Colorado health officials say a massive permit backlog that has left hundreds of water systems in administrative limbo has shrunk in the past year, though more work remains.
Last year, 75% of wastewater discharge permits had expired. This year that figure has dropped to 50%, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), with 1,384 permits classified as expired. The permits regulate and set standards for removing pollutants from wastewater before it is discharged to streams.
The state’s Water Quality Control Division has wrestled with the problem for several years. In the past two years the state has provided several million dollars to help eliminate the backlog. Major dischargers, such as the City of Aurora and Metro Water Recovery, are among those that have been impacted by the problem.
Under the federal Clean Water Act, entities that discharge fluids into streams, including wastewater treatment plants and factories, must get approval from water quality regulators to ensure what they’re putting into the waterways does not harm them.
Though holders of expired permits are legally allowed to continue discharging, the expiration means dischargers face major uncertainty about what future requirements may be and how much it will cost to meet them, according to the CDPHE.
Protecting streams from pollutants is a tough problem and is getting more difficult as populations grow and climate change reduces the amount of water flowing in rivers, intensifying contamination. Emerging toxins, such as PFAS, also now require treatment. PFAS make up a large class of chemicals used in everything from firefighting foam to Teflon. They are known as “forever chemicals” because they last decades in the environment and the human body. The EPA has just begun setting regulatory standards for them.
The agency has hired a consultant to help it examine new ways of managing the permitting process. It expects to have recommendations for new procedures by midyear 2025, CDPHE spokesperson John Michael said.
“We are committed to finding solutions to address more of the backlog,” he said via email.
The agency is under the gun to do so, in part, because its performance lags the standards set by the EPA, which state that 75% of all discharge permits under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, should be current.
“Timely issuance and reissuance of NPDES permits are important because they can provide greater certainty to the business community and ensure that permits improve environmental protection by reflecting the most recent scientific information,” said Marisa Lubeck, a spokesperson for EPA’s Region 8, which includes Colorado.
“The EPA has encouraged and continues to encourage CDPHE to decrease its NPDES permit backlog, and we are aware the state has acquired additional resources to help with this effort,” Lubeck said via email.
States across the country have wrestled with monitoring and renewing the discharge permits. According to a 2024 EPA analysis, Colorado had the largest permit backlog nationwide, with 81% expired. The average nationwide is 22%. The EPA’s estimate is higher because the state’s method for classifying permits differs from the federal government’s, according to the EPA.
With the new funding, the CDPHE has hired additional staff to address the problem and to shore up long-term finances for the regulatory work by increasing fees the state can charge for the permits.
Colorado State Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Republican from Brighton and a member of the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee, said she remains concerned that the health department hasn’t fully resolved the problems.
“The bottom line is that there are still a lot of permits in that backlog,” Kirkmeyer said.
And she said cities and wastewater utilities continue to complain about the permitting process, calling it cumbersome and time-consuming.
The Colorado Wastewater Utility Council, which represents municipalities and wastewater treatment providers, did not respond to a request for comment.
The Gold King Mine’s level 7 adit and waste rock dump, boarding house, and other associated structures, circa 1906. Via the Land Desk
Click the link to read the article on the Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):
December 13, 2024
⛏️Mining Monitor ⛏️
The News: After decades of trying, Congress finally passed a “good samaritan” mine remediation bill that could help nonprofits and other non-governmental organizations clean up abandoned mining sites.
The Context: In 1994, the state of Colorado, with the help of Bill Simon and other volunteers, launched the Animas River Stakeholders Group to study and address abandoned mines in the upper Animas River watershed. It would be a collaborative approach — without heavy-handed regulations or the dreaded Superfund designation. “We figured we could empower the people in the community to do the job without top-down management,” Simon told me back in 2016. “Giving the power to the people develops stewardship for the resource, and that’s particularly useful in this day and age.”
Their task was a monumental one: The US Geological Survey has catalogued some 5,400 mine shafts, adits, tunnels, and prospects in the upper Animas watershed. Nearly 400 of them were found to have some impact on water quality, about 60 of which were major polluters, contributing about 90% of the mining-related heavy metal loading in streams. Dozens of abandoned mine adits collectively oozed more than 436,000 pounds of aluminum, cadmium, copper, iron, and zinc into the watershed each year, with waste rock and tailings piles contributing another 80,000 pounds annually.1
The upper Animas isn’t unusual in this respect. A 2020 Government Accountability Office report estimated that there are more than 500,000 abandoned mining-related sites and features across the Western United States. While most of those are hardly noticeable and have little effect on the environment, at least 100,000 of them were found to pose physical or environmental hazards.
Those hazards range from open mine shafts (that can swallow up an unsuspecting human or animal), to contaminated tailings or waste rock piles, to the big one: mine adits discharging heavy metal-laden acid mine drainage into streams. Federal and state programs exist to address some of these hazards. But the sheer number of problematic sites, and the fact that many are on private lands, makes it impossible for these agencies to remediate every abandoned mining site.
So, for the last few decades, nonprofits and collaborative working groups like the Animas River Stakeholders have taken up some of the slack. With funding from federal and state grants and mining companies, the Stakeholders removed and capped mine waste dumps, diverted runoff around dumps (and in some cases around mines), used passive water treatment methods on acidic streams, and revegetated mining-impacted areas.
This image was taken during the peak outflow from the Gold King Mine spill at 10:57 a.m. Aug. 5, 2015. The waste-rock dump can be seen eroding on the right. Federal investigators placed blame for the blowout squarely on engineering errors made by the Environmental Protection Agency’s-contracted company in a 132-page report released Thursday [October 22, 2015]
But the most pernicious polluters — the draining adits — were off limits. The volunteer groups couldn’t touch them, because to do so would require a water discharge permit under the Clean Water Act, and that would make the Stakeholders liable for any water that continues to drain from the mine, and if anything went wrong. In other words, if some volunteers were trying to remediate the drainage from a mine, and it blew out Gold King-style, the volunteers would be responsible for the damage it inflicted — which could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
For the last 25 years, the Animas River Stakeholders2, Trout Unlimited, other advocacy groups, and Western lawmakers have pushed for “good samaritan” legislation that would allow third parties to address draining mines without taking on all of the liability. Despite bipartisan support, however, the bills struggled and ultimately perished.
That’s in part due to concerns that bad actors might use the exemptions to shirk liability for mining a historic site. Or that industry-friendly EPA administrators might consider mining companies to be good samaritans. And back in 2015 Earthworks pointed out that good samaritan legislation wouldn’t address the big problem: A lack of funding to pay the estimated $50 billion cleanup bill. So if a volunteer group did trigger a Gold King-like disaster, the taxpayers would likely end up footing the bill.
But last year, Sen. Martin Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat, and 39 co-sponsors from both parties introduced the Good Samaritan Remediation of Abandoned Hardrock Mines Act, tightened up to alleviate most concerns. It passed the Senate in July of this year, and was sent to the House, where it also received support from Republicans and Democrats alike.
Assuming President Biden signs it into law, the new act will open the door to more cleanups — but in a limited way. To begin with, the bill only authorizes 15 pilot projects nationwide, which will be determined via an application process. The proponents will receive special good samaritan cleanup permits and must follow a rigorous set of criteria. No mining activities will be allowed to occur in concert with a good samaritan cleanup. However, reprocessing of historic waste rock or tailings may be allowed, but only in sites on federal land, and only if all of the proceeds are used to defray remediation costs or are added to a good samaritan fund established by the act.
Rep. Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat, opposed the bill nonetheless, saying it compromises federal environmental law and “opens the floodgates for bad actors to take advantage of Superfund liability shields and loopholes.” He added that it would give the incoming Trump administration “unilateral power to decide which entities are good samaritans and which are not.”
This isn’t, however, a blanket loophole, it only applies to 15 projects — at least for now. While that limits the damage that could be done by bad actors abusing the liability shields, it also limits the benefits: Fifteen projects isn’t going to go very far in addressing the 100,000 or so hazardous mine sites. The Animas River watershed may not benefit at all, since the 48 sites in the Bonita Peak Mining District Superfund site are not eligible for good samaritan remediation.
Still, the law will open the door for a handful of projects that could improve water quality in some watersheds. The challenge now is figuring out how to address draining mines in an economically feasible fashion. Simply plugging, or bulkheading, the mine adits often isn’t effective, because the contaminated water ends up coming out somewhere else. And treating the draining water is an expensive, and never-ending, process.
The good news is that some funding was made available via the Infrastructure and Inflation Reduction laws passed during the last four years, and just this week the Biden administration gave mining cleanup a boost this week by offering states $3.7 million in grants to inventory, assess, and remediate abandoned hardrock mines.
The bad news is that the legislation that’s really needed — genuine and substantial mining law reform — probably is on hold for at least the next four years.
Prior to mining, snowmelt and rain seep into natural cracks and fractures, eventually emerging as a freshwater spring (usually). Graphic credit: Jonathan Thompson
***
In other mining news, the Biden administration this week halted new mining claims and mineral leasing for the next two years on 165,000 acres in the upper Pecos River watershed west of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The “segregation,” as the action is called, is designed to allow the Interior Department to determine whether to ban mining and drilling in the area for the next 20 years.
Included within the acreage are more than 200 active mining claims held by Comexico LLC, a subsidiary of Australia-based New World Resources. For the past several years, Comexico has been working its way through the permitting process to do exploratory drilling at what it calls its Tererro mining project. It has met with stiff resistance from locals and regional advocacy groups, partly because mining has a dark history in the Pecos River watershed. In 1991, a big spring runoff washed contaminated mine and mill waste from a long-defunct mine into the upper Pecos River, killing as many as 100,000 trout. That prompted a multi-year cleanup of various mining sites.
But the withdrawal won’t stop the project outright, because it doesn’t affect existing, active, valid claims. Yet it can keep the company from staking more claims and may make it harder to develop the existing ones (especially if they haven’t established validity).
What was a bit more of a surprise to me is how it broke down into categories.
📸 (Not Quite) Parting Shot 🎞️
The old Buick at Cow Canyon Trading Post and Cafe in Bluff, Utah, my favorite place to stop and get caffeinated and breakfast burrito’d in Canyon Country. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
1 These figures did not include the recently closed Sunnyside Mine/American Tunnel or the Gold King, since both were permitted mines at the time, meaning they weren’t abandoned.
2 The ARSG disbanded after much of the watershed was designated a Superfund site.
A new statewide survey shows that 23 Colorado cities have aging lead water delivery pipes, roughly 20,000 of them, that could potentially taint drinking water.
Under federal rules, those cities must identify all contaminated pipes and replace them by 2037, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
But the initial survey, completed in October, also found that 170,000 additional water lines still need to be examined. Cities that have untested water delivery pipes are notifying customers of the risk and have through November of next year to finish the identification process, according to Seth Clayton, executive director of Pueblo Water.
“It took a significant effort to get the initial inventory completed,” Clayton said, “and then we sent out 22,000 letters to customers saying their service line type is unknown and could be lead. That sparks a bit of panic because of the misinformation out there. But call volumes and our customer service time is starting to decrease.”
The City of Lafayette banned lead pipes in 1959, according to Melanie Asquith, the city’s principal utility engineer. As part of the new survey, it has identified just one partial pipe that contains lead. Still, the city is notifying 770 customers who have unknown line types and plans to begin testing them early next year.
The communities on the list are: Sterling, Denver Water, Manitou Springs, Steamboat Springs, Georgetown, Grand Junction, Golden, Ft. Morgan, Englewood, Loveland, Aurora, Yampa, Flager, Lafayette, Limon, Bristol Water and Sanitation District, Pueblo Water, Eckley, Parkville Water District, Silver Plume, Greeley, Morgan County Quality Water District, Lost Valley Ranch Corp.
Lead water lines were commonly used up until the 1980s, when they were banned by the EPA. Though water entering the pipes may be clean, erosion of the aging lines causes lead to seep into the water. No levels of lead are considered safe for children and can cause serious health problems in adults, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
Even before the new mandate to replace all lead lines, the EPA ordered cities such as Denver to begin replacement programs because some lead had been detected in water delivered to homes, violating federal standards at the time. Denver Water has removed 30,000 lines, with another 30,000 to go, according to agency spokesman Todd Hartman.
Other cities that have never had lead levels that exceed federal standards began replacing lead lines years ago as part of routine maintenance and leak repair programs, according to Mark Ritterbush, Grand Junction’s water services manager.
“We’ve been chipping away at it over time because we knew the EPA was going to do this. There’ve been rumblings for at least a decade,” Ritterbush said.
Still, he said, the city has spent $1 million to comply with the lead pipe rules and meet the survey deadline. “We had a good foundation. But because we’re on the clock, it’s a lot to handle.”
A whistleblower and watchdog advocacy group used an EPA database of locations that may have handled PFAS materials or products to map the potential impact of PFAS throughout Colorado. They found about 21,000 Colorado locations in the EPA listings, which were uncovered through a freedom of information lawsuit. Locations are listed by industry category. (Source: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility analysis of EPA database)
Organic halides are highly useful compounds in chemical synthesis, where the halide serves as a versatile functional group for elimination, substitution, and cross-coupling reactions with transition metals or photocatalysis1-3. However, the activation of carbon-fluorine bonds, the most commercially abundant organohalide and found in PFAS, or “forever chemicals”, are much rarer. Current approaches based on photoredox chemistry for activation of small molecule carbon-fluorine (C–F) bonds are limited by the substrates and transition-metal catalysts needed4. A general method for the direct activation of organofluorines would have significant value in organic and environmental chemistry. Here, we report an organic photoredox catalyst system that can efficiently reduce C–F bonds to generate carbon-centered radicals, which can then be intercepted for hydrodefluorination (swapping F for H) and cross-coupling reactions. This system enables the general use of organofluorines as synthons under mild reaction conditions. We extend this method to the defluorination of polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and fluorinated polymers, a critical challenge in the breakdown of persistent and environmentally damaging forever chemicals.
Prior to mining, snowmelt and rain seep into natural cracks and fractures, eventually emerging as a freshwater spring (usually). Graphic credit: Jonathan Thompson
Click the link to read the article on the KUNC website (Rachel Cohen). Here’s an excerpt:
December 12, 2024
More than 140,000 abandoned hardrock mines scatter federal lands in the Western U.S. Their cleanup could be getting easier, thanks to a bill that cleared its final hurdle in Congress this week…Finally, this week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bipartisan bill called the Good Samaritan Remediation of Abandoned Hardrock Mines Act, which the Senate had already passed this summer. It creates a pilot program under the Environmental Protection Agency that allows nonprofits, governments or landowners to clean up old mines without taking on the risk…
“Historically, the fear of litigation and liability that might trail a would-be ‘good Samaritan’ has kept us from doing a lot of that clean-up work,” said Chris Wood, the president and CEO of Trout Unlimited, which works to remediate mine tailings to improve water quality. Wood said the organization faces obstacles to do as much cleanup as it would like because of the liability concerns. He’s been working to remove these hurdles for two decades.
Virtually indestructible plastic on a black rock beach in Hawaii. Photo credit: Eric Johnson/NOAA
Click the link to read the release on the NOAA website:
November 19, 2024
Marine microplastics are an urgent issue. Much of the world population consumes seafood as a source of protein, and microplastics can threaten this sustainable food source.
With further research, scientists can gauge how microplastics impact human health, fishing industries, and our marine ecosystems.
Understanding the existing distributions and quantities of microplastics in the global ocean is a vital first step towards combating microplastic pollution. This requires scientists, researchers, and decision-makers to have access to large-scale, long-term comprehensive microplastics data.
Atlas of Ocean Microplastics
Debuting in 2024, the Atlas of Ocean Microplastics (AOMI) is a database of ocean surface microplastics data created by Japan’s Ministry of the Environment, AMOI is created in collaboration with researchers, research institutions, and governments around the world. Data from the NCEI Marine Microplastics Product are available through AMOI, which is in keeping with NCEI’s commitment to data findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reuse of digital assets (FAIR Principles). AOMI is also sharing microplastics data with NCEI’s Marine Microplastic database, making both databases more complete to best serve users.
Since the data are from many different publicly-available sources, AOMI quality controls the data and adds a comparability grade to each data according to the Guidelines for Harmonizing Ocean Surface Microplastic Monitoring Methods. AOMI also visualizes where the data was collected and thus the distribution of ocean surface microplastics around the globe on an interactive map.
AOMI is available to the public. Users can view and download all data for free, and filter the data according to their own purposes and uses.
Marine Microplastics Unraveled
Microplastics, including those found in the marine environment, are pieces of plastic or fibers less than 5 mm—smaller than a sesame seed. Any plastic product, including single-use plastics like bottles and plastic bags, along with plastics in items like cosmetics, can eventually become marine pollution.
There are many different types of microplastics, including beads, fragments, pellets, film, foam, and fibers.
Some microplastics are made to be small for a specific purpose. These primary microplastics can be plastic pellets that are melted and used to create larger plastic items, or the microbeads that may be found in personal care products, such as toothpaste, face washes, and cosmetics.
Secondary microplastics come from larger pieces of plastics, such as beverage bottles, bags, and toys. Sun, heat, wind, and waves can cause these plastics to become brittle and break into smaller and smaller pieces that may never fully go away. Microplastics are also created when pieces of plastic break off during use. For example, particles of synthetic tires can break off during regular use and through wear and tear.
Similarly, our clothing, furniture, and fishing nets and lines may produce plastic microfibers, another type of secondary microplastics. These fibers are extremely common on shorelines across the United States, and are made of synthetic materials, such as polyester or nylon. Through general wear or washing and drying, these tiny fibers break off and shed from larger items.
No matter where we live on the globe, we all have a role to play in taking action in reducing plastic waste through more responsible behaviors to help keep our environment clean. Products like the AOMI and the NCEI Marine Microplastics Product give everyone access to microplastic concentration data that can guide future work and help visualize our progress.
Aspen City Council unanimously passed a first reading of an ordinance aimed at updating the city’s water service line requirements. Called Ordinance 19, it sets out to be in compliance with new federal and state lead and copper regulations…The primary goal of the ordinance is to align Aspen’s water system with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Lead and Copper Rule Revisions and Lead and Copper Rule Improvements, which were finalized in December 2021…These rules, which Aspen utilities staff had to meet by Oct. 16, impose stricter requirements for lead in drinking water, including mandatory service line inventories and replacement plans for all public water systems. In that inventory, Aspen’s Water Department showed that 98% of the city’s 4,121 accounts are free of lead, with the majority of pipes being copper or plastic.
Click the link to read the article on the Denver Water website (Cathy Proctor and Jay Adams):
October 23, 2024
Preparing a water system to meet future challenges means investing in a flexible, resilient operation that’s ready for just about anything — such as a warming climate, pandemics, population growth, periodic droughts, competition for water resources, security threats and changing regulatory environments.
From meeting day-to-day challenges to addressing long-range issues, Denver Water is building and maintaining just such a system, one that stretches from the mountains to homes and businesses across the Denver metro area.
The goal: Ensuring a clean, safe, reliable water supply for 1.5 million people, about 25% of Colorado’s population, now and in the future.
To continue meeting that goal, Denver Water expects to invest about $1.8 billion into its water system during the next 10 years, from large projects to regular inspection and maintenance programs designed to ensure the system is flexible, resilient and efficient.
In addition to rates paid by customers, funding for Denver Water’s infrastructure projects, day-to-day operations and emergency expenses, like water main breaks, comes from bond sales, cash reserves, hydropower sales, grants, federal funding and fees paid when new homes and buildings are connected to the system. The utility does not make a profit or receive tax dollars.
Here’s an overview of some of Denver Water’s recently completed and ongoing work:
Northwater Treatment Plant
Denver Water in 2024 celebrated the completion of the new, state-of-the-art Northwater Treatment Plant next to Ralston Reservoir north of Golden. The new treatment plant was completed on schedule and under budget.
The treatment plant can clean up to 75 million gallons of water per day and the plant’s design left room for the plant to be expanded to clean up to 150 million gallons of water per day in the future as needed.
A major feature of the site visible from Highway 93 is the round, concrete tops of two giant water storage tanks. Most of the two tanks are buried underground; each tank is capable of holding 10 million gallons of clean, safe drinking water.
The plant is a major part of Denver Water’s North System Renewal Project, a multi-year initiative that included building a new, 8.5-mile pipeline between the Northwater Treatment Plant and the Moffat Treatment Plant. The new pipe, completed in 2022, replaced one that dated from the 1930s.
The Moffat Treatment Plant, which also started operations in the 1930s, is still used a few months during the year and will eventually transition to a water storage facility.
Lead Reduction Program
The water Denver Water delivers to customers is lead-free, but lead can get into drinking water as the water passes through old lead service lines that carry water from the water main in the street into the home.
The Lead Reduction Program, which launched in January 2020, is the biggest public health campaign in the utility’s history and considered a leader in the effort to remove lead pipes from the nation’s drinking water infrastructure.
Denver Water crews dug up old lead service lines from customers’ homes for years of study that led to the utility’s Lead Reduction Program. Denver Water has replaced more than 28,000 old, customer-owned lead service lines at no direct cost to the customer. Photo credit: Denver Water. Photo credit: Denver Water.
The program reduces the risk of lead getting into drinking water by raising the pH of the water delivered and replacing the estimated 60,000 to 64,000 old, customer-owned lead service lines at no direct cost to the customer. Households enrolled in the program are communicated with regularly and provided with water pitchers and filters certified to remove lead to use for cooking, drinking and preparing infant formula until six months after their lead service line is replaced.
To date, Denver Water has replaced more than 28,000 customer-owned lead service lines at no direct cost to the customers. The program received $76 million in federal funding in 2022 to help accelerate the pace of replacement work in underserved communities, resulting in thousands of additional lines being replaced during 2023 and 2024.
Water storage
Work on the Gross Reservoir Expansion Project, the subject of more than 20 years of planning, got underway in April 2022. Expected to be complete in 2027, the project will raise the height of the existing dam by 131 feet.
The higher dam will nearly triple the amount of water that can be stored in Gross Reservoir, providing Denver Water with more flexibility to manage its water supply in the face of increasingly variable weather and snowpack patterns.
Check out the work done on Gross Dam during summer 2024:
After two years of preparation and foundation work, Gross Dam’s new look began to take shape in 2024 when workers began placing new, roller-compacted concrete at the base of the Boulder County dam in early May.
Raising the dam involves building 118 steps on the downstream side of the dam. Each step is 4 feet tall with a 2-foot setback.
At the height of construction, there will be as many as 400 workers on-site, and when complete the dam will be the tallest in Colorado.
Ongoing investments for the future
As the metro area grows and changes, it’s often an opportunity for Denver Water to upgrade older elements of its system.
Denver Water is continuing its investment in replacing about 80,000 feet of water mains under streets every year while also installing new water delivery pipe where needed. The utility has more than 3,000 miles of pipe in its system, enough to stretch from Seattle to Orlando.
In early 2025, Denver Water will wrap up a major project: replacing 5 miles of 130-year-old water pipe under East Colfax Avenue, from Broadway to Yosemite Street. The pipe replacement work was done in advance of the East Colfax Bus Rapid Transit project. That effort, led by the Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, broke ground in early October.
