Latest news with #U.S.CleanWaterAct
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Dougherty County portion of Flint River declared impaired
By David Dixon ALBANY — The Georgia Environmental Protection Division's Water Protection Branch recently added the section of the Flint River from the Lee County line to the Mitchell County line to the GAEPD Impaired Streams List (Section 305(b)/303(d)). In 2022, that portion of the Flint was designated as impaired for mercury in fish tissue and in 2024 for the human pathogen indicator bacteria E. coli. To meet the requirements of the U.S. Clean Water Act, Georgia assesses a percentage of its waters approximately every two years and publishes the 'Water Quality in Georgia' Integrated Report. This report describes the quality of all the waters in the state and contains a list of waters in good condition and those impaired/polluted, along with fish consumption guidelines. 'Due to the impaired listing, Dougherty County is required to begin monitoring the Flint River as part of our NPDES Stormwater Permit as a Phase I medium Municipal Stormwater System (MS-4) and submitting those results to Georgia EPD,' according to Dougherty County Public Works sources. The Dougherty County Public Works Department is in the process of finalizing a sampling and testing protocol to meet the requirement from GAEPD. The GAEPD has approved total suspended solids sampling as a substitute for mercury testing, a once-a-year requirement. The sample would be required to be taken at the upstream end of the defined urbanized area at the Marine Stormwater Canal (Marine Ditch) near Radium Landing and the downstream end at the discharge point at the Radium Spring Run (Skywater Creek). For bacteria testing, the GAEPD is requiring that four grab samples be collected within a 30-day window four times a year at these two sites. This will require collecting 16 total samples per calendar year. The requirement also stipulates that two groups of four samples be collected from May-October and the other two sets from November-April. These samples must be put on ice immediately after they are collected. DCPW will send these samples off for certified laboratory testing. Even though Dougherty County will not be required to test for mercury in this section, Georgia Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Resources Division Fisheries Supervisor Rob Weller said, 'Mercury in fish tissue will still be tested by the DNR. In the case of the Flint River and other water bodies, the DNR will sample fish tissue for mercury and other parameters every 10 years. The next routine scheduled sampling date for the Flint River is 2031.' The mercury in fish tissue designation has been caused by accumulation of that toxic material in upper predatory fish like largemouth and striped bass. Mercury is released naturally into the atmosphere through volcanic eruptions and wildfires. It is also produced through human activities such as combustion of coal to produce electricity. Wind transport from far away sources of mercury also can contribute to the accumulated load. In the case of Dougherty County, the majority of this toxin would have been produced from the nearby legacy coal burning plants that have now discontinued burning coal. These sources were Plant Mitchell on the banks of the Flint River downstream of Albany, MillerCoors (now MolsonCoors) in Dougherty County, and the Crisp County Power Commission plant beside Lake Blackshear at Warwick. Unfortunately, mercury takes a long time to work its way out of the environment, so testing and publishing guidance on fish consumption is needed to inform the public of the potential danger of eating certain species. The designation of E. coli bacteria is directly caused by the city of Albany's Combined Sewer Overflow system. Although much work has been completed on eliminating the raw sewage that goes into the Flint River, until it is completely separated from the stormwater, issues with high bacterial loads, after even small rainfall amounts, will continue. 'We are, of course, interested in seeing this section of the Flint delisted by GAEPD,' Flint Riverkeeper Gordon Rogers said. 'I have personally been working on the mercury issue as Riverkeeper for first the Satilla, then the Flint, since 2005. We have seen improvements due to better emissions controls and closures, and expect to see more. 'Regarding E. coli, the work that the city is doing is the key to major success. We are pleased with their progress and expect to see bacterial levels drop in the next few years. Even now, there are many times when the river is perfectly safe to be in. Indeed, we have a couple of 'tube floats' coming up on May 30-31 that are open to the public.'
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Wetlands protections built an industry for mitigation banking. Rollbacks could erode it.
