Utah’s Coal-ash Pollution: A Toxic Example of a National Problem

The majority of coal plants in the United States, like the Hunter Power Plant in Utah, are contaminating groundwater with toxic pollutants, a new report reveals.

The three smokestacks of PacifiCorp’s coal-fired Hunter Power Plant loom in the skies on a 1,000-acre site just south of Castle Dale, Utah.

Commissioned in 1978, the Hunter plant burns millions of tons of coal a year and generates more than 1,500 megawatts of electricity for use in nearby communities.

But it also generates something else: greenhouse gases and toxic pollutants, including coal ash.

Coal ash, or coal-combustion residuals, is primarily produced from burning coal in power plants. It contains mercury, arsenic and other byproducts that can pollute waterways, drinking water and the air, according to the EPA. These chemicals can cause cancer, developmental disorders and reproductive problems, says Earthjustice, a nonprofit organization that specializes in litigation of environmental issues.

While some power plants dispose of coal ash in landfills, others discharge it into nearby waterways under the plants’ discharge permits.

Those discharges add up. According to the first comprehensive national study of coal-ash pollution, 91 percent of all coal plants in the country are contaminating nearby groundwater with toxic pollutants.

The study, conducted by the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project with assistance from Earthjustice, found that the groundwater near 242 out of 265 coal-fired power plants contains unsafe levels of at least one pollutant, including heavy metals such as arsenic and lithium.

According to the report, 52 percent of the plants have unsafe levels of arsenic, which the EPA classifies as a carcinogen, and 60 percent of the plants have unsafe levels of lithium, which can cause kidney and neurological damage.

The study ranks the 10 worst polluting sites, including Utah’s Hunter, which came in at number 8. The report states that the groundwater beneath Hunter “is contaminated with lithium at concentrations 228 times safe levels and cobalt at 26 times safe levels.”

PacifiCorp acknowledged that cobalt, lithium and molybdenum all exceed groundwater-protection standards at the site in a letter sent Dec. 12, 2018, to the Utah Department of Environmental Quality.

Despite this pollution and risk to local water sources, the Bureau of Land Management is currently planning to sell 200 acres of public land to PacifiCorp for an expansion of the Hunter coal-ash disposal site. PacifiCorp is the parent of Rocky Mountain Power, Utah’s largest utility company.

Ashley Soltysiak, director of Sierra Club Utah, says it would be “irresponsible” to give PacifiCorp more land to expand the existing coal-ash site.

“The fact that the Hunter coal plant is making headlines for its groundwater contamination shows that PacifiCorp is incapable of complying with safe groundwater standards,” she says. “Giving them more land to use for a new landfill would be irresponsible of the Bureau of Land Management, given that they have already caused contamination at their current landfill.”

A History of Pollution, a Risky Future

During most of the 20th century, power companies dumped coal ash into unlined landfills and waste ponds. For years the lack of a barrier between the coal ash and groundwater allowed for leaks and contamination of underground water supplies, according to the report.

After several high-profile coal-ash spills in Tennessee and North Carolina, the EPA finalized the first federal regulation for the disposal of coal ash, referred to as “Coal Ash Rule.” The 2015 regulation established groundwater monitoring requirements for coal-ash dumps and required power companies to publicize the data starting in March 2018.

The new report analyzed this data, which was collected from more than 4,600 groundwater monitoring wells located around the coal-ash dumps of 265 coal-fired power plants, representing about three quarters of the coal power plants across the United States.

The rest of the plants did not have to comply with the federal Coal Ash Rule’s groundwater monitoring requirements last year, either because they closed their ash dumps before the rule went into effect in 2015 or because they were eligible for an exemption.

The threat to groundwater comes from both coal-ash ponds and dry coal-ash landfills, according to the report. The monitoring data revealed unsafe levels of contamination at 92 percent of ash ponds and 76 percent of ash landfills.

Many of the coal-ash waste ponds around the country are poorly and unsafely designed, with less than 5 percent having waterproof liners to prevent contaminants from leaking into the groundwater, and 59 percent built beneath the water table or within five feet of it.

Among the top 10 most contaminated sites are a family ranch near San Antonio, Texas, where dozens of pollutants leaked into the groundwater from the San Miguel Power Plant.

Another top contender is the Duke Energy Allen Steam Station in Belmont, N.C., where the coal-ash dumps built underneath the water table are now leaking at least 12 pollutants including cobalt — which can cause thyroid problems and other health issues — at concentrations more than 500 times safe levels.

David Rogers, senior representative for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign in the Carolinas, says it’s the oldest active coal plant in the state.

“Unfortunately, we weren’t that surprised that the Allen plant rated so high in terms of level of pollution,” he says. “Duke has been resistant to truly protecting those communities by excavating that coal-ash site and moving the toxic mess to dry lined facilities away from our waterways and drinking sources.”

Rogers added, “The reality is that there’s no perfect way to deal with coal ash. That is why we are pushing so hard for Duke to retire all of its coal fleets, because every single day, they continue to burn coal. They are just making this problem bigger and bigger.”

Duke Energy Corp. had proposed covering some of its ponds and leaving it in place, but on April 1 North Carolina officials ordered the company to remove coal ash from all storage basins in the state.

Utah’s Coal Plants

Power companies have made some effort to reduce the impact of these sites, but local experts question how effective they would be.

Soltysiak expresses doubts about mitigation efforts applied by PacifiCorp, which include so-called research farms  at the Hunter and Huntington coal plants.

“The idea is that waste water from the plant goes to a pond to water the farms so that only the plants absorb the water,” she says. “Rocky Mountain Power claims that the waste water is safe. But if that were the case, there would be no need to divert it to the farms.”

The Sierra Club and its partner, the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, filed a lawsuit in 2015 over the concern that the water at Huntington runs through the coal-ash ponds is contaminated. The most recent Huntington permit document says that this research farm practice must be phased out by 2022.

The state of Utah has a history of coal dependency and has played a critical role in contributing to the nation’s energy sector, Soltysiak says. Still, available technology and opportunities could allow the state to shift from fossil fuels to clean energy, she says.

However, there haven’t been any efforts by Utah’s legislature to curtail the coal plants. In March, Utah’s State Senate panel advanced a legislation that would fund exporting the state’s coal in an attempt to hold onto Utah’s fading coal industry.

Grace Olscamp, communications and outreach associate at the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, says Utah is “unique” in its relationship with coal because it was the first state to build a power plant close to the fuel source, rather than the city. That led to significant transportation cost savings and allowed Utah to have some of the cheapest coal power in the country.

“But Utah does face the same problem that most states with coal plants face: significant investments,” Olscamp says. “Utilities invest millions and millions of dollars into coal plants, whether it’s to keep them up-to-date with the latest regulations or simply just trying to keep them operational. If the utility were simply to shut down a coal plant, they would lose millions, so, naturally, they want to avoid that.”

Although Utah still embraces coal, it has taken some steps toward more sustainable energy. This year the Utah legislature passed a resolution that supports renewable energy development in rural parts of the state.

That’s a start, but Soltysiak say the state should take further steps.

“In recognition of Utah’s long history with coal, we need to be looking towards bringing in new, clean energy jobs and more economic diversity to sustain coal-dependent communities, re-mediating the environmental damage caused by generating coal, and dealing with the legacy pollution from burning coal,” she says.

No Response From Federal Officials, But Some States Step Up

Federal officials have not issued a formal response to the report.

An EPA spokesperson says by email that the agency is reviewing the EIP report and is unable to comment at this time.

But the spokesperson added, “It is important to note that the federal regulations for the disposal of coal-combustion residuals, finalized in 2015, require groundwater monitoring as a first step in a process to monitor and assess contaminants from [coal combustion residual] units. Where contamination is detected above specified levels, the regulations require the owner or operator of the facility to initiate measures to clean up the contamination.”

It doesn’t look like much of this problem will be cleaned up anytime soon.

President Donald Trump vowed to prop up the dying coal industry during his presidential campaign. In 2017 the Trump administration made steps toward rolling back the Clean Power Plan, a signature regulation by the Obama administration that was viewed as the most important step toward curbing carbon emissions, which come mostly from coal power plants.

Also in 2017, an appeals court granted a request from the Trump administration to stop a plan for new pollution controls at Utah’s oldest coal-fired power plants, including Hunter. The move dealt a blow to the efforts to reduce haze near Utah’s iconic national parks such as the Arches and Canyonlands.

Then, in July 2018, the EPA issued a rule that weakened consumer protections related to coal-ash management. It was the first major move under new EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist. The changes will allow some coal-ash ponds to remain open until October 2020 — a year and a half longer than originally planned.

But there is some progress on the state level. Abel Russ, senior attorney at EIP, says some states do more in terms of coal regulation than the federal rules require. For example, he says, while the federal rule doesn’t cover landfills that were closed before 2015, Georgia is regulating those landfills on a state level.

