The flower industry has a thorny environmental problem — and plastic is just part of it

Social Sharing

CBC News · Posted: Sep 23, 2022 

(Daniel Leal/AFP/Getty Images)

Over the past few weeks, as a tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth, mourners laid hundreds of thousands of bouquets at royal residences and parks across the U.K.

As moving as some found it to see Buckingham Palace, Balmoral, Sandringham and Windsor Castle awash in a sea of floral tributes, others saw something else: plastic. 

In central London's Green Park last Monday — one of many locations where people left flowers — workers bundled bags of discarded plastic wrappers and cellophane from bouquets left in honour of the Queen. In images posted in the Daily Mail, volunteers were seen cutting wrappers from bouquets, and a large flat-bed truck was stuffed with dozens of bags of the plastic waste. 

Becky Feasby, a sustainable florist and owner of Prairie Girl Flowers in Calgary, said she had two thoughts when she saw the royal tributes. First, that the bulk of those flowers was likely imported. Second, she was struck by the "sheer volume of plastic wrapping." 

"The amount of single-use plastic waste is truly staggering," said Feasby, who is also working on her master's degree in sustainability at Harvard University.

When thinking about harmful environmental practices, it might not seem obvious to consider the flower industry — which, after all, celebrates beautiful blooms grown of this earth.

"We think of them as gestures of kindness or empathy or affection," Feasby said. "But the reality of the global flower industry is that the bulk of our flowers are grown in the Global South and transported worldwide in refrigerated cargo jets and trucks, wrapped in plastic and arranged in toxic floral foam."

Depending on where the flowers come from, there's industrial farming and the effects of pesticides, fertilizers or water-hungry greenhouses to consider, said Kai Chan, a professor at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia, and a Canada Research Chair in rewilding and social-ecological transformation. 

"When people come to learn about just how damaging the industrial farming of flowers is, it doesn't feel like such a good gift," Chan said. 

There's also the carbon footprint of importing exotic or out-of-season blooms — and quickly — to keep them fresh. Canada imported $137.8 million in cut flowers and buds for ornamental purposes in 2020, largely from Colombia, Ecuador, the U.S. and the Netherlands, according to Agriculture Canada's Statistical Overview of the Canadian Ornamental Industry.

Then there's the packaging, which often includes the green floral foam that flowers are arranged in, and which has been shown to contribute to the world's microplastic pollution. Finally, wrap it all up in a plastic or cellophane sleeve. 

Vancouver's MonteCristo magazine reports traditional floristry produces up to 100,000 tonnes of plastic waste each year.

Only nine per cent of plastic waste worldwide is actually recycled, with the bulk winding up in landfills, according to a 2022 OECD report. But the kind of wrapping used to package flowers is also light and flimsy, Chan noted, and thus likely to blow out of a landfill and into a nearby river, lake or ocean.

If you love fresh flowers — as a gift, a tribute or for yourself — there are plenty of ways to make environmentally friendly choices. Support for increased sustainability in the floral industry is increasing thanks to organizations such as the Sustainable Floristry Network and Slow Flowers, Feasby noted.

You can support locally grown, seasonal flower farmers, many of whom may use regenerative and organic growing practices. Look for florists who sell their bouquets in recycled paper or reusable glass vases. 

This may mean buying your blooms from a local farmers' market or directly from a sustainable florist, and it may mean spending a little more money than you would at the grocery store checkout line, Chan said.

"It can still look beautiful, and it will be more meaningful. And arguably, that's the point."

As for the flowers that adorned the Queen's coffin during her funeral on Monday, they were local and meaningful: cut from the gardens of Buckingham Palace and Clarence House, they included myrtle grown from a sprig saved from the monarch's 1947 wedding bouquet. 

— Natalie Stechyson

Why Indigenous-led projects could be key to combating Canada’s energy dilemma

By Neetu Garcha 

 Global News
September 23, 2022 

 How Indigenous ownership can be part of Canada's energy solution

Canada’s energy dilemma can be dealt with in-part through Indigenous-led clean energy projects, according to some First Nations leaders in B.C. who say they’re too often left out of the conversation.

The path forward, they say, would involve their communities having an equity stake in major projects, while placing this country on the map as a leading exporter of some of the natural resources the world relies on.

“We have so much energy in this country and Indigenous people need to be part of the decision-making process as it relates to resource development. They need to have loan guarantees to buy an equity stake in these projects. Those are key factors that will help Canadians in this country keep oil and gas within the country and export it to other countries,” Wet’suwet’en hereditary chief Theresa Tait-Day told 

Tait-Day says with centuries-old ancestral knowledge of protecting lands and natural resources, Indigenous people in Canada can play a major role in helping the world reduce its reliance on fossil fuels.

“It’s important that industry talk to the (First Nation) and understand the nation, understand the history, understand how we’re governed, understand the Indian Act, understand how it’s impacting us,” Tait-Day said.

“And I think that’s a real call-out from me to the government to not just go in blindly, but there’s a whole parameter around engagement and we have failed to figure that out.”