Paul Stoddard, a principal at environmental consulting firm EnSafe, unlocks the gate to the West Tennessee Wetlands Mitigation Bank in Shelby County, Tenn. on March 11, 2025. EnSafe planted more than 50,000 trees to restore portions of this 250-acre wetland, creating credits for developers to purchase to offset destruction of wetlands elsewhere. (Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht for Tennessee Lookout) Fourth-generation Middle Tennessee cattle farmer Cole Liggett lined up with scientists and environmental advocates in March to urge Tennessee lawmakers not to gut the state's historically strong protections for wetlands. Wetlands protection has been good business for Liggett. In addition to raising cattle, he's a manager at Headwaters Reserve, a firm that developers pay to preserve and restore wetlands and streams so they can destroy them elsewhere, called mitigation banking. If lawmakers follow through on a plan to deregulate an estimated 80% of the state's isolated wetlands, that will upend the industry in Tennessee and drive up prices for developers still required to pay for mitigation, Liggett testified. Liggett works in a growing industry that operates more than 2,500 mitigation banks nationwide, earning an estimated $3.5 billion in revenue in 2019, according to a 2023 study funded by the Ecological Restoration Business Association. The industry is built on demand spurred by the 1972 U.S. Clean Water Act, which requires developers to offset their damage to wetlands by building or restoring wetlands nearby. But recent federal actions to shrink the scope of that law are pushing states to choose how strictly they will regulate wetlands. The consequences of those decisions not only threaten further degradation of land, water and wildlife, but also the fortunes of an industry that has made a big business out of conservation. Environmentalists: Second attempt at wetlands bill would leave 80% vulnerable to development The 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Sackett v. EPA stripped federal protection from wetlands that don't have a surface connection to navigable waters, which means bigger rivers and lakes. President Donald Trump's Administration has vowed to ease regulation, allowing developers to ditch and drain all but the wettest wetlands without permits or mitigation. Environmentalists fear that a recent order to speed up around 600 energy projects nationwide could limit requirements to compensate for the destruction of wetlands. Some states, such as North Carolina and Indiana, have loosened regulations since the Sackett decision. In March, Kentucky lawmakers passed legislation to do the same, overriding Gov. Andy Beshear's veto. Tennessee's wetlands regulations predate the federal Clean Water Act protections passed in the 1970s, but pending legislation could roll back much of that protection, according to the Southern Environmental Law Center. The Tennessee Ecological Restoration Association, which represents Liggett and other mitigation bankers in Tennessee and the southeast, told the Tennessee Lookout that this will directly impact the growing mitigation industry. 'We will see a decrease in demand for credits if aquatic resources are deregulated.' Those concerns aren't shared by everyone in mitigation banking. The national industry is more worried about the defunding of agencies that oversee banks and the prospect of a recession. William Coleman's California-based ecological consulting firm Eco-Asset Solutions and Innovations does much of its business in states that have active wetlands mitigation banking programs. 'My company has not seen any downturn in business,' Coleman, the firm's founder and president, said. 'Landowners are still very interested in the revenue opportunities mitigation banking offers.' Water collects among trees at the West Tennessee Wetlands Mitigation Bank — a wetland restored from its former days as farmland — near the Loosahatchie River in Shelby County, Tenn. on March 11, 2025. (Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht for Tennessee Lookout) Paul Stoddard, a principal at environmental consulting firm EnSafe, looks out on the 54,000 trees the firm planted to restore a wetland in Shelby County, Tenn. on March 11, 2025. EnSafe sells mitigation credits generated by the restoration and preservation of the 250-acre plot to developers. (Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht for Tennessee Lookout) Environmental consulting firm EnSafe used ditches formerly dug by farmers to ensure water collects on restored wetlands in Shelby County, Tenn. The company created what is now a protected wetlands mitigation bank in 2018. (Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht for Tennessee Lookout) Just outside of Memphis, a chorus of frogs on a roughly 250-acre tract of former farmland nearly drowns out the traffic on nearby Austin Peay Highway. Environmental consulting firm EnSafe planted about 54,000 trees on the once flood-prone fields in 2018 and will be responsible for its upkeep until the wetland is mature and healthy – anywhere from seven to 10 years. After that, the land will go to a partnering land trust, where it will be conserved in perpetuity. 'Granted, there is a business piece to what we do, but restoring things to the way they were is also pretty cool … There will be a pocket here forever,' EnSafe principal Paul Stoddard said. The West Tennessee Wetlands Mitigation Bank has sold credits to Amazon to offset a new delivery center in Fayette County. A contractor purchased credits to compensate for a 2-million-square-foot distribution facility called 'Project Iron Giant,' according to records kept by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, one of the federal agencies tasked with overseeing wetlands regulations. TERA estimates that mitigation businesses have poured more than $1 billion into around 130 mitigation bank investments across Tennessee. 