Europe’s Surprising Record of Dam Removals

A growing movement across the continent is working to remove thousands of barriers and restore some of the world’s most fragmented rivers.

The 1999 demolition of the Edwards Dam on Maine’s Kennebec River set off a wave of dam removals across the United States. Since then some 1,200 dams have come down to help restore rivers and aquatic animals, improve water quality, and boost public safety — among other benefits.

Across the Atlantic, European nations have been busy removing thousands of river barriers, too. But until recently the efforts have gone largely unnoticed, even among experts.

Pao Fernández Garrido can attest to that.

An engineer and expert in ecosystem restoration from Spain, Fernández Garrido was finishing her master’s thesis in 2012 when she attend a dam-removal training in Massachusetts that was part of a conference on fish passage.

She was floored to learn about the United States’ widespread dam-removal efforts and returned to Europe determined to learn what was happening with dam removals on the continent — and to be a part of the action.

So did Herman Wanningen, a freshwater consultant from the Netherlands, who also attended the conference. Fernández Garrido joined him when he founded the World Fish Migration Foundation in 2014. Soon after they helped form a coalition organization called Dam Removal Europe that also includes European Rivers Network, WWF, Rewilding Europe, the Rivers Trust, Wetlands International and the Nature Conservancy.

One of the first things Fernández Garrido and her colleagues wanted to know was the extent of river fragmentation on the continent. That wasn’t easy: While the United States has an exhaustive inventory of its 90,000 dams, not every European country, they learned, had collected similar data.

At the time not much was known beyond the fact that Europe had 7,000 large dams. But as their project to map river barriers, known as AMBER, got underway, they learned the on-the-ground reality included many smaller dams and other barriers — at least 1.2 million river barriers in 36 European countries.

Fernández Garrido and her colleagues spent more than three years on research, including river surveys in 36 countries, to gather the more robust data. Their results, published in Nature in 2020, found that on average river barriers occur almost every half mile.

Two-thirds of these barriers are under seven feet tall, but small doesn’t mean insignificant. Low-head dams and smaller obstructions like weirs and sluices can still block the movement of some fish, as well as aquatic plants, invertebrates, and the flow of sediment and nutrients.

Many of the dams — around 150,000 — are also obsolete and no longer provide any beneficial functions.

The good news, though, is that they also found that 4,000 European river barriers had already come down in the previous 20 years, with France, Finland, Sweden, Spain and the United Kingdom being the most active.

These efforts, though, had largely flown under the radar.

“Nobody was talking about these, nobody,” says Fernández Garrido. “The United States is celebrating that it has removed 1,200 and nobody’s celebrating in Europe because nobody knows.”

That’s changed as they continued with their work to compile research, organize supporters across the continent, and push policymakers for action.

In 2019 the researchers delivered a report on case studies of dam removals and their benefits to the European Commission. The following year the World Fish Migration Foundation published the first-ever Living Planet Index on the global state of migratory fish. It found that migratory freshwater fish populations in Europe had dropped 93% since 1970, much higher than the already dismal global average of 76%.

The cumulative weight of those findings may have had a big impact on policy.

That same year the European Commission published its biodiversity strategy for 2030.

“For the first time ever in history, it stated that we should free at least 25,000 kilometers (15,500 miles) of river in Europe from barriers by 2030,” says Fernández Garrido.

While that was welcome news, it was still only a guideline — not legally binding.

In May 2022, however, the commission followed up with a proposal called the EU Nature Restoration Law. “In this law, they say we must start removing dams,” she says. And the proposed language calls for restoring 15,500 miles of river to a “free-flowing state by 2030.”

The European Parliament will need to ratify the law in the next couple of years. “In the meantime politicians could work to weaken it,” she says. “That’s why environmental groups are working hard to keep it strong.”

On the ground, the work to restore free-flowing rivers continues.

Last year 239 river barriers were removed in 17 European countries, including more than 100 in Spain. Finland is in the process of removing three hydroelectric dams on the Hiitolanjoki River, which will aid salmon populations. And France is home to the tallest dam removal on the continent yet, the 118-foot Vezins Dam on the Sélune River in Normandy, which was removed in 2020. Demolition began this summer on a second dam on the river, La Roche Qui Boit, which will allow the Sélune to run free for the first time in 100 years. Migratory fish populations like salmon are expected to return, and the dam removals will also reduce toxic algae that pooled in the warm waters of the reservoirs during summer.

Some of this work — and more — is showcased in a new documentary, #DamBusters, by director Francisco Campos-Lopez of Magen Entertainment. The film follows Fernández Garrido across Europe as she meets dam-removal heroes in Spain, France, Estonia, Lithuania and Finland.

“Restoring nature is probably the job of our time, our generation,” she says in the film.

But it’s a process that will also take time.

“There are some river systems, like for example in North America, where the benefits of dam removal are shocking and so amazing because that river system was only blocked for only 100 years,” she tells The Revelator. “But when you are talking about recovering our river systems in Europe that have been controlled and mismanaged for 500 years, 600 years, 1,000 years, we have to be cautious about what we expect.”

But even if ecological restoration comes more gradually, political movement has been swift.

“The progress since we started in 2016 until now — having policies proposed at the European level — it’s amazing,” Fernández Garrido says. “It’s really an achievement.”

The combination of research, policy reports, political pressure and movement-building have kickstarted a river restoration effort that shows no signs of slowing down — and could be a model for other regions.

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Previously in The Revelator:

5 Reasons to Rethink the Future of Dams

‘Free Water’ Was Never Free, Writes a Historian of the American West

Subsidized water cultivated the West, but this required becoming increasingly profligate with the region’s scarcest resource.

The West uses too much water. For such a simple problem, the obvious solution — use less — lies frustratingly out of reach.

That inability to change may seem hard to understand, but the root of the problem becomes clearer if we consider the role of the West in the historical development of the United States:

The purpose of our system of “free water” — heavily subsidized water for irrigation — was to provide opportunities to settlers.

The frontier has served an important function in the Euro-American imagination since before there was a United States. For historians of the American West like me, the significance of the frontier has been at the center of our field for more than a century. Thomas Jefferson made the most notable case for westward expansion, prescribing it to relieve the social and political pressures that were building up as eastern populations grew and fought over limited resources. By the mid-1800s policymakers believed his ideal of yeoman homesteaders and their patchwork of farms was the Manifest Destiny of the United States’ exceptional democracy.

But that ideal never made it all the way across the continent. It ran into a problem right around the 100th meridian, west of which there wasn’t enough rainfall for agriculture.

Agriculture would require irrigation. A lot of it.

Green circles of irrigated crops against a desert background. — Colorado desert irrigation in 1990. Photo: Gary Todd (public domain)

To solve this problem, the United States formed the Reclamation Service (the precursor to the Bureau of Reclamation) just over a decade after the frontier closed in 1890. While the federal government wasn’t quite powerful or rich enough, at the time, to construct many major irrigation projects, the Service provided a signal of the nation’s commitment to investing in the West as a site for settlement. It was too important a project to leave to private irrigation companies and too much work for individual homesteaders. As historian Donald Pisani put it in his book Water and American Government, “Federal reclamation was the last stage of Manifest Destiny.”