The matriarch from a nation at the centre of Canada’s pipeline fight says many First Nations see energy projects as a way to help their members, in part by generating revenue to help reduce their reliance on government funding – something she says is only possible if it’s done right.

“We’ve never owned a pipeline. We’ve never owned a mine. We have never had an equity stake in this. So the dialog and the conversation hasn’t been at the community level,” she said.

In her own community, blockades and marches in 2019 led by other hereditary chiefs brought construction of the contentious Coastal Gaslink pipeline to a standstill, threatening Canada’s new LNG terminal on the west coast.

READ MORE: First Nations leaders renew call to stop B.C. pipeline projects as UN raps Canada

“It is Indigenous Peoples’ right to self-determination and to be self-determining according to our laws, our traditional governance systems,” Sleydo’ (Molly Wickham), spokesperson for the Gidimt’en Checkpoint said on May 11, 2022.

Many of those opposed to the project say the pipeline doesn’t have consent to cross through their territory but others within the nation disagree, instead signing an agreement with the company along with 19 other nations along the nearly 670-kilometre route. Those nations now have the option of equity ownership of ten per cent of the project.

With Russia’s war in Ukraine shining another light on the danger of our allies’ dependence on foreign energy sources, Tait-Day says governments and industry need to do a better job of setting the stage for meaningful dialogue.

“We have to have global security. We have to have control of our energy projects as Canadians, as Indigenous people, and to play a part in a global market, be the distributors to help our nations, Canadians and Indigenous people across the country to be sustainable. We’ve seen what happens when we rely on Russia,” Tait-Day said.

To help move the process along, she co-founded the First Nations Major Projects Coalition (FNMPC). She says together, they’re supporting 90 Indigenous communities who have ideas about their future and green energy.

“We are able to do the legwork for the nations, find the funding, help deal with the hurdles that we have to go through with the government. Government does not want to engage with us because it’s not in their interest. Their interest is to continue to perpetuate the internalized racism and their internalized oppression of our people by making decisions for us,” Tait-Day said.

READ MORE: Indigenous communities ink Coastal GasLink option deals with TC Energy

Among the communities working with the FNMPC is Fort Nelson First Nation in northeastern B.C. Chief Sharleen Gale, also chair of the FNMPC board, says her community’s first-in-Canada $100-million geothermal project could heat up to 14,000 homes and eventually sell energy to the province’s power grid.

“This is 100 per cent Indigenous-owned,” Gale told Global News.

Gale says the project is inspiring remote communities across the country who historically haven’t seen themselves as major players in this market, adding, it’s critical they’re involved in the planning of resource projects from the beginning.

Fort Nelson First Nation Chief Sharlene Gale at geothermal project site. Supplied

“We are the keepers of the land, we’ve lived here for thousands of years, we know where things can and cannot go … companies whether they go bankrupt or whatever, they leave our territory and then as Indigenous people we are left to clean up the mess and I think if we’re involved at the forefront, we could ensure best practices on the ground to really reduce the impacts,” she said.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW ADVERTISEMENT


She believes Canada’s energy transition needs to find a balance between economic prosperity and environmental stewardship.

Tait-Day says it’s also important to address those who may believe signing agreements with industry partners means giving up inherent rights and title to their land.

“Actually that’s not the case. The case is they’re renting the land,” Tait-Day said.

 Alberta energy industry undergoing green transition – 

That’s where the ground-breaking Delgamuukw v. British Columbia case is paramount. A landmark decision that started in the small community of Kispiox. Earl Muldoe was a claimant in that historic lawsuit, which in 1997 recognized Wet’suwet’en has a system of laws and ownership of the land that predates colonialism.

Muldoe died in January. Now, his nephew Jordan Muldoe, an elected Kispiox councillor, says the case continues to loom large in his life.

“The Delgamuukw decision is huge … consultation is what they were trying to achieve, but it starts years ahead of time,” he said.

Kispiox councillor Stu Barnes says having equity stakes in major resource projects could also help communities like theirs remove reliance on Indigenous Services Canada (ISC).

“The goal is to become self-sustainable and not have to rely on the formulas that ISC imposed on us and have limited our ability to live off the land and at the same time created dependence on the Indian Act,” Barnes said.

Kixpiox band councillors speaking to Global News about Canadas energy crisis. Global News

A major challenge preventing this participation is a lack of funds to invest in the projects, according to Kispiox Chief Councillor Cameron Stevens.

“I think it would be good to be partners of this clean energy movement and I think we have, you know, a lot of resources on our territory that can be used for clean energy, whether it’s the run of the river or geothermal and even biomass,” Stevens said.

“But most of the time, it’s it’s money. That is one of the hurdles from moving the project forward, at least in our area.”

Regardless of the path, Tait-Day says the partnerships are key because Canada can’t deal with its energy dilemma without the support of Indigenous people whose land, in many cases, remains unceded.

