People Before Profit blog

Texas towns run dry as private water trumps public need

Tue, 27 Aug 2013 16:13:00 +0000

AUSTIN, Texas - Let's say you live in a small Texas town that, because of a years-long drought, is running out of drinking water.

Because of the emergency, your town has banned homeowners from watering lawns, and begun trucking in tanks of water to keep the town from going completely dry.

Down the road, however, a landowner has leased his groundwater rights to a petro/gas drilling firm that routinely uses many thousands of gallons of water to extract oil and gas from the ground. Where does his water come from?

The same place as yours, essentially.

Underground aquifers are the source of much of the water that has allowed cities, farmers, and ranchers to prosper in this arid region. Texas law allows landowners to pump as much water from their wells as they choose - with few restrictions - even if part of that water is siphoned from other landowners or neighboring towns. The "rule of capture" treats groundwater as private property, even though scientists have long recognized the deep interchange between ground (private) and surface (state) waters.

Water rights expert Robert Glennon, author of "Unquenchable, America's Water Crisis and What To Do About It," says on his website: "What we must recognize is that water is a finite and valuable resource ... We should create a lifeline supply that recognizes a human right to water for basic needs. If the richest country in the history of the world cannot make that commitment to its people, then we are a sorry lot."

Glennon advocates that communities escalate rates charged to major water users, in order to encourage conservation.

Texas laws and customs, however, have reflexively backed corporate and landowner rights, regardless of their impact on the common good. In recent years, that one-note boosterism has led to critical water shortages in the most drought-stricken areas of the state.

In Barnhart, Texas, for instance, "the me-first we-never" motto of water rights has bled the town dry for days at a time. Nearby hydraulic fracking gulped down a veritable flood of well water, this during a brutal drought.

The State of Texas is building a pipeline to route water to the town's residents, which is yet another way that Texas taxpayers are funding Big Oil and Big Gas.

A statement released by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality revealed that approximately 30 towns could run out of water before 2014. Much of the state is experiencing moderate to severe drought conditions.

"It's ridiculous," said Gloria (who requested her real name not be used). "I have friends whose wells have run dry, and it's because their neighbor contracted his well water to the gas companies. He takes the money - hell, he hasn't farmed his land in years - he takes the money and lives over in Lubbock. It's not his problem, but it's our whole way of life drying up because of people like him."

Gloria and her husband live in a rural county on the Texas Panhandle hard hit by the ongoing drought. Breakthroughs in extracting oil from formations previously thought played-out has led to an oil boom that has spread from the Midland-Odessa Petroplex into the Panhandle. This, combined with natural gas explorations, has led to a huge demand on water.

Gloria's family has farmed their land for generations and observed water conservation practices well before the current drought. "We've been good about using drip irrigation, basically doing the right thing year after year," she said, adding "It's expensive, but it's kept the well water flowing, or at least it did until recently."

While the Texas South Plains struggles with long-term issues of drought, corporate vs. common water needs, and dwindling aquifers, the story downstate features another player: coal-powered electrical plants, which are water hogs.

The larger a city, the more its power needs grow to a level far beyond the ability of surface water (rivers and lakes) to provide, which again pushes the burden onto groundwater.

The problem, however, is that groundwater isn't always near potential customers. Part of the cost of the pipelines and water treatment plants then gets passed on to consumers in the form of taxes and increased water rates.

Because the State of Texas has divided its territory into a slurry of water conservation districts and public entities, the battle for who controls the H20 is one in which the average citizen has little direct say.

Water district boards are empowered to sell water to companies representing water-hungry industries and cities. These competing interests have been such a source of contention that this year the Texas Legislature, long dominated by climate-change-deniers, finally passed the State Water Plan.

Texas voters will decide in November whether to support the plan, which includes funding for hundreds of water supply projects.

In the meantime, Gloria continues to see water trucks drive by her farm en route to various petro/gas drilling projects.

"Frankly, I don't see how any plan by the state will really fix the problem. We're a dry state and getting dryer by the day," she said. "The people down in Austin have to decide whether they care more about people than oil rigs, and I don't see that happening anytime soon."

