UK

Academic calls for upgrade to sewage systems to protect health

by University of Leeds

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

The risk to public health from human feces in our rivers and seas will increase without action to create a wastewater system fit for the future, according to a Leeds academic.

Professor Barbara Evans, Leeds' Professor of Public Health Engineering, has collaborated on a new report which assesses the best ways to reduce dangers associated with recreational use of water contaminated by sewage.

She said, "Investments in sanitation require national vision and leadership; 150 years ago, the U.K. committed to eliminating cholera and made the necessary huge investments in our wastewater system; we have reaped the benefit of that vision for our whole lives, and we probably haven't been sufficiently aware of it.

"That investment is reaching the end of its life, and we owe it to our children and our grandchildren to make a new commitment and create a vision of a new wastewater system fit for the future."

The report, led by the Royal Academy of Engineering, calls for improvements to the country's sewage system, better maintenance, and more widespread testing of the country's waterways to reduce the risks to swimmers and other water users.

Professor Evans, from Leeds' School of Civil Engineering, was a member of the working group that led the project.

She said, "It's important that people use our natural resources for leisure. It's good for public health and we don't want to stop that.

"What we want to do is to find interventions that bring down the risk of the chance of disease outbreaks when people use those resources."

Reducing people's risk of encountering human fecal pathogens in untreated and treated sewage discharged into rivers and coastal waters must be a priority, the document said.

Consumption of water contaminated with human feces exposes people to bacteria such as salmonella and E. coli, viruses and protozoa, all of which can cause stomach upsets, diarrhea and vomiting. Small children are particularly vulnerable.

The report says collective action by industry, government, public bodies and the general public is required. It makes 15 recommendations, including: review current bathing water regulations; prioritize maintenance of the existing sewage network; return to collecting widespread data on fecal bacteria; develop a long-term strategy for better designing cities to reduce flooding, and the appointment of a dedicated wastewater champion.

Professor Chris Whitty, England's chief medical officer, said it was a "public health priority as well as an environmental one."

First of its kind

This is the first time a comprehensive report has been undertaken to assess actions to reduce public health risks associated with use of public waters contaminated by fecal matter from human waste.

Its findings are based on risk-based assessments and consultations with more than 100 engineers, plus wastewater experts, the water industry, campaign organizations and policymakers.

Despite wastewater treatment works reducing the concentration of human fecal organisms, the continuous discharge of treated effluent into rivers, seas and lakes remains a source of these potentially health-damaging organisms.

The report's authors emphasize that the aim is not to completely remove all those organisms but to find cost-effective, long-term methods of reducing them to a level that does not put public health in jeopardy.

Greater exposure to pollutants

The report, published on 21 May by the National Engineering Policy Center, notes the rise in recreational activities in coastal and inland open waters across the U.K., leading to greater public exposure to pollutants. Increased public awareness and data availability on water quality have spurred renewed scrutiny over U.K. water standards and necessitated a revaluation of the public acceptability of the risk.

The report notes that there is a lack of evidence to demonstrate a direct, causal link between specific wastewater discharges and specific health incidents but emphasizes the known public health risk from exposure to high concentrations of fecal organisms.

It focuses on the role of wastewater infrastructure in introducing primarily human fecal organisms into open water through storm overflows and treated effluent discharge. It does not look at agricultural runoff from livestock, wild animals, or septic tanks.

The working group examined a range of actions across storm water management, wastewater treatment, monitoring and communication with the public, and maintenance and operations. The proposed actions aim to either engineer a reduction in the hazard itself or minimize public exposure to it and the report emphasizes that the choice of action will depend on local conditions, including scale, geography, policy priorities and affordability.

The authors said that the government should not just focus on improving infrastructure—which would reduce the short-term health risk—but a longer-term vision for how the U.K.'s cities are designed.

Public health priority

Professor Whitty said, "Public waterways are a great resource enjoyed by many children and adults and can have a significant positive impact on our health.

"Minimizing human fecal organisms in fresh water is a public health priority as well as an environmental one.

"While there will always be challenges with the efficient management of sewers and sewage treatment works, this report provides clear technical options for how this can realistically be achieved."

The experts also recommended decreasing urban runoff, with incentives for removing impermeable surfaces, like patios or paved-over gardens; increasing rainwater collection and expanding natural environments like wetlands, which would all help to reduce the amount of water and sewage going into the network; as well as educating the public about public health risks and improving effectiveness of signage at designated bathing sites; plus a potential ban on non-flushable items.