 British Columbia

Coastal GasLink warned more than 50 times over environmental violations during pipeline construction

Social Sharin

• Faceboo
• Twitter
• Email
• Redd
• LinkedIn\

Many warnings relate to failure to protect sensitive waterways from sediment, erosion on 670-km pipeline route

Betsy Trumpener · CBC News · Posted: Sep 21, 2022 

A photo taken by a B.C. government inspector at a Coastal GasLink pipeline right of way in April 2022 shows soil erosion that violates the conditions of the company's environmental permit. An EAO white stamp in the top left corner indicates the location and time the photo was taken. (Contributed/Ministry of Environment and Climate Change)

Coastal GasLink has now been warned more than 50 times about environmental violations during construction of its natural gas pipeline across northern British Columbia, according to the province. 

In an email to CBC News, the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change said it had issued a total of 51 warnings, 16 orders, and levied two fines — penalties of more than $240,000 "for repeated non-compliance" — since construction on the pipeline started in 2019. 

Many of the warnings relate to the failure to protect sensitive waterways and wetlands from sediment and erosion that can harm fish habitat and water quality, a violation of the project's environmental assessment certificate.

When complete, the 670-kilometre pipeline will cross about 625 streams, creeks, rivers and lakes, many of them fish bearing, according to Coastal GasLink. 

• A pipeline runs through it: Coastal GasLink is crossing hundreds of waterways in northern B.C.

The most recent inspection report by the Environmental Assessment Office (EAO), published in August, flagged "multiple infractions" — some of them repeat violations — on sensitive waterways, including the release of pollution into Fraser Lake, around 120 kilometres west of Prince George. 

A plume of brown sediment in Fraser Lake in April 2022 is visible in this aerial photo from an environmental assessment officer's inspection report of the Coastal GasLink pipeline. An EAO white stamp in the top left corner indicates the location and time the photo was taken. (BC Ministry of Environment and Climate Change)

The EAO said the release of turbid water flows toward Fraser Lake resulted in a plume of sediment in the water that could be seen from the air.

An EAO inspection photo taken from a helicopter on April 27 shows a large swath of brown water off the north shore of the lake, which is a critical habitat for endangered white sturgeon and trumpeter swans. 

The lake's south shore is home to about 1,000 people in the village of Fraser Lake, and the site of a popular provincial park. 

Visitors enjoy the water at Beaumont Provincial Park on Fraser Lake. The lake is a critical habitat for endangered white sturgeon and a globally significant overwintering site for trumpeter swans. (Contributed/David Luggi )

A ministry spokesperson told CBC News in an email that sediment and turbidity can damage water quality and fish habitat, reduce sunlight in the water, and settle on wildlife and vegetation. 

But Coastal GasLink denies responsibility for the environmental violation at Fraser Lake.

In an email to CBC News, Coastal GasLink said the company's own investigation, which included aerial and ground studies and water quality monitoring, determined that the "sediment plume was not a result of project activities" but rather from public roads. 

An earlier EAO inspection report from 2020 also documented turbid water entering Fraser Lake.

A photograph from an Environmental Assessment Office inspection report shows a submerged sediment fence along the Coastal GasLink pipeline route in April 2022. An EAO white stamp in the top left corner indicates the location and time the photo was taken. (BC Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy)

The most recent inspection report, published last month, lists "multiple" instances of environmental non-compliance in other locations on the pipeline construction route, citing sediment fences that ripped or collapsed and erosion control measures that didn't work.

The company said most of the recently identified problems have already been resolved, while others require "longer term solutions."

"Given the scale of the project, the terrain the project crosses, as well as temperature and ever changing weather conditions, the dynamics of erosion and sediment control remain a challenge," said Coastal GasLink in an email to CBC News. 

• Coastal GasLink fined a second time this year for repeated environmental violations

• Coastal GasLink failed to fix nearly 2 dozen environmental violations along pipeline route, B.C. officials say

In July, the EAO and Coastal GasLink signed a compliance agreement requiring the company to follow "more proactive measures" to control erosion and sedimentation for all new construction along the pipeline route, according to the government.

A ministry news release said failure to comply could "result in escalating enforcement action, up to and including stop-work orders."

The agreement only applies to a 100-kilometre stretch of the pipeline where ground hasn't yet been broken.

In an email to CBC News last week, the ministry said the EAO has "no information at this time on any further enforcement actions" against Coastal GasLink.

Coastal GasLink's natural gas pipeline crosses about 625 rivers, creeks, waters, streams and lakes on its 670-kilometre route across northern B.C. (CBC News)

The project has faced strong opposition from some Indigenous groups. 

Several Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs and their supporters want to stop the construction of the pipeline, whose path runs through their traditional territories. 

This year, 19 pipeline opponents were charged with criminal contempt for defying a court order to stay away from construction sites.

• Wet'suwet'en leader charged with criminal contempt over Coastal GasLink pipeline blockade

• Wet'suwet'en members sue RCMP and Coastal GasLink for alleged harassment and intimidation

On Sunday, opponents said despite two years of blockades, Coastal GasLink was set to drill beneath the Wedzin Kwa River, also known as the Morice River.

