wealthy alumni boosters to send more checks. T’was always thus.

Dirty Secrets of College Admissions

A new study proves what the relatively few students of color who will ever have the chance to attend selective colleges and universities have long suspected: Despite what people call “imposter syndrome”—i.e., the insecurity that some Latinos and African Americans feel about whether they deserve the opportunities they’ve been afforded—they aren’t imposters at all. Far from it. Rather, they’re among the most deserving of admission.

The numbers show that, for the most part, students of color had to work harder in high school to get into these elite schools than white ones with hook-ups, deep pockets or alumni pedigrees.

Moreover, in many cases, this pattern will continue throughout their entire professional lives. Merit only gets you so far.

Just look at the experience of what might be called whites without privilege. Working-class whites who don’t have a foot in the door are being kept out of top schools not by Latinos and African Americans but by ruling class whites who are working an angle.

All this comes to light thanks to a lawsuit accusing Harvard of practicing discrimination in its undergraduate admissions process. In 2014, an organization calling itself Students for Fair Admissions and other plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against Harvard College in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, claiming that the school discriminates against Asian American applicants by holding them to a higher standard than other applicants.

That’s been a hard case to make given that the college’s student body is now about 25 percent Asian. Both the District Court and the First Circuit of Appeals have rejected the claim, and now the plaintiffs want the Supreme Court to hear their appeal of the lower court’s rulings.

But the lawsuit itself isn’t what matters here. It’s the public documents that the lawsuit brought to light.

Researchers from Duke University, the University of Georgia, and the University of Oklahoma dove into those documents and analyzed something that looms large in the admissions process of elite schools yet is rarely talked about: admissions preferences for recruited athletes, legacies, those on the “dean’s interest list” (read: donors), and children of faculty and staff—a group collectively referred to by the unwieldy acronym of ALDC).

Using data from the Harvard lawsuit on 166,727 U.S. applicants to Harvard between 2009-2014, the professors did a good job of breaking down who has been getting in and why they’ve been getting in.

According to their findings, more than 43 percent of the white students admitted were ALDC. But the share for African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos was less than 16 percent. Furthermore, the research shows, roughly three-quarters of white ALDC admits would have been rejected if not for their ALDC status. Finally, eliminating preferences for athletes and legacies would make the pool of admitted students much less white.

FBI: Stars Bribed Their Kids’ Way Into Top Schools

As a Mexican American who went to Harvard, I hear only one thing in these findings: vindication.

You see, Latino and African American students who go to Harvard, or other highly selective college and universities, tend to arrive on campus with a ringing in their ears. It’s the sound they heard in high school of jealous white classmates sniping that if they hadn’t been people of color, they wouldn’t have gotten in.

I know that sound. Intimately. I told this story in a book I wrote nearly 30 years ago about my experience as a Mexican American undergraduate at America’s oldest and most prestigious institution of higher learning.

That petty and small-minded attack is based in ignorance, and a complete misunderstanding of something called affirmative action, a concept which this year celebrates its 60th anniversary.

It was on March 6, 1961, that President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925, which included a provision that government contractors “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” The reasoning was that society couldn’t just ignore the destructive and debilitating effects of a few centuries worth of discrimination, mistreatment, injustice—and in the case of Black Americans, outright enslavement—by putting people on the starting line of a race and yelling: “Ready, set, go!”

That’s absurd. It isn’t enough to simply bar discrimination. America needs to encourage the expanding of opportunity to groups that had previously been denied it by making positive efforts — that is, taking “affirmative action” — to live out and make real what Harvard boasted in its recruitment material was its “commitment to diversity.”

Yeah, whatever. When I walked through Johnston Gate and into Harvard Yard in the fall of 1985, I was one of just 35 Mexican Americans in a class of about 1,600 undergraduates. That’s only about 2 percent. Add in Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, Colombians and others, and the total number of Latinos might have reached 5 percent.

