Mormon Church gives water to boost imperiled Great Salt Lake

By SAM METZ

Olof Wood walks across reef-like structures called microbialites, exposed by receding waters at the Great Salt Lake, Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2022, near Salt Lake City. Amid rising panic about the future of Utah's Great Salt Lake, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is putting newfound emphasis on environmental stewardship. A high-ranking church official spoke to scientists and politicians at the University of Utah on Friday, March 17, 2023, about the church's recent move to donate 20,000 acre-feet of water to help maintain the elevation of the Great Salt Lake and commitment to re-landscaping its temples and meetinghouses known for their neatly manicured grass.

 (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer,File)

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Donating a small reservoir’s worth of water rights to Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Replacing grass with rocks and water-wise landscaping around neatly manicured churches. Reducing water use by more than one-third outside the headquarters in Salt Lake City’s Temple Square. These are among the actions that the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is taking to address the realities of a rapidly approaching, drier future.

Remarks from Bishop Christopher Waddell at the University of Utah on Friday underscored how the church — one of the biggest land and water rights holders in the western United States — is expanding its role in conservation and looking for solutions “that protect the future for all God’s children.”

“Our ability to be wise stewards of the earth is dependent on our understanding of the natural resources we have been blessed with,” the high-ranking church official said at a symposium on the future of the Great Salt Lake at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law.

Speaking after a long list of scientists and Republican Gov. Spencer Cox, Waddell said the church’s focus on stewardship spanned back to the Brigham Young era, noting that the faith’s forefather endorsed what one historian said was a “radical notion” — that water is a public resource, not just a matter of private property rights.

He said that the church was grateful for the wet winter — but unsurprised given the power of prayer — and urged members of the faith to conserve water and to not let the season’s plentiful snowpack go to waste.

The church’s expanded role in Utah’s conservation efforts comes as an increasing number of large institutions acknowledge additional actions will likely be needed to prepare for challenges ahead in the drought-stricken western United States. Yet it is also reigniting recurring questions from a growing chorus of environmentalists and scientists about whether the region’s leaders — in business, politics and religion — are acting aggressively enough to confront drought and its looming consequences.

An acre-foot is enough water to supply about two to three U.S. households for a year and the lake operates at a 1.2 million acre-foot deficit

Church officials announced earlier this week that they planned to donate roughly 20,000 acre-feet of water rights to the Great Salt Lake, which has shrunk to its lowest levels ever due to a supply-demand imbalance caused by decadeslong regional drought. The church has at least 75,000 acre-feet of active water rights, the Salt Lake Tribune reported in February.

The church’s donation is roughly the size of a small reservoir and about 2% of what’s needed to keep the lake at its current level, according to research from a group of scientists led by Brigham Young University Ecologist Ben Abbott.

“It’s a drop in the bucket on one level, but it’s also a big drop,” Abbott said of the church’s donation.

Though there is less water now flowing through the rivers that have historically fed the lake, growing cities and farms continue to draw water, causing the lake’s elevation to plummet. If the lake continues to shrink, it could risk being an ecological, economic and public health disaster; as more toxic dust is exposed on the shoreline, it will likely endanger native species, dirty the air in surrounding communities and reduce the “lake effect” snow that the state’s ski industry relies on.

Scientists worry that if the lake’s current trajectory continues, the surrounding areas could become desolate wastelands like the areas surrounding parts of inland California’s Salton Sea and the Owens Valley.

Utah lawmakers have passed a variety of drought-related measures to make farming more efficient and to pay homeowners for replacing some grass. Yet they haven’t advanced more drastic proposals on par with neighboring states, amid winter snowfall expected to temporarily stave off crises at both Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border and the Great Salt Lake.

“Mother nature really helped us out,” Republican Sen. Scott Sandall said earlier this month. “We didn’t have to pull that lever for emergency use.”

With scientists projecting that the lake could dry up in as soon as five years, demands have grown louder for lawmakers to commit to keeping the lake at a baseline elevation — and to consider more aggressive policies to ensure more water is delivered amid competing interests like municipal development and water intensive farms.

Though lawmakers and state leaders laud conservation efforts underway, they still plan to dam the Bear River — the largest tributary feeding the Great Salt Lake — and the Lake Powell Pipeline, which would siphon water from the shrinking reservoir that stores Colorado River water for seven U.S. states and Mexico.

“Our state leaders have failed to solve the Great Salt Lake crisis because they have turned their back on meaningful solutions to put water in the Lake,” Zach Frankel, the executive director of the Utah Rivers Council, said.

On Friday, Cox was firm in rebutting the idea that political leaders aren’t doing enough to save the Great Salt Lake. He cautioned scientists about the degree of certainty with which they present “doom and gloom” projections, and warned activists that the aggressive policy changes they seek could kindle fierce public backlash and jeopardize progress.

“We are going faster than I ever thought we would go. But if we start confiscating farms and water shares, you will see politicians respond very quickly. People will run for office to make sure that we are not saving the Great Salt Lake,” Cox said. “They will be elected. Those are the types of things that you have to think through.”


 State of Utah Department of Natural Resources park ranger Angelic Lemmon walks across reef-like structures called microbialites, exposed by receding waters at the Great Salt Lake on Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022, near Salt Lake City. 