A written release from the Gidimt'en Camp said the river provided drinking water for Wet'suwet'en villages and was a key salmon spawning area.

"Wet'suwet'en resistance to drilling beneath Wedzin Kwa has delayed the destruction of Wet'suwet'en waters for approximately two years," stated the release.

"Wet'suwet'en territory is unceded, unsurrendered, and sovereign.... The pipeline will never be put into service." 

Coastal GasLink says the $11.2-billion project is now 70 per cent complete and that the pipeline is scheduled to be in the ground by 2023.

Noise pollution is killing whales, but this technology could help

Written by Nell Lewis; video by John Lewis, CNN
Published 4:27 AM EDT, Mon September 26, 2022


Carlos Echavarria / MERI Foundation
In the Gulf of Corcovado, off southern Chile, whales are abundant. Nine species can be found in these waters, and it's one of the largest feeding grounds in the southern hemisphere for the endangered blue whale (pictured).

CNN —

In the ocean, where light only penetrates a few hundred feet underwater, animals depend on sound to locate food, navigate and to communicate with each other.

But even well into the last century, humans were unaware of the soundscape beneath the waves. Unable to hear the low frequencies that travel furthest underwater, explorers and scientists believed the ocean was a “silent world,” according to French bioacoustics expert Michel André.

“We (humans) ignored this acoustic dimension,” he says. “We contaminated the ocean with sound, without even having the first idea that this could have damaged it.”

In recent decades, the ocean’s depths have become noisier, with the rumble of ship engines, the intense pings of military sonar and seismic blasts used to locate oil and gas deposits. This cacophony of human-made sound is drowning out marine life’s natural chatter, and the impact is life-threatening.

Mammals such as whales have become isolated from their mates, their migration routes have been disrupted, and in some cases noise pollution has caused permanent hearing loss, which can be fatal

.

The tail of a blue whale flicks above the water in the Gulf of Corcovado, Chile.

Alex Machuca / MERI Foundation

“Sound is life in the ocean,” says André. “If we pollute this channel of communication … we are condemning the ocean to irreversible change.”

André and other scientists believe that increased noise pollution has led to more collisions between ships and whales, as the ocean giants – which use echolocation or biological sonar to “see” objects – can struggle to locate a vessel over the constant din, while some individuals have become so deaf they cannot hear the approaching danger. Since 2007, the International Whaling Commission has logged at least 1,200 collisions between ships and whales globally, but many more are likely to have gone unnoticed.
Safe and quiet

Technology that uses acoustics to detect the presence of whales in shipping lanes could help to avert these collisions. André and his team at the Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics in Barcelona have developed software called Listen to the Deep Ocean Environment (LIDO), which monitors acoustic sources in real time and uses artificial intelligence to identify them.

In October, a two-meter-long buoy equipped with this technology and other sensors will be dropped into the Gulf of Corcovado, off the coast of Chile, an area busy with both whales and ships. Using LIDO, it will be able to detect whales within at least a 10-kilometer radius and automatically send an alert to Chile’s navy, which will in turn send a message to nearby vessels, encouraging them to change course or reduce their speed. Ship engines make less noise at lower speeds, which makes it easier for whales to home in on their location.

The buoy will be the first of a wider network deployed as part of the Blue Boat Initiative, a program founded in 2020 by MERI Foundation, a scientific research organization based in Chile. The long-term goal is to have these kinds of buoys running along the coast of South America and beyond, providing a safe passage for migrating whales and other marine species, says Sonia Español-Jiménez, MERI’s executive director.

The Gulf of Corcovado was an obvious place to start. The body of water, which stretches more than 50 kilometers between Chiloé Island and the mainland of southern Chile, is a hotspot for whales – home to nine species – and the largest feeding ground in the southern hemisphere for the endangered blue whale.

But the area is also subject to intense marine traffic, with many vessels belonging to the salmon farming industry. However, research in the US has shown that reducing ship speed is a simple and cost-effective method for avoiding collisions with whales.

The noise from ship engines can disorientate whales, which rely on sound to navigate.

Daniel Casado / MERI Foundation

In May 2021, after a run of deadly collisions on Chile’s coastline, more than 60 Chilean scientists made a plea to the government to reroute ships from sensitive regions, set speed limits in certain shipping lanes and establish an alert system to warn vessel pilots.

Susannah Buchan, an associate researcher at the University of Concepción in Chile, was one of the signatories and is currently working with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) on adapting a similar acoustic alert system for Chilean waters. WHOI technology has already deployed in the Santa Barbara Channel, off the coast of California, and off the coast of Savannah, Georgia.

While she sees “great potential in acoustic alert systems,” Buchan says it is important that they are fully validated in scientific literature and by a peer-review process. She also warns that acoustic alert systems are not a “silver bullet” that will end all ship strikes and must be complemented with other solutions such as slow-down zones.