With the New Deal, the Bureau of Reclamation came into its own: Hoover Dam, completed in 1935 as the world’s largest dam, served as a symbol for the country’s ability to conquer nature.

Progressives championed desert reclamation at the turn of the century, but the federal government’s willingness to build infrastructure and give water away on extravagantly lenient terms was just as appealing for conservatives after World War II. Even Barry Goldwater, while courting the libertarians of the nascent New Right, advocated for the federally funded Central Arizona Project in his home state so that farmers could grow cotton in the Sonoran Desert.

That’s the defining contradiction of life in the West: “Government,” in Western parlance, was and is the stuff of restrictions, even when it’s the government that underwrites ever-popular sprawl.

While some made fortunes off this deluge of government spending, the enrichment of a few landowners was not the policy objective. Rather, the purpose of all the free water was to retain the West as a “safety valve,” a place of refuge for those who wanted to avoid the taxes and regulations of the East. But to accommodate growth without limits as the population boomed, the region would need to heighten the contradictions and become increasingly profligate with its scarcest resource.

Agriculture was once the means for permanent settlement of the arid West, and it continues to drive water consumption today. Around 80% of Colorado River water goes toward agriculture. About half of that is directed toward alfalfa hay that feeds cattle, an extremely inefficient way to provide calories for humans.

AZ must reduce water usage by 21% — and smaller cuts are needed in NV and Mexico — to avoid a “catastrophic collapse” of the Colorado River, the U.S. govt says.

The area is facing its worst drought in 1,200 years — now ongoing for 23 years — largely due to the climate crisis. pic.twitter.com/2n8gUy1eKV

— AJ+ (@ajplus) August 18, 2022

Agricultural water rights are some of the oldest in the West, and water law here revolves around seniority. Yet even if there were a ready legal pathway to divert water away from alfalfa fields, the fact remains that the apparatus for western water delivery was simply not built with a regulatory lever. The underlying imperative to grow without limits would inevitably lead back to a state of crisis.

Consider St. George, Utah. The fastest growing metropolitan area in the country consumes almost no agricultural water, yet its lawns and golf courses quickly suck up its scarce water supply. The city, a popular destination for retirees, is expected to double in population by 2050. Officials now find themselves struggling to find sources of water for the surge in residents. What is quickly becoming a crisis for humans is also creating additional pressure on other species such as the endangered woundfin and Virgin River chub.

Sprawl in St. George, Utah. Photo: Murray Foubister (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The system’s deference to ideology over pragmatism is clear when it comes to the Basin’s 30 Native American Tribes. Collectively, they control about 20% of the water rights in the Colorado River system, yet many of those rights consist of “paper water.” They’re unrealized due to a lack of infrastructure. Building the necessary water projects for the Tribes would not only cost money but also push the system past the point of collapse. The very viability of the free water system depends on a de facto denial of the water rights of Indigenous nations, just as broken treaties facilitated the “free land” policy of the 19th century.

Free water was destined to run out eventually. Facing this problem in the West will be difficult, considering that politics and culture have worked in tandem for so long to keep “government” out of government-subsidized water. It’s unclear whether the system can be retrofitted with an off switch and whether the necessary governments can work together to do so before the Colorado River system crashes.

So how do we move forward? Ending the current subsidies seems the most commonsense solution — as well as the most unlikely to gain political traction.

Another possible solution: commodities trading. The classic solution for an imbalance of supply and demand is to introduce markets. Yet applying this approach to western water faces logistical challenges and can do little about longstanding problems of equity.

Still, the problem is big enough that all interventions may be necessary. Perhaps these first two ideas can be implemented. And perhaps we can think bigger.

One way forward is for the government to recognize the inherent worth of natural waterways, rejecting the premise that all fresh water must be consumed. Giving legal rights to ecosystems is the goal of the rights of nature movement, which has had some success across the world and even in the U.S. West. The organization Save the Colorado helped the communities of Ridgway, Nederland, and Grand Lake in Colorado pass resolutions recognizing the intrinsic rights of their watersheds. I’m part of an organization, Save Our Great Salt Lake, that’s exploring a similar strategy.

Wherever the future leads, the aridification of the American West will have consequences not just for those living here, but for the entire country.

It’s conceivable that westerners will adapt more readily to a drier climate than the rest of the nation will adapt to the loss of a region that functions as a safety valve. At any rate, we’re approaching the end of an era in which water was taken for granted. Just as human beings physically depend on water, our policies and conversations need to align with the water cycle.

The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.

Previously in The Revelator:

Left Out to Dry: Wildlife Threatened by Colorado River Basin Water Crisis

Let’s Rename the Day After Thanksgiving ‘Extinction Friday’

The annual Black Friday ode to commercialism and overconsumption sits at the core of our ongoing destruction of Earth’s ecosystems. We can flip the script.

This is the week when Americans gather to eat turkey and pie, watch football, argue at the dinner table, and — after we’ve digested our excesses — line up in front of our computers or big-box retail stores for the chance of shaving a few pennies off the already low, low price of a shiny new 75-inch 8K QLED TV. Of course, the marketers tell us, we need the model with built-in Alexa voice control — for more shopping without ever getting up from our well-worn couches.

Black Friday has become a testament to our society’s embrace of overconsumption — a blood-sport game of conquest and consumerism that’s as far as we can possibly get from a holiday supposedly devoted to giving thanks.

So this year, let’s ditch Black Friday, Cyber Monday and whatever they’re going to try to get us to “celebrate” this coming Wednesday.

Let’s pull back and remember those we’ve left behind.

Let’s mark the post-Thanksgiving date as Extinction Friday: a moment to think about the peoples and species we’ve driven off the face of the Earth, and to promise to do our part to prevent others — or ourselves — from joining them.

This Friday, instead of shopping, offer up a homily for Martha, the last passenger pigeon, who died alone in her cage at Cincinnati Zoo in 1914, and vow to do your part to ensure that no other bird species share her fate.

Give a moment to think about Toughie, the last known Rabbs’ fringe-limbed tree frog, who gave up this mortal coil in 2016. Promise to protect any amphibians who cross your path.

Bow your head to George, the last Hawaiian tree snail of his species, gone since 2019. May his memory serve to remind us to grow a backbone when it comes to standing up for the invertebrates around us.

Raise your hands to the unnamed thousands of species (and trillions of individuals) we lose each year to the forces of commerce and progress, and then offer a mantra to slow the growth that’s killing us all. The people dying in Cancer Alley in Louisiana. The tribes facing deforestation in the Amazon and displacement in Africa. The mountain gorillas falling to the spears and shotguns of wildlife traffickers. The corals getting bleached by climate change — our ultimate sin. The orangutans slaughtered to make way for the cheap palm oil baked into this weekend’s pumpkin pie …

The list goes on and on. Don’t limit yourself; devote yourself to those you can help, or inspire others to help.