Most of us were straight-A valedictorians, student body presidents, self-starters who had rocketed through high school kicking ass and taking names.

Meanwhile, 75 percent of Harvard’s student body was at that point still white.

Which reminds me of the second sound that people of color often hear in our heads as we make our way through the college experience. As we associate with our white classmates, it sometimes occurs to us that some of these people aren’t all that. A lot of them don’t seem that smart. They don’t spend a lot of time in the library, and yet they walk around campus with an impenetrable air of confidence. Indeed, some appear to have simply skated through life with help from their parents, from society, and ultimately from the admissions office.

Now thanks to a very important study, my friends and I know that we weren’t imagining things. There were, in fact, some imposters on campus. And now we know who they were.

Unionized workers fight for better pay in post-pandemic economy

Mark Strassmann

Fri, November 26, 2021

Omaha, Nebraska — Part of America's Great Resignation is a Great Repudiation — workers are rising up and demanding better, as businesses struggle to find enough people to fill open positions. 

A strike by more than 1,000 Kellogg's plant workers is in its seventh week. There are ongoing walkouts by coal miners in Alabama. Health care workers in Northern California are also on strike. John Deere recently settled with 10,000 striking workers, as did Mercy Hospital in Buffalo, New York. 

"Workers definitely have more labor market leverage because employers need to hire," said Johnnie Kallas, a project director at Cornell University's Labor Action Tracker. "They're understaffed and therefore workers have more bargaining power." 

At Kellogg's four plants in the U.S., workers are demanding an end to a two-tier pay structure the union conceded to in 2015 that pays new hires lower wages indefinitely. 

"We're professional cereal makers," said mechanic Dan Osborn, who is among 1,400 Kellogg's workers on strike. "We've been doing it our whole lives. And they're not going to get anybody better than that." 

"I feel we have the upper hand right now," added James Jackson, a mine operator on strike. 

Maintenance mechanic Robert Jensen pointed to Nebraska's unemployment rate —1.9%, the lowest for any state in recorded history. 

"There just aren't enough skilled craftsmen to fill all these openings," Jensen said. 

Kellogg's said the strike has forced it to begin replacing workers. 

"The prolonged work stoppage has left us no choice but to begin to hire some permanent employees to replace those currently on strike," Kellogg's said in a statement to CBS News. 

Even as the weather gets colder and picketing gets old, Osborn said the employees won't give up their fight. 

"We'll stay out here one day longer than they are willing to," he said.  

Kenya tree felling sparks anger over Nairobi's new highway


Emmanuel Onyango - BBC News, Nairobi
Sat, November 27, 2021

Decades-old ornamental palm trees are among those uprooted

Rubble, bare earth and tree stumps mark the route of a super highway under construction in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, upsetting environmentalists - especially in the wake of the COP26 summit.

Rows of mainly indigenous trees that once lined the route of the new four-lane 27km (16-mile) Nairobi Expressway have been felled as construction nears completion.

Ornamental palm trees - some of them planted soon after independence from British colonial rule in the 1960s - have not been spared either.

Last year a century-old fig tree targeted for removal was saved by the president after a public outcry - but campaigners' voices about the hundreds of others have been drowned out.

This old fig tree was spared the axe after a campaign to save it

Elizabeth Wathuti, from the Green Generation Initiative, who earlier this month was among those rallying world leaders in Glasgow to reduce the impact of climate change, is devastated by the destruction in the heart of one of the city's main thoroughfares.

"We previously geographically mapped out 200 trees marked for felling along Kenyatta Avenue alone. It's a sorry state of affairs," she told the BBC.

The devastation has already seen flocks of marabou storks and other birds that perched and nested on the trees migrate to tall buildings in the city centre.
Suspension order ignored

The Chinese-financed highway, some of which is elevated, will link the main airport in the east to western suburbs. It is intended to make it easier to cross the city and free other roads from Nairobi's notorious traffic jams.