Understanding the ocean

The acoustic buoys deployed as part of the Blue Boat Initiative will not only work as an early warning system for vessels but will also use sensors to gather data such as water temperature, pH, and oxygen levels, which can be used to study ocean health and the impact of climate change.

They could also be used to help monitor local whale populations. “Every whale has a unique sound,” explains Español-Jiménez, and the buoy’s LIDO technology can identify and classify four of the whale species found in the Corcovado Gulf from their song – humpbacks, blue whales, right whales and sei whales. She adds that as the buoys gather more data, LIDO can be trained to identify other marine species.

Together all this data can be used to inform government policy and action on marine conservation and climate change, she says.

Technology is transforming our understanding of the ocean, says André. “It has brought back this capacity to hear underwater and to listen to creatures underwater and understand the need for them to survive in this environment.”

A pioneer in bioacoustics, André’s work began in the 1990s, when he started investigating the cause of ship and whale collisions on a busy ferry route in the Canary Islands. His research found that whales’ exposure to noise was leading to “acoustic trauma,” with their inner ear receptors becoming severely damaged over time.

It was then that he had the idea to create an acoustic anti-collision system for whales, but the Blue Boat Initiative is the first time his technology will be implemented in the real world.

André would like to see it become more widespread, crossing countries and continents. “My hope is that we can replicate this effort along the Pacific coast so we can cover the tracks of these whales up to Alaska,” he says.

By providing tools to identify sources of sound and to monitor biodiversity, André believes that humans can reconnect with nature and help it recover: “If we find a way to monitor, to listen, and to understand the message from sound, then we have a way to understand the health status of the Earth.”

Technology that identifies whale species using sound is being deployed in the Pacific Ocean

Acoustic buoys will be moored in Chile as part of the Blue Boat Initiative and equipped with software that can identify and classify four species of whales. Press play to listen to their sounds.

Blue Whale

Humpback whale

Sei whale

Right whale

Source: MERI Foundation, Listen to the Deep

Graphic: Woojin Lee, CNN

Tasmania’s whale stranding: what caused it and can it be stopped in the future?

This part of the island is known as a ‘whale trap’ but using technology to prevent the events may interfere with the natural cycle

An arial view of some of almost 200 stranded whales that have died on

 Tasmania’s Ocean Beach near Macquarie Harbour. 

Photograph: Adam Reibel/AAP


Graham Readfearn
@readfearn

THE GUARDIAN, AUSTRALIA

Sat 24 Sep 2022 

A gruesome task remains for a rescue team responding to a mass stranding of pilot whales on Tasmania’s west coast – the gathering up and towing of about 200 huge carcasses out to the deep ocean.

That operation could take place on Sunday, after more than 30 of the whales – that are actually large oceanic dolphins – were successfully saved and taken back out to sea during three days of rescues this week.

The effort came almost two years to the day of Australia’s biggest cetacean stranding event involving 470 pilot whales at the same location.

So what might have caused this latest stranding, why is this place known as a “whale trap” and could anything be done about it – and should we even try?
Why is this part of Tasmania a whale-stranding hotspot?

Pilot whales are not well studied but are known to live in pods of 20 or 30 with females as leaders. Sometimes they form temporary “super pods” of up to 1,000 animals.

Tasmania is known to be a hotspot for strandings of cetaceans – whales and dolphins – and the area near Strahan’s Macquarie Harbour is particularly known for pilot whale strandings.

Prof Karen Stockin, an expert on cetacean strandings at Massey University in New Zealand, said nobody knows for sure why some become “whale traps” but it is likely to be a combination of prey, the shape of the coastline and the strength and speed of the tides.

“The tide comes in and out very quickly and you can get caught out,” she said. “If you’re a pilot whale foraging and are distracted, you can get caught. That’s why we refer to these places as whale traps.”


Whale strandings: what happens after they die and how do authorities safely dispose of them?

The deeper water where pilot whales live and feed – mostly on squid – is relatively close to the shore around Macquarie Harbour and the gradual sloping Ocean Beach could also be a natural hazard.

Dr Kris Carlyon, a wildlife biologist at the state’s marine conservation program, has been on the scene this week, as he was two years ago.

He said one theory was that the gentle sandy slope towards the shoreline could confuse the echolocation the pilot whales use to interpret their surroundings.

What caused this stranding?

Scientists have carried out necropsies of some animals on the beach, and tissue samples and stomach contents are also being analysed.

Carlyon said these tests were to rule out any possible unnatural causes, but so far results were suggesting a natural event.

“We may never know the exact cause, but we are starting to rule things out,” he said.

Previous research of the stomach contents of pilot whales stranded on Ocean Beach found they were eating a variety of squid.

Carlyon said it’s possible the prey may have been closer to the shore, drawing one or two members of the pod into the natural whale trap.

Stockin said it would be very difficult to know what drew the whales too close. But whether they were chasing prey or simply took a wrong turn, the social structure of the pod would likely have drawn even more animals in.

“What ties pilot whales together is that they have strong social bonds that last almost a lifetime with other whales in their group,” she said. “It’s an incredibly strong bond and if you have one lost or debilitated animal, there’s a risk others will try to help.”