In addition to replacing the water mains under Colfax, Denver Water crews are replacing any lead service lines they encounter during the project.
Changing our landscapes
In recognition of the drought in the Colorado River Basin, Denver Water and several large water providers across the basin in 2022 committed to substantially expanding existing efforts to conserve water.
Among the goals outlined in the agreement is the replacement of 30% of the nonfunctional, water-intensive Kentucky bluegrass in our communities — like the decorative expanses of turf grass in traffic medians — with more natural ColoradoScapes that include water-wise plants and cooling shade trees that offer more benefits for our climate, wildlife and the environment.
Denver Water supported a new state law passed in 2024 designed to halt the expansion of nonfunctional, water-thirsty grass by prohibiting the planting or installation of high-water-using turf in commercial, institutional, or industrial property or a transportation corridor. The bill takes effect Jan. 1, 2026. The new law doesn’t affect residential properties.
To help customers remodel their landscapes to create diverse, climate-resilient ColoradoScapes, Denver Water offered two workshops this year and is planning additional workshops in 2025. Photo credit: Denver Water.
Denver Water also is working with partners — including local governments, fellow water providers and experts in water use and landscapes — to develop programs that will help transform our landscapes and expand our indoor and outdoor conservation efforts.
The utility in 2024 held water-wise gardening workshops and offered a limited number of customer discounts on Resource Central’s popular Garden In A Box water-wise garden kits and turf removal services.
Get tips and information about rebates available for conserving water indoors and out at denverwater.org/Conserve.
The utility also has started work transforming its own landscapes, including about 12,000 square feet around its Einfeldt pump station near the University of Denver. It’s Youth Education program has helped Denver-area students remodel landscapes at their schools.
And it’s supporting partners, such as Denver’s Parks and Recreation Department, which is replacing 10 acres of water-intensive Kentucky bluegrass covering the traffic medians on Quebec Street south of Interstate 70. The project is replacing the homogenous expanse of turf with a closely managed, water-wise Colorado prairie meadow filled with grasses and wildflowers that provide habitat to pollinators.
These projects are examples of how Denver Water is planning for a warmer, drier future by partnering with our community. Together, we can build a system and a landscape that supports our customers and creates a thriving, vibrant community now and in the future.
Denver Water’s collection system via the USACE EIS
Environmental Program Manager Jenny Frithsen with nonprofit Friends of the Yampa conducts water quality sampling in fall 2023 on a tributary to the Yampa River. Friends of the Yampa/Courtesy photo
Click the link to read the article on the Craig Press website (Suzie Romig). Here’s an excerpt:
October 5, 2024
In early fall with lower and warmer water levels, river users commonly see algae coating rocks or floating in the Yampa River, in coves and edges of area reservoirs and especially in stagnant ponds of water left over from higher flows. However, this fall watershed study groups and some citizens are raising algae alarm bells and asking questions about what appears to a strong presence of algae in the watershed. Some residents are asking water experts if the toxic level spike from a blue-green algae bloom in early September at Stagecoach Reservoir, which led the state to issue a brief red warning level closure at Morrison Cove, may be a foreshadowing of greater, growing concerns systemwide in the Yampa River watershed…
“As there are warmer temperatures and less water, this is the risk that we are going to face in the future, and a healthy watershed is more important than ever,” said Jenny Frithsen, environmental program manager at nonprofit Friends of the Yampa, during an Upper Yampa River Watershed Group meeting on Wednesday.
For the first time since the state algae monitoring program was formalized in 2018, an algae bloom caution warning occurred at Elkhead Reservoir in September, said Water Quality Monitoring and Assessment Specialist Ashley Rust with Colorado Parks and Wildlife…COepht.colorado.gov/toxic-algae shows that of the 10 waterbodies listed at a yellow caution level for algae, three are in Routt County including Elkhead, Stagecoach and Steamboat reservoirs. In August 2020, a red warning level was issued briefly for a toxic spike from an algae bloom at Steamboat Lake…Supervisory Hydrologic Technician Patricia Solberg with the U.S. Geological Survey said algae was present at very noticeable levels in the river through Steamboat this year during the August sampling. Solberg said the USGS has been testing once annually since 2019 in late summer or early fall for the aquatic indicator chlorophyll-A as well as algae biomass at three sites, including upstream of Stagecoach, in Steamboat and in Milner.
Legislative momentum against PFAS has surged this year, as at least 11 states enacted laws to restrict the use of “forever chemicals” in everyday consumer products or professional firefighting foam.
The legislation includes bans on PFAS in apparel, cleaning products, cookware, and cosmetic and menstrual products. Meanwhile, lawmakers in some states also passed measures that require industries to pay for testing or cleanup; order companies to disclose the use of PFAS in their products; and mandate or encourage the development of PFAS alternatives, according to Safer States, an alliance of environmental health groups focused on toxic chemicals.
The thousands of chemicals categorized as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, do not naturally break down and are found in the blood of 97% of Americans. Some PFAS compounds can harm the immune system, increase cancer risks and decrease fertility.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released new standards limiting PFAS in drinking water. Water systems have five years to comply with the rules. Even before the EPA action, 11 states had set their own limits on PFAS in drinking water, starting with New Jersey in 2018.
Water utilities and chemical manufacturers are challenging the new EPA standards. But states also are heading to the courthouse: So far, 30 states have sued PFAS manufacturers or key users for contaminating water supplies and other natural resources, according to Safer States.
“Over the past two decades, the knowledge of PFAS health effects has really exploded,” Jamie DeWitt, a professor of environmental molecular toxicology at Oregon State University, told Stateline.
“We now know that they’re linked with different types of cancer, suppression of the vaccine antibody response, liver damage, elevated cholesterol and developmental effects,” said DeWitt, who is also director of the university’s Environmental Health Sciences Center.
But the chemical industry and some companies that use PFAS in their products argue that states are going too far. PFAS compounds have properties that make them nonstick, stain-repellent, waterproof or fire-resistant. In addition to being used in everyday consumer goods, they are critical to renewable energy, health care and electronics, defenders say.
“PFAS are a diverse universe of chemistries. They have differing health and environmental profiles. It is not scientifically accurate or appropriate to treat all PFAS the same,” Tom Flanagin, a spokesperson from the American Chemistry Council, told Stateline in an email.
“Consumers should also know that PFAS chemistries in commerce today have been reviewed by regulators before introduction, are subject to ongoing review, and are supported by a robust body of health and safety data.”
In California, which has enacted 19 PFAS-related laws since 2007, the state Chamber of Commerce “opposes any blanket ban on all commercial products containing PFAS,” according to Adam Regele, vice president of advocacy and strategic partnerships. There are more than 15,000 chemicals in the PFAS category, Regele said, and there aren’t viable alternatives for all of them.
Scott Whitaker, president and CEO of AdvaMed, a trade association representing medical technology companies, told a congressional committee last year that “it is hard to imagine the medical industry without the many important products that contain fluoropolymers,” a type of PFAS. Whitaker noted that CPAP machines, prosthetics, IV bags, surgical instruments and many other medical products contain PFAS.
The semiconductor industry also has expressed concern about far-reaching bans on PFAS, which it uses to manufacture computer chips. It wants exceptions to the new rules as well as time to develop alternatives.
But Sarah Doll, national director of Safer States, said one reason states have been so successful in enacting PFAS limits is that more companies are willing to stop using the chemicals.
“When California restricted PFAS in textiles, all of a sudden you saw companies like REI saying, ‘We can, we’re going to do that. We’re going to move to alternatives,’” Doll said.
In Vermont, state lawmakers in April unanimously approved a measure banning the manufacture and sale of PFAS in cosmetics, menstrual products, incontinence products, artificial turf, textiles and cookware.
“The same as everyone else, like Democrats, we want to make sure that we remove PFAS and get it out of products as soon as we can,” said Vermont Republican state Rep. Michael Marcotte, who said his district includes cosmetics manufacturer Rozelle Cosmetics, in Westfield.
Democratic state Sen. Virginia Lyons, the chief sponsor of the Vermont bill, said it is particularly important to get PFAS out of products that are essential to consumers.
“There are some consumer products where you can say, ‘I don’t need to buy that, because I don’t want PFAS,’” Lyons said. “But it’s really tough to say that [about] a menstrual product.”
California’s latest PFAS measure, which Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed last month, specifically bans the use of PFAS in menstrual products. Democratic Assemblymember Diane Papan, the author of the bill, said it was particularly strong because it covers both intentional and unintentional uses of PFAS, so “manufacturers will have to really be careful about what comes in their supply chain.”
While more states enact laws focused on specific products, Maine is preparing to implement the world’s first PFAS ban covering all consumer goods. The Maine law, which is scheduled to take effect in 2030, will include exceptions for “essential” products for which PFAS-free alternatives do not exist. Washington state has also taken a sweeping approach by giving regulators strict timelines to ban PFAS in many product categories.
Colorado’s Eagle County and a coalition of environmental groups are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reject what they called an attempt to “dramatically remake” federal environmental law by the backers of a controversial oil-by-rail project in eastern Utah.
First proposed in 2019, the 88-mile Uinta Basin Railway would connect Utah’s largest oil field to the national rail network, allowing drillers there to ship large volumes of the basin’s “waxy” crude oil to Gulf Coast refineries — with the vast majority of the traffic routed through Colorado.
Eagle County and five environmental groups sued to overturn the railway’s 2021 approval by federal regulators, and in a decision last year the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with the plaintiffs, finding “numerous” and “significant” violations of the National Environmental Policy Act in regulators’ analysis of the project’s risks. The Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, a group of Utah county governments backing the project, appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case this year.
In separatebriefs filed Friday, attorneys for both Eagle County and the environmental groups urged the court, where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority, to affirm the Court of Appeals decision.
“Petitioners are asking this Court to impose limits on NEPA that have no basis in its text whatsoever,” Eagle County’s attorneys wrote in their filing. “They ask this Court to give agencies broad permission not to study the consequences of their actions.”
The Court of Appeals’ August 2023 ruling found that Surface Transportation Board regulators had violated NEPA by failing to analyze a wide range of “reasonably foreseeable upstream and downstream impacts” of the railway’s construction, including increased air pollution and the “downline” risk of train derailments and wildfires in Colorado and elsewhere. If the lower court’s decision is ultimately upheld, the project would be remanded back to the STB for a more thorough environmental review.
“It’s disgraceful that the railroad’s backers want federal agencies to turn a blind eye to those harms,” said Wendy Park, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that sued to block the project, in a press release Friday. “A robust environmental review that takes a hard look at all the train’s threats is crucial for protecting communities near and far from this railway.”
At an estimated capacity of up to 350,000 barrels exported per day, the Uinta Basin Railway would rank among the largest sustained efforts to transport oil by rail ever undertaken in the U.S., singlehandedly more than doubling the nationwide total in 2022, and causing a tenfold increase in hazmat rail traffic through environmentally sensitive and densely populated areas in Colorado.
In their petition for Supreme Court review, the railway’s backers argued that federal agencies conducting NEPA reviews must be limited to considering “proximate effects of the action over which the agency has regulatory authority.”
“There is simply no role under NEPA’s text and this Court’s precedents for stymying development projects based on environmental effects that are so wildly remote in geography and time,” attorneys for the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition wrote in an Aug. 28 brief.
A long list of conservative advocacy organizations and fossil fuel industry groups have filed amicus briefs in support of the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition’s argument. Among them is a filing by Anschutz Exploration Corporation, the oil and gas company owned by conservative Colorado billionaire Phil Anschutz, whose ties to Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch have repeatedly come under scrutiny.
In their response brief, Eagle County’s attorneys argued that adopting the petitioners’ view of NEPA’s requirements would “change it beyond recognition.”
“NEPA makes clear that agencies must study the ‘reasonably foreseeable’ environmental consequences of their actions,” they wrote. “And the environmental consequences of, for example, a derailment of an oil-laden train next to the river are eminently foreseeable.”
Oral arguments in the case, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, are scheduled to be heard on Dec. 10.
While many are familiar with the fish and wildlife that define our landscapes there are other lesser-known critters that play a role in creating and maintaining a healthy ecosystem. This little guy isn’t flashy with brilliant plumage, a thrilling call, or a remarkable migration story. It is very difficult to see by the naked eye, doesn’t have a dramatic migration story, and isn’t tasty to eat. But you can always know where to find it … in clean clear healthy waters.
So what is this new river friend of ours?
Cymbella cistula photomicrograph. Via: American Rivers
Cymbella cistula shown here is one of the many members of the genera and among the many thousands of varieties of diatoms, or what are commonly called algae. Diatoms are microscopic cells with an outer body shaped in a dramatic and diverse array of wondrous forms. These individual diatoms can exist as individuals or group together in visible colonies (such colonies can be mistaken for a vascular plant, e.g., a plant that has circuitry like blood vessels for transporting water and nutrients through their stems … as a simpler form of life, diatoms have none of this circuitry).
Diatoms generate oxygen through photosynthesis – the process where sunlight and carbon dioxide are converted to oxygen, energy, and water. They are often referred to as planktonic (from the Greek for “wandering”) because despite some having the ability to swim about, they spend their time moving with the currents. The companion group of critters to the plant-like diatoms, or phytoplankton, are the zooplankton, the first consumer in the ocean that eats phytoplankton, also small or early life stage animals that swim or float about.
These two types of planktonic organisms are critical to freshwater and marine food webs and make up a tremendous amount of the living biomass, or organic matter, in our rivers and streams.
Algae? Phytoplankton? You may be envisioning a lake or stream covered in green, making recreation discouraging or even hazardous with certain types of algae blooming in the heat of summer. Too many nutrients from treated wastewater and lawn or farm chemicals allow many species of diatoms to excessively thrive. Impoundments behind dams are often subject to algae blooms due to the decreased flow of water and higher water temperatures. And while abundant amounts of algae generate oxygen from their photosynthesis, inevitably an excessive amount of algae biomass will crash and decay. And decay then consumes all that oxygen. What was a naturally clear and clean waterbody turns a murky green with little oxygen. And some species of diatoms generate toxins that are harmful to humans and animals, making an impoundment or lake not just unappealing to swim, but hazardous to your health. But what about our new friend Cymbella cistula? Not all diatoms are alike! And many species are quite sensitive to an abundance of nutrients and do not thrive in enriched and warmer waters. Cymbella diatoms are one of the diatoms that can really only flourish in low nutrient (“oligotropic”) conditions, waterbodies that run clear and clean. Here is where this tiny organism has an out-sized role in our work to protect and restore our waters.
To chart a course away from polluted and degraded rivers, streams, lakes, and wetlands we need to set a destination. One destination is a waterbody that has little or no impact from humans, or what scientists and regulators call a baseline condition. Because different types of waterbodies – wetlands, estuaries, lakes, streams, and rivers – all have different chemical, biological, and physical characteristics no two types of baseline conditions are exactly the same. Pristine rivers and streams in the northeast are generally those that run clear and cold and flow through forests and areas of little human disturbance. While you may know a pristine stream when you see it, in order to make decisions about how to restore an unloved reach of river, scientists and regulators need precise and measurable indicators of what a pristine baseline condition means.
Macro Invertebrates via Little Pend Oreille Wildlife Refuge Water Quality Research
For many years those indicators were chemical measures of water cleanliness – dissolved oxygen, suspended solids, or temperature. But these indicators only describe a condition at a point in time when the measurement was taken and don’t integrate conditions over longer periods. And they can miss other problems that may be present. So these chemical measures alone are not the best for ensuring we make it to our destination of healthy water. To get the get fullest and most robust picture of the health of a river or stream we need to listen to the critters!
To make a better roadmap (rivermap?) to our destination scientists have for years been exploring what types of fish, insects, and diatoms live in the different types of waterbodies. This work over the last 30 years has created biological definitions of a waterbody’s health to complement the more simplistic chemical measures. One of those biological definitions is based on the description of the types and amounts of diatoms present different environmental conditions. In many parts of the country including here in New England scientists have now collected enough diatom data across enough waterbody types and conditions to create statistical models that show us what diatoms should be living in what types of water conditions. These data and models allow environmental professionals to design clean-up plans or demonstrate how a high-quality water body can remain in good health. In our work to ensure our rivers can be as clean and healthy as possible we rely on the most robust tools, regulations, and policies that help guide science-based decision making. Biological indicators of river health are one of those important tools. The Cymbella diatoms whose presence in these models provides a scientifically robust measure of what constitutes high-quality water are ones we need to listen and pay attention to. So the next time you are paddling down or wandering along that clear and cold stream give a nod to that other “wanderer” helping guide us on our journey to clean and healthy water for all!
Megan Hill is an assistant professor of chemistry and leader of the Hill Lab in Colorado State University’s College of Natural Sciences. Her research leverages organic chemistry to design advanced polymeric materials for applications in sustainability, catalysis and soft materials. She recently sat down with SOURCE to answer some common questions.
What are microplastics?
Given their name, they are micro-sized bits of plastic. There are even smaller nanoplastics that are below that (.5 mm in diameter) threshold (about the size of a grain of rice). They are pieces of plastic that have broken down but never fully degraded.
How long has synthetic, mass-produced plastic been around?
Let’s say about 100 years. Chemists spent a lot of time and effort optimizing polymerization techniques, eventually making catalysts that enabled extremely fast, cheap and easy production of plastic materials. Once the industry realized how useful these lightweight, durable and cheap materials were, then it just kind of exploded. It’s much more complex than that because there was government assistance in making these types of products more affordable. Within the last 10 to 20 years, people started to realize, “Wow, this stuff is still around, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going away anytime soon.”
Dr. Megan Hill at Colorado State University where she teaches. “There’s not a future that is without plastic, but there should be a future with much less and better plastic.” Photo credit: Colorado State University
Have we had better living through chemistry, i.e. plastics, in the past century?
You absolutely have to take that into account. Plastics make cars and airplanes lighter, reducing the amount of fuel that is needed. Wind turbines are made from epoxy resins, crosslinked polymer networks. Polyethylene is used in hip replacements, and Kevlar is something that saves people’s lives. These are all plastic materials.
What are the unintended consequences?
We’ve never had to deal with materials that have such a long lifetime. Every material that we’ve worked with in the past has been environmentally degradable over at least long periods of time. People didn’t realize how long it would actually take these materials to degrade. But now we are facing the fact that nearly every piece of plastic that has ever been made still exists, except for a small percentage that has been incinerated.
Is it bad that microplastics are found in virtually every part of human bodies?
We still have a lot to learn about how microplastics affect our health. Initially, it was thought that it wouldn’t be that big of an issue because particles have to be really small to pass through your esophagus or digestive tract, so we assumed microplastics would not persist in the body. But as these particles have become smaller and smaller, now they’re accumulating in tissues and throughout our bodies. We are still not sure what this means to our health. Plastics are designed to be inert, so the chemical structures are not likely interacting with anything in our body, but they are foreign objects that your body will likely react to. There’s still a lot unknown about the severity or what might actually happen as these particles accumulate more in animals and then humans as it goes up the food chain.
Dr. Megan Hill in the chemistry lab at Colorado State University where she teaches. Photo credit: Colorado State University
What’s an example of your lab’s research in polymers?
One area of research our lab focuses on is integrating reversible or degradable bonds into polymer networks and backbones. By making some of the bonds reversible, we can improve the ability for the materials to be broken and reformed, without compromising their material properties — a big problem plastic recycling is currently facing. Another CSU group has pioneered polymer materials that can be chemically recycled, a route that enables polymers to be broken down to their starting materials so they can be remade into the high-quality materials that are needed in industry.
What does it mean for a polymer to be sustainable?
It means finding starting materials that aren’t derived from oil. [ed. emphasis mine] It means using processes that are less energy intensive. It means thinking about the end-of-life of the materials we are making. We still aren’t exactly sure how long it’s OK for something to persist in the environment, and the answer will certainly depend on several different circumstances, but it needs to be addressed. Something I find hopeful and inspiring is how the whole polymer community, and chemistry community, has refocused our attention on these issues. I wouldn’t say that anyone’s doing research now without thinking about the end fate of the materials they are making, which is something that people just didn’t consider before.
What are some positive developments?
Scientists have teamed up and come up with some really promising solutions. They have developed new recycling methods, they have engineered enzymes that are more efficient at breaking down plastics, they have developed catalysts that can convert plastics into useful chemicals, etc. There is also funding for researchers to develop sustainable materials, figure out creative methods to tackle the abundance of plastic waste, and for people to start companies. So I see a very bright future in this. It would help if the government would make plastic a little more expensive or have some sort of incentives to get companies to stop using it. It’s incredibly difficult for individual consumers to avoid all the plastic that is cheap and easy.
What can people do to help?
Every little action helps. Support companies that try to steer away from plastics, vote for politicians who support research, and if you can, spend or give a little extra money to show it’s something you care about.
Top 10 sources of plastic pollution in our oceans.
Prior to mining, snowmelt and rain seep into natural cracks and fractures, eventually emerging as a freshwater spring (usually). Graphic credit: Jonathan Thompson
Across the state, Colorado has 23,000 abandoned mines awaiting cleanup. Untreated, these mines spread acid mine drainage into an estimated 1,800 streams. Many of these legacy mines — inoperational areas with historic mining activity — leach heavy metals into watersheds, harming aquatic ecosystems. Cleaning up mines could help improve water quality and contribute to healthier watersheds. Colorado’s Water Resources and Agriculture Review Committee recently advanced a bill to help remove dangerous mining waste. Bill 4 would establish a new permit process through the Division of Reclamation, Mining, and Safety in the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to facilitate the removal of mining waste. The permits are intended for projects that would improve water quality by cleaning up mines that are no longer operational. Currently, Colorado laws make some cleanup efforts challenging due to strict regulations that are intended to protect the ecosystem from mining operations — not reclamation of legacy mines. The new permit type would focus on areas that are “sources of discharge,” leaking acid mine drainage or heavy metals into the watershed. Permit applicants would still be required to comply with any applicable surface or groundwater water quality conditions. If approved, the bill would help expedite “reclamation-only” permits issued starting in July 2025…
The “Bonita Peak Mining District” superfund site. Map via the Environmental Protection Agency
Locally, the region’s history of mining still affects water quality today. Critical headwaters in the San Juans are surrounded by old mining areas. On Red Mountain Pass between Ouray and Silverton, Red Mountain Creek runs orange. Both natural minerals and ceased mining operations contribute to the creek’s hue. Heaps of mine tailings also funnel the river in a straight line into the Uncompahgre River and down into Ridgway. Bill 4 is intended to incentivize clean up of some of these 23,000 abandoned mines across the state, while improving water quality.
Bonita Mine acid mine drainage. Photo via the Animas River Stakeholders Group.
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Elise Schmelzer). Here’s an excerpt:
September 24, 2024
Organizations and local governments that want to fix the acidic drainage from a mine outside of Alma — and the hundreds of thousands of other abandoned mines across the West — are hopeful about new legislation under consideration in Congress. By removing liability burdens, the bill would finally give them more leeway to stop the pollution seeping into the streams relied upon for drinking water, recreation, and fish and animal habitat.