HO HUM, NOTHING TO SEE HERE

Regulators: Nuclear plant leak didn’t require public notice

By MICHAEL PHILLIS and AMANCAI BIRABEN

today

 Cooling towers release heat generated by boiling water reactors at Xcel Energy's Nuclear Generating Plant on Oct. 2, 2019, in Monticello, Minn. Minnesota regulators said Thursday, March 16, 2023, that they're monitoring the cleanup of a leak of 400,000 gallons of radioactive water from Xcel Energy's Monticello nuclear power plant in late November 2022. The company said there's no danger to the public. (Evan Frost/Minnesota Public Radio via AP, File)

Minnesota regulators knew four months ago that radioactive waste had leaked from a nuclear power plant in Monticello — but they didn’t announce anything about the leak until this week.

The delay in notifying the public about the November leak raised questions about public safety and transparency, but industry experts said Friday there was never a public health threat. They said Xcel Energy voluntarily notified state agencies and reported the leak of tritium to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission soon after it was confirmed and that the leak of 400,000 gallons (1.5 million liters) of radioactive water never reached a threshold that would have required public notification.

“This is something that we struggle with because there is such concern with anything that is nuclear,” said Victoria Mitlyng, a spokesperson with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “The concern is very, very understandable. That is why I want to make extra clear the fact that the public in Minnesota, the people, the community near the plant, was not and is not in danger.”

State officials said that while they knew of the leak in November, they waited to get more information before making a public announcement.

“We knew there was a presence of tritium in one monitoring well, however Xcel had not yet identified the source of the leak and its location,” Minnesota Pollution Control Agency spokesperson Michael Rafferty said Thursday. “Now that we have all the information about where the leak occurred, how much was released into groundwater and that contaminated groundwater had moved beyond the original location, we are sharing this information.”

Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that occurs naturally in the environment and is a common by-product of nuclear plant operations. It emits a weak form of beta radiation that does not travel very far and cannot penetrate human skin, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said a significant health risk would only occur if people consumed fairly high amounts of tritium. That risk is contained if the plume stays on the company’s site, which Xcel Energy and Minnesota officials said is the case.

If regulatory officials are sure it didn’t move off site, people shouldn’t have to worry about their safety, he said, adding that companies usually take action when onsite monitoring wells detect elevated levels of contaminants like tritium.

Mitlyng said there’s no official requirement for nuclear plants to report all tritium leaks to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Instead, Xcel Energy had previously agreed to report certain tritium leaks to the state. When Xcel Energy shares information with the state, it also shares it with the commission.

The commission posted a notification about the leak on its website Nov. 23, noting that the plant reported it to the state a day earlier. The report classified the leak as a nonemergency. The notice said the source of the tritium was being investigated at that time.

Beyond that, there was no widespread notification to the public before Thursday.

Rafferty said disclosure requirements fall to the facility, and state agencies would have notified residents immediately had there been an imminent threat to health and the environment.

Rafferty said the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency decided to share information about its role overseeing the cleanup now “because we have more details about the location and potential movement of the contamination, steps being taken to control the plume and plans for remediation including short-term storage of contaminated water.”

Mitlyng said there is no pathway for the tritium to get into drinking water. The facility has groundwater monitoring wells in concentric circles, and plant employees can track the progress of contaminants by looking at which wells detect higher amounts. There are Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors on site too, watching over the response.

The company said the leak came from a pipe between two buildings.

Xcel said it has recovered about 25% of the spilled tritium so far, that recovery efforts will continue and that it will install a permanent solution this spring.

Xcel is considering building above-ground storage tanks for the contaminated water it recovers and is considering options for the treatment, reuse or final disposal of the collected tritium and water. State regulators will review the options the company selects, the state Pollution Control Agency said.

The regulatory commission said tritium spills happen from time to time at nuclear plants, but they’ve either been limited to plant properties or involved such low offsite levels that they didn’t impact public health. Xcel Energy reported a small tritium leak at Monticello in 2009.

The Monticello plant is about 35 miles (55 kilometers) northwest of Minneapolis, upstream from the city on the Mississippi River.

Shelby Burma, who lives minutes from the site of the spill, said the news — coming weeks after a train derailment on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border left lingering concerns about contaminated air, soil and groundwater — makes her worry about an increasing amount of chemicals in the environment.

“I think it’s pretty alarming that they did not notify the public right away,” Burma said. “They said it won’t cause any harm, but that’s hard to believe when they waited how long to go public with it.”

___

Phillis reported from New York City, Biraben from Pierre, South Dakota. Associated Press writers Trisha Ahmed and Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis and Margaret Stafford in Kansas City, Missouri, contributed to this report.

Minnesota officials say radioactive water leak not affecting drinking water

March 17 (UPI) -- Minnesota officials are monitoring a November leak of water contaminated with tritium from a nuclear generation plant, which they said has not left the site or spread into the well water of local homes.

Xcel Energy and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency said Thursday that the contaminated water never reached the nearby Mississippi River nor neighborhood drinking water in homes around the power plant in Monticello, Minn.

Xcel Energy first reported the leak to the Minnesota duty officer and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in late November 2022 after finding unusual results during routine groundwater monitoring.

The source of the leak was a leaking water pipeline between two buildings at the nuclear plant. Xcel officials said it believes it leaked about 400,000 gallons of the water containing tritium before it was stopped.

RELATED  Officials search for missing radioactive capsule in Western Australian

"We are working to ensure this cleanup is concluded as thoroughly as possible with minimal or no risk to drinking water supplies," Kirk Koudelka, MPCA assistant commissioner for land and strategic initiatives, said in a statement.