United effort

Professor David Butler FREng, Chair of the National Engineering Policy Center working group on wastewater, said, "Our vision for the U.K.'s future wastewater system is one that ensures the right balance of human health, environmental protection, and economic sustainability.

"But first we need a strong evidence base to understand and measure public health risks accurately. Such a foundation is essential to inform regulations, standards, and policies, enabling a united effort by governments, regulators, and water companies to mitigate health risks and ensure the safety of open waters for everyone.

"Growing urbanization and forecasts for more frequent and intense rainfall events due to climate change will mean increasing pressure is put on our aging wastewater system. Policymakers and industry should carefully consider the actions we have outlined here and their implications in future wastewater infrastructure projects."

More information: Testing the Waters: Priorities for Mitigating Health Risks from Wastewater Pollution: raeng.org.uk/news/new-report-u … rotect-public-health

Provided by University of Leeds Reviving England's polluted rivers through incentivizing farmers and comprehensive monitoring

 

Congressional Leaders Call on US DOJ to Investigate Fossil Fuel Industry Climate Deception

Statement by Kathy Mulvey, Union of Concerned Scientists

Published May 22, 2024

WASHINGTON—Today, U.S. Senate Budget Committee Chair Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and House Oversight and Accountability Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) asked U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate fossil fuel industry climate deception and efforts to divert and delay action to address the worsening climate change crisis. The lawmakers forwarded evidence uncovered through public hearings and internal documents produced in response to congressional subpoenas issued as part of a multi-year bicameral investigation into ways fossil fuel companies and their associates knew about the harm their products would cause to people and the planet but lied to the public to continue boosting corporate profits.

Below is a statement by Kathy Mulvey, the accountability campaign director in the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

“This multi-year bicameral congressional investigation has brought to light shocking and undeniable wrongdoing by ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell and others in the fossil fuel industry. There’s now a mountain of evidence confirming the fossil fuel industry’s ongoing efforts to defraud the public, manipulate our political system, delay the necessary transition to clean energy, and risk shareholder investments in the name of power and profits. Investigation and civil litigation against tobacco and big pharma firms by the U.S. Department of Justice was a critical step toward accountability for corporate misconduct, and similar action is warranted in the face of the fossil fuel industry-driven climate crisis. Requiring major oil and gas producers to stop lying and correct past lies could lead to a watershed moment in furthering climate action.”

This announcement comes after the United States experienced the highest-ever annual number of billion-dollar plus disasters in the previous year. Also in 2023, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP brought in combined annual profits totaling over $100 billion. Climate attribution research, including multiple studies led by UCS, directly connect emissions from the extraction and use of fossil fuel products to increased average temperature of the Earth’s surface, global sea level rise, ocean acidification, and wildfires. Another peer-reviewed analysis by UCS found that if policymakers do not take action on climate change, extreme heat could cause tens of millions of outdoor workers in the United States to jeopardize their health and risk losing a collective $55.4 billion in earnings each year by midcentury.

Additional UCS Resources and Analyses:

• A UCS blogpost by Mulvey on revelations from the first batch of internal oil and gas documents released by the U.S. House Oversight Committee.

• In a video, UCS scientists react to misleading statements made by the CEOs of BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell at a previous House Oversight Committee hearing.

• A UCS blogpost documenting disinformation claims by oil and gas company executives.

• A UCS report, “The Climate Deception Dossiers: Internal Fossil Fuel Industry Memos Reveal Decades of Corporate Disinformation.”

• A UCS blogpost by Mulvey discussing the departure of ExxonMobil’s climate scientist board member.

• A UCS blogpost by Laura Peterson, a corporate analyst at UCS, outlining ExxonMobil’s lawsuit against its shareholders and the company’s recent departure from the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

• A UCS blogpost by Peterson breaking down the climate disclosure rule proposed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this year.

• MEDIA CONTACT

  

  Ashley Siefert Nunes

  Climate and Energy Media Manager

  Climate, International Climate Negotiations, Corporate Accountability

  asiefert@ucsusa.org

  
  

Doctors engage the public by bringing a human side to social media

Presenting their ‘human self’ as well as their ‘professional self’ allows doctors to role model healthy behaviours for peers and trainees, and be more relatable to their patients and the public.

THE CONVERSATION 

Published: May 22, 2024 

A few years ago, doctors flooded social media with photos of themselves in swimsuits, along with the hashtag #medbikini. The reason? A recently published study suggested it was “unprofessional” for women physicians to post photos of themselves in bikinis.