“This is a problem that is generally unseen to the general public,” said Ty Churchwell, a mining coordinator with Trout Unlimited who has worked for more than two decades to create better policy for abandoned mine cleanup. “As long as they can walk over to their tap and turn it on and clean water comes out, too often people don’t think about what’s happening at the top of the watersheds. “But it’s a horribly pervasive problem, especially in the West. It’s hurting fisheries, tourism and recreation, domestic water — it’s a problem that needs to be solved.”
Acidic drainage pollutes at least 1,800 miles of Colorado’s streams, according to a 2017 report from state agencies. About 40% of headwater streams across the West are contaminated by historical mining activity, according to the Environmental Protection Agency…But nonprofits, local governments and other third parties interested in fixing the problem are deterred by stringent liability policies baked into two of the country’s landmark environmental protection laws: Superfund and the Clean Water Act. Anyone attempting to clean up sources of pollution at a mine could end up with permanent liability for the site and its water quality…State officials, nonprofit leaders and lawmakers for decades have worked to find a solution that allows outsiders — called “good Samaritans” — to mitigate the pollution infiltrating thousands of miles of streams. That work may finally bear fruit as Congress considers a solution that advocates believe has a good chance of passing. Federal legislation to address the problem cleared the Senate with unanimous support, and on Wednesday it passed out of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee — the farthest any good Samaritan mine cleanup bill has proceeded.
The Animas River running orange through Durango after the Gold King Mine spill August 2015. Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson/The Land Desk
The U.S. Air Force has a plan for cleaning up a decades-old jet fuel spill from a base near Albuquerque.
However, the local water authority said last week that the plan is inadequate, in part because it scales back current remediation efforts and doesn’t mention how the Air Force will address sudden issues.
In 1999, officials discovered a fuel leak, assumed to be more than 24 million gallons, in the jet fuel loading facility at Kirtland Air Force. The leak could be twice the size of the infamous Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989, according to the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice.
It’s unclear when the leak – the largest underground toxic spill in U.S. history – first occurred, but it had been spilling fuel into the ground for decades by the time it was discovered, according to Kelsey Bicknell, environmental manager at the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority.
An Air Force report says existing measures have prevented further migration of the fuel contaminants and that officials are regularly taking groundwater samples to ensure that drinking water remains safe both on and off-base.
Bicknell said there are concerns with the way the Air Force plans to go forward, including a lack of forward-looking analysis and the absence of a “trigger action plan” that identifies possible changes and prescribes a response to those changes.
She told the water authority’s Technical Customer Advisory Committee that the fuel soaked its way through almost 500 feet of soil, and ultimately reached the water table, where rock wouldn’t permit it to drop further. Then, she said, it began to pool underground.
Bicknell said the fuel not only contaminated the groundwater but also released volatile vapor into the nearby atmosphere.
She said the Air Force used a vapor extraction system to clean up more than a half-million gallons of fuel.
“This was a really successful system,” Bicknell said, adding that the program was shuttered after about a decade.
Bicknell said the Air Force is now using a groundwater pump-and-treat system that targets the dissolved fuel components that have moved away from the source of the leak and area. There are also four extraction wells, brought online between 2015 and 2018; they draw out and treat groundwater.
Bicknell said the Air Force has announced plans to turn off two of the wells. But that was done without input from the water authority and without including the agency in decision-making.
Air Force representatives did not immediately respond to phone and email requests for comment.
Bicknell said the goal now is to try to get the Air Force to reverse its decision before the wells are shut down. State and federal regulators have jurisdiction over the cleanup plan, she said, but the water authority cannot veto what the Air Force wants to do.
“Ultimately, we’re the water carrier, the ones that are impacted,” Bicknell said. “If the Air Force messes up, it is our source water that’s impacted, and it’s us that lose out on access to a supply source, so including us in the room and in project discussions and decision-making is something that is paramount.”
On April 16, 2024, the Yorba Linda Water District (YLWD/District) Board of Directors rededicated its state-of-the art PFAS Water Treatment Plant in honor of former YLWD Board President Dr. J. Wayne Miller. The J. Wayne Miller, Ph.D. Water Treatment Plant – capable of treating up to 25 million gallons of water per day – provides clean drinking water for the 80,000 customers the Yorba Linda Water District serves. Credit: Yorba Linda Water District
…in the past few years, Yorba Linda has picked up another distinction: It’s home to the nation’s largest per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) water treatment plant of its kind, according to the city.
“This December will be [three] years we’ve been running, and we’re the largest PFAS treatment plant using resin,” says J. Wayne Miller, former board president at the Yorba Linda Water District, for whom the plant is named.
The Yorba Linda PFAS treatment plant took over a long, narrow strip of the water district’s parking lot, not quite the length of a football field. A series of giant tanks sit atop a concrete platform. “Honestly, they look like large propane cylinders,” says Todd Colvin, chief water system operator for the district. Each tank looms about 10 feet tall and can hold around 4,500 gallons. There are 22 of them, arranged in a double row, painted pristine ivory white. The tanks are packed half-full with a kind of resin – special polymer beads – that pull PFAS out of the water. Every gallon of water pumped from the district’s wells now passes through a few of these tanks for treatment, before going to the homes and businesses of 80,000 people.
The Yorba Linda Water District built the largest PFAS water treatment plant of its kind because it had a big PFAS problem. In February 2020, the water district had to take all of its wells offline because they were drawing groundwater contaminated with PFAS…But where is all this PFAS coming from? In Orange County, one of the primary culprits appears to be the Santa Ana River Almost a hundred miles long, the Santa Ana River flows through mountains and canyons, the cities and suburbs of San Bernardino and Riverside. Along the way, it picks up PFAS. “We find it in some of just the natural runoff that goes into the river during the winter, during storms,” says Jason Dadakis, executive director of water quality and technical resources at the Orange County Water District. ”We also detect some PFAS coming out of the sewage treatment plants upstream.” There’s also the legacy of factories and military bases in the area.
Click the link to read the article on the E&E News website (Miranda Willson). Here’s an excerpt:
September 12, 2024
“It’s absolutely everywhere,” said Sarah Hale, an environmental researcher who manages ZeroPM, a project funded by the European Union. “Trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) will be the next discussion in America, I can guarantee it. It will be about how should we treat it and what should we do.”
The attention on TFA underscores the game of whack-a-mole that scientists and communities face with forever chemicals. With thousands of identified versions of the substances, the chemicals are practically ubiquitous in the global economy, and researchers are still determining the exact health risks associated with many of them. But TFA could pose a particularly difficult problem down the line, due to how much it would cost to take it out of drinking water, experts say. The substance is extremely small, mobile and water soluble. As a result, it cannot be removed from water using the filtration systems that many communities are installing now for large, widely studied forever chemicals, said Rainer Lohmann, a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island.
Trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) is a very persistent contaminant that has gained attention due to its multitude of anthropogenic sources, widespread occurrence in the environment, and expected accumulation in (semi-)closed drinking water cycles. Here, we summarize and assess the current knowledge on the anthropogenic sources of TFA to better understand the human-induced environmental TFA burden and highlight future research needs. Formation of TFA from the degradation of volatile precursors leads to diffuse and ubiquitous contamination of the environment. The analyses of ice core and archived leaf records have undoubtedly demonstrated that atmospheric depositions of TFA have increased considerably over the last decades in the Northern Hemisphere. Moreover, many point sources of TFA have been identified, which can lead to contamination hotspots posing a potential threat to human and environmental health. Also, unintentional formation of TFA during per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) remediation might become a major secondary source of TFA.
A whistleblower and watchdog advocacy group used an EPA database of locations that may have handled PFAS materials or products to map the potential impact of PFAS throughout Colorado. They found about 21,000 Colorado locations in the EPA listings, which were uncovered through a freedom of information lawsuit. Locations are listed by industry category. (Source: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility analysis of EPA database)
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Meg Wingerter). Here’s an excerpt:
Colorado will receive $225,000 each of the next three years to monitor exposure to lead in rural residents and to “forever chemicals” in people who encounter them at work. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made grants to Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah for “biomonitoring,” which refers to testing blood or other bodily fluids for chemical contamination. The grants will allow them to test the amount of lead and other heavy metals in rural residents’ blood, while testing for per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) will focus on firefighters and other people in jobs where they frequently use the chemicals.
These sediment traps of hay bales and tarps, seen on July 21, were placed in Lincoln Creek below Grizzly Reservoir. Pitkin County officials say that a July 16 release from Grizzly Reservoir that turned Lincoln Creek and the Roaring Fork River orange had minimal biological effects on fish and other aquatic life. Credit: Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism
Pitkin County officials say that a July release from Grizzly Reservoir that turned Lincoln Creek and the Roaring Fork River orange had minimal biological effects on fish and other aquatic life.
Water quality testing results from the day of the sediment release, July 16, show high levels of iron and aluminum, but they do not show levels of copper high enough to be toxic to fish.
Members of the Lincoln Creek workgroup, which is comprised of officials from Pitkin County, Colorado Parks & Wildlife, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Independence Pass Foundation and others, met remotely on Wednesday to debrief the July 16 incident. The water quality samples were collected by staff from the Roaring Fork Conservancy and the results are available on River Watch, a statewide volunteer water quality monitoring program operated by CPW.
The released sediment was in particulate form and less able to be readily taken up by aquatic life, according to a press release from Pitkin County. There were no fish kills reported to CPW and the event is not expected to have a significant long-term impact on aquatic ecosystems.
“Most of this indicates that although visually the impact of the event was, you know, scary to look at, it does seem that at least from a copper and biological perspective that there was less of a copper biological risk to fish,” said Megan McConville, CPW River Watch program manager. “The copper has a more toxic effect on aquatic life than the aluminum or the iron.”
Twin Lakes Reservoir & Canal Co., which operates Grizzly Reservoir, drained the reservoir this summer so it could make repairs to the dam and outlet works. On July 16, a pulse of sediment-laden water from the bottom of the reservoir was released down Lincoln Creek, turning it and the Roaring Fork River orange and alarming Aspen residents and visitors.
A July 1 news release from Pitkin County had warned of the potential for temporary discoloration of the river as the reservoir was drawn down, but the severity of the event shocked many people. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is investigating whether the sediment release needed a permit under the Clean Water Act.
Officials say the release is unlikely to pose any ongoing risk to people recreating in local waterways.
Local officials, residents and environmental groups have long been concerned about water quality on Lincoln Creek and the July 16 release came at a time of increased scrutiny. Officials have determined that a “mineralized tributary,” which feeds into Lincoln Creek above the reservoir near the ghost town of Ruby, is the source of the high concentrations of metals downstream. The contamination seems to have been increasing in recent years and may be exacerbated by climate change as temperatures rise.
High levels of aluminum, iron at testing sites
Water quality samples were taken by Roaring Fork Conservancy staff at six locations on Lincoln Creek and the Roaring Fork on three dates: June 4, June 25 and July 16. The locations were the Grizzly Reservoir inlet, below Grizzly Dam, the Lincoln Gulch Campground on the creek just above the confluence with the the Roaring Fork, the Grottos day-use area and Difficult Campground. Control samples were also taken from the Roaring Fork just above the Lincoln Creek confluence. An additional location, below the sediment traps on Lincoln Creek about 50 yards below Grizzly Dam, was tested only on July 16.
That data show sharply increasing concentrations of aluminum and iron on July 16, particularly just below the dam. On June 25, there were 258 micrograms (parts per billion) of aluminum in the water below Grizzly Dam, which is still exceeds the chronic water quality standard for aquatic life (on all but one date and location, the amount of aluminum exceeded either the CPW acute or chronic water quality standards for aquatic life). During the release on July 16, that jumped to 1.7 million micrograms. Testing at the second location below the dam, below the sediment traps placed by Twin Lakes, that number was down to 726,600.
“There was a pretty significant drop from what was coming directly out of the dam,” said Chad Rudow, water quality program manager with the Roaring Fork Conservancy. “It kind of shows the sediment traps were doing their job and helping to sequester some of that stuff.”
By the time the release had made it downstream to the confluence of the Roaring Fork, the total iron levels had decreased by 97%, and total aluminum decreased by 98%.
Because there were additional elements in the water, the aluminum was not as toxic to fish as it could have been, McConville said.
“The more carbon you have in the water, the less toxic it makes the aluminum,” she said. “Because we’ve got bottom lake sediments coming down, they were probably pretty high in carbon. … My guess is that a big slug of carbon came down along with the iron and aluminum and for aluminum in particular, it probably provided some protection for those aquatic organisms.”
The iron levels also exceeded state chronic water quality standards for aquatic life in eight of the 19 sites and days tested, but iron is a 30-day standard and the release was a roughly 36-hour event.
“If that event had gone on for 30 days or a longer duration, then that standard would have been applicable,” McConville said. “But because it was such a short-term event, that sort of clogging, smothering effect that we would expect from that precipitated iron just really didn’t have a chance to occur.”
The reason copper levels below the reservoir were so low is probably because the entirety of Lincoln Creek above the reservoir — the source of copper contamination — is being diverted to the Arkansas River basin through the Twin Lakes Tunnel.
A map of the Independence Pass Transmountain Diversion System, as submitted to Div. 5 Water Court by Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Co.
Lincoln Creek and Grizzly Reservoir are part of a highly engineered system that takes about 40% of the water from the headwaters of the Roaring Fork to cities and farms on the east side of the Continental Divide. Water is sent from the reservoir through Twin Lakes Tunnel into Lake Creek, which is then collected in Twin Lakes Reservoir.
Four municipalities own 95% of the shares of water from the Twin Lakes system: Colorado Springs Utilities owns 55%; the Board of Water Works of Pueblo has 23%; Pueblo West Metropolitan District owns 12% and the city of Aurora has 5%.
Officials said at Wednesday’s meeting that this is just the initial attempt at understanding the water quality testing data around one reservoir release event and there is still a lot of data that needs to be analyzed from other testing agencies.
In addition to the Roaring Fork Conservancy, four other entities are conducting water quality sampling this summer: Pitkin County Environmental Health; the U.S. Forest Service; Colorado Parks and Wildlife; and the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado Boulder. The workgroup has hired consultant LRE Water to review the data and an EPA report, make a site visit and comment on the sampling plans of the five different entities.
“The initial plan was to have all of the data come to us at one time, the beginning of next year, but there became this ask for the data around this event; there was a concern around toxicity,” said Kurt Dahl, Pitkin County environmental health director. “There’s still a lot of data that we have out there. … The context of the entire year is going to have to wait until our intended timeframe of early next year to talk about how this looks in comparison to the various other times we’re out there sampling.”
Prior to mining, snowmelt and rain seep into natural cracks and fractures, eventually emerging as a freshwater spring (usually). Graphic credit: Jonathan Thompson
Blanca Wetlands, Colorado BLM-managed ACEC Blanca Wetlands is a network of lakes, ponds, marshes and wet meadows designated for its recreation and wetland values. The BLM Colorado and its partners have made strides in preserving, restoring and managing the area to provide rich and diverse habitats for wildlife and the public. To visit or get more information, see: http://www.blm.gov/co/st/en/fo/slvfo/blanca_wetlands.html. By Bureau of Land Management – Blanca Wetlands Area of Critical Environmental Concern, Colorado, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42089248
Dozens of environmentalists, homebuilders, farmers and road builders, along with Colorado water quality regulators, will buckle down next week to begin work on a complex new set of rules designed to protect thousands of acres of wetlands for years to come.
And, yes, they want your help.
Colorado’s Water Quality Control Commission plans a series of public meetings in the coming months, with a kickoff meeting Sept. 4, followed by workshops Sept. 13 and Oct. 4. Meetings will be held virtually and workshops will be held virtually and in person, according to state health officials.
Colorado is the first state to address a major gap created last year when the U.S. Supreme Court, in its Sackett v. EPA decision, wiped out a critical set of environmental safeguards contained in the Clean Water Act.
Healthy mountain meadows and wetlands are characteristic of healthy headwater systems and provide a variety of ecosystem services, or benefits that humans, wildlife, rivers and surrounding ecosystems rely on. The complex of wetlands and connected floodplains found in intact headwater systems can slow runoff and attenuate flood flows, creating better downstream conditions, trapping sediment to improve downstream water quality, and allowing groundwater recharge. These systems can also serve as a fire break and refuge during wildfire, can sequester carbon in the floodplain, and provide essential habitat for wildlife. Graphic by Restoration Design Group, courtesy of American Rivers
House Bill 1379, approved by Colorado lawmakers in May, identifies which streams and wetlands must be protected, and where exceptions and exclusions for such things as homebuilding, farming and road building will apply. During the next 16 months, the rules spelling out how the law will be enforced must be crafted and approved by the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission.
Lawmakers have given the regulators and participants until December 2025 to finish the rules and launch the oversight program.
“For 50 years we all depended on the Clean Water Act to protect our watersheds,” said Stu Gillespie, an attorney with EarthJustice who helped negotiate House Bill 1379. “But that was taken away by the Supreme Court. Now we all need to be involved because we all rely on these watersheds. I hope people will keep tabs and engage from the outset so we don’t lose any more wetlands and streams.”
Ephemeral streams are streams that do not always flow. They are above the groundwater reservoir and appear after precipitation in the area. Via Socratic.org
The Sackett case had major impacts in Colorado and the West, where vast numbers of streams are temporary, or ephemeral, flowing only after major rainstorms and during spring runoff season, when the mountain snow melts. The Sackett decision said, in part, that only streams that flow year-round are subject to oversight. It also said that only wetlands that had a surface connection to continually flowing water bodies qualified for protection. Many wetlands in Colorado have a subsurface connection to streams, rather than one that can be observed above ground.
House Bill 1379 corrected those problems.
But lawmakers and others remain worried that the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Water Quality Control Division, already facing a major backlog on issuing permits for one of its programs, will have difficulty keeping up with the permitting demands of the new wetlands program.
Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Republican from Brighton, said she is hopeful that new requirements calling for frequent reporting to the state’s Joint Budget Committee, or JBC, and lawmakers will keep the program on track and help fill the funding gaps that have plagued the health department in recent years.
Lawmakers have provided nearly $750,000 this year for the initial work and OK’d four new full-time positions for the program as well as part-time legal support, according to the final fiscal note on House Bill 1379.
“We’ve always understood that we needed a permitting process in place,” Kirkmeyer said Aug. 20 at a meeting of the Colorado Water Congress. “But we also need safeguards to ensure there is oversight at the JBC so we can ensure permits are being processed in a timely manner.”
A pilot wastewater treatment project in the Wet Mountain Valley west of Pueblo just got a boost from a state grant. The project is designed to address challenges some small communities are having in meeting increasing federal environmental standards combined with the demands created by a growing population. The system calls for upgraded wastewater lagoons stocked with specialized microbes, as well as a technology known as electrocoagulation to help clean sewage from water. Dave Schneider manages the Round Mountain Water and Sanitation District in Westcliffe and Silver Cliff. He said they’ve run small scale tests that show their concept works. The next step is to run a larger scale test on the upgraded lagoon system. They’ll also do separate assessments of the electrocoagulation component to determine whether it is necessary.
“What are the challenges we have (on a) big scale?” he said. “We might have to do one or two different tweaks that we might not have initially planned, but we’re going to find a methodology in this that will work.”
The state Department of Local Affairs awarded a $546,750 grant to the district to help fund the $800,000 pilot project…Schneider said they hope to submit the plans for the demonstration project to the state health department for approval this fall and get the upgrades started next spring.
The entrance to the Colorado State Land Board’s Lowry Ranch property in Arapahoe County is pictured on May 16, 2024. (Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline)
Colorado regulators on Wednesday gave the go-ahead to a sweeping oil and gas drilling plan on a large tract of state-owned land east of Aurora, with several conditions aimed at addressing concerns from nearby residents opposed to the project.
On a 3-1 vote, members of the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission approved the 32,000-acre “comprehensive area plan” proposed by Denver-based Civitas Resources, which aims to streamline permitting for 156 new oil and gas wells at seven drilling locations in Arapahoe County. But they moved to require that Civitas use emissions-reducing electric drilling equipment, and left the door open to denying permits for proposed well pads nearest to several southeast Aurora subdivisions.
“I do see concerns with the CAP, and I do think there’s additional work that could have and probably should have been done,” said ECMC Commissioner Mike Cross. “But I still do think that it does meet our rules, and is approvable.”
Most of the area in Civitas’ CAP proposal consists of the sprawling Lowry Ranch property, a former U.S. Air Force missile launch site and gunnery range acquired by the Colorado State Land Board in the 1960s. Limited drilling has taken place on the property since the Land Board first issued a lease for oil and gas development in 2012, but the CAP’s approval could fast-track drilling in the area for the next six years.
Save the Aurora Reservoir, a community activist group formed to oppose the project, made their case against its approval in a two-day hearing last week, citing concerns about increased noise, truck traffic, air pollution and wildfire risk. They also worry about the proximity of the Lowry Landfill Superfund Site, on the northwest corner of the project area. Civitas agreed not to drill under the Superfund site at the Environmental Protection Agency’s request.
“We are devastated by the Commission’s decision,” Marsha Goldsmith Kamin, STAR’s president, said in a press release. “This is without doubt the wrong decision for the health, safety, and environment of our community.”
The approval also drew condemnations from state and national environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, which called the plan “reckless.”
“The grassroots efforts in Aurora have been powerful, passionate and persistent,” Ben Jealous, the Sierra Club’s executive director, said in a statement. “Members of this community deserve access to healthy air and clean water, and shouldn’t have to live in fear of fracked gas operations beneath their homes and schools.”
The 26,500-acre Lowry Ranch, a former U.S. Air Force missile site and bombing range, was acquired by the Colorado State Land Board in the 1960s. (Colorado Newsline illustration/State Land Board map)
Two-year process
Civitas first submitted its CAP application in 2022. Jamie Jost, an attorney representing Civitas, told commissioners Wednesday that the company’s proposal had “evolved for the better” over the course of two years of community outreach and feedback, “including input and influence from STAR.”
“It’s a comprehensive area plan that’s the result of thousands of hours of consultation, cooperation and collaboration with multiple federal, state and local governmental stakeholders, oil and gas operators, mineral owners, community groups and citizens,” Jost said of the proposal.
But Jost also criticized the testimony from STAR and its expert witnesses during last week’s hearings, accusing the group of spreading “misinformation intended to incite fear.” Civitas was particularly adamant throughout the proceedings that STAR’s fears about induced seismic activity — a phenomenon that has been documented elsewhere but is considered a low risk in the geological formations drilled in northeast Colorado — are unfounded.
In a statement, Kait Schwarz, director of the Colorado branch of the American Petroleum Institute, called it “disappointing and revelatory” that environmental groups continue to offer “significant resistance” to drilling proposals following the passage of stricter laws and regulations in recent years.
“Our operators are proud to produce in Colorado, yet it is disheartening to encounter such opposition even when the regulations and requirements are strictly adhered to,” Schwartz said. “This application and decision should serve as a model for addressing future projects.”
None of the drilling sites proposed in the Lowry Ranch CAP would be closer than 3,000 feet from the nearest subdivision — satisfying the 2,000-foot setback requirement adopted by the ECMC in 2020 — but the plan’s opponents say it’s still far too close to neighborhoods, schools, recreation areas like the Aurora Reservoir and environmentally hazardous sites like the Lowry Landfill.