Texans concerned about water policy have a few options. One is to find out who is on their local water district board.

The Texas Water Development Board website includes information to help residents find what groundwater district they live in, as well as other information including contact information for each district.

The Environmental Defense Fund is active on the state and national level on a variety of water-related issues.

Texas Living Waters Project is a joint effort by the National Wildlife Federation and the Sierra Club.

It should be noted that although Texas historically has been a hostile climate for the labor movement, this hasn't stopped the AFL-CIO from advocating a water blueprint to benefit not only Texans but the rest of the nation.

The AFL-CIO's Six-Point Jobs Plan includes calls to reauthorize and expand the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. The plan also cites the need to renew the Building Star program to create jobs through the installation of energy- (and water-) saving technology.

Corrected 8/29/13: The Texas Water Development Board is the state agency that works with groundwater management districts. An earlier version incorrectly identified the agency.

Photo: A central Texas rancher put this sign on his fence to encourage everyone driving by on TX 290 to do whatever they can to bring the parched land some relief. Jack Newton CC 2.0

That sinking feeling: Ongoing disaster in Louisiana

Fri, 23 Aug 2013 15:44:00 +0000

There's a big, gaping hole in this story: specifically, a sinkhole. In Bayou Corne, Louisiana, it's an ongoing environmental disaster that first emerged in August 2012. 350 residents were forced to evacuate; initially, they were confused. Then it came to light that the sinkhole opened up on land leased from a petrochemical company, and things - unfortunately - made more sense.

The land was leased to the company Texas Brine by its landowner, the Occidental Chemical Corporation. That company was operating there through a process known as injection mining; activists, however, might refer to it as irresponsible tampering with the environment for the purpose of extracting a resource - in this case, saltwater. It was nothing new. But what happened afterward was. The operation involved hollowing out the land, which was effectively a giant salt deposit, and establishing "salt caverns" there, which helped pump saltwater to the surface and send it off to refineries to be used in manufacturing paper and medical supplies. Then, after some odd seismic activity, one of the salt caverns collapsed.

The resulting sinkhole was about an acre wide - initially. Now, it covers about 24 acres and is roughly 750 feet deep. It often devours wildlife and cypress trees, and ensures the continued exile of Bayou Corne's former residents. Stinking oil has also been known to bubble to the surface, and gases have seeped into a nearby aquifer.

Of course, one can be sure that neither Texas Brine nor Occidental has been charged with disrupting 350 lives, because corporations are increasingly considered to be above the law.

Ecologist Sandra Steingraber noted that this type of mining presents "an inherently dangerous situation. When you keep drilling over and over and over again, whether it's into bedrock or salt caverns, at some point you have damaged the integrity of this underground structure enough that something is in danger of collapsing."

As hydrologist Jim LaMoreaux added, companies like Texas Brine are too busy trying to "not go over a certain budget and a certain time frame" with these operations, and don't bother to do a proper survey of the environment. These companies, he said, cut corners and fail to commission the proper studies.

Last week - finally - the state of Louisiana filed lawsuits against Brine and Occidental for damages stemming from the cavern collapse. Activists fear the result will be little more than a slap on the wrist for these companies, as so recently occurred in the case of BP, for its negligence in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Mother Jones described this incident as "the biggest ongoing disaster in the United States you haven't heard of." But the people of Bayou Corne are all too familiar with this event, which has permanently altered their lives.

"We just feel that the place is not ever going to be what it once was," said former resident Bucky Mistretta. "It was just a beautiful, pristine place on the bayou. And now that's gone, and we just wouldn't feel safe about what's underneath us."

Photo: This sinkhole forced an entire small community to evacuate, and continues to grow larger. Jeffrey Dubinskey/Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper & Louisiana Environmental Action Network

World scientists’ report will sound new climate alarm

Wed, 21 Aug 2013 12:06:00 +0000

The Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is in the process of finalizing its next report, due to be released in four volumes between Fall 2013 and Spring 2014. These reports, which have come out every seven years over the past several decades, represent the combined consensus views of thousands of climate scientists.

