Sick leave policies get more attention after threat of railroad strike

Katie Wedell, USA TODAY
Wed, September 21, 2022 

A recently dodged transportation crisis between the country's biggest railroads and the employees who work for them put the question of sick leave, and who does and doesn't get it in America, squarely at the forefront of national debate.

One of the major sticking points in negotiations between the nation’s railroads and the unions representing railroad workers this summer was a request for paid sick leave.

Because more than 95% of employers offer at least some paid sick days to their employees, many outsiders to the industry were shocked to learn that railroad employees didn’t have that benefit in their contracts.

The ability to take a sick day with no repercussions is a benefit many workers take for granted, but it's not guaranteed by law in most parts of the country.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, HR experts said more companies are paying attention to their sick leave policies as important recruitment tools because workers are demanding those days.

The 12 rail unions and a committee representing 30 railroads came to tentative agreements early Thursday last week to avoid a strike that would have kicked off Friday and parked one-third of the nation's freight trains, plus many commuter trains.

President Joe Biden stepped in personally to avoid a work stoppage that would have exacerbated supply chain bottlenecks and caused major economic disruptions.

The unions still need to vote in the coming weeks on whether to accept the new contracts.

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How common is it for workers to have zero sick days?

About 96% of American employers offer some form of paid sick leave to their employees, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.

The number of days offered ranges from one day a year to unlimited.

“But there are industries where workers have no days designated as sick leave,” said Johnny Taylor Jr., SHRM president and CEO.

All workers, regardless of industry or union representation, have the right to take unpaid leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act without the fear of losing their jobs.

Only 14 states have laws guaranteeing paid sick leave, but those laws often exclude workers in some industries, including government employees as well as railroad and airline employees.

The workers who don’t get any sick days tend to be low-wage workers and those working part-time, said Eileen Appelbaum, co-director of the think tank Center for Economic and Policy Research.

“Generally speaking, if you're not either low-paid or part-time, your employer provides paid sick days and certainly more than one,” she said. “It's not unusual to have five or seven paid sick days in a year and to be able to carry some number of them over.”

Eileen Appelbaum, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research

Railroad work clearly differs from a desk job in that trains can’t run without key personnel.

But other industries with similar staffing needs, such as commercial airlines, have paid sick time built into their employee contracts.

Pilots accrue paid sick time that goes into a bank, according to contracts negotiated by the Air Line Pilots Association, International.

Taylor said he was surprised rail workers hadn’t negotiated paid sick time into their contract before now.

“At the end of the day, they're covered by a union,” he said. “As much as they would like to point to the fact that they don't have it, frankly, they just didn't negotiate that.”

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Limited sick leave can hurt employee recruitment

Appelbaum said the lack of sick leave could be part of the reason the rail industry, which pays high wages, is having trouble recruiting workers.

“I mean this is an industry that has a problem with staffing, or so they claim,” she said. “I don't think we have to look very far to see why that's a problem.”

Many other industries have redundancy employees who can do more than one job and who can be available to work when others call in sick, she said.

“You need to have other people who can step into that job or a pool of people who say that they're available,” Appelbaum said. “There might have to be a premium pay for stepping in at short notice or something like that.”

Sick time is just one element of a benefits package that industries use to recruit workers to otherwise undesirable jobs, Taylor said.

“It is a way to differentiate to make an ‘unsexy' job or industry more attractive,” he said.
How much sick leave do most jobs give?

SHRM, the human relations industry group, says there is a trend toward giving employees a bank of paid days off that can be used for any purpose – a sick day, a vacation or a personal day.

Their numbers show that’s what 67% of employers offer.

“We know from the pandemic that if a sick person comes to work because they don't have enough sick days, they then bring it to the workplace and get other people sick,” Taylor said.

Society for Human Resource Management President and CEO Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.

It’s not in the company’s best interest to lose multiple workers to sickness, but there’s a flip side to offering paid sick days.

“We don't want people, when you give them a certain number of days for sick days, to feign sick just because they don't want to lose (those days),” Taylor said.

With a PTO system in which a day can be taken for any reason, it removes the need to lie about or prove illness to take a sick day, he said. And it makes it possible for people to take days to deal with their mental health without having to explain.

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About 6% of employers don’t designate a specific number of PTO days at all but rather leave it up to the employee and their manager in what’s called unlimited, open or managed time off, according to SHRM.

More than a dozen states and some counties and cities have passed legislation guaranteeing workers paid sick leave, according to advocacy group A Better Balance. But many of those laws exempt railroad workers specifically, in addition to government employees and some others.

For example, a New Mexico law that took effect July 1 allows workers to earn and take up to 64 hours of paid sick time a year.
Why didn't railway workers get the same type of sick leave?

But there are caveats. Laws like New Mexico's, which does not apply to “flight deck/cabin crews subject to the Railway Labor Act, certain railroad workers,” can have limits

The Railway Labor Act governs labor relations in the railroad and airline industries and therefore is written in as an exemption to many employment-related laws.

Instead of paid sick days, union members say they’ve been operating under various complex attendance policies that did not guarantee the ability to take a day off for illness or a doctor’s appointment without punishment.

A Better Balance is pushing for a federal sick leave law that would guarantee workers across the country the protected right to take time away from work for illness in their family without losing their jobs.

The Healthy Families Act would guarantee workers nationwide the right to earn up to seven paid sick days a year. The bill was last reintroduced in the House and Senate in 2021.
Rail unions say their sick leave policy was unfair

The railroads argued their attendance policies already provide ample opportunity for workers to call in for illness or a medical appointment without labeling a specific number of days as paid sick leave.

Employees who are essential to train operations can temporarily remove themselves from service, or “mark off,” for any reason, including sickness or personal reasons, said Ted Greener assistant vice president for public affairs for the Association of American Railroads, in an email.

