Bill Gates urges South Korea to be a leader in 'crisis moment for global health'


Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates called on South Korea to play a greater role in tackling infectious diseases and fighting a "global health crisis." The Microsoft co-founder addressed the National Assembly in Seoul on Tuesday. Photo by Yonhap

SEOUL, Aug. 16 (UPI) -- Billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates urged South Korea on Tuesday to step up in the international fight against infectious diseases, saying that the country is poised to play a leading role during "a crisis moment for global health."

Gates, who co-chairs the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, addressed South Korean Parliament and praised the strides the country's health industry has taken, including "incredible vaccine manufacturing, incredible diagnostic manufacturing, R&D capabilities [and] diagnostic capabilities."

"Korea is poised to be a leader in this work," he said in his speech, which came on the second of a three-day visit to the country.

Gates highlighted South Korea's contributions to health initiatives, such as its $200 million contribution to the COVAX global vaccine-sharing program.

RELATED South Korea looks to tackle global vaccine inequality

The country is also positioning itself as a global biomanufacturing training hub, recently launching a series of initiatives to train people from low- and middle-income countries to produce their own vaccines in partnership with the World Health Organization.

Gates said his namesake foundation signed a new agreement with the South Korean government to address health inequality and infectious diseases in the developing world.

"This is a crisis moment for global health, so this is also a fantastic time for our foundation to strengthen the partnership with Korea," Gates said, calling on Seoul to level up its international aid contributions.

"As you increase that generosity to match your economic success as the 10th-largest economy, you will be able to have incredible impact, particularly with partnerships like our foundation and multilateral global health organizations."

Ahead of his address, Gates met with National Assembly Speaker Kim Jin-pyo and other members of parliament and asked South Korea to boost its international aid contribution to 0.3% of GDP.

"International health solidarity and cooperation, including the joint response to COVID-19, is essential for the survival of humanity," Kim said, according to a statement.

Lawmakers added that South Korea has agreed to increase its participation in the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, a global foundation that works to develop vaccines against emerging infectious diseases.

Later Tuesday, Gates met with executives from local firm SK Bioscience -- which has developed several products, including South Korea's first homegrown COVID-19 vaccine, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The 66-year-old billionaire was also scheduled to meet with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on Tuesday.

Gates published the book How to Prevent the Next Pandemic in May and argued that COVID-19 could be the last pandemic if the world makes the requisite key investments.

Britain's Rwanda deportation flights grounded over political killings warning


Court documents reveal Britain's deportation plan to fly asylum-seekers back to Rwanda was canceled in June after government officials were warned about human rights violations, including torture and killings. File photo from Andy Rain/EPA-EFE.

Aug. 16 (UPI) -- The first flight to take asylum-seekers from Britain back to Rwanda was canceled in June after UK ministers were warned about human rights violations by Rwanda's government, including torture and killings, according to documents released Tuesday in Britain's high court.

The court is considering an application by a foreign office official to keep parts of the documents sealed over national security concerns, as several media outlets and some migrants argue the 10 comments are in the public interest.

According to the unnamed official, a public document on Rwanda and its human rights record was being updated as the flights were being planned. The official claimed Rwanda's updated "Country Policy and Information Note" said migrants would be "entitled to full protection under Rwandan law, equal access to employment and enrollment in healthcare and social care services."

The document was questioned after one reviewer grew skeptical over whether it gave an accurate depiction in the country.

RELATED Court blocks Britain's first deportation flight to Rwanda at last minute

"There are state control, security, surveillance structures from the national level down... political opposition is not tolerated and arbitrary detention, torture and even killings are accepted methods of enforcing control too," the official wrote in a covering email, according the High Court judge Lord Justice Lewis.

Jude Bunting QC argued Tuesday for the media organizations that want the information released.

"The public needs to understand the material that was available to the government at the time the decisions under challenge were taken, the evidence that is said to weigh against, as well as to justify, this flagship policy and the reasons why the government decided to proceed," Bunting said.

RELATED Britain's High Court allows deportation flight to Rwanda

A decision on whether the documents will be released could come as early as Wednesday.

The first deportation flight bound for Rwanda, carrying asylum seekers who entered Britain illegally, did not take off as scheduled June 14 after a last-minute intervention by the European Court of Human Rights.