Draft copies of some of the reports are now being leaked. While the IPCC correctly responds to criticism of these as premature, since they are by no means finalized yet, there are some things we can already be certain of.

1. The certainty on the part of the vast majority of climate scientists that global warming is real and is at the very least primarily caused by human action has been growing with each new IPCC report. That trend will continue in the upcoming report. All the criteria for such certainty have long ago passed 90 percent, and just keep getting confirmed by new scientific study, by extreme weather events in the real world, by unprecedented droughts in many parts of the world, by the increasing acidity of the world's oceans, and much more.

2. Because the IPCC works on the basis of summarizing thousands of other scientific studies, it tends to be both wide-ranging in outlook and also somewhat conservative in its predictions. In each report, seven years apart, the "worst-case" predictions of the previous report have become the "most likely" predictions. This too will continue, as new studies confirm and deepen our collective knowledge about the world's climate system, how it works, how it is interconnected to all other natural systems (water, oceans, soil, plant life, etc.), and how changes in each of these systems affect all the others.

3. It appears that this latest report will include consideration for the first time of the impact on sea levels from the melting of ice in Greenland, predicting even higher sea level increases than in previous reports. However, it still will not include consideration of the impact on climate change of the melting of the permafrost across the top of the Northern Hemisphere. This is important because this melting releases massive amounts of previously frozen methane and carbon dioxide. This can exacerbate global warming caused by direct human interference in the climate, creating a feedback loop that will make greenhouse gas emissions much worse, and from a source that humans do not have any control over.

4. As each year passes, it becomes more difficult and more expensive to institute measures to reduce global warming. This creates a political paradox - the more we need such measures, the more proof there is of the reality of climate change, the more time passes, then the measures we need to take become more expensive and more massive, and the political will to do the right thing becomes more difficult. With each step toward certainty, the right-wing cries against reality become more shrill - another trend with no end in sight.

5. We can be certain that at least some of the press coverage of the final report will focus on anything that can be used to downplay the significance of the problem. This report will likely discuss the phenomenon that increases in average air temperatures have slowed over the past few years, and deniers will seize on this to undercut the need for change. But since all the world's natural systems are integrated at every level, average air temperatures, which are still increasing, are only one part of a very complex equation. If you take into account the rapidly increasing acidity of the ocean, which results from the ocean absorbing carbon dioxide, there has been no slowing of the impacts climate change is making on the real world. But some press coverage will focus on any piece which, taken out of context, can be used to make people feel that the situation is not as bad as it really is.

6. Similarly, right-wing efforts to discredit climate change science, in addition to becoming increasingly shrill, also rely on overly simplified nonsense. Every year, when there is still a winter it will be used to claim that "global warming isn't real - we still have winter!" But this ignores how climate change works. It doesn't eliminate seasons, it makes the high temperatures greater. Just because we still have beaches in Florida doesn't mean that sea levels aren't increasing, and that increase will speed up over the coming decades. Right-wingers also focus on what is happening this year or next, to the exclusion of looking at the real long-term trends in the climate. This year may be about the same as last year in terms of the number and intensity of forest fires, for example, but the more than five decade long trend is for more forest fires burning at greater intensities. This winter may or may not be warmer than last year's, but the long-term trend is for Autumn to last longer and Spring to arrive earlier.

7. As many have pointed out, the right-wing attacks on climate science have little or nothing to do with the science itself; they are based on a rejection of what will be required to combat global warming. Government action on a large scale is required, as are restrictions on what businesses can do especially regarding greenhouse gas emissions. When right-wingers sneer at the science, they are really fearful of what will happen to their financial supporters in the fossil fuel industries.

We can predict, with 100 percent certainty, that the upcoming IPCC report will confirm that global climate change is real, it is getting worse, it is caused mostly or entirely by human activity, and that we need to act to combat it - to reduce emissions, to adapt to the coming crises a warming world will bring on top of the huge impacts we have already seen.