“Mark-off days are not penalized. Some railroads use a point system to track these days off, which is not an issue unless employees reach zero points,” Greener said. “Sick days are not explicitly called such in this context, but they operate in a similar manner.”

But the unions have called the points system demoralizing.

Dennis Pierce, president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, said the turning point in negotiations last week came when the unions “finally convinced” the railroad companies to provide workers sick time.

The tentative agreement members of the 12 rail unions must vote on this week includes only one paid sick day, far short of the unions’ goal of 15.

But Pierce said even a single day is an improvement from recommendations by a Presidential Emergency Board that Biden assembled in July, which advised the unions to drop the sick leave question and handle any attendance policy disputes in the grievance and arbitration process.

In addition, the deal gives engineers and other workers voluntary days off – allowing their work schedule to resemble something closer to five days a week rather than a full week – and guarantees they won’t be fired for visiting physicians.

“That’s a big win for us,” he told USA TODAY in an interview. “We actually, for the first time ever, negotiated contract language that prevents the railroads from punishing our guys under the attendance policy to go to the doc. That's been a critical issue.”
How does the Hi-Viz points system work?

One of the attendance policies that uses points, and has been criticized by the rail unions, is BNSF Railroad’s Hi-Viz policy.

Under the system implemented in February, workers are given a bank of 30 points. If they miss a call to work an assignment, or can’t work because of illness or family emergency, they lose points.

The number of points lost depends on the type of employee, day of the week and type of assignment, but it typically ranges from 2 to 15 points for a 24-hour missed day.

Points are not affected by rest days required when an employee works a certain number of consecutive hours.

Employees can earn back 4 points by being available for work for 14 days straight, according to the policy. They don’t necessarily work all those days in a row; they just have to be available to work.

Anyone who losses all their points can be punished or terminated.

After much criticism of the system, the railroad revised the policy on June 1 and said employees would no longer lose points if they missed a call to work the day before or after a scheduled vacation. More ways to earn bonus points were also added, including rewarding those available to work most often with 7 points a month.

The unions and their supporters said those changes were not enough to fix a bad attendance policy.

“These changes do nothing to address the policy’s fundamental flaws," the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO said in a statement. "For example, allowing a worker to bank a few extra points will not offset the massive 15-point cost of a worker missing one high-impact day.”

Instead of addressing worker fatigue, the unions argued the changes incentivized exhaustion because they rewarded those who worked the most hours with more chances to earn points.

Neither iteration of the policy allows for an employee to take a paid sick day with no consequences, which is what the unions demanded during contract negotiations.

An AAR spokesperson said in a statement that the organization representing the major freight railroads is pleased with the tentative agreement.

"The agreements also address several scheduling and related matters, including time away from work for routine and preventive medical care, and provide that certain medical absences are not counted toward normal attendance handling," the statement said.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Railroad strike hinged on lack of paid sick leave. How common is that?

U$A

Deal that prevented rail strike still needs worker support

JOSH FUNK

Wed, September 21, 2022 

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A last-minute deal prevented a railroad strike for now, but many rail workers remain unhappy with working conditions, including some who protested outside their workplaces Wednesday ahead of votes to approve the new contracts.

Handfuls of workers gathered outside railyards across the country in pickets organized by a newly formed workers group separate from the 12 unions that negotiated the deals last week with the major U.S. freight railroads. The protesters expressed dissatisfaction with the deals, just as the unions are trying to explain the potential benefits they negotiated to their roughly 115,000 members ahead of contract votes.

Fears about the dire economic consequences of a rail strike that could cripple all kinds of businesses that rely on railroads to deliver raw materials and finished goods prompted the Biden administration to jump into the middle of the contract talks last week and urge both sides to reach an agreement. The contract talks included Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern, BNSF, CSX, Kansas City Southern and a number of other railroads, so the entire country would have been affected by a strike.

Nearly a dozen BNSF workers gathered near Minot, North Dakota, Wednesday with homemade signs declaring “We demand more!!” and “We will not back down.” Another group of a half dozen workers stood outside their worksite in Olathe, Kansas, with signs saying “Railroad greed driving inflation" and “Greedy railroads harming nations supply chain.”

Workers' concerns about time off and demanding attendance policies at the railroads took center stage in the negotiations. In the end, the unions that represent engineers and conductors secured a promise of three extra unpaid days off for workers to attend doctors' appointments without being penalized and improved scheduling of days off to go with the 24% raises and $5,000 in bonuses that a special board appointed by President Joe Biden recommended this summer for the five-year deals.

It remains to be seen whether those concessions are enough to get workers to vote for these deals. A branch of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union rejected a deal last week that didn't include those extra days off, so they are back at the table now working on a new pact. Two smaller unions did approve their deals, but the nine other unions will be counting their votes at various times over the next two months.

The two biggest unions that held out the longest — the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen union that represents engineers, and the Transportation Division of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers union that represents conductors — aren't expected to report the results of their votes until mid November. Members of those unions are still waiting to see all the details of the deals that Biden announced last Thursday because lawyers are still finalizing everything before the full agreements get released.

That puts any potential for a strike out beyond the midterm elections, which mitigates the potential political impact of the talks for Biden and the Democrats. If any of the unions do reject their contracts, Congress could still be forced to step in.

Recently retired engineer Marilee Taylor, who left the railroad in Chicago after more than 30 years earlier this year when BNSF imposed the strictest attendance policy in the industry, said she doesn't think the tentative agreements do enough to address the schedule and workload concerns after the major railroads eliminated nearly one-third of their workforces over the past six years. Unions say the railroads' strict policies make it hard to take any time off without a penalty.