Although the study caused a major outcry and was eventually retracted, its key message was nothing new. For decades, doctors have been trained to keep their personal lives separate from their work lives. To maintain their identities as trusted experts wherever they go — even on the beach.

Studies have shown that this pressure to appear professional can lead to burnout and even suicide. It may also damage physicians’ relationship with the public, because people tend to trust experts who are not only knowledgeable, but also warm and personable.



But our new study shows that — despite these pressures — physicians feel it’s important to show their personal side on social media. To be effective health communicators, they see that presenting their “human self” as well as their “professional self” allows them to role model healthy behaviours for peers and trainees, and to be more relatable to their patients and the public.
Doctors on X

As researchers who study health communication and physician education, we wanted to understand how doctors present themselves on social media — an environment where the lines between personal and professional are often blurred.

We interviewed 28 doctors in the United States about how they decide when and what to post and who they hope to reach on X (formerly Twitter). We also looked at each doctor’s bio and profile photo, noting the images, hashtags and descriptions they used to present themselves.

We found that the doctors used X for many reasons, ranging from the strictly professional to the highly personal. They used the platform to connect with colleagues, advocate for social change, raise awareness about social justice issues and educate the public about health topics, which aligns with previous research.

This public outreach wasn’t just a hobby or passion for physicians, but a core part of their professional role. As one doctor put it: “I feel like it’s part of my job. It’s part of what I signed up for as being a physician to educate my communities.”

Most importantly, doctors also used X to show a more human side, posting about their families, pets, vacations (yes, including pictures of themselves in swimsuits), hobbies and more. Many were also upfront about their failures and struggles with their mental health, explaining that they wanted to show the general public (but also remind some of their medical colleagues) that doctors “are human beings…like everyone else.”

Doctors felt it was important that their posts and profile represented their authentic self and not just their professional credentials, although they showcased those as well. As one doctor put it: “This is me. I’m a physician. I’m a woman. I’m a mother.”

Showing their authentic selves

Doctors felt it was important that their posts and profile represented their authentic self and not just their professional credentials. (Shutterstock)

Doctors explained that showing their human side wasn’t just something they did for themselves but was also a way to build trusting relationships with their patients. They were keenly aware that trust is essential for effective medical care, increasing the chances that patients will return for follow-up visits and stick to health recommendations.

As one doctor put it, “I think I get credibility for demonstrating humanity, honestly…Once they sort of know who I am as a human, I like to think that it, I hope, makes them more likely to listen when I say something medically.”

Doctors also shared their authentic selves to create social change, both in their profession and in society at large. Recognizing the high levels of stress students face in medical school, they hoped to role model for future physicians that “doctors can’t be doctors all of the time” and encourage them to work towards better work-life balance. Doctors also used their profiles to speak out about important social justice issues, such as diversity in medicine, gun control and the climate crisis.

At times, doctors’ openness about their personal identities and beliefs caused tensions in their professional lives. For example, some received comments from employers who felt their social media use was “too personal.” Others experienced harassment, including offensive comments about their race or gender.

Still, the doctors in our study overwhelmingly felt that showing this human side was worth it — that it made them better social media communicators, doctors and citizens. By showing their authentic selves online, they felt they could show colleagues, aspiring doctors and the public that it is possible — and even beneficial — to be both a doctor and a human being.

Authors

Alice Fleerackers
Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Journalism, Writing, and Media, University of British Columbia

Disclosure statement
Alice Fleerackers receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Lauren A Maggio
Professor of Medical Education, University of Illinois Chicago

How Audubon is Working to Protect Wetlands a Year After US Supreme Court Gutted Protections

Wetlands and small water bodies are critical for birds and need renewed support.


Green Heron. Photo: Liz Eudy/Audubon Photography Awards
Words by Caitlin Wall
Policy Director, Water Conservation
Published May 21, 2024


On May 25, 2023, the Supreme Court drastically weakened federal Clean Water Act protections for waterways across the country. The Sackett v. EPA ruling found that smaller bodies of water—like seasonal streams or wetlands—that do not directly connect to another federally protected water body (like a larger lake or river) do not fall under the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act. A year later, the ramifications of the ruling are still being understood in many parts of the country, but overall, the decision resulted in drastically fewer federal protections for waterways that are critical for birds and people.

Audubon recognizes the value of wetlands not only for bird habitat, but also the important benefits they provide to communities across America. Wetlands and similar waterbodies filter pollutants out of the water system, recharge aquifers, act as storm buffers, and absorb carbon—providing resilience to climate change threats like drought, flooding, and extreme storm events. Removing federal protections for these waterways opens them up to development and destruction as they are no longer subject to federal permitting or mitigation processes.

