In the steps of history's forgotten female explorers



(Image credit: Emily Almond Barr)


By Jessie Williams2

6th August 2021

Walking in the footsteps of history's intrepid women explorers, Elise Wortley hopes to shine new light on these adventurers and inspire a new generation.

In 1911, French former opera singer and Buddhist scholar Alexandra David-Néel promised her husband she would be back in 18 months and embarked on what would end up being an epic 14-year expedition through Asia to the forbidden city of Lhasa, vowing to "show what the will of a woman can do". She trekked through the Himalayas in the freezing winter, slept in the snow and allegedly ate leather from her boots to stave off hunger, before disguising herself as a beggar to sneak into the Tibetan capital in 1924, aged 55. In doing so, she became the first European woman to enter Lhasa, which was then sealed off from the outside world.

Yet David-Néel remains a little-known explorer, unlike celebrated adventurers like Ernest Shackleton and Edmund Hillary whose names have been immortalised in history books and taught in schools. Women explorers – including David-Néel, Nan Shepherd and Freya Stark – have largely been forgotten or overlooked, despite achieving feats that even today seem astounding.


Alexandra David-Néel wrote about her 14-year expedition through Asia in her book, My Journey to Lhasa (Credit: Keystone/Stringer/Getty Images)

David-Néel wrote about that adventure in My Journey to Lhasa, describing her happiness to be "en route for the mystery of these unexplored heights, alone in the great silence, tasting the sweets of solitude and tranquillity". The book would go on to inspire women adventurers, including modern-day explorer Elise Wortley, who read the book when she was a 16-year-old growing up in Colchester, Essex. "The whole story just really captured my imagination. I always had it in the back of my mind to follow in her footsteps in some way," she told me.

In 2017, when she was 28, Wortley left her home in Brixton, South London, to follow the first part of David-Néel's journey in Sikkim in north-eastern India. She walked for one month, travelling 750km from Impong to Mount Kanchenjunga along the Tibetan border at altitudes of up to 5,050m. "I retraced her route, reread all her books and made a map," Wortley said.

"I just want more people to know about these women by spreading the word and celebrating what they achieved, because they are slowly being forgotten."

But this was a trip with a difference. Wortley was determined to use her trek to revive interest in history's intrepid women explorers.

"I just want more people to know about these women by spreading the word and celebrating what they achieved, because they are slowly being forgotten," she said. "Back then, women just weren't taken seriously and no-one saw their achievements as the same as the guys. They had to work so much harder. For me, the interesting thing was that they were doing the same journeys as the men, but they'd have so much extra baggage to deal with, as well as society saying, 'You shouldn't be doing that, you should be at home.'"

Lachen, a remote town in Sikkim, India, was the starting point for Wortley's David-Néel inspired trek (Credit: Image Source/Getty Images)

Keen to recreate David-Néel's experience to the fullest, Wortley pledged to only use equipment available to the French woman in the 1920s – including a yak wool coat, a wooden backpack she made from a chair she found on the side of the road in Brixton, a basket that she tied together with rope and even 1920s underwear. She slept under an old canvas tent and only used her emergency sleeping bag once when the cold got too much – temperatures reached -15C at night. "The yak wool coat was thick, but at night it was absolutely freezing," she said.

To keep warm in the 1920s, David-Néel practised tummo breathing, an ancient technique that heats the body from the inside out. But since the method takes years to master, Wortley instead relied upon two hot water bottles – minor luxuries that David-Néel also had – that she filled with water heated over the fire to survive the cold. "I pretty much just spent the nights refilling them. I wasn't sleeping much," she said, laughing.

Did she ever regret her decision not to use any modern equipment? "There were times when I regretted it, definitely. But I wanted to experience what she would have experienced, and the only way to do that, and to properly understand how tough it would have been for her, was to do it with only what she had," Wortley said. She added that "researching all the clothing and equipment turned into one of the most interesting parts for me."

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Wortley recruited an all-women team for her journey: filmmaker Emily Almond Barr; and Jangu, a female mountain guide descended from Lepchas, the original inhabitants of Sikkim. Both opted for modern clothes and used modern equipment.

Travelling as a woman has obviously improved significantly since the 1920s; however, Wortley said "we still face a lot of the same things, like unwanted attention." In her book, David-Néel wrote about the undesired attention she got during her trips; other female explorers of the time who faced the same issue ended up dressing like men.

For her journey in India, Wortley was joined by guide Jangu Lepcha and filmmaker Emily Almond Barr (Credit: Emily Almond Barr)

But Wortley acknowledges that in most ways, adventure travel as a woman is a lot better today. "With the internet you always know where you're going and you can always have contact with people. Which makes me think, gosh, these women back then, they would literally just go on their own and all they had was writing letters to stay in touch with family."

After that first trip, Wortley began researching other historical women explorers whose adventures she could emulate. She found dozens, including the Scottish writer Nan Shepherd, known for her book The Living Mountain about her time exploring Scotland's Cairngorm Mountains in the 1940s; Freya Stark, an Anglo-Italian travel writer and explorer who traversed the Middle East and Afghanistan in the 20th Century; and Zora Neale Hurston, the American author and anthropologist who travelled to Haiti in the 1930s to document voodoo rituals and beliefs.

Inspired by these women, Wortley has continued to seek adventure. She has scaled the peaks of the Cairngorms, dressed as a 1940s explorer à la Nan Shepherd – complete with a tweed coat, knee-high lace up vintage boots, a cotton skirt and wartime rations. She is currently planning a third trip for next summer, which will involve re-creating 16-Century Irish pirate queen Grace O'Malley's voyage from the west of Ireland to England. Wortley also hopes to explore Kurdistan in northern Iraq like Freya Stark once did. Her aim is to continue retracing the steps of these intrepid women and documenting the experience under the moniker Woman with Altitude. She also strives to make a positive impact on the lives of the women in the communities she visits, raising money for charities such as Scottish Women’s Aid and Freedom Kit Bags, a charity that supplies reusable sanitary wear for women and girls in Nepal and India.

She knows there's still much to be done when it comes to boosting the profiles of these explorers. When Wortley spent three weeks in the Cairngorms following in Shepherd's footsteps, she brought along a copy of The Living Mountain, a poetic homage to the Scottish mountain range. Despite the book being widely celebrated today and Shepherd's face being on the Scottish £5 note, Wortley found that the people she came across in Scotland often didn't know who she was. An indication, perhaps, of just how vital Wortley's project is.

Inspired by Scottish explorer Nan Shepherd, Wortley donned 1940s trekking clothes for a three-week expedition to Cairngorms National Park (Credit: Emily Almond Barr)

As she has learnt about these women and their adventures, Wortley has also come to understand more about herself. "It sounds cheesy but I've learnt that anything's possible – I thought I'd never be able to do this at one point in my life." In her early 20s, she suffered from anxiety and panic attacks. "I couldn't really go to work, I couldn't do anything. That really held me back quite a bit." She's also discovered just how resilient the human body is. "Especially when I was walking in India, [I found] your body can do so much more than you think. Even when I was completely exhausted, I could still keep going that little bit more," she said.