“The issue remains we're working fatigued," said Taylor, who is active with the Railroad Workers United coalition that urged workers to go on strike. "The safety of ourselves, our coworkers and the people that we serve — whose communities we run through — are at risk .... These conditions are losing many, many workers who cannot maintain 90% of their every breathing moment in service or at the behest of the railroad.”

Norfolk Southern engineer Hugh Sawyer said it's hard to tell how many workers will ultimately vote for these deals because they might decide these agreements are the best they can get, although he said he's not hearing many people happy with them. Even if they remain frustrated, workers may not be willing to go on strike and risk having Congress intervene and impose a contract on them that could be worse than what the unions agreed to.

“We’re sick and tired of the way we’re treated out there,” said Sawyer, a 34-year veteran of the railroad who serves as treasurer of the Railroad Workers United group that includes workers from all the unions. “There's a lot of anger out there.”

One example of the schedule challenges rail workers face is that Sawyer just had outpatient surgery done earlier this week on one of his days off, but he has no idea when he'll be able to schedule an appointment to have the stitches removed from his head next week because he'll be on call then and doesn't know when he'll be working.

“It's just ridiculous,” he said.

States with abortion access have lower gender pay gap than states where abortion is restricted or illegal

Alejandra O'Connell-Domenech
Wed, September 21, 2022

Story at a glance

• A new study from MoneyGeek found that the average annual income and the median annual income for women is more often lower than men in states where abortion care is illegal or restricted.

• The MoneyGeek study underscores previous research claiming that abortion access has a profound impact on the economic lives of women.

• The states with the greatest gender pay gap include Wyoming, Utah and Mississippi, where abortion is now illegal, according to the study.

The gender pay gap has remained stable over the past 15 years, with women earning about 84 percent of what men earn.

But a new study from the personal finance company MoneyGeek found that the pay gap between women and men tends to be lower in states with more accessible abortion care and higher in states with restricted or banned abortion care.

The five states with the greatest gender pay gap — Wyoming, Utah, Louisiana, Mississippi and Idaho – are also where access to abortion is either restricted or, in the case of Mississippi, outright illegal, according to the study.

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In Wyoming — the state with the largest pay gap — the median income is $40,574, and women on average earn about 65 cents to every dollar earned by men.

Abortion is still legal in Wyoming while a lawsuit that contests a ban on the procedure moves forward.

Gov. Mark Gordon signed a “trigger ban” in March, written to take effect if the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which it did this summer. The law criminalizes abortion except in the cases of rape, incest or if the pregnancy poses a risk to the mother’s life “not including any psychological or emotional conditions.”

Health care providers who violate the ban would be charged with a felony and could face up to 14 years of prison time under the law.

In August, a Wyoming judge temporarily blocked the legislation, pausing the ban.

Utah, Louisiana and Idaho ahave restricted access to abortion care and women make about 69 cents, 73 cents and 74 cents to the dollar compared to men respectively, according to the study.

Women in Mississippi, where the state government is currently enforcing its trigger ban, on average make about 73 cents for every dollar that male residents earn.

The MoneyGeek study underscores other research showing that abortion access is strongly linked to women’s financial wellbeing. Last year, The Brookings Institution released an analysis that found access to abortion “profoundly” impacts the economic lives of women by determining if and when they become mothers.

The five states with the narrowest gender pay gap are Vermont, New York, Nevada, Alaska and California. Women earn about 89, 88, 86 and 85 cents respectively for every dollar men make.

Three of those states, Vermont, New York and California, expanded access to abortion care after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

In response to the Supreme Court’s decision, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared the state as a “safe harbor” for people trying to access an abortion. Hochul also announced that she would allocate $35 million to abortion providers to help clinics manage the expected influx of patients stemming from the overturning of Roe.

Those funds were distributed in two parts. The governor directed the New York Department of Health to allot $25 million into an Abortion Services Provider Fund and ordered the state to put aside $10 million in security grants for reproductive health centers.

California has followed suit, with Gov. Gavin Newsom also recently proclaiming the state as an abortion safe haven. California lawmakers passed a slew of bills to protect and expand abortion care access.

Those bills include legislation that would ensure no one in the state would be investigated, prosecuted or incarcerated for terminating a pregnancy or suffering a miscarriage and bar professional boards from suspending licenses of those who administer legal abortion care in California and other states.

In Alaska and Nevada, abortion rights are protected. In 1990, Arizona residents passed a referendum protecting the state’s law legalizing abortion, and in Alaska’s highest court recognized the right to reproductive choice under the state’s constitution, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.

It was set to be Nebraska’s largest wind project. Then the military stepped in.

A Nebraska county of only 625 people contained nearly 100 deep underground nuclear missiles, so the US Air Force halted a green-power project that would have revitalized its economy

Farmer Jim Young gestures to a missile silo on his land near Harrisburg in Banner County. Young and other landowners are frustrated by the Air Force’s decision to ban windmills within two nautical miles of these missile silos – a decision that has paused and may end the biggest wind energy project in Nebraska history. Photo by Fletcher Halfaker for the Flatwater Free Press

By Natalia Alamdari
September 16, 2022
Flatwater Free Press
Nebraska's important stories. Well told.

NEAR HARRISBURG–In bone-dry Banner County, clouds of dirt drift into the sky as rumbling tractors till the sun-baked soil.

In some fields, the ground is still too dry to start planting winter wheat.

“This is the first time in my life I haven’t been able to get wheat in the ground,” said Jim Young, standing in a field that’s been in his family for 80 years. “We get very little rain. And we get a lot of wind.”

Some of the country’s best wind, in fact.

That’s why 16 years ago, wind energy companies started courting landowners up and down County Road 14 north of Kimball — a deep purple smear through the Nebraska Panhandle on wind speed maps. The sign of high-speed, reliable wind.