According to Xcel, tritium is a compound that is commonly created in the operation of nuclear power plants that emits low levels of radiation.

"We have taken comprehensive measures to address this situation on-site at the plant," Chris Clark, president of Xcel Energy-Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, said in a statement. "While this leak does not pose a risk to the public or the environment, we take this very seriously and are working to safely address the situation.

RELATED  Army Corps of Engineers to probe Missouri school for radioactive waste

"We continue to gather and treat all potentially affected water while regularly monitoring nearby groundwater sources."

Clark admitted that the tritium released from the plant was "well above" the 20,000 picocuries per liter limited by the Environmental Protection Agency for drinking water but those levels were reduced as the tritium diluted in groundwater.

"This does not present a public health or drinking water issue," Clark told the Minneapolis Star Tribune, adding that the plant is monitoring two dozen wells regularly.

New Mexico opts for veto power on spent nuclear fuel debate

By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN

FILE - Brendan Shaughnessy, left, with the Nuclear Issues Study Group, protests with other activists ahead of a meeting of a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission panel in Albuquerque, N.M., on Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2019. Lawmakers have endorsed a measure that calls for banning the storage of spent nuclear fuel in N.M., unless the state provides its consent first. Democratic lawmakers have been raising concerns that opening the door to waste from commercial nuclear power plants around the U.S. would result in New Mexico becoming the nation's dumping ground. The legislation passed the House on Friday, March 17, 2023, and governor intends to sign it.

(AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan, File)

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico’s governor on Friday signed legislation aimed at keeping spent nuclear fuel produced by commercial U.S. nuclear power plants from being shipped to the state, just hours after the measure cleared its final legislative hurdle.

Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham wasted no time adding her signature after the New Mexico House voted 35-28 in favor of the bill following a lengthy debate. Five Democrats joined Republicans in opposition, arguing that the measure would challenge longstanding federal authority over nuclear safety matters and lead to new court challenges.

The bill from Democratic state Sen. Jeff Steinborn, of Las Cruces, will impact a proposed multibillion-dollar facility in southeastern New Mexico that would have the capacity to temporarily store up to 8,680 metric tons of used uranium fuel. Future expansion could make room for as many as 10,000 canisters of spent fuel over six decades.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission may announce a decision soon on whether to grant a license for the project spearheaded by Holtec International, which has spent an estimated $80 million over the past eight years on the approval process.

Lujan Grisham and members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation have voiced strong opposition to building the facility along the state’s border with Texas. Both states sued the federal government over the issue, and top elected officials in Texas were unsuccessful in their efforts to stop a similar facility in neighboring Andrews County from being licensed.

If a license is granted for the complex in New Mexico, it would still need permits from the state Environment Department. That’s where critics say the state could lean on the legislation and halt the project.

Rep. Gail Chasey, an Albuquerque Democrat, argued that there has been no incentive for states with nuclear power plants to find permanent solutions for dealing with spent fuel. As long as New Mexico is seen as an option, those states won’t be concerned with the long-term effects, she said.

“The trouble is this is a forever decision. We don’t get to decide, oh, let’s not do this anymore and take it away,” Chasey said. “So think about the fact that if it were such a profitable and good thing, then the states that produced it would have it near their facilities.”

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, nuclear reactors across the country produce more than 2,000 metric tons of radioactive waste a year, with most of it remaining on-site because there’s nowhere else to put it.

Since the federal government has failed to build a permanent repository, it reimburses utilities to house the fuel. That cost is expected to stretch into the tens of billions of dollars over the next decade, according to a review by independent government auditors.

The fuel is sitting at temporary storage sites in nearly three dozen states, either enclosed in steel-lined concrete pools of water or in steel and concrete containers known as casks.

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has talked about revisiting recommendations made a decade ago by a blue-ribbon commission on America’s nuclear future. In November, her agency issued a request seeking input on a consent-based siting process to identify locations to store commercial spent nuclear fuel.

Despite opposition from environmentalists, the Biden administration has pointed to nuclear power as essential to achieving its goals to create a carbon-free electricity sector by 2035.

Some lawmakers from southeastern New Mexico said local elected officials and residents would welcome the Holtec project and that visits to some of the current storage sites near power plants have shown the casks are safe.

They also touted the safety of transporting the material by rail to New Mexico, saying armed guards would be aboard the trains and that testing has shown the casks would not release radiation in the event of a derailment.

Republican Rep. Cathrynn Brown, whose district includes the proposed Holtec site, said the region already is home to the federal government’s only underground repository for Cold War-era waste generated during nuclear research and bomb-making. It also hosts a uranium enrichment plant.

The legislation sends a message to companies to “invest all you want and then we’re going to pull the rug out from under you,” Brown said. “And I don’t think that’s fair.”

Still, other lawmakers have voiced concerns about the project since it would be located within the Permian Basin, one of the most productive oil fields in the world. New Mexico gets a significant portion of its revenue from drilling.

"HUGS NOT DRUGS"

Lack of hugs caused US fentanyl crisis, Mexico’s leader says

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador gives his regularly scheduled morning press conference at the National Palace in Mexico City, Feb. 28, 2023. Mexico’s president called anti-drug policies in the U.S. a failure Wednesday, March 15, 2023 and proposed a ban on using fentanyl in medicine. 

(AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File)


MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president said Friday that U.S. families were to blame for the fentanyl overdose crisis because they don’t hug their kids enough.

The comment by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador caps a week of provocative statements from him about the crisis caused by the fentanyl, a synthetic opioid trafficked by Mexican cartels that has been blamed for about 70,000 overdose deaths per year in the United States.

López Obrador said family values have broken down in the United States, because parents don’t let their children live at home long enough. He has also denied that Mexico produces fentanyl.

On Friday, the Mexican president told a morning news briefing that the problem was caused by “a lack of hugs, of embraces.”

“There is a lot of disintegration of families, there is a lot of individualism, there is a lack of love, of brotherhood, of hugs and embraces,” López Obrador said of the U.S. crisis. “That is why they (U.S. officials) should be dedicating funds to address the causes.”

López Obrador has repeatedly said that Mexico’s close-knit family values are what have saved it from the wave of fentanyl overdoses. Experts say that Mexican cartels are making so much money now from the U.S. market that they see no need to sell fentanyl in their home market.

Cartels frequently sell methamphetamines in Mexico, where the drug is more popular because it purportedly helps people work harder.

López Obrador has been stung by calls in the United States to designate Mexican drug gangs as terrorist organizations. Some Republicans have said they favor using the U.S. military to crack down on the Mexican cartels.

On Wednesday, López Obrador called anti-drug policies in the U.S. a failure Wednesday and proposed a ban in both countries on using fentanyl in medicine — even though little of the drug crosses from hospitals into the illegal market.

U.S. authorities estimate that most illegal fentanyl is produced in clandestine Mexican labs using Chinese precursor chemicals. Relatively little of the illegal market comes from diverting medicinal fentanyl used as anesthesia in surgeries and other procedures.

There have been only scattered and isolated reports of glass flasks of medicinal fentanyl making it to the illegal market. Most illegal fentanyl is pressed by Mexican cartels into counterfeit pills made to look like other medications like Xanax, oxycodone or Percocet.

Farmworkers use Florida march to pressure other companies

By MIKE SCHNEIDER

1 of 13
In this photo taken with a drone, farmworkers and allies march through agricultural land on the first day of a five-day trek aimed at highlighting the Fair Food Program, which has enlisted food retailers to use their clout with growers to ensure better working conditions and wages for farmworkers, Tuesday, March 14, 2023, in Pahokee, Fla.

(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

Farmworkers were leading a five-day, 45-mile (72-kilometer) trek on foot this week from one of the poorest communities in Florida to a mansion-lined, oceanfront town that is one of the richest in an effort to pressure retailers to leverage their purchasing power for better worker pay and working conditions.

The farmworkers said they were marching to highlight the Fair Food Program, which has enlisted companies like McDonald’s, Walmart, Taco Bell and Whole Foods to use their clout with growers to ensure better working conditions and wages for farmworkers. They hoped to use the march to pressure other companies, like Publix, Wendy’s and Kroger, to join the program that started in 2011.

The march began Tuesday from the farming community of Pahokee, one of the poorest in Florida, where the median household income is around $30,000. The march’s launching point was a camp where farmworkers were coerced into working for barely any pay by a labor contractor who was convicted and sentenced last year to almost 10 years in prison. The contractor confiscated the Mexican farmworkers’ passports, demanded exorbitant fees from them and threatened them with deportation or false arrest, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The marchers were on schedule to arrive Saturday in the town of Palm Beach, which has a median household income of almost $169,000 and is lined with the mansions of the rich and famous, including billionaire Nelson Peltz, who is Wendy’s chairman, and former President Donald Trump.

According to the Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which organized the march, the program has ensured that farmworkers are paid for the hours they work; guaranteed them on-the-job safety measures such as shade, water and access to bathrooms; and has reduced the threats of sexual assault, harassment and forced labor under armed guards in the fields where tomatoes and other crops are harvested. Immokalee is a southwest Florida farming town in the heart of the state’s tomato-growing area.

Growers have benefitted since it reduces turnover and improves productivity, according to the coalition.

Farmworkers marching in Florida to demand better conditions
Farmworkers are leading a 45-mile march from one of the poorest communities in Florida to one of the richest. It's an effort to pressure retailers to leverage their purchasing power for better worker pay and working conditions

. (March 17) (AP video: Daniel Kozin)

Wendy’s said in a statement that it didn’t participate in the Fair Food Program because it sources its tomato supply from indoor hydroponic greenhouse farms, while the program operates for farmworkers predominantly in outdoor fields, so “there is no nexus between the program and our supply chain.” The fast-food chain said it requires third-party reviews to make sure no abuses are involved in the harvesting of the tomatoes it gets from suppliers.

“The idea that joining the Fair Food Program, and purchasing field-grown, commodity tomatoes, is the only way that Wendy’s can demonstrate responsibility in our supply chain is not true,” Wendy’s said.

The coalition on Friday in a statement described Wendy’s response as a “dodge.”

Officials from Publix and Kroger didn’t respond to emailed inquiries.

The idea to pressure retailers to use their clout with growers to improve pay and conditions for Florida tomato pickers took off in the early 2000s when the Coalition of Immokalee Workers led a four-year, nationwide boycott of Taco Bell. The boycott ended in 2005 when the company agreed to pay a penny more per pound for tomatoes purchased from Florida growers in order to raise farmworkers’ wages.