Because Extinction Friday isn’t just this Friday. It’s also Extinction Saturday, Extinction Sunday, Extinction December, and on and on, ad nauseum.

But we can do better. We can skip that 8K UHD TV. We can avoid shopping at Amazon-dot-com and protect the calm of the natural forest. We can give thanks for the world around us, let the memories of those we’ve failed change us as much as they haunt us, and act.

We can steer the narrative and alter our reality. We can turn Extinction Friday into a Day of Evolution.

Then — only then — can we rest and truly be grateful.

How (and Why) I Planned a 40-City Book Tour About Shark Science and Conservation

If a book contains critical conservation messages but nobody reads it, does it make a difference?

As a shark scientist, I know the importance of generating public support for endangered, poorly understood or ignored species. That’s why I wrote my new book, Why Sharks Matter: A Deep Dive With the World’s Most Misunderstood Predator — to reach people I couldn’t through my technical papers, articles or conference presentations.

I spent almost 10 years writing the book, but as the publication date neared, I realized that was just the first step. I also needed people to know it existed so they could buy it, read it, and hopefully act on its recommendations.

My publisher has some resources to help with media interviews, but like most academic presses their promotional budget is limited. I knew that if I wanted to really get the book out there, I had to do it myself.

I decided that a book tour was the best option.

As I write this, I’m in a hotel room in Raleigh, North Carolina — stop number 28 on a 40-city (and growing) tour that’s already gone better than I expected. I’ve reached thousands of people, sold crates full of books, and spread the message that sharks are worth protection and conservation.

Yes, I did all the planning for this myself — it’s beyond the scope of an academic publisher — and I planned it all as environmentally mindfully as possible.

Here’s how I accomplished that.

Why I Wanted to Do a Book Tour

Authors always want people to read their books, but good scientific communicators embrace the principle of “double dissemination” — telling the same story in multiple ways, and possibly different formats, for varied audiences.

I knew going into this tour that some folks would be more receptive to my book’s “here’s how we have to change our behaviors to save the planet” arguments if they heard them delivered persuasively by an expert speaker. That’s why the public-speaking component of a tour helps the cause I care about so deeply.

I love public speaking. Standing on a stage in front of a live audience has been a welcome break from giving talks into my webcam from my living room. They’re a lot more exciting, too. Each of my talks includes a Q&A component, which lets people ask me anything they want to know about sharks, marine biology or ocean conservation. You never know what you’re going to get asked, so this is also a good test of your ability to speak off the cuff.

The book tour has also, obviously, helped to drive book sales, both in person and through media and social media attention that sold even more books elsewhere.

Doing some media during the lunch break pic.twitter.com/ilUZNs1hRM

— Dr. David Shiffman (@WhySharksMatter) October 22, 2022

I had a few additional, personal reasons for the tour.

After the past couple of years, I’ve really missed travel. As an academic, some of my closest friends are now scattered all over the world. Work travel lets me visit places (and people) where I used to live and now miss, and it lets me go to some places where I’ve never been and have always wanted to visit. I wanted to do more of that.

I certainly got to — but that came with challenges.

Balancing the Environmental Impact of Travel

Travel, especially air travel, has an environmental impact that we can’t ignore.

I don’t believe that the answer is “never travel if you care about the planet,” but instead to be thoughtful and strategic about it. For me, flying halfway around the country to give a half-hour talk is neither thoughtful nor strategic.

Instead I rely heavily on a concept introduced to me in Brett Favaro’s book The Carbon Code: If you can’t minimize your carbon footprint, maximize the value you get out of it. Do more than one thing per trip.

That meant sometimes building a book tour talk into trips to places I was already going. For example, I attended a conference in Spokane, Washington this summer, so I also gave a public talk there and added on side trips with talks in nearby Seattle, Victoria and Vancouver, British Columbia. (I used to live in Vancouver, so this also let me catch up with friends and colleagues while I was there.) The only flights associated with this trip were to Spokane and home from Canada.

I also planned regional swings, often centered around an anchor point. Some venues don’t really care when I speak, while others have a particular date in mind (or were based around work events like scientific conferences with fixed dates). In those cases, I’d make sure to be in the area when the venue needed me, then reach out to other nearby venues and say, “Hey, I’m in town for X and free these days to give a talk.”

That allowed me to limit my coast-to-coast flights to one round trip. I flew to California once and visited five cities while in the area.

Throughout the tour, I’ve flown as little as possible. Sometimes this meant trains, while other times it meant driving. My personal rule is if I can get there in less than six hours of driving, I won’t fly. Your (literal) mileage may vary here.

How I Arranged It

I’m an experienced public speaker and I’ve developed an extensive network of contacts from years of conferences and professional events. I also have a significant social media following and contacts with folks who run social media for venues all over the world. All of this is to say that some of this was easier for me to arrange than it might be for you — but the basic principles should work for anyone interested in planning similar events.

The basic model of my talk was a 30- to 40-minute presentation, followed by a Q&A, book sales and signings. I mostly worked with zoos, aquariums and science museums, as well as a few universities with public lecture series, bookstores that do author events, and libraries.

Step one was to lock down the anchor talks. I started by using social media and emails to announce that I was planning a book tour and inquire if anyone had interest in hosting me.

Here’s the important lesson I learned: I don’t reach out randomly to anyone who lives in a town I hope to visit. I start with people I already know who work for venues that might be interested in the type of events I’m offering. If I knew of a venue but didn’t know anyone who worked there, I used social media to ask if anyone could connect me. This avoided the need to cold call anyone.

Once I had anchor talks in place, I started looking into nearby cities and venues. I asked my connections something like “I have a talk at South Padre Island on X dates and I’m interested in event venues in nearby cities and towns — do I know anyone with contacts at venues in Corpus Christi, Port Aransas, etc.”

My contacts had another key role: Local champions have helped bring me to their areas and arrange logistics, including meet and greets with local scientists and students. Many helped arrange housing and other accommodations, including some meals and rides from the airport.

The Economics

Academic publishers don’t pay for things like this. At my book’s intentionally affordable price point of $25, a tiny portion of which goes to the author, I would need to sell a lot of books to cover the costs of even one of my trips. (Venues usually sell my books directly, or through a partnership with a local bookstore, to avoid me having to carry books around the world.)

So how does it work? Simple: The venues pay my speaking fee and travel expenses. We negotiate based on venue size and resources — a rural public library wouldn’t have the same events budget as a large city science museum. But on every one of my regional legs, I made more in speaker fees than it cost me to get there — often substantially more.

As an academic I can take advantage of another way to pay for me travel costs: departmental research seminars. I was able to get to several cities because a university brought me out to speak about my research to their students and staff. Then, while I was nearby, I could arrange events at smaller public-facing venues.