With about 150,000 acres leased by energy companies, this county of just 625 people stood poised to become home to as many as 300 wind turbines.

It would have been the largest wind project in the state, bringing in loads of money for the landowners, the developers, the county and local schools.

But then, an unexpected roadblock: The U.S. Air Force.

A map of missile silos under the watch of F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne. Green dots are launch facilities, and purple dots are missile alert facilities. There are 82 missile silos and nine missile alert facilities in western Nebraska, an Air Force spokesperson said. F.E. Warren Air Force Base

Under the dusty fields of Banner County are dozens of nuclear missiles. Housed in military silos dug more than 100 feet into the ground, the Cold War relics lie in wait across rural America, part of the country’s nuclear defenses.

For decades, tall structures like wind turbines needed to be at least a quarter mile away from the missile silos.

But earlier this year, the military changed its policy.

One of many missile silos located in Banner County. Many of the silos are arranged in a grid pattern and spaced roughly six miles apart. Placed here during the 1960s, the Air Force silos, which house nuclear weapons, are now hampering a massive wind energy project. Photo by Fletcher Halfaker for the Flatwater Free Press

Now, they said, turbines now can’t be within two nautical miles of the silos. The switch ruled out acres of land energy companies had leased from locals — and wrested a potential windfall from dozens of farmers who’d waited 16 years for the turbines to become reality.

The stalled Banner County project is unique, but it’s one more way that Nebraska struggles to harness its main renewable energy resource.

Oft-windy Nebraska ranks eighth in the country in potential wind energy, according to the federal government. The state’s wind energy output has improved markedly in recent years. But Nebraska continues to lag far behind neighbors Colorado, Kansas and Iowa, all of whom have become national leaders in wind.

The Banner County projects would have grown Nebraska’s wind capacity by 25%. It’s now unclear how many turbines will be possible because of the Air Force’s rule change.

“This would have been a big deal for a lot of farmers. And it would have been an even bigger deal for every property owner in Banner County,” Young said. “It’s just a killer. Don’t know how else to say it.”

LIVING WITH NUKES

John Jones was driving his tractor when out of nowhere, helicopters whizzed past overhead. His tractor had kicked up enough dust to trigger a nearby missile silo’s motion detectors.

Jeeps sped up and armed men jumped out to inspect the potential threat.

“I just kept farming,” Jones said.

The people of Banner County have coexisted with the missile silos since the 1960s. To keep up with Soviet nuclear technology, the U.S. began planting hundreds of missiles in the most rural parts of the country, positioning them to shoot up over the North Pole and into the Soviet Union at a moment’s notice

.

Tom May examines the growth of his recently planted wheat. May, who has been farming in Banner County for more than 40 years, says his wheat has never been as impacted by drought conditions as it is this year. May, who had contracted with wind energy companies to allow wind turbines to be placed on his ground, says that an Air Force rule switch now won’t allow a single wind turbine on his land. Photo by Fletcher Halfaker for the Flatwater Free Press

Today, there are decommissioned silos scattered throughout Nebraska. But 82 silos in the Panhandle are still active and controlled 24/7 by Air Force crews.

Four hundred intercontinental ballistic missiles — ICBMs — are burrowed in the ground across northern Colorado, western Nebraska, Wyoming, North Dakota and Montana. The 80,000-pound missiles can fly 6,000 miles in less than a half-hour and inflict damage 20 times greater than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima in World War II.

“If we ever get bombed, they say this is the first place they’re going to bomb, because of the silos that we’ve got here,” said farmer Tom May.

Every acre of May’s property sits within the two miles of a missile silo. Under the new Air Force rule, he can’t put a single wind turbine on his ground.

Wind turbine developers first came to Banner County about 16 years ago – men in polos and dress pants who held a public meeting for interested landowners at the school in Harrisburg.

Banner had what developers called “world-class wind.” Many landowners were eager – signing away their acres came with the promise of roughly $15,000 per turbine per year. The turbines were also going to pump money into the county and school system, said county officials and company executives.

“In Banner County, it would have reduced property taxes to damn near nothing,” Young said they were told.

Eventually, two companies – Invenergy and Orion Renewable Energy Group – finalized plans to put up wind turbines in Banner County.

Environmental impact studies were completed. Permits, leases and contracts were signed.

Orion had 75 to 100 turbines planned, and hoped to have a project operating by this year.

Invenergy was going to build as many as 200 turbines. The company had qualified for federal tax credits to start the project and had even poured the concrete pads that the turbines would sit upon, covering them back up with earth so farmers could use the land until construction began.

But discussions with the military starting in 2019 brought the projects to a screeching halt.

Wind turbines pose a “significant flight safety hazard,” an Air Force spokesman said in an email. Those turbines didn’t exist when the silos were built. Now that they dot the rural landscape, the Air Force said it needed to reevaluate its setback rules. The final number it settled on was two nautical miles — 2.3 miles on land — so helicopters wouldn’t crash during blizzards or storms.

The distance was necessary to keep aircrews safe during “routine daily security operations, or critical contingency response operations, while also co-existing with our fellow Americans who own and work the land around these vital facilities,” a spokesman said.

In May, military officials traveled from Wyoming’s F.E. Warren Air Force Base to break the news to landowners. On an overhead projector at Kimball’s Sagebrush Restaurant, they showed enlarged photos of what helicopter pilots see when flying near turbines in a snowstorm.

For most landowners, the news came as a gutpunch. They said they support national security and keeping service members safe. But they wonder: Is eight times as much distance necessary?

“They don’t own that land. But all of a sudden, they have the power to strike the whole thing down, telling us what we can and can’t do,” Jones said. “All we’d like to do is negotiate. 4.6 miles [diameter] is way too far, as far as I’m concerned.”