The Fair Food Program followed several years later in an agreement with Florida tomato growers, and it now includes more than a dozen participating corporations. Leaders of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Fair Food Program have been recognized with a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, a Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights award and presidential award presented by then-Secretary of State John Kerry.

“So now workers enjoy the right to complain without fear of retaliation. Workers also have water and shade as part of these agreements,” said Gerardo Reyes Chavez, a coalition official, at the start of the march in Pahokee. “The program has proven to be the solution, the antidote to the problem of modern day slavery, the problem of sexual assault, and the problems that have always plagued the agricultural industry.”

___

Daniel Kozin in Pahokee, Florida contributed to this report.

___

Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at @MikeSchneiderAP

Virgin Orbit pausing all work, reportedly furloughs staff

By SYLVIA HUI

March 16, 2023

This undated photo provided by the UK Space Agency on Thursday March 16, 2023, the Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne rocket at Spaceport Cornwall, at Cornwall Airport in Newquay, England. Virgin Orbit said Thursday March 16, 2023 it is pausing all operations amid reports that the company is furloughing almost all its staff as part of a bid to seek a funding lifeline. (UK Space Agency via AP)

LONDON (AP) — Virgin Orbit said Thursday it is pausing all operations amid reports that the company is furloughing almost all its staff as part of a bid to seek a funding lifeline.

The California-based satellite launch company confirmed it’s putting all work on hold, but didn’t say how long for.

“Virgin Orbit is initiating a company-wide operational pause, effective March 16, 2023, and anticipates providing an update on go-forward operations in the coming weeks,” the company said in a statement.

It said the move was “to conserve cash while the company continues to evaluate all available options.”

The company declined to comment on reports that all but a small number of workers will be temporarily put on unpaid furlough.

Virgin Orbit, which is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange, was founded in 2017 by British billionaire Richard Branson to target the market for launching small satellites into space. Its LauncherOne rockets are launched from the air from modified Virgin passenger planes, allowing the company to operate more flexibly than using fixed launch sites.

In January, a mission by Virgin Orbit to launch the first satellites into orbit from Europe failed after its rocket’s upper stage prematurely shut down. The failure was a disappointment for Virgin Orbit and British space officials, who had high hopes that the launch, which took off from Cornwall in southwest England, would mark the beginning of more commercial opportunities for the U.K. space industry.

The company said last month that an investigation found that its rocket’s fuel filter had become dislodged, causing an engine to become overheated and other components to malfunction. The nine small satellites it carried fell back to Earth and landed in the Atlantic Ocean.

“Our investigation is nearly complete and our next production rocket with the needed modification incorporated is in final stages of integration and test,” Virgin Orbit said in its statement Thursday.

The company has said that its next launch will take place from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California for a commercial customer. It hasn’t provided a date.

Virgin Orbit has completed four successful satellite launches so far from California for a mix of commercial and U.S. government defense uses. Other than the U.K., it also has ambitions to expand its operations to mainland Europe and South Korea.

BNSF train derailment spills diesel fuel on tribal land in Washington

March 16, 2023

This photo provided by the Washington Department of Ecology shows a derailed BNSF train on the Swinomish tribal reservation near Anacortes, Wash. on Thursday, March 16, 2023. Two BNSF trains derailed in separate incidents in Arizona and Washington state on Thursday, with the latter spilling diesel fuel. There were no injuries reported in either. The derailment in Washington occurred on a berm along Puget Sound, on the Swinomish tribal reservation near Anacortes.

 (Washington Department of Ecology via AP)


ANACORTES, Wash. (AP) — Two BNSF trains derailed in separate incidents in Arizona and Washington state on Thursday, with the latter spilling diesel fuel on tribal land along Puget Sound.

No injuries were reported. It wasn’t clear what caused either derailment.

The derailment in Washington occurred on a berm along Padilla Bay, on the Swinomish tribal reservation near Anacortes. Most of 5,000 gallons (nearly 19,000 liters) of spilled diesel fuel leaked on the land side of the berm rather than toward the water, according to the state Ecology Department.

Officials said there were no indications the spill reached the water or affected any wildlife.

Responders placed a boom along the shoreline as a precaution and removed the remaining fuel from two locomotives that derailed. Four tank cars remained upright.

The derailment in western Arizona, near the state’s border with California and Nevada, involved a train carrying corn syrup. A spokeswoman for the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office, Anita Mortensen, said that she was not aware of any spills or leaks.

BNSF spokeswoman Lena Kent said an estimated eight cars derailed in Arizona and were blocking the main track. The cause of the derailment was under investigation, and it was not immediately known when the track will reopen.

The derailments came amid heightened attention to rail safety nationwide following a fiery derailment last month in Ohio and a string of derailments since then that have been grabbing headlines, including ones in Michigan, Alabama and other states.

The U.S. averages about three train derailments per day, according to federal data, but relatively few create disasters.

Last month, a freight train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, near the Pennsylvania border, igniting a fire and causing hundreds of people to be evacuated.

Officials seeking to avoid an uncontrolled blast intentionally released and burned toxic vinyl chloride from five rail cars, sending flames and black smoke high into the sky. That left people questioning the potential health impacts even as authorities maintained they were doing their best to protect people.