As the world opens up again, Wortley is ready to walk in the footsteps of these explorers once more, raising awareness of their achievements and perhaps even inspiring the next generation of female adventurers.

---

At the world's oldest social housing, rent hasn't changed since 1521

It costs less than €1 a year to live at the Fuggerei in Augsburg, Germany

CBC Radio · Posted: Aug 27, 2021 

The Fuggerei in Augsburg, Germany, is the world's oldest social housing complex still in use. It was founded by wealthy businessman Jakob Fugger five centuries ago. (Konstantin Yolshin/Shutterstock)

Months before his 18th birthday, Noel Guobadia and his family fell on hard times.

His parents had separated, and his mother was struggling to make ends meet. She announced the family would move into the Fuggerei, the world's oldest social housing project, in Augsburg, Germany.

"I was like, 'People really live there? Are you sure?" recalled Guobadia, who is now 27 and remains one of the youngest residents of the complex.

The Fuggerei is a landmark in the city not only because it resembles a medieval village, but also because the rent hasn't changed in 500 years. Residents pay about $1.30 — or 0.88 euros — per year for their apartments and commit to daily spiritual reflection.

Roughly 160 residents live in the Fuggerei, ranging from retirees with scant pensions to young adults priced out of an increasingly expensive city. Just an hour's drive from Munich, Augsburg is in demand with commuters trying to escape Germany's hottest rental market.

Guobadia credits the Fuggerei's low rent for the ability to concentrate on his education.

Noel Guobadia moved into the Fuggerei just before his 18th birthday. Now 27, he says his subsidized apartment has afforded him opportunities for growth. (Vanessa Greco/CBC)

"You can really build yourself in here," he said. "I'm getting my degrees, I'm getting job experience all because it's financially possible for me to focus on that."

In 1521, the wealthy banker Jakob Fugger founded the Fuggerei as a home for the city's poorest Catholic workers. He envisioned a place where residents could live debt-free while still participating in the community. Fugger charged residents one Rheinischer gulden a year, the equivalent of one month's salary at the time.

Today the walled enclave is a magnet for tourists. Adult guests pay 6.50 euros (about $9.70 Cdn) to walk through the maze of 67 quaint terrace houses. Each one is two-stories high, painted a distinctive burnt yellow and topped with terracotta roof shingles.
Three conditions for living at the Fuggerei

To be eligible to live in the village, applicants need to meet three basic criteria: they must demonstrate financial need, have lived in Augsburg for at least two years and be of Catholic faith.

Social worker Doris Herzog is the first point of contact for most applicants. She checks church registers to ensure they're Catholic and interviews them on their living situation.

Doris Herzog, a social worker at the Fuggerei housing complex in Augsburg, acts as a support for current residents. (Vanessa Greco/CBC)

She estimates there are about 80 people on the waiting list for the Fuggerei. Depending on their accessibility needs, those applicants could be waiting years for a callback.

"More people want to have an apartment on the ground floor, so they have to wait a long time for an apartment there — maybe five, six or seven years," said Herzog.

Current residents of the Fuggerei still live by guidelines established in the 1500s. They contribute to the community, volunteering as gardeners and night watchmen. After the Fuggerei gates lock at 10 p.m., residents who are late pay a small fee to the gatekeeper.

Ilona Barber, who moved in six years ago, sells tickets at the tour admission window.

"For me, it's fun — even when some are surprised at the ticket prices," she said, laughing. "I used to work in the United States in a casino so I'm used to interacting with all kinds of people."

At 71 years old, Barber said she is grateful for the friendships she has with fellow residents. She and her neighbours host potluck dinners and chat often on WhatsApp. The regular stream of tourists allows her to meet new people while the locked gate at night helps her feel safe.

Ilona Barber sits in her one-bedroom apartment with her dogs Linda and Pino. 

(Vanessa Greco/CBC)

There is, however, one Fuggerei rule that remains difficult to enforce.

Original residents of the Fuggerei were asked to offer three prayers a day for Jakob Fugger and his family. Several residents currently living in the complex were coy about their adherence to the rule. Several said they interpret it more broadly, spending a few minutes a day reflecting on things they're grateful for.

"Jakob Fugger says they have to pray for him. Our administrator always says he is in heaven and will see if you do that. You are responsible for that," said Herzog.

In other words: that part of the deal is between residents and God.
Raising rent 'would defeat the core purpose'

The Fuggerei marked its 500th birthday on Aug. 23 with a celebration attended by Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder. Attendees sang Happy Birthday to the housing complex and dined at long tables lining the Fuggerei's main boulevard.

But this village's longevity has been hard won.

The Fuggerei is a walled enclave in the city. Night watchmen guard the complex when the doors close in the evening. If residents arrive back after the gate has closed at 10 p.m., they pay a small fee to the gatekeeper. (Konstantin Yolshin/Shutterstock)

It survived the Thirty Years' War when Augsburg was a flashpoint for clashes between Protestants and Catholics in the 1600s.

Much later, during World War II, residents sheltered inside a bunker that remains on site today. As they hid, allied bombers destroyed roughly 75 per cent of the Fuggerei, leading to a lengthy reconstruction process.

The Fuggerei is still managed by the Fugger family. Money for maintaining the village comes from investments in forestry, real estate and entrance fees.

Count Alexander Fugger-Babenhausen, a descendant of Jakob Fugger, helps run the Fuggerei endowment fund. He said there remains zero interest in raising the rent.

"We can house 160 people that wouldn't otherwise be able to live in the way that they do," he said. "Increasing the rent would defeat the core purpose of the Fuggerei."

Alexander Graf Fugger-Babenhausen is a descendant of Jakob Fugger. The Fuggerei is still managed by the Fugger family. (Vanessa Greco/CBC)

Those who visit the homes today will notice that above the main gate is a stone tablet that reads in exemplum. The phrase refers to Jakob Fugger's hopes that his charitable settlement would be a model — or an example — to others.

Five centuries later, it seems Jakob Fugger's hopes have been realized. During the Fuggerei's birthday celebration, organizations in Sierra Leone and Lithuania revealed they are studying the village with the intent of replicating it in their own countries.

In Sierra Leone, activists Rugiatu Neneh Turay and Stella Rothenberger expressed interest in creating a Fuggerei-style settlement for women and girls in the fishing village of Tumba. In Lithuania, there is interest in building a Fuggerei with a focus on poverty in old age.

Martin Schenkelberg, Augsburg's counsellor for social affairs, said he would love to see more Fuggerei in Germany and exported around the world.

"Affordable and safe housing is the basis of good living in our society," he said. "When you have a home … you are able to determine your life and your own future."

Written and produced by Vanessa Greco.

Hear full episodes of Day 6 on CBC Listen, our free audio streaming service.

ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF KATRINA

Hurricane Ida could be among strongest to hit Louisiana since 1850s, governor warns

Gridlock as New Orleans residents fled on Saturday night

Category 4 storm forecast to hit Sunday afternoon

Interstate 10 is packed with evacuees heading east on Saturday as Hurricane Ida approaches. Photograph: Scott Threlkeld/AP


Oliver Laughland in New Orleans
@oliverlaughland
Sun 29 Aug 2021 04.52 BST

As Hurricane Ida barrelled towards the Louisiana coast, residents braced for a storm of potentially historic proportions due to arrive on the 16th anniversary of Katrina, the brutal hurricane that claimed more than 1,800 lives on America’s Gulf coast.