At Audubon, we continue to work with partners and federal agencies to find solutions for this regulatory gap—this includes working at state and local levels and advocating for increased federal funding for existing programs that protect and restore wetlands. We are working across the country to shore up protections in states that now have the ability to protect—or ignore—these critical waterbodies. Here are some of the ways Audubon is leading the fight to protect wetlands:

Colorado

Audubon Rockies, along with coalition partners, was instrumental in working with state leaders to pass a bill that protects wetlands and ephemeral streams that lost federal jurisdiction after Sackett. Colorado’s legislative calendar and process allowed it to move quicker than other states, with impressive partner collaboration. In all, Audubon network members took 2,523 online actions to support this policy and protect the waterways in their state.

Indiana

Unfortunately, not all states took the opportunity to protect wetlands. Some chose to double down on the Sackett decision and further erode the legal protections for these smaller waterways. Audubon Great Lakes fought hard, speaking out on behalf of the 94 percent of Indiana voters who believe that state leaders should either strengthen or maintain Indiana's current wetlands protections. Looking ahead, Audubon Great Lakes will continue working with partners throughout the state to restore protections and conserve wetland habitat wherever possible.

Illinois

Other Great Lakes states are heeding the call to protect wetlands, including Illinois. This state is close to following Colorado’s lead in enacting its own state-level protections for wetlands and waterways left vulnerable by the Supreme Court. The work is still ongoing to pass this legislation this session and Audubon Great Lakes will continue advocating for swift passage.

Wisconsin

The work to protect wetlands in Wisconsin was ongoing even before the Sackett decision. In fact, the past year has led to two amazing victories for the Badger State. Last year, Audubon Great Lakes helped secure funding in the Wisconsin state budget for a wetlands restoration project. This collaborative effort —which included the Oneida Nation, Northeastern Wisconsin Audubon, and the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay Cofrin Center for Biodiversity—will also help scientists understand how birds respond to wetland conservation efforts. This year, the governor signed bipartisan legislation into law creating the Pre-Disaster Flood Resilience Grant Program. This will provide funding to encourage local governments to restore and conserve wetlands and undertake other proactive strategies before flooding events occur.

New Mexico

In the Land of Enchantment, Audubon Southwest is working with partners to help improve the health and flow of rivers. This includes advocating for the development of a state-base surface water-quality permitting program that would help buffer the protection of our streams from pollution and dewatering that will result from relaxed federal standards. This critical work is all the more important as our non-profit partner, American Rivers, recently named all of New Mexico’s as the most endangered in America.

California

A bill currently in the California legislature session would codify a state policy that would result in no net loss of wetlands and would require long-term gains in the quality and quantity of wetlands. Audubon California is also supporting additional staffing and authority for the State Water Resources Control Board to regulate "waters of the state," including isolated wetlands. And, Audubon California is co-sponsoring a bill to protect water supplies for managed wetlands. While California already has strong state protections for wetlands, this critical work will proactively ensure wetlands are providing the habitat and ecosystem needs for birds and people throughout the state.

Maryland

Audubon Mid-Atlantic had several water wins in the Maryland legislative session this year and the Clean Water Justice Act was a crucial win for wetlands. This bill restores protections for some Maryland waters that were lost in Sackett and restores the right of communities harmed by water pollution to bring a lawsuit against polluters in those waters. Audubon Mid-Atlantic was proud to support environmental justice and watershed conservation advocates working to advance this critical response to Sackett for Maryland’s waterways.

Utah

Audubon has long worked to support saline lakes and their surrounding wetlands throughout the West and our tenure at Great Salt Lake is no exception. The goal of the Great Salt Lake Watershed Enhancement Program, co-led by Audubon and The Nature Conservancy, is to enhance water quantity and water quality, with at least 25% of the funding used to protect and restore wetlands habitat to benefit the hydrology of Great Salt Lake. Late last year, the Trust awarded more than $8.5 million to protect or restore wetlands for the benefit of the lake.

Florida

In Florida, Audubon has worked for over a century to protect the Everglades and its surrounding ecosystems. The work continues in Tallahassee and in Washington, DC. A recent decision to delegate federal wetland permitting authority to the state would further weaken federal protection of these wetlands. Fortunately, a federal judge has intervened to stop that delegation. Audubon Florida has also moved successfully during multiple recent legislative sessions to block proposals to roll back wetland protections enacted by local government that are stronger than state law. In Congress, Audubon is supporting provisions in the Water Resources Development Act of 2024 that would provide for wetland restoration in the Western Everglades and Lake Okeechobee.