Also worth noting: I kept my day jobs and worked remotely while on the road, although I sometimes had to take half days to account for travel.

Pros and Cons

As of this writing I’m about three-quarters through the originally planned 2022 book tour, and I’ll extend it through 2023 in some capacity. I had feared that I might be burned out by now, and I need to tell you — I’m not. I’ve visited friends and colleagues I haven’t seen in years and visit traveled to places I used to live and now miss.

I’ve also gotten to tour tons of wonderful museums, zoos and aquariums and chat with some fascinating people.

My book has taken me to some pretty cool places! Currently eating fish and chips overlooking the Tower of London. pic.twitter.com/cSiLRHC9xl

— Dr. David Shiffman (@WhySharksMatter) October 25, 2022

And there’s nothing like a live audience who appreciates what you have to say. I love this.

When the tour is all over, I’ll be thrilled that I did it and look back fondly on the memories I made.

But I do miss sleeping in my own bed, and I haven’t seen some friends at home for a while. Planning this tour has been a ton of work. While I’ve avoided burnout, being on the road living out of a suitcase and eating unhealthy roadside food and visiting tons of different time zones all takes its toll.

I can’t imagine I’ll ever do anything like this again.

Unless the sharks still need me, of course.

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Election Denial Is the New Climate Denial — and Still a Threat

The midterms may have avoided a red wave, but there’s still blood (and some anti-science conspiracy theorists) in the water.

Let’s start with the good news. Several prominent proponents of former President Trump’s Big Lie of election fraud failed in their bids for elected office in the recent midterms, allowing Democrats to keep control of the Senate and flip several key statehouse roles. We won’t need to worry about the likes of Kari Lake, Tudor Dixon, Doug Mastriano or Mark Finchem anytime soon.

But here’s the bad news: We will still need to worry about them — and many others like them — in the long term.

Lake and her ilk may have failed at the ballot box, but zealots like her and Mastriano are unlikely to disappear for long. Fueled by conspiracy theories, right-wing misinformation and propaganda, Christian nationalism, and antigovernment extremism, they have too much invested in their aggressive identities to give up and go home.

And they still have plenty of support.

One of the most disturbing results of the midterm is the sheer number of election deniers who did get elected. By last count, at least 220 people won federal races this year after directly supporting Trump’s Big Lie of election fraud or otherwise expressing skepticism about the proven validity of elections. The candidates who will soon take office included at least eight governors and 10 senators, according to The New York Times and CNN. Hundreds more appear to have taken or kept office in local elections around the country. An additional crop of QAnon believers and other extremists lost their elections by painfully narrow margins, meaning they (and their voters) still have a lot of power in the broader political spectrum.

This is an environmental issue.

Election deniers also embrace a wide range of antidemocratic, anti-science beliefs and conspiracy theories — including casting doubt on the very existence of climate change and its threats, as shown in dozens of public statements compiled by Emily Atkin at Heated. All too often they use their comments to not only spread misinformation about climate change but to attack government institutions, left-leaning politicians, renewable energy, progressive causes, or the media.

Perhaps that’s one reason election-denying candidates received millions of dollars from energy and transportation companies leading up to the midterms, according to analysis by ProPublica and The Hill. It’s corporate support that gives these people a big chunk of their power. Now that the midterms are over and Republicans have taken control of the House, we can expect these newly elected representatives to pay back their corporate benefactors and support pro-business, pro-pollution, anti-voting policies, regulations and legislation.

Speaking of which, election deniers also overwhelmingly support restrictive new voting legislation that would disenfranchise young and poor voters, as well as voters of color — the same groups most likely to be put at risk from climate change and pollution. This threat will continue on both federal and state levels, most notably from four incoming secretaries of state who will now have power over elections in Alabama, Indiana, South Dakota and Wyoming.

Let’s not forget about the people who voted for them, either. The MAGA wing remains strong throughout the country and far too many folks still carry the Trump flag and bemoan the results of the 2020 election while finding new ways to threaten election officials, volunteers and voters — or government institutions in general.

And then, of course, there’s Trump himself, who just threw his red MAGA cap back into the ring and declared his intent to run for president again in 2024. The Insurrectionist in Chief continues to spread election lies and misinformation about both the 2020 and 2022 elections, and we’re still recovering from his four years of antienvironmental policies. If he ever ascends to office again, it will be more of the same and likely worse, fueled by delusion and his scorched-earth modus operandi.

Heck, we don’t even need to wait for 2024 to see what will happen. Even with their twice-impeached leader out of office, his acolytes have continued their assaults against the EPA, reproductive rights, voting rights, energy policy and other safeguards and freedoms.

They’re just warming up.

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Frogs vs. Climate Change: How Long Can They Stand the Heat?

New research compiles the “heat tolerance” of 616 amphibian species — and reveals how much more we need to know.

This summer’s brutal European heatwave delivered record temperatures that baked cities, dried out rivers, and sent thousands of people to the hospital.

The heat also harmed wildlife across the continent, especially frogs and other amphibians that can’t regulate their own body temperatures. The British conservation group Froglife told The Independent that reports of frog deaths increased around the country this summer, with the amphibians dying from dried-out skin, dehydration or starvation.

One gruesome case happened at Benhill Road Nature Garden in the United Kingdom, where visitors and their children stumbled across dozens of dead, desiccated frogs. Their pond, once a refuge in an ongoing drought, had dried up too quickly.

“It does feel really relevant to what’s going on at the moment,” local mother Linda Tibbets told Southwark News. “It’s this visual representation of what’s happening and maybe what’s to come.”

With heatwaves predicted to become both worse and more frequent due to climate change, and average temperatures rising around the world, amphibian conservationists find themselves with a challenge: How to prevent mass mortalities like this — or even extinctions — in the future?

One answer may come from understanding amphibians’ “heat tolerance” — the upper temperature range at which an animal can survive.

We have a long way to go to get to that understanding, though. According to new research published this October in the journal Scientific Data, scientists haven’t determined the heat tolerance for about 93% of recognized amphibian species. In fact, we lack information for entire groups of species.

“We haven’t found any data for caecilians, an entire order of limbless amphibians,” says the study’s lead author, Patrice Pottier, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

But Pottier and his coauthors did manage to collect and consolidate, for the first time, previously published heat tolerance data for 616 species of frogs, toads and salamanders around the world. Many of the species are already endangered due to habitat destruction, disease, invasive predators or other factors.

A toad held in a gloved human hand — An endangered Wyoming toad. Photo: Ryan Moehring / USFWS

For the people working to protect these species, this information is a potential gold mine. In addition to their paper, the researchers have made the data available through a downloadable database, which the scientific community has already started digging into for additional studies.