National Hurricane Centre officials said Ida had strengthened to a category 3 hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico early on Sunday morning. It is forecast to make landfall on Sunday afternoon as a potential category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of 130mph (210 km/h), life-threatening storm surges and heavy rain.

State officials warned that Ida was likely to become one of the worst hurricanes in the history of Louisiana, a region known for torrid weather events.

A satellite image of Hurricane Ida from 9pm on Saturday. Photograph: NOAA/GOES/AFP/Getty Images

“This will be one of the strongest hurricanes to hit anywhere in Louisiana since at least the 1850s,” said Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards at a press conference on Saturday. “We can also tell you your window of time is closing. It is rapidly closing.”


Hurricane Ida: thousands evacuate from New Orleans as storm bears down

Tens of thousands of residents in coastal communities in south-east Louisiana were under mandatory evacuation orders. In New Orleans, the city placed those living outside the levee protection system under mandatory evacuation and urged all others to leave voluntarily. There was gridlock on the main highway leaving the city and vast queues at the Louis Armstrong international airport, as officials announced all flights would be cancelled on Sunday.

It was 29 August 2005 when New Orleans and other communities in the region were decimated by Katrina and the subsequent government failures in response. Hundreds of thousands of homes were lost after the city’s levee system failed, leading to catastrophic flooding. The city took years to recover.

On Saturday, Edwards pointed to billions of dollars in federal government investment in the city’s levees to argue the city was better prepared over a decade later.

“We’re not the same state we were 16 years ago,” Edwards said. “This system is going to be tested. The people of Louisiana are going to be tested. But we are resilient and tough people. And we’re going to get through this.”

In downtown New Orleans the streets were eerily quiet on Saturday evening as the city braced for tropical storm force winds to arrive from Sunday morning. In the city’s historic French Quarter, businesses were boarded up and on Bourbon St, usually the centre of nightlife in the city on weekends, bars were deserted.

New Orleans resident Aha Hasan outside Buffa’s Lounge on Saturday. He plans to stay in the city as Hurricane Ida approaches. Photograph: Anne Ponton/The Guardian

Still, some businesses remained open. At Buffa’s, a 24-hour dive bar and jazz venue in the city’s Marigny neighborhood that is known for its decision to stay open during inclement weather, a steady stream of regulars came to drink and eat before the storm arrived.

Aha Hasan, a 25 year-old camera technician, sipped beer and drank shots before preparing to ride out the storm at his nearby third-floor apartment. Hasan was 10 years old when Katrina hit the city and still remembers it vividly.

“Every four years we get a bad one,” he said. “And everyone I know who’s been in this city for all these intense hurricanes aren’t going anywhere this time, so I decided to stay because of that.”

The Louisiana national guard has stationed 5,000 troops around the state in preparation for search and rescue missions. As officials warned of widespread power outages, 10,000 linesmen were on standby to respond.

Ida’s precise landfall location remains unclear, with hurricane warnings in effect from Intracoastal City in south Louisiana to New Orleans. Storm surge warnings extend into coastal Mississippi and Alabama.

Ida’s track shifted slightly to the east throughout Saturday, increasing the danger in New Orleans, where the National Weather Service projected wind of 110mph and up to 20 inches (510mm) of rain, leading to fears of major flash flooding in the city.

‘A combination of failures:’ why 3.6 MILLION pounds of nuclear waste is buried on a popular California beach

The defunct San Onofre nuclear power plant near San Clemente, California.

 Photograph: Lenny Ignelzi/AP


The San Onofre nuclear power plant shut down years ago – but residents and experts worry what will happen with the waste left behind


Kate Mishkin
Tue 24 Aug 2021 

More than 2 million visitors flock each year to California’s San Onofre state beach, a dreamy slice of coastline just north of San Diego. The beach is popular with surfers, lies across one of the largest Marine Corps bases in the Unites States and has a 10,000-year-old sacred Native American site nearby. It even landed a shout-out in the Beach Boys’ 1963 classic Surfin’ USA.

But for all the good vibes and stellar sunsets, beneath the surface hides a potential threat: 3.6m lb of nuclear waste from a group of nuclear reactors shut down nearly a decade ago. Decades of political gridlock have left it indefinitely stranded, susceptible to threats including corrosion, earthquakes and sea level rise.

The San Onofre reactors are among dozens across the United States phasing out, but experts say they best represent the uncertain future of nuclear energy.

“It’s a combination of failures, really,” said Gregory Jaczko, who chaired the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the top federal enforcer, between 2009 and 2012, of the situation at San Onofre.

Buried waste

That waste is the byproduct of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (Songs), three nuclear reactors primarily owned by the utility Southern California Edison (SCE).

Federal regulators had already cited SCE for several safety issues, including leaking radioactive waste and falsified firewatch records. But when a new steam generator began leaking a small amount of radioactivity in January 2012, just one year after it was replaced, it was SCE’s most serious problem yet. A subsequent report from the NRC’s inspector general found federal inspectors had overlooked red flags in 2009, and that SCE had replaced its own steam generators without proper approval. SCE tried to fix the problem but decided in 2013 to shut the plant down for good.

Activists thought they had scored a victory when the reactor shut down – until they learned that the nuclear waste they had produced would remain on-site.

That wasn’t supposed to be the case. Under the US Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, the federal government was to move waste into a centralized, remote federal facility starting in 1998. In 2002, George W Bush approved Yucca Mountain, a site about 100 miles from Las Vegas, as a permanent underground nuclear waste repository. But in 2010, the Obama administration scrapped the controversial plan.

Without a government-designated place to store the waste, the California Coastal Commission in 2015 approved the construction of an installation at San Onofre to store it until 2035. In August 2020, workers concluded the multi-year burial process, loading the last of 73 canisters of waste into a concrete enclosure.

San Onofre is not the only place where waste is left stranded. As more nuclear sites shut down, communities across the country are stuck with the waste left behind. Spent fuel is stored at 76 reactor sites in 34 states, according to the Department of Energy.

Handling those stockpiles has been an afterthought to the NRC, the federal enforcer, said Allison Macfarlane, another former commission chair.

“It was not a big topic at the NRC, unfortunately,” Macfarlane said. “In the nuclear industry in general the backend of the nuclear cycle gets very little attention. So it just never rises to ‘oh this is a very important issue, we should be doing something.’”
Plenty of risks, and not enough oversight

The waste is buried about 100ft from the shoreline, along the I-5 highway, one of the nation’s busiest thoroughfares, and not far from a pair of faults that experts say could generate a 7.4 magnitude earthquake.

Another potential problem is corrosion. In its 2015 approval, the Coastal Commission noted the site could have a serious impact on the environment down the line, including on coastal access and marine life. “The [installation] would eventually be exposed to coastal flooding and erosion hazards beyond its design capacity, or else would require protection by replacing or expanding the existing Songs shoreline armoring,” the document says.