The Lowry Landfill superfund site east of Aurora in Arapahoe County is pictured on May 16, 2024. (Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline)
Commissioner John Messner was the lone vote against the plan’s approval. Trisha Oeth, the commission’s newest member, did not take part in the proceedings because they began prior to her appointment to the panel by Gov. Jared Polis in June.
Messner objected to the “vague and noncommittal efforts” made in the proposal to minimize the project’s cumulative impacts on public health and the environment.
“The CAP application as a whole, as presented, does not meet the intent and requirements of our rules, and has not shown that it is protective,” Messner said.
ECMC staff recommended the Lowry Ranch plan’s approval earlier this year. It’s the fourth CAP considered by the commission since its 2020 rules overhaul, and Wednesday’s vote marks the fourth consecutive approval. But Commissioner Brett Ackerman said prior to the vote that “this one felt close.” Commissioners debated whether to delay a decision on the plan, but ultimately moved forward with an approval with the attached conditions.
“Like Commissioner Cross, I do not believe it’s perfect,” Ackerman said. “Like Commissioner Messner, I do have some concerns that it can more closely comply with the intent and specificity of our regulations with a little more work.”
Civitas will still be required to seek ECMC approval for each proposed drilling location in the plan through a process known as an “oil and gas development plan,” or OGDP. That process could include revisions to the proposed sites as a result of a required “alternative locations analysis,” commissioners said Wednesday.
“In order of the things that cause me the most concern, first and foremost would be the proximity of the primary line of well pads to the line of residential developments,” said Ackerman. “They feel a little deaf to some of the concerns of the nearby residents, as opposed to promoting maybe a couple of opportunities for working together with those residents to minimize impacts.”
Moab tailings site with Spanish Valley to the south
Click the link to read the article on The Deseret News website (Amy Joi O’Donoghue). Here’s an excerpt:
August 6, 2024
Sixteen million tons of radioactive uranium tailings once sat near the banks of the Colorado River, putting the waterway in peril of contamination on the outskirts of Moab. Removal began in 2009 and was halted for a time due to lack of funding for the U.S. Department of Energy cleanup project, but work is continuing at a steady clip — with nearly 15 million tons shipped by rail to a disposal cell about 30 miles away at Crescent Junction. At this rate, the tailings removal may be completed by next year, but much work remains to be done afterward for full remediation of the area in which the uranium mill operated for nearly three decades…
Mary McGann, a Grand County commissioner who heads up the steering committee involved in the project, said she envisions something similar to Las Colonias Park in Grand Junction, Colorado. It, too, was a remediation site for tailings removal and it, too, is adjacent to the Colorado River…
Contamination from what the locals call “The Pile” has been a problem for the Colorado River in Grand County — before the establishment of the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action, or UMTRA, Project. But the project established groundwater wells to prevent the leaching and to serve other useful purposes.
During the reporting period, which ran in mid-July of 2023 to mid-July this year, officials noted there were over 1,036,719 tons of uranium mill tailings shipped by rail four times a week. To date, the project has shipped more than 14.8 million tons, or about 92% of the total estimated 16 million tons in the tailings pile to be moved. During that same reporting period, more than 151,162 tons of debris was placed in the disposal cell — also shipped by rail. That includes the successful removal of 14 autoclaves — each weighing 16,000 pounds, according to project spokeswoman Barbara Michel.
Petersen Air Force Base. Photo credit: Peterson Air and Space Museum
Click the link to read the article on The Guardian website (Tom Perkins). Here’s an excerpt:
August 12, 2024
The US air force is refusing to comply with an order to clean drinking water it polluted in Tucson, Arizona, claiming federal regulators lack authority after the conservative-dominated US supreme court overturned the “Chevron doctrine”. Air force bases contaminated the water with toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” and other dangerous compounds. Though former US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials and legal experts who reviewed the air force’s claim say the Chevron doctrine ruling probably would not apply to the order, the military’s claim that it would represents an early indication of how polluters will wield the controversial court decision to evade responsibility. It appears the air force is essentially attempting to expand the scope of the court’s ruling to thwart regulatory orders not covered by the decision, said Deborah Ann Sivas, director of the Stanford University Environmental Law Clinic…
The supreme court in late June overturned the 40-year-old Chevron doctrine, one of its most important precedents. The decision sharply cut regulators’ power by giving judges the final say in interpreting ambiguous areas of the law during rule-making. Judges previously gave deference to regulatory agency experts on such questions. The ruling is expected to have a profound impact on the EPA’s ability to protect the public from pollution, and the Tucson dispute highlights the high stakes in such scenarios – clean drinking water and the health of hundreds of thousands of people hangs in the balance…
Several air force bases are largely responsible for trichloroethylene (TCE) – volatile organic compounds – and PFAS contaminating drinking water sources in Tucson. A 10-sq-mile (26 sq km) area around the facilities and Tucson international airport were in the 1980s designated as a Superfund site, an action reserved for the nation’s most polluted areas. The EPA in late May issued an emergency order under the Safe Drinking Water Act requiring the air force to develop a plan within 60 days to address PFAS contamination in the drinking water.
From satellite view, the land north of the Arkansas River is a seemingly random checkerboard of vital green and desperate brown, quickly fading from a few thriving farm acres to the broad, water-drained desolation of northern Crowley County.
From the cab of Matt Heimerich’s pickup, each alternating square of emerald corn or desiccated knapweed is a decision by a distant big city — to either share Colorado resources responsibly or toss rural Arkansas River counties to the fate of the hot summer winds.
That square was reseeded with native grass after Aurora bought the water in the 1970s, Heimerich says. That plot, Colorado Springs dried up and it’s all weeds. That farm, Aurora wants to dry it up soon, but the water court referee wants a better reseeding plan.
Heimerich’s family is one of the few farmers remaining in the 790 square miles of Crowley County after city water buy-ups shrank the county’s irrigated acres from more than 50,000 in the 1970s to just a few thousand this year. He jumps down from the pickup to clear invasive kochia weeds from a pipe opening gushing cool canal water down a 1,500-foot corn row.
Straight line diagram of the Lower Arkansas Valley ditches via Headwaters Magazine
Two miles away is downtown Olney Springs, population 310. Crowley County as a whole has only 5,600 residents, and more than a third of those are inmates at two prisons. The only retail operation left in Olney Springs is a soda vending machine against the wall of town hall.
As Heimerich clears his irrigation pipe, he pauses to jab a thumb over his shoulder 150 miles to the north at Aurora, where the population increased by more than 100,000 over 20 years. “When you build a new development, at the end of the day, you’re drying up a farm,” Heimerich said. “Where else is it going to come from?”
“Crowley is just the worst example of what can happen when nobody cares, and nobody pays attention,” he said. The tiny community serves as an enduring reminder of the cultural and economic ruin that occurs when big cities in Colorado and elsewhere purchase farms, dry up the land and move the water to urban areas. It gave rise to the term “buy and dry,” a practice now widely condemned.
The practice was supposed to end in the Lower Arkansas Valley in 2003 with a hard-fought federal court battle and settlement. Since then, state lawmakers and top water and farm agencies have changed laws and spent millions of dollars testing new protective methods for sharing water temporarily between rural and urban areas. They have also spent heavily to improve water quality for thousands of people living near the river who still don’t have clean water to drink.
The big cities insist they have learned their lessons from the Crowley County disaster.
“The results of what happened in Crowley County are unacceptable and widely recognized as a travesty,” said Colorado Springs Utilities spokesperson Jennifer Jordan. “We’ve taken those lessons to heart.”
Arkansas River Basin — Graphic via the Colorado Geological Survey
But outraged Lower Arkansas growers and water districts say new efforts to protect their farm water aren’t working. At the same time, the big cities say new laws making it easier to share farm water don’t provide enough reliable water to grow their communities.
The cities also say big changes in the future water picture, climate-driven reductions in stream flows and threats to their Colorado River supplies leave them little choice but to draw more farm water.
This year they did that, inking deals in the Lower Arkansas worth more than $100 million to buy and lease land and water, raising alarms among local growers and generating big questions about whether the state is doing enough to protect rural farm communities and the water that keeps them going.
Buy and dry light
The cities say a lot has changed in the past 20 years and that these new deals represent innovations in water sharing. But critics in the Lower Arkansas Valley say these same deals signal that no one is doing enough to prevent “buy and dry” or the latest tool in the water acquisition quiver, “lease and dry,” in which water is pulled from farmland periodically.
Aurora, for instance, spent $80 million in April to buy nearly 5,000 acres of farms in Otero County and the more than 6,500 acre-feet of water associated with that land. An acre-foot equals nearly 326,000 gallons of water, enough to irrigate half an acre of corn, or supply at least two urban homes for one year.
Aurora plans to use the water itself in three out of 10 years, leaving it on the farms the rest of the time. Some 4,000 acres of land will be dried up intermittently when Aurora is using the water, according to Karl Nyquist, a developer and grower who negotiated the deal with Aurora and who is operating the farms for Aurora under the lease agreement.
Colorado Springs has a different arrangement just downriver in Bent County, where it will permanently purchase up to 15,000 acre-feet of water from local farmers. Colorado Springs will also help pay local farmers to install modern center pivot irrigation systems that use less water, allowing the city to keep the saved water for its use.
In Crowley County. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
In this deal, Colorado Springs and the farmers will be responsible for revegetating any dried-up land. It will use the water in five out of 10 years, and it has agreed to make a one-time, upfront payment of $2.5 million to Bent County plus payments each year based on how much water is taken off the fields. The money is in addition to payments to farmers.
“We wanted to make sure Bent County was kept whole,” said Scott Lorenz, a senior water projects manager with Colorado Springs Utilities.
Bessemer Ditch circa 1890 via WaterArchives.org
And in Pueblo County, perhaps the least controversial of the three deals, Pueblo Water agreed to purchase nearly one-third of the shares in the local historic Bessemer Ditch system for $56.2 million. Pueblo continues to lease the water back to the farmers for now. At the same time, the Palmer Land Conservancy has developed a sophisticated new framework that measures farm productivity on land watered by the Bessemer Ditch and will eventually help direct water to the most productive farms as Pueblo takes its water. The hope is that the new system will increase overall farm productivity on the ditch system and help make up for anything lost when the less productive lands are dried up, according to Dillon O’Hare, Palmer’s senior conservation manager.
Palmer is also working to analyze the impact of the deals on water quality downstream and how to prevent further damage, O’Hare said.
Irrigated farmland is evaporating
The three projects come as new data shows Colorado’s irrigated farmlands are shrinking. Since 1997, the state has lost 32% of these lands, with areas in the Lower Arkansas Valley seeing losses higher than that, according to an analysis of federal agricultural data by Fresh Water News.
Crowley County has lost 90% of its irrigated lands in that period. Pueblo has lost 60.2%, and Bent and Otero have lost 37.6% and 35.2%, respectively.
State agriculture and water officials are worried about the decline, but say they have few tools to prevent it because farmers are free to sell their water rights to whomever they want.
“Am I concerned? Definitely,” said Robert Sakata, a long-time vegetable grower near Brighton, and former member of the Colorado Water Conservation Board who now serves as the director of water policy for the Colorado Department of Agriculture. “We all talk about water being a limited resource, but prime farmland is also limited and it’s important to take that into consideration.”
Not all these losses are due to big city water prospecting. Climate change, market challenges and legal obligations to deliver water to downstream states are also fallowing Colorado farmlands.
Everyone is sympathetic. No one is in charge.
Still, more than 20 years after the intergovernmental peace accords, it wasn’t supposed to be this way.
The Lower Arkansas Valley region is part of the sprawling Arkansas River Basin. The river has its headwaters near Leadville and flows through Buena Vista, Salida, Cañon City, into Pueblo Reservoir and on over the state line east of Lamar.
Its counties were once a sweet spot in the basin’s agriculture economy. The river fed a bountiful chain of tomato, sugar beet and onion fields, as well as acres of luscious Rocky Ford melons, and chiles, corn and alfalfa.
Cities say these latest deals, which they call “water sharing” agreements, will bolster the agricultural economies and keep remaining water on farm fields forever. But the term “sharing” doesn’t sit well with some local farmers and water officials who have a deep distrust of the cities they blame for the region’s decline.
“I call it a charade,” said Mike Bartolo, a retired Colorado State University Extension research scientist who farms in Otero County near Rocky Ford. “You dry up an acre, you’re drying up land that was formerly irrigated. That’s buy and dry.”
While the state’s highly touted Water Plan cheers for the concept of cities helping rural areas thrive after water losses, there is no mechanism or state law or bureaucracy to watchdog new sales.
After the 2003 agreement in the Lower Arkansas Valley, state and local water leaders began testing new ways for cities and farmers to temporarily share water, something that had been almost impossible under older water law.
But Aurora and Colorado Springs say the early experimental programs didn’t provide enough water at reasonable prices to fulfill their fast-growing community needs permanently.
Lorenz, the Colorado Springs Utilities manager, said the city does lease some water in the valley, but it hasn’t been enough to ensure the stability of its long-term water supply.
“The major concern is that we would lease from a particular farmer, and then a different city would come out and buy those water rights and the farmer wouldn’t lease to us anymore,” he said.
And in fact that is what just happened in April, when Aurora purchased the Otero County farms, which had formerly leased water to Colorado Springs.
Colorado Springs Utilities formally opposes the latest Aurora water deal, as do the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District based in Pueblo, and the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District in Rocky Ford.
But their anger has so far been expressed by passing resolutions, not filing lawsuits.
How Aurora Water and other cities have treated Arkansas River counties like Crowley after past buy-ups leaves nothing but suspicion about newly announced deals, local leaders say.
Though Aurora says it is not attempting any more permanent dry-ups of local land, “I don’t think any of us believe them,” said Heimerich, Crowley County’s representative on the Southeastern Conservancy board. Heimerich also is a member of the board of Water Education Colorado, which is a sponsor of Fresh Water News. “They’ll do whatever they need to do and apologize later.”
Thornton, Larimer and Weld counties conducted a similar debate publicly — from the 1990s to this year — as Thornton bought up 17,000 acres of northern Colorado farms and their water rights and began drying up the land. County commissioners and other local officials brought their legal weight and bully pulpits to bear in demanding extensive concessions from Thornton. The Adams County city has been reseeding dried up land with native grass and backfilling lost property taxes, but gets mixed reviews from locals.
The latest Lower Arkansas water deals are also pitting Colorado’s big cities directly against each other in conflicts not seen for decades. When the board of Colorado Springs Utilities passed a resolution earlier this year condemning Aurora’s Otero County deal, it was a direct shot from leadership of a city of nearly 500,000 — the Colorado Springs City Council is the utility board.
“The idea is that there’s Denver, there’s a Denver metro complex and they’re going to just do whatever they want to do and the rest of the state has to go along with it,” City Councilman Brian Risley said.
But Alex Davis, a top Aurora Water official, said Colorado Springs’ ire is unwarranted.
“Aurora has worked in close partnership with Colorado Springs for decades and that will continue,” she said. “This is a case where we disagree.”
Peter Nichols, general counsel for the Lower Arkansas Water Conservancy District in La Junta, said he is deeply concerned by what cities are proposing now.
“We thought we were through with all of this. We thought we had it under control,” he said of the Aurora and Colorado Springs purchases.
Nichols is among those who have spent much of the past 20 years creating a system, now known as the super ditch, that allows seven local irrigation companies to negotiate leases with cities.
A map of the Fry-Ark system. Aspen, and Hunter Creek, are shown in the lower left. Fryingpan-Arkansas Project western and upper eastern slope facilities.
Importantly, it also won the legal right to move leased water stored in Pueblo Reservoir out of the valley, via the federal Fryingpan-Arkansas Project and the Otero Pipeline, removing what had been a key barrier to leasing.
Nichols said local growers and water districts have worked hard to find ways to share water so that it doesn’t permanently leave the valley. That the cities are now jumping the line with these new deals isn’t OK with him.
A farmer’s — and a county’s — greatest asset
Colorado Springs and the other thirsty Front Range cities want farmers like the young Caleb Wertz to be the new face of urban water agreements. On a recent 95-degree summer afternoon, Wertz high-tailed it across Bent County driving an ambulance to take an injured neighbor to the hospital. He had planned to be on his farm, but that’s life in the Lower Arkansas Valley.
The population is shrinking, and everyone has too many jobs to count. The local farmer is also a first responder. Your primary care provider is a farmer’s wife.
Arriving back at the farm just after 5 p.m., Wertz talks about what is perhaps the most controversial decision he has ever made: Selling a portion of his agricultural water to fuel housing growth in Colorado Springs.
The deal will pay him enough so that he can install modern irrigation systems, drying up portions of the fields, known as corners, that won’t be reached by the new, center pivot sprinklers, and allow Colorado Springs to buy the saved water.
He is also planting cotton alongside his traditional corn, and he believes he is the first in the state to do so. A new modern variety is supposed to use half the water, just one acre-foot per acre, rather than the two acre-feet of water that older types, such as those grown in Arizona, use.
For Wertz, the agreement will give him enough money to keep farming and enough new technology to make his remaining agricultural water go farther. He will become a rarity in the area: A young farmer with enough land and water to continue the business his family started in 1919 and to expand it.
“The water purchase makes it a lot more doable because we can farm those acres so much more with pivots,” Wertz said. “That’s the case even though we’re drying up the corners. … That has a bad connotation to it. But Colorado Springs is reimbursing the farmers to turn those corners into pasture land or to revegetate. … Even if it is not producing corn, it’s not just becoming wasteland.”
But to some of his neighbors in the valley, Wertz has entered a hostile no-man’s land, facilitating yet another dry-up of farmland in a region that has already lost too much water and land to urban thirst.
“I know people don’t like it and people are entitled to their opinions, but a lot of those are the older generation who don’t like seeing it because of what happened years before I was even born,” said Wertz, who is 23. “I was glad to see the Springs come in and ask questions about working with us.
“We were quite leery at first. But they have proved it to us. It is extending the water use for them and us, and allowing my brother and I to start taking over some of these acres that haven’t been farmed for a while because there isn’t enough manpower.”
But can the land come back after fallowing?
Another worry for Lower Arkansas growers is whether new methods that allow cities to take the water off the fields for one or more years and then return it at a later time, do more harm than good. They’re not sure farmland in the region is resilient enough to bounce back from cycles of city-caused drought.
Perry Cabot, a research scientist and specialist in farming practices and farm economies, has spent years studying the issue. He says that there is hope for fallowing, after years of experiments and tests, but only with crops such as alfalfa and other grasses and sometimes corn.
“The programs we have done saw alfalfa return almost with a vengeance,” Cabot said. “Grass hay is the second-best candidate.”
Nyquist, the developer and grower who is leasing back and farming the land he recently sold to Aurora, agreed, saying fallowing programs do work, but they are not good for small growers who don’t have the cash to buy the necessary new equipment and nutrients that are needed to help fully restore the crops once water returns.
Still, Jack Goble, general manager of the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District in Rocky Ford is wary of plans that take water from parts of farm fields over long periods of time.
“And I haven’t found a farmer yet that believes that that’s a viable farming situation, ” he said. “It’s tough to bring that land back.”
Dan Hobbs irrigating from the Bessemer Ditch. Credit: Greg Hobbs
For years, valley water hasn’t been drinkable
Anger aimed west and north from Lower Arkansas Valley towns extends to water quality issues, not just water volume.
For many decades, groundwater wells and the river have been contaminated by farm runoff, mining operations and some naturally occurring pollutants.
The same federal Fryingpan-Arkansas Project that in 1962 created Pueblo Reservoir was also supposed to solve the drinking water problem for 40 communities downriver by building the 130-mile Arkansas Valley Conduit to move clean water from Pueblo Reservoir. But it wasn’t until 2023 that final funding for the $610 million pipeline arrived.
Some downstream leaders are galled that Aurora can start taking more fresh water out of the Arkansas before serious pipeline construction has begun to serve the 50,000 people in long-suffering downstream towns.
“My whole life has been under drinking water restrictions, not being able to attain safe drinking water except to go buy it or to go through extraordinary measures to treat it,” said Dallas May, whose family ranches 15,000 acres north of Lamar. May also is on the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District board.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Water Quality Division, which tests Lower Arkansas water a few times a year, classifies most of the river below Pueblo Reservoir as not supporting drinking water or “aquatic life use.” The classification calls the Lower Arkansas suitable for “warm-water aquatic life” and recreation.
The state did not respond to requests for more detailed assessments of Lower Arkansas water health. Asked if state efforts were improving water quality on the Arkansas, a spokesperson said in an email, “Trend studies require extensive data over a significant period of time. The water quality in watersheds is influenced by a wide variety of factors, including precipitation and weather trends that can highly influence the water quality from year to year.”
Some Lower Arkansas farmers and officials are tired of waiting. They see the problem getting worse as, for instance, Aurora takes more water out of Otero County, “What happens is all of the bad things are concentrated into what is left,” May said, “and that is a huge problem.”
Silence at the state level?
The Colorado Water Conservation Board spent years writing the statewide Water Plan, convening forums and task forces, and conducting listening sessions on the tensions between city water needs and the survival of agricultural communities. They say they are concerned about new city water buys, but add they have no authority to influence any deals because water rights are private property rights and can be bought and sold at will.
The board declined an interview request about Aurora’s water purchase or the broader water use questions.
“The Colorado Water Plan sets a vision for meeting the state’s future water needs and was broadly supported by local communities,” Russ Sands, the board’s water supply planning chief, said in email responses to questions. “But the decisions that happen in local communities regarding their water purchases and planning are largely outside of the state’s control. Accountability for staying true to the vision of the Water Plan is a collective responsibility.”
The loss of irrigated farmland isn’t expected to slow anytime soon as climate change dries up streams and population growth drives cities to buy more. The Colorado Water Plan’s forecast shows the population of the Arkansas River Basin, which includes Colorado Springs and Pueblo, surging more than 60% by 2050, increasing the pressure to tap farm water.
Sakata, the state water policy advisor, who farms near Brighton, said protecting the state’s irrigated farmland will take more work. “We can’t just say lease the water for three out of 10 years. We need to have agreements so that water sharing will be really available.”
As an onion grower, Sakata can’t do interruptible water supply agreements because he has long-standing yearly agreements with suppliers that require him to deliver vegetables. If he fallows his land for a year, the money he would likely be paid wouldn’t be enough to compensate him for the loss of onion sales and the need to support his employees during the break.
Farm research scientist Cabot would like to see the state begin buying irrigated farms, using conservation easements to protect them from development or purchase, and then leasing that land and its water to young growers.
What else state leaders can do to preserve what’s left of Colorado’s irrigated land isn’t clear yet, but Alan Ward, a Pueblo native who is also director of water resources for the Pueblo Water, said the state needs to reexamine its policies and goals.
“There is only so much water available, and I don’t think it’s realistic for the state to continue to think that we can control our urban areas and grow them fast without impacting agriculture.” Clarifying that he was speaking as a private individual, rather than a water official, he said, “I’d rather have the farms continue and not have the urban growth, but I am probably in the minority on that.”