Off County Road 19, a chain link fence separates a missile silo entrance from surrounding farmland. Young parks across the road and points over a hill to a meteorological tower put in by an energy company.

There are acres of farmland between the missile silo and the tower. The tower Young is pointing to appears as a small line on the horizon, topped with a blinking red light.

“When you can land a helicopter on top of any hospital in the country, they’re saying that this is too close,” Young said, pointing to the missile silo and the distant tower. “Now you know why we’re pissed, right?”

WIND ENERGY IMPROVING, BUT STILL LAGGING

Nebraska built its first wind turbines in 1998 — two towers west of Springview. Installed by the Nebraska Public Power District, the pair were a test run for a state whose neighbor Iowa had been promoting wind energy since the early 1980s.

A map of wind facilities in Nebraska shows wind speeds throughout the state. The dark purple band cutting Banner County in half indicates where the two wind projects would have gone. Courtesy of the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy

By 2010, Nebraska was 25th in the country at producing wind-generated power — the bottom of the pack among windy Great Plains states.

The reasons fueling the lag were uniquely Nebraskan. Nebraska is the only state served entirely by publicly owned utilities, mandated to deliver the cheapest electricity possible.

Federal tax credits for wind farms only applied to the private sector. With a smaller population, already cheap electricity and limited access to transmission lines, Nebraska lacked the market to make wind energy worthwhile.

A decade of legislation helped change that calculus. Public utilities were allowed to buy power from private wind developers. A state law diverted taxes collected from wind developers back to the county and school district — the reason the Banner wind farms may have shrunk taxes for county residents.

Now, Nebraska has enough wind turbines to generate 3,216 megawatts, moving to fifteenth in the nation.

It’s modest growth, experts said. But with new federal legislation incentivizing wind and solar energy, and the three largest Nebraska public power districts committing to going carbon neutral, wind energy in the state is expected to accelerate.

The biggest obstacle now may be Nebraskans who don’t want wind turbines in their counties.

The turbines are noisy eyesores, some say. Without federal tax credits, they aren’t necessarily a financially wise way to generate electricity, said Tony Baker, legislative aide for Sen. Tom Brewer.

In April, Otoe County Commissioners imposed a one-year moratorium on wind projects. In Gage County, officials passed restrictions that would prevent any future wind development. Since 2015, county commissioners in Nebraska have rejected or restricted wind farms 22 times, according to energy journalist Robert Bryce’s national database.

“The first thing we heard out of everyone’s mouth was how, ‘We don’t want those damn wind turbines next to our place,’” Baker said, describing visits with Brewer’s Sandhills constituents. “Wind energy tears apart the fabric of communities. You have a family that benefits from it, wants it, but everybody that neighbors them doesn’t.”Many wind turbines can be found near Banner County in neighboring Kimball County. This area of Nebraska is one of the best places in the United States for consistent, high-speed winds, energy experts say. Photo by Fletcher Halfaker for the Flatwater Free Press

John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, said pushback over wind farms has ramped up in recent years. But it’s a loud minority, he said. Eighty percent of rural Nebraskans thought more should be done to develop wind and solar energy, according to a 2015 University of Nebraska-Lincoln poll.

“It’s that NIMBY problem,” Hansen said, using the acronym meaning, “Not in My Backyard.” It’s, “‘I’m not against wind energy, I just don’t want it in my area.’ Their goal is to make sure that no project gets built, period.”

For Nebraska towns facing shrinking populations, wind turbines can mean economic opportunity, Hansen said. In Petersburg, the influx of workers after a wind farm was built led a failing grocery store to instead build a second location, he said. It’s the equivalent of a part-time job for farmers who agree to turbines.

“It’s like having an oil well on your land without all the pollution,” said Dave Aiken, a UNL ag economics professor. “You’d think it would be a no-brainer.”

In Banner County, the economic benefit would have bled into the surrounding area as well, landowners said. Crews building turbines would have bought groceries and stayed in hotels in neighboring Kimball and Scotts Bluff counties.

Now, the landowners aren’t entirely sure what’s next. Orion said the Air Force decision rules out at least half its planned turbines. It still hopes to have a project running in 2024. Invenergy declined to detail any future plans.

“This resource is just there, ready to be used,” Brady Jones, John Jones’ son, said. “How do we walk away from that? At a time when we’re passing legislation that would vastly increase investment in wind energy in this country? That energy’s got to come from somewhere.”

The Flatwater Free Press is Nebraska’s first independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories that matter.

By Natalia Alamdari
Natalia Alamdari has worked at newspapers throughout the country. Her reporting has taken her to small town shooting ranges in Missouri, contentious school board meetings in Delaware, and aquariums in Texas. Working at the Flatwater Free Press is a return to Nebraska — in college, she spent a summer interning at the Omaha World-Herald. She is a graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia and native Texan. When she’s not reporting, you can probably find her baking, petting her cat, or trying out a new crafty hobby.

An ‘immortal’ gas pollutes far more than carbon dioxide. But emissions are largely unregulated.

Phil McKenna, Inside Climate News - 16h ago

This article was published in partnership with Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news outlet that covers climate, energy and the environment.

DAVIDSON, N.C. — Four thin, metal cylinders containing the world’s most potent greenhouse gas stand lashed to the base of a Duke Energy substation on a quiet country road. The tanks are made to hold sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), an electrical insulator that was once used to fill race car tires, tennis balls and even Nike Air Max shoes.