“Some people are currently investigating potential drivers of the variation in heat tolerance, how different life stages cope with heat, or whether heat tolerance is correlated with disease susceptibility,” Pottier says. Previous research has shown that frogs with lower temperature tolerances are more susceptible to the deadly chytrid fungus, which thrives in cooler environments. Chytrid has already caused several extinctions and continues to spread, so this is a particularly important area of study.

Looking for Languages

The dataset happened, like so many innovations, out of a frustration with existing tools.

“We weren’t originally planning to compile a database,” Pottier says. “I started to design a project that required a large and comprehensive dataset on amphibian thermal tolerance, and I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the scope of previous syntheses. I knew none dug into the literature in languages other than English.”

Although most scientific journals — 90% or more, depending on the field — publish in English, important conservation data often exists in other languages. Researchers studying Asian horseshoe crabs, for example, had to compile and translate data from multiple Indonesian and Chinese languages and dialects to get one species listed as endangered in 2019.

The overreliance on English poses particular problems for research in amphibian-heavy nations. For example, a 2020 survey of doctoral students in Colombia — which is home to more than 1,000 amphibian and reptile species — found that “publishing in a second language creates additional financial costs” and that 43.5% of their papers were rejected or required revisions because of English grammar. At least 220 Colombian journals publish in Spanish, but they lack the reach of English-language publications.

Close-up of a red toad's face — A red Rhinella margaritifera from the Tanimboca reserve in Colombia. Photo: Sebastian Di Domenico (CC BY 2.0)

“Most amphibians live in countries where English is not the primary language,” Pottier says, “so we had reason to think that there’s a lot of data published in different languages.” After an initial pilot to test results from a broader linguistic sample, they settled on Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, simplified Chinese, French and Japanese for their searches.

Those languages yielded 13% of their data — information they would have missed if they’d stuck with English publications.

Even so, the results still weigh heavily on the Global North. As with other areas in science and conservation, that gap needs to be addressed on a more systemic level.

“Tropical areas are the most diverse and perhaps the most threatened, yet they’re the least studied,” Pottier says. “I believe we need to create more collaborations with researchers from the Global South. If we can stimulate new data collections with this paper, then this goes beyond our expectations.”

Adapt or Die?

Pottier says they’re already putting the data to use studying amphibians’ plasticity — a species’ adaptability to major environmental shifts such as climate change.

“It’s extremely important because we know that current heat waves are stressful for most animals on this planet,” he says. “We need to understand whether animals will be able to adapt or acclimatize to future temperatures.”

We know how this works for other species. Humans, for example, can tolerate temperatures between 95 and 130 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on humidity levels and how much time people have to adapt to rising heat levels.

But humans and other mammals have an advantage over frogs: We can regulate our own body temperatures. Amphibians are ectotherms, meaning they rely on external heat sources. That makes them more vulnerable to sudden environmental shifts.

But how vulnerable remains an active field of study. Pottier says their current work aims “to predict how much temperature amphibians can tolerate currently and by the end of the century, and which parts of the globe would be the most important for conservation.”

An emerald glass frog (Espadarana prosoblepon) observed in Los Cedros. Photo: Juan Sebastian Forero Rodriguez via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Of course, this type of research doesn’t have to be limited to frogs. “We hope others can use a similar framework to gather comprehensive data on fish, reptiles, or invertebrates,” Pottier says.

No matter what species researchers decide to target with their heat tolerance studies, accelerating climate change and habitat destruction mean time is of the essence if we hope to give wildlife opportunities to adapt.

“We found data for species that are now extinct,” Pottier says. “It made me sad to see how biodiversity erodes so quickly.”

Previously in The Revelator:

Harlequin Found: ‘Extinct’ Toad Rediscovered After 30 Years

Outdoor Afro: Celebrating Black Joy in Nature

Black people like nature, too. But you wouldn’t know it from looking at outdoor magazines — at least not before Outdoor Afro got started.

If time and money weren’t an issue, what would you do?

That’s what Rue Mapp’s mentor asked her as she faced the completion of her college degree and an uncertain job market.

“I’d probably start a website to reconnect Black people to the outdoors,” Mapp replied, a story she recounts in her new book Nature Swagger. Soon after that, in 2009, she launched the blog Outdoor Afro, which began with stories of her own experiences in nature. It was inspired not just by her own love of the outdoors, but of a desire to increase the visibility of Black people enjoying those spaces.

“From my kitchen table I decided to tell a new story using images — unlike anything I had seen growing up among the glossy outdoor nature publications — of Black people in nature as strong, beautiful and free,” she writes.

The work hit a nerve — and a need.

Since then Outdoor Afro has grown into a powerful not-for-profit organization of outdoor education, recreation and conservation that’s trained more than 100 volunteer leaders who host in-person and online events, including meetup networks in 60 cities and 32 states.

The Revelator spoke with Mapp about what inspired her work, how visual representations of Black people in nature are changing, and what can be done to further that work.

You grew up in Oakland, California, but spent time at your family’s ranch in Lake County. Do you think you would have started Outdoor Afro if you hadn’t had an early connection to nature?

No, but the other thing many people don’t know is I had an early introduction to digital technology. I’ve been into computer programming since I was 11 years old. That helped inform the early creation of Outdoor Afro. I might have launched an Outdoor Afro group without technology, but I was able to quickly understand how social media could serve as an amplifier to share information with thousands of other people.

Outside of the family ranch I grew up on, I also joined many nature-based groups over the years, but those experiences were often disappointing. I found that the digital answer hadn’t satisfied me either. So, I used my blog and website to tell a new narrative of what I believe Black people were capable of in the outdoors. From there, I created and led groups in the outdoors that were truly useful and brought about better connections.

How did the organization grow from a kitchen table blog to where it is today? Was there a moment when you had an inkling that it would become the force that it is?

Yes. I did believe there was something powerful and knew it could become something special. I also realized I had to give myself over to it completely for it to work. Outdoor Afro was simply my calling.

The result is a network that allows me to perform years of experience in the outdoors and use technology, business and my art history education to shift the visual representation deliberately of how our stories are told.

Rue Mapp in front of mural — Outdoor Afro founder Rue Mapp. Photo: Bethanie Hines.

Since you’ve been doing this work, have you seen the visual representation of Black people in nature change?

That is one key milestone that Outdoor Afro helped to achieve from the beginning. We’ve continued to change the narrative of who gets out and leads in the outdoors. When I started Outdoor Afro, you didn’t see these visuals, which was a big problem. There was this false narrative that we didn’t do nature, and even some Black people bought into this falsehood. But I knew it wasn’t true.

It took almost 10 years of persistence to get the story right. Today those glossy magazines now more regularly have people who look like me, and more like America in general. Our country is filled with many types of groups and outdoor experiences. Let’s celebrate them all!

Being Black isn’t a singular experience — it’s reflective of region, age, personal history, etc. [That’s why] Nature Swagger includes stories of many unsung individuals who we can relate to or who remind us of family and friends. Through the book, I want readers to be inspired and see nature from many perspectives and think broadly of what connections to the outdoors can look like.