Where does the battle flow next?
Water veterans such as Cabot said the state is likely doing everything it can right now to protect irrigated ag lands. But like Sakata, he says more work needs to be done to shore up farm markets and to create easier, more lucrative water sharing arrangements.
“I don’t want to oversimplify this,” Cabot said, “but the simplest way for cities to get this water is to go to farmers and say ‘How much did you make last year?’ and then offer them 10% more. … These are not just fields. They are farm enterprises.”
Kate Greenberg, Colorado’s agriculture commissioner, is overseeing multimillion-dollar efforts to protect farmlands by improving soil health, solving market challenges and making farm water use more efficient. She says the people of Colorado are on board with her agency’s efforts.
“We did a study last year that showed over 98% of Coloradans believe agriculture is an integral part of our state. If we’re taking water out of agriculture, where are we putting it to beneficial use?
“Are we conserving it to grow urban developments and do we want to see that over preserving agriculture and biodiversity. We need to answer that question as a state.”
Bartolo, the retired CSU researcher, hopes the answer comes soon, before any more of the valley water is siphoned off for urban use.
As news of the deals spreads, Bartolo’s sense of deja vu is growing and his fears for the future of the valley’s irrigated ag lands is growing too. No one knows yet what will happen when Aurora’s contract to use the Fryingpan-Ark to deliver water expires in 2047.
“Having lived through it in my lifetime, I have seen the drastic changes,” Bartolo said.
What worries him, and other growers too, is “what happens if they come back after 2047? What happens then?”
Proposed Uinta Basin rail project in #Utah could result in surge of hazardous shipments along Colorado River
Colorado’s attorney general recently left open the possibility he will take a formal role in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court to help block a proposal that would send a massive surge of oil trains along the Colorado River.
“The proposed plan to run two-mile-long trains filled with hundreds of thousands of barrels of waxy crude oil along the Colorado River daily poses an extreme risk to this critical water source and the communities, industries, and farmers that rely on it,” Weiser wrote in an email statement to Colorado Newsline. “This proposal was rightfully tossed out by an appellate court. I am presently considering all options to protect the Colorado River — that includes weighing in with the U.S. Supreme Court as it reviews the case.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit last year ruled the U.S. Surface Transportation Board, which is the primary federal regulatory agency overseeing U.S. rail projects, erred under the National Environmental Policy Act and ordered the agency to fix significant problems with the proposed 88-mile rail spur’s environmental impact statement.
The appeals court found the STB failed to properly weigh both the upstream and downstream impacts of oil production, including accident data, downline fire risks and the impact to endangered fish from predicted oil spills in the Colorado River.
The seven Utah counties surrounding the Uinta Basin oil fields, which formed the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case in March. The Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County case will be heard during the high court’s next session, which begins in October.
Weiser — a former Supreme Court clerk to justices Byron White and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, former dean of the University of Colorado law school, and former U.S. Justice Department attorney in the anti-trust division — has been one of the top state officials critical of the Uinta Basin Railway project.
“I am disappointed the Supreme Court heard (the Uinta Basin) case. We won an important decision,” Weiser said in a phone interview last week. “I have been a vocal critic of the idea of taking what seems to me a high-risk move through a fragile ecosystem by allowing there to be the shipping of oil in railway cars that could lead to the sort of ecological harms we’ve seen happen elsewhere.”
Weiser points to the environmental devastation of Norfolk Southern railroad’s East Palestine, Ohio, chemical train derailment last year.
“It doesn’t take much for a single incident to create extraordinary and lasting damage, and that, too, is a good basis for prohibiting (the Uinta Basin) project for going forward, so we’ll continue to make that case,” Weiser said. “I worry that a Supreme Court that is not interested in protecting our land, air and water could be less sympathetic to this point. We did see that lack of sympathy in the case involving the Clean Water Act.”
Weiser said the only silver lining in that case was that conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh sided with the liberal minority, joining Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissenting against the ruling.
“We were successful in that case with Justice Kavanaugh, but obviously we were still a vote short,” Weiser said. “I’m worried about all of our environmental statutes if the mindset is, ‘How do we gut any environmental protections?’ We as a society are going pay a price for that, whether that’s coming from the Supreme Court or a second Trump administration.”
From an antitrust standpoint, Weiser says consolidation in the railroad industry has opened up new risks of harm, because less competition leads companies to be less committed to reliable, safe service and adequate staffing. While federal legislation is stalled, Colorado lawmakers took up the issue last session and set up a new state rail safety office.
“Part of the challenge from a competition standpoint is the Surface Transportation Board I believe has had the sole authority to evaluate mergers in rail, and they’ve been willing to approve mergers in rail that really highly concentrated that industry,” Weiser said, specifically referring to the U.S. Justice Department objecting to the Union Pacific merger with Southern Pacific in 1996.
“I think the system of oversight that does not allow the Justice Department to stop anti-competitive mergers is problematic, and it’s problematic that the Surface Transportation Board took action in this case and did not take the Department of Justice competition concerns more seriously,” Weiser added. Now Union Pacific controls most east-west freight through Colorado and is currently negotiating with the state for a new lease at the state-owned Moffat Tunnel.
Eagle County officials have said they hope the state will take a more active role in the Uinta Basin Railway battle going forward, citing $450,000 in legal fees.
Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, in a rare statement on the Utah oil-train project, which has united the state’s Democratic lawmakers in opposition, said that if the Supreme Court greenlights the Uinta Basin Railway this fall, it will have “profound implications across the West.”
“It’s a legal case that we’re following, of course,” Polis said recently in Vail, as quoted in the Colorado Times Recorder. “We’re actively monitoring it. It would have a major impact on our state for sure, in terms of transportation. I don’t have any say over it. It’s not up to the governor. It’s a pending court case, so we’re aggressively monitoring it, and it would have profound implications across the West.”
It was nine years ago yesterday, while I was sitting in our Durango home, when a tweet from La Plata County popped up on my screen warning residents of an upstream spill of some sort. “I gotta see this,” I said to myself, running out to the old Silver Bullet and driving it to the 32nd Street Bridge. When I found the water to be its usual placid green, brimming with SUPers and boaters and scantily-clad tubers, I continued north into the broad, flat-bottomed Animas Valley, where the generous monsoon had left pastures green and cottonwoods lush.
I turned onto Trimble Lane, passed the golf course and rows of McMansions to a little turnout by the bridge and was transfixed by the river: Turbid, electric-orange water, utterly opaque, sprawled out between the sandy banks, as iron hydroxide particles thickened within the current like psychedelic smoke.
This image was taken during the peak outflow from the Gold King Mine spill at 10:57 a.m. Aug. 5, 2015. The waste-rock dump can be seen eroding on the right. Federal investigators placed blame for the blowout squarely on engineering errors made by the Environmental Protection Agency’s-contracted company in a 132-page report released Thursday [October 22, 2015]
The crazy color was the result, of course, of the Gold King Mine spill, when contractors for the EPA inadvertently breached an earthen plug in the portal of the Gold King Mine, releasing some 3 million gallons of TANG-hued, acidic, metal-tainted water into a tributary of the Animas River, turning the waterways various shades of yellow and orange for a good 100 miles downstream. The incident drew global attention, shut down the river, and affected recreation, commerce, and agriculture, as well as inflicting trauma on the collective psyches of the riverside communities — some of which still lingers today.
It really seemed, at the time, to be a turning point. After years of lurking under the public radar, abandoned mines and the ways they harm the environment, impair water quality, and sometimes harm human health were finally getting attention. There were congressional hearings on the problem, dozens of stories in the national media, and Gold King downstreamers demanded that the Upper Animas River watershed be declared a Superfund site in order to fix the problem, once and for all.
The “Bonita Peak Mining District” superfund site. Map via the Environmental Protection Agency
Nine years have passed, a Superfund site — the Bonita Peak Mining District — was established, numerous lawsuits have played out, and as much as $160 million has been spent responding to the initial disaster and on Superfund-related activities in the years since. And yet, no meaningful federal policy regarding abandoned mines has been passed by Congress or implemented by the White House. And while Gold King Mine discharges are being treated, keeping some harmful metals out of the streams, very little additional progress has been made on solving the larger problem of abandoned mines in the Upper Animas watershed and their effect on water quality.
It is all a bit discouraging, to say the least. Though none of it is all that surprising.
On the federal policy part, the Biden administration issued a report last summer calling for major reforms to the 1872 General Mining Law. The proposed changes would increase protections on mining claim/lease and permitting end, so as to avoid future Gold King events. And they would establish a reclamation fee and royalties on federal hardrock minerals to help fund a restoration industry tasked with cleaning up abandoned mines.
It all sounds great, but so far has yielded very little actual policy. Yes, the Biden administration increased mining claim fees from $165 to $200. And the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act did earmark billions of dollars for abandoned mine — and oil and gas well — cleanup. As for Congress, the closest they’ve gotten to a viable mining law reform bill is one clearing the way for corporations to use public lands as waste dumps.
The problem is that the mining industry wields a great deal of power, especially in Nevada, Arizona, and Utah. And that means that even Democratic, otherwise green-leaning politicians tend to bow down to industry (see Sens. Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto, both of Nevada). The Biden administration, meanwhile, has developed a case of carbon tunnel vision, and is looking to streamline and encourage mining for so called “green metals” such as lithium, manganese, cobalt, and copper. And it has also signed on to efforts to bolster the domestic uranium mining industry to support a growing advanced nuclear reactor sector. Implementing the administration’s own recommended reforms could slow those efforts.
Prior to mining, snowmelt and rain seep into natural cracks and fractures, eventually emerging as a freshwater spring (usually). Graphic credit: Jonathan Thompson
As for a lack of progress in the Upper Animas? That’s a more complicated situation. In fact, it’s the complicated nature that makes it so challenging.
Superfund — or CERCLA — seems to work well as a blunt instrument for cleaning up old factories, waste dumps, or other contained industrial sites, and for holding the responsible parties to account. It has a good track record on some mining sites, as well, including several in the West. Even then, however, the cleanup can last for decades, and in the case of draining mines, may require water treatment in perpetuity.
But there’s nothing straightforward or simple about the environmental legacy of mining in the Upper Animas watershed and the 48 sites within the Bonita Peak Mining District Superfund site. The mountains’ innards resemble Swiss cheese, with miles and miles of drifts and shafts in addition to natural fractures and faults that blur hydrological understanding. Indeed, mysteries remain around the exact source and pathways of the water that blew out of the Gold King in 2015. (For what is likely the most exhaustive, and exhausting, chronological dive into the Gold King/Sunnyside/American Tunnel connections, check out this old Land Desk wonkfest. But remember, only paid subscribers have access to the archives!)
Further complicating issues is a fair amount of natural acidity and metal loading that can never be cleaned up, along with the still unanswered question of which stretches of stream may have been able to support fish before mining commenced, and which ones may feasibly be able to support fisheries in the future. In other words, what is the end goal of the project? What would “fixing” the problem, as downstreamers demanded in 2015, look like in terms of specific water quality improvements in specific stretches of streams? And are those desired fixes feasible? Nine years later and those questions linger.
The saddest part of it all, perhaps, is the fact that those questions were being asked and answered, and solutions were being implemented, prior to the Gold King spill. The Animas River Stakeholders Group moved maddeningly slow at times, but they were thorough, realistic in what could be achieved, and effective. They were also efficient: Since their funding was limited, they had to prioritize projects that would give them the biggest water quality bang for their buck. They were also somewhat limited in what they could do thanks to liability issues. While moving or capping a waste pile is fairly low risk, if a “good samaritan” like ARSG tries to fix a draining, abandoned mine, it could become responsible for future problems — like the Gold King blowout, for example. So, ARSG relied on industry partners for draining adits, or called in the EPA.
A lot of folks, myself included, hoped that the Superfund cleanup would incorporate ARSG as an active partner and build upon their efforts. Just imagine what the group, which was formed in 1994 and included a vast storehouse of water quality data and analysis and human expertise, could have done with EPA funding and liability protection? Instead, the EPA started virtually from scratch. The ARSG ultimately disbanded and was replaced by the citizens advisory group, or CAG. Former ARSG Coordinator Peter Butler was brought on as CAG’s chair.
I’d run into Butler on occasion while running or hiking the trails around Durango, and he always seemed a bit frustrated about the lack of progress at the Superfund site and the EPA’s lack of receptiveness to the advisory group’s advice and data collection.
Shortly after the Gold King spill, the EPA had spent many millions of dollars setting up a water treatment facility in the former mining town of Gladstone, at the mouth of the bulkheaded and defunct American Tunnel (which accessed the Sunnyside, the last operating mine in the region, which was shuttered in 1991). But it only treats drainage from the Gold King, letting acid mine drainage from other nearby adits flow unmitigated into Cement Creek, which ultimately joins up with the Animas River. Other than that, the EPA had done very little in the way of substantive remediation, and downstream water quality has remained poorer than it was in the early 2000s, when the Sunnyside’s treatment plant was still up and running. (It’s a very long story, but to sum it up: Legal issues, a lack of funding, and an eviction shut treatment down in 2004, causing water quality and downstream fish populations to deteriorate).
Still, I was a bit shocked when Butler announced his resignation from the CAG late last year, and sent a letter detailing his reasons for moving on. He cited the lack of CAG influence on decision-making, the high turnover among local EPA administrators, and the EPA’s failure to honor promises made to the local community prior to Superfund designation. And, he wrote:
(The EPA later responded, as reported by the Durango Herald’s Reuben M. Schafir)
It was damning criticism and the EPA lost an important advisor when Butler stepped down. And while the CAG continues its work with a capable group of local advisors, Butler’s exit also seemed to signal the end of the Animas River Stakeholders Group era, in which environmentalists, bureaucrats, scientists, and industry collaborated to find working solutions to complex problems.
It has taken me a while to write about this, in part because I do find it somewhat heartbreaking. It also worries me. Earlier this year Navajo Nation advocates and residents celebrated when the EPA finally designated the Lukachukai Mountains Mining District Superfund site after years of lobbying for it. They saw it as a guarantee that dozens of abandoned, Cold War-era uranium mines would finally be cleaned up and would stop oozing toxic material into the water and homes. And maybe it is, but how long will it take?
The sad reality is that no one — not the EPA, not the Stakeholders group, not industry — will ever totally fix the problem of polluting abandoned mines in the Upper Animas watershed. All they can really do is manage it and, in an ideal world, learn from the experience and develop better and more innovative ways to carry out that management. I suppose in EPA-time, nine years isn’t all that long. There’s still time to right the ship so that the project can benefit the water and the local community.
Last week’s $90 million settlement relating to the 2015 Gold King Mine Blowout that turned the Animas and San Juan Rivers TANG-orange for over 100 miles downstream did not bring an end to the legal saga that has dragged on for more than six years (lawsuits against the federal government are still pending). But when the agreement is finalized, Sunnyside Gold Corp—the owner of the nearby, now-shuttered Sunnyside Mine—will finally be free of the mess. Extricating themselves from any further liabilities has cost them about $67.6 million: $40.5 million to the feds; $6.1 million to the State of Colorado; $11 million to the State of New Mexico; and $10 million to the Navajo Nation, not to mention the tens of millions they’d already spent cleaning up a century’s worth of mining mess.
🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫
Glen Canyon Dam. Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson/The Land Desk
I’ve seen a bunch of headlines lately to the effect of: “Lake Powell water hits highest level in three years.” It’s accurate and it’s certainly good news for everyone who relies on water from the Colorado River, but it doesn’t really tell the whole story. Yes, deadpool has been delayed for another year or so, boaters have better access to the reservoir, hydropower output should be a bit better, and the ferry between Halls Crossing and Bullfrog Marinas is operating once again.
That said, the headline is a bit of a glass half-full sort of thing. Yet in this case, it wasn’t even half full, at its seasonal peak in early July it was only about 41% of capacity — or 59% empty for all the pessimists. Now water levels are dropping again and likely will continue to do so until next spring, as releases exceed inflows.
In some ways you could say that Lake Powell’s levels are a microcosm of the Southwest’s climate as a whole. We’ve had a few decent to downright-abundant water years, which have eased the drought in most places and helped reservoir levels recover. But the wet years have not ended the Southwest megadrought, now going on its 25th year, which is the most severe dry spell of the last 1,200 years, according to new research out of UCLA. Nor has the above-average snowpack brought Lakes Powell or Mead back to their 1980s glory days. It will take several more consecutive wet years to make that happen.
The increase may not be enough to quell concerns about future water supplies, but the ferry’s up and running again, which is a good sign. I’ve only taken it once: My dad and brother and I took the Lowrider, a 1967 Pontiac Catalina, across Lake Powell many years ago, before taking some hairball, oil-pan-busting Henry Mountain route for which the car was not appropriate. The ferry ride only lasts a few minutes, but it’s kind of cool, and it allows you to see a lot more country with less driving. It only runs when the water level is above 3,575 feet, though, which means you probably only have a month or two to try it out.
Figure 4. Graph showing the distribution of reservoir storage in different parts of the Colorado River basin between 1 January 2021 and 15 July 2024. Credit: Jack Schmidt/Center for Colorado River Studies
The orange plume flows through the Animas across the Colorado/New Mexico state line the afternoon of Aug. 7, 2015. (Photo by Melissa May, San Juan Soil and Conservation District)
As the CEO of Northern New Mexico Indigenous Farmers, I see firsthand the struggles our farmers face every day. Our community, inherently connected to our land and rich in agricultural traditions, has been hit hard by an unreliable water system that makes it tough to keep our crops healthy and our livelihoods secure. The Hogback pump station, which should be a dependable source of water, often breaks down, causing us to lose crops and hope. Today, I want to share why securing Energy Transition Act funding for a new pump station is so crucial and how this project will bring much-needed hope to our community.
This image was taken during the peak outflow from the Gold King Mine spill at 10:57 a.m. Aug. 5, 2015. The waste-rock dump can be seen eroding on the right. Federal investigators placed blame for the blowout squarely on engineering errors made by the Environmental Protection Agency’s-contracted company in a 132-page report released Thursday [October 22, 2015]
Our organization was born out of the Gold King Mine spill, a disaster that laid bare the lack of support for our farmers. The spill made our existing problems worse, showing that without quick action, our farming future was at risk. One of the biggest issues we face is our broken-down irrigation system, specifically the Hogback pump station. Its frequent failures leave us with no reliable water supply for our crops, creating a constant state of anxiety for our farmers and resulting in fallow land. This situation can’t go on if we want our community to thrive. That’s why we applied for the ETA grant from New Mexico’s Economic Development Department, and I’m thrilled to announce we were awarded $3.6 million in funding to replace our failing pump station. This isn’t just a fix for our water problems; it’s a lifeline for our entire community. The new pump station, complete with its own solar power, will make sure our farms get a steady and reliable supply of water, leading to healthier crops and more stable incomes for our farmers. But the benefits of this project go beyond water. A reliable pump station will help us rebuild our agricultural sector, providing jobs and boosting local businesses that rely on farming. It will also help us keep our cultural traditions alive, as farming is more than just work for us — it’s a way of life that connects us to our heritage and our land. This project will also bring our community together. Alongside the new pump station, we plan to offer training for our farmers on modern irrigation techniques and sustainable land management. This training will give our farmers the tools they need to use water more efficiently and improve their yields. By learning and growing together, our community will become stronger and more united.
Little is known about the full impact of so-called ‘forever chemicals,’ and settlement would prevent participants from suing in the future
In the fall, the district and authority declined to participate in two PFAS-related settlements. Last month, district staff received information about a new settlement the district and authority could elect to participate in, with similar terms to those in the fall, and lower compensation. During their regular meetings on Thursday, July 25, the district and authority boards reviewed and declined the new settlement proposal, and authorized district staff to make decisions about similar settlements going forward…
The district and authority have conducted three studies to sample the water they provide for PFAS over the last five years. Data from the most recent study, conducted in 2023, shows that PFAS have been detected in five out of 11 of the two water providers’ sources, with four detections within the authority, and one in the district. All five detections were below the maximum contaminant level of four parts per trillion. For reference, one part per trillion is the equivalent of one drop of water in 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools…
Part of the challenge of sampling for PFAS is that technology has not caught up to the chemicals — though there are thousands of PFAS chemicals, only 29 can currently be detected. At the moment, not all labs in the United States can test for PFAS, and the testing is very expensive. The district and authority will next sample for PFAS in 2025.
One year ago, the Supreme Court issued its sweeping decision in the case Sackett v. EPA, which invalidated federal Clean Water Act protections for most streams and wetlands in the United States. Since then, the fight for clean water protections has been at the state level. This report outlines the state of clean water protections one year out from the Sackett decision and why federal protections for our critical waters is vital in the face of worsening climate change and other threats.
In the year since the Supreme Court ruling, two states passed or introduced legislation to create new permitting programs to fill the gap in federal protections and eight states passed or introduced stronger laws and policies to strengthen state protections. Two states passed legislation weakening state-level protections, while efforts to weaken state protections failed in four other states.
The Importance of Wetlands and Streams
Wetlands and streams are the livers and heart of our ecosystems. These critical waters prevent flooding, filter pollution, store carbon, and provide critical habitat for wildlife. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), ”Wetlands are among the most productive ecosystems in the world, comparable to rain forests and coral reefs.”
Similarly, streams that flow only part of the year play a critical role in maintaining the quality and supply of our drinking water and aid water conservation.
Our lakes and rivers depend on these critical waters, which in turn depend on the Clean Water Act (CWA or the Act) for protections to keep them healthy for fishing and swimming, agriculture and other business uses, and as a source for drinking water. In many cultures, particularly Indigenous cultures, water has a deep religious and spiritual element, and water is seen as life — waters are considered sacred places to cherish and protect. To limit their protection under the CWA could degrade the quality of water in waterways that people and wildlife depend on.
Healthy mountain meadows and wetlands are characteristic of healthy headwater systems and provide a variety of ecosystem services, or benefits that humans, wildlife, rivers and surrounding ecosystems rely on. The complex of wetlands and connected floodplains found in intact headwater systems can slow runoff and attenuate flood flows, creating better downstream conditions, trapping sediment to improve downstream water quality, and allowing groundwater recharge. These systems can also serve as a fire break and refuge during wildfire, can sequester carbon in the floodplain, and provide essential habitat for wildlife. Graphic by Restoration Design Group, courtesy of American Rivers
Lincoln Creek was yellow as it flowed into Grizzly Reservoir in September 2022. A report from the Environmental Protection Agency says metals contamination in the creek and reservoir is a result of natural causes, not a nearby mine. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Daily News website (Austin Corona). Here’s an excerpt:
July 17, 2024
Ongoing construction at the Grizzly Reservoir turned the Roaring Fork River orange as it ran through Aspen on Tuesday. The discoloration had remained in the upper valley as of Tuesday afternoon, with some cloudiness visible as far downstream as Woody Creek. The river appeared clear at Old Snowmass. The city of Aspen said in a Facebook post that its municipal drinking water is safe to drink. Aspen takes its drinking water from Castle and Maroon creeks, not the Roaring Fork. The only drinking water intake located directly on the Roaring Fork is in Glenwood Springs. Nonetheless, county officials have warned recreators to be cautious when playing in the river and avoid ingesting river water. The county also warned against allowing pets in the river. A county alert on Tuesday said the river could appear muddy and discolored over the next few days. Sediment from Grizzly Reservoir likely contains high loads of copper, aluminum, iron and other minerals. The reservoir is located on Lincoln Creek, where the Environmental Protection Agency discovered high metals contamination in 2023 (the contamination was found to be naturally occurring). After leaving Grizzly, the creek flows into the Roaring Fork River roughly 10 miles upstream of Aspen.