Before the $550m (£410m) project started last year, an official environmental impact report said that more than 4,000 young and mature trees would be cut down.

It also flagged its "major negative impact" on air and water quality during construction.

Many marabou storks nest on trees in the city

In response government officials said the Chinese contractor building it would plant trees elsewhere - five for every one felled.

But this will not be in Nairobi - and environmentalists fear such promises may not be kept.

Nature Kenya's Paul Gacheru points out that little account is taken of how old the trees being felled are - and the time it took to grow them.

"They are doing beautification. They are putting some grass, some flowers. But the value of those flowers versus the tress that have been cut cannot be equal," said Mr Gacheru.

Ms Wathuti agrees: "The developers say: 'It's OK. We'll just plant new trees somewhere else.' But this is not OK and we know in our hearts that this is not OK. Every tree in the city counts and every tree in the city must live."

Tree stumps can be seen all along the route

This distrust has been fuelled after it came out that a section of the highway was to encroach into the city centre's Uhuru Park.

This iconic green space was saved in the 1990s by environmentalists, led by the late Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai, thwarting the then-ruling party's plan to build its huge HQ and shopping complex there.

The highway's design has subsequently been tweaked - but a coalition of environmental organisations, including Green Generation Initiative and Nature Kenya, went to court in June 2020 to stop the project, arguing that it had gone ahead without public consultation.

Yet construction and the chopping down of tress has continued, despite the law requiring a suspension of works pending the environment court's decision.

According to Mark Odaga, from Natural Justice - which is also part of the coalition, the problem comes down to details.

The report approving the project gave little away about how the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) would deal with the environmental impact before, during and after construction.

"A public consultation would require them to give us that information," Mr Odaga told the BBC.
Activist shot dead

Nairobi straddles forests to the west and savannah grasslands to the east, with three rivers running through it.

It is popularly known as the "Green City in the Sun", but its green spaces are being eaten up everywhere by commercial and infrastructural developments - it is not just the Nairobi Expressway to blame.

It is the government's lack of consultation about big projects that upsets people

To the north and east, huge bypasses are being built that are spewing out red dust and rocks in already congested neighbourhoods.

To the south, a high-speed railway has been built through a national park, which activists say poses a threat to wildlife.

Trees lining roads in the suburbs have also been cut down to create space for giant billboards.

Without warning, Nairobi's Uhuru Park and Central Park were recently closed for three months - officially to be spruced up.

This has sparked consternation as photos have since emerged of building work going on there. Last year, Uhuru Gardens was similarly shut without warning - the authorities then explained it was to create a memorial area for independence heroes.

But again it is the lack of consultation that angers many residents.

And the odds are stacked against conservationists.

In July, prominent environmental activist Joannah Stutchbury was shot dead near her home in Nairobi.

The 67-year-old had been getting death threats for campaigning against the destruction of Kiambu Forest by developers eyeing the prime site on the outskirts of the city.

Critics say the government is barrelling ahead with the Nairobi Expressway because President Uhuru Kenyatta wants it finished before he leaves office - it is seen as his legacy project.

The CRBC has said it will open six months ahead of schedule in time for the elections next August.

But doubts too have been cast over whether the highway will really ease congestion in the city as motorists will have to pay a toll to use it. Some see it as a road for the rich in a city where most people use matatu minibuses to travel.

Ms Wathuti says those in government should rather keep the health of the city in mind when considering their legacy. She says green spaces are the lungs of a city - areas that are also important for the mental health of its residents.

"I'm grieving because by cutting down trees to create more space for roads, we are undermining the children's and young people's sense of agency and meaning."

More on Nairobi's super highway:

Why a giant fig tree won over a president

'A giant gash is being carved through the city'

Can lithium cure what ails the Salton Sea?


Louis Sahagún
Sat, November 27, 2021

UC Riverside researchers plunge a corer from a raft into the Salton Sea to collect a sediment sample. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Studying the complexity of mud on the ocean floor is a life’s work for Timothy Lyons, so when the tall and lean biogeochemist asks you to join an expedition in search of chemical mysteries buried deep beneath the waves, be prepared to get wet and dirty.

