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4 days ago
- Science
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A song for the Cahaba River
Hundreds of Alabamians flock to the Cahaba River each year during peak blooming season. (Lee Hedgepeth/Inside Climate News) This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. WEST BLOCTON, Ala.—'The lilies have bloomed this season if you know where to go.' It's a line in Birmingham band I Declare's newly released song 'Cahaba,' and it's the truth. At the recent Cahaba Lily festival, you could hear the sacred Southern knowledge passing from one person to another. 'Where do you go? Have you been yet? Is the water low enough to see them?' The lilies, a species endemic to the southeastern U.S., are named after Alabama's longest free-flowing river, the Cahaba. They bloom boldly atop the jagged shoals that line the river's bottom each year between Mother's Day in May and Father's Day in June. This year, as is growing more often the case, an unusually rainy May has led to a less than ideal viewing season. But still, like clockwork, Alabamians have flocked to the Cahaba to see what they can. 'On the banks of the big river, watching nature's finest show,' the song's lyrics say. 'It's a biological marvel, a cesspool of teeming growth. A reflection of our survival in the water's steady flow.' It wasn't always like this. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Dr. Larry Davenport is known as the world's foremost expert on the Cahaba Lily, scientific name Hymenocallis coronaria. He was the keynote speaker at the 35th annual Cahaba Lily Festival, a gathering about 40 miles southwest of Birmingham that he's been part of since its beginnings. When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was searching for an expert to investigate the lily and its potential candidacy as an endangered species, they turned to Davenport. At the time, in the late 1980s, the Cahaba Lily wasn't anywhere near the cultural symbol it's now become for the region. A recent academic article called the flower 'charismatic'—a characterization that left Davenport thrilled. The Cahaba Lily has come a long way in three decades, he said. 'It was a mysterious plant at the time,' Davenport said. 'Little was known about it.' So Davenport decided to take up what would ultimately become a lifelong challenge, investigating everything he could about the plant's habitat, anatomy and life cycle. Ultimately, USFWS chose not to list the Cahaba Lily as an endangered species, though organizations like the Nature Conservancy consider the lily 'threatened.' Historically, large populations of the flower have been wiped out by human activities like the damming of Alabama's rivers. The construction of a dam on the Black Warrior River in the early 1900s effectively drowned a miles-long stretch of the flowers, sometimes called shoal lilies. 'That was the motherlode,' Davenport said. 'And when the dam was put in, all of those lilies were flooded out.' A century later, another human activity—the burning of fossil fuels—has added yet another obstacle to the lily's ability to thrive. Research suggests that as the climate warms, heavy rain events in the southeast U.S. will become more frequent, as will periods of drought. Siltation, where sediment coats the shoals needed for the plant's growth, is one of the most serious threats to the Cahaba Lily, Davenport said. That type of water pollution, often caused by mining or other development upstream, can also be compounded by the impacts of climate change, which could lead to excessive rainfall that contributes to sediment runoff. As such rain events become more frequent, viewing the lilies, too, will become more difficult, as the plants will often—like this year—be covered for much of the blooming season by high river water. That human impact on the Cahaba and its lily—the effects of pollution and lax environmental regulation—are part of the dynamic that I Declare aimed to convey in their new album, 'We Ought to Celebrate.' The band's five members—Hunter Huie, Austin Noble, Ben Smith, Kyle Posten and Joseph Foster—all grew up below the Mason-Dixon Line, struggling with what it meant to be Southern, white and progressive. Huie, who grew up in Alabama, said he always identified with the rebellious, anti-authority attitude of his Southern community, but the older he got, the more he resented what he thought were the base political viewpoints that often accompanied it. As he grew older and learned more, he began to realize it was Southern Blacks and other progressives that truly embodied the ideas of fighting against the mainstream and pushing back against unchecked authority, not conservative whites who held fast to a historically bereft view of a 'lost cause.' 'I just really hate that there is this patina of white supremacy and racism that coats the surface of everything in the South,' he said. 'That's something we want to fight against. We have to dig deeper.' That's at the heart of what 'We Ought to Celebrate' is about, Huie said—painting a nuanced picture of the complex, heartbreaking, beautiful realities of the South in which he finds himself living. 'Me and my neighbors, we ain't never gonna be OK with 'Let's Go, Brandon' plate tags or those Johnny Reb battleflags,' one of the band's lyrics say. 'You and your buddies might be laughing at this son of a yuppy, but I'll take my chances putting my money right where my mouth is.' Explicit environmentalism, too, is part of what forms the fabric of I Declare's new EP. 'Cahaba dreaming,' the band's lyrics say. 'Well I just think you should know. The lilies have bloomed this season if you know where to go. And I've got the lead on sallies—they're buried in the mud. It seems so silly really, but it's in our blood.' Sallies (a reference to the region's robust salamander population), like the Cahaba Lily, have been threatened by human activity, particularly habitat destruction. Just this year, residents of a Birmingham suburb fought a development that had been set to encroach on the habitat of resident spotted salamanders. Reflecting on that kind of environmental impact is important to the band, guitarist and vocalist Ben Smith told Inside Climate News. 'We feel like being in Alabama, we're surrounded by this culture that's dominated by an affinity for the outdoors,' he said. 'But we have this precious, unique ecosystem right here that's absolutely wonderful that we actually don't care about at all, that we pollute and mismanage. There's this juxtaposition of this affection for nature while most people are also completely unconcerned with its health and well-being.' It's frustrating to witness, Smith said, but it makes for a good song. Austin Noble, a saxophonist and vocalist for the group, grew up in Adger, a mining town in western Jefferson County that garnered headlines when a mine expanded beneath its residents' feet. In March 2024, a grandfather living atop a mine in the area was killed when methane, a common byproduct of coal mining operations, leaked into his home, triggering an explosion. Noble said growing up in a mining community shaped how he views the environment and the need for regulation. 'Everyone I knew in high school, they'd finish up, then head to work for the coal mines,' Noble said. 'So they go into the mines, their health is affected and their lifespans are shortened, and this is how they're repaid. An exploded home.' That sentiment made its way into the music: 'I remember being told once Don't bite the hand that feeds But what about mother nature Who brings our thirsty throats a drink Why should she have to pay for All our externalities Growth isn't always a good thing Oh man, plaque clogs the arteries'