The flights would carry migrants who arrived in Britain, by what the government considers "illegal, dangerous or unnecessary" routes, back to Rwanda where they could claim asylum. So far this year, more than 13,000 asylum-seekers have crossed the English Channel in small boats from France.

RELATED Britain unveils plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda

A number of groups have criticized the flights claiming they are cruel. A full court hearing into the legality of Britain's deportation plan is scheduled for Sept. 5.

Gov. Wolf signs EO to ban conversion therapy in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf signed an executive order banning conversion therapy in the state. Tuesday Photo courtesy of Office of Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf/Website

Aug. 16 (UPI) -- Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf signed an executive order Tuesday effectively banning so-called conversion therapy in the state in an effort to protect its LGBTQ residents from the controversial practice that attempts to forcibly change one's sexual orientation.

The Democratic governor signed the executive order during a press conference that directs government agencies to discourage conversion therapy and to take steps to promote evidence-based best practices for LGBTQ people.

It also directs for government policies and procedures to be updated to support LGBTQ employees and for the departments of human services, insurance, state and others to ensure state funds, programs, contracts and other resources are not used in any way to support conversion therapy.

"Conversion therapy is a traumatic practice based on junk science that actively harms the people it supposedly seeks to treat," Wolf said in a statement. "This discriminatory practice is widely rejected by medical and scientific professionals and has been proven to lead to worse mental health outcomes for LGBTQIA+ youth subjected to it.

"This is about keeping our children safe from bullying and extreme practices that harm them."

With the signing of the executive order, Pennsylvania becomes the 21st state to ban conversion therapy, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank.

LGBTQ advocates have long pushed for conversion therapy to be banned as medical professionals see it as harmful to the LGBT community.

The American Medical Association has said it opposes the practice as it assumes that homosexuality or gender nonconformity are mental disorders and practitioners often employ "unethical" techniques including electric shock deprivation of food and liquid, chemically induced nausea and masturbation reconditioning to change one's sexual orientation.

"These practices may increase suicidal behaviors and cause significant psychological distress, anxiety, lowered self-esteem, internalized homophobia, self-blame, intrusive imagery and sexual dysfunction," the AMA said.

According to The Trevor Project, which seeks to end suicide among LGBTQ people, 45% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, 75% experienced symptoms of anxiety, 58% reported symptoms of depression and 36% reported having been physically threatened or harmed due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.

RELATEDTexas lawsuit targets preventive care coverage for birth control, STD testing

Despite these concerns, 13% of LGBTQ youth nationwide reported being subjected to conversion therapy, with 83% stating it occurred when they were minors, according to a national survey on LGBTQ youth mental health conducted last year by The Trevor Project.

The executive order was signed as Republican-led states have pushed legislation that restricts the rights of LGBTQ persons.

The American Civil Liberties Union has listed dozens of what it describes as anti-LGBTQ bills that have been introduced into state legislatures this year alone, many of which target youth.

During the Tuesday press conference, Wolf said these efforts by "right-wing extremists" who use their power to "bully" LGBTQ youth are the impetus behind the executive order.

"This is despicable and it's causing immense harm to our communities," he said. "The anti-LGBTQ legislation, the phony moral outrage on the part of right-wing politicians has fed a very real and a very dangerous wave of discrimination and violence against the LGBTQ community."

Citing stats from the Armed Conflict and Event Data Project, Wolf said anti-LGBTQ mobilization, including demonstrations, violence and propaganda, increased by more than 400% last year compared to the year before with this year on track to be even worse.

"We have a crisis here, and it's unacceptable -- it is unacceptable for all of us. Political attacks on LGBTQ communities are not happening in a vacuum. They're happening in our towns and they are happening in our schools," he said.

"But there's something very simple that we each can do to help -- We can stand up," he said. "We can stand up and tell LGBTQ youth that we hear them, we accept them exactly as they are. They matter, they belong and we're going to protect them and we're going to look out for them."

The Trevor Project, which provided the state with data that aided in fashioning the bill, said it applauds Wolf for signing the executive order while calling on other states to follow his lead.