On a recent foray onto California’s largest and most troubled lake, Lyons rode a Zodiac skiff with a 15-horsepower engine across the Salton Sea against a backdrop of desolate mountains, dunes and miles of shoreline bristling with the bones of thousands of dead fish and birds.

As he approached the center of the lake with a clutch of passengers including two members of his laboratory at UC Riverside, Lyons said, “Cut the engine. Let’s grab some mud.”

Moments later, Caroline Hung, 24, and Charles Diamond, 36, dropped a coring device over the side, then hauled up a sample of sediment that was gray on the bottom, dark brown on top, and as gooey as peanut butter.

“The big problem at the Salton Sea is intermingled with that organic brown layer on top — and to be honest, it’s scary,” said Lyons, 63. “It’s loaded with pesticides and heavy metals — molybdenum, cadmium and selenium — that linger in greatest concentrations in deeper water.”

“That should worry people, because the Salton Sea is shrinking and exposing more and more of this stuff to scouring winds that carry them far and wide,” he added. “Our goals include mapping where these hazardous materials are located, and determining where they came from and what may become of them if trends continue.”

UC Riverside professor Tim Lyons and doctoral student Caroline Hung prepare a corer on the Salton Sea to collect sediment for their research. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

For Lyons’ research team, filling blanks in existing data is an obsession, and it could have significant implications at a time when the air practically crackles with a volatile mix of environmental danger and economic opportunities promised by ongoing efforts to tap immense reserves of lithium, a key ingredient of rechargeable batteries.

Few dispute the need for swift action at the 343-square-mile lake straddling Imperial and Riverside counties, about 150 miles southeast of Los Angeles. Clouds of salty, alkaline toxic dust containing heavy metals, agricultural chemicals and powdery-fine particulates linked to asthma, respiratory diseases and cancer are rolling off newly exposed playa, threatening the health of thousands of nearby residents.

Delays and costs are mounting for many projects that were designed to be showcases of restoration and dust mitigation. Scientists say it’s because the projects were developed without consideration for heat waves, severe droughts and water cutbacks due to climate change, or for the constantly evolving underlying geology at the hyper-saline landlocked lake at the southern end of the San Andreas Fault, where shifting tectonic plates bring molten material and hot geothermal brine closer to Earth’s surface.

Now, large corporations investing in proposals to suck lithium out of the brine produced by local geothermal operations have revived hopes of jobs and revenue from land leases, with lithium recovery projects potentially supporting internships, education programs and environmental restoration projects for years to come.

The big question during a recent meeting sponsored by the Lithium Valley Commission, a group of lawmakers and community leaders organized to help guide decisions that could affect low-income communities surrounding the Salton Sea, was this: What’s in it for us?

“The lithium rush at the Salton Sea cannot be stopped,” said Frank Ruiz, Audubon California’s program director for the lake and a member of the lithium commission. Communities surrounding the Salton Sea, he said, “see that as a victory — a ticket to a better life.”

“If done correctly,” he said, “it will elevate the region by creating jobs, benefit the state and the nation by making geothermal energy more affordable, and lay the groundwork for negotiations aimed at ensuring that some of the royalties from lithium production and related land leases are used to support dust reduction and environmental restoration projects.”

Jonathan Weisgall, a spokesman for Berkshire Hathaway Energy, which was recently awarded a $6-million California Energy Commission grant for a demonstration project at a geothermal facility in the nearby community of Calipatria, agreed, but stopped short of guarantees.

“My passion is workforce development and economic opportunities in the clean energy sector,” Weisgall said. “We don’t want to bring in a workforce from outside Imperial County if we don’t have to.”