Ordway, Colorado-based Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Company, which maintains and operates Grizzly, is installing a liner on the reservoir dam this summer. The company is draining the reservoir as part of the project, which has apparently allowed sediment from the bottom of the reservoir to flow downstream in Lincoln Creek…Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal began draining the reservoir in late June, sending the drainage water through a tunnel under the continental divide. Toward the end of the process, the water level dropped below the tunnel’s intake, causing project managers to send the remaining reservoir contents down Lincoln Creek.
Contractors move equipment as part of a 2021 study of removing per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) from the aquifer under Cannon Air Force base, near Clovis, New Mexico. New Mexico asked a judge to require the federal government to pay current and future damages from PFAS in court documents filed Monday, July 8, 2024. (Courtesy U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Maxwell Daigle)
Click the link to read the article on the SourceNM.com website (Danielle Prokop):
July 10, 2024
New Mexico requested a judge order the federal government to pay the past and future costs of cleaning up ‘forever chemicals’ from military bases across the state, per court documents filed Monday.
New Mexico officials argue the federal government needs to be accountable for PFAS contamination costs at Cannon Air Force Base, Holloman Air Force Base, Kirtland Air Force Base, White Sands Missile Range and Fort Wingate.
Now, after a federal rules change on Monday, they hope it will allow the state to recover damages and future cleanup costs for PFAS contamination left by the U.S. Department of Defense at military bases across New Mexico.
“We applaud the EPA’s listing of certain PFAS, or ‘forever chemicals,’ as hazardous substances under the Superfund statute,” New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said. “This enables us to pursue monetary damages and costs at federal facilities, as stated in our amended complaint.”
Torrez said the change means a federal law requiring polluters to pay to clean up contamination now applies to PFAS.
The designation of PFAS as a hazardous substance is separate from the EPA’s efforts to remove the forever chemicals in drinking water.
The filing makes the federal government liable to pay for current and future costs, repair damages to water, land, air and address impacts to wildlife and the state’s economy.
“This opens the door for us to really help communities like Clovis who have been suffering for far too long with this threat, if not actuality of PFAS,” New Mexico Environment Secretary James Kenney said.
He told Source New Mexico that if a judge grants the request, the timeline for payment would be uncertain, but pointed to a similar process on the Gold King Mine, which took several years.
The state has spent an estimated $8 million to $10 million on technical, legal costs and clean-up at Cannon and Holloman, Kenney said, but the estimates for cleanup at all sites will be expensive.
“We could easily be looking at up to 150 million, if not more, especially once we understand the magnitude of the damages,” Kenney said.
He said it’s unclear when the state will have an estimated cost of damages available.
“It depends if we have cooperation by the United States,” Kenney said. “I would say to be five and-a-half years in, and to be where we are today, does not scream – to me – cooperation.”
As part of those costs, New Mexico is looking to recoup at least $850,000 for the removal of thousands of PFAS-contaminated cow carcasses from a dairy farm next to Cannon, another $1.3 million for investigation contamination around bases, according to the complaint.
The filing amends a five-year old civil case before the federal District of South Carolina Court. That case combined 500 claims from across the country seeking damages from contamination caused by the use of a fire-fighting foam containing PFAS. The case has been in a discovery phase since 2020.
Specifically, New Mexico said the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force broke state law by failing to contain or “address contaminants, hazardous wastes, and hazardous substances,” listing how PFAS was found in groundwater and surrounding environment.
The original 2019 complaint only focused on Cannon and Holloman Air Force bases, but the amended complaint filed Monday expands to five sites.
New Mexico argued in their 65-page motion that while the federal government has acknowledged that PFAS poses “an imminent and substantial danger,” at Cannon, that they have failed to take action to clean up.
The complaint asked that the court grant the state the power to direct the federal government to “to take all steps necessary” on clean-up.
The U.S. Department of Defense deferred comment to the U.S. Department of Justice Tuesday.
New Mexico is embroiled in a second, separate federal lawsuit with the U.S. Department of Defense over PFAS, which is still in mediation, and is not part of the effort to recoup damages.
On July 5 2024, a court in Quito, Ecuador ruled that the Machángara River, which runs through the city, is a subject of rights. The Machángara River case was filed as a Protection Action by the Kitu Karu Indigenous people to address the serious pollution of the river. The fundamental rights that have been affected by this situation include the rights of nature, the right to water, a healthy environment, sanitation and health, as well as the right to the city. The court recognized that since the river is alive, it is subject to rights under the Constitution of Ecuador, which establishes that nature possesses a right to protection, promotion, and restoration. The Constitutional Court of Ecuador previously recognized that rivers are protected under Chapter 7 of the Constitution in 2022.
The judge determined that the Municipality of Quito had breeched the rights of the Machángara River by failing to treat 98% of wastewater that runs into the river from the municipality. As a result of this decision, the judge ordered the implementation of a decontamination plan, following the precedents established by the Monjas River ruling in the north of the city. This plan must include specific measures to reduce the levels of contamination, in addition to considering alternative and sustainable solutions for water treatment. The Municipality of Quito will have to manage the available resources and request financial support from the central government to expand these projects. This ruling must be complied with immediately and the municipality must start implementing the necessary measures for the decontamination of the Machángara River without delay.
The municipality filed an appeal against this decision and the litigation will continue in the Provincial Court of Justice.
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Lauren Penington). Here’s an excerpt:
Rocky Mountain Lake — located at 3301 West 46th Avenue in Denver — closed Thursday after recent testing found toxic levels of algae around the shoreline, the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment said in a statement on social media…Recent routine testing at Lake Arbor in Arvada also revealed blue-green algae was approaching toxic levels, forcing the city to close the lake indefinitely Thursday, Arvada officials said in a news release…
The number of algae blooms will increase as Colorado’s climate becomes warmer, according to previous reporting. The blue-green algae found in the lakes are naturally occurring and an important part of the ecosystem, but the blooms can produce toxins if they grow big enough. Harmful algae looks like thick pea soup or spilled paint with a green, red, gold or turquoise color. They also often have foam or scum.
Toxic-algae blooms appeared in Steamboat Lake summer of 2020. The lake shut down for two weeks after harmful levels of a toxin produced by the blue-green algae were found in the water. As climate change continues, toxic blooms and summer shutdowns of lakes are predicted to become more common. Photo credit: Julie Arington/Aspen Journalism
In 1953, the Anaconda Minerals Company leased nearly 8,000 acres of land in central New Mexico from the Pueblo of Laguna to mine uranium for nuclear weapons. The company gouged and blasted away at the earth, constructing the three massive holes known as the Jackpile-Paguate Mine.
The Jackpile-Paguate became the world’s largest open-pit uranium mine, producing some 24 million tons of ore. It employed hundreds of Laguna Pueblo members and transformed the community’s economy. But mining companies and regulators gave little thought to the safety of miners and nearby residents. Miners were exposed to radioactive and toxic heavy metals daily, even spending their lunch breaks sitting on piles of radioactive ore. Blasting sent tremors through the pueblo’s adobe homes, and a cloud of poisonous dust drifted into the village of Paguate, just 2,000 feet from the mine, coating fruit trees, gardens, corn and meat that was set out to dry.
In 1982, uranium prices plummeted, and Atlantic Richfield, Anaconda’s successor, shut up shop, conducted a cursory reclamation and walked away.
Aerial view of Laguna Pueblo, Rio San Jose, and Interstate 40 in New Mexico. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
But the pollution didn’t end when the Jackpile closed. A toxic plume continued to spread through groundwater aquifers, and the Rio Paguate, a Rio Grande tributary, remains contaminated more than a decade after the facility became a Superfund site, despite millions of dollars in cleanup work. And Laguna residents and former mine workers still suffer lingering health problems — cancer, respiratory illnesses and kidney disease — from the mine and its pollution.
There are at least 250,000 abandoned mining “features,” including at least 4,000 involving uranium, scattered across the Western U.S. — mines, waste piles, prospect holes and other infrastructure. Some are harmless and invisible to the untrained eye. Others continue to threaten the environment, people and wildlife, even after millions of dollars have been spent attempting to clean them up. Mining is hard — but healing the earth and the health of the communities affected by it is immeasurably harder. [ed. emphasis mine]
Data visualization by Jennifer Di-Majo/High Country News
Data visualization by Jennifer Di-Majo/High Country News
Data visualization by Jennifer Di-Majo/High Country News
❶ The Iron Mountain Mine operated from the 1870s until it was abandoned in the 1960s. It was listed as a Superfund site in the 1980s and cleanup continues, including round-the-clock treatment of draining, heavily contaminated water so acidic it can devour a metal shovel blade in less than 24 hours.
❷ Cold War-era uranium mining companies left behind more than 100 waste piles contaminated with radium and heavy metals in and around the Navajo Nation community of Cove. This March, some 50 years after mining ended, it was designated as the Lukachukai Mountains Mining District Superfund site.
❸ The Formosa Mine — shuttered and abandoned in the early 1990s — discharges millions of gallons of acid mine drainage into the Umpqua River each year. It was designated a Superfund site in 2007, and cleanup efforts received additional Infrastructure Act funding in 2021.
❹ Mining ended and groundwater pumps shut down at the Berkeley Pit in the early 1980s, allowing the massive hole to fill with acidic, heavy metal-laden water. More than 3,000 snow geese died in 2016 after landing on the Berkeley “lake,” which is part of the Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund site.
❺ The Bonita Peak Mining District Superfund site — nearly 50 abandoned mines and related features — was designated following the 2015 Gold King Mine blowout, when some 3 million gallons of acid mine drainage spewed into the Animas River drainage.
❻ Mining occurred at the Questa Molybdenum Mine from 1920 until 2014, contaminating soil, surface- and groundwater. A water treatment plant operates in perpetuity to keep contaminants from streams at a cost of more than $5 million annually.
❼ Thousands of uranium mines were abandoned after the Cold War in the Lisbon Valley, White Canyon, and Uravan Mineral Belt in Utah and Colorado. (The USGS labels many of this area’s uranium sites as “unknown.”)
Data visualization by Jennifer Di-Majo/High Country News
Hardrock mining introduces oxygen and water to sulfide-bearing rocks, and the resulting reaction forms sulfuric acid. The now-acidic water dissolves and picks up naturally occurring metals such as zinc, cadmium, lead, arsenic, mercury and even uranium, ultimately depositing these harmful minerals in streams or lakes long after mining ceases. Acid mine drainage is mining’s most insidious, pervasive and persistent environmental hazard.
Data visualization by Jennifer Di-Majo/High Country News
SOURCES: U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Government Accountability Office, Congressional Research Service, University of New Mexico Native American Budget & Policy Institute, Mining and Environmental Health Disparities in Native American Communities, by Johnnye Lewis et al.
The case concerned a 40-year-old precedent known as “Chevron deference.” That doctrine held that when a federal law is ambiguous, the courts must defer to the interpretations offered by the agencies the law covers — as long as those interpretations are “reasonable.” On Monday, the court discarded Chevron deference. This may sound like an abstruse legalistic squabble, but it has massive implications for Americans in all walks of life. It could subject agency decisions on scientifically based issues such as clean air and water regulations and healthcare standards to endless nitpicking by a federal judiciary that already has displayed an alarming willingness to dismiss scientific expertise out of hand, in favor of partisan or religious ideologies. The ruling amounts to an apogee of arrogance on the part of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, wrote Justice Elena Kagan in a dissent joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. But it’s not a new development.
“The Court has substituted its own judgment on workplace health for that of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration,” Kagan wrote; “its own judgment on climate change for that of the Environmental Protection Agency; and its own judgment on student loans for that of the Department of Education…. In one fell swoop, the majority today gives itself exclusive power over every open issue — no matter how expertise-driven or policy-laden.”
Conservatives have had it in for the Chevron doctrine for a long time; given their current majority on the court, the doctrine’s death has been a foregone conclusion, awaiting only the appearance of a suitable case to use as a bludgeon. Indeed, the majority was so impatient to kill the doctrine that the court’s six conservatives chose to do so by using a case that actually is moot. That case arose from a lawsuit brought by the herring industry, which objected to a government policy requiring herring boats to pay for government observers placed on board to make sure the boats were complying with their harvesting permits. The rule was imposed under the Trump administration, but it was canceled in April 2023 by Biden, who repaid the money that had been taken from the boat owners — so there’s nothing left in it for the court to rule on.
Interestingly, Chevron deference was not always seen as a bulwark protecting progressive regulatory policies from right-wing judges, as it’s viewed today. At its inception, it was seen in exactly the opposite way — as giving conservative policies protection from progressive-minded judges.
This term, the court’s conservative supermajority handed down several rulings that chip away at the power of many federal agencies. But the environmental agency has been under particular fire, the result of a series of cases brought since 2022 by conservative activists who say that E.P.A. regulations have driven up costs for industries ranging from electric utilities to home building. Those arguments have resonated among justices skeptical of government regulation. On Friday [June 28, 2024], the court ended the use of what is known as the Chevron doctrine, a cornerstone of administrative law for 40 years that said that courts should defer to government agencies to interpret unclear laws. That decision threatens the authority of many federal agencies to regulate the environment and also health care, workplace safety, telecommunications, the financial sector and more…
But more remarkable have been several decisions by the court to intervene to stop environmental regulations before they were decided by lower courts or even before they were implemented by the executive branch. On Thursday, the court said the E.P.A. could not limit smokestack pollution that blows across state borders under a measure known as the “good neighbor rule.” In that case, the court took the surprising step of weighing in while litigation was still pending at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Iron Fen. Photo credit from report “A Preliminary Evaluation of Seasonal Water Levels Necessary to Sustain Mount Emmons Fen: Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests,” David J. Cooper, Ph.D, December 2003.
The court also acted in an unusually preliminary fashion last year when it struck down a proposed E.P.A. rule known as Waters of the United States that was designed to protect millions of acres of wetlands from pollution, acting before the regulation had even been made final…Similarly, in a 2022 challenge to an E.P.A. climate proposal known as the Clean Power Plan, the court sharply limited the agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, even though that rule had not yet taken effect.
That kind of intervention has little in the way of precedent. Usually, the Supreme Court is the last venue to hear a case, after arguments have been made and opinions have been rendered by lower courts…Collectively, those decisions now endanger not only many existing environmental rules, but may prevent future administrations from writing new ones, experts say…
Coyote Gulch’s Leaf charging at Red Rock Hyundai in Grand Junction May 23, 2023. The Biden administration’s effort to boost sales of electric vehicles while cutting emissions from gasoline-powered vehicles could face a tough test in the courts
Three years ago, President Bidenpromised to “deliver a whole-of-government approach to the climate crisis,” including by making half of all new cars electricby 2030. Now the Supreme Court has imperiled that broad agenda — and possibly other climate and environment rules for decades to come. In recent rulings, particularly two last week, the high court added obstacles tothe government’s ability to regulate air pollution, water pollution and the greenhouse gases that are heating Earth. The decisions could empower conservative judges on lower courts throughout the country to block even more environmental regulations — not only under Biden but presidents who follow him. The recent rulings are “especially valuable for conservative judges who are inclined towards striking down [environmental] regulations,” said Sam Sankar, senior vice president for programs at the environmental law firm Earthjustice. “They had a knife before; they have a chain saw now.”
On Thursday, the Supreme Court put on hold the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan for cutting industrial air pollution that wafts across state lines. On Friday, the justices overturned the so-called Chevron doctrine, severely limiting the power of federal agencies to regulate fundamental aspects of American life, including the environment. And court rulings in 2022 and 2023 targeted the EPA’s authority to curb greenhouse gases and to protect wetlands from runoff. Together, the decisions underscore how a multiyear campaign by industry and conservative groups is successfully weakening the power of the administrative state, and the EPA in particular.
In western communities, mobile home parks provide a more affordable place to live, but residents often face problems with their drinking water.
In Colorado, a new law gives the state authority to test water quality in these communities and force owners to fix any issues.
The state plans to start testing the water at hundreds of parks across the state this summer. Officials have already gotten a head start at one community in Western Colorado that helped spur the legislation.
Apple Tree Park sits on the banks of the Colorado River just across from the town of New Castle.
Silvia Barragán moved to the park in 2015. Her street is lined with trees and she has a big yard with a garden.
“Some people might look at this as just a trashy mobile park, but it’s not,” Barragán said. “It’s a nice, nice neighborhood. There’s a lot of kids in the summer running around and there’s a lot of elderly people that have lived here most of their lives.”
Barragán is originally from Michoacán, Mexico, and she raised her family in western Colorado. Her experience at Apple Tree Park over the last decade has mostly been positive.
“Since I moved here, I felt peaceful and at home,” Barragán said. “My neighbors are great neighbors and I haven’t had any issues in Apple Tree except the water.”
For years, Barragán and her neighbors have been speaking out about the discolored water that comes out of their taps.
“It’s kind of brownish, yellowish. It’s kind of nasty,” she said. “It’s like river water, like if I’m camping and I go get river water, that’s what it looks like.”
Barragán only wears black now because the water stains her clothes and laundry, and it ruins her appliances.
It has an unpleasant smell and taste, so she fills up water jugs at the local grocery store.
“I buy water,” Barragán said. “I buy water for cooking, I buy water for drinking, I buy water for the dogs.”
When the state tested the water at Apple Tree Park, they found it meets federal EPA standards under the Safe Drinking Water Act, passed in 1974, but it has higher than normal levels of heavy metals such as iron and manganese. The park is supplied by groundwater wells, and is outside the limits of the nearby town of New Castle, which draws the majority of its drinking supply from a nearby creek.
Joel Minor used to manage the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s environmental justice program, and said Apple Tree’s situation — of heavy metals showing up in underground well water — is pretty common.
“Because of the taste and color and odor of the water, it can be unpleasant to drink and can cause other issues,” Minor said. “We recognize that that creates challenges for park residents and may require them to spend money on things like bottled water or repairing or replacing appliances.”
While Apple Tree’s overall water system meets federal health standards for drinking, a recent round of testing this winter found that a few samples out of the 200 taken had manganese levels that were above the EPA’s health advisory for infants. High levels of manganese can negatively impact babies’ brain development.
When the state got the test results back in February, they worked with the park owner—Utah-based company Investment Property Group (IPG)—to notify residents and local health officials about the issue.
“What we want folks to know is to be cautious about using tap water from the park for making formula for infants under the age of six-months-old,” Minor said. “These particular locations where this occurred seem to be spots where maybe the water isn’t being flushed quite as well.”
With the passage of the Mobile Home Park Water Quality Act in 2023, the state’s been working with IPG to do more regular testing and to fix the water issues. The company didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.
In 2020, IPG bought the mobile home park from the local Talbott family, which had owned the park since its inception. The company has properties across 13 states, including more than 110 mobile home parks, according to the Mobile Home Park Home Owners Allegiance’s online database.
The state has been having regular meetings with IPG, Garfield County health officials, local advocacy groups and park residents to come up with a variety of ways to improve the water.
“One key short-term solution that we’ve been working with the park on is flushing the water system more frequently, which can help remove iron and other metals that have accumulated in the system,” Minor said. “We’ve also worked with that same coalition to put on an informational webinar about how to do in-home flushing for appliances like water heaters and pipes so that residents are also able to flush their own water systems.”
Another short-term fix already underway is putting in water stations where residents can fill up jugs for cooking and drinking.
The state is providing direct funding to the park in the form of an assistance grant to help install these stations. One has already been installed at a local school across from the mobile home park that’s also owned by IPG, and the company plans to install a second by early June in a communal area near the entrance to the park.
“That was something we came up with based on feedback from park residents that folks are having to drive across the river and across the highway into New Castle to fill water jugs for drinking and other purposes,” Minor said. “So these are key short-term solutions, but we recognize they don’t address the root cause of the problem.”
To address the root cause, the state is proposing bigger engineering solutions like installing a filtration system, or even connecting Apple Tree to a municipal water supply.
But Apple Tree is just one of about 750 mobile home parks in Colorado. The new legislation gives the state authority to test, but the full scope of just how bad water quality could be at those parks, and the costs to fix the various causes could easily begin to rise as testing ramps up.
There is additional funding available for park owners to make these system-wide changes, and if they don’t, the state could impose fines until the problem is fixed.
“We are really trying to prioritize solutions that won’t increase rent for park residents by either looking at lower cost options or ways of getting outside funding that can ensure that some of those costs don’t get passed on to residents,” Minor said. “We know that passing along the cost could potentially make the equity challenges that are already at play worse if residents have to pay more for their water bills or their space rents.”
Alex Sanchez leads the Glenwood Springs-based Latine advocacy nonprofit Voces Unidas, which worked with Apple Tree residents and Democratic Colorado House Representative Elizabeth Velasco of Glenwood Springs to pass the water quality legislation.
“We’re not opposed to getting state dollars and federal dollars to be able to support or incentivize some of these solutions,” Sanchez said. “But ultimately, we believe it’s the responsibility of those corporate owners who have been making a lot of profit off the backs of hardworking folks without having access to, you know, quality water, potentially sidewalks, infrastructure and other benefits that many of us take for granted.”
For Sanchez and Voces Unidas, the new law is just the first step in addressing a widespread environmental justice issue — many people living in these communities have lower incomes, don’t speak English as a first language, don’t have access to resources to file complaints, and are Latines or other people of color.
“The issue is not just contained to one or two parks. Something is happening in these mobile home park communities and because they’re not regulated, there’s not a lot of accountability,” Sanchez said. “Many of these communities across Colorado are owned by corporations that are from out of state.”
In a recent statewide poll in Colorado, Voces Unidas found 41% of mobile home park residents surveyed did not trust or drink their water.
Since 2020, the state’s health and environment department has received 66 formal water quality complaints from 42 parks. State officials estimate that it will take them four years to test the water at all of Colorado’s roughly 750 parks.
For her part, Apple Tree Park resident Silvia Barragán is glad that her community is at the top of the state’s list.
“When I bought this place, I thought I was gonna retire here,” Barragán said. “So I would be sad to think that I need to buy another place just because, you know, I haven’t seen any change.”
Barragán hopes the new legislation will speed things up, but she doesn’t know how much longer she can wait for clean water.
This story was produced by Aspen Public Radio, in partnership with The Water Desk, an independent initiative of the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism.
On May 29, 2024, Colorado Governor Jared Polis stated “Water is life in Colorado and today I was proud to protect our water resources that are essential for our agriculture, our economy, and our way of life.” That day, he signed HB24-1379 Regulate Dredge & Fill Activities in State Waters, making Colorado the first state in the nation to pass legislation that addresses the stream and wetlands protection gap created by the May 2023 Sackett vs. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decision. It took a lot of hard work, long days, collaboration, substantive and technical outreach, leaning into complex topics, working through misinformation, and dealing with a competing bill. We had to make some compromises, but ultimately, we came together in the “Colorado way” on a new law that works for Colorado’s unique intermountain waterways and protects wetlands and streams that were put at risk of losing protection by the Sackett decision.