Concerns have also been raised about government oversight of the site. Just after San Onofre closed, SCE began seeking exemptions from the NRC’s operating rules for nuclear plants. The utility asked and received permission to loosen rules on-site, including those dealing with record-keeping, radiological emergency plans for reactors, emergency planning zones and on-site staffing.

San Onofre isn’t the only closed reactor to receive exemptions to its operating licence. The NRC’s regulations historically focused on operating reactors and assumed that, when a reactor shut down, the waste would be removed quickly.

It’s true that the risk of accidents decreases when a plant isn’t operating, said Dave Lochbaum, former director of the nuclear safety project for the Union of Concerned Scientists. But adapting regulations through exemptions greatly reduces public transparency, he argued.

“Exemptions are wink-wink, nudge-nudge deals with the NRC,” he said.

“In general, it’s not really a great practice,” former NRC chair Jaczko said about the exemptions. “If the NRC is regulating by exemption, it means that there’s something wrong with the rules … either the NRC believes the rules are not effective, and they’re not really useful, or the NRC is not holding the line where the NRC should be holding line,” he said.

Close calls

In 2015, the NRC tried unsuccessfully to revise its decommissioning rules and reduce the need for exemptions. But commissioners never acted, despite a 2019 Office of Inspector General audit that questioned whether the rule would ever see the light of day and that estimated that eliminating exemptions could save the NRC, utility and taxpayers about $19m for each reactor.

“The problem you have here is that the NRC is simply not doing its job as a regulator. So what it has done is allowed the industry to basically determine the conditions under which this material is stored on a temporary basis across the country,” echoed retired Rear Admiral Len Hering, who served more than 30 years in the US navy and was awarded a 2005 presidential award for leadership in federal energy management from President George W Bush.

Meanwhile, at San Onofre, two close calls drew the ire of activists and townspeople. In 2018, workers found a loose piece of equipment in one of the canisters, causing a 10-day work stoppage to ensure the error didn’t pose a threat to the public. In a separate incident several months later, a canister filled with radioactive waste became wedged when employees were loading it into the ground and nearly dropped 18ft. The second incident was not made public until a whistleblower brought it up at a community event.

Spent fuel is stored at 76 reactor sites in 34 states. Experts say the NRC doesn’t properly monitor this radioactive waste. Photograph: Marcus Brandt/EPA

After these incidents, the NRC cited SCE for failing to ensure equipment was available to protect the canister from a drop, and failing to notify the NRC in a timely manner. In a memo, NRC staff told SCE it was “concerned about apparent weaknesses” in managing storage oversight. SCE was fined $116,000 but permitted to continue loading casks within one year.

Another concern is that the CEO of Holtec, the manufacturer of the canisters, told a 2014 community meeting that the canisters are difficult to repair. “It’s not practical to repair a canister if it were damaged,” Kris Singh said.

Singh walked that statement back last September, but questions remain as to what San Onofre would do if a canister did indeed appear damaged.

According to a plan the California Coastal Commission approved in July 2020, SCE will also inspect two of the 73 buried canisters every five years, and a test canister every two and a half years, starting in 2024.

But critics say they are not confident SCE would self-report given the utility’s record. “It’s a self-reporting industry,” Hering, the retired rear admiral, said. “And they simply can’t be trusted.”

Thinking about ‘how systems will fail’

Holtec did not responded to requests for comment for this story.

In an email, a spokesman for the NRC declined to comment on the 2018 incidents at San Onofre, and said that possible accidents are significantly fewer than at an operating reactor.

“The NRC has thoroughly reviewed this issue and believes that the spent fuel can be stored safely on site at San Onofre. It can’t be moved off site because there is no federally approved disposal site for high-level waste, although we are currently reviewing two applications for interim storage facilities in west Texas and New Mexico,” the spokesman said.

Al Bates, manager of regulatory affairs at San Onofre, said there was a probability that incidents “manmade or by Mother Nature” might happen at San Onofre. But if they do, he said, there would be little impact on public safety.

“The fact of the matter is, there’s, yes, it’s high-level nuclear waste. But, yes, the technologies that we’re using are extremely robust for any possible scenarios,” he said.

He also disputed that the exemption process leaves the public out of the process, noting that requests are public record and that SCE adds information about decommissioning to its website and through a community panel.

“It’s an open book,” Bates said. “We’re not trying to get away with anything. We’re doing the same thing that other utilities have done to rightsize regulations around the true nature of decommissioning and the fact that decommissioning is a much lower risk to the public … therefore regulations have to correctly acknowledge that.”

“We have no motivation to hide anything. As a matter of fact, if you want to lose your job in nuclear power try to hide something – you’ll never work in nuclear power again,” said Randall Granaas, senior nuclear engineer at San Onofre.

John Dobken, spokesperson for Songs, also stressed that the waste is stored safely, but said the right thing to do would be to relocate the waste off-site – a decision only the government can make.

“It’s important to know there are some who want to make this about fear and it shouldn’t be about fear,” he said. “It should be about doing the right thing, and the right thing is about relocating the spent fuel from an interim storage site and eventually into a geological repository, and that’s what we’re working towards.”

However, many of these potential problems might have been avoided, Jaczko said, if SCE had considered another location for its fuel, instead of leaving it on the reactor site, or if it had more adequately consulted with the community.

“I think that a better solution could be had with a little bit more work. And it wasn’t done and now it’s created this very polarized community that has strong concerns about what’s being done and doesn’t feel like they’re being listened to. And they’re not,” he said.

It’s worth considering how things fail, though, argued Rod Ewing, nuclear security professor at Stanford University’s center for international security and cooperation, and author of a 2021 report about spent nuclear waste that focuses on San Onofre.

“The problem with our safety analysis approach is we spend a lot of time proving things are safe. We don’t spend much time imagining how systems will fail,” he said. “And I think the latter is what’s most important.”

The dubious Senate proposal to bail out nuclear powerplants

BY BENJAMIN ZYCHER, 

OPINION CONTRIBUTOR

 — 08/28/21 

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN 

AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

© Getty Images

Costly economic distortions are an inexorable result of government bailouts for specific industries, the justifications for which are almost always deeply dubious.

Consider section 3203 of the proposed Senate Energy Infrastructure Act. It would establish a $6 billion credit program over four years starting in fiscal year 2022 for nuclear electricity plants “projected to cease operations due to economic factors.” The credits, disbursement of which would cease after 2031, would be defined as a certain dollar amount per megawatt-hour (mWh) of generation. And just as the production tax credit for wind electricity has been extended 13 times, it is difficult to believe that once implemented a similar subvention for nuclear power will fail to prove semi-permanent.

And sure enough: The draft legislation directs the comptroller general to submit by Jan. 1, 2024 “any recommendations to renew or expand the credits.”

The bill makes it clear that the ostensible rationale for the credits is “the potential incremental air pollutants that would result if the [given] nuclear reactor were to cease operations. …and be replaced with other types of power generation.”

But the draft legislation asks no one to investigate or even to speculate about whether the hypothetical increase in air pollutants resulting from a shutdown of a nuclear generating plant would yield a violation of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) in the relevant geographic region for any of the (criteria) pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act.