Feds want justices to end Navajo fight for Colo. River water

By MICHAEL PHILLIS

1 of 8
A sign marks Navajo Drive, as Sentinel Mesa, homes and other structures in Oljato-Monument Valley, Utah, on the Navajo Reservation, stand in the distance, on April 30, 2020. The U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide a critical water rights case in the water-scarce Southwest. The high court will hold oral arguments Monday, March 20, 2023, in a case with critical implications for how water from the drought-stricken Colorado River is shared and the extent of the U.S. government’s obligations to Native American tribes. 

(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)



States that rely on water from the over-tapped Colorado River want the U.S. Supreme Court to block a lawsuit from the Navajo Nation that could upend how water is shared in the Western U.S.

The tribe doesn’t have enough water and says that the federal government is at fault. Roughly a third of residents on the vast Navajo Nation don’t have running water in their homes.

More than 150 years ago, the U.S. government and the tribe signed treaties that promised the tribe a “permanent home” — a promise the Navajo Nation says includes a sufficient supply of water. The tribe says the government broke its promise to ensure the tribe has enough water and that people are suffering as a result.

The federal government disputes that claim. And states, such as Arizona, California and Nevada, argue that more water for the Navajo Nation would cut into already scarce supplies for cities, agriculture and business growth.

The high court will hold oral arguments Monday in a case with critical implications for how water from the drought-stricken Colorado River is shared and the extent of the U.S. government’s obligations to Native American tribes.

A win for the Navajo Nation won’t directly result in more water for the roughly 175,000 people who live on the largest reservation in the U.S. But it’s a piece of what has been a multi-faceted approach over decades to obtain a basic need.

Tina Becenti, a mother of five, made two or three short trips a day to her mom’s house or a public water spot to haul water back home, filling several five-gallon buckets and liter-sized pickle jars. They filled slowly, sapping hours from her day. Her sons would sometimes help lift the heavy containers into her Nissan SUV that she’d drive carefully back home to avoid spills.

“Every drop really matters,” Becenti said.

That water had to be heated then poured into a tub to bathe her young twin girls. Becenti’s mother had running water, so her three older children would sometimes go there to shower. After a couple of years, Becenti finally got a large tank installed by the nonprofit DigDeep so she could use her sink.

DigDeep, which filed a legal brief in support of the Navajo Nation’s case, has worked to help tribal members gain access to water as larger water-rights claims are pressed.

Extending water lines to the sparsely populated sections of the 27,000 square-mile (69,000 square-kilometer) reservation that spans three states is difficult and costly. But tribal officials say additional water supplies would help ease the burden and create equity.

“You drive to Flagstaff, you drive to Albuquerque, you drive to Phoenix, there is water everywhere, everything is green, everything is watered up,” said Rex Kontz, deputy general manager of the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority. “You don’t see that on Navajo.”

The tribe primarily relies on groundwater to serve homes and businesses.

For decades, the Navajo Nation has fought for access to surface water, including the Colorado River and its tributaries, that it can pipe to more remote locations for homes, businesses and government offices.

It’s a legal fight that resonates with tribes across the U.S., said Dylan Hedden-Nicely, the director of the Native American Law Program at the University of Idaho and an attorney representing tribal organizations that filed a brief in support of the Navajo Nation.

The Navajo Nation has reached settlements for water from the San Juan River in New Mexico and Utah. Both of those settlements draw from the Colorado River’s Upper Basin.

The tribe has yet to reach agreement with Arizona and the federal government for water rights from the Colorado River in the Lower Basin that includes the states of California, Arizona and Nevada. It also has sought water from a tributary, the Little Colorado River, another major legal dispute that’s playing out separately.

In the U.S Supreme Court case, the Navajo Nation wants the U.S. Department of the Interior to account for the tribe’s needs in Arizona and come up with a plan to meet those needs.

A federal appeals court ruled the Navajo Nation’s lawsuit could move forward, overturning a decision from a lower court.

Attorneys for the Navajo Nation base their claims on two treaties the tribe and the U.S. signed in 1849 and 1868. The latter allowed Navajos to return to their ancestral homelands in the Four Corners region after being forcibly marched to a desolate tract in eastern New Mexico.

The Navajo Nation wants the Supreme Court to find that those treaties guaranteed them enough water to sustain their homeland. And the tribe wants a chance to make its case before a lower federal court.

The federal government says it has helped the tribe get water from the Colorado River’s tributaries, but no treaty or law forces officials to address the tribe’s general water needs. The Interior Department declined to comment on the pending case.

“We absolutely think they’re entitled to water, but we don’t think the lower Colorado River is the source,” said Rita Maguire, the attorney representing states in the Lower Basin who oppose the tribe’s claims.

If the Supreme Court sides with the Navajo Nation, other tribes might make similar demands, Maguire said.

Arizona, Nevada and California contend the Navajo Nation is making an end run around another Supreme Court case that divvied up water in the Colorado River’s Lower Basin.

“The first question in front of the court now is: why is the lower court dealing with the issue at all?” said Grant Christensen, a federal Indian law expert and professor at Stetson University.

Even if the justices side with the Navajo Nation, the tribe wouldn’t immediately get water. The case would go back to the U.S. District Court in Arizona, and rights to more water still could be years, if not, decades away. The Navajo Nation also could reach a settlement with Arizona and the federal government for rights to water from the Colorado River and funding to deliver it to tribal communities.

Tribal water rights often are tied to the date a reservation was established, which would give the Navajo Nation one of the highest priority rights to Colorado River water and could force conservation on others, said Hedden-Nicely of the University of Idaho.