"Taxpayers' dollars must never again be spent on the dangerous and discredited practice of conversion 'therapy' -- which has been consistently associated with increased suicide risk and an estimated $9.23 billion economic burden in the U.S.," Troy Stevenson, senior campaign manager for advocacy and government affairs at The Trevor Project, said in a statement.

"We urge the state legislature to pass comprehensive state-wide protections and for governors across the nation to follow the Keystone State's lead in ending this abusive practice."

'What a morning!' Huge waterspout churns offshore as lightning flashes

Wyatt Loy
Tue, August 16, 2022

At 6 a.m. CDT Tuesday, Boo Freeman filmed a massive waterspout off the coast of Destin, Florida, about 50 miles east of Pensacola, before most people had their first cup of coffee. "What a morning! Wow!" Freeman posted on Instagram.

Multiple videos and photos posted to social media showed the storm, Northwest Florida Daily News reported. Freeman told AccuWeather that the photogenic waterspout dissipated offshore. "I've seen many waterspouts; just last week we had another one pass by."

AccuWeather Senior Weather Editor Jesse Ferrell pointed out that this was not a typical waterspout. "It looks like this was a legitimate tornado over water formed by a supercell thunderstorm, not a weak waterspout spun up from a rain shower."


FL Waterspout Radar

A radar loop from 5:30 to 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 16, 2022, shows a line of thunderstorms offshore from Destin, Florida, indicated by the red dot.

Radar showed a strong thunderstorm formed just offshore and moved southeast. The National Weather Service issued a special marine warning for offshore waters shortly after the waterspout was sighted.

This is the fifth waterspout reported by the National Weather Service off the Florida Panhandle this summer. Data on how often waterspouts occur isn't well-updated, and most of them go unreported entirely, Ferrell said.


Summer 2022 Waterspouts

A total of five waterspouts have been reported by the National Weather Service office so far this summer.

Many of the waterspouts reported in northwest Florida this season have been off the coast near Tallahassee, and the one in Destin is the farthest west of the bunch so far.

  

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for WATERSPOUT 

Protection sought for rare butterflies at Nevada site



Rare Butterfly Geothermal Project

In this photo provided by the Center for Biological Diversity are the meadows at Baltazor Hot Spring in Humboldt County, Nev., Jan. 14, 2022. Conservationists who are already suing to block a geothermal power plant where an endangered toad lives in western Nevada are now seeking U.S. protection for a rare butterfly at another geothermal project the developer plans near the Oregon line. The Center for Biological Diversity is now petitioning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the bleached sandhill skipper under the Endangered Species Act at the only place it's known to exist.

 (Patrick Donnelly/Center for Biological Diversity via AP

SCOTT SONNER
Tue, August 16, 2022 

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Conservationists who are already suing to block a geothermal power plant where an endangered toad lives in western Nevada are now seeking U.S. protection for a rare butterfly at another geothermal project the developer plans near the Oregon line.

The Center for Biological Diversity is now petitioning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the bleached sandhill skipper under the Endangered Species Act at the only place it's known to exist.

It says the project the Bureau of Land Management approved last year 250 miles (400 kilometers) north of Reno could ultimately lead to the extinction of the 2-inch-long butterfly with golden-orange wings.

“This beautiful little butterfly has evolved over millennia to thrive in this one specific spot, and no one should have the right to just wipe it off the face of the Earth,” said Jess Tyler, a scientist at the center who co-wrote the petition.

USFWS has 90 days to decide whether there’s enough evidence to conduct a yearlong review to determine if protection is warranted, so any formal listing is likely years away.

But the petition signals the potential for another legal fight all too familiar to Ormat Nevada, which wants to tap hot water beneath the earth to generate carbon-free energy the Biden administration has made a key part of its effort to combat climate change with a shift from fossil fuels to renewable sources. Opposition to those efforts in Nevada has come from conservationists, tribes and others who otherwise generally support greener energy supply.

“At a time when climate change is undisputedly one of the greatest threats to the planet, it is disappointing that the Center for Biological Diversity, a group with a mission to protect the environment, is attempting to stop the development of clean, renewable energy sources,” Ormat Vice President Paul Thomsen said in an email to The Associated Press.

The center and a Nevada tribe have been battling the Reno-based company in federal court since December over its other power plant scheduled to begin operation by Dec. 31 in the Dixie Meadows 100 miles (160 kilometers) east of Reno.