Because the Clean Air Act requires that the respective NAAQS “protect the public health” with “an adequate margin of safety,” it is difficult to believe that a shutdown of a limited number of reactors and replacement with, say, combined-cycle gas generation, would result in ambient air quality in excess of a given NAAQS. The “public health” would continue to be protected

Forget air pollution. This proposed subsidy is a bailout — that is, a sizable economic distortion to be added to all of the other distortions inflicted by various policies upon electricity markets. Would it not be better to reduce that aggregate of economic losses rather than to add to them? The actual unpublicized justifications for this proposal are exceedingly weak.

Competitive price pressures from generation fueled with inexpensive natural gas. Competition is the very basis of a market economy, and a failure to foresee the sharp decline in natural gas prices when nuclear investments were made does not justify a federal bailout. Investors and managements contemplating large investments know that there are important risks, both known and unknown, and make their decisions accordingly. The proposed subsidy would shift those risks onto the taxpayers writ large, and there is no reason to believe that such a shift is efficient.

Single-unit vs multi-unit nuclear operating costs. Two of the nuclear generating stations desperate for operating subsidies (Davis Besse and Perry, both in Ohio) are single-unit facilities, which have operating costs per mWh higher than those for multi-unit stations, because their fixed overhead costs are spread over less generation, and because they cannot achieve scale economies similar to those of multi-unit plants when negotiating service and fuel contracts. There is no reason that taxpayers should bear the attendant economic burdens.

Potential mismanagement. It is no secret that business management, like all human endeavors, varies in terms of the efficiency of the decisions made and the conduct of operations. Not only does the proposed legislation not consider the cost effects of possible mismanagement, it also reduces the economic penalty for such inefficiency.

Costly state regulation and the effects of “renewable portfolio” or “clean energy” standards. Regulation at the state level, imposed by legislatures, public utility commissions and other official bureaus, obviously creates costs and distortions, often sizable. Moreover, about 30 states require that some proportion of the electricity produced or consumed in the state be generated by certain technologies (e.g., wind and solar power), and those requirements often exclude nuclear electricity.

Is there a reason that federal taxpayers should be forced to bear the consequences of state laws and regulations? Reforms of state policies yielding adverse outcomes must be implemented at the state level; a federal bailout reduces the incentives for such reforms. The owners of nuclear powerplants should make their case to the state legislatures.

The distortions created by the federal wind production tax credit. The one argument in support of the proposed nuclear subsidy that is not wholly spurious is the effect of the wind production tax credit (PTC), now between $15 and $25 per mWh. The PTC thus allows the wind producers to reduce the prices that they bid for sales into bulk power markets – sometimes to negative levels – while still “earning” positive net prices.

This obviously is unfair competition: The operators of nuclear plants receive no such subventions, and for technical engineering reasons, it is difficult or impossible for nuclear plants to ramp generation up and down in response to short-term price fluctuations.

So, one could argue that the proposed nuclear subsidy corrects the competitive problem created by the PTC, but that is a non sequitur. If the distortions created by given policies are to be addressed by incorporating new distortions, over time the entire economy in effect will become centrally planned, as one set of distortions after another is adopted to deal with the problems created by earlier ones. The proper course is to end the wind PTC and not to bail out nuclear plants with another subsidy program.

Note also that the prospective “profitability” of a given nuclear plant hinges on assumptions about prices, operations costs and other parameters that are subject to important uncertainties. One study by the former chief economist of the PJM Regional Transmission Organization projects net operating profits for 2021 of $30.4 million and $47.5 million for the two plants in Ohio referenced above, respectively. Another study from the PJM itself projects 2021 operating losses for those units of $28.8 million and $33.2 million, respectively.

In short, such calculations are far from straightforward, and no one will be surprised when those applying for the new nuclear credits find ways to increase the magnitude of the operating losses they will claim.

The arguments in favor of this proposed subsidy are exceedingly weak, and the central principle weighing against it is powerful: Let us reduce rather than increase the distortions created by government economic policies. A failure to keep that principle in mind will yield ongoing economic losses for all of us.

Benjamin Zycher is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

RIGHT WING THUNK TANK 

Embodied Carbon: A Hidden Climate Challenge

The Rocky Mountain Institute issues a new report on reducing embodied carbon.

By Lloyd Alter
Published August 27, 2021

Installing reinforcing bar for concrete construction.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) notes in a new report that "the solutions for addressing embodied carbon in buildings have not been widely studied in the United States, leaving a significant knowledge gap for engineers, architects, contractors, policymakers, and building owners." This is one of many understatements in the report, which is titled "Reducing Embodied Carbon in Buildings." Embodied carbon is pretty much ignored in North America; it is the blindspot of the building industry. This report may help change that.


"Embodied carbon" is the terrible name for the carbon emissions that I have described as "the CO2 emitted during the construction of a building, the carbon burp that comes from making the materials that go into a building, transporting them, and assembling them." A few years ago I suggested that they should be renamed "Upfront Carbon Emissions" because they are not embodied; they are in the atmosphere and they matter now when every gram of carbon counts against the carbon budget. The term has been accepted in the UK (where much of the work on Embodied Carbon is being done) and is used for all the emissions in the product stage and the construction process stage—everything up to the point where the building starts to be used.

RMI

The report demonstrates that it is surprisingly straightforward and affordable to reduce the embodied carbon of concrete construction by optimizing the concrete mix and using recycled content in reinforcing bars. It actually claims that "concrete and steel offer most significant opportunities for reduction" and that we can "reduce embodied carbon by 24% to 46% at less than 1% cost premium."


The authors of the report—Matt Jungclaus, Rebecca Esau, Victor Olgyay, and Audrey Rempher—describe the issues with structural materials like cement, "one of the largest contributors to US-borne emissions at 68.3 million metric tons (MMT) ofCO2e per year," and steel, "responsible for 104.6 MMT ofCO2 emissions annually." They are not nearly so enthusiastic about mass timber as many others are, even questioning whether it truly stores carbon, writing:

"Considering wood as a carbon-sequestering material is a point of contention among industry experts, with debate largely revolving around varying forestry and harvesting practices and their effect on emissions. Nevertheless, timber is typically seen as a lower-carbon alternative to steel and concrete when used as a structural material."


That is kind of damning with faint praise there to those of us who think that concrete and steel should be replaced with sustainably harvested mass timber as soon as possible; but that's probably a bridge too far for RMI, even in a time of climate crisis. They make mass timber sound like a bad thing, instead of the only material that even has a chance of being carbon neutral. Mass timber is not perfect, but in a report that is trying to get the construction industry to understand embodied carbon, do they have to be so ambivalent about alternatives to concrete and steel?:

"As demand grows for wood products, it will be crucial to ensure this demand is met with sustainable forestry management practices. Otherwise, the broader use of timber as a building product could result in higher carbon emissions and less ecological diversity."

Upfront emissions, UK style.
World Green Building Council

RMI takes a different approach to Upfront Carbon Emissions than is typically done in the UK or Canada: "Upfront embodied carbon includes emissions related to the extraction, transportation (from extraction site to manufacturing site), and manufacture of materials." But it does not include "emissions related to transportation to the construction site, the construction or use phases, or end-of-life considerations."