Given the likelihood of a long road ahead, Kontz of the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority says many older Navajo won’t live to see running water in their homes.

Becenti, the 42-year-old mother of five, remembers shedding tears of joy when running water finally was installed in her house and her family could use a flushable indoor toilet.

It was a relief to “go to the facility without having to worry about bugs, lizards, snakes,” she said.

___

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

 

The Big Story

Approval of 30-year oil project comes with fraught politics for Haaland, Biden

The administration’s approval of the Willow Project puts Interior Secretary Deb Haaland into the position of defending the approval of a project she once opposed.

© AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan

Haaland, after the approval was announced earlier this week, released a video calling it “difficult and complex” but saying it was inherited from prior administrations.   The video came after the White House said the Interior Department would make an “independent decision” on whether to approve it.    Yet Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said that his advocacy in support of the project was with President Biden, not Haaland.    “Deb Haaland was not in the loop on this at all,” he told reporters this week.    However, an Interior Department spokesperson said that Haaland was “actively involved in Willow discussions from the beginning.”    Meanwhile, the administration’s press release on the topic focused on moves that were made to shrink the project, such as allowing it to move forward with three drill sites instead of the five originally requested by ConocoPhillips.    The decision was also politically difficult for Biden, who wants to be seen as doing everything he can to keep fuel prices low, but alienated allies in the environmental movement.

Deb Haaland in difficult spot after Biden approves Alaska drilling

BY ZACK BUDRYK - 

THE HILL

03/17/23 

President Biden has put Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in a difficult spot by approving a controversial Alaskan oil-drilling project that the former New Mexico lawmaker opposed when she served in Congress.

Biden’s decision to proceed with the Willow Project will allow ConocoPhillips to produce up to 180,00 barrels a day at its peak, which a ConocoPhillips spokesperson said should be within the first few years of startup. The project is expected to produce 576 million barrels of oil over 30 years.

The president and supporters of the project say Willow will create thousands of jobs in Alaska and help keep the U.S. energy independent, an increasingly important notion for Biden ahead of an expected 2024 reelection bid likely to take place against a backdrop of elevated gas prices aggravated by the Russia-Ukraine war.

But the project will also produce an estimated 239 million metric tons of carbon emissions over the next 30 years, which is equivalent to driving 51 million cars for a year.

That’s why Haaland, the first Native American to lead the Interior Department, opposed the project when she was a member of Congress.

And it’s why the decision to approve Willow undercuts her standing and puts her in a tough spot going forward — especially with groups opposed to the project, who believe their lead defender within the administration was just big-footed.

“It seems clear that the White House decided to override Secretary Haaland, as well as many other career staff who believe that this project should not have been approved throughout the department,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, which is suing the federal government over the approval. “I think the Biden White House is forcing them to take the blame and swallow a decision they did not agree with, for very political reasons.”

Haaland likely knew she could be in a tough spot with Willow as early as her confirmation hearing in 2021, when she was asked about her opposition to the project by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a prominent supporter

Murkowski specifically asked Haaland if she would allow it to proceed as Interior secretary.

“I think being a [Cabinet] secretary is far different from being a member of Congress,” Haaland said at the time.

Murkowski was the only Republican on the Senate Energy Committee to vote for Haaland’s confirmation.

Interior did approve the Willow Project, but that approval does not show Haaland’s name.

Instead, the No. 2 official at Interior, Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau, an Alaskan nominated for his post after Murkowski and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) signaled they would block Biden’s first choice, signed the approval.

Haaland made her first public comment on the approval Monday evening, saying in a video posted to Twitter that the decision was a “difficult and complex” one that Biden inherited from former President Trump.

The Interior Department’s public announcement of the signoff also pointedly deemphasized the approval itself. Instead, it focused on the department’s decision to reduce the area on which Conoco may drill — a battle won in a war that was lost.

Interior also announced new protections from drilling for a broad swathe of the Arctic over the weekend as rumors swirled that the Willow approval was imminent, an indication the department also senses the political minefield and is seeking to limit the damage.

Environmental groups aren’t publicly upset with Haaland and say they interpret the fact that Beaudreau signed the approval suggests their longtime ally wasn’t in favor of the decision.

The fact that Beaudreau signed it “tells, in my mind, that Deb Haaland was not on board with this decision to some extent,” Hartl said.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), who, like Murkowski, has been a longtime backer of the Willow Project, suggested Wednesday that Haaland’s involvement in negotiations had been minimal.

“Deb Haaland was not in the loop on this at all,” Sullivan told reporters Wednesday. “She was the official in the federal government least involved. And in part, I’m sure, because she was so adamantly against it as a congresswoman. But whatever they’re saying, she had nothing to do with it.”

An Interior spokesperson declined to comment on Sullivan’s specific remarks but sharply contested the idea that Haaland had been removed from the decision-making process.

“The Secretary has been actively involved in Willow discussions from the beginning,” the spokesperson said. “In addition to traveling to Alaska and holding stakeholder meetings in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Utqiagvik, she has met with Alaska Native leaders on both sides of this issue multiple times in D.C. and virtually, as well as conservation and other groups, and members of Congress.”

Either way, the decision would appear to undercut Haaland, suggesting she was overruled and raising questions about her influence in the administration.

“[We’re] very much aware of the legal battles and the complexities that may have strong-armed those who do want to take more progressive actions on the climate,” Jade Begay, director of policy and advocacy at the Native American advocacy group NDN Collective, told The Hill in an interview.