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Bessmer residents want answers about 4 million square foot data center coming to city
An aerial view of a proposed data center site within Bessemer's city limits. Residents who live near the property are concerned about a lack of information about the project and disruptions from the center -- which, if built to planned capacity, would be one of the largest in the United States and could become one of the largest single consumers of electricity in the state. (Lee Hedgepeth/Inside Climate News) This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. BESSEMER — They all came here for peace, and so far, the land has given it to them. For Marshall Killingsworth, the peace comes from the owls whose hoots echo across the valley as he sits in his favorite spot in his garden. For David Havron, it's looking up at the stars at night as the moonlight glistens off the lake just outside his back door. For Mary Rosenboom, it's the calls of the songbirds as the sun slowly sets over the hilly terrain. For Becky Morgan, it's the view of the mountain from her recliner—through the long windows that line the sides of her home. But all these residents in this area of rural Jefferson County are afraid—fearful that their peace may soon be disturbed. 'Town is moving closer to us,' Jeff Lowe said last week. 'And we're not happy about it.' Killingsworth, Havron, Rosenboom, Morgan and Lowe are just a few of the residents whose homes are adjacent to a 700-acre, wooded plot of land that soon may be transformed, through years of construction, into a 4.5-million-square-foot data processing center located just within the city limits of Bessemer, Alabama, a city of about 25,000 southwest of Birmingham. If built to planned capacity, the data center would be one of the largest in the United States and could become one of the largest single consumers of electricity in the state. Of nearly a dozen residents interviewed by Inside Climate News, none expressed support for the project as planned. Instead, all shared fear and frustration over their inability to obtain information about the $14.5 billion proposal from politicians charged with representing the public. Efforts by Inside Climate News to speak with public officials in Bessemer about the proposal, called Project Marvel, were met with silence. The mayor, his chief of staff and the city's attorney all signed a non-disclosure agreement with the developer, staffers said, and would not be able to answer questions about the project. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Members of the Bessemer City Council, tasked with approving or rejecting the rezoning necessary for the proposed data center, have repeatedly refused to comment. 'I thought I answered your question,' said Carla Jackson, a council member who represents the area of Bessemer where the data center is planned. 'And I was so sweet about it. Right now, while it's under litigation, I'm not going to talk about it.' In the last decade, technological evolution has quickened pace, with massive data centers now in demand for more intensive computational tasks like cryptocurrency mining and processing artificial intelligence (AI) requests. That digital demand, in turn, has made its way into the physical world as tech companies search for cheap land, electricity, water and resources necessary for the development of large data processing centers like the one being proposed in Bessemer. A data center is like a city with computer servers as the buildings, requiring network cables, power sources and cooling infrastructure, like roads, power lines and sewer networks in a municipality. Data flows like traffic. Similar to the police and surveillance in a city, a data center also has security infrastructure—electric fences, anti-ram barriers, infrared cameras, alarms, lights and sometimes even guard stations and other surveillance systems to protect against attacks. As of early 2025, the United States has more than 5,000 data centers, according to industry reports, compared to around 1,000 just five years earlier. And with that increased demand comes an inevitable, increased demand for resources. The proposed data center campus in Bessemer, if realized, would consist of 18 buildings, each larger than the average Walmart Supercenter, that would house massive server farms for data storage and processing. Located on about 700 acres of wooded land currently zoned for agricultural use, the proposed physical infrastructure would require the permanent clear-cutting of at least 100 acres of forest. The company behind the project is a newly created limited liability company, Logistics Land Investments LLC, first formed in May 2023, according to records from the Delaware Secretary of State. The company's registered agent is not a person, according to business records, but the Corporation Trust Company, also based in Delaware—an entity that has been used by large tech companies like Google and Apple for corporate dealings in the past. Despite its brief history, Logistics Land Investments has already found itself in at least one legal battle. Court records show that company has been sued by the First Baptist Church of Red Oak, Texas, a place of worship that was located on land the development company was interested in buying for another project. After the sale fell through, the church sued, arguing that the company had wrongly breached their agreement. The president of Bessemer's City Council, Donna Thigpen, was the only public official interviewed who confirmed she had not yet signed an NDA. In fact, Thigpen said, she'd been largely left in the dark on the proposed data center thus far. 'We have not met with the builders yet,' she said. 'We know nothing about it.' She referred further questions to the mayor's office, though she noted he'd signed an NDA. The mayor's office did not respond to several requests for comment. The only information about the project made public so far has been in limited answers from the company's attorneys to residents' concerns voiced in planning and zoning meetings held earlier this year. Those few answers provide only small, fragmented insights into what could be one of the largest capital outlays in recent state history. But even that information is probably more than is legally required to be given to residents, according to arguments made by an attorney for Bessemer in a recent court hearing. 'There's no provision in the code of Alabama that authorizes the asking of questions, the furnishing of environmental reports or development plans or anything of that nature,' he told a Bessemer judge. 