But transportation to the construction site, and the construction itself, are important parts of upfront emissions, which usually include everything up to the use phase. Later in the report, they note:

"The transportation of materials within or across geographic regions can significantly impact the embodied carbon of a product. Although the manufacturing stage typically emits the highest levels of carbon in the life cycle of a given product, transportation emissions can be substantial, particularly when a large quantity of material is transported across long distances."


But evidently, this is too hard to do. "The information is not readily available via tools such as EC3. Additionally, it requires a side calculation for each material depending on its source."

We need more than this.

It's wonderful that the RMI is addressing embodied carbon and is trying to bring a big conservative industry on board, but this report is profoundly unsatisfying and sometimes confusing. These are times when we have to get people's attention.

The report does mention in blue call-out boxes that "Initial decisions that affect the fundamental design of abuilding to reduce embodied carbon while meeting the functional requirements of the project." Yet when they do a whole section on case studies in the economics of low embodied carbon buildings, they note that "this study does not include any whole-building design strategy changes." It is evidently too hard because the EC3 tool they are using "does not have the. capability to inform whole-building design changes." But if you are doing case studies, these are fundamental. Frances Gannon of Make is quoted in our earlier post about building form:

"Key design moves at the start of the project will make the biggest difference: reusing existing buildings where possible, keeping new building forms simple and efficient, ensuring structural efficiency, keeping structural grids small and considering how the facade interacts with the frame are key contributors to the overarching principle of using less. Then as the conversation moves to materials, we’ll have the best chance of meeting ambitious embodied carbon targets."

The RMI report mentions most of these in passing in the blue boxes, but it is a huge miss not to run the numbers in the case studies after optimizing the form. The industry people might have been even more impressed by the cost savings.

More critically, the report appears to be determined to underplay the urgency, going on about how easy it is to do and won't cost all that much money. They mention the time value of carbon and refer to Architecture 2030 and don't even mention the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) until the conclusion. One gets no sense of crisis or of the importance of the issue that you see among architects and engineers in other countries, like where Steve Yates of Webb Yates Engineers says things like:

"It’s absolutely outrageous that an architect goes out and buys locally grown tomatoes at the supermarket, gets on their bike to [go to] work, and thinks they are an environmentally conscious person while designing a concrete or steel-frame building. Architects and engineers are the ones making decisions, so why don’t they engage with this?"

It seems like RMI is trying to walk a fine line, saying, "Hey, you can reduce your embodied carbon and it won't hurt, and you can do it for cheap!" instead of stating the fact that we have to radically reduce upfront carbon emissions right now. Perhaps they don't want to seem extreme and appear to rock the boat, but the boat needs to be rocked. Buried in the conclusion, the RMI does finally express some sense of urgency:

"Reducing embodied carbon is an urgent and critical issue because the trajectory of embodied carbon emissions is not currently aligned with global climate targets... It is imperative that practitioners employ the strategies and solutions available today to accelerate the adoption of low-embodied-carbon construction. These changes are necessary to deliver the unprecedented action required to meet the goal of the Paris Climate Agreement and limit global warming to 1.5°C."

But this is all too little, too late.


Read Frances Gannon of Make Architects in the UK for what her firm is doing; look at the positions of the Architects Climate Action Network. This is serious.

Keystone XL pipeline full of problems that caused large oil spills: U.S. watchdog
UCP FAILED DUE DILIGENCE WHEN INVESTING TAXPAYERS $$$$$ IN KEYSTONE
'TC Energy's record among its peers is one of the worst in terms of volume of oil spilled per mile transported,' statement says

Reuters
Doina Chiacu
Publishing date: Aug 23, 2021 • 

U.S. President Joe Biden canceled Keystone XL's permit on his first day in office on Jan. 20. PHOTO BY ANDREW BURTON/GETTY IMAGES FILES

WASHINGTON — The U.S. government watchdog found multiple problems with the construction, manufacture and design of the Keystone XL pipeline, validating President Joe Biden’s decision to revoke its permit, leaders of several House Democratic committees said on Monday.

The committee leaders requested the Government Accountability Office report in November 2019 after more than 11,000 barrels crude oil leaked from the pipeline in two releases in less than two years.

“In its thorough review of the pipeline’s history and construction, GAO found that preventable construction issues contributed to the current Keystone pipeline’s spills more frequently than the industry-wide trends,” they said in a statement.

Keystone’s four largest spills were “caused by issues related to the original design, manufacturing of the pipe, or construction of the pipeline,” the GAO report said.

Biden cancelled Keystone XL’s permit on his first day in office on Jan. 20, dealing a death blow to a long-gestating project that would have carried 830,000 barrels per day of heavy oil sands crude from Alberta to Nebraska.

“TC Energy’s record among its peers is one of the worst in terms of volume of oil spilled per mile transported,” a statement from the lawmakers said.

They included Representatives Peter DeFazio, transportation committee chairman, Frank Pallone, energy and commerce committee chair, Donald Payne, chair of a subcommittee on railroads and pipelines and Bobby Rush, chair of a subcommittee on energy. the lawmakers said.

“President Biden was clearly right to question this operator’s ability to construct a safe and resilient pipeline, and we support his decision to put Americans’ health and environment above industry interests,” they said.

© Thomson Reuters 2021

The social and environmental perils of magical thinking

We can’t just assume that the pandemic, the climate crisis, and other pressing societal issues will work out fine

By LOUISE FABIANI
PUBLISHED AUGUST 27, 2021 8:45AM (EDT

(Leonardo Carrato/Bloomberg/Getty Images)

This article originally appeared on Undark.

There has been much coverage in recent media of citizens who fail to acknowledge the existence of such global crises as Covid-19 or anthropogenic climate change. They are said to be skeptical or in denial. They refuse to participate in any solution for the simple reason that they believe them to be non-issues.

Just as dangerous to the common good is a person who fully accepts the existence of a problem, yet believes as a matter of course that everything will work out just fine. They are indulging in magical thinking — a mentality marked by excessive optimism and a dash of egocentrism. Magical thinkers are content to simply sit on the sidelines and radiate good thoughts at those doing the heavy lifting to solve the world's ills.

Both adamant deniers and cheerful magical thinkers refuse to contribute time and energy or make personal sacrifices to solve social problems. They hold society back from tackling its most pressing threats to equity, security, and even survival. They leave others to do the worry and the work. Not only is this monumentally unfair to those who shoulder the responsibility, it wastes valuable time. No local or global crisis will disappear if everyone assumes that someone else will fix it.
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It is easy to understand why magical thinking's core element, optimism, arose as a human trait, and why it persists. The alternative to belief in positive outcomes can be resignation or despair, which are both painful and limiting. It could be argued that humanity would not be where it is right now if not for legions of optimistic ancestors ignoring the local doomsayer's warnings not to cross that river or build that tower or taste that strange new berry. Whenever a bold (and perhaps foolhardy) pioneer managed to explore, engineer, or eat something new and lived to tell the tale, human culture grew in its complexity — and in its capacity for further creativity. To put it another way, had all early hominins been cautious to a fault, we may never have ventured away from out points of origin.