USFWS declared the quarter-sized Dixie Valley toad endangered on a temporary emergency basis in April.

Ormat agreed in a joint court stipulation Aug. 1 to suspend construction at least until September and perhaps until the end of the year to consult with the government to ensure compliance with the act.

The butterfly's listing petition, filed Aug. 8, comes 10 years after the service rejected a similar bid from WildEarth Guardians, citing a lack of imminent threat to the insect's habitat.

But the center says the situation changed when the bureau approved Ormat's project at Baltazor Hot Springs near Denio.

The power plant would sit outside the butterfly’s habitat, a single alkali wetland of around 1,500 acres (607 hectares) created by discharge from the Baltazor Hot Springs.

But tapping the underground water likely would affect the flows that support the plants that host the larva that hatch from the butterfly’s eggs and provide nectar for adults, the petition says.

Thomsen said Ormat has a long history of working with the government “to ensure that all habitats and ecosystems, regardless of their federally protected status, co-exist safely with the renewable energy plants we develop.”

The bleached sandhill skipper is a subspecies of skippers stretching from Washington to Arizona and Colorado. Its small geographic range and specific habitat make it highly vulnerable to extinction, the petition says.

“Geothermal energy is an important part of our clean energy transition, but it can’t come at the cost of extinction.” said Patrick Donnelly, the center's Great Basin director.

The petition says there are no official government counts of the butterfly's population, but scientific surveys from 2014-19 indicate it's in decline, with estimates ranging from fewer than 10,000 to hundreds.

Thomsen said Ormat shifted its original blueprint away from butterfly habitat. He said the plan BLM approved after a thorough environmental review includes years' of monitoring and mitigation plans in the event any potential harm to the insect emerges.

The petition claims no mitigation would offset the likelihood the project would alter the spring's hydrology "with the potential to dry up the hot spring altogether.”

“In short, the drying of Baltazor Hot Springs and the meadow it supports would be unmitigable and would result in the extinction of the bleached sandhill skipper."

New climate deal spurs hopes of more carbon storage projects







Carbon Storage New Prospects

Geologist Fred McLaughlin points to lab equipment Aug. 10, 2022, at the University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources in Laramie, Wyo. Researchers use the equipment to study samples from deep rock formations that have potential for storing carbon dioxide underground. New federal tax credits and billions of dollars in new funding are likely to boost such efforts to counter climate change. (AP Photo/Mead Gruver)

MEAD GRUVER
Mon, August 15, 2022

GILLETTE, Wyo. (AP) — The rolling prairie lands of northeastern Wyoming have been a paradise of lush, knee-deep grass for sheep, cattle and pronghorn antelope this summer.

But it’s a different green — greener energy — that geologist Fred McLaughlin seeks as he drills nearly two miles (3.2 kilometers) into the ground, far deeper than the thick coal seams that make this the top coal-mining region in the United States. McLaughlin and his University of Wyoming colleagues are studying whether tiny spaces in rock deep underground can permanently store vast volumes of greenhouse gas emitted by a coal-fired power plant.

This is the concept known as carbon storage, long touted as an answer to global warming that preserves the energy industry's burning of fossil fuels to generate electricity.

So far, removing carbon dioxide from power plant smokestacks and pumping it underground hasn't been feasible without higher electricity bills to cover the technique's huge costs. But with a $2.5 billion infusion from Congress last year and now bigger tax incentives through the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress on Friday, researchers and industry continue to try.

One goal of McLaughlin’s project is to preserve the lifespan of a relatively new coal-fired power plant, Dry Fork Station, run by Basin Electric Power Cooperative. State officials hope it will do the same for the whole beleaguered coal industry that still underpins Wyoming’s economy. The state produces about 40% of the nation’s coal but declining production and a series of layoffs and bankruptcies have beset the Gillette area’s vast, open-pit coal mines over the past decade.

While the economics of carbon storage remain uncertain at best, McLaughlin and others are confident in the technology.

“The geology exists,” McLaughlin said. “It is a resource we’re looking for — and the resource is pore space.”

HOW IT WORKS

By pore space, McLaughlin doesn’t mean skin care but microscopic spaces between grains of sandstone deep underground. Countless such spaces add up: Enough, he hopes, to hold 55 million tons (50 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide over 30 years.