"The big problem at the Salton Sea is intermingled with that organic brown layer on top — and to be honest, it's scary," says Tim Lyons, center. "It's loaded with pesticides and heavy metals." (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

A core sample of Salton Sea sediment shows a gradual change from gray mud at the bottom to darker, organic-rich material caused by fertilizer runoff from farmland. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

The Salton Sea was created in 1905 when the Colorado River broke through a silt-laden canal and roared unimpeded for two years into a basin near Brawley then known as the Salton Sink.

Fishermen flocked to its barnacle-covered shores to catch corvina, croaker and sargo. Birds flocked to its wetlands, turning it into one of the most important stops along the Pacific Flyway for species including 90% of the migration’s white pelicans.

But the Salton Sea is a non-draining body of water — which is what makes it technically a sea and not a lake — with no ability to cleanse itself. Trapped in its waters are salt and selenium-laden agricultural runoff as well as heavy metals deposited over the last 116 years, authorities say.

Some scientists believed that 2018 would be the start of a profound environmental, public health and economic disaster for California.

The change was predicted in 2003 when the state Legislature promised to slow the shrinking of the lake as part of a successful effort to persuade the Imperial Irrigation District to sell some of its water to San Diego. Under the agreement, the district stopped sending fresh water into the lake on Dec. 31, 2017.

With relatively little water flowing in, the salinity level continues to rise. It is now at about 68 parts per thousand, authorities say. That’s nearly twice as high as the salinity of the Pacific Ocean, which is about 35 parts per thousand.

The Salton’s high salinity has made it inhospitable to tilapia, a primary food source for migrating birds; the fish has all but stopped reproducing. Visiting bird populations are a small fraction of what they once were.

The only fish in the Salton Sea today are inch-long desert pupfish and hybrid tilapia. Scientists say even these will survive only near the mouths of rivers and canals once the salinity level reaches 70 parts per thousand, which is expected within the next few years.

A study by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation concluded that doing nothing to keep the Salton Sea viable could end up requiring nearly $10billion in mitigation projects.

Critics point to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Hill Bay project on the Salton Sea as an example of what has not been accomplished. The restoration program was designed to create more than 500 acres of shallow marine habitat for migratory shorebirds at the sea’s southern end in Imperial County, using water from a nearby river and a 183,000-pound steel barge equipped with pumps anchored a mile offshore.

Six years of delays have added costs to the project’s original $5.3-million budget. But it may never cross the finish line because of a series of unforeseen problems that have cropped up as the Salton Sea recedes and the flows of its tributaries decline. For example, the Alamo River is no longer considered a source of water for the project because its flows have fallen below an inlet that was designed to guide water into the proposed marine habitat.

UC Riverside researchers Tim Lyons, Charlie Diamond and Caroline Hung, from left, launch a skiff into the Salton Sea. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

As of November, the Fish and Wildlife Service has spent roughly $1million in grants and budget allocations on the project, federal officials said. A $3.3-million grant awarded by the California Wildlife Conservation Board to help complete the work requires that the Fish and Wildlife Service secure a 25-year lease agreement with the Imperial Irrigation District by Dec. 31, said Pam Bierce, a spokeswoman for the federal agency.

On top of that, a year ago the Imperial County Air Pollution Control District slapped the irrigation district, which owns the property, with an order to deal with dust emanating from the work site. The irrigation district responded with surface-roughening techniques that reduced dust by 90%.

“The Red Hill Bay project was a solution to a problem that existed 15 years ago,” said Tina Shields, water department manager at the irrigation district. “The design doesn’t work anymore because it is a dynamic place and conditions have changed.”

Beyond that, CalEnergy Resources Ltd., a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Energy, has a preexisting lease for the entire surface area of the project.

In a recent response to questions from Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Coachella), the irrigation district said it “will work with CalEnergy to incorporate their plans for geothermal energy and lithium development on a commercial scale for the benefit of the local community and the rest of California.”

The Salton Sea remains an environmental war zone like no other. Lyons’ team aims to collect information that can help stakeholders make the best decisions moving forward.