Yet here we are in the 21st century. Billions of human beings are benefitting from millennia of cultural innovation and more than three centuries of Enlightenment thinking, a paradigm shift that enabled great minds to tackle age-old problems such as infectious disease. But Enlightenment thinking has also caused its share of problems, such as the release of massive amounts of carbon dioxide from combustion engines and factories. It also gave rise to, or at least reinforced, a quasi-religious belief in the power of the human mind to solve almost anything with technology, given adequate time and resources. Biologist David Ehrenfeld calls this the arrogance of humanism. It provides an easy fallback for any crisis. Not to worry. Somebody will think of something.

Take the loss of global biodiversity. The denialist would say, "Environmentalists exaggerate the threat of extinction just to get attention." The optimist would say: "It sounds really bad, but nature is resilient, and ecologists are resourceful. Why, just the other day they discovered a frog they thought was extinct for decades!"

The magical thinker combines that optimism with a self-interest that can take root when a solution to a problem conflicts in some way with their identity or values, or simply takes too much effort and time. "Smartphones use rare-earth metals mined in biodiversity hotspots? Awful," the magical thinker would say. "I love gorillas. But as a busy working mom, I cannot give up my phone. Someone will find a safer source of metals before long."

This discomforting cognitive dissonance begs to be resolved. In their 2007 book, "Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)," Elliot Aronson and Carol Tavris write, "Dissonance is bothersome under any circumstances, but it is most painful to people when an important element of their self-concept is threatened — typically when they do something that is inconsistent with their view of themselves." We can add: or when they are called upon to do something that clashes with their self-image in some way.

Given how unbearable cognitive dissonance can feel, it's hardly surprising that magical thinkers grasp at any relief available. They shut down the avenues of curiosity that could lead to deeper understanding, prematurely reassure themselves that things sound worse than they are, and place unwarranted faith in others to do any repair they acknowledge needs doing. By convincing themselves that the problem doesn't need to be fixed yet, and then only by others, they create a "Get Out of Jail Free" card for their consciences.

As we lurch further into the Anthropocene, people comfortable with change will continue to bump up against those who aren't. How can activists, policymakers, and even ordinary citizens mitigate magical thinkers' disengagement with reality and responsibility?

Shaming them does not work. Badgering them with more and more facts will only cause entrenchment, more elaborate magic. It's like Aesop's fable about the sun, the wind, and the cloaked traveler. No matter how hard the wind blew, it could not remove the man's cloak; in fact, it only succeeded in making him hold on more tightly. But when the sun beamed at him, the man took off his cloak voluntarily. The fable advises a soft sell augmented by persistence. (The sun tried to make the man change even after witnessing the wind's failure.)

To spur magical thinkers to action, I would also advise anyone in the position of educating the public about an issue to avoid automatically painting an optimistic picture of possible measures as if they are almost faits accomplis. Faced with dire scenarios such as those in the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it is tempting to comfort people by doing such things as enumerating successful extant "green" technologies, like electric cars and solar panels, as a way of predicting the arrival of similar solutions further down the line. It is far more effective to pair cold facts with warm hope instead of palliatives. As Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci said, we need the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will.

When a problem arises, denial and magical thinking both fail to get the job done. The best kind of hope we can give people hinges on a contingency, where the need for participation is understood: We can do this if we put our heads together, find workable solutions, then put them into play. It sees a light at the end of every tunnel, but knows we'll never get out of the darkness without the collective will to change.
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* * *

Louise Fabiani's science writing and critical essays have appeared previously in Undark, as well as in JSTOR Daily, Aeon, Slate, Science, New Scientist, Pacific Standard, the TLS, and elsewhere. She lives in Montreal.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

FASCIST MAGICAL THINKING

UCP MLA suggests he wants to see 'accelerated case rate' of COVID-19

Author of the article:Jason Herring
Publishing date:Aug 28, 2021 •

Lethbridge East MLA Nathan Neudorf is seen in this file photo. Neudorf suggested he'd like to see COVID rates rise quickly and pass through the unvaccinated population, in hopes of a fast decline. 

PHOTO BY FILE

A United Conservative Party MLA is under fire after saying he’s “very hopeful” Alberta will see a rapid rise in COVID-19 spread among unvaccinated people.

Lethbridge-East MLA Nathan Neudorf suggested he wants to see Alberta’s COVID-19 fourth wave emulate events in the United Kingdom, which saw a steep rise in virus transmission at the start of the summer and continues to see high rates of spread.

“If you watch the signs around the world with this fourth wave, as it’s being called, in the U.K. we also saw a rapid rise of case numbers but then an equally rapid decline as it finished going through the unvaccinated population, it didn’t have anywhere else to go,” said Neudorf, who made the comments in a Friday interview with Bridge City News, a Lethbridge media outlet.

“So I’m very hopeful that we will see the same kind of trend, maybe a bit of an accelerated case rate, but then a very quick decline as well, allowing us to safely keep businesses open so we don’t have to add further restrictions.”

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Neudorf’s characterization of the U.K.’s fourth wave is inaccurate. The country did see a precipitous rise in cases followed by a brief rapid decline, but case counts there have been steadily increasing since the start of August.

The MLA, who is also the UCP caucus chair, also said the government would keep public-health measures at their current level and “see what happens” when schools reopen.

Alberta is in the midst of a surging fourth wave of COVID-19, having recorded more than 1,000 cases of the virus daily on the last three days for which data was available. Hospitalization rates are also rising steeply, with 336 Albertans in hospitalization with the virus, the most since early June.

The province has a high population of unvaccinated individuals, with about 1.5 million Alberta who have not had even one dose of COVID-19 vaccine. That includes about 660,000 Albertans under the age of 12, who are not yet eligible for the jab.

Neudorf’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Postmedia, nor did Alberta Health when asked whether his remarks accurately represent Alberta’s COVID-19 approach.

The remarks drew broad criticism on social media, where doctors, infectious disease experts and political opponents were among those to deride the comments as hazardous and unscientific.

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Edmonton emergency room physician Dr. Shazma Mithani said the strategy described by Neudorf is “irresponsible” and “dangerous.”

“To suggest a reasonable plan would be to allow COVID to essentially run rampant through the unvaccinated is so problematic on so many levels,” Mithani said. “Essentially reaching herd immunity and not caring about the casualties around the way is reckless.”

Mithani said she has been asking all patients she sees whether they are vaccinated against COVID-19, and if not, why. She said only a tiny minority of those who are unvaccinated say this is by choice; others are in vulnerable populations, many working multiple jobs or raising young children at home.

“A lot of these people aren’t the typical anti-vaxxer everyone finds so easy to hate. It’s much more nuanced than that,” Mithani said, arguing more vaccine outreach is needed to reach these communities.

She added Alberta’s acute-care system cannot handle a pandemic strategy where COVID-19 is allowed to spread freely among the unvaccinated, and said it’s concerning leaders like Premier Jason Kenney or Health Minister Tyler Shandro have yet to speak publicly about the fourth wave.

Both politicians, as well as chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw, have not spoken to media in weeks. Kenney’s office has said the premier is on vacation, but would not confirm where he went or when he would return.