A single pound of SF6 heats the planet as much as 25,200 pounds of carbon dioxide and remains in the atmosphere for 3,200 years, according to the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. SF6 is one of several long-lived, synthetic, fluorine-containing chemicals that are released by heavy industry, chemical manufacturers, semiconductor-makers and electric utilities according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA, which does not regulate emissions of any of these potent greenhouse gases, notes that once they are released, they are “essentially permanent additions to the atmosphere.”

In 2020, Duke Energy, which provides electricity in six states, leaked nearly 11 metric tons of SF6 into the atmosphere from its electric substations in North and South Carolina alone, more than any other utility in the nation, according to mandatory reports the company files with the EPA each year, reviewed by Inside Climate News. The emissions were equal to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of more than 59,000 automobiles, according to the EPA’s greenhouse gas equivalency calculator.

Jeff Brooks, a spokesperson for Duke Energy, based a half-hour south of here in Charlotte, said a possible reason the company’s emissions were higher than all other utilities in 2020 may be a reflection of how often Duke Energy inspects equipment and refills leaked gas relative to other companies. If, for example, Duke Energy only refilled leaked gas on an individual piece of equipment every five years while other companies refilled leaked gas every two years, Duke would report five years worth of emissions for that piece of equipment for the year it was refilled, while other companies would only report two years worth of emissions, Brooks said.

Under such a scenario Duke Energy would likely have years of low emissions punctuated by a single year of high emissions. However, this is not the case. SF6 emissions from Duke Energy’s North and South Carolina electric utilities have been the highest of any electric power company in the country for six of the last seven years, according to company data reported to the EPA.

While other utilities have participated for decades in a voluntary program with the EPA to reduce SF6 emissions to next to nothing, Duke Energy has not. Duke Energy’s leak rate in North and South Carolina, where it reports combined emissions from subsidiaries Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress as a single entity, was 5.2% in 2020, or more than five times higher than the average leak rate of utilities that participate in the EPA’s voluntary emissions reduction program.

Based on emissions data Duke Energy reported to the EPA, the two utilities emitted 119 tons of SF6 in the last decade alone, the greenhouse gas equivalent of more than half a million automobiles over a one-year period.

Brooks said the company is currently replacing older equipment across all six states that it serves as part of a grid strengthening and resiliency initiative. The initiative will replace older, 1970s-era circuit breakers that use SF6 and are more leak-prone, with newer, more leak-resistant equipment that still uses SF6. Brooks said Duke Energy is also targeting its most leaky equipment for faster replacement.

Brooks said he didn’t know why Duke Energy, the largest electric power corporation in the U.S. based on revenue, wasn’t part of the EPA-industry partnership but said his company was “open to evaluating it.”



Image: Thermal images of electrical equipment at a Duke Energy substation. (Philip McKenna)© Philip McKenna

The leading users, and emitters, of sulfur hexafluoride are electric utilities that use the gas as an insulator to prevent electrical equipment from arcing, or sending an electric current jumping through the air, and in high-voltage circuit breakers to quickly interrupt electric current. The gas is housed in pressurized tanks at utility substations, and a small amount is often emitted either through equipment leaks or improper handling during servicing or disposal of the gas.

Electric utilities often use the portable SF6 cylinders to refill, or “top-up,” leaking electrical equipment, according to the EPA. Duke Energy confirmed that the cylinders at its substation in Davidson held SF6 but would not say why they were at the substation or whether they were full or empty. “We sometimes stage cylinders at our sites for upcoming equipment commissioning or maintenance,” Brooks said.

Now, the 88 utilities that are current members of the EPA emissions reduction program, representing nearly half of the U.S. electric grid, are eyeing ways to eliminate SF6 emissions entirely.

Unless the rate at which utilities leak SF6 decreases, U.S. emissions will likely grow along with the electric grid. Recent studies suggest the electric grid will have to increase its transmission capacity to two to five times its current level by midcentury if the U.S. is to meet its net-zero emissions goals.

And just as Duke Energy lags its peers in the electric power industry in reducing its emissions of SF6, the U.S. lags other countries. Europe and Japan have adopted SF6 emission reduction measures to the “greatest extent possible,” a 2013 EPA report concluded, while the U.S. has “significant potential for reductions.”

In 2009, the EPA determined that SF6 threatened “the public health and welfare of current and future generations” in part of a sweeping “endangerment finding” on greenhouse gases. Thirteen years later, the agency continues to rely on voluntary measures for SF6 emission reductions.

Sally Rand, a former EPA official who led the agency’s voluntary partnerships with industry that helped reduce emissions in the 1990s and early 2000s, and other former EPA officials say it’s time to re-engage industry and redouble efforts to eliminate the remaining fluorinated gas emissions.

“They abandoned the partnerships early,” said Stephen Andersen, director of research at the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development and a former EPA official who pioneered the agency’s industry partnerships. “It was a terrible mistake.”

Molecules that ‘live forever’

In the early 1990s, SF6 was widely used, as the “air” in race car tires, tennis balls and Nike Air shoes. Refrigeration and air conditioning companies were eyeing similar fluorine-based chemicals as an environmentally friendly alternative to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), chlorinated chemicals that were destroying atmospheric ozone.

The synthetic fluorine compounds were odorless, colorless, nontoxic, nonflammable and incredibly durable. They didn’t harm the ozone layer, and in the case of SF6, its large molecular size meant that it wouldn’t easily leak, keeping a shoe, ball or car tire inflated for far longer than ambient air.

The strong bonds fluorine formed with carbon and other atoms meant the chemicals were both incredibly inert — they wouldn’t react with other chemicals — and highly resistant to degradation. The chemistry led to long-lasting refrigerants like Freon, as well as nonstick and stain-resistant coatings like Teflon and Scotchgard. Thom Sueta, a spokesperson for The Chemours Company, said that one Teflon branded product, Teflon EcoElite, does not contain the fluorine-carbon chemistry of PFAS.