Pilot whales can communicate through clicks and whistles, and Stockin said this can make rescuing them more difficult, as those still on shore can continually call to pod mates for help, forcing them to return.

At some mass strandings, Stockin said, if a female that is the pod’s matriarch is still alive but stranded, junior pod members could continually return.

She said the fact that this stranding took place two years to the day after the previous major event could suggest a link to a seasonal or cyclical marine heatwave “but there’s just not enough analysis of these events”.

“We need to remember: mass strandings are a natural phenomenon, but that is not to say there are not times when strandings occur that are human induced,” she said.
Could anything be done to stop this happening again?

Carlyon said the state’s marine conservation program had considered potential approaches to prevent strandings in the future, including using underwater sound or developing an early warning system.

“It’s the million-dollar question: what can we do to stop this happening in the future given we know this is a mass stranding hotspot?” he said. I don’t have a good answer, to be honest.”

So far, Carlyon said, “there’s nothing leaping out at us as a feasible option” but the program would “continue to look if emerging technology or ideas could help”.


Talking to whales: can AI bridge the chasm between our consciousness and other animals?


Stockin said acoustic pingers are sometimes used to deter some dolphins.

“But there’s a very fine line here,” she said. “We would not want to scare animals away from critical foraging habitat.”

She said in some places around the world, underwater acoustic monitoring is used to alert authorities to times when marine mammals are in coastal waters.

“Then you might have a higher chance of responding,” Stockin said. “But in our desire as humans to want to fix things, we have to remember that sometimes things are just part of the natural cycle.”

In some indigenous cultures, whale strandings have traditionally been seen as a blessing from the sea. Dead cetaceans are also a food source for coastal and ocean wildlife.

But it was understandable, Stockin said, that humans felt an affinity to cetaceans and wanted to help them – regardless of what caused their stranding.

“They’re not just charismatic megafauna; they have a critical role to play in our oceans,” she said.

“They have dialects in the way we have accents. Some can even use tools – bottlenose dolphins use sponges on their [nose] to protect themselves when they’re foraging. They have strong social bonds. We know we are dealing with a female-led society here.

“They’re complex social mammals like us.”

Profiting from poison: how the US lead industry knowingly created a water crisis

Advertisements and documents pushing for lead pipes. 

Composite: National Geographic Society Internet Archives, Alamy, Toxic Docs

The lead water crisis facing Chicago and many other US cities today has roots in a nearly century-old campaign to boost the lead industry’s sales

Revealed: the ‘shocking’ levels of toxic lead in Chicago tap water

Erin McCormick and Aliya Uteuova

THE GUARDIAN

Thu 22 Sep 2022 

LONG  READ 

The year was 1933 and, to a group of industrialists gathered in a New York City lunch club, it seemed like the lead industry was doomed.

The women’s pages of newspapers were filled with stories about children being poisoned by the metal, which had been identified as dangerous as early as the mid-1800s. And cities around America had started banning the use of lead pipes for drinking water.

Lead companies were looking for a way to keep their revenues flowing, but, as the secretary of the Lead Industries Association would warn them in a later report, lead poisoning was “taking money out of your pockets every day”.

So the Lead Industries Association, made up of all the major lead companies of the time, launched a two-pronged plan to revive the industry’s sales of lead pipe – a plan that is still threatening the health of millions of residents around the United States today, including in Chicago, where the industry’s tactics paid off spectacularly.



First, the association mounted an “intensive drive” to get cities to add requirements to their building codes saying that only lead pipes could be used to connect people’s homes to the water system. Secondly, it worked to convince plumbers to become lead advocates as well, urging them to keep cities dependent on complex lead work or risk losing their plumbing jobs to simple handymen.

The association hired two staff members to visit hundreds of city water departments and send out letters to thousands more – pushing the idea of making lead pipes mandatory in city codes. In addition, the association sent illustrated promotional materials to a list of 4,357 water departments and water companies in the US to encourage use of lead pipes.

“They had a big interest in selling this stuff and creating markets that were basically permanent,” said historian David Rosner, who co-authored a book with Gerald Markowitz on the lead industry’s tactics. He added: “They were really interested in making sure no bad news tarnished their product: bad news like ‘It’s killing kids’ or ‘It’s poisoning us’.”

Vintage advertisements for the National Lead Company and the Lead Sheet and Pipe Development Council. 

Photograph: National Geographic Society Internet Archives/ Alamy

Around the same time, the association sponsored university research to mount competing studies to those showing lead had dire effects on children’s brains and developing bodies. The staffers also worked to recruit plumbers, giving classes in leadwork for apprentices and hosting an exhibit seen by 30,000 plumbers who attended the national convention of master plumbers in Chicago in 1935.

Within six years, according to historical documents reviewed by the Guardian, the industry boasted of having succeeded in getting lead pipes required in the codes of two states and 33 major cities – from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Buffalo, New York, to Austin, Texas. In the meantime, plumbers associations in 14 states had pledged their allegiance to using lead pipes.