'You have a right to be heard as to whether you agree with that ordinance or not. Nothing more, nothing less.' The city had landed in court after a group of residents filed suit, claiming that property owners weren't given proper public notice ahead of a recent public hearing on the proposal. Because residents packed the meeting room, the city argued in court, there was no deficiency in public notice. Monica Agee, a Jefferson County Circuit Judge in the Birmingham division, issued a temporary restraining order on April 14 preventing the Bessemer City Council from voting on the proposed rezoning of the property from agricultural to industrial. After issuing the restraining order, Agee transferred the case to the county's Bessemer division, where the matter was scheduled for a hearing. Agee's temporary restraining order was 'wrong and illegal,' attorney Shan Paden, representing the city, told Bessemer judge David Hobdy at an April 23 hearing. Hobdy scolded the lawyer for his comments about the judge. 'I take issue with the fact that you're saying that judge knew what she was doing was wrong,' Hobdy said. 'That's a circuit judge of Jefferson County, too, so I think she had appropriate authority to act at her discretion.' Lawyers for both the residents and the city of Bessemer brought up the size of the project in making their respective arguments about how the judge should eventually rule. 'This is a $14 billion project,' Paden said. 'To give you the scope of that, the entire value of all the real estate in the city of Bessmer in 2018 was $345 million dollars,' Paden said in part. Public officials should be judging the merits of such a project, the lawyer argued, not a judge. Lawyers for the residents living near the proposed data center site, on the other hand, argued that the size of the project demands robust public notice and close adherence to relevant law. 'This is about protecting property owners' rights to protect their land from money-grabbing AI developers who have devastated many, many communities across the country,' the residents' attorney, Reginald McDaniel, said. John Parker Yates, another attorney for the residents, reminded the judge that the identity of the developer and its potential client is still not known. 'This could be a Chinese data center,' he said. 'And that's scary—that could be happening in our backyard and us not know.' In the end, Judge Hobdy chose not to dismiss the lawsuit outright as lawyers for the city of Bessemer had asked him to do. Instead, he told both parties that he planned to hold over the case long enough for city officials to begin the public notice process and rezoning process again, in accordance with Alabama law. If and when that process is complete, the judge said, he'd consider ordering a dismissal in the case. Hobdy set a status update hearing in the case for Aug. 1. Despite the delay in the necessary rezoning achieved through the residents' lawsuit, community members opposed to the project now have another, likely more difficult task ahead: to convince public officials to vote against moving the proposal forward. Marshall Killingsworth walked in his garden on a recent afternoon, his daylilies blooming in the warm Alabama sun. Killingsworth, 80, retired after working for decades in IT at major companies, including Blue Cross Blue Shield and Drummond Coal. Even in retirement, though, he's busier now than ever. He spends much of his time outside, tending to an elaborate, well kept yard overlooking a wooded valley where the data center is now proposed to be built. Soon, Ron and Becky Morgan, married nearly 28 years, came and sat with Killingsworth. Ron, an Army veteran, jumped into the conversation as soon as he arrived, talking intensely about potential noise, light pollution and the environmental impact of the necessary clear-cutting and construction. Becky placed her arm on Ron's leg. 'We just got here,' she said, laughing. 'Other people want to talk too.' In Alabama, almost all the new electric demand that the state's largest energy company, Alabama Power, has projected is for data centers, said Daniel Tait, executive director of Energy Alabama, a nonprofit organization that advocates for clean energy in the state. Many data centers use alternative energy sources, including solar, wind, nuclear and hydrogen, to reduce carbon emissions and reduce their reliance on the electric grid, although investors in the Bessemer project have not outlined any such plans. Lawyers representing Logistics Land Investments did not respond to requests for comment. As demand for digital content grows, an 'arms race' has escalated between tech giants to build digital warehouses and bring their services to market first. Data centers were initially smaller and demanded 50 to 200 megawatts of power to run. Driven by the development of AI, a new, second round of data centers uses five times more energy, averaging 2 to 3 gigawatts to sustain operations. They are considered 'high capacity' because once the center is running, it doesn't stop. 'You can't turn it off like the AC,' Tait said. If built to full capacity, the Bessemer data center campus is projected to consume around 1,200 megawatts of energy and could feasibly consume around 10.5 million megawatt hours per year. That's more than 90 times the amount of energy used by all residences in Bessemer and more than 10 times the amount of energy used by all residences in Birmingham annually. Increased demand for energy, or at least the potential for it, is already driving Alabama Power's desire to double down on fossil fuel investments. The company, an effective monopoly, has asked the state's Public Service Commission to approve its purchase of a gas-powered power plant in recent days, potentially exacerbating the state's reliance on dirty energy that contributes to climate change. When a technology company proposes to a municipality to build a new digital storehouse, however, sometimes 'elevated demand load is overstated because every party is financially invested in overstating the need,' Tait said. Even as the city moves forward with its plans, for example, there is no guarantee the data center will have customers once built. Jefferson Traywick serves as Jefferson County's first ever economic development advisor. In an interview, he said that there are multiple potential customers engaging with investors about potential end use. Traywick said he'd signed an NDA as well, so he couldn't say who those possible customers might be. 'I really don't even know,' he said. Ideally, data center companies should pay for their own infrastructure, but in practice, this often doesn't happen, Tait said. The vast majority of these infrastructure projects benefit only the data center, not the broader customer base. Tait believes building these operations 'should not be on the backs of regular people to benefit the wealthiest corporations in America.' These corporations, he said, 'should pay their fair share. If anything, they should pay more than their fair share.' Brenda Small and her daughter, Brianna, live in a small trailer park just outside the boundaries of the proposed development. Last month, they were quick to express their opposition to the project. Small said her power bills are already approaching $500 some months. 