His team members’ recent venture into the Salton Sea got off to a wobbly start when they gathered in bulging life vests at one of the few remaining places where a boat can be put into the water: a remote stretch of ankle-deep shallows and ooze.

After several minutes of pushing and pulling their little skiff into deeper water, they climbed aboard and set out on tea-colored water as smooth as glass. Their goal was 30 feet below the surface.

“It is an exciting time to be investigating the contents of the mud we’re pulling up out of the water,” Hung said. “In it are pieces of information that could help bring environmental justice to local communities.”


This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Scientists ask the public to help count walrus from space

M.A. Jacquemain
Fri, November 26, 2021, 


Walrus Day on November 24th marked the launch of an initiative that enlists the public in identifying walrus in images from space as part of an ongoing census of the animal.

The project, Walrus from Space, invites members of the public to examine some of the almost 600,000 satellite images taken of coastal areas in the territory of the Atlantic and Laptev walrus populations. Participating “walrus detectives” will contribute to the census of these species that scientists will continue for five years.

One of the major goals of the project, run by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the British Antarctic Survey, is to learn more about how walrus populations are being impacted by climate change.

“This project represents the development of a new technology to conduct cost-effective, non-invasive monitoring of walrus from space,” Brandon Laforest, senior specialist of Arctic species and ecosystems at WWF-Canada, told the Weather Network.

Laforest added, “By collecting thousands of images of known walrus haulouts, we can monitor how many walrus there are at different locations of the year, track the use of these habitats over time, and contribute this data to Inuit-led research projects to better understand how walrus are responding to the climate emergency and increased shipping presence in the Arctic.”

Walrus, like polar bears, depend on sea ice for various aspects of their survival—birthing, molting, access to food supplies—and walrus populations have had to adjust as the extent and duration of the sea ice shrinks in the Arctic.

Though walrus prefer to haul-out on the sea ice, they have always had to rely on beaches, rocky shores, and other land-based haulouts through the summer season. But recently, as confirmed by a 2017 report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, walrus have been hauling out on land more frequently and in larger groups.

The result is that walrus often come in closer contact with shipping, industry, and tourism—all of which continue to encroach on the Arctic as the sea ice shrinks—disrupting behaviour and closing off even many land-based haulouts for the notoriously skittish creatures.

It also means that walrus must regularly travel greater and greater distances to their food sources, further straining populations that are flagged on the IUCN’s Red List as “vulnerable” and considered to have a status of Special Concern by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.

Past attempts to call attention to the plight of the polar bear’s homelier neighbour have not gone without controversy — in particular the episode in the documentary Our Planet, depicting a scene of overcrowding in the Pacific walrus population on a Russian beach off the Chukchi Sea.

The scene records walrus trampling each other, scaling up a cliffside to escape the mass of bodies, and tumbling over the cliff-face to gruesome deaths, and is characterized as a stark consequence of climate change.

Critics called it sensational and out of context, as walrus falls have been recorded before (though never by the dozens, as in this case) and because clips of a less crowded haulout were interspersed in the video with the teeming beach.

Such controversy could be put to rest by the answers the walrus census will provide.

Acknowledging that “we need to know more” about how walrus are affected by the climate crisis and with an aim to have the public “help scientists spot changes over time,” the project doubles as outreach and research.

Walruses in Russia Staffan Widstrand/The Image Bank Unreleased/Getty Images

Pacific walruses crowd a beach on Arkamchechen Island. | Location: Arkamchechen Island, Chukot Autonomous District, Russia. (Staffan Widstrand/The Image Bank Unreleased/Getty Images)

After a brief training tutorial provided online after a user registers an account, participants are asked to scan images covering a 200m x 200m area — squares of rugged coastline or crystalline icy sea that come to seem, while viewing one after the other, like Arctic-themed abstract art.