McLaughlin and his team used the same drill rigs as the oil industry to bore their two wells almost 10,000 feet (3,000 meters), taking core samples from nine geological formations in the process. The researchers will study how injection at one well, using saltwater as a stand-in for liquid carbon dioxide, could affect fluid behavior at the other.

"It's basically like a call and response, if you want to think of it that way," McLaughlin said. “We can ground truth our simulations.”

McLaughlin's team also does a lot of lab work on carbon sequestration back at the University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources in Laramie, studying on a microscopic scale how much carbon dioxide different sandstone layers can hold. They model on computers how much carbon dioxide, well by well, could be pumped underground north of Gillette.

Eventually they want to advance to carbon dioxide captured from the smoke plume at nearby Dry Fork Station, using a technique developed by California-based Membrane Technology and Research, Inc.

WYOMING'S CARBON DREAMS

With an eye toward carbon storage, Wyoming in 2020 became one of just two states, along with North Dakota, to take over from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency primary authority to issue the kind of permit McLaughlin and his team will need to pump large volumes of carbon dioxide, pressurized into a high density “supercritical” state, underground.

Besides the permit, the geologists will also need more funding. The U.S. Department of Energy Carbon Storage Assurance Facility Enterprise (CarbonSAFE) program is funding 24 carbon capture and storage projects nationwide, and this is one of the furthest along.

Such projects were likely already eligible for some of the roughly $2.5 billion in last year's infrastructure bill. Now the new Inflation Reduction Act will boost the “45Q” tax credit for electricity producers who sequester their carbon from $50 to $85 per ton.

Pumping carbon dioxide underground is nothing new. For decades, the oil and gas industry has used carbon dioxide, after it's separated from the methane sold for fueling stoves and furnaces, to recharge aging oil fields.

UNTIL NOW, FAILED EXPERIMENTS

Critics, however, point out the process is expensive to use at power plants and provides a lifeline of sorts to the coal, oil and natural gas industries when the world, in their view, should stop using fossil fuels altogether.

To date, only one commercially-operational, large-scale project in the U.S. has pumped carbon dioxide from a power plant underground. But to defray costs, NRG Energy’s Petra Nova coal-fired power plant outside Houston sold its carbon dioxide to increase local oil production.

After three years in operation, Petra Nova closed in 2020, when low oil prices made using the gas to recharge a nearby oil field unprofitable.

In December, a U.S. Government Accountability Office review found that Petra Nova was the only one of eight carbon capture and storage projects at coal-fired plants to actually go into operation, after getting $684 million in Department of Energy funding since 2009.

Some communities that have dealt for years with industrial air pollution also worry that companies will use promises of carbon storage as a way to expand.

For Massachusetts Institute of Technology research engineer Howard Herzog, a carbon capture and storage pioneer, the question isn't whether the technique is technically feasible at scale. He's certain that it is. But whether it can be economically feasible is a different matter.

“People are starting to take it more seriously even though fundamentally changing our energy systems is not an easy task,” Herzog said. “It’s not something you do in the short term. You’ve got to really set the policy in place and we still haven’t really done that.”

It may be expensive, said Herzog. But doing nothing when it comes to climate, “may be much more expensive.”

___

Follow Mead Gruver at https://twitter.com/meadgruver

A German refinery partly owned by Moscow has started mixing US oil with Russian crude


Phil Rosen
Mon, August 15, 2022

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck.Andreas Gora/Getty Images

A German oil refinery in Schwedt has begun blending US crude with Russian Urals, Bloomberg reported Monday.


The refinery, which is partly owned by Rosneft, is typically reliant on Russian crude but has started to turn to alternative supplies.

Germany's Economy Minister has previously noted that Schwedt faces the biggest challenge amid refiners to wean off Russian crude.

Germany's refinery in Schwedt — which is partly owned by Moscow's Rosneft — is now mixing US crude with Russian Urals, sources told Bloomberg.

According to the report, about 20% of what the refinery is processing is US crude. The supplies are being imported via Germany's Baltic coast port of Rostock, which only recently saw its first delivery of American oil in several years.

The US crude supplies mark a pivot for Schwedt, which is based near the Polish border, as it has long relied on Russian crude that comes in from the Druzhba pipeline.