'That's ridiculous for one month,' she said. Small worries her bills will soar even higher because of increased energy demand from the data center. In Georgia, tech companies and consumer advocates have negotiated and agreed that the data center operators cover their own infrastructure costs rather than passing those expenses entirely to consumers. Georgia has also been more forward-thinking about clean energy, Tait said. But Mississippi's approach to cost allocation is a 'free for all.' Last year, Mississippi passed a state law that declares anything Amazon needs to build is automatically in the public interest, with no Public Service Commission review. This approach is 'the most egregious example we see in terms of a cost allocation problem,' Tait said. Alabama law contains tax carve outs for capital projects, including a specific, 30-year tax abatement meant to attract large data centers. If approved by Bessemer officials, a tax abatement under the economic development law could amount to a tax cut of more than $500 million. So-called 'hyperscale' data centers like those used by Google, Meta and other large tech companies can consume hundreds of gallons of water daily and millions annually. Smaller centers use less water but can still consume a significant amount of a town's water supply if not properly managed. To cool the heat generated by thousands of servers in one data center, a chilled water system is typical for a hyperscale data center. The central chiller cools the water, circulates it through heat-absorbing coils, and dissipates the heat into the air through a cooling tower. The water then recirculates. In smaller centers, water can be piped to nearby wastewater facilities. Lawyers for Logistic Land Investments have said in documents that the proposed Bessemer facility's end user may choose to rely on a so-called 'closed loop' cooling system meant to reduce water usage and waste, but it's unclear exactly how that system will work—what the water demand will be and where wastewater would be discharged. Despite the rapid construction of new data centers driven by the demand for AI, cryptocurrency mining and cloud computing, Alabama lacks a comprehensive water plan. Under state law, if you own land next to a river or stream in Alabama, you can use the water without a permit. Businesses using more than 100,000 gallons of water daily are required to file a certificate and declare the water usage as beneficial, but the reporting is largely self-regulated without meaningful oversight, and penalties are nonexistent for non-compliance, according to Cindy Lowry, executive director of Alabama Rivers Alliance. Most states in the east have a regulated water withdrawal system, she said. Alabama does not. 'We have virtually nothing,' said Lowry. If different sources pull from one river, like the Black Warrior River, and everyone is filling out a certificate, 'There's nobody looking to say: 'How much can the system handle? How many straws are in the system?'' Lowry said. By consuming large amounts of water, a data center, like the one proposed in western Jefferson County, has the potential to become the largest water consumer in the state. Already, 80 percent of water withdrawals in the state are for cooling coal, gas and nuclear plants, Lowry added. Often, utilities may not have initially planned for such massive water demands. With their high water consumption for cooling systems, data centers pose several significant water challenges for Alabama. A data center can strain local water utilities capacity, increase water bills for existing customers, disrupt the natural flow of rivers, reduce the water available for downstream users and potentially destroy local ecosystems. Dynamics like these worry Ron and Becky Morgan. The couple is among the few residents in the area on well water, Becky explained, putting them at risk of becoming victims of groundwater contamination—water used to cool data centers is mixed with chemical coolants—or more general water scarcity. 'We're on the front lines when it comes to water,' she said. Jeff Lowe, a retired firefighter, said he worries about the impact the facility will have on the ability of first responders to adequately address fires in the area. 'They say Warrior River is going to supply it,' Lowe said of the local water utility. 'But I don't know if they can. They can't even keep the fire hydrants around here going.' Lowe said he also wonders about the additional fire risk posed by the data center itself, potentially replete with electronic equipment and lithium batteries, in a community with limited resources to respond to large, industrial fires. 'I just don't know if they have the resources to deal with something like that before it gets out of hand,' he said. On the whole, residents fear perpetual daylight will replace starlight and the 24-hour mechanical whir of machinery will be their surround sound, drowning out the birdsong. They foresee the banks of Little Blue Creek and other wetlands being deforested, the lakes flooded with potentially toxic runoff laced with coolants and wildlife driven from their habitat. David Havron, president of the Rock Mountain Lakes Landowners Association, is one of the residents who filed suit against the city, resulting in the restraining order that delayed the city council's vote to move the project forward. He worries that the nighttime view from his dock, just a stone's throw from his back door, will soon be ruined in favor of a project that he believes will provide little benefit to his neighborhood or those living in it. 'It's going to look like a sunset,' he said of the light pollution. 'A constant haze in the sky.' With less vegetation to absorb rainwater because of the clear-cutting necessary to complete the project, Havron said residents are worried flooding could become worse in the area, with runoff potentially filling the lakes around which many of the residents have built their homes and lives. Then, there's the risk to wildlife. 'It'll all be gone,' Havron said. 'It'll run off. There's a set of bald eagles. There's deer and coyotes, racoons and turkeys and everything else here. It'll all be gone … It's going to have to be cut.' Not long after Ron and Becky Morgan had arrived at Marshall Killingsworth's garden gathering, Mary Rosenboom came and sat down among the daylilies, completing the circle of neighbors brought together by the fight to save their community from an unwanted development. A sales professional, Rosenboom said she'd never delved into political or environmental issues until the data center came knocking at the community's door. Once she began to look into the potential impacts, she quickly realized this was a fight she was willing to join and, if necessary, help lead. Now, she's become an accidental activist. 'It was absolutely an accident, but here I am,' she said. Sitting in front of her was a brightly colored binder, filled with research on data centers, city governance and what the impact could be in her community. It's a hard fight to win, Rosenboom said, when there's so little information being provided about the specifics of the project. The non-disclosure agreements, the residents said, was one of their top concerns. 