Then, in 1993, researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published a study in Science showing just how durable these compounds were.

“They live forever,” said lead author A. R. “Ravi” Ravishankara, who called them “immortal molecules.” Now a professor of chemistry and atmospheric science at Colorado State University, Ravishankara said he was concerned about the chemicals’ growing use at the time and what unintended impacts they might have on the environment. He warned that if chemicals in use are found to cause harm, “you just can’t take it away,” he said.

Ravishankara immediately stopped using the fluorinated chemicals in his lab. When a representative from Nike who had heard about his study called to ask about the chemicals’ safety, he urged them to do the same.

“I said this is a horrible thing to do,” Ravishankara said. Nike eventually phased out use of SF6 in 2006, more than a decade later. Nike notes on its website that it was aware of the problem in the 1990s but that it took “years of innovation” to transition off of sulfur hexafluoride.

The largely unregulated class of synthetic, fluorine-containing chemicals became known as “the immortals” because of how long they remain in the atmosphere. The human-made compounds — which also include tetrafluoromethane (CF4) and hexafluoroethane (C2F6) — are some of the most potent and longest-lasting greenhouse gases on the planet. Tetrafluoromethane, which is a byproduct of aluminum manufacturing, is the longest-lived of all. It has an atmospheric lifetime of 50,000 years.

The chemicals share the same fluorine-based chemistry as per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) substances, the toxic “forever chemicals” linked to cancer that are used in everything from nonstick coating on pots and pans to fast-food packaging, water-repellent clothing and cosmetics

Ranajit Sahu, an independent environmental consultant and engineer, said the chemicals had a “few decades of great use, and then the after-effects started to be felt.”

“First we had ozone depletion, then PFAS contamination, now climate change, all from the same carbon-fluorine chemistry,” Sahu said.

Global emissions of these long-lived “F” gases in 2018 equaled the climate impact of 264 million tons of carbon dioxide, based on an Inside Climate News assessment of the European Union’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research.

The figure is roughly half of 1% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, far smaller than yearly emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary driver of climate change. However, the emissions are still significant, equal to the greenhouse gas emissions of putting an extra 57 million automobiles on the road each year, according the EPA’s greenhouse gas equivalency calculator — and driving those cars for thousands of years.

Low-cost methods could quickly bring emissions of the fluorinated climate pollutants to near zero and, in some cases, can even save the companies money.

“Technically feasible substitutes exist for every single one of these F gases,” Benjamin Sovacool, director of the Institute for Global Sustainability at Boston University.

“They’re man-made. You can make other ones.”

When planet-saving moves are money-saving too

Electric utilities that participate or have participated in the EPA program represent nearly half of the U.S. electric grid. Those participants have lowered their annual accidental emissions of sulfur hexafluoride from 13% of the total SF6 they used in 1999 to just 1% in 2020, according to the EPA’s most recent inventory of greenhouse gas emissions.

Reducing the amount of gas that leaks when workers refill or drain SF6 tanks on electrical equipment makes economic sense. Large utilities use hundreds of thousands of pounds of SF6 across their service areas. At approximately $15 a pound, the cost of having to replace even a small percentage of lost gas each year adds up.

This was the case with California utility Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which reduced its SF6 leak rate from 8% to 4% over a three-year period ending in 2002. The company spent $100,000 implementing new policies to reduce emissions and saved $400,000 in avoided gas purchases for a net savings of $300,000, according to a case study published by the EPA in 2006.

Similarly, the Southern Company, which provides power across the Southeast and is one of the nation’s largest utilities, reduced its SF6 emissions rate from 10.4% in 1999 to 2.9% in 2006, the agency reported in 2007. The decrease in emissions saved the company $130,000 in 2006 and lowered costs associated with outages and maintenance according to the EPA.

Brooks, the Duke Energy spokesperson, said SF6 represents a small part of its total emissions, but they are taking steps to reduce leaks.

“It accounts for about three-tenths of 1% of our total greenhouse gas inventory,” Brooks said. “From an effectiveness standpoint, obviously addressing our direct source [carbon dioxide] emissions is a priority for the company. But we’re also looking at opportunities to reduce the output of SF6 from our equipment.”



Residents Prepare As Hurricane Florence Barrels Towards The Carolinas (Charles Mostoller / Bloomberg via Getty Images file)© Charles Mostoller

While the combined emissions from Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress represent the nation’s largest source of SF6 emissions, the combined utilities did not have the highest leak rate in 2020. That distinction went to Southwestern Public Service Company, a small utility in Texas owned by Xcel Energy.

Southwestern leaked 11.5% of the total SF6 it stored in 2020, a rate more than twice that of Duke Energy Carolinas, according to an Inside Climate News assessment of EPA data. A spokesperson for Xcel said the high rate of emissions was due to a reporting error. An EPA spokesperson confirmed that the company submitted revised emissions data earlier this year that the agency is now assessing.

The states step in

While the EPA hasn’t pursued regulations, some states have. In 2010, California required utilities to reduce SF6 emissions by 1% per year. The state allowed for a maximum emissions rate of 10% per year starting in 2011, lowering it to 1% by 2020. Now California is going further, phasing out the use of SF6 for all new electrical equipment by 2033.

“If it’s going to stick around for a long time, it means you need to start taking action sooner rather than later so you don’t keep on continuing to emit it and it keeps piling up in the atmosphere,” said Mary Jane Coombs, a branch chief with the California Air Resources Board, which regulates greenhouse gas emissions in the state, of the state’s SF6 rules. “Because of its time in the atmosphere and because of its global warming potential, we knew we could do a lot with a relatively quick regulation.”