The online experience is fitted with a handy zoom feature and image adjustment for sharpness, brightness, and contrast, to assist with the vagaries of walrus identification: walrus haul-out on coasts in groups as tiny as five and as large as 100,000; they might appear bright red or dull grey; they can be mistaken for patches of water, rocks, or rusty barrels — when photographed from space.

It also becomes clear that having participants sort through thousands of images is a way to help scientists eliminate the inadequate photographs — images ruined by cloud cover or some other blockage. (There is even a button to identify a “poor image.”)

But this correspondent, anyway, felt a great responsibility peering into image after image for the tell-tale brownish blotches; and an elated feeling when, on a rocky shore, the blotch was almost certainly walrus. (Though on the leaderboard I am in 5485th place, and dropping.)

The project is one of many recent initiatives to focus on the impacts of climate change on walrus. Others include one by the Chukchi Indigenous peoples to restrict flights over haulouts, coastal management by Indigenous groups in Alaska, and projects led by Inuit researchers in Nunavut and supported by WWF-Canada’s Arctic Species Conservation Fund. “One study is using camera traps and drones to better understand how walrus use their haulouts and how they react to passing ships which are known to disrupt walrus while they are resting,” Laforest explained.

“The other is analyzing walrus for the presence of microplastics which have been shown to accumulate in Arctic marine food webs through the drifting of plastic pollution to the Arctic.”

Yet the Walrus from Space initiative is a rare chance for the public to make a meaningful contribution to climate science.

“In the midst of the climate emergency, and fresh off of COP26, many people are worried about the state of our planet and eager to help but often left wondering what they could actually do to support the conservation of wildlife that live in such faraway places as the Arctic,” Laforest stated.

“We hope to engage half a million people worldwide…harnessing the motivation of desktop conservationists around the world to improve our knowledge of walrus haulouts and work towards the protection of these important habitats.”

Wrongfully Convicted Black Man Is Entitled to No Money from The State After 43 Years In Prison, Now a GoFundMe Has Raised Over $1M: ‘You Deserve Every Penny!’

Nicole Duncan-Smith
Fri, November 26, 2021

A Missouri man convicted of triple murder four decades ago is able to spend this holiday season home with family after courts ruled that he was wrongfully convicted.

Despite being a victim of the state, he will not receive any form of compensation from the state in restitution. However, a GoFundMe launched by the Midwest Innocence Project over the summer with a goal of $7,500 has far surpassed the goal of the nonprofit corporation.

On Tuesday, Nov. 23, Kevin Strickland was exonerated by a “Show Me” state judge of an over 40-year murder conviction he received in 1979. Evidence that was previously ignored was brought forward by a Jackson County prosecutor and was key in gaining Strickland’s new freedom.

Kevin Strickland speaks to reporters after being released. (Screengrab Kansascity.com)


The state’s attorney Jean Peters Baker spoke on this victory, saying, “To say we’re extremely pleased and grateful is an understatement. This brings justice — finally — to a man who has tragically suffered so so greatly as a result of this wrongful conviction.”

As Strickland exited the Western Missouri Correctional Center, he spoke about his emotions to a group of reporters.

“I’m not necessarily angry. It’s a lot. I think I’ve created emotions that you all don’t know about just yet,” the now 62-year-old shared. “Joy, sorrow, fear. I am trying to figure out how to put them together.”

He further committed himself to work in criminal justice reform, in hopes that he can prevent this from “happening to someone else.”

The presiding judge, James Welsh, said that he was presented with “clear and convincing evidence” that “undermines the Court’s confidence in the judgement of conviction.”

The community has also rallied around Strickland’s story to help him return to some normalcy as he begins to reintegrate into society. The GoFundMe has reached the $1.1 million mark, just $100,000 short of a new $1.2 million goal. Many donors contributed $5,000 each.

One donor left a comment demanding change: “This release after so many years of incarceration without compensation is wrong on so many levels. This practice only endorses a bad practice by prosecutors and will do little to help others similarly situated. There has to be some accountability for decisions that are made even in error. Let’s change the laws!”