Do you have a favorite place in nature?

The redwoods are important to me in Oakland’s hills because of their historic value in my own life and region of origin. More than 150 years ago, those redwoods were clearcut due to the California gold rush and the increased demand for wood to build housing.

The beauty of today is witnessing the regeneration of those redwoods. They’ve come back as a second and third generation and have grown tall, which is a testimony of the possibility of regeneration in all our lives. The redwoods help me remember that things can be clear cut, but can also come back anew, stronger and more powerful than ever.

These same redwoods are just a mere 10 minutes from where most Oaklanders live, so they are quite accessible, and they remain a place I often go to experience such awe-inspiring wild nature lessons.

Nature never fails. It always delivers. As I continue to push my own limits — physical, psychological and geographical — I continue to have new moments of awe, challenge and joy, but overall a deepening experience of satisfaction. Pushing ahead with my own outdoor adventures helps keep me on the pulse of what new outdoor enthusiasts are experiencing. It’s also important for me to remain a practitioner and as someone who needs nature’s medicine, too.

How can non-Black folks help support or create space for Black joy, accessibility and safety in nature?

Continue to support the work of Outdoor Afro and others like it and find ways that are personal to you to bring forth a vision of a world connected to nature that we all want to see. Share our network with your friends and family to encourage them to get outside. Anyone can follow us at outdoorafro.org and social @outdoorafro.

You don’t have to have an afro to be a part of Outdoor Afro! I reflect on how my mother made quilts. Outdoor Afro is a patch of this larger quilt of connectedness to create something that is unified and beautiful. The specificity of Outdoor Afro is important but stitched together with the story of all of us.

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Previously in The Revelator:

Latinos Face Challenges Accessing the Outdoors — and Climate Change Is Adding to Those Barriers

Midterms 2022: A Green Wave on the Horizon?

While control of Congress remains unsettled, other races around the country reveal a growing — if precarious — tilt toward climate as a priority.

As the dust settles on the 2022 midterm elections, one thing becomes clear: The projected “red wave” of Republican victories failed to materialize.

But while control of the House and Senate — and therefore the fate of President Biden’s agenda — remains unsettled, a closer look at less publicized political races around the country reveals what may be a “green wave” of growing climate action.

Pundits will point out that inflation, abortion and threats to democracy drove much of this year’s voting, but at the same time many people — especially younger voters — turned out with climate on their minds.

The results were far from a green tsunami, and regressive politicians and their supporters maintain a strong riptide that threatens to drown progress on many fronts. But looking past the tumultuous surface, we can see ripples of progress.

Climate Governors for the Win (Mostly)

Governors’ races don’t generate much national attention, which is a shame since these offices have enormous roles in state climate policies — and through them, on national decarbonization efforts.

That doesn’t go unnoticed on the local level. This year voters in three western states — California, New Mexico and Colorado — reelected Democratic governors Gavin Newsom, Michelle Lujan Grisham and Jared Polis. Each has shown support for reining in the fossil fuel industry and boosting renewables in states that play oversized roles in the national energy picture.

Meanwhile Oregon media have called the state’s governor’s race for Democrat Tina Kotek, which would help ensure the future of Oregon’s Climate Action Plan and other efforts to promote clean energy. Democrats’ usual stranglehold on the office was in jeopardy this year after Nike cofounder Phil Knight poured millions into the election to support Republican Christine Drazan and unaffiliated candidate Betsy Johnson.

On the east coast, Josh Shapiro won Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race after running on a platform that included ambitious clean-energy objectives (as well as “responsible fracking”). He beat election denier and Christian nationalist Doug Mastriano, who “unabashedly and loudly called for deregulation of the state’s fossil fuel industries,” according to Spotlight PA. Maine reelected Democrat Janet Mills, who won against Republican Paul LePage, the state’s previous governor from 2011-2019. Solar energy production in Maine has quadrupled since Mills took office, while LePage has a long history of misrepresenting climate science (and just about everything else). And New York elected Democrat Kathy Hochul to her first full term, winning out over her opponent (and fracking proponent) Lee Zeldin.

Michigan, meanwhile, reelected Democrat Gretchen Whitmer over Republican election denier Tudor Dixon, whose environmental policies could be summed up, at best, as pro-business. And in Wisconsin, incumbent Democrat Tony Evers narrowly squeaked into his reelection victory with his full legislative power seemingly intact, despite statewide gerrymandering that threatened to grant Republicans a vetoproof supermajority.

On the other hand, Arkansas elected climate denier Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Georgia incumbent Brian Kemp won handily over Democrat Stacey Abrams, who had promised a more aggressive climate policy for the state. And Beto O’Rourke lost in Texas to incumbent Greg Abbott, who infamously (and incorrectly) blamed wind turbines for his state’s deadly winter power outages. As of press time, the Arizona governor’s race remains too close to call, with election denier and border-wall hawk Kari Lake running neck-and-neck against Democrat Katie Hobbs. The state’s clean-energy future hangs in the balance.

And then there’s Ron DeSantis, who won in Florida despite a long record of anti-climate policies. His reelection puts him on a clear path to run for president in 2024.

Ballot Measures Deliver Wins and Losses

Voters in just a few states faced ballot measures directly related to environmental issues.

New Yorkers overwhelmingly backed the $4.2 billion Clean Water, Clean Energy, Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act that would “preserve, enhance, and restore New York’s natural resources and reduce the impact of climate change.”

Money to fund the measure has already been approved by the state’s legislature. An estimated $1.5 billion would go to climate change mitigation, $1.1 billion to restoration and flood risk reduction, $650 million to open space conservation and recreation, and $650 million to water quality in resiliency infrastructure.

“We’re really excited about helping to jumpstart this transition to protect our communities and make sure our infrastructure is in good shape,” Julie Tighe, president of New York League of Conservation Voters, told The Revelator in October.

A much smaller $50 million “green” bond to fund open spaces, climate resilience and other environmental measures also went before Rhode Island voters. It looks to be headed for a win.

At the local level, voters in Boulder, Colorado, look to have approved measures that would use tax revenue to help fund wildfire prevention and climate resilience, increase energy efficiency, and help lower income residents pay energy bills.

In nearby Denver, residents voted in favor of using excess tax revenue to fund climate projects.

It was a different story in California, where projections suggest that Proposition 30 — the Tax on Income Above $2 Million for Zero-Emissions Vehicles and Wildfire Prevention Initiative — will fail.

The measure would have increased taxes on wealthy residents to fund clean cars and related infrastructure. It was supported by a range of Democratic groups and environmental organizations but opposed by clean-car advocate Gov. Gavin Newsom. He branded it as a giveaway to rideshare companies that are required by state law to boost the number of zero emissions vehicles in their service.

Key State Races

Democrats in Michigan appear to have gained control over both state houses, which could be good news for water protections. E&E News reports that “the state could take more aggressive action to tackle ‘forever chemicals’ that have plagued Michigan waterways, as well as lead service lines.”