Audubon will continue to look for and promote opportunities that protect America’s wetlands and seasonal streams for birds and people.

Big Tech thinks it can plant trees better than everyone else

Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Salesforce launched a new coalition to try to cancel out their greenhouse gas emissions.


By Justine Calma, a senior science reporter covering energy and the environment with more than a decade of experience. She is also the host of Hell or High Water: When

 Disaster Hits Home, a podcast from Vox Media and Audible Originals.

VERGE
May 22, 2024

An area of dense primary forest in the Loango National Park, Gabon, on Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2022. Photo: Getty Images


Some of the biggest names in tech are joining forces to try something that many before them have failed to do: use trees to cancel out their greenhouse gas emissions. Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Salesforce are creating the Symbiosis Coalition as an effort to support “nature-based” projects aimed at taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

It’s a tactic companies have used for decades to try to offset their greenhouse gas emissions by planting trees, which take in and store carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. The hope is that paying to restore forests will amplify that process, ostensibly counteracting companies’ carbon footprint. It sounds simple enough on paper. However, a growing body of evidence has shown that this strategy fails time after time.

A growing body of evidence has shown that this strategy fails time after time

The Symbiosis Coalition seems to think it can turn things around. Together, the companies have committed to purchasing credits from “high-impact, science-based restoration projects” representing up to 20 million tons of captured carbon dioxide by 2030. They say they’ll vet projects for quality control, aiming to drum up demand for carbon credits that have earned a bad rap because so many carbon offset initiatives have fallen flat in the past.

In one recent example, a study of 26 carbon offset projects across six countries published in the journal Science last year found that few of them succeeded in stopping deforestation. Whatever climate benefits the projects were purported to have were overblown by as much as 300 percent. A separate investigation into one of the world’s leading carbon registries found that 90 percent of its rainforest offsets turned out to be “phantom credits” that likely didn’t represent real-world reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. And a 2022 report by nonprofit watchdog Carbon Market Watch determined that carbon offset credits offered by major European airlines were similarly linked to faulty forestry projects.

A big part of the problem is that it’s difficult to measure just how much carbon dioxide a tree or forest has absorbed, which has led to projects exaggerating how much good they do for the climate. Planting trees is also a tricky endeavor — if they don’t live for hundreds of years, they just wind up releasing all the carbon they’ve stored. Planting the wrong trees in the wrong place, creating tree farms instead of forests, can also harm the local environment. In 2020, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff backed a World Economic Forum plan to plant a trillion trees — although the research undergirding the effort was quickly criticized by dozens of scientists for grossly overestimating the potential environmental benefits.

Salesforce, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are confident they can keep history from repeating itself

Nevertheless, Salesforce, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are confident they can keep history from repeating itself. To try to accomplish that, they worked alongside independent experts to establish strict criteria for forestry projects. Symbiosis also says in a press release that it’ll “involve and compensate Indigenous Peoples and local communities” to work toward “equitable outcomes.” And while it’s starting with forestry projects, Symbiosis says that, over time, it’ll incorporate other strategies, like sequestering carbon dioxide in soil.

“Nature-based projects are complex and challenging to get right and haven’t always lived up to their intended impact,” Symbiosis executive director Julia Strong said in an email to The Verge. “Symbiosis aims to address challenges around nature-based project integrity to date by setting a high-quality bar that builds on best in class market standards and the latest science, data, and best practice.”

The coalition is modeled after a similar initiative called Frontier launched by Stripe, Alphabet, Meta, Shopify, and McKinsey in 2022. Frontier is focused on supporting new technologies to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Frontier has contracted more than 510,000 tons of carbon removal — but delivered just around 1,700 tons of captured carbon so far.

Both Symbiosis and Frontier are aimed at facilitating deals between carbon removal projects and companies that want to pay for their services. Eventually, Symbiosis hopes more companies beyond its founders will hop on board.


For perspective, all of these efforts still add up to a small fraction of the emissions these companies produce. The 20 million metric tons of nature-based carbon dioxide removal that Symbiosis committed to is just slightly more than the 15.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide Microsoft alone produced in its last fiscal year.


To be sure, safeguarding the world’s forests does a lot of good for the planet. But exploiting them in the name of fighting climate change hasn’t been a safe bet. Raising the stakes, Big Tech’s greenhouse gas emissions are growing with the rise of energy-hungry AI tools. If companies are serious about taking on climate change, they’ll still have to rein in the amount of pollution they produce in the first place. Even successful forest projects can’t do all the dirty work for them.