“There are some states that are good role models, and states that are bad role models,” Russ says. “But there’s a lot of room for states to grow on this issue and do a better job.”

Meanwhile Russ estimates that about half of the coal ash buried in America is in landfills and ponds that were closed before 2015, and therefore, are not regulated by the Coal Ash Rule.

“We are hoping that someone should take a note of that fact and require a more comprehensive inventory of all of the ash coal repositories across the country and require clean-up where necessary,” he says.

In its report EIP calls for companies that operate coal plants to dig up the coal ash from all dumps that are located near groundwater and put it elsewhere.

When asked whether it’s possible to clean up coal-ash contamination, Russ says it depends on the site. In some cases it moves very quickly, and in some places it moves slowly.

“You won’t be able to clean up everything,” he says. “But you really can make a difference at each site and see it in a short period of time. It might be five years, it might be 10 years, but you will see the groundwater return to normal if you take the source of pollution out of the picture.”

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Why Every City Needs a Climate Storyteller

The Climate Narrative Project, started by author Jeff Biggers, is training a new generation of storytellers to help us meet the challenges of climate change.

We have a big job ahead of us. The perils of climate change will require that we craft new policies, fund robust scientific research and dramatically rethink most of the infrastructure we rely on — everything from energy to food to transportation. Supporters of a Green New Deal have insisted that we need a World War II-scale mobilization to put the brakes on a fossil-fueled economy. All of this may conjure the work of engineers, urban planners, designers, scientists and policymakers.

But that’s not all.the ask

We’ll also need more storytellers, says Jeff Biggers.

Biggers, a journalist, playwright and historian, has written hundreds of articles and eight books, including Resistance: Reclaiming an American Tradition and Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland. He’s spent decades deeply entrenched in movements for environmental protection and justice, but says he still felt we were falling short on inspiring the change needed to meet the scale of the problem.

So in 2014 he started the Climate Narrative Project, which works with high schools, universities and communities across the country to fuse science and art into new narratives about climate change and solutions that cut across disciplines and media.

We spoke with Biggers about his work helping to train climate storytellers and how it’s changing communities.

Jeff Biggers
Jeff Biggers reads from his book, Resistance. (Photo: Courtesy of the author)

What led you to start the Climate Narrative Project?

I feel like we have a climate communication crisis as much as a climate crisis. We’re not just up against a formidable lobby of oil, gas and coal, but somehow we need to rise above the noise, the distractions and the globalization of indifference to injustice in daily life. While the majority of Americans recognize the growing problem of climate change, surveys have found that most people rarely discuss it or know how to engage in real action.

I’d seen this for years — decades — as a long-time organizer and environmental justice chronicler in coal country. We had often failed at communicating the right story to galvanize enough support to change destructive policies or hold outlaw coal companies and their bankrolled politicos accountable.

What do you hope the project will achieve?

Returning to my roots as a storyteller, I felt we needed to bring together science, humanities and the arts to come up with new climate narratives that could galvanize action and envision ways for regenerative solutions: in effect, to train a new generation of climate storytellers as community organizers.

Based in Iowa, I’ve worked with campuses, community groups and planners in towns and cities across the country, from Appalachia to the steel mills of Gary, Indiana, to rural Arizona to cities in Silicon Valley. I train with artists in all forms of storytelling — dance, theatre, film, spoken word and creative writing, visual arts and radio — in order to rethink our ways in regards to energy, food, waste, urban design and transportation, and our connection to our local history and nature. Then we envision a roadmap through stories in how we can transition toward creating carbon neutral regenerative cities and campuses — ways in which we don’t simply “do less harm,” but actively repair the environmental destruction and replenish our natural resources.

A mural from the “Ecopolis” project in Gary, Indiana. (Photo by Jeff Biggers)

What has been one of your favorite stories that have been told through the project?

In one of my Climate Narrative Project cadres an art student in Iowa stunned her audience by displaying a beautiful painting she had done of the prairies, spoke about her interviews at Standing Rock and then poured black oil all over it to demonstrate the impact of pipeline bursts.

What kind of effects have you seen on audiences or in the communities where these projects have been created?

On a community level, I was blown away by the “Ecopolis” stories composed by a group of urban farmers, rappers, educators, jazz musicians and artists in Gary, Indiana, who brought together an unusually diverse coalition — mainstream environmental groups, churches, teachers and students, business people, city administrators — with their vision of the famous steel city as a carbon neutral regenerative city, walking us through a decade of transitions to green-enterprise zones and circular economies, soil mitigation and local food, rewilding and reconnecting to the extraordinary and biodiverse Indiana dunes.

After the multimedia theatre event at a solar-powered church, the local groups sat down for a lunch hosted by urban farmers and began the process of making this vision a reality.

On a campus level, I’ve been amazed by the Climate Stories Collaborative at Appalachian State University, which followed up our Climate Narrative Project training as an initiative to bring together 23 different academic units and departments to engage students and faculty with story-driven climate actions.

Climate Narrative Project at the Harker School in San Jose, California. (Photo provided by The Harker School)

As climate impacts increase and this issue hits home for more and more people, do you think art and culture will play a bigger role in how we understand the problem and craft the solutions we want to see?

If we’re serious about engaging communities for climate action and environmental justice, storytelling and all the arts must play a key role in our initiatives. I tell every organization, community and interfaith group, school and university, and especially town and city councils: Don’t waste your resources on bureaucrats, task forces and commissioning studies that no one reads — invest in the arts, storytellers, writers, playwrights and farmers.

Every organization, campus and city should have a Climate Storyteller-in-Residence, a Climate Artist-in-Residence, a Farmer-in-Residence, etc. If we are to meet the urgency of climate action, we must be training brigades of climate storytellers to astonish, inspire and organize our communities.

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‘This Is Not Like a Fence in a Backyard’ — Trump’s Border Wall vs. Wildlife

How will the border wall affect jaguars, bears, birds, bees and other wildlife? And what other solutions might work better without harming people or ecosystems?

How will Trump’s border wall affect wildlife in the United States and Mexico?

As I discussed recently on the Sciencentric podcast, the wall’s true impact becomes more evident when you envision all of the things that accompany it: Roads, vehicles, lights, and acres upon acres of cleared habitat. That’s bad news for jaguars, bears, birds, bees and hundreds, if not thousands, of other species.

Check out the video interview below, where host Eric R. Olson and I also discuss The Revelator, my work on “Extinction Countdown,” and what technologies might work instead of a wall.

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To Survive in Texas, Black Bears Need an Open Border

Decades after being wiped out in the Lone Star State, black bears are slowly returning. Experts fear that a border wall between the United States and Mexico would end that recovery.

As a child Diana Doan-Crider loved hearing her grandfather’s tales of the grizzly bears and wolves he saw in the early 1900s while working to build Mexico’s railroads through the mountains. A Tepehuán Indian from Durango Mexico, he told vivid stories, and his knowledge of nature inspired her to become a wildlife biologist when she grew up and to spend decades researching black bears in northern Coahuila’s mountains, just across the Texas border.

That was an important time for black bears, which had all but vanished from Texas in the 1950s following decades of hunting, trapping and habitat loss. The animals started to return to Texas’s Big Bend National Park in the late 1980s. At first it was just a handful of bears, but soon visitors began reporting dozens sighted a year, including females with cubs.

Doan-Crider’s pioneering research, published in 1996, helped confirm what Texas wildlife managers long suspected: Black bears were regaining a foothold in southern Texas, not from other U.S. states but from Mexico.

Mexico has a thriving bear population, thanks to its mountainous expanse and greater cultural acceptance of the animals, both of which also made the recolonization possible, says Doan-Crider, who is now an adjunct professor at Texas A&M University and executive director of a nonprofit called Animo Partnership in Natural Resources.

“Mexico’s bear habitat is so huge, and some local densities are the same as what you’d see in Alaska,” she says. “You can see 25 bears in one day.”

The bears, Doan-Crider and other researchers found, were crossing into Texas from Mexico through the Sierra del Carmen Mountains, which are only separated from the mountains in Big Bend by the Rio Grande River.

Big Bend National Park
Big Bend National Park. Photo © Meg Wilcox.

Big Bend, which was established in 1944 when there were no bears in the area, is a stunning and geologically diverse landscape of mountains, desert and river that stretches for more than 1,200 square miles along the border where West Texas dips into Mexico. It’s also good habitat for the returning bears, and it quickly became a safe haven for the animals.

Today, with the bears still reestablishing themselves, Texas lists the black bear as a threatened species.

This fledgling recovery could now be in jeopardy, however. Experts worry that any obstacle to the animals’ movement, such as President Trump’s proposed border wall, would set back hard-fought efforts to rebuild the population — especially with climate change intensifying the episodes of drought and wildfire that serve as key drivers for bears expanding beyond their usual range.