There were influential groups pushing Biden to OK the project, including Alaska’s congressional delegation, the American-Canadian union Laborers’ International Union of North America and a group of Alaska Native state leaders who recently met with Haaland.

And with the 2024 election approaching, Biden has shown signs of tacking right, both with the Willow announcement and with his support of a bill to override changes to Washington, D.C.’s criminal code.

With the crunch resulting from the invasion of Ukraine, “we got a kick in the energy reality teeth last year,” said Frank Maisano, who represents energy clients at the law and government relations firm Bracewell LLP, “and it’s just evident that we can’t run away from fossil fuels as quickly or as much as environmentalists want us to.”

“The Biden administration has had to moderate and unfortunately that puts them in a tough spot,” Maisano added.

Supporters of Haaland say that while the Willow approval was a major loss and a blow to morale, they still think she can be an effective ally within the administration.

“Both things can be true: we still hold her in great regard but this Willow decision, they got it completely wrong and I think a lot of people at the agency know it,” said Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club’s Lands Protection Program. 

“It’s the White House’s choice of how they want to proceed here,” Hartl said. “Do they want to keep handcuffing Interior because they feel like Lisa Murkowski is more important than the future of our planet? That’s their decision.”

Rachel Frazin contributed.

Native American groups blast governor for agency appointment

By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN and MORGAN LEE

1 of 6
Protesters place tape over their mouths to express frustration with the appointment of James Mountain to lead the New Mexico Indian Affairs Department at the New Mexico state Capitol building in Santa Fe, N.M., on Friday, March 17, 2023. A coalition of advocates dedicated to stemming the tide of violence and missing persons cases in Indian Country are demanding more transparency from New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, saying there should be greater accountability in the system for vetting state-appointed positions that serve Indigenous communities. (AP Photo/Morgan Lee)

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A coalition of advocates dedicated to stemming the tide of violence and missing persons cases in Indian Country is demanding more transparency from New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, saying there should be greater accountability in the system for vetting state-appointed positions that serve Indigenous communities.

About 30 protesters gathered Friday in the state Capitol rotunda to voice concerns about the Democratic governor’s contested pick to head the state’s Indian Affairs Department. They want the governor to withdraw her appointment of James Mountain, citing charges he once faced.

They were joined by legislators, including Democratic Sen. Shannon Pinto of the Navajo community of Tohatchi. The Navajo Nation president also has said he cannot support the appointment.

“For so many survivors, when we see James Mountain, we see our abusers,” said Angel Charley, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women.

She said Mountain’s appointment has overshadowed a stalled proposal in the Legislature to make crime victims’ reparations funds available to the families of missing and slain Native Americans.

“He knows how much division there is because of his nomination,” she said. “Step down.”

Lujan Grisham’s appointment has sent shockwaves through tribal communities. While the governor so far has continued to defend Mountain, she has yet to submit his nomination to the Senate for confirmation despite the legislative session ending at noon Saturday.

“I appreciate the passion. But I think that some of the efforts here are a bit unfair and are very misguided,” Lujan Grisham said Friday at a news conference.

Many in the Democratic-led Legislature have remained mum about the governor’s choice not to push for a hearing, which would offer a public forum for Mountain to be vetted.

A former San Ildefonso Pueblo governor, Mountain was once was indicted on charges that included criminal sexual penetration, kidnapping and aggravated battery of a household member. The charges were dropped in 2010, with prosecutors saying they did not have enough evidence to go to trial.

The governor has said those who disagree should respect that charges against Mountain were dismissed.

“I do think that some of that passion about a zero-tolerance standard is pretty interesting in this regard: dismissed case, old,” Lujan Grisham said. “He’s defending himself effectively. I feel terrible for his whole family.”

The coalition has said New Mexico continues to have the highest rate of missing and slain Native American relatives and that “we are at a critical turning point as an Indigenous people.”

“The pervasive culture of violence has normalized behaviors that were once unthinkable in our communities,” the coalition said in a statement. “We are reduced to speaking in hushed whispers about violence that we have not only personally experienced, but that we experience daily in our homes and communities.”

“When we have the courage to speak out, we are often met with blame and stigma, as though we have caused these problems ourselves,” the statement continued.

Aside from recalling Mountain’s appointment, the coalition is demanding a rigorous vetting process for all state-appointed positions that serve Indigenous communities and that any nominee with a court record or indictment related to rape or domestic violence be disqualified.

They also are seeking the creation of a community advisory committee to help vet state-appointed tribal leadership.

“We cannot rely solely on the All Pueblo Council of Governors, the Navajo Nation leaders, Apache leaders, and/or Indigenous male state leaders for the vetting of candidates, as we have learned over the years that tribal leaders actively participate in the patriarchal culture of protecting perpetrators,” the coalition said.

The groups also want a formal apology from Lujan Grisham “for this outrageous nomination” and demanded that an Indigenous woman be appointed as head of the New Mexico Department of Indian Affairs

Mountain has not directly addressed the concerns about his nomination. In a letter directed at state lawmakers, his daughter, Leah Mountain, described him as a devoted father who instilled cultural identity, confidence and aspiration in her after her mother left. She said the allegations against him are false.

Mountain still can serve as head of Indian Affairs without confirmation, and the next likely opportunity for the full Senate to vote on confirming him wouldn’t come until January 2024.

___

Montoya Bryan reported from Albuquerque.