Scientists found a way to grow diamonds from scratch in just 15 minutes

By Joshua Hawkins
Published May 22nd, 2024

Image: Björn Wylezich / Adobe

Scientists have discovered a way to synthesize diamonds, and it doesn’t even require a starter gem to get things going. The new technique can actually grow diamonds in normal atmospheric pressure, and it can do so in just 15 minutes.

This crazy breakthrough is highlighted in a new study published in Nature at the end of April. According to the researchers involved, the new technique will eliminate several major drawbacks to the synthesis processes normally utilized to create diamonds.

Natural diamonds are created deep within what we call the molten zone of the Earth’s mantle. This area of earth is located hundreds of miles beneath the surface, and it takes a ton of pressure (something like several gigapascals) and temperatures exceeding 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit (1,500 degrees Celsius) to grow diamonds naturally.

A diamond pattern. Image source: htoto911/Adobe

Synthesizing diamonds requires a similar process, with high-pressure and high-temperature both being requirements to convert carbon, which has been dissolved into liquid metals like iron, into a small starter diamond. These components are difficult to keep up for long periods of time, and even then, the quality of those components really affects the quality and size of the diamond generated.

Other methods remove the need for high pressure but still require a starter seed to get the process moving. With this new technique, though, the ability to grow a diamond becomes much more accessible.

The researchers used gallium with a bit of silicon to get started and put it into a graphite crucible. The entire setup could be maintained at sea level atmospheric pressure and could be readied to create a diamond in just 15 minutes. They then flushed super-hot carbon-rich methane gas through the crucible chamber.

And, with a little tweaking, they started to grow diamonds. Of course, the entire process still needs some tweaking, as the diamonds that they’re growing here aren’t big enough to slot into rings or anything. But, with the process becoming much simpler and the required components becoming easier to maintain, creating diamonds from scratch could be well on its way to becoming far more accessible.

Watchdogs Investigating Mt. Diablo USD's $50M Energy Project

An oversight committee at Mt. Diablo Unified School District, Calif., is looking into cost overruns on Schneider Electric's work to modernize heating and cooling equipment, lighting fixtures and building control systems.

May 22, 2024 •
Katie Lauer, Silicon Valley, San Jose, Calif.

Shutterstock
(TNS) — For the past decade, Schneider Electric has wooed educators across the country with promises of green, cost-cutting energy solutions to help improve learning conditions inside school halls and classrooms.

Whether modernizing heating and cooling equipment, lighting fixtures or building control systems, the Texas-based multinational company has boasted that its services not only reduce energy consumption, but also save school districts money in the long run.

But several watchdogs responsible for ensuring effective spending of taxpayers' dollars are now ringing alarm bells over one multi-million-dollar Schneider Electric project in Contra Costa County. Complaints have snowballed into questions about whether the Mt. Diablo Unified School District (MDUSD) illegally allowed Schneider to scope, design and construct energy-efficient improvements to buildings district-wide, ultimately doubling their cost to $50 million.

What's more, an oversight committee is claiming that the district is stonewalling its attempts to investigate this contract, perhaps in violation of California law.

The school district's Citizen's Bond Oversight Committee (CBOC) on Thursday discussed sending a formal letter in June to the county's civil grand jury about its concerns, shortly after sharing the same grievances with District Attorney Diana Becton's office.

Committee members — who are appointed by MDUSD's governing board — are looking into allegations related to Schneider Electric's "energy savings performance" contract with the district. Similar contracts at the crux of Schneider's pitch to educators have been clouded by allegations of malfeasance, including criminal forfeiture of $1.7 million and a $9.3 million settlement in Dec. 2020 involving at least eight projects with the federal government.

Under current regulations, contracts classified as "energy savings performance" can be approved without being put out to competitive bidding, as long as the amount of money saved from efficiency upgrades exceeds project costs. The district took Schneider at its word that the projected savings will surpass $37.7 million within 20 years; in fact, the contract stipulated that the company's data on projected savings would be approved without any additional measurement or verification.

Concerns that the school board has not properly handled these allegations have gotten so serious that the oversight committee has tentatively suggested starting a campaign to recall MDUSD's board trustees, who approved the contract and subsequent revisions with Schneider.