'When you're dealing with public funds and public ordinances, there should be no NDA,' Ron Morgan said. Even if public officials are unwilling to talk about the possible impacts of the project, the residents around the site say they're ready for a war. Securing the restraining order and delaying the process was a battle won, they said, but the fight is still well underway. Becky Morgan, also a plaintiff in the suit against the city, said that previous public hearings have been largely a formality, with officials doing little to meaningfully engage with citizens' concerns. 'It's just a farce,' she said. And when it came time for officials to ask questions of the developer, there was little desire on the part of public officials to push the data center representatives for more substantive information. 'They already had their marching orders,' her husband, Ron, said. 'And now we have ours.' The next stage of the fight is already underway. The last week of April, more than 100 residents gathered inside Rock Mountain Baptist Church to hear from lawyers McDaniel and Yates about what may come next. The pair characterized securing a delay in the rezoning process as a win but warned residents that a protracted legal fight could drag on for years and cost the community upwards of six figures. Outside the legal realm, the lawyers said, residents should do all they can to press local political leaders to oppose the project and provide as much information about the proposal as possible before and during newly scheduled planning and zoning commission and city council meetings in the coming weeks. No matter what, the lawyers told the crowd, fighting a municipality with practically unlimited resources over a multi-billion dollar project will be an uphill battle. It was a reality many of the residents were already coming to terms with. They were ready for the fight. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump official visits, touts Alabama coal mine with thousands of federal safety violations
Warrior Met has a checkered safety history, according to federal records. (Lee Hedgepeth/Inside Climate News) This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. TUSCALOOSA — When Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum visited two Warrior Met coal mines in central Alabama last week, he said he was emphasizing the administration's commitment to 'clean, beautiful coal' and its plans to roll back regulation. The department's press office swiftly posted on social media after the trip his ultimate goal: 'Mine, Baby, Mine!' What Burgum didn't mention on Friday was Warrior Met Coal's checkered safety and environmental record, which includes thousands of federal safety violations issued under both Republican and Democratic administrations. He also didn't mention the death of Aaron Haley, a 34-year-old miner killed on the job in 2023 because, according to an investigative report by federal safety officials, Warrior Met did not keep equipment in safe operating condition. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Missing, too, from Burgum's comments was any recognition that the coal produced by Warrior Met, metallurgical coal, is not used to power American homes or businesses. Instead, it is shipped abroad through the Port of Mobile, largely to countries in South America and Asia for steelmaking. 'Through these tours, Secretary Burgum is displaying the importance of President Trump's executive orders which are Unleashing American Energy and putting hardworking Americans first,' a press release from Burgum's office said after the trip. 'Friday's visit highlights the Department of the Interior's continued focus on bolstering domestic coal production to create more jobs, lower the cost of living for Americans, and unlock more of our nation's critical resources.' Neither Inside Climate News nor other local news outlets contacted by ICN were notified of Burgum's visit ahead of time. A national reporter for Fox Business was on site for the trip with access to the cabinet secretary. The Department of the Interior has not responded to questions about the trip or why local reporters were not included. It did not address Warrior Met's safety or environmental record. Warrior Met has not responded to questions about Burgum's visit or its own environmental and safety record. According to the department, Burgum's first stop was Warrior Met Mine No. 4. The mine utilizes the longwall method of extraction where coal is sheared by large high-powered machinery, leaving behind vast open expanses underground that can lead to the permanent sinking of the land above. The method is faster and can be riskier than other forms of mining and has been blamed for methane leaks. In March 2024, an Alabama grandfather was killed by an explosion in his home above Oak Grove mine, a longwall operation in nearby Jefferson County, after methane gas likely leaked into the home, This month, just days before President Donald Trump boasted from the White House about 'unleashing…clean, beautiful coal,' a West Virginia woman was severely injured from a blast at her home above a longwall mine. On April 5, she lit a cigarette, setting off an explosion that first responders suspect was caused by a methane leak from the mine, owned by Core Natural Resources, a Pennsylvania company created by the merger in January of CONSOL Energy and Arch Resources. An investigation is continuing by state inspectors who have ordered the company to submit a revised permit for monitoring methane emissions. Coal helped turn the United States into a global economic and military power, but coal-fired power plants emit toxic air pollution and heat-trapping gases that are changing the world's climate in dangerous ways. Moreover, the methane that coal mining releases is a super-pollutant 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the planet over a 20-year period. Inside mines, methane also presents deadly explosion risks to miners if safety measures are not followed. Contrary to Trump and Burgum's clean coal assertions, coal is the dirtiest of fossil fuels. Warrior Met's No. 4 mine has had a history of safety violations, according to records maintained by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), the federal regulator charged with ensuring miner wellbeing. Since 2019, the mine has been cited by federal regulators nearly 3,000 times with safety violations. About 25 percent—731 of those violations—were labelled by MSHA as 'significant and substantial,' meaning the violations were 'reasonably likely to result in a serious injury or illness.' More than 100 citations have been issued since Trump took office. Records show that the No. 4 Mine is currently undergoing two spot inspections and a 'regular safety and health inspection,' investigations that have resulted so far in 25 citations. The mine's previous complete safety and health inspection, conducted in January, February and March, resulted in 78 citations, according to regulatory records. Less than two years ago, Aaron Haley, a West Virginia native and father of three, was killed while working inside the No. 4 Mine. An MSHA investigation into the incident faulted the mine for his death and injuries suffered by two other miners. 