“The ability for wildlife to move across that border is so important,” says Patricia Moody Harveson, a research scientist at Borderlands Research Institute at Sul Ross State University. “We would not have black bears in Texas anymore if it wasn’t for that transboundary movement across that border.”

Black bear cubs
Black bear cubs at Big Bend National Park. Photo: National Park Service (public domain)

It’s not clear whether the Trump administration plans to construct the border wall through Big Bend, although it continues pressing forward with plans to build the wall through the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge and a 100-acre butterfly refuge.

The National Park Service declined a request to be interviewed for this story.

A volunteer ranger at the park, who did not want to be identified, told The Revelator that talk of the wall is, “all buttoned up.” But he said it “goes against everything the park stands for” and wondered how a wall could be built when heavy machinery is banned from the park, even for the removal of old telephone poles.

Bears, of course, are only one of many species, from reptiles and amphibians to bighorn sheep, which would be affected by the proposed wall. Beyond Texas, conservationists recently claimed that building the wall would be “game over” for recovering jaguar and ocelot populations in Arizona.

Jonah Evans, state mammalogist at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, agrees with Harveson that, “when it comes to bears, being able to travel across large areas is important to recover their populations and thrive in a landscape as challenging as West Texas.”

Evans can’t say how big the bear population is in the state, but he says they’ve mapped breeding populations in just three of Texas’ 254 counties.

“Right now, we have very few,” he adds. “It’s a pretty isolated population.”

Bear breeding map
Credit: Texas Parks and Wildlife Department

Bears are tough to count, because they cover huge distances and are expensive to catch and monitor. Texas Parks therefore relies on data from trail cameras and from voluntary reports of bear sightings by ranchers, such as at deer feeders.

Based on those reports, Evans says Big Bend National Park is “clearly one of the core breeding populations that we have.”

He adds, “If you don’t have breeding, you don’t have bears.”

Climate Change and Cross-border Movement

Extreme weather events appear to be a key driver for bears crossing the border, according to Doan-Crider’s research.

“We’re now looking at how drought and events like wildfires are a driving mechanism for expanding a bear population,” says Doan-Crider. “Normally females might not leave their home range, but once those droughts hit, once wildfires come in, they will cover huge distances to find some habitat.”

Her research correlates maps of food sources like oak trees (acorns) and prickly pear with bear movements, documenting that female bears will travel twice as far as in times of drought, or what she calls the “threshold of misery.”

Black bears can have enormous ranges during these periods, as great as about 380 square miles, she says.

This can drive bears from Mexico into the United States or force them to journey in the opposite direction. Other researchers, including Dave Onorato and Raymond Skiles, the recently retired wildlife biologist for Big Bend, have also documented these border crossings during drought. At one point in the early 2000s, when food was scarce in Big Bend, all the bears left for Mexico and then returned a year a half later. Similarly, Harveson noted that two bears the Borderlands Research Institute was radio-tracking crossed over into Mexico during the severe 2012 drought.

Invisible Wall

As “horrified” as she is by the proposed border wall, Doan-Crider says she’s more concerned about what she calls the “invisible wall,” or the lack of social acceptance and lack of preparation bears hit when they cross into Texas.

Most wildlife managers and researchers are focused on Big Bend, but Doan-Crider says she thinks bears are also crossing into Texas farther east, from the mountains just south of Laredo, where Mexican land cooperatives are protecting bears. They don’t stand a chance on the U.S. side, she says, because of the likelihood that they’ll come into contact with humans who aren’t used to living with bears, or with landowners who have deer-hunting operations.

Meanwhile, Harveson says the breeding population at Big Bend appears to be spreading into the Davis Mountains, about 150 miles to the north. That could also put them at risk.

“As bears move into areas they haven’t been in for more than 50 years, we look for that potential for human-bear conflict,” she says. The Borderlands Research Institute plans to study the corridors that bears are using to traverse this distance, as well as their use of habitat and movements within the Davis Mountains. “We’d like to help make the adjustment easier.”

Doan-Crider agrees that more steps need to be taken to protect the black bears that have returned to their former range.

“If Texas wants to do something about bears, they should be putting a lot of money into educating the public,” she stresses.

Doan-Crider says the question of the wall, and the bigger question of bear recovery, is more about, “Do you want to have bears in Texas?”

If the answer is yes, then keeping the border open — especially at Big Bend — is vital.

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March of the Ticks: Is Lyme Disease Spreading Faster Than We Can Respond?

Climate change is bringing the tick-borne illness to new parts of the country every year, outpacing data collection and response by the Centers for Disease Control.

Ticks and the diseases they carry are spreading so quickly across the United States — likely driven by climate change — that the government is having trouble keeping up with the data.

In the past most cases of Lyme disease, the country’s most common tick-borne illness, occurred in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic and Upper Midwest states. But a recent report issued by lab-testing company Quest Diagnostics reveals the disease has dramatically expanded its range. According to the report, Lyme disease has now been found in all 50 states.

“Our data show that positive results for Lyme are both increasing in number and occurring in geographic areas not historically associated with the disease,” Quest’s senior medical director, Harvey W. Kaufman, M.D., said in a prepared statement last summer. “We hypothesize that these significant rates of increase may reinforce other research suggesting changing climate conditions that allow ticks to live longer and in more regions may factor into disease risk.”

Lyme outbreaks have long been tracked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but the agency’s data present an incomplete picture because Lyme reporting is still voluntary in many states. Quest’s report, compiled from data on physician-ordered blood tests for the disease, presents a bigger picture of the spread and shows higher numbers of cases in some states than those in the CDC’s records. Quest’s Lyme disease cast count for California in 2017 is more than three times higher than the CDC’s count.

Adding to the picture, a recent citizen science study published in PLoS ONE detected the species of tick that carries Lyme disease in several counties previously not reported by the CDC.

The spread of these ticks and their diseases is just one more economic cost created by climate change. A recently published review found that the annual economic impact of Lyme disease in the United States is $786 million — and that’s only going to grow as the disease continues to advance. Groups are now advocating for increased government budgeting for Lyme disease initiatives.

How bad is it? These maps show the geographic spread and steady increase in Lyme disease cases in the states where it is still most prevalent. (According to the CDC, these numbers probably represent about one-tenth of all new U.S. Lyme diseases cases.)


Note: The CDC’s records for Massachusetts have dropped sharply since 2016, though the state reports that new infections have continued to rise through that period.

For more information on Lyme disease and your risks, visit cdc.gov/lyme/.

 

Sources and Methods:
County-level Lyme disease data reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2000 – 2017 available here.

Dot density maps were developed in ArcGIS Pro by randomly placing a tick symbol within a county’s boundaries for every 20 or 5 Lyme diseases cases (in the Northeast or Great Lakes regions respectively) reported from that county.

The CDC’s surveillance data are captured by county of residence, not county of exposure. The CDC also notes this data set is limited by under-reporting of cases in highly endemic areas.

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Death by Rail: What We’re Finally Learning About Preventing Wildlife-train Collisions

Railways can be deadly for animals ranging from elephants to grizzlies and frogs, but we’re just beginning to understand the causes and solutions.

Last year a terrible accident in India made headlines around the world. Late one February night, a speeding train struck a herd of elephants crossing the tracks, instantly killing two adults and two calves. A third adult died soon after.

It wasn’t an isolated incident. Over the past 30 years train collisions have killed more than 220 elephants in India alone.

Most of those incidents don’t generate international headlines; nor do the deaths of thousands of additional animals killed by trains worldwide each year. In fact most wildlife-train collisions go unnoticed, their fatalities left uncounted — which has made it difficult for experts to study the problem and mitigate its impacts.

That puts us woefully behind similar research to reduce vehicle-wildlife collisions on roads, an active field of research for the past two decades. That’s because car-animal collisions present a greater danger to human safety and property, according to a 2016 study surveying the emerging field of railway ecology. “Despite the field of road ecology rapidly expanding and the large footprint created by railways, there is a prominent lack of research related to railways and their effects on wildlife,” the study found.

Here’s what we do know: Like roads, railways fragment habitat and can affect all kinds of wildlife in varying ways. Collisions are the most common cause of mortality, but some animals die from electrocution or being stuck between the rails, leaving them susceptible to predation, starvation or dehydration.

Exactly how many animals die is a bit of a mystery. Railway mortalities are usually not as visible to the public as roadkill, and railways can be harder to access for research and data collection, the 2016 study found.

The little research that has been done on railways and wildlife has been largely limited in both scope and geography. The majority of studies have looked at large mammals, mostly in North America and Europe, with some attention paid to elephant strikes in India.