In April, German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said Schwedt will face challenges in weaning off Russian supplies, and that it would need additional support from Poland to secure deliveries from elsewhere.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Europe has been trying to reduce imports of Russian oil, and the EU plans to cut off seaborne imports by the end of this year.

But ahead its partial embargo, the EU saw an uptick in flows at the start of August, pointing to the difficulty of finding alternative supplies.

Through the first week of this month, shipments to European buyers notched a five-week high, and cargo ships continue to obscure the origins of crude to allow sanctioned goods to keep moving.

Toxic pollution in the Great Lakes remains a colossal problem


Daniel Macfarlane

Erie Times News
Sun, August 14, 2022 

The Great Lakes cover nearly 95,000 square miles (250,000 square kilometers) and hold over 20% of Earth's surface fresh water. More than 30 million people in the U.S. and Canada rely on them for drinking water. The lakes support a multibillion-dollar maritime economy, and the lands around them provided many of the raw materials — timber, coal, iron — that fueled the Midwest's emergence as an industrial heartland.

Despite their enormous importance, the lakes were degraded for well over a century as industry and development expanded around them. By the 1960s, rivers like the Cuyahoga, Buffalo and Chicago were so polluted that they were catching fire. In 1965, Maclean's magazine called Lake Erie, the smallest and shallowest Great Lake, "an odorous, slime-covered graveyard" that "may have already passed the point of no return." Lake Ontario wasn't far behind.

In 1972, the U.S. and Canada signed the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, a landmark pact to clean up the Great Lakes. Now, 50 years later, they have made progress, but there are new challenges and much unfinished business.

I study the environment and have written four books on U.S.-Canadian management of their shared border waters. In my view, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement was a watershed moment for environmental protection and an international model for regulating transboundary pollution. But I believe the people of the U.S. and Canada failed the Great Lakes by becoming complacent too soon after the pact's early success.

Starting with phosphates

A major step in Canada-U.S. joint management of the Great Lakes came in 1909 when they signed the Boundary Waters Treaty. The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement built on this foundation by creating a framework to allow the two countries to cooperatively restore and protect these border waters.

However, as an executive agreement, rather than a formal government-to-government treaty, the pact has no legal mechanisms for enforcement. Instead, it relies on the U.S. and Canada to fulfill their commitments. The International Joint Commission, an agency created under the Boundary Waters Treaty, carries out the agreement and tracks progress toward its goals.

Steve Dartnell of Erie walks near Beach 6, Sept. 16, 2021 at Presque Isle State Park.

The agreement set common targets for controlling a variety of pollutants in Lake Erie, Lake Ontario and the upper St. Lawrence River, which were the most polluted section of the Great Lakes system. One key aim was to reduce nutrient pollution, especially phosphates from detergents and sewage. These chemicals fueled huge blooms of algae that then died and decomposed, depleting oxygen in the water.

Like national water pollution laws enacted at the time, these efforts focused on point sources — pollutants released from discreet, readily identifiable points, such as discharge pipes or wells.

In this file photo, Lee Sedgwick of Millcreek Township makes bubbles at sunset, April 28, 2020, on the shore of Lake Erie at Beach 1, Presque Isle State Park.

Early results were encouraging. Both governments invested in new sewage treatment facilities and convinced manufacturers to reduce phosphate loads in detergents and soaps. But as phosphorus levels in the lakes declined, scientists soon detected other problems.

Great Lakes toxic contaminants

In 1973, scientists reported a perplexing find in fish from Lake Ontario: mirex, a highly toxic organochloride pesticide used mainly to kill ants in the southeast U.S. An investigation revealed that the Hooker Chemical Company was discharging mirex from its plant in Niagara Falls, New York. The contamination was so severe that New York State banned eating popular types of fish such as coho salmon and lake trout from Lake Ontario from 1976 to 1978, shutting down commercial and sport fishing in the lake.

In response to this and other findings, the U.S. and Canada updated the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement in 1978 to cover all five lakes and focus on chemicals and toxic substances. This version formally adopted an ecosystem approach to pollution control that considered interactions between water, air and land — perhaps the first international agreement to do so.