“In city after city, where the continued use of lead was threatened by the encroachment of substitutes, we succeeded in protecting our interests by having lead introduced to plumbing codes where it had previously been omitted,” wrote Felix E Wormser, the lead industry association’s secretary, in a report to the organization’s board of directors in 1935.

The degree to which this plan still haunts American cities is chilling.

In Chicago, city officials are just beginning to figure out how to deal with the dangers to drinking water: lead pipes feed water to 400,000 homes there and will take at least $8bn to get rid of. In Buffalo, community groups are fighting to stop a lead poisoning epidemic that has taken a toll on several generations of the mostly black children in the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods. Meanwhile the Biden administration has secured $15bn in federal money to remove the menace that still lies under the ground in every state in the nation – but that is still only a third of what will be needed.

“A lot of public money is going to be spent to deal with the lead in water issue, but so much of this really goes back to the lead industry’s attempts to sell lead pipes,” said Rick Rabin, a health activist who was among the first to write about this in a journal article.

In Chicago, the industry’s strategy translated into decades of delay in banning lead pipes.

Excerpt of a 1938 activities report from the January 1939 Lead Industries Association board of directors meeting. Composite: Toxic Docs

Just ask Julius Ballanco, a longtime Chicago plumbing engineer. When he got his first taste of the plumbing industry, as a teenager working in his father’s New Jersey plumbing business in the 1960s, lead was everywhere.

He remembers spending cold, rainy mornings sitting in a trench, breathing in the fumes from a pot of melting lead, which the plumbers of the time used for the painstaking job of soldering together lead or cast iron pipe.

“You’d come home and your hands would be shining because the lead got into your skin, giving us lead poisoning,” said Ballanco. “I often wonder if I’d be a little smarter today if I hadn’t had to deal with lead.”

After going to university to become a plumbing engineer, Ballanco moved to Chicago and learned just how entrenched the toxic metal had become in the city. He joined a national engineering organization trying to get lead requirements out of city building codes.

By then, the lead industry’s sales campaign had ended and most cities had long since banned lead pipes, recognizing the danger of childhood lead poisoning. But Chicago’s plumbers, according to news articles and accounts from the time, were still championing lead for its durability and bendable nature.

In Chicago, the city code still said in early 1986 that any pipe 2in or less in diameter connecting a home to the water system had to be lead – and plumbers fought to keep that rule in place for decades, news accounts suggest.

Back in the 1930s, the city had been the home base of the lead industry’s midwest campaign to promote lead pipe and its plumbers’ organizations became a forceful ally.

The Lead Industries Association had assigned field men to attend the national plumbing convention in Chicago with the goal of “arousing the master and journeyman plumbers to the danger to their own profession of turning away from lead”.

Excerpt from the October 1935 Lead Industries Association board of directors meeting. 

Composite: Toxic Docs

In return, Chicago plumbers enthusiastically promoted the industry – as was seen in an article written for the industry’s Lead magazine at the time.

“I am happy to say that the lead industry […] has cooperated fully with the plumber to strengthen and improve plumbing ordinances all over the country,” John J Calnan, a Chicago plumber, wrote in a piece for Lead magazine in 1934.

Within a few years, Lead magazine published an article commending Chicago city officials for allowing only lead service lines in the city’s code.

The support for lead lines was cemented in the 1950s, as the plumbers union became particularly powerful in the city, according to reporting by Chicago broadcaster WBEZ. The union’s leader, Stephen Bailey, marshaled hundreds of thousands of labor votes to help elect his boyhood friend, Mayor Richard J Daley, who remained in office until the mid-1970s.

This in turn was said to have given the plumbers sway over the city’s plumbing codes.

“As everybody in Chicago knows, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,” John McHugh, a veteran Chicago journalist who authored a book on the Chicago plumbers, told reporter Monica Eng of WBEZ.

Legion of Honor members at the St Patrick’s Day Parade on State Street. Pictured, from left, are: Dan Ryan Jr, Robert Quinn, Mayor Richard J Daley, Stephen Bailey of the Plumbers Union and Monsignor Francis Byrne.

 Photograph: Courtesy of University of Illinois at Chicago. Library. Special Collections and University Archives Department (Richard J Daley Library)

Daley and Bailey could be seen marching arm in arm in Chicago’s St Patrick’s Day Parade, sponsored by the plumbers, who dye the city’s river shamrock green for the famous event every year.

In 1986, Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor, tried to buck the union. He proposed taking the lead requirement out of the code, after hearing from the health department that 1,644 children in the city were suffering from high levels of lead in their blood.

By then every other major city in the nation had banned lead pipes and Ballanco’s engineering organization was urging Chicago to adopt a model city code that excluded lead as well.

But the plumbers’ union stood its ground and opposed the measure, and thus it failed to win approval from the city’s aldermen.