“The mammal species receiving the most attention are frequently the larger ones, such as moose, bears or elephants as they cause more damage to trains, disrupt the normal operation of the train network, or hold higher conservation and economic status,” according to the editors of the 2017 book Railway Ecology.

Understanding how to curb wildlife deaths from trains means first understanding what draws animals to the tracks in the first place, which is not always easy. New research is working to close that knowledge gap, identify problem areas and find cost-effective solutions.

Deer on train tracks
Deer on the railway tracks in New York. (Photo by Timothy Vogel, CC BY-NC 2.0)

The timing of this research, experts tell us, is important. With rail transit of products and materials on the rise and high-speed rail networks expected to grow as we work globally to lower our carbon footprint, the number of fatalities could soon increase unless we devote more resources to additional research and mitigation.

Railway Barriers

Rail tracks can make for tough times if you’re a toad — even a big one.

In Brazil a 2018 study found an estimated 10,000 Cururu toads (Rhinella marina) and related species, often called giant toads, were dying every year along a 500-mile stretch of railway. Researcher Rubem Dornas says they still don’t know exactly why so many toads die, but it appears the tracks formed a barrier the toads can’t cross while migrating. Despite the large size of the toads, which average about 4 to 6 inches in length, the researchers found they may not be able to jump or climb over rails more than 6 inches high.

“We think the main problem is the barrier effect caused by the rails,” says Dornas.

Not all the fatalities are the result of being run over by passing trains. Some of the toads appeared to have died from desiccation due to extreme heat from the tracks.

Most horrifyingly, others showed signs of barotrauma, where a sudden change in air pressure from the fast-moving train causes the inner organs to be blown out — the toads literally exploded from the inside.

While additional research would help to better understand the problem and its population-level impacts for the toads, Dornas says that providing passage underneath the rails could be a useful solution.

A 2018 study of endangered gopher tortoises (Gopherus polyphemus), which have been known to cross railways near John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida, came to a similar conclusion.

“We predict that nearly all tortoises in the vicinity of railways are susceptible to becoming entrapped or experiencing reduced movement and dispersal,” the researchers wrote. They recommended trenches that can create a safe passage underneath the tracks and an escape route for those that get caught between rails.

While smaller in size, these trenches are similar in concept to corridor bridges and tunnels that are commonly used to help animals safely cross roadways. And while crossing structures may be used occasionally for railways — like a “landscape” bridge over railway tracks that was opened in Stockholm, Sweden in 2017 — it’s far less common. The biggest reason is simply financial — the structures take resources to build, and so far more investments have been devoted to reducing wildlife collisions on roads than rails.

Wildlife road overpass
Wildlife overpasses, like this one in British Columbia, is more common for roads than rails. (Photo by B.C. Ministry of Transport, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

That could change with more interest in railway ecology and cheaper building options. ARC Solutions, a project of the Center for Large Landscape Conservation, held a recent design competition to rethink the materials and engineering used in wildlife overpasses to make them more sustainable and affordable. If those concepts come to fruition, it could mean an easier lift to develop safer crossing systems for all kinds of wildlife over both roads and rails.

Warning Systems

Getting animals over or under tracks safely is helpful when a railway is an obstacle. But, as researchers found in Alberta, Canada, railways can also be a destination. And that requires a new set of solutions.

Concern over grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) deaths on the Canadian Pacific Railway between Banff and Yoho national parks has prompted years of study. “The causes for attraction of bears to the rail are really surprisingly complex and variable among individuals,” says Colleen Cassady St. Clair, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Alberta, who has been leading a team to determine why grizzlies end up on railways and how to prevent their deaths. “There just isn’t a single simple solution.”

The biggest reason is that railways are a good place for a bear to find food. For one thing, the trains can spill grain from their cargo cars, leaving behind a steady supply of free food.

The very existence of the railways also opens up avenues for grizzly dining. The carcasses of deer and other ungulates struck by trains are an attractant for bears. Railways are slightly warmer than adjacent forests, which attracts ants, another grizzly food, researchers have found. And palatable vegetation also grows along the tracks, providing grizzlies with a wide range of edible choices.

This “edge habitat,” according to a 2017 study co-authored by St. Clair, has “higher species richness, diversity and cover for seven of the eight most commonly-occurring species that are consumed by grizzly bears.” Buffaloberry, a local fruit that’s an important source of nutrients for bears pre-hibernation, was even found to have more fruit, ripen earlier and have higher sugar content within 15 meters the railway lines compared to the nearby interior forest.

Grizzly bear
Food that grizzly bears like, including berries, have been found to grow more abundantly near rail tracks. (Photo by Christian Tauber, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

More food along railways means the possibility of more train strikes on bears. So what to do about it?

One tactic would be to limit the growth of vegetation that attracts bears and other wildlife, or, as Canadian Pacific Railways has done, remove vegetation from along the tracks that could obscure sight and sounds lines to make approaching trains easier to see and hear at certain problem locations.

But St. Clair favors a different approach, developed by one of her graduate researchers, Jonathan Backs. He invented a warning system using a vibration sensor on the track that, farther down, triggers a ringing bell sound and flashing light 30 seconds before a train passes by a hotspot that has been designated for mitigation.

Acoustic warning systems have been developed elsewhere. Poland is testing a system that deters wildlife from approaching trains by loudly broadcasting recordings of barking dogs and alarm calls of other animals. Japan is testing a similar system. St. Clair says that these acoustic warning systems are promising, but it’s too early to determine how effective they’ll ultimately be. One drawback could be that if predator sounds are used as a deterrent and no predator ultimately appears, animals will stop associating those warning sounds with a risk.

To avoid that potential pitfall, the warning system that Backs is developing in Alberta has a key difference: It’s not meant to scare the animals, but to teach them.

“Our idea with this approach was to help the animals learn that these warning signals, which are not scary in themselves, are reliably associated with the train coming, which most animals seem to find scary,” says Backs. “And then the animals would learn to get out of the way when they receive these warning signals rather than waiting for the train to arrive.”

Backs says he’s still analyzing the data he has collected from trials of the warning system, but preliminary results are encouraging — and not just for bears. Other large animals appear to leave the tracks around six seconds earlier when the system is used.

And that’s another reason St. Clair is excited about the potential of this system. Public interest in grizzlies helped spur the research, but the mitigation can be useful for all kinds of wildlife and all over the world. “The principles potentially apply to all animals,” she says.

Backs says there is still more work to do to prove the concept and then find partner organizations to implement it. “The most important thing for me is to get it out there and make it real and put it in the hands of people who are working hard to keep animals safe,” he says. “It might end up being only one part of a broader toolbox — different solutions are appropriate in different situations — but it’s exciting that this could actually be used to save lives.”

And for the field of railway ecology, more research is still needed, too, says St. Clair.

“We need a broader understanding of where mortality is a real problem, for which species and what the circumstances are that generate locations of higher vulnerability,” she says. “Some ongoing work in Banff is trying to put together an entire database of animals that have been killed on the rail and determine what environmental and train operational factors seem to contribute to that vulnerability. With that information it will be possible to be more surgical, if you will, in applying the right kind of mitigation.”

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Ruby Mountains: A Push to Drill, a Failure to Consult Native Peoples

A plan to lease oil and gas drilling rights on nearly a million acres of land near the Te-Moak Tribe of the Western Shoshone illustrates the consistent lack of government consultation with tribes.

It’s a frigid December morning when I meet Chairman Joseph Holley at the Te-Moak tribal headquarters in Elko, Nevada, seven hours north of Las Vegas. Holley, tall and round-faced, offers me a cup of coffee. He has the burly build of a man who worked 37 years in the area’s gold mines, drilling aboveground and digging below the surface.

Holley’s a relatively new tribal chairman, having served since November 2018. “I’m still catching up with a lot of things,” he tells me. He’s following in the footsteps of father, activist Glenn Holley, Sr., who fought for aboriginal title to restore Te-Moak lands starting in the 1970s.

That heritage of activism may need to be invoked for the struggle that Chairman Holley and the Te-Moak now face. A major plan to lease drilling rights near the Ruby Mountains, including land bordering the Ruby Lake Wildlife Refuge, threatens not just the local ecosystem but the tribe’s very existence.

Mining the Mountains

The Ruby Mountains are a prime summertime destination for anglers and hikers, but for the Te-Moak Tribe of the Western Shoshone, who have called the area home for tens of thousands of years, these are the Duka-Doya mountains. Here are pronghorn and bighorn sheep, mule deer and greater sage-grouse. The rivers run with mountain whitefish and native rainbow trout, while endangered Lahontan cutthroat trout swim in the lakes. Here the Te-Moak have gathered nuts and branches and tracked the pathways of wildlife, in tune with the changing seasons. Over millennia, the Te-Moak learned what plants grow where and when, and which animals come to drink in certain springs.

These are watering holes that — if oil and gas companies get their way — might dry up forever, bringing the Te-Moak cultural history to a close.