Audubon convened and facilitated conversations to support consensus around a good solution and worked to depoliticize wetland and stream protections. After all, they support all of us. Audubon celebrates our network who submitted 2,248 comments to legislators in support of creating a robust Colorado Dredge and Fill Program that covers all streams and wetlands. Audubon members also made more than 60 contributions to the “What’s Your Wetland?” storymap in support of HB24-1379. Audubon celebrates our critical partnerships with the Protect Colorado Waters Coalition and the Colorado Healthy Headwaters Working Group as we worked together to preserve our critical needs through a storied and challenging process.
The new law—led by Speaker of the House Julie McCluskie (D-Dillon), Senator Dylan Roberts (D-Frisco), Representative Karen McCormick (D-Longmont), and Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s (CDPHE) Director of the Water Quality Control Division, Nicole Rowan—is excellent news for Colorado’s birds and communities that critically depend upon clean water. It helps lead the way for other states in their pursuit of wetland and stream protections in the post-Sackett landscape.
House Bill 24-1379 was one of two proposed bills that sought to address the regulatory gap created by the Sackett decision. Senate Bill 24-127, sponsored by Senator Barbara Kirkmeyer (R-Brighton), was the second. Due to the two competing approaches of the two bills, consensus was found after a wild ride of public engagement, testimonies, intense negotiations, and 29 amendments. Notably, Senator Kirkmeyer became a co-sponsor to the amended and final HB24-1379 within the last week of the legislative session, winning bipartisan backing.
Why Was a “Colorado Program” Necessary to Protect Wetlands and Streams?
Wetlands and stream systems are essential for birds and provide ecosystem services such as water purification, wildlife habitat, and flood, wildfire, and drought mitigation. Colorado has lost about 50 percent of its wetlands due to development since statehood, so protecting what remains is imperative.
The Clean Water Act provides authorities for the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to define and regulate different types of water bodies. This includes the 404 Permit Program, which determines which wetlands must be regulated and which kinds of dredge-and-fill activities must be permitted for specific waterways. The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Sackett v. EPA dramatically narrowed the scope of these regulations and undercut waters subject to federal regulation and placed an estimated 60 percent of Colorado wetlands at risk of losing protections. Moreover, all ephemeral streams and a significant portion of intermittent streams in every area of the state would have lost protection if a new state program was not adopted. The United States Geological Survey’s National Hydrography Dataset* (as reported in Colorado’s 2022 Sackett Amicus Brief) estimates that 24 percent of Colorado’s streams are ephemeral and 45 percent are intermittent** meaning over two-thirds of Colorado’s waters are temporary and lack year-round flow.
The Sackett decision opened the doors for development to occur next to and on top of wetlands on private land, so long as there is no surface water connection between them and flowing waterways. House Bill 24-1379 was drafted to moderate the pendulum swings in federal wetland and stream protection levels in Colorado by creating a predictable State permitting and protections program that would work for Colorado’s intermountain semi-arid waterways.
What Does the New Law do for Colorado’s Wetlands, Streams, and Restoration Projects?
The new state Dredge and Fill Permit Program created by HB24-1379 contains many details established in statute, and there are areas where more time and attention is needed to determine outcomes through a rulemaking process. Although the new law contains all of the federal 404 agricultural exemptions and some new exemptions tailored to Colorado needs on irrigation ditches, and much more, the below list pertains to Audubon and the Colorado Healthy Headwater Working Group’s direct work in protecting wetlands and streams and restoration project capabilities.
The new regulatory protections program, with its broad application to Colorado ‘State Waters,’ surpasses the scope of the federal ‘Waters of the United States.’
“State Waters” C.R.S. 25-8-103(19) means any and all surface and subsurface waters which are contained in or flow in or through this state, but does not include waters in sewage systems, waters in treatment works of disposal systems, waters in potable water distribution systems, and all water withdrawn for use until use and treatment have been completed.“
The new permitting program is structured to prioritize avoidance of adverse impacts to State Waters, followed by minimization and, finally, compensatory mitigation of the unavoidable impacts.
Federal 404 guidelines are the floor and not the ceiling for any state rules, allowing Colorado to customize regulations that work for intermountain semi-arid waterways.
The existing Water Quality Control Commission (WQCC) will draft the new rules and review and issue individual permits so that no new regulatory commission will be formed, and reports will be generated detailing the functionality of the new permitting approach.
The new law creates a new definition in the statute of “ecological lift,” which “means an improvement in the biological health, as well as the chemical, geomorphic or hydrologic health of an area that has been damaged, degraded for destroyed.”
This new definition is used as one of several criteria for when certain restoration projects will not be required to obtain a state dredge and fill permit: For ephemeral streams, the WQCC must promulgate rules that include: “An exemption for voluntary stream restoration efforts in ephemeral streams that do not require compensatory mitigation and are designed solely to provide ecological lift where the activity is taking place.” This was one of the provisions that Audubon pressed hard for to maintain the status quo that restoration of rangeland ephemeral drainages to stop erosional headcuts from destroying critical mesic areas could continue to take place without having to obtain a dredge and fill permit (as these areas have always fallen outside of the federal 404 permit jurisdiction). These mesic area restoration projects have been happening for about 10 years in Colorado with great success.
For perennial and intermittent streams, if your restoration project requires a federal USACE 404 Nationwide Permit 27 or other general permit, provided those activities result in net increases in aquatic resource functions and services, then a project proponent will not need a separate permit from the Water Quality Control Division.
What Are the Next Steps?
CDPHE will initiate the rulemaking process starting September 2024 through December 2025 to fully form the regulatory program put in place by HB24-1379. All voices will play a role in both the design and implementation of HB24-1379’s regulatory program, helping to set up Colorado for long-term success. Watch for additional information and engagement from Audubon. Sign up for notifications and learn more here!
Conclusion
Water connects us all, and rivers do not stop flowing at state lines. More must be done to restore federal protections for interstate river health while adequately supporting state wetland and stream protection programs. As a headwater state, Colorado must continue to lead the way for the rest of the West and the nation in terms of what can be accomplished with collaboration and shared vision. HB24-1379 does that and puts Colorado on a path to protect its waterways for future generations. At Audubon, we know the value and connectivity of our watersheds, wetlands, streams, and rivers; these are waterways we all depend upon—birds and people. We also know the value of bringing people together for durable solutions and we cannot do this work without you. Together, we can protect our most precious natural resource, water, and the health of our waterways and continue the Colorado way of coming together to address our most pressing issues.
Thank you for helping us pass this historic legislation.
Healthy mountain meadows and wetlands are characteristic of healthy headwater systems and provide a variety of ecosystem services, or benefits that humans, wildlife, rivers and surrounding ecosystems rely on. The complex of wetlands and connected floodplains found in intact headwater systems can slow runoff and attenuate flood flows, creating better downstream conditions, trapping sediment to improve downstream water quality, and allowing groundwater recharge. These systems can also serve as a fire break and refuge during wildfire, can sequester carbon in the floodplain, and provide essential habitat for wildlife. Graphic by Restoration Design Group, courtesy of American Rivers
West Fork Fire June 20, 2013 photo the Pike Hot Shots Wildfire Today
From email from Western Resource Advocates (Erin Overturf):
June 28, 2024
STATEMENT FROM WESTERN RESOURCE ADVOCATES
This morning, the Supreme Court ruled to overturn Chevron v. NRDC, one of the most cited cases in American law.
This is just the latest in a series of SCOTUS decisions designed to undermine the effectiveness of federal administrative agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency.
Today’s far-reaching ruling overturns a 40-year legal framework, marking the culmination of a decades-long effort to undermine federal agencies’ efforts to protect our health and our environment. Overturning Chevron v. NRDC will exacerbate existing dysfunction in federal policymaking, inviting litigation and making it increasingly challenging to secure public health and safety standards – including solutions addressing climate change – at the federal level.
Administrative agencies are the workhorses of our modern system of government. The issues confronting our day-to-day lives are too numerous and too nuanced for the three main branches of government to address alone, but agencies have the technical expertise and flexibility to fill in the gaps.
This decision will make it harder for federal agencies to take action to protect our health and our environment, allowing unelected federal judges with lifetime appointments to reject the policy judgements of agencies with more expertise and replace those agency judgments with their own policy preferences.
“This ruling makes the work we do before state utility regulators and legislatures all the more important. Given the challenging new landscape for federal agencies created by today’s decision, state-level policy on climate action and environmental protection is more critical than ever. The feds will not be able to solve this problem for us. It is time for leadership at the state level.”
In light of this decision, advocacy within our states to protect our health, our environment, and our climate has never been more important. States can and should set their own standards to reduce pollution, conserve water, and protect wildlife.
WRA is committed to continuing to leverage our expertise driving state-level policies that protect our health and fight climate change and its impacts in the Interior West.
Attorney General Phil Weiser released the following statement regarding today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision overruling 40 years of regulatory law precedent:
“Under 40 years of precedent known as the Chevron doctrine, the Supreme Court has given reasonable deference to federal agencies to implement statutes passed by Congress, notably, when a statute is unclear. As the court has consistently acknowledged, it is impossible for Congress to legislate every detail needed to carry out and enforce complex laws.
“With today’s opinion in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Supreme Court appoints itself as the super regulator. The court says that it knows better than highly trained experts when it comes to protections for the air we breathe, the water we drink, public lands, worker safety, food and drug safety, public safety, disaster relief, public benefits, or any other regulation that affects American lives. [ed. emphasis mine] The court’s decision in this case threatens to create regulatory uncertainty for businesses, government agencies, and everyday Americans. As a result, it promises not only confusion, but also higher costs and greater harms. Rather than clarifying the scope of the Chevron doctrine, the court chose to sow chaos and uncertainty.
“Today’s decision does not impact state regulations promulgated under Colorado state law. The Department of Law will continue to work with state agency partners to implement and enforce state regulations.”
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News (hyperlink to the original story), a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here.
The high court sweeps away a ‘Goliath’ of modern law, weakening agencies’ legal authority as courts weigh Biden’s policies to cut greenhouse gases.
Just as federal regulators move forward with a climate change policy rooted in dozens of complex provisions of law, the Supreme Court on Friday overturned the principle that has guided U.S. regulatory law for the past 40 years.
That principle held that a federal agency’s interpretation of the law should be honored, as long as it is reasonable, in cases where there is any question about the law’s meaning.
Now, the so-called Chevron doctrine has been swept aside by a 6-3 court split along ideological lines. Chief Justice John Roberts, who two years ago authored a major opinion limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, wrote the majority opinion, reining in the power of all federal agencies. The court “gravely erred” in 1984 when it gave the regulators deference to decide what the laws they implement mean, he wrote.
“Chevron’s presumption is misguided because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities,” Roberts wrote. “Courts do.”
In response to the argument by the Biden administration that resolving such ambiguities involves policymaking that is best left to political actors, not to unelected judges, Roberts said Congress—itself a political branch—expects courts to decide the meaning of the law. And Congress can always change the law, he said.
“To the extent that Congress and the Executive Branch may disagree with how the courts have performed that job in a particular case, they are of course always free to act by revising the statute,” Roberts wrote.
But Congress has backed away in recent decades from substantive stand-alone bills like the Clean Air Act, and has included much of its recent health and environmental decision-making in must-pass budget legislation that can leave lawmakers’ intent subject to interpretation. Experts say the end result of the decision to overturn Chevron will be increased power for the courts and less for the executive branch.
The decision to overturn Chevron fulfills a long-held wish of conservative groups that seek a smaller role for the federal government. They are led by a network funded by the Koch family, which made its billions in the petrochemical industry. Although small fishing operations brought the case against federal regulators, they were represented by a titan of conservative law, former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, and lawyers for the Cause of Action Institute, which shares an address and personnel with the Koch-funded organization Americans for Prosperity.
Ironically, the 1984 case articulating the deference principle, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council,was an anti-regulatory decision. In that case, a unanimous court upheld a Reagan administration air pollution regulation that environmentalists challenged as too weak.
That rule was issued by an Environmental Protection Agency then led by the late Anne Gorsuch, a fierce opponent of regulation. Her son, Supreme Court Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, today wrote a lengthy concurring opinion affirming the wisdom of sweeping away the Chevron precedent, finding the reason in the roots of common law, from ancient Roman law to the efforts of King George to control the American colonies.
“Today, the Court places a tombstone on Chevron no one can miss,” Gorsuch wrote. “In doing so, the Court returns judges to interpretive rules that have guided federal courts since the Nation’s founding.”
In the years since Chevron was decided, courts invoked the doctrine repeatedly to uphold regulations that industries chafed at, making the case one of the most-cited in administrative law (it appears in more than 41,000 cases, according to Google Scholar.) Advocates of unfettered industry began to view the legal principle as a tool of government overreach, and called for the courts to abandon it.
No one articulated that view more memorably than Gorsuch when he was a federal appeals court judge, just months before he was hand-picked by the conservative Federalist Society to be President Donald Trump’s first addition to the Supreme Court.
“What would happen in a world without Chevron? If this Goliath of modern administrative law were to fall?” Gorsuch wrote in a 2016 immigration case. Congress would write laws, agencies would “offer guidance on how they intend to enforce those statutes,” and judges would “exercise their independent judgment” on those laws, not bound by what agencies said they meant, he wrote. “It seems to me that in a world without Chevron very little would change—except perhaps the most important things.”
Chevron’s Climate Stakes
When it comes to President Joe Biden’s effort to put a national climate policy in place, the most important things may well be the outcomes of a slew of lawsuits filed against the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies in the past year.
These lawsuits, most of them in the names of Republican-led states that have been joined by fossil fuel industries, essentially accuse the agencies of overstepping their legal authority with regulations to curb greenhouse gas emissions or otherwise address climate change.
The agencies in most cases are applying broad legal authority Congress gave them years before the dangers of climate change were fully recognized or even contemplated. The EPA’s regulations to cut carbon pollution from the nation’s two leading sources—vehicles and power plants—are based on the Clean Air Act, passed in 1970 and amended in 1990. The Securities and Exchange Commission is seeking to standardize corporate disclosure of climate risks by relying on Great Depression-era laws that require publicly traded companies to fully inform investors of factors that could affect their financial conditions.
In some cases agencies have more explicit direction from Congress than others—for example, the Clean Air Act provisions on vehicles are more specific than those governing power plants. But in virtually all pending challenges to Biden policy, foes have identified what they see as legal ambiguities, or faults in agencies’ interpretation of the law.
“It’s very hard to write statutes in technical, controversial areas and not have a shred of ambiguity,” said Lisa Heinzerling, a professor at Georgetown Law School, in an interview prior to the decision. “Even if someone is really trying to be careful, people with enough money and enough lawyers can, after the fact, really bring ambiguity out of something that was intended to be clear.”
Now that Chevron has been overturned, the Supreme Court has placed the onus squarely on judges to interpret regulatory law, which typically involves application of science and knowledge of the latest technological advances.
In a scathing dissent, Associate Justice Elena Kagan said the court had removed “a cornerstone of administrative law,” upending the structure that supported much of the federal government’s functions.
The Chevron doctrine “has become part of the warp and woof of modern government, supporting regulatory efforts of all kinds—to name a few, keeping air and water clean, food and drugs safe, and financial markets honest.”
Contrary to Roberts’ view, Kagan said that Congress has assigned federal agencies to address interpreting the law in regulatory areas, which often involve scientific or technical subject matter. “Agencies have expertise in those areas,” Kagan wrote. “Courts do not.” Now she said such decisions will be made by courts that have no political accountability and no proper basis for making policy.
“A rule of judicial humility gives way to a rule of judicial hubris,” she wrote.
A Move Long Coming
But the Supreme Court for years has been moving in the direction of giving less authority to federal agencies; the trend accelerated after Trump gave conservatives a commanding 6-3 majority with his three appointees. Although the lower courts still invoked Chevron often, the high court has not relied on the doctrine in any case since 2016. And without mentioning Chevron, the Court recently has displayed little deference for agencies’ reading of the law.
Two weeks ago, for example, the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on “bump stocks,” rejecting the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms’ technical and legal analysis that the rapid-fire gun accessories convert rifles to machine guns, long banned by federal law. Associate Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that a converted rifle wasn’t a machine gun, in an opinion accompanied by a highly unusual set of trigger mechanism illustrations.
“What that opinion looks like is pretty much the court figuring out on its own how guns work,” Heinzerling said. “That decision is a sign of things to come.”
On Thursday, in a 5-4 opinion by Gorsuch, the Supreme Court put a hold on the EPA’s effort to address the difficult problem of smog-forming pollutants that drift across state lines, saying the agency had not adequately explained how it would address the cost-effectiveness of the “Good Neighbor” program over time. (Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett broke from other conservatives in a dissenting opinion, warning the court was downplaying the EPA’s role under the Clean Air Act and leaving “large swaths of upwind States free to keep contributing significantly to their downwind neighbors’ ozone problems for the next several years.”)
Especially relevant to climate law was the court’s 2022 decision in West Virginia v. EPA case, written by Roberts and also settled 6-3 with Republican-appointed justices in the majority. In that case, the Supreme Court set a new standard of skepticism for federal agency authority on “major questions” of national importance, throwing out the Obama administration’s approach for cutting carbon emissions from power plants.
That case, and now the loss of Chevron deference, could well tip the balance against climate policy in the courts, experts say. A case in point is the litigation (Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce) that was before the court, brought by fishing operations against the agency charged with enforcing fishing law in U.S. waters, the National Marine Fisheries Service, or NMFS.
For three decades, NMFS has had a program of putting scientific observers on board fishing vessels to prevent overfishing and ensure compliance with other federal laws, like those to protect endangered species. Lack of observer coverage has been a chronic problem in the underfunded program and in 2020, to increase coverage to address strain on the important Atlantic herring fishery, in part due to climate change, NMFS set new rules requiring that the fishing operations pay the cost of the observers.
The fishing operations ended up being reimbursed for 100 percent of their costs (about $30,000), but the Supreme Court did not focus on such details. Instead, it focused on what it viewed as the correct roles of agencies, Congress and the courts. Roberts wrote that it was an error for courts to give the executive agencies the benefit of the doubt whenever there was a question of the law’s meaning.
“By forcing courts to instead pretend that ambiguities are necessarily delegations, Chevron prevents judges from judging,” Roberts wrote.
Tara Brock, Pacific legal director and senior counsel for the advocacy group Oceana, said the result would be less monitoring of the industry at a time when more is needed.
“Things are changing in fisheries,” Brock said. “Suddenly somebody in Alaska is catching species that they historically haven’t. Well, what does that mean for fisheries management? Observers being present and being able to document what we are seeing on the water and having that really critical data is going to become even more valuable as climate change continues to change our oceans.”
But lawyers representing the fishing operations that brought the challenge said that the Supreme Court has restored balance to decision making about federal regulation.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a precedent Friday that had for decades limited judicial power to strike executive branch regulations, in a decision immediately criticized for potentially undermining decisions by scientists and agency experts.
The 6-3 and 6-2 decisions in two cases brought by fishing operators in New Jersey and Rhode Island challenged a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration rule and overturned the principle known as Chevron deference.
That precedent gave federal agencies broad discretion to use their judgment to resolve any ambiguity Congress left in a federal statute.
The court’s six conservatives reasoned that courts “routinely confront statutory ambiguities” that have nothing to do with the authority of regulatory agencies, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.
“Of course, when faced with a statutory ambiguity in such a case, the ambiguity is not a delegation to anybody, and a court is not somehow relieved of its obligation to independently interpret the statute,” Roberts wrote.
Under the 40-year-old precedent, courts gave up their interpretive role and deferred to agencies, Roberts wrote.
But they shouldn’t, he added. Judges should apply their own legal reasoning to reach a sound decision.
“Courts instead understand that such statutes, no matter how impenetrable, do — in fact, must — have a single, best meaning.”
1984 ruling overturned
The decision overturned Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, a 1984 Supreme Court ruling that said courts must defer to federal agencies’ expertise when considering legal challenges to a rule. The 1984 ruling significantly raised the bar for overturning an agency rule.
The precedent strengthened the executive branch under presidential administrations of both parties, but experts worry its reversal will strip agencies of the power to enact regulatory safeguards across a broad spectrum of issues including clean air and public health.
In a dissenting opinion, the court’s three liberals — not including Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in one of the cases, after she recused herself because she’d heard the case as an appeals court judge before joining the Supreme Court — said the majority erred by misunderstanding the roles of three branches of government.
Congress knows it cannot “write perfectly complete regulatory statutes,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent. Interpretation of those statutes is a given, and Congress usually prefers a “responsible agency” instead of a court.
Agencies are more politically accountable and have greater technical expertise in a given issue than courts, she wrote.
“Put all that together and deference to the agency is the almost obvious choice,” Kagan wrote.
Kagan went on to criticize the decision as a power grab by the judiciary at the expense of agency experts.
“A rule of judicial humility gives way to a rule of judicial hubris,” she wrote. “In one fell swoop, the majority today gives itself exclusive power over every open issue — no matter how expertise-driven or policy-laden — involving the meaning of regulatory law.”
Liberals see a weakening of safeguards
Liberal groups and elected Democrats worried the reversal will strip agencies of the power to enact strong regulatory safeguards across a broad spectrum of issues, especially climate and environmental regulations.
“It weakens our government’s ability to protect us from the climate crisis, threats to worker safety, public health, clean air and water, safe medicines and food, a sound financial system, and more,” Manish Bapna, president of the environmental group NRDC Action Fund, wrote in a statement.
“Today’s reckless but unsurprising decision from this far-right court is a triumph for corporate polluters that seek to dismantle common-sense regulations protecting clean air, clean water and a livable climate future,” Wenonah Hauter, the executive director of the advocacy group Food & Water Watch, said in a statement.
Rachel Weintraub, the executive director of the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, a group that advocates for strong federal regulations, said in an interview before the decision was released that Chevron deference has allowed a host of regulations affecting consumer safety, labor, environmental protections and other issues.
“The important role that government plays in ensuring the health and safety of our families and the fairness of our markets could be undermined here,” she said.
The ruling takes power away from the experts on a particular subject of a federal regulation — traffic engineers at the Department of Transportation, disease experts at the Food and Drug Administration or scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency, for example — and gives it to the federal judiciary, Weintraub said.
U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat who is the ranking member on the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee, called the ruling a gift to polluters and the fossil fuel industry.
“For 40 years, Congress has passed laws with the understanding that the interpretation of those laws is for the courts, but the implementation laid in the hands of the scientific and policy career experts at our federal agencies,” Grijalva said in a statement.
“But now, thanks to this extremist power-grab, our most fundamental protections will be at the whim of individual judges — many of whom are far-right ideologues — regardless of their lack of expertise or political agenda.”
Conservatives applaud rollback
Republicans in Congress and conservative activists praised the decision for weakening the administrative state, saying it would return power to the legislative branch.