It could also give the state an opportunity to take needed action on climate change.

Democrats also appear to have taken control of the state legislature and governor’s office in Minnesota, Maryland and Massachusetts. “The wins finally give those states an upper hand to push through new climate goals,” Vox reports.

While it may not feel like a lot to cheer about, Republicans’ hope for a supermajority in the state legislatures of Wisconsin, Montana and North Carolina fell short.

Let’s not forget about state attorneys general, who are the top enforcers of state environmental laws. They can use their weight to sue oil and gas companies or other polluters — or seek to dismantle the Biden administration’s environmental regulations.

In some of the most-watched AG races, Republicans picked up wins in Georgia and Texas, as did Democrats in Wisconsin and Michigan. Arizona and Nevada remain too close to call.

The win by Attorney General Dana Nessel in Michigan, along with the reelection of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, could help lead to the shutdown of Enbridge’s spill-prone Line 5 pipeline.

Democrats also appear to have chalked up a few victories in secretaries of state races around the country — a particular target of election deniers, who promised to throw future elections into chaos. But extremist candidates still won four races to date, with the key states of Arizona and Nevada still up for grabs.

Finally, in Texas, Harris County judge Linda Hidalgo won a tough reelection battle in her petrochemical-heavy region. “Hidalgo’s first term … saw her emphasize environmental priorities — including incorporating climate flood maps into city planning and hiring environmental prosecutors,” according to Vox.

Other important races took place across the country, up and down every ballot. What were the climate victories or losses in your local elections? Let us know.

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Why Scientists Are Rallying to Save Ponds

Humble ponds have a key role to play in fighting climate change and aiding conservation — but only if we protect them.

Thomas Mehner’s research team has spent the past few years wading through ponds in Brandenburg — the state surrounding Germany’s capital city, Berlin. It wasn’t the increasingly hot summers that forced them into the cool water. They were collecting samples for analysis — something not many other people are doing.

“Northeast Germany is blessed with lakes, so if you talk with people about ponds, they say, ‘Are they so important?’” says Mehner, a researcher at the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Friedrichshagen, Berlin.

The answer, it turns out, is yes.

Ponds take so many forms across the world that the word “pond” can be quite difficult to define. Typically, however, they’re smaller and shallower than lakes. As to their importance, research suggests that ponds are better for biodiversity than many larger bodies of water. They’ve been found to support more plants and animals overall, including many endangered species.

That’s part of what guides Mehner’s research on ponds. His team gathers information on insect larvae and environmental DNA to detect the presence of fish and amphibians. They also collect traces of greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide to examine the link between the biodiversity of water bodies and its impact on emissions in the environment.

Their work is part of a larger effort.

Mehner is the German partner for POND Ecosystems for Resilient Future Landscapes in a changing climate — PONDERFUL, for short. The international project examines hundreds of ponds across Europe — and beyond — to see how they can help provide climate change solutions and boost conservation.

But for these often-ignored water bodies to help us and support wildlife, researchers say ponds also need protections.

Establishing Safeguards

Ponds can be just as diverse as the ecosystems they support. In Germany, for example, ponds were typically carved out by glaciers during the last ice age, says Mehner. In the United Kingdom, they were largely excavated by farmers for rearing cattle. Some ponds are a permanent fixture of the landscape, while others only exist during certain periods of the year.

Regardless of their origins, ponds have helped provide refuge for wild animals and plants. Unfortunately, despite decades of research showing ponds’ importance to biodiversity, they’re often overlooked by policymakers and the public.

The current policy that covers standing waters in the U.K. and European Union — the EU Water Framework Directive — largely excludes bodies of less than 50 hectares.

As a result, ponds are essentially ignored, which means they’re not monitored by authorities and are allowed to languish, blocking potential climate and biodiversity benefits.

PONDERFUL hopes to change this. One of its major goals is to gather data that can be shared with policymakers to highlight the importance of ponds so they’re given more attention.

Pond with vegetation on the banks — A PONDERFUL project in Switzerland. Photo: Julie Fahy (CC-BY-NC-ND)

Disappearing Ponds

Time is of the essence.

Some of the ponds that Mehner studies are located in the small municipality of Schöneiche, on the border of Berlin and Brandenburg, where ponds are disappearing.

“This is really a reflection of climate change,” he says. The lack of rain in recent years has depleted the ponds, which also suffer from urban pressures. Berlin consumes a lot of groundwater from surrounding areas, further pushing the groundwater-fed ponds to the breaking point.

This isn’t an isolated problem.

Research from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology found that 90% of ponds in Switzerland have been lost over the last two centuries. The U.K. had an estimated 800,000 ponds at the start of the 20th century; today less than a quarter of those remain. In Austria, researchers found that 70% of temporary saline ponds were lost over a 60-year period.

Unlike in Brandenburg, in these countries the loss of ponds has been linked to agricultural intensification, with farms either filling in the ponds, ploughing over them or draining them.

Global Action

Whatever the reason for their perilous states, researchers hope that better data can help guide government policy.

There’s evidence elsewhere that it can.

Elias Bizuru, director of research and innovation at the University of Rwanda, helped to build the Rwanda Biodiversity Information System. Starting in 2018, researchers collected data from wetlands and other freshwater habitats and made it all available on one system.

“The information related to biodiversity in Rwanda was scattered across institutions, and getting that information was a very, very big challenge,” says Bizuru. Without the information at hand, researchers like himself found it difficult to make suggestions on the kind of actions decisionmakers should take to protect wetlands.

When they do have easily accessible data, Bizuru says, the Rwandan government can be quite successful in its interventions. The Nyandungu Eco-Tourism Park, for example, was a degraded wetland six years ago. Now, after a restoration project, it’s host to a wide range of native species, including dragonflies, snakes, amphibians, birds and a range of plants.

Another restoration project in Switzerland created hundreds of new ponds and managed to increase the regional populations of eight endangered frogs, toads and newts, especially helping the European tree frog. The effort helped boost those regional populations by 52%.

In the U.K., the Norfolk Pond Project has conducted similar work. Carl Sayer and Helen Greaves, colleagues in the geography department at University College London, have together helped to restore more than 200 ponds originally dug for agricultural purposes.

To restore them, Sayer and Greaves would simply clear up mud and remove trees from the area, letting nature do the rest. A study published by the pair in 2020 highlighted significant increases in aquatic plants, invertebrates and amphibians after their interventions.

frog in shallow clear water — A European tree frog. Photo: Nicholas Turland (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

“You’re almost reinstating natural processes, really, because in a natural state ponds are disturbed,” Sayer says.

Cascading Effects

Ponds don’t only exist in rural areas.

Zsófia Horváth, a community ecologist at the Institute of Aquatic Ecology in Budapest, runs a citizen science campaign for ponds in urban areas across Hungary. Her research team has collected biodiversity data from 386 ponds and surveyed more than 800 pond owners to find out which interventions people can take to make their ponds more biodiverse.