This June the Nevada Bureau of Land Management plans to auction oil and gas leasing rights on 934,244 acres of public lands in the Ruby Mountains area. Long in the works, the lease parcels were formally announced on Feb. 19. In Elko the BLM will offer 49 parcels, comprising 75,005 acres. In the nearby Battle Mountain district, it will lease 123 parcels, amounting to 264,075 acres. The Ely district will see the largest amount leased: 291 parcels totaling 604,164 acres.

ruby mountains mapAccording to Holley, lands included for possible leasing are both within and adjoining the South Fork Band reservation at the foothills of the Ruby Mountains. (The Te-Moak have four bands: the South Fork, Wells, Battle Mountain and Elko colonies.)

Another 52,533 acres in the nearby Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest were expected to be similarly auctioned, but the U.S. Forest Service denied that lease request on March 14 following months of public outcry and data that showed the land had little drilling value.

Ruby Mountains
Thunderstorms near the Ruby Mountains near Elko, Nev., Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. Photo by Michael Balen. Credit: U.S. Forest Service.

When I visited Elko to talk with Chairman Holley and other residents, I found that many people were still unaware of the ongoing BLM leasing plans. Those who heard feared they would have devastating effects on the local land and peoples and expressed outrage at how little the tribe was consulted.

Polluted Medicines

I meet Fermina Stevens in an Elko hotel/casino. Stevens served as chairperson representing the Elko Band on the Te-Moak tribal council from 2000-2003 and since 2012 has worked as a legal assistant for the Cavanaugh-Bill Law office, where she’s assisted on cases of the Western Shoshone Defense Project.

As we sit at the casino bar, Stevens tells me she’s concerned about public access. Specifically, tribal access.

Historically the Western Shoshone used a wide swath of land, travelling to seasonal camps and trekking to different sites to gather various foods and medicinal plants. That traditional land is now federally owned “public” land, with highly restricted access. Only 14,005 acres have been accorded to the tribal reservations.

“We have to go to public lands to gather,” Stevens explains. “We gather willow across a wide area, which means we need wide access.”

Red and green willow, which are used to create cradleboards and baskets, have particularly important cultural significance, she tells me.

“Our culture is our gathering, our willow, our prayer. We come from the land.” Other important plants include cedar, sage, and the doza root that grows close to sagebrush. In early fall, from September to October, the Te-Moak gather pine nuts.

And the Te-Moak’s limited acreage doesn’t protect many sites of spiritual and cultural significance. If tribal members wish to conduct a ceremony on BLM land — for example, at the summer and fall solstices, the points of the year of highest cultural significance — they must submit a request to the agency, including a map of the area to be entered.

Holley later tells me this raises a particularly difficult dilemma: How do they protect these areas of sacred significance without announcing them to the outside world?

He asks, what will happen when those sites the Te-Moak have been utilizing for centuries end up in private hands? How will the continuity of their culture be affected?

Stevens says she also worries about how the land itself will be affected by oil and gas development, particularly fracking.

“Fracking pollutes our medicines, the water, the animals who are drinking the water,” she says. Leasing the land, including fracking, “affects us spiritually. It’s a big loss. We need clean water and plants to conduct our ceremony.”

Lost Lands

For the Western Shoshone, these lands have always been theirs.

The 1863 Treaty of Peace and Friendship at Ruby Valley acknowledged as Shoshone lands a wide swath from the Shoshone River Valley in the north, to the Smith Creek Mountains in the west, to the Colorado Desert in the south to the Great Salt Lake Valley in the east.

Holley asks: How will fracking affect those never-ceded lands, now held by BLM “as a trustee” of public lands?

If the piñon trees dry up because water-intensive fracking sucks springs dry, then how can the Western Shoshone teach their children about the history that happened at that spring?

“Kids will lose their culture, tradition and history.”

Holley has seen the pattern before with past mining projects. For example, the Newmont Mining Company’s open-pit Lone Tree gold mine notoriously polluted the local water with arsenic, boron and other contaminants. BLM promised the Te-Moak that water sources would remain unaffected. However, according to Holley, “the mine drew water down to where springs don’t flow any more. It changes the whole landscape, everything that depends on the water, the grasses, the trees, the animals that drink from the springs.”

More recently, Holley says, BLM permitted Newmont to dry up 63 springs near its Long Canyon Mine in Wells.

“BLM assures us that it will be fine, that the water will be healthy,” Holley says. “It never is fine.”

Chairman Joseph Holley
Chairman Joseph Holley. Photo: Tiffany Higgins

Kyle Hendrix, public affairs specialist for the Battle Mountain BLM district, later tells me that cleanup of mining waste by companies such as Newmont is “voluntary.”

In Elko Holley’s jaw is set, eyes registering the memory of failed promises.

Contradictory Stories About Consultation

During and after my visit to Elko, I’m told conflicting stories about whether and how tribes had been consulted on this leasing of public lands.

The Nevada BLM’s Environmental Assessment report, dated Feb. 13, states that consultation included “letters, phone calls, e-mails, and visits with individual tribal/band Environmental Coordinators or other representatives.”

Chairman Holley denies that, stating that aside from a Feb. 4 letter informing the tribe of the June auction, the Te-Moak have not been contacted in other manners. According to Holley, authentic consultation has not happened.

Letters, he says, show little understanding of his people’s culture or policies. BLM and Forest Service consultation-request letters require a reply within 30 days, but the Te-Moak Council, which makes all decisions collectively, meets only once a month. Ironically, the very letter to invite consultation from the tribes imposes a timeline that ignores the tribal calendar.

When I contact all three BLM relevant districts (Ely, Battle Mountain and Elko), the claim to have visited tribal members appears to be more aspirational than accurate. Greg Deimel, public affairs specialist for the Elko district, says their district’s tribal liaison Native American coordinator would have met with tribal councils in January were it not for the government shutdown.

Kyle Hendrix, public affairs specialist for the Battle Mountain district, tells me that the letters sent on Feb. 4 are “the only formal letter on consultation for the upcoming June sale.”

Hendrix says the BLM’s goal “is to provide government-to-government consultation with the sovereign tribes, which is a little bit elevated and happens earlier than the more standard public scoping processes. We’re looking to get early issues and concerns. If they’ve got an area of tribal significance, cultural significance, within some of these areas that we’re looking at doing that, it’s the opportunity to say ‘These are our concerns,’ and what can be done to include the removal of that parcel in that sale.”

He adds, “We’ve got a great working relationship with the tribes. It’s really a high priority for the Battle Mountain district.”

But Holley objects to smaller BLM districts sending letters to the tribe, arguing that it doesn’t constitute actual government-to-government consultation, which would be “President-to-president, country-to-country. Get us to the top, somebody that can make changes, make adjustments.” Meeting with his counterpart in the Nevada BLM at the state level, he says, would fulfill government-to-government consultation.

Federal Declarations on Consultation

What’s legally and culturally expected in tribal consultation?

International declarations require more than just consultation, says Matthew Campbell, attorney for the Native American Rights Fund. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Article 32, states that indigenous peoples must give “free, prior, and informed consent” to projects that will affect them.

In U.S. law, Campbell explains, “the federal government has an obligation to consult with Indian tribes on matters that will have an impact on the tribes, their resources, whether it’s water resources or land, their traditional resources, cultural resources, within their traditional areas.” He mentions directives issued by Presidents Clinton and Obama stating that the government needs to take its obligation to tribes very seriously.

Campbell says the federal government’s responsibility to tribes is “separate and apart from any obligation that it might have to the public. Tribes are not just mere stakeholders. Because they have the unique government-to-government relationship, the feds have a unique obligation to reach out, take affirmative steps to ensure the tribes understand what it intends to do and get the tribes’ position.”

I mention Chairman Holley’s contention that he’s only received a letter from BLM, but no contact beyond that.

Campbell declined to comment on the specific case, but says “in general, form letters should not be sufficient. They need to reach out to the tribes and ensure that they really understand what is taking place.”

How Are Cultural Resources Assessed? The Story Between the Stones

If the June auction goes through, any oil and gas companies winning leases would have to spell out their plans for the land. It’s only at this point that the BLM would hire an archaeologist to survey the “cultural resources” on those particular parcels.

Holley objects to this process, saying an archaeologist’s assessment can’t be called a “cultural survey” if the tribe isn’t asked to consult on it.

The problem, Holley says, is that an archaeologist may identify art on stones and determine those areas to be worthy of protection. But without the storied past of the Te-Moak culture, the expert might be ignorant of a spring or other natural features of cultural significance, where the Te-Moak have passed on teachings through the generations.

“They label archaeological surveys as cultural surveys, but they won’t pay or invite us to be on site,” he says. “So it’s not a cultural survey. This happens quite regularly, all the time.” Holley maintains that such surveys turn out to be rubber stamping what the company already intends to do.