Photo: Following the Copenhagen Climate Change talks in December 2009, the United Nations Office in the Russian Federation, together with the Young Peacekeepers Movement, sponsored an art contest called "People in the face of climate change." This is one of the entries. United Nations Development Program in Europe and Central Asia CC 2.10

Idaho blackened by brushfire

Tue, 20 Aug 2013 16:07:00 +0000

The 104,000-acre Beaver Creek wildfire has been appropriately described as a "beast." It is currently winding its way through parched grasslands and pinewoods, encroaching on Sun Valley, a central Idaho resort community. The blaze, started by lightning, is only nine percent contained - and it's been burning since August 7. What most of the media is not reporting, of course, is the disaster's tie to climate change. And as with the other major brushfires that preceded this one, you can be sure there's a connection.

As of now, about 1,850 homes remain under an evacuation order as the fire is at an "extreme risk" of further growth. High temperatures and strong wind gusts aren't helping. "It's been hot; it's been dry. The vegetation here has been extremely dry," said Traci Weaver, spokeswoman for the local fire management team. "It's a perfect firestorm."

Despite the media's aversion to associating this with global warming ("the fire was, after all, triggered by lightning," a detractor might say), a link was nevertheless drawn in a new study published by Michigan State University. The paper appeared just a week into the Beaver Creek blaze, noting, "Climate change may favor larger and more destructive wildfires in the American West in the future." It's a statement that's been made numerous times by everyone from environmentalists to scientists, and all the while, the worsening droughts (which exacerbate the fires) are proving it to be true.

Lifeng Luo, MSU professor of geology and the study's lead author, remarked, "Our findings suggest that future lower atmospheric conditions may be conducive to larger and more extreme wildfires, posing an additional challenge to fire and forest management."

The study focused on U.S. states that have, in recent years, been epicenters for wildfires that once occurred on a much less frequent basis. These included Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho. Although 2012 had the second fewest number of fires in this region since 2000, the study found, August 2012 saw a whopping 3.6 million acres blackened. This means that the fires overall have been fewer, but larger. And as the researchers concluded, wildfires will continue in this fashion.

Carl Albury, a worker with the U.S. Forest Service, added, "A 100,000-acre wildfire used to be unusual, you would see one every few years. Now, those types of fires are becoming a yearly occurrence."

As a Think Progress article elaborated, "history speaks for itself. The seven largest U.S. fire seasons since 1960" have all occurred within the space of the last 13 years.

Unlike their larger counterparts, local news outlets did, at least, acknowledge the obvious climate change connection: "A generation of firefighters has faced conditions their predecessors never imagined," said the Idaho Statesman. "The fires, driven by a warming climate, bountiful fuels, and a growing population living on lands that were once wild, are reshaping the ecosystem and the human communities within."

As the Beaver Creek fire creeps ever nearer to Sun Valley, it drives home another point: more and more people are being put in harm's way as housing development expands and moves into risky fire zones. Since the 1990s, the Statesman reported, 15-17 million new homes have been built in such areas. When wildfires reach homes and become "urban blazes," the problem grows more complex, because once a single house starts burning, that can jump to surrounding homes and overtake even the best of firefighting efforts.

As global warming continues, wildfires in both developed and undeveloped areas will increase in magnitude. According to the Department of Agriculture, the amount of land burned by the fires will double by the year 2050.

As several politicians have reminded people, failure to acknowledge climate change will do nothing to improve the situation. Whether the culprit is a climate change-denying Republican, or a media outlet that chooses not to address the matter, the end result is the same.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said, "Address climate change. Open your eyes, breathe the air, and see what's going on. Warmer temperatures combined with long dry seasons have resulted in more severe wildfires, and it's only going to get worse."

Photo: A helicopter flies over a large column of fire. KTVB/Twitter

Gulf of Mexico dead zones are part of climate disaster web

Fri, 16 Aug 2013 16:49:00 +0000

An oxygen-devouring algae bloom is causing a 5,840 square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico - that's 2,940 square miles larger than last year. The growing issue has been linked to fertilizers and pesticides used on farms in the Midwest, but there's a bigger picture. Many Republicans in Congress, who have vehemently denied the existence of climate change, would have one believe that any claims of climate alteration are baseless. But there's an easily discernable pattern, in this case, that proves that to be false.