In 1987, the two countries identified the most toxic hot spots around the lakes and adopted action plans to clean them up. However, as scholars of North American environmental regulations acknowledge, both nations too often allowed industries to police themselves.

Since the 1990s, studies have identified toxic pollutants including PCBs, DDT and chlordane in and around the Great Lakes, as well as lead, copper, arsenic and others. Some of these chemicals continued to show up because they were persistent and took a long time to break down. Others were banned but leached from contaminated sites and sediments. Still others came from a range of point and nonpoint sources, including many industrial sites concentrated on shorelines.

Many hazardous sites have been slowly cleaned up. However, toxic pollution in the Great Lakes remains a colossal problem that is largely unappreciated by the public, since these substances don't always make the water look or smell foul. Numerous fish advisories are still in effect across the region because of chemical contamination. Industries constantly bring new chemicals to market, and regulations lag far behind.

Nonpoint sources of Great Lakes pollution

Another major challenge is nonpoint source pollution — discharges that come from many diffuse sources, such as runoff from farm fields.

Nitrogen levels in the lakes have risen significantly because of agriculture. Like phosphorus, nitrogen is a nutrient that causes large blooms of algae in fresh water; it is one of the main ingredients in fertilizer, and is also found in human and animal waste. Sewage overflows from cities and waste and manure runoff from industrial agriculture carry heavy loads of nitrogen into the lakes.

As a result, algal blooms have returned to Lake Erie. In 2014, toxins in one of those blooms forced officials in Toledo, Ohio, to shut off the public water supply for half a million people.

One way to address nonpoint source pollution is to set an overall limit for releases of the problem pollutant into local water bodies and then work to bring discharges down to that level. These measures, known as Total Maximum Daily Loads, have been applied or are in development for parts of the Great Lakes basin, including western Lake Erie.

But this strategy relies on states, along with voluntary steps by farmers, to curb pollution releases. Some Midwesterners would prefer a regional approach like the strategy for Chesapeake Bay, where states asked the U.S. government to write a sweeping federal TMDL for key pollutants for the bay's entire watershed.

In 2019, Toledo voters adopted a Lake Erie Bill of Rights that would have permitted citizens to sue when Lake Erie was being polluted. Farmers challenged the measure in court, and it was declared unconstitutional.
Warming climate and flooding

Climate change is now complicating Great Lakes cleanup efforts. Warmer water can affect oxygen concentrations, nutrient cycling and food webs in the lakes, potentially intensifying problems and converting nuisances into major challenges.

Lake levels at Presque Isle:High-water mark

Flooding driven by climate change threatens to contaminate public water supplies around the lakes. Record-high water levels are eroding shorelines and wrecking infrastructure. And new problems are emerging, including microplastic pollution and "forever chemicals" such as PFAS and PFOA.

More:Report: 4 Erie County waterways among 53 in Pennsylvania containing microplastics

It will be challenging for the U.S. and Canada to make progress on this complex set of problems. Key steps include prioritizing and funding cleanup of toxic zones, finding ways to halt agricultural runoff and building new sewer and stormwater infrastructure. If the two countries can muster the will to aggressively tackle pollution problems, as they did with phosphates in the 1970s, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement gives them a framework for action.

Daniel Macfarlane is an associate professor of environment and sustainability at Western Michigan University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Toxic pollution in the Great Lakes remains a colossal problem

Europe drought: German industry at risk as Rhine level falls



Ships sail past dry land in Dusseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. After weeks of drought, the water levels of the Rhine have reached historic lows.

 (Federico Gambarini/dpa via AP)

Tue, August 16, 2022 

BERLIN (AP) — Germany's main industry lobby group warned Tuesday that factories may have to throttle production or halt it completely because plunging water levels on the Rhine River are making it harder to transport cargo.

The Rhine's level at Emmerich, near the Dutch border, dropped by a further four centimeters (1.6 inches) in 24 hours, hitting zero on the depth gauge.

Authorities say the shipping lane itself still has a depth of almost 200 centimeters (six feet, six inches), but the record low measurement Tuesday morning highlights the extreme lack of water caused by months of drought affecting much of Europe.

“The ongoing drought and the low water levels threaten the supply security of industry,” said Holger Loesch, deputy head of the BDI business lobby group.

Loesch said shifting cargo from river to train or transport was difficult because of limited rail capacity and a lack of drivers.