“We’re much more than stones. Tell me what happened in between the stones,” Holley insists. It is a declaration that resists the historical tendency of anthropology and archaeology to see native peoples as physical artefacts rather than living cultures whose oral histories are embedded in the land.

Holley prods, “Who better to do such an assessment than the ones who live the story between the stones?” To his mind the Te-Moak should be integrated into the beginning of any cultural surveys. And be paid for it.

Although Hendrix of the BLM Battle Mountain district later notes hypothetical instances where tribes might be paid for consultation services, he doesn’t furnish any examples.

Holley also suggests that conducting an official ethnography — a scientific study of the customs of peoples and cultures — would go a long way toward recording, and perhaps protecting, traditionally used gathering sites. However, Holley describes struggling with BLM over who conducts the ethnography.

“Ethnography should be part of the process of reviewing a plan — for example, for oil and gas leasing or mining,” he says. “But they always want to choose the ethnographer,” which he says leads such reports to be biased. He’d like to raise funds to hire a non-BLM ethnographer, but so far the tribe hasn’t found the money to do so.

Past Experience

I ask Chairman Holley if he has faith that BLM would, if properly informed, indeed remove places of tribal concern from the parcels to be leased in June?

“No. I don’t trust how they do business,” he says. The tribe’s past experience has taught them differently.

“When you come face to face with BLM, they don’t hear a thing you’re saying,” he says. “It’s just frustrating.” He mentions BLM district administrators who “don’t do what they say they’re going to do,” and instead “go just the opposite direction.”

He challenges the BLM representatives to “tell us where the cultural side, the medicinal side is,” but despairs that they lack such knowledge and don’t seem interested in learning.

His tone turns urgent, the buildup of decades of not having the Te-Moak cosmology and cultural practices truly heard or respected: “We’re a part of the land, we hunt, we gather medicinal herbs, we pray. This is what’s required of us as human beings to give back to what’s provided to us to live by.”

He describes a relationship with the land and its denizens that is mutual. The land, which they call Newe Sogobia, requires humans’ humble tending. It’s a worldview distinct from the Western view of land as the deliverer of economic resources — oil, gas, and minerals for companies to exploit.

So will the tribe answer the February letters from the BLM districts, particularly the inquiry regarding identification of places of tribal concern?

“Yes,” Holley replies; they’ll answer the letters.

But in doing that, he says, they want the locations of their most significant places “under lock and key.” That hasn’t happened in the past. Before development of the Tosawihi Quarries within the Waterton Mining Company’s Hollister Mines, the Te-Moak identified and notified Elko BLM of ancient rock shelters that Holley says were used as blinds when gathering or hunting. Despite this notification, “these cairns got kicked over by the mining company.”

Another project saw workers drive right through a sacred site, which BLM reportedly blamed on its archaeologists’ GPS not synching up with the mining company’s maps.

“If BLM can’t even ensure that their own people will protect our sacred locations, then how can they keep others from destroying them?” Holley asks.

They’re hoping that this time, history won’t repeat itself.

Holding Out Hope for Consultation

On March 26, according to Holley, the tribe received a phone call from Elko District BLM Native American consultation coordinator/tribal liaison Jessica Montcalm. They’ve agreed that Montcalm, whose background is in industrial archaeology, will come to the April 3 tribal council meeting. Holley stresses that this classifies as information-gathering, not consultation. “She’s not the boss, so she can’t make the decision” about parcels to be leased for oil and gas uses.

“We always request to talk with the lead person in the agency.” He acknowledges that, in the past, the BLM-Elko district has sent its district manager, Jill Silvey. But in general he hasn’t seen the agency take steps allowing the Te-Moak to talk “with someone who can make laws and regulations.”

So far, he stresses, there has been no consultation. To begin true consultation, he’d like to see BLM approach the tribe to propose adequate dates to meet with the Te-Moak tribal council — and then not just give information, but listen.

I ask him if he thinks the BLM and the Te-Moak tribe will actually get to that phase of consultation. “Honestly, probably not. They’re too overworked, they’re too busy, they have no time. But, let’s see where it goes. Maybe they will.”

As time winds down before the June lease auction, Holley holds out that slim hope.

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Bees, Cougars and Climate: The Best New Environmental Books of April

This month brings new books by Bill McKibben and Carl Safina, as well as important discussions about wildlife coexistence, poaching and dam removal.

If you’re looking for some inspiration, you’re in luck. Booksellers will soon see a massive influx of powerful and informative new environmental books. They cover everything from pollinators to animal cognition and predator coexistence to the morality of environmental protection.

revelator readsWe’ve picked the 17 best eco-books of April 2019, including titles for activists, scientists and eco-friendly kids. Links are to publishers’ websites, and you can also find any of these books at your favorite store or library. Pick the ones that are best for you and then put this new inspiration and information to good use saving the planet.

Wildlife and Endangered Species:

protecting pollinatorsProtecting Pollinators: How to Save the Creatures That Feed Our World by Jodi Helmer — An in-depth look at the pollinator crisis (which is affecting bees, as well as bats, birds and other pollen-spreaders) and what people around the world are doing to reverse the declines. A buzz-worthy book.

Down From the Mountain: The Life and Death of a Grizzly Bear by Bryce Andrews — A cautionary tale of human-grizzly coexistence (or lack thereof). The book helps to illustrate the broader issues affecting grizzlies as their populations grow, pushing them closer and closer to humans (and, sadly, their guns).

Beyond Words: What Elephants and Whales Think and Feel by Carl Safina — A new version of Safina’s bestselling book about the inner lives of animals, adapted for young-adult readers.

Corridor Ecology: Linking Landscapes for Biodiversity Conservation and Climate Adaptation — The second edition of this important book discusses the latest science about wildlife corridors and how to restore them. (Read our interview with co-editor Jody Hilty here.)

Our Planet by Alastair Fothergill, Keith Scholey and Fred Pearce — The directors of the BBC’s Planet Earth and Blue Planet have brought their talents to Netflix for a new documentary series about conservation. This gorgeously photographed coffee-table book expands upon the documentary itself and gives us the chance to slow down and absorb every detail. David Attenborough, who narrates the TV series, provides the foreword.

The Sea Turtle Mystery — The famous “Boxcar Children Mysteries” series tackles the thorny issue of sea turtle egg poaching, a major threat to the survival of all sea turtle species. Can the kids solve the crime and save an endangered species? Geez, I sure hope so.

yellowstone cougarsYellowstone Cougars: Ecology Before and During Wolf Restoration by Toni K. Ruth, Polly C. Buotte and Maurice G. Hornocker — This massive book (525 pages, weighing 1.7 pounds!) is the result of years of fieldwork by the authors. It reveals how wolves and cougars compete with each other and sets the stage for what may be the next era of carnivore conservation and management in the West.

Don’t Let Them Disappear by Chelsea Clinton and Gianna Marino — A delightful kids’ book about why tigers, elephants, rhinos and other species are at risk and what we can do to help. Also available in Spanish.

Ocean Outbreak: Confronting the Rising Tide of Marine Disease by Drew Harvell — If you want to know more about diseases affecting marine wildlife, there’s no better person to turn to than Harvell, the scientist who led recent research into the starfish wasting epidemic affecting the west coast. Her new book examines starfish, as well as corals, abalone and salmon to define both the problem and the necessary solutions.

History Lessons for the Future:

Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power by Anna Merlan — This isn’t strictly an environmental book, but you want to better understand why some people (and certain presidents) keep insisting that climate change is a hoax, then you need this on your nightstand. Prozac not included.

Same River Twice: The Politics of Dam Removal and River Restoration by Peter Brewitt — A profile of three dam-removal projects in the Pacific Northwest with lessons for advocates throughout the world.

As Long as Grass GrowsAs Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock by Dina Gilio-Whitaker — The history of indigenous resistance may offer all of us the strength we need to keep fighting, from the co-author of “All the Real Indians Died Off” And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans.

Morality and the Environmental Crisis by Roger S. Gottlieb — How can we be good people when so many of our individual and collective actions contribute to the destruction of the planet? This major new academic book explores the philosophical, religious, political, societal and ethical challenges and opportunities of living in a time of crisis. (Or you can just watch this episode of “The Good Place.”)

Pollution and Climate Change:

chokedChoked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution by Beth Gardiner — My lungs hurt just reading the description of this book. Gardiner traveled the world to find out how pollution clogs our cities, hearts and politics. Along the way she uncovers the solutions that just may help us all breathe a little easier.

Losing Earth: A Recent History by Nathaniel Rich — A book-length expansion of Rich’s widely shared New York Times Magazine article about how we could have solved the climate crisis in the 1980s — and maybe how we can put those lessons to better use today.