An Inside Climate News analysis of EPA data suggests three California electric utilities — Southern California Edison, PG&E and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District — exceeded the 1.0% maximum leak rate, with leak rates ranging from 1.1 to 1.3% in 2020, the most recent year for which data is available.

Dave Clegern, a spokesperson for the California Air Resources Board, said only one of the three utilities, PG&E, exceeded state regulations, with a 1.1% emissions rate in 2020. Clegern said state and federal methods of calculating the leakage rates may differ slightly and added that the final figure for one of the utilities, Southern California Edison, is still being finalized and could change.

PG&E spokesperson James Noonan said the company’s “actual emission rate for 2020 was within state limits of 1 percent.”



Image: Electrical transmission towers at a Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) electrical substation during a heatwave in Vacaville, Calif., on Sept. 4, 2022. (David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images)© David Paul Morris

Clegern said, “CARB has been in discussions with PG&E but disagrees with PG&E’s assertions.”

It’s unclear what, if any, repercussions PG&E will face for exceeding the emissions limit. Clegern said the Air Resources Board can’t comment on any open enforcement cases.

Massachusetts implemented similar rules for SF6, allowing Eversource and National Grid, the state’s two main electric utilities, to leak up to 3.5% of all the SF6 they used in 2015 and ratcheting down to a 1% maximum leak rate by 2020. Both utilities were below the maximum allowable leak rate in 2020 according to the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.

But even in states without SF6 regulations, utilities are reducing their emissions far more than Duke Energy.

PPL Electric Utilities, an electric company in Pennsylvania, where SF6 is not regulated, had a leak rate of just 0.045%, the lowest leak rate of any of the more than 70 electric utilities in the nation who submitted data to the EPA in 2020.

“We’re doing it because of the environmental reasons, but the great side effect of it is that we also have great reliability,” said David Quier, vice president of transmission and substations for PPL Electric Utilities. It’s “good all around.”

Quier said his company is using data analytics to help the company stay on top of leaks.

“Say you have an SF6 breaker that data analytics shows is trending toward failure,” Quier said. “Failure for that breaker means a significant leak. Eventually, it’s going to have to get replaced. You can replace it before it has the big leak or you can replace it afterwards.”

PPL and other electric utilities are now going further, piloting SF6-free electrical equipment at their substations.

Executives with Eversource — which provides electricity to Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire — say they hope to have their first high-voltage SF6-free circuit breaker in service in Preston, Connecticut, in November.



ImagE: A view underneath the Eversource substation on the Boston waterfront on April 18, 2017. (David L. Ryan / Boston Globe via Getty Images file)© David L. Ryan

“We’re one of the first, if not the first, to apply this technology,” Paul Melzen, director of substation engineering and design for Eversource, said of the specific type of breaker the company is installing. “We’re proud of that one because we are really leading our peers.”

Melzen said limiting SF6 emissions is a key part of the company’s goal to be carbon neutral by 2030. Eversource already has a relatively low leak rate of 0.5%, according to company officials. As the company looks ahead, Melzen said the next step is to transition to SF6-free electrical equipment.

The equipment Eversource plans to install this fall is a “vacuum circuit breaker,” which uses a vacuum space, or the absence of any gas, to interrupt electric current. From a climate perspective, vacuum breakers are a positive alternative because they don’t emit any greenhouse gas.

However, a report released by the EPA’s Electric Power Systems Partnership in 2020 noted that it would be “difficult” to employ similar equipment for even higher-voltage applications that use the most SF6 gas. An alternative, fluorinated gas known as Novec is becoming increasingly available for higher-voltage equipment.

3M, the chemical company that makes that gas, said it reduces the carbon footprint of leaks from high-voltage equipment by more than 99% compared to equipment using SF6 and, unlike SF6, remains in the atmosphere for only 30 years. Novec is nonflammable and does not harm atmospheric ozone, and 3M says the gas has low toxicity.

Melzen said Eversource is now beginning the permitting process for a new substation in Massachusetts that he hopes will use Novec gas when it comes online later this decade. If the company can use Novec-based equipment, the new substation will eliminate the need for more than 60,000 pounds of additional SF6.

“We’re taking it very seriously,” Melzen said.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

James Webb Telescope captured a stunning image of Neptune you have to see to believe

By Joshua Hawkins
September 21st, 2022 

Neptune is the furthest known planet in our solar system. Because of that distance, getting great views of this ringed planet has been difficult. Now, though, James Webb has captured a stunning image of Neptune. In fact, the image is so stunning that the European Space Agency claims that it’s the clearest view of the planet we’ve had since 1989.

Neptune was first discovered in 1846, and when Pluto was booted from the planetary roster in 2006, it officially became our solar system’s outermost planet. Now, James Webb has given us a unique look at the planet, including more details about the planet’s beautiful and often overlooked ring system.

Neptune is so far away from our planet that the last time we got a good look at the planet with any kind of detail was 1989, back when Voyager 2 completed its flyby. Those images were great, but they didn’t offer a complete look at the planet’s ring system. Now, with this new James Webb image of Neptune, we’re seeing rings we’ve never captured before.

Image source: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

It’s a striking reminder of just how powerful James Webb is. The images were taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). On top of being the first time we’ve imaged the planet so clearly in the last three decades, this is also the first time we’ve looked at Neptune using infrared light.

However, James Webb’s image of Neptune is just a start for the space telescope. We already saw the kind of detail possible with Webb’s first images. But, as astronomers search for inhabitable exoplanets, we’ll no doubt lean on Webb even more. Of course, there are concerns that our current model could cause us to misinterpret Webb’s data, but that’s another problem altogether.

For now, we can at least appreciate this spectacular James Webb image of Neptune. And, if you’re looking for more beautiful sites captured by James Webb, you should check out the space telescope’s capture of the Orion Nebula.