“It's only a question of time before facilities in the chemical and steel industry have to be switched off, petroleum and construction materials won't reach their destination, and high-capacity and heavy-goods transports can't be carried out anymore,” he said, adding that this could lead to supply bottlenecks and short-time work might result.

Loesch warned that energy supplies could also be further strained as ships carrying coal and gasoline along the Rhine are affected.

Drivers in southern Germany already have to pay considerably more for fuel than those further north, according to Germany's biggest motor club. The ADAC said diesel was being sold for under 1.82 euros ($1.84) per liter in Hamburg, while in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg it cost on average 1.97 euros.

The BDI said droughts such as that seen this year could become more frequent in the future, and urged the government to help closely monitor water levels and react early to potential transportation problems on Germany's waterways.

Experts say climate change is making extreme weather, including heatwaves and droughts, more likely.

Germany's weather service has forecast heavy rain toward the end of the week that could provide some relief to river shipping companies.

Judge rules names of landowners in path of carbon capture pipeline should be made public


Donnelle Eller, 
The Des Moines Register
Tue, August 16, 2022 

The developer of a proposed $4.5 billion carbon capture pipeline in Iowa must release the names of landowners who could be impacted along its roughly 680-mile route, a district judge ruled.

Summit Carbon Solutions, an Ames company that has proposed building a pipeline to transport liquefied carbon dioxide, failed to win a permanent injunction to keep secret the names of thousands of landowners it said could be in the pipeline's path.

Under state law, Summit was required to hold public meetings for landowners potentially impacted by the pipeline project, and the company compiled a list with more than 10,000 names along the route.

Steve and Karmin McShane paint a sign in opposition to a carbon capture and sequestration pipeline in Linn County.

After the Iowa Utilities Board asked Summit to submit the names, the company asked state regulators to keep the list confidential. Summit also filed a petition with the court to keep the names secret.

The Sierra Club of Iowa asked regulators to release the names under state's open records law, a move state Consumer Advocate Jennifer Easler also supported.

In November, the Iowa Utilities Board decided it would keep secret most of the names, saying property owners' right to privacy outweighed the public's interest. The three-person board did, however, order Summit to release the names of businesses, cities, counties and other government entities that own land along the path.

Board chairwoman Geri Huser dissented, saying she would have released the property owners' mailing addresses but not their names.

MORE: What we know about three carbon capture pipelines proposed in Iowa

On Friday, Polk County District Judge David Nelmark said Summit had failed to show landowner information should be excluded from state public records law. He ordered a temporary injunction allowing Summit to keep landowner names confidential to be lifted in 14 days.

Nelmark said the order's enforcement could be delayed if there is an appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court.

Summit officials said Monday the company was reviewing Nelmark's order and its legal options.

The Sierra Club has said Summit seeks to prevent the release of landowner information to shut down communication among Iowans who want to fight the pipeline.

MORE: Iowa politics, ag heavyweight Bruce Rastetter sets sights on $4.5 billion carbon capture pipeline

"Summit vigorously fought to keep the landowner list confidential so the landowners could not form a unified opposition,” Jess Mazour, the Sierra Club's conservation program coordinator, said in a statement Monday.

Summit said in its own statement Monday that it sought to "protect the privacy of our landowners and from harassment."

"We believe it is reasonable that landowners would get to choose whether or not their name, address and contact information are made public," the company said. "Having now signed agreements with more than 700 Iowa landowners, we believe our efforts were successful."

The company also said the information shouldn't be publicly released because to do so would help its competitors. Two other companies — Navigator CO2 Ventures and Archer Daniel Midlands Co., partnering with Wolf Carbon Solutions — plan similar projects.

The Sierra Club released a copy of the order Monday. It hadn't yet been filed in district court.

Summit Carbon Solutions, a company that agri-industry entrepreneur Bruce Rastetter started, proposes to capture carbon dioxide emissions from ethanol plants and other industrial agriculture operations in Iowa and four other states, then liquefy the gas under pressure and transport it to North Dakota, where it would be permanently sequestered deep underground.

Donnelle Eller covers agriculture, the environment and energy for the Register. Reach her at deller@registermedia.com 

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Summit loses effort to keep secret names of those in pipeline's path