Science Comics: Wild Weather by MK Reed and Jonathan Hill — The science of storms, meteorology and climate change in a fun, easy-to-read graphic format. Like everything in the “Science Comics” series, this is sure to entertain while it educates, no matter what your age.

Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben — Be strong. No, seriously, that’s the ultimate message of this latest book by the acclaimed environmental activist.

That’s our list for this month, but there’s plenty more to add to your reading lists. For dozens of additional recent eco-books, check out the “Revelator Reads” archive — and come back in just a few weeks for next month’s inspiring list.

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How to Win the Fight Against Plastic

The Story of Stuff Project’s Stiv Wilson talks about an upcoming film that traces the life cycle of plastic and the people leading the fight against it.

When you throw things away, do you wonder where “away” is? An upcoming film, to be released this fall by the nonprofit The Story of Stuff Project, traces the journey of our plastic products. It covers not just where our plastic goes but also where it comes from.

It’s a lesson we need.the ask

We’re at a reckoning point with plastic waste. Many countries that once accepted our discards are now turning it away. Islands of plastic are growing in the ocean, and it’s being eaten by animals living in the farthest reaches of the planet. The current rate of plastic production is “incongruent to planet Earth,” says Stiv Wilson, director of campaigns for The Story of Stuff Project. And yet industry is planning to ramp up production fueled by the availability of cheap natural gas.

So what to do? According to Wilson, we need to lift up the voices of those who live in the most affected places. They already know what solutions work best.

Bringing those voices to the front is at the heart of The Story of Stuff’s new film, he says. But to find those people, they had to travel far and wide. The journey took them to the oilfields of Karnes County, Texas; a pipeline route through western Pennsylvania; the ship channel of Houston; the ghost towns in China that are turning away plastic waste; Jakarta, where plastic pollution is dozens of feet deep; and India, where plastic-burning incinerators spew toxic chemicals into the air.

We talked with Wilson about the upcoming movie and his journey to produce it.

Stiv Wilson
The Story of Stuff Project’s Stiv Wilson has traveled the world looking for solutions to our plastic crisis.

What are you hoping this film will accomplish?

For a long time, I think, the plastic pollution issue has been framed as an ocean issue, and what we haven’t really talked about enough is what the whole system of plastic looks like. Plastic pollutes at every stage of its life cycle.

I don’t think most people know that if you want it to stop plastic from going into the ocean in Indonesia you need to ban fracking in the Ohio River valley. The U.S. is the largest exporter of oil and gas as feedstocks for plastic — we feed China, we feed Europe — because of the fracking boom here.

So our intention with the film is to show the entire system of plastic and that includes every stage and also that upstream the human health concerns are way more significant than eating fish that’s eaten plastic — living next to a refinery for plastics is going to be far more dangerous.

But all along the life cycle of plastics there’s people fighting back. These are people whose stories you don’t often hear and they are the people who actually have the solutions to the problem.

Were there places that really impacted you personally?

The hardest thing I witnessed on this whole trip was outside of Delhi. There was an open dump, which was bigger than the pyramids at Giza — you can see it 20 miles away. And at the base of that is an urban dairy farm. Then right adjacent to it is an incinerator where the toxic bottom and fly ash is going straight into the dump. Then it rains and that goes into water that cows are drinking. There was this one scene where I saw a baby cow drinking from its mother at the base of this dump with the incinerator in the background. And I’m talking to people who work on this urban dairy farm and they’re saying that you die 30 years earlier if you live here, but they have no other choice — this is their livelihood.

You go down the Ci Liwung River in Jakarta, Indonesia and you see the stratification of plastic bags 15-30 feet deep in the soil. Sadly, plastic is part of the geological record at this point.

It’s one thing to witness this as just an everyday citizen, but when you come at it from an activist perspective like myself, you’re looking at the whole system that created this. How many bad decisions in a row got us to this point, and how entrenched it is? And how do you stop this?

What’s the balance between cleanup and prevention at this point?

Every year we have this feel-good day in September for international coastal cleanup. And every year we realize that more and more plastic is on the beach. And it feels like a dog chasing its tail. But now with the Break Free From Plastic movement, which is 1,400 NGOs globally that are all operating from the same strategy, vision and principles, we’ve instituted a kind of hack to those cleanups to start reporting brand data. And that flips the narrative of who’s responsible for the stuff. It’s no longer that just everyday people are the problem — it’s the companies that produce this stuff.

I don’t believe that any cleanup efforts are going to work if we don’t prevent the problem in the first place. Industry will say it’s a management problem, but this is unmanageable. There’s way too much plastic in the system.

So the first message is, you have to stop this massive petrochemical buildout that’s looking to put 40 percent more plastic into commerce by 2025. Because we just can’t deal with that as a global society.

Plastic waste burning
Plastic waste in Surabaya, Indonesia is openly burned or used as fuel for furnaces to boil water for tofu factories, with no environmental controls. (Photo by Stiv Wilson)

With fewer and fewer countries willing to accept our plastic, is recycling in jeopardy?

There’s so much plastic in the system that it doesn’t have much value for recycling any more. If the supply far exceeds the demand and it’s exponentially growing, you’re never going to solve the problem. You’re never going to make the economics of recycling really work. China closed its doors and now, on the West Coast of the United States, we’re stockpiling plastic. There’s nowhere for it to go, so it’s being landfilled.

We need to build circularity into our economy — stop waste exports, do domestic recycling and ban problematic products.

There’s this idea that recycling will save us. It’s wrong. It’s a good thing to recycle if you have good environmental controls and good protocols for human rights, but you don’t have that in the developing world. You don’t have either of those things because the margins are so small on recycling that you have to cut corners, and those corners that are cut affect both people and planet.

What did you find that was hopeful?

When you look at the people fighting back in the system, I think if we can elevate those voices, we can win. I see the unsung leaders from developing nations getting to the world stage and talking about real solutions.

For instance, we saw a decentralized waste-management program in the Philippines that provides basic collection and source segregation for materials. It was a very poor neighborhood that was filled with so much plastic you couldn’t see the ground, and now it’s absolutely immaculate. Waste pickers have been turned into civil servants.

It’s a very simple system that’s scalable and economic. It’s also 85 percent cheaper because all organics are composted and all materials that have markets for recycling are recycled. So you’re down to 10 to 20 percent residual waste, which means you’re sending one to two trucks to the landfill instead of 10, which saves a tremendous amount of money. You can see how this can be scaled at the country level and would work for other countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam.

Elsewhere there are also some really progressive policies that are starting to mandate that you put recycled content into new packaging applications so that you don’t need the feedstocks — you don’t need all the fracking.

At every part of the system you have people with really genius interventions, and it’s all about scaling this up through stories in media, popularizing those and then just implementing them because the solutions are there. It’s right in front of our face.

I’m also heartened by the Break Free From Plastic movement that’s building a lot of solidarity and power. It’s very intersectional. We’re finally talking about the entire system of plastic, and we’re crafting policy to address the entire system.

What makes me hopeful is that the scale of the movement responding to the problem is starting to match the scale of the problem itself. For many years we’ve been under-resourced and under-powered and that has changed. The movement is growing and it’s gaining in power.

The good news is that the solution is right in front us. The bad news is the current system is very entrenched, and there’s a lot of money behind it. So it’s a big fight.

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Declaring a Climate Change Emergency: Would It Be Legal? Would It Be Useful?

Environmental and constitutional law scholar Dan Farber explains what a climate change emergency declaration could achieve.

The possibility of declaring a national emergency to address climate change will probably remain under discussion for the next couple of years, particularly if the courts uphold President Trump’s wall “emergency.” As a legal scholar, I want to explain how a climate emergency declaration would work and what it could and couldn’t do. But first I want to emphasize three key points:

  1. Declaring a climate emergency should be off the table if the Supreme Court rules against Trump.
  2. An emergency declaration is not a magic wand that gives presidents a blank check. A declaration would allow some constructive steps to be taken, but within limits.
  3. The ultimate goal has to be congressional action, and an emergency declaration should only be considered as part of a larger legislative and administrative agenda.

Even if the Supreme Court upholds Trump, using this precedent to fight climate change will require some real soul-searching. Trump has violated a longstanding norm of presidential restraint in using emergency powers to address domestic policy. Whether to disavow or exploit that change in norms is a hard question. And declaring a climate emergency might help mobilize public opinion in support of legislative action, or it might cause a backlash that would make new legislation harder. But if the Supreme Court rules for Trump, the idea of a climate change emergency declaration has to be taken seriously.

Something of a compromise position might be to declare that the resilience of the electrical grid is a national emergency, not climate change itself. That would still allow some important actions that would help reduce carbon emissions. Basically, many of the steps that are needed to decarbonize the grid would also increase its ability to resist and bounce back from disruptions due to national disasters or cyberattacks on the energy system.