'On August 30, 2023, at approximately 6:50 a.m., Aaron Haley, a 34-year-old belt foreman with over 13 years of mining experience, died when a longwall belt conveyor take-up unit (take-up) component, the bridle, broke and struck him,' the report said. 'The accident occurred because the mine operator did not maintain components of the take-up in safe operating condition.' Haley's obituary offers a more expansive sense of what was lost that day: 'Aaron was kind, loving, generous, funny and would give the shirt off his back to anyone. He loved teaching [his son] baseball, football, fishing, and just 'guy' stuff. His two baby girls…had him wrapped around their fingers. He loved playing kitchen, restaurant and pushing them on their swings. Aaron loved his wife…dearly and took the best care of her. He was the absolute best husband, father, son, and an all-around wonderful man.' MSHA cited Warrior Met with a violation of 30 CFR 75.1725(a), a regulation requiring that equipment 'be maintained in safe operating condition.' If machinery is deemed unsafe, the regulation requires it be removed from service immediately. Since Haley's death, the No. 4 Mine has been cited nearly 39 times for violating the same safety requirement. Burgum's visit to the No. 4 mine was followed, according to his department's press release, by a 'windshield tour' of Warrior Met's planned Blue Creek facility, which is slated to be one of the largest coal mining expansions in the state's history. If approved by state and federal regulators, the project is expected to increase Warrior Met's coal production by up to 60 percent. Taxpayer-funded support for the facility may top $400 million. Warrior Met's planned expansion at Blue Creek may also include the extraction of publicly-owned coal managed by the Bureau of Land Management, according to federal documents. In Alabama, as in many other states, so-called 'mineral rights'—including the right to mine for coal under property—have been separated from surface ownership over time. One person or entity can own a surface property under Alabama law while another person or entity can own the rights to all of the resources below that same piece of land, a situation known as a 'split estate.' In significant areas of Alabama, the federal government retains mineral rights despite private land ownership on the surface. The federal Bureau of Land Management announced in April that it would conduct an environmental assessment related to Warrior Met's Blue Creek project and, specifically, its proposal to mine 14,040 acres of federal minerals underlying privately owned land in Tuscaloosa County. Warrior Met's applications to lease the coal rights propose the extraction of approximately 57.5 million tons of recoverable public coal reserves. Taxpayers will help to pay for some critical needs related to the expansion of the Blue Creek project, according to state and county officials who touted the expansion as leading to job creation. In March 2024, Gov. Kay Ivey announced that, with the support of the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs, the Appalachian Regional Commission would provide $500,000 in taxpayer funding to install public water service to the Blue Creek mine site. 'Access to dependable local water service is essential to attract and grow new business and jobs,' Ivey said. Warrior Met also secured a $26.5 million tax abatement from the Tuscaloosa County Industrial Development Authority. A breakdown of the tax incentive deal in 2020 estimated that Warrior Met would receive $18 million in tax breaks during the project's construction and $8.5 million over the next decade. 'This project represents a significant investment in our community by Warrior Met Coal,' said Mark Crews, chairman of the Tuscaloosa County Industrial Development Authority, 'but also represents valuable job opportunities for our citizens for several decades to come.' Exports from Warrior Met and other Alabama coal producers are also a driving force behind continued expansion at the Port of Mobile, including the publicly-funded dredging of Mobile Bay, which is slated to cost taxpayers more than $350 million. Warrior Met has been the target of litigation over its environmental record. In September 2024, Black Warrior Riverkeeper, an environmental group founded to protect and restore the Black Warrior River and its tributaries, settled a lawsuit with the company over a leaking coal slurry impoundment at Warrior Met's No. 7 Mine in Brookwood. Black Warrior Riverkeeper had documented nearly two dozen leaks from the coal waste pond in the year before the suit was filed, the organization said in a court filing earlier this year. The settlement, approved by a federal judge in September of last year, requires Warrior Met to limit and monitor leaks from the site, pay $250,000 to the Freshwater Land Trust for a conservation project and reimburse the nonprofit for its legal fees. Burgum said last week that metallurgical coal like that extracted by Warrior Met is 'essential for us for steelmaking,' though the company itself has acknowledged its coal is not used for steelmaking in the United States. 'Substantially all of our steelmaking coal sales are exported,' the company wrote in its 2024 annual report to shareholders. In the same report, Warrior Met outlined various risks and uncertainties that could impact their bottom line. Among them: 'Challenges associated with environmental, health and safety laws and regulations' and 'climate change concerns and our operations' impact on the environment.' James Bruggers contributed reporting for this story.
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
What caused Birmingham's Code Red Air Quality Alert?
Prescribed burns are commonly used to limit fuel availability and reduce the number of wildfires. Research suggests the blazes also cause excess premature deaths due to particulate pollution. (Lee Hedgepeth/Inside Climate News) This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. BIRMINGHAM — On Monday, as afternoon sank into evening, a haze fell over the Magic City. Soon, the questions began popping up. 'What's burning?' Julia Juarez, one Birmingham resident, posted on social media. 'I don't know,' another resident replied. 'I kept trying to clean my glasses.' His glasses weren't the problem. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX The real cause of the smoke—a prescribed burn about 70 miles northwest of Birmingham in Bankhead National Forest—left public officials scrambling to warn residents of the resulting health risks. Experts urged nearly 900,000 residents in two of Alabama's most populous counties to limit outdoor activity because of the poor air quality caused by the planned burn. On Monday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service issued a Code Red Air Quality Alert for Shelby County and Jefferson County, which includes Birmingham and its suburbs. The alert began just before 8 p.m. Monday evening and lasted until 11 p.m. Tuesday night. 'Under Code Red conditions, particulate matter concentrations are expected to reach unhealthy levels,' the alert said. 