Jack Weir, a member of the oversight committee, has spent two decades doing similar work on over $1 billion in school bonds for six different oversight committees. He said at a March 7 committee meeting that, "we would prefer the district to clean this up if there is a problem. But from my perspective, we aren't getting any cooperation back from the (school) board, and this has gone on for months, and months, and months."

Gina Haynes, the oversight committee's chair, said reaching out to the county's district attorney — and potentially a civil grand jury down the line — was a last resort, after school district Superintendent Adam Clark and the board denied the committee's request for $14,250 to hire independent legal counsel to review allegations of possible wrongdoing.

"I just want to know, did we do it wrong? And learn from it," Haynes said Thursday, adding that the oversight board has asked for independent legal help on this issue for more than a year. "I applied for this committee — I'm not here just to rubber stamp. My job is to report out to the public, and I feel like I can't do that."

MDUSD Superintendent Adam Clark defended the project's legality and completion, arguing that the CBOC's repeated requests and complaints about the bidding process and energy savings of Schneider's project are "clearly outside of their scope of responsibility." After the committee was not satisfied with Schneider's answers over several meetings, he said that the CBOC also refused to use the list of attorneys — and narrower scope of investigation — that the district offered.

"The role of the CBOC is — after a project is complete — to basically verify that we did what we said we would do," Clark said Friday. "Of course, if something's amiss, I want to get to the bottom of it. My concern is if we start hiring attorneys on their behalf and keep going down different rabbit holes, that's not very responsible and not even how we do business."

Potential trouble began brewing in March 2023, when the total project cost swelled to $49.4 million after the school board unanimously approved an amendment to Schneider's May 2022 contract to replace lighting fixtures and ceiling tiles district-wide. The expanded scope included nearly $25.1 million of additional work on heating and cooling systems, which was not separately put out to bid.

Schneider has signed similar contracts with several other school districts nationwide, including Northern California projects in Berkeley, Dublin, Dixon and Stockton.

But state officials have advised other government officials for years that this no-bid-extension process may violate state laws regarding conflicts of interest.

In addition to a letter sent in 2019 to the city of Pleasanton, California's Fair Political Practices Commission also advised the city of Concord's legal team in 2020 about this same concern.

Marc Starkey, an account executive for Schneider Electric who has managed over $150 million in school district projects for the company, including the Mt. Diablo district, refused to comment on the accusations or respond directly to the oversight group's push to investigate the contracting issues. However, he said he believes that a new state law, which went into effect in January, ensures that their two-step contracting process is "completely legal."

"This hasn't been brought up in like 200 of our contracts that we've done over the last 15 years, so it hasn't been an issue," Starkey said Thursday. "The committee's here to make sure that district's performing right, so they have every right to do that. But we're going to respond how the district wants us to — we're going to be here every step of the way."

In 2018, voters approved Measure J, a $150 million school bond bookmarked for campus infrastructure improvements and energy system efficiency upgrades. According to flyers ahead of the election, more than 85 percent of polled voters shared four top priorities for that money, which is paid back by increased property taxes: improvements to technology and science in classrooms, building repairs to aging roofs, plumbing and electrical, campus security measures and upgraded computers and engineering classrooms.

However, Schneider's heating and cooling work, and lighting work has already accounted for more than 60 percent of the total $46 million spent on Measure J projects by the end of March, according to a quarterly report the oversight committee released this month. Those records also show that the district still owes another $20.3 million for the company's contract.

Haynes, the committee chair, said this discrepancy between funded projects and the district's $1 billion "wish list" of priorities provides "a little snapshot of what we really need to upgrade at all these school sites. If we could have gotten all this work done for half the price, we wouldn't want to make this mistake again."

Schneider's federal settlement from 2020 echoes the Mt. Diablo Unified School Board's bond oversight committee's current concerns about doing the right thing, and learning from past mistakes.

"Ever since we brought this up and wanted to investigate, there's been all this pushback, especially from the superintendent," Haynes said, adding that she's uncomfortable with how contentious meetings have become. "We're volunteers who are just trying to do oversight. It shouldn't be this hard."

©2024 Silicon Valley, San Jose, Calif. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

West Coast seabird study shows how they might one day share the air with wind turbines

by JoAnna Wendel, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Close-up of ThermalTracker-3D offshore prototype system sensors (A) and a depiction of 

this system during deployment in 2021 on a WindSentinel buoy (outlined in a white 

bounding box) (B). Credit: Frontiers in Marine Science (2024). DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2024.1346758

One day, wind turbines may float off the coasts of California and southern Oregon, providing clean, renewable energy to millions of homes. But before construction can start, researchers are studying how to minimize the potential wind farms' impact on local wildlife.