With all that in mind, here’s what you need to know about the issues.

Transmission lines
Electric transmission lines. (Photo by Tonyglen14, CC BY 2.0)

Would Climate Change Qualify as a National Emergency?

Trump has declared a national emergency so he can build his wall. But if illegal border crossings are a national emergency, then there’s a strong case for viewing climate change in similar terms. That point has been made by observers ranging from Marco Rubio to a Legal Planet post by Jonathan Zasloff.

I agree, but I want to dig deeper because it’s such an important point. In order to uphold Trump’s emergency declaration, the Supreme Court will have to either rule that the definition of emergency is exceedingly broad or that courts have little or no power to scrutinize a presidential declaration. There is a genuine legal basis for calling climate change a national emergency, as opposed to Trump’s ridiculous border-security declaration.

If it upholds Trump’s declaration, it would be extremely hard for the Supreme Court to overturn a climate change declaration. One reason is that some attributes of climate change and immigration are similar. Both issues involve the country’s relations with the outside world, an area where presidential powers are strong. But it isn’t as if we suddenly found out about border crossings or climate change. Given these similarities, it would be very difficult for the conservative majority to explain why it was deferring to the president in one case but not the other.

The only major difference actually cuts strongly in favor of an emergency declaration for climate change: The U.S. government has already classified climate change as a serious threat to national security, and it is a threat that is getting stronger daily. Recent science indicates that climate action is even more urgent than we thought.

Trump’s stated justification in his proclamation is that “the problem of large-scale unlawful migration through the southern border is longstanding, and despite the executive branch’s exercise of existing statutory authorities, the situation has worsened in certain respects in recent years.” Climate change, too, is a “longstanding problem,” and it certainly has gotten worse despite the effort of the executive branch (Obama) to address the problem. Federal agencies, as well as Congress, have made it clear that climate is a serious threat to our nation.

Other parts of the government have weighed in as well.

The Environmental Protection Agency has made a formal finding, based on an exhaustive review of the scientific evidence, that greenhouse gases endanger human life and welfare both within the United States and globally. That finding was upheld by the D.C. Circuit. The Supreme Court reviewed other aspects of the D.C. Circuit’s decision but pointedly turned down requests that it review this EPA finding. The scientific evidence is ironclad. If a foreign power had somehow invented a weather-control technique to impose these harms on the United States, no one would doubt that this was a very serious national security problem. Trump is now trying to defuse this argument by convening a presidential commission, but the makeup of the commission will deprive it of any credibility.

National security agencies have also consistently viewed climate change as a serious threat. In written testimony to Congress about threats to national security, the Trump administration’s own Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats discussed the serious threat of climate change. “The past 115 years have been the warmest period in the history of modern civilization, and the past few years have been the warmest years on record,” he said. “Extreme weather events in a warmer world have the potential for greater impacts and can compound with other drivers to raise the risk of humanitarian disasters, conflict, water and food shortages, population migration, labor shortfalls, price shocks and power outages. Research has not identified indicators of tipping points in climate-linked earth systems, suggesting a possibility of abrupt climate change.”

The military has already taken a proactive stance on climate change. Former Secretary James Mattis was clear about the impact of climate change on national security: “Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today. . . It is appropriate for the Combatant Commands to incorporate drivers of instability that impact the security environment in their areas into their planning,” he said.

Retired U.S. Navy Captain Joe Bouchard
Retired U.S. Navy Captain Joe Bouchard, former commander of Naval Station Norfolk, which is threatened by sea-level rise. (Photo by Chesapeakeclimate, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Congress, too, has recognized climate change as a threat to national security and more specifically to military infrastructure and activities. The most significant action was the passage of the Defense Authorization Act of 2017, H.R. 1810. The Act was a funding statute for the Pentagon. Section 335 of the Act states that “climate change is a direct threat to the national security of the United States and is impacting stability in areas of the world both where the United States Armed Forces are operating today, and where strategic implications for future conflict exist.” In a crucial House vote, 46 Republicans crossed the aisle to vote against an effort to take out the climate provision. President Trump signed the bill.

Given all of this, if the Supreme Court does uphold Trump’s order, it will be very difficult to overturn a presidential declaration that climate change is a national emergency.

What Legal Authority Would an Emergency Climate Declaration Give the President?

What government powers would be unlocked by declaring a climate change emergency? One immediate possibility would be to use the same power that Trump is considering in order to divert military construction funds to other uses — in this case, perhaps building wind or solar farms or new transmission lines. But what else could President X do?

The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law has compiled a helpful list of almost 150 statutes giving the president special powers during emergencies. The list doesn’t map the outer perimeter of presidential powers — there are other laws that give presidents powers to take action on the basis of national security, and the president also has some ill-defined, though not unlimited, powers to take action without explicit congressional authorization. But the list provides a good start, and here are just a few of the possibilities:

  • Oil leases are required to have clauses allowing them to be suspended during national emergencies. (43 USC 1341) If climate change is a national emergency caused by fossil fuels, then suspension seems like a logical response.
  • The president has emergency powers to respond to industrial shortfalls in national emergencies. (50 USC 4533). This could be used to support expansion of battery or electrical vehicle production. Another provision allows the president to extend loan guarantees to critical industries during national emergencies. (50 USC 4531). This could be used to support renewable energy more generally.
  • The secretary of Transportation has broad power to “coordinate transportation” during national emergencies. (49 U.S.C 114). This might allow various restrictions on automobile and truck use to decrease emissions of greenhouse gases.
  • The president may invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to deal with “any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States.” (50 USC 1701-1707). That description certainly applies to climate change. According to the Brennan Center, this Act “confers broad authority to regulate financial and other commercial transactions involving designated entities, including the power to impose sanctions on individuals and countries.” Conceivably, these powers could be deployed against companies or countries trafficking in fossil fuels.

Those are just some from the Brennan Center list. Moreover, as I said above, the president has other powers relating to national security, statutory and otherwise, that aren’t keyed to a declaration of national emergency — for instance, the kinds of tariffs Trump has imposed on foreign goods (say those relating to oil and gas drilling, or to oil imports).

ship channel
The Houston ship channel. (Photo by Roy Luck, CC BY 2.0)

You might well respond that using these various powers to deal with climate change is stretching them far beyond any reasonable understanding of congressional intent. But if the courts upholds Trump’s action, that will be a sign that they’re not willing to apply any meaningful oversight to presidential actions.

What Would Be the Possible Benefits of an Emergency Declaration?

Declaring a climate emergency could have benefits even apart from any concrete follow-up. It would be a strong signal that the United States recognizes the urgent need to cut carbon emissions — a signal to the international community as well as courts and agencies within the country. That would be a plus by itself.

Beyond that, I would favor tying emergency actions (at least at the start) to recognized issues that impact our society’s security. One is grid resilience. Renewables and storage would make a particular contribution to resilience in areas where they have the least penetration, meaning the Southeast, but also in many other states. Microgrids combined with distributed solar could also be useful in the wake of natural disasters like the hurricanes endemic to the Gulf Coast. We need to jump-start the carbon transition in those parts of the country to pave the way for more comprehensive measures. We also need to upgrade the grid elsewhere. Doing so would allow much bigger cuts in emissions from the electricity sector.

Another security-related issue involves military installations. The military has already taken steps to increase use of renewables and to harden sites against sea level rise. But a lot more could be done, particularly in the way of much greater electrical storage capacity (which might include use of electric vehicle batteries). Military funds could be redirected for these purposes, and the military could also be involved in increasing grid resilience in areas surrounding military bases and for critical infrastructure more generally. This could be especially helpful in starting the ball rolling in the Southeast, which remains the most backward area in terms of renewable energy.

A third option would be to take America out of the business of encouraging the use of coal in other countries. Emergency and national security powers give the president considerable leverage over exports and financing of foreign projects. We should not be devoting our resources or production to encouraging countries like India to build more coal plants.

It would take a lot more work to turn these ideas into actionable proposals. We’d need to know the effect of these measures, the available resources and just what statutory provisions would support them. Closer study could also turn up additional possibilities. It would probably take a sustained effort, maybe by a small team, to work through the issues in-depth.

If the Supreme Court overturns Trump’s order, declaring a climate emergency seems far less appealing. But who knows if that will happen? And of course, we have no way of knowing just when we might have a president who actually wants to do something about climate change. That’s definitely not something we should take for granted. But if and when it does happen, he or she should have access to a full analysis of the policy options.

As much as I care about climate change, I am hoping that the courts reject Trump’s emergency declaration, which would make these questions moot. Even putting aside my feelings about the wall itself, I think it’s an undesirable expansion of presidential power. But there’s no guarantee the courts will stop Trump. If his action is upheld, the door will be open for declaring a climate emergency, if we choose to go down that path.

A version of this story first appeared on Legal Planet.

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.