'People with heart or lung disease, older adults, and children should avoid all physical activity outdoors. Everyone else should avoid prolonged or heavy exertion.' An air quality forecast released by the Jefferson County Department of Health attributed the poor air quality to the prescribed burn. Smoke from the blaze in Bankhead National Forest near the Winston/Lawrence County line moved into the metro region overnight and has been trapped under an 'inversion,' which occurs when warmer air high in the atmosphere traps relatively cooler air—and in this case the smoke accompanying it—below. The inversion and resulting trapped plume were clearly visible miles away on Monday evening. The smoke's journey from Bankhead National Forest into the Birmingham metro was also visible in satellite imagery taken Monday evening. Code Red Air Quality alerts are issued when particulate matter—the amount of small pollution particles in the air—reaches unhealthy levels. 'Particulate matter contains microscopic solids or liquid droplets that are so small that they can be inhaled and cause serious health problems,' according to the Environmental Protection Agency. 'Some particles less than 10 micrometers in diameter can get deep into your lungs and some may even get into your bloodstream. Of these, particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, also known as fine particles or PM2.5, pose the greatest risk to health.' Exposure to PM2.5 can affect both your lungs and your heart, the federal agency has said. Studies have linked particle pollution exposure to a variety of problems, including premature death in people with heart or lung disease, nonfatal heart attacks, irregular heartbeat, aggravated asthma, decreased lung function and increased respiratory symptoms, such as irritation of the airways, coughing or difficulty breathing. The local health department's air quality warning specifically cited PM2.5 concentrations as the reasons for the Code Red alert. 'PM2.5 concentrations have already dramatically increased and will continue to do so overnight and will not decrease until the inversion breaks mid-morning,' JCDH's air quality forecast said as of Monday night. Scientists have concluded that climate change is compounding the impacts of particulate matter pollution on human health. 'In the Southeast, climate change threatens [air quality] improvements by creating favorable conditions for increases in smog and wildland fire emissions,' the National Climate Assessment concluded. The report specifically highlighted potential risks posed even by planned, controlled burns. 'While the impacts of wildfires on air quality are widely recognized, less is known about the impacts of prescribed burns versus wildfires on air quality,' the report said. 'Prescribed burns reduce the risk of wildfire damage to the environment, homes, and infrastructure, although areas with intensive prescribed burning tend to be near communities with higher social vulnerability scores, which subsequently experience more negative health outcomes from the smoke.' In its announcement about air quality alert, the Jefferson County Department of Health recommended rescheduling outdoor activities for days when particle levels are lower. Health officials urged those who found themselves outdoors to avoid exposure to visible smoke, to limit driving and engine idling and to avoid using gasoline-powered lawn and garden equipment. If you exercise outdoors during an air quality alert, health experts say, walk instead of jog and avoid doing so near busy roads. Outside particulate matter can also affect indoor air quality, according to experts. 'Keep windows and doors closed to prevent further circulation of particles,' according to JCDH. 'You can further reduce indoor particle levels by eliminating tobacco smoke, limiting cooking with wood, coal, oil, or natural gas, and limiting the use of candles, incense, and household cleaners.' If breathing becomes difficult, health officials say to immediately move indoors. Prescribed burns have long been used to manage wildfire risks by limiting the availability of fuel—dry vegetation—in areas prone to burning. Of late, Alabama has faced significant difficulty in arresting the impacts of wildfires. On March 5, officials with the Alabama Forestry Commission, the government agency charged with wildfire control, said that its firefighters combatted 181 wildfires—a record number for one day. Those fires resulted in the burning of approximately 1,700 acres across the state. Federal officials announced in January that they planned to conduct prescribed burns across nearly 200,000 acres of land in Alabama national forests in the first six months of the year, including more than 21,000 acres in Bankhead National Forest. Officials said at the time that great care is taken to limit the potential for harm caused by planned burns but that the benefits outweigh the risks. 'As a result [of these prescribed burns], hazardous fuels are reduced and human communities are protected from extreme fires,' said Martel Knipe, a fire management officer with the U.S. Forest Service. 'Using prescribed fires reduces pest problems and disease spread. It also restores nutrients to the soil so that trees and flowers can grow.' On Monday, the Forest Service announced it would start a burn of approximately 780 acres about six miles east of Pebble, Alabama, near Wolfpen Hunter Camp inside Bankhead National Forest. 'During today's prescribed burn, County Road 60 forms the burn boundary and should be traveled with caution,' the announcement said. 'The public may notice Forest Service fire crews and equipment. Smoke may also be visible on state highways 33, 195 southeast of the burn area. The wind is expected to be out of the northwest and will carry the smoke to the southeast. As the temperatures cool later today, the smoke may begin to settle in the Rock Creek and Houston communities.' By Monday evening, however, smoke from the blaze had settled well beyond Rock Creek and Houston. By midnight, PM2.5 concentrations in Birmingham were 4.3 times the World Health Organization's annual PM2.5 guideline value, according to federal air quality measurements. Recent research has attempted to more clearly quantify the impacts of prescribed burns on health impacts in the southeastern U.S. In a November 2024 study published in the journal Environment International, a team of researchers reviewed data on prescribed burns in the southeast from 2013 to 2020 and concluded that exposure to particulate matter caused by the planned fires resulted in more than 20,000 'excess non-accidental premature deaths' across 10 states. During that eight-year period, prescribed burns, which make up around 79 percent of the total number of wildland fires in Alabama, resulted in an average of 270 excess premature deaths in the state each year—around 2,100 deaths over the studied period, according to the researchers. While some research has indeed demonstrated benefits of prescribed burns under certain conditions, the authors suggested, more research is needed to properly weigh the benefits and risks associated with the planned blazes. The Forest Service's prescribed burn map indicates the agency plans to burn additional land within Bankhead National Forest in the coming weeks and months.