Researchers from the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and environmental consulting firm H. T. Harvey & Associates recently deployed technology off the West Coast in one of the first efforts to understand how high seabirds fly and whether they might interact with wind turbines and other infrastructure.

They published the research on April 24 in Frontiers in Marine Energy.

"This is an important step in understanding seabird behavior at the height of offshore wind turbines on the West Coast," said Shari Matzner, computer scientist at PNNL and co-author on the paper. Data from scientists on research vessels have provided estimates of how high birds fly, depending on wind strength, but "this is really the first time we've had real-time, quantified flight height data for these birds," Matzner said.

Tracking birds

Scientists have studied impacts of wind turbines in Europe and on the East Coast, which have a more mature offshore wind industry. Previous studies have found very low rates of collisions between birds and offshore wind turbines.

But deep waters off the West Coast host a much different community of seabirds than both those places, said Scott Terrill, paper co-author and principal senior avian expert at H. T. Harvey. Out there, birds like albatross, shearwater, and petrels hunt for food and depend on the same strong winds that make these waters ideal for generating power.

These birds spend much of their lives in the air. To stay aloft using the least amount of energy, the birds hitch rides on strong gusts of wind to gain altitude and then coast downwards in a flight pattern known as "dynamic soaring."

Researchers want to know whether dynamic soaring—and other flight behavior—might bring these birds to the height of offshore wind turbine blades, which would stretch from 25–260 meters (82–853 feet) above the water.

"Certain kinds of seabirds actually need wind for effective, or even any, flight. They have long, narrow wings like glider aircraft. It's important to quantify the degree to which seabirds and offshore wind turbines might overlap," Terrill said.

During the summer of 2021, DOE and PNNL, along with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, launched a buoy fitted with PNNL's ThermalTracker-3D (TT3D), a stereo camera system that uses a pair of thermal cameras to track birds as they fly overhead.

Researchers have already used TT3D on land to monitor birds as well as bats as they navigate around land-based wind turbines, but this is the first time the technology has been deployed at sea. After deployment, the H. T. Harvey team evaluated the bird flight data.

Bobbing on a buoy around 40 kilometers (25 miles) off the northern Californian coast, TT3D monitored the sky for nearly 2,000 hours over the summer of 2021. The instrument spotted more than 1,400 birds flying both day and night.

Out of the 1,400 birds tracked, 79% of them flew in the first 25 meters (82 feet) above sea level, with most activity concentrated in the first 10 meters (33 feet) above sea level—far below hypothetical turbine blades.

Of the remaining birds tracked, 21% flew at heights that overlapped with hypothetical turbine blades, while fewer than 1% flew higher. No birds were tracked flying higher than 316 meters (1,036 feet) above sea level (the detection range of the system is limited to around 400 meters, or 1,312 feet).

Where the day length was about 14 hours, most birds were spotted during the day, but TT3D also tracked activity at dawn, dusk, and overnight.

"These data add to the baseline understanding of bird behavior and will help us better understand how any future wind turbines may affect seabirds," said Matzner, who led the development of TT3D at PNNL.

Protecting from environmental impacts

The latest work adds to a bulk of research from PNNL that aims to minimize the impact of renewable energy projects on wildlife.

To complement data from TT3D, PNNL researchers are also working on a system that uses radar to track bird flight at sea. While TT3D can generate details about flight patterns and provide some data to help researchers identify species, it doesn't "see" long distance.

Radar, on the other hand, doesn't offer fine detail, but its detection range would allow for tracking the behavior of a population of birds around places intended for wind turbines, Matzner said.

This year, TT3D will also be deployed to study birds on the East Coast, as a part of the Wind Forecast Improvement Project, a PNNL-led project to improve weather forecasts for utilities.

The Frontiers study won't be the last of its kind on the West Coast, Matzner said. Although TT3D can spot birds, the ability to tell what species they are is still a work in progress.

Researchers also need to understand how birds might be affected aside from collision risk; some studies show that bird populations will completely avoid areas with wind farms, for example.

More data will be needed to fully understand how birds use the air they may one day share with wind turbines.

More information: Stephanie R. Schneider et al, Autonomous thermal tracking reveals spatiotemporal patterns of seabird activity relevant to interactions with floating offshore wind facilities, Frontiers in Marine Science (2024). DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2024.1346758

Journal information: Frontiers in Marine Science 

Provided by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory 

System provides clearer picture of avian activity around wind turbines