“The Constitution vests Congress with the sole authority to make law,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said in a statement. “After forty years of Chevron deference, the Supreme Court made it clear today that our system of government leaves no room for an unelected bureaucracy to co-opt this authority for itself.”
Rep. Bruce Westerman, an Arkansas Republican who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, said Friday’s ruling should spur Congress to write more prescriptive laws.
“Congress has sidestepped our legal duties for far too long and today’s ruling puts us back in the driver’s seat when it comes to rulemaking and regulatory authority,” Westerman said in a written statement. “We’re no longer going to let federal agencies fill in the details when it comes to the policies we enact.”
Roman Martinez, an attorney who argued on behalf of the Rhode Island fishing operators, called the ruling a “win for individual liberty and the Constitution.”
“The Court has taken a major step to shut down unlawful power grabs by federal agencies and to preserve the separation of powers,” Martinez said in a statement distributed by the conservative public relations firm CRC Advisors. “Going forward, judges will be charged with interpreting the law faithfully, impartially, and independently, without deference to the government.”
No plans to reopen old cases
In the majority opinion, Roberts said the court did not plan to reopen cases that had been decided by Chevron “despite our change in interpretive methodology.”
Even prior to Friday’s decision, the court had used Chevron less often. During the oral argument, Roberts cited a study that the court had relied on the precedent sparingly over the past 14 years.
The court’s conservative majority has shown a willingness to move away from deference to agency decision-making, demanding more explicit congressional instruction.
In West Virginia v. EPA in 2022, for example, the court ruled that the EPA lacked the authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
Daniel Wolff, an administrative law attorney at the law firm Crowell & Moring, downplayed the effect the ruling would have on the administrative state.
Congress at times explicitly directs agencies to craft regulations, and those rules will still be subject to the same standard that they were written reasonably, Wolff said in an interview prior to the decision.
Rules with solid legal and statutory foundations would survive under either standard, he said.
“Rolling back Chevron is simply going to mean agencies don’t get the benefit of the doubt in the case of a tie,” Wolff said. “They have to come into the court and persuade the court that they have the better reading of the statute.”
Fishing operators
The cases decided Friday was brought by herring fishing operators from New Jersey and Rhode Island who challenged a NOAA rule requiring the operators to pay for the federal monitors who regularly join fishing boats to ensure compliance with federal regulations.
The fishing operators said the rule forced them to hand over up to 20% of their profits.
After a lower court relied on Chevron deference to rule in favor of NOAA, oral arguments at the Supreme Court in January focused almost entirely on Chevron.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday accepted a last-ditch appeal from the backers of a controversial oil-by-rail project in eastern Utah, agreeing to review a lower-court ruling that sided with a Colorado county and environmental groups who accused federal regulators of failing to adequately analyze the proposal’s downstream risks.
In an August 2023 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit found that the Surface Transportation Board’s approval of the 88-mile Uinta Basin Railway contained “numerous” and “significant” violations of the National Environmental Policy Act, and ordered the STB to correct deficiencies in the project’s environmental impact statement. The Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, a group of Utah county governments backing the project, appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court in March.
In a list of case orders released Monday morning, the court issued a so-called writ of certiorari and agreed to review the case. With the Supreme Court set to enter its summer recess next week, arguments in the case, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, will be heard during the court’s next term, which begins in October.
An ambitious multibillion-dollar scheme first formally proposed in 2019, the Uinta Basin Railway aims to connect Utah’s largest oil field to the national rail network, allowing drillers there to ship large volumes of the basin’s “waxy” crude oil to Gulf Coast refineries. At an estimated capacity of up to 350,000 barrels exported per day, it would rank among the largest sustained efforts to transport oil by rail ever undertaken in the U.S., singlehandedly more than doubling the nationwide total in 2022, and causing a tenfold increase in hazmat rail traffic through environmentally sensitive and densely populated areas in Colorado.
Colorado’s Eagle County joined five environmental groups in suing the STB over its 2021 approval of the project, arguing the agency’s analysis had violated NEPA. A three-judge Court of Appeals panel agreed, directing the STB to further scrutinize downstream risks of increased oil-train traffic in Colorado, wildfire hazards, impacts on communities along the Gulf Coast and more.
“It’s disappointing the Supreme Court took up this case but the appellate court’s decision on this destructive project is legally sound and should ultimately stand,” said Wendy Park, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental groups that sued to block the project. “The proposal for the Uinta Basin Railway cut corners from the start but federal laws are now catching up with this climate and environmental catastrophe.”
In its March 4 petition to the Supreme Court, the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition argued that the lower court’s ruling conflicted with existing case law, and that analysis of such “distant effects” would exceed the STB’s authority.
“Agencies need a manageable line to guide their NEPA studies, and this Court is now the only place to find one,” the coalition wrote.
In a reply brief, Eagle County and the environmental groups wrote that the lower court “correctly concluded the Board has authority to consider the reasonably foreseeable effects of oil production and refining that the Railway would induce.”
Keith Heaton, the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition’s executive director, told a committee of Utah lawmakers in February that while he believed the project had “a very good case before the Supreme Court,” his organization was prepared for a do-over of the NEPA process if necessary. The project is a public-private partnership between Heaton’s group, the Rio Grande Pacific Corporation and the private equity firm Drexel Hamilton Infrastructure Partners.
“Worst case scenario is we can always go back and re-do the environmental impact statement,” Heaton said.
Even with federal approval, however, critics have expressed widespread doubts about the partnership’s chances of securing the billions in financing necessary to build and operate the rail line. Backers have signaled their intent to apply for $1.9 billion in special tax-exempt infrastructure bonds that must be approved by the Department of Transportation, a move that also drawn staunch opposition from Colorado lawmakers.
“The fossil fuel industry’s insistence on a doomed project at the expense of taxpayers underscores that it’s only interested in protecting its own bottom line,” said Luis Miranda, director of the Sierra Club’s Utah chapter. “The Uinta Basin Railway threatens public health, as well as treasured landscapes and waterways. A derailment would carry immeasurable harm.”
Dr. Jessica Ray, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Washington, explains what PFAS are, how scientists are trying to remove them from the environment, and what you can do to reduce the impact of PFAS on your own health.https://player.vimeo.com/video/946246279 Dr. Jessica Ray discusses PFAS in our water supply.
The Conversation has collaborated with SciLine to bring you highlights from the discussion, which have been edited for brevity and clarity.
What are PFAS, and how are they used?
Jessica Ray: PFAS are a class of thousands of synthetic chemicals originally manufactured and heavily used in the 1950s. They were the active ingredient in fire suppressant foams that were used at military bases on aircraft fires.
Since then, they’ve been used in many applications and consumer products – shampoos, dental floss, nail polish. They’ve been used in waxy coatings found in food containers. They have also been applied as nonstick coatings; for example, in cookware. They’ve been used in outerwear to help with rain protection.
Why are PFAS called “forever chemicals”?
Jessica Ray: It is difficult for PFAS to degrade naturally in the environment or even during processes like water treatment.
How do PFAS move through the environment?
Jessica Ray: Unfortunately, PFAS like to stick to solid surfaces like soils. They can dissolve in water and enter the Earth’s atmosphere. And because PFAS can permeate air, water and soil, humans and animals can be exposed to them in a multitude of ways.
Jessica Ray: You can do a number of things. If you’re cooking, you could purchase and use stainless steel or cast iron cookware, very tried and true cookware that should not contain PFAS.
Jessica Ray: A handful of companies are selling essentially a version of a Brita water filter that are targeted for PFAS. Generally though, just using something like a Brita or Pur water filter at home should help reduce exposure to not only PFAS, but other contaminants that might persist even in drinking water that’s distributed to your tap at home.
What about your research on removing PFAS from water?
Jessica Ray: My research group is exploring two different approaches for treating PFAS in water. One approach is to remove or separate PFAS from water. The other is to destroy PFAS in water.
For the separation approaches, we’re looking at existing water treatment processes used in drinking water and wastewater treatment, and then trying to modify those processes to selectively target PFAS in water apart from other contaminants that might be in the water.
How is your group trying to improve PFAS filtration?
Jessica Ray: If you are filtering your water at home using a filtration cartridge, then that can help to remove a wide variety of contaminants. These contaminants can include heavy metals or other dissolved contaminants in water.
But often, PFAS in drinking water sources tend to exist in very, very low concentrations, while other contaminants exist at much higher ones. Filters only have so many adsorption sites available where contaminants are bound. And so there is a strong likelihood the adsorption sites will be occupied before the PFAS can be removed from the water.
One approach that we’ve been using is to develop new adsorbents that help target PFAS. My group has been developing this material for the last couple of years. And we’ve been talking to people who can help commercialize this technology so consumers can apply these kinds of point-of-use treatments to help protect them from PFAS. It’s hard to say exactly how long it will be until the treatments will be commercially available – maybe in one or two years.
Are there alternatives to PFAS that are safer to use?
Jessica Ray: Researchers are looking into what’s called green chemistry – designing chemicals that behave similarly to PFAS but aren’t as toxic and will break down in the environment. So there is hope for the future.
SciLine is a free service based at the nonprofit American Association for the Advancement of Science that helps journalists include scientific evidence and experts in their news stories.
In recent years, Michigan has spent tens of millions of dollars to limit residents’ exposure to the harmful “forever chemicals” called PFAS. And some cities there have spent millions of their own to filter contaminated drinking water or connect to new, less-polluted sources.
“We’ve made significant investments to get up to speed,” said Abigail Hendershott, executive director of the Michigan PFAS Action Response Team, which serves as a coordinating group for the state’s testing, cleanup and public education efforts. “There’s still a good chunk of the country that hasn’t taken on anything.”
That’s about to change.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued new standards last month for PFAS levels in drinking water, giving water systems three years to conduct testing, and another two years to install treatment systems if contaminants are detected. State officials and utilities say it’s going to be difficult and costly to meet the requirements.
“This is going to take a lot more investment at the state level,” said Alan Roberson, executive director of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators, a group that convenes leaders in state health and environmental agencies. “It creates a big workload for everybody.”
PFAS chemicals are widespread, found in a host of everyday products and industrial uses, and they don’t break down naturally, meaning they stay in human bodies and the environment indefinitely. Exposure has been shown to increase the risk of cancer, decrease fertility, cause metabolic disorders and damage the immune system.
To date, 11 states have set limits for PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, in drinking water. Several others have pending rules or levels that require public notice. While the federal rule builds on those efforts, it also sets limits that are stricter than the state-issued rules.
“We really have looked to the states as leaders in setting standards and doing some of the foundational science,” said Zach Schafer, director of policy and special projects for the EPA’s Office of Water. “The state agencies are the ones who will be playing the point role [in implementing the national rule].”
Schafer said the agency estimates that 6% to 10% of water systems nationwide will need to take steps to reduce PFAS contamination, at a cost averaging $1.5 billion per year over an 80-year span.
Public health advocates say the EPA’s rule is an important step to ensure all Americans have access to safe water. They say state actions show that such efforts can work.
But some state regulators and water suppliers — even in states that already have their own rules — say the strict thresholds and timelines imposed by the feds will be difficult for many utilities to achieve. While the Biden administration has dedicated billions in funding to help clean up water supplies, experts say the costs will far exceed the available money.
“It’s going to have a significant impact nationally on water rates and affordability of water,” said Chris Moody, regulatory technical manager with the American Water Works Association, a group that includes more than 4,000 utilities.
An estimate, conducted on behalf of the association, pegs the national cost of cleaning up contaminated water at nearly $4 billion each year. The report found that some households could face thousands of dollars in increased rates to cover the costs of treatment.
‘There’s a lot of concern’
New Jersey in 2018 became the first state to issue standards for PFAS in drinking water. While the state’s regulations given New Jersey a head start, officials say they still have a difficult task ahead to meet the stricter thresholds.
“When we bring in the EPA number, the number of noncompliant systems goes up dramatically,” said Shawn LaTourette, the state’s commissioner of environmental protection. “There’s a lot of concern about cost and implementation.”
LaTourette said state leaders are working to analyze which water systems may fall out of compliance when the federal thresholds take effect. And he’s calling on lawmakers to provide more money to communities that can’t afford the upgrades.
In Washington state, utilities have begun testing for PFAS under state standards passed by regulators in 2021. Officials say that roughly 2% of the water systems tested so far aren’t in compliance, but that number would jump to 10% when factoring in the stricter federal limits. State leaders say they’ll be able to grandfather in the data they’ve been collecting to meet EPA’s testing requirements.
The agency may ask state lawmakers for a “substantial” increase in staffing to implement the new rules, said Mike Means, capacity development and policy manager with the Washington State Department of Health.
Michigan has had its drinking water standards for PFAS since 2020. Hendershott said state officials are well prepared to incorporate the EPA’s thresholds. But the strict new limits could quadruple the number of water systems that fall out of compliance.
Sarah Doll, national director of Safer States, an alliance of environmental health groups focused on toxic chemicals, said state efforts were key to bringing about the federal rule.
“They created the urgency for the feds to bring these standards,” she said. “States that already have regulatory standards absolutely are in a better position.”
‘It’s very expensive’
While many states have not enacted their own standards, some have conducted testing or taken other steps to address residents’ exposure.
Missouri has been testing water systems for PFAS for more than a decade and created maps to notify residents of potential exposure. Of the 400 systems it’s sampled, 11 may have trouble complying with the EPA rule, said Eric Medlock, an environmental specialist with the state Department of Natural Resources. The agency aims to bring on a chemist and laboratory equipment to conduct more testing in-house.
Medlock expressed concern that the federal limits are so strict that they’re near the threshold of what can be detected.
“When you get down to these really low detection levels that are right at the regulatory limit, that poses a problem,” he said. “We’re going to have to enforce and regulate what EPA proposed. It is going to be an issue.”
Medlock and others noted that states will face longer-term issues with the storage of the waste products filtered from the water, which carry their own PFAS contamination risk.
The infrastructure bill passed by Congress in 2021 includes $5 billion over five years to help communities treat PFAS and other emerging contaminants.
More funding for cleanup may come from state lawsuits filed against chemical manufacturers. Thirty attorneys general have filed litigation against polluters, and Minnesota settled its case against 3M Company for $850 million. But leaders say such settlements aren’t a predictable funding source.
In addition to the upfront cost of installing treatment systems, utilities face ongoing expenses, such as replacing filters and disposing of waste, that are less likely to benefit from federal grants and loans. Meanwhile, some water system leaders say the federal compliance timelines may not be long enough.
“It takes time to design and build a major capital project,” said Erica Brown, chief policy and strategy officer for the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, a policy group that advocates for public water utilities. “It’s not one of those things that you say, ‘You have to do this, and next year,’ and you can just turn it on.”
And some officials fear the drinking water limits could lead to more state regulations on wastewater plants and other entities whose discharges may affect drinking water sources.
“It seems like it’s going to be problematic, because [treatment] is very expensive,” said Sharon Green, manager of legislative and regulatory programs with the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, an agency whose members operate 11 wastewater treatment plants.
Both state regulators and regulated utilities say state leaders need a broader approach to the PFAS problem than just treating the water that comes out of the tap. Officials need to stop pollution at the source, regulate industrial operations and limit products that contain the chemicals.
“If we keep it out of the river in the first place, … [the utility] doesn’t have to spend millions of dollars for treatment,” said Jean Zhuang, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, an advocacy group focused on the South.
While Southern states have not adopted drinking water standards for PFAS, Zhuang said South Carolina’s requirement that polluters disclose their discharges of PFAS is a good model to begin cutting off contamination sources.
As states face down the expenses of fixing the PFAS problem, some advocates also want them to remember the public health costs of inaction.
“People will ultimately be consuming less of these chemicals and getting sick less often,” said Melanie Benesh, vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group, a public health advocacy nonprofit.
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Climate change is a real bummer for mountain streams — it depletes the groundwater that feed creeks and rivers and makes them dirtier, besides. That’s the grim conclusion one reaches after reading two recently published papers. Let’s take them one at a time:
The Colorado River region is in the grips of the most severe, multi-decadal drought in over a millennium. The most obvious signs of this are declining streamflows across the region. But these declines, the authors of the paper point out, “cannot be explained solely by lower precipitation.” In 2021, for example, the Upper Colorado River Basin received about 80% of the normal snowfall. But the river’s unregulated flow into Lake Powell was just 30% of normal — indicating that some of that snow was going missing somewhere along the line.
Some of the vanishing act can be attributed to sublimation, or the direct conversion of snow to water vapor, skipping the in-between liquid state (so the snow evaporates into the atmosphere rather than into streams). Climate change-exacerbated warming temperatures and dust-on-snow (and the resulting decrease in albedo) can increase sublimation. But researchers suspected something else was also at play here, namely changes in groundwater storage.
Scientists have long assumed that groundwater didn’t play a significant role in streamflows in mountainous regions because the geology didn’t support large underground storage. But newer research suggests that networks of fractures in crystalline and metamorphic rock can store more water at greater depths than previously believed. Perhaps that was what was stealing the water?
The researchers focused their investigation on the drainage of the East River, a stream that flows from the mountains above Crested Butte, Colorado, and on whose banks the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory sits. They used a high-resolution hydrological model that maps what’s going on 400 meters underground.
The East River Valley, northwest of the historic town of Gothic, home to the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory. The mountain with the pointed peak in the distance is Mount Crested Butte. Photo credit: Mark Stone/University of Washington
They found that, normally, groundwater storage can help stabilize streamflows during fluctuations between wet and dry years. Big snow recharges the aquifer, and the aquifer bolsters stream flows during droughts. But modeling shows that after just one extremely dry year, the groundwater storage does not recover, even after subsequent wet years. Higher temperatures, meanwhile, increase vegetation’s evapotranspiration — or consumption of groundwater — which further diminishes groundwater storage recharge. Wintertime snowmelt actually increases groundwater recharge during the winter and early spring, but in doing so, steals water that would otherwise go to streamflow.
So, yeah, not only does global warming diminish the snowpack, it also depletes groundwater storage, which ultimately leads to reduced Colorado River flows and more tension and conflict over how to divide up what little water — that could be contaminated with metals (see below) — remains. I’d recommend reading the whole paper, since my summary really doesn’t do it justice. It has interesting insights into how mountain hydrology works. Here’s a diagram from the paper giving a good overview of the phenomenon:
As if that wasn’t bad enough, now we learn that those depleted streams are also getting dirtier. That is, concentrations of potentially toxic metals are increasing in mountain streams. And, yes, it’s thanks to human-caused climate change (though the metal-loading itself isn’t necessarily human-caused).
It’s important to note that this paper focuses on acid rock drainage as opposed to acid mine drainage. Both phenomena work the same: Water and oxygen react with sulfide minerals, usually pyrite, to form sulfuric acid. The acid then dissolves other minerals and “loads” the water with those metals, such as lead, copper, aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, and zinc — each of which can harm aquatic life in high concentrations. Acid rock drainage is the more overarching term, but generally refers to this reaction occurring naturally. Acid mine drainage is when mining catalyzes or exacerbates the phenomenon by introducing subterranean minerals to oxygen and water.
Cement Creek and an iron fen above Silverton, Colorado. Cement Creek is affected by both natural acid rock drainage and human-caused acid mine drainage. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
An analysis of 40 years of water chemistry from 22 mineralized watersheds across Colorado found that sulfate, zinc, and copper concentrations were increasing by about 2% per year average — and have nearly doubled over the last 30 years. Some of this may be due to declining streamflows, which carry less water to dilute the metals. But the researchers found that load — or the amount of metals in the water — is also increasing, and is on average “at least an equal contributor” as the dilution effect. They also found that loads began climbing more dramatically beginning in 2000, when the current mega-drought kicked in.
And there appears to be a correlation between the mean annual air temperature, or MAAT, and the acid mine drainage load and concentration. This led researchers to theorize that warming temperatures are melting previously frozen ground, opening up new pathways for oxygenated groundwater flow (in the same way that mining does), which in turn leads to more formation of acid rock drainage. Similarly, declining groundwater storage could lower water tables, exposing more subterranean sulfides and minerals to oxygen, thus increasing groundwater acidity and metal loading.
The authors conclude: “Our correlation analysis therefore points to accelerating sulfide weathering rates from melting of frozen ground as perhaps the most important driving mechanism for observed regional increases in concentration and load at acidic sites.”
📖 Reading Room 🧐
In my teens and early twenties, I made a nearly annual springtime pilgrimage from Durango or Santa Fe to the Tucson area for some sunshine and desert time. One of my favorite things to do while there was to hike up Mt. Wrightson. The trailhead is at around 5,000 feet in elevation in the lush, jungle-like Madera Canyon, itself a stark contrast to the blazing cacti and scrub-smattered lowlands nearby. The well-worn trail takes you through a variety of eco-zones before topping out on the 9,456-foot summit where, inevitably, there would be snow. And, yes, I know that it’s weird to hike back to the high country climate while on an escape from the same, but it’s different when at the end of the day I’d be sitting in an open air cafe under a brilliant bougainvillea.
Wrightson is in the Santa Rita Mountains, one of dozens of Madrean Sky Islands, or wildly biodiverse mountain ranges in southern Arizona and northern Mexico. The Arizona Republic’s Brandon Loomis has a good and heartbreaking story about how the Sky Islands are threatened by climate change, development, and a new mining boom — especially to extract so-called “green metals” such as manganese, which is used in electric vehicle batteries.
⛏️ Mining Monitor ⛏️
Defunct uranium mines and waste rock above the San Miguel River near the former townsite of Uravan in western Colorado. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Maybe uranium’s too hot to handle? In March we reported that Sassy Gold was set to acquire 345 uranium mining claims on 8,206 acres in La Sal Creek, the Lisbon Valley, the Uravan Mineral Belt, and on the San Rafael Swell from Kimmerle Mining and its associated firm, Three Step Partnership, both of Moab. Now Sassy is retracting its offer, saying it “identified a number of material political, environmental and technical risks associated with the properties” that “fundamentally altered the value of the proposed transaction.” You don’t say?
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Congress continues to push legislation that would “reform” the 1872 General Mining Law. Good news, right? Wrong. These lawmakers — which include both Democrats and Republicans from mining-heavy states — are looking to codify an older interpretation of the law allowing mining companies to dump waste rock or mill tailings on federal mining claims that are not valid, i.e. they don’t contain minerals of proven value. The bill passed the House and is now working its way through the Senate. Inside Climate News has more on that.
Meanwhile, efforts to actuallyreform the 152-year-old law to make it less of a giveaway to corporations appear to be at a standstill.
Click the link to access the report on the American River website. Here’s the introduction:
Introduction One year ago, the Supreme Court issued its sweeping decision in the case Sackett v. EPA, which invalidated federal Clean Water Act protections for most streams and wetlands in the United States. Since then, the fight for clean water protections has been at the state level. This report outlines the state of clean water protections one year out from the Sackett decision and why federal protections for our critical waters is vital in the face of worsening climate change and other threats.
In the year since the Supreme Court ruling, two states passed or introduced legislation to create new permitting programs to fill the gap in federal protections and eight states passed or introduced stronger laws and policies to strengthen state protections. Two states passed legislation weakening state-level protections, while efforts to weaken state protections failed in four other states.