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Black residents of Chestnut have little hope of access to public water
Members of the Chestnut community pose for a photo after attending a Beatrice town council meeting in early February. Credit: Lee Hedgepeth/Inside Climate News Members of the Chestnut community pose for a photo after attending a Beatrice town council meeting in early February. (Lee Hedgepeth/Inside Climate News) This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. CHESTNUT — For Valentino Thames, it's become a routine. Just another part of everyday life. At least once a week, he makes a trip of more than 25 miles to the nearest Walmart, located in the county seat of Monroeville, to buy gallons and gallons of water—enough for him and his wife Linda to drink, cook and wash themselves until the next week, when they'll have to do it all again. He's one of dozens in Chestnut, a small, majority-Black community in south-central Alabama, that lack access to public water. Like Thames, many residents are forced to travel dozens of miles to access or buy water for everything from drinking to personal hygiene, a result of private wells that are deteriorating or have in some cases fallen into complete disrepair. For years, they've pressured public officials without success to extend water infrastructure to Chestnut. 'I don't understand it,' Thames said. 'It seems like they come up with reason after reason to keep us from getting water. We're trying as hard as we know how.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Across Alabama, around 800,000 people—about 20 percent of the state's population—rely on private water supplies, like wells, for drinking water, according to state estimates. That reality often has socioeconomic and racial implications, too. In some places, such as Athens, just under 100 miles north of Birmingham, and Prichard, just north of Mobile, most whites have reliable municipal water and sewer service while many Black residents suffer from deteriorated or nonexistent water infrastructure. Across the state, money and power can often determine where the water flows, experts say. And there are other risks, as a rapidly warming climate brings heat waves and drought, extreme weather and flooding. Summers, too, are simply getting hotter. As many as one-fifth of the world's wells are at risk of drying up in the near-term, researchers have concluded. Among public officials, Chestnut's situation is no secret. It's an inconvenient truth. Earlier this month, residents of Chestnut attended a meeting of the town council of Beatrice, the nearest community with a municipal water supply. They hoped to get a commitment that if grant money were found for the project, Beatrice leaders would allow for a water connection and sell Chestnut residents water as they do their own citizens. Billy Ghee represents the area on the Monroe County Commission, which is the governing body for unincorporated parts of the county like the Chestnut community. He pitched residents' request to Beatrice town officials, who refused to allow Chestnut residents to speak. Both towns are predominantly Black. 'We're not going to entertain questions or comments from the public,' Beatrice Mayor Annie Shelton told those gathered, including roughly a dozen Chestnut residents seated in folding chairs in the rear of the room. 'This is not the time for that. This is the way it's going to have to be done.' Instead, Shelton allowed Ghee to take the floor. 'This is a humanitarian issue that we are dealing with,' Ghee told Beatrice officials. 'And I'm hoping we can work with you all.' Because of money made available through legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Ghee said, there may be a way to obtain grant funding to help cover the cost of extending public water access to Chestnut. Obtaining any grant money, though, would likely require the stated approval of the cooperating water authority—in this case, Beatrice. And time, he said, is of the essence. 'I don't know how long these funds are going to last,' he said. President Donald Trump has already issued a directive freezing government funding that called the release of IRA and infrastructure dollars into question, and though the order has since been rescinded, experts say the money may still remain in limbo and litigation as the Trump administration unfolds. Beatrice's water operator, Stanley Watson, spoke after Ghee on behalf of town officials. Watson said he agreed with Ghee's characterization of the problem and said it was one of his 'longtime dreams' to extend water supply to Chestnut. 'But it's not feasible,' Watson said. 'The money is 95 percent of the equation.' With so few residents in Chestnut to recoup the upfront costs of extending water lines, bringing water to the community isn't economically reasonable, he argued. 'It's not that I'm against it,' he said. 'I look at it in a common sense-type way. I look at the numbers and the population of Chestnut.' Residents like Thames interviewed by Inside Climate News said they understand the economic argument. But access to clean water for drinking and bathing should be a right, they said, not a matter of a financial cost-benefit analysis. Public officials have a moral obligation to extend the water supply to suffering rural residents, regardless of the financial calculus, they said. Shelton told residents that if funding were actually secured, members of the Chestnut community could come back to Beatrice officials to discuss the matter. But for now, she said, there would be no commitment, written or otherwise, from the town. 'Right now, it cannot be done,' she said of supplying water to Chestnut. Lasonja Kennedy, a resident of nearby Buena Vista who's helped organize Chestnut residents, said the mayor's stance puts citizens in a Catch-22. Without a formal commitment from a supplying water source, applying for grants to help cover the costs of running Beatrice's water to Chestnut would be difficult, if not impossible. 'And water is a right,' Kennedy said after Monday's meeting in Beatrice, a town of about 200 people. 'These people need water one way or another.' Hearing again and again from residents struggling to access water each day is heartbreaking, Kennedy said, and isn't reflective of what claims to be the richest country in the world. Earlier in the night, as the Beatrice meeting had begun, each Chestnut resident had stood and pledged allegiance to the American flag—that of a country as of yet unable or unwilling to provide them clean drinking water. Yet those same residents, Kennedy explained, are burdened with unearned shame when they see someone they know in the grocery story, for example, and have pallets of water weighing down their shopping cart. One resident described the feeling, Kennedy said, explaining that she would lie to her neighbor to explain all the water she'd purchased: 'I'm just having a party.' Kennedy said that among the hundred or so residents of Chestnut, nearly all face some type of water access issue. For some, that means frequent, often costly repairs to old water wells that have deteriorated year after year. For others, it means no access to running water at all, a result of a well that is no longer serviceable or a groundwater source that has simply dried up. Even when an aging well pumps water, it may not be suitable for drinking or cooking, she said. Thames recalled the day nearly 10 years ago when his wife doubled over with stomach pain. The Thames family had to travel to a Mobile hospital more than 100 miles and a two-hour drive away to get medical care. Medical professionals confirmed she had suffered from a parasite caused by contaminated water, Thames said. Since then, they've been taking the trips to Walmart at least once every week or so, buying enough clean water to survive in their Chestnut home, typically around 10 cases of 40 bottles—over 50 gallons in total. He rarely invites family to his home, Thames said, because of the shame involved in not having access to clean running water. 'I get embarrassed that they can't even take a proper bath or shower in the tub,' he said. 'Everybody needs to wash.' Jerry Johnson is one of the community's few white residents. He said that the argument that there's no money available for extending the water supply to Chestnut is unfounded. 'That's bullshit,' he said. 'There's money available.' Both Johnson and Thames pointed to other projects across the county that have recently been funded, projects like a splash pad for children and renovations at the county courthouse in nearby Monroeville, heart of Harper Lee country, widely considered to be the inspiration for her Alabama classic 'To Kill A Mockingbird.' 'I just don't understand why we can't have running water,' Johnson said, frustration in his voice. Asked about the danger of IRA or infrastructure money that could potentially help Chestnut disappearing under the new presidential administration, Johnson took out his phone and clicked the photos app. He turned his phone around and pushed it out from his chest with pride. 'Here's my son with Trump,' Johnson said. 'I'm not worried.' The day of the Beatrice meeting, Trump had announced his plans to attempt a shutdown of USAID. Johnson brought it up, noting that Trump's shuttering of the agency should free up billions in federal funding. In Johnson's view, an application of an America-first approach would mean that money would now begin to flow to projects like providing Chestnut with public water. 'He's going to do it,' Johnson said. 'I know he will.' He said he has a message for the president: 'America first. American people first. Chestnut people are part of America, and they ought to have water.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