“Lead [pipes] have proven over a long time to do the job they were designed to do,” Jim McCarthy, the union’s business manager, told the Chicago Tribune at the time. “I’m hard-pressed to understand why people are talking about lead poisoning. We’ve had lead pipe in the water system here for 100 years.”

James Majerowicz, the current president of the Chicago Journeymen Plumbers’ and Technical Engineers, local union 130, said he was involved with the plumbers back in 1986, but didn’t believe they opposed stopping the installation of lead pipes.

“I don’t remember the plumbers being opposed to it,” said Majerowicz. “I find that difficult to believe, because we’ve always been looking out for public safety and health.”

He said that today “we are 100% behind replacing lead services. It has been proven now that lead is not that good.”

But, according to Ballanco, until the federal government banned lead pipes in 1986, Chicago continued to install them. The city’s long delay in banning the pipes is why Chicago has more lead pipes than any other city in the nation.

“There’s still a lot of lead in Chicago,” said Ballanco, who has now founded his own engineering company and is still working to help Chicago get rid of the lead. “Does it hurt the children growing up? Sure, it does. Does it impact their mental capacity and decrease their ability? Yes, it does.”

Five hundred miles east in the rust belt city of Buffalo, community members are finally mobilizing to get rid of the lead pipes that the pitchmen of the Lead Industries Association once sold their city leaders.

An investigation by Reuters found the city has one of the worst lead poisoning problems in the nation – with more than 40% of children having elevated blood lead levels in some zip codes.

Not only did the Lead Industries Association boast to its membership about getting lead codified in Buffalo’s plumbing codes, it promoted the use of lead for federal public housing projects built in the city, too. The association’s Lead magazine published a 1939 article praising the federal government for using 20 tons of lead pipe and 40 tons of lead caulking in constructing two Buffalo housing projects, which were some of the first public housing in the nation where black residents were allowed.

“By the use of lead services for these projects, the authorities have taken a further judicious step toward assuring low maintenance cost,” said the article, which argued lead was the only material with all the characteristics to provide “adequate health protection” and urged more use of lead in constructing public housing.

Stephanie Simeon is fighting the effects of all that lead every day, not only as a community organizer in Buffalo, but as a mom.

As the executive director of the Buffalo non-profit Heart of the City Neighborhoods, Simeon is leading a campaign to help the city raise the funds and spur the community engagement needed to get rid of its buried lead pipes. Her adopted daughter, now 11, suffered lead poisoning as a baby and is now struggling to overcome a host of developmental delays.

“Our kids are having low educational attainment and our schools have high rates of suspension,” she said, noting that lead has been linked to learning disabilities and behavioral problems in children. “We can do better than this. This is one of the richest nations in the world.”

When the Guardian shared documents with her showing how the lead industry once pushed to get its product written into Buffalo’s city code, she was outraged.

“It’s disgusting,” said Simeon, who said industry should have to pay for the lasting damage to children done by its profiteering.

But legal efforts to hold the industry accountable for lead poisoning caused by paint and leaded gasoline, which were both promoted by the Lead Industries Association as well, have mostly faltered. The association itself went bankrupt in 2002, saying it could not afford insurance to fight off lawsuits.

“It was profit over people,” said Simeon. “Now we’re paying for it.”

China declares water supply 'red alert' for biggest lake as long drought lingers

An aerial view shows a tributary stream running through the dried-up flats of Poyang Lake that stands at record-low water levels as the region experiences a drought, outside Nanchang, Jiangxi province, China on Aug 28, 2022.

23 Sep 2022

SHANGHAI: The central Chinese province of Jiangxi has declared a water supply "red alert" for the first time after the Poyang freshwater lake, the country's biggest, dwindled to a record low, the Jiangxi government said on Friday (Sep 23).

The Poyang Lake, normally a vital flood outlet for the Yangtze, China's longest river, has been suffering from drought since June, with water levels at a key monitoring spot falling from 19.43m to 7.1m over the last three months

The Jiangxi Water Monitoring Centre said Poyang's water levels would fall even further in coming days, with rainfall still minimal. Precipitation since July is 60 per cent lower than a year earlier, it said.

As many as 267 weather stations across China reported record temperatures in August, and a long dry spell across the Yangtze river basin severely curtailed hydropower output and damaged crop growth ahead of the autumn harvest.

An aerial view shows a dried up fish habitat experimentation farm at Poyang Lake that stands at record-low water levels as the region experiences a drought, outside Nanchang, Jiangxi province, China on Aug 26, 2022. 

Related:

Receding water levels of China's Yangtze reveal ancient Buddhist statues

In pictures: China hit by drought as record heatwave continues

Though heavy rain has relieved the drought in much of southwest China, central regions continue to suffer, with extremely dry conditions now stretching more than 70 days in Jiangxi.

A total of 10 reservoirs in neighbouring Anhui province have fallen below the "dead pool" level, meaning they are unable to discharge water downstream, the local water bureau said earlier this week.

State weather forecasters said this week that drought conditions still prevailed in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze, and efforts were required to seed clouds and divert water from elsewhere.