Another was elated for Strickland, “You deserve every penny , I can’t even imagine 43 years taken away Your a millionaire now !!”

Strickland, who has always maintained his innocence all along, was convicted without any physical evidence linking him to the murders. The court sent him away for nearly two-thirds of his life based on the testimony of one woman — who later recanted her testimony on her death bed.

His younger brothers Roland Strickland and Warren Thornton said this has been a 43-year nightmare. KSHB records Strickland as saying, “I’ll never forget that time, that day, that month. My birthday is in April. I had just turned 16, and you take my brother away for life,” he said. “He wasn’t even a man. He’ll probably tell you he was, but I mean, age-wise, he was a boy. He was 18.”

Strickland also revealed that while his brother was sentenced in 1979, he had been locked up before the trial.

Thornton shared, “He wasn’t able to see his daughter, his son. He never got to see any of my children. The way the world has changed, the simple things that we take for granted, he didn’t have had any of those. Forty-three years of advancement he’s missed out on.”

While he missed out on seeing the children in the family grow up, the most painful thing he missed out on was not seeing his mother before her death on Aug. 21, 2021. Rosetta Thornton was 85.

“She was a fighter, but right now she’s crying — she’s crying in joy, she’s smiling at him, and it’s not supposed to be like that,” Strickland said. “It’s painful that she held on for so many years to see her son come home innocent like he said he was and she couldn’t make it.”

As compensation statutes for those wrongfully convicted vary, depending on the state, Missouri, according to State Rep. Richard Brown, has “one of the strictest compensation laws in our nation.”

The state’s compensation law, according to Bakersfield.com, will only allocate payments to prisoners who proved their innocence through a specific DNA-testing statute. The state will not even offer him support in securing counseling or therapy for the trauma he experienced while in prison. Nor will he be eligible to receive social services like statewide publicly funded health care.

The prosecutor that worked to free Strickland says that Missouri should expand its compensation law, “especially when the system knows it made the mistake.”

Now, Strickland is relying on the support of the public and nonprofits, who are raising money on his behalf.

Canada's powerful maple syrup cartel is facing a shortage so bad it had to tap into 50 million pounds of strategic reserves


Hilary Brueck
Thu, November 25, 2021

They call it "Québec's liquid gold."Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Canada's maple syrup cartel drained about half of its strategic stockpile this year.

A short harvest season, coupled with increasing demand, drove the move.

"We need to produce more maple syrup," a spokeswoman said.

Canada's maple syrup cartel can't keep up.

The Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, known as the maple syrup "cartel" because they control such a large share of the market, is draining 50 million pounds of the sweet liquid gold from its reserve, about half of the entire strategic stockpile, Bloomberg reported.

"We need to produce more maple syrup," spokeswoman Helene Normandin told Bloomberg. "The reserve is there to make sure that we are always able to sell and offer this product."


The QMSP, a consortium of more than 11,000 Canadian producers, is dealing with rising demand and dwindling supply. A warm spring this year resulted in a shorter syrup harvest, cutting output by 24%, Bloomberg said. It's the first time in three years that the QMSP has needed to tap its reserve.

"We're seeing people cook more at home, and use more local products,'' Normandin said, referencing the COVID-19 pandemic as one reason demand for the sweet gooey stuff has surged.

Team Canada drinks maple syrup on March 18, 2018 in Montreal, Quebec.Minas Panagiotakis / International Skating Union via Getty Images

The Canadian syrup cartel controls more than 70% of the maple syrup supply worldwide. US maple syrup production, while a much smaller share of the market, is also down this year.

Just over a decade ago, the Canadian syrup stockpile fell prey to the maple syrup heist of the century. As Vanity Fair later reported, roughly 540,000 gallons of syrup (about 12.5% of the stash) were quietly siphoned out of storage. The heist cost more than $13 million USD, making it the costliest heist in Canadian history.