'The beauty of mitigation credits is that the developer just writes a check and they're done. All the monitoring and reporting and maintenance and stuff is up to the bank,' EnSafe Senior Ecologist Jimmy Groton said. That process makes mitigation banking a high-risk industry, according to Liggett. Regardless of whether they sell credits, banks are required to maintain their wetlands for at least seven years. The proposed regulatory rollback on Tennessee's wetlands would mean an 80% decrease in demand for mitigation businesses, he testified to Tennessee lawmakers on March 26. 'Such a drastic decrease in the demand after such a high investment … has potential to drive up credit prices as a necessity to avoid potential financial insolvencies,' Liggett said. Hillary Bonham, a principal at environmental consulting firm Baetis Restoration Partners, has experience as both a residential developer and mitigation banker. She told Tennessee lawmakers that the current average price of a credit in Tennessee is around $50,000. Reducing regulations and hampering demand will likely cause the credits that remain to be 'exponentially more expensive when they are needed.' In Georgia, where isolated wetlands are not regulated, a single credit can range from $750,000 to $1.1 million according to the Georgia Alabama Land Trust In Lieu Fee Program, Bonham said. Mitigation banks have been the preferred way to offset wetland destruction for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Corps since 2008, and the industry has ballooned rapidly since the first entrepreneurial banks were established in the early 1990s. John Paul Woodley, Jr. helped issue the Army Corps of Engineers' 2008 mitigation rule while serving as assistant secretary of the Army for civil works. He's also the immediate past chair of the board of the National Environmental Banking Association, a trade association with around 100 members nationwide. Some people expected to see the Sackett decision have a dramatic impact on mitigation banking, he said, but two limiting factors prevented a panic within the industry. For every wetland that is destroyed, we must see at least three acres of wetlands being built, which would not happen during an emergency process. – Matt Rota, Healthy Gulf First, when the decision was made, developers already well into the permit process could either choose to move forward under the previous terms or go back to the drawing board. Most businesses didn't want to start over, so many pending permits under review by the Corps proceeded as though nothing had happened, Woodley said. Second, states have significant control over the regulation of state waters. 'Many states have just said, 'We don't care about that. We have our own jurisdiction, and we're not limited by what the Clean Water Act says is the waters of the United States … If the U.S. doesn't want to protect those waters, that's fine and dandy. We will,'' Woodley said. Some states have more isolated wetlands than others, he added, and those states will have to decide whether to protect those resources. Woodley thinks they ultimately will. Generally, coastal wetlands will maintain federal protection because of their connection to the navigable waters of the ocean. But experts fear that some swamps and marshlands, once protected, may now face development due to human-made flood-control structures, such as levees or berms, that could be construed as legal separations between wetlands and waters of the U.S. President Trump's declaration of a 'national energy emergency' led the Corps to fast-track review for more than 600 permits. Environmental advocates say that could come at the expense of wetlands. 'Any damages to wetlands due to this emergency must be mitigated properly,' said Matt Rota, senior policy director for Healthy Gulf, a nonprofit advocating for communities along the Gulf Coast. 'For every wetland that is destroyed, we must see at least three acres of wetlands being built, which would not happen during an emergency process.' Those in the industry see other actions by the administration as slowing down environmental permitting, posing a different kind of threat. Trump's first administration made funding cuts to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Corps that ultimately increased the time it took to review pending permits. Longer review periods can mean less return on investment for landowners, Coleman said. 'That meant there were just not enough bodies to review the applications that were on the table … so there was a tremendous delay,' he said. Coleman's company found that an average two- to three-year review period stretched into four or five years during Trump's first term. We have learned the hard way that each acre of wetlands that is destroyed and replaced with concrete worsens our flooding problems and increases our climate risks. – Kristen Schlemmer, Bayou City Waterkeeper Woodley said demand for mitigation banks is driven largely by development pressure. In Virginia, where he's based, data centers are a big contributor. Some of the mitigation banking industry's biggest customers are state transportation departments and the oil and gas industry—roadways and pipelines often have less flexibility to build elsewhere. 'Anything that takes place that causes an economic downturn, that causes people to retrench and postpone their development plans … that's the risk to the mitigation industry,' Woodley said. 