In a statement Friday evening, NDP health critic David Shepherd said Shandro must address Albertans and explain whether Neudorf’s comments represent the province’s COVID-19 plan.

“The UCP caucus chair says the plan is clear: let ‘er rip,” Shepherd said.

“This government will let the Delta variant sweep through our unvaccinated population, causing more serious illness and death. No thought for the impacts on families who will suffer, on health-care workers who are still trying to recover from the last wave, on businesses trying to get back on their feet or students returning to school in just a few days.”

‘Worst drought conditions we've had since 2002’: Alberta farmers struggle to feed cattle, grow crops

Author of the article: Kellen Taniguchi
Publishing date: Aug 28, 2021 • 

Hay bales are seen in field near Highway 37 and Highway 2 north of Edmonton, on Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2021. As historic drought conditions have destroyed crop yields across the Prairies, hay prices have skyrocketed. 

Photo by Ian Kucerak PHOTO BY IAN KUCERAK /Postmedia
Article content

A summer of heat waves and little rainfall has Alberta farmers struggling to make it through the season.

Crops aren’t making enough feed for some cattle farms and Shelby Blosky, owner of Double S Ranch Cattle Co., said farmers like herself are having to buy extra hay bales at steeper prices due to limited supply.

“Typically, we pay around $50 for a round bale of hay and this year there’s prices out there upwards of $300 a bale,” said Blosky, whose farm is about 107 kilometres southwest of Edmonton near Breton. “There’s going to be a lot of farms that are just going to say they are done with it and that’s really heartbreaking to see.”

Blosky said the increased prices of hay and other crops are forcing some farmers to sell off their cattle at auctions, and it’s hard for her to see because farmers don’t farm to be rich.

“We do it because we love it. I can’t imagine family farms that have had the same cattle bloodline for 100 years and they’re being forced to sell their cows — it just makes me sick, to be honest,” said Blosky, adding she still thinks about the cows she had to sell six to seven years ago to avoid going into debt.

Melanie Wowk, chair of Alberta Beef Producers, which represents over 18,000 cattle farmers and ranchers in the province, confirmed that some farmers are being forced to sell their cows.

“We’ve definitely heard from the auction markets that cattle numbers are up,” said Wowk. “So, there’s a lot higher numbers going through right now than there typically is at this time of year.”

On July 9, Wowk said she got several calls from producers in the area who said their crops were starting to turn early due to the extreme heat and they were worried the crops would deteriorate to the point that they wouldn’t be worthwhile to turn into feed.

The hotter-than-average summer has been detrimental to the condition of crops and just 18.2 per cent were considered to be in good to excellent condition as of Aug. 10, according to the province’s crop report. The report noted that the 10-year average has seen 69.9 per cent of crops in good to excellent condition.

“In the cropping sector in Alberta, these are the worst drought conditions we’ve had since 2002 when there was a widespread drought in Western Canada,” said Tom Steve, general manager of the Alberta Wheat and Barley Commissions. “It’s definitely going to take its toll on a number of farmers.”

Steve said prices for a lot of crops are very strong due to the drought reaching many regions, however, he said farmers have no or very little crop to sell and are unable to take advantage of the strong prices.

“It’s going to cost the same amount of money to harvest that crop. Whether it’s a four bushel per acre yield or a 50 bushel per acre yield, it still costs you the same for fuel, labour and wear and tear on your equipment.”

Regions south of the Trans-Canada Highway have seen the biggest impact due to the drought, he said.

Blosky, Wowk and Steve all said the extreme heat has also brought more grasshoppers.

“It was pretty disheartening to go walk out into the pasture when we turned the cows out and the grasshoppers had already eaten a very large amount of the grass,” said Blosky. “There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s just another thing this year.”

ktaniguchi@postmedia.com

Hay bales are seen in a field near Highway 37 and Highway 2 north of Edmonton, on Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2021. As historic drought conditions have destroyed crop yields across the Prairies, hay prices have skyrocketed.

Photo by Ian Kucerak PHOTO BY IAN KUCERAK /Postmedia

Hay theft reflects level of farmer desperation

By Doug Ferguson

WESTERN PRODUCER
Published: August 26, 2021
Livestock, News

Alberta SPCA provincial supervisor Stuart Dodds, left, and Alberta Environment and Parks conservation officer Rob Spellicy receive 11 bales that were recovered from a rural property.

 | Alberta SPCA photo


RCMP investigate after grass was illegally hayed in an Alberta park and bales stolen before they could be recovered

Theft of about $10,000 in hay bales gathered without a permit from a provincial park in Alberta, and then allegedly stolen before they could be donated to a charity, is being seen as an example of the desperate situation many livestock producers face.

Due to widespread drought and heat waves that have caused poor hay crops and rising prices across much of Western Canada, “people are going to whatever length to secure feed,” said Stuart Dodds, provincial supervisor for the Alberta SPCA.

After the round hay bales were found in the park by conservation officers, Alberta Environment and Parks decided to donate them to the SPCA. However, the bales were removed by an unknown party before the charity could pick them up.

It had planned to use them as feed in case livestock are seized from producers this winter, said Dodds. He warned the feed shortage means everyone from large livestock producers to hobby farmers with horses need to make plans to secure feed or downsize herds as they head into this fall and winter.

Failure to prevent animals from starving in Alberta can result in everything from fines of up to $20,000 to prohibitions on owning livestock, and “it could become a big problem in these coming months,” he said.

Alberta Environment and Parks was informed July 17 that a grassy area within Lois Hole Centennial Provincial Park near Edmonton and St. Albert had been illegally hayed, the department said in an email. “Haying within a provincial park or protected area requires a permit; the department did not issue a haying permit for that location.”

Eleven bales were subsequently recovered from a rural property by the department in connection with the original complaint and donated to the Alberta SPCA, said Dodds. However, someone else appears to have separately come in and removed about 70 of the bales that remained in the park, he added.

It is the first such incident known to Dodds involving a public park.

“We’re hearing stories at the moment, just odd little stories of feed being stolen, but that’s from people’s fields and things like that.

“I think people are just getting a bit desperate and trying whatever they can to get supplies … If producers have a lot of feed on hand in yards and what have you, they need to be making sure that it’s secure because somebody might come in and attempt to take it, so you need to be careful around especially these rural areas.”

The alleged theft is believed to have occurred between July 31 and Aug. 5, said the email by Alberta Environment and Parks. Although the matter is currently part of a criminal investigation by the St. Albert RCMP for alleged theft over $5,000, efforts by The Western Producer to contact the detachment for further information were unsuccessful.

It wouldn’t have been easy to remove the bales, Dodds said in the statement by the Alberta SPCA. “Collecting 70 bales would have required a bale picker as well as numerous loads on a flatbed semi-trailer.”

Due to the fact it is difficult to predict in advance the severity of the upcoming winter, hay is purchased by the Alberta SPCA on a case-by-case basis as livestock seizures occur, he said in an interview.

“We couldn’t buy a whole bunch of bales now and just have them sit there for two years because it’ll just go mouldy, and if we don’t use them, it’s a waste of time and money, isn’t it?”

Anyone with information about the alleged theft can contact the Conservation Officer Enforcement Line at 780-644-3880, or the St. Albert RCMP.