Dead zones are oxygen-deprived areas in oceans and large lakes, which suffer from an overabundance of certain nutrients and, often, pollutants. The dead zone in the Gulf was first identified in 1950, but did not become a major problem until much later (think very recently). The correlation between the dead zone and the Mississippi River, which is the drainage area for 41 percent of the continental U.S., is obvious. High-nutrient runoff, such as nitrogen and phosphorous, is dumped into the Gulf from the river, and most of that comes from Midwest agricultural practices. But that's only one ingredient in the deadly cocktail that is responsible for what is also referred to as the "hypoxic zone" of the Gulf.

In 2010 - the year of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill - the dead zone was the largest it had ever been; the size of New Jersey. There, too, exists a link. When oil decomposes, it consumes oxygen. So, for one of the largest oil spills of all time to occur in a body of water already suffering from hypoxia...well, you do the math. And despite BP's claims to the contrary, there are still remnants of that crude in the Gulf, the effects of which could linger for decades. This could foil any efforts made to lessen or alter the pesticides used on Midwest farms to mitigate the problem. It's a complicated issue, and it gets worse.

The very same area of land from which nutrients drain into the Gulf also just happens to be the site of numerous factory-scale meat farms. To be clear, the Midwest is the most heavily-concentrated area of factory farms in the country. And factory farms are big trouble. It is a profit-hungry industry that relies heavily on dangerous chemicals: pesticides, to curb disease and bacteria; and antibiotics and hormones, to stimulate rapid livestock growth. Ethics and animal welfare are not even part of the equation. The factory farming industry is capitalism to the nth degree. And the swath of chemicals and animal waste from these factories gets dumped into lakes and rivers (often illegally), where it eventually runs off into the Mississippi River - and you can imagine where it goes from there. Factory farming is very much a contributor to the dead zone.

Genetically-modified crops, another gift from corporations, also come into the picture. GMO corn and soybeans make up a large part of the diets of cattle, who are imprisoned and tortured in unsanitary conditions. GMO corn carries a toxin that makes it poisonous to a pest called the rootworm; that toxin also builds up and eventually drains into the Gulf. The modified crops also cause said rootworm to become more resistant, thus facilitating the need for farmers to "up the dosage" of pesticide.

So are there ways to curb what is being pumped into these waters? A 2012 study by Iowa State University suggested that there might be. It found that by mixing in one or two other vegetables with the Midwest's corn and soy crops, farmers could reduce the need for nitrogen fertilizer by 80 percent. Also, instead of leaving fields empty during the winter (this massively contributes to soil runoff), farmers could occupy those spaces with cover crops.

But the average farmer would not associate the deep problems in the Gulf with corn crops; nor would many animal rights activists link the dead zone to the very cruel factory farms they are fighting. It's very possible that this is due to the fact that the national dialogue on this issue is sorely lacking. The problems in the Gulf are often cited as "another product of climate change." But not going into greater detail, and not tracing the issues to their multiple sources, results in a truncated assessment of the overall problem. And that opens the door for Republicans to write that assessment off as another part of "the leftist global warming conspiracy."

On Aug. 14, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh claimed that climate change is not happening; that human activities are not having any negative effects on the environment, because "you must be either atheist or agnostic to believe that man controls something he can't create."

But one thing disproves that sort of statement: the simple lineage of disastrous human practices, which some experts have traced all the way down the line from corporate profiteering, to animal cruelty, to illegal chemical dumping. It is all connected, and unless greater social and environmental responsibility is exercised, hypoxic zones like the one in the Gulf will grow and multiply.

It is ironic that the very Republicans who deny climate change exists are actually contributing to it, through their support of corporations: corporations like Monsanto, which manufacture harmful pesticides; corporations like BP, that engage in offshore oil drilling amidst spills and leaks; corporations that, if given the chance, will damage areas like the Gulf so badly that New Jersey-sized dead zones will become a permanent fixture in the already-blackened water.

Photo: The dead zone in the Gulf, as it appeared in 2011. (Wikipedia/NASA & National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)