'They had a very difficult time around 2008 … the number of permits applied for declined, and at the same time, the number of the requirements for mitigation took a downturn.' In Gulf States like Louisiana, which is home to 40% of wetlands in the continental U.S. and has sustained 80% of national wetland losses, environmental advocates warn about the consequences of filling in wetlands through emergency permitting without ensuring proper mitigation. 'We have learned the hard way that each acre of wetlands that is destroyed and replaced with concrete worsens our flooding problems and increases our climate risks,' said Kristen Schlemmer, senior legal director of the Bayou City Waterkeeper, a nonprofit working to protect communities impacted by water pollution and flooding in Houston. Some wetlands mitigation banking businesses have begun to diversify their offerings to include conservation-based credits for protecting the habitats of endangered species, carbon sequestration or nutrient banking to prevent excessive runoff of nitrogen and phosphorus. This story is part of the series Down the Drain from the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting collaborative based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
California Senate leader urges Dodgers to drop oil and gas advertisers
A leading member of the California Senate is urging Dodgers owner Mark Walter to end the team's sponsorship deals with oil and gas companies, telling him that "continuing to associate these corporations with our beloved boys in blue is not in our community or the planet's best interest." In a letter Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach) wrote that Angelenos "breathe some of the most polluted air in the country, with demonstrated links to negative health outcomes." The recent L.A. County wildfires, she said, have called attention to the fact that "fossil fuel pollution is responsible for not only the climate crisis, but also the persistently harmful air quality in the region." One of the Dodgers' most visible advertisers is Houston-based oil giant Phillips 66, which owns the 76 gas station chain. Orange-and-blue 76 logos are displayed throughout Dodger Stadium, including above both scoreboards — a climate red flag that I highlighted in a column last year. My column prompted climate activists to rally outside Dodger Stadium and start a petition — which as of Tuesday afternoon had garnered nearly 23,000 signatures — calling on Walter to dump Phillips 66. Activists and academic experts say fossil fuel companies, like tobacco companies before them, use ads at sports stadiums and other cultural institutions to build goodwill and normalize the harms caused by their products. Gonzalez noted that California is suing major oil and gas companies, including Phillips 66, for climate damages, with state officials accusing the industry of a "decades-long campaign of deception" to hide the truth about global warming and delay the transition to clean power. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed the lawsuit to move forward. Federal prosecutors, meanwhile, charged Phillips 66 last year with violating the U.S. Clean Water Act by dumping oil and grease from its Carson refinery, just outside Gonzalez's district, into the L.A. County sewer system. Removing the Phillips 66 ads from Dodger Stadium "would send the message that it's time to end our embrace of polluting fossil fuels and work together towards a cleaner, greener future," Gonzalez wrote. The Dodgers didn't respond to a request for comment. The 2024 World Series champions aren't the only pro sports team taking fossil fuel money. A recent survey from UCLA Law's Emmett Institute tallied at least 59 U.S. franchises that accept sponsorship dollars from oil giants, or utility companies whose energy sources are primarily fossil fuels. The list included five other California teams: LAFC, the Sacramento Kings, the Athletics (formerly of Oakland), the San Francisco Giants and the San Francisco 49ers. The Dodgers, though, occupy a unique place in American sports history. As Gonzalez wrote, the team has long been ahead of the curve. The Dodgers broke baseball's color barrier when they signed Jackie Robinson in the 1940s, and when they barred cigarette ads from Dodger Stadium in the 1960s. More recently, the team has encouraged fans to take public transit to games and launched sustainability efforts. These efforts "make the Dodgers' continued partnership with Big Oil all the more anachronistic," Gonzalez wrote. Gonzalez wrote to Walter after hearing from Zan Dubin, the climate activist leading the push for the Dodgers to drop Phillips 66. Dubin, who has worked with the local Sierra Club chapter on the campaign, praised Gonzalez for showing "true leadership and unflinching courage as the first elected official to endorse our campaign." "Greenwashing must end so we can accelerate adoption of renewable energy," Dubin said. A spokesperson for Phillips 66 didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did a spokesperson for Ohio-based Marathon Petroleum, whose Arco gas stations have run ads at Dodger Stadium in recent years. In an interview, Gonzalez described herself as a "huge baseball lover" who grew up cheering for the Dodgers. She said she wishes players on the team would start talking about fossil fuel advertisements, too. "I'd love for [Shohei] Ohtani or [Freddie] Freeman or someone to say, 'This is important to us, too,'" she told me. The Dodgers travel this week to Tokyo, where they'll open the season with two games against the Chicago Cubs. They'll return to Los Angeles for the home opener at Dodger Stadium on March 27. The 76 logos will loom large. Just a few months removed from the Eaton and Palisades fires, Dodgers fans taking pictures and posting them on social media will, in many cases, be providing free publicity to Phillips 66. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