During a previous research project in Austria, she found that if one pond disappears, others suffer.

She tells me that ponds function for the species they host the same way islands might for humans at sea. The more islands are lost, the more precarious it becomes for a seafarer to access the resources they need to survive.

“You’re taking out these important members of the network,” she says. Their research looked into zooplankton populations — crustaceans and rotifers — since the 1950s and found that species loss correlated with a reduction in the number of ponds in the area.

The idea that it’s important to create networks of ponds is also shared by Sayer, and it’s a long-term goal of the Norfolk Pond Project.

“I’d love to see whole areas joined, where we restore ponds in one landscape and another, and then we link it all up,” he says.

Ensuring such networks become a reality, however, requires more data, Horváth says.

“It’s so easy to ignore a habitat if you don’t know what kind of service it can offer humanity,” she says. “It’s kind of a very profane, human-oriented point of view — but this is how policymakers and the general public work.”

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Previously in The Revelator:

Scientists Find New Way to Reduce Marine ‘Dead Zones’

New Law Could Help Fund Water Upgrades For Communities That Need it Most

Disadvantaged communities have suffered disproportionately from underinvestment in clean and affordable water. That could change with legislation passed last year.

When storms like Hurricane Ian strike, many people have to cope afterward with losing water service. Power outages mean that pumps can’t process and treat drinking water or sewage, and heavy stormwater flows can damage water mains.

Ian’s effects echoed a similar disaster in Jackson, Mississippi, where rising river water overwhelmed pumps at the main water treatment plant on Aug. 29 following record-setting rain. The city had little to no running water for a week, and more than 180,000 residents were forced to find bottled water for drinking and cooking. Even after water pressure returned, many Jackson residents continued to boil their water, questioning whether it was really safe to drink.

Jackson had already been under a boil-water notice for more than a month before the crisis, which arrived like a slow-motion bullet to the city’s long-decaying infrastructure. Now, Jackson and its contractors face lawsuits and a federal investigation.

We study water policy with a focus on providing equitable access to clean water. Our research shows that disadvantaged communities have suffered disproportionately from underinvestment in clean and affordable water.

However, a historic increase in federal water infrastructure funding is coming over the next five years, thanks to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that was enacted in 2021.

If this funding is managed smartly, we believe it can start to right these wrongs.

A Complex Funding Mix

Water infrastructure has two parts. Drinking water systems bring people clean water that has been purified for drinking and other uses. Wastewater systems carry away sewage and treat it before returning it to rivers, lakes or the ocean.

Money to build and maintain these systems comes from a mix of federal, state and local sources. Over the past 50 years, policymakers have debated how much each level of government should contribute, and what fraction should come from the most prized source: federal money that does not need to be repaid.

The 1972 Clean Water Act created a federal grant program, managed by the Environmental Protection Agency, to help states and municipalities build wastewater treatment plants. Under the program, federal subsidies initially covered 75% of project costs.

In the 1980s, the Reagan Administration challenged this arrangement. Conservatives argued that the grant program’s main purpose — addressing the need for more municipal wastewater treatment — had been fulfilled.

In 1987, Congress replaced wastewater grants with a loan program called the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, which still operates today. The EPA uses the fund to provide seed money to states, which offer low-interest loans to local governments to build and maintain wastewater treatment plants. Congress created a corresponding program, the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, in 1996 to fund drinking water infrastructure.

As a result, U.S. water infrastructure now is funded by a mix of loans that must be repaid, principal forgiveness awards and grants that do not require repayment, and fees paid by local users. The larger the share that can be shifted into grants and principal forgiveness, the less pressure on local ratepayers to foot the bill for long-term infrastructure investments.

water storage tank and pipe — Water tank in the disadvantaged unincorporated community of Woodville, Calif. Photo: Tara Lohan

What’s in the Infrastructure Law?

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act authorizes more than $50 billion for water infrastructure over the next five years. This won’t close the gap in funding needs, which the EPA has estimated at $472.6 billion from 2015 through 2034 just for drinking water systems. But it could support tangible improvements.

When water systems that serve low-income communities borrow money from state programs, even at low interest rates, they have to pay the loans off by raising rates on customers who already struggle to pay their bills. To reduce this burden, federal law allows state programs to provide “disadvantaged communities” additional subsidies in the form of principal forgiveness and grants. However, states have broad discretion in determining who qualifies.

The infrastructure law requires that 49% of federal funding for both drinking water and wastewater infrastructure must be awarded as additional subsidies to disadvantaged communities. In other words, almost half the money that states receive in federal funds must be awarded as principal forgiveness or outright grants to disadvantaged communities.

Who Counts as ‘Disadvantaged’?

In March 2022, the EPA released a memorandum that calls the infrastructure law a “unique opportunity” to “invest in communities that have too often been left behind — from rural towns to struggling cities.” The agency pledged to work with states, tribes and territories to ensure the promised 49% of supplemental funding reaches communities where the need is greatest.

This is an issue where the devil truly is in the details.

For example, under Mississippi’s definition of “disadvantaged community,” Jackson’s 2021 award for principal forgiveness was capped at 25% of the original principal. In its March 2022 memorandum, the EPA identified such caps as obstacles for under-resourced communities.

Mississippi appears to have responded by using a new standard for funds coming from the infrastructure law. Beginning this year, communities whose median household income is lower than the state median household income — including Jackson — will be awarded 100% principal forgiveness, which makes the funding effectively a grant.

Additionally, the EPA discourages using population as a factor to define “disadvantaged communities.” Communities with smaller populations struggle to cover water systems’ operating costs, so that challenge is important to consider. But using population as a determining factor penalizes larger cities that may otherwise be disadvantaged.

For example, in 2021, when determining principal forgiveness, Wisconsin awarded a higher financial need score to communities with populations below 10,000. This penalized Milwaukee, the state’s largest city, with almost a quarter of its people experiencing poverty.

In September 2022, Wisconsin updated its definition to consider additional factors, such as county unemployment rate and family poverty percentage. With these changes, Milwaukee now qualifies for the maximum principal forgiveness.

Mississippi and Wisconsin previously relied on factors too narrow to reach many disadvantaged communities. We hope the steps they have taken to update their programs will inspire similar actions from other states.

Getting the Word Out

In our view, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to correct decades of underinvestment in disadvantaged communities, especially with the EPA pushing the states to do so.

Historically under-resourced communities may not be aware of these state program funds, or know how to apply for them, or carry out infrastructure improvements. We believe the EPA should direct states that receive federal funds to help under-resourced communities apply for and use the money.

Recent events in Jackson and Florida show how natural disasters can overwhelm water systems, especially older networks that have been declining for years. As climate change amplifies storms and flooding, we see investing in water systems as a priority for public health and environmental justice across the U.S.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Previously in The Revelator:

Public Health Crisis Looms as California Identifies 600 